The Man Who Walks Alone

(This is the first few pages of a fanstay novel I have started...Tell me what you think...)

Chapter One:

Inside the blackened woodland of Kiverski, deep amongst the ghostly images of foreboding trees and the dank, rancid soil that littered across the region, one man stood alone.
His blood soaked machete was held with firm grip between his palms, his fingers tightly coiling around the handle awaiting any sound of movement from the shadows. His breathing was calm and passive, his eyes were focused and resolute, his nerves were completely unmoved. This would seem like an odd way for a man to react after he had just single handily decapitated seven Kiversian Nightwolves, one of the most relentlessly savage beasts to roam the whole continent of Isleta. One of these flesh eating creatures had been known to mangle and devour entire platoons of soldiers, leaving only torn skin and broken bones behind it. But here stood one man with one sword, surrounded by the bodies of one of the most feared beings to rove through this part of the world, and he wasn’t even short of breath.

The darkness of the night had consumed the forest, leaving only the pale light of the moon to give the man visibility. But he had no need for sight. His other four senses were perfectly acute and had seemed to evolve far beyond the ability of the average human.
Beneath one of the bodies of the fearsome wolves the man heard a very slight gasp, a gasp that no other human being could hear. It was the sound of someone inhaling sharply, but trying to be as silent as possible. The man knew that a Wolf Wrangler was lying beneath the dismembered torso of the beast, trying to remain hidden, struggling to remain mute.
A Wolf Wrangler was a human, usually male, who dedicated his life to building a repose with wild wolf creatures. Using skills and techniques which were pasted down from father to son, the Wrangler would tame these wild beasts, using them as trade items or to power carts and chariots. But this Wrangler was different. Kiversian Nightwolves were solitary animals, who only came into contact with other wolves of the same species when it was their mating season. Yet he had tamed seven individual male wolves to corporate in a pack. This Wrangler was no trader or salesman, he was an assassin, who had trained his wolves to live in harmony with each other so they could all work together to hunt and kill any target the Wolf Wrangler ordered them too.

The man kicked the ragged, bloody torso of the wolf off the person who lay beneath and saw the frail completion of an old terrified man. The Wolf Wrangler was frozen with fear. Now that his Nightwolves had been slain by the menacing figure of the man looming over him, the Wrangler’s armour was gone and all that was underneath it was a weak, brittle aged old fool, with no protection and no means to fight.
The looming man knew that this Wolf Wrangler had been sent by someone else whom wanted him dead. He also knew that whoever had sent the Wrangler, had paid him half the price of the job now and half on completion. That was the unwritten law of Isleta. The looming man crouched down and stared coldly into the Wranglers eyes, resting his machete against his leg.
‘Who sent you here?’ growled the man, his deep husky voice penetrating the Wranglers spirit, filling his body with the icy ambience of trepidation creeping up his spine, distributing the shattering fear throughout his stomach and limbs.
‘Don’t…k-kill me’ The Wrangler stammered, anxiety crushing his aptitude to speak without squeaking like a wounded rodent.
The man inhaled sharply, showing mild annoyance at the Wrangler not answering his question. The man repeated. ’Who sent you here?’ he said now clutching the handle of his machete.
‘I…was…no one sent me…I do business for myself’ The Wrangler spluttered, with his eyelids peeled back, staring directly into the pupils of the man.
The man stood up from his crouching position, he turned his head and brushed his long black hair away from his face. He let out a minor sigh, and then his hardened hands lifting the handle of his blade. The man could see through the Wranglers pathetic slurs, his lies were transparent and easily identified as a vain attempt to hide the name of the one who wanted him dead. ‘I’m getting tired of repeating myself, you old bastard. I will not ask you another time. Tell me who sent you or I will see to it you never walk again.’
The veins in the Wranglers eyes were convulsing. Shirr unfiltered terror hit him, wave after wave of merciless dread drenched him like a flash flood in an open field. Despite his paralyzing fright, the Wrangler’s shallow exterior seemed to fill him with false confidence as he drew himself up to his most positive looking, and said. ‘I will tell you, if first you tell me your name.’
The mans machete, smothered in dried wolves blood, was then trust into the Wranglers precarious kneecap. The blade was hard-pressed through bone, arteries and capillaries as it tore through the Wranglers skin and flesh into the soil below. The mans machete was now six inches deep into the earth, with strands of veins wrapped coiled around the cutting edge. The Wranglers screams were deafening. His face had turned blue, his limbs started convulsing, his throat was overflowing with foam, his pain was that of nightmares.
But to add insult to an awfully serious injury, the man twisted the blade in the lesion, making a huge gory crater in the kneecap so that now the wound would never heal.

‘I want…’ the mans deep voice grumbled, as he tore the half drenched machete out of the Wranglers kneecap. ‘…a name.’
The Wrangler rocked back an forth on the grim soil, clutching his almost severed knee joint, writhing in inescapable agony. Blood was bombarding from the open wound, smothering the Wranglers hands in his own thick, black fluid. His vocal cords were now beginning to tear themselves apart, as his incessant screaming was so unremitting. As shock began to take affect and all hope of recovery fled his mind, the Wrangler uttered two words in the direction of the shadow of the man looming over him.
‘…Ronikon…Teale…’ he whispered, before shock consumed his fragile body and transformed him into a jittering pile of convulsing nerves, shaking him over and over, like a fish out of water with Parkinson’s disease.

Ronikon Teale were the only words the man needed to hear. He had heard this name before from a man and women he had met three days ago in a hamlet called Gijirai. They told him to fear that name. They told him Ronikon was a vile man, a gangster whom owned the town of Haital which was half a days walk north of the Kiverski Forest. It was said that he and his men would dish out savage and brutal beatings to any citizens of the town who couldn’t pay his protection money. It was even said that if the citizen still did not pay, Ronikon would kill their entire immediate family in front of them. But the man had only heard Ronikon’s name, he had never met him. Why would a notorious gangster want to hire a highly trained Wolf Wrangler to kill him? It didn’t make any sense. But the Wolf Wrangler had failed and now the man would have to travel to Haital, search for Ronikon and find out why he would go through such trouble and expense just to know that a man he had never even met before was dead.

The Wranglers convulsing body started to go stiff. He had lost many pints of blood and he would soon die from his grisly cut. His vocal cords had now almost torn completely, he was unable to speak. And as the foam poured from his quivering lips, he would roll his eyes back into his skull as if he was laying there wanting to die, to be realised from the pain, but death wouldn’t come.
The man bent down once more over the frail old fool and rested his hand underneath his nose. He was still breathing. The man then reached into the Wranglers pocket and took out a small purse of coins. He then stood, placing the purse into his own pocket and turned away from the dying old man. He then turned his head slightly, so from the corner of his eye he could see the old man breathing, then spoke the last words the Wrangler would ever hear.
‘My name is Koji…’
Koji then unleashed a venoms swing at a nearby tree with his machete, piercing the moss ridden bark, slicing through the mid section, until the blade was revealed, excelling splinters of wood and tree bark, on the other side. Koji then lowered his machete and secured it back into its holder before walking away from the Wolf Wrangler, just another nameless face who’s life he had taken in this barren land.
The tree began to quiver and wobble from side to side, until finally this enormous mass of timber fell hurtling towards the incapacitated Wrangler. As the Wrangler looked up at his immediate death declining upon on him, he felt uplifted with bliss. He had lived a long life of training his animals, travelling across Isleta, meeting people whom hired him to kill; people whom he hated but needed their money. The Wrangler knew he was a bad person, he trained his wolves to kill men so he would receive a large purse of coins at the end. The Wrangler had dreamed once that he would encounter a figure, a figure of a man of shadows, who would kill all of his wolves and bestow an excruciating end upon him. The Wrangler should had retired years ago, but his greed for coins propelled him into an ongoing, never ending hunt for the blood of men, as if killing persons for money had become an addiction that could not be extinguished. It seemed only a matter of time before he would encounter the shadowy figure he had seen in his dreams. That time was tonight, and the Wrangler had been beaten by a far stronger foe. And now as this feeble old man lay here bleeding, everyone whom his wolves had mercilessly ripped limb from limb by his order, was now getting their vengeance.

The huge tree trunk collapsed upon the Wranglers skull, splitting his cranium into tiny fragments of what was once the old mans head. His brain matter was blasted across nearby scrubs and Lon grass, decorating their natural splendour with the macabre image of abominable gore dripping from the leaves. The old mans blood and fluid seeped into the rancid ground below, adding to its foul texture and almost unbearable smell. The Wranglers brain matter filtered into the soil, beneath which resided layer upon layer of the worms and parasites to feed upon the fresh blood and chunks of warm flesh. All that remained of the old mans skull now was a the crushed remains of cranium and the skin of a torn, insubstantial membrane that was once the face of an elderly man, which all lay under a massive tree trunk, coated in the blood of an assassin.

Koji walked forth into the night, heading north of Kiverski Forest. After an hour he found a dirt path, a narrow road of fertile soil that ran the length of this foreboding woodland. He followed the trail cautiously, while the only single thought running through his mind was of the planning and the execution of the task in hand.