Wee Piggies of Radiant Might

by Bill McCurry

  “Aren’t you charming?” Sakaj flung the Nub back into the world of man.

  Fingit grabbed at the sleeve of Sakaj’s blue gown. “Bring him back and let me talk to him!”

  The Nub silently said, “Whenever you’re ready, Sakaj. I don’t hold a grudge.”

  Louze walked another twenty feet closer to the Nub, who silently said, “Fine, Sakaj. I’ll take him with my little stick-knife. Watch me.”

  Sakaj uttered a lengthy, complex curse involving the Void, the Five Demon Cows of the Fissures, three bodily functions, two intimate parts of Krak’s body, and a cactus. Then she pulled the Nub up to trade. “You know very well that torturer will spill your intestines and fertilize a garden on that spot with them.”

  “Maybe. I won’t trade just anything to you, even for my life.” The Nub crossed his arms.

  “So you say before you’re under his blade, Nub.”

  Krak whispered, “Just trade something with the little peach pit, already!”

  “So you say, mighty Sakaj. I think we understand one another better.”

  Sakaj sneered and let it fill her voice. “Oh, you may be sure that we do.” The Nub doesn’t understand anything about anything. Perhaps I can squeeze him dry of everything he values. I’ll ruin him for Fingit!

  “I want power.” The Nub said it as if he were asking for a clean mug. “Five squares should be enough. Please make an offer.”

  Sakaj took a breath, calmed herself, and made her voice as languid as a serpent. “Since I have already anticipated everything you could possibly say to me, I have an offer at hand. For five squares, you shall father a child and then leave it at the crossroads nearest its birthplace.”

  “I guess you intended that to sound poetic, mighty Sakaj, but no. I’ll build a monument to you. A small one, no bigger than a donkey.” The Nub held up his hand at just the height of a donkey.

  “Pathetic. For four squares, you will father a child. Once it walks, it shall be cursed to kill its weight in creatures or men every day until it dies.”

  The Nub dared to laugh. “Definitely no. I’ll tattoo ‘She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named’ on my chest. For four squares.”

  Ooh. What manner of curses might I visit upon him through the agency of that tattoo? But it is not enough power for our purposes. “While that is flattering in a slutty way, no. Let us bring the bargain to three squares, and whenever you create something, you must destroy something equally precious.”

  The Nub laughed again, louder, and then paused. “For three squares, I won’t be able to laugh for a month.”

  “A meager offer. For three squares, you shall never know happiness.”

  “Forget it. I won’t laugh for a year. Three squares.”

  “No, that is not enough.”

  “What do you mean, mighty Sakaj?” The Nub peered around. “Do you need a certain type of sacrifice for something? What do you need?”

  “You idiotic lump!” Krak whispered. “Why did you give him that bit of information? Has deicide clouded your thinking?”

  Sakaj shook her head. The Nub is just a young man, almost a baby. He doesn’t know what he knows. “It was a figure of speech. I was merely commenting on the deficiency of your offer. You will not know happiness for ten years in exchange for three squares.”

  “So that’s the amount you need. Well, I might consider it then. But not for three squares.”

  “Four squares then, but you’re stretching my patience like a harp string. If I let you die now, it wouldn’t diminish my joy at this evening’s dance.”

  “Good lie,” Lutigan whispered. “That was convincing.”

  “I want an open-ended debt.” The Nub yawned. “Five squares every day, forever.”

  Even though the end of all things was at hand, the gods all laughed in silence.

  Sakaj kicked at the black grass. “Perhaps you would like a goldfish that grants wishes too? Hm? No! Of course not! No god has ever paid an open-ended debt, and I will not be the first! Take five squares or accept death.”

  “No, Sakaj. I can hear that you need this. Three squares per day, open-ended.”

  “Bah! Bah, fie, and ram your offer up your pinched human ass!”

  The Nub said, “Oh, you really do need this, don’t you?”

  An earthquake thundered and crashed into existence on the other side of the pond in the Dark Lands. Sakaj looked around and saw Cheg-Cheg’s head emerging from the ground.

  “No, I don’t!” Sakaj’s voice implied that yes, she might. “You… just go off to die if you want to! Or you can take six squares and be denied happiness for ten years.”

  “Two squares per day, forever.”

  Krak whispered, “Do not take an open-ended debt, Sakaj. Better that we all die. It would be an appalling precedent. Every being in the Void would mock us.”

  Cheg-Cheg had climbed fully out of the ground, shaking Dark Lands dirt off like he was a dog. He pointed at the gods and roared.

  The whole Void can suck itself out of existence for all I care! “No! No, no, no! Seven squares!” Sakaj screamed.

  “Two squares per day, forever. Otherwise, I’m taking my chances with Louze back there.” The Nub pointed in a random direction, since he couldn’t see Louze at all.

  Cheg-Cheg charged across the pond, rather agile for a creature with the same mass as a hill.

  Krak bellowed, “You will not make this bargain!”

  “Father Krak?” the Nub said.

  All the gods but Sakaj dropped to the ground as they abandoned their bodies.

  “Just a few seconds more…” Sakaj knelt as she watched Cheg-Cheg knock down ancient trees like they were toddlers. “You will not know happiness for twenty years, in exchange for… one square per day. Open-ended. Forever.”

  “The power to accumulate every day!” the Nub said.

  “No! All right! Yes! Done!”

  Sakaj tossed today’s power to the Nub. “Such a pleasure being utterly violated by you! Bastard!”

  The Nub nodded as if he’d just purchased a pair of boots. “I’ll call on you again some time.”

  An avalanche of power enveloped Sakaj.

  The sorcerer snatched the wooden toy porpoise off the ground and held it between his knees. He began scratching a symbol on it with the iron crosspiece that Louze had used to saw off his nipple.

  As Cheg-Cheg’s impossible nightmare of a hand swept toward her, Sakaj abandoned her body in the Dark Lands.

  Sixteen

  (Fingit)

  Fingit’s new armor pinched a little in the crotch, but he’d forged it in a rush. Considering that he had created armor and weapons of divine power for twelve gods, and that he’d accomplished it before Cheg-Cheg had shown up to squash his new forge flatter than Weldt’s penises, anyone who wanted to quibble about the tailoring could just bite themselves on the ass.

  Sakaj had provided the power required for all of this.

  Amazing how all was forgiven when she showed up with a positive ocean of power. Krak even hugged her.

  Now that the gods were preparing for battle, Sakaj handed out power as if it were sand. Fingit had asked her, “Why so generous? You wanted that power so much you killed Harik like he was vermin. Almost killed.” Harik had abandoned his body at the last instant and survived.

  Sakaj clenched a fist between her breasts. “All victory now flows through me.”

  Fingit waited for more. When it didn’t come, he said, “Good to know. I’ll engrave that on the buttocks of your armor.”

  Krak used some of Sakaj’s power to remove the taint of insanity from the land so all the gods could fight Cheg-Cheg in their homeland. Chira, Goddess of Forests, prepared the ground for battle. Lutigan called his fourteen demigod shield-men, although his host of fourteen thousand warriors had withered to fourteen thousand fat, old, or dead men. Harik and his wife, Trutch, the Goddess of Life, fueled their battle-rage by arguing about what Harik had been doing while she had been trapped in dirt-eating insanity.

  Fingit’s labor
had delivered to each god the finest example of his or her preferred weapon. Lutigan’s two fourteen-palms-length swords could cleave iron or granite. Harik’s javelins delivered lightning, Chira’s bow never missed, and Casserak’s spear shook the earth like an avalanche. Sakaj might find it difficult to strike the decisive blow against Cheg-Cheg using her strangling cord, but that wouldn’t be Fingit’s fault. He’d made the thing deceptively strong and long.

  Madimal, God of Deep Waters, came to Fingit to talk about his weapon. “Fingit, you pathetic squint, what the barking hell is this? A net?”

  Fingit looked at the net in Madimal’s hand and then pointed at it. “You traditionally fight with a net.”

  “That’s when I’m fighting regular Void-beasts, or Lutigan’s flunkies. What am I going to do, capture Cheg-Cheg’s little finger?”

  “Give it here.”

  Fingit led Madimal out behind the Forge of Thunder and Woe. “See that tree? The big one on the left? Well, screw that tree.” Fingit hurled the net, and in midair, it stretched out large enough to cover not only the tree but also the entire hillside. “It gets big enough to grab whatever you want it to grab, up to a certain point. That certain point is about as big as a hillside.”

  Madimal still looked skeptical. “Fair enough. But what do I do then? Drag Cheg-Cheg to the ground like a runaway pig?”

  “Say the magic words. Go on.”

  “Bite my ass!”

  The entire net erupted in flames too brilliant to look at. When they had faded, nothing larger than a blackened stump stood on the hillside—apart from the undamaged net.

  Fingit said, “The magic words to retrieve the net are, ‘Fingit is a genius.’” The net refolded as it returned to him, and he handed it back to Madimal.

  “I guess it will do.” The God of Deep Waters trudged away.

  Fingit hefted his new hammer, the Mallet of Indefensible Devastation. It could crush any object or creature that was hard. The harder it was, the better his hammer could crush it. At least, that’s what Fingit had forged it to do. He wasn’t 100 percent confident he’d succeeded. Nor was he entirely sure the other gods’ weapons could do just exactly what he’d promised. It was a bit of a rush job, but everything should work out fine. He was 99 percent sure.

  However, the gods’ new armor provided unparalleled protection, if not comfort. Fingit felt unbending conviction about that. He admitted he might have spent a bit more time on his own armor than on the others’ armor. In fact, he’d spent more time on his armor than on all the other armor put together. But no one could fault him for concern about his own survival. At least, they couldn’t if they didn’t know.

  Ever since the first time Cheg-Cheg had bellowed and stomped around their land, the gods had always driven the Void-beast away by fighting it—and hurting it—within the Home of the Gods. Krak therefore planned to fight Cheg-Cheg in the Gods’ Realm today. At dawn, he arrayed his forces for battle. However, by midday, Cheg-Cheg had not arrived.

  “Think Cheg-Cheg’s taking the day off?” Fingit scanned the horizon with his Spyglass That Sees through Things That Aren’t Too Thick.The name was pathetic, but Fingit had named it in disgust when he found it couldn’t see through thick things.

  Krak, transcendent and exalted in his white armor that was one-eighth as bright as sunlight, grimaced down at Fingit from where they both stood at the summit of Mount Humility. “Shut up. I’m the Father of the Gods, so I don’t get cold, but my testicles are like raisins. No more talk about Cheg-Cheg not coming.”

  Fingit glanced at Sakaj, who stood at Krak’s other hand, shimmering in her armor of several colors—the Suit of Ambiguous Mischance. She raised an eyebrow at Fingit as if he were a dog that had trotted face-first into a glass door.

  Krak was keeping Fingit and Sakaj with him for the battle. Fingit had felt honored, until Krak said it was because he didn’t trust them worth a damn. The other gods were scattered in the valleys beneath Krak’s vantage.

  Fingit had crafted each god’s armor in his or her accustomed color. Sparkly-blue Gorlana, iron-gray Weldt, and his wife, passion-red Effla, were hiding on the right. Blood-red Lutigan and his drab thugs hid on the left, along with void-black Harik. The remaining four hid behind Lutigan. Flashing-yellow Trutch, holly-green Chira, deep ocean-blue Madimal, and ale-brown Casserak completed the wicked pantheon. From the top of Mount Humility, they looked like gaudy berries, some of which must be poisonous. Fingit grinned down at them and shifted against the pinch in the crotch of his steel armor that he had polished as bright as a mirror. He hoped they were all staying alert down there. Even at their best, most of the gods didn’t have much of an attention span.

  Later in the afternoon, just when Fingit was thinking about saying some other stupid thing, Cheg-Cheg’s full, volcano-like roar reached them. Fingit inspected the horizon, but Cheg-Cheg must have been too far away for even a god’s eyes to perceive him. Krak grunted and raised a golden horn half again as long as he was tall. He sounded a vibrating blast, almost too low to be heard. The pathetic, whip-thin vegetation in front of him quivered and then collapsed.

  Cheg-Cheg roared again. He roared three more times in the next two minutes, and each time, he sounded closer. Within another minute, the titanic creature rushed into view, approaching the gods at a relaxed lope.

  Krak released the impossibly searing light of the sun, which crackled across the valley and struck distant Cheg-Cheg on his broad, feathery purple forehead. The beast twitched but didn’t stop. The only damage Fingit could see was a few smoking feathers. Cheg-Cheg doubled his pace and ran straight toward Krak.

  Krak bellowed laughter like a god. “That was just to get his attention!”

  Fingit nodded. He was too nervous to make even a bad joke.

  Cheg-Cheg reached the foothills a few thousand feet beneath Krak. The monster slowed, looked around, and ripped a gigantic pine tree out of the ground. Before he could hurl the tree, Weldt jumped out from hiding near the monster, whirled his sling, and shot a flaming lead ball into Cheg-Cheg’s armpit. The foul, monstrous armpit hair began smoldering.

  As Cheg-Cheg flapped his arm to stifle the fire, Effla sprinted past Weldt, a bright-red slash brandishing a sword quite a bit taller than her. Fingit smiled because he could hear the sword singing from where he stood. The singing sword would drain the monster’s will if she could pierce its skin. Or maybe the beast would just feel faint. Or maybe nothing would happen. But the singing itself was a nice effect, anyway. Effla leaped the last ten paces to Cheg-Cheg’s leg and swung at the black, leathery shin with all her godly power. The sword bounced off with a discordant note, and she bounced with it, right into Gorlana. The two of them tumbled another hundred feet before rolling to a stop.

  Effla’s failed attack hadn’t even gotten the monster’s attention. With one arm pressed down tight to smother the armpit blaze, the monster flung the pine tree at an improbable velocity, even for a huge supernatural being. The tree trunk landed on Weldt with a gargantuan explosion of dirt clods around the supine, iron-gray deity. Fingit told himself that since Weldt was protected by magical armor, he should be able to survive even that attack. Cheg-Cheg snatched the tree like a switch and smashed Weldt five more times. As the god’s decapitated head sailed into a stand of timber, the great Void-beast tossed the tree over his shoulder a quarter mile up the mountainside. Fingit didn’t lie to himself about Weldt surviving that. The elevated god should be on his way to the Dim Lands right then.

  Cheg-Cheg began climbing the mountain. A rainbow of six more gods plus Lutigan’s fourteen nasty thugs assaulted the monster from behind. This was the main attack. The demigods charged all around to confuse the monster. Lutigan hacked at the Void-beast’s Achilles tendon, leaving shallow cuts that released a foul vapor like hissing steam. Harik threw lightning-javelins at Cheg-Cheg’s gibbous, yellow eyes, and Chira shot arrows up his pug nose. Casserak thrust her spear under one of the creature’s luminous, white talons to stab the nail bed. Trutch leaped atop the beast�
�s immense foot like an insane, yolk-dipped shrew. She flailed with her ax, with a zero probability of hurting him at all.

  Madimal hurled his net, and it spun out to an enormous diameter suitable for enveloping Cheg-Cheg. The monster stuck out one horrifying finger, snagged the net, and collected the collapsing net into one hand. He chucked it back toward the river valley, and it disappeared past the horizon. It might have sailed past the valley, or out of the Gods’ Realm entirely.

  “Now!” Krak bellowed. He ran down the mountainside to join the fight, a boulder of incandescence gaining speed. Fingit and Sakaj followed him.

  Cheg-Cheg stiffened and turned under the coordinated attack, looking back the way he had come. Then he staggered three steps backward away from the mountain.

  “He’s going to run!” Fingit shouted. “He’s breaking!”

  Indeed, Cheg-Cheg took another step back and lowered his head, streamers of acid-drool pouring down to dissolve the foliage and soil. Then the monster sighed and shook his head, reminding Fingit of a frazzled mother who had found filth tracked onto her clean floor. Fingit stopped shouting about victory. He ran faster instead.

  The monster roared. Every raucous noise the gods had heard from the monster throughout history was immediately reclassified. Many were relegated to “bellow” status, and a good number were recognized to be “howls.” Very few became “yawps.” The measure of a Cheg-Cheg roar became how far it tumbled you across the landscape, and how much blood gushed from your ears, nose, and eyes.

  Fingit tumbled “pretty far” and gushed “a lot.” The roar had hurled him almost back to the foothills by the time he stopped himself. Everyone else was dragging and staggering to their feet, including Lutigan’s demigods. Fingit sneezed some blood and watched the demigods begin recreating their formation.

  Cheg-Cheg bounded a step forward and landed one-footed on half a dozen of Lutigan’s shield-men. Fingit gaped as the monster hopped to the side and squished three more demigods, and then landed with both feet on the remaining unfortunate pawns. Without breaking rhythm, the Void-beast jumped back to his original position to complete the combination.