Sulla Avirtus

Sulla Avirtus rode hell-for-leather through the icy north wind and unremitting downpour to the Citadel of Eris. Despite the aching in his raw legs, he would only stop at a station for a fresh horse. He had but a day left to deliver the Skull to the matriarch Eris Severa. Failure would result in public crucifixion.
His attention turned to the artifact in his saddle bag; its geometry that of a small human skull, constructed of crystal, smooth as an infant. He could not summon an image of the visage – he was ordered to avoid eye contact. Already the Face, as Eris Severa called it, had tried to speak to him. The thing had once told Sulla Avirtus to assimilate himself with it, but he had ignored.
          The Goddess Serra was already tugging the sun away from the world, as she cried rain, slowly enveloping the world in darkness. The gloomy clouds above signaled her arrival, the blood-shot moon had personified her presence. As cold as it was, he feared Serra would weep snow during the night.
He reached for his dagger in its leather sheath, hand shaking and arm numb. His throat dry, the moisture devoid in his lips, he slowly made a small incision in the back of the ponies neck. This ignited a small stream of scarlet as the pony whinnied and whined. He rested his head on the neck and began sucking the blood out of the wound. It was briefly revitalizing. 
Sulla dug his heels in the stirrups and sped onwards, the hooves clacking on Merick’s infamous stone road. He had crossed barren plains, into leagues of forest, onto the paved road which snaked its way to the Citadel of Eris. He had traveled roughly seventy-five leagues; twenty more and he’d be gazing upon the gigantic masonry walls that surround the citadel. He was close.
The paved road stretched across a sprawling copse; curtains of alder on either side of him. Rainwater dripped monotonously from the wooded giants. Leafless shrubbery rose to obscure the rotted leafs that blanketed the wet earth.
In the twilight of the moon Serra, he watched a raven soar through the veil of descending clouds. A raven foreshadowed death – to Sulla Avirtus, it was a grim reminder of Eris Severa’s dark cruelty which outweighed her incomparable beauty.
“Everyone wants her,” a guard had told him at the last station where he got a fresh riding pony. “But she’ll nail your skull to her marble hall if you displease her.”
“You’ve seen it?” Sulla Avirtus remembered saying.
“I’ve seen several crucifixions,” the mail-clad man had said with disgust, “I’ve heard she orders unfaithful temple slaves to be skinned alive.”
“With a knife?”
“With an axe,” the goatee bearded man had said. “Or a tree saw. Or –“he paused. “Perhaps her skin was yanked off.”
“Her?” Sulla had wondered.
He nodded. “Eris Severa doesn’t like other females.”
“Why?”
“They don’t have pricks.”
“Be glad we have pricks,” Sulla had said.
“You are in her cavalry?”
“I am. Eris is my pony.”
The man chuckled, an icy cloud of breath escaping his ale scented mouth. “She belongs to Julius Amarsus now.”
That had taken Sulla Avirtus by surprise. The Citadel of Merick allied with the Citadel of Eris? The two leaders were now joined in love? He reckoned it was Eris Severa’s seduction scheme for power.
“You met Julius Amarsus?” Sulla had asked.
“No, but I have a cousin who has. Says the man is a tyrant.”
That, too, was news to Sulla Avirtus. He had never met Julius Amarsus. A tyrant never lasted – they were always assassinated.
The pain in his legs brought him out of his reverence. He struggled to keep consciousness as exertion, soreness and tiredness overwhelmed him into a slumber of rest.

Sulla Avirtus was unhorsed by an ash-shafted arrow.
         He crashed in the freezing mud. Vision swam, head spun. The last thing he heard was menacing war-cries, horses’ hooves, and the cacophony of steel before his ears rang loud.
         Eternity later, sensory information flooded in; the semi-frozen earth beneath his back, a light snow descending from the grim clouds above, the cries of grown men like women in child-birth.
         Sulla Avirtus’s ambition of rising was short lived – the ash-shafted goose-fletched arrow that jutted from his studded leather jerkin had robbed him of strength. The leather body armor had checked but a fraction of the impact.
          He recognized his heightened senses – the arrow in stark detail, the sound of war, and the heavy but slow rhythmic beating of his heart. A tableau vivant flashed before his eyes – brief pieces of his life; sheep-herding as a poor boy, the military draft by the Citadel of Eris, his promotion to cavalry, which, by their standards, was the most frowned-upon occupation one could have in the military, even though cavalry broke phalanx’s and won battles. The moving picture stopped. Tears filled his eyes. That was all. The visions of his life were not worth looking at. His life felt paltry and useless.
         An armored figure loomed over him. Could it be Eris’ general Maximus Wolfe? The man extended a gloved hand to Sulla. Maximus’s pig-snouted visor covered the handsome features Sulla had once seen, his hauberk encasing his muscular physique. His domineering but charismatic statue intimidated his foes, seduced his allies.
         Sulla was still in awe. He clasped the general’s hand.
         Maximus hefted Sulla up with one arm.
         Maximus Wolfe didn’t speak. Instead he drove his broadsword into Sulla’s perforated chest. Both arrow and sword protruded Sulla as he collapsed in the snow.
         “Embrace me,” something said.
         Rich or poor, man or beast, steel united all in death’s cold embrace.
          
Sulla Avirtus awoke to a dark world of snow and vicious winds. The biting wind roared only to be drowned out by the whining of his pony. The beast panicked as thunder rippled through the land. Lighting followed; omens of both power and beauty instilled by the god’s of Nuvinine. The brilliancy of white-blue eruptions briefly lit the distant snow-covered mountains in the east. The treacherous Bloor Mountains contained an artifact similar to the Skull he carried; so the old prophet Dios wrote three hundred years ago. Dios had been correct insofar.
         Near blackness, Sulla lit his oiled lantern. The ponies were trained to follow the road to the next station provided there was light.
Sulla Avirtus clutched the fur cloak tighter around him as he shivered, drenched in the tears of Sara. He wondered how long he slept in this damned storm. Or hallucinated. Frigid temperatures had its way with the mind.
         He tried to massage the feeling into his sore thighs, but they were like attached boulders, blistered dead-weight.
         A pain struck his heart like both arrow and sword from his vision. He slapped a gloved palm to his chest and coughed.
         “Embrace me,” the Skull said. This time he considered it.
He had done little with his life. It would take the sweep of broadsword or the thud of an arrow to end his life – not some artifact, not the weather. The snow would steal his warmth; the artifact would eat his mind. Eris Severa would skin his integrity, but he’d dodge the arrow, avoid the sword. He wouldn’t rot in the ground as a peasant; he’d burn on the pyre as a noble.