The Land of Moving Sand

On old rocks in silence we sat, in the land of moving sand.
An assassin’s duty is not to choose but to act, to facilitate the inevitable. A professional does not kill in haste but neither are they idle. Indecisiveness harbours an assassin’s death like a chill wind predicts a storm, but here we sat, waiting.
The desert was not made for man. The bones and carrion looming forebode any venture into their domain. How long we had been in this unchanging land I know not, ordinary marks of time do not exist here.
If I close my eyes and empty my mind I can still remember home. The smell of grass and cold water, the feel of wet dirt on your hands, the sound of the wind aching through the forest. But these are painful memories.
The scrape of whetstone against blade focused Emmerus’ thoughts, as much as it could the unconscious routine pacified him.
His unkempt hair was matted from dust and time, boots caked in black mud; hands thick like his father’s. The flaps of leather holding him from the whips of wind were his only abode.
He looks at me now, not quickly or stern with eyebrows furrowed, just with his eyes, and I know what he has decided. I draw my weapon - my life had not been one to die without. Boots shift in the sand as Emmerus stands. My knees do not shake, I do not beg, I hold up my weapon as a man’s honour calls for. Even now as he moves towards me he looks old, face lashed by weathered lonely hardship, tired and bent in the dying sun.   
An imperceptible twitch - I’m on my back, thick warmth is running down my chest and arm. The sunset sky comforts my eyes as they tear from gagging on blood.
It would not please him for me to kick and choke - I feel his steel bite flesh, stealing my last sweet throes of life from hungry death.
In a timeless land I die. Bit by bit buried in the sands, the message of my carcass foretelling what waits for the man who thinks himself a hero.
Emmerus slowly wipes his blade and sheathes it. The dribbling blood pooling on the ground quickly sinks into the sand. Licking cracked lips Emmerus flips up his hood and walks away.
The man had run far from his home on the Warren Sea hoping to find solstice in the desert. But broken bones coerce, money outweighs old friendships, and so Emmerus had tracked his mark. He had been killing for a long time, flickers of windmills and mountains in the sun are the ghosts of his mind.

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The outpost’s beaten door groans as Emmerus pulls it open and steps into the building. He hugs his cloak around him and moves to the dimly lit hearth. The shadow of a man in uniform lengthens behind him.
“Job finished Gov’na?”
“Yes,” Emmerus replies.
“Right, here’s your pay.”
A tight bag clunks on the stone ground next to the fire as the shadow disappears. Pulling open the bag Emmerus puts the gems under a flap of leather and smoothes out crinkled parchment.

·          Dulio Province
·          10 Days
·          East Marshal Viktor

The letter burned slowly in the embers, the ink of each scratch melting as Emmerus pushed out of the outpost. The wind smacked shut the door behind him, feeding the fire and consuming the paper in flame.
Outside, the cold of night. Rattles and chants of old cannibals praise a crawling maleficence that had long ago consumed the land. Their yearning howls roll over the dunes and chill the flesh. Emmerus walks in the sound of their hunt, grinning as he nears their camp.