War Pigs

by Jay Requard

  Lut wrapped his legs around Dras’ waist and grabbed his wrists. Dras tugged to free his right hand, thrashing Lut's face.

  The cut on Lut's cheek reopened. The world shuddered with each strike.

  "Hold the wrist," called a voice.

  Lut, on the border of unconsciousness, mumbled through swollen lips. Every time Dras’ fist connected, it felt like sleep, sweet and endless and dark, until with a sudden jolt the next strike woke him like Shur’s arrows, a lightning bolt of sheer agony.

  "He's tiring," shouted Grus through the light and the dark. His father had shoved his way to the edge of the pit, on his hands and knees so he was eye-level with Lut. "Keep your guard high. He's tiring. Keep your guard high!"

  Delirious, Lut worked his hips up Dras' torso, tucking his knees beneath the warrior's slick armpits.

  Grus screamed from the edge. "Set your bar!"

  Lut slipped his right leg over Dras’ left shoulder, twisting his knee to the right until his foot rested on Dras' neck. Without thought, he brought up his left leg, cinching the hook formed by the front of his ankle. He snared Dras' head, neck, and right arm in a triangle created by his legs.

  "Bend the bar," Grus screamed, the only sound in the world.

  He pulled on the top of Dras' head to complete the choke.

  Panicked, Dras straightened his upper body and lifted Lut out of the puddle. He slammed him into the water, knocking Lut's skull on the bottom.

  Rust colored Lut's vision. The sear of his face wound no longer remained a mild sting, but a raging inferno the water failed to douse. He tightened his entire being around that triangle choke, refusing to surrender.

  Dras collapsed to the side, unconscious.

  A hand reached into the murky water, grabbing Lut by his neck. Air rushed through his snout and maw, bubbling gore from both orifices. His first full breath ended with hacking cough, a sensation he had endured the day before but refused to let silence him this time. "The Azure Queen," Lut croaked, clearing water from his lungs. "I want to serve the Azure Queen!"

  A hush met his cry. The easy choices for most champions from the Without-Tents were always the most simple and expected: a life of a raider for the Tents and Inners, which allowed a comfortable existence as long as one stayed alive, and perhaps inclusion if one fought well enough to gain such merit. To go into the service of a deity spoke of a personal avarice outside of what was expected of his kind, a disregard for one’s station, and ultimately, an insult to those who had conformed.

  The Tent referee holding Lut by his neck pulled him to his feet, drawing him close to whisper. "Say you were drowned. Say you were bludgeoned. Say anything else."

  Spitting the last of the silt from his mouth, Lut stood tall, staring hard at the Tent. "Why? So I can lap at your feet like the rest of these dogs do?"

  The crowd gasped.

  Lut laughed at their reaction. "A champion can demand for anything. I demand to be free from all of you! I demand to serve the Azure Queen!"

  Silence met him. Lut had done more than spurn them—he had revealed what he had always known in his heart: it did not matter if one lived under a hide or under stars, no person was without dignity save what they allowed to be taken from them.

  And he was about to take his dignity back. Lut looked to his father, who remained on his knees at the pit’s muddy edge. Eyes to the soil, Grus did not meet his son's gaze.

  The Tent referee, heated by the condemnation, gripped the hilt of his dagger. "The Wretched reside beyond the forest's edge on the valley’s eastern slope. Find them and your damnable fate, mongrel."

  4

  Stairway to Heaven

  Cast from his people, Lut limped to the edge of the woods, his hands balled at his sides in expectation of a reprisal. He reached the tree-line on the valley's eastern slope.

  There in the shadow of the oak and ash groves stood five figures, each cloaked in a mantle made of different designs natural to the rainy wilds. Known as The Wretched, these old souls had given themselves to the deities of the land. The survivors of their masters’ capriciousness and power, as well as figures of rumor and fear, they stared at the newcomer with jaundiced eyes. From their brood stepped the largest of them, a tall one draped in the untanned hides of beavers, the rotten tails painted yellow in the fashion of The Burnt Maiden. She held her hands out to Lut. “Welcome, champion. Are you here for your boon?”

  "I am," said Lut. "I have chosen to give myself to the Azure Queen."

  "To give one's self to the gods affords an opportunity for the highest honor outside of what most Wagani will ever achieve...if you survive." The shaman revealed a toothy smile, crooked and yellow, when she parted her pipe-burnt lips. "What would you offer a goddess in return for her blessings?"

  Lut stared glumly at the mystic. The loss of his society, his father—he knew what he wanted for what he had given. "I have heard of her beauty since my youngest days, as I have her power," he said, summoning some conviction. "The gods care not for station, wealth, or mere words. They care for devotion. I offer her more than an arm to swing a blade, or a body to sate her needs. I offer her love."

  The shaman for The Burnt Maiden raised her chin at the pronouncement. From the folds of her beaver skins, she produced a small pouch made of stitched leather. Opening the end, she poured a thick powder into the empty palm of her hand, an iridescent dust hued to shades of pink, blue, and yellow.

  She came close to Lut. "You think you're the first to try to transcend their station? Do you know how many fail?"

  "I'm not them." Lut squared with the weird female. "I am ready for my fate."

  Without warning, she grabbed Lut by the back of his head and forced his face into the powder held in her palm, grinding it into his snout. Suffocated by the intrusion, Lut fought for breath as stars and suns blazed through his mind. Moons, alien and uncounted, eclipsed the inside of his eyes to darkness.

  Lut woke somewhere in a wood between the last shadows of night and dawn's creeping fingers. Arrows of light lanced the green canopy of needles and broad leaves. A vein of crystal flowed into a wide pond, sending ripples across the surface. At the pond's center rose a beautiful female, her skin smooth and pale. Wet ringlets fell to her delicate shoulders, the color of hot gold.

  A pair of masked males stood on the mossy bank beyond her, armored in old breastplates and black hoods. They stared at Lut through the holes of their cowls, their bloodshot gaze focused on him, an intruder. Blue paint tipped their tusks that peeked from beneath the canvas.

  Naked from head to toe, the female's tight curves beckoned him to forget the dangerous look of her guards, enticing his eyes to the flare of her hips, the firm muscled legs, and breasts swollen in delight. Toned to perfection, she moved as if the air itself bent to her will, parting for the smoothest of actions. She caught sight of Lut, her eyes glittering above a small, straight nose. Power exuded from her, an exalted vibration beyond perception.

  "You awaken." She turned her dripping nakedness toward him. Beauty—terrible, undeniable beauty—closed on him, promising to take everything. "I've been hearing about you, my little prince."

  Lut sat up, aware of his own nakedness. Not ugly by the standards set by his race, he touched his wounded face, surprised to find the cut on his cheek stitched shut with a fine weave.

  "So I lived," he said, somewhat amazed.

  "That you did," said the Azure Queen. She flashed a bright grin, her white teeth aligned in two perfect rows. "Apparently you were so focused on meeting me that not even the dust of The Wretched could claim your mind. I was touched."

  Seated before a goddess, Lut stared. He had dreamed of her, this force of nature, this queen of magic and myth. Words seemed lacking.

  "Lut?" she called, amused by his quiet. "Aren't you going to say anything?"

  "What more needs to be said?" he asked. "I've wanted to be here since the day I heard of you. I have wanted to serve you and you alone. And now I can."

  Her amusement ebbed to curiosity.
"Why?"

  "You bless the best warriors, the greatest raiders," Lut said. The confidence of this fact eased the tremor in his voice. "I want to earn my ax, my sword, whatever you give me. I wish to build my legend in your name."

  "What sentiment." The Azure Queen slinked from the pond like a snake. "Most males come looking for something else."

  "I know what they look for," he replied, entranced by her poise. Lust stirred his groin. "But I know what you want."

  She crawled to him, threading herself in his arms. Laid in his lap, she looked up seductively, her lips dewy. "And what is that?" she asked, placing one of his hands on a firm breast. Her nipple puckered beneath his rough palm.

  At the edge of hunger, Lut shuddered, caught in a game of cat-and-mouse. He knew what waited for the spider that lay with a black widow. Instead, he removed his hand from her breast, holding it between them with his five fingers splayed.

  No distractions, no mind.

  "Honor," he answered.

  She paused, both at his hand and his refusal of something he knew many had taken without thought or appreciation. A moment’s contemplation, she brought her blue hand to his, her fingers laced in the cracks. "You'll be interesting, at least."

  Lut grinned at the compliment, curious to see how long he would endure the bliss he held in his arms.

  Hours after their love making, whispers, and petting in the dark, Lut received his black hood. Weary of body but elated of mind and soul, he wandered from The Azure Queen’s grove to the greater haunts of her stronghold, a collection of small caverns and vaulted forests. Beneath one of the many stone mouths, he found a shallow passage taken up by a skilled smithy.

  “You’re new one, right?” asked the blacksmith behind the anvil, an old warrior scarred and darkened from years of bloodshed and toil. He balanced a stout hammer against his block of pitted iron. “You get one weapon at no cost. Break it and you will be without name or worth, and only by deed or blessing will I give you another. Understand?”

  Lut nodded warily before the smith ordered him to a small bench by the cave’s opening. He sat there, watching as the smith stood before a trough full of charcoal-colored rocks. He picked out a few and tossed them into his furnace, a squat oven made of clay and old pine needles. Knelt before the open mouth, the smith sang:

  So boils the old bones,

  Sizzle, splat, bubble and spit,

  Water flows but the earth abides,

  Hold flat, my hardy lad,

  Over the hills and in the bogs,

  Sizzle, splat, bubble and spit,

  Water flows but the earth abides,

  Red blood rests in fens and skin,

  Feeding the bones,

  Sizzle, splat, bubble and spit,

  Water flows but the earth abides…

  When the dirt, debris, and impurities had peeled and boiled from the ore, the smith scooped them from his furnace. Lumps of molten metal cast a grim light in his cave, and the shadows created made his broken tusks seem like the ancient stumps of two dead trees, stark and sinister after some blight. A small smile formed on his thin lips.

  “How did you fight, boy?” he asked Lut. “Did you accord yourself well in the games?”

  “With the power of my body and the precision of my eye,” he answered, curious of the question. “Why do you ask, iron-chief?”

  “The weapon is made for the warrior, but a warrior is not made for the weapon.” His hammer raised, the blacksmith juggled it in his hand before bringing it down hard. Sparks flew with each sharp stroke. He flattened the iron pieces and stacked them atop of each other. “I’ll have to make something especially nasty for you.”

  Lut sat on his stool and watched an ax take shape, enthralled as the master before him sang, banged, and let free spirits of death and creation.

  Part II

  The Dividing Line

  1

  All that Glitters

  Lut smiled when he severed the human's head from his body.

  Standing over the screaming, terrified farmer, he silenced the vermin with a stout blow to the side of the neck, the blade of his iron ax digging into flesh. Red splashed the boards as Lut quickly withdrew and chopped again, this time finding bone. The farmer's screams popped to a gurgled silence and the body went limp. One more stroke and the head rolled free, spotting the floor of the small cabin.

  Grinning like a mad beast, Lut viewed the corpses he left behind as he exited the house, sure he had stolen everything of shining value from the mother and daughter the farmer had fought to protect. His loot bag clanked as he ran into a pitched battle at the hamlet's center, a one-sided jumble of his black-hooded kin and a worthless enemy.

  Roofs, constructed of grass and reeds, flickered dull in the smoky night as heat ate the wooden frames. Iron drank while children fell silent, too useless and too fragile for the backbreaking slave labor that waited the survivors. It was a small blessing for the men and women left alive. They would march many miles through the gathering dark, barefoot and naked.

  Rejoining in the fray, Lut cried his name. "Lut-tik-tik-tik!" He slashed at faces and chests with Ravager, his long-handled ax, culling human scum until he met a fellow raider in the massacre.

  Tet, the exposed tusks in his mouth visible below the ripped edge of his black hood, grinned with lurid pleasure as he bit into a heart he ripped from a young girl's chest. Bits dripped from his mouth as he gorged, not even chewing as he devoured the pulsing organ. "Ho, Lut! How goes Ravager's legend?"

  Lut hacked the hands off one of his victims, tossing them away before he put the wretch out of his misery. "It grows like your stomach.” He hated the young warrior, one of the few within his raiding party who hinted a threat to his position as the Azure Queen's mate, enticing him to continue the bloodletting.

  Ten years younger than Lut, Tet laughed heartily. "I'll need good food if I'm ever going to kill you one day."

  Lut strode down a lane between two wood-and-thatch homes in search of more sacrifices to be made. “If.”

  The march back to the Azure Queen's hills took the better part of the night. Of the twenty humans kidnapped, only two died along the way—one slain for her slowness and the other left behind after the raiders had brutalized him to the point they cut his throat out of mercy. Lut led the party through the recesses of his lady's expansive wood, where the weir-lights hung from branches and vines, casting groves purple, red, and blue. The human cattle were secured away in their pens, one for pleasure and the other for sacrificing. An alpine wind, everlasting and never silent, roared in the ash trees.

  Lut's raiders met her guards in the tunnel to her sanctum, who like Lut wore black sacks over their heads with holes cut for the eyes. They took the small wagon holding Lut's personal spoils, helping to unload the heavy burden. Iron, spice, jewels—these things were taken to the den he shared with their goddess, much of which he would give out in reward to his raiders at times when morale lessened. Unlike the other gods worshiped by his people, the Azure Queen understood the value of safe minds, safe thoughts.

  Lut passed through the shadows of the tunnel without danger, used to the unlit passage after years of walking its way. A pale light shone at the end, the first rays of heaven. Color and depth returned in a glory of thick clover beneath his bare, beaten feet. He emerged on a meadow surrounded by a mix of brambles and ancient trees. Wildflowers danced with dandelions bathed in Shur's daylight.

  On the emerald green, but not far from her wide pond, the Azure Queen bent to pick at some mushrooms in the overgrown grass. Nude from head to toe, her smooth body shimmered, every blue inch a glittering rainbow. Blonde hair hung loose from her perfect head.

  Seeing his love, his purpose, Lut knelt in wait of her attention. He laid Ravager before him, the handle pointed to her in case she wished to strike him dead, an end he would accept without question. Long minutes passed as the goddess traipsed about her glen, smelling flowers, singing songs, and laughing. At what, Lut did not know, but the sounds she made lived
in his heart.

  "You're so very dutiful, my little prince," she called, her voice a dreaming melody. The Azure Queen looked to Lut. "Not the beast they tell me you are."

  "They call me that?" He did not meet her gaze.

  "I listen to your raiders, you know. When they sleep," she said. "Do you doubt my ability?"

  Lut scoffed. "I’d doubt Shur's rise first."

  "Dutiful, dutiful Lut." The Azure Queen closed on him, her hips moving side to side, like an undulating adder. "Whatever am I to do with you?"

  He caught the scent of her sex—her hot, wet, wonderful sex. Lust twisted in his groin. He almost started when she laid a hand on his armored shoulder. "I am yours to do what you will, my lady," he said, steady. "Whatever you ask, it is done."

  "As long as I'm happy..." The Azure Queen reached under Lut's hard chin, her fingers brushing his wide jaw with a tender caress. She lifted him to his feet, making sure he looked in her eyes. What he saw in those golden pools made his heart flutter.

  "Go on," he said, wanting. "As long as you’re happy...?"

  Her grin widened at the question. "Then you'll always have your place."

  Lips met, tongues hungered. Lut marveled at how his tusks never cut her cheeks, and yet somehow there they were, perfect and smooth. Crushing her to his bare chest, he picked her up by her round bottom, allowing time for her to wrap her strong legs around his waist.

  "Take me home, raidlord," she whispered in his dagger ear. "Take me under."

  Lut marched on her pond, the body wrapped to his lighter than deerskin. They fought each other the whole way. She nipped at his face, giggling every time she caught his lips in her teeth or probed an ear with her red tongue. They submerged beneath the chilled surface of the pond when she let him in.