Demonworld Book 4: Shepherd of Wolves

by Kyle B. Stiff

  “I see.” Vito thought of the mythology of the dogmen. The simple story was, perhaps, an explanation for their inborn sense of community, their distrust of individuality, of the lone troublemaker. It made sense that they put the lion-god, one of the four gods of the wasteland, in their story as a kindred spirit. The lion-god was a hunter, a warrior, a killer, and dogmen favored that sort of thing. But they distrusted the fact that the lion-god needed no one, for a dogman needs a great amount of support from his community in order to survive - both physically and psychologically. The god they prayed to, perhaps the same one that Globulus often spoke of, enjoyed sacrifice, rewarded selflessness and the giving of gifts, and rewarded whole communities for good behavior and punished whole communities for the sins of single members.

  Even Vito made a show of praying to the god of the dogmen, but he could never believe in it. He had the taint of the city, he figured, that mixture of cynicism and inquisitiveness that plagued the minds of men. Unlike the dogmen, he could not say, “God willed it thus.”

  “What is troubling you?” said Naarwulf. One of the women knelt beside the opening to the tent and passed several bowls of dried meat and coffee to Naarwulf.

  “I am afraid,” said Vito, “that Globulus is the only honest man in the world.”

  “You are an honest man.”

  “Hm.”

  “I can smell lies,” said Naarwulf. “And you smell clean.”

  “Only honest enough to admit that I know nothing. Globulus, though. In secret, he told me many, many things. He... he made statements.”

  “What kind of statements?”

  “But I... I state nothing.”

  * * *

  The horde moved. From atop one of their trucks, Vito could see the tops of their heads, bobbing and lurching on all sides and stretching into forever. Thousands of torches hovered over the legions, more numerous than the stars above. When he closed his eyes, the hum of the trucks and the pounding of feet was like the dull roar of an ocean. He knew that if they all roared at once, the entire world would explode.

  He lowered himself from the truck so that he could walk among them. He slapped a dogman on his strong back; the leashman, far taller than his Khan, barked and dipped his head low. Vito walked among the throng, saw their furred faces, saw them hiding weariness from his glance. He walked near a tanker heavy with fuel. There were others like it. He estimated that they had just enough to get to Pontius. Just enough for all the trucks full of gear and weapons and food gutted from Hargis. Enough fuel for Pontius, and not a drop more. Like the economy of nature: just enough for the next kill, and not an ounce more.

  He moved on and saw a dogman leading a horse by its reins, then saw a long line of the beasts. Already they had started eating the animals. Early on, the fighting over the animals had been terrible, because there were nowhere near enough mounts for all of them. Better they eat the animals than ride them, their Khan had declared, and better they eat the horses than one another. No dogman or human rode a horse in the Khan’s legion.

  He walked among the livestock, fat bleating animals that stank no worse than the dogmen. Just the other day Vito had had a dogman executed for having sexual congress with one of them. The pup had been brought to him with a terrible commotion and cries for blood; only blood could cleanse his sexual license. The dogman seemed a strapping warrior, large and with great teeth. Really, their Khan had cared little that the pup had had sex with an animal, and he would have preferred to let the matter drop. But he had to perform his part in order for the whole to be maintained, and so with grand flourish he had ordered the dogman to be tied at the limbs to four different horses. Those who saw the spectacle of the beating of the horses, how they ran and pulled the pup apart, how the intestines spilled out in a great pool, how the sinner cried out – those witnesses had run to every corner of the horde and told of how their mighty Khan cleansed the sins among them, and was surely in communion with God Himself. Vito felt nothing during the event. Even when the blood was pouring, he had only experienced a sense of mild distaste.

  * * *

  Another sunset in the flatlands and Vito sat with Naarwulf and Ric Ramos and some other trusted guards. While Ramos cooked a giant pig on a spit, he told them of the time he lived in Hargis, before he joined the PRC, when he had sworn off his life of crime. No more selling of drugs, no more frequenting prostitutes, no more bloodshed. But the vow had made him greatly hungered, and so he made the mistake of going into a neighborhood store, and there he saw a little girl who was disrespected by the shop owner by way of an accusation of theft. In a blind rage, Ramos slapped the shit out of the shop owner, who drew a firearm against him. Ramos took the firearm away and blasted the man in the chest. Kneeling over the dying man, he remembered his own reputation, and so strangled the rest of the life from him. The dogmen barked out great laughter.

  I’ll go to the sea, thought Vito. I’ll destroy Pontius, then move as best I can to Sunport and put it to the torch. I’ll give the horde leave to rape the coast as they see fit. Then I’ll walk into the sea by myself. I’ll go under the water and be no more.

  A dogman pup crawled near the roasting pig. Ramos watched him as he licked the thing’s ear, then pushed him away roughly.

  “Shit,” said Ramos. “We can eat like this every day. I can cook up a whole hog every day. ’Cause I don’t give a fu-u-u-uck!”

  No one has ever mentioned our inability to sustain ourselves, thought Vito. No one… no, not one, has mentioned sustainability.

  They are perfect for this work. They are perfect.

  Bloodnose, with pink skin under ratty white hair, with visible ribs and dead gray eyes, crept silently to the group and sat. Conversation dimmed and several edged away. Vito turned on one dogman, barked loudly, eyes fierce, and the reluctant leashman sat still. Bloodnose’s gray brother Frigidskin crept up, silent like his brother, and sat nearby as well. They were excellent trackers and snipers, pariahs who had no capacity for showmanship like the rest of their kin. Vito liked them, and it annoyed him that the others did not trust them. But still, he did not look at them. If they were pariahs then they were pariahs.

  Ganson regarded his Khan with open curiosity. Ganson was a young dogman who had only just reached maturity, and so his body was an awkward combination of bony and muscular. He was covered in thin tufts of yellow-and-brown hair. His fangs were very long, and while it was said that he was a berserker in battle, mindless of his own safety, Vito had seen nothing of him save a sort of shrewd wisdom, a keen knack for knowing when to speak and who to speak to. He was the son of a chieftain. Because his people had been enslaved by the men of Hargis, Ganson and many of his kin had human names. They had had the sense to join the Khan without a fight.

  When we reach the coast, I’ll give what’s left of the horde over to Naarwulf and Ganson. Ganson will be full-grown by then. He’ll be less loyal to me, and ready to lead. The dogmen will grow to hate one another again. They will grow weary of the wasteland. They will be ready to divide up and in stolen ships they will rape the coast until their ships fall to rot and sink. And I will be dead, long dead, by then.

  * * *

  All women belonged to the Khan. He loaned them out to the chieftains, but he had to make sure that they remembered they were only on loan. By way of punishment, he or Naarwulf sometimes had to fuck a chieftain’s raggedy, scared harem while the chief and his guards watched. Victor’s rights after a duel. And the fucking looked no different from the fighting, for bruised property was reminder to a dogman long after a word had been forgotten.

  Khan Vito approached his tent near daybreak as the horde settled, and he turned to Naarwulf. “Make some rounds somewhere.”

  Naarwulf stopped instantly, barked in the affirmative, and Vito entered his tent alone.

  Two girls were huddled near one another in the tent. One had long red hair, straight and lank with grease. She was very small and had thin lips. The other was rounder, more full, with curly black hair bunched up with filth
. Vito stood over them and said, “Take off my pants.”

  The dark-haired girl crawled before him and unzipped his pants while the other unlaced his boots. He felt his pants pulled down, then his stinking cock hung before the dark-haired girl’s face. She moved to touch it but he slapped her hand away. He moved to their mats of straw and piled them up, then sat down on his coarse throne. He gestured to the black-haired girl and she crawled to him, pulled off her single loose garment, and sat beneath him. He glared at the small red-headed girl and she dropped her thin, filthy dress. She stood awkward and skinny, but did not move to cover her small breasts as she once did.

  Vito felt hot breath, then the dark-haired girl put his limp cock in her mouth. She closed her eyes and swirled her tongue around the thing. He leaned over slightly and she arched her back so that he could look at her full ass. He filled out quickly in her mouth and she moved her head back and forth, warm and soft.

  He gestured to the red-head and she settled near him and licked his belly, his chest, as she had been taught to do. This was how he liked her best; her body off to the side, all gangly and bothersome but out of sight, and with her soft red hair near him. He liked her profile, liked the feel of her tongue. But that was all that he liked about her.

  “You suck a dick like a retard eats jelly,” said Vito. “It’s all one big sloppy mess that someone else has to clean up.” The dark-haired girl put her hand to the shaft as she moved her head, eager only to avoid punishment. “Proud cunts of Hargis,” he mused. “Noble sluts getting fucked by the ugly, hairy Half Breed.”

  The dark-haired girl worked her mouth faster, wincing a little as he hardened more gripped a hand at the base of her neck and squeezed her fat breasts with the other. Then he pushed the red-haired girl away, she squealed and hit the sand, and he exploded into the other girl’s mouth. He held her head down, then pushed her away as well.

  He leaned forward, hissing fiercely. “Cunts of Hargis,” he sighed. “Do anything to keep out of the wasteland, won’t you.”

  While the girls cleaned him up and dressed him, he admitted to himself that he did not feel at home.

  * * *

  Khan Vito stood over a dead dogman challenger in a ring of fire and was pummeled by waves of sound, the howling of thousands of barbarians, and he was howling as well. He unsheathed his ceremonial blade with his left hand, for his right was nearly shattered, and forced the blade between the taut fibers of the rival’s neck and drove it through sinew and cords that oozed gallons and then grinded it through the bone and with a terrible jerking motion he yanked the rest of the head clear from the body.

  “Pontius!” he bellowed, his muscles engorged with death as he swung the head over the crowd. “Pon-ti-u-u-us!”

  This is a Truth! he felt his blood cry out before the endless legion. This is a Truth! This is a God and this is a Statement!

  Chapter Ten

  The Other

  Wodan stood on a field of snow under a black sky. A creature sat hunched over before him. Its features were black, so black that he could only see its outline as the snow fell around it. The creature advanced with short hops, pulling itself forward with long, thin arms that dug into the snow. The closer it drew, the sicker Wodan felt.

  “Stop!” he commanded. The word echoed in his skull.

  “More,” said the creature.

  Wodan slashed a hand through the air, and said, “This far, and no further!”

  The creature tilted its head, and a horrid, deep growl shook along its dark body. It lifted an arm and pointed a clawed finger at Wodan’s gut. Suddenly a terrible pain wracked and twisted about in his belly and he doubled over and fell into the snow. The pain inside his body stretched out its tendrils, reaching into his chest, choking his heart. The pain receded slowly and Wodan stared at the black creature.

  The creature motioned and Wodan looked behind himself. He saw Jon and Justinas and the others standing frozen.

  “More.”

  “No! Their blood doesn’t belong to you!”

  The creature advanced again and Wodan forced himself to stand. He wondered if any compromise could be had against hunger itself. Slowly Wodan raked a hand across his throat, then nodded down to his own body. “This far,” he said, “and no further.”

  Wodan woke in some cramped space that vibrated around him. He was in a dark and square room with his motorcycle propped up beside him. There was an opening nearby. He looked outside and saw fog swirling beneath him, saw tall spires of stone falling away, and heard puddles of thick sludge splashing below. There was a rope tied loosely about his waist and he realized that he was in the back of their truck and that they rode through the lowlands marked as Fog on their map.

  He felt terrible. His eyes and the back of his head ached, his lungs hurt when he breathed, and his nausea was only compounded by the bouncing of the truck. Their food supplies had been shuffled about, and were stacked dangerously high, so that room could be made for him and his bike. He rubbed his face, felt some instinct warning him - he looked at his hand and was terrified at the sight of it - it was someone else’s hand, wide and bony, with curved fingers like meathooks - then realized that it was only his own hand, soft, delicate, and pale. He laid back and closed his eyes so that he could rest from the sickness.

  He tried to remember what had happened, and had the feeling that he’d woken and remembered and forgotten a dozen times before. They had left the hill country, and had ridden through downward sloping plains. He was filled with a sort of mania as they made camp early one morning. His jokes had Jon and Jake doubled over, he had thrown up their tents faster than Chris could take them out of the truck. Then - troubled sleep, nightmares, images of war and death, both a warning and a temptation. He had been tired the next day and rode far behind the others. A lapse in memory. He remembered the others standing over him and his bike idling in the sand nearby. They picked him up and gave him water that he immediately threw up. They had conferred with one another, then put him into the back of the truck and dragged him along with the rest of their equipment. He knew that in any other circumstance he would have felt ashamed for not bearing his own weight, but his sickness cast him into another world, a place of pain where nothing mattered. If they had left him in the dust and the sun, he would not have cared.

  He turned and looked idly at the swirling fog, suddenly cast into red by the truck’s brake lights. Then darkness once again. His eyes adjusted and he saw spires of rock receding into the distance, boulders drenched in the cool sweat of the earth, the dark side of the world. Mist, formlessness. A birthing place. The hum of a small engine, a flash of light; it dimmed and through slitted eyes he saw a biker riding behind him. Chris? Cedrik? Did it matter who checked up on him? The rider swerved, picked up speed, and left him to his purgatory.

  He woke again and was drenched in wet. He wondered if it had rained, or if a water barrel had burst near him. He felt the stuff. It was thick in his hands, some sort of goo, the discharge of a dying animal. He had sweated the stuff and his throat ached with thirst and he felt about and knocked over a canteen nestled between his arm and torso. He drained the thing until it was empty, licked at the rim, then felt stabbing in his gut, something worse than nausea, and curled into a fetal ball, shaking and sweating. Cold, but with something hot inside of him. Growing, eating him, killing him.

  * * *

  The truck was still and the fog hung heavy outside the open door. Wodan rolled out from the opening and planted his feet on moss and slick stone. The night air was cool, and smelled of dank, creeping things. Wodan leaned against the truck, then followed the sound of voices. He saw the pinprick lights of cigarettes.

  “Because I was high, man!” came Jon’s voice, and the others laughed. “Me an’ my buddies, we ate up a bunch of crystal butane. Plus, I’d already run up to one car, and gotten by okay, mind you... we were just crazy, running in traffic, and the first car I ran into, he knew better, he stopped and just let me scream and carry on for a while. But the other ca
r I ran into head-on, this guy, he was a real asshole, I knew his punk ass. He thought it was all a joke and while I give him credit for slowing down, he still hit me. I was hangin’ on to the front, just screaming like crazy, I saw him laughing, too... then he braked hard and I just flew like fifty feet and slammed into the concrete. Fuckin’ asshole, man! Broke my arm, I got a concussion, all that shit.”

  “Did you cry?” said Jake.

  “Naw, man.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m a man.”

  Wodan wandered into them and they stood suddenly, eyes wide and faces pale as if they’d seen a ghost. Wodan smiled, then nodded.

  “Damn... nation!” hissed Cedrik.

  Chris stepped forward. “I thought we was gonna have to bury you, man.”

  Wodan cleared his throat, sat before them unsteadily, and said, “The services of the Mortician will not be needed just yet.”

  “How’s it going?” said Sylas.

  “Better,” said Wodan. “I’m really hungry.”

  Justinas and Cedrik gathered up some of the bread and cold beans they had been eating and passed it over, and Wodan took it gratefully.

  “You ready to ride with us again?” said Chris.

  Wodan nodded, then said, “How long I been out?”

  They looked to one another, and Cedrik said, “Hard to say, man. I don’t think any of us knows how long we been in this shit. Hard as hell to navigate in this shit, you know? I’ve just been kind of pointing us south-like, we’ll have to get back on course once we’re out. It’s this fog, man. There’s natural hot springs all over... plus it’s lowland, real low. Creepy as shit, too.”

  “Creepy,” said Wodan, nodding slowly. “There’s... living things here. What about flesh demons?”

  “S’kinda weird, man. First day we come in here, I got scared. Scared, ’cause I saw some kind of tracks, and not from any animal I know. I thought about just going around... we talked a long while, eventually decided it would take too long to go around. I figured we could always run or hide if we met some demon, what with our bikes, an’ all. But, man... the whole time we been ridin’ through here, I’ve seen tons of tracks. Traces of lairs, even. But no demons.”