by Dante King
Hengchun grinned and pointed his spear at the second steel wolf’s head. Another massive thunderclap crashed through the fort, and another series of powerful explosions tore a brutal, perfectly linear passage through the ranks of Jengshen’s charging troops. Hengchun’s spear was no doubt some sort of Fire weapon, and he was using it to detonate the gray powder inside the wolf’s head weapons. I could see now why he had so easily defeated the Emperor’s much larger force.
“Take the fort!” I roared to my party.
We launched one more volley of arrows, stones, and crossbow bolts at the defenders on the walls, then we veered off, racing around the perimeter of the fort to get to the smashed-out south wall. I needed to get inside and take on Hengchun right away before he could wreak much more havoc with his secret weapons.
While the others charged to give support to Captain Jengshen and his troops, I reined in Fang and sprang out of the saddle, running down his scaly back until I was balanced on his tail. With a single swipe of his powerful tail he could pulverize men to mincemeat and fling their battered bodies well over thirty yards.
“Flick that tail of yours, Fang!” I yelled.
Fang gave his tail a sharp lash, and the force hurled me up over the wall. I turned my impromptu flight into a graceful somersault, tumbling through the air, and I landed with a smooth forward roll inside the fort. The instant I came up from the roll, I began whirling in a tornado of precision-directed fury with the Dragon Sword. The enchanted greatsword lopped off limbs and heads, and dozens of soldiers fell in seconds before my vicious hacks and slashes.
Hengchun saw me carving a passage of death through the ranks of his troops and roared with fury.
“Welcome, God of Nothing, to your final resting place! Now you die!”
He shoved the nearest soldier aside and wheeled the trooper’s wolf’s head weapon around. I’d seen the wolf’s head in action, and knew that if the power of that weapon was unleashed on me I’d be turned into dogfood as quickly as Jengshen’s men had been. While Henchun prepared to aim the weapon at me, I fought off the hordes of soldiers attacking me from all sides. I jumped back to give myself some room and pulled Death energy from my distant army to empower my assassin’s armor and tower shield until they were at bursting point.
Hengchun pointed his spear at the wolf’s head and fired. Thunder crashed and pink flame blasted from the mouth of the war machine, and a force just as potent as the strongest of the Warlock’s lightning bolts smashed into my shield. I was flung backward with such force that my flying body pulverized dozens of men behind me. I was hurled through the air in a gory spray of blood and flying limbs. I slammed into the far wall of the fort, and all the air was driven from my lungs. I bounced off it and rolled in the dirt, gasping for breath.
The immense Death magic in my shield and armor had saved me, but this energy had been completely depleted by just one shot from Hengchun’s weapon. Indeed, nothing was left of the shield at all.
Hengchun was already at the next wolf’s head, screaming at the soldiers who were manning the weapon to aim it at me. I couldn’t afford to let them take another shot at me, because I certainly wouldn’t survive one more.
Groaning, I struggled to my feet and drew Grave Oath. I flung the dagger across the courtyard, and it passed a hundred of Hengchun’s and Jengshen’s troops as they engaged my party in battle. My dagger cut through the air, avoiding the many fighting soldiers, and slammed into the eyeball of one of the troops manning the final wolf’s head. I dispatched the other with a shot of my wrist crossbow, and he gasped as roots sprung from the wound and strangled him from the inside out.
Hengchun was now forced to turn the heavy weapon around by himself.. With my strength returning rapidly, I charged toward Hengchun. Cursing and swearing, he struggled to turn the heavy steel wolf’s head around, but as I bore down on him, cutting down any troop who dared stand in my way, he saw that he wouldn’t make it.
When I came within twenty yards of him, he ceased trying to move the weapon. He growled and shifted into a combat stance, and his red spear lit up. With a deep whoosh, flame encapsulated the weapon, burning brightest at its tip. Skidding to a halt, I snatched up a shield from a dead soldier and empowered it with a quick boost of Death energy from the dead soldiers nearby. With a snarl, Hengchun unleashed the Fire Spear’s magic, and a torrent of roaring flame blasted toward me.
I crouched behind the Death-enhanced shield as flame crashed in a tsunami against it. It was only due to the Death magic that the shield didn’t melt in a second or two, but there wasn’t enough Death magic to hold it together much longer. Once it melted away, I’d be toast, literally.
What I needed was a distraction. With a snap of my fingers, I raised a dozen dead soldiers near Hengchun as zombies, and had them all swarm him at once. He had no choice but to cut off his stream of fire and fight off the attacking zombies.
I dropped the red-hot shield, and it turned into a lump of molten goo the moment I pulled the Death magic out of it. Despite being well into middle age and heavy around the belly, Hengchun moved with astonishing speed and fought with a grandmaster’s flair. He was spinning and dodging, cutting down zombies left, right and center, stabbing his Fire spear through their eyeballs or tripping them up with its shaft, or whipping the blade edge of the spearhead around in fearsome cuts that took zombies’ heads off their shoulders. Within less than a minute, he’d killed every zombie around him.
“Nice work Hengchun,” I said, spinning the Dragon Sword in my hands as I advanced on him. “But you’re going to have to do better than that against me.”
“Foreign devil,” he snarled. “You will die as rapidly as your undead minions did!”
We charged at each other and exchanged a flurry of blows. As quick as his lunges and cuts were, my ducks, dodges, and counterattacks were faster. Soon, I was beating him back, blow by savage blow. His Fire spear was a potent weapon; the Dragon Sword could not cut through its shaft. As powerful a weapon as the Fire spear was, its weakness was the man who wielded it. In one final, desperate attack, he hurled all his strength and momentum into a flying lunge at my throat. I ducked and flung myself forward in a knee slide, passing under Hengchun as he leaped over me. I hacked at him as he passed, and the Dragon Blade cleaved his body in half from his balls to his cranium.
The two halves of Hengchun dropped in a bloody mess to either side of me.
I stood and noticed the quietness of the battlefield, save for the groans of the dying and injured. My party and Jengshen’s troops had overwhelmed what remained of the resistance.
After mopping up any surviving enemy troops, we searched the fort, and found the Emperor’s head alchemist locked up in a cage in a cellar. He was a tiny, rail-thin old man who looked like he was at least ninety years old, and his eyes were wide with terror. He took the note I handed him, stamped with the Emperor’s personal seal, with his skeletal, livers-potted hands trembling. After he’d read it, he beamed out a toothless smile and gave as low a bow as he could, his bent back creaking and his knees wobbling.
“God of Death, I owe you my life,” he croaked. “I am Wenxing, Head Alchemist to the Glorious Emperor of Yeng. According to this note from the Emperor, I am to give you anything you ask of me. So, God of Death, simply ask, and it will be so.”
“I need you to show me how to use those wolf’s head weapons,” I said. “And I need some of your gray powder.”
“Of course,” he said. “How much would you like?”
“All of it,” I answered with a grin.
Chapter Six
Wenxing chuckled heartily and shook his head, smiling. “You are very eager, God of Death! It is a blessing that you came to Yeng when you did. In all my long years, nearly one hundred of them, I have never seen such a period of anarchy and chaos as this. Indeed, it seemed as if the Emperor’s dynasty itself was on the verge of collapse, something unheard of in the history of this land. For saving us, you shall have your reward: all the gray powder you can carry,
and these new weapons, which I was forced to make for Hengchun.”
Remembering that Hengchun had called me ‘God of Nothing’, I wanted to ask Wenxing a few questions about the warlord before we moved on to the weapons and powder.
“You were Hengchun’s captive for a few weeks. Did you ever see him doing any strange rituals with blood? In his raids, did he ever capture and kill young women?” I asked.
“He did capture many young women when he and his forces raided the countryside, yes,” Wenxing answered. “I don’t know what he did with them, though. He would take them away in the night, and I would never see them again. I shudder to think of what happened to those poor girls.”
The old alchemist had suffered enough trauma; he didn’t need to hear about how Hengchun had likely been slitting the girls’ throats and draining them of their blood. My suspicions had been confirmed: Hengchun had been in league with the Blood God. Now there was only one more thing I wanted to find out about Hengchun.
“Do you know if Hengchun recently sent any of his troops on a mission to Gongxiong Harbor?” I asked.
“Yes, as a matter of fact he did, just a few days ago,” Wenxing answered. I don’t know what their orders were, but the troops disguised themselves as civilians and took a lot of gray powder with them.”
I chuckled dryly and shook my head.
“If I’d known a few minutes ago that it was Hengchun who’d sabotaged my ships, I would have made him die a lot more slowly and painfully,” I muttered.
“Sabotaged your ships?” Wenxing asked.
“Never mind. Come, show me how these wolf’s head weapons work.”
Wenxing struggled up the stairs and shuffled across the courtyard, surveying the scene of the battle. He saw the two halves of Hengchun’s corpse and spat on the ground, snarling.
“That evil creature should have suffered a far slower death than that,” he said. “But nonetheless, it is good that justice finally found him.” He shuffled over to the nearest wolf’s head and stroked the steel almost affectionately. “I hope that my creations did not kill too many of your troops, God of Death. At least now they will be used against evil men, not by them.”
“They took out a good number of the Emperor’s troops, but none of mine,” I said. “So, how do these mighty weapons work?”
“The principle is quite simple, but the secret to the weapons’ devastating power is in these red balls,” Wenxing answered. “Grey powder explodes inside the weapon, launching the red ball out. The explosion also sets off a reaction inside the ball, which consists of many layers. Each layer explodes in quick succession as the ball travels, creating a line of powerful explosions that can mow through a mass of troops. If it’s fired into something very solid like a thick stone wall, all the layers will explode together, creating an even more powerful explosion. To use the weapon, you pour a bag of gray powder in, then roll the ball down. After that a fuse is inserted, and the fuse lit to fire the weapon.”
“Or I could just use this,” I said, picking up Hengchun’s Fire spear.
“Yes, much faster than fiddling with fuses,” Wenxing said, nodding enthusiastically.
Yumo-Rezu walked up to us and gave Wenxing a polite bow.
“Wenxing, this is Yumo-Rezu, the Dragon Goddess.”
“It is I who should be bowing to you, Dragon Goddess,” Wenxing said, giving her as low a bow as his geriatric body would permit. “Truly, these are strange times when one of the ancient goddesses walks the earth again!”
“Speaking of ancient deities,” Yumo-Rezu said to me, “that’s the Fire God’s spear. It’s been lost for thousands of years, but Hengchun must have found it in one of his raids. It’s an extremely powerful weapon.”
“I discovered that firsthand,” I said, pointing at the twisted lump of molten metal on the ground that used to be a shield.
I talked more to Wenxing about the wolf’s head weapons, the red balls and gray powder, and he said he’d hand over all the gray powder in the Forbidden Palace to me, and show me how to make more. He also agreed to make a lot more red balls for me before I left Yeng. I raised the dead soldiers in and around the fort as zombies and then we headed back to the Forbidden Palace, which we reached just after nightfall. We were treated to another lavish feast, and the Emperor expressed his gratitude to me for rescuing the alchemist and defeating Hengchun. That night the alchemist showed me the formula for gray powder and ordered palace servants to bring out a few hundred barrels of the stuff from the cellars.
My army arrived the next morning, and everyone in the Forbidden Palace marveled over the dragon bones. We loaded the gray powder into our wagons, gave the Emperor a number of the looted art and treasure we’d salvaged from the Warlock’s tower, and then said our farewells.
Once more my mounted party traveled ahead of the main army. We reached Gongxiong the next morning and I went straight to the harbor, while Yumo-Rezu and Rami-Xayon sought out their aunt, Tong-Tong. I sensed a large amount of death here; many people had burned to death, but others had been killed by violence. Many of the buildings had been burned to the ground, and all but a handful of ships had been sunk. Thankfully, one of my warships was still afloat and undamaged, and I found Percy and his pirates on the deck drinking rum.
“Captain Chauzec!” Percy exclaimed, jumping to his feet when he saw me, with a massive grin smeared across his face. The other pirates all gave a cheer and rushed over to greet me. They all had plenty of cuts and bruises, and many were limping. None had been killed, though.
“What the hell happened here?” I asked.
“All hell broke loose a few days ago,” Percy answered. “It happened at about the same time as we saw a massive lightning storm raging in the far distance.”
“That would have been the battle I fought against the Warlock, whose ass I kicked.”
“Good thing, Captain Chauzec. But while you were fighting that bastard, some of his friends came ‘ere and set fire to every bloody ship in the harbor. They were using some sort of fire magic, I believe; no natural fire burns that hot or spreads that fast.”
“It was Yengish gray powder, I’m pretty sure of that. I’ve got a few hundred barrels of it to load onto this ship in two days.”
“Nasty bloody stuff it, it was,” Percy said, shaking his head. “Once me and my boys saw what was happening, we got our crossbows and cutlasses out and let the landlubber firestarters have it, but there were too many of ‘em. We fought hard, and we eventually killed all of ‘em, but not before they’d torched almost every last ship in the bloody harbor. And once those fires started on a ship, there was no putting ‘em out, not with water, sand or anything else you threw on ‘em. The fires quickly spread, and as you can see, half the bloody town burned down.”
“At least you and your men managed to save this war ship, though. At least we have this vessel to take us back to Prand,” I said.
“But what about your army, Captain Chauzec?” Percy asked, his face falling. “I feel like me and my boys have let you down terribly. We did everything we could to stop ‘em, you know. Fought like sharks in a feedin’ frenzy, we did.”
“I can see that. Don’t worry Percy, you saved one ship and that’s enough. I have a plan for getting my army across the ocean. It’ll take a while, but I’m sure it’ll work.”
“How do you propose to do that, Captain Chauzec?”
A smile spread slowly across my face. “The undead, Percy, are impervious to a lot of things that would kill the living. Cold doesn’t bother them, and they can’t starve to death or die of thirst. As you’ve seen, it takes a hell of a lot of damage from conventional weapons to take a zombie or skeleton down too. Now, what’s one more thing that the living must have to sustain life, but the undead can do without?”
Percy scratched his chin and scrunched up his face.
“Whores?” he answered uncertainly. “Not that it’s a life or death need, but it’s close! When my boys have been out at sea for months and they haven’t had their hands on a pai
r of tits or fine female ass, they lose their bloody minds, they do!”
I had to laugh at this, but after I finished chuckling, I shook my head. “Good guess, Percy, but you’re pretty far off the mark. The answer is air. The undead don’t need to breathe.”
A knowing smile slowly spread across Percy’s face as he realized what I was getting at. “Captain Chauzec, this is almost as unbelievable an idea as your plan to kill a kraken, but just like that crazy plot, it’ll work! Aye, but it’ll take a while to march an undead army across the seabed, under the waves.”
At that moment a new idea popped into my head, and my grin broadened substantially. “Percy, did you ever ride in a sled when you were a kid?”
“On snow, like?”
“On snow, on grass, anywhere.”
“No, but I’ve heard that some of the Northern Barbarians travel great distances across the ice and snow of the wastes by sled, pulled by teams of tamed direwolves.”
“Exactly. I don’t have a team of direwolves to pull a sled, but I do have an immensely powerful undead kraken and whale. And if we can build a large enough sled to pack an army onto…”
“Arr Captain Chauzec, arr! We can salvage all the anchor chains from the sunken ships in the harbor, and whatever metal sheets are on ‘em too. We can make a series of sleds for your troops, all linked together in a long chain, that your whale and kraken can drag across the seabed. Why, with the kraken being as strong as it is, the army might only take a week or so longer to get across the ocean that us in the ship.”
“For added speed I can get my troops to push barge poles into the seabed as they move, propelling them forward,” I said.
“As long as you can get the materials out of the harbor, my boys and I can put this contraption together,” Percy said. “We’ve had a good rest from our skirmish the other night, and even though we’re still hurtin’ some, we’re ready to work, and I’ll set sail as soon as you want me to.”
