Of Gods & Grunts

by Kyrell Kendrick

  My rant over, I laid back, a sudden lack of energy.

  "You miss your home, don't you," she said sympathetically.

  "Yeah, I wish," I began.

  She cut me off, as a breeze with the first sign of the night's chill hit the camp, "I'm cold. I'm going to grab some more wood and a blanket. We have spoken enough, and I am tired," she said without emotion.

  I shrugged and got up to help her.

  Chapter 16

  We were packed up and on our way to gnomeland. We passed a small village and noticed the road no longer resembled the well worn, well-groomed thoroughfare of Teletha, but more of a pair of wagon tracks overgrown by simple weeds.

  Traveling through the village was a mild spectacle, as adults and children alike came to see what rich nobles were condescending themselves to visit such a small community.

  We only spent a few hours in Kipling's Roost and were able to acquire food, feed, and other essentials for our journey, in exchange for a miniature beast of burden.

  According to Cloy, we were only a third of the way to Caramondon Hall, and the further from Teletha we went, the more dangerous the journey.

  The first forty miles outside of Kipling's Roost were completely uneventful. Like super duper boring uneventful. We went about twenty miles a day, give or take, and the trail went from two wagon ruts to a single game looking trail that was hard to spot. More than once, we had to either backtrack or cut over a few hundred meters.

  The terrain went from great plains like farmland to thin forest. We went up and down more than one rocky hill and crossed more than one creek. Each time we crossed a creek, I forced the horses to stop, and of course, tried to get them to drink. I also bathed and filled our water skins.

  I don't know if I'm just immune to the local water parasites, or what, but I never got sick drinking from the creeks.

  We were continuing on the trail until we crested a large ridge and saw the mountains way off in the distance.

  Cloy pointed and said, "At the base of those mountains is the entrance to Caramondon Hall."

  The mountains were at least fifty miles off, maybe even more. I could barely make the peaks out.

  "What do you think like a week?" I asked.

  She nodded seriously.

  Exasperated, I said, "This is so long and forever taking."

  She nodded again, "Be thankful the trail is still visible," she said.

  I rolled my eyes and hit the reins.

  We rode another mile until we hit a large clearing and the distinct smell of rotting carcass.

  "Eww," I said, rolling up my face in disgust. By the smell of it, the animal had been dead for at least a week.

  Rover didn't like the smell either, because he neighed aggressively and got very close to the carriage.

  Looking down, I noticed the other horses had their ears flat against their head and were starting to step around nervously.

  I'm not an idiot, well no, that's not true, I am an idiot sometimes, but I know animals have some better senses than humans.

  Thinking the glade was an ambush, I didn't want to give away that I knew something. I slowly rotated the selector switch on my M4 and pulled out a frag grenade. I carefully removed the thumb clip but kept the pin inserted.

  I scanned the area with my eyes but saw nothing.

  Cloy was no fool, and she whispered, "I see nothing."

  A roar, unlike any I had ever heard before, struck my heart with fear. My first instinct was to run away as fast as possible in any direction, but that fear lasted half a second as Cloy grabbed my arm.

  The horses, however, had a more primal response and did exactly what I had wanted to do.

  Rover took off straight down the glen, keeping clear of the trees, and not heading uphill, back the way we came.

  The two horses pulling the carriage, which I had named Mary-Kate and Ashley, each tried to head a separate direction. Since they were horses and lacked good horse sense, each one tried to run the direction in which they were tethered.

  Mary-Kate tried to bolt left, while Ashley tried to go right.

  Mary-Kate was either faster or had better footing because she won the resulting tug of war match and pulled Ashley off of her feet.

  Noticing that she wasn't going anywhere fast, Mary-Kate, that fickle bitch of a pony, decided it might be better to follow Ashley.

  Well, Ashley was already on the ground, trying her damndest to stand back up, and overall impeding the proper function of the carriage, while still being perfectly connected to the tongue.

  Mary-Kate, who looked like a Clydesdale and probably weighed as much, pulled hard and caused the carriage to tilt hard on its front right wheel, lifting the back left completely off the ground.

  Since DOT doesn't exist in Teletha, neither Cloy nor I were wearing seatbelts, and I am also sad to report, our airbags didn't inflate.

  Both of us flew off the front right side and slammed into the ground knocking the wind from us. Thankfully the grass and underlayment were soft and not rocky.

  Ashley got her footing, and the horses finally decided to work together and run as fast as their gigantic horse legs could carry them.

  A second, closer and louder roar changed the mind of Rover, and he suddenly turned around because he ran to the edge of the glen, which apparently was a decent ten-foot cliff.

  Thankfully, Rover isn't as dumb as Mary-Kate and Ashley because he turned around and decided to come back to the safety of the wagon.

  Now I can only assume that Rover didn't see us lying there, trying to catch our breath.

  He probably said, "These assholes are leaving me here to die, as he watched our carriage run to the other side of the glen, and into the forest."

  So Rover bolted after the wagon.

  Something caught my eye as I tried to make sense of what was happening. Flying overhead was a crimson red dragon. I knew it was a dragon because it looked like a fucking cliche lizard with bat wings.

  The damn thing was about forty feet long, with at least a two hundred foot wingspan. Like the wingspan was ridiculously wide.

  "Run to the forest!" Cloy cried.

  Not waiting for an engraved invitation, I did as I was beckoned.

  Just as we were nearing, I heard a loud explosion. Not like the type of explosion that a frag makes, but like the loud wooshing explosion that is made when you throw a match on a pile of wood with gasoline.

  I felt the heat at the back of my neck and smelled what can only be described as garlic.

  "We have to kill it!" Cloy said.

  Now I'm all about killing things, but I am also all about living. Using my M4 to kill that dragon seemed about as useful as using a slingshot on a bear. Sure, I'm going to piss it off and might even take an eye, but chances are I'm going to wind up being bear poop.

  "I've got a better idea, let's run and hide!" I said.

  "It will never stop hunting us," she said calmly as the fire died down. "We have to kill it before it kills us."

  You hear a lot of tales in the barrooms in Teletha, and one of the tales was that dragons were all extinct because no one had ever seen one alive.

  Apparently, Cloy offered a different theory. No one had ever seen one alive, because dragons pretty much kill anything they find.

  I later found out that dragons are not only voracious hunters, but they also are incredibly intelligent, like smarter than humans, and different colors of dragons exemplify their breath.

  We were fighting a red dragon, which meant he breathed fire. Red for fire. Now that we're all caught up, I had the annoying problem of how to kill a giant death machine with a pea shooter.

  "OK," I said, "We'll hide in the trees, and when it lands, I'll try to kill it with my M4."

  "I don't think you can pierce its armor with that," she said, pointing at my carbine.

  "Shit," I said, and looked around. We were ten feet into the forest, hiding behind two large trees. "If I can get to my assault pack, I've got a claymore. That has to be able to kill i
t."

  She shrugged, not understanding what a claymore was.

  Just as I looked back to see if I could even find the carriage, the canopy of leaves burst into flames above us, and at least twenty limbs covered in leaves crashed to the forest floor around us.

  I ducked down and covered my head with both hands, as I had not been wearing my helmet.

  "We need something sooner," she yelled, covering her head in a similar fashion.

  "I wish I had a fucking stinger," I said.

  The FIM-92K Block 1 Stinger Man-Portable Air Defense System is a very sophisticated shoulder-fired, fire and forget anti-aircraft missile. It weighs about thirty-five pounds, is about five feet long, and about three inches wide. They are produced in the good old US of A and are typically given and used by soldiers with the 14P MOS.

  All that information is useful to know because when a Stinger appeared out of nowhere and landed in front of me, I was dumbfounded. I stood staring at the shoulder-fired weapon system for at least ten seconds, trying to figure out if I was stroking, hallucinating, or had just gone batshit crazy.

  A vicious roar brought me back to life, and I saw Cloy waving her hands frantically in front of me.

  When I was at Fort Bliss, I got to see some Marines shoot down some bats or turkeys or whatever the fuck those overprices skeet targets are called. Like any good soldier, we hadn't wasted the opportunity to get a little hands-on experience and cross-train on the MANPADS. We didn't get to shoot a live one, unfortunately, but we did get to watch some land sailors blow up some targets, and I have to admit it's pretty cool.

  The Stinger was already prepped for me to fire. The BCU was inserted, the IFF antenna down, and all the shipping caps were undone.

  Calmly, and against Cloy's yelling, I shouldered the FIM-92K and walked out into the open.

  I turned left, towards the direction of the last yell, and saw a nice bright red spot in the distance.

  The dragon was performing its favorite tactic, breath fire on prey, fly away, wait for breath to build back up, and breath fire again.

  It circled and started heading right for me.

  Dragons are big, powerful, apex predators with heavy armor and large wings. They are not, however, nimble.

  I heard the not so familiar sound of an infrared seeker on the missile loudly proclaiming it was ready to fire.

  I waited a few seconds because I wasn't sure if the dragon was in range. Looking through the reticle, I saw the dragon fill out the circle as it approached straight at me.

  Smiling, I depressed the trigger and heard the belch as the compressed gas motivator popped the missile forward. Less than a second later, the main motor kicked in, and the stinger was on its way to say hi to my new friend.

  Like I said before, dragons are big and armored. They are smart and are apex predators. Dragons, however, are not immune to a three and half-pound annular blast fragmentation warhead.

  I watched as the Stinger rushed impossibly fast towards the dragon in the sky and then popped with a ring of smoke. Two seconds later, I heard the explosion.

  Two pieces of red fell like meteors, still smoking.

  Moments later, I heard a thud.

  A large shit-eating grin plastered my face.

  Cloy ran up beside me, "What was that?" she asked.

  I placed the Stinger on the ground and stared at it, willing it to give me some sort of information. This wasn't some simple accounting error, like did I packed two frags or three. I'm pretty sure I would have noticed the heavy, unwieldy, super-advanced shoulder-fired surface to fucking dragon missile.

  "A Stinger," I replied, still in disbelief.

  "Ohhhh," she said, smiling. "I thought you had aspirations to be a bee or a wasp or something."

  I slowly turned my head to look at her, a little anger in my eyes. "What do you know?" I asked accusingly.

  She shrugged and turned back towards the forest, "Come on, we have to find Rover!"

  Stingers are one-shot weapons, and practically useless after they have been fired, but I figured there might be some markings or something on the tube that could shed some light on my predicament. Was I in some sort of weird-ass psycho simulation the Chinese were using to try and pull information out of me?

  I quickly dismissed the idea, mainly because my security clearance had a single S next to it, and no special read-ons or cool names to go with it. In fact, the only reason I had a security clearance was so I could get into the battalion TOC to receive OPORDS.

  If the Chinese or the Russians or whoever the fuck had me in some sort of weird dream simulation thing, they were going to be sadly disappointed.

  So I grabbed my tube, the Stinger one, and ran to catch up to Cloy.

  "What do you know?" I pressed.

  "I know that if the horses run off, we're walking," she replied flippantly.

  Cloy sped up her pace and kept her head on a swivel.

  We arrived to find the carriage and the horses milling about, a mile down the way. Rover was with them too. They all looked healthy and calm, and definitely not worried about the huge dragon that had just tried to eat them.

  I went to the rear to check on our stuff and was surprised to see the box that I had desperately tried to open previously was now fully open and fully empty.

  Cloy saw it too and took a deep breath, which she promptly exhaled.

  "What's in the box? What's in the box?" I said Brad Pittingly.

  "Cloy deas mytracka, canan," Cloy said really loud.

  "Canan, paya mytracka," an annoying voice replied.

  I immediately raised my M4 and searched around the area. "Hey, asshole," I shouted, "Come out where I can see you."

  "I'm up here," he said.

  I was prepared for many things, but I was not prepared for the ugly asshole looking thing sitting atop my carriage. He looked like the cross between Golem and an elf. Not like one of those cool looking elves in Teletha, no those stupid-looking ones that help fat people in red coats deliver presents. He even had green shoes with gold bells on end.

  "What the fuck?" I asked.

  "You may call me master," he said with a sneer on his face.

  This guy was like eighteen inches tall, blue, and probably weighed five pounds on a good day. The fact that he was so small was the only reason I didn't shoot him. I think I might have an issue with people trying to get me to call them master. If I ever get back to Earth, I should see a therapist about it.

  "You can suck my balls," I said, hand still on my M4.

  "How dare you," he said, and then rose to his mighty, or I guess, tiny, full stature, "I will rule this land, and you will be the first to kneel at my feet."

  Seeing an ugly ass, Santa helper try to claim dominion over the land hit my funny bone hard.

  "Oh," I said to Cloy, who was not amused by the way, "He's so precious," I swooned, doing my best to imitate a seven-year-old girl. I then turned back to him, "Aren't you just a cute little elf bitch."

  "I will see you drawn and quartered!" he said, pointing at me.

  "Oh, did the wittle elf have an uh oh?" I said, lowering my M4.

  He took a deep breath, hatred and rage seething from his every pore.

  "Someone's an angry little bitch, yes you are, yes you are," I said, stepping closer to him. I then turned to Cloy, "Is he dangerous?" I asked seriously.

  "He cannot hurt you," she said.

  I trusted Cloy, immensely, and she knew way more than she was letting on.

  I nodded, getting ready to shoo the elf away.

  She whispered in my ear, "You must give him a name."

  "Good idea," I said. A large grin split my face, and I turned to look at him. My first thought was Napolean, but even that was too good. My second choice was obscene, and frankly, I abhor cussing. Ok, I lied; I just didn't want to name him one of my favorite cuss words.

  Then it hit me. When I was a kid, like eight or so, my uncle babysat me all the time. He was a huge nerd and made me watch his Thundercats tapes. Notice I
didn't say DVDs or videos. No, they were straight-up VHS tapes.

  Now, don't get me wrong, eight-year-old me had some really weird mixed feelings about Cheetarah that I really don't want to get into right now, but I have to say, with all my heart, fuck Snarf. Fuck him right in his stupid cat lizard face.

  "Snarf," I said.

  Cloy just looked at me funny, and Snarf just shrugged.

  "Great, now that we got that out of the way, kick rocks," I said to Snarf.

  He tilted his head slightly and then raised his eyebrows in confusion.

  "Beat it. Take a hike. Get lost. Bye Felicia," I rambled, as I started to climb into the carriage.

  Cloy went around to check on the horses and then climbed up beside me.

  "I will travel with you mortal," Snarf said annoyingly.

  "The fuck you will," I said, still upset that the douchebag had ordered me to call him master.

  Snarf could ferret out word meanings by context because he definitely understood the meaning of, the fuck you will.

  Snarf straightened up and bowed deeply, "Forgive me, mortal, for it has been some time since I have interacted with one of your will and stature."

  For some reason, I pictured a spider inviting a fly into a parlor.

  "Yeah, save that silver-tongued bullshit for your boyfriend down at the Blue Moon," I said, turning towards the horses.

  No response came, and I knew I was being ignored.

  "A deal then, perhaps?" he said, sitting between Cloy and me.

  I took a deep breath. He weighed, I guessed about six pounds. I could probably get a good forty feet if I was standing, twenty from my seated position. It wouldn't be difficult to just snatch him and chuck him.

  "In exchange for allowing me to travel with you, I will answer three questions," he said, holding up three little digits.

  I started to say something, but he cut me off.

  "Know this mortal, your questions may only be yes or no, and may not interfere with the will of another god," he said.

  I looked past him at Cloy and gave a look to her that said, is this guy for real?

  Cloy looked angry, but said, "Any deal you make with him, he is bound to honor."

  Feeling a little cocky, especially after killing a dragon, I said, "Five questions."