Blood Of Gods

CHAPTER 37

Patrick sighed. If it wasn’t one thing sapping Ashhur’s strength, it was another.

The first had been the task of sealing the huge gap in Mordeina’s wall after the collapse of Celestia’s tree. That effort had taken the deity almost six hours to complete and was accomplished only with the help of the nine spellcasters who hadn’t been killed during the raid on the settlement. Next the god raised a temporary passage to replace the Wooden Bridge, which lay in ruin-Karak had apparently splintered the structure after his army crossed. After that came Ashhur’s efforts to quell the fires that raged on either side of the road as they marched. The deity had also taken it upon himself to pass along his healing touch to any who might need it-human, Warden, or even horse-as they proceeded at breakneck pace toward the east.

And now this.

“There’s so many,” Tristan whispered, the young soldier’s eyes wide and disbelieving as he stared at the impossible things surrounding them.

Patrick glanced at the boy. He looked as frightened as Patrick felt. “No shit,” he said, trying to break the tension.

No one laughed.

They had come out of the smoke that billowed from the shattered lands bordering the Gods’ Road-beasts of every species imaginable, wolf and elk and hawk and boar to name a few, standing upright as they broadened around the massive convoy. Luckily Ashhur had sensed the beasts’ presence before they’d appeared. The god stopped the march, ordering his eight thousand brave warriors to bunch up while the undead he commanded surrounded their ranks, forming a wall of dead flesh. If he hadn’t, the exhausted new army of Paradise would have run smack into Karak’s new pets.

As it was, while the beast-men snarled and howled and snapped their jaws when they first emerged from the smoke, they hadn’t yet attacked. They simply leapt about, their numbers far too many to count, encircling the undead in the same way as the undead encircled the living, rarely coming within ten feet of Ashhur’s deceased sentinels. Occasionally, one of the more wild-looking beasts would venture close to the walking corpses as if testing its strength, but not once had any truly attempted to cross the barrier.

Those trapped in the middle of the undead were in a state of unease just as great, if not greater, than the pacing beasts. The air was filled with the sickly sweet scent of their fear. Patrick felt it as well, a churning deep in the pit of his stomach that made his throat run dry and his shoulders quake. I have it better than most, he thought, and that was the right of it. At least he knew the gods were capable of such feats of alteration, having watched as Ashhur created fiends like these on two separate occasions. For the others, seeing wild beasts that walked like humans must be like living a nightmare.

“Form up!” came a firm voice from Patrick’s right. There he saw the Master Warden Ahaesarus walking among the men, four other Wardens behind him. His face was stern, and he ambled with ease, hands clasped behind his back. At least someone isn’t frightened. Though, perhaps it was only an act to help calm the nerves of his wards.

If it is, it’s a good one.

“What do you think they’re waiting for?” asked Preston Ender.

Patrick looked up at the old soldier. Preston sat atop his horse, eyes narrowed and brow furrowed, hand cupping his thick gray beard as if deep in thought. He didn’t seem afraid in the slightest. That makes two. Patrick thought.

“I don’t know,” he said aloud.

“How many do you think there are?”

Patrick shrugged. “You tell me. I can’t really see from down here.” He had lent his new stallion to a man named Duncan earlier that day, saying that he wanted to jog for a short while to get his blood pumping. A funny suggestion, considering running was extremely painful for Patrick given his uneven legs. It was something he only did when absolutely necessary. But Duncan was a proud man, and he would have taken offense if he’d known that Patrick had only made the offer because Duncan looked like he was ready to pass out from exhaustion. Stupid fucking git, Patrick chided himself, wishing he had that horse now.

Preston leaned forward in his saddle. “Impossible to tell for certain. They keep moving around. But there are certainly lots.”

“That’s helpful,” Ragnar muttered from beside his father.

Preston cuffed his son on the back of the head, and Ragnar rubbed the spot, looking upset. Little Flick laughed at him, which made his brother, Big, laugh as well. Edward chuckled. Soon, the whole of the Turncloaks were guffawing like a pack of hyenas in the midst of frightened lambs. Patrick smiled truly for the first time in quite a long while, feeling the tension break. The other men in close vicinity seemed put off by the display. Warden Barnabus even shushed them, but the Turncloaks didn’t listen.

“You know,” Patrick said after the laughter died down, “your boy has a point. You don’t even have a guess for us?”

“Fine,” said Preston, shaking his head. “Let us say. . a hundred thousand.”

“A hundred thousand?” said a panicked voice from among the others.

“Only a guess!” the old soldier shouted, and he glowered at Patrick. “You see? That is why it’s not a good idea to make assumptions, especially out loud.”

“Got it,” Patrick replied.

Preston gestured for Patrick to come hither, so Patrick placed a hand on the man’s horse and got up on his toes.

“Though there do seem to be twice, maybe three times as many beasts as there are undead,” he whispered, serious as a lightning strike.

Patrick rolled back flat on his feet, any joviality he felt fleeing him. Ashhur had more than twenty thousand walking corpses at his disposal. The math was demoralizing.

“Shit.”

He spun around, elbowed a man wearing a comically large helm to get him out of the way, and began walking between two columns of frightened people. “Where are you going?” he heard Preston ask.

“I think a god might have a better grasp on numbers than you,” he shouted over his shoulder.

Ashhur lingered just inside the ring of undead, standing beside one of the wagons holding their paltry food stores and fronted by a company of thirty Wardens. The frightened men and women of the convoy kept edging closer to the deity, seeking out his protection, but the Wardens shielded the god while Ashhur remained inexplicably standoffish. Patrick approached the line of Wardens, preparing a tirade for when they would try to stop him from advancing, but oddly their numbers parted as he clanked toward them, allowing him passage. He cocked his head, uncertain. Warden Judah nodded to him on his way by.

He sidled up to the deity, who was standing mere feet behind the wall of undead, gazing out at the legion of beast-men in the same way Tristan had. His flesh was still chalky; his hair seemed to have lost its golden luster; and his normally pristine silver armor now looked a dull gray, but that somehow only made him seem more statuesque and imposing. Patrick cleared his throat, and Ashhur’s softly glowing eyes lowered to him.

“Patrick,” the god said.

“Your Grace,” Patrick replied.

“I have been waiting for you to come to me.”

“You have?”

Ashhur nodded. “Please, climb atop the wagon.”

“Um, all right.”

Patrick did as he was asked, using his powerful arms to haul his bulky frame onto the wagon’s roof, where his sightline was almost even with Ashhur’s. Boards creaked beneath his feet. For a moment he simply stood there, in awe. The multitude of beast-men had seemed daunting when he’d been down below, but up here, able to fully witness the sea of writhing fur that seemed to stretch out for a mile in every direction, the view was entirely different. It wasn’t a daunting task that faced them, but an impossible one.

“Your brother’s been busy,” he said, trying to keep from careening into despair.

“Indeed he has.”

Patrick thought back to the morning Ashhur created the grayhorn-men, pictured the landscape darkening and turning brittle as the life-giving energy was siphoned out of it. “But your Grace,” he said, “to make so many. . he must have gutted half of Paradise to pull it off. . ”

Ashhur frowned. “He did no such thing. These beasts are different. Remember when I formed the wolf-men, so long ago? You asked me why I did not make them more intelligent, and I told you it would greatly weaken me. Karak has taken no such precaution. Just as we did when we created humanity, he gave these creatures a piece of himself, each and every one of them. Though they are still close to the beasts they were, in time their intellect will grow, as will their drive. And they will be loyal, entirely, to Karak.”

Patrick gave the deity a queer look. “That makes no sense, your Grace,” he said. “Why go through the trouble of making these beasts smart, if they’re not smart enough to realize when we’re sitting ducks?”

“If they were mere beasts, they would have already attacked,” said Ashhur. “It is that intelligence at work here. Karak wanted them to surround us. They were created to make me choose.”

“Choose? Choose what?”

“That which is more important to me: my need to pursue my brother or the need to keep my children safe.”

Patrick frowned.

“I don’t get it.”

The deity turned to face him. His expression was exhausted and filled with a mixture of anticipation and doubt. It was not a look befitting a god, and it made Patrick nervous.

“I can scatter them if I wish,” Ashhur said, lowering his booming voice and directing it so only Patrick could hear. “They are still base creatures, and whatever intelligence they have, I can still overwhelm with fear. But these. . things will move deeper into my lands, and when they do, they will hunt my children, without warning, without mercy. Yet if we fight the beasts, our forces will suffer casualties, and it will give Karak ample time to distance himself from our troops.”

“So what will you do?” Patrick asked. His voice sounded small and insignificant in his ears.

The deity inclined his head. “We stay the course,” he said, “and hope my children are intelligent enough to hide within the walls I’ve raised for them when the beasts arrive.”

“What of those who aren’t in Mordeina? There must be thousands of them.”

“Those, we simply pray for.”

“And who does a god pray to?”

Ashhur sighed once more, his glowing eyes aimed at the gray-blotted sky. “Anyone that will listen.” Patrick didn’t think he’d ever heard anything more depressing in all his life.

Ashhur turned away from him. Patrick was left to stand atop the wagon alone, surrounded by frightened humans and Wardens on one side, and countless undead and beast-men on the other. The beasts’ grunts and growls rose in volume, their eyes following the god as he progressed along the line. Patrick could see hatred in their glares, but awe and dread as well. In that way, the creatures were very much like himself.

The deity strode ahead, the line of undead bulging outward as he neared their numbers. The beast-men outside the protective circle howled and snarled, backing away as the walking corpses pressed closer to them and snapping their jaws at Ashhur. The god held out his hand, and his ethereal sword appeared from the mist, massive and glowing.

The sea of decaying flesh parted, and Ashhur walked past them, each step measured, determined. The beast-men snarled, a guttural chorus that caused the very air to quiver. Patrick looked on uneasily as twenty or more of the braver beasts, former wolves and elk, charged the deity, claws outstretched. Ashhur swung his sword with such speed that the blade became a glowing half-circle as it cut through the attacking beast-men. Bodies were carved in two, the beasts’ blood washing over Ashhur. In a matter of moments, all of those that had attacked were dead.

The other beasts close to the deity nervously backed away. For a moment Ashhur simply stood there, staring at them, while blood fizzled and popped on his glowing blade. Eerily calm, he knelt down and placed his fingers on the already scorched ground. Flames immediately sparked to life, racing away from the god in either direction like twin waves and rising twenty feet into the air. The wall of fire raced along in front of the swaying undead as it circled around them. The inferno blocked Patrick’s view of the beasts, but their shrieks and howls of pain could be heard over the violent crackle of the flames. He had to shield his eyes from the brightness as the atmosphere became superheated. Sweat rolled over his brow.

Ashhur shuddered for the briefest of moments, and the flames died away, retreating back toward the being who had created them, revealing a ring of smoking, humanlike corpses. There had to have been more than a thousand of them. Patrick squinted, looking on as his god forced himself to his feet. When he took his first step, his right knee buckled, and he almost fell. His face was more drained than ever before.

And then it was over, the beasts’ howls echoing across the land as they fled into the distance. Ashhur strode back toward his children, the deity’s armor caked with blood, his expression tired. Men rushed Ashhur, falling to their knees before him, begging the god to say he would keep them safe. Patrick thought he saw Ashhur’s dimly glowing eyes well with tears as he knelt down among his flock, allowing them to gather around him and offering reassuring words. This seemed to lift the mood of the men, a sentiment that passed through their great numbers like a wave. Soon many of them wore smiles, even if most were wary. The din of the fleeing beast-men drifted into the background, seemingly forgotten. Patrick couldn’t help but think of Mordeina and the many villages outside Paradise’s capital settlement. It seemed they would need Ashhur’s protection far more than those here at his side.

Patrick glanced behind him as the last of the beast-men disappeared into the lingering smoke. A cluster of brawny wolf-men was the last to leave, casting hateful stares at the god of the west before they themselves disappeared. For a moment Patrick took in the reality of all that surrounded him, and had to fight back despair; where there had once been forests and grass, there was now a country of glowing, smoldering coals. It hardly looked like a land worth fighting for.

Yet fight we will. His resolve grew as he watched his god calmly nurture his children. Patrick climbed down from the wagon and sought out the company of his Turncloaks, his brothers-in-arms. If Ashhur is willing to sacrifice so much of himself, how can we do any less?

The Wardens reorganized the people into their formations, and soon the march began anew. Ahaesarus took the lead, his extremely long legs churning as he jogged, sword raised, ushering his wards onward while Ashhur loped behind him. Patrick found Duncan and retook his stallion, his knees throbbing as he climbed into the saddle. He exchanged a few casual remarks with Preston, Edward, and Tristan as they cantered, but his gaze kept finding its way back to his god. Ashhur looked like he might fade away right then and there. Patrick wished there were a steed large enough to carry him.

The caravan moved onward, the undead dragging their carcasses along, somehow keeping pace despite their stiffness. The sun crept low behind them, casting long shadows over the Gods’ Road. A few of the horses faltered, two of them snapping legs, forcing a shaking Ashhur to heal them. It seemed not even broken mounts could stop the march. They were near to Ashhur’s Bridge now, much too close to consider stopping.

The smoldering ruins of Paradise abruptly ended, replaced by fields of grass, dull green from the winter’s snow, and trees that were hearty despite their empty branches. The smoke that constantly seemed to envelop them all but disappeared. Patrick looked all around him, taking in his surroundings. After the desolation they had passed through over the last three days, he thought he’d never seen anything more beautiful.

Then the convoy came to a halt once more; only this time a tired grin stretched across Ashhur’s sallow face as he gazed upon the obstruction in the road. The wall of swaying undead parted, and the god stepped through them, trailed by his Wardens. Patrick shot Preston a look, and the two men followed.

The obstruction in the road was a group of what looked to be at least two hundred dark-skinned people. They were camped right in the center of the Gods’ Road, sitting around cookfires, wearing only their bloodstained smallclothes. Piles of mismatched armor, once worn by Karak’s soldiers, were stacked outside their small clusters. Their horses-only a handful of them-grazed lazily on the field of flattened grasses to the south of the road. The men of Ker all rose when they spotted the eastern-marching convoy, appearing pleased as they gazed up at Ashhur. Oddly enough, though they looked at the numerous undead with startled expressions, they didn’t withdraw in fear. It was almost as if seeing such horrors had become commonplace for them, which struck Patrick as particularly discouraging.

He scanned the assembly for a sign of his giant old friend, but Bardiya was nowhere to be seen.

Three of the Kerrians talked with the rest of their group and then approached Ashhur, meeting the deity halfway. All three dropped to their knees before him.

“Your Grace,” said the one in the middle, a tall youngster Patrick didn’t recognize. In fact, as he scanned the Kerrians’ faces in the dying sunlight, he realized he couldn’t identify any of them. Had it been so long since he’d traveled farther than the Black Spire? It didn’t seem like it.

Then again, the passage of time is fleeting when you don’t age.

He rode his stallion up to Ashhur’s side, and the three men of Ker turned their eyes to him. All three looked at him with suspicion, and two seemed repulsed by his appearance. Patrick frowned. It had been a long while since he’d experienced such a reaction; he’d almost forgotten how insulting it was. He wondered if they would have reacted the same way if Bardiya had been with them.

“Allay, Midoro, and Nusses-my children,” said Ashhur, thankfully drawing their attention away from Patrick. “Why are you blocking the road? We wish to pass.”

The one in the middle bowed low, his black skin gleaming in the waning light. “We were waiting for you, your Grace.”

“If you desire to join our ranks, I ask that you pack up your belongings, mount your steeds, and find a place among the column. The bridge bearing my name is but a few hours away, and we will ride through the night if need be to reach it.”

“Are you pursuing Karak, your Grace?” asked the one named Allay.

“Of course.”

“Then the bridge to the delta isn’t where you need to go.”

“Is that so?”

The one named Midoro, a bulky young man with a wide jaw and piercing hazel eyes, nodded. “It is, your Grace.” He pointed north, toward a lengthy backdrop of rolling hills that ended at a thick wood. “The god of the east went that way.”

Ashhur faced the direction in which Midoro pointed. His pale lips twisted into a grimace, and he shook his head.

“Of course,” the god said.

“Bardiya already ran off after him,” said Nusses. “He ordered the rest of us to go back home, but those you see here couldn’t bring ourselves to abandon him.”

“Wait,” said Patrick. “Bardiya is going after Karak on his own?”

Allay, Midoro, and Nusses nodded.

Ashhur seemed to mull over the men’s words for a moment before turning about and facing his legion of Wardens. “We will make camp here, with my children from Ker,” he said. “But only for an hour or two. Pass the message along to the others. There are no safe passages across the Rigon, north of the bridges, and the terrain is rocky and perilous. We will be greatly slowed.”

As the others dispersed, including the Turncloaks, Patrick trotted up to his deity. “I wish to go on ahead.”

“Do not worry for Bardiya,” said Ashhur. “My child knows what he is doing.”

“Are you sure of that, your Grace? What if he’s not in his right mind?”

Ashhur tilted his head forward. “I have felt him in my thoughts, my son. He has recaptured the grace he thought he lost. He is as complete now as he has ever been.” A sad smile came across the deity’s face. “However, if you wish to forge ahead, you may. The undead will find the footing treacherous in the forest. Form a party with the Master Warden, and search out my brother’s army. But you will only look-not engage. Not until the full of my force is with you.”

Patrick almost opened his mouth to protest, but decided against it. “Very well, your Grace.” He dropped to a knee, bowing low.

Ashhur placed a hand on his head and then turned away, heading back toward the swaying undead and the short-lived camp that was now being raised between them. He lingered there for a long while, staring up at the northern wood. He knew his desire to rush to Bardiya’s aid was rash. It was selfish. He’s my friend. I don’t want to lose him too.

Gods knew he had lost enough already.