“Compliments of his Royal Majesty.” Torsten spoke into the man’s ear as he cut his throat and shoved the discolored man to the ground.
The green man melted into a puddle and he stood over it, looking into the reflection of his childhood self in the man’s mortal remains. He fell forward and into the pool and found himself standing on a moonlit ridge overlooking a Graveyard of the Ancients. A faint blue light rose from the ruins and almost drowned out the light from a star moving in the wrong direction across the sky. He had seen no stars that night he camped on the ridge above the Graveyard.
A woman with six tits, like a cow’s udder, he laughed to himself in his dream, served him and three of his friends immense mugs of ale in a rundown tavern. Moments later two men stabbed each other as they grappled in front of the fire, having come to blows over some unknown dispute. There had been no woman with three times the normal amount of breasts in that place. Though if there had been, perhaps he’d have been a better customer. He and his friends left and the walls of the place melted, sinking downward like rain into parched earth, leaving them standing in the outdoors.
Millions of raiders surrounded him and a handful of allies on a vast plain. A huge man with a bull’s skull for a head towered over them and laughed with eyes burning red. Some of the details were wrong, but as far as Torsten was concerned it might as well have been the absolute truth. He was a fool to let his men get caught like that. He was a fool to think he could have somehow survived, though he did appear to have done just that. Or did dead men dream as well?
The giant sorcerer’s fist came screaming down on him, trailing fire across the sky like a comet and slammed into him. The force of the impact crushed him utterly and ground him to dust. The remains of his body flowed like liquid and solidified and he found himself surfacing from an emerald blue pool surrounded by white sands the color of the finest paper.
A moment’s enjoyment on a deployment during an undeclared war between The Kingdom and some island nation far in the south. Fought over trade rights, as it were. A lot of men dead over money. What else would they be fighting for? As he exited the pool three beautiful women approached him, disrobing as they walked until they were all as naked as he was. The four of them collapsed to the ground together in a tangle of limbs and lust. To Torsten’s eternal regret, the beach had actually been empty when he had taken that swim.
His mind drifted like flotsam and jetsam after a violent storm. Images passed by quickly. Most he didn’t recognize. If there was some meaning here, he didn’t see it. But in dreams there rarely was.
Torsten sat up as he took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Cool air blew across his brow as he found himself sitting on a bed in a room lined with panels of metal. Each panel was decorated with strange symbols he didn’t recognize. Witchlight from some spell above him lit the room and danced among the panels, reflecting about the room as it saw fit.
He raised his hands to wipe his face and nearly blackened his eye with the metal cylinder that covered the place where his right hand used to be. What purpose this could possibly serve, he could only wonder. A blunt cylindrical chunk of metal that seemed to be somehow connected to his arm seemed to be of less use than the stump of the missing hand might be in its place.
As he looked at the cylinder he felt something twinge in the missing hand again. He’d had little time to come to terms with the fact he would be spending whatever remained of his life as a cripple. He could use a sword and spear with his left hand, better than most could with their right, but a one handed man was unlikely to last long in battle. The possibility of continuing a life of sticking to the shadows as a scout still remained though.
Men who were of use were not usually discarded from the service of The Kingdom for something that wouldn’t hinder their performance. Hells, Torsten thought as he looked at the cylinder, I might even get used to the stares this fucking thing is bound to bring. But it’s going to make it a hell of a lot harder to blend into a crowd.
He stared at the cylinder for a moment, seeing his reflection in it. Bloodshot blue eyes stared back at him from above a crisply trimmed beard of dirty blond hair. When he had left the crumbling tower, intent on fighting his way through several hundred angry Mountain Men, he had more than a few weeks growth. Whoever had attached this thing to his hand had also seen fit to groom his facial hair. He couldn’t help but laugh.
His laugh stopped when he looked down and saw that the mail and clothing he’d been wearing was gone and had been replaced with a white robe. The fabric was exquisitely soft and impeccably clean. He just thought it was strange that someone had seen fit to strip him down, reclothe him, and then leave him in this place.
Torsten stood and felt dizzy for a moment, leaning over and resting the cylinder on the bed he’d just risen from. Where the hell am I? He wondered. Then he remembered the voice.
Surely that had just been a hallucination. Torsten was not one to believe in fairy tales. The name spoken, Anhur, was that of a legendary warrior of ages past that had been revered as the living embodiment of war. Until he had ascended into the heavens on a column of the blood of his enemies and become the God of War. Or so the stories went. Torsten wondered how much blood it took to lift a man to the heavens then shook his head. It was unlikely that what he had heard had actually happened. The delusions of a dying mind. But he didn’t feel dead.
He looked around the room. There didn’t seem to be a door or any windows. As he sought some sign of there even being an outside he couldn’t help but think that he was in fact dead, and this was some sort of punishment for something that he had done in life. A panel in the wall suddenly moved, sinking back into the wall and sliding to the side.
Torsten looked out through the doorway. Two men clad in bronze armor as he had seen before approached. A glance over their shoulders showed a long white hallway of some type of material that resembled marble. It was well lit, but with no visible source of illumination. As if the hallway itself was a source of light.
The two stopped and looked at Torsten for a second before speaking in unison.
“Warrior Torsten, it pleases our master that you have recovered from your wounds.”
Not dead then, Torsten thought. There was a brief pause before the two continued.
“Lord Anhur, master of war, scourge of the weak, and ruler of The Hall of Iron commands your presence. Follow us.”
With that they turned and began pacing down the white hallway away from Torsten. Commands me. He noted the language they had used. Then he was not a guest in this place, wherever it was. He looked around the room once more and started after them.
His perception of the hallway shifted as he stepped into it. It seemed to be carved from a single huge piece of some type of rare marble and it was difficult to tell how far away the other end was. One moment it seemed only a few steps away and the next it seemed dozens. With a step the two bronze knights and the other end disappeared leaving him stranded in some whitewashed void.
Through the fog of his mind Torsten began to despair, but with the next step the end of the hallway was suddenly directly before him. A door of polished metal, gleaming like a mirror greeted him. He stared at his reflection in it for a second, as he had in the cylinder that was stuck to his arm moments before. It seemed as if the door was designed to serve as a mirror as well as a portal. Though he could not say why, Torsten knew its purpose and lifted his hand to open it. As he did so it slid open of its own and disappeared into the white walls.
A dimly lit room met his gaze on the other side of the door. Something resembling torches lined walls of gray slate, guiding his eyes to what he assumed to be the intentional center of the chamber. A cone of light descended from some unseen source and lit a dais in a position commanding the entire room. There a great chair of some unknown metal sat.
To say that it sat was incorrect. Nothing seemed to support the seat as it hovered a few feet off of the ground, perfectly still. As Torsten’s eyes adjusted to the lower light level, h
e could see what appeared to be a series of barbed spikes running up the chair where the spine of anyone daring enough to sit there would undoubtedly be. If his childhood memories of fairy tales served him correctly, this was the Throne of the War God.
And if this was the Throne of the War God that he beheld, then he was in none other than the Hall of Iron. Unfortunately, as far as he could remember, he had never heard where that was supposed to be.
Torsten looked about the room and saw a group of four men standing, flanked by four of the bronze knights. One of the knights beckoned to him to join them. The stances of the men looked familiar as he approached and their body language gave them away before he could see their faces.
Four of his men. Four of his crew. At least that many of them had survived the disastrous fight against the Mountain Men and their skull-faced sorcerer. Torsten’s eyes moved back to the bronze knights for an instant. They bore an uncanny resemblance to the gray men that had stood beside the sorcerer and that had killed several of his men. Something about the way they moved and the way the light gleamed on the surface of their armor marked them as some type of kin.
He looked to the faces of his men. All were men he knew well. The same that he had decided would be good company in his final minutes of life. All except one. On some level Torsten’s mind registered that the man should not be there.
One of the men he had dispatched as a messenger stood before him. If he had not carried his message of warning back to the men of The Kingdom, then the responsibility for that task rested solely on the shoulders of one man. Ragnald met Torsten’s gaze only for a second before lowering his eyes.
“I’m sorry.” He spoke in a low tone, but his voice carried well throughout the Hall of Iron. Something like a muffled growl sounded within the chest of the nearest bronze knight.
“Aye, there’s no need for apologies Ragnald. I don’t think any of us asked to be here.” Torsten gestured at the other men and himself with the cylinder clamped over the stump of his right hand. It would take time for him to learn to stop making such gestures with his mangled arm.
“Did your brother, Lon, escape the fight to carry our message?” Torsten continued. The men had not been born brothers, but it was common enough for men in service to The Kingdom to refer to their comrades as such.
“No.” Came the simple reply.
Torsten couldn’t help but shake his head. That likely meant many men were going to be caught unaware of the threat and were going to die before this was all over. The others remained silent.
“What happened?”
“We did as we were ordered.” Ragnald spoke informally, as was Torsten’s policy with his subordinates. Military discipline had its place, but titles and needless formality had always struck him as a waste of time. Besides that, men saluting him made him a target to any hostile sharp shooter who happened to be watching. So far the policy had served him well.
“We left the fight behind, though it pained me to do it.” The scout swallowed once and continued. “As we rode, we killed a few men that attempted to block our path. Just ran them down with our horses and cut a few, but we never dallied on the path. Whatever you lot were doing was working wonders. The whole damned herd of the Mountain Men was nearly fighting each other to try to get to you. We had a relatively easy time of it at first, but then some riders caught up to us.”
“And with knights in gray plate, no doubt.” Torsten spoke. Ragnald nodded and continued.
“One of the gray knights you mention. He was on foot, and still out ran our horses. It was un-fucking-believable. The Mountain Men’s horses, too. There was something strange about them. Like they’d been changed. It was crazy that they could have caught up to us, but how easily they did it was incredible.”
“And it wasn’t just how fast they ran either.” Ragnald continued. “The first that caught up to us. As much as I wanted to fight, I didn’t want to fuck around with them. We had a job to do.” Torsten nodded his approval. The man’s desire to stay and fight had been evident to all assembled in the crumbling tower.
“So I just stabbed his horse in the neck. A bastard thing to do in a fight. Dishonorable, even. But that’s what I did. A thick piece of the animal’s flesh on its neck came away and I thought I saw bones. In there among the spraying blood. But it didn’t even stumble. I knocked its rider off and got a better look. They weren’t bones. All in the wrong place for that. And they were some type of metal. I’d stake my left nut on it.”
A few of the other men grumbled and the bronze knights seemed to look at one another. A bold proclamation from one who held his own balls in such high esteem. “Go on.” Torsten said.
“There were just too many of them. While we were trying to fight free of them, the gray knight grabbed Lon. It pulled him from his horse and threw him to the ground. I rode to his aid, but in the few seconds it took for me to get there the gray knight cut his horse in half and crushed Lon’s skull. The kid never had a chance.”
More of the assembled scouts muttered. They had all seen the gray men perform similar feats.
“I drove my blade down onto his head, as hard as I could. It was a blow that would have made Head Splitter proud. No man could have survived it. Even a knight in full plate would have had his brains scrambled to the point of death by it. But that gray man… it didn’t even scratch his armor. And he sure as hell stayed on his feet. Before I knew it my horse was dead under me as well and I was falling.”
“I rolled just in time to avoid getting trapped beneath my horse. The gray man didn’t waste any time. He came at me right away while I was still on the ground. I managed to sweep him from his feet and get back to mine. I looked to see what the other riders were doing, but they were just standing there. Watching.”
“I gave the gray knight a few more shots with my blade, but nothing happened to him. I couldn’t even dent his armor, and on the last blow my sword shattered. I don’t know what overcame me then, but I turned and ran. I fucking ran. From a fight. And it wasn’t because I was ordered to carry your message back. I ran because I was scared.”
Torsten remembered the moments of terror in the presence of the skull faced sorcerer and the gray man that Pier had felled, but had not slain. He couldn’t blame the man for his fear. It was as if there was something inside the men they fought, if they could even be called men, that was generating fear in everyone around them. He simply nodded to Ragnald.
“And the gray man came after me. Swinging his sword. It made some noise like a hive of angry bees every time it came near me. I couldn’t hurt him, but he was clumsy. Unskilled. I could evade him.”
“Maybe being around Ed for so long,” Ragnald gestured to one of the other men with them. Torsten had already recognized his friend, but hadn’t looked at his face yet. He did so and their eyes met for a moment. Something was different there, but Torsten couldn’t pin point it exactly. What little of his mind that wasn’t buzzing was focused on Ragnald’s report.
“Gave me some kind of second hand luck.” Ragnald finished his sentence. Ed’s luck had been a bit of a joke among the men. Some had even taken to borrowing his clothes when gambling to see if they could borrow some of it. It rarely worked.
“Turns out I was running straight for a big fucking gorge. I thought about leaping it, but if a man is strong enough to cut a horse in half, I thought he’d be strong enough to jump a big hole in the ground. I could feel his footsteps right behind me, shaking the ground. I rolled and spun, shoving my feet up into his hips. I sent that fucker rolling right over me and face first down into that pit. I got to my feet and heard him hit the bottom a few seconds later.”
Ragnald declined to share how hard he’d been breathing and that he thought he’d broken his leg at some point during the roll. And that it had taken him quite some time to get to his feet. He’d heard the gray man hit the ground long before he decided to rise. He had, in fact, been spurred into action by the sound of approaching horses. No need to make himself look any worse, he figure
d.
“I turned back just in time to see about ten angry Mountain Men riding down on me. They started moving slow. Way too slow and everything got kind of bright and blurry and then we were here. And you lot were almost dead.”
Torsten remembered that as if it had been a dream. There was a general outline of what happened in his mind, but the fine details were blurry and distorted. Had he vomited or had it just blood soaking through his shirt beneath his torn mail?
Ragnald’s report finally done, Torsten turned his attention to the other men. Ed. Styg. Pier. The men he had faced certain death with and that had stood with him at the very end. Each bore harsh, new scars. The red welts clashing equally with the white robes they wore and their skin alike.
Styg glanced around the Hall of Iron nervously. His eyes settled on each of the bronze knights, lingering there suspiciously before moving on to the next. Wise to be distrustful, Torsten thought. Not so wise to show it, he concluded to himself.
A clap of thunder sounded, shocking Torsten and his men, as bright light flared throughout the Hall of Iron. The bronze knights didn’t move as the men jumped, nearly deafened and blinded by the spectacle.
Deep laughter filled the air from all directions at once, further disorienting them before settling on one source. It came from the direction of the Throne of the War God. The laughter abruptly stopped followed by another clap of thunder as a figure appeared before the throne. The dark shape of a large man, outlined in bright light. It was impossible to see any more detail than that.
“Enough” a harsh voice commanded, reverberating throughout the Hall of Iron. The same voice that claimed to be Anhur when Torsten and his men had arrived. “I did not bring you here that you might woo one another with your tales.”
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