Lutigan watched her. “That was odd.”
“It sure was.” Fingit nodded.
“She started skipping on her left foot. Normally, she starts on her right. And she’s skipping either five steps or six steps between trees, never seven, which would make much more sense. I wonder what this means?”
Fingit closed his eyes and counted imaginary dead Lutigans. “So, about the chariot. Will you ride it?”
Lutigan roared, “Ride it? I already rode it. It crashed onto the battlefield and almost elevated me!”
“No, not that chariot. And I’m sorry about that, as I’ve said every time we’ve spoken for the past twenty thousand years. I mean the new chariot that will gloriously save us all.”
Lutigan lifted his chin at that, and Fingit saw the God of War’s nostrils flare. At the same time, he spotted a figure a hundred paces off behind Lutigan. The intruder was running through the trees toward them.
The Void suck it! I almost have this idiot hooked. Who is that?
Lutigan ended his moment of thought. “No. You fly in your stupid chariot. I want to see you vomit up an organ for a change.”
Fingit executed a rapid search for a good lie. “I can’t fly it. I have to stay here to guide the chariot back to the Home of the Gods. It won’t help us otherwise.” Looking beyond Lutigan, he saw that the approaching figure was Sakaj. Her Gown of Shimmering Thought now hung stained and shredded on her wasted form. Her hair, once black as a cruel thought and as soft as a lover’s breath, now flew tangled in every direction. Fingit saw two beetles crawling in it. Every feature of her once-radiant face was now thrown into such extreme relief that it appeared scratched out in chalk by an angry child.
Fingit ignored Sakaj. “Lutigan, whoever rides the chariot will secure glory everlasting. He’ll be the greatest hero in history!” He whispered, “Maybe greater than Krak!”
Lutigan paused with a distant look in his eyes. He opened his mouth to respond, but at that moment, a piercing cry sounded from behind him and both gods looked. Several paces away, Sakaj sat on the withered grass with her sandals off. She had just torn the little toe off her right foot and was in the process of tearing off the toe next to it.
Neither god considered for a moment trying to stop Sakaj. During her Year of Self-Annihilation, some gods had tried to prevent her from harming herself, but she had managed to elevate herself every day no matter what anyone did. They at last stopped trying and learned to accept a shattered, dismembered, or dying Sakaj as part of the landscape.
This current self-mutilation annoyed Fingit, because he couldn’t continue hoodwinking Lutigan until Sakaj’s howls and shrieks abated. He and the God of War watched Sakaj tear off the second smallest toe on her right foot. Then she went to work on her left foot, tearing off the two smallest toes there as well. She began working on her hands next.
This is unbelievable. Oh, what am I saying? Of course it’s believable. She once drank molten lead. This is definitely believable.
Sakaj had torn off the two smallest fingers from her right hand, and as Fingit watched, she used the thumb and two remaining fingers on her gory right hand to rip off the two smallest fingers on her left. She then rose to her feet, grunting and staggering, and glared at Lutigan with incandescent hatred.
“Dumber than dog shit,” Lutigan mumbled as Sakaj staggered toward him. Fingit didn’t believe she could do more than stagger, but she proved him wrong. She launched herself at Lutigan’s crotch, seized his testicles in her claw of a right hand, pulled, and twisted with all her godlike might.
Fingit felt sure that the feral imps in the distant valley heard Lutigan’s curse with perfect clarity. Lutigan jumped back, gasping. However, he was the God of War for some excellent reasons. One was that a little unimaginable agony didn’t stop him or even make him hesitate. He drew forth one of his fourteen swords that were all fourteen palms long. Inspiration appeared on his face, and striking with the superlative precision of the God of War, he sliced off Sakaj’s right thumb. He followed that with the rest of the fingers on her right hand, taking one off with each stroke. He took the three left fingers with lightning cuts, and then he pushed the goddess to the ground so he could deliver three toe-severing strikes to her right foot. As Lutigan began on the left foot, Fingit heard the God of War counting under his breath. “Ten… eleven… twelve…” He counted with each swing of his sword until all twelve of Sakaj’s remaining digits dotted the wan grass. Lutigan stood over the squirming Goddess of the Unknowable, chortled, and severed her head as he yelled, “Thirteen…”
Lutigan appeared confused for a moment, and then he looked at Fingit.
“Son of a bitch!” Fingit screamed as joy bloomed on Lutigan’s face.
The God of War flourished and bellowed, “Fourteen!” in the same instant his sword swept Fingit’s head from his shoulders.
Four
(Fingit)
Since the beginning of his existence, whenever Fingit had been decapitated, crushed, or ripped into bits, he had always returned to consciousness in the Dim Lands. There he’d waited until the sun rose in the Home of the Gods, at which time he’d been restored to his normal, unelevated state.
Certain philosophical questions had arisen from this arrangement. If Fingit returned to consciousness in the Dim Lands, didn’t that mean he’d been unconscious at some point? If so, how long had he been unconscious? Since he had been elevated in one place and awoken in a different one, how could he know where this unconsciousness had taken place? And since he was a god, how did he know that existence continued when he wasn’t aware of it? Even worse,
