Brondt Kamffer's Blog, page 2

seventeenth

(Previous Chapter)

Damek roused me from sleep the following morning before the first birds had begun to sing in the trees around us.

“Wake up, you lazy bastard,” he said as he shoved at me with his foot. “Can’t lie abed all the gods damned day when there’s work to be done!”

This was the second morning in a row now that the old man had woken me before the dawn. The previous morning, lying in my mother’s hovel, it had been understandable, as Inquisitor Koldan and the posse were coming to begin the...

sixteenth

(Previous Chapter)

Damek refused to say anything more on the subject of bastardry, and I was left feeling cheated. I was tantalizingly close, I believed, to finally getting some answers from the old blind bastard, but he remained as tight-fisted with his information as ever.

“Come along, Rio,” he said, his voice hard with determination. His blind gaze drifted further up the road, as though he could sense how close we were to our first stop along the road to Gandras. “Come,” he said again. “We m...

fifteenth

(Previous Chapter)

I returned to Damek some time later, my britches washed and the stench of my humiliation removed. Despite being late summer, it was a chill day, and my wet pants were making my scrawny arse cold.

“Took your time, boy,” the blind man said as I returned. He was seated beneath a gnarled oak, twirling a twig between his fingers.

“I cleaned up as best I could so you wouldn’t complain about the way I smell,” I replied.

“Ha! Take you a damned sight longer than that to remove the stenc...

fourteenth

(Previous Chapter)

As I walked alone towards Maluns, I grew simultaneously more cocksure and more terrified.

“Who the hell does the blind bastard think he is?” I muttered to myself. “Sod just strolls in here, says my mother put me in his service, and then starts ordering me about? Who the hell does he think he is, anyway? Thinks I’m so useless I can’t steal a loaf bread?”

My steps faltered at that point. “Steal a loaf of bread. How the hell does the bastard think I’m going to do that? And with t...

thirteenth

(Previous Chapter)

“We can stay here for the night,” Damek said. “The Inquisitor won’t be back until the morning, and we will be out of his way by then. Besides, the bastard will be more concerned with hunting down your mother than with the prospect we might be spending the night inside her abandoned forest hovel.”

“I’ll have to chop more wood,” I said. “My mother wanted us to save as much as we could, but we still ran out of wood last night.”

Damek put his hand on my shoulder. “No wood. Too muc...

interlude

(Previous Chapter)

Inquisitor Varyna set down her quill, leaned back in her seat, and met Ilarion with a hard stare.

“What’s the matter, Inquisitor?” Ilarion asked, a sardonic grin creasing his lips. “Hand cramping already? God’s faces, but we’ve only just got going. My throat isn’t even feeling the effects of that piss you call cider I was forced to drink a while ago.”

Varyna ignored him. “Tell me, Ilarion, do you really expect me to believe all of this sentimental crap you’re telling me?”

“What...

twelfth

(Previous Chapter)

I ran all the way through Maluns without allowing myself to be distracted. The sun had progressed overhead to such a point that evening was fast approaching. I didn’t realize I’d been speaking with Inquisitor Koldan for an entire watch, but, then, time flies when one is trying and failing to be a bastard.

I found the forest path in the gathering twilight and was forced to slow my mad dash so that I didn’t trip over any roots or rocks. The last thing I wanted was to fail in de...

eleventh

(Previous Chapter)

I remember that Inquisitor well. His face is burned into my memory like a hot brand to a cow’s backside. His name was Koldan, which was fitting, given that the name means sting. Bastard stung Maluns pretty good at that time.

It took him a couple of days to arrive in our town. The Inquisitors are a roving bunch at the best of times, being the Empire’s chief means of enforcing orthodoxy in the rural areas. So it was little surprise that when Batur’s crimes came to light, there...

tenth

(Previous Chapter)

The months following that incident were some of the happiest of my young life. I had a home—something I have not always been privy to—with a family of sorts. Certainly, my mother remained as painful to be around as ever, but Senka made my mother’s presence in my life bearable, as my sister was a happy child and capable of showing me the humor in just about anything.

My association with Batur continued to grow as well, and I began to spend every day with him in the mill, even...

ninth

(Previous Chapter)

My mother was a druid and an herbalist, which meant she knew a great many ways to prevent a variety of maladies, and ways to cure others. In short, though my mother was a whore, she knew how to save herself the trouble of falling pregnant to one of her clients. She had herbs and roots and teas that could close the womb of a woman or cause a woman to purge her unborn child.

I knew this because, despite the shift in my mother’s clientele from female to male, she still saw some...