Darkness settled like a dusty quilt across the land. Save for a watch detail patrolling the newly erected embankment along the perimeter, the rest of the village was quiescent. Until shouting upset the stillness, yanking Tyler out of his slumber. Sleep would wait. Tyler emerged from the small dwelling the Goddess had provided for him, making a beeline toward the commotion.
A crowd of Norlunders gathered in front of a modest barn shaped structure that was the temple of the Goddess. The shouting Tyler heard was cheerful to the point of rapturous. Expressions of joy shined from the villagers’ torchlit faces. He spotted the Goddess standing at the temple entrance bearing a smile that reflected the celebration around her. But what were they celebrating?
Tyler wove his way through the crowd until he came upon three men, two women, and a small child of four or five years. The newcomers were walking skeletons, their faces hollow, their bodies whittled down by paring knives of emaciation. The child appeared barely alive in the arms of the woman Tyler presumed to be the mother.
Tyler gave the Goddess a questioning look.
“These people were captives of the Skags,” the Goddess explained, her face aglow with relief. “They have escaped and returned to us.” The Goddess conveyed orders to her attendants to have the former captives taken away and cared for. She ran gentle, compassionate fingers down the side of the child’s face.
“Goddess, I need to interview the captives as soon as possible…preferably now,” Tyler insisted.
“Why?” the Goddess asked as an attendant escorted away the woman and child.
“As former captives they can give us information about the Skags.”
“We know plenty about the Skags,” the Goddess stated with a confused frown.
“What you know is outdated. Anything new they can tell us will be of great help.”
The Goddess stared at the outlander.
“Trust me on this one.”
“Very well,” the Goddess relented. “Do not keep them long. They are exhausted enough as it is.”
Tyler did keep the former captives long, but it was by their choice, not his. The men and women were all too anxious to reveal what that they knew of the enemy while in the throes of brutal captivity. Their revelations lasted most of the night.
Early the next morning, Tyler visited the Goddess in her temple. The interior of the structure was neat, clean, sparse and practically unfurnished. Hardly a dwelling befitting a Goddess, Tyler noted.
“Lowers my expectations of Valhalla,” Tyler muttered amusedly.
“I beg your pardon?”
Tyler spun to find the blond so-called deity standing behind him, a composed vision of unconventional beauty.
Tyler blamed a momentary lapse in awareness for enabling the Goddess to surprise him. Unless a person appeared out of thin air there was no way anyone on the face of whatever world could sneak up on Tyler.
“Yeah…uh, nothing,” Tyler replied, suppressing the improbable notion that this woman could have appeared out of thin air. “Look, I need several dozen men, quiet, stealthy men, the type that can move around without making a lot of noise.”
A golden eyebrow lifted in thought before a helpful smile crossed the Goddess’ face. “I know of a few hunters that fit your requirements. I will have Haruld and Voorgren gather the rest. What will you do with them?”
“I’m going to mold them into a weapon that I can throw at the enemy.”
“Just like you are molding the rest of our warriors.” The Goddess stepped closer to Tyler, placing the palm of her hand against his chest.
Tyler froze, not knowing how to process that contact. Was it amorous or platonic?
“I do not know what the future holds,” the Goddess continued meaningfully. “Knowledge of outcomes is the province of the Fates and they guard that knowledge most jealously. I want you to know, however, that I greatly appreciate your assistance.”
The Goddess drew closer, pressing herself next to Tyler’s body. Any question Tyler had regarding the nature of the Goddess’ touch was pleasantly resolved. Two bodies, one pale and deliciously supple, the other dark and rippled intertwined on the floor of the temple in a vigorous tangle of passion and desire.
“Did the Goddess give you her anointing?” Olag asked as he accompanied Tyler on an inspection tour of the village’s northern defenses.
The outlander balked, not sure how to answer. “Anointing?” Tyler covered his skittishness on the matter with a sophomoric chuckle.
Olag’s expression remained quite serious, intensely reverent.
Tyler’s grin faded. “If anointing is what you want to call it then I suppose I was…anointed.”
“A great honor has been bestowed upon you,” Olag announced admirably. “Anointings are granted only to the most exceptional of warriors on the rarest of occasions.”
“Oh.” Words momentarily eluded Tyler. “I…well I don’t know what to say.”
Olag clapped Tyler’s shoulder with a meaty hand. “You don’t have to say anything. Just continue to guide with your actions.” The guard’s expression turned merry at the drop of a hat. “So what was it like porking a goddess?”
Tyler’s brow rose at Olag’s colorful change in demeanor. He smiled. “Heavenly.”
Both men erupted in laughter.
Reports from scouts came in five days later of a vast Skag host crossing the Grovian Plains. Tyler kneeled at the base of a watchtower to examine a map of the local geography that he etched on sackcloth. A group of Norlunders huddled around him, peering over his shoulder at the strange illustrations along with accompanying squiggles and slashes the outlander called handwriting. Maps did not exist among the Norlunders. The idea that Tyler could deploy fighters to a location simply by pointing at a feature on the illustration invoked murmurings of awe among them. Tyler took a pause from his concentration to look up at the sky. Storm clouds brewed, occasionally backlit by flashes of lightning.
“You think the Goddess can produce a tornado that’ll blow the Skags away?” Tyler asked half in jest.
“If she does that, there will be no fighting for us to do,” War Leader Haruld replied, visibly unnerved by the idea.
“That would be very inconvenient wouldn’t it?” Tyler remarked sardonically.
At that moment the topic of their conversation appeared. The Goddess moved among her adoring flock, draped in full battle regalia. Silver form fitting, anatomically correct torso armor, matching wrist and shin guards, a silver helmet crested with white feathers, and twin swords dangling from both sides of her comely hips. Her great cat sauntered regally beside her, caparisoned in black armor topped with a spiked helmet, adding spice to its naturally fierce appearance.
“The Skags come in full force as you said they would.” The Goddess exhibited a steely lack of emotion. “You have shown us new ways of fighting to prepare us for this onslaught. Now, you must command us in our time of greatest need. Command, Tyler Worthington and we will follow.”
Tyler stood, rolling up the sack cloth map. He was no stranger to command, but at the small unit level. And the people he had commanded were leagues better armed and trained than these denizens of the Dark Age around him. Still, he would give it his best shot. He looked at the Goddess. “I want you to lead a defense of the northwestern approach. Keep the enemy bogged down while my force conducts a special mission.”
“If your mission succeeds how will we know?”
Tyler gave the Goddess a wink. “You’ll know.”
Skags carpeted the plain, from fast moving krelik riders to dense columns of foot soldiers brandishing scythe swords, spears and metal convex shields. Darkness, bearing the promise of a coming storm intensified, making midday almost indistinguishable from dusk. The Goddess stood at the crest of the embankment, heavy winds lashing the long yellow locks beneath her helmet. She saw the krelik riders pulling ahead of the infantry, galloping toward the earthen ridge. She drew both of her twin swords from their scabbards, raising one overhead to signal the archers. Bowmen surged to the top of the embankment, lining up on either side of the Goddess. They whipped out arrows and notched their bows.
The mounted Skags were rapidly closing in on the defenders. The kreliks, though ungainly beasts in appearance, were deceptively fast.
Waiting patiently until the Skags were within arrow range, the Goddess lowered her sword. The bowmen released, sending arrows high into the bleary sky, where they fell upon the charging Skags and their hideous mounts in a deadly precipitation. Hundreds of Skags succumbed to arrow impacts. An equal measure of kreliks howled in pained rage from one or more projectiles embedded in their thick hides.
A collective astonishment befell the bowmen. The dark skinned stranger had explained to them the principle of massed fire. But the concept had been academic until they had actually seen the results first hand. The bowmen eagerly notched their bows and sent another volley soaring toward the enemy’s disheveled ranks. More Skags were swept to the ground, dead or wounded. Riderless kreliks, rampaged uncontrollably, impeding the overall Skag advance, but not derailing it. The Skags pressed ahead, stubbornly filling the gaps created by their fallen comrades. It was not long before the entire length of the embankment was a throb of screaming Skags. The krelik riders galloped along the earthen wall in an effort to outflank the structure. Scores were struck down by harassing arrows cast from the bowmen above.
Then the Skags ran into more humans, and their lumpen features transitioned from blind frustration at their losses to the savage anticipation of cutting down easy targets. That those presumably easy targets were formed into ranks fifty men abreast, eight deep never registered with the Skags. That the humans held sharp pikes twice the height of a man seemed a matter of even lesser consequence…until the humans lowered those pikes.
The kreliks instinctively recognized the danger those pointed poles represented and tried to pull up without their rider’s consent. Some succeeded, but their riders were ejected by sudden halts and catapulted from the backs of their animals where they were impaled upon a hedge of pikes. Others were too carried along by momentum and their bulky bodies rammed unwillingly into the phalanx’s front ranks like boulders.
Several Norlunders were bowled aside or trampled underfoot by kreliks driven to battle-maddened fury was by pike wounds. But the Norlunders held firmly, recovering from the first charge, reforming and holding back a second, more determined enemy thrust.
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