A Thirst For Vengeance (Book 2) Read online

  Table of Contents

  A Thirst for Vengeance, Part 2

  Books by Edward M. Knight

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  New Book Releases Newsletter

  About A Thirst for Vengeance, Part 3

  About the Author

  A Thirst for Vengeance, Part 2

  The Ashes Saga - Dagan’s Tale

  By Edward M. Knight

  www.edwardmknight.com

  Copyright © 2014 Edwards Publishing, Ltd

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-9937370-6-0

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Cover art by F. Bolla

  First Edition: June 2014

  Books by Edward M. Knight

  THE ASHES SAGA - DAGAN’S TALE

  A Thirst for Vengeance

  A Thirst for Vengeance, Part 2

  Book Description

  My name is Dagan. There are few alive with more blood on their hands than me.

  I have lived a life of degeneracy. I have studied the teachings of the dark mage Helosis and walked the path of the dead. I have been to the shadowrealm and emerged with my soul enact. I have challenged the Black Brotherhood and ridden with the Knights of Valamor as a brother-in-arms. I have spoken to Xune.

  My name is Dagan. This is my tale

  ...Thus began the story of one man's life. Now, in A Thirst for Vengeance, Part 2, that story continues.

  Rebellion is brewing in the heart of Hallengard. As Dagan seeks purpose in the aftermath of his mentor's death, he finds himself caught in the cross-hairs of a powerful foe. Desperation leads him to the most dangerous of havens: the Black Brotherhood. There, he discovers a place rife with corruption and deceit... and learns of a horrifying conspiracy centered around him.

  Chapter One

  The fire from the Arena ravaged Hallengard for days. Since it burned in the south, the Master did not give permission to the city watch to help those in need. Thousands died.

  Chaos ruled the streets. All semblance of order was broken. The city watch erected barriers to keep refugees from fleeing north. Hallengard was divided in two.

  Those were dark times for all involved. Smoke from the fires filled the air and obscured the sun in a permanent haze. South Hallengard was rife with corruption.

  I will not sit here and claim that I was above it. I was right there in the midst, thieving and pilfering with the best of them.

  In fact, I was the best. I was still small, and thus easily overlooked. I knew how to hide in the shadows and stay away from watchful eyes. I could blend in. I could be invisible.

  At least, until it came time for me to strike.

  After the finality of Blackstone’s death had sunk in, I became numb. The morals that compelled me to set the slave children free had cost me my best friend’s life. I considered myself wholly responsible for his death.

  It is a burden I have never been able to unload.

  I witnessed, in the days that followed, the basest of human behavior. Mobs ruled the streets before splintering off into rival gangs. They clashed with each other as much as with the city watch.

  The Master had commanded the watch to keep disorder contained in the south. He did not want it spreading to more affluent parts of the city.

  Containing the chaos was like trying to hold the lid on a boiling pot of water. Sooner or later, the building pressure inside would burst. The longer you waited, the worse the resulting explosion would be.

  You have to understand: People lost more than just their homes in the fires. They lost their hope. They lost their trust in the ruling class. They lost their belief in the natural order of things. They saw that the Master of the city, along with the counsellors, were there only to oppress them.

  It was the early stages of a revolution. Looking back, I can see how frightened the prospect made the nobles. I can understand their desire to keep the people in check.

  So, in an act of desperation, the Master and his counsellors turned to an unlikely ally:

  The Church.

  I spoke before of the Church’s meteoric rise to power over the course of my lifetime. It all started there, in the city of Hallengard. It all began because of the fire Blackstone and I started.

  The Church had ministries all over Hallengard, of course. However, the majority of them were in the south. The poor and desperate made for easy converts. Easy, at least, compared to the rich, powerful, and content nobles.

  But control of Devil’s Bane was the carrot that granted the Church access to the north. Their false religion, completely unfounded by history of the early gods, was only tolerated by the nobles because of the Church’s monopolistic control over the drug. The priests and church officials were not fools. Nor were they righteous men. They were greedy, corrupt, and power-hungry.

  They were, in short, just like the rest of us.

  So, when they saw panic rising in the courts of North Hallengard in the days that followed, they stepped in smoothly and offered their help.

  They would tame the unrest, they said, in return for a simple favor. A seat on Hallengard’s closed council.

  One seat was all they asked. One seat added; none removed. The council of four would become a council of five. None would be supplanted. No trouble would be stirred.

  Of course, prior to that point, the closed council had been four for just one reason: to grant veto power to the Master.

  He counted as one of the four. Ancient decree ruled that matters pertaining to Hallengard’s prosperity always be decided upon by a majority vote of the committee.

  The unspoken rule, therefore, was that the Master’s opinion was given double weight in contentious issues.

  The granting of a fifth seat changed the power dynamic. No more was the Master’s rule absolute. Now, divisive decisions could go either way. If the Church was granted its fifth seat, it could rule against the Master with three other council members and sway decisions in its favor.

  I was too young to understand the significance of the change at the time. But it is no stretch to say that the day the Master accepted the Church’s offer, Hallengard was changed forever.

  It took less than a week for the Church to regain control over the south. They did very little, in truth, except appear before the closed council with their offer at exactly the right time. People in south Hallengard were tired of disorder. It was easy for the Church to step in and establish themselves as new rulers.

  But the Church’s motives were more sinister than that. The Church knew the common people were looking for a leader. They were looking for someone to guide them.

  So the Church stepped in to
willingly fill that role. They had begun to build their army.

  But that story does not concern me. At least, not for many years. I have told you before that the Church had been both an ally and a foe to me. The fact still stands. I will get to that at its proper time.

  What did concern me, while all this was going on in the background, while people rioted and buildings burned, was sustaining my livelihood.

  It is obvious that, after two years off the streets, I had grown to rely on Blackstone. I did not look upon him as a father, or as family. But he was a friend. And now, he was gone.

  Gone. Gone, because of me. Gone, because of my mistake.

  I did not allow myself the luxury of grief. I wanted to be hardened by death. I wanted to be immune to the emotions that followed.

  Perhaps if I had grieved, things would have turned out differently. Perhaps if I had, I wouldn’t be sitting at this table today. Perhaps I wouldn’t be telling you my tale.

  Perhaps my greatest wish would be granted, and my name could be erased from the pages of history forever.

  Alas, such things are not in my power to command.

  So there I was, back on the streets, alone and with no place to go. The skills Blackstone had taught me were serving me well in the commotion after the fires. I could steal anything I set my mind to.

  Unfortunately, there was not a lot to steal. And even less worth getting caught for. With absolutely no order, the simplest crime would not be punished by a stained right thumb.

  It would be punished by death.

  I did not care. I had become numb. I dulled down my emotions to a vague nothingness in the back of my head. I acted as an automaton. I left no room in my mind for conscious thought.

  So I began to steal indiscriminately. I picked pockets and snatched coin purses. I took any trinkets that caught my eye. I hoarded dimes, pennies, and marks.

  Within days, I’d built up a collection double the size of the biggest payouts given in the gambling district. I was, in a matter of speaking, rich.

  I did not feel rich. I did not feel anything. I fed on the commotion going on around me, and thrived on the disorder. I could not allow myself to feel. I was afraid that if I did, the torrent of guilt would overwhelm me.

  I may have avenged Alicia by killing Three-Grin. But what did it matter? I had lost Blackstone in the process.

  Thus began my journey down a dark and dangerous road.

  Chapter Two

  Dagan paused and looked up. He saw Patch, perched on the edge of his stool, eyeing him with undue admiration. He saw Earl, regarding him with a lingering sliver of pity on his face. The old man pretended to be tough and hardened, but underneath it all—Dagan knew—was the boy who had never gotten over the loss of his first love.

  His companions did not interrupt him this time. They sat there, looking at him, waiting for him to continue his story.

  The next part gave Dagan pause. He had never described the four years that followed Blackstone’s death to anyone. In fact, he preferred not to give those years much thought. They had shaped the man he had become, undoubtedly, but that did not mean he enjoyed reminiscing.

  “This next part,” Dagan said, “may be difficult for me to recall. A lot of things happened in very quick succession. It was the perfect turn of events. Fortune left me powerless to impose my will or desires on them. I was as helpless as a leaf in a storm.”

  He looked at Patch, then continued. “I told you that this story is about the folly of being a hero. But to emerge in a position where heroism is possible, I had to first become somebody at the other end of the spectrum. I had to be corrupted. I had to become a murderer. I had to become a man—” he swept his gaze to Earl, “—of the Black Brotherhood.”

  ***

  After the Church had calmed most of the rioting, south Hallengard returned—more or less—to normal.

  While living with Blackstone, I had become very far removed from life on the street. I had a bed. I was given clothes. I did not need to worry about food, or a knife in the gut. I could practice with my blades.

  But being on my own, I had no illusion of having any of those things. The thing that irked me most was the inability to practice.

  I could not do it for multiple reasons. One, I could not risk attracting attention to myself. Two, I only had my ivory blade.

  Blackstone’s throwing knives were lost the night of the fire. His home had been sacked and robbed in the aftermath. I had gone there, hoping to find that old chest, and left bitterly disappointed.

  Not only had the landlord rented out the space to new tenants as soon as he could, but he had also taken the liberty of burning all of Blackstone’s belongings that had survived the looting. There were rumors on the streets that the old inhabitant had dabbled in necromancy. With the Church’s rule, nobody wanted to be associated with that dark magic.

  So I could retrieve nothing from Blackstone’s home. I had nothing, in fact, except for his amulet. His amulet, and the white, narwhal ivory knife he had gifted me.

  The ivory blade never left my side. I slept with it tucked under my ribs. When I roamed the streets, my fingers would graze over the hilt unconsciously. It was mine—only mine. Nobody could ever have it.

  That is why I dared not take it out. Even a flash of a blade like that would set the most reluctant gossiper talking. I did not want to attract attention to myself, and that meant hiding the knife.

  I was also fiercely protective of the amulet. For obvious reasons, it meant so much more to me than the lost mark ever had. The amulet had belonged to Blackstone. He had given it to me seconds before his death.

  Wearing it on my neck, as he had, was unthinkable. It would be worse than sacrilege. I kept it wrapped up in a dirty red rag that I kept tied to my upper leg, beneath my pants. Nobody would ever notice it. And, just like the knife, that small bundle never left my person.

  It did not take long for me to fall into a regular rhythm of burglary and theft. I was like a black rook. My stash of coins grew by the day. Aside from buying myself meals, I did not spend the money on anything else.

  Perhaps it was my way of trying to replicate the game Blackstone and I used to play. Perhaps it was my attempt at feeling less alone. Maybe it gave me a sense of purpose. Whatever it was, my daily ritual of pickpocketing and stealing quickly turned into an obsession.

  The rigors of Blackstone’s training had left their mark on me. They had taught me discipline. Discipline was what I craved. Discipline and order. None of it could be found on the street.

  No matter what we did, Blackstone would have some sort of metric to gauge my progress. “If you’re not making process, you’re standing still,” he once told me. “And when you stand still, you let the world pass you by, which means that, in fact, you regress, simply by doing nothing.”

  I did not want to regress any more than I wanted to do nothing.

  So my way of measuring progress came in increasing my daily hoard. It did not matter that I had no need for money. I had become a kleptomaniac. I stole and hoarded. I stole, and hoarded. I stole and hoarded, again and again and again, over and over, each day, until the need to better yesterday’s haul drove every decision I made.

  My behavior spiraled down so quickly because stealing was easy for me. Coin purses and hidden pockets came undone to my nimble hands. I felt no qualms about bilking the poor. All my victims were poor, because they all lived in south Hallengard.

  Age or gender made no difference to me. A mother carrying bread for her three sons and two daughters, all under the age of five? Snip. Off comes her coin purse. A hobbled old man pausing to rest on the stairs of a mortar building, his face lined with age? Swipe. Out come all his coins from one filthy pocket.

  And so on and so forth. I stole from priests and nuns. From merchants, from guards, and from other urchins. I stole because I had nothing better to do. And nowhere else to go.

  Remember: Up to this point, there had never been a time in my life when I was truly alone. My behavior had
never been so unregulated. When I was in Three-Grin’s dungeons, my existence was defined by him. When I first came to Hallengard, and met Magda, her approval always weighed on the back of my mind. Of course, after her came Blackstone.

  Now, I was wholly and entirely on my own.

  One day, fancy took me to check in on Magda’s hut. There was nothing left. It had burned in the fires. As for my old crates? Well, I was pleasantly surprised to find them still intact, and in exactly the same spot I had left them. I was too big to sleep under them now, of course. But, it felt strangely reassuring to know that the spot I’d picked as safe more than two years ago had proven itself so even in the wake of mass rioting.

  I had no permanent place to call my own anymore, nor held any desire for such. Most nights I spent on the rooftops, sometimes sleeping, sometimes planning my next break-in. Night time, I learned, was more prosperous for skillful thieves.

  Besides, it was safer to sleep on the side of a busy street in the middle of the day than anywhere in the open at night.

  One month after the Church established control, I had accumulated a substantial amount of wealth. It was ridiculous, really, how much a boy of ten could steal.

  I kept all my dividends in multiple small stashes hidden all over south Hallengard. That way, I never had to worry about one being found and taken. I could make it up.

  Besides, it was not hoarding that drove the madness of my obsession. It was the actual process of thievery.

  My unfettered success was going to my head. One month in, I got caught. That single event defined me forever.

  Chapter Three

  It was a day like any other. I was awakened near dawn by the sound of rattling wheels on the cobblestone.

  I opened my eyes and saw the plaza before me. It was mostly deserted, except for a handful of early risers. Bakers needing to prepare their flour before customers arrived. Merchants readying their storefronts for the day. And so on.