Vagabonds

by Kyle Olson

  “Who made that for you, anyways? Some god of the craft you browbeat into submission?”

  Her fluid grace jittered. A piece of the puzzle clicked into place.

  “It does not matter.”

  Ifon hunted down memories, but it was such an eternity ago. The era of the wild, untamed Sejit. Had anyone been close to her in those days? No, she was a solitary hunter. So then, who? With the business end so helpfully pointed in his direction, he seized upon the opportunity to observe it, for once.

  As she spun and flipped it, he caught glimpses of something that shouldn’t be. Something engraved or etched onto the rear. Letters. He couldn’t read them, but he didn’t need to. Who would leave a message on a weapon?

  Only a mortal would be so asinine.

  “An offering of appeasement? An attempt to placate your wrath? Not many mortals have worked godsmetal… Quite the curious thing you’ve got there.”

  “Silence! You speak of honor and pride? Yet here you are, nattering away.”

  “And here you are. Here we are. It’s like we’re on a walk together, isn’t it?”

  Her grip tightened. Too tight. Her knuckles bunched and wrists locked up. Any attack now would be easy to avoid. He licked his chops, for he finally came to a conclusion—even if said conclusion was unsettling in its implications.

  Though most who knew her would argue otherwise, she had a terrible streak of sentimentality. Goddess of war, indeed!

  “That’s a gift, isn’t it? Some mortal you were soft on? Bedded, perhaps?”

  “Don’t you dare.”

  The knife was in, now he just needed to twist. “Were they the reason you had that tantrum all those years ago? Perhaps they did as mortals did and went and died on you?”

  He got his answer. She charged with a feral scream, her body shifted. Gone was the lion in the shape of a woman. In its place, a lioness fighting upon two legs.

  Clumsy it may have been, the power and ferocity took him by surprise.

  It was all he could do to throw himself out of the way, but her recklessness left her open. Before he landed the mist flash-froze. Thousands and thousands of glittering beads hung in the air.

  She lifted both arms into the air to deliver a strike that would cleave him in twain.

  Beads snapped together behind her and shot forward, thrown by an invisible hand.

  The point of an icy spear erupted from her chest. Snarling, she staggered, but still her blade flashed in a silver arc. Ifon hit the ground too late to evade or dodge, but his spear had fumbled her aim.

  Blood spattered to the ground along with the wet slap of a limb. He’d only lost his left arm instead of half his body.

  Ifon growled and urged the spear onward, forcing the wound open as the rest of the ice pushed through. Sejit cried out, unable to fight against her momentum, and fell next to him. He was upon her like a wild, pain-maddened animal, working the spear with his remaining arm, widening the wound through her back and out her chest. Bone cracked and splintered. He yanked the icy spear free, aimed at her heart through her spine, and thrust.

  CHAPTER FORTY FOUR

  “We’re so late!” Sophia panted out, lungs burning from the exertion of running at a full clip, and uphill at that.

  “Why didn’t you say it was going to happen so soon! We could’ve ridden on Hydon!” Yf’s graceful form dashed and leapt without apparent fatigue. She’d dart ahead and turn to wait out the approach of Sophia and Tarkit.

  “I said ‘Now,” didn’t I!”

  Tarkit surged ahead of Sophia, then slowed to allow himself a few words, “It doesn’t matter, and at this point, I don’t think we should continue…”

  They were halfway up the long, winding driveway.

  Daontys thrashed about, but he couldn’t shake the beast atop his back. Of the four assembled, he was the slightest, but Ifon and Sejit—those brutes couldn’t hope to catch him, get near him. They simpered and crawled like worms. He alone held majesty in the domain of the sky, untainted by the muck and dirt.

  Even still, he had displayed considerable generosity by allowing this skirmish upon the ground.

  Tess mashed his face into the dirt, laughing and hacking all the while, toying with her prey.

  Beast! Animal! Accursed, crawling creature!

  ENOUGH!

  The falcon cried out. What remained of his suit tore apart, a massive silver falcon where a man once was. Tess was thrown off by the sudden transformation, a blazing fist punched awkwardly through his thigh.

  Again a shrill cry ripped through the air, though one of agony instead of triumph. The searing pain of the cauterized wound was the final affirmation that he had been too generous.

  With a mighty flap of his wings and a kick from his good leg he righted himself, bowling Tess over before she could follow up. A second swoop of wings and he was airborne, spiraling upwards with the aid of hot currents from sun-soaked patches of dirt. Tess hurled her flames and conjured fiery columns, but her target was swift and ever climbing. In seconds he’d ascended fifty feet, then a hundred, two hundred, flitting and weaving with agility a creature his size shouldn’t possess.

  From on high he got a good look at the world as it was: Small and filthy. Tess hurled insults at him. He couldn’t care less. Look at her, crawling upon the rocks.

  But, something he did care about caught his sharp eye. Sejit’s attack, so fast when nearby, now seemed so languid. Ifon’s ice took an age to form and pierce her. Excellent!

  Ah, Tess finally noticed, too.

  Of course it took her a while longer. Crawling creatures couldn’t see past their own nose. His charred leg dangled limp and useless, racked by fits and twitches of healing.

  Their duels had split them apart, himself and Tess edged towards the east, near the cliffs and open sky, while the other battle had grown close to the western mountain face. A gap that’d take thirty, forty strides to cross was nothing to him now.

  Behind and above, the sun powered through the clouds, dispersing them in seconds. Where chill, rainy breezes blew, there were warm currents that smelled vaguely of spring. Rainbows glistened in the backdrop.

  The jackal morphed, dropping to all fours and sprinted in a rush towards Sejit.

  Rays of sun fell from the heavens, punching scorched holes in the earth. And only earth. Where a beam should have pierced through, leaving nothing but a smoking husk of a jackal, they deflected from her back, as if it were mirrored.

  How dare she!

  More. More!

  He flew higher and higher, wasting precious seconds, but he must. At his zenith his wings spread wide. For anyone below, had they looked up, it would have appeared a massive falcon was holding the sun between his wings, lifting it into the heavens from the dark abyss below the horizon.

  The sun flared. Some millions of miles away from the world, a tendril of plasma reached out for the planet orbiting it, stretching a hundred thousand miles into the gulf between them.

  A pinpoint of light appeared on the ground, as if someone held a magnifying glass close. It blossomed, engulfing the three gods in its radiance. The air wavered as if the whole space had become a distant mirage.

  Ifon’s strike faltered as he looked around, then up. Daontys could see his lips moving, intoning words of threat and disagreement with the current turn of events. He hated to do this, to lose someone like Ifon. His like could never be replaced. Even had a good conversation or two.

  No matter.

  After this, he would not need to be replaced, for none would be able to challenge Daontys, the Dawn, The Sun, and The Father of Gods.

  They should be so honored to die by my hand!

  CHAPTER FORTY FIVE

  Tess had reached Ifon and Sejit. He had transformed, and at first, made to retaliate, but decided better of it in light of Daontys’ haphazard assault and broke for safety as fast as his awkward, three-legged gait could carry him. Tess scooped up what she could of the lioness in her mouth as Sejit labored for life. Wounds struggled to clos
e, to turn back the clock. Blood slicked Tess’ tongue, coppery, metallic, savory. A deep, primal desire wanted to snap down on the arms she held as she dragged Sejit away. Or attempted to. The ebon jackal was a slight animal, and Sejit was a great beast of a woman.

  She’d barely made it ten feet before the light was blinding and heat intolerable. She’d be able to save herself, but the lioness?

  A different sort of screech thundered through the air. Distant, at first, but approaching at a speed beyond mortal, even godly, possibility. A great spear propelled by gouts of flame, leaving trails of smoke in its wake.

  Daontys tried to dive out of the way, but the missile tracked true, engulfing him in its detonation. The pillar of sunlight dimmed to nothing. Another distant rumble got Tess’ ears twitching and she dropped Sejit.

  There!

  A red streak zeroed in on her. She danced sideways and the missile slammed into the ground where she once stood and exploded.

  Or attempted to explode. A detonation fierce enough to reduce a family home to matchsticks and rubble was contained in an orb the size of a snow globe, boiling and seething whites and oranges and reds. Tess bounced the orb up, inspecting it, and then uncorked it. A crimson lance shot out like a spray of water from a fire hose until it’d expended itself and died away.

  Daontys plummeted from the heavens, his brilliant feathers mottled by soot and char—those that hadn’t been blown clean off, at any rate. Scant feet before impact he came to his senses and flapped, arresting his fall, but his wounds left him unable to land with grace, or even upright. He couldn’t stand right, couldn’t lay right, instead flopping and flopping about, raising a shrill noise along with dust.

  Ifon raced to him, but wasn’t quite sure what to do with the bird. He had, after all, just attempted to kill him.

  Another, deeper rumble. High, so high up it was naught by a black speck. Wolf and jackal ears strained to pick up the sound. Above the rumble of jet engines, a keening whistle. A heavy whistle.

  “A bomber,” Ifon growled, indicating with a nod of his nose towards the sky to point out they had bigger concerns than each other at that particular moment, “And it’s just dropped off the kids.”

  He could decide what to do with Daontys later, but first he had to ensure there would be a later. A difficult prospect as his foreleg was still in the process of becoming a proper limb, rather than a stump drooping from his shoulder like a fur-covered balloon, stretching out and elongating as it filled with meat and bone.

  Ifon let loose a bone-chilling howl, and the world responded in kind. Clouds returned with a vengeance, blotting out the sun, dumping the world into gray twilight. Frozen winds bit to the bone, even through Tess’ thick fur. In seconds a sunny day had transformed into the blizzard of the century. Ice and snow built up like waterfalls in reverse until there were dozens of monolithic spires jutting high above.

  The first bombs slammed into the ice and detonated, spraying frozen shrapnel in every direction. Just as fast as they could eat through the ice, so too could Ifon regrow them while the blizzard raged. A dozen bombs went off, then two dozen. Shards, some the size of cars, cratered the landscape and brought utter ruin to what remained of Daontys’ home.

  Tess fought the ice as much as anything, standing vigil over Sejit. Tracking each chunk that would squash them, the jackal shattered them with explosive fire. While the seemingly infinite rain of shards and fragments may have been a ceaseless shotgun blast to the face, it was still better than the alternative.

  And she still had to worry about the bombs and missiles, pray that Ifon’s defenses would keep them at bay.

  CHAPTER FORTY SIX

  The dull, distant thuds of battle reached the three of them through their feet as much as their ears. Their quick walking pace became a run. Just as they’d reached the driveway and began up the hill, the first of the icy spires, peeking up over the ridges, were shattered by the bombs.

  “Wow… That’s, what are we going to go?” Sophia said as the three of them came to a standstill.

  Tarkit and Sophia labored for breath, sweat slicking their brows despite the chill breeze rushing across them.

  “I agree with Tarkit,” Yf said, reluctantly, “We can’t—”

  Her whole body twitched and tensed, ears locked upon the brush.

  “What is it?” Sophia asked, straining to listen along, but any tiny details were lost in the cacophony above.

  Her answer came in the form of a gun barrel peeking from a bush, followed by a man—and then several men emerging in a circle around them. Sophia spun about, looking for an escape, saw none. Tarkit was already putting his hands up, his attention upon one man who seemed no different from the rest. All told, some dozen men in uniform had emerged.

  “That’s it, nice and easy,” said the man, approaching on sure, but guarded steps.

  Sophia followed along with Tarkit, while Yf simply sat down. The camouflaged men closing nearest her were unsure whether to keep their weapons trained upon the cat or the humans.

  “Why have you come here? How do you know those at the top?” The man barked out.

  “We heard the blasts and, like any good neighbor, decided to check it out in case we had to call the authorities,” Tarkit said, easily, or as easy as someone with their hands in the air at gunpoint could say.

  Sophia thought about adding on, but as she stared back at the barrel pointed at her, decided she’d bite her lip instead. She’d already been shot—to death, at that—once, and wasn’t in a hurry for a repeat.

  “Sure you did. What about the cat, taking your pet out for a walk?” The man indicated towards Yf with a nod of his head, making sure not to take his eyes or firearm off Tarkit.

  Yf, in keeping with a cat, maintained her indifferent façade with some annoyance sprinkled on top.

  “As you can see, she’s quite a large cat. Needs her exercise.”

  “And your pet just so happens to be able to speak?”

  “What? You must’ve been camping in the bushes too long. That was my daughter speaking.”

  During the back and forth questioning, Tarkit studied the man. On the collar of his uniform was an embroidered rank insignia, along with the name “Hafferson.” The insignia was a set of vertical bars and a star to the right of them. Colonel for the Ertonese military, if he remembered right.

  “I’m sure of what I saw and heard, and I accept this because I know who, or what, is at the top of this hill,” he said, keeping his tone even, “You have been observed since you left from the same motel room as Seraphina and Jasmine.”

  “Then why bother with the questions at all?” Yf said, licking a forepaw.

  Several of the men nearest her developed restless hands on their weapons.

  “Easier to gauge a man by his lies,” said Hafferson, “Or a cat-god.”

  Tarkit nodded in understanding, “So then. You’ve captured us. What now?”

  “You come with us.”

  Tarkit and Yf shared a look. Yf, or rather Hydon, could dispatch the platoon with ease, but with the range and encirclement, they would not get away unscathed. Still, they couldn’t allow themselves to be captured.

  Meanwhile, Sophia was finding herself less impressed with the gun pointed at her as the questioning went on. Another round of detonations went off; some men flinched, then everyone did as a hail of pulverized ice cascaded down around them.

  “Well I don’t want to!” Sophia declared, folding her arms across her chest, giving the soldier nearest her the best approximation of the look she imagined Sejit would have in such a scenario.

  He too was less than impressed.

  Explosions faded, but the echoes resounded through the mountains and trees. The rain of ice boulders sent tremors through the ground. A few had even rolled lazily into view before their descent was halted by trees.

  Hafferson lowered his rifle, but the others did not. “Young lady. We are having this discussion because you are unarmed. It would not be unreasonable for this to be conside
red a warzone. As such, it would not be remiss for me to act accordingly.”

  “Yeah, what’s that mean?”

  “It means,” Tarkit interrupted, “We become hostiles if we are not cooperative.”

  “Right on the mark. I, and the rest of my men, would prefer to avoid that outcome if at all possible.”

  The firearm was now a source of irritation for the sphinx. She glared at the thing like it was an eyesore. “I know how this goes! We agree and you march us along, then we disappear into some prison and are never heard from again!”

  Hafferson simply indicated to the man nearest Sophia with a hand gesture. The other man advanced upon Sophia, turning his rifle about in order to administer silence with the butt of the stock. In a brilliant display of recklessness, Sophia charged the man, catching him in the chest with a shoulder. Owing to the size difference he was thrown off balance more by surprise than her feeble impact. Two others swooped in to restrain the girl, but she was full of fight.

  And roving fingers.

  As one of the men pinned her to the ground, knee to the chest, she managed to undo the clasp on the thigh holster for his sidearm. He noticed too late as she pulled it free, pressing the barrel to his leg.

  “Yeah, what now?” She said, albeit wheezily as most of his weight was pressed into her sternum.

  Hafferson grimaced, even reddened, “Drop the weapon.”

  “No.”

  Yf and Tarkit exchanged a worried look. “This girl,” it said. A short conversation, entirely through Looks, followed, during which it was agreed upon that the fuse had been lit and it was just a matter of time. They had to act.

  One of the soldiers went wide-eyed as a circular void winked open behind Hafferson. Others snapped their weapons up when a massive white tiger leapt out, knocking him into the dirt face-first.

  Tarkit dove to the ground.

  The staccato of burst-fire weaponry added to the din from the gods’ battle. Hydon roared and growled, blood-red rosettes blooming across his hide, swiping and lashing and pouncing. Men screamed from claw and tooth. Yf joined the fray. While her lithe, nimble form lacked the impact and weight of Hydon, she was no less lethal. Human intellect guided her claws and teeth, feral strength and reflexes ensured they hit their mark.