Soldier of the Death God

This is a rough draft of the first chapter of "Soldier of the Death God". If you want to read the chapters as they are readied for the final book, consider joining my Beta Readers club.

Blurb

Cryptus is a Dark Captain in service to the Lich Queen. A loyal vassal and righteous worshipper of the Elemental God of Death, he has been amply rewarded for his service with title, property, and happy family. His rigid moral code defines him as much as the dreaded necromancy he wields.

Can Cryptus' rigid moral code survive when the Lich Queen is defeated and everything he knows falls apart?

This is a story of violence, betrayal, and despair.

Chapter 1: Cryptus

Nekra woke me with a kiss on the cheek. We'd been married for over twenty years, but the love was still there. She was still beautiful, everything I could ask for in a life partner. She still served the Lich Queen, once as a handmaid but now as her head seamstress.

I rolled out of bed, grateful that even in my forties, I had the mobility of youth. My joints did creak, though. Unlike many other dark captains, I was still alive, the heart still beating in my chest. Death was not the end of service to the Lich Queen, but I liked the act of breathing. Eventually, the aches and pains of age would slow me down, and I'd cross over. But that day hadn't come yet.

I looked in the mirror. I could see a gaunt man with long, gray hair. Handsome of face, only one scar, that on my cheek, received in a fight before I took service to the Lich Queen. My wife got up and hugs me from behind. She, too, is gaunt, but feminine. She remained the great beauty that made the Dark Mistress select her to be a handmaid.

"Can you walk our children to the academy?" My wife asked. "The streets are not what they were."

I frowned, the mirror betrayed me as crows' feet appeared by my eyes. Recently, the ruffian gangs had been causing trouble again on the streets. Once more, I would need to cull the criminal class so they remember the Lich Queen's mandate: In Necropolis, a child must be able to walk safely from the northern gate to the southern gate with a bag of gold in each hand.

Part of it was that the ruffians knew the Dark Mistress was away, invading the primitive Kingdom of Namayan. While she was converting that petty, feudal kingdom to righteous worship of the Elemental God of Death, they had begun to push boundaries. No matter, it was well within my ability to bring them to heal.

Nekra let me go, and I made my way to my private chambers. As I drank a glass of wine, the servants dressed me. First in spidersilk undergarments, followed by a jacket of arctic wool. Over that went my armor, perfectly fitting bone-steel plate. Bone-steel was forged from iron and human bone, making a pale yet light alloy. As a Dark Captain of the Death Legions, my armor was painted in royal black. The exception is where protective runes had been scribed, the power of which burned away the paint.

Once garbed in my armor of state, I personally buckle my belt on, for the scabbarded soulblade it held was a danger to anyone but me. Then Nekra came in, also now dressed, carrying my blood drinking rune spear. Together, we left our chambers and out into the courtyard of our home.

Our home was a five-story house built around a central courtyard. Our chambers were fashionably on the bottom floor, as are those of our children, and the stables. The family servants and guards lived in the upper floors; their lower status meant they climbed the steep stairs to their residences and workplaces. It was the property the Lich Queen gave me as a wedding present twenty years ago.

Our children came out of the apartment they share, dressed for the Ashen Spire Academy of Sovereign Arts in their school uniform of black leather, replete with a weapons belt containing a sword, and custom ritual daggers. Morcant, our son, seventeen, is tall, and his handsome visage clearly comes from Nekra. Morrigan, our daughter, who is a year younger, looked like a mix of Nekra and me. Her soft face hid a stubborn rage that reminds me of my youth.

Nekra bids them farewell for the day from afar. Here in the courtyard, we had to keep up appearances. Our children's servants had filed out behind them and bow as we exit the gates. I could read the pride that goes in those bows, a pride for which the servants have every right to feel. While the blood of my ancestors flowed in the veins of Morcant and Morrigan, the servants did most of the raising. Both Nekra and I had important roles to fulfill, and as our noble class did, we passeded the task of raising and caring for children to these folk. I was grateful to these servants and protected them as one would any precious resource.

Outside the gates of our home, a dead woman swept leaves while a dead man pulled a cart laden with packages. To someone not new to Necropolis, their smell would be oppressive. To me, the smell was home, the place where many commoners are lifted above simple labor through the expediency of the undead workforce. Instead, the people had lives of leisure, spending their time pushing the boundaries of knowledge and art. Only in backwards places like Namayan are the peasants forced to spend their living years in labor, and then have wasted deaths spent entirely outside our plane of existence. We were more enlightened than they are, for which we were thankful to her Dark Majesty, the Lich Queen, head priestess of the God of Death.

I led the way, walking at a stately pace, my children walking beside me. I was escorting my brood, and wanted to see why Nekra thinks the streets are getting uneasy.

We walked to my children's school up the narrow streets of Necropolis, passing shops and the homes above them, as well as the inevitable temples and columbaria, where the remains of the undead worked to dust, and ashes are kept. Our path was uphill, for Necropolis is built on a great hill riddled with subterranean passages and crypts.

As we approached the Ashen Spire that is second in height to only the Lich Queen's massive bone tower in the center of the city, we passed through the grand square of the city. Merchants hawked their wares from a hundred stalls, buskers tried to convince the hard-working people of the city to part with their coin, artists worked on easels, and the walking dead kept everything clean and did the hard labor.

I didn't need to see their faces to know my children were rolling their eyes as I veer to approach the stall of Mildred Graves. I lived a mostly ascetic life, living plainly, partaking only in that which a married man who serves our ruler as Dark Captain should. Here, in the square, Mrs. Graves is one of the few liberties I allowed myself.

I had eaten at the best restaurants in Necropolis and the tables of visiting emperors paying tribute to the Lich Queen. Yet nothing compared to the food that Mrs. Graves prepared at her stall. Bits of chicken liver are pan-seared until perfectly crispy, over which a cooked lizard egg is placed, then the result is wrapped in a crowmeal crepe. I paid her handsomely, a silver coin, which she weighed. I could take murderous offense to the fact that she didn't trust me to proper coin, but her cooking artistry is such that I granted her allowances.

As Mrs. Graves prepared breakfast for me, Morcant, and Morrigan, I observed the crowd. Ruffians walked in small groups amongst them, the common people wary of the wolves within their midst. Every ruffian wore the signature collar: a broad, soot-gray ruff whose stiffened folds framed the face like the petals of a poisoned flower. Once the badge of courtiers and merchants, it had become, in the tight streets of Necropolis, a mark of cutthroat self-appointed protectors. The lace was never clean. Most collars were patched with burlap, a few embroidered with silver thread.

The street gangs were allowed to exist because they served a purpose. The Lich Queen's early experiment with a constabulary saw corruption hiding behind her uniform, so she replaced them with criminals who were more obvious in operation. So she replaced them with the already present street gangs, who were supposed to be the sort of mix of vigilante and criminal oppression that happens in every city. They also managed that unsavory element of human nature: cheap physical thrills.

In any case, my wife was right: the ruffians were pushing boundaries even here in the grand market square under the shadow of the Lich Queen's tallest tower. Competing gangs worked the merchants, forcing the hard-working vendors to pay different groups to avoid trouble. That was against the unspoken rule where gangs could not overlap, which meant too many young men were not joining the legions. I would need to reduce the gangs again.

I stifled an internal sigh. Before I reduced the gangs again I would need to talk to one of their leaders, Balchor. We had attended the Ashen Spire together, and he had competed with me for the affections of Nekra. While I had completed my education there, he had left in anger.

Mrs. Graves snapped her fingers impatiently at me. I took the freshly cooked wrapped meat and egg from her. I walked my children to the edge of the square, where the gate into Ashen Spire stood.

My children walked in without even a farewell. Like the ruffians, my children were pushing boundaries. I supposed that was what teenagers did, even if their father is a Dark Captain serving the greatest ruler in history. I shrugged, they would come around in a few years.

ASSIST ME!

The psychic voice of the Lich Queen slammed into my head with enough force to drive me to my knees. The power of the sending was such that I knew every Dark Captain had received it. And through the connection, I felt an emotion I never imagined she could feel.

Fear.

Her Dark Majesty was afraid.

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