Wee Piggies of Radiant Might

by Bill McCurry

  Some mumbles and whines indicated that no one had seen Sakaj.

  “Oh, well,” Krak said. “Sakaj isn’t the most important thing right now.”

  Everyone waited for Krak to speak. Many stopped breathing. Some were missing lungs or diaphragms, so they hadn’t been breathing to start with.

  Krak said, “The important thing is that my ass is itching beyond belief. Is anyone close enough to scratch it for me?”

  The gods who could speak then spoke all at once. Most of them expressed their ideas about defeating Cheg-Cheg, although Fressa hooted questions at Krak about where exactly his ass itched.

  Fingit tried to ignore them all. Without nasty, ridiculous mankind to dupe out of power, this is what the divine rulers of all existence had degenerated into. Maybe we deserve to be exterminated, he thought.

  When the veil between god and man had fallen eight years ago, it had ripped away contact with mankind like tearing off a scab. After the shock had dissipated, all the gods marched around shouting for the first month while waiting for things to go back to normal. When nothing improved, they sharpened their enchanted weapons, slapped on their golden armor, and practiced raising volcanoes and throwing down deluges. They felt pretty good about that, being mighty and divine and everything. But mankind remained unreachable, and the war-lust faded.

  For the next two years, the gods made a lot of plans about what they would do when they returned to the world of man. They speculated on what might have changed, what mankind had probably screwed up, and how best to fix things. Krak gave unto each of them a domain to command when the world of man was reclaimed.

  After those two years had passed, the gods became discouraged and began fighting among themselves. The dismemberments and immolations weren’t so bad, but once the gods began wiping out demigods wholesale, Krak showed that he still had the largest balls in the universe by putting an end to it. Then came a year of surreptitious rage and bitching by the other gods about Krak’s high-handed ways. Several gods tried to overthrow Krak, and he demonstrated how the impossibly searing light of the sun can halt an insurrection when applied to a god’s scrotum. Weldt probably still had nightmares about it.

  Divine power ran out, and after another year, the gods gave up. This began the time in which gods sat around becoming sadder, older, fatter, and stupider. Everyone was depressed, and no one could stand anyone else’s company. Some of the greatest maudlin poetry of all time was composed during that period. Also, during that time, Sakaj embarked upon her Year of Self-Annihilation.

  By the sixth year after the Veil had fallen, most of the morose, flaccid, degenerating gods had slid into insanity and aberrant behavior, punctuated by brief periods of tedious lucidity. Fingit thought maybe he’d been spared the worst of that because he spent a lot of time alone in his workshop and had never paid much attention to anything else anyway. He puttered around with various projects and gadgets that became gradually less complex and interesting as his powers diminished. Krak had become weaker, more confused, and more ineffectual each month.

  Now, eight years after the Veil had severed the gods from mankind, Fingit lay elevated in the Dim Lands along with most of his family, and that wasn’t as much fun as it sounded.

  Being “elevated” was in fact the divine equivalent of being temporarily dead and trapped in the Dim Lands until the next sunrise. After several eons, the gods came to find the Dim Lands tedious beyond expression, even for their godlike imaginations. When a few gods began murmuring that they might prefer real death to all this sitting around, Krak decreed that henceforth no god would be called dead but would instead be described as elevated. “Death” sounded pedestrian anyway, like something a goat or a man would do, and unfit for divine beings. It was of course ridiculous to expect gods to feel differently about the Dim Lands just because Krak used a fancy word, but the tactic nonetheless did change the gods’ feelings about the whole situation more than they would admit.

  Fingit tried to pick out some speck of logic or purpose in the symphony of bullshit around him. They’re all talking about tactics, but they’ve lost their minds. We should be talking about logistics, not tactics. We need to get the power flowing again, which means we need to cut through to the world of man. It will be an astounding undertaking. It’ll be the most heroic and perilous act of this age.

  I wonder who’s stupid enough to let me talk them into it?

  Three

  (Fingit)

  Fingit sighed as he trudged through the grove that had once been considered the loveliest spot in the Home of the Gods. The Gossamer Forest looks like a troll’s toilet.

  Fingit had become accustomed to the trees being brown, even in spring and summer. But today, the leaves drooped in wilted gray clumps that dripped foul-smelling goo and the trunks put him in mind of a leper’s leg. The Whispering Brook had once rippled through the middle of the forest, home to bright fish and clever otters. All that remained was a coarse trench of black, viscous mud populated with nondescript but uniformly repulsive reptiles. Fingit didn’t want to think about the Falls of Hope and Loss. They had been his favorite retreat, and he resolved not to even walk down to those falls today.

  Fingit adjusted his new spectacles. He hadn’t ground them quite right, but they were close enough to do the job. He only hoped the same was true of everything he’d tried lately. Yesterday, the gods had enjoyed a reprieve from Cheg-Cheg’s war-making. They didn’t know why, and Cheg-Cheg wasn’t known for explaining himself.

  Fingit had put that day to the best use he could think of. He had sealed himself in the Forge of Thunder and Woe, where he had fashioned his most magnificent works throughout the ages. Ever since the Veil had fallen, his great smithy had gradually transformed itself into a sad clapboard workshop in the back of his home. He still had a small forge and a nice set of tools though, so he retained the grand name for the sake of nostalgia.

  Today, he had set about bringing forth his most important creation ever. He would build a chariot to carry a god across the Void, through the Veil, and back into the world of man. Once the Veil was crossed, then all ills plaguing the gods would be set right. Fingit felt positive about that.

  A number of technical problems faced Fingit in designing his chariot, but a philosophical problem loomed over all the others. What was the nature of the matter, the gasses, the streams, and the goo that lay between the Gods’ Realm and the world of man? And why was it screwed up?

  One would think that at some point, since the beginning of time, the gods would have answered the first question. Krak and his brood had intended to answer it, and they had made it a high priority. Yet other, more critical concerns had distracted them age after age. They had required time to build seventeen-story marble palaces for their pets, to write mediocre love poems for saucy demigoddesses, and to sit with their fellow gods looking down on men to place bets on human activities. For example, a popular wagering game involved betting on which man would be the last to drown in a shipwreck.

  Yet the gods had not entirely failed in determining what connected them to the world of man. Various gods had spit forth some theories. Without exception, drinking establishments had served as the places in which theories were conceived, and the theories had always been fathered by alcoholic beverages fatal to any non-divine being.

  Weldt, the God of Commerce, proposed the first Theory of Ineffable Conjunction during a pause between bouts of weeping over being mocked in the bedchamber by his wife. He envisioned the connection as a tunnel through which the gods could see and move. He described it as dark and scary, with a forbidding aura that only the brave could pierce. Other gods asked Weldt to explain how two gods could see different things through the tunnel simultaneously. He elaborated, “Climb up my ass, you squint! See how you like living with that moist, rutting harpy!” Then he passed out for four days.

  Everyone acknowledged that this theory was weak, but it remained the prevailing, and only, theory for thirty thousand years. Shockingly, Lutigan, the God of War, pr
oduced the next theory during a drinking contest against Cassarak, the Goddess of Health. During the contest, Lutigan belatedly realized he was going to lose because no being in existence could consume more food or drink than Cassarak. Lutigan leaped atop the table, scattering bottles, pitchers, and glasses. Then he announced the second Theory of Ineffable Conjunction, which held that the realms of god and man are connected by a window. He proclaimed that he needed to run and “write that down,” upon which he fled the tavern and avoided losing the contest. The next day, several gods asked him about his theory, and he had obviously given it some thought. He said that more than one god could see different things through the window because it was “real wide.” When asked how gods could pass through it to the world of man, he said, “It’s a window. Open it, you moron!”

  While thirty thousand years had passed between creation of the first and second theories, the third theory followed the second more quickly. In fact, Gorlana, the Goddess of Mercy, announced the third Theory of Ineffable Conjunction nine hours after Lutigan announced the second theory. Gorlana, Effla, Trutch, and Sakaj were enjoying brunch at the Sun Soul Pavilion the morning after Lutigan’s announcement, and Gorlana revealed that the matter connecting the realms was like an egg. After a discreet silence and some sips of morning-time alcoholic beverages, Trutch, the Goddess of Life, asked Gorlana to explain how this was so. Gorlana said, “Oh, I don’t know. But it’s such a nice image, I think it must be true.”

  Gorlana’s announcement heralded a one-hundred-fifty-thousand-year hiatus for new Theories of Ineffable Conjunction. During that time, the gods preferred not to think about the topic at all, but if compelled to do so, they tended to side with Lutigan.

  After those one hundred fifty thousand years had passed, Harik, the God of Death, hit upon the fourth theory. At Krak’s annual birthday celebration, his children gave him a mated pair of whales of an extinct species. The gift-wrap ribbon was rather long, as one might expect. As Harik helped his father unwrap the gift, he became mesmerized by the ribbon and wandered off to a corner of the whale-accommodating tavern to consider it. Later, the entire population of the Gods’ Realm, including gods, demigods, imps, and whales, sang felicitations to the Father of the Gods. During the song, Harik jumped atop the female whale and began shouting about the fourth Theory of Ineffable Conjunction. Five seconds later, Harik’s left arm was vaporized by the impossibly searing light of the sun, and he henceforth became more circumspect about his theory.

  Harik held that an immense ribbon connects the realms. While the ribbon had substance, it was woven loosely enough to enable gods to see through it and pass through it. Some of the gods found this theory interesting, and some felt it to be asinine. It never gained much popularity since all the gods feared that Krak disliked it, and they preferred to avoid having their parts vaporized.

  In conceiving his chariot, Fingit rejected the ridiculous egg theory immediately. He tossed out the tunnel theory because it couldn’t explain multiple perspectives, and because Weldt was an oaf. Of the remaining two theories, Fingit held no strong opinions about which was correct—or which was the least incorrect, as the case may be. He finally chose the window theory. He didn’t feel any better about its accuracy, but he could easily make calculations about something straight and rigid, like glass. Calculating vectors and power ratios for something like a ribbon would be a pain in the butt, and he was already getting a headache.

  Once Fingit settled on the window theory, he hypothesized about why no one could see through the window anymore. Perhaps the curtains had been drawn. Perhaps someone had let a shrub grow in front of the window. Could the window have been painted over by an inattentive decorator? Maybe someone had just parked their fat ass in front of the window for eight years. Fingit realized that seemed unlikely, but on an inter-dimensional scale, who could say?

  Of course, all these impediments were metaphorical, just as the window was a metaphor for conceiving how the connection between the realms worked. Fingit wasn’t so far gone that he misunderstood that. He considered the window metaphor as he conceptualized his chariot and its capabilities.

  Fingit then opened his tome of schematics and design notes and studied everything he had written over the ages about chariots. The first thing he noted was to avoid putting anything inside the chariot that should not be touched. In fact, he had underlined that point with red ink.

  Quite a few millennia earlier, Fingit had created a marvelous battle engine, the Flying Chariot of Recalcitrant Obliteration. He made a gift of it to Lutigan, who right away went out to create a pretext for attacking somebody unimportant. During the fight, the chariot crashed onto the battlefield on its side and spun for more than two hours, causing Lutigan to vomit up some things that defied identification. When Lutigan complained, Fingit explained that Lutigan must have touched something that should not have been touched. Lutigan observed how clever Fingit had been to place something inside the chariot that shouldn’t be touched. Then Lutigan stabbed Fingit fourteen times from his neck down to his groin.

  Throughout the day, Fingit amassed information and created a novel schematic for this new chariot, which he decided to call the Chariot of Crushing Divinity. He knew that was an insipid name, but he couldn’t think of anything better.

  Then Fingit stoked his forge and gathered his materials. Stoking the forge was a huge aggravation. In earlier times, he’d retained several imps to do the scut work around the forge. But when things went to hell, he could no longer feed and house the imps. They turned feral and returned to the forests in the valley.

  So, Fingit stoked the forge, fashioned the metal, joined it with cunning, infused it with power he had husbanded for such a task, attended the details of the chariot’s appearance, and handled the entire job himself. The day’s work produced a brass chariot that gleamed in the divine, though dimmed, sunlight of the Gods’ Realm. Fingit smiled upon his work and felt more pride in it than in anything he’d created since the Veil had fallen. He could hardly wait for it to be launched and guided back to the world of man. He just needed to find someone dim enough to ride in it.

  After an hour of trudging through the Gossamer Forest, Fingit gave up on finding any stupid gods there. It seemed deserted. He thought he might try his luck down the mountain at the Sun Soul Pavilion, since Weldt and Harik were known to spend evenings there drinking and debauching. Well, their debauching had diminished. Cute demigoddesses once would have toppled onto their backs for these gods unprompted, but now they found Weldt and Harik rather repulsive. The gods sagged unpleasantly, their ears sprouted bountiful harvests of hair, and they were boring in the way only a self-absorbed immortal entity can be. Therefore, the debauching had decreased to almost nothing, and the drinking had increased in proportion.

  However, as Fingit walked down the mountain, he spied two figures approaching him. From this distance, one appeared to be throwing a compact net at a small animal, and the net snared the creature without fuss. The accompanying figure ran to the animal, un-snared it, and handed the net back to the first figure.

  Fingit hurried to meet these two. When closer, he could tell that the second figure was Gorlana, Goddess of Mercy. Her waves of red hair lacked the luster they had once possessed, and her gown of cream and sapphire didn’t swirl with majesty as it had in the old days. Fingit became excited, however, because she was definitely dim. He recognized the other figure by his blood-red armor, tiger-skull helm, and face like a war ax. This was Lutigan, and that dampened Fingit’s excitement quite a lot. It wasn’t that Lutigan was smart. Lutigan just didn’t like Fingit very much.

  When Fingit had drawn much nearer to these gods, he again saw Lutigan toss his small net with appalling speed. The net snared a rabbit near the base of a tree, and the rabbit kicked, trying to free itself. Gorlana rushed to the tangled rabbit as Fingit walked toward her. With immense tenderness, she untangled the creature, and then she shot her left hand forth with a black dagger and killed it with a thrust. Almost as rapidly, she reached
into her gown and produced six small black spikes. She staked the rabbit to the ground, one spike through each paw and one through each ear.

  The Goddess of Mercy rose with less-than-godlike grace and noticed Fingit staring at her in repulsed perplexity. She smiled a sweet smile from her heart-shaped face and said, “Ants have to eat too.” She carried the net back to Lutigan with a giggle. He responded with a grimace and an aggressive lowering of his mighty red eyebrows.

  “Fingit, what brings you out of your shed? Tired of smelling your own farts?” Lutigan said by way of greeting. Fingit felt hopeful, since this was far more polite than Lutigan had offered in years.

  Fingit paused to consider the best way to approach Gorlana and Lutigan. How could he introduce them to the idea of the chariot to produce the highest probability of them agreeing to ride the damned thing? Deep within himself, Fingit feared that the chariot would blow up and vaporize its occupants, so he needed to make this sound really good.

  However, Fingit could not think of a lie sufficiently convincing to entice even a moronic god to his destruction. Words and lies didn’t happen to be Fingit’s strength. He fell back on the same weapon he used when the gods went into battle. He used a gigantic hammerblow between his opponent’s eyes—metaphorically, in this case. “I built a chariot to fly to the world of man through the Veil. If we don’t get across, all of us will be elevated by Cheg-Cheg or go insane or both. One of you needs to fly it.”

  Gorlana giggled. “Fingit, you’re cute. If you ever speak to me again, about anything at all, I’ll stake you out like this rabbit. It’ll take more spikes. I’ll use nine of them just for your penis.” Then she kissed Fingit on the forehead, kissed Lutigan on the ear, and smacked Lutigan a cracking blow on his left buttock. She skipped away, blowing kisses to each staked-out woodland creature as she passed it.