God Conqueror 2

by Logan Jacobs

  “It’s sand, I can’t help stepping softly,” the centaur snorted. “And it doesn’t make any sound, so why are you worried about it? We’re visible for miles anyway, it’s not as though we can sneak up on anyone in the middle of a desert.”

  “Please, stepping heavily angers Shoragua,” the woman insisted fearfully. “It is like treading upon his back. It hurts him.”

  “Humans,” groaned Elodette as if the word were an expletive. But unless I was just imagining it, I think she did make an effort to step marginally more lightly after that, although that was no easy task for someone of her size and stature.

  “What kind of pansy ass god gets hurt by mortals stepping on him?” Lizzy demanded.

  I shot her a glare, worried that our hosts would be offended by her contempt for their god. If they decided to abandon us in the desert to fend for ourselves, we would be fucked. “It hurts when you’re a wolf and you step on me,” I pointed out. “A lot.”

  “Sorry,” Lizzy said as her ears twitched apologetically. “I don’t mean to.”

  The caravan started moving again. This time we zigzagged back towards the general direction we’d started out heading in, at a more moderate pace than before. Danazar was the one who set the pace and the angle of movement.

  It was interesting to me to observe his style of leadership. I myselves took a fairly democratic approach, solicited feedback from my companions, and devoted a lot of attention to making sure they were all safe, comfortable, and happy. Danazar on the other hand preened himself like a peacock, bossed everyone around vociferously, and seemed to take his twelve wives for granted and mostly ignored them when he wasn’t fucking them. That attitude didn’t necessarily earn him a lot of popularity points with members of his caravan like Kiki, who had a pretty assertive personality herself. However, even though they might complain about him both behind his back and to his face, the rest of the caravan ultimately obeyed Danazar, and I started to deduce that their obedience had a lot to do with Danazar’s allegedly superior ability to intuit Shoragua’s wishes. Which, practically speaking, just meant that underneath all his prissy, flamboyant ways, he was a very keen reader of the desert.

  “So, you really must tell me, my friend,” Danazar said to my self who was riding near him, “how is it that one becomes a god? It is a matter of great personal interest to me.”

  “I bet it is,” grumbled a large, heavily tattooed caravan member nearby as he rolled his eyes. “Don’t tell him how, stranger, or he’ll make us cart a hundred wives around for him. There won’t be any carrying capacity left for our wares.”

  “I, ah, it depends,” I replied. “I think most gods have just always been gods from the moment they came into existence. There isn’t really a transition for them. My case is different because I am an earth walker, meaning a god inhabiting a mortal body. And I think… I think I was a mortal before I was a god. Maybe in some ways I still am a mortal. But, the oracle and the high priest of my temple believed that I am now the incarnation of the god Qaar’endoth. So I’ve just been trying to fill that role ever since.”

  “Hmm, you should not be so humble, you know,” Danazar said as he tapped his bejeweled fingers thoughtfully on his pointed chin. “You must express yourself in a grander and more decisive manner, my friend. It is far more effective with women.”

  “How would you know?” the disgruntled tattooed merchant scoffed. “You’ve never seduced a woman in your life. You just purchase all of them.”

  “Yes, yes, but that is only because I have more important things to do than try to keep women happy,” Danazar replied with a dismissive wave of his hand. “If I seduced them, I would have to work to keep them. I purchase them, and they are mine forever. Now, back to the topic at hand. So what is it like being a god, then, my friend?”

  “It’s, er, not as glamorous as you might think,” I replied. “Your lifestyle as a caravan leader is probably a lot more luxurious than mine.”

  “Hmm,” Danazar said. “Perhaps you are just not doing it right. Not taking full advantage of your position, that is.”

  “Well, I don’t think the powers that I’ve been given were really meant to enrich my life, exactly,” I said. “I’m not saying that they can’t be fun sometimes, because of course they are, a hell of a lot of fun. But I think I was given divine powers, if that’s even what I really have, in order to be able to destroy Thorvinius, eventually.”

  “Oh? Who is this Thorvinius?” Danazar inquired with an arched eyebrow. I noticed that his eyebrow was too perfectly groomed to have grown in that dramatic shape naturally.

  “He’s another god, one who uses his powers for evil purposes,” I answered. “He slaughtered my entire order. Once I can, I will return the favor.”

  “My, my, what viciousness,” Danazar purred. “Very primal. You wear it well.”

  “Uhh. Okay.” I really wasn’t sure how else to respond to that.

  “But, of course, whoever this Thorvinius fellow is and whatever he did to get you all smoldering with rage like that, he cannot compare in villainy to Pyralis,” Danazar continued.

  “Pyralis?” I asked.

  “Yes, the scourge of the desert,” Danazar hissed.

  “I think you’re being a bit melodramatic,” chided the large tattooed intruder on the conversation. “Just because Sharman’s caravan outmaneuvered us in that one skirmish… I’m not saying they’re not a bunch of nasty bastards, because they are, but the desert’s full of those, and not all of ‘em worship Pyralis.”

  “Shut up, Khan!” Danazar ordered. “Am I the leader of this caravan, or are you?”

  “Ostensibly you, but that’s not really pertinent to the argument, is it?” Khan asked. “Besides, a real leader doesn’t have to go around telling people he’s the leader.”

  Danazar scowled. “I didn’t say I was the leader, you said it. And of course it is obvious to anyone that I am the leader of this caravan without their needing to be told. I am the cleverest, the best-looking, and the best-dressed.”

  “Whatever you say, boss,” Khan sighed.

  “Halt!” Danazar screeched suddenly. “Everybody halt!”

  Chapter Ten

  I noticed Khan’s expression transform instantly from exasperation into nervousness. “Er, did we do something to upset Shoragua?” he asked without a trace of sarcasm.

  “No,” Danazar replied calmly. “It is time for the midday meal.”

  The caravan halted, unfurled makeshift canopies that had been strapped to the camels’ backs, and set them up by stabbing their stakes into the sand. It seemed to me that a god who would object to being stepped on too heavily probably wouldn’t be too keen on being stabbed with canopy stakes either, but I decided it was probably better not to mention it. The idea of sitting out there in the middle of the desert without the shade from the canopies was far more horrifying to me by that point then the wrath of some random watery god. The sun had intensified until it felt like it was burning my skin off.

  My companions were suffering just as much, but at least the women of the caravan had taken pity on Lizzy, Florenia, and the two centaurs and offered them headscarves for some protection from the rays. For Elodette to have accepted was actually somewhat alarming, since I knew she wouldn’t accept something that she deemed a “ridiculous human garment” unless she were truly desperate, and centaurs did not conventionally wear headscarves. For Ilandere to have accepted the gift was less significant, since she probably would have worn just about anything she was given, no matter how uncomfortable, in order to be polite to the giver. But since her ivory skin was the fairest of all the women’s, she did need the protection the most. Florenia wore her headscarf with a bit of an ironic air, just as she had worn the robes and veil of a Nillibetian vestal after being forced into a chaste temple life by her parents. Lizzy’s headscarf didn’t want to stay put properly due to her long, pointed ears and fluffy hair, and it was a little hard to look at her wearing it without laughing.

  As for Willobee, he had
very quickly given up on wearing his chainmail overcoat and had it transferred to a camel’s load, but other than that, he did not seem particularly bothered by the heat. “Gnomes can withstand a much wider range of climates than humans,” he declared proudly. “We are a much hardier and more versatile folk.”

  “Yup,” Lizzy shot back, “just like cockroaches or somethin’.”

  I made sure to secure a canopy for Generosity, Virility, Fury, Slayer, and Chivalry, since the horses weren’t designed for such extreme heat the way the grumpy camels were, and I knew that the desert was just as hard on them as it was on the human members of my party.

  As we all huddled under our respective canopies in groups of about a dozen in varying degrees of sweaty, heat-induced misery, some caravan members started carrying out shockingly elaborate arrays of food. There were sweet dried dates, dried coconut, dried spiced meat, bread with cheese or cream fillings, and rice and nuts wrapped in grape leaves, as well as flaky honeyed pastries.

  “This is my favorite of our adventures so far, Master,” Willobee said happily as he munched on a honeyed pastry and drank something from a flask that sure didn’t look like water, without any apparent regard for the increased risk of dehydration.

  “It’s too fucking hot,” Lizzy groaned. “Why are we traveling in the middle of the day like this anyway? Why can’t we just nap under these canopies and then cross at night?”

  “Shoragua does not like humans to be active at night,” Zembo growled. “He sends creatures to punish those who are.”

  Lizzy shrugged. “I ain’t scared of nothing at night. I’ll eat whatever damn creatures he cares to send me.”

  “You have never seen a sandworm, little wolf,” Zembo replied. “You do not eat sandworms. Sandworms eat you.”

  “Lizzy here may just be a pretty girl now, but she’s a real force to be reckoned with at night, when she changes into her wolf form,” Willobee informed him proudly. “Not even a normal wolf either. She’s about four times the size of a normal wolf. Danazar may have twelve wives, but I assure you, each of Vander’s are worth at least that many ordinary women.”

  “Hey hey hey,” I mumbled through a mouthful of grape leaf and rice. In the time it took me to chew and swallow a bite, at least one of my companions was always sure to do or say something to provoke someone. “Ith not a competithon!”

  Khan, however, seemed much more concerned with how Lizzy would stack up against a sandworm than with how she and the others stacked up against Danazar’s sedentary wives, who were currently eating their meal in seclusion inside their litters. Not even their dozen or so energetic children, who were tended by nursemaids, were allowed to join them. Khan laughed and said, “Four times the size of a wolf? That’s barely the size of a sandworm larva.”

  That was kind of a disheartening image, I had to admit. Ilandere’s doe eyes widened even farther. Even Lizzy didn’t have an immediate retort to that.

  “Well, can’t you just shoot a sandworm?” Elodette demanded as she patted her bow. I don’t think I had ever seen her show as much affection to any living creature as she did to that bow, with the possible exception of Ilandere.

  “Yes, yes, of course, sandworms are so huge that they are very easy to shoot,” Khan said.

  Elodette’s gray eyes flashed triumphantly.

  “But they are so squishy and their anatomy is so primitive that it does not affect them,” he continued. “Their vital organs are buried several feet deep, if they even exist at all, which we can’t be sure of. You can cut the damn things in half, and they’ll just slither off in opposite directions each with approximately the same amount of brain cells as it had to begin with.”

  “Then how do you kill one?” Lizzy and Elodette demanded in unison. Their eyes met in surprise. It was a rare moment of unity for the she-wolf and the centaur.

  “You don’t!” Khan replied unhelpfully. “You run away from them. You run like hell.”

  “A god does not run from any man or beast, least of all a worm,” sniffed Florenia.

  “Er, I don’t know about that,” I said. “I’ll fight a sandworm if I have to, but if there’s nothing to be gained from it, I’m not going to do it just to show off.”

  “Your greatest fault is that you are too humble, Qaar’endoth,” she said.

  Khan snorted. “Women. Worrying what they think too much just gets you killed.”

  “Well, ignoring my advice has gotten more than one man killed by a sandworm or sandstorm,” Kiki retorted.

  “It’s true,” Zembo said. “After Danazar, she’s the best at interpreting Shoragua’s wishes. That’s one of the reasons I married her.”

  Soon after that, Danazar gave orders for the food and the canopies to be packed away again, and we reluctantly exposed ourselves to the burning sun again in order to continue our trek.

  It was true that sinking into the sand with every step increased the amount of physical effort expended and slowed us down significantly, but we still would have been able to move much faster and more efficiently if we had traveled in a straight line and at a consistent pace. Instead, we continued to zigzag back and forth according to Danazar’s whim, and sometimes we crept along at a snail’s crawl and at others huffed and puffed so fast that two unfortunate caravan members who were on foot overheated and passed out. Their companions splashed them with precious water, slung them on top of camels, tied down their semi-conscious bodies, and kept going as if the incident wasn’t really anything out of the ordinary.

  “Er, why does Shoragua want people to move in this haphazard way?” I asked Kiki after the second man went down. “I’m not sure that it’s very… energy efficient.”

  “Because if we march with a consistent rhythm, it disturbs the slumber of the sandworms, which are Shoragua’s creatures,” Kiki answered.

  “Ah,” I said.

  “Well, I’d rather take my chances with a sandworm than slowly roast to death like this,” Lizzy grumbled. “I just want to get to the other side already.”

  “We are not even halfway there,” Kiki told her with slight amusement. The she-wolf was pretty tough in some ways, but enduring the monotonous discomfort of the desert didn’t seem to be one of them. Willobee, on the other hand, who was by nature a runner and a hider, not a fighter, didn’t seem very bothered at all by the sun’s hostility. His large, knobby nose might have looked even redder than usual, but that was about it. He didn’t even appear to have broken a sweat inside his velvet suit even though I and all the women were soaked by then.

  Then Danazar screamed, “Halt! Everybody halt right this instant!”

  “Is it time for dinner?” Lizzy asked hopefully, even though the midday meal had only been about an hour before that.

  But the next second, after twirling one of his hands in the air as if he were trying to commune with the winds or something, Danazar pointed to a nearby sand dune and yelled, “Line up on the crest!”

  “Oh fuck,” Kiki said under her breath.

  The plump woman with the charcoal-coated eyes, who seemed to be the head nursemaid, started jabbering away at Danazar’s brood in their native language and ushering them towards the crest of the dune. Other children in the caravan, of which there were not many, were under the care of their own families.

  The adults started cursing at the camels and sometimes hitting them with sticks or sandals to make them move faster, which the large, lumpy, ornery animals didn’t seem particularly inclined to do. The litter-bearers struggled up the dune with their burdens, since even in case of emergency, Danazar’s wives were apparently too lazy to get out and walk. The entire caravan was overwhelmed by a sudden air of panic and urgency.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked Kiki. “Sandworms?”

  She laughed. “No, no. You think they would be this calm and orderly?”

  Then she busied herself teaming up with Zembo to push, drag, and verbally bully a confused camel up the side of the dune with the rest of the group, so I didn’t want to distract her by asking any mor
e questions.

  Instead I just focused on leading Florenia on Chivalry, Lizzy on Virility, Willobee atop the camel he had borrowed, and the other three destriers up to the crest of the dune. Elodette had taken charge of Ilandere, and I knew she would make sure that the princess was safe.

  We were only halfway up the dune when the winds kicked up significantly and started pelting our skin with sharp grains of sand.

  “Cover your faces!” Kiki yelled at me and my companions.

  Some of them were already doing that, but the rest of the women took heed and wrapped their headscarves across their mouths and noses so that only their eyes peeked out. The gnome used his long lavender beard for the same purpose. I wasn’t wearing any scarves, so I just lowered my heads and shielded my eyes with my hands. If any of my selves got grains of sand embedded in their eyes or scarring up their lungs, I could always replace them.

  As the large caravan started gathering along the crest of the sand dune, they settled their camels down in a seated position, and then the families crouched on the leeward side of the camels and tucked themselves into balls. I guessed the camels were quite accustomed to the sand and had evolved to withstand such conditions, but that was not true of our horses, so I hurriedly borrowed five cloths from the nearest families, dampened them with water from one of my skins, and draped them over the heads of Generosity, Virility, Fury, Slayer, and Chivalry to protect them.

  Willobee’s borrowed camel seemed for some reason more instinctively obedient to the gnome than the merchants’ camels that they had raised from birth were to them, so he had no problem getting it to settle down on its haunches. Then he, Lizzy, and Florenia crouched down together on its leeward side like the rest of the caravan members were doing. Ilandere and Elodette could not fit in the shelter of a camel, so they just turned themselves leeward so that the sand would blow against their backs instead of directly into their faces and clutched their headscarves tight. I stood beside the horses and patted them and tried to keep them calm and hold on to their reins to ensure that they would not run off.