Young. Beautiful. Eager to please. Looking at him as though he were a God. Then again, that was exactly what she thought. She would make a good companion. Not unlike his wife.
His thoughts turned sour for a moment. He knew exactly how long it had been, to the day, since she had died. Taken with his children by Mordechai’s plague. Someday, somehow, he would avenge their deaths. Beyond what vengeance he had already taken. A soft breath on his shoulder and he was drawn back to the girl by his side.
He was not one to draw attention to himself. But he allowed himself to daydream for a little while. He could take the girl back to the Heart Cities with him. Dress her in fineries that showed off her figure and parade her through the fashionable districts near where he had a home. The beautiful savage he had taken as a prize on the warpath in The Western Fringe. He would be the envy of no small number of men. But what would Anhur have to say about that?
She had fallen asleep with her head on his chest where they lay together amid a pile of furs. Young and pretty with a cascade of red hair falling from her shoulders. She had bright blue eyes and pale white skin that now turned blue and then purple in her face as he choked her.
Her hands reached up to his and tried to pull them away, but he was simply too strong. She tried to scream for help, but the barest whisper escaped her mouth. Nails broke against the steel of his hand as they clawed at it in panic before finding purchase in the unprotected skin of his forearm. There they sank into him, drawing blood and sending tendrils of burning pain up his arm.
But he did not stop. Anhur did not stop. Gurgling noises began to sound in her throat. As if she was drowning in her own blood.
Her eyes began to show bleeding into the whites as he squeezed harder, unable to stop. Her body began shaking weakly as her oxygen starved muscles twitched. Life rapidly fading from her eyes, she looked to Torsten. Betrayal and incomprehension showed there, drowning in tears. An accusatory gaze, asking only ‘why?’ in the seconds before she died.
Torsten fought to regain control of his body, but he didn’t know how. Anhur laughed mockingly.
“What are you doing to this beautiful child, Torsten?” The granite voice asked in between fits of near hysterical laughter. “Perhaps you aren’t quite done with her yet?” Anhur’s gaze through Torsten’s eyes fell upon the girl’s naked chest, tracing a line further and further down her body.
No. No. No. It was the only thought Torsten had. Anhur laughed and forced Torsten to rise from his bed, leaving the dead girl behind. He grabbed his blade and strode forth into the night, wearing nothing. Held completely in thrall, used as a puppet, Torsten killed dozens in their sleep. More died as he struck them down from the shadows before they could react.
All over the village the same scene played itself out over and over. Five naked men, smeared with the blood of their victims, slaughtering defenseless and sleeping people. By the time an alarm was raised, it was too late. Too few remained to make a difference. Eric had finally awoken and joined the fight as well, convinced that the scouts had been betrayed and were now fighting for their lives. As the morning sun rose the last man was struck down.
The shaman.
Before he died, he was shown the ruin of the village and all who had lived there. Dragged by his hair and mercilessly beaten by the scouts. He could only ask the same question the girl had when Torsten had choked her to death.
“Why?” He croaked in a broken voice, tears spilling from his eyes as he knelt surrounded by the scouts and by the ruin of his people. “Why would you do this? After we took you in and gave you shelter. Why would you murder us?”
Anhur answered through Torsten’s mouth, warping and twisting the man’s voice.
“To teach my puppets a lesson. To remind them that my rule is absolute.” As Torsten finished his proclamation, Pier stepped forward, taking the man’s head with a single swipe of his great axe. The body slumped forward, spilling crimson spatter upon the white snow in a great arc.
The six scouts stood, gore stained and filthy from their deeds. The five men held in thrall by the War God were still naked and shivering in the cold. Eric shivering with the aftermath of what had just happened. Anhur relaxed his grip, but only slightly. Now allowing the scouts to suffer with their own thoughts.
Torsten felt sick to his stomach and vomited. For the first time in his life because of something he had done. Self-loathing and disgust washed through him and the War God forced him to rewatch the particularly gory deaths over and over in his mind’s eye. Always ending with the red haired girl that had been the first to die. Focusing intensely on her eyes as blood seeped into the cornea and the life faded from them. Torsten hadn’t even had a chance to learn her name.
He dropped his sword and sat down in the snow, with his hands shaking. He had just murdered dozens of people if not scores. This was no battlefield where such a feat would earn him honor and glory beyond his days. These were no enemies of his people that deserved to die. No corrupt foreign generals or merchants whose deaths could avoid a larger war, thus saving many lives. This was only murder. He vomited again.
“Never question me.” The deep bass reverberated through their minds. “Or next time it will be worse.”
An hour later the men stood assembled, shame etched across their pale faces. Clothed again, but not allowed to wash the blood from their bodies they watched as the buildings of the village burned. Just in case anyone had survived, Anhur would leave them nothing to return to. Even the livestock had been killed and the crops burned. Scorched earth in totality.
They watched in silence, unable to look one another in the eye. Silently they turned and left the scene of the massacre behind them, returning to the chase.
Only one other time they had been diverted from the sorcerer’s trail. The War God wanted something they were near but wouldn’t say what. A shattered fragment of a road of the Ancients led them to a mountaintop ruin. Bathed in moonlight as they ascended, the wind surged as they crested the peak to stand among the crumbling buildings, threatening to send them off the mountain and to their deaths far below.
Blue lights danced across Torsten’s vision, guiding them through the fallen outpost. A wolf howled in the distance, its lonely cry echoing from granite face to granite face about them as the trail ended. A cast out, driven away and left to die alone.
“Downward.” Anhur spoke his command to Torsten. He looked at his feet to see the outline of a trap door obscured by scorched rock and windblown dust and dirt. A hard breath blown over the seam sent dirt into the air. He knelt and brushed away enough to get a firm grip. The others stood watch as he worked.
With a casual tug, the door moved. Creaking on ancient hinges that hadn’t been oiled in the lifetime of any living man. The sound echoed downward into unlit tunnels. Torsten descended, the War God’s collar growing hot as he went.
Despite the darkness he could still see. The red glare of his eyes glowing reflected back at him from a few shiny surfaces of ancient steel, amazingly not corroded, and polished stone. A thick coating of dust ground beneath his feet with each step. Nothing had set foot here in a very long time.
Something sounded ahead and his blade was in his hand in an instant. Crackling with energy. Ready to kill. Torsten could feel the War God’s anticipation of a fight pouring through and into him. His breathing quickened though he did his best to remain silent. He stepped lightly, not wanting to alert any potential foe to his presence. Pupils dilated as far as possible, leaving the barest sliver of a blue iris. His hands flexed and relaxed rhythmically on the grip of his sword as he stepped.
A single shaft of moonlight pierced the veil of darkness, descending from a hole in the ceiling to the floor as dust danced through it. He could hear something breathing ahead of him. This far into the mountains in a ruin of the Ancients, no matter how minor, what kind of monstrosity might be lying in wait for him ahead?
Thoughts racing, but remaining calm, he moved as quickly as he dared. He hugged the wall, avoiding the shaf
t of moonlight. Feet shuffling ahead. He switched to a one-handed grip on his blade, drawing a dagger from his belt with the other. Two weapons were better than one.
“Torsten,” the voice echoed down the tunnel to him from where he had entered, sounding entirely too loud in the confined space. Ed called down to him. “Hurry up.” Something moved quickly ahead. There was no hiding his presence now. All or nothing.
Torsten surged forward, blades at the ready, and instinctively hurled his dagger at something moving across his field of vision further down the tunnel. It shrieked for a moment then was still. He closed on it to inspect his kill.
A raccoon. Nothing more. No monster guarding an ancient treasure or gray man waiting in ambush. Anhur chuckled in his head. A fierce warrior indeed. He retrieved his blade from the animal’s corpse and scanned the hallway around him. A side tunnel branched off, leading to a door that stood slightly open.
Torsten pushed the door the rest of the way open and red light from his burning eyes flooded the room, lighting his path. Two skeletons lay on either side of a metal table. Both were clad in the rotted rags that were the remains of their once impressive and no doubt expensive ancient finery. Not what I’m here for, Torsten thought and ignored them.
In the back of the room, a wooden shelf, still intact despite its age. Not rotten, no holes from insects eating it. Maybe the cold climate or some magic of the Ancients preserved it. Impossibly, a few books stood there. No doubt they would be worth a king’s ransom back east.
Torsten picked one up and looked it over. The script was strange, unlike any he’d seen before. There was something familiar about it though, and he could make out a few letters here and there. He’d never learned how to read as a child, but had insisted on it when he had started to make a few coins cutting throats for king and country. To make a better soldier, had been his official reason. To improve my chances of survival should I be betrayed had been his real reason.
He turned the book over and over in his hands. The cover felt strange, like some type of metal but it bent just like paper. A small circle surrounded by even smaller circles with orbits outlined around the larger greeted him on the cover. Finally one word jumped out at him: FUNDAMENTALS.
Smooth. Synthetic. That was how the book felt as he touched it with his hand of living steel. The sensory input from it was incredible. Magical even. It was better than the original. Much stronger too. Perhaps he’d have been better off having lost the whole arm. Who knew how it might function now.
His eyes moved from his hand back to the book and the writing there. It was strange. Almost mechanical. It looked like no handwriting he’d ever seen before.
It stared back at him. Fundamentals of what, he wondered. Destroy them, Anhur spoke. Acid in his voice. In but a few moments the room was lit further by the small fire consuming the pages. Still not what I’m here for Torsten realized.
There among seemingly useless trinkets and baubles. Anhur’s magic outlined something on the shelf beneath where the books had stood. A metallic cylinder no larger than his fist. Yes, Anhur spoke with granite rumbling through Torsten’s head. Take it.
Torsten took the object, handling it with great care. He had no idea what it was, but if it was of interest to the War God it could very well be dangerous. He wrapped it with oil cloth and placed it securely in a pouch hanging at his side.
No further mention was made of the object or of the detour into the mountains. An uneventful week was spent, still on Skull Face’s trail. The air seemed to grow colder and colder by the minute as they ascended higher and higher into the mountains. Amidst the primeval forests they went hours on end without seeing the sky above them for the thickness of the interwoven branches overhead. At times it was difficult to tell if it was day or night.
The wind in their ears and rustling through the leaves was a constant companion, as well as the strange rumblings of the ground beneath their feet. Cold air stung their lungs with each breath and numbed their skin. It seemed that they might be climbing into the heavens themselves, leaving the world of mortals far behind and below them.
The silence was occasionally broken by the howl of a distant wolf or the cry of a hunting eagle. But not by the voices of men. They advanced mostly in silence, as though their rough voices might violate the virgin beauty of the wild lands around them.
A night spent camping on a high ridge protected from the driving wind by a natural outcropping of rock gave them a good view of… well, of something. Tall pines dusted with snow gave way to some construct of the ancients. Their relics were always enigmatic when inspected by men.
They weren’t quite sure what it was. It appeared to be a giant metal bowl. At this distance it looked about a hundred yards across. Roughly the size of a standard sporting pitch back in the heart cities.
Relatively shallow and filled with holes at regular intervals that would have defeated the purpose of using it to hold liquid. A single gleaming spike stood perched in the center, pointed at the heavens above. Ominous. Threatening. As though it bore a grudge against the sky itself and sought to bring it down in ruin.
They had talked about investigating it, to see what it was and if there might be anything of use there. They had been preparing to pack what meager gear they carried with them and to descend to the great steel contraption when Anhur had spoken to them all through Torsten.
“You will do no such thing.” Torsten spoke with a strange warping of his voice. The result of the War God using him as a puppet. “Any man who dares approach that abomination will die tonight.” And with that the matter was decided.
They spent the rest of the night camped in silence, huddled close to the flames of a small campfire to keep warm. Two days later they arrived at the first sign of human activity in weeks. The shack.
As they closed in on it, each man moved with great care. In stalking their foe, they had seen no indication that he was aware he was being followed. Though perhaps that was part of a ruse to lull the scouts into a false sense of superiority, of safety. They wouldn’t allow themselves to fall victim to something as simple and embarrassing as a booby-trap if they had any say in it.
No concealed pits full of sharpened stakes, no bear traps waiting to snap shut on the unwary leg, no magical wards stood. Just a yard with a few hungry goats milling about. Torsten pushed one of the goats aside as it challenged him on his path through their territory with a soft headbutt.
He couldn’t help but laugh. This goat weighing no more than a child was angry enough at his intrusion to strike out at him. As Torsten moved past the goat it seemed satisfied that its territory had been defended.
A signal, disguised as the song of a rare type of bird, called out by one of the scouts opposite the small home from Torsten brought every man to a stop. Each of them froze in place straining to see or hear anything around him. Torsten stood precariously in the middle of the yard. He could disregard the order if he so felt, but it might be a bad idea. Then again standing out in the open might be a bad idea as well.
In an uncharacteristic moment of indecisiveness he stopped and mulled over his dilemma. He was an easy target and easily seen by anyone inside that might happen to look out. Then again, the signal meant that someone might be about and moving might draw their attention to him. As he stood still the small goat decided that his territorial integrity had, in fact, not been fully defended. The creature got a running start and leapt, the crown of its head aimed squarely for Torsten’s ass.
The impact caused the man to lose his balance for a second. The initial assault was followed quickly by the goat, this time catching the man in the back of his thighs and crumpling him to the ground. Torsten did his best to remain silent. The gridlock between screaming in fury and laughing hysterically at his plight held his tongue for the moment as he grabbed his attacker’s horns and held him at bay.
Another signal sounded. The ‘all clear’, giving men leave to continue their cautious approach. Something moved at the edge of Torsten’s vision and he saw
Styg looking at him, stifling a laugh with one hand before turning his attention back to the matter at hand.
Torsten grabbed the horns firmly and rose, turning and sending the goat flying into the yard. From there he moved to the door of the shack, making sure his sword was ready for either potential enemies within or another assault by the ruminant terror.
In less than the blink of an eye he was at the door, ready to force it open. The other five members of his crew were arrayed about the hovel in their assigned positions. Ready to stop anyone from fleeing or to provide support in the case of a fight.
A simple metal doorknob was set in old boards beginning to deteriorate with rot. It was cold to the touch. Torsten noted for the first time there were no lights coming from inside or any smoke from the chimney. Such trivial things that should have been noted before they ever got this close. The interference from the hand of the War God was making him sloppy. Hopefully that didn’t end with him being killed by some asshole like Skull Face.
He gripped the handle firmly and turned it slowly, checking to see if it was locked. It was not. He began to push the door open when he noticed something odd. Symbols that he couldn’t name or place had been painted above the door on the frame in what appeared to be blood.
Torsten pushed the door and it swung open silently. Strangely he found that far more unnerving than if it had made a great deal of noise. His eyes flared red and he could see in the dark of the small home as easily as he could in the moonlight outside. A solitary figure lay on the floor, arms and legs splayed out in the shape of an X where hands and feet had been nailed to the floor. Blood stained the floor around the man’s corpse. His torso had been cut open and his organs removed and placed about him. More symbols akin to those above the door were drawn in spirals around the body. Still relatively fresh. No more than a few hours done.
Torsten scanned the room and saw no threat before he dared approach. He looked down upon the dead man’s face. Old. Great-grandfather old. What a shitty way to end such a long life. Anhur’s familiar rumbling laugh sounded in Torsten’s head.
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