“They are both counted among the enemies of our people.” She spoke, anger hinting through her voice though she appeared to be attempting to control it.
“Our people then? You are from The Kingdom as well?” Torsten asked before catching his error. “Uh… you… were from The Kingdom?”
Her eyes locked onto his and he found himself either unable or unwilling to look away. The end result was the same. “There is much we share Torsten.” She began. “You, and I, and these men with us.” She gestured to the prone figures of men and horses spread around the two of them before continuing.
“A common ancestry and a common heritage. This world and everything in it is ours by birthright. Those like Anhur and his petty enemies conspire against us, even as they conspire against one another. They would deny us mastery of our own destiny and keep us as slaves and playthings. A fact I am sure that you are painfully aware of.”
The memory of the War God reaching through Torsten and using him like an extra pair of hands was still fresh. There was no denying that part of what she said was true. How had she known? She blinked once and Torsten shook his head, a buzzing growing there along with something else. Anger perhaps. His or Anhur’s, he could not say.
He looked to Modi again and nodded, showing he understood what she meant. The light emanating from within the shade of the woman began to fade, and she with it. It pulsed a few times, waxing and waning as he watched. Her form became more and more ethereal with each cycle of the pulsations. More ghostlike in appearance.
“For now, you must obey him. You have no choice. But you will see me again Torsten. When you do, I beg you, heed my words. I can free you from his grasp and put an end to his lies.” Her eyes appeared filled with an unfathomable sadness as she spoke and seemed as though she might shed tears. Can ghosts cry, he wondered.
She reached out and grabbed his shoulder firmly, giving it a light squeeze that he found oddly reassuring. She leaned in and kissed his cheek, her lips feeling very real against the filthy mat of beard that covered most of his face. Then she was gone, as quickly as Skull Face had disappeared when Torsten had been about to strike him down.
Modi, he thought. The name sounds familiar. Perhaps a great aunt or cousin had that name when he was a child. Surely someone on his mother’s side. On his father’s side though… who knew? He’d never known the man or any who claimed kinship to him. His mother had assured him that he man had been a great warrior, for what that was worth. Little, indeed.
Had there been a cousin, blonde haired and blue eyed by that name that he had fancied as a child? He was almost sure of it. Had he just imagined everything that he had just seen? Always possible, he concluded, though unlikely. The feel of her hand on his forehead, on his forearm as she helped him up, and on his shoulder was all too real. And far too cold.
If he had imagined it all, why not imagine something more fun? Like a warm beautiful woman wearing revealing clothing or better yet nothing at all, instead of a cold woman clad in battle damaged armor. He looked down at his forearm, smeared with dirt and blood, and saw what might be a handprint there, too small to be his own.
Torsten breathed deeply smelling the fires burning around him. Wood, grass, stone itself it smelled like. His head hurt. All of him hurt. He put his hand on a nearby tree and leaned against it, noting that the trunk seemed damaged and some of the smaller branches had been torn.
After a few minutes of gathering his thoughts and his strength, the pain that coursed through him began subsiding. He watched in wonder as small wounds in his flesh seemed to knit themselves, closing before his eyes.
Something stirred near him and before he could identify it by sight, he knew it by sound. The pathetic, pained screams of a wounded horse. One of the Mountain Men’s horses. They were tough alright. He was surprised it lived at all. He strode to it. It had been the mount he rode away from Fort Pleasant before the Gods had seen fit to destroy it.
His sword was still attached to the saddle bags. The poor creature writhed in agony trying to pick itself up from the ground, but its spine was broken. Each time it moved it whinnied and screamed in pain.
Torsten drew his blade from the baggage and placed a calming hand between the horse’s eyes. It did nothing to reassure the beast, and seeing the sword in his hand only seemed to scare it more. As if it knew what he intended to do. Its cries reached an ear-splitting high before he thrust the sword into its neck. The horse coughed once as the blood spilled both out of its throat and down the inside of it, choking the beast.
It stumbled on its forelegs for a few more seconds trying to rise in vain before it finally collapsed.
“Thanks for that. The sound was getting irritating to say the least.” A familiar voice. Torsten turned to see Ed sitting upright, leaning against a shattered tree trunk. He was covered with blood. Aside from looking like shit and being weakened he seemed uninjured. Ed attempted a smile, but his eyes betrayed that he felt no such mirth.
Torsten strode to him, feeling his strength increase with each step, and helped his friend to his feet. Incredibly Ed had held onto the hammer he wielded through the maelstrom and still clung to it. Do I tell him what I just saw, Torsten wondered. No, he concluded, best to not have everyone think I’ve lost it.
Between them they found the others fast enough. All stirred when they were found and within ten minutes the scouts were reunited.
It took a few more minutes to find Eric. The first clue they had found him was blood dripping on Styg’s head. He looked up into the trees above them and swore.
“Well, fuck.” He spoke. The others looked and saw what he meant. About ten feet off the ground the still form of Eric hung, twisted among the thick branches there. Blood flowed from several tears in his mail.
“Get him down.” Torsten ordered. Pier hefted his axe, found near where he had fallen, and made to cut down the tree. “Not fucking like that,” Torsten began. “He might still be alive. Climb up there.”
Pier shrugged his indifference and rested the axe on the ground near the tree trunk. Ragnald stepped up to help him get to the lower branches, but Pier just motioned him away and leapt into the tree with ease. A few seconds later he leapt down, carrying the unmoving shape of Eric.
He knelt and lowered the soldier to the ground, the rest of the scouts standing around him in rough circle.
“Is he dead?” Asked Styg.
“Why do you care?” Ragnald asked back.
“I don’t really. Just that he looks a bit like my brother. Don’t want to see someone like that dead, you know?”
As Styg finished the last word Eric sat up with lightning speed taking a great gasp of air and screaming at the top of his lungs. Everyone around him jumped back, startled by the suddenness of it all.
“What the fuck was that?” He yelled several times, repeating himself. His voice echoed over the silent hills about them. A few men laughed. Ed stepped forward and put his hand on Eric’s shoulder.
“That was the wrath of a God, son.” His response came, entirely serious and very accurate the others surmised.
They checked the man over a few times. He had not been with them in Hall of Iron. He was still just a man and it was a minor miracle that he had survived at all, much less seemingly without serious injury. A few broken ribs. Perhaps a fractured bone in his left wrist. A cracked cheek bone as well. He would survive.
“Fucking tough as nails, that one.” Ed reported to Torsten. They both had a feeling that would definitely work out in the soldier’s favor in the very near future.
The scouts began searching their surroundings for anything of use. They bound the man’s wounds as best as they could with what they had at hand. It wasn’t pretty but it would work.
After their scavenging was done, Torsten brought all of them back together. An unfortunately familiar presence started pushing its way into his mind again, no doubt into the others as well.
“Eric, soldier of The Kingdom, watchman of Fort Pleasant, I Torsten, leader of this scou
ting unit and ranking officer of his Majesty’s Armies in The Western Fringe, hereby conscript you into my service. From now on you are a man of my crew.” He paused as Eric looked at him, clearly unsure of himself. “Welcome to the scouts.”
“Now, let’s get out of here. These dead horses are starting to stink.”
The five men each clapped the wounded soldier on the back and spoke their congratulations before returning to their scavenging. Supplies and weapons weren’t going to just find themselves.
HOVEL. That was the only word that could describe it. A shack of little more than twigs and mud. A few scrawny goats milled about a small yard, fenced in with roughhewn branches. The fence showed more craftsmanship and care than the home did.
They moved in on the humble home in total silence, weaving through the brush and trees. They fanned out as they moved and encircled the place, leaving no avenue of escape for any potential enemies that might attempt to flee. Even Eric managed to move steadily without making a noise. Weapons drawn, they prepared to descend on their target with a fury.
Torsten’s crew had followed the trail of Skull Face to here. Or had they simply been led here by Anhur? Difficult to say, Torsten concluded. The man they hunted had vanished at the moment of truth. Anhur had assured them that the sorcerer had not gone very far and had been wounded grievously in the fight. He wouldn’t be able to put much distance between them on foot as it were.
The six of them had set out towards the west, always following the trail. Sometimes it consisted of a ghostly blue light showing the path the sorcerer had trodden, though Eric could see no such thing, untouched by the War God as he was. Other times it was a much more concrete thing. Boot prints in mud, broken branches, discarded campfires.
When Anhur had been present, putting himself into their heads as he saw fit, he assured them they were on the right trail and that they would find the man they sought in a matter of days if not hours. That had begun some eight weeks before.
So long ago that Eric’s limp had cleared and his wounds had healed. Now, the six men of Torsten’s crew were filthy and unwashed, tired from the trail. Bearded and as savage in appearance as any of the Mountain Men they had faced.
Contact with them had been sparse as they left the site of Fort Pleasant’s death. A few times they had been hailed while crossing the foothills of The World’s Spine. When the War God was present it was a death sentence for the Mountain Men. When he was not, it was an opportunity to trade for information or food other than freshly killed game.
Not that any of them minded eating what they had hunted and killed with their own hands, but a little variety never hurt. There was always a guarded caution though. The War God’s collars, Torsten’s hand, and Ed’s steel eye burning blue in his face always seemed to set them on edge. It marked Torsten’s crew for what they were.
Sons of the Gods. Best to proceed carefully they probably thought. Torsten could not blame them.
When parlay was on the table instead of murder, the Mountain Men told them that the sorcerer had indeed passed this way. They had given the man free passage, as they knew of him by reputation.
They told Torsten’s crew that the man had come down from the Graveyard of the Ancients that stood highest in the mountains. Where few dared to tread. He was a Mountain Man, of that there was no doubt. But none could say from what tribe or clan he hailed. He had rallied many of the chieftains among the Mountain Men to his cause. Those that had not joined willingly did so after he and his gray men forced them to bend their knees. The sorcerer had claimed to be a messenger from the Gods, and had some right fancy tricks to back up that statement. Most didn’t buy it, but enough did to give him an army that then headed east. Always looking for something or another. Things that belonged to Mordechai. A lot of men dead for a few shiny trinkets. A messy business that, they concluded.
When they met on friendly terms, Torsten couldn’t help but think that beneath the wild and savage façade of the Mountain Men, they were really no different than the men of The Kingdom. And when covered with two months’ worth of trail dust, the men of The Kingdom weren’t very different from the Mountain Men.
Aye, and while were all so alike and friendly why don’t we build a big campfire, sit around it, and sing and trade kisses. Torsten laughed to himself as he thought.
One night the scouts actually had shared a fire with a group of Mountain Men out seeking game among the rough terrain of the foothills.
Good hunting was to be had there. Rams, deer, mountain lions. Food and trophies. Eric had taken a large ram that provided more than enough food for all. Late in the night though, Anhur had come, taking Torsten’s hands as his own. The small party of hunters had all died, bloody and screaming curses against the scouts for violating the sanctity of the shared fire.
They had tried to avoid others since that time, the deaths casting a palpable bad mood over the group. Not a man there was squeamish about taking life when needed. But there had been no reason to do so. Slaughter without reason was little more than murder. No warrior, no matter how successful and how many men had died by his hand, considered himself to be a murderer.
Anhur apparently disagreed with them though.
During a stretch of three particularly cold and windy days, the trail they followed led them to a small village. A cold, clear mountain stream brought fresh water and a flat place with good soil provided arable land for growing crops and fodder for livestock. Natural rock formations along the trail approaching from below made it a good defensible position. Lookouts knew they were approaching long before they reached the top.
A wooden gate, crude but heavy and sturdy, had been placed across the trail and barred their path. It would be a simple matter for the men of Torsten’s crew to destroy it if they so chose. But that was not their inclination, nor was it the will of the War God.
The men parlayed with the dozen or so Mountain Men blocking their path and persuaded them that they only wished to pass through on their way higher into the mountains. That they would be more than happy to pay a toll. The men above had conferred with one another before sending a messenger to the village chief.
When the man arrived he saw Torsten’s hand and Ed’s eye and immediately named them Godspawn, insisting that they not only be allowed to pass through free of charge, but that they stay the night and eat and drink their fill.
And that was exactly what they did.
Fresh water from the streams was pulled into ancient iron cauldrons and heated that the scouts might bathe. Refreshment and drink were had while they washed themselves and the rare bar of soap was produced for their use. Torsten assumed it was some type of honor, but in the back of his mind he suspected it had more to do with how bad his men had smelled when they arrived.
A gathering of all in the village was held to honor their guests. Sheep were slaughtered and roasted and casks of ale were opened. The first night there was spent relaxing. Eating and drinking. With no sign of hostility on the part of anyone. Even Anhur seemed to have taken the night off.
Torsten could still feel the presence of the War God in his head, but he remained silent. Content to merely observe the festivities.
Young women, recently blossomed and not yet married were offered to them. Better they take the seed of the Gods than they be wasted on a mortal man, the village shaman insisted. Even if the men who bore that bloodline were about to move on permanently. Future generations of warriors from their village would grow to dominate the world, the man professed as he presented a group of nervous and blushing young women to Torsten’s crew.
Not a man had refused.
The women Torsten had taken looked on his scarred flesh and his hand of living steel with a mixture of awe and fear. They flinched at the touch of the cold metal, but did their duty nonetheless. Was such a thing really a gift, he wondered, that it would mark him and disfigure him so for the rest of his life? Was it not within the power of a God to return the hand to him, flesh and blood?
He felt a stirrin
g of some type in the place in his mind where Anhur now resided, but there was no response to his blasphemy.
Torsten’s crew slept well into the next day, the sun already climbing across the sky before they stirred. Another feast was held in their honor and the village shaman distributed the rest of the remaining women between them, pleading with the scouts to ensure the ascendency of his tribe as reward for their hospitality.
They spent the remainder of the day eating, drinking, and fucking. As night fell even the Sons of the Gods began to tire, showing their origin as mere mortals before they had been chosen by the War God. The people of the village retired for the night and the torches of the watch were struck and carried by the men on guard.
This far in the mountains and in such a defensible position, there were few threats. But there were still threats. As the darkness of the night grew deeper and deeper, something stirred. Something hostile.
Anhur roused the men of Torsten’s crew, all save Eric. They were sent forth into the village of the Mountain Men to do his bidding. To kill every last man, woman, and child there.
The five men were good at what they did. They had been doing it for a living, for decades between them. Silently eliminating their enemies when possible meant they had a greater chance of living to see another day. Their experience and the hand of Anhur, embodied in the burning collars of the War God, combined to make them exceptionally lethal.
Torsten raged inside his own mind, not able to even control his own breathing as he watched Anhur’s work.
He had awoken earlier in the night to find his hand of living steel clamped down on the throat of the last woman he had been given. Earlier she was pleading with him to take her away from this place, away from what sad fate she thought awaited her here without him. Tales of abuse and depravity. Dreams and hopes for the future shared.
He didn’t believe her. Something about the way she glossed over the details and the inflections in her speech. Just words she spoke, hoping he would take her with him. But for the briefest moment he did entertain the notion of taking her along.
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