Wicked Gods

by D. N. Hoxa

  It was too dark to see farther ahead, but I could have sworn I saw shadows moving somewhere in front of the guard who’d gone to check who it was. They definitely weren’t expecting anyone, which could be either good news for us or bad.

  “Hold!” shouted the guard all of a sudden, making me jump in place. Without warning, one of the other two began to run up the cobblestone street with his spear in hand, and he disappeared before we could see what the hell was going on. The fear intensified, but so did the hope. What were the odds that someone had come to save us?

  I almost smacked myself in the head for thinking that.

  “I said, hold!” the guard said again, and both he and his friend raised their spears forward. All we could see was darkness, but there was definitely someone out there, someone the Diviners didn’t know.

  I held my breath as I followed the movement of the shadows, until finally, I could make out a pair of eyes. They looked orange, but I blamed the dancing fires of the torches for making me see things. No way could someone have eyes like that. He looked like a freaking lion.

  But with every step he took, light bathed him, and I realized that yes, people could have eyes like that. Eyes that spit fire. And their owner was possibly one of the scariest dudes I’d ever seen.

  He was taller than the Diviner guards but much slimmer. He wore all black, and the beard covering half his face was the same color.

  More importantly, he wasn’t alone. Four others that I could see, all dressed in black, too, were behind him, and by the looks of it, they weren’t carrying any weapons. But they were smiling.

  The sound of footsteps coming rapidly from my left called my eyes to the street. Reddar and eleven other Diviners, all with spears in their hands, were running like their tails were on fire. Not good. Definitely not good.

  “Greetings, people of Kall,” an ice-cold voice said. Lion-eyes spoke like he owned the fucking world—or all nine of them. “We mean you no harm.”

  Even before he’d finished his sentence, Reddar growled. “Who dares to trespass our borders? Show yourselves!”

  He stepped in front of his guards, his chest forward and his chin up.

  But Lion-eyes wasn’t concerned in the least. “Relax, Diviner,” he said with complete ease. “We’re not trying to hide by any means.” And he took a few more steps forward. Five people were behind him, and each looked deadlier than the last. That’s when I made up my mind: they were bad news for the Diviners of Kall, and they were bad news for us, too.

  “Sim?” I said, looking at him for a split second, and the shocked look on his face said that he knew exactly what was going on. “Sim, who are these people?”

  He looked at me like he’d just seen a ghost and only shook his head.

  Reddar slammed the butt of his spear to the ground, making me jump once again. “You have no business here. Turn back where you came from, or suffer the consequences.” It seemed he knew, too, who the newcomers were.

  “You dare speak to us that way?” asked Lion-eyes, but he didn’t sound pissed off, just curious.

  “You’re not welcome here, snake,” Reddar spit. “Take your people and leave.” It was a threat if I’d ever heard one.

  “We will in just a second,” said Lion-eyes, and his eyes fell on the cages, making my heart skip a beat. “By the order of the Masters, we’re here on official business.”

  “Screw your business,” said Reddar without missing a beat, angrier than before. “Masters have no say within the Town of Kall.”

  “Sure, sure.” The way Lion-eyes spoke reminded me of the people back home. “We have information that two humans and an imp are among you, and as soon as you hand them over, we’ll do as you ask.”

  I held onto the wooden bars of the cage. I’d asked for a miracle. A miracle, not six men dressed in black who looked like they could tear me apart with a movement of their hands, damn it!

  Then…

  “We’re here!”

  Millie.

  “We’re here!”

  “Millie, no!” Sim and I shouted at the same time.

  “Well, would you look at that?” said Lion-eyes with a laugh.

  “Millie, shut up!” I hissed when she looked like she wanted to shout again.

  “They’re with the masters, Morgan. They’re going to take us home!”

  “No, they’re not. Just stop—” But Reddar’s voice covered mine.

  “The humans and the imp are ours,” he said his voice echoing in the night. “You have no claim over Kall.”

  “Sure we do,” said Lion-eyes. “Hand them over, and we’ll leave before you know it.”

  His smile was gone. That guy was not playing games, and he wasn’t someone we could ever hope to run away from, either. Call me crazy, but in that moment, I wished to stay caged in Kall until death. It sounded like a better fate than the alternative.

  “Haven’t you taken enough already?” Reddar asked. “They belong to us. We will keep them.”

  “No, you will not. Hand them over—now,” Lion-eyes ordered.

  I expected Reddar to step back and tell his men to open the cages. I expected them to hand us over to Lion-eyes, no matter how angry they were about it. These people were with the masters, after all. You just didn’t say no to the masters.

  But Reddar didn’t say anything more to his men or to Lion-eyes. Instead, he pointed his large spear right at him—and threw it.

  It all happened so fast. One second, there was complete silence in Odin’s Square, and the next, people were running from all sides, throwing arrows and spears and screaming their hearts out. I forgot how to breathe for a few seconds as I watched more men dressed in black come out of the shadows to meet the attack of Reddar and his people. Blood spilled left and right, bodies dropped to the ground like they were in a play and they’d rehearsed the moves a thousand times. The smell of piss and shit in the cages was rapidly replaced by the rusty scent of blood, and recognizing it, I finally came to my senses.

  Reddar and his people were busy fighting. So was Lion-eyes. This was our chance. It was our chance to escape and never look back. Nobody was paying any attention to us. It was now or never.

  Searching for ropes and weak links was useless. I’d already tried that. When the idea popped into my head, I didn’t think twice. I moved to the end of the cage to gain as much momentum as I could, and I shot forward with all my strength. Putting my left arm forward, I slammed into the wood of the cage. I expected to meet at least some resistance, but on impact, the entire cage tumbled over the rocks underneath. My head spun as the cage crashed onto the ground, slamming me against the dirt, face first. The right side of my body hurt but not nearly as much as I’d feared. I barely noticed the sound of battle around me, and all I could hear was the voice in my head, shouting at me to get up.

  But getting up was not possible because the cage was turned over and I was trapped behind broken pieces of wood, so I laid back and held myself on two wooden bars while I kicked the hell out of another with my good leg. Something warm and thick slid down my eye but I didn’t dare stop to check how much damage I’d done to myself by throwing the cage over. I just continued to kick with all my strength until finally, my prayers were answered, and the wood cracked. I didn’t stop to check if my body would fit through the small opening. I just pushed myself forward and moved until the dark sky was above me. I jumped to my feet, ignoring my body’s warnings completely. I was injured in more than a few places, but I could check it all out later. For now, I needed to free Millie and Sim, and we needed to get the hell out of there.

  A body slammed onto my side two seconds after I’d made it to my feet, threatening to throw me to the ground once more. I moved away as quickly as I could, cursing the Diviner by my feet, who now had a knife buried in his forehead, his dark eyes open and lifeless, staring at the empty sky. My first thought was to find my bag and my weapons where the Diviners had thrown them by the statue, but a look around said that if I went into the battle happening just two feet
away from me, there was no way I was going to make it back out.

  I grabbed the knife buried in the Diviner’s forehead, but pulling it out was harder than I thought it would be. The sight of blood no longer bothered me after having to tend to my bloody wounds almost every week for the past three years. My heart was in my throat, and the thought that somebody was going to grab me from behind any second now stayed with me until I cut through the rope holding Millie’s cage together.

  “Jump,” I shouted and ran over to Sim, who was still as pale as before, urging me with his eyes to hurry. I cut the ropes of his cage as fast as I could until he was able to open the door and let himself out.

  Millie grabbed me by the arm, but I pushed her away.

  “Go!” I shouted, nodding at the darkness behind the cages—the only empty space in the Square. We had no idea where that road would take us, but we had to try.

  “Can you run?” Sim shouted in my ear, but he didn’t have to shout anymore. The sound of battle behind us had died down, and even though every cell in my body wanted me to move and not look back, I looked back. I had to.

  And I was right.

  The sound of battle had died down. More than a few Diviners, dead Diviners, filled the Square grounds, and a lot of men dressed in black, too. I scanned the bodies quickly, hoping to see Lion-eyes somewhere in their midst, but Sim grabbed my hand and pulled me forward.

  “Run, beast!”

  The battle had stopped. Reddar was still standing. Lion-eyes was nowhere to be seen. That was more than enough information to propel me forward into the darkness. Millie and Sim were by my side. We couldn’t see shit, but we kept going, the shouts of the people we’d left behind chasing us like they were ghosts. I lagged a couple feet behind the others because of my wounded leg. No matter how good I was at ignoring the pain, my body was beginning to shut down. I hadn’t eaten, hadn’t rested enough and hadn’t given my wounds enough time to properly heal. But all of that could wait. If we made it out of Kall, I had all the time in the world to eat and rest and get better. If we could just make it out…

  The shadows in the distance were ones I was hoping to ignore as well, but then three torches lit at the same time as if by magic, and six Diviners stood before us, much closer than any of us had thought. We all halted in place. I no longer had it in me to be terrified, it seemed. I grabbed Millie’s and Sim’s arms and began to pull them back the direction we’d come from, but soon we realized that another three Diviners were behind us. The blood on their clothes said that they’d been in the battle against the masters’ men, and they’d survived. Definitely not people I wanted to try my luck with, not with only half my body working properly. So we stopped again. To our sides were trees full of empty branches, and behind them were houses, small and made of wood. We were surrounded by the Diviners of Kall on all sides.

  I still had the knife I’d taken out of that man’s forehead with me, but it was as useless as the rest of my body in those moments. We waited, looking from one end of the street to the other, wondering who would be the first to throw their spear at us.

  “Let me through!” someone shouted, someone who sounded very much like a pissed off Reddar. He was coming from the battle, half his face covered in blood, his spear still in his hand while one of his men walked beside him, holding a torch over his head. I held onto the knife in my hand as tightly as I could. If we were going to die tonight, I was going to at least take one of them with us, preferably Reddar.

  He stormed to us like he meant to break us as soon as he reached us. The fear disappeared, leaving way for a false sense of courage in my chest. I’ll take it, I thought, and prepared myself. The knife was small, but two stabs to the side of his neck would probably do the trick. Hopefully.

  Much too soon, Reddar was in front of me, his thick finger in my face.

  “You are—”

  But he didn’t get to finish whatever he wanted to say.

  “Reddar,” someone said. It was an old, tired voice but powerful enough to stop Reddar in his tracks. Seriously, it was like someone pressed his off button. The Diviner froze in place, his eyes wide and full of panic, if I wasn’t mistaken. My hand was sweating from how tightly I was holding the knife, but I didn’t loosen my fingers.

  My eyes were stuck on Reddar’s face, but I could hear the crowd behind us moving to the side.

  “That’s enough,” the old voice said. I was caught between turning around to face whoever it was and standing right where I was, ready to stab Reddar if he so much as raised his hand toward me.

  But he didn’t. Instead, he closed his eyes, which cost him a lot by the look on his face, and he stepped back. I had no choice but to turn around. My fingers were already numb, but the knife wasn’t going anywhere.

  The next second I was standing face-to-face with an old man, shorter and smaller than me, but with eyes so clear they almost looked white. Soft, compared to Lion-eyes, but the aura that hung around his small frame gave me the feeling that I should be stepping away from him, too. I stood my ground and held my chin up. Whoever this guy was, I was going to put him in his place just like I had with Reddar. Granted, that hadn’t exactly gone well, but what other choice did I have?

  Taking in a deep breath, I met the old man’s eyes and spoke.

  “Look, I don’t know who you are, or who those people that came looking for us were, but we made it clear from the beginning that we didn’t want any trouble. We just want to be on our way, okay?”

  The old man raised a grey brow—all five hairs left in it. “What is your name, human?”

  I shook my head. “What does my name have to do with anything? I told you, we just want—”

  “What is your name?” The authority in his voice made goose bumps rise on my arms. I swallowed hard.

  “Morgan Caine,” I whispered, a bit embarrassed to have caved so easily.

  Pressing his lips together, the man nodded. “Well, Morgan Caine, you and your friends are free to leave.”

  “But Agda, they—” Reddar started, but the old man didn’t look like he intended to let anyone finish their sentences anytime soon. Raising his right hand up, he simply waved his fingers, not once looking away from me, and Reddar stopped talking. This guy was definitely a big deal around here. I just wish we’d met him before they’d thrown us into those cages so now I wouldn’t be smelling like piss and shit.

  “Thank you,” I said, nodding my head, but it didn’t look like Agda was finished.

  “On one condition,” he continued, and I thought: anything at all. Anything was better than dying in this miserable town of Diviners. I’d take my chances outside the cage, thank you very much. “You cannot ever return to the Town of Kall for as long as you live.”

  Uh…excuse me?

  “Okay,” I breathed, stunned in place. “Okay, that won’t be a problem.” And I wasn’t going to shed tears about it anytime soon.

  “Do we have your word?” the man said, and I almost laughed.

  “You do.”

  Sim grabbed me by the arm then and whispered, let’s go, before pulling me back, away from the old man. But…

  “Why?” The question slipped from my lips before I realized it. I jerked Sim’s hand off me, not realizing that he’d grabbed my right arm until the pain shot up my shoulder. I dragged my leg closer to Agda again because I needed to know. It was better to know, right? Why didn’t he want us coming back to Kall?

  “I’m just curious,” I said. “Why?”

  Wrong. It wasn’t better. It was much worse.

  “There’s blood on you, Morgan Caine,” Agda said, his voice hushed. My good leg almost gave up on me. “And we want no part of it.”

  For whatever reason, I looked at Reddar. He no longer seemed pissed off. In fact, he was completely relaxed and looked at me like I was the strangest little thing he’d ever seen. He didn’t doubt the old man’s words, it seemed. Not like I did.

  “Bullshit,” I said, half a smile stretching my lips. “This is ridiculous. How d
id the blind woman tell you, huh? Who is she, your sister?” Probably. I mean, how else would she have told this guy about me? I shook my head. “There’s no blood on me.” Except for the blood around my wounds, but I doubted he meant that. “Are you blind, too, old man?”

  Two of the Diviners standing behind him stepped forward, their spears slightly pointed my way, but a wave of Agda’s hand and they fell back in place. Maybe calling the guy old man hadn’t been the smartest idea.

  “A dark shadow follows your every step. It comes with you wherever you go. Dark times lie ahead of you, child,” he said, and he actually sounded like he meant every word. And the fact that he didn’t comment on the blind woman made me really edgy—like he really didn’t know what I was talking about.

  But come on! Do you think that’s a coincidence? No way in hell.

  So why did he look at me like I was a lunatic?

  “How would you even know that?!”

  “Morgan,” Sim warned, trying to grab me by the arm again, but I pushed him away.

  “No! He’s not making any sense. How would he know that there’s a dark shadow following me? Tell me, how?”

  I should have just left. I never should have asked why. I should have just left. Stupid, stupid Morgan.

  “Take them,” said Agda with a nod, and he turned away to leave, seemingly done with me. But I wasn’t done with him.

  “Hey, answer me! What the hell does that mean?” Reddar stepped in front of me, blocking my view, but I moved to the side so I could see that old man. “Answer me, damn it!”

  He didn’t, no matter how many times I shouted at the top of my voice. Instead, Reddar and his people dragged us away into the darkness, never saying a single word.

  Eight

  The woods are safe, I repeated to myself every time I looked behind me and thought I saw two orange eyes staring back at me. Lion-eyes is not here. He’s probably dead in Kall.

  But the paranoia didn’t fade.

  According to Sim, we were in between Kall and a town called Tottep, a place we didn’t want to go through for no reason at all, though it was full of imps. He said the townspeople there worshiped Vor, the goddess who knew all. I didn’t want to have anything to do with people who worshiped like mad men—like the Diviners of Kall. So we decided to go around every town from there to Mount Arkanda, stay as low as possible, and not attract any attention.