God Conqueror 2

by Logan Jacobs

  “… But I don’t think the drummers recognize that,” Ilandere said thoughtfully as they continued to cower.

  “Hey, there, it’s all right,” I said in the same tone that I might use to soothe a spooked horse. “You guys, I don’t mean you any harm. I just want to talk. And my friends are real nice too. See how pretty they are?”

  “Don’t mean we’re nice,” Lizzy snickered unhelpfully.

  “Please,” I continued as I held up my hands in the universal gesture that demonstrated I wasn’t holding any weapons. “We’d really like to come in and see your camp. Looks like a real nice job you’ve done with it. Really impressive construction. And this fence here! Pretty much impenetrable to anyone you don’t want getting in, eh?”

  “You don’t have to lie to them, Vander,” Lizzy said. “Watch this.”

  I was afraid she was going to leap the fence, which of course I could have done easily myself, except that I wanted to set the drummers at ease and preserve their illusion that they had control over who could and couldn’t access their camp.

  But instead the she-wolf simply sashayed up next to me to press herself against the fence and blink her green eyes flirtatiously through a gap. Then she said in the sweetest, kindest, most soothing, and beguiling tone of voice I had ever heard come from her lips, “Now you listen up, fuckfaces. If you don’t get your sorry asses over here and open this fucking gate for us in the next minute, we’re gonna be obliged to bust our own way in, and I promise that you ain’t gonna like the consequences of that none whatsoever.”

  As she continued murmuring to them like an adoring mother to her frightened child, the drummers gradually picked themselves up off the ground, slunk out of their huts, and crept up to the fence to stare directly at us. I had to say they weren’t any more pleasant-looking up close. It was like some fucked-up god had decided to breed humans with monkeys. Then the bravest of the drummers reached out hesitantly to Lizzy through a gap in the fence. The she-wolf extended her clawed hand in return, and I held my breath for a second. Then she gingerly patted the drummer’s meaty oversized hand.

  “Uggauggaugga,” the drummer grunted in delight. Then he or she, it was too modestly dressed for me to be able to tell, scurried over to the fence gate, unbarred it, and swung it open.

  Chapter Four

  Lizzy snickered, blew me a kiss, and waltzed into the drummer compound first. All three of me followed on her heels. Florenia glided in surrounded by me. The centaurs came next, and Willobee brought up the rear. I could tell that the gnome was extremely uncomfortable with this situation, because his primary defense mechanism was his adept, some might even say occasionally duplicitous, way with words, and the drummers clearly didn’t have the capacity to be influenced by words. At least, not in the way that the gnome used them.

  The drummers didn’t ring us in with spear points or launch boulders at our heads. They just crowded around us docile as could be, never mind that many of them were still smeared with the blood of their two already forgotten dead companions. The expressions in their eyes were a mixture of fear, awe, and downright adoration. The latter was primarily directed at Lizzy, which went to show you how clever they were.

  But then as I again noticed the correlation between her furred ears, tail, and hindpaws and the wolf pelts that the drummers seemed to favor as garments, I wondered if there might be something more to their affinity with her than her little sweet-talking stunt.

  “They’re rather like children, aren’t they?” Ilandere remarked. “Er, Vander, I think… they’re waiting for you to tell them what to do.”

  “Hey, thanks for letting us in, guys,” I said.

  “That’s the only reason you’re still alive this minute,” purred Lizzy in equally friendly tones.

  “The reason we all came over here is to talk with you about Sanctimia,” I said. “You know, that village over that way?” I pointed. “The one where you’ve been attacking all those sheep? Yeah, that’s making some people over there pretty unhappy….”

  “Okay, they have no idea what I’m saying,” I muttered from another of my mouths. “How do I explain this to them?”

  One of the female drummers started petting Ilandere’s long silvery-blonde tail, and the centaur giggled.

  The absurdity of the situation struck me, and I wondered how exactly we’d managed to get so sidetracked from our main quest of hunting down the Thorvinians. Well, at least the drummer settlement lay along our path. If we could just convince them somehow to stop needlessly killing sheep that they weren’t even going to eat, we could be on our merry way. It wasn’t like I even owed that much to Sanctimia. But seeing people living in that much misery for such a preventable reason just made me want to do something about it. Besides, Lizzy seemed pretty invested in the situation, although I knew she was more concerned about the plight of the wolves that the drummers were wearing as loincloths than the plight of the sheep or the Sanctimians.

  “We could act it out,” Florenia suggested. “Sometimes my friends and I used to play a game like that, with two teams. One person would get up to perform, and they’d have to try to illustrate a concept well enough that their team could guess what it was, without using any words.”

  “Hmm, okay, that’s not a bad idea,” I said. “So, we act out them killing the sheep? And then show them that it upsets the people who own the sheep?”

  “No, we act out them killing wolves, and then show them that kind of behavior will get their heads ripped off,” Lizzy said. I had a strong suspicion she wasn’t planning to mime the head-ripping part.

  “I will play the Sanctimians,” Florenia offered. “Being forced to serve as a vestal of Nillibet gave me plenty of experience with imitating people who are prudish, self-righteous, and miserable.”

  “I will be a Sanctimian too,” Ilandere said.

  “You should be a sheep,” Lizzy objected. “Since that’s what you’re most like, personality-wise. Meaning no offense.”

  “I hope that none of you imagine I will be participating in this nonsense,” Elodette said haughtily. “Considering that I’m nothing remotely like a Sanctimian, a sheep, or a wolf.”

  “We’re all going to do what Vander needs us to do to help out,” Ilandere said fiercely.

  “Princess, of course I will do as you command me, but it is beneath your royal dignity--” Elodette began.

  “Stop, everyone,” I said wearily. “Let’s start with something simpler and work from there. Okay?”

  I mimed eating with utensils to some of the drummers who were watching that self while another of my selves mimed drinking from a cup.

  “Think you guys could offer us some hospitality?” I asked. I wasn’t all that hungry or thirsty, since it hadn’t been that long since we breakfasted at The Traveler’s Providence, but I wanted to test out the drummers’ level of comprehension and how far their goodwill toward us extended. Did they want to please us? Would they at least try to do as we asked?

  The drummers watching my body that was miming eating with a fork and knife merely squinted in confusion, scratched their heads, and grunted in a concerned tone.

  But the drummers watching my self that was miming drinking from a cup exclaimed, “Uggaugga! Uggaugga!” and several of them ran off into a building.

  “How can you base an entire language off one word?” Willobee groaned.

  Lizzy shrugged. “If you don’t got anything much to say to each other…”

  “Perhaps the gradations in their pitch and intonation are so subtle and complex that this vocalization which seems uniform to us actually comprises a highly nuanced vocabulary,” Florenia suggested serenely.

  We all squinted at her sideways.

  “Only joking,” she said.

  At that point, the drummers who had run off a minute ago returned bearing various drinking vessels and started handing them to us. Most of the vessels were either large folded leaves or hollowed-out wood, but two were made from wolf skulls. They handed one of those to one of my selves a
nd had the bad fortune to hand the other to Lizzy.

  I thought it would probably take two of me to restrain her, but Lizzy’s reaction surprised me. She took the skull, looked at it clinically for a long moment, smiled very slightly to herself, and then took a long sip of the liquid that it held.

  For a second I was relieved, and then after another second’s reflection I was actually more worried than before. But I was holding three drinking vessels of my own, and now that I’d successfully communicated with our new hosts enough to obtain these drinks for us, it would have been poor manners not to consume them. So I turned my attention to the liquid that Lizzy had casually swallowed. I didn’t recognize it, but it was something dark, fermented, and decidedly unappetizing. I guess if it were poisonous or otherwise dangerous to the health, Lizzy would have been able to detect that by smell. But then again, Lizzy’s unusual genetic background had equipped her with an ironclad constitution that enabled her to scarf down all kinds of things a normal person wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole without suffering any apparent ill effects, up to and including plague-infected corpse meat. So I just hoped that she was considerate enough of our comparatively weaker constitutions to think to give us a heads-up if these vessels contained anything of that sort.

  My self who was under the most intense scrutiny from the surrounding drummers at the moment took the first sip. It required intense effort not to spit it back out and to force an appreciative smile onto my face. It kind of tasted like alcohol… on its way back up, after a bout of excessive drinking.

  I saw Ilandere let the liquid barely touch her rosebud lips and turn pale with revulsion. Another of my selves watched Elodette take one look at it and lower her cup again without deigning to try it. My third self watched Florenia catch a whiff of the liquid as she brought it near her mouth and proceed to fake taking a sip without actually ingesting any.

  Then I heard a pleased hum from about waist height behind me, and turned to see Willobee nodding his head in approval, which made the long white ostrich feather in his red velvet cap bob wildly.

  I raised an incredulous eyebrow at him.

  “It is really a most potent flavor, Master,” he remarked. “Very rich. Very earthy. It reminds me a bit of a traditional gnomish drink that has been brewed for many centuries in the northern Yagural mountains, said to have both medicinal and aphrodisiac properties.” The gnome inflated his already chubby cheeks with a long drag, swilled it around in his mouth, and swallowed with a satisfied sigh.

  The drummers watched our reactions to their drink intently and gibbered at us inquisitively.

  “Delicious,” I managed to say.

  “Better than delicious, it’s complex,” Willobee said sincerely.

  “I can sincerely say that it’s the most putrid thing I’ve ever tasted in my life,” Florenia murmured sweetly, even though she had barely done more than inhale the scent of the drink.

  “In all honesty I’d have to admit that it’s not the most putrid thing I’ve ever tasted in mine,” Lizzy said, which was very fair-minded of her, and also reflected an extremely low standard.

  There was a commotion around us as the drummers started teaming up to heft boulders over behind each member of the party, except for the two centaurs, whom they seemed to recognize were shaped in a way that was not conducive to sitting. From watching them move the boulders I realized that, whatever their other shortcomings, these were a remarkably strong people, much stronger than humans were. Maybe that was part of the reason they had managed to survive for as long as they had with such apparently limited mental functions.

  Once they had the boulders in place, they grunted at us eagerly, patted the boulders, and then patted our bottoms. They did this without any hesitation or embarrassment, as if it they didn’t have any conception of that kind of contact being an inappropriate way to behave toward strangers, especially strangers whom they seemed to hold in reverence. None of us had been expecting it, so none of us had any time to dodge. Florenia grimaced at me. Lizzy’s muscles tensed, and she bared her teeth. I cast her a warning look.

  Except for the centaurs, we all sat down. The boulders were fairly small ones, so all of our feet were planted firmly on the ground, except for Willobee’s, which swung freely in the air as he perched on top. In some ways he looked like a little old man, with his hairy tufted ears, lavender beard, and knobby features, but even though he had proudly informed me that he was of a larger than average size for a gnome, he would never outgrow a human toddler.

  After we were seated, the drummers gibbered excitedly and started skipping around us in a circle hooting happily. This reminded me quite a lot of the way they had just been behaving over the bodies of their two recently deceased comrades, who were lying just a few yards away. I wasn’t quite sure if that was a good sign, which meant that they were celebrating us as honorary members of the tribe or something like that, or if it was a very bad sign, which meant that they intended for us to be dead soon.

  “I’m not sure if I like them less or the Sanctimians less,” Elodette remarked.

  “Aw, they’re happy, don’t be mean,” Ilandere reproached her.

  “Yes, but happy about what?” Elodette asked grimly.

  “They like us!” Ilandere replied. “The Sanctimians didn’t like us. That made me feel bad.”

  “Maybe they like the idea of wearing our skins as clothing,” Elodette said.

  “Maybe they like the idea of consuming our flesh in order to imbibe our vitality,” Florenia added.

  At that point, the drummers started carrying out food to us. All kinds of food, including berries and nuts for which they had evidently foraged, as well as unidentifiable mashes served on leaves, and root vegetables served in their skins. There was also cooked lamb. I had a feeling I knew where that came from. There were, however, no utensils on offer, which I supposed was why they had completely failed to understand my food-related hand gestures earlier. Instead watching us drink seemed to have prompted the idea of feeding us.

  The drummers’ food was a lot more palatable than their drink. It wasn’t exactly the finest meal I had ever enjoyed, but I did appreciate their efforts, and most of it didn’t make me feel like barfing, except for a few bowls filled with creepy crawlies. They had crispy roasted spiders, live wriggling worms, and crunchy beetles, all of which they seemed to enjoy munching on. None of us touched those dishes.

  As Florenia stared at the bowls of insects, she suggested, “Er, Qaar’endoth? Perhaps instead of this whole… ah… exercise in cultural immersion, we could just bring a few of these creatures over to the field with the slaughtered sheep that Lizzy tracked them from, and express our disapproval to them? Then they’d understand what we were referring to.”

  “We can’t bring them back into the village,” I replied. “Seems like they only go on their raids at night when the villagers aren’t on guard, since the villagers have never seen them and still think that they’re wolves sent by Monomachus. And I think it might be a good idea to keep it that way. Because imagine if the drummers met the Sanctimians. Think they could coexist?”

  “No, one group would eventually annihilate the other,” Florenia conceded.

  “Or better yet, they’d both wipe each other out!” Lizzy suggested hopefully. The she-wolf was completely supportive of my quest for bloody vengeance. She tended to be a bit less invested in our party’s occasional humanitarian endeavors along the way.

  “So what do we do, Vander?” Ilandere asked.

  “We stay,” I said. “Just for a few days. Long enough to monitor them and figure out the when and why of their sheep raids. Then we can interfere and explain to them that the raids have to stop.”

  “And the wolf-killing,” Lizzy added.

  “They don’t really seem to have any other hobbies besides killing for fun,” Willobee pointed out. “We might have to teach them some replacement forms of recreation.”

  “Killing the way they do it isn’t even fun,” I said. Back at my temple, the other
novices and I had had a spare body each, and we had elevated killing each other into an art form in our daily combat training exercises. It had been a friendly competition, mostly, although I couldn’t say there had never been any hard feelings. Even if your consciousness wasn’t destroyed, and you could simply regenerate the body you had lost, it still wasn’t particularly enjoyable to have a grappling hook burst through your chest or your spine ripped out of your back. It definitely instilled some memorable lessons though.

  “How could killing ever possibly be fun?” Ilandere exclaimed.

  “Hey now, don’t knock it before ya try it,” Lizzy advised her.

  “Hmm, does that principle apply to those roasted spiders?” Florenia asked the she-wolf slyly. It would have been an effectively appalling dare for a normal person. Lizzy, however, blinked her green eyes, reached out, plucked out a crumpled ball of legs, popped it into her mouth, and chewed with relish. Florenia gasped a little, Ilandere squealed, and both of them averted their eyes.

  The she-wolf looked extremely pleased by the dramatic reaction she had evoked. She shot back at Florenia, “Hey, ain’t you vestals s’posed to be, ah, real educated in all kinds of cooking and taste testing and such? Real knowledgeable about every kind of flavor there is, and all the little differences between them such as peasants like me wouldn’t have a clue about? You wanna sample the quality of this here dish for me, give me your professional opinion like?”