[Demonworld #4] Shepherd of Wolves

by Kyle B. Stiff

  Wodan glanced at the other dogmen filing into the tent, and wondered if he’d taken up more than he could handle. It was true that his body was going through some kind of change, and that he’d kill a dogman up-close, but that fight hadn’t been easy.

  I’ll have to watch and wait until he comes close, or provides an opening, Wodan thought. If I want to preserve what I’ve already done for Pontius, then I’ll have to be ready for the moment when I… when my body takes over.

  Wodan saw the man staring at his chest and arms, and just then Wodan remembered that he was covered in scars. They probably stood out dark against his pale skin, which hadn’t seen the sun in weeks. Before Wodan could decide if he was disgusted or simply confused, the man spoke.

  “This is Naarwulf,” he said, nodding toward the great black dogman. “He’s my right hand man. This human,” he said, nodding toward the black man, “is called Ramos the Strangler. He’s my official executioner. Depending on how this goes, he might be the last man you talk to tonight. My name is Khan Vito. I’m the chief of chiefs here. Now, just who are you?”

  “Vito?” said Wodan, taken aback. “Vito of Hargis?”

  “You know the name?”

  Wodan nodded slowly. “You were a soldier. That is, if you’re the same Vito that Zachariah told me about.”

  Vito smiled genuinely. “You knew Zachariah? He’s alive, then?”

  Wodan nodded quickly. “We’re very close, yes. Red hair, hook nose, big lips. Always talking in detail about something or other.”

  Vito laughed. “That he does! I’ve known Zach since he was a child. He probably never thought much of me, but of all the royal family, I think I liked him the most.”

  “He did respect you,” said Wodan. “He would be ashamed to see what you’ve become.”

  Without hesitation, Vito gestured toward a dogman near Wodan. In a blur the beast moved and Wodan slapped into the ground, dazed, long before he realized that the dogman had punched him in the face. The pain shook his head as if the floor was wobbling up and down. He tasted blood. He wanted to lie down for hours until the pain disappeared, but he slowly remembered who he was and what he was doing. Dizzy and sick to his stomach, he slowly dragged himself back into a kneeling position.

  “That’s just a reminder,” said Vito. “Don’t forget your place. Okay?”

  Wodan nodded, the forced his eyes back onto the Khan.

  Vito paced back and forth. “Who are you?” he said, his voice flat.

  “Wodan.”

  “Wodan what?”

  “Just Wodan. An exile, stripped of family name.”

  “And who do you work for?”

  “For Pontius.”

  “Bullshit,” said Vito, stopping in his tracks. “I’ve already guessed that the leftovers from Hargis saw us in their ships and went to Pontius. But Pontius is a cesspool without leadership. There is no “Pontius” - there are only groups vying for power. Now, who do you work for?”

  “I work for the Blood King,” said Wodan, trying to color the truth until it was something slippery and malleable.

  “The Blood King? Is he the leader of these guerilla units?”

  Wodan nodded. “He tells people like me what to do. The others pick up their directions from people like me.”

  “Is that so.” Vito thought for a moment, then said, “And how many of you are there?”

  “People like us... we aren’t given a lot of details about the big picture. As for our forces, it’s mostly just boys, kids who follow orders. Kids sick of Pontius, anxious to get out, and who had no direction or reason to live before this battle.”

  “Makes sense. You’re a weird one, huh? All the same, I don’t like your tone.” He nodded to another dogman behind Wodan. Wodan felt a terrible kick in his side, agonizing because it smacked against ribs that may have already been broken. Wodan cried out and slapped into the sand, mouth grinding against sand as he tried to pull in air for nearly a minute.

  Again Wodan fought down his rising panic, focusing on the fact that he was already dying long before any dogmen took hold of him. The savage beast-men waited with a surprising show of patience while Wodan slowly hauled himself back onto his knees.

  Vito shook his head. “We got a tough guy here, I see.”

  “Just waiting for orders,” Wodan wheezed. His voice sounded weak and thin in his own ears. “Just like everyone else here.”

  “What an honest little slave. You’re a good product of civilization, you know that? It doesn’t sound like you really give a damn about Pontius, but you’re willing to fight and die for it all the same. I guess you think that’s normal because that’s how everyone lives.” Vito paused for a long time, then said, “But I think you’ll find the Khan of the wasteland does not take orders - he gives them.”

  He nodded to another dogman, and just as Wodan said, “That’s not what Globulus told me,” something slammed into the back of his head and he crashed into the sand. Vito’s eyes went wide and he waved away the dogman, then grabbed up a chunk of Wodan’s hair and pulled his head up.

  “What do you know of Globulus?” Vito barked.

  Wodan heard it as if spoken from a great distance through a thick, dark cloud. He could swear that someone was whistling directly into one of his ears. Vito’s eyes bore into his own, as if he was desperate to understand the off-hand remark. Wodan wondered if he’d been wrong about the man. He did not know what he stood to gain, but he felt as if he could push Vito easily. He wondered if his body would be filled with strength if he could only push Vito a little further…

  He forced himself to smile; he knew that his face was a mask of blood. “Our friend Zach,” said Wodan, fighting for breath. “He told me... the philosopher Globulus... that he tainted you. Led you astray from your station.”

  Vito growled and dropped Wodan’s head. “Don’t ever think you know anything about Globulus and his teachings, pup,” said Vito. “If Zach had ever had the chance to learn anything from Globulus, then he would be here right now.”

  “You’ll see him again, if you make it to Pontius,” said Wodan, rising to his knees once more. “You’ll find he’s learned a thing or two on his own that no pencil-necked philosopher could ever teach him.”

  Vito shook his head, as if dazed. “I don’t need to ask you how you got all those scars,” he said. “You’re really some kind of asshole. You know that?”

  Before Wodan could respond, Vito darted forward and, faster than the eye could follow, he smashed his knee into Wodan’s mouth. Wodan heard something crack, then felt hard sand smack into his head. Finally the dogmen in the tent gave vent to horrid, guttural laughter. Wodan felt something in his mouth, hard chunks against his tongue, so he turned his head and spit out a great wad of blood mixed with teeth. He ran his painfully swollen tongue along his gums and felt gaping holes where many of his front teeth and some along the side had been. It took a long time before his eyes could adjust to the sight of the little fragments of his old self lying in the sand; his head was horribly jarred, and he could not seem to focus his vision.

  “Believe me, Vito,” said Wodan, forcing to control his voice as he laid in the sand. “I’m exactly where I want to be.”

  He tried to lift himself up using his hands tied behind his back, but felt horrible pain in his ribs, so he laid back down. He rolled onto his stomach, then dragged his head along the sand until he was able to lift himself up with a minimum amount of agony. The tent grew deathly quiet as Wodan forced himself back into his kneeling position. He glanced down, saw that the sand was caked with blood all around him, then closed his eyes as he fought a wave of nausea.

  “Wodan,” Vito said quietly. “Why in the world are you doing this… for Pontius?”

  “It’s not to save Pontius,” said Wodan, hearing the truth in his own words for the first time. “I just wanted to meet the man who unified all these dogs to destroy Pontius.”

  “Well that’s the thing, isn’t it.” Vito crouched down in front of Wodan, then took a s
eat in the sand. “I’m not doing this just to destroy Pontius. Same way as you’re not fighting to save it. I’m doing this, Wodan, because it’s time that the mistake of civilization was erased.”

  “Erased?” said Wodan. “But what about all the people who depend on it?”

  “Those who are strong enough... will be freed. Those who are weak, those who depend on artifice in order to survive, will finally have to deal with reality itself. We must all face pure, untainted reality. Not all of us will survive.”

  “Reality?” said Wodan. He shook his head slowly, then said, “Reality as dictated by the flesh demons.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The demons control this world. We live in their shadow. For all your great deeds, you wouldn’t have this army now if the demons hadn’t let you have it, would you? We’ve both been scarred by our homeland, perhaps by civilization itself, but civilization is the only shield we have against the demons. What you’re talking about is going to set people back into a state of war with nature itself. How could any inventor or mathematician or artist have any hope of fighting against some brute monster? That’s not honest living, Vito – that’s suicide. It’s… it’s an urge toward…”

  When Wodan faltered, Vito cut in. “You say that civilization is a haven for thinkers, for people too weak to live in nature. Sounds nice, but the reality is far from it.” Vito’s eyes bore into Wodan’s battered skull, and his mouth contorted venomously, and he said, “Long ago, Wodan, very long ago, the life principle created men and women and gave them minds greater than all the other animals. Men fought against beasts, and killed them and ate them. It was a very intimate process; men were very close to the blood of their kills. The greatest warriors were honored. They were given the tribute they were due.

  “But not everyone had the strength to be a hero. By the work of warriors, the lives of the weak were made easier. The weak multiplied. They grew envious of the strong. The weak and the clever found a way to scam the earth; they perverted the life principle by planting seed and raising crops, by streamlining nature’s species. How can a strong man live on bread, Wodan? A warrior needs meat, needs blood! What sort of life is worth living, if all it’s about is being bent over in some baking field worrying that the rain won’t come? Life is about battle! About facing down other beasts of war - and killing and eating the flesh of the conquered! You think some faggot from the city is going to understand that? You think he’s going to be grateful to you for defending his ass from someone like me?

  “No. Not at all, Wodan. The weak stay busy. At the end of every age, their house of cards is smashed. At the beginning of every new age, they build it up again. They live beyond their natural lifespan, then they fill their extra time with games. The games become more and more intricate, the scams more and more grandiose, until finally you have religions and political dogmas. They scam the warriors into thinking that something is wrong with them, then they put leashes on them, then they set the warriors against one another in the scam of organized warfare. The strong end up killing the strong, while the weak sit back and count their imagined gains and losses. It’s all an illusion, but the game becomes so vast that nobody can see outside of it. Not even those in power! Can you believe that, Wodan? Even the very people who should be in on the joke begin to think that the game itself is reality! Look at it: It’s a world without masters, but only leashes, and every man has his hand on someone else’s leash.

  “Only Globulus could see this for what it was. Only Globulus’s mind was vast enough, and his heart honest enough, to see the entire cage. Life is transitory, Wodan. A frail and beautiful thing that is only incredible because it is fleeting. Do you really think it’s possible to manage and order your environment in a clever enough way that you can extend life’s beauty forever? That’s a perversion, Wodan. To hope for survival beyond your day of death is to become a zombie, not fully alive, never really dead.

  “The truth is, I’m the greatest thing to ever happen to Pontius. When my horde and I batter down their walls and empty out their markets and lay waste to their lies, when the people feel their hearts quicken and smell the smoke and the blood and when their ears are filled with the screams, the endless screams of truth, then in their last moments they will, for the first time, fully be alive. They’ll be as alive as life is meant to be - short, and packed to the brim with greatness and wonder. They’ll find out who their true friends and family are when they see and hear and feel them panic before they are ripped apart.

  “For my horde, it will be the same. Many of them will die in battle - but they will live before they earn their rest. I may die, too, and I am not afraid. I lived in fear in my youth, Wodan, in constant fear of the whims of my superiors, the craven plotting of my inferiors, the smiling backstabbing of my peers and so-called friends. I thought that I was powerful… and that was the worst of it. I bought into the scam of civilization to the point that I scammed myself every time I looked in the mirror.

  “I know the medicine seems like poison. I know that when you’re crouching behind city walls, it seems just to call those eternal beasts of the wasteland “demons”. I know it seems to make sense to slave away your whole life and to feed your blood into a system that promises protection and the extension of life at the cost of your freedom. But something in you knows that is all a lie, Wodan, or else you wouldn’t have ranged outside of the city walls to throw yourself at another beast like yourself.

  “I can tell you want to fight for what’s right, and live the sort of life that you can be proud of. I only wish you could see how deep the scam of civilization goes, Wodan. How did it go when Pontius ordered you to sacrifice your life for another? Did the Blood King demand it, or did you propose it yourself? Did your “friends” try to stop you? And your friend, our prisoner, whose life you try to buy with your own - would he have done the same for you?

  “There are many layers of reality, as told in Globulus’s Layerism. The heart of it all, the great and horrible truth - is that, when everything is analyzed long enough, and when all the blind spots of the mind are filled up honestly, you’ll see that it’s all one big fucking scam. Whether it’s some diseased bum asking you for spare change, or a politician taking your money or even your life for his battles, or the church infecting your mind with some belief that makes you despise yourself, or a woman who loves your strength but will debase herself in any way in order to make you weak and malleable, or a parent who forces you down the same path he took that he knows is wrong but is desperate to legitimize his own wasted life, or an artist who tells some sad and pathetic story so that your tears will wash his filth-ridden soul - all of it, Wodan, is one great big interconnected scam.

  “You bought into it, and for that, I am sorry. I think that, under different circumstances, we would have liked one another. But I have earned the title of Khan and I mean to wipe out Pontius, and then Sunport, and then all the cities along the coast. And no one, not even I, can stop me in that good and honest work. But because you have bought into that scam, you have set into motion a series of events that will, soon enough, lead to your own death.”

  Vito fell silent. Wodan had not moved, but only sat and listened and absorbed. He thought for a long time and Vito waited patiently. Finally Wodan said, “You have admirable strength and honesty, Vito, but I’ll always remember you as a fool for not taking this army of yours and turning against the flesh demons. You’re smart, but not smart enough to clearly see that they’re the ones who hold the leash of our species. You’re so close to freedom, but you follow an awful, hateful thing that I can’t-”

  In a sudden burst of rage, Vito shot forward and slammed his fist into Wodan’s face. Wodan fell back, but this time he rested. Vito recoiled, then held his fist in his other hand. The two looked at one another. Wodan was in terrible pain, and decided to be honest enough with Vito to lie in the sand and relax, rather than fight the pain; Vito openly massaged his fist, and was not afraid to show Wodan that he’d hurt one of his knuckles.<
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  Vito tore his eyes away, then rose to leave. He suddenly noticed that one of his dogmen was leering at the boy with his tongue hanging out. Another dogman was visibly erect, and his eyes trailed up and down Wodan’s body. Vito shook his head, then said, “Every dogman - out. Out, out, out!” The beasts left, whining and glaring down at the boy.

  Vito looked down at Wodan, then said, “I realize now what kind of person you are. Among our people, every man and every dogman has the right to call out any chief or any Khan in the rite of the duel. I wish... that you had known that. Then... in your last moments, you could have truly lived as a man.”

  “Great Khan!” someone cried outside.

  “Enter!”

  A human approached and said, “Got somethin’ on the radio, Khan. Seems some of those fighters from Pontius, they agreed to pick up the prisoner. You know, for the exchange. Ganson, uh, he said he’d meet them by that big salt pillar on the plains east of here.”

  “Ganson said that?”

  “He... yeah, he did.”

  The pup is too presumptuous, thought Vito. Running too many deals on the side. I don’t like it.

  Vito thought for a moment, glanced at Wodan, then said, “The fighters were good on their word. We’ll be good on ours. Tell Ganson to take thirty dogs and take the prisoner to the place of exchange. Treat the prisoner with respect and leave him there in peace. But tell Ganson... to attack and kill the others.”

  “Khan?”

  “Do it!”

  The human bowed and left the tent.

  Vito looked at Wodan again, and saw that he was still on the ground, staring up at him.

  “So,” said Wodan, “scams are a part of civilization, are they?”

  The accusation stabbed into Vito. He began to formulate an argument, a statement of some sort, then he grew weary of the argument and decided that it did not really matter. He left the tent with Naarwulf and Ramos on either side of him.

  Vito stood at the edge of the sandy cliff and looked down at the train of warriors and vehicles in the valley below. “Naarwulf,” he said quietly, “keep those human guards in there, and post a few other human guards around the perimeter. We’ll let him rest a day, then see if he’s fit to move.”