by Dante King
He bowed again. “Thank you, my lord.”
He walked on shaky legs with Elyse over to the food wagon, where she got him some apples and jerky and a waterskin. Isu sidled up to me, staring intently at the scene.
“Something isn’t right here,” she whispered. “Be on your guard, Vance.”
“Trust me, I know,” I said. “There’s something suspicious about him, something I can’t quite put my finger on.”
“Your foolish cleric is obviously too naive or too stupid to see that.” Isu stared an icy gaze at Elyse, who was clearly helping this young man out of the goodness in her heart. “Let it be on her head if any ill comes of this.”
“It’s not her fault she actually has a heart,” I said coldly to Isu. “And don’t you worry, I’ll be keeping an eye on the boy.”
“Just remember whose fault it is that he was brought here,” Isu said with a sneer before turning around and striding briskly away.
I shook my head as I watched her go; Isu could really be a bitch supreme. I wondered if she would ever learn to get along with the other women… and if I could ever bring myself to trust her completely. I knew she had something planned but didn’t know if it would go as far as betrayal. Then again, there was the situation with Xayon, Isu’s involvement in some sort of major betrayal of all the Old Gods. I still needed to get to the bottom of that, whatever it was, but I could only do that when Rami-Xayon was back with me. I hoped my harpy would find her soon.
Chapter Eight
“All right everyone!” I yelled. “Back in formation! We’re moving out!”
One of my skeletal cavalrymen had been smashed to smithereens by a barbarian’s morning star, and his skeletal horse was now without a rider. This would be perfect for transporting our little stray; he wouldn’t be able to control the skeletal horse the way he would a living horse. Instead, it would be under my command.
“Hey, Jort,” I said, “you look like your legs could use a break. Why don’t you hop up onto that horse skeleton over there? Don’t be alarmed by the fact that it’s, you know, dead. Trust me, it’s one of the safest things to sit on here.”
“If it’s all right with you, my lord, I’d rather—”
“I insist.” I fixed him with a fierce stare that told him quite plainly that there would be no arguing with this.
“Vance, he’s—” Elyse began, but I was quick to silence her.
“He looks too tired to walk at our speed, the skeletal horse has a perfectly comfortable saddle, and he won’t even have to think about directing it because it’s under my control,” I said firmly. “So, Jort, get onto that horse. Now.”
Elyse huffed and glared at me—and judging from the look in her beautiful blue eyes, I had to wonder if she hadn’t heard me and Anna going at it. But she said nothing. Jort looked at her with a kind of pleading look, but he quickly realized that my word was the law in this group, and, grumbling something under his breath, he climbed up onto the skeletal horse’s saddle.
We got back into formation and set off with the new force of zombie cavalrymen mounted on undead direwolves split into two halves-one covering the right flank of our formation, one covering the left. I mounted Fang and headed up to the very front of the train, with Rollar on his dire bear riding next to us.
I briefly sent my mind into the body of my harpy. The creature was flying over a broad expanse of barren, rock-strewn fields, with absolutely no signs of life to be detected. There were scattered drifts of snow, so it had to be further north than I was. At least that meant that Rami-Xayon was somewhere vaguely to the north and wouldn’t have to make a massive detour or trek to meet up with us. I hoped she would be able to rejoin the party before I reached Drok’s tribe and the Wise Woman.
The sun was getting low in the sky, and it was obvious that we wouldn’t be reaching the village before dark. After an hour or so of travel along the road, in which we encountered no other travellers, or enemies, dusk began to fall. I told the others to wait and headed into the woods, soon finding a suitable clearing to set up camp in.
I figured it was about time to tell the others that Anna had stowed away with us, before one of them found her in the supplies wagon and stuck her with a sword or a spear. I got my undead troops to surround the campsite as sentries—we’d definitely be safe and sound throughout the night—and then jumped up onto the supplies wagon before anyone could start unpacking it.
“Everyone, come here for a second!” I yelled, and they obeyed. “We, uh, have an extra member to our party.”
Eyebrows were raised all around.
“What are you talking about, Vance?” Elyse asked, looking confused.
“My lord,” Rollar said, “begging your pardon, but should you not have perhaps told us about this before we set off from Brakith?”
“Drok like parties!” Drok grinned stupidly.
Isu turned and sent him a glower that could have melted steel.
“I would have told you all if I’d known she was there. But she decided to come along, even though I expressly told her not to.”
“Then you should kill the little cow for her insolence and disobedience,” Isu hissed. “She’ll just be dead weight the rest of us have to drag around.”
“No members of this party will be killing any other members of this party.” I transfixed Isu with a glare that was every bit as ferocious as hers. “And that’s enough from you, Isu.”
Isu huffed and folded her arms aggressively across her big, round tits.
“Anna, come out now, before you cause any more trouble.”
The flap of the wagon opened, and Anna jumped out, looking like a million gold pieces. There was a glow to her skin that was practically angelic, and I had to wonder if my wad had had something to do with that.
“Greetings, everyone!” She flashed them a massive smile with her perfect white teeth bright against the falling darkness. “Apologies for just, you know, popping out like this, but hey, sometimes a girl just has to take things into her own hands! And Lord Vance, I’m so, so sorry for disobeying your orders. I’ve been a very bad girl, and I think you should punish me for what I did.”
She bit her lip and stuck her ass out suggestively. Elyse and Isu immediately turned and glowered at me. Weirdly enough, when they turned their attention back to Anna, their frowns morphed into smiles. They were twitchy smiles, though, almost as if they were trying to fight them, but couldn’t. Then I realized what was going on and peered a little more closely at Anna to verify. Sure enough, clutched subtly behind her back sat the cause of the unstoppable smiles: Lucielle’s Mirror.
If the others found out that she was using this magic item on them, they’d be mad as hell. The longer this went on, the faster they’d catch on, too.
“All right, all right,” I said hastily. “Well, now that’s over with. So, everyone, Anna’s traveling with the party, for better or worse. I’ll send her back to Brakith as soon as the opportunity arises. Go on now, do your thing and set up camp.”
They all moved off, grumbling about Anna but smiling every time they turned and looked at her. When they were far enough away, I approached her.
“Put it away, Anna,” I said sternly. “It won’t work on me.”
“Put what away?” she asked, feigning innocence.
“Don’t play dumb. I know you have Lucielle’s Mirror behind your back. I’m a god, and that thing has no effect on me.”
Her smile faded, and her face took on the familiar look I’d seen on it so many times when we’d been kids, when we got caught causing trouble.
“Sorry, Vance,” she murmured. “I just… you know how important making a good first impression is and I knew they’d all be angry at me for stowing away like that…”
“You know that’s no excuse for secretly using a magic item on them,” I said. “And what’s more, my friends aren’t idiots. I’m pretty sure they suspected you were using the mirror on them; it’s not the first time they’ve met you, you know, and they know you have Lucielle’
s Mirror. And if you want to make a terrible first impression on someone, using a fucking magic item on them is a tried-and-true method.”
“I’m sorry, Vance,” she murmured, almost on the verge of tears. “I really shouldn’t have done that, now that you put it like that. Look, um, maybe you should just keep the mirror from now on.”
“I don’t need to carry another magic item around,” I said. “You keep it; it’s yours anyway. Just don’t use it so irresponsibly again.”
She started saying something else, but at this point, I felt a sudden tingle of my sixth sense, so I ignored her and looked intently around me. Rollar was busy setting up his tent, and Drok was being directed to the farthest end of the campsite by Isu, who was holding her nose against his reek. Elyse, however, was missing, as was Jort.
“Look,” I muttered, ignoring whatever Anna had been talking about, “just forget about it and don’t use that thing on anyone in the party again. Get yourself set up for the night; I have to check on something.”
I drew Grave Oath and started seeking out the missing people. I shot my consciousness into the heads of all my undead troops, using their eyes to search through the shadows, but there was no sign of her or Jort anywhere. With an unshakable sense of dread, I hurried over to the skeletal horse that Jort had been riding. There was blood all over the saddle.
“Shit,” I muttered. Something definitely wasn’t right here.
I looked down at the ground and saw bloody footprints leading out of the campsite, in the direction of a small creek nearby. I figured Elyse had gone off to fill her waterskin up at the creek, and Jort, seeing that she would be alone in the dark, had followed her. Whatever his intentions were, I was certain they weren’t good.
I followed the trail of the bloody footprints, clutching Grave Oath, my heart hammering in my chest. I wasn’t afraid for myself, of course; I was afraid that I wasn’t going to get to Elyse in time. Perhaps the matchstick-thin peasant was far more dangerous than he looked.
The footprints led through a trail in which the darkness was close-packed and almost suffocating. The sense of dread grew in the pit of my belly with every step. Soon after, I heard the burbling of the creek growing louder. I turned a corner, and my heart almost stopped when I my eyes took in the scene before me—but then, in an instant, my training and instincts took over, and I acted.
Elyse was bent over the stream, filling her bottle, with a burning torch held in one hand for illumination, and standing behind her, gripping a long red dagger with a wavy-shaped blade, was Jort. He was about to plunge the dagger into her neck at the base of her skull, an instantly lethal kind of blow.
I was too far away to tackle him, but I was well within range for a knife throw. I flung Grave Oath at Jort with al the force I could muster. The enchanted dagger spun through the air, and my aim was true. The blade slammed into Jort’s skull and sunk in up to the hilt. But instead of dropping dead, with his body shrivelling up as Grave Oath sucked his soul out, the peasant—or the boy who looked like a peasant, which he now very clearly showed himself not to be—simply stopped what he was doing and turned and stared at me with his mouth twisted into an evil grin, his eyes showing their blood-red color in the fire light. The thud of Grave Oath slamming into Jort’s skull gave Elyse a start, and she screamed when she turned around and saw him standing over her with his red dagger in his hand and my dagger protruding from his skull.
“Run, Elyse!” I yelled. “This is no mortal man we’re dealing with!”
Elyse shrieked, thrusting the burning torch into Jort’s face before he could take a swipe at her with the dagger, but the flames in his face did nothing to stop him, and with a growl, he lunged at her with the dagger. She only just managed to evade the thrust, then jumped back and sprinted over to me, collapsing behind me as soon as she made it.
“Vance,” she gasped, her eyes wide with fright, “what’s going on? What is he?!”
“I don’t know.” I wished I’d brought my kusarigama with me, since I was now unarmed. “But anything Grave Oath can’t kill can be labeled a pretty fucking serious threat.”
Jort—whoever or whatever the hell he really was—turned and lurched toward us, brandishing the red dagger and grinning maniacally. Blood trickled from his red eyes, and a gush of it washed out of his mouth. His laughter was not the laughter of man. It was deep and booming, and it rattled the trees with the depth of its sound.
“Your mace,” I said to Elyse.
“There’s no moonlight; I can’t—”
“No, forget about the magic, just give it to me. I’m not gonna try to take on this thing, whatever it is, without a weapon. Run back to camp and get… fuck, just get everybody! Go!”
“I can’t leave you here alone with—”
“Just go!” I yelled, snatching her mace out of her hands.
Jort was lurching rapidly toward me on shaky legs. His movements, even though his body was that of a scrawny peasant, were not those of a man. It was more like he was some sort of crippled insect, the way he moved.
“You have interfered in our plans for the last time.” His voice sounded like a hundred throaty northern barbarians threatening me at once. “We will devour your soul and the souls of your followers before drowning all of Prand in blood!”
I had suspected it from the moment I saw the blood all over the saddle and the bloody footprints, but now I knew it for certain: I was dealing with a creature of the Blood God.
Elyse’s mace was a weapon of the Lord of Light, and I couldn’t use it the way it worked for her, with the power of the Sun. But I had repurposed a weapon of Light before, when I’d channeled Death magic through the tower shield of a Resplendent Crusader. If I could channel Death magic through a kind of banal weapon like that, I was pretty sure I could channel it through a weapon like this.
As Jort still lurched ominously toward me, I closed my eyes and sent my soul diving deep below the surface of this forest, sensing all of the corpses, millions upon millions of them, buried here from this Age and the many Ages that had preceded it. There was a deathly cold dwelling deep within the earth and a hardness that was stronger than any substance—a hardness of bones so old, so compressed, that they had turned to stone.
This was what I drew up. I filled the mace in my hands with its power, as if the weapon was a waterskin I was filling at a stream. The steel of the mace became icy cold in my hands, and the metal started to stink of old grave rot, of decaying flesh and crumbling bones.
“You’ve fucked with the wrong god,” I snarled as Jort moved almost within striking range. “And this clumsy assfuck of yours is about to get his skull turned to pulp.”
Jort lunged at me, but I sidestepped and smashed the mace with full force into his face, unleashing the pent-up Death magic. The force of the blow, combined with the brutal explosion of Death magic, would have liquefied a fully armored mountain troll, but this skinny little rake of a man merely got a dent in his face as his head was knocked to the side, with little actual damage done.
“Shit, that’s not good,” I muttered, jumping back as he took a swipe at me with the red, wavy-bladed dagger. My sixth sense was telling me that if that dagger touched me, something pretty fucking bad would happen.
Again, I drew as much Death power as I could from deep underground and smashed the mace with all the might I could muster into Jort’s skull. Once more, I put a dent in his head with a blow that would have killed a dire bear on the spot, but aside from him stumbling back a step, the hit hardly perturbed him.
All right. It was time to ramp things up.
My first priority, since it was turning out to be a chore to kill this thing, was to get that red dagger out of its hand. I left my chest wide open as I sucked more Death magic into the mace, inviting Jort to lunge at me. He did, and I leaned back to dodge the blow before whipping the mace around in a vicious strike that connected with his wrist. The release of Death magic was powerful enough to almost blow me off my feet this time, rocketing outward in a shock w
ave of cold stink, but fortunately, it was also strong enough to smash the dagger out of this creep’s hand, and it went flying into the bushes.
“All right, motherfucker,” I said. “Now it’s time to really party!”
Since Jort was no longer armed with a dangerous weapon, I decided that the only way I was going to kill him was if I went all out. Drawing Death power into every blow I struck, I darted forward, smashing the mace into him, then jumped out when he swung around to try to counter attack.
I focused on his joints, crunching the Death-enhanced mace head into them with every blow. His body was immensely strong, and even though I slammed blow after blow into him, he kept coming for me. His movements were getting slower and jerkier though, and my relentless attacks were breaking down whatever magic was holding his body together.
I heard many feet running down the trail behind me, accompanied by familiar voices shouting. My friends were on their way, but this shit was personal now, and I was determined to finish Jort off on my own.
Again and again, I darted in and planted crushing blows on his joints, on his head, on his neck, everywhere, and slowly he started to break down. Even though he kept laughing in that maniacal hundreds-of-voices-all-together voice, I could tell that he was dying—if he was even alive to begin with.
Finally, he made a final desperate lunge for me, with both hands extended. I sidestepped the attack, then belted the mace into his face with a double-handed blow. This time, the force was enough to take his head off his shoulders. It flew through the air, bounced along the ground, and disappeared into the bushes, while his lifeless body flopped dead at my feet.
Even though I hadn’t been harmed, I was feeling pretty damn exhausted myself. I dropped to my knees, breathing hard and feeling spent.
“Lord Vance, are you injured?” Rollar gasped, running over to me.
“No,” I managed to wheeze, “but I feel like I just fought an army single-handedly. I must have hit this motherfucker over a hundred times, as hard as I could. He just wouldn’t go down.”
