“I can’t leave you here alone with—”
“Just go!” I yelled, snatching her mace out of her hands.
Jort was lurching rapidly toward me on shaky legs. His movements, even though his body was that of a scrawny peasant, were not those of a man. It was more like he was some sort of crippled insect, the way he moved.
“You have interfered in our plans for the last time.” His voice sounded like a hundred throaty northern barbarians threatening me at once. “We will devour your soul and the souls of your followers before drowning all of Prand in blood!”
I had suspected it from the moment I saw the blood all over the saddle and the bloody footprints, but now I knew it for certain: I was dealing with a creature of the Blood God.
Elyse’s mace was a weapon of the Lord of Light, and I couldn’t use it the way it worked for her, with the power of the Sun. But I had repurposed a weapon of Light before, when I’d channeled Death magic through the tower shield of a Resplendent Crusader. If I could channel Death magic through a kind of banal weapon like that, I was pretty sure I could channel it through a weapon like this.
As Jort still lurched ominously toward me, I closed my eyes and sent my soul diving deep below the surface of this forest, sensing all of the corpses, millions upon millions of them, buried here from this Age and the many Ages that had preceded it. There was a deathly cold dwelling deep within the earth and a hardness that was stronger than any substance—a hardness of bones so old, so compressed, that they had turned to stone.
This was what I drew up. I filled the mace in my hands with its power, as if the weapon was a waterskin I was filling at a stream. The steel of the mace became icy cold in my hands, and the metal started to stink of old grave rot, of decaying flesh and crumbling bones.
“You’ve fucked with the wrong god,” I snarled as Jort moved almost within striking range. “And this clumsy assfuck of yours is about to get his skull turned to pulp.”
Jort lunged at me, but I sidestepped and smashed the mace with full force into his face, unleashing the pent-up Death magic. The force of the blow, combined with the brutal explosion of Death magic, would have liquefied a fully armored mountain troll, but this skinny little rake of a man merely got a dent in his face as his head was knocked to the side, with little actual damage done.
“Shit, that’s not good,” I muttered, jumping back as he took a swipe at me with the red, wavy-bladed dagger. My sixth sense was telling me that if that dagger touched me, something pretty fucking bad would happen.
Again, I drew as much Death power as I could from deep underground and smashed the mace with all the might I could muster into Jort’s skull. Once more, I put a dent in his head with a blow that would have killed a dire bear on the spot, but aside from him stumbling back a step, the hit hardly perturbed him.
All right. It was time to ramp things up.
My first priority, since it was turning out to be a chore to kill this thing, was to get that red dagger out of its hand. I left my chest wide open as I sucked more Death magic into the mace, inviting Jort to lunge at me. He did, and I leaned back to dodge the blow before whipping the mace around in a vicious strike that connected with his wrist. The release of Death magic was powerful enough to almost blow me off my feet this time, rocketing outward in a shock wave of cold stink, but fortunately, it was also strong enough to smash the dagger out of this creep’s hand, and it went flying into the bushes.
“All right, motherfucker,” I said. “Now it’s time to really party!”
Since Jort was no longer armed with a dangerous weapon, I decided that the only way I was going to kill him was if I went all out. Drawing Death power into every blow I struck, I darted forward, smashing the mace into him, then jumped out when he swung around to try to counter attack.
I focused on his joints, crunching the Death-enhanced mace head into them with every blow. His body was immensely strong, and even though I slammed blow after blow into him, he kept coming for me. His movements were getting slower and jerkier though, and my relentless attacks were breaking down whatever magic was holding his body together.
I heard many feet running down the trail behind me, accompanied by familiar voices shouting. My friends were on their way, but this shit was personal now, and I was determined to finish Jort off on my own.
Again and again, I darted in and planted crushing blows on his joints, on his head, on his neck, everywhere, and slowly he started to break down. Even though he kept laughing in that maniacal hundreds-of-voices-all-together voice, I could tell that he was dying—if he was even alive to begin with.
Finally, he made a final desperate lunge for me, with both hands extended. I sidestepped the attack, then belted the mace into his face with a double-handed blow. This time, the force was enough to take his head off his shoulders. It flew through the air, bounced along the ground, and disappeared into the bushes, while his lifeless body flopped dead at my feet.
Even though I hadn’t been harmed, I was feeling pretty damn exhausted myself. I dropped to my knees, breathing hard and feeling spent.
“Lord Vance, are you injured?” Rollar gasped, running over to me.
“No,” I managed to wheeze, “but I feel like I just fought an army single-handedly. I must have hit this motherfucker over a hundred times, as hard
