by Bill McCurry
“That was rather graceful.” Sakaj sneered from her knees. “You should ask Cheg-Cheg to dance. I find most mystical creatures to be quite agile. Even the imps.”
Fingit wiped his face. “Let’s serve tea and read poetry too. If you can read poetry with your lungs hanging out your nose.”
Sakaj shrieked a spine-withering battle cry and ran toward Cheg-Cheg. Fingit followed her. He didn’t know what had happened to Krak.
Everyone was charging toward the monster, but Casserak was the first to close with it. She lifted her spear with both brown armored arms and jammed it into the earth. The ground jerked and clashed in an expanding earthquake directed toward Cheg-Cheg. Old trees heaved over and fell as the quake passed. It flowed up to the Void-beast and shattered the ground under him. Their enemy flexed his knees and stuck out his arms for balance. The earthquake passed without bobbling the creature.
Cheg-Cheg took a casual step forward before bending and shoveling an enormous pit out of the ground with one swipe of his clawed hand. At the same time, he seized Casserak in his other hand and lifted her. Her spear spun away into the trees. The Void-beast hurled Casserak into the pit hard enough for her brown armor to ring like a dropped pot lid. Then he shoved the dirt back into the pit on top of her and stomped it flat, three times.
Now Harik, his wife Trutch, and the Forest Goddess Chira closed in from three sides, with Harik throwing javelins and Chira shooting arrows up Cheg-Cheg’s nose. The monster bent and grabbed Chira by the head and torso. He stood, lifted her, and dropped her into his maw like a sardine. Fingit heard the shriek of monster teeth on the green metal armor, along with the shriek of Chira as she was crushed and consumed. The armor wasn’t working out as well as he’d hoped.
Effla and Gorlana were tearing their way through underbrush to join the attack. Fingit and Sakaj were half a minute away. Krak and Lutigan were nowhere in sight. The great monster feinted toward Trutch with his left hand and then snatched Harik with his right. Harik tried to stab the beast in the thumb with his lightning-javelin, but he electrocuted himself. Cheg-Cheg kicked Trutch, and she sailed halfway up the mountainside, a saffron missile. She slammed into the granite slope and sounded like a gong announcing the end of time. Her limp body slid down the slope.
Madimal had retrieved Casserak’s spear to charge the monster, with Gorlana screaming profanities at his side. Cheg-Cheg plucked Madimal up with his left hand. Since a squirming Harik filled his other hand, the monster dropped and smashed Gorlana under his horrific knee. He ground Gorlana into the earth as if she were a smoldering ember. When the beast rose, Gorlana did not emerge from the huge divot in which he had smashed her. Her dismembered, sparkly-blue leg did emerge, stuck to the monster’s knee. Cheg-Cheg shook his leg for a couple of seconds, and the dislodged limb fell to the mangled earth.
Cheg-Cheg stood, lifted Harik and Madimal to his face, and shook them like a child might shake two bugs. Fingit could see Harik’s arms flailing and Madimal’s feet kicking, but they’d be elevated in moments, on their way to the Dim Lands, and therefore out of the fight. He despised the idea of failing and having to try again tomorrow, and each day after that, over and over, until Cheg-Cheg was injured badly enough—or got bored enough—to leave them alone. Today didn’t look like the Day of Victory for the gods, though.
The air crackled above Fingit’s head, and every droplet of airborne water boiled away in an instant. The impossibly searing light of the sun streamed out from the mountainside, passed just between Trutch and Harik, and sizzled into Cheg-Cheg’s left eyeball. The monster bellowed. It assuredly did not roar. It closed its eyes and shuffled back a step, but it didn’t drop the two trapped gods.
The horrific ray of annihilation ceased. Fingit watched Cheg-Cheg’s eyelid, expecting to see awful damage, even a hole burned all the way to the monster’s brain. But when the eyelid opened, it revealed an intact eyeball, although it was smoking and a little discolored in one spot.
“Damn it!” Krak closed with Fingit and Sakaj as they sprinted. “I may not have killed it, but it knows I don’t like it very much.”
Now Cheg-Cheg sidestepped away from the remaining gods, produced a titanic grunt, and inscribed an arc on the ground with the longest talon of his right foot, ripping up trees and dislodging boulders as he went. A circle of earth seemed to dissolve within that arc. The monster stepped into the circle and began sinking into the ground, still holding Madimal and Harik.
Despite possessing divine speed and endurance, Fingit wasn’t sure he could reach the monster before he disappeared. He also wasn’t sure he’d be able to strike much of a blow when he got there. Perhaps it was just as well that Cheg-Cheg’s piglike, tufted ears had dropped below ground level when Fingit, Sakaj, Krak, and Effla reached the circle.
Looking down, Fingit saw the monster carrying Harik and Trutch, descending toward a landscape he recognized as Unicorn Town. They’re dead. Cheg-Cheg can destroy them for all time there. What idiot can I trick into going after them?
“We have to save them!” Fingit yelled. “Let’s jump in after them! All together… one… two… three!”
No idiots jumped into the hole. Effla at least had the courtesy to act a little embarrassed. Fingit put the doomed gods out of his thoughts and began considering how to improve the armor’s survivability.
A screaming Lutigan hurtled past them, almost knocking Fingit into the hole. Lutigan threw himself into the emptiness, swords upraised, angling for the top of Cheg-Cheg’s feather-crested skull. A moment later, the circle solidified back into the regular ground of the forested foothills.
All four gods stared at the spot into which Lutigan had leaped. Effla shuffled her feet a bit. Sakaj wound and unwound her strangling cord.
“Well, now I feel bad,” Fingit said, and the other gods nodded.
Actually, I don’t feel bad. I feel… useless. I didn’t do a damned thing. I didn’t even have to fool Lutigan into doing something stupid. He’s just stupid. Aw, no wonder they laugh at me and call me the Little Tinker of the Gods. I’m more like the Limp Dandelion of the Gods.
Fingit grabbed Krak’s arm. “Elevate me! Send me to Unicorn Town!”
Krak shook his head. Effla, the Goddess of Love, said, “The monster will kill you there, little boy, and you will be dead ever after. You’ve never been capable of rising to a challenge.”
Fingit blushed but said, “I can stop—” He ceased talking when Sakaj jammed a knife through his throat and dragged it to the side, slicing his jugular. Blood sprayed against his armor’s collar and into his eyes, blinding him.
“You cretin!” Krak yelled at Sakaj. “He’ll be asleep when he gets there! Helpless!”
Fingit ignored Krak. He clutched his hammer, and as his body collapsed, he focused on Unicorn Town.
Seventeen
(Sakaj)
Sakaj wiped Fingit’s blood off her face using the back of her hand. “Well?” she said, looking from Krak to Effla and back.
“If you try to stab me, I’ll cut you in two from your ratty hair down to your other ratty hair,” Effla said.
Sakaj lowered her knife. “We have to go after them.”
“No!” Effla said.
“Yes,” Krak said at the same time.
Effla took a step back and squinted.
Sakaj stood tall and spoke to Effla as if she were a dim pony. “Cheg-Cheg can take any of us to the Dark Lands whenever he wants and finish us there.”
Krak rubbed his jaw. “Either we defeat him today, or we accept exile. Hell, for all we know, he might follow us into the Void and destroy us there.”
Effla cursed for a few moments and then nodded. She drew her knife and placed the point on Sakaj’s throat. Krak pulled forth his knife, which was quite a lot nicer than any other knife in existence, and laid it against Effla’s throat. Sakaj lifted her knife and prepared to slay the Father of the Gods.
Krak cleared his throat. “And… now!”
All three knives were driven forward with divine po
wer, and all three accomplished deicide. Sakaj grinned and held the Dark Lands in mind as she expired.
An unknown interval later, Sakaj awoke lying on velvety black grass. She rolled to her feet and began unwinding the strangling cord from about her forearm. Krak was already sprinting down the shallow hill toward Cheg-Cheg and the not-so-mystical pond. The monster was snapping and grunting a few hundred paces away. Sakaj followed Krak, and she heard Effla’s footsteps slapping the grass behind her.
Cheg-Cheg still grasped Harik and Madimal, who remained alive, if flailing and shouting meant anything. Fingit was bouncing and dodging around the monster’s left foot, which jerked, stomped, and denied Fingit a good target. Sakaj didn’t see Lutigan anywhere.
As the newly arrived gods drew near their enemy, Cheg-Cheg sidestepped and whacked himself on the side of the head twice using the hand still grasping Madimal. Then he wriggled like a horse’s back in fly season. Madimal screamed and began babbling. He babbled so loudly that Sakaj almost didn’t hear Lutigan yelling and hooting from above. After a moment of disorientation, she realized that Lutigan was inside Cheg-Cheg’s ear, probably scrambling around in the ear canal and whacking everything within reach.
Cheg-Cheg must have tired of Madimal’s terrified gibberish, because he squeezed his fist tight and crushed the god, armor and all. Madimal jabbered, then burbled, then whimpered, and then he was silent, except for the plop of some entrails and one arm as they fell to the grass. The beast pitched his corpse, which spun away over the pond, the trees, and whatever lay beyond them.
Cheg-Cheg slapped his ear with his open hand, but Lutigan never stopped yelling defiance and profanity. Krak released the impossibly searing light of the sun at the monster’s undamaged eye, but Cheg-Cheg warded the light-beam away with his other hand, almost annihilating Harik.
The beast snarled and then spit at Krak, Sakaj, and Effla. Krak jumped one way, Sakaj jumped the other, and Effla stumbled for an instant. A great, viscous mass of Cheg-Cheg’s acid-like spittle enveloped her and smashed her to the ground. Sakaj bounced back to her and noted that the corrosive substance hadn’t marred Fingit’s armor, or at least not yet.
Cheg-Cheg had paused for a moment while aiming his sputum. Fingit now charged toward the monster’s stupendous right foot and swung his hammer with both hands. He landed the blow against the foot’s longest talon, and a shattering boom caused Sakaj to squint and hold her ears. When she opened her eyes again, she saw that the talon had been smashed completely off and was lying atop Fingit, who’d been thrown to the ground. Cheg-Cheg cocked his head at the god, who was struggling to stand. The monster shifted his weight and stomped Fingit with a cataclysmic reverberation.
Sakaj rushed past Krak toward the creature. Krak released the impossibly searing light of the sun again, this time striking Cheg-Cheg in the mouth. The Void-beast shook his head and leaned to step away, but he halted halfway through the motion. He looked down and wiggled his talons, and then the creature tried to lift the foot that had crushed Fingit. The foot was bound fast to the earth. Cheg-Cheg dropped Harik, who plunged two hundred feet into the nearby pond, howling all the way. The monster grabbed his black leathery lower leg with both of his clawed hands. He heaved on the leg, which stretched like cooling taffy, soft and pliable.
“Hold this!” Sakaj yelled, throwing one end of her strangling cord to Krak. She sprinted between Cheg-Cheg’s feet at supernatural speed, holding the other end of the cord, which lengthened as she ran. She rounded the monster’s immobilized heel and returned to Krak. Then she and Krak crossed the cord and pulled it tight around Cheg-Cheg’s ankle.
Cheg-Cheg swatted at the gods, but with one foot pinned and a god ravaging his inner ear, he bobbled and even staggered once. Krak and Sakaj heaved in opposite directions with every grain of their divine strength, as if they were using an enchanted wire to slice an enormous, mystical Void-cheese. Fingit had made the strangling cord long and strong. The cord closed, the ankle severed with a gigantic, wet pop, and the monster dropped to his knees in a catastrophic collapse.
Krak and Sakaj ran back out of Cheg-Cheg’s reach. The beast just watched them run away, crouched on his hands and knees. He gazed at them with his feathery brow drawn tight and his lips turned down over a mouthful of decimating teeth.
Sakaj regarded the Void-beast. This is the worst we’ve ever hurt him. Perhaps he’s accusing us of cheating at some rough but collegial game. Perhaps he’s going to cry. He could sing and break wind in harmony for all I care, as long as he goes away.
The monster poked at his dismembered right foot and then jiggled it. The foot appeared to no longer be locked tight to the earth. Cheg-Cheg picked up the foot, examined it, and then looked around before stuffing the appendage between his teeth. Lutigan jumped out of the monster’s ear and dropped to the earth, where he landed with simian grace.
Cheg-Cheg, Dark Annihilator of the Void and Vicinity, crawled away on his hands and knees, carrying his foot in his mouth. Just as he disappeared into the Unicorn Town darkness, Sakaj shouted, “Don’t come back! Your foot’s not the only thing we can cut off!”
Sakaj and Krak trotted to the deep depression that Cheg-Cheg’s severed foot had left behind. They found Fingit lying in the bottom, dazed and squeaking, but alive in his unscratched armor. They hauled him upright and steadied him as he climbed out of the depression, stumbling and drooling.
When Fingit had been revived somewhat, he said, “I figured I’d get stomped on. I mean, if you hit a giant monster on the foot with a hammer, expect to get stomped on, right? So I planned for that contingency. A bit tougher armor, a few special enchantments blended to be extra-sticky and extra-stretchy, and there you go.”
“Risky. Too damned risky, and not much of a plan,” Krak said.
“Maybe,” Sakaj said. “But it worked.” She spotted Lutigan dragging a half-drowned but still-wiggling Harik to shore.
Fingit let his head fall back, and he shrugged. “If all this happened like I planned, I figured you’d know what to do. If it didn’t, then I’d be dead and wouldn’t give a crap anyway.”
Sakaj smiled and kissed Fingit on the cheek, then she patted him on his armored head. “Sneaky bastard.”
Eighteen
(Fingit)
No one had peed on Fingit all morning, which made him feel a little victorious. He rolled onto his back on the luscious grass that smelled sweet enough to eat. The sun dusted warmth onto his face, and the breeze brushed it away.
A paw like iron drove into his diaphragm, and another slapped his upper thigh. He gushed air, and a tongue of unparalleled determination tried to lick the inside of his mouth. At least the dog had learned not to pee on him. Laughing, Fingit pushed away the tongue and the furry head it belonged in. “No! Bad dog.” The dog backed away a step and barked as Fingit sat up. As soon as the god was steady, the dog bounded onto him and began licking his ear. Fingit hugged the solid, shaggy, unexceptional beast around the neck, and the creature sat on his foot.
Fingit had put some thought into making this dog, and he wanted it sufficiently prepared for its purpose. He reached behind him and flung a large stick he’d brought. He reminded himself to hold back. Now that Fingit possessed his godlike physique once again, he could toss the stick past the estate walls with no effort. The dog galloped away and returned with the stick by the time Fingit had stood. It offered Fingit the stick, which he grasped. Then the dog refused to give it up, tugging and shaking its head.
Pretty good so far.
Later that morning, after Fingit and the dog had enjoyed a modest interval of jumping, barking, and drooling, Sakaj walked onto Fingit’s estate. Her rapid, sinuous, and disdainful stride brought her through the platinum gates set into immense, green marble columns. Upon seeing Fingit with the dog, she halted. “You needn’t limit your acquaintances to your intellectual equals. I’ll use short words when I talk to you from now on.”
Fingit hid his annoyance by chuckling and scratching the dog’s loose neck skin. Sakaj ha
d become increasingly sharp and even cruel to him in the days since they’d maimed and vanquished Cheg-Cheg. She had accused him of trying to steal her glory just because he’d banged out a few trinkets and gotten crushed. Fingit had explained that glory was flying around in abundance these days, and he didn’t need any of hers. She had clarified that all the glory was hers. He didn’t want to go to war against Sakaj, especially when he’d just rebuilt all his dwellings, but she was acting crazy even for her.
“Come on, Krak’s waiting,” Sakaj said. “You can bring your mistress.”
“Krak can wait. This fine beast is yours. It’s a present.” He clapped the dog’s shoulder and stepped back.
Sakaj rolled her eyes and walked away toward the gate. “I’m going. I didn’t want to bring you, anyway. I’ll tell Krak you’re off plotting to murder him. Since you’re so glorious now.”
“Wait, you’ll want this dog. It’s special.”
“I heard about the dog you made for Krak. No thanks.”
“Just wait!” Fingit yelled.
Sakaj turned, cocked one hip, and lifted her jaw at him.
Fingit pointed at the animal, which sat and began scratching its ear. “Even though you’re an aggravating, prevaricating, deranged, treacherous serpent and you’d melt me in lava if it suited you, I feel like being nice. You need this dog.”
Sakaj crossed her arms. “Oh, of course I do. You must think I need something to love. That will make me gentle and floppy like you, correct?”
“Not at all.” Fingit gave her an innocent look.
Sakaj sneered. “All right, you must think I’m stupid enough to take a dog that’s booby-trapped or cursed.”
“No. I think you need something to kick that will still love you.”
Sakaj frowned at Fingit. Then she looked at the dog, which was now licking its rectum. “Well… that wouldn’t be any fun. No challenge.”