Sons of the Gods

by James Von Ohlen

  Brandished spears and polished sword blades gleamed brightly in the late afternoon sunlight. The men rode with weapons drawn, not knowing how far it would be to their prey. Though they rode on the trail of their quarry, and could tell roughly how long it had been since they passed, the men they hunted could just as easily double back and lay an ambush for them. It’s what Torsten’s crew probably would have done had they known someone was following them.

  Wary of such treachery, Torsten advanced his column at a quick pace, but significantly less than the coursers that carried them were capable of. He hadn’t survived all of these years in the face of danger by being reckless or foolhardy. The path wound its way through a thick stand of trees and he slowed the column’s advance, eyes searching for signs of danger.

  They passed through the trees and onto open roads surrounded by low scrub and tall grass on the plains. Those things could easily hold threats as well, but on open ground the mounted warriors had a significant advantage against footmen. They would be free to run down any foes they met at their leisure, unlike among the trees where their size and numbers could be used against them.

  The trail led them on for another hour or so and the sun began to sink towards the horizon. In the waning light of the day, Torsten could still make out the tracks they followed. Something about them caught his attention and he called to the two men behind him to confirm what he saw.

  The trail had split in two. One set of tracks led north towards a small forest and the other led westward up a rolling hill off of what passed for the road in this backwater. The three riders conversed for a moment before deciding to follow the group ascending the hill. The horse tracks led there and none led to the wood. It was likely that the raider’s leaders had taken that path. After finding and killing those men, Torsten’s crew would return to hunt down the remainder among the trees.

  Halfway up the hill Torsten spotted movement upon the crest above them. It was minuscule and could have only been some errant branch being driven by the wind, but it caught his attention nonetheless. He raised his hand, signaling to the men who rode behind. Several quick gestures of his hand communicated his commands to them.

  After the motions stopped his hand fell to the hilt of his sword and he drew his blade. Head Splitter, he had taken to calling it after the name was suggested by various brothers in arms. The first time he’d used it in battle it cleaved the head of a man in a heavy helmet in half vertically and continued down into the man’s throat before beginning withdrawn. Later it had been said that the armor the dead man wore in that battle was forged from a piece of the Bones of the Giants.

  The strange structures could be found in the cursed places that men referred as the Graveyards of the Ancients. Weapons and armor forged from such were said to possess incredible qualities in battle. In exchange for this power, they often proved just as deadly to the warriors who wielded them as those they struck down with them.

  Weapons of this kind had become favored among men with the rot of age or among men condemned to die on the field of battle. Men with nothing to lose. Over time the items crafted from the incredible metal seemed to poison those who possessed them. They wasted away and died, often taking anyone foolhardy enough to spend too much time around them along on the trip to the next world.

  Whether the dead man’s armor was made of the Giant’s Bones or not, the blow had still been impressive and been the stuff of which names were made. Head Splitter had served Torsten well in dozens of fights across the lands of The Kingdom and beyond. He knew it would serve him well yet again.

  Mounted warriors fanned out behind Torsten, forming a wedge with him at the point as they ascended the remainder of the hill. If someone was up there, the advance would prevent them from enfilading the entire group of scouts with whatever missile weapons they might have.

  Most of the Mountain Men shied away from bows and crossbows, seeing them as cowardly. But not all of them saw it that way, and a column of enemy scouts sitting vulnerable might be too tempting a target for a properly armed group to pass on.

  Something moved again, ahead of the scouts, up on the crest of the hill. What weapons that were not already drawn for battle came to hand with a hiss of steel sliding smoothly against leather and wood scabbards. Their advance continued.

  A voice cried an alarm ahead of them and other voices yelled in answer. Two men appeared on the hilltop looking down at the advancing scouts. They wore tattered clothes of rough spun wool and had painted faces. Light green stripes and designs stood in stark contrast with pale white skin beneath.

  Several more men joined them. One threw a spear as Torsten shouted his command to his crew. The spear fell well short of its mark as the horsemen picked up their pace. Whatever fool had thrown it, had likely never faced mounted opponents before. Such a weapon would be of far more use in his hands set to receive a charge than thrown away in a futile show of force.

  Their mounts picked up the pace. Faster than a man could move, but far short of a sprint for the coursers. The men didn’t know what waited for them at the top of the hill, and it wouldn’t do to have them run into treacherous terrain, straight into a defensive pit dug in the earth, or off a cliff and into thin air.

  Screams sounded from the hilltop as Torsten and his men approached. All above were armed. Some with large swords and axes, some with the occasional shield, and a few with spears. The spearmen would have to die first.

  The Mountain Men formed a rough line of about thirty soldiers by Torsten’s estimation. Behind them, three men mounted on horses of their own yelled commands and the footmen scrambled to respond. This would not be an easy fight. There was no such thing as far as Torsten was concerned.

  The top of the hill could be seen clearly now. No obstacles threatened to break the legs of the scout’s horses and no doom awaiting them other than what might come through combat. Torsten yelled another command and the scouts accelerated, covering the last bit of ground before the enemy at a quick pace.

  Torsten rode at the center of the wedge formation, so he was the first to make contact. A large Mountain Man with a flowing gray beard snarled as he prepared to swing a huge two handed axe at his approaching foe. Torsten wondered for a moment why the man didn’t simply side step and cut the legs out from under his horse. That’s what he would have done.

  Instead the Mountain Man stood his ground and struck at Torsten as he approached instead of his mount. The man died as Torsten turned his blow aside and his riposte nearly cut the man’s head off, cleaving deep into his neck and his chest. Torsten’s mount didn’t pause and kept on with its initial course. He pulled it up and spun around to return to the attack, seeing his men repeating his maneuver and the trailing ends of the wedge cutting down more of the raiders.

  One horse was missing its rider. Several raiders stood over what had to be a fallen scout hacking away furiously. The man was likely dead already. There would be no helping him. His mount would be retrieved later.

  The others turned and reformed their wedge heading back at the remaining raiders. It would only take one more pass to finish them.

  Torsten kicked his mount to a faster pace and closed on his next target. Something moved towards him, catching his attention and causing him to look away from his target just in time to see one of the mounted raiders leveling a spear at him and closing at him from the right.

  He pulled up on his mount to slow it and change direction, hoping to throw off the charging raider’s aim, but it was to no avail. The tip of the spear passed within a hair’s breadth of his thigh and dug deep into his mount’s flank. A split second later the raider’s head left his shoulders as the man on Torsten’s right in the wedge took him.

  Torsten’s horse collapsed, throwing him off amidst the dust. The raider he had been intent on riding down seized his opportunity and sprang forward to attack. Torsten was lucky to not have been pinned beneath his fallen mount. With both hands and both legs free, he could still defend himself.

  He scrambled to hi
s feet in time to turn aside a two-handed blow from a large, crudely made sword with his shield. Steel rang on steel and the force of the impact jolted up his left arm, leaving a hated sensation in its wake.

  The raider didn’t hesitate after his initial attack and launched a reverse direction strike aimed at Torsten’s neck. Torsten stepped under the attack, sword and shield held in a semi-defensive posture, and then drove the tip of his blade through the raider’s exposed chest in a downward blow that cut him open from shoulder to hip.

  Screams sounded about him, and he looked to see his men finishing the last of the raiders. It looked as if there would be no prisoners. Only the prize of three captured horses.

  The Mountain Men’s horses were clearly of a different breed than those ridden by the men of The Kingdom. Shorter and thicker and with a bad disposition, they seemed more suited to intense labor than to carrying men into battle. If they came across any farmers in need of draft beasts on their way back to civilization, the scouts might part with their trophies for a small fee.

  Or they might just eat them.

  No enemy remained upon the hill. Only Torsten’s crew. Several men inspected their fallen comrade, but as was suspected the man was dead and far beyond the help of mortal men. At least the man’s mount was unhurt and Torsten wouldn’t have to walk.

  Nothing of value was found in the simple campsite the raiders left behind. Assorted odds and ends that seemed to have been taken from the farmhouses they had ransacked, a few crude weapons, and bits and pieces of field kits. At least a decent fire pit had already been dug and some kindling gathered.

  Torsten ordered his men to bury their fallen brother and say the words that accompanied a man dead in battle to the world of the Gods. When the short ceremony was done, they rolled the dead raiders down the hill and hitched their mounts before settling in to make camp in the final moments of daylight.

  A half moon greeted them a short while after the sun finally set and sank below the horizon. Sentries were posted and the men settled in. Most found sleep easy enough. Torsten stayed awake for a while, thinking on the man who died taking the hill.

  Others said they had seen his mount stumble, as if on a loose stone, and he lost his balance at an inopportune time. The raiders hadn’t hesitated to attack and drag him from his saddle. He’d tried to fight them on the ground, but outnumbered three on one, he died quickly. His name was Jean and he was the son of fishermen. Always quick with a joke, he had joined the armies of The Kingdom to avoid spending the rest of his life smelling like yesterday’s catch. Or so he’d told anyone who would listen.

  Losing men under his command bothered Torsten. He saw it as a failing on his part, even if the man who had fallen had been an unredeemable fuckup. As commander of a unit, he should have been able to compensate for shortcomings in his crew and ensure that each man lived to fight another day. In this case, he saw nothing he could have done differently.

  At least the man had fallen in battle and now sat with the God of War in his Hall of Iron to await the final battle. Or so it was said by many. A sentiment being popular didn’t mean that it was correct though. And Torsten wasn’t sure if he actually believed the old stories of the Gods.

  He saw nothing in the world that pointed towards their existence and the old legends made them sound like petty madmen, warring with one another over seemingly insignificant things. A few times in his life Torsten had seen things that he couldn’t explain and that others had named as magic or signs from the Gods. He wasn’t so sure about those either.

  Regardless of where he was now, the man was dead and Torsten was not. Better him than me, he concluded though he bore the man no ill will. Now he would be responsible for finding a replacement and training him appropriately. Perhaps the next man to come to his crew would have better luck.

  Scouts examined the horse the dead man had ridden into battle and determined that it was uninjured and still fit for duty. The horse that Torsten had cut from beneath him was butchered and supplemented the men’s dinner and the next few days’ rations before the meat went bad.

  Is there some captain among the Mountain Men out there now, lamenting having lost thirty of his warriors as well? He wondered as he thought of the pile of dead men on the other side of the hill. Many held the opinion that the Mountain Men were savages, little more than animals that had learned to talk. Torsten had spent enough time in The Western Fringe to harbor no such beliefs. These people were just as intelligent as anyone else he had faced in battle, and just as good at it.

  It seemed though that they were permanently stuck in some long ago age. Their villages were little more than hovels by Kingdom standards and they bore no significant technology to speak of. Their metal working was crude at best and they didn’t wear armor. What kind of warrior doesn’t wear armor, Torsten wondered. One that doesn’t fear death, he guessed.

  His gaze shifted to the west. Somewhere over the horizon stood one of the Graveyards of the Ancients. Some claimed they had once been cities of a society advanced in the ways of magic and ultimately destroyed by the Gods for their hubris. Now they were little more than huge piles of rubble and twisted metal that dotted the land. The Bones of the Giants emerged from them seemingly at random.

  Many claimed that fantastic treasures could be found in such places. Some even emerged from the Graveyards with riches that allowed them to become nobles and live lives of comfort. But the witchlight that permeated such places scared away most would-be treasure hunters. Those brave enough to persist in their task often never returned or died rapidly of some strange poisoning when they did.

  A faint glow of pale blue light could be seen hugging the earth if Torsten squinted just right. Many of the Graveyards of the Ancients showed this effect at night. Most said it was a remnant of the terrible magic that had destroyed them or the lingering curse placed on them by the wrath of the Gods. He thought there might be a better explanation, but he had yet to find it.

  Such things were of little importance though. For now, there was sleep to be had. And tomorrow, there were more men to kill.

  TWELVE more men died shortly before dawn. In the darkness after the moon sank below the horizon and before the sun rose to light the day, Torsten’s crew set out upon the trail once more. They found the men they were tracking in under an hour.

  Their camp was undefended as the lone sentry set to warn of danger had fallen asleep. A knife was silently drawn across his throat as his mouth was covered by rough hands and others grasped his limbs to keep him from thrashing and making noise. He died with a look of surprise on his face that faded as rapidly as his life. Dismounted, the scouts encircled the camp and killed everyone in a matter of moments. Most died unaware of the threat. A few managed to arm themselves and put up a fight, but they were too disoriented and far too outnumbered to make a difference. They died like everyone else.

  As the sun rose it painted the sky blue and revealed the aftermath of the scouts’ work. The primitive camp of the Mountain Men was stained with blood and the other signs of battle. Trails in the dust showed where the corpses of the dead men had been dragged away. The light revealed new tracks as well. Things that the scouts had missed in the dark of the night or that they had been too busy to notice.

  A set of tracks moved away from the camp, leading back out of the woods and onto one of the roads of the Ancients. No one knew how long the stone pathways had been there, but they never seemed to age or wear under the boots of men, wheels of carts, or hooves of beasts of burden. They led from one Graveyard of the Ancients to another, but sometimes they seemed to lead to nowhere at all. Occasional patches of the stone seemed to have been smoothed by some intense heat and became as slick as glass.

  No plants grew along the roads either. Something prevented the encroachment of the tall grasses that were the hallmark of the rolling hills and plains of The Western Fringe. The growth stopped a few feet on either side of the roads and never came any closer. That didn’t mean they didn’t collect dust though. The foot
prints the Mountain Men had left were clear as day to anyone who knew how to look for them.

  It was difficult for the scouts to say how many men they now tracked as they appeared to be attempting to hide their numbers. The footprints were blurred and indistinct, as if each man was intentionally stepping on the footprints of the man in front of him as they marched in single file. Torsten’s crew could be following ten men or following ninety. They simply didn’t know.

  Several times as they followed the tracks, they were joined by new sets as well. Tracks emerged from the grasses and trees along the way, belonging to more men who fell into line with the march. They were footmen though, and could be left behind in a hurry. If need be Torsten and his crew had no compunction about running for their lives.

  A few times, scouts rode back along the new tracks to see where they originated from. The men returned only to report more ransacked and burned farmhouses. As always there were no survivors and badly abused bodies.

  One of the scouts suggested that the farmers that had been killed had met their end in a ritual manner. As if they were a sacrifice of sorts to the Gods of the Mountain Men. Several nodded in agreement and others simply stared blankly, either uncaring or disbelieving.

  A gust of warm wind blew in Torsten’s face and he called his crew back to their task of tracking the raiders. By mid afternoon they had found the sites of several more ransacked homes and the still burning remains of a mill. There seemed little point in burning the mill if the men who would bring grain to be ground there were already dead.

  Destruction for the sake of destruction was not the style of the raiders from the World’s Spine. In their infrequent attacks they took slaves, brides, and what they could find of use. But they had never before set the entirety of their path to the torch. Perhaps the Mountain Men were trying to hide something in their wake, Torsten considered.