Sons of the Gods

by James Von Ohlen

  Such an alliance could be a significant threat to the areas of The Western Fringe claimed by The Kingdom. The ramifications of this event would have to be thought out later, he determined. Now, surviving the night was the first priority. Living to see another day and delivering news of this threat would be counted as a victory.

  While he watched them, two scouts joined him and began counting their enemy and taking notes of his dictations. Torches flared to life amongst the crowded mass of infantry below them and men began to cheer and scream. Their sorcerer had arrived. Only this time, he was not alone.

  The screams began to take on a more unified tone and became a chant carried by the voices of all the raiders. The crowds parted and a group of three men moved slowly through them, steady moving ships in a sea beset by storms of raging men. The sorcerer stood in the front, flanked on either side by a single man carrying a large sword that seemed to glow with a light of its own. In stark contrast with the other raiders surrounding them, the two were clad in oddly shaped armor. It was dark gray and its mirrored polish seemed to catch every scant source of light around them and reflect it. A halo of faint light hung about them, like some conjured witchlight.

  Behind them stood a man carrying what appeared to be their personal banner. It was one that Torsten had not seen before in his dealings with the Mountain Men. A many-pointed star on a white background above what looked to be a pile of skulls. He looked down to the see the man carrying the banner and his breath caught for a moment.

  There stood the beast of a man that he had wounded in the neck during their earlier skirmishes. Such a wound was mortal. There was no way the man could have survived, yet there he was. He looked no worse for the wear, save for a jagged red scar across the side of his neck where Head Splitter had cut him open. He joined in with the assembled host of raiders, adding his voice to theirs.

  Voices joined one another to carry the words of the raiders much farther than would have seemed possible. Torsten understood their words as they yelled them over and over.

  “God spawn. God spawn. God spawn.” They chanted continuously.

  The trio stopped amongst the hundreds of warriors and gazed upon the tower, the sorcerer’s eyes glowing red in his skull helm once more. He raised a single hand and silence fell upon the army of raiders.

  “Men of The Kingdom,” his voice carried loud and clear, showing no accent as he spoke. Torsten motioned to one of the men near him and a bow was placed in his hand followed quickly by an arrow. If the sorcerer took a few more paces forward, the shot would be a sure thing.

  “Hear me now,” the sorcerer’s voice rang out again. Torsten nocked the arrow and raised the bow to aim. “You do not have to die this night.” The man below spoke and a gust of wind caused his black robes to dance about him.

  “Give us the Nexus, and you will be given your lives.” He stepped forward once as he finished the sentence and raised the Demon’s Maw in his hands. The man to Torsten’s left spat, showing what he thought of the raider’s words. Torsten drew the bow a little further as he wondered what exactly the Nexus was.

  Even if the man below could be trusted to honor any such agreement, it was the duty of Torsten’s crew to deliver news of this enemy warband within the borders of The Kingdom. Such a thing could not be ignored, and to do so would be the gravest dereliction of duty. There would be no surrender here. There could be no surrender here.

  “Refuse me,” the sorcerer continued flatly, “and you all will die.” The sorcerer seemed to be looking directly at Torsten, as if he could see him through the stone of the tower. The Demon’s Maw sent a stream of its lethal breath into the air as if to punctuate the statement.

  True to the weapon’s name, it was as if some infernal beast exhaled into the air. Waves of intense heat visibly rippled through the air accompanied by a loud hissing noise. The sound set Torsten’s teeth on edge and caused the hairs on the back of his neck to stand on end. The heat from the blast slapped him in the face, drying the sweat from his brow even at this distance and causing no small measure of pain.

  There can be no surrender, he reminded himself. As the sorcerer lowered his weapon he took another step forward. Torsten smiled and spoke loudly as he released his grip on the taught bowstring.

  “I’ve your answer right here.” His voice carried over the assembled raiders, steady and calm.

  The familiar twang of the taught cord releasing its tension was a welcome and comforting sound to him. Air whistled and the steel bodkin-tipped missile sailed towards its mark in seeming slow motion. The man to Torsten’s right inhaled sharply in anticipation of the weapon striking its target.

  Glaring light showed from the sorcerer’s eyes and he raised his left hand, speaking words none present could understand. The arrow really did slow as all watched, and came to a complete stop scant inches from the open palm of the outstretched hand. He turned the hand so that his palm faced up and he closed his fingers into a fist. The arrow began to burn and then was crushed by some unseen force before it fell harmlessly to the ground.

  “Oh fuck.” One of the scouts near Torsten whispered.

  “Destroy the tower. Bring me their bones. Keep one alive that I might question him.” The sorcerer spoke and then turned to walk back among the multitude of raiders. The two gray giants that stood with the sorcerer began speaking commands to the raiders and they hastened to obey. Within the hour the beginnings of siege equipment was being assembled before the tower, just outside of bowshot. Nearby trees were cut down and roughly fashioned into weapons of war.

  Several crude rams began to take shape. Against a modern fortress with good upkeep the things would be laughably useless. Against the ancient timbers of the gate and the crumbling stone of the tower’s walls, they might as well have been the most powerful weapons known to man.

  Torsten left one of the men on the third floor, stationed there to provide a long distance watch. Followed closely by the man who’d handed him the bow, he took the stairs down to the ground floor two and three at a time. He nearly fell once, but caught himself on a hand rail that fell apart beneath his touch. On the ground he called his men before him and conferred with them. Though the final say was always his, it would be a cold day in all hells below before Torsten refused to hear what might be a life saving idea.

  As was his custom, Ed relayed the concerns of the men under Torsten’s command to him. All saw the grim reality of their situation, and understood that there could be no surrender here. It was likely they would die, but they would fight unto the very end. Lives would have to be sacrificed, but at least one man would have to survive the fight to carry warning back. Who that might be would be decided when the time came.

  Torsten held the gaze of each man under his command as he listened, his eyes moving back to Ed every now and then to show that he was listening and that he understood.

  One man stood among the mounts, tending to them, making sure they were secured and would cause minimal disruption or damage if they panicked in the coming fight. He knelt and began moving rubble and debris about on the floor. As Ed spoke, the man called the sergeant’s name. Ed paused and looked to him.

  “What is it?” He asked.

  “I’ve found something.” The man responded pointing to the ground. Just then one of the exhausted horses standing nearby him raised its tail in the air and sent a steady stream of manure onto the floor.

  “I think I know what you’ve found.” A voice called from the assembled men to general laughter.

  “No,” the soldier began, “there’s a grate in the floor. There’s some kind of drainage. And it looks large enough for a man to fit through.”

  IT was actually large enough for two men to fit through, side by side. Ed took two men with him and descended into the grate carrying his sword in one hand and a makeshift torch in the other. It led down into a drainage tunnel that was lined with cobbled stone and supported by buttressing every dozen paces or so. Clearly the original builders of this passage had intended it to
be more than just drainage. It was intended to serve as an egress point from the tower should it need to be abandoned or fled from.

  The passage was astonishingly clean. No debris from the tower’s slow decay over the passing years had made its way this far down, and it provided easy movement. In minutes the trio of soldiers covered a good distance. Their hopes rose as they marched in formation down the tunnel. There might yet be a way out.

  A gentle curve in the pathway lay ahead of them, moving to their right. As they moved through it, the sound of something moving ahead of them in the tunnel echoed to them. Rats about their normal business, or men trying to move silently and failing. It was impossible to tell just yet. They held their weapons at the ready and spread out as much as they could. Ed held his torch out in front of him, willing the light to spread further and reveal what lay ahead of them.

  A faint light danced at the edge of their vision for the briefest of moments before it disappeared altogether. The man to Ed’s left took a deep breath and gripped his sword tightly with two hands. A loose cobblestone sounded as something or someone stepped on it. Ed lowered the torch and moved into a more appropriate fighting stance. A shield would have been better in his off hand, but he could use the torch as a weapon as well.

  Nothing happened.

  The trio stood at the ready for several minutes. Ed signaled silently to the men with him to advance slowly. Without sound the three of them began creeping forward, ready to fight, senses straining to see anything ahead of them in the darkness.

  Something moved, just barely visible. A strange perturbation in the air. It shimmered like a mirage or waves of heat, in the shape of a man no more than a few paces in front of Ed. It was almost too late when he saw it. Purely out of instinct he raised his sword in a defensive strike and the felt the impact up his arm of another blade meeting his own. The sound of steel on steel rang out, echoing down the long tunnel in both directions. Ed shouted an order to his men and they sprang into action.

  Someone cursed loudly, in the language of the raiders. The air shimmered again and suddenly where it had been moving in strange ways, a leather clad warrior of the Mountain Med stood before Ed in the tunnel, mid-swing with his crudely forged sword.

  The man’s eyes were wide in his face behind the red war paint that covered it. They widened further with rage as Ed blocked the strike and struck back at the man. He struck high to distract the man as one of the other scouts stepped forward and drove the point of his sword at the raider’s exposed midriff.

  Some unseen force blocked the blow, and suddenly the three men were facing what appeared to be no less than a score of raiders in the cramped confines of the drainage tunnel. Spears struck over the shoulders of men in the front rank of raiders. Those in the front swung swords and axes. Steel flashed in the torchlight and one of the scouts went down. A sudden surge of bodies pushed Ed and his remaining brother in arms back from the fallen man and he disappeared beneath the feet and weapons of the raiders. If the man still lived, there would be no helping him.

  Ed swung the torch at one man’s face, as anger clouded his features beneath his gray beard. The fire caught in the Mountain Man’s facial hair, burning him and causing him to yell in pain as he raised his hands to his face to defend his eyes. Ed’s sword gutted him a split second later and the man fell, partially blocking the tunnel. He thrashed as he fell, tripping up another of the raiders and adding to the obstruction.

  Ed struck at the fallen man who still lived, tearing deep into the back of his thigh. With such a wound the man wouldn’t be moving very fast or very far anytime soon. Ed called to the remaining soldier who stood with him and they began retreating down the drainage tunnel, calling out to their brothers so they knew a potential fight was coming.

  Voices echoed back to them, lost in the shouting all about them, and a scout carrying a torch dropped into the tunnel in the distance ahead of them. The soldier saw the mass of men behind his two brothers and turned to climb back out of the tunnel, yelling to the men above him.

  The man running by Ed’s side grunted and fell to a knee as a hurled short spear stabbed into the back of his thigh, mirroring the wound Ed had just dealt out to the enemy to slow their advance. Ed stopped to help the wounded man, and the soldier attempted to push him away.

  “I’m done. Go on without me, and I’ll hold them here as long as I can.” He spat the last words out through gritted teeth, almost snarling them like a beast. Ed couldn’t help but chuckle as he looked down upon his wounded brother.

  Such a dramatic statement.

  No doubt the warrior had visions of bards singing the tale of his last battle beneath the ruined tower around crowded campfires and in busy taverns back in civilized lands. Men nodding their grudging respect of such a warrior and the women swooning at the thought of being with the man.

  He knelt and helped the wounded man to his feet and shoved him back the way they had come through the tunnel. Back towards the tower. Two more scouts dropped into the tunnel, each carrying swords and shields.

  “We’re scouts, son. We don’t throw away our lives. It doesn’t work that way.” Ed responded before turning and delivering a two handed blow with the pommel of his sword into the nearest buttress. It held firm. Another blow and nothing to show for it.

  The raiders began to sort themselves out, and the dead man and wounded man were being carried out of the way. In a few short moments their advance would continue. Two scouts with swords and shields could hold them for a while in this tight place, but against so many men with spears it was a guaranteed losing proposition. Desperation began to creep into Ed’s actions, giving him a new strength.

  The pommel of his sword slammed into the joint of the buttress again and this time it shifted slightly with a loud crack and a rain of dust. He looked in one direction to see the two scouts grabbing the wounded man and carrying him to relative safety and in the other to see twenty or so angry raiders moving down the tunnel towards him.

  Another blow and he nearly lost his grip on his sword as the impact sent tendrils of numbness up his arms followed quickly by pain. The wooden beam crossing the ceiling of the tunnel fell and nearly landed on him, sending him leaping back from it. Several stones and a good amount of dirt came down with it, but the ceiling held.

  The raiders drew to within a few dozen paces and one cocked his arm back to launch a spear at Ed.

  “Fuck me.” He said as he turned and began to run.

  The two scouts that had descended into the tunnel moments before were already helping the wounded man back up into the tower. But he knew he wouldn’t make it in time. And if he didn’t do something, the two men still in the tunnel were as good as dead as well. He heard the spear glance off of the ceiling of the tunnel and land on the floor behind him.

  After just telling his man that scouts didn’t throw away their lives, he hoped he wasn’t about to make himself a liar. Ed turned to face the oncoming horde of barbarians and gripped his sword with both hands. He spread his feet wide, finding a good point of balance and weaved the blade back and forth, feeling the weight of it as he moved it.

  A fleeting thought of all of the battles he had survived in his life crossed his mind. He was by no means a young man, and he had fought often. There had always been a lot of fighting. A common thing for a man like him.

  He’d never been particularly good at it. Better than most, he supposed. Not as good as many others. But he had always been lucky.

  Men who surely would have killed him slipped on some unseen spot of mud on the battlefield, or were tripped up by their own men, or picked another target because of their shiny armor, and were finished by someone else. Someone ran between him and an arrow that would have pierced his heart. A coin on the ground caught his eye and the knife swung by a jealous husband passed harmlessly where his throat was but a second before as he stooped to pick up the money. Some other man beat him to volunteering for a mission that turned out to be a death sentence.

  Luck had been his th
ing. A perfect hand dealt to him by a man trying to cheat him. Loaded dice defying their intended purpose and Ed still won. A knife cast into the darkness around a camp in hostile territory hitting home in an approaching soldiers chest and alerting the sentries that danger was at hand. If Luck was a man, that man had been gay for Ed.

  And now, here in this drainage pipe beneath a crumbling tower that was older than dirt, out in the middle of who fucking knew where, his luck seemed to have run out. His knuckles whitened with the force of his grip on his sword and he forced himself to relax and take a deep breath. Tight hands meant tight arms, and that men being slower than you could be. And that meant being deader than you should be.

  He screamed a challenge to the men coming for him, bracing his abdomen and sending blood rushing through his body. They eagerly answered and the first two of them broke into a run towards him. The first came at him with a one handed axe and a dagger. The raider tried to feint in one direction with the dagger and bring the axe around at Ed’s head, but Ed had seen that trick a hundred times. Hells, he’d used it himself a hundred times. He drove the point of his sword through the throat of the Mountain Man and stepped back as he collapsed.

  The rest of the raiders saw the man fall and began sprinting towards him, intent on grinding him to nothing with their numbers. A hurled knife stuck into Ed’s left forearm, point first. He attempted to hold his sword with his left hand while trying to pull the knife out with his right. He screamed in pain.

  A wave of angry muscle and pointed metal was about to break upon him, and pain would become his world. He screamed one final time as he tore the knife out of his arm and threw it back at his attackers. He thought he saw it strike home in one man’s chest. Or maybe he imagined it, not wanting to see the blade fall harmlessly to the ground.

  And then the ceiling caved in.

  A torrent of stone and dirt buried the screaming raiders as they ran towards him, sending a cloud of dust into Ed’s face. The suddenness of the moment surprised him and he choked on airborne dirt and dust as he fell backwards, trying to throw himself out of the way of the collapsing ceiling.