God Conqueror 2

by Logan Jacobs

  “You as soft as the horse-girl?” sneered one of the ones whose names I didn’t know. “She’s a real pretty little thing, but she doesn’t have a clue how the world works. And neither, apparently, do you. It’s Sharman’s caravan or ours. You think we should let our people burn? Or kids burn? So these guys don’t have to get their faces a little wet?”

  “Their faces a little wet, huh?” I pointed to the soggy Pyralian on the floor. “How’s he doing? He still have a pulse?”

  The caravan members exchanged glances. None of them answered.

  “That’s what I thought,” I said. “I get that you’re willing to do whatever it takes to protect your people. That makes sense. The problem is that you’re not even going to get the results you need this way. If you torture someone, he’ll just-- ”

  “We already did get the results we need,” Danazar hissed triumphantly. “This way. Our way. Shoragua’s way.”

  “What?” I said.

  “We know where Sharman’s caravan is, and where they’re headed,” Danazar said. “He told us exactly what we needed to know, and all it took was a little helpful encouragement. Imagine that.”

  “Okay, but how do you know he wasn’t lying?” I asked.

  “You wouldn’t lie to us, would you, my friend?” snarled the burly merchant who was gripping the mostly limp, red-eyed captive by the back of the neck.

  “No!” the captive howled. “No, I swear, I swear, I told you everything. Everything I know. Please… please don’t… that was all I knew.”

  The caravan members looked at me smugly as if that proved anything.

  Then Danazar walked up while the captive was still being held up by the other merchant and asked, “You’re absolutely certain of that?”

  “Yes,” the captive blubbered. “Please… I told you everything… ”

  “Danazar--” I began.

  Then the caravan leader moved faster and more efficiently than I had ever seen him move and sliced through the captive’s throat with a slender ornate dagger, more like a stiletto, that he had apparently produced from up his sleeve. The Pyralian’s bloodshot eyes bulged. He tried to thrash for a few seconds, but he couldn’t even clutch his throat with his hands, since they were still tied behind his back. Then the merchant holding him up dropped him on the ground. His foot scrabbled a little, and his back arched. Then his face went slack, and his body went still as the blood that poured from his throat pooled darkly in the sand.

  “You were saying?” Danazar asked me as he wiped the stiletto on the captive’s red robe.

  “Well, at least he isn’t suffering.” I shrugged.

  “Vander, I like you, but you have to understand, we’re not… knights,” Khan said. “Knights? That is what your people call them? The men who ride around in the shiny armor challenging people on bridges? Showing off for women?”

  “Um. Yeah, knights do other things too, but I think that’s what you’re thinking of,” I agreed. “My only opposition was to torturing them after you got them to tell you what you wanted. Either kill them then or let them go. Torture seems evil when done for fun.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s not us,” Khan said. “We’re just merchants. We’re just trying to stay alive. We’re not playing by tournament rules out here. Not trying to win eternal fame and glory.”

  “Speak for yourself,” purred Danazar, who seemed to have instantly gained back some of his usual coquettish demeanor as soon as both captives were dead.

  Khan rolled his eyes. “All right, well, not by the sword anyway. That’s not our game. It’s not a game we’d win, and it’s not a game we’re gonna risk playing.”

  “Well, where did he say Sharman’s caravan was going?” I asked.

  “He said they will be waiting to ambush us at the Silvermoon Inn tomorrow,” Danazar said. “That’s where we were heading. We’ll have to refill our water somewhere, and it’s one of the smaller oases in this desert, where there’s less traffic. But we’ll divert our course to the Dromedary Inn to the west instead. It will only take us a few more hours.”

  “How do you know he’s not trying to force you to the Dromedary Inn?” I asked.

  “You weren’t there,” said the merchant who had been dunking the prisoner when I walked in. “He didn’t have the presence of mind left to avoid our questions or lie to us. He was just screaming everything he could think of, everything that was in his mind. Shoragua reveals the truth.”

  I sighed. “All right, well, it’s your caravan. I’m going back to bed.”

  And that’s exactly what I did. Lizzy didn’t even wake up when I lay down next to her again.

  I wasn’t convinced that the merchants’ interrogation tactics had produced reliable intelligence, but there didn’t seem to be much of a point arguing with them. Their ways were centuries old, and they weren’t inclined to change them just because of some random guy who showed up with two extra bodies and a handful of beautiful women. They thought they knew what they were doing, and they took it as an insult for me, as their guest and a stranger to the desert, to question them.

  So if they were wrong, and hostile Pyralians showed up at this alternative oasis they had mentioned, then my friends and I would just have to be ready for them.

  I guessed I wouldn’t mind overthrowing another god, anyway.

  Chapter Fourteen

  In the morning, the caravan breakfasted, and then set off before dawn, which was earlier than usual, since contrary to Lizzy’s preference, and what would have been mine too, Danazar only had his people travel during the hottest hours of the day. Another Shoraguan rule.

  No one seemed to question the absence of the Pyralian captives even though no announcement that I was aware of had been made. Probably their fate partly spread through word of mouth from the members who had been present in the tent. But I suspected that the other reason for the lack of discussion was that maybe no one except me and my companions had ever expected the two scouts to survive until morning.

  When I got a chance to talk to Ilandere without too many merchants around to overhear, I told her, “Stay extra close to at least one of me at all times today, okay? It’s possible there could be… trouble. Don’t worry about it, I just want you to know so that you’ll stay where I can keep you safe.”

  “I will,” she promised and then she smiled. “I would even if it weren’t a safety issue.”

  When another of my selves told Florenia the same, she nodded. “Does that mean there’s likely to be a fight?” she asked hopefully. “I love watching you slay our enemies.”

  Lizzy just winked and said, “You know I got your back, Vander. At least one of em’ anyway seeing as there’s only one of me.”

  Willobee said, “I’m not worried. I have a good feeling about the desert. The desert doesn’t want to kill me the way that mountain did. But I’ve gotten used to you saving my life by now, Master, so please don’t disappoint me if anything does happen.”

  I alerted Elodette about the threat too, but I didn’t say anything about protecting her from it, because that probably would have just offended the fierce archer.

  Later I asked Kiki, “Does Sharman’s caravan usually target oases?”

  “Kind of,” she answered. “Not the oases themselves, necessarily, since those are vital to everyone. Pyralians might use fire, but they can’t drink it any more than we can. But attacks often take place around oases since that’s one place you can be sure of eventually running into other caravans. Otherwise it’s hard to predict each other’s paths, since no one goes in a straight line, unless you want to be gobbled up by sandworms.”

  “We are making good time,” Zembo said. “We are halfway to Bjurna now. Once we reach the town, Sharman’s caravan will not pursue us. Pyralis’ power is concentrated in the desert. It fades as they leave it.”

  “Hmm,” Florenia said thoughtfully. “Are gods’ power often tied to physical locations like that, Qaar’endoth? You seem to be equally powerful wherever we roam. But do you need to stay within a cer
tain range of your altars, do you think?”

  I hesitated. “Well, I never really considered that, I guess because I never left my temple grounds until a few weeks ago. I don’t think so because I don’t feel any different as we move further away from the altars. But I guess it’s possible I just haven’t reached the edges of my range yet? When Luma walked the earth, he didn’t have any limitations like that. And Thorvinius doesn’t seem to be having any problems rampaging across Ambria. But some gods do. Like they’ll be the god of a certain volcano or something and have absolute power there, even over greater gods, but can’t leave it. So I guess I don’t know.”

  “Don’t think there’s any need to get into fancy what-ifs like that,” Lizzy asserted. “Let’s just test shit out and see what you can and can’t do, that’s the only real way isn’t it?”

  “Guess that’s pretty much what we’ve been doing,” I agreed. “I just don’t want to expose the rest of you to any unnecessary risks.”

  “Don’t worry, Vander,” Ilandere said. “We trust you to take care of us, no matter what.”

  “That’s exactly what worries me,” I groaned.

  “And we are glad to sacrifice our lives for your mission if it comes to that,” Florenia added.

  “Speak for yourself,” grumbled Willobee. “I’m not even three centuries old yet. I’ve barely seen any of the world.”

  Soon after that, the rest of the caravan started getting visibly tense.

  “Two miles out?” Kiki muttered to Zembo.

  “About one and a half,” he replied.

  “We should be approaching from the south side, we’d have better visibility there,” she said.

  “Trust in Shoragua,” he answered unhelpfully. What that really meant in this instance was to trust in Danazar. And although I recognized that Danazar was extremely skilled at navigating the desert and its natural perils, I believed that his judgment was a little clouded by emotion when it came to these Pyralian raiders that had everyone so rattled.

  “I’ll go scout ahead,” I said.

  “No!” Zembo said immediately.

  “You can’t do that,” Yuri said. He was grimacing, although I didn’t know whether that was in response to my suggestion, or to the knowledge that he could not serve as a scout himself anymore, now that he had only one good hand, and Danazar preferred to send the caravan’s best fighters.

  “Sorry,” Kiki said. “There’s a very strict policy on that. No non-members traveling with us can leave the caravan.”

  “Why not?” Lizzy demanded. “We ain’t your prisoners.”

  “Because, first of all, people that we don’t really know could betray us to other caravans,” Kiki explained patiently, “but even if we trust their intentions absolutely, they could rouse the sandworms accidentally, if they weren’t as skilled at interrupting their walking rhythms as Danazar is or the more experienced members of the caravan are. Furthermore, they could just get their own damn selves lost, and then we’d either have to waste time looking for them, or they would just die out there.”

  “Okay, I won’t ride ahead,” I said, “but should we really be heading this way?”

  “Yes, The Dromedary is up ahead this way,” Zembo said as he pointed forward.

  “What I meant was, should we really be riding between these sets of dunes here?” I asked. “They’re kind of steep, it’s almost like going into a valley, and that’s not really a good idea, if there’s a possibility of an ambush.”

  “This is the route Danazar has chosen,” Kiki said, “and I don’t know if he’s right or not, but I do know he’ll be pissed if you say anything to him.”

  Two of my selves were near the back with Kiki, Zembo, and my friends, but one of me was ahead with Danazar as usual, who was still cordial even though his manner had cooled a bit towards me since the interrogation incident with the Pyralian captives. I glanced over at him and tried to think of a way to raise the issue tactfully so that I wouldn’t seem to be questioning his authority in front of his people and cause him to become even more obstinate about it.

  “Would Danazar rather be pissed or dea--” Lizzy started to ask.

  A fire arrow sailed past her nose, hit the sand, and sputtered out.

  “Or fucking dead, you idiots?” Lizzy shouted the rest of her question.

  “Get down!” I yelled. “Turn around, get out of the valley!”

  As more fire arrows rained down, other caravan members were also yelling instructions, some of them in the common tongue and others in their native language. People started jumping off their camels and taking shelter behind them or trying to drag them backward or forward. Merchants with spears started trying to form a ring around the rest of the caravan, but the rest of the caravan wouldn’t stay put long enough to be surrounded. One plump woman appeared to be trying to dig herself into a hole in the sand. Danazar screamed, “Protect my children!” Other merchants cursed or screamed wordlessly when some arrows hit their marks.

  In short, there was general chaos.

  Except for my friends and me. Of course I’d expected this would happen, and we all took the appropriate cover against one of the wagons and were safe from the attack.

  The rain of fire arrows from above continued, but it had thinned out somewhat, which told me that our unseen enemies were on the move, no doubt to hem us in at both ends of the valley, since the caravan hadn’t moved fast enough to have a chance of getting out in time. I could catch the occasional golden glint of one of their headdresses above the crest of a dune, and the tops of bows, but that was pretty much it.

  One of me stayed to guard my friends. It took me a moment to decide whether to leave one body or two, but the sight of both Lizzy with her daggers and Elodette with her bow springing into ready positions made up my mind. Elodette wasn’t going to let anything happen to Ilandere any more than I was, and Lizzy, as much as she might insult and belittle him, had a soft spot for Willobee that had grown too big to hide. So between the three of us, I knew we could protect the noncombatant members of our party, the centaur princess, the gnome, and the duke’s daughter. Generosity, Virility, Fury, Slayer, and Chivalry were also playing an inadvertent part in that by trotting nervously around us and neighing in response to the mayhem.

  My other two selves each sprinted for opposite ends of the valley. If there was a weak spot where we could break through, I would find it and enlarge it, while my other self escorted my friends and as many of the other caravan members as possible that way.

  The scenes on each end of the valley mirrored each other. As I approached, a mass of red-robed, gold-helmed warriors spilled down from the dunes. None of them seemed to be carrying any blades. Instead, they held either bows, or rods like the ones carried by the captured scouts. I estimated that there were about fifty men on each side. So they outnumbered our entire caravan nearly two to one, let alone the minority of the caravan that was of fighting age and inclination.

  As I ran, the Pyralians raised their bows and shot arrows at me and the spear-wielding Shoraguans who charged behind me. The Pyralian arrows weren’t the usual kind of unwieldy and impractical fire arrows that had to be tied with pitch soaked rags and lit at exactly the right time, only to fly with laughable inaccuracy. They looked just like standard arrows and did not feature any apparent flammable material at all, but the instant they sprang from the bow, they simply burst into flame and stayed alight until they hit something, whether that something was sand or flesh. I realized that Kiki had probably been right about the rods. They weren’t some kind of mysterious artifice, they really were just divinely powered.

  I had a divine power of my own though.

  With that many people shooting at me at once, I couldn’t avoid all the arrows. One of my selves was instantly killed by an arrow through the throat, a placement reminiscent of the night I had first met Elodette, and she had shot me. So I sent out another body from my self that was in the middle of the valley with my companions and sprinted hard enough that I had regained my place at
the fore of the Shoraguans by the time our line crashed into the Pyralian line. I took no weapons with me the second time, since I knew I could easily get burnt up at any time, and whatever weapons or objects I was carrying did not regenerate the way my bodies and the clothes that I was wearing did.

  The Pyralians carrying rods were now shooting out streams of fire at us that extended about five feet and were as big as a platter in diameter, but I noticed that only those in the front did so, which indicated that they were not impervious to their own fire. Again, they weren’t pressing any buttons or twisting the rods or using any other apparent activation mechanism. They just extended them like magic wands, and the fire shot out.

  I ran, dropped to the sand when I was six feet away, and tackled the nearest Pyralian at the knees in order to get under his stream of fire. I could feel its searing heat inches above me. Then as he fell, I seized his arm to control the direction of the flamethrower and aimed it at his own face, which sizzled and melted into a puffy blob seeping through the cracks of a red-black crust. The same blast hit several of the Pyralians behind him, who screamed and confirmed that fire burned them just like other humans.

  But at the instant that I surmised the Pyralian whose head I had just blasted died, his flamethrower was extinguished and turned into just a metal rod. I, apparently, was not granted the power to ignite it at will. However, I could still do a hell of a lot of damage with just a metal rod.

  I rammed it through one Pyralian’s eye socket as he started to turn his flamethrower on me. Then, I spun with his corpse and used it as a shield from an incoming torrent of flame that quickly engulfed him. I shoved his flaming body at the wielder of the flamethrower responsible, and lit that Pyralian on fire too. Then I ducked below the next stream to whoosh toward me and used the rod to shatter the kneecap of the Pyralian who had aimed it. I pushed off and rose in a spinning motion that culminated in cracking another Pyralian over the head with the rod. As he fell unconscious, a Shoraguan spear burst through his gut.