Sons of the Gods

by James Von Ohlen

  Sons of the Gods

  James Von Ohlen

  © Among the Pines Publishing, 2014

  All rights reserved

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, businesses, characters and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, actual events or locales is purely coincidental.

  THE bodies were no more than a few hours old. Rigor mortis hadn’t even set in yet. What was left of them was cut down from the trees where they had been hung or crucified. It appeared they had been tortured before their deaths as well. Ugly red gashes covered what little of their bodies wasn’t burned. Their lower legs were nowhere to be found either. Just cauterized stumps where the knees used to be, as if the flesh had been burned away.

  Nothing else remained save for ashes and heat warped stones that could have been floors or walls or foundations before. The site had probably been a farmhouse at one point in time. Like all of the others they’d found in the past few weeks, it had been razed and whoever lived there was killed, taken, or fled. There were never survivors. Nearby crops remained untouched. If raiders had done this, they weren’t interested in food.

  Torsten ran his hand back and forth over a patch of ashes, holding it a few inches above them. They were still warm. Whoever had done this might still be close. It was only a matter of time until the group of scouts under his control found the perpetrator’s trail. Strangely, it had disappeared as it approached the ruined house. But men didn’t simply vanish. It would be found again, and then the hunt would be on once more.

  At its finish, who knew? Vengeance for the dead perhaps, or maybe just an unsatisfying end. A hanging if the men surrendered or a fight if they did not.

  In the past three weeks, Torsten and his men had been hunting bandits and raiders on The Western Fringe. The vast, sparsely populated plains that stretched for several hundred miles between the Heart of the Nation along the coast, and The World’s Spine Mountains in the West. The raiders had been unusually active and had even dared to attack one of the forts of the King’s Peace.

  Such a thing wasn’t unheard of. That was part of why the forts were there in the first place. To serve notice to The Kingdom’s southern neighbors and stake The Kingdom’s claim to the land, as well as to protect the farming and mining interests of The Kingdom. Soldiers were stationed there and the citizenry of The Kingdom could take refuge under their protection in times of need.

  Despite The Western Fringe being sparsely populated, it still proved a vital area to the nation’s security. Food and precious ores were produced there that fed the population centers in the East and the burgeoning industry there as well. Whether the ores mined here were destined to become jewelry or weapons, it didn’t matter. They were valuable and so men came looking for them. Not enough to bring civilization with them though. Few things in The Western Fringe could be called civilized.

  Other men came as well. Not laborers. More adventurous or perhaps more desperate than others. Scavengers. The found what they could to sell. They were part of an industry that thrived on exploration of the Graveyards of the Ancients. More than one secret vital to the wellbeing of the nation had been pulled from the ruins of the cities built and destroyed in a cataclysmic war so long ago.

  Torsten had seen a few of those cities. Sprawling ruins that nothing lived in. It was said that the ancients had dared to challenge the Gods themselves and paid for their hubris with their lives. Child’s tales held little weight in his mind. More concrete things like iron ore and grain were far more valuable to him. And securing them for his nation and his people.

  The steel blade hanging on Torsten’s hip was likely forged with metals found within a few days’ ride of his current position. Huge mining camps dotted the eastern edge of The Fringe and a few could be found farther into its interior. Mines existed back in the east, but they were small insignificant things compared to what he had seen in the west.

  In the east they required far too much effort and money to produce only a fraction of what could be found in The Fringe. He would never have guessed that The Kingdom had such an appetite for iron, but soldiers always needed armor and weapons, farmers always needed plows, and carpenters always needed screws and nails. Thus the need for men of The Kingdom to make a living out in the wilderness of the west.

  Torsten looked up to the World’s Spine Mountains looming in the west, violating the heavens with their rough shapes and stretching across the entire horizon from side to the other. Great streaks of red splashed across the faces of the mountains where rare minerals and rock formations showed through the granite facades of the range. Perhaps the telltale signs of the murder of some ancient giant or god. Or the foundations of some great fortune in the future. The mountains stood within a few days’ ride of his position.

  The mountains and their foothills served as a natural border of The Kingdom, but men lived there who were not subjects of His Royal Majesty. Most had probably never even heard of him. They sought their own way in life, outside of the laws and regulations of The Kingdom. Taking what they saw fit to take and in what matter they chose to do so.

  Mountain Men, they were called in The Kingdom. What they called themselves never came into consideration in the civilized world. They existed as savage tribes in constantly shifting alliances fed by endemic tribal warfare and generations old blood feuds. In the past a loose confederation of the tribes had held vast swaths of the Western Fringe, ranging there in great mobile cities with their herds of barely tamed horses and abundant game. But over the passing generations and centuries they were pushed back by the inexorable westward expansion of The Kingdom.

  There had been great battles, and the Mountain Men had bled The Kingdom, staining the west red. The Long War, historians now called it. They took their toll on the battlefields, claiming more than their fair share of lives. But given the odds against them in numbers and technology, there could have only ever been one outcome.

  Over the course of generations, unmercifully, they were driven back across the plains and into the mountains where they now lived. If The Kingdom ever decided that the mountains were worth fighting for, then the Mountain Men would be expelled from there as well.

  Had they ever been able to form any kind of lasting alliance between themselves they might be a military force to be reckoned with. But Torsten figured that day would never come. They shared similar cultures and a common language, but their feuds continually divided them, demanding that blood be shed among them.

  Frequently.

  Every now and then, the bravest or most desperate among them would strike out to the West. Their attacks on settlements were few and far between because of the disproportionate military strength that The Kingdom could bring to bear on the area in a real fight. Though they were savages, they weren’t stupid. Better to let sleeping bears lie. Most of the time they showed up on the western borders of The Kingdom as traders. That was a much smarter approach in Torsten’s mind.

  This seemed to be one of those rare times, though. Times when the Mountain Men forgot who it was they faced and descended from their high mountain villages. When it happened there was slaughter as they descended on hapless farmers and miners, and slaughter when the men of The King’s Peace extracted a bloody price on the Mountain Men for their actions.

  The Mountain Men were hardened warriors, of that there was no doubt, but they lacked the numbers and steel that was held by the armies of The King’s Peace. They died bravely when the two clashed, but they still died.

  This time seemed like it might be different, if only for a little while. Apparently there had been enough of the raiders to pin the local garrison into their fort and lay siege to it.

&nbs
p; But the possibility remained that they might not be raiders at all.

  Torsten himself had donned the guise of a Mountain Man on more than one occasion in service to his country. ‘Plausible deniability’, that was the phrase that the higher ups back east had used. The less they could be tied to their orders, the more things could be done quietly to their advantage.

  If soldiers of The Kingdom were found to be carrying out the things Torsten and the men under his command had done in the past, it would have meant open war with neighboring nations. That could be a good thing to the fat serpents in the east if they made their money. But it could also mean The Kingdom being overrun with foreign soldiers and those same fat serpents dancing on the end of a rope. A very thick rope to support their fat asses.

  But if it was just Mountain Men, ranging from their homes in The World’s Spine to do some looting, then that was just business as usual. Or unusual, depending on how you looked at it. Hardly worth raising an army over and worth even less when weighed against the cost of an open war.

  Politics and the pursuit of wealth at any means. Torsten had no stomach for it. It struck him as particularly spineless. But those were the men with the money and thus the men with the power. Gold and blood greased the gears of The Kingdom. He could walk away from this all today if he so desired and have an easy life for the rest of his days, but the wealth those men commanded seemed something out of dreams. Almost unthinkable. Obscene, really.

  Why didn’t he walk away? He’d thought it over in the past. Even now as he sifted through ashes the thoughts tickled at the back of his mind. He didn’t need the money to care for a family. He had none of his own. Gone the way of all living things some years back.

  The money wasn’t why he kept doing it. The life itself appealed to him on some level that simply couldn’t be touched. Not just the life of a warrior, but a warrior in the shadows. Somewhere in the depths of his being he also felt a sense of duty. It was a calling that needed to be answered.

  Few men ever used the word and fewer still understood what it meant. It was as apt a description as any that applied to Torsten. Patriot. He stayed for the joy of the fight and the desire to see his nation and his people prosper.

  Gallant knights looked well and bold trying to capture their counterparts on the battlefield for boasting rights and ransoms. Women swooned at the tales of their exploits and no doubt many of them found their way into the beds of those same knights. In a contest of arms, Torsten was more than capable of standing among then or besting them if he wished.

  But they were more concerned with being honorable than winning a fight. A fight honorably lost was still a fight lost. And men who lost fights didn’t usually live very long.

  Torsten had no concern with what was fair or noble. As long as he lived and his enemies died. And die they did. Few men of this world could claim to be his equal with a blade in hand. Many had done so, not through their words, but by drawing against him. They had not lived very long.

  Yes, Torsten could make sport of his enemies on the battlefield, but those things rarely won wars or kept one on the backburner that threatened to burst into flames. Men like him, working in the dark of night, or out in the wilderness, or anywhere his country needed him for that matter, doing what they did best.

  Rough men doing rough things. Bloody things.

  That was what mattered.

  The Kingdom needed a few dozen men dead to protect trade rights in the island nations to the far south? Sending in a fleet of warships spewing flames into the cities would get the job done, but would have collateral economic damage that could cause unforeseen consequences. Some Lord and Lady might have to take a less expensive vacation for the Yule. Instead of the impressive display of military might, men like Torsten were called upon to deal with the situation.

  After so many years and so many throats cut in dirty alleys he had realized that he actually liked the life he led. He wouldn’t trade it in for the world. In his zeal, he’d become very good at what he did. Among the best in the known kingdoms of men. The men who commanded him, and who he chose to serve, knew as much and they deployed him with care. Always with a sensitive task best taken care of away from too many eyes.

  Yet now, here he was. On the edge of The Kingdom sifting through the ashes of destroyed farms and abandoned forts. Perhaps his superiors suspected someone like him was at work. Other nations used men like him as well, when the situation called for it. Torsten had faced them before. Short, brutal affairs that left men dead or wishing they were.

  There was something about the way those men walked, talked. Sometimes just the way they stood that marked them. Torsten knew them when he saw them. He had wondered in the past if they could mark him as well.

  Or perhaps the men in charge just really wanted whoever was doing this to die.

  The men defending the unnamed fort Torsten had been sent to had managed to hold out long enough to send a carrier pigeon detailing their plight. By the time the relief force arrived though, the fort was empty and unmarked save for a single hole burned through the thick stone of its low walls. The scorch marks there, and the way the stone had warped under the heat looked a great deal like the remains of the farmhouse Torsten stood in.

  That was a feat of sorcery, many of Torsten’s men had sworn. If they looked closely, they could see the ripples of motion in the stone where it had liquefied under some intense heat and then solidified again as it cooled. Like a frozen image of the concentric lines surrounding a stone dropped into a still pond. Powerful magic, indeed.

  There had been no living member of The King’s Peace when Torsten arrived with the small relief force to break the siege. They were all dead. Much like the people of the small villages and farms his men had found on the trails leading away from the fort.

  He grabbed a handful of the ashes and sifted them through his callused hands as a horse snorted behind him. The finer particles blew away from him in the light breeze and the rest piled neatly beneath his extended fingers.

  “What do you make of it?” A man’s voice asked from off to his side.

  “I’m not sure yet, Ed.” Torsten answered as he looked to his second in command. The familiar eyepatch over Ed’s left eye was coated with a thin layer of trail dust. A single green eye peered back at Torsten from the other side of the man’s face.

  “The very stones of this place have burned. Whoever or whatever did this,” Torsten motioned to the ruin about him before continuing. “Is not to be taken lightly.”

  Torsten’s mail jingled like tiny bells as he stood up. “Where are the men I dispatched when we arrived?” He asked.

  “I believe that’s them approaching now.” Ed answered, nodding to a group of three mounted men, all moving towards the ruined farmhouse and soldiers about it at a trot.

  Torsten could see the men clearly as they approached. They were indeed the three he’d sent to find the trail of the raiders. They looked like soldiers. Here within the borders of The Kingdom and on official business as it were, there was no need for disguise. No need to hide what they really were. Men at war. Scanning the men milling about the burnt home, the trio picked him out and rode directly to him to report.

  Horses snorted their discomfort as they were brought to a hard stop a few paces away from Torsten. The first among the scouts nodded before speaking. Such had become a custom among Torsten’s unit. Salutes and formal speech were for a different type of soldier.

  “We’ve found the trail. It looks to be about twenty men on foot and three or four on horseback. Still fresh and not far.” The man reported.

  Torsten nodded before voicing his response loud enough for all to hear.

  “Saddle up.”

  That was all that needed to be said. His men worked quickly and efficiently and in a few moments the entire squadron was saddled and ready to go. Twenty one men in total, they were less than a third of the men sent to relieve the besieged fort. The others had been left to repair and garrison the stone complex, not a common task fo
r men such as they were. But it needed doing. An officer had been left running the show there until relieved by Torsten’s command or that of someone higher ranking in The Kingdom’s armies. Out here on The Western Fringe, that was unlikely to happen.

  Twenty one including Torsten, they were all experienced scouts. That’s what the men in charge had taken to calling units like this. Scouting was something they could do, and do well, though it was only a small part of most of their work. Torsten considered it a kind of hunting. Not much different really. Just tracking and killing men instead of deer or boars. Perhaps it was a euphemism that the men with power laughed about over expensive dinners.

  “Did you hear that our ‘scouts’ burned another village to the ground and took away all of its residents to be sold into slavery? And they managed to get someone else blamed for it?” Torsten could picture a fat bejeweled man saying as he held a leg of lamb aloft by the bone, punctuating the last question with a stab at the air with his meal turned weapon. Uproarious laughter greeted his proclamation.

  Or perhaps they just didn’t know what else to call them.

  None of Torsten’s men were strangers to the Western Fringe. Between them about ten long bows and as many spears were held. Each man had his own sword and shield as well as being clad in strong chainmail. A few of them carried extra weapons as well. A large two-handed axe here, a sword more fitting for executions than work on the battlefield there, enough daggers to arm every thief in a small city. The raiders ahead were definitely in for a fight they could not win.

  The scouts had eschewed taking a name for their group as was common among other units in The Kingdom’s armies. No Wrath of the Gods or Screaming Eagles. They’d simply decided to be known as Torsten’s Crew. Now they looked to their commander as one, waiting for his orders.

  When he saw they were all ready to move, he simply nodded. Torsten moved out at the point and the remaining men formed a side by side column ten riders deep. The two men in the back always rode in the same position. Some might have seen it as an insult, but as the rearguard the men knew the vital importance of their posts and had been assigned them in recognition of their abilities.