God Conqueror 2

by Logan Jacobs

  “Willobee, I would never leave you behind,” I replied. “I’m also not fetching you a fucking cask of honey mead thousands of feet up the side of a mountain. But… what you said about a tube? That gives me an idea.”

  “Well, maybe just one tankard then?” the gnome bargained hopefully.

  “How about a rope?” I countered.

  “A… rope?” he asked in confusion. “How am I supposed to drink from a rope?”

  Elodette, from where she waited on the side with Ilandere and all the horses except for Slayer, immediately began digging through my pack that contained my grappling hook and the attached rope.

  “You’re not,” I said. “You’re supposed to tie it around yourself so that we can pull you out of there when the rest of this rock field goes to hell.”

  By then, Elodette had found the grappling hook with the rope. She took the loose end without the hook on it, whirled it around above her head like a lasso, and flung it to my nearest self.

  “Thanks, Elodette,” I said. I reeled in the rope the rest of the way, which caused the grappling hook to scrape across the rocks as it bumped over them. All of my companions watched curiously.

  “Um, I don’t know if I like this idea much, Master,” Willobee was muttering.

  “Just trust me,” I said. “Besides, you don’t have much of a choice at this point, unless you want to stay in there.”

  “If someone would just bring me a little honey mead--” the gnome began.

  “Ah, shut up and let Vander do his job,” Lizzy growled.

  I looked around and chose a tree on the far side of the rock field where Slayer was now grazing nonchalantly just as if he had had absolutely nothing to do with the whole incident. I took care not to hit the horse while I swung the grappling hook in circles at my side, then aimed at a sturdy branch midway up the tree trunk and tossed the hook so that instead of catching onto the branch, it sailed all the way over and dropped down on the other side. I kept feeding out more slack and allowing the hook’s weight to pull the other end of the rope down almost to the ground, while I walked over to the dangling grappling hook in another body.

  Once my other self had caught hold of the rope end with the grappling hook, I passed the other rope end into the crevice near the telltale ostrich plume. “Has the rope reached you yet, Willobee?” I asked the gnome.

  “That tickles, Master,” he replied, which I took as an affirmative.

  “Just let us know whenever you’ve got the rope tied securely around you,” I told him. “I mean it. Your life is going to depend on that rope, so unless you want to go for another flight like the one Slayer just sent you on, take the time to get your knots right.”

  A heavy sigh puffed out of the crevice.

  “Now,” I said, “while Willobee’s taking care of that, Florenia and Lizzy, why don’t you go back over there and join Ilandere and Elodette? Things are about to get a little… rocky over here.”

  “Har har har,” Lizzy said. “Don’t you need my help to push?”

  “Your help is helpful, but not necessary in this case,” I replied. “Look, I don’t want to spend another hour digging you out of a rockslide too, okay?”

  “I agree that we should get out of the way of the rockslide,” Elodette spoke up, “but I think we should all go over there to the other side, so we can keep moving as planned, instead of going around again. Your detours take forever, human.”

  “My detours are the only reason we’re all still al--” I began, but the black centaur was already picking her way across the rock field. I didn’t like the fact that I hadn’t had the chance to pre-check the route she was taking, not one bit, but at least she was being careful by testing each foothold with one hoof before she transferred her weight from the other three, and at least she had moved down below us as far as was practical to do to minimize the risk of causing a disturbance that would affect the rocks the rest of us were standing on.

  “If a mere horse can do it…” Elodette said scornfully as she gestured at Slayer. Her tone of voice was careless and defiant, but I could see that her sharp gray eyes were focused on the task at hand, and her powerful muscles were tensed with the effort that it took to control her balance.

  Lizzy scrambled over toward the far side too with much more ease than the centaur who weighed many times more than she did and lacked the flexibility and maneuverability of a human body. I wasn’t too worried about the she-wolf, who was athletic even when just in her human form.

  Florenia, who was naturally slim and graceful but lacked Lizzy’s strength and athleticism, worried me more, but I had known that she wouldn’t allow the other two women to show her up and would insist on making the insecure crossing as well. One of my two selves that were still out on the rock field escorted her to make sure she didn’t slip and be ready to shield her with my body if more rocks started falling.

  The other escorted Ilandere, whose rock navigating abilities were most of all in doubt. The princess’ fearful expression resembled the one that came upon her face when she was confronted with stairs that she had to climb up or down, but she clutched my hand and nervously made the crossing. Even though I had lost count of the number of rock fields we had already crossed, I knew that this one was different, since it was the one that had swallowed Willobee, and was proving unwilling to let him go again without a fight.

  After the women had crossed, the two of me who weren’t occupied with the grappling hook led across Generosity, Virility, Fury, and Chivalry each in his or her turn. When they reached the other side some of them snuffled Slayer, and he snuffled them back in greeting.

  Then, after my entire party was safely on the other side, I passed off the grappling hook to Elodette with instructions to pull with all her might on my say-so, and all three of me returned to the crevice between Willobee’s position and the outside world.

  “Er, you ready yet, Willobee?” I asked him. “Must be getting pretty cramped in there, huh?”

  “Ready as I’ll ever be, Master,” replied the gnome. “I can’t say that I’d mind getting out.”

  I took a few deep breaths to fill my lungs. Then, I pushed with all my might in perfect unison. As soon as I managed to budge the boulder, the mountainside groaned threateningly and other rocks started rolling our way, but this time, I didn’t stop. I just pushed harder than I had ever pushed anything before in my life, and the boulder scraped, then tipped, then rolled out of the way and revealed a round little chainmail-clad gnome crouched in the hole that it had been covering.

  “Now!” I screamed to Elodette at the top of all of my lungs.

  Willobee, who was thoroughly knotted up in some kind of full-body harness that I didn’t have any time to get a good look at, was immediately whisked into the air with the speed of a slingshot snapping back. I heard him let out a squawk worthy of an exotic tropical bird.

  Then, it was time to worry about my selves.

  I started getting pelted from all directions with rocks ranging in size from my fist to larger than one of my own bodies while the rocks that I was standing on suddenly seemed to remember that they had urgent business to attend to farther down the mountain. I had about thirty feet of moving rock field to cross to rejoin my friends. My chances of making it without being struck dead or buried alive were objectively slim to none.

  But that was okay because only one self out of three needed to make it.

  One of my selves got a foot pinned between rocks almost immediately. My nearest other self yanked me free, but that body’s ankle was already destroyed, so I limped behind the other two as I all sprinted for my life.

  I fell flat on my stomach as the rock that I was pushing off from with my foot flew out from under me. Then I rolled sideways down the mountainside just in time to drop beneath a temporary ledge and allow a horse-sized boulder to skip over me without crushing me. As soon as it was past, I leapt back on top of the ledge before the ledge itself could collapse on top of me and continued my sprint.

  I angled my run
somewhat diagonally downward, rather than horizontally, since I knew that when you were getting swept away by a river, it was best to aim for the shore diagonally so as not to waste too much energy fighting the current. It was kind of a compromise with nature.

  A rock in the head stunned me. I knew that that self was no longer functioning at full mental capacity, and that the self with the fucked-up ankle was no longer functioning at full physical capacity, so I reassimilated the self with the fucked-up ankle first and then immediately sent out my third body again from the one of me that was farthest ahead. I could only project as far as my height, so I couldn’t send myself all the way to solid ground, but I could get a lot closer that way. Then I reassimilated the half-conscious self with the dented head and again sent a replacement body out from my leading self. In a situation like this, I wanted to have three bodies up at all times to maximize my chances of survival, because if they all got buried under an avalanche at the same time, I would be truly and permanently dead.

  My leading self had only about another ten feet to clear. None of me were covering ground very fast, because for every foot of distance I gained, I slid down another several feet, or had to change directions to avoid an obstacle or projectile.

  My middle self took a melon-sized rock in the chest and got knocked flat on my back pinned underneath it. As I lifted the rock off my chest, my third self came up from behind and grabbed my arm to yank me back up to my feet again.

  A boulder the size of Elodette that was rolling past those two selves hit a sharp edge, tipped in my direction, and triumphantly crushed both of me like dough beneath a rolling pin.

  Elodette reached out her hand to my last surviving self. I took it, and she yanked me onto solid ground, out of the path of the continuing rockslide. I sent out two more spare selves just in case as I panted with exhaustion, clutched my middle and gritted my teeth against the fading sensations of being crushed to death. I had never had that much skin shredded, that many bones broken, and that many organs squashed simultaneously before, even that time when one of my selves had fallen a hundred feet off a sheer cliff face that I had been climbing without a rope on a dare by another novice.

  Ilandere was in tears by that point. “Vander, that was the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen,” she cried.

  “Horrible?” I croaked. “I think you mean, the most awesome thing you’ve ever seen. I just took on the spirit of the mountain, or whatever you want to call it, and--”

  “It won,” Elodette finished my sentence as she pointed at the gory remains of two of my bodies in the middle of the rock field.

  I jerked three thumbs at all three of my chests. “I won! It takes a hell of a lot more than a fucking avalanche to finish off a god. I’m still here, aren’t I?”

  “So is Mount Ugga,” Elodette said grimly. At that point I realized that she was still gripping the end of a rope in the hand that she hadn’t used to pull me to safety. I looked up at the tree that the rope was secured from and spotted a small round shape dangling thirty feet above us.

  “Er, Elodette?” I asked. “Wanna let Willobee down now?”

  “Oh,” she said and blinked her gray eyes. “Sure. I kind of forgot about the gnome.”

  I guess I just had to be thankful that Elodette was the type to forget that she was holding up someone’s full body weight on the other end of the rope and just leave that someone dangling there, rather than the type to forget, let go, and drop the someone.

  Lizzy and Florenia each seized one of my selves and kissed me passionately in an uncharacteristically public display of affection apparently provoked by their relief that I had survived the rockslide.

  That left one self to stand by with a vicarious erection and watch Elodette lower Willobee. I think my condition did not go unnoticed by the black centaur who huffed and pointedly averted her eyes.

  “That was amazing, Master,” gushed the gnome. “I saw the whole thing from up there. Until now, I had never appreciated the full extent of your athletic abilities.”

  “Yeah,” Lizzy broke off our kiss for a moment to chime in. “You looked like a gazelle that was about to get its ass eaten by a lion.”

  “Uh… thanks?” I said.

  It was then that I realized that when I told Willobee to tie himself to the rope securely, he might have overdone it a little. He looked like he was wearing rope bracelets, rope anklets, several belts, and several nooses for good measure. There was barely a square inch of chainmail or blue velvet visible between the loops upon loops of knotted rope. Not only did the gnome look like he was in danger of accidental strangulation, he looked like he could have easily been squeezed until he popped when Elodette started hauling him up. But somehow he must have gotten lucky enough with the knot placement that that didn’t happen.

  “Er, Willobee?” I asked. “Any chance you can… untie yourself?”

  Willobee confidently selected a complicated knot at his shoulder at which several strands of his intricate harness seemed to converge, grasped a section of it, and tugged.

  Nothing happened.

  The gnome was silent for a moment. Then he replied cheerfully, “Nope.”

  I groaned, while Lizzy marched over to demand, “Are you kidding me, gnome? First you get yourself buried in a have-a-lunch and now this?”

  “… Buried in a what?” Elodette asked her.

  “A have-a-lunch,” Lizzy repeated.

  “… A what?” Elodette repeated.

  “You know, a have-a-lunch, like the slang term for a rockslide?” Lizzy said impatiently. “Ain’t you ever heard that before?”

  “No,” the centaur replied gravely. “No, I have not.”

  “Lizzy, do you mean an avalanche?” I asked her.

  “Is anyone going to untie me?” Willobee asked plaintively.

  “Shut up, gnome, I’m explaining somethin’,” the she-wolf said. She looked around at all of our quizzical expressions. “Er, no one’s ever heard that one before?”

  We exchanged glances and shook our heads.

  “Lizzy, I don’t think that’s a word,” Florenia said.

  Lizzy bit her lip. Her long pointed ears twitched backward in concern. For a moment she looked like a cornered animal. Then she said haughtily, “Sure it is, comes from the idea of how a have-a-lunch stuffs a bunch of rocks in your face whether you like it or not, even if you ain’t hungry. It’s a gallows humor thing like we have among vagrants and bandits and other rough and ragged types, you posh lot wouldn’t understand.”

  “Hmmm,” the duke’s daughter made a noise that did not sound entirely convinced.

  “Well, what are all you standing ‘round gawking for?” the she-wolf demanded. “Ain’t anyone gonna help this poor gnome here?”

  She grabbed Willobee’s nearest hand and started picking at the rope knots around his wrist with an air of intense concentration.

  I shrugged, knelt down and selected a knot of my own that looked promising, and got to work too.

  But it was the two centaurs who really came to Willobee’s second rescue of the day. They were extraordinarily gifted when it came to tying, and, apparently, untying knots as well. Their herd used natural fibers, including tree bark, reeds, and animal wool, to twist and braid cords that they used for all kinds of practical purposes, so it was an art form they had learned at a young age. Without their help, we might have had to give up and cut the rope in order to free the gnome which I didn’t want to do in case it became necessary to use it again before I had the chance to buy a replacement.

  After another half an hour lost that way, Willobee was finally rope-free, and I recoiled the cord around the attached grappling hook and put it away in one of the packs again. Then, we continued on our way.

  There had been an occasional patch of frost before on our way up, but nothing significant. So when more snow started appearing, I knew we were very near the top. The women started shivering in their dresses and, in the case of Elodette and Ilandere, midriff-baring leather breastplate and skimpy pink
blouse, respectively, but they were also happy about the shift in climate since it signaled that the ordeal of Mount Ugga was almost behind us.

  Not long after that, we reached the pass between two peaks where I had intended for us to cross over.

  We paused for a minute there to gaze out over the surrounding landscape that stretched in both directions, the way we had come, and the way we were heading toward. Right below us, so many miles of sheer rock faces and precarious boulder fields interspersed with scraggly pine trees that the climb looked nearly impossible, especially for five horses and two centaurs. At least, it looked like something that only a lunatic would attempt. It felt great to have that kind of visual display of the feat we had just accomplished as a team. The other side of the mountain was much more gradually sloped. I was very glad to see that, which we had had no way of knowing from the other side. Even if we had tried to ask any of them, I didn’t think that any of the Sanctimians or the drummers had crossed this range. They just lived in the shadow of the mountains and accepted them as the boundary of their little world.

  Beyond the spectacle of Mount Ugga itself, I could see green hills and woods stretching out for as far as the eye could see behind us, and the road that my party had been following. The huts of the village of Sanctimia were visible too. As for the crude drummer settlement from which we had started our ascent, that was a little more questionable.

  “Oh look, there’s the drummer camp,” Ilandere said as she pointed.

  But Lizzy scoffed, “No it ain’t, that’s just some trees missing their leaves down there. It’s too small to see from here.”

  “Come look on this side,” Florenia invited them from where she stood with another of my selves, twenty meters ahead.

  The rest of our companions joined us at that vantage point, and for a few minutes, all eight of us gazed in uncharacteristically silent awe.