He turned back and opened his mouth to speak but was cut off as a shield came spinning into his face like a giant frisbee. I jerked my head to see where it had come from and saw Cressida crouching off to the side of the road, peeking out from behind a half-fallen tree. She looked at me with a self-satisfied smirk. That’s my girl, I thought, rushing in.
Before he registered what had happened, I had him on his back. He looked up at me as if I was the grim reaper stepping out from the shadows to drag him to Hell. Blood drained from his nostrils where Cressida had made her mark. She had landed a perfect shot. There weren’t too many places she could have hit him and gotten such a decisive result.
“Any last words?” I asked. My shins pressed both of his arms into the road. I felt his resistance, but it wasn’t near enough to make me budge.
“Be done with your work, then,” he conceded, looking me dead in the eyes.
I drove his henchman’s spear into his eye. He writhed for a few seconds and went limp. I got up and went to retrieve my weapon, leaving the other behind to stick out from its new resting place as a warning to all bronzed-up fuckboys that might want to cross our path down the line.
Helen beamed as I passed. Nothing on our strange journey so far had made me feel as good as I did when fighting alongside her. It felt like we were dancing—seeing her react to my moves on the battlefield and responding to hers in return.
I kneeled down and yanked Artession’s spear from one of the fallen. It slid out with relative ease, accompanied by a wet squishy sound that felt more at home in a cartoon. The man groaned as more blood trailed out behind it. I used his tunic to wipe off the handle, intentionally leaving some caked on the tip as a warning. Or a trophy. He watched me, the flame in his eyes slowly fading.
“Do you want me to end your suffering?” I asked.
“No, no,” he wheezed. Fluid trickled from the sides of his mouth, down his cheek. “I . . . wish to . . . think.” He coughed up more blood and turned his attention to the sky, seeing something that I could not. I watched his soul evaporate like condensation when one breathes on a pane of glass, drying up without a trace. I had a knee-jerk pang of sympathy but remembered that if I had not stopped him, he’d likely be raping my girls right then instead. I started rummaging through his equipment.
I loosened his belt and put it on my own waist, scabbard and sword included. I examined the shield, trying to decide if it would be more of an advantage to have or not. I liked my flexibility and tended to play offensively, but I couldn’t ignore the notion that, every once in a while, there was no better alternative to putting a wall between you and your opponent. I decided to bring it along. If I felt it was a burden, I could always drop it or, more likely, give it to one of the girls.
Then, I surveyed our handiwork, hands on my hips. We had taken down some real soldiers—outnumbered four to one, no less. That spoke volumes to me. The hurdle we had just overcome was far more of a threat than the one we had faced on Santorini, and it did wonders for my confidence in this strange new land. I unsheathed the sword, feeling its weight in my hands. It felt a little awkward and clunky—the shield more so. I was not used to fighting close range with something so heavy. I’d have to practice, but it was definitely an upgrade to what I’d been using. My MMA and combat training had proven useful so far, but my luck was going to run out if I didn’t make an effort to adapt.
I pushed the shield forward, bashing an invisible enemy back, and chopped at him while he was caught off guard. Not too bad, I thought. I repeated the move but followed up with a stab instead. “I can get the hang of this.”
I didn’t bother with their armor, deciding it would be too cumbersome. Although, I did try on one of those goofy-looking helmets to see how much it obscured their field of view. The answer was a lot. I heard Helen giggling and removed it to see her hunkered down over by one of the others. She was watching me, amused.
She retrieved her dagger from his face and unsheathed his sword, saying, “I am excited to play with this new big knife.” She tucked it into her belt, opposite her other blades. I wondered then if, being at least part robot, she was ambidextrous. My robo-hands weren’t, but that was more of an issue with how my brain worked and not the hands themselves.
Cressida had not moved much from behind her tree. Helen greeted her with a smirk and drew her new toy back out, pointing it in the other girl’s direction.
“Come, little one. You say you know this road well? Show us the way so that you can return safely to your people.”
23
We pressed on for several more hours, still travelling parallel to the road but taking cover when it was available. It was hardly past noon after the fight, and I was already exhausted. If it wasn’t enough that I never got around to sleeping the night before, the fight really did me in. I’d suffered many a sleepless night in the navy, but all the extra exertion weighed on me. I huffed at the memory of the water barrel ordeal and the Cyclops before that. To top it all off, I had just duked it out with eight well-trained soldiers. By some miracle, I managed to keep standing.
Cressida and Helen both said we had about three days’ worth of walking inland. I did not think to ask if that accounted for sleep breaks. I assumed it did but was too tired to verify. There were a lot of things I had not thought to ask. For instance, I still had no real idea who the hell Cressida was, what the hell she was doing on that island, or what had put that bruise on her head. I cared less and less the more tired I got.
I hadn’t found time to ask Helen about the specifics of her condition either—whether or not she was growing human organs or if it was all still machinery under the hood. That was not something I had forgotten; I was just waiting for an opportunity to get us alone after she cooled down about the whole Cressida thing.
We passed by a handful of houses as we went. All of them had been ransacked. I figured one of those would be as good a place as any to rest, and if we were going to rest at all, sooner was better.
“Let’s bunk here tonight,” I said, stopping in front of a charred stone husk that was once a home. “I need to rest after everything. I haven’t gotten any sleep since before we found you, Cressida.”
“Oh, my!” she exclaimed. “How are you still walking around? This makes your victory over those curs even more impressive.”
I smiled at her and winked. “All in a day’s work.”
“Yes, you must rest for your strength,” she said.
Helen stretched her arms to the sky and let out a long, dramatic yawn. “Ahh . . . I, too, am exhausted.” Her statement caught me off guard. She had said before that she didn’t need sleep like humans do, and I never figured out exactly what that meant. Maybe I was about to see firsthand. “Cressida, dear, since you do not need your strength for battle, I think it would be a good idea for you to keep watch—out here—for several hours.”
“That would be wise,” Cressida said.
“Then it is settled. Come, Troy.” She opened the door and invited me in. I took my bag from Cressida before making my way through the threshold.
I expected to walk in on the gory remains of a dead family but had no such luck. I hoped that whoever lived in the place was all right, tucked away somewhere safer. The fire had burned just about everything away, but at least the structure was still standing.
“Water?” I offered Helen a bottle from my backpack as I sat it by the door.
She waved it away and moved to pull my blanket out, spreading it in the center of the floor.
“It’s not the most comfortable way to sleep, but I’ve dealt with worse. Does it work for you, Helen?”
“I will be able to manage, Troy,” she said with a dirty grin. “Let us lay, if you please.”
She curled close around me the moment my back hit the sheet. I placed both hands behind my head, looking up. The roof was entirely gone except for the blackened trusses meant to support it. Several of them still maintained their anchors to each other, but most had burned their vital joints away. Lu
cky for us it was not raining.
The sky was a vibrant red. Night would be on us soon. I hoped we could make it through in peace. With luck, any travelling soldiers would pass us by with no more than a fleeting glance, assuming everything of value had already been raided.
I felt her hand slide into my pants. Here we go, I thought.
“Your body is moving you like want me,” she whispered into my ear.
Well, you do have your hands on my crotch, I thought. “Why do I get the feeling you were only pretending to be tired to get us alone?”
“How intuitive you are, Troy Weston.”
She kissed my cheek and followed up with a lick. I drank in the cinnamon as she rubbed her covered breasts against my side. I could feel her nipples pressing through. It felt like a silk cloth had my groin in a chokehold. She was ready.
“She’s right outside, Helen,” I whispered. “She’ll hear us.”
“It is only fair, is it not, Troy? I heard you with her. I even peeked inside a few times.” Her massaging became gentler. Her advances were getting harder to resist. “Do you not want me?” Stroke. “I have made my intentions clear to you.” Stroke.
“I mean, yeah I do, but . . .” Her tongue buried itself in my mouth. Stroke.
I couldn’t take it any longer. She kissed me harder, her tongue constantly probing, insistent that I play back. I pulled her tunic down and saw that devious grin creep across the sides of her face. My hand was on her breast. In every way, she felt like a real woman. In every way, my body responded to her as if she were.
The air grew hot around us. We tore each other’s clothes off in a storm of passion, scattering them all over the floor. No longer was I worried about that other girl or the noise or even soldiers who might happen by at any minute.
I had her on her hands and knees, and I swam inside. She moaned in ecstasy with each push, giggled every time I withdrew. She whipped her head around, her dark curls flinging to the side, and playfully bit at me in the air like an animal. I thrust harder, and at each peak a momentary look of shock flashed over her face, only to be replaced by her devilish grin.
I turned her on her back and had her hold her legs up while I dived in again. She looked at me with an expression of overwhelming joy, halfway between a smile and euphoric dissociation. It was like she had one foot in reality and the other in a world of bliss. Her hands dropped to her chest, and she squeezed her breasts together, moaning. I held her legs up and kept going. She moaned louder.
I was a king then, towering over this goddess who had given herself to me. This was a woman for whom many men had died. Many more still were willing to kill for her, and I had just soared to the top of the list myself. The thought that I was with such a woman, doing what I was doing, made me feel invincible. I was the Hulk. I was Thor. I was Zeus. No one could strike me down.
She reached out to grab my waist, her face blushing, sweat running down her forehead. She tried to pull me to her with each thrust. She couldn’t do much, but I heard the message loud and clear. Keep going.
She wailed at the top of her lungs. It was like she wanted the other girl to hear, and in the moment, I didn’t give a shit. She deserved everything from me.
Our thighs slapped together, and I thought of how I saved her from the Cyclops and the rush that had been. I thought of our fight with the Thirians and with the Greeks soldiers mere hours ago. I imagined the many more fights we were sure to see and how amazing they would all feel. But it would be hard to match the way I felt right then.
Suddenly she screamed, digging her nails into my sides. Her chest heaved upward, leaving her head turned back on the blanket like it wanted to detach and roll off. The tendons in her neck exposed themselves in the strain. I imaged no man had ever seen her so vulnerable, especially not my Helen. She spilled over me, and I shot inside. Wow.
I wiped off and put my clothes back on, noticing this time that I felt no guilt about what happened. I tried not to dwell on it and focused instead on getting some sleep. I lay back down, and Helen snuggled up to me, lazily tracing a figure eight over my brow.
“That was amazing. I have never done that before,” she said.
I was more relaxed than I had been since I arrived in that strange land. My consciousness was on its way out the door when Cressida came in.
“I have decided that I am too tired to keep watch. I think it would be dangerous and irresponsible for me to continue as I am. I need rest,” she said. Her tone was even, almost robotically so, like she had rehearsed before the intrusion. Her expression and the way she wildly observed us betrayed her anxiety. Normally, I would have felt bad for her, but I was in no state of mind to be concerned with such trivial things.
Helen turned to me with her mischievous grin but spoke to Cressida. “I do not need to sleep like you, little one. Have your rest. I will take watch.” She ran her finger across my forehead one more time before getting up and making a show of slowly putting her clothes on.
I watched her hips swing as she went out, my body still thrumming like a bowstring. Even then she echoed in every bone; I was high with her sensation. Cressida had not even come to join me on the blanket before I drifted off, greeting what would be the best sleep I had in ages.
24
Neither of them were in the room when I awoke, having slept at least twelve hours. The sun was shining through the open ceiling. I was happy to get the rest—I could not remember the last time I had slept that well—but I was annoyed that they hadn’t woken me. We had a war to fight, after all, so on went my equipment.
The girls were both sitting on the ground outside at opposite ends of the house. Helen was munching an apple and looking thoughtfully off into the distance. Cressida sat cross-legged and was running her fingers through the grass.
“You have awakened!” Helen grinned, turning to me. She gestured over her shoulder behind the house and said, “There are several apple trees over there if you wish to have some. I did not think it wise to dip into our rations when food is already here.”
Cressida turned to watch us but did not say anything.
“Good idea,” I said and went around to grab a fruit.
The taste was surprising. I expected this old-timey ancient fruit to be more bitter or less juicy than what I was used to, but it was just like some of the apples back home—maybe better. I looked it over, making absolutely sure I wasn’t going to swallow a barcode sticker, and came back around to meet the girls.
“Why didn’t either of you wake me?” I asked.
“You needed your sleep,” Helen said. “We have a long day ahead, and you must be in shape to protect us.” She got to her feet and turned to Cressida. “Lead the way.”
We traveled for another couple hours until we came across an intersection. It must have been noon. There were several random scatterings of ruined houses along the way, but no one, save for a handful of corpses, greeted us as we passed.
We stopped for a moment at the crossroads as Cressida turned to us. “This road will take us to Ilium. We should reach the city before tomorrow evening if we have no delays.”
“Yes, and then we shall part ways,” Helen said, smiling. She did not even try to hide her excitement.
“Yes, and then we will part.” Cressida nodded solemnly.
The rest of that day was fairly uneventful. We walked on until nightfall and did not encounter another soul. The breaks we took were few and short, and Cressida mentioned that we were travelling at a faster pace than she anticipated. With every step I took, my excitement grew. Soon, I would be in the city that only existed in legend in my time. Not only that, but I would help liberate it from invaders if at all possible. I prepared myself to witness the most impressive display of warfare I had yet to see, part of me hoping to be let down for the sake of the lives that might be lost, and another part of me wanting to see both sides delivering everything they had. Few things in life compared to the primal passion of battle. Many would disagree, but war was an artform as old as the human race
itself, and the outcome of battles shaped history.
There I was in the past—or some alternate version of it—preparing to rewrite the history known to my time. The concept was an internal struggle I’d been dealing with since the truth had slowly dawned on me over the last couple days. I couldn’t worry about what would happen to me or my life back home if I were to change the course of history. All I knew in that moment was that I was still alive and kicking, and that was enough for me. Perhaps I could even find a better life in this strange new world. Maybe my fortune, my destiny, was on the other side of this war, inside the walls of Ilium.
It was not long after the sun dropped out of sight that we decided to rest. We had run across another destroyed home, very much like the previous one except that there were neighboring residences on either side—also burned. We scoped them all out and chose the one we felt would provide the best cover.
We opened the door to a sickening image of what remained of the family that had lived there. It was apparent that the father had done all he could to protect his wife and daughter, but to no avail.
The man had been impaled several times and left on the floor. The monsters had then moved on to defile both women before ending their lives in equally gruesome manners. My heart cried out for them, and I vowed that the next group of Greek soldiers unlucky enough to come my way would die in their name.
Cressida whimpered at the sight and dug her face into my shoulder. “I do not want to stay here tonight, Troy.”
“This is the best shelter around for us. We should not take any risks if we don’t have to. I will bury them and we can make do for the night.”
I looked around for a shovel but couldn’t find one. It wasn’t the most efficient tool, but I found a large pan and set to work behind the house. I laid the family in a row along the grass so the girls could stay inside and not have to see them.
After slinging so many pans full of dirt, I could not help but to look over at the poor saps. The two women, lying there dead and disrespected in the most horrible way, were all too real an illustration of what may have become of the women under my care had I not been able to protect them. It was by some miracle that I was able to handle those troops the previous day. The world I found myself in was a jungle. It seemed like a single wrong move could lead to dire consequences. But, I thought, such is war. Such is life. I kept digging.
Gears of Troy: A Scifi Fantasy Harem Page 10