[Demonworld #4] Shepherd of Wolves

by Kyle B. Stiff

  Wodan knew that their time was short, and that the invaders drew nearer each day. “What if... what if we worked here for a while? If we fished for you just long enough to earn six pack animals?”

  The chief considered this for a while. “If a man works for six passings of the moon, and is thrifty in his ways, he can earn one and one-half donkeys. He may keep one for himself, he may shake hands with his brother and breed their donkeys together, to make more. He may then take the half-donkey and trade it to another man in exchange for a wide-hipped woman, and use her to make more workers. But this thing takes at least six passings of the moon!”

  Immediately the spirit man stopped his raving and said, “Such... is... the... law...” in a beautiful singsong voice.

  “But we don’t have that long!” said Wodan, grinding a palm along his forehead.

  “My boy, all time is in the world. There is no need to rush about. The fish is always there, the moon is always there even when it appears to be dark, these invaders that you speak of - they too are always there. If you wait, there will be other invaders to fight. I assure you of this.”

  “What if you took on an indentured servant?” said Sylas. Everyone turned to face him. “What if one of us agreed to stay on for a year or so?”

  “Sylas!” said Jon.

  “What? I... I like it here! I wanted to be an artist when I was young. Let’s face it, Pontius doesn’t have any sort of culture. These people might look strange, but they have real meaning in their lives. Real stories!”

  Jon gestured to the spirit man. “You wanna dance around like this clown?”

  “Yes, I do,” said Sylas, laughing. “It’s not that strange, is it?”

  “And we would like for you to dance with us as well, young man,” said the chief. “To fish with us for a year, this would get you... let me see...” The spirit man whispered to the chief. “The spirits, they say this will get you two fine animals and also several fat bushels of fish.”

  “That’s something, at least,” said Wodan. “But Sylas, are you really sure about this?”

  “Go ahead and throw two more donkeys in the mix,” said Jake, “because I’m not in any real hurry to see Pontius get ransacked, if you wanna know the truth.”

  They all stared at Jake in wonder - except for Cedrik, who leaned in close and said, “It’s that girl with the dark hair an’ the crazy ta-tas, innit?”

  Jake smiled, then blushed and looked away.

  “Now it is settled!” shrieked the chief. “We will give four fine animals to the four warriors who will return just in time to see their homeland destroyed by the dogmen!”

  * * *

  At nightfall the villagers gathered on the surface and sang a farewell song. Sylas, now covered in fresh paint, hugged each of his friends and wished them luck. He hugged Wodan last, and an understanding look was shared between them; Sylas knew that Wodan had gone the distance for him, and now Sylas chose to remain, in part, so that Wodan could return to his own world. Chris slapped Jake on the back while Cedrik stood over him and, with an expression of utmost seriousness, explained with poking fingers and other gestures all the various maneuvers he should try on the dark-haired girl if given half a chance.

  Four animals were led out, and gifts as well. The boys were given wide conical hats to protect them from sun and wind. They were also given special garments to wear, wide square cloths with a hole cut out for the head; these garments were made of a beautiful, shimmering material woven from the gunk produced by a species of subterranean worm. Jon’s garment was deep red with highlights of purple that shone when the light struck from a certain angle. He mounted up on a pony, a wild little beast that snorted and kicked and was inconsolable about something or other. Chris’s garment was black with slender streaks of silver. He rode a sickly looking horse with knobby knees and protruding ribs, but the beast did not seem to mind its burden. Cedrik’s garment was sky blue run through with strips of midnight, and he rode a rigid donkey with eyes that swiveled to and fro and never settled on any one thing. Wodan’s garment was an intensely vibrant green, a reminder of spring in a world that had not seen one for over a thousand years, and the giant goat he rode was grim-faced and wore a double crown of spirals about its head.

  They were given coarse material and sticks for the making of tents, many skins full of water, and leather pouches packed to the brim with fish from the deep. Besides the Hargis sniper rifle, which Chris kept close even though it was without ammunition, the boys had no weapons. Wodan heard a guide speaking to Cedrik, who said things like, “... then you will come to a little hill... then you will come to a bent tree...” while Cedrik nodded. The boys shouted their goodbyes as they rode out, the villagers cried and sang and waved, Sylas pumped a fist into the air and Jake hollered a shrill cry. Wodan tipped his wide-brimmed hat one last time to them all before they left that peaceful refuge and returned to the night and the wasteland and the journey once again.

  * * *

  For many nights they rode northwest. Now they had a goal, a direction written out on a map of stars that Cedrik pointed out to them. They spoke often, no longer disconnected from one another by the roar of engines or the endless hum of nothingness when doom was their companion. They ate their fish raw; there was no need for fire, for they were tired enough by dawn to collapse and rose from their tents only when the sun was hidden once again. They slowly rode through a land that was pale and pink and very nearly flat. Cedrik reckoned that they were far past the low-lying foglands to the west and a little south, but they saw no sign of the hills on their left-hand side save a few islands of rock that slanted upwards, echoes of mountains from ages past.

  Wodan often rose before the others and cast his eyes into the northeast. He could see nothing but flat earth, but he could feel the Black Valley calling out to him. The call made little sense, but the place that he had been exiled to over a year before, a strange and hateful land of nightmares, now pulled on his heart like homesickness. Only when the other boys woke could Wodan shake the thing calling out to him.

  As they drew closer to Pontius, more troubling dreams came to Wodan. He could hear arguing, like a family quarrelling while standing over his casket, their voices muffled by the closed lid. In another, he could feel chains about his hands and feet, strange celestial beings leading him to an underground dungeon; his crime was an act of blasphemy, and the price was a thousand years in darkness and solitude. In another, he could hear a voice of water and a voice of thunder shouting at one another inside of him, giving two contradictory siren calls - to survive, to let go of life; to be born, and to die. There was no clear-cut answer available to him. The argument occurred in the language of guts and blood, and so the only solution was to play it through until one voice triumphed and another was beaten into silence.

  One night, the four rode beside one another and Wodan felt a terrible pain wash through his stomach. He leaned over, pretending to rest as he suppressed the urge to cry out. Just then, Jon’s pony glared at Wodan, then whinnied and kicked about long enough for Jon to run through a string of curses but not long enough to take any action. The pony threw Jon from his back, then ran ahead, unmindful of the weight of fish and water sloshing on its back, then suddenly disappeared from view. There was a soggy crashing sound and the boys dismounted and ran.

  They came to a narrow ravine cut out of the earth. Down below, the pony laid twisted and dead atop a mound of fish.

  “I’ll be damned,” said Jon, “if that stupid thing didn’t pick about the right time to bolt.”

  They wondered if they themselves could have walked right into the narrow crack in the earth, then shrugged the question off and tethered their mounts as best they could and crawled down into the hole. They gathered up the fish and made a fire and Cedrik showed them how to cut the pony apart with a sharp stone in order to eat the best parts of it. If anyone had looked down on the feast, they would have been terrified of the four young men in their strange, shining cloaks gathered about a fire with i
ts smoke seemingly coming up from the depths. The cooked meat lifted their spirits greatly, and the severed head from the pony looked on, eyes wide with eternal shock. They rested in the earth throughout the heat of day, then rose up again that night and redistributed their burdens. Jon climbed up onto the donkey behind Cedrik and they rode on.

  Many more nights passed as they traded Jon between them. The fish and water became less of a burden and more of a worry. One night Wodan’s goat bucked suddenly, then bleated and cantered about with one foot held high. A scorpion was tossed clear and disappeared. Cedrik threw his eyes about for the thing so that they could rid the world of it, but saw no sign of it. Wodan stayed atop the goat and finally calmed it with gentle words. The boys shrugged and continued on.

  At the start of the next night, they uncovered the beasts from their hiding place and saw that the goat’s right foreleg was horribly swollen to such an extent that they could find no joints along the smooth limb. The goat hopped up, eager to prove that it should not suffer the same fate as the pony, but when Wodan tried to mount it the goat swung its horns about, cried a single shrill note, and sidestepped away. The wasteland had laid claim to him.

  The four boys gathered for a council.

  “If we redistribute everything again,” said Chris, “it’s just going to slow us down even more. It’s going to be the same as when we were on the bikes without Justinas. Everything’s going to keep breaking down, we won’t have anyone who can fix anything, we’ll keep going slower and slower, and finally we’ll just run out of supplies. I don’t know about you all, but I’m not about to trust in another random bunch of primitives to save us.”

  “We’re not that far from Pontius,” said Cedrik. “We can push on, even as we are...”

  “But since we’re close to Pontius, two of us could ride on ahead. We could carry less food and water, and move a little faster, and that way we could nearly guarantee that at least two of us would make it.”

  Cedrik shook his head. “I don’t wanna ride ahead jus’ ’cause I was lucky enough to have a donkey not bit by a scorpion or fallen in a holler. How can we split up now, man, when we’re this close?”

  “An’ how can we lag behind when we’re this close?”

  “Alright,” said Wodan, “I agree with Chris - but I don’t want us to fight or argue when we’re this close to our goal. So how about this. We draw straws to see which two of us take the horse and the donkey and ride ahead, and which two of us walk the rest of the way with the majority of the supplies and the lame goat.”

  “Thing is,” said Jon, “whichever group has Cedrik in it is gonna have a major advantage.”

  “Not really,” said Cedrik. “I’ve done shown you guys how to move around. Plus, the good thing about Pontius is that it’s got a river runnin’ right through it, east to west. Even if you’re off by a little, you won’t miss Pontius by that much. You can recalculate and follow the river, if you have to.”

  “Jon? Chris? What do you think?” said Wodan.

  “I’m down,” said Chris, and Jon shrugged in half-agreement. “Long straw means you ride, short straw means you walk.”

  Wodan removed his hat and unwound four straws from it, two long and two short. He handed them off to Cedrik, who studied them, then placed them in his fist such that four even lengths jutted forth. Everyone knelt around him as he extended a fist that held the fate of them all.

  Wodan leaned forward, then Chris pushed ahead of him, removed a long straw, then rose quickly and set to unburdening his horse. Wodan reached forward, pulled out a short straw, and sat back. Jon pulled, then sat down again; he and Wodan held their short straws and looked at one another, smiling despite their fate. Cedrik opened his palm and sighed, glaring at his long straw, full of guilt.

  “It’s you and me, Jon,” said Wodan. “We were already chosen by the wasteland, anyway, seein’ as it was our mounts that were taken down. The ritual of the straws only confirms it.”

  “Guess so,” said Jon. “The world really is one mean old bitch.”

  “I feel terrible, man,” said Cedrik, rising slowly.

  “Don’t be,” said Wodan. “We’ll be coming along right behind you. Go to Pontius. Tell them what we did, and how much they owe us.”

  “Alright, man.”

  Cedrik unburdened his donkey, then embraced the two walkers for a moment. Chris mounted up but would not look at them, only pursed his lips strangely and waved a curt goodbye. The riders rode away, faster than before, their blue and black garments trailing behind in a shimmering glare.

  Wodan and Jon gathered up the fish and water, slung some onto the goat’s back, then hauled the rest onto their own shoulders. Wodan tugged on the goat’s tether and they followed the trail of dust ahead of them.

  * * *

  The green walker and the red walker pulled the lame goat behind them under a path of stars. To pass the time they exchanged stories and, while they felt as if they had been dealt a difficult hand, they never complained. They joked and laughed often; their voices and the grunt of their goat were the only sounds for miles around in that empty land. They often took to speaking in Justinas’s ridiculous accent in order to honor their dead friend and to fight against a sense of resignation that could easily creep in whenever they considered that they were in a lonely world far away from anyone who cared about them.

  Jon often cast sidelong glances at Wodan. He was ill at ease because his memory was playing tricks on him. When their crew had first come together, he must have confused Wodan for Jake, because he thought that Wodan was only as tall as himself. That was the trouble with meeting so many people at once, because Wodan was clearly a head taller than Jon. He decided that he might not have noticed it before because Chris was the tallest among them, plus he always brought a lot of attention to himself anyway. Still, Jon was filled with the sneaking suspicion that Wodan had hit some kind of insane growth spurt in the past few weeks. Unfortunately, Wodan now wore pants that he’d stolen from the camp of the dogmen, so he couldn’t find out for sure if he’d outgrown his old clothes. Jon tried to shake off his unease, but then he remembered that earlier in their trip, he mostly did not believe that someone like Wodan could possibly take down the Ugly and the Coil. He’d seemed too soft, and altogether too nice. Now when he looked at Wodan, he could believe the stories; the angles on his pale face were sharp and hard, and his eyes shone like clear diamonds. Wodan still seemed too kindly to fight over supplies, but if they did run out of food, Jon did not look forward to finding out how far his friend would go to survive.

  They came to a land torn through by red spires. Their raw fish had run out the night before, and they were already weak and hungry again. They made the painful decision that a heavy meal must accompany the dawn. Wodan and Jon gathered on either side of the goat and scratched its ears and whiskers.

  “I saw some scrub brush,” said Jon. “We’ll make a fire.”

  Wodan nodded, then said, “I’ll give this guy his rest.”

  Jon left, and it was the first time Wodan had been left alone for weeks, perhaps months. The thing inside gripped him with renewed vigor, and he had to stoop for a moment because his legs grew weak. Eventually he led the goat to a hidden place among the stones, and even if the animal knew what was to happen it made no sign of protest. Wodan led the goat to a place with a shallow indentation of stone, a basin where rain gathered on rare occasions. Wodan felt a horrible weight of guilt even as he felt something inhuman driving him on. He found a heavy red stone and picked it up.

  The goat stood deathly still. With great effort Wodan lifted the stone into the air, then brought it crashing down onto the goat’s head. The beast stumbled, its legs shook and its poisoned leg slid out from under it, but it neither died nor ran. Wodan raised the rock again and heaved it down onto the base of the goat’s skull. It flopped onto the ground and laid completely still, but Wodan heaved the stone once more and brought it crashing onto the beast’s head once more. A great cracking sound echoed on the circle
of stones and the beast’s mouth hung open at an unnatural angle.

  As if in a dream, Wodan jammed a small, sharp-edged stone into the goat’s tough neck and immediately gallons of blood poured out against his knees. Before he knew what was happening, he realized that his mouth was against the warm slit and hot, salty blood was gushing into his mouth. Wodan watched himself, recoiling in horror as he worked his jaw to chew at the throat, but also curious about the fact that his body had needed red blood and red meat for a long, long time, and curious about what his body would do with the dead flesh, the raw material. He felt strength coursing into him, and he could hear something like singing in his ears.

  While Wodan ate the blood and flesh of the goat’s neck, Jon stood just behind a boulder and watched. He was deeply uncomfortable, and wondered if he’d ever really known Wodan at all.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Kill Them and Eat Them

  The horde that was legion came up from the fog-choked lowlands. They stripped the place clean of every living thing they could find as they churned up the earth in their death march, and while they now had water in plenty, they had consumed all of their livestock and every bit of food. They grew famished as they entered the hills south of Pontius, and all the clans grumbled about the Khan who could not feed his people.

  One night, a terrible accusation was given voice: Before all the livestock was eaten, two dogmen apparently had sexual relations with one of the beasts. Everyone who heard the rumor agreed that the tribes were surely defiled after eating the unclean animal. First a few witnesses came forth, then dozens, then hundreds claimed to have seen the act. The two accused dogmen were beaten and led about as an example to others, and after they were stoned to death Khan Vito went up to the bodies with his leashman Ramos and they set about cutting up the bodies and cooking them. Many dogmen cried out in protest; some, scared away by the dog Naarwulf, skulked about and whispered harshly about the blasphemous Khan. A few dogmen joined in the terrible feast. The Khan was not disturbed by the chaos, but only ate his fill and went to sleep.