The Cross Guard (Purgatory Wars Book 3)

by Dragon Cobolt

  “Mm.” He breathed in and out.

  The tent flap opened and light spilled in. Kayley – showing zero shame – rolled over, her breasts greeting the messenger who had come to the tent. Borin sat beside her, his cock softening. His body glinted with sweat, rivulets sliding along his scar tissue. He looked right into the messenger’s eyes, and saw the man flinch.

  “T-The...the boats are r-r-r-ready, G-General,” he stammered.

  Borin nodded. “Good.” He said. “Tell the men to load up.”

  The messenger nodded.

  Kayley chuckled throatily. “And when does the General board his boat?”

  Borin smirked. His hand grabbed her hair, and roughly, he pressed her head into his lap. Kayley – like a good pet – started to lap at his balls, then at his cock as he hardened. He leaned back against one palm, his other hand on the back of her head – keeping her in her place.

  “Last,” Borin hissed.

  As Kayley’s head bobbed – utterly shameless, utterly without hesitation – Borin closed his eyes.

  “When you do this next,” he murmured as he shoved her head down. The sound of Kayley gagging on his member was like music to his ears. His smile widened. “We’ll be in the City of the Dead Gods.”

  * * *

  The stone shifted above Liam and he blinked as he saw Fizit looking down at him. The gorgeous lizardwoman snorted – then was pushed out of the way by Megara, who grabbed the rest of the rubble and heaved it aside with a single, frantic push. Liam blinked and sat up, coughing. He felt like someone had beaten him about the head and shoulders with a large pipe. A dozen small cuts felt like they were bleeding across his body. Looking around, he saw that the palace was actually quite intact. Most of the walls were even undamaged. The roof hadn't fallen in.

  Why the hell was he the only one surrounded in rubble?

  “You idiot,” Meg snarled, grabbing him and holding him to her body. Something grated inside of Liam and he gasped.

  “Legs, legs!” he hissed.

  Then the glowing light of Tethis' magic flared through his body. Liam felt bones reconnect and – for a single dizzying moment – nerves realign. It was not a sensation he wanted to feel again any time soon. But a year of putting him back together after their adventures had made Tethis very good at her job. Soon he could feel his feet again and was standing under his own power as Meg shook him backwards and forward.

  “Never. Stand. Next. To. A. God. You. Are. Killing. You. Fucking. Marvelous. Heroic. Son. Of. A. Bitch!”

  She made each word its own sentence and its own shake.

  Liam's head tilted backwards at bit and he mimed hanging limp. “I am slain by the shaking.”

  “Asshole,” Meg snarled, then kissed him desperately. Her hands grabbed his ass and she ground against him with such intensity that Liam thought he'd collapse into a puddle right then and there. She broke the kiss, whispering. “And you didn't bring me to the fucking orgy, either? That's it. Relationship over.”

  “But, in my defense, I didn't nail Mary,” Liam mumbled, dazedly.

  “Oh, in that case, we're double broken up.” Meg kissed his neck.

  “Is this normal?” Fizit asked sotto voce to Tethis, who giggled.

  “You should have seen them after the minotaur,” she whispered back.

  Meg shot them a glare. “And why are we not wasting these motherfuckers?”

  Liam had managed, finally, to look down from the roof and away from Meg's beautiful body and was taking stock of the slaves. There were quite a few who had been lightly injured and were being tended too. The lizardmen all looked fine, save for one who had a chunk of rock sticking out of his shoulder. He looked more bemused than anything else as one of his friends took hold of the rock and yanked it free, then bandaged it up.

  It was still dark outside.

  “How long was I out?” Liam asked.

  “A few minutes, I think,” Tethis said.

  “Oh, good.” Liam rubbed his head. He knew that being knocked out at all was a fairly dangerous situation to be in, but being knocked out for longer than a few minutes was where you started edging closer to serious brain damage. “Is everyone okay?”

  “Define okay,” Fizit muttered.

  Meg leaned close and whispered in Liam's ear: “One of the big bastard's chunks of wall fell on you.”

  “Huh,” Liam said.

  The slaves were all looking like people who had just been yanked out of a train, then watched the train crash into another train: shocked, more confused than happy, and unsure of what to do next. Liam coughed loudly. “All right!” he said, holding out his hands. “Everyone, uh, over here. I want everyone to line up, we're going to find the touchstone and free you. All of you.”

  The lizardmen – without a leader – looked towards Fizit. Fizit lifted her hand in a gesture Liam couldn't read. The lizardmen took that as a leave to sit down, save for one woman who hurried off. She returned bearing a touchkey, which Liam took and used to start unlocking slave collars. When he came to Mary, he smiled at her.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  Mary looked desolate. “I betrayed my oath,” she said, quietly, as Liam removed her collar.

  “Yeah, you did,” he said, quietly. “If your oath was to remain chaste and a virgin.”

  Mary looked at her feet. Her hair hung before her red face and Liam saw her shoulders shaking. He put his hands on her shoulders – and for once, touching her didn't make his whole body tingle. Maybe being exposed to her pheromones had left him less susceptible to a new hit. Or maybe, just maybe, she was wrong.

  Maybe lilin weren't always horny.

  “I betrayed my oath a long time ago,” he said. “Without even thinking of it. I took a life. Hell, I've taken a lot of lives. The fact that they wanted to kill me first doesn't, uh, change the fact that I'm a killer.” He sighed, then gently drew Mary into a hug. “I...” He groped for words, blushing. This was easier on Facebook, when you had time to think out what you wanted to say. But he closed his eyes and pushed on. “I don't want to belittle your feelings, but... killing someone is a bit worse, in my book, than having consensual sex.”

  Mary snorted, somewhere between a sob and a laugh.

  “And God doesn't make us perfect,” Liam whispered. “If you try and live up to his mother and his son – if you try to do good and protect the weak and fight injustice? I think he'll forgive an orgy. Or two.”

  Mary looked up at him, her eyes still glinting with tears. She smiled.

  “You know, they s-say Satan can quote scripture too,” she said, wiping at her eyes with tears.

  Liam scoffed. “If I was Satan, I'd be trying to lay you again.”

  “You are hugging me while we're both completely naked,” Mary murmured.

  Liam felt his cock harden slightly.

  He was away from Mary and beside Meg so fast that he could have been Sysminor. This brought an actual smile to Mary's face but she still looked deep in thought as Liam and the freed slaves got dressed. The former slaves left to go find their families, several of them bearing copies of the touchkey to free other slaves that were in the rest of the city. Fizit and her lizardmen had formed into a tight formation, weapons on hand, when Liam ambled over to them, brushing his palms along his kilt.

  “So, what do we do now?” he asked as Meg stood behind him.

  Fizit had gotten into her armor and placed a feather headdress on her head that made her look a good foot taller, once again reminding Liam of how little he knew about the lizardfolk's culture and organizational structure. She looked down her snout at him, her eyes unreadable.

  “We have the better weapons,” she said.

  “You also are down one god,” Liam shot back.

  “True,” Fizit said, her tail lashing from side to side. “And an army of the god Ra is approaching.” She paused, looking away. “We may not have massacred you for Sysminor, but we owe our souls to General Brax. And he is loyal to Sysminor.”

  “Loyal to a dead god?
” Liam asked.

  Fizit blinked. “You...” She shook her head. “You don't think Sysminor is going to stay dead? Not even the weak gods of humanity stay dead.” She shook her head again. “No, we'll be lucky if Sysminor takes more than a few days to reconstitute himself at the temple.”

  Liam felt cold.

  “Fortunately,” Fizit said, reaching up to adjust her headdress. “Gods tend to forget what happened just before their death. If we hurry home, we can find and explain it to him.” She sighed. “Know this, Liam Vanderbilt of Earth. Mercy here is not the same as mercy on the field. When we meet in battle, I won't stay my hand. Neither will the General.”

  Liam composed his voice before responding. He bowed to her. “I understand. On the field of battle, you can fight with honor, against people with weapons – not unarmed slaves.”

  Fizit nodded curtly. Then, slowly, she grinned. “And if I capture you, I know exactly where to put you.” Her eyes glittered and she turned to walk away, tail lashing away.

  “Your bed?” Liam called after her, hopefully.

  “Six feet under,” Fizit said over her shoulder. “You are far too dangerous to leave alive, Vanderbilt..”

  Then she and her lizardmen were gone – marching down main street towards the front gate of the City of the Dead Gods. The citizenry, unaware that they had been freed, didn't even cheer.

  * * *

  Liam and Meg sat together at the docks of the City and watched the horizon. “God, I never thought that I'd be waiting desperately for Liv and Vulkis to show up,” Liam said, shaking his head.

  They had been in the city for two days and most of it had been spent helping the Council of Freedmen put out minor fires. A few elements of the city had tried to take power – several going far enough to start attacking the reconstituted Councilmembers - so Liam, Tethis and Meg had all been busy.

  Tethis had been stamping out an unchecked plague that Sysminor had looked more than willing to let fester in the poor districts. Meg had been running messages back and forth across the city, as well as organizing the surviving valkyrie of the city into scout patrols. The rumors that an army was approaching hadn't abated, though any actual sign of it had yet to appear, beyond a few farmers from the fertile coast coming to the city to give scattered reports of cavalry roaming the countryside, looting.

  And Liam?

  Liam had been doing what famous people on Earth did best: standing beside a cause he supported and letting his fame shine onto it.

  “Godkiller?”

  Liam turned to look at the twelve year old girl who had come puffing up to the docks. She was dressed in the pale red linen jerkin and sturdy shoes of a Council messenger.

  “Yes?” Liam asked, tiredly. He had stopped trying to get people to stop calling him that.

  Meg faux-grumbled. “Godkiller, I was the one who threw the bomb...”

  Liam elbowed her playfully but then stopped smiling when the messenger bowed her head to him.

  “Godkiller, the Council wants to speak to you right now.”

  Meg smiled. “Go on ahead,” she said. “I'll wait here, see if Vulkis arrives.”

  Liam nodded and stood up. He brushed his hands along his thighs, then leaned forward to kiss Meg on the lips. When he drew back, she whispered: “And I'll be sure to see if I can find more people who can look for Liv.”

  Liam nodded.

  Following the girl through the city, he could see fear and happiness in equal measures on everyone's face. Former slaves were reunited with their families. The old city guard were patrolling the streets and people seemed to greet them like old friends. Just not seeing a scaled face or bared teeth seemed to be putting cheer into the population. But there were more than a few whispers he heard that started with the word Ra.

  Ra the sun god.

  Ra, the original ruler of the City of the Dead Gods, before he had been forced out and the city had become one of the most hotly contested pieces of real estate in Purgatory.

  Ra, who hadn't been in the city for more than five centuries.

  But the other thing he heard whispered made him feel awkward, not scared. People who saw him – and that was hard to avoid, considering how tall he was compared to everyone else – turned and whispered to their friends.

  Godkiller.

  There goes the Godkiller.

  Liam and the messenger came to the palace of the Free Lord, which remained empty save for a legion of construction workers who were carefully setting everything to rights again. The dais before the front of the building had had the slave market cleared away, and was now hosting a spirited debate between two people. One of them was bearing the religious symbol of Thor and the other was Mary.

  “That which you do to the least of my brothers and sisters, you do unto me, she said. We can all learn from that – did not the suffering of each slave here bring pain to every heart in the city?”

  Liam almost wanted to stay and keep listening. But he instead let himself be led into the palace itself and to the council chambers, mounted on the second story. Despite the windows being open and quite a few complete scrubbings, the smell of sex remained thick in the chambers that Sysminor had once used as his own personal bed chambers.

  Liam tried to not think about the mechanics of fucking that thing.

  The Council were already seated when Liam came in. There were five men and seven women, all of them leaders of important industries in the city. Bronzesmiths, alchemists, glaziers, merchants. All of them had the same proportion of wealth as a CEO from Earth – the only reason why they weren't billionaires was that Purgatory's economy wasn't robust enough to have billionaires. Liam bowed to them.

  “Council,” he said.

  “Liam Godkiller,” the head of the council – a burly woman named Vani, who was both the head of the Guild of Alchemists and married to the best bronzesmith in the city, who sat at her side – smiled as she spoke. Her wife also smiled. In fact, every member of the council was smiling.

  Liam started to get really nervous.

  “The Council has been debating who is to be the Free Lord of the city,” Vani said. “And it was decided – with the threat of Ra's army on our doorstep and the danger presented by Sysminor and his lizardman hoards-”

  Liam started thinking: Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck.

  “-that the only person who could possibly lead this city through the dangers and tribulations ahead of it is a man from a world where great democracies are the status quo, not the exception. A man whose knowledge of artisanal crafts have already given us so much. A man who has faced monsters and gods and lived. A man who-”

  “No!” Liam exclaimed.

  The Council stopped smiling.

  “I- I'm sorry, but no!” Liam shook his head. “I'm barely twenty. I've never even managed a four person project, let alone one of the biggest cities in Purgatory. I'm also technically a citizen of Faiyum Falls and another God, and I'm a Christian – and this city's mostly-”

  Vani slammed her palm down on the desk.

  She may have been an alchemist, but she still had the body and build of a blacksmith. Or a tavern brawler. And the slap of her palm against the table was loud enough to quiet not just Liam but everyone in the room.

  “Listen,” she said, quietly. “Right now, this city is near to five revolutions. Normality has to be brought back. But everyone who was liked by the whole city? They're out there, out on the Forest of Woe, feeding carrion. The Aesir mistrust the Hellenes, the Hellenes can't stop bitching about the Coptics, the Coptics think the Aesir are nothing but a bunch of fucking upstarts. That's not even getting into the Tuatha, the Golga, and those Mary worshipers and who knows how many Cults of Sysminor we missed.”

  Liam nodded.

  “Now, I wanted to do this politely, but since you need to pull a Cincinnatus and try and beg off the responsibility you have to the citizens by claiming that you're not fit to be a leader, I'm going to be blunt. Either you lead us through the next few months, or I get unpleasant.�
�

  Liam breathed in, then out. “Well, holy fuck, I've never been so completely upbraided for trying to do the right thing in my life.” He chuckled, nervously. “I get where you're coming from, but I don't have any experience.”

  “That?” Vani said, sitting down, her face receding from the red it had been. “Is the best fucking thing you could have said, Liam Godkiller. Someone who knows they know nothing can learn. Someone who thinks they know everything can't.”

  Liam nodded.

  The rest of the Council relaxed.

  Liam smiled. “Well, let's get to work, then. I've been paying some people from my purse to scout the surrounding countryside – Meg has every valk in the city doing it. But do you guys know where the army of Ra is?”

  “That's another reason why we voted you in,” Vani said.

  “It's three days away,” the head of the glaziers guild said, tugging on his mustache. “Our scouts say it's led by Borin the Black. But worse?” He frowned. “They say it has an Eye of Ra in the baggage train.”

  Liam remembered the perfectly straight canyon that held the teleportation shrine that he and his friends had used to get here. It had been cut by an Eye of Ra. He gulped. “Shit.”

  “Not a big one, fortunately,” the head of the glaziers said. “But still, even a small Eye can blow our gates to shreds.”

  Liam nodded. “Well, fortunately, we just need to explain to this Borin that this city is no longer under the control of a mad god. He can go home and report to Ra that their assistance is not required.” He stopped. “I can see by all of your facial expressions that I am missing something blindingly obvious.” He rubbed his hands along his eyes. “Please, explain.”

  “I can do that.”

  The new voice made Liam pull his hands away from his eyes. It was a grizzled looking goblin. Muscles bulged underneath his clothes, and he walked with the casual grace of someone who had been training for battle for most of his life. His face was scarred and puckered with the marks of dozens of battles, and he wore armor with complete disregard for the weight or heat. He sat himself down at the table.