“Thank you, Tyler Worthington.”
Tyler glanced up to see the statuesque blond Goddess standing over him. He rose. “No need to thank me, since I had no choice but to defend myself.”
“Yes, but you also defended others and you saved lives. You are truly a great warrior.”
Tyler stared at the woman who called herself Goddess, and had to wonder if there was an inkling of truth to the claim. She looked as fresh as if she had just stepped out of a photo spread for a major fashion publication. She exhibited no signs of exertion, no cuts, no bruises. Not a single strand of her golden hair appeared out of place. Uncanny.
The man named Olag stepped to the Goddess’ side. He didn’t look nearly as happy to see Tyler as the Goddess clearly was. Tyler couldn’t blame the guy. Being put down in a sleeper hold was not a very dignified position for a proud warrior to be in.
“Where is my sword?” Olag demanded.
“I will gladly help you retrieve it,” Tyler replied in a tone he hoped would allay the big man’s pique. To the Goddess: “After I find his sword, I’m gone, out of here…that is if I’m free to go.”
The Goddess’ expression flashed concern. “Well, certainly you are free…but we would like it if you remained with us.”
Tyler shook his head. “No can do. I need to find a way to get back to my world.”
“But to venture beyond the land of the Norlunders is to court grave danger. You will not be safe beyond our borders,” the Goddess insisted.
“I’m not exactly safe within them,” Tyler countered. “How long before these Skags overrun you?” He waved a hand, indicating a ground littered with Skag and human corpses. “How long before you no longer have enough manpower to hold back that horde?”
“We are open to suggestions, Tyler Worthington,” the Goddess offered. “How do we prevent the Skags from overrunning us?”
The Goddess regarded the outlander with a look of hopeful expectation. Olag’s stern demeanor took a momentary leave of absence as he mirrored the Goddess’ expression.
Between the two of them, Tyler was trapped and he knew it. I really walked into this one didn’t I? He berated himself. He could not in good conscious desert these people to an enemy clearly bent on cleansing them from the land.
Letting out a resigned sigh Tyler shrugged. “I might have a few suggestions, if you’re willing to listen.”
The great hall was a huge stone edifice situated in the middle of a village of wood and thatch structures. It was shaped like a rectangle and its gray coloring matched the bleakness around it. Tyler noticed that the sun rarely cast its rays in this land of perpetual overcast. Grayness pervaded every nook and cranny of existence. Shades of gray even insinuated its way into the green hues of plants and tree leaves.
The sound of merriment booming from inside the hall was enough to make the Norlunders forget the gloom of their environment. A long wide table was situated lengthwise down the middle of the floor, corresponding to the length of the building. Raucous Norlunders sat or stood around the table chugging down brew and wine from enormous mugs and chalices.
A Norlunder leapt on top of one end of the table for a song and a dance. Inebriation upset his balance in a spectacular way, cutting short his impromptu performance. A roar of laughter greeted the hapless reveler’s unceremonious plunge to the floor.
Tyler stood at the other end of the table taking in the boisterous scene with an outsider’s fascination. The Norlunders were celebrating their victory over the Skags. Tyler was dubious. The Skag attack seemed more of a probe than a concerted effort by the enemy to take the village. Whether the Norlunders suspected that to be the case or not, the warriors were loathe to allow strategic or tactical complexities to mar their perception of the day.
The warriors around Tyler boasted of their individual deeds in battle. Tyler refrained from tooting his own horn. But others did that for him and before long, word of the dark skinned stranger’s mighty prowess in combat was the prevailing topic of conversation. Tyler took a sip of rich brew from his overflowing mug. He was not much of a drinker. Plus, given his current predicament, Tyler felt a need to maintain as clear a head as he possibly could in this strange setting.
He turned to Olag, who had become a companion over the past few hours. “Where’s the Goddess?”
Drink and good cheer had softened Olag’s harsh countenance. It seemed he no longer bore Tyler ill will over their earlier meeting. “She’s in the temple, doing whatever divine beings do,” he replied, his breath robust with brew.
“Is she really a Goddess?” Tyler pressed, making no effort to hide his skepticism.
Olag lifted a bushy brow as if such a question had never been put before him. “Is she a Goddess? That’s like asking if the sky is really a sky or if the sun is really a sun.” The warrior laughed before turning up his mug to drain it.
Deciding he wasn’t going to get anywhere with that line of inquiry, Tyler switched topics. “I’m seeing similarities between your people and an ancient people where I come from called Vikings. How long have Norlunders been on this world?”
“Many generations,” said Olag. “Legends say the Goddess placed us here because she was lonely.”
“What does the Goddess say?” Tyler asked.
A lengthy, hearty belch preceded the warrior’s answer. “The Goddess says nothing, except that we are blessed.”
“Blessed?” Tyler’s face scrunched in irritation. “That’s it? You don’t know how you got here and your…Goddess won’t tell you?”
“That’s her prerogative, Tyler Worthington.” Olag gestured for a server to refill his mug. “Maybe one day she will tell us…until then…” Olag shrugged.
“What about the Skags?” Tyler queried, trying to tamp down his annoyance. “What do your legends say about them?”
Olag ejected a stream of spittle at the mention of Skags. “They’re new. They appeared in the time of my grandfather’s father. That was a time when Norlunders were as numerous as the stars in the sky. Now we are few. Skags have killed and enslaved a multitude of our number. But we have refused to perish. For a while we fought the Skags to a standstill, until a leader rose up among them and unified their tribes. Now they press us harder than ever, further depleting our population.”
“A leader? Who is he?”
“They call him the Jahon.”
Tyler mulled on that for a few seconds before receiving a bruising back clap from Olag. “Enough talk of those demon slime lickers.” He gestured to Tyler’s mug. “Drink, enjoy. We’ll worry about Skags tomorrow!”
“I’ll enjoy,” Tyler conceded. “As for this.” He held up the mug. “One more sip and I’m done.”
In spite of another overcast day, the sky remained way too bright for Tyler’s alcohol-muddled eyes to adjust to. His head felt like it had been dissected and sewn back together with a rusty needle. Every little sound from the wheedling of what passed as birds on this world to a whispered remark amplified the grinding discomfort of Tyler’s headache. On top of it all, he could not figure out how that one more sip he vowed to take turned into multiple mugs of brew. Worse than that, was his lack of memory when it counted, such as waking up the next morning to discover not one but two choice, fully naked Norlunder beauties on either side of him.
Tyler was walking with the Goddess along the outskirts of the village. Also accompanying him were the Goddess’ War Leaders Haruld and Voorgren, along with a coterie of personal guards.
“You need an obstacle running the length of this perimeter,” Tyler pointed out. “You’re wide open. An embankment going north and west should do the trick. You’re bounded by the river in the south and the Skags are not likely to come at you from the forest since they require flat grazing terrain for their…” Tyler had to think hard, not only because his hangover was impairing his ability to focus, but because he had only recently learned the name of those butt ugly beasts the Skags rode.
“Kreliks,” the Goddess added helpfully.
Tyler gave a nod to the Goddess. “Kreliks. Of course it wouldn’t hurt to fortify that approach as well.”
“Obstacles, fortifications. We have no need of such things,” the war leader called Haruld declared.
His shorter, thinner comrade, Voorgren, concurred with an emphatic tap to his chest. “Agreed. Our fortification has always been the fighting prowess of the Norlunder warrior. The weak build walls. We build men.”
“And the Skags have wiped out those men as fast as you could build them,” Tyler retorted. “I think it’s time to try something new, gentlemen. Because the next time the Skags attack…and they will in force…this village will fall.”
The war leaders directed mildly flustered gazes at the Goddess. “What say you to this, Goddess?” queried Haruld. “Is our value as warriors to be impugned by this outsider?”
“Tyler Worthington impugns no one,” said the Goddess. “He is telling us how to achieve victory and that is of far more value than wasting lives on old, tested and ultimately failed methods of defending ourselves. Gather a work detail and begin the preparation.”
The Goddess’ tone invited no further debate on the matter. The war leaders cloaked their reluctance beneath crisp utterances of acknowledgement.
Tyler, having tuned out the exchange, wanted nothing more than to return to his bed.
Thirty archers were lined up in an open field with the river to their backs. Facing them at a hundred yards distant were man-shaped hide sacks stuffed with grass and tied to poles planted in the ground.
Tyler gave the command and the archers removed arrows from their quivers, notched bows and released. Over two dozen arrows penetrated the effigies, not one sailing astray.
Approval glowed from Tyler’s eyes at the precision marksmanship he was witnessing. Norlunder archers were individually proficient, but they were not accustomed to working as a unit. Tyler put the archers through continuous target practice drills, not because they needed it…although constant practice never hurt. He was more interested in instilling within them a new sense of cohesion and discipline.
The war leaders hovered in the background, their scowling faces betraying what they thought of the attention the outlander was bestowing upon the bowmen. Archery was an art looked down upon in a society enamored with shock combat. Bowmen were barely tolerated, yet recognized as being of limited utility on the battlefield. Tyler’s new tactical scheme eliminated the stigma attached to bowmen, granting them equal status with the sword bearing infantry.
“Why do you waste time with them?” War Leader Haruld demanded gruffly. “Cold steel will dispatch a Skag with greater reliability than a flying twig with a point at the end.”
Tyler visualized himself knocking some common sense into this arrogant blowhard. Instead, he settled on civility. “One twig may not be effective, but many twigs falling upon the enemy like rain will do plenty of damage.”
Haruld’s inscrutable expression loosened in a brief dawn of comprehension. Unwilling to concede the outlander’s point, the war leader grunted and walked away.
Several hundred men, arrayed in dense formations, marched in sync in the same field where the archers drilled hours earlier. Each man possessed a twelve-foot wooden pole that had been sharpened to a stabbing point.
Tyler watched the phalanxes maneuver, evaluating their coordination. He yelled out a command and the first ranks of each phalanx thrust out their pikes toward an imaginary enemy. Not bad for beginners in this type of warfare, Tyler thought. Of course it remained to be seen how well the pikemen composed themselves in the face of a krelik charge.
“A shame,” War Leader Voorgren tsked, appearing at the outlander’s side. “So many good warriors who should have swords in their hands and you have them playing with sticks.”
Voorgren was an itch Tyler wanted to scratch. Without looking in the man’s direction, Tyler replied levelly. “A row of those sticks will ravage a herd of kreliks more effectively than the shorter reach of a sword. All that is required is that men hold their ground to meet the charge.” Tyler turned to the war leader. “That takes a special kind of courage.”
Voorgren’s face twisted into a scornful mask for lack of a rejoinder. He growled something beneath his breath and walked away.
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