“He put up a good fight against my lizard.” I paused to admire the huge bear. While it was bruised and bloody, with chunks of its fur ripped out, it was still standing. An admirable feat considering the bear had gone toe-to-toe with a zombie lizard.
“Your lizard is an impressive beast in itself,” Rollar said. “But for some reason, my helm does not work on it.”
“That’s because Fang, my lizard, is dead. Well, undead, technically speaking. He obeys only me because he’s a creature of Death, not Life. And the hammer—what’s the story with that?”
“It is a relic from the God of Thunder. As you discovered when you attacked my camp, it still holds some power. Not as much as it should, though.”
“This means that somewhere, the God of Thunder and the God of Beasts still live,” I said. “Their souls are alive, at least. If I could find their bodies, I could resurrect them. Although first, I made a promise to one of my companions to resurrect her chosen goddess.”
“Which god?”
“Xayon, Goddess of Wind,” Rami put in.
“Ah, yes, Xayon,” Rollar said. “Well, if you’re looking for her body, I know where it is.”
“Where?” I asked, to test whether he truly knew the answer.
“Your uncle’s castle in Brakith.”
“Right.” I nodded. It seemed he did know the location and was willing to tell me. It seemed he would be loyal and truthful.
I took a few moments to survey the battlefield. Rollar’s troops were still on their hands and knees, kowtowing to me. My troops, including Rami and Isu, were waiting for my signal, their weapons still at the ready.
“These men will obey me from now on, as their supreme commander, yes?” I asked Rollar.
“I am your subordinate now,” he answered, “and these men are now yours. They will obey you, and they will only take orders from me if those orders come from you first.”
I decided to test this out to see if he was telling the truth.
“Men!” I barked, “get up and stand to attention!”
All of Rollar’s troops scrambled to their feet, standing to attention, their arms stiff at their sides, their backs ramrod straight, and their eyes staring straight ahead. Not one of them moved a muscle; indeed, they hardly even breathed.
“Stand on your right foot only!”
All of them immediately complied, raising their left feet off the ground. I had to chuckle; this was quite amusing.
“Wave your left arms around like windmills!”
Again they obeyed right away.
“Cluck like chickens!”
This command was followed by about a hundred soldiers clucking like a flock of chickens. I roared with laughter. This was brilliant. However, as fun as it was, I had more important things to do.
“Stand at ease, gentlemen.”
The chorus of clucking stopped, and the men stood at ease.
“Get them back into their groups,” I said to Rollar. “And wait here for me. I still have a lot of questions to ask you, and I want to explore the crypt. I suspect danger lurks there. After all, something happened to the people of Kroth, who all vanished from this place. But first, I need to locate my cleric companion. You blew her out of the sky with that fucking thunder hammer of yours.”
Rollar blanched, and his face turned white, as though my mention of what he had done to Elyse might mean punishment.
I shrugged. “She’s all right, which is the main thing. All’s fair in war, right?”
“Correct.” Rollar bolted upright.
“Rami, Isu, Drok,” I said, “stay here and have a look around these ruins. See if there’s anything of interest. I’m going into the woods to find Elyse and the harpy.”
I returned to the spot where I’d seen Talon and Elyse earlier with my mind-vision. They were still tangled up in the tree.
I scrambled up the tree and clambered out onto the limb closest to Elyse. She and the harpy were hopelessly tangled in a mesh of broken, twisted branches, but this makeshift net had obviously broken their fall and saved Elyse from a fatal injury.
“Vance?” she murmured as I made my way along the bough toward her. “Why am I up here? What happened?”
“Just relax, Elyse. I’ll get you out of there in a minute.”
I went to work cutting some of the straps of the harness. After I’d sliced through a few, I was able to pull Elyse free. Talon would take a whole lot more work to free, as its wings were tangled up in the branches. I sent a command to the creature to calm down.
“I’ll send some of Rollar’s men”—well, they were my men now—”up here to cut you down.”
For the moment, I wanted to get Elyse down and make sure she was all right. I slung her over my shoulders and climbed down the tree, then laid her down on a bed of soft leaves near the trunk.
“Are you injured at all?” I asked. “Can you move your hands, feet, fingers, toes, arms, and legs?”
She tried all of these appendages and found that they were all fine. She had a few scratches on her arms and legs from the branches, but they were very minor.
“I’m fine,” she said, sitting up. “It’s all coming back to me now. I was about to blast that soldier with my holy fire, when there was this… this sound, like thunder, but louder than any thunder I’ve ever heard. Then, I was spinning—everything was spinning—and I was falling. Then, everything went black.”
“You’re all right then.” I breathed out a sigh of relief. “Praise the… uh, praise myself.”
Chapter Eighteen
I helped Elyse to her feet, but, to tell the truth, she didn’t seem to need much assistance now. She was almost back to normal after crashing through the trees while strapped to my zombie-harpy.
“Quite a lot has happened since the battle,” I said. Let’s return to the camp, I’ll update you as we walk.”
“No,” she said.
“No?”
“Let’s not go back
