“I’ve got your back, Daniel,” she said firmly. “But what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to make you look really badass for a few months, until whoever is still alive figures out what really happened. Then they’re going to look back at this shitstorm, and decide that messing with me is not worth the pain. Now come on, we’ve got a fight to get ready for.”
Chapter 19
The weekly brawl for possession of Aphrodite’s leash was a popular event. Judgement Square was packed with a teeming throng of men and elves, all gathered to watch the duels. There were no children in the crowd, but aside from that detail it reminded me of any sporting event I’d ever been to. There were even vendors moving through the crowd hawking snacks and drinks, and a couple of booths where bookies were taking bets.
A broad wooden stage dominated the center of the square, and in the middle of that were the stocks Aphrodite had mentioned. We arrived just as she was bending over to put her wrists and neck in the round hollows of the device’s lower half. A guard lowered the top half into place, leaving her trapped with her head sticking out one side of the heavy wooden board and her naked body on the other side.
Come to think of it, half the crowd was probably here just to see her naked. Even from a distance her beauty was stunning, and the way she swayed and wagged her butt was guarantee to draw in more contestants.
The guards attached the shackles on her ankles to heavy chains anchored to the stage, and then backed away. An armored warrior who must have been seven feet tall reluctantly took off the ring he was wearing, and hung it from a hook on the front of the stocks right above Aphrodite’s head. Then he turned to face the crowd with a determined scowl, one hand resting on the massive axe hung from a loop on his belt.
A dwarf with gleaming gold bands on his tusks stepped up onto the stage, and raised his hands.
“Warriors and wenches, welcome to this week’s Battle for Beauty’s Leash!”
A cheer went up from the crowd. The dwarf waited for the noise to die down before he went on, his deep voice booming across the plaza.
“That’s right, everyone. We’ve got the hottest slut in Asgard right here for your viewing pleasure. Shake that ass, slut! Are you ready for a new master?”
“New master, old master, what do I care?” Aphrodite called out, her sultry tones somehow penetrating the general din to caress my ears. “I haven’t been fucked in hours, and my pussy is getting desperate for a big cock. Come on, studs, are you ready to show me who’s boss? If you want a piece of this sweet ass, come up here and take it!”
“There you have it, folks! Right from the grand slut herself. Gorash, are you going to let some young punk take that sweet pussy away from you?”
“Hell, no!” The giant warrior shouted. “Come and try me, boys. I’ll kill any man who steps on stage!”
“We’ll see about that,” the announcer called. “The rules are the same as always, warriors. One challenger at a time, and once you step onto the stage there’s no backing out. Keep your power focused, because if you destroy the stage or kill anyone in the crowd you’re disqualified. But other than that, anything goes, and the first man to win ten challenges in a row gets those sweet tits all to himself for a week. Step on up, warriors! Who’s ready to try his luck?”
There was a group of men gathered around the steps, but no one seemed especially eager to go first. That was sensible enough. The fight would be easier if they let someone else wear Gorash down first, and maybe eliminate some of their rivals.
“How are you going to do this?” Mara asked. “These guys are the best fighters Valhalla has to offer, and with those rules you can’t use most of your magic. You’re not all that good with a sword, are you?”
“Who said I was going to be fighting?” I replied. “That would be stupid. Alanna, are you up for this?”
The wooden armor I wore shifted and shrank, fading away in the blink of an eye as Alanna stepped out of it. She wore an odd suit of light armor that reminded me a bit of the style the ancient Greeks had used. Supple leather covered her torso, with a steel breastplate protecting her chest and a skirt of leather strips faced with steel hanging down over her thighs. Steel bracers protected her forearms, and an open-faced helm covered most of her head, but her legs and feet were completely bare.
“I am ready, Daniel,” she said confidently. “Shall I eke out a narrow victory against the odds, or would you like to make a statement?”
Mara stared at her. “You’re sending Alanna to fight? Are you sure that’s a good idea? Half those guys are going to think it’s an insult, and they’ll take it out on her.”
Alanna patted her cheek. “Sweet girl, you need have no fear for my fate. Have you forgotten who I am?”
“I want you to smack them down pretty hard,” I said. “We can’t afford to have a bunch of sore losers following us around making trouble, so I want them to know they’ve been beaten.”
“Then fill me with your power, my wizard, and I shall crush every foe who stands against me,” Alanna said confidently.
I focused on our bond, and sent a rush of mana flowing down it to join the ocean of power she already held. Her mana capacity was absurdly huge by now, and still growing fast enough that I suspected she’d built some kind of storage device in her private pocket dimension. But I wasn’t going to run out, so I didn’t mind feeding her all the power she could want.
She shivered, and her eyes lidded. “Wonderful,” she breathed. “That’s my wizard. Always ready to drown me in his essence. Cheer me on, then, while I work your will. This should be entertaining.”
She swaggered off into the crowd, projecting an aura of bad girl confidence so thick you could cut it with a knife. Mara watched her go with a worried frown.
“I hope you know what you’re doing here, Daniel. Asgard’s heroes are bad news. Most of those guys are as tough as demigods by now, and they’ve been training to fight Loki’s army for hundreds of years.”
“That’s why I’m not going up there,” I said. “You’re right, the only way I can fight that kind of skill is if I make it irrelevant by blowing up the whole area. But that cuts both ways. Tell me something. How long do you think Alanna has been training to fight?”
“I know she’s old, Daniel. But she doesn’t even have a sword!”
I shrugged. “She’s older than swords, Mara. Metalworking has only existed for, what, maybe a fourth of her life? Hell, she probably remembers when spears were the big new thing. Trust her to know the best weapon for a fight.”
“A fourth? No, she can’t be that old, can she?”
Some overconfident kid had gone up to fight Gorash and gotten his ass kicked while we were talking, which made me glad we hadn’t waited any longer to make our move. A couple of armored dwarves dragged the body off the stage, and the announcer stepped back up.
“That’s one victory for Gorash! Who will be next?”
Alanna leaped over the whole crowd of warriors that was gathered at the foot of the steps, and landed lightly on the stage.
“I shall do battle next,” she announced boldly.
There was a moment of stunned silence, before the crowd erupted in astonished murmurs.
“A woman?” Gorash growled. “Is this some kind of joke? You aren’t even armed!”
“Do you fear me so much, that you make foolish excuses? I am never unarmed.”
Alanna held out her hand, and a spear of living wood grew from her palm to fill it. Little leaves sprouted from the shaft here and there, but the tip was steel.
“Is she a dryad?” Someone said.
“No, it must be a magic spear,” another objected. “No dryad can shape metal.”
“Who are you, stranger?” The announcer asked.
“I am-”
“Alanna Firescorn!” Aphrodite exclaimed. “I thought you died in the Fall!”
“I am not so easily disposed of.”
Aphrodite laughed. “That’s just like you, Daughter of Spring. But what ar
e you doing in Asgard?”
“You don’t think I came just to see the magnificent bitch in chains? Perhaps I want payback, for what you did to Pythagoras.”
“Are you still upset about that? Well, come on, then. Cut a bloody path through these grunting savages, and we’ll see if you can tame me.”
“All challengers are welcome,” the announcer declared. “Man or woman, centaur or giant, it makes no difference under the Allfather’s decree. Take your places, warriors. Ready? Begin!”
Gorash unlimbered his axe, and charged Alanna with a war cry that shook the stage. But the ancient dryad wasn’t intimidated at all. She met his rush squarely, stepping into his swing and stopping it cold with her hand on the shaft of the axe. The tip of her spear flashed up to lay his unguarded throat open, and a fountain of blood erupted to shower the stage.
Gorash staggered back two steps, and collapsed. Alanna twirled her spear and turned back to the announcer, not a hair out of place. The blood hadn’t even touched her, thanks to a ward of force magic she’d thrown up at the last moment.
“Next.”
“Whoa,” Mara breathed. “She’s good. Was she always that good? She didn’t seem like anything special back in Kozalin.”
“When did you see enough of her to know how she fights?” I asked.
“What, you think I didn’t scout out the competition? I spent way too much time on that mission trying to figure you all the crazy stuff you were doing.”
“Oh. Well, Alanna doesn’t usually show off without a good reason,” I explained. “No matter how skilled she is she’s just a dryad, and she doesn’t have a lot of raw power to throw around when she’s on her own. But give her a good wizard to bond with, and that’s another story.”
“Raw power is pretty much your specialty,” Mara agreed. “Was she using your force magic there?”
I nodded, but Aphrodite’s laughter drew my attention back to the stage.
“Silly Grunt, don’t you know dryads get stronger with age? This one could wrestle a frost giant, at least for a minute or two. You’ll have to make her use up her magic before you can beat her that way.”
“Brute force is for humans,” scoffed an elegantly dressed Vanir man as he took the stage. “Let’s see how you fare against one who can match your speed, and turn your own nature against you.”
“I already have a wizard,” Alanna declared. “And his… power… is much larger than yours.”
The elf scowled, and drew a pair of short swords. “Then we can do this the hard way.”
I wasn’t sure what this guy’s trick would be, but he didn’t keep me in suspense for long. As he closed in his blades suddenly burst into flames, and started leaving burning trails in the air behind them as they moved. He fought with sweeping, flamboyant movements that filled the space around him with fire as his blades clashing with Alanna’s spear.
When he couldn’t break through her guard, he took a deep breath and exhaled a gout of flame that completely enveloped her. That proved to be a mistake, though, because a moment later the point of her spear emerged from the conflagration to punch through his fancy shirt. The flames died away to reveal Alanna mostly unharmed, with just a bit of her hair burned away.
The elf retreated, dropping a sword to fumble at his belt pouch while his blood fountained from the wound. Alanna didn’t give him any respite, though, and when his hand came out with a potion in it she darted through his guard and deftly severed his arm at the elbow. With a second mortal wound gushing blood it wasn’t long before he collapsed.
“Oh ho, what’s this? A magic edge on your blades? That’s a new trick for you, Alanna,” Aphrodite observed. “Who is this wizard of yours?”
“Are your eyes failing you already? You saw us together but a few days ago. Next.”
Aphrodite’s eyes went wide, and then she turned her head to look over the crowd as best she could. After a moment she found me.
I smiled, and waved. Mara put her arm around me, and rested her chin on my shoulder.
Aphrodite’s delighted look almost made me reconsider this whole ploy.
Alanna’s next couple of opponents were nothing special for this crowd. Just big, tough guys who knew how to fight, and had enchanted weapons and armor to back up their skills and natural power. But they’d seen enough of her moves now that they took her seriously as an opponent, and didn’t make any dumb mistakes. Instead each fight dragged on for long minutes, filled with furious exchanges of blows and brief flashes of magic.
My dryad was burning power at an amazing rate to match their enhanced physical abilities, but it didn’t matter. Unlike my puny mortal self she could channel immense amounts of power without straining herself, and as long as she had mana little things like fatigue or injuries were no problem. The minor cuts and bruises her opponents managed to inflict faded away in moments, and she wasn’t even breathing hard.
Either of those guys would have wrecked me if I’d tried to fight them fair, though. Was Brand just overestimating me, or had he sent me here expecting that I’d lose?
Great. Now I had to worry what he was playing at, on top of everything else.
Opponent number five was another elf, but this one was a lot trickier than the first. The moment the announcer started the match he spread a handful of tiny stones onto the stage, which sprouted into a multitude of caltrops. Then he started casting a spell.
In the blink of an eye Alanna’s spear became a bow, and she loosed an arrow that gleamed with force magic at him. He broke off his casting to swat it away with his staff, but she was already loosing another. For a few moments he was pinned down by a furious barrage of arrows, forced to parry or block every shot because his own caltrop field kept him from dodging.
Then one of the arrows stopped in midair behind him, spun around, and came zooming back in to impale him from behind. The fight didn’t last long after that.
“See that, boys?” Aphrodite crowed. “Better watch yourselves around Alanna. She’s a back door kind of girl, but it’s not her who gets it from behind.”
“When in Athens, do as the Athenians do,” Alanna said. “Besides, shouldn’t you be over that by now? You can’t tell me you didn’t enjoy it.”
“Oh, I thought it was hilarious. But then I had to listen to Athena bitch about all her ruined plans for two hundred years. Her boy hero was supposed to sail off to despoil some Asian princess and kill a bunch of monsters, not lose his confidence and retire early.”
“It’s hardly my fault that he couldn’t handle what he dished out,” Alanna objected. “But perhaps that sort of battle would amuse you more? I believe I still have Big Don packed away somewhere.”
Another burly, bearded man stepped up onto the stage, and spat. “Woman, you’re going to regret that. I usually leave these battles to the young champions, so they can prove themselves. But it will be a cold day in Muspelheim before I let you get away with mocking our brave warriors and their sacred customs.”
Alanna blinked at him uncertainly. “You have sacred customs that involve buggery? Well, that changes my impression of Valhalla. Do the hall wenches grow penises after midnight, or is it the new recruits bending over for the veterans?”
The man’s face went red, and his hand went to his sword. “Insolent wench. I was talking about the Battle for Beauty’s Leash.”
“Since when is murdering each other for the right to be some woman’s next rapist a sacred rite? Ah, but I can hardly complain when I’m participating, can I? Tell me your name, so I know where to send the wergild.”
“I am General Boril, commander of the Gray Raven Army, and I’d be back tomorrow even if you could best me. But no slip of a girl is going to defeat a thousand year veteran. I’ll teach you that your place isn’t on the battle field, wench.”
“Do you think that I have lived for twenty thousand summers without learning my own nature, young man? Dryads are a dream of nature bound to man’s will by lust, and I welcome every night of service to my master. But no warrior’s mi
ghty thews can bend my heart, for wit and wisdom are my weaknesses. So come try your sword against a wizard’s pet, and we’ll see if cold steel can defeat sorcery today.”
“Bold words, but if your wizard is so great why isn’t he up here?”
“For the same reason that your gods don’t let their sons do battle here,” Alanna replied. “He specializes in blowing things up, and the stage would never survive. Besides, I’m the one who wants to claim the bitch.”
“That’s magnificent bitch to you, mana slut,” Aphrodite put in.
Alanna’s lips twitched. “Do I need to muzzle you, bitch? That wood is warded against you, not me.”
“Ooh, that’s a great idea! Gag me with a big wooden dick,” Aphrodite suggested eagerly. “Shut me up good until you’re ready to tame me.”
Alanna rolled her eyes. “As if you were sane enough to tame. If you keep annoying me I may just order you to stand completely still and silent, and then put you in a closet and ignore you all week.”
Aphrodite pouted like a little girl. “Meanie. Alright, go on and kick everyone’s butts for me. I’ll be a good girl.”
“Those two have a lot of history, don’t they?” Mara murmured in my ear.
“Apparently. I’ll have to ask her about it when I get a chance.”
“Good idea. It’s kind of fun to watch them go at it, but the more they ignore Boril the more pissed off he gets. I wonder if they’re doing it on purpose?”
“I’m more interested by the fact that the announcer hasn’t interrupted them to get the fight started. The way he keeps looking at Aphrodite, I’m starting to think she’s the one who’s really running this show.”
“What? Don’t be stupid, Daniel. No woman would ever help arrange her own rape.”
My reply was interrupted by the announcer finally stepping in to call for the start of the match. I dropped the conversation, expecting things to get loud and violent very quickly. But Boril was too cagey for that, and instead he merely settled into a stance and met Alanna’s gaze for several long seconds.
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