“And what is the purpose of your mission?” I demanded.
“To find a living god,” he answered. “To find one of the old gods who still lives and to serve him or her so that I may become Fated. So that I might join the battle against the Blood God.”
“Well, you’re in luck, Rollar.” I lowered my dagger. “Because you’ve found what you were after. You’re looking at a god—a living, breathing god. And I can make you Fated. If you submit to me.”
Chapter Seventeen
“You… a god?” Rollar asked. “But I thought you were simply an assassin? And then, I heard rumors that you had become a powerful necromancer.”
“Yes, and now I’ve become a god. The God of Death, to be exact. Would you like me to kill you and then resurrect you to prove it?”
He threw down his sword and dropped to his knees.
“Then the prophecy is true,” he murmured, staring up at me with awe in his eyes. “The wise woman’s prophecy is true.”
It was a little strange to have a conversation while a battle was proceeding in earnest all around us.
“Tell your men to stop fighting so that we can talk,” I said.
Rollar cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed out a command.
“Cease fighting! Drop your weapons and surrender, all of you!”
I sent out a mental command to my undead troops to do the same but made sure they kept their weapons in their hands just in case this was some sort of trick.
Rollar’s troops, surprisingly enough, immediately obeyed. Every one of them threw down their weapons, stepped back from my troops, and raised their hands in the air. Even the bear backed away from Fang. There was not a murmur of protest, not from a single one of them. Rollar had said that he was a stickler for discipline, but this was just ridiculous. It was almost as if he exerted some form of mind control over his troops. Like I did. How was that possible?
“What did you mean about the wise woman’s prophecy?” I asked him.
“When I was a little boy, before the Church of Light forced my tribe to convert, we had a wise woman. She prophesied that my destiny would lie with a new god. A god who would be born at the time when a great danger was threatening the world. I would fight this new god, and I would lose. But he would show me mercy—”
“Let me stop you right there,” I interrupted. “This sounds like some ploy to make me spare you. I’m not so easily beguiled.”
Rollar laughed nervously as the rest of my companions gathered around me.
“What is this about?” Rami asked. “No more fighting? There are enemies who still breathe.” She shot a venomous look at Rollar.
“Do you mean to kill them?” Isu asked me. “There’s no shame in killing those who have surrendered. You are a god now, Vance. You don’t follow the foolish moral laws of mere mortals.”
I wasn’t sure where Drok had gotten to, but I looked around the bloody battlefield and saw him trawling through the corpses among the ruins. Was he looking for loot?
Elyse had fallen from Talon somewhere in the woods, and I hoped she wasn’t badly injured or worse. I took a brief moment to close my eyes and used my divine abilities to search for Talon and Elyse. I was about to pray that she wasn’t too badly hurt, but I was a god now, so who the fuck would I pray to? Myself? Shit, all I could really do was hope.
I located Talon, tangled in some branches, with Elyse still strapped into the “baby-bag” attached to the harpy’s torso. Both of them were upside down, and the harpy was struggling futilely to get free of the tangle of branches.
So, they were both reasonably unharmed. It meant I could focus on the task at hand: deciding whether I should allow Rollar and his men to live.
I returned to my body to find the sergeant begging.
“Please, hear me out,” Rollar he said. “This isn’t a tale I made up. It’s true.”
“All right,” I said. “Let’s hear where this goes.”
“The wise woman said I would serve this living god faithfully thereafter,” Rollar continued. “And together, we would fight the darkness of the new, terrible threat. This is what was prophesied. Now I know it must be true. It has to be you. It all makes sense.”
“This god could be the Lord of Light,” I said.
“I never served the Lord of Light,” Rollar answered calmly. “Not in my heart. I only pretended to so that I could ascend to a position of power and obtain a suitable number of men under my command. As soon as I found men who would follow me, I promptly deserted with my entire division. The words of the wise woman are far more important than anything that false god needed me to do.”
“Prove it,” I said. “Command your soldiers to bow down to me as the God of Death.”
“All of you!” he roared, “get on your hands and knees and prostrate yourselves before Vance Chauzec, the God of Death!”
Every one of Rollar’s troops immediately turned to face me, dropped onto their hands and knees, and pressed their foreheads into the ground.
Each trembled with terror, and it seemed they weren’t actually giving true obeisance to me but were petrified of fighting yet more undead. I didn’t mind either way. It was incredible to have a living army bow to me.
“All hail Vance Chauzec, the new God of Death!” they chanted in unison. “All hail Vance Chauzec!”
I turned to Rollar and nodded slowly. “How do I know I can really trust you to serve me? How do I know that you won’t shove a dagger between my ribs the moment I turn my back?”
“You have one of the people of the Wastes in your ranks,” said Rollar. “Call him over here.”
“Drok!” I yelled. “Come here!”
From where he was pillaging the dead, Drok lifted his head and
