Phoenix Rising by Jason K. Lewis Page A

their limbs contorted at impossible angles. One stared, vacant eyed towards the door over his own shoulder blades, his blond hair straggling across the floor.
    Metrotis stood inside the room on the left. He held both hands to his mouth. A green tinge coloured his sallow skin.
    In the centre of the room, towering over the tangled corpses stood a man without a soul. His expression was blank, but his body suggested murder. It was as if his eyes focused on some object in the space between him and Wulf.  
    Although the man wore no chains, Wulf guessed that this was the other prisoner he had heard Metrotis speaking to.
    “Who this?” Wulf said, and pointed his sword at the man. There was something disturbing about his eyes. Eyes like that did not, could not, belong to any normal man.  
    This man would be a challenge to beat in battle , a part of him thought. A challenge many would sing of . A challenge to build a legend that might be retold for aeons.
    “This is Optuss.” Metrotis spoke softly, a slight tremor in his voice. “I think he killed these men.”
    Wulf grunted. Do you think so? “Kill men, good.” For the time being there would be no profit in challenge. A man who could cause such havoc might be useful; the future could wait. He moved towards Optuss and picked up one of the fallen assassin’s swords. “You know fight?” he asked the man.
    “He doesn’t speak,” said Metrotis. “Careful, he’s not supposed to be dangerous.” Metrotis’s eyes were wide. “But I think he killed these men; yes, I think he killed these men.”
    Wulf glanced at Metrotis. The little man was developing a talent for stating the obvious, and he was beginning to slip into the fear after battle that many tribesmen suffered from. Men who would run screaming – heedless of death – into battle, would later sit shivering, shaking, sometimes crying out for no reason. Wulf could not understand why this happened, but Metrotis would be no help in a fight.
    He reached out and presented the sword to the black haired prisoner. “You take.” The man’s arms glistened in the lantern light, smooth as marble.
    Metrotis tutted. “Optuss won’t follow your orders. I don’t think he’s even here with us, in any real sense.”
    It took Wulf a second to translate the sentiment. He tutted in return. The man has no soul, he translated. “He kill men. He know.”  
    He presented the sword hilt to Optuss again. The man’s eyes seemed bottomless, like the very pits of hell.  
    Optuss continued to stare into the middle distance. But, slowly, his hand rose and he grasped the sword hilt.  
    The man’s hand touched his own and Wulf shivered. No soul. Then he turned and stalked rapidly from the room. He didn’t look back – the image of Optuss seared through his mind – but he heard movement from behind. Something, a memory perhaps, rattled the door of his consciousness – seeking desperately for a way in, for recollection and acknowledgement – but then faded as quickly as it had arisen.
    “Optuss, come,” said Metrotis.
    Wulf smiled. Somewhere outside there were men to fight, men who had a chance of fighting back, men who would present a challenge. Wulf and Optuss are good dogs for Metrotis.  
    But sometimes dogs would bite, tear and rend.  
    They reached the end of the corridor; it opened onto an enclosed space that was two stories high on all sides.  
    More figures, dressed like the others, were attacking an older man. Wulf recognised the man who had come into his cell almost every day, in the beginning, and stared at him with unblinking black eyes. The man looked like Metrotis, Wulf guessed they were kin.
    The black eyed man could fight, that much was clear from the body that already lay at his feet, but Wulf doubted he could overcome the three that remained. He paused momentarily and considered running to the man’s aid. Another piercing scream echoed from a room on the second level. The man had a sword; his fate was with the