by Eric Ugland
So I threw it as hard as I could.
“Hammer,” I shouted over my shoulder. I reached back without looking, and felt a hammer haft in my hand.
I closed in on two minotaurs, one with two horns and one missing a left horn. I leapt.
Two-horns got the shield while one-horn got the hammer. Two-horns tried to block my shield bash with his maul, but I had a little more oomph behind it than he was expecting. Soon his maul, and my shield, went into his face.
One-horn swung with a spiked mace, but either he was mad at Two-horns or he wasn’t paying attention to where people were, because that swing missed me and went straight into Two-horns. The spikes punched through the armor and lodged into the big bull’s belly.
My hammer came down on one-horn’s one horn, invalidating his nickname. There was a sharp crack, and the horn fell off.
No-horn, née One-horn, roared in anger. Two-horn roared in pain. I landed on the other side of them, skidding slightly before getting both feet planted. I bent low and swung a really great backhand straight into the side of Two-horn’s knee.
The knee went sideways, and the minotaur fell to the ground, the spiked mace still in his stomach, ripping it out of No-horn’s hands.
No-horn roared again, and pulled a sword from his belt. He lifted said sword high and prepared to stab me when a spear came out of his gullet.
I saw a grinning lutra behind him — Ragnar coming through.
Three minotaurs charged from the west, with nothing but a lone snowbold standing in the way, setting his spear and ready to take the charge.
I hurdled the bodies in front of me and threw my warhammer at the minotaurs. Then I snatched Two-horn’s maul off the ground.
The warhammer slammed into the middle charging minotaur. I launched into the air as Vreggork closed his eyes, his hands shaking on the spear.
CLANG.
My shield hit the lead minotaur in the head from the side, perfectly sending me ass-over-tea-kettle so that I landed sitting on the next minotaur’s head, one horn to my front, one horn to my rear. Minotaur two lost his balance, what with me on his head, and I rode him down to the ground. As soon as my foot was on the dirt, I got the maul coming around and went straight into the minotaur’s face, which was currently at ground level, I got rid of his snout. It was just a bloody pulp.
Then it was just me and one minotaur. He was busy shaking his head after the impact with the shield.
I gave the maul a little twirl and did a foot-over-foot sidestep until I was in front of him.
The minotaur narrowed his eyes and glared at me, also getting into a fighting position.
“You’re a mercenary, right?” I asked.
He frowned, then nodded once, curt.
“Let me guess,” I started, “normally you’d just try and rip my head off, kill me like your contract states, right?”
Another curt nod.
“But you’re looking around and realizing that I’ve done a pretty stellar job taking you fucks apart, and you’re wondering who I am. And if you can succeed by yourself when all your buddies failed.”
“Maybe,” he said in a gruff, guttural voice.
“You like the guy you work for?”
“No.”
“Are you bound by a contract?”
“Yes.”
“How does it end?”
“With you being dead.”
“There’s no fail state?”
“Fail state?”
“Is it a you die or I die sort of thing?”
“I have not read the contract.”
“Why is that?”
“I...” he hesitated. “Don’t know how to read.”
“So you don’t know what the contract says. Might be that you just need to make a good effort at killing me.”
“I guess.”
“Which you might have done.”
“I suppose,” he said, lowering his gargantuan sword a little.
In return, I relaxed my weapons, just a little.
“Maybe,” I said, “and I’m just spitballing here, but maybe this whole mercenary life isn’t at all what you were thinking it might be? Working for some asshole who has no respect for you or your kind? Who threw you into a situation where he knew you were going to get killed, because he wanted the glory for himself. He just wanted y’all to soften me up.”
“Possible.”
“You thinking you might want a career change? Become a farmer or something less, you know, about to be murdered-y?”
He took a moment to think about that. I watched his sword go even lower.
“Who are you?” he finally asked.
“Duke of Coggeshall. Slayer of Worms and Wyrms and I’m willing to bet my kill count is higher than most you’ve encountered. You, and your buddies here, were never on my list of enemies. I’d prefer if you were on my list of friends. I like minotaurs. And don’t take this the way it’s going to sound, but one of my best friends is a minotaur. Lovely guy. Takes care of the animals in Coggeshall. He’s awesome at it, but probably needs some help. We’re a growing town.”
The minotaur looked genuinely confused. Now his sword grazed the dirt. He was not at all ready to fight. And in looking at him, I realized there was definitely one major problem with minotaurs in battle. Their horns made helmets really hard to fit on their heads. None of these guys had been wearing helmets. Arrows to the face would be insanely useful against them. I made a mental note for later — you know, should I need to face down minotaurs again.
“Are you...” he started then stopped, “are you inviting me to join your, uh, town?”
“Are you the honorable sort?” I asked. “Looking for a good life in a good place dedicated to making a home where people can raise a family in safety?”
“That is what you are doing?”
“I mean, that’s the goal.”
“And you have minotaurs there already?”
“We do,” I said, neglecting to let him know it was just the one who wasn’t actually a minotaur so much as an Earth-dude who became a minotaur. “And lots of others. Humans, dwarves, battenti, elves, kitsune-girls, kobolds, and a really grumpy asshole who hates shiny pebbles.”
That made the big guy smile just a little.
“You won’t be mad that we tried to kill you?” he asked, suddenly worried.
“Lots of people have tried to kill me, but I’d only be upset with y’all if you’d succeeded. You were lied to, Bub. You were made a pawn by an asshole who’s tried to kill me several times, and still failed.”
I noticed the big guy look over my shoulder.
One of the minotaurs who I’d speared earlier was standing rather jankily upright, armor tossed to the side, one huge hand holding an obvious dent in his chest where he’d probably broken a bunch of ribs.
“I will go,” Broken-ribs said, “if you will take a wounded warrior.”
“We take all types,” I said, and I dropped the maul.
“I will go as well,” called out a weak voice from the grass, another minotaur having trouble getting to his feet.
“Go help him,” I told Vreggork.
The little snowbold ran over, and dutifully tried to get the minotaur to his feet.
“If you swear allegiance to me,” I said, “then you’ll all be part of the Coggeshall family.”
“I swear my allegiance to you, Duke of Coggeshall,” said one Minotaur. Then another. And another.
“MONTANA!” came a cry from the tree line where the rest of my group was.
“Never ends. Skeld, help these guys here. I’ll see what the screaming’s for.”
In short order, there were nine new members of Coggeshall. Eight quite wounded, but Skeld was busy distributing healing potions as I sprinted for the tree line.
Chapter Fifty-Five
I got to the tree line just in time to see Bear get snagged by Wulf.
Tarryn and Amber were in bloody heaps, and Meikeljan stood at the base of a tree, eyes wide. Not moving.
Wulf had the brownie in his paw, and was squeezing her hard enough to make her eyes bulge. He had a bloody short sword in his other paw, and he glared at me, eyes more than a little crazy.
“Mind explaining things before I jump to insane conclusions, Wulf?” I asked.
“You do not belong here,” he said. “This is the land of the--“
“Let me just stop you right there. Which team are you playing for? Ursus or corrupted ursus?”
“My hand was forced, I had to take the offer of power in order to rid the world of you.”
“Whoops.”
“Whoops?”
“Well, You failed on that one, did you? I’m still here.”
He started laughing.
“You do not understand,” he said. “You will never reach the ritual in time, and the great—”
I held up a hand, and for whatever reason, he stopped his inane rant. I dug into my character sheet real quick, and pulled up my abilities. Time to use something I’d been avoiding because it seemed so immoral and wrong. Time to force someone to tell the truth.
I used veritasium.
“Where is the ritual taking place?” I asked.
“It is up the mountain three miles, in a cave at the west end of the Valley of Spears,” Wulf said. A shocked look came over his face. “How—”
I snatched the dagger at my belt, and threw it hard.
Straight in the traitorous asshole’s eye, right up to the hilt.
His other eye stared at me, but then he fell over backward.
I darted to the body and wrenched his paw open. Bear gasped for air.
“Meikeljan,” I snapped, “over here, and heal her.”
“I can’t,” he sobbed back at me.
“Check the others,” Bear got out through what sounded like ruined vocal cords. “Am fine.”
I’d almost forgotten about them, but I went over, they were in rough shape. Multiple stab wounds to each, lots of blood loss, and barely a pulse.
Reaching across the bloody bodies, I grabbed Meikeljan by his tiny robe, and wrenched him until our noses were touching.
“Heal them,” I snarled.
“I can’t,” he said, his voice quavering and his body shivering.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Eona has left me,” he replied.
“SKELD!” I shouted, “need those healing potions here. Now!”
“Yup!” Skeld hollered back, and I heard him running.
“You want to explain to me why these people have to die?” I asked. “What did you do?”
“I listened to Wulf” Meikeljan said “And I started to believe him. My faith wavered.”
“You believed that sack of shit? That the power he was getting from some other entity was the right stuff?” I pulled out my magic rock, and held it up. The light pointed up the mountain, in the vague direction of where Wulf had indicated under the truth spell. It wasn’t pinging off Meikeljan. “Get Eona down here and fix these two.”
“I—I—”
“You can’t?”
“No, my faith wavered and Eona has abandoned me.”
“Are you a traitor?”
“No!” he shouted.
Skeld was there, healing potions in his hands.
“Last two,” he said between breaths.
I snatched one. “Tarryn.”
I rolled Amber over gently and poured the potion into Amber’s mouth. I’m pretty sure I barely made it in time, because her eyes were glazing over a bit. Then, as the elixir went down her throat and the magic did its thing, her eyes got glossy, and she focused on my face.
She tried to speak, but something wasn’t working right.
“Relax,” I said, “you’re okay. We got you.”
Amber nodded, then closed her eyes. Her breathing was stable though. Her wounds didn’t exactly seal up completely, but the bleeding stopped. The healing potion had just been enough to keep her alive.
“How’s Tarryn?” I asked.
“Here,” Skeld said, “but barely. What happened here?”
“Treachery,” I said. “Wulf has been fucking us over the whole time. That’s probably why we kept ending up in shitty spots where everything was trying to fucking kill us.”
“Why?”
“Fuckhead,” Bear coughed out.
“What she said,” I said. “Seems like it’s the usual shit. Something offers power to those who want it, and those who take it have no idea what they just traded for the power.”
I looked over my shoulder and saw the minotaurs approaching, following Ragnar and Vreggork.
There was a big whoomp, and Fritz slammed down, landing with all the grace of an overladen box truck.
“Arm-eee,” he honked.
The minotaurs, looking marginally better than before, tried to get weapons out to attack the deep goose. It made me feel good that they were ready to fight for me, mistaken though they were.
“Stand down,” I said. “He’s a friend.”
“Arm-eee. Come-ing.”
“From?” I asked.
“Down.”
“Caticorix,” I hissed. “Did you guys know about this?”
“No,” the lone uninjured minotaur said. “We were told we were it.”
“Means that asshole was going to ride his army up here and kill y’all so he wouldn’t have to pay you.”
“He will pay for his treachery,” the uninjured one said.
“Yeah, definitely, but maybe not quite yet.”
I looked around, thinking hard, trying to categorize what I had. Nine minotaurs. One healthy, the others mostly so. Two lutra, healthy. One snowbold, fine. Maybe needing a change of pants. One Meikeljan asshole who was currently useless to me, but in theory, might either be a traitor or have his godly powers returned. Two nearly dead friends. One eight-headed monster goose.
“I know this is almost always a bad idea,” I said, “but we’re splitting the party.”
“Wha—” Ragnar started, but I held my hand up.
“No time to talk. We just have to do it. Ragnar, you are in charge of group one, and that’s everyone but me, Skeld, Bear, Meikeljan, and Fritz. Get our injured back to Coggeshall stat.”
“What does stat mean?”
“As fast as possible.”
“Back through the mountain?”
“No. I’m betting that if you follow where this road used to be, you’ll get to the valley.”
“We know how to get to Osterstadt from here,” the healthy minotaur said.
“Okay, so lead them there first. Go safely but fast. Skeld, give them some gold for expenses. We’ll see you back in Coggeshall.”
Skeld reached into the knapsack. He grabbed a pouch, and then peeked inside before grabbing a different pouch.
“And you?” Ragnar asked.
“Gotta finish the mission,” I said. I flipped the magic rock up into the air and watched the glowing point spin around. “Kill the corrupted ones. Save the world. That sort of thing.”
I looked over the group, and then over my shoulder at the clearing. No army yet.
“Get moving,” I said, “if Caticorix sees you, he’ll give chase.”
“We will keep them safe,” the minotaurs said.
“Godspeed.”
Chapter Fifty-Six
“Can you carry us?” I asked Fritz.
He just made a cartoon duck sort of a noise.
“That’s probably a no, eh?”
Eight goose heads were obviously disappointed in me.
“We’re going to head up that way,” I said, pointing up-mountain. “Do a little recon, make sure we’re going to be in the clear.”
A honk, and the giant eight-headed goose launched into the air.
“We’re going through the woods,” I said. “Meikeljan, Bear, you guys hoist on me. We need to move fast.”
Nods.
“You able to handle it, Bear?”
“I will manage.”
I knelt, and let the two climb on me, and then I starte
d jogging, getting deeper into the trees. Skeld stayed right on my tail, still carrying the bag. I passed back my shield, but had him pass an axe to me.
We moved at a decent clip, not completely silent, but quiet enough. I heard noise from the south, from the direction where Caticorix’s illusionary self had appeared. It was quickly followed by a loud goose honk.
I dropped to a knee, and Skeld followed suit. I could hear Meikeljan and Bear breathing, being that they were acting as my pauldrons. It was most definitely an odd feeling.
A big ol’ group of humans in armor came running up the hill and over the ridge line, pouring into the clearing with hollers and yells, waving weapons and making quite the ruckus.
The ones in front came to an awkward stop while the ones in the back continued forward, and there was a jumble as the back collided with the front.
One hell of an entrance.
It took a few minutes for the group to extricate themselves and reform into some semblance of order. I got a decent count of them, then: twenty-eight armored men and women. Most wore chain mail, some had breastplates, and two had leather armor. Those two had bows. As a group, they moved forward again, slow and quiet now, hunting.
We remained still and silent.
“Is this where we are supposed to be?” one of the humans asked.
“Caticorix said it was straight up to the clearing,” a woman answered. “Kill everything here.”
One of the men stomped on something.
“Killed everything,” he said. “One ugly fucking toad.”
A bit of laughter.
“There must be something here,” the woman said. “We would not have been sent on a snipe hunt for nothing—”
“I say we came here, we saw what we saw, we killed what we saw, and we go back down to pick up our gold!”
There were a few cheers. Then three of the figures moved close, and held a tight conference. I could tell that they were talking, but I had no idea what exactly was said. After their terse words, they split apart.
“We killed everything we saw,” the man said. “Right?”
“Right!” came the response as a chorus.
Then, the group turned around, and in a remarkably relaxed state, they headed back down the mountain.
I let them move a few minutes more, thanking the gods I’d put as many points into luck as I had. Then we continued.