Free The Beast of Maug Maurai, Part One: The Culling by Roberto Calas

do
it. But I’ll not bear questions. I’ll not be challenged. Out here, I’M THE
DUKE!  You understand that?”
    They stared at him silently, faces
blank.
    “DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?”
    There was a general murmur of
affirmation so Murrogar let it be. He unslung his drinking horn and let it fall
to the ground then pushed through the crowd to the north, toward the river. The
others turned and followed him listlessly, letting their useless items fall to
the leaves and ferns. Murrogar looked once over his shoulder. He counted the
party and realized that he would have to send most of them to their deaths.

Chapter 13
     

Like many prisons in the Galadane Empire, Geyr Froen was erected on an
island. The lake which surrounds it once was stocked with great brasomeurs,
nurtured to extravagant size by beast handlers. The great monsters perished
from a waterborne pestilence, so the lake now is stocked with slitworms, which
form a more potent deterrent. A desperate prisoner may risk monstrous water
lizards, but not even a lunatic thinks slitworms are worth the gamble. Not even
the most deranged criminal will risk dying in the terrible pain that only
slitworms can induce.
     
    -- From, “A Modest History of West Nuldryn,” by Yurik Bodlyn,
Historian and Scribe
     
    Their first soldier, a man named
Beldrun Shanks, waited at Geyr Froen. Hammer had spoken to the man’s former
commander, who had nothing good to say.
    “This fellow, Beldrun Shanks,” said
Grae. “I have trouble believing he’s as bad as his commander said. He must have
some good qualities if he’s stationed at Geyr Froen.”
    “Trudge Beldrun Shanks,” replied
Hammer. “‘Grew up in Hrux Barony. Earned quite a reputation. Big as an ogre,
but meaner. ‘e’s a fine fighter. But ‘e’s been disciplined for everything from
lewdness to murder.”
    “Murder?” Grae glanced back at Jastyn
and Maribrae, who had stayed behind to picnic on the Byway while Shanks was
retrieved from Geyr Froen. Grae was glad they weren’t near enough to hear
Hammer’s description.
    “Here’s a little morsel,” Hammer
continued. “Apparently ‘e finds it funny to get drunk and find a cow or an ox.
Then he tries to take a leg off clean, with one axe stroke.” He lifted a
wineskin from a hook on his saddle. “Don’t that paint a dainty portrait?”
    “I don’t understand,” said Grae.
“Sour fellows like that aren’t chosen to guard Geyr Froen.”
    “I don’t recall saying nothin’ about
guarding.” Hammer took a long draw from his wineskin and rode on ahead.
     
    The prison of Geyr Froen was nothing
more than a massive granite keep and four towers. There was nothing pleasant
about the curtain wall; anyone who looked on it knew that it was meant to keep
people in, not out. The battlements were on the outside, facing in. The towers
had arrow slits facing the keep.
    When they brought Shanks out, he was
in leg irons and manacles, escorted by three Standards who aimed crossbows at
him the entire way across the bridge. He was a hulking figure, easily six
inches taller than the tallest guard. A ragged dungeon-beard partially obscured
the conviction brands of rape, robbery and murder on his neck. He had the
bulging brows and sloping forehead of a brute and the powerful, pouting lips of
a bully. His eyes spoke of something different. Light blue and expressive, they
held the lie of kindness.     
    The guards dragged four stumps out
from the gatehouse and Beldrun Shanks sat, still in manacles and irons, with
Grae, Hammer and the Geyr Froen Wardmaster outside the fortress. The crossbowmen
stood a short distance away, arranged in a semi-circle to avoid crossfire,
their weapons held low but ready.
    Shanks was the only soldier in the
squad that hadn’t been told of the mission beforehand. He had received no
letter from the Chamberlain, as the other soldiers had. He listened to Grae
with a smirk on his face.
    “Once the mission is complete, you
will serve two more years of