Photo by Jason Abdilla on Unsplash.

This passage appears in the upcoming novel MORDRED (2025).

Mordanth was a kind executioner. Not overtly nice, in that he still had a duty to perform, but he was kind in the moments he needed to perform that duty. Before he would lift his axe, he would kneel before the condemned prisoner on the block and whisper, “I’m sorry this is happening to you. Know that it will be quick, and that your absence will be felt from this world. Your time has come, but your toil is at an end. The struggle is over, and you shall know peace.”

He wore a black hood so that the condemned could not see his face. Without fail, the condemned would look up at him, that black hood like a void in reality blotting out the world, with a perplexed expression upon their faces. It was as though they’d never imagined such a thing, that death would end their heartache or their suffering. In truth, he wished he could offer them greater solace than simply these kind words. He was the one who had to look them in the face just before they met their end, and he was the one who had to drop the axe. 

If he did not offer these kind words to those he had slain, he wondered what toll it would take on him. Being a killer was not who he was; he performed a duty for the state and was paid in recompense. It was a job like any other, something that must be done and so someone had to do it. Mordanth wondered if this was the natural state of any work—that one must always be prepared to perform a grisly task so that they may earn a fair living. If one does not face such tasks with a light heart and kind words, would the work erode their very souls? 

At day’s end, the hood would come off, just as anyone else’s work clothes. He would hug his children and kiss his wife’s cheek, sit at the table and listen to the stories the little ones would tell each other. He was a burly man, as you might imagine for someone to lift the axe above their head time and again, but he sat at the kitchen table hunched, as though he feared he took up too much room. The sounds of laughter and high voices echoed through the house as the children prepared for supper. Inevitably, one of them would ask, “How was your day, father?”

“It was a day like any other,” he would reply.

“How many heads did you take?” pondered another. They all knew what he did for a living, for he would answer honestly if asked. The answer varied from day to day, as he may be asked to execute one or one hundred. (Truthfully, it was usually somewhere in the middle—not quite one, but not quite one hundred.) 

“Tomorrow could we watch you work?”

“No, I’m afraid not,” Mordanth would answer. “You need to attend your schoolwork. Perhaps then you’ll have a far better job than your dear old dad.” 

How many lives had Mordanth taken through his years as a headsman? Perhaps a greater number than the greatest soldier, and certainly greater than the most prolific murderers. Only heads of state had taken a larger number than Mordanth, and they were far less kind than he. But still each day, he would walk home, enter the door, hug his children and kiss his wife’s cheek before sitting at the kitchen table. Mordanth didn’t have a sad thought in his mind, and simply watched and listened to the children, grateful that his work could afford the roof over their heads and the meals in the oven.

And so, one day, Mordanth donned his black hood and walked to the block, awaiting the arrivals. He set his basket in front of the block, used to catch the falling heads of those he had to collect. Variously, others would come for the bodies and the heads, each usually bound for a different location. The heads were often placed on pikes as a warning, while the bodies were disposed of in the lime pits. He was merely one stop on the line—the jailers would bring the prisoners, he would execute them, and then others would dispose of them.

He had naught but kind words for them all.

Mordanth prepared himself for the day, whispering a prayer only he could understand. The jailer announced the first arrival, a man named Galahault who had been awaiting execution for over a year for some unspecified crime. With Mordanth were those others who would dispose of the bodies and the heads: Malvont, who had a barrow to take the remains to the pits, and Agravin, who carried a spear for the prop he’d take away. 

Malvont and Agravin thought Mordanth a curious man, for he had no qualms about his work, but these two men complained to one another about the wages they were given, and the grim nature of their tasks. Malvont would say that “It needs to be done,” while Agravin often recoiled at the heads because he captured them quickly, sometimes before the life had fully gone from them. Their lips frozen in horror, their eyes bulging from their sockets, unsure of why they can no longer breathe or move the extremities to which they were no longer attached, and just then the life would evaporate from them. “Well why don’t you wait awhile, then?” Malvont asked, to which Agravin responded, “There’s always another one waiting. We have to move it along.”

The jailer, named Cadmus, asked Galahault if he had any last words.

“I go to my end knowing nothing else,” whispered Galahault. He was tall and graying, his hands bound by shackles as he stood before the block. “This is my escape. You will continue to suffer, my jailer, as will the chaplain, and you, my executioner. I have been condemned, but so have all of you, as has everyone. It doesn’t matter what I did, and it doesn’t matter what you do. Each of you will have your turn.”

Galahault knelt before the block, resting his head as if preparing for slumber.

Mordanth hunched next to him and placed a hand upon his back. He whispered, “I’m sorry that this is happening to you.”

“What have you to be sorry for? This is the way of things,” answered Galahault. 

Mordanth looked at him, perplexed. He could hardly remember the next thing he was supposed to say, but found it within himself. “Know that it will be quick, and that your absence shall be felt from the world.”

“The world cares nothing for me, sir,” said Galahault. “If it had, would I be here on this block? As for its quickness, it certainly matters not. I will still be dead in the end.”

Malvont and Agravin glanced at one another, Agravin resting his head upon the spear and Malvont holding the handles of the barrow.

Mordanth seemed shaken by Galahault’s words, but still managed to provide his final kind words: “Your time has come, but your toil is at an end. The struggle is over, and you shall know peace.”

“On that point you are correct, sir. My time has come and the struggle is over. The lights will go out, and my soul will be gone. This poor meat will be put back into the grinder. Goodbye, sir. Lift your axe and be done with it,” said Galahault.

Mordanth stood upright, suddenly unsure and unsteady. Normally, he could lift the axe and bring it down in one clean stroke, severing the head from its body without much ado. He found himself hesitating and unsure why. The axe seemed heavier in both hands than it had in the past. Each time he previously spoke those words, the prisoners all looked at him strangely, but no one spoke in response. He thought they were kind things to say to someone whose life was about to end. Had he been wrong?

When he brought the axe down the first time, it stuck in Galahault’s neck, spraying blood all about, and causing the prisoner to scream and gurgle, as it must have caught some part of the windpipe. Mordanth yanked the axe back, a splatter of blood following its upward arc. Galahault’s spine must have been severed on the first hack, because only his head seemed to twitch and caterwaul. Mordanth brought the axe down again, but this time missed the neck entirely, instead caving in the brain. This must have been the killing blow, as the caterwauling stopped, but the head was still attached to the body. Even the third stroke didn’t separate the two—Malvont and Agravin looked on in detached horror, squinting as Mordanth pulled back the axe yet again. Only on the fourth hack did the head leave the neck, the chopping block now covered in gore and viscera from the series of bloody slashes. 

Mordanth looked down at his clothes, now covered in Galahault’s blood, as if spattered with red paint upon a canvas. He tightened his grip upon the axe, twisting his fingers on the handle. Looking back at the horrified faces of Malvont and Agravin didn’t help. “You awright there, mate?” asked Malvont. 

Agravin didn’t have to worry about Galahault’s head looking back at him, as the life was already long gone by the time he collected it. Malvont pulled Galahault’s corpse back from the block, blood still streaming from the cleaved neck. He lifted it into his barrow with some effort.

Mordanth didn’t respond to Malvont’s question, nor did he seem to respond to much of anything. How many had met their end beneath his axe? Why did this feel so different? Certainly in the struggle to separate Galahault’s head from his body, Mordanth knew that dealing death in this manner was not kind. He thought himself a kind person, someone who is only doing what he must to provide for his family. A roof over their heads. A meal in the oven.

The jailer, Cadmus, had missed most of these proceedings, witnessing only the first axe fall, and then disappearing back toward the cells to fetch the next one for the block. Already he was waiting with Mordanth’s next victim, prepared to announce the prisoner’s name.

Galahault’s head was upon Agravin’s spear, and his remains were on the way to the cart that Malvont would take to the pits. The two came back quickly, with a fresh spear and an empty barrow. The jailer announced the next prisoner as Argent.

Mordanth stared at his axe, still messy with Galahault’s blood. Normally he’d have cleaned it by now, sharpened it with a stone perhaps. But this was different. And for the life of him, Mordanth could not understand why.

“Do you have any last words?” asked Cadmus of the prisoner, Argent. 

“Please sir,” pleaded Argent. “I didn’t do it. Truly. I wasn’t even at the town square that night, you must believe me. I don’t even understand why they thought it was me. You can ask my wife, I was with her. Please. You can’t do this.”

Mordanth kicked the knee from the prisoner, so that Argent went down before the block. Malvont and Agravin were bewildered and surprised by this act, as they’d never witnessed such  cruelty from Mordanth. 

“I’m sorry that this is happening to you,” said Mordanth. 

“Please sir, don’t do this thing, please.” Tears streamed down Argent’s cheeks. “I’m begging. Please.”

“I have no say in the matter,” said Mordanth.

“Of course you have a say,” cried Argent. “You’re the one holding the axe!”

“Know that it will be quick, and that your absence shall be felt from the world.” 

Argent cowered on his knees before the block, his hands clasped together in supplication, wrists bound, face wet with tears. Mordanth stared at him coldly, the black hood masking any emotion he might have felt. Malvont and Agravin watched with more than a little curiosity.

“Your time has come, but your toil is at an end.”

“Oh God, please!” shouted Argent, his voice cracking. “I don’t want to die, please!”

Mordanth forced the whimpering man down to the block, his snot and tears mixing with the blood stains that were still drying from Galahault. Mordanth pulled the collar of Argent’s uniform, revealing the bare skin of his neck. 

“The struggle is over, and you shall know peace.”

Mordanth lifted the axe over his head and stared down to his next victim, still begging and pleading for his life. Malvont and Agravin could not look away from this curious turn, the kind executioner turned cruel butcher. The axe stayed above his head as a cold wind blew through the yard.

It fell upon the block next to Argent’s ear, buried in the wood. He could barely believe the sight of his reflection in the silver blade, blurred through his tears. The big man was walking away, out of the yard. Malvont and Agravin stared dumbly, watching as Mordanth left his post. 

“Where you going?” asked Malvont.

“Home,” replied Mordanth without looking back.

The townsfolk watched as he removed his black hood, his clothes still covered in the spray of Galahault’s blood. He’d ended one life but spared another, albeit, perhaps, not for long. He had no idea why he’d reacted this way, for indeed this was somehow a reaction to the condemned man Galahault and the words he’d spoken before he passed beyond the veil of this mortal coil. It rubbed him raw as he took steps away from the jail and through the town. He twisted and wrung the black hood between his fingers, unsure of his place and disliking how he’d become cruel to the other condemned man Argent. He had been there to close their eyes forever and to say a kind word besides. Instead he’d terrified the doomed Argent, whose pleas must have reached Mordanth in his heart of hearts. 

Still he walked through the town, blood spatter upon his chest and clothes. 

His wife, Kwellick, was surprised when he arrived home so early. She had been about the business of chores and cleaning. 

“What are you doing home?” she asked, perplexed.

“I couldn’t perform my duty today.”

“What does that mean? Why?”

“I don’t know. I simply couldn’t,” answered Mordanth. “Must there be an explanation?”

She noticed the blood on his clothes, thinking of how he’d never dirtied himself in the performance of his duties before. “You’re a mess, love. Come, let’s get you cleaned up.”

“I think I need to lie down,” said Mordanth.

“Fair enough, love.” She led him through to the bedroom, helping him to disrobe and lay on the bed. 

“Just for a little while.”

“Call on me when you wake, I’ll fetch you some tea,” said Kwellick, placing a kiss upon his temple.

Back at the jail, the curious case of Mordanth had made a stir of news. Some heard it from Malvont that the kind executioner had finally snapped, while others heard it from Agravin that the brute had granted mercy and pardon to a condemned crook. Though they had both been there, neither of them had the truth of it, but what they said was not entirely false. The warden heard it from the jailer Cadmus, who had been busy fetching the next of the condemned who was supposed to be executed after Argent, and therefore had been the first to hear it from both Malvont and Agravin straight away. 

The warden, a man named Lothinger, was now trying to figure out the logistics of either housing those condemned longer or hiring another executioner. Lothinger had no desire to hire someone else, and none of the other guards in employ of the jail wanted to take on Mordanth’s duties. Of course, Lothinger could be the one to swing the axe, but he felt the task somewhat beneath him, preferring to remain a step removed from taking the lives of prisoners in his charge. 

“What am I to do with Argent? What am I to do with the others who were supposed to be executed?” asked Lothinger. “Now they live. Now they require meals and shelter. We need those cells! More coming in every day.”

Cadmus responded, “Perhaps if you were to speak to Mordanth? He may just not have been well and required a day. We all need time to rest and relax, sir, even those who take lives.”

Lothinger thought on this. “He has his evenings! He has his time to sleep! Blast it, we need him to keep the line moving.”

“He’s the one who does the job no one else wants to do,” said Cadmus.

“Yes, but we can’t let him know that. Then he could ask for more coin for each execution performed. We only have so much that we can pay.”

“We could defer executions...” replied Cadmus.

“These sentences are passed by the courts. Justice doesn’t adhere to petty economic concerns like how much we can pay to house prisoners or pay an executioner.”

“Then perhaps the courts need to be reformed.”

“That’ll be the day,” answered Lothinger with derision. “I suppose you are right, Cadmus. I’ll need to pay a visit to Mordanth to repair this damage and get the line moving again.” Lothinger, a haughty, stout man with a curled moustache and bushy sideburns, stood from his desk and took his coat from the rack. “Where can I find this Mordanth?”

“He lives at the north of town, in a small residence with his family. I can get you the address. Shall I call a trolly, sir?” asked Cadmus. 

“No, thank you. I shall walk.”

Lothinger leaned on a cane as he ambled out of his office, through the hallways of the administrative wing, and eventually out toward the town. The weather was overcast, the rippling white sky like velvet high above. The bustle of commerce ran through the town’s streets as he strode by, working his way north, following the same steps that Mordanth walked on his way home each day. Lothinger pondered the path of this man, knowing very little about him, but feeling it important to follow these footsteps in an attempt to understand him better. To pass by the market with its assorted smells, to rustle the dust with your boots, to hear the chatter of the townsfolk as you dithered in their midst. 

As Cadmus had heard it from Malvont and Agravin, this Mordanth styled himself a kind executioner, and Lothinger wondered at the oxymoronic quality of such a man. How could he be kind as he took men’s lives? Did he smile beneath that black hood? What were the words he’d speak to each of them in his attempt to ease what was about to happen?

Truly, it was beyond Lothinger’s ability to comprehend. Each of us has our function to perform, and those functions define us, for that is the way of the world. A newspaperman would be tenacious, a politician would be amiable, a hand at the factory would be stern. Why would you be an executioner if you wanted to be kind? 

He found himself before Mordanth’s modest home, a one-level building that barely looked as though Mordanth himself could fit inside, let alone with multiple children and a wife. Surely an executioner’s salary could afford better accommodations, but what did Lothinger know of such things? After all, how much could a roof over one’s head cost?

Lothinger rapped on the door with his cane. A comely lady opened, wearing a dress and an apron. She looked like a home body to Lothinger’s eyes, but comely nonetheless. Our Mordanth had done well with himself to have snagged such a lass.

“May I help you?”

“Yes, I’m looking for Mordanth. My name is Lothinger—I’m the warden of the jail. I suppose that makes me his boss.”

“Please come in,” said the woman. He followed her invitation, crossing the threshold into a small living room, replete with some minor pieces of furniture. She led him into the kitchen where she offered him a seat. “I’ll get Mordanth. He hasn’t wanted to get out of bed. Perhaps your calling on him will change his mood.”

“Thank you, my lady.”

She vanished for a mere moment. He looked around at the unpretentious decor in the kitchen, thinking of how it compared to his own home. His was much larger but messier, as he didn’t have anyone to keep up the cleaning, though he could afford to hire someone if he would so choose. It would be something he should remember to look into, but his home is too often just a place where he goes when he’s not at work. That’s where his time was better spent, keeping the line moving—those damnable prisoners weren’t like to care for themselves.

Mordanth’s wife returned, stating that her husband would be just a minute, then offering some tea. “That would be very kind of you,” he replied. He continued to eye her, thinking of how his job kept him from finding a lady such as this. He may have looked at her rump a little too long as she turned, carrying the teacup with its dish beneath. She said nothing of his lingering gaze, but a somber cloud passed over her face. 

Trying to ease the tension, he asked, “Has Mordanth spoken to you about why he isn’t about his work?”

“He said he couldn’t perform his duty was all,” she answered. “Would you care for some sugar with your tea?”

“No thank you, m’lady. And why couldn’t he perform?” he continued, his eyebrow raised.

“He said he didn’t know. He just couldn’t.”

“Well we need to get him back to his duty, don’t you think? We have a common interest in it, m’lady. He provides for you and your lovely home, and he keeps the line moving in my jail. I would hate for that system to break down for the both of us.”

The cloud that had passed over her face had become a frown altogether. “I want what’s best for my husband,” she said. “If he no longer wants to perform that duty, we can find something else, some other way to keep the roof over our heads.”

Lothinger sipped the tea, marveling at its taste. “Exquisite, m’lady. Where did you find such tea?”

Mordanth lumbered from the darkened hallway into the kitchen. He seemed to take up most of the room, as though he needed to hunch in order to fit beneath the ceiling. “Mr. Lothinger, sir,” he said.

“There’s a good lad,” said Lothinger. “Mordanth, what can I do to get you back to your work?”

“I don’t know if I want to be back to the work, sir,” replied Mordanth. “It’s not kind work.” He sat down in a chair across the table from Lothinger while Kwellick ambled away, disappeared to somewhere else in the house. 

“And you see yourself as kind?”

“I wanted to believe I was. That I could offer something good for the prisoners we had to dispatch. Perhaps all they needed before they parted was a kind word and a bit of relief before laying their burdens down. It's a scary thing to face the axe.”

“Indeed it is, lad,” said Lothinger. “And you must’ve seen dozens... hundreds before now...”

“Thousands,” replied Mordanth with a hushed sort of awe.

“Thousands then. And they all went to the blade with your supervision.” Lothinger tapped the floor with his cane.

“Yes sir,” Mordanth answered.

“And after all those faces, after all the heads you’d parted from their bodies, what made yesterday so different?”

Mordanth was silent for a moment, contemplating the question as though he hadn’t already been turning it over in his head for the last day. In fact, he’d asked it of himself again and again. When he looked down at his hands, he imagined the head of Galahault looking up at him, his grisly neck leaking offal to the floor.

“There was a man,” said Mordanth, “whose life I ended yesterday. I spoke the words I always speak. And this man rebuked each of them as though they were nothing. As though he couldn’t wait for the cold comfort of the grave. And after his rebukes, the death I delivered was not clean. It must have hurt when I brought the axe down four times to part the man’s head from his neck. He was ready to be done, as though it were just another task to be over with. The lights will go out, and my soul will be gone, he said. But it took four whacks. Blood everywhere. Screaming like a child. And the next man who was to meet my axe, he begged and pleaded. He told me that I did not have to do this thing. I had a choice. I spoke the words I always speak, but they came out malicious, angry. I was a death-dealer, a destroyer. How can one be kind as they destroy?”

Lothinger listened to every word from Mordanth, measuring the man with every breath he took. Certainly he had been simple. It was as though he’d never once weighed the merits of his profession in all the time he’d been serving in the role. There was a calm sadness in the man, a world weariness from this recent theosophical engagement. “What were the words you spoke?”

Mordanth took a heavy breath, his eyes cast downward to the floor. He recited them as though they were a hymnal, a quiet prayer to honor a deity who may not be listening. “I’m sorry this is happening to you. Know that it will be quick, and that your absence will be felt from this world. Your time has come, but your toil is at an end. The struggle is over, and you shall know peace.”

The man across the table tried to imagine hearing these words in the place of a prisoner, the shadow of this giant looming heavily above. The black hood of an executioner blotting out everything else, the words hanging in the air incomprehensibly, as the condemned faces the moment of their death. 

“It is reassuring to think that one day our toil will end,” said Lothinger. “At the same time, you wear the black hood of a headsman, and you brandish the axe that will end their lives.”

“Those are the tools of my function. I wear the hood because I’m told to, I use the axe because I have to.”

“Why did you start saying these things?” asked Lothinger.

“I asked myself, what does someone need when they know they’re about to die?” answered Mordanth. “All else is forfeit. There’s no escape from the end. The axe will fall, and I’ll be the one to swing it. What would I want to hear?”

“And that’s what you came up with?”

“People may not know it, but they need a kind word, there at the end. They need someone to reassure them and tell them it wasn’t all for nothing. Not everyone receives such a bounty. Some people drop dead or die in their sleep. They suffer an accident or they’re murdered by someone far more malicious than I. If I knew my time was at an end, that’s what I’d want. Reassurance.” 

Lothinger held his chin as he gazed at Mordanth, studying his features. “And you think you can no longer provide that reassurance.”

“No.”

Lothinger felt a bit flabbergasted by this man, by the calm reasoning of his arguments. A kind executioner. Imagine! Feeling that it must be necessary to reassure those who are condemned to die for their crimes. 

“But you see,” Lothinger began, “these men are being punished for their sins.”

Mordanth replied, “Aren’t we all?”

That response stunned Lothinger. Were all of us condemned? No, of course not. These men would be slain because they were a danger to the state. They could not be allowed to live for the common good of society. “You and I,” said Lothinger, “serve a purpose. Do you understand, Mordanth? Criminals offend society, they make war upon the state, they act counter to the laws that uphold our civilization. For that reason, they must be removed from the population. And it is my function to serve as caretaker for those criminals and simultaneously to protect civilization from them. For those who are the most heinous, their punishment is to die. This is both their punishment and a boon to society, and you are protecting civilization by removing them permanently. Do you see?”

“They’re human, sir. They don’t see the world in those terms. And neither do I.”

“Then perhaps you’re a criminal like them.”

Mordanth laughed slightly, then his smile faded into plaintive regard for the man across the table. “I take lives. But my act is sanctioned by the state. Theirs is not. Perhaps I’m no different from them. I’m able to do what others cannot. But tell me—is that not true of all labor? I am able and capable of the function, and I am paid to do it. Would the man with his head lain on the block be free to continue his life had he pursued my line of work? It is a conundrum I cannot escape. The thing that separates him from me is sanction.”

“And because you can do the work, you are a rare man—is that your case?” asked Lothinger. “As you point out, there are a hundred men, a thousand men who could do your job. A man can take a life if he is hungry enough. A man can do the job if it’s necessary to earn his keep. And you keep a roof over your children’s heads. Must a man also be kind?”

“I must,” answered Mordanth. “Or what is it for?”

Lothinger rapped a knuckle upon the kitchen table. Mordanth had given him much to think on, and even he had begun thinking of his role. Perhaps he’d been so far removed that he had never contemplated or examined his life. At the same time, perhaps he would walk away from this interaction and forget it, for there are always more tasks to be done, more work to be completed. “So you won’t be coming back to fulfill your duties?”

“I don’t think I will, sir.”

“How will you earn your keep? Your family mustn’t starve.”

“When you leave here, look around you,” said Mordanth. “There are always other things one can be. There are cobblers and tanners and merchants and builders out on those streets. One of the wonderful things about being human is that I can be something different. I can change. Maybe you can too.”

Lothinger didn’t see Mordanth again after that. Neither did Cadmus or Malvont or Agravin. The jail was forced to hire another executioner to handle the next men on the chopping block. The bodies were still sent to the lime pits and the heads were still placed on pikes. They replaced the cog and the machine continued to chew gristle, just as it had always done. But Mordanth didn’t need to be a part of it, and for that he was grateful.