[Demonworld #4] Shepherd of Wolves

by Kyle B. Stiff

  Immediately a warrior turned to the fallen dogman, yanked his pants down, and examined the thing. It looked no different from any other, but, seeing an easy way out of the situation, he shouted, “By the gods, his member is covered in some awful disease! We have been deceived!” The other dogmen threw sand over their left shoulder and made the sign of the circle on their chest and made a great show of praying.

  “The deceivers are dead,” said Bloodnose. “So, return to the pack. We will say nothing of this!”

  Fearful that the blood brothers would change their minds and shoot, the warriors sang a celebratory song as they made their way back toward the camp.

  Bloodnose scratched his brother’s head, and said, “Use this thing first,” then tapped the rifle lightly and said, “Use this thing when you need it.”

  * * *

  Khan Vito took to riding atop one of the tanker trucks full of diesel just to see if anyone would have the balls to pass a stick of dynamite into the exhaust and blow it up while he sat on his rocking chair throne. Even as the dogs grumbled about their diaspora and the seemingly insurmountable distance to the promised land, he knew that they acknowledged him as the Khan, a legendary figure reborn time and again whenever the tribes needed to come together in order to survive. They knew that he would not be Khan if he saw the broken land bridges and immediately gave up, as the rest of them wanted to.

  He wondered if they could see how bored he was, gently rocking on his throne. For years he had spoken to the dogmen, trying to convince them that they could not fight against the leash of Hargis one day, then beg from it the next. The tribes could not fight against one another for Hargis money, or lay down their weapons for cushy jobs as Hargis servants, or turn against a tribe that fought against Hargis just for a boost in reputation. In the past, the tribes and clans had come together under a Khan, a visionary warrior capable of seeing beyond the leash of family ties, even beyond the leash of fear, and that was why Vito had courted the title for himself. He knew the danger. There were many, many stories about various Khans bringing the tribes together only to be betrayed by rivals or former friends at the moment of victory. Khan Vito knew that the shamans supported his vision of a world free of the cage of civilization, a timeless world ruled by warrior-dogs, but he knew that the possibility of living in a violent paradise weighed little against the rush of overcoming and sacrificing a leader whose reputation was greater than one’s own.

  They’re hypocrites, he thought. Thick-headed idiots. I’m the greatest thing that’s ever happened to them. They know it, in their guts. But the mind of a dogman… outside of battle, they are the most worthless people in the world.

  The sense of their own racial inferiority was a thick, palpable presence. They thought and spoke of it constantly. He heard a cluster of young dogmen whispering below the tanker. Would they send a challenger to him later? Would they dynamite the truck and send him on to Valhalla in a blaze of glory, and tell the tale of how their mighty Khan successfully brought them out of their homeland and into the land of the gorge in the middle of nowhere?

  If I can just get them to Pontius, he thought, shaking his head. They are terrifying in combat, but such victims in all other matters. If I can just get them there and turn them loose…

  He heard pounding on the side of the truck, then, “Hey boss!”

  Vito leaned over in his seat and saw Ramos staring up at him. “What’s up?”

  “You know that human? That ex-soldier? One I was talking about?”

  Vito was bored already. He nodded slowly.

  “Well I choked that motherfucker!”

  “Yeah?” said Vito. The man had been a rabble rouser, a troublemaker.

  Vito unconsciously looked away from Ramos; for him, the ex-soldier, the entire situation, simply no longer existed. “Boss!”

  “Yeah!” said Vito, leaning over and glaring.

  “Well I wanted to tell you this funny shit. After I choked him out, this other dude, he came runnin’ up to me... he was a dogman, just a pup, but he slapped the shit outta me.” Ramos waited for dramatic effect, then said, “But you know I keep my knife close, so as I fell back, I kinda got it in my hand, like so... when I come up again, I whipped my trusty right across his belly! An’ he was like, “Yi yi yi!” an’ went runnin’ off… holdin’ his guts in!”

  Vito smiled genuinely. “You say he was holding his guts in?”

  “Yeah! Just like... yi yi yi!”

  The two laughed loudly. “Ramos! It really is the little things in life, isn’t it?”

  * * *

  Vito sat on a stool alone in his tent and picked a flea from his chest hair. He watched the little black thing wiggle between his fingernails. He knew that only a few years ago, the idea that he would have to deal with such vermin would have been inconceivable. Now, after learning the truth about the world from Globulus, the idea of wearing a leash behind city walls just to avoid things like fleas – a mere inconvenience – seemed inconceivable.

  He heard a cry in the distance, shrill and high, and crushed the flea between his fingers as he rose to investigate. Most of the camp had only just settled down, but the rising sun was already hot and close. Several guards followed him silently as he walked through the pack. He saw dogmen laughing and carrying on the distance, passing something between them.

  He came to a group crouching in a circle. They smiled and bowed their heads to him. A dogwoman laid on the ground, propped up beside her man. She held a soaking wet, crying newborn child bundled in filthy rags.

  Vito knelt beside the dogwoman. Her hairline came down nearly to her eyebrows, and she had a large chin and even had a few patches of thin, fine facial hair. Vito laid his hard, coarse hand on the child’s head, and almost immediately the little pup ceased crying. He could hear the dogs behind him gasp, as if the event was a sign of incredible portent. The child quivered with naked potential, its little jaw strangely popping open and shut, the wrinkled eyelids clasped tightly.

  “It is a boy,” said the father, face beaming.

  Vito looked at the mother, and said, “What will you name him?”

  “Vito,” she said. She smiled slightly, suddenly unsure of herself.

  “I’ll have to make sure the name is worthy of him, then,” said Vito. The father hid his face, suddenly overcome with emotion.

  Vito patted the child once more, then thought, Can they really not see it? Don’t they know what the delay at the gorge will do to us? When our supplies run out, what do they think we will eat?

  “I can see that he will make a great warrior,” said Vito, rising to leave. He saw the mother swell with pride before he turned away.

  The child will be eaten, Vito thought. We will all, eventually, be aborted.

  * * *

  “Why do you complain so?” said Ganson, the young noble-born dogman. “The Khan has brought us around the gorge. He will never stop in this quest!”

  “Many say,” said a dogman, “that the Khan, he is a man, he is crazy. Because he is a man, he is crazy. They say that this moving is bad, it takes us away from home.”

  “Home?” said Ganson, turning so that the crowd could hear him. “Where is home? In Hargis, in a cage? Hargis was bad. The Khan, he talked to the wise man Globulus, he talked to the chiefs, he killed many bad men and now Hargis is no more. Hargis was not good.”

  “I do not say that Hargis was good. It was bad. But our Khan... he is not a dogman!”

  “No, he is not. He is a wolf, my friend. Does he speak as a man speaks?”

  “Well...”

  “And through our Khan, we are made wolves, too. A dog is a little thing. It sits by its leash and complains if its master does not tie it up tight enough.” At this, many dogmen laughed. “But a wolf, he travels far, when it snows he does not feel cold, when the sun... when it is hot, he does not stop to rest. The wolf does not stop until it catches the prey. This is the new way that our Khan, who was once a man but is now a wolf, teaches us. And that way is good!”

&
nbsp; “It is good!” someone in the crowd shouted.

  “Anyone who is a wolf can say, without question, that it is not a bad thing,” Ganson concluded.

  The other dogman could see that he had been singled out, and that his friends who had complained with him only minutes before had been completely been won over by Ganson’s way with words. He finally relented. “Very well, Ganson. I was only speaking what I thought was good. I see now that our Khan is good. I will remain loyal to him until I die. I will die for our Khan!” The dogman raised his fist high, and Ganson took his wrist and shook it vigorously as the crowd cheered. In the distance, Ganson could see that the great Khan was watching him from atop one of the fuel tankers. Ganson pretended that he did not notice the Khan watching him, but in his heart he wondered if the Khan was proud of him for doing his part to hold them all together. He wondered if the Khan was considering making him a leader of one of the clans, or perhaps even an entire tribe…?

  What a bunch of fucking children, Khan Vito thought to himself.

  * * *

  Naarwulf stooped to enter the tent he shared with the Khan. Vito stood before him, short and powerful, regal and feral, the most powerful man in the world because he found it easier to destroy the world than serve it. Naarwulf strode up to him and, with a great bark, slapped him in the side of the head with such force that the Khan wheeled about, kicked his feet up, then slid against the side of the tent and flopped into the ground.

  Naarwulf shouted, “You will never make me kill another chieftain again! Never!”

  Vito staggered onto his side, then fell. His eyes darted back and forth, and Naarwulf wondered if the blow had blinded him. “Naarwulf,” he muttered, “when I say ‘jump’... then you… you say… how… high...”

  Naarwulf shoved his Khan onto his back and crouched over him. “I will go to Hell today because of you! Because of your vision! I killed a chieftain! Outside of a duel, that is - unthinkable!”

  “Nothing is unthinkable!” Vito hissed. Naarwulf placed two massive hands on either side of the Khan’s throat to silence his blasphemy. He thought of the terrible thing, earlier, when they made camp. They had rounded the gorge, sure enough, and were nearly back on course. Still, a troublesome chief would not silence his dreadful condemnations against their Khan. He had caused division among his warriors. And so, by the Khan’s order, and like a good leashman, Naarwulf had strode up to the chieftain and his great bodyguard, without weapons, and announced that for his selfish pride Naarwulf was going to kill him. The bodyguard had moved to unsheathe an axe - Naarwulf bashed the dog in the throat, took the axe himself, and swung the thing overhead such that it grinded through the fat chieftain’s head and lodged into his ribs and spine. When the other warriors reacted, Naarwulf was taken over by the bloodlust; he flung dogmen around, disarming and stabbing and tearing throats and punching out eyeballs until the other warriors loyal to the dead chief had laid down their arms and pledged sole allegiance to Khan Vito, the great and immortal leader who had led them around the gorge.

  Naarwulf pulled his hands away from the Khan’s neck in terror. He whined, long and loud, because now that he’d killed the Khan, it was his duty to become… no, impossible! Not Naarwulf! Never!

  “Naarwulf,” Khan Vito whispered, his throat raw. “Don’t you realize those fat chieftains made up the whole rite of the duel so they could throw dogs like you against one another and keep their own hides out of danger?”

  Naarwulf howled in even greater terror when he heard the voice of his lord, his immortal Khan. He scrambled into a corner, hands over his head.

  Vito tried to rise, felt the veins in his head swell as if they would burst, then laid down again. He breathed carefully and let the pain wash over him. After a long time, he turned and saw his loyal leashman, the fiercest dogman he’d ever known, whimpering in the corner.

  “Naarwulf, listen. Those spineless dogs made up the concept of Hell to keep wolves like you in line. And you are a wolf. Today, you’ve hunted and killed a god. You’re afraid now because the last bit of dog that’s still in you, the dog that they trained you to be, is going through its death pains.

  “All your life they’ve told you that civilization is evil, but at the same time, they told you that loyalty to the tribe is all-important. They told you they could get you to paradise, or Valhalla, or Heaven, or whatever you want to call it. It’s all a lie, Naarwulf. The tribes are no different from Hargis, no different from Pontius. There is no such thing as a good or bad civilization, pup. They’re all the same. All of them are sanctuaries for the weak. Why do you follow me, Naarwulf?”

  Naarwulf moaned loudly.

  “You follow me because I’m strong,” said Vito. “You’re strong, too. You could take me in a duel, Naarwulf. Easily. But you know that only I have the power to destroy civilization, don’t you? They stuck you so deep in their cage that you need a thick-headed little human like me to get you out of it.

  “We were both outsiders, Naarwulf. You were a wolf raised by dogs. I was a warrior raised by weaklings. But we’ll get through this. You might have to beat my ass every now and again. I don’t mind. We’ll get through this.”

  Vito finally rose, then coughed and spat. Naarwulf peeked around his arms and saw Vito tidying himself up. The women were nowhere to be found, so the Khan readied some tea himself. After a while he said, “Naarwulf. Have some tea with me.”

  “Nuh...” Naarwulf moaned, digging his face into his arms.

  Vito poured two cups, rose, and kicked Naarwulf in the ribs. His foot bounced back and he winced as if he’d kicked solid stone. “Are you disobeying a direct order?”

  Naarwulf sighed and rose and the hair on his face was matted with tears. He stood awkwardly and took the small cup of tea from Vito. The two went outside to watch the sunrise.

  After a while, Vito said, “Thanks.”

  Naarwulf lowered his head as he recalled killing a chieftain.

  “I’m not thanking you for that. I don’t have to thank you for following orders, leashman.” Vito stared at the side of Naarwulf’s head until the dogman looked up and faced his Khan with bleary eyes. Already a massive bruise was welling up on the side of the Khan’s head. “I’m thanking you,” Vito said, “for making today interesting.”

  * * *

  The crisis of skirting of the gorge was overcome, and the tribes remained unified under the Khan. In the following weeks, the horde tramped through the wasteland, gorging themselves on their dwindling livestock and water supplies. As they drew near the sheer cliffs north of the gorge, no duels were called for. They uprooted any trees they could find for campfires and sang songs of their great Khan, Vito the Wolf, Vito the Destroyer. Ganson danced with the young pups and Ramos suddenly recalled that he’d actually known Vito far longer than he’d let on in his previous stories, and he told of how he and Vito had fought back-to-back, in their childhood, against hundreds of Hargis soldiers.

  The great horde came to the cliffs and filled up every available valley and bled through, slow and unstoppable, their footsteps and droning engines echoing like a pestilence of locusts. Their scouts ran overhead, from the face of one cliff to another, and when they stopped to watch the torches and headlights down below, it looked like a river of light, a hundred channels of white magma burying the world.

  Then the mines started going off.

  One day a pack of dogs ran back through the throng, calling out to their Khan. Vito leaped from the top of the diesel truck and stood before them.

  “Great Khan!” said one, bowing low. “There are mines in the passes! I saw one go off with my own eyes, killing warriors without any warning!”

  “The mine you saw - how many were killed?” said Vito.

  “Dozens!” screamed the dogman. “No, hundr-”

  Vito leaped forward and socked the dogman in his jaw. The dogman stumbled back and shook his head.

  “How many?” hissed Vito.

  “Ah... one was killed, for sure,” said the dogman. “B-but
two more were dreadfully wounded!”

  “Khan,” said another dogman, “a jeep has been ruined by a mine hidden in another pass!”

  “Gods below,” said Vito. He climbed back on top of the diesel truck. “You do realize that Pontius is going to put up some kind of defense, don’t you? Is this really so terrifying to you?”

  The dogmen glanced at one another.

  “Carry on,” said Vito. “Carry on.”

  The reports continued to come in, several per day. Mines felling warriors, mines destroying jeeps, mines found and carefully disarmed by scouts. Vito guessed that the zeppelins of Hargis must have gone to Pontius and warned them. He knew that he could not trust his own scouts, who blew everything out of proportion. Based on tire tracks and signs of camps, they were dealing with anywhere from ten to one hundred saboteurs. It was no matter to Vito. If he had his way, he would make it so that his legion would simply plow over the mines, silent and unmindful if a few of them should die. They were an ocean; it was inevitable that a few drops would be skimmed off the top.

  Then came reports that a few armed rangers had been spotted, men on motorcycles or in trucks. There were reports of skirmishes. Sometimes Vito could hear gunfire in the night, but he could never be sure if his scouts were fighting someone, or if some pup had taken a wild fit and had to fire off a few rounds before he could calm down.

  One day, near dawn, Vito sat with Naarwulf outside their tent. Ganson strolled up with the blood brothers Frigidskin and Bloodnose on either side of him. “Great Khan,” said Ganson, “I have reports that the attackers have been spotted at-”

  “Stop right there!” Vito snapped. He threw his head at the tent and they all entered. While Ganson and the blood brothers knelt low, Vito said, “Ganson, I think I remember saying before that when you run up to me with these “official” reports, it throws everything into chaos for hours. I want those dogs out there asleep and rested for tomorrow, not up all night howling vengeance about some shit that doesn’t matter in the long run.”

  In the silence that followed, Vito considered their situation. They were nearly out of water, but no one ever spoke of the matter. If they did not remain on their course toward the foglands, or if they slowed down even a little, they would all die of thirst between the unforgiving cliffs. All of them, no exceptions. They did not have the time to run around all day long looking for some idiots from Pontius. The water situation would be resolved by reaching the lowlands, but Vito had few ideas about what they would do for food, and none of them were good. Soon, some hard decisions would have to be made.