Sons of the Gods

by James Von Ohlen

  Torsten grabbed the dead man’s weapon, a single headed axe with a long handle fit for gripping with both hands. He felt the balance of the weapon as he swung it about him, laying in to two men near him and sending them to their maker. The weapon looked crude, but felt good and strong in his hands. Not all was lost.

  He engaged a few men moving towards him and in the near distance beyond them, he saw that Pier still stood. Against all odds, the man who had left the tower on foot not only still lived, but seemed to be thriving in the mayhem of the battle. He stood amongst countless corpses of Mountain Men and he was covered in blood. Some of it was likely his, but the cautious distance that the raiders were keeping from him suggested that most of it was theirs or that of their brothers. Pier screamed as he tore into another man, striking him with the axe in swings that blurred into one. The unlucky raider seemed to fall apart under the attack as limbs flew in different directions.

  Torsten had only a scant few seconds to take in the state of his crew before more of the raiders were upon him. A few of the scouts remained mounted and tried to move towards each other. Most were on the ground. They were mostly hidden from view, but he could see their locations as a mass of raiders huddled around each of them. Four men had managed to make it to one another and now stood back to back picking at the men around them and trying to move outward from the body of enemy soldiers.

  Most importantly, Torsten could no longer see the men he had ordered away as messengers. If they survived to carry news of the growing threat in The Western Fringe, then no man’s death would be in vain this day. Confident that they had escaped, it was time to do the same for himself and his men that survived. He struck down three more raiders in quick succession, slapping down their awkward attacks and finishing them with a precisely delivered riposte.

  More came for him. The head of the axe clipped off the top of one’s head and the swing continued around over Torsten’s head and back into the chest of another enemy. The blade lodged there for a moment and he brought the butt of the weapon up in a vicious blow that shattered the face of another man and sent him to the ground in an unmoving heap, even as it ripped the blade free from the other raider’s chest.

  He began sprinting and ducked a swing from a large knife, shouldering the man out of the way, and arrived near the group of scouts he had sighted moments before. He called out to them and they moved towards him as well. They exchanged smiles of relief and joined into a group of five, pushing towards the relative safety of the edge of the melee.

  Torsten dropped the axe he carried and picked a sword from a fallen enemy warrior. It would be more useful for fighting in formation. No sooner had the five men begun moving, cutting down a few in their way, than a horse crashed amongst them. Three men were sent to the ground and scrambled to return to their feet. The Mountain Men’s cavalry had arrived.

  Torsten stabbed the horse in the neck and it reared back, throwing its rider before taking a few quick steps and then collapsing. Two more horses burst through the men surrounding them. Ed, still mounted, grappled with a raider on a horse of his own. A hurled spear struck Ed’s horse and it stumbled, lowering Ed’s head just enough to miss a blow that surely would have decapitated him had he held his position.

  Lucky fucker, Torsten thought as he saw Ed accidentally shove the tip of a borrowed sword through a raider’s throat.

  One of the scouts that had just fallen made it to his feet quickly and he grabbed the unbalanced raider and pulled him from his horse. He guided the man’s fall ensuring that he landed face first with both of their full bodyweights on the raider’s neck. It gave a loud pop as it broke and the man lay face down in the dirt, unmoving save for a twitching foot.

  The scout tried to leap onto the back of the raider’s horse only to catch sword and axe blows from two different directions as he did so. He clumsily struck back, but lost his grip on his weapon. His arms continued to flail as if he still held it. A third and final blow put him down.

  A strange silence overcame the crowd of blood crazed men intent on killing one another. The creeping sensation of fear that Torsten had felt earlier in the presence of the sorcerer began to spread through his chest once more, like powerful hands squeezing down on his lungs and his heart. The raiders surrounding him parted to let one of the gray men approach.

  Torsten couldn’t see the man’s face behind his visor. Just a pair of glowing red orbs where eyes should be. He tried to fight the fear he felt, but at best he could only stalemate it. One man seemed to lose himself entirely and rushed forward towards the gray man, arms held stiff and straight down at his sides as he screamed.

  The gray man grabbed the charging scout by the throat and lifted him from the ground. He closed his hand, metal biting into flesh and in a few seconds the scout’s head fell to the ground next to his body. Blood pumped from the stump of the dead man’s neck, showering the gray man with gore. Torsten stared in disbelief. How was such a thing possible?

  The remaining men stared as well, mouths gaping at the spectacle. How could this man possibly be killed if he was impermeable to blades and had the strength to squeeze a man’s head from his shoulders?

  The gray man stepped forward, laughing. His laughter came to an abrupt end as a massive axe slammed into the back of his helmet with a deafening clang. Pier had joined the fight.

  Torsten took a glance back over Pier’s shoulder to see a trail of mangled, dead, and dying raiders in his wake. This was a side of the man that Torsten had been completely unaware of. It was as if some demon akin to what powered the sorcerer’s weapon had been freed from hells below and found a home within the tall scout’s flesh. His face betrayed nothing, stone cold as he went about his work.

  After the blow, the gray man stumbled and turned back just in time to see Pier slam the axe into his face. The blade didn’t penetrate the gray man’s armor, but he collapsed backwards nonetheless, limbs going limp as he fell. The weapon that the monstrous warrior had carried fell from his grasp and landed at Torsten’s feet. Without hesitation, he snatched the weapon from the ground and turned it on his enemies.

  The blade still gave a faint blue glow and vibrated slightly as he held it. Like it was humming or even singing. With the spell of the gray man’s presence broken, the scouts and raiders began at one another again. The strange blade cut through weapons and armor as easily as it cut through flesh. Torsten reeled at the power of the blade as he struck down a score of men in a scant few seconds.

  Gore splashed as the blade passed through a man’s torso with little more resistance than would be found swinging the weapon in the air. Bone and sinew gave way and the top third of the man’s body fell to the ground amidst flailing limbs and a gurgled scream. On some level Torsten was horrified by what had just been wrought by his hand, but there was no time to consider what had happened. Amongst the fury and hate of battle it was kill or be killed, as it always had been.

  As it always would be.

  More men fell beneath the strange blade in his hand. Hope surged within Torsten, but it was not to be his victory that day. Blades still cut into his flesh, piercing his mail and drawing his blood. A crude sword slammed into his side, failing to penetrate his armor, but breaking bones with the impact before Torsten cut down the man who had swung it.

  A hurled knife buried itself in his unprotected thigh and by some miracle he managed to stay on his feet, though he missed a step and almost fell. As he stood off balance, the tip of a large knife punched through his mail and glanced off of one of his ribs. Intense pain and then unnerving numbness shot through his chest as he dropped his attacker with a pommel’s blow to the temple.

  No matter how many men he and his brothers cut down, more took their place. Though the raiders still hovered back from Pier, they didn’t hesitate to strike at his back when the opportunity presented itself.

  Of the five scouts assembled, one fell after a few moments of battle. Within a few minutes all bore wounds that would kill them if not treated shortly. Torsten watched
his lifeblood run down his arm from a deep wound somewhere near his shoulder. His arm didn’t want to work and he was beginning to grow light headed. Lifting the strange blade to strike with seemed like very hard work and the sword itself seemed to be growing heavier and heavier with each passing second.

  The fallen gray man roused and pushed himself back to his feet from where he had lain. The sorcerer’s voice called out again and he appeared before Torsten and the remains of his crew, flanked by his standard bearer and the other gray man.

  “Men of The Kingdom. You may yet survive this day.” He spoke as he signaled for the raiders to fall back from the group of scouts. “You need only tell me where the Nexus is, and all of this will end.”

  Torsten still had no idea what the skull-faced man was talking about. He glanced at the men by his side as he wobbled and threatened to collapse. Their facial expressions showed no hint of recognition either.

  “Without my help, you are all going to die. We don’t even need to finish you off. You will bleed out in short order. But I am the chosen champion of Lord Mordechai. The power to save you is mine.” The sorcerer almost sounded sympathetic to their plight as he spoke. Torsten glanced down at the Demon’s Maw that the man carried. Witchlight danced there.

  Once more the world seemed to slow to a crawl. Torsten lunged forward and brought the glowing blade down in an arc aimed at taking the sorcerer’s head from his shoulders. The self-proclaimed champion of the god of slaughter began moving backwards, but Torsten moved too quickly and it was too late for the raider.

  The blade descended inexorably towards his neck only to stop as it was intercepted by the weapon of the gray man at the sorcerer’s side. The gray man’s weapon struck again and Torsten’s hand fell from his body, still clutching the strange blade and leaving a spiraling trail of blood dancing in the air behind it. The standard bearer swung the pole that carried his charge in a wide circle and caught Torsten in the chest with it sending him sprawling back among the remainder of his crew.

  “And so you die.” Spoke the sorcerer with finality. The nearness of his own encounter with death having no effect on his voice. Steady. Even.

  Torsten looked at the men with him as his vision blurred and began to fade. Styg. The man wounded in the tunnels with Ed. A good soldier. Reliable. Always quick with a joke. Ed. His right hand in dealing with the men under his command. A lucky fucker whose luck seemed to have finally run out. And Pier. A good scout with a knack for slaughtering men that was only recently discovered on this final night.

  If this be his time and place, he was unlikely to find better company, Torsten thought.

  He struggled to keep his eyes open, but he was losing the fight. He’d lost so much blood. He glanced towards his hand, laying at the feet of the sorcerer as the gray man who’d lost the sword earlier reclaimed it from his grasp. The same strange buzzing he had encountered twice before washed over him once more, setting his fine hairs on end. He tried to force himself to his feet, unwilling for his end to come in such a manner. His strength failed him and he rolled flat on his back looking up to the sky.

  The Lost Star, moving backwards against the flow of the others, passed over them.

  “Finish them.” The sorcerer spoke with finality. The gray men moved forward to carry out his order. A glowing blue blade came into view and began descending towards him. Torsten tried to raise Head Splitter to intercept it, forgetting that the blade was gone along with the hand that had wielded it against the enemies of The Kingdom for so many years.

  His vision blurred to orange before his eyes closed on their own and his skin prickled and burned as men screamed out around him. He forced his eyes open to see a golden halo surrounding him and the remaining men of his crew in all of their bloodied and battered splendor, looking like the dying heroes of some children’s story.

  The mass of Mountain Men around them moved impossibly slow, as though they were moving through molasses. A lucky few running from them, the rest taking flight and leaving the ground under external power. The sorcerer and his gray men fell to the earth equally slow as some unseen force threw them from their feet and cast them backwards, limbs splayed and weapons falling from their hands.

  The scene faded from Torsten’s vision and disappeared altogether. In some recess of his mind that was still functioning logically, he assumed that he had just died.

  Bright light shone in his eyes and cool air caressed his face as his back pressed against something cold. Pain flared across the stump of his severed hand. The flow of blood came to a stop. Likely because there is none left to bleed out of me, he thought.

  “Be at peace warriors.” A commanding voice like that of a general made of granite boomed, seeming to come from all directions at once. “Your battle has ended. You have been found worthy and among those who battled today. You have been chosen.” It ended and echoed into silence.

  Torsten blinked, trying to clear his sight. A pair of blurry figures stood over him and cold hands grabbed him. The shock of their touch brought a moment of clarity and he saw them as they were. Two armored figures, clad in bronze plate. Their touch was as cold as ice.

  “What happened?” One of the scouts asked. “Where are we? Are we dead?” He continued as though talking to himself. Torsten heard the unmistakable sound of a weapon being dropped and a man collapsing.

  “You are not dead, merely in my great hall.” The commanding voice responded, as if the fact was plain for all to see.

  “And who might you be?” The same scout asked.

  “I am known among your people as Anhur.”

  Torsten’s mind reeled at the voice. The air of authority behind it gave it a palpable weight. Like stones on his chest. Anhur, it had said. The name was familiar to him and to all. They’d heard it hundreds if not thousands of times as children and in the old tales of heroes from days gone by. Anhur, the great warrior who had helped to forge The Kingdom.

  Anhur.

  The God of War.

  PAIN surged through Torsten’s hand and he opened his eyes with a gasp. Bright lights shone down into his face, momentarily obscuring his view of his surroundings. Something clung to his face, covering his mouth and nose and he reached up to tear it away, but found that his limbs had been restrained. Pain flared again and he turned his head.

  His eyes adjusted just enough to the light that he could see some type of steel cylinder being placed over the stump of his right hand. Bronze hands like those of the knights who had stood over him earlier clutched the cylinder and worked at tiny gears and screws. With each twist of the screws, he felt them sinking into his flesh and a new wave of pain shot up the arm.

  He tried to yell, but found that he couldn’t. After a moment’s confusion he closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on what seemed to be happening to him and around him. Something hissed periodically, like and angry cat but deeper in tone. He searched his memory and associated the sound with something he had seen in the greater cities of The Kingdom. A device that ran on steam.

  Such a thing seemed a useless novelty when he had first seen it, but then he had witnessed the machine moving a weight that would have taken four or five horses to budge. His mind had run wild the possibilities and he’d even spent a few days speaking with the men demonstrating the machine about its possible military applications. Tearing down fortifications and the like. The mental exercise was enjoyable, but came to an end when Torsten and his crew were redeployed.

  He found that keeping his eyes shut and concentrating on what his other senses told him helped clear his mind of the fog that hung about it. He felt pain in his right hand. He found that odd, as the last thing he remembered was losing that same hand in battle. An image of a sword glowing pale blue flashed through his mind and then he saw it sever his forearm clean. That same blade had done the same and far worse to Torsten’s enemies only moments before as he had wielded it against them.

  A phantom limb, perhaps? He asked himself. He had heard of such things during his time enlisted in the
armies of The Kingdom. Men lost limbs in battle or to infection or an overzealous chirurgus in the aftermath. Even years after the fact some still reported feeling pain or discomfort in the limb that had been removed. The question of how one was supposed to treat pain in something that wasn’t there had been hotly debated among the doctors of the Royal Institutes as well.

  After his instruction in emergency battlefield medicine had ended, Torsten had never paid enough attention to them to hear what their official answer was about the phantom limbs. Now he wished he had. Dealing with pain in a hand that wasn’t there might be a very useful skill right about now.

  A buzzing sound like a nest of angry hornets drew Torsten’s attention. Pain surged anew and he smelled something strange, like distilled spirits. The pain faded and he felt his mind clouding again. Something like voices of men speaking to one another passed over him, but he couldn’t make out what was being said. He tried to open his eyes, but found that he couldn’t.

  At several points in his body he felt pressure, as though something was being pushed into his skin, but no pain. First, he saw no significance in the points that were being probed. Through the fog of his mind he barely remembered that he had been wounded several times in the fight against the Mountain Men and their sorcerer. Something seemed to be moving under and through his flesh at those same points.

  Intense discomfort at the thought of something moving through him faded and he lost himself in the smell of the spirits. He dreamed of random moments from his past. But in the way of dreams they were not as things had actually happened.

  A small green man sat in the corner of his bedroom and watched him and his brother practice their reading by candlelight before sleeping. There had been no green men he had known of in his childhood, and he had never read with his brother.

  Torsten’s mirror image of himself as an adult stepped forth from the shadows, gripping the green man’s head savagely with one hand. His fingers sank into the man’s eyes and pulled his head back and to the side as the other hand drew a knife across the green man’s throat, ripping the flesh there open with a welter of green blood.