Fang and Talon sounded like excellent names, and they fit nicely together. For now, however, I had a duel to complete.
“Get your sword,” I said as I waved my hand at the soldier.
The soldier started to sprint in the opposite direction of the house where he’d left his sword, but Fang jumped in his way.
“No detours,” I said. “Get your sword. Now.”
The soldier gulped before he plodded toward the house. He tugged the sword out from the old man’s corpse and trudged back to me.
“Good. Now you’re going to fight me.”
“Who. . . who are you?”
“Justice. Although I go by other names too. The God of Death. Soultaker. You may have heard of me.”
He gasped. “You’re… Soultaker?”
“The one and only. Now, I figure you can earn your life. I don’t want folks thinking I’m not a merciful god. Before we have our little duel, though, I have some questions. First, where’s the rest of Rollar’s army, and, more importantly, where’s the prick himself?”
“I-I don’t know,” the soldier muttered.
“Fang, let’s see if we can jog this bastard’s foggy memory.”
Fang lunged forward and bit down on one of the soldier’s arms. The man’s eyes almost popped out of their sockets, and he let out a piercing howl of agony. Fang growled and bit down harder, ripping the man’s arm off completely. As Fang chewed on the disembodied arm, the soldier screamed and writhed, with blood spurting from the ragged stump jutting from his shoulder–all that was left of his arm.
“Oops,” I said. “I seemed to have totally forgot about the duel. I don’t suppose it’ll be easy to fight for your life with only one arm. But it’d be impossible to fight without the other one. So, why don’t you answer me?”
“He’s. . . he’s probably reached Kroth by now,” the soldier gasped.
“Kroth? Why’s he going there?”
“A crypt. Temple ruins. The Tree God. He thinks there are relics there. He’s got a map.”
“What’s on the map?”
“Locations of lost and forgotten temples all across Prand. He’s trying to find them all.”
I’d followed Rollar all across the continent before meeting Isu, but I never knew he actually possessed a map like this.
“If you have a quarrel with Rollar, then you should go to Kroth. But I have nothing to do with him. Me and the others deserted Rollar’s army a week ago.” His eyes started to roll to the back of his skull, and I figured he wasn’t far from passing out from blood loss.
“So, you and your buddies are deserters as well as cowards and bullies then. I can’t say I’m surprised.” I slapped him across the face so that he wouldn’t drop unconscious without answering my second question. “Where’s Rollar planning to go after Kroth?”
“I really don’t know!” he whimpered. “He didn’t say. He was c-convinced he’d find what he was looking for there.”
The scumbag was telling the truth; he had no reason to lie. It sounded as if he resented Rollar, and he would have no reason to want to protect him.
“Well, I guess we’re done here,” I said.
“So, y-you’re not going to let that thing eat me?” he asked with pleading in his eyes. “Do I still get to fight for my life?”
“Sure.” I motioned for him to attack.
Despite missing an arm and losing a lot of blood, he came at me with a deafening battle cry. I sidestepped his attack before slashing Grave Oath across his stomach. I watched with cool detachment as he dropped to the ground and clutched his stomach. He writhed and screamed while his body withered and his soul entered my dagger.
The village burned around me, and I saw no evidence of any survivors. I could have spent hours scouring each home for anyone who was still alive, but I knew how ruthless Rollar’s men were. There wouldn’t be a single soul remaining here.
As I walked toward Fang, I heard the clip-clopping of hooves. I pulled out my kusarigama and prepared to deal swiftly and brutally with whoever it was, but I lowered the weapon when I saw the rider trot around from behind a burning barn.
“Isu, what are you doing here?”
“Curiosity, maybe,” she answered with an unsettling smile. “Or perhaps I was drawn by the intensity of death here. I sensed it. I may not be a god, but I am still a necromancer.”
“I sensed it, too,” I said. “When I came here, it felt like a kind of sixth sense.”
“You are the God of Death, Vance. Does it surprise you that you can sense the presence of death when surrounded by it? That you are drawn to it, like iron filings to a loadstone?”
“I guess not.”
“Being a deity is so much more complex than you can even begin to understand. You have hardly begun to scratch the surface, Vance. A long journey lies ahead of you.”
“I’ve never been afraid of hard work.”
“And the work is very hard. In a way, I’m almost relieved that you took my divinity from me. It had started to become a burden instead of a blessing, truth be told.”
I wasn’t sure how much of that I believed. She harbored no small degree of resentment for taking her divinity. Was she trying to deflect my attention away from that fact?
On the other hand, maybe she had wanted me to take it all along. Why else would she have dropped so many hints?
Either way, I wasn’t about to trust her completely just yet.
“I’m beginning to wrap my head around that, yes.” I stared for a while at the corpses strewn across the village streets.
“Corpses for your army,” Isu said, noticing where I was looking.
The thought of a zombie child serving me was simply too twisted to imagine, even for me.
Isu studied my face closely, her beguiling eyes keenly searching… for what? Weakness? A chink in my ethical armor? She
