Chapter 1.4

Ax

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The two-headed hound charged right at me, and I saw two little creatures following right behind it. The creatures were shaped like grown men, but standing little more than four feet tall, barely taller than the ripening wheat. Instead of normal heads, they had the heads of a jackal. The jackal men were wearing chest armor made up of bones tied together with leather, and carried little bows and short spears.

I didn’t wait for the beast to reach me, I charged at it. I really wished I had my brass knuckles. Even as I thought of them, they began to materialize around my right hand. Hell yeah, I can work with this magic shit. I could feel fire in my veins, urging on the fight.

I tackled the hound just as it was gathering to leap at me, and we collapsed into a heap of snarling teeth and swinging fists. I got an arm around one neck, while the other turned to snap at me. I punched the biting head as hard as I could, but I didn’t have a lot of leverage. The head yelped in surprise, then bit at my arm. I tightened my grip around the beast’s other neck. If I could choke out the one head, maybe it would weaken the thing.

I could hear snarls coming from the two jackal men, and my brother shouting at them. I could tell they were fighting, but couldn’t take my eyes off the wolf head. I could feel the fire inside me pushing to get out. Magic, right, I had that now. I held my hand out towards the other head, palm first. A gout of flame burst from my hand, white hot, and burned into the snout of the wolf head. The hound bucked wildly underneath me, forcing me to lose my grip. I tumbled to the ground. Before I could regain my feet, the beast was on me. One head dangled uselessly from its muscular shoulders, but the other went straight for my throat. I managed to get my left arm up in time, as its teeth tore into my forearm instead of my jugular.

“You need to DIE!” I shouted at it, punching it repeatedly in the head. Over and over I hit it, pinned under the body weight. After a half-dozen punches, I realized that the hound wasn’t moving. I shoved hard, pushing the body off of me. It was then that I saw that my brass knuckles had reshaped themselves, with four bloody spikes rising two inches off each finger.

I looked for my brother, and saw that one of the jackal-men was writhing on the ground, his flesh looking melted. The creature was screaming piteously. Karson had the other jackal man pinned to the ground, stabbing it with his stone knife. After a minute, he stood up.

“You look like shit,” he said. Then Karson turned to the screaming jackal man, and gestured as if he were grabbing something. The jackal man jerked, then collapsed unmoving. A predatory gleam came to Karson’s eyes. Then he turned sharply to look at the village.

“Come on, there’s more of them!” He began to run back towards the houses.

As we ran, I heard the shrill screams of a woman. Even as we rounded the corner to take in the narrow street, the scream cut off suddenly. At the far end of the houses was a small group of four men. One of them was methodically clubbing a body in the head, over and over and over again. The other three started moving our direction.

These men were a solid six feet tall, thick with muscle. Their hair looked more like fur, growing down onto their shoulders and back, and their heads were wide with deep set eyes and heavy brows. They looked vaguely neanderthalic, with wide protruding jaws. Despite their barbaric look, they wore heavy leather breastplates made of bone and iron. Two of the three headed our direction carried thick iron clubs, and the third carried a labrys, a two-headed axe. Behind them, the fourth stopped clubbing the dead body, satisfied that he’d completely crushed the skull. He started to follow his friends.

“Can you do the fire thing from back here?” asked Karson. “These guys are going to be way worse than the dog people.”

“Let’s find out,” I said grimly. I summoned up my magic, willing it to make a fireball that I could throw. I stuck my hand out, and a tiny ball of fire burst forth, flying at the axe carrier. The missile homed in on him with freakish speed, and exploded in a massive flame. At the same time, I saw a greenish-black spell hit one of the club wielders.

Both started screaming in pain, one on fire an the other clawing at his face as it began to melt. It was an acid attack of some sort, and I shuddered to think how horrible that would feel. I had known someone who had accidentally spilled acid on their arm back home, and the scars he had to show for it were horrifying.

But we had no time to celebrate, because the other two were running straight at us. They were surprisingly fast for their size. I fired off another fireball, but my target leapt to the side. The fireball struck a house instead, lighting the wood on fire.

Then I was back in melee, as a club began to swing at my head. I jumped forward towards the man, trying to get inside that swing. It worked, to some extent. The man’s fist that carried the club struck my left shoulder, making the whole arm go numb for a minute. That arm was already injured from the two-headed hound, and now it was useless. I punched with my spiked brass knuckles right at his face. The man turned his face down, so the spikes scraped across his forehead instead of landing a solid blow. He began to bleed heavily from his scalp. I took a blow in the chest from his empty hand, sending me flying back across the road. I tumbled and rolled a few times, before regaining my feet. My assailant was stalking toward me, wiping blood out of his eyes.

I ran at him, hoping to get to him before he could bring that heavy club into position to hit me. To my surprise, he threw it at me. I aborted my charge, ducking to the side as the club narrowly missed me. Then I got tackled, the heavy man bearing me to the ground, his hot, rancid breath in my face. I only had one good hand to fight with. I took in a deep breath and reached for my magic again. I opened my mouth and breathed fire right in his face. It wasn’t as concentrated as my blast against the hound, but it made the man loosen his grip enough that I could kick him off of me. I rolled back to my feet just as my brother tackled the man from my left, stabbing away with his stone knife. I jumped back into the fray, punching as hard as I could with my brass knuckles.

A few frantic punches later, the man went limp. I pulled myself slowly to my feet, and looked at Karson. His clothes were a mess as he hobbled over to the beast man he had thrown acid at. Once again he grabbed nothing, and the wounded enemy jerked, before falling still. He turned back, his eyes dancing with energy.

A bellow of rage came from down the street. A fifth beast man stepped out of a house, dragging a woman by the hair. This one seemed to be the leader, for his gear was better than his compatriots. The armor was thicker, and this one actually wore a helmet. The struggled in his grip, trying to escape. Without looking, he punched her. Her face crumpled as he fist actually crushed her skull. He dropped the dead body, and bellowed again. The beast man picked up a club from the ground, and began to run at us.

Both Karson and I threw magic at him, but this beast man seemed to know how to handle it. Without breaking stride, the beast smacked my fireball with his club, knocking it from his hands as tucking his helmeted head down to his chest and running through the burst of flames. Then he dove into a forward roll, sliding under Karson’s acid attack. Without losing hardly any momentum, he was back on his feet and charging both of us.

I stomped on the ground, summoning some of the earth magic I’d used to make Karson’s knife, and a stone burst from the ground right under the man’s feet. With an agility that would make a professional athlete jealous, the beast man leapt over the stone, twisting to regain his footing, and ran toward us again.

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My left arm had begun to regain its feeling, so at least I’d have both arms for this fight. I was running out of energy. Mana, it’s called mana, a part of my brain whispered to me. Fine, I was out of mana, I thought. Now was not the time, I had to focus.

“You go high, I go low?” said Karson.

“Done,” I said, and we dove forward as the man reached us. I leapt for his head, trying to wrap myself around his torso, as Karson tangled himself up in his ankles. We fell into a dogpile not unlike a football scrimmage where everyone was trying to grab a loose football. I punched blindly, my spiked knuckles scraping off armor more than anything else. Heavy punches landed repeatedly on my ribs, and I had no idea where that club had gone.

I heard a squeal of pain come from the man, and a few minutes later, the struggle was over. I untangled myself from the body, to see Karson already on his feet. He was covered in blood from his head to his chest, and was panting heavily. He still held that stone knife, but the tip was broken off.

My arm screamed in pain from the dog bite and the abuse of the fight, and I was pretty sure I’d cracked some ribs. Karson was still limping, but seemed little worse for the wear aside from that.

“So you’re not bad at combat, either,” I said. “Got any mana left? I could use a little healing.”

“Some, not much,” he said. “Let’s see if anyone else is severely injured first. Yours aren’t life threatening.”

“Good thinking,” I said. “What the hell did you do?”

“I have soul magic,” Karson said. “If they’re near death, I can eat their souls. I can absorb some of their essence for a short time. I may be able to yank on their souls to distract them, but it is a temporary thing. Didn’t get a chance to try it. I need to experiment more to understand what I can do. You have fire magic? I thought you were all earth magic and shit.”

“I guess I have both? I don’t know, is that not normal?” I never got into any of that Lord of the Rings stuff back at home, I didn’t know anything about magic.

“Beats the hell out of me,” said Karson. “I just ate souls of creatures that shouldn’t exist, in a different reality, after falling through Primal Chaos because we were fighting a cult in an abandoned warehouse. Right now, I’m not sure what the hell normal is.”

I laughed weakly, then sat my tired ass down on the dirt next to the dead raider. Around us, people began to peek out of houses to see if the raid was over.

“You’re covered in blood,”I observed.

“Stabbed him in the femoral artery. He bled out over my face while I held his ankles. Broke my knife on his bone.”

“I think we need better gear,” I said.

“I’m not wearing bones,” said Karson.

“Yeah, I’m not carrying a giant metal club, either.”

“What the fuck were those things?”

“I think they were gigantes,” said Karson, pointing at the dead beast men. “Born of the blood of Uranus after Kronos castrated him. Often confused with giants, because of their strength and their name. But you can see, they are the same size as us, just a lot stronger.”

“And the things we fought in the field?”

“The hound was Orthrus. Well an orthrus, I guess. There was only supposed to be one, but I’m guessing there are more, seeing as it was part of a small raiding party. The jackal guys were cynocephali - literally dog people.”

“Well, I’m not remembering all that shit. Two-headed hounds and cynos. Got it.”

Karson shook his head. “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”

The villagers eventually came out. The house that I lit on fire by accident had burned itself out, leaving a huge whole in one wall. Karson went off to help the injured, leaving me to my own devices. Erxandros fretted about, generally directing people to do what they were doing anyway. I guess middle management is the same no matter what time period you are in.

The gigantes had managed to break into three houses before we interrupted. The third house, the one I had accidentally set on fire, was interesting. A teenage boy of about sixteen or seventeen in a torn chiton dragged a dead gigante out, dumping the body next to the ones we had slain. He carried a long spear with him, the tip bloody. I was impressed.

I began to systematically loot the bodies, stripping off armor, weapons and gear. I wasn’t planning on using the armor or weapons as they were, but I had a glimmer of an idea of what I could do with them. The boy kept hovering over my shoulders as I worked.

“Either help or go away,” I finally snapped at him. He started, but set his spear down within easy reach and began to help remove armor. “What’s your name, anyway?”

“It’s Lacedaemon, Lord.”

“What do you do here in the village? And how did you learn to use a spear?”

“I mostly help with the crops, tend the animals. I got conscripted into the militia last year, so I spent a season warring. I earned a bit of money, but haven’t been able to make enough to buy armor.”

“Do a lot of villagers get conscripted?”

“I imagine so, my Lord. I know my unit was all conscripts.”

So they didn’t have much of a standing army. That made sense. Crops still needed to be planted and harvested, and armies cost a lot of money. If no major wars were happening, there wasn’t really much need. I didn’t know much of what happened in ancient Greece. Wasn’t it a bunch of city-states that went to war with each other all the time?

By the time Karson got back, we had finished looting the bodies. We had four clubs, an oversized labrys, six sets of breastplate, a helmet, one decent pair of leather sandals that I gave to Lacedaemon, and a small pile of misshapen silvery-gold coins with a crude crescent carved into it. Karson looked cleaner, although his chiton was still bloody. I introduced Lacedaemon, which seemed to surprise him. We really needed to talk soon. There seemed to be a lot of things he knew that I didn’t.

Karson reached over and grabbed my shoulder. I felt strange magic pulse through me. The ache in my ribs went away, and the bloody bite on my arm sealed up without a mark.

“That’s the last of my mana,” he said. “Can’t do much else, but that should take care of the worst of it.”

“Thanks,” I said. That was an awesome bit of magic to have. I was slightly envious; at least until I remembered what I could do now. I really was looking forward to playing with it.

The death toll turned out to be seventeen men, women and children. There were tears and and a little bit of wailing, but the villagers were quick to haul the bodies away. The bodies of the villagers were washed carefully, and anointed with oil. Karson later told me that they would bury or cremate the bodies after a brief lamentation period, not unlike modern funerals. The raiders, on the other hand, were casually piled away from the village. They would be dumped in a mass grave, or burned in a single pyre, to dispose of the remains.

Erxandros came over to us, two young village women in tow. Each woman had a basket under their arms.

“My Lords, thank you for your gracious help in defending the village. You as well, Lacedaemon. I’m sorry for your loss.”

“I’m sorry, Lacedaemon, I didn’t ask,” I said to him. “Who did you lose?”

“My parents and my little brother,” he said.

“My condolences,” I said.

“Let’s get you cleaned up,” said Erxandros. “These women will assist you.”

Lacedaemon remained back in town while we were led down to a deep creek on the opposite end of the village from where we had explored. There we split to separate portions of the creek. I was taken by surprise when the woman with me began to unpin my tunic.

“What are you doing?” I said with a start.

“You are dirty, I’m to wash you.”

“I can do that,” I protested.

“Nonsense,” she said, unfastening my belt. My tunic fell. “Get in the water and rinse. I will attend you after I set your tunic to soak.”

Naked and suddenly feeling quite uncomfortable, I stepped into the surprisingly deep water, and rinsed myself. I dunked my head, and the warm water felt amazing. Karson had healed the worst of my injuries, and the bath was rinsing away the stress of the fight. At least, until I felt a warm body press against me. Soapy hands began to wash my chest from behind.

I stood suddenly, and the soapy hands began to wash my back and shoulders. I half turned to see the woman behind me, wearing nothing. Her chest was generous, and water dripped down to her navel appealingly. She had a twinkle in her eyes.

“Don’t worry, my Lord. We’ll have you cleaned up swiftly. A brave man such as you should be taken care of.”

“I don’t even know your name,” I protested.

“It is Xene,” she whispered in my ear as she pressed against me once again. Her hand slipped lower, and my resistance vanished. It was some time before I made it back to the village.