The Sharded Blade | Part 1 (A Dark Fantasy Novella)

Part 12

I passed the day following my grim discovery at the cabin with a mindset bordering on feverish, consumed with concocting elaborate plots to exact revenge for my Carli.  I'd killed people in some brutally creative ways in the past, usually to send a message and at a client's direct request.  However, now my mind was intent on producing a plethora of even more diabolical new methods for extracting the life out of those who had done this to my daughter.

Every once in a while, I would bounce one of what I thought were the better and more gruesome ideas off of Gertrude.  She'd give me a squeak or a ratly growl for most of the iterations.  But there were a couple where it almost seemed like she was seriously questioning if there was something wrong with me.  Was I actually being judged by a demon rat?

With night once more settling in, I knew I had to get back to the spot where Carli had vanished and wait for her. She'd reappear, I hoped, and lead me to the already discovered place of her death.  With a deep-seated reluctance, I accepted this was how the game was going to have to be played out until I got what I wanted.

So, I dragged my heavy heart back to the edge of the woods and lingered, Gertrude once more loyally on my shoulder.  I found an odd peace in the darkness while I waited.  Partly, I supposed, because I felt the rat and I had grown closer.  You know, ever since she agreed to see things my way.  

Carli, like clockwork, reappeared late that evening, right where I had remembered the spot to be.  She looked at me and darted off without a word.  I guessed she recalled she'd already said something that signaled me to follow the night before.

And although I trailed her, I could have easily led the way.  When there were a few trees still between the cabin and us, she stopped.

"There," Carli whispered as she slinked up behind one of those trees and pointed through the forest as though she was telling me something I didn't already know.

"Looks abandoned.  But we should be careful," I said, mustering as much false uncertainty as I could.  Based on the look of things, no one had been around since my excursion here last night.

Both of us approached the shack.  I knew we would find it empty, but also not knowing exactly what Carli was thinking.  As we neared the scene of the crime, I couldn't help but look at the tree twenty feet away where Carli's body was buried.

Reopening the door I had locked back up before leaving last night, I entered, pretending to investigate the area for the first time.  It was merely a show for the spirit of my dead daughter and she did not enter, choosing instead to linger cautiously just outside.

Gertrude made her own rounds, seeming to join in with my charade. The rat took a particular interest in the corner where I had found the shovel.

After a few minutes, I came back out and motioned for Carli to enter with me.  She did.

"This the place?" I asked, igniting the lantern and allowing the interior to come into view.

She nodded, particularly drawn to the red stains on the floor where I had discovered her body.

"No one's here now.  The men who kidnapped you, can you describe them to me?"

"Two were darker," she said.  "Two of the other three were paler, and one was in between.  Bigger men.  There was a woman with them too, but she was covered from head to toe in a hooded robe. I never got a good look at her."

"What about distinguishing marks?"  Describing general traits like skin tone in a city like this one was utterly meaningless to me.  It was a veritable melting pot, being a port city.  If an ethnicity existed somewhere in the world, odds are it existed here as well.

"The one darker man was missing part of his right ear.  The upper part, like this."  Carli folded her own ear down to demonstrate.  "Two of the light-skinned men had their heads shaved."

Ok, now that was something that I could possibly work with.  The dark-skinned man with the missing part of his ear was a good lead.  That was a pretty outstanding characteristic and would certainly be readily identifiable.

I made a mental note of all the thugs I had met in my time, but the description of a man without the top part of his right ear didn't trigger any memories.  So I filed that tidbit away and focused on the fact that I needed more information about the hairless men.

"The men without hair, were they shaved?" I asked. "Or naturally bald?"

Carli shook her head.  She didn't know, and I couldn't blame her.  Pretty hard to tell when you're being tied up and murdered.

I knew that shaved heads could have meant members of the Low Dogs, a gang of ruffians that ruled parts of the city's streets.  Naturally bald though, not so much.  Lots of poor souls suffered from that condition.  Not me though.  If there was one thing I didn't suffer from, it was a lack of follicles.

"Did they — hurt you?" I asked.  I was fishing to see what she might have remembered before dying.  The raging fires inside me didn't need stoked, but I still wanted more reasons to track down  and kill these men.

The spirit of my daughter rubbed at her bruised wrists.  But beyond that, she was silent.  It was the sort of quiet that goes along with the unspoken phrase, 'I'd rather not say, because saying means remembering.'

Deciding we'd worn out our welcome, my daughter's ghost and I removed ourselves from the shack.  On our way out, I couldn't help but notice how Carli took more than a passing interest in the tree where I had buried her body.  She eventually stopped and stared.

"That tree is scary," she said.

"Why?"

"Feels like death."

"Try not to think about it," I said, not knowing what else to do as I walked past.  "Let's get back to the inn, ok?"

Not hearing a reply, I turned to see the last bit of her as she faded away once more.