Through Hell (standard:fantasy, 998 words)
Author: Vincent Collevera	Added: May 09 2007	Views/Reads: 2970/2002	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Gayan Padrianus is a mercenary colonal returning home to his pregnant wife. What he finds when he arrives is something he never expected. Will he find his child? Will he overcome what he sets out to destroy, or will his life be snuffed out like so many

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always been relaxing after long months of campaigning.  The second mile 
of silence raised the hairs on the back of his neck and had an arrow 
notched in his horse bow. 

His people were sometimes called the People of the Chimes.  Each hut,
yurt, long-hut, or tent had a hand-made wind chime for each inhabitant. 
 Even a small village could be found from a mile distant by following 
the tinkling of chimes.  He could not hear them and he was only a 
half-mile out. 

The chimes, which help ward away evil and could not be abided by most
creatures of the dark, were only to be silenced in times of mourning.  
For there to be no chimes singing at all... 

He kicked his dun colored charger into a gallop.  He smelled char as he
entered the Outer Barrier; a stone wall ringing the village.  The 
Field, a hundred-span killing ground before the Inner Barrier, was 
thankfully empty of enemy dead.  Gayan knew they had not been attacked 
from without.  The gates were closed. 

He approached slowly, reining in his charger halfway across the Field. 
There were seven corpses outside the large wooden door that served as a 
gate.  The great door had been blocked shut from the outside with 
wooden posts driven into the ground before it. 

Dismounting, he told the horse to stay knowing that even a pack of
hellhounds couldn't move it unless he said.  He studied the corpses.  
They were men of the village, men he'd known since childhood.  Angoth 
the Ferrier.  Velyn the Brewer.  Guard-Captain Seth.  Others.  They'd 
blocked the door then, "fallen on their swords." 

Seven of the most trusted and honorable men of his villiage had locked
all but the most nimble inside then committed honorable suicide.  Gayan 
pulled some rope from his saddle-bags and tied one end to a post.  The 
other end he tied to his saddle-horn and mounted up, guiding the horse 
backwards away from the gate.  In this fashion, he soon had the posts 
pulled up and the gate unblocked. 

Gayan retrieved his rope and slowly entered the town to lingering smells
of smoke, char and blood.  Screams echoed in his mind as his other 
senses began to pick up on the violence that was done here so recently. 


--To Be Continued


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