Guardian of the God - God's Appearance - Prologue - Massacre at Shintadan

  Guardian of the God

-

God's Appearance

(Book 5 of the Guardian of the Spirit Series)

 

Author: Uehashi Nahoko

Translator: Ainikki the Archivist

 

  Prologue - Massacre at Shintadan

     

    The moon cast a harsh cold light upon the earth.  Scattered warriors galloped their horses across the plain. They carried pine torches aloft in their left hands, illuminating their trail while leaving the rest of the world in half-dark.

    The riders crested a small, steep hill. The torches they carried cast the view below them in an indistinct ring of light. Shintadan prison fortress lay ahead of them. High walls surrounded the fortress on all sides; torches could be seen burning along the top of each wall. Inside the walls, three watchtowers were visible. Light streamed from the windows of the watchtowers as well.

    "We can't see what they're doing," one of the riders called out to the leader of the group. The rider adjusted the reins of his swift horse.

    Both the leader and his horse stood perfectly still and silent as they stared down at the fortress. "You're right. We can't see at all. It would take a red-collared pigeon about half an hour to fly there from here, so we should be able to make out more detail. But I can't tell why it's so quiet. I don't even hear the watchdogs barking."

    The warrior stared straight at the prison fortress from beneath his crude dome-shaped helm. He wore leather chest armor and a shortbow was strapped to his back. The hilt of the sword at his hip was attached to a tassel of blue thread mixed with gold to indicate his rank as the captain of the squad.

    "We'll spit into two groups. Everyone from Schuld to Dolm, come with me. We'll go in the main gates. Everyone else, stay twenty horse lengths behind us. If anything happens, don't try to save us. Report back to Makal fortress.

    "We don't know what shape our enemy will take, but we should assume they've taken control of the fortress. They may have laid traps for us. Be on your guard!"

    His voice echoed across the flat plain. The riders distributed themselves in a fan shape behind him and called assent back to their leader in deep voices.

    While descending the hill, the riders became increasingly more anxious. Where was the enemy? They saw no soldiers. Where would an enemy hide, if their goal was to break people out of prison?

    The people here had been imprisoned on orders from the King; breaking them out of prison was an act of treason. Shintadan was a small provincial prison fortress that held only commoners of the lower classes. Unbelievable rumors had circulated that a clan of some accused prisoners had risked everything, including their own lives, just to save them.

    The border of New Yogo was close to Shintadan. New Yogo and Rota were close allies and the Yogo people were not warlike, so it was extremely unlikely that they would have attacked the fortress.

    The armed riders descended the hill onto the flat land below and drew their swords. While holding their pine torches in their left hands and their weapons in their right hands, they guided their horses skillfully using only their legs. The walls of the fortress towered over them. There was no sign of a ladder or any other means an enemy could have used to scale them. It was silent as death all around. When they caught sight of the bridge over the deep moat, the riders frowned.

    The drawbridge was down and the main gates were wide open. The light from the watchtowers bathed the fortress' walls in dim light.

    "Ah!" One of the riders sucked in a breath and pulled sharply up on his horse's reins. He dismounted as rapidly as flight and leaned over a large black lump on the ground. He called to his comrades, "This guard is dead!"

    The captain of the riders dismounted next to the guard’s corpse. He frowned deeply as he looked it over by the light of his torch. "What's the meaning of this? How did it happen?"

    The man lay face down, completely covered in blood, but his wounds hadn't been made by a blade or an arrow. The skin covering the nape of his neck had been shaved off as if by sandpaper. Chunks of flesh had come loose from the wounds.

    "He looks like he's been gnawed on by wolves," the captain muttered.

    On the other side of him, a rider called out, "Captain! There's another one!"

    And there was, identical to the first: lying face-down with severe injuries that had not been made with any obvious weapon. Based on their orientation, the dead men had rushed here from the direction of the moat.

    The captain gazed up at the main gate with a dumbfounded expression. "If those men were attacked by wolves, they would have been running toward the safety of the walls—not away from them. There was something in the fortress that chased them here. But that's impossible. It's not like an entire wolf pack could find its way in."

    The riders faced the fortress and slowly moved toward it. When they passed inside the gates, what they saw was horrific.

    Silent corpses were scattered around the gates. Prisoners and guards alike laid face-down with their throats ripped out or the skin at the back of their necks torn away.

    Any survivors would have heard the riders approach, but no one came to meet them. They must be utterly terrified if they lacked the courage to even leave the walls of the fortress. The riders shivered as if cold water had been dumped over their heads and cantered further into the eerily silent prison fortress without saying a word.

    There were no wolf tracks anywhere. The prisoners' workshop was intact. Various unfinished crafts were lined up on low platforms outside the workshop as if the prisoners had abandoned them suddenly. If there had been a wolf attack, some of these should have been disturbed or damaged, but none of them were.

    As the riders went deeper and deeper into Shintadan fortress, they became convinced that wolves had not caused this disaster.

    "Captain! Come look at this!" one of the riders called out in surprise. He pointed to the stocks that were used to punish and humiliate prisoners that got out of line. On the side of one of the pine platforms was a substance like butter or fat. The surface of the platform had been smoothed down so well it looked like it had been shaved and sanded.

    "What the hell is this stuff?" the rider asked.

    But they had no time to discover the meaning behind the mysterious substance along the side of the platform; there was too much else to examine. On one side of the fortress there was a wall formed by small stones piled together; this wall showed clear signs of an animal attack. Whatever the beast was, it had raked down the side of the wall with huge claws, leaving behind a long, deep gash.

    A rider discovered one dead body that showed no signs of being attacked by an animal. The body was a woman's; she'd been executed in the open space in the center of the prison yard.

     The captain of the riders led his men up to the higher level of the prison fortress to get a better look at the carnage from above. When he looked down, the captain briefly lost the ability to speak.

    What had happened here? It looked as if a giant had cut down everything below with one swing of a mighty scythe. Bodies were scattered in a radial pattern around the woman's execution site in the yard.

    The captain was a brave man, but even he couldn't keep his knees from shaking. This wasn't a wolf attack. If this isn't some sort of nightmare, what is it?

    The pale moonlight cast the bodies below in a corona of light like the sheen of frost. No one in the prison fortress had survived.

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