They dragged the prisoner deep into the village and tossed him at the Goddess’ feet like a sack of tubers. The mob shouted and screamed and spat in animalistic displays of wild release. Voices calling for the prisoner’s death were augmented by calls urging the Goddess to give her divine sanction. A foot lashed out from the mob, striking the prisoner in the side. The prisoner gasped in pain and contracted into a fetal ball.
Someone else approached the prisoner with a club. The man raised the club over head, bracing for a bludgeoning blow.
The man peered at the Goddess, seeking her approval to strike.
The Goddess, seated on a stone slab cut to accommodate her pleasingly lithe proportions, raised a hand.
The man with the club lowered the instrument and stepped back, obviously disappointed. The need to inflict violence was so strong in the man he almost defied the Goddess’ silent command. But fear of incurring the Goddess’ wrath outweighed his homicidal lust. The man merged into the crowd as the Goddess rose from her stone perch to examine the barely conscious prisoner.
She gestured and two guards flanking her throne rushed to the prisoner, grabbing him by each arm and yanking him to his feet.
The prisoner sagged in the guards’ grips. His head lolled side to side, his dark eyes partly open, barely focused. He had been stripped from the chest up. He wore strange green leg coverings of a material the Goddess had never seen before. But most strange all of all was his color. The prisoner’s skin was a deep brown…almost black in hue. His facial features were much fuller than that of a Norlunder. And his hair…the Goddess touched his short hair, gently pulling at coarsely curled strands. She appraised the rest of him, finding him to be quite a pleasing specimen. As tall, if not taller than her tallest guards, the man was heavily muscled, yet lean around the middle, giving him a most appealing symmetry. The Goddess turned away before certain thoughts interfered with her objective scrutiny of the stranger.
“Take him away,” she ordered the guards. “I want him cared for until he is strong enough to talk.”
As the guards removed the prisoner, the Goddess returned to her throne and sat. She called for her attendant to bring over her black lioness. The Goddess stroked the glossiness between the cat’s ears as it moaned delight.
U.S. Special Forces operator Tyler Worthington had no idea where he was, how he got here or how long he had been unconscious. All he knew was that one moment he was creeping through dense Congolese foliage on his way to assassinating a brutal warlord. The next moment he was gone, transported by whatever means to another barely hospitable environment on a world he strongly suspected was not Earth. Tyler found himself along the bank of a river, light headed, disorientated, bereft of his weapons and gear. The land was gravelly, fog drenched and dotted with patches of dull green vegetation. A treeline covered the near distance, disappearing behind the steep gradient of a hill. A weird blue-green-brown mixture colored the sky, further convincing Tyler that he was on another planet.
But how the hell did he get here? That was when a band of ruffians set upon him, cutting short his reverie, pounding him into the dirt.
Tyler burst into full consciousness as if from a fitful dream. He scrambled to his feet, his senses heightened, his body revitalized. He was in some sort of enclosure. It was a hut with a hole in the ceiling, providing an outlet for the smoke rising from a fire burning at the center of the floor.
A leathery flap covered the hut’s exit. That’s where Tyler headed. Cautiously he lifted the flap, bent and stole a peek outside. A huge man wearing a metal helmet and chain linked armor covering a kilt-like getup stood just beyond the entrance, his back to the hut. A cascade of blond hair flowed down the man’s back from beneath his odd medieval looking headpiece.
Tyler squinted in amusement. Wherever he was, the natives sure dressed funny.
Stealthily, Tyler eased out of the hut. He tiptoed toward his presumed guard and wrapped the man’s head in the steel vice of a sleeper hold.
The guard struggled ferociously, but Tyler’s hold held, his flawless technique an effective counter to his victim’s brute strength. Within seconds, the guard’s resistance slackened then ceased. Tyler gently lowered the guard to the ground.
“Halt!”
Tyler whirled toward the sound of that voice.
Four men, dressed much like the one he subdued, trotted toward Tyler with swords drawn.
So much for slipping out of this place undetected. Tyler sighed resignedly and removed the unconscious guard’s sword from its scabbard. Tyler was an expert in the use of blades. But he had never handled a blade as monstrous as the one he was holding.
Tyler stood his ground, preparing to meet the guards’ attack. That’s when he saw her. A tall, blond woman with a seductively snug fitting silver-plated garment snuggly wrapped around her well-formed torso. An enormous cat, black as obsidian, accompanied her. It was too large to be a panther. The animal bore the look of a female lion. Tyler gripped the sword’s hilt tighter, more apprehensive about the feline threat than the human.
More blond warrior-looking types rushed to the scene until Tyler found himself confined within a bristling circle of spears and swords.
“Who are you?” The woman asked.
Tyler blinked, surprised. He expected a language barrier. “My name is Tyler…Tyler Worthington. Who are you and where am I?”
The woman approached.
Tyler stared at her fixated. The angularity of the woman’s features would have prevented her from being considered conventionally beautiful in Tyler’s world. Though she was far from unappealing. Her body was a finely cut meld of sensual and athletic. The aura she exuded, transcended the physical in a way Tyler could not put into words. Gray eyes, clear as sun-glazed ice stared back at Tyler with unwavering curiosity.
“I am the Goddess,” the woman replied with earnestness. “You are in the land of the Norlunders.”
Tyler tried not to look dubious. “A Goddess? A Goddess of what?”
The woman frowned minimally. “I am the Goddess of my people.”
Tyler wanted to press for an elaboration, but decided to leave it at that. If this woman and her rabble of followers wanted to believe she was a goddess, so be it. When in Rome…
“Who sent you?”
Tyler was momentarily thrown by the question. “Who sent me? No one sent me. I don’t know how I got here unless you used your godly powers to summon me here.”
The woman either had no concept of sarcasm or she simply ignored Tyler’s barbed reply. “I am as subject to the whims of the Fates as any mortal. If the Fates sent you to us, then that means you have a purpose.”
“Too bad your subjects beat the crap out of me before you reached that conclusion,” Tyler growled, his body still feeling painful vestiges of the Norlunders’ warm reception.
“Forgive my people,” the Goddess solicited. “They thought you were in league with the Skags. Had you looked anything like one they would have slaughtered you where they found you.”
“What’s a Skag?”
“Demons in the guise of flesh and blood,” the woman replied, her gray eyes turning hot with loathing. She glanced past Tyler to where her unconscious guard rested. “You must be a warrior to have subdued Olag.”
Tyler lifted his chin. “You could say that.”
“Then your purpose will be served with us.”
Tyler shook his head in vigorous rejection. “My only purpose is to get the hell out here and back to my own world.”
The sound of a horn echoed from nearby, eliciting alarmed reactions from the warriors. The big cat let out a menacing growl.
The Goddess shifted her gaze to the general direction of the sound and her eyes narrowed.
Tyler followed her gaze. “What’s going on?”
“The Skags are coming. Time to show your mettle.” The Goddess bounded away, the black lioness in tow.
A fear-wrought commotion cascaded over the village. Women and children fled past Tyler away from wherever the danger was. Armor clad, shield bearing warriors dashed in the opposite direction, their expressions dancing with the anticipation of facing that very danger. Tyler was inclined to join the women and children, but his own unwillingness to back down in a fight, coupled with simple curiosity compelled him to join the warriors.
He found himself along the outskirts of the village, next to a wooden watchtower. A heavy fog blanketed the gray tundra beyond the village boundary. Tyler initially saw nothing. Suddenly a multitude of forms took shape, bursting from the mist into horrifying visibility. Large creatures built like men, but with grotesquely misshapen faces made all the more hideous by bloodlust.
The Skags wore dark leather like material that covered their torsos but left their pale, muscled arms bare. They galloped toward the village astride monstrous boar-like creatures with curved tusks and enormous snouts dripping with exertion.
Tyler barely had time to let that hell spawn image settle into his perception before the first mounted terror was upon him.
A Skag-mounted beast plowed into a cluster of warriors, impaling one on its long white tusk. The beast flung the instantly dead warrior off its tusk as if flicking away a fly. The Skag thrust a lance with a serrated head at another downed warrior, transfixing the latter to the ground. Extracting the bloodied lance blade, the Skag settled on Tyler and wheeled his mount in that direction. Tyler held the sword he stole from Olag in front of him as the beast thundered toward him like an antiquated locomotive. At the last second Tyler leapt to one side, delivering a slash to the beast’s legs. The force of the contact was jarring enough to dislodge the sword from Tyler’s grasp. Tyler was propelled to the ground. A piercing howl emanated from the animal as it bucked in pain, tossing its rider in the process.
The Skag took a tumble but emerged back on his feet, with lance in hand.
Tyler rose to face the Skag weaponless. He spotted the sword, lying perhaps a dozen feet out of reach. Tyler went for the weapon, but the Skag was closer and he moved swiftly to intercept the human with a lance thrust.
Tyler reared back, avoiding a thrust that would have laid his throat open. When the Skag tried a second thrust, Tyler swerved left as the blade swished within inches of his ear. He grabbed the lance’s shaft and pulled. The Skag lurched forward off balance. Tyler delivered an elbow to the creature’s jaw and heard as well as felt bone shattering beneath the splotched skin of his opponent’s repulsive face. The Skag dropped, injured, but unkowed by the blow. The Skag unsheathed a dagger and tried to regain his footing. Tyler, in possession of his opponent’s lance, jerked it into the Skag’s throat. The Skag collapsed and this time he stayed down.
Tyler turned in time to see another Skag-mounted beast bearing down on him. The human gripped his lance javelin style and hurled it. The lance caught the Skag in the chest knocking him off the animal. Tyler rushed to the downed rider and plucked the lance out of the Skag’s corpse. He spun around 360 anticipating more opponents.
A group of Norlunders was engaged with a half dozen mounted Skags in a confused melee. A Norlunder with a bow released an arrow that pierced a Skag’s upper chest. The Skag knifed to the ground where Norlunders hacked him to pieces in a gore-strewn blur of swords and axes.
Three dismounted Skags torpedoed into a knot of Norlunders. A Skag wielding a spiked mallet sunk one of those spikes into a human forehead. He kicked a second Norlunder to the ground and raised the mallet preparing to bring it smashing down on the human. Tyler swung his lance. He was close enough to the Skag that the blade ripped a gash through the creature’s armpit. The Skag turned to Tyler in a welter of rage and charged, bringing his mallet down in an overhand swing. Tyler deflected the mallet with the lance blade, whacking the Skag between the eyes with the blunt end. The impact was solid enough to have been lethal. Either way, the Skag went down like fallen timber.
A powerful roar for the briefest of seconds drowned out the tumult of battle. Tyler turned to see the Goddess’ lioness leaping through the air with a frightening grace. The black cat flew at a mounted Skag from an angle, snatching its victim from off his mount and driving him into the unyielding dirt-packed surface. The lioness buried its blade sharp teeth into the screaming Skag’s body, tearing out chunks of flesh.
The Goddess was not far removed from her pet. She held two swords. The blades were not as long or wide as the swords wielded by the male warriors around her. They were slender and slightly curved, possibly forged for her handling alone. Almost dainty looking by Tyler’s estimation. But when an arc of that dainty steel carved through two onrushing Skags simultaneously while gutting a third one in the same motion, Tyler revised that unflattering estimation. And the Goddess dispatched those three Skags with the sword in her right hand. The sword in her left hand moved seemingly of its own accord, depriving an attacking Skag of his battle-axe…along with the hand that held that axe.
A mob of Skags, some mounted, others on foot, surged toward the Goddess. The entire battle seemed to shift in that direction. Tyler rushed to her assistance when it appeared that the Goddess was going to be subsumed in a howling tide of malformed monsters. He became a tornado, whirling through a press of Skags with his lance, stabbing and slashing with the blade, bludgeoning with the shaft. Tyler swiped at the ankles of an enemy warrior, upending the Skag. Just as he was poised to drive the lance blade through the Skag’s neck, a deep bellow shook the air, as if blasting from a broken tuba.
Tyler looked up and spotted a mounted Skag in the distance blowing a black horn. The Skag wore a conical helmet with a T shaped standard jutting from the tip. Tiny bones from small animals were strung along the standard’s cross section. Tufts of blond scalps, presumably removed from unfortunate Norlunders, hung from the vertical section.
At the horn’s signal, Skags began retreating. The Skag at Tyler’s feet struggled to rise in an effort to follow his brethren. With a lacerated ankle, the Skag wasn’t going to get far without assistance. Tyler decided to let him go.
A Norlunder warrior had other ideas. The Norlunder pounced on the wounded Skag, cleaving the latter’s skull open with an axe. The rest of the Norlunders went after the fleeing enemy killing as many as their blades and arrows could reach before terminating their pursuit. Tyler let the humans warriors have at it. He lowered to his haunches to catch his breath now that that the danger to himself had subsided. He blew out a huff of dismay. This medieval-style combat was a son-of-a-bitch…especially to someone highly trained in the covert aspects of modern high tech warfare.
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