Enemy of the Gods Read online

  ENEMY OF THE GODS

  James Von Ohlen

  © Among the Pines Publishing, 2015

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, businesses, characters and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, actual events or locales is purely coincidental.

  “WAR descends upon us all, we few that remain, one final time.” The warrior’s voice rang loud and clear, reaching all corners of the hall, underscored by a distant rumbling of explosions that faintly shook the floor. The words carried a hint of sadness and a touch of anger, but despite their grim situation, nothing of despair or fear. No, nothing like that would come from such a man as this, Andre thought as he listened. Such a man was likely incapable of such emotions.

  In all of his years of service to this man, this warrior, Andre had never heard anything even approaching fear in his voice. Many times in the past the sermons delivered by this born leader of men had rallied his soldiers and his people, uniting them in common cause that had seen enemies destroyed and the very forces of nature tamed.

  Mountains levelled, and oceans drained. Entire races purged from the face of the world in steel and flame. All the work of this man. From tribal warrior to Emperor in his life. But never had his words carried the stench of fear. The taint of hopelessness.

  The Hammer.

  Just as the men of his tribe had taken to calling him when he was still but a child. His true birth name had been kept a secret between him and his mother, and never revealed to another living soul. Thus, the world had come to know him as such.

  The Hammer. Named for the great weapon he had carried since he was old enough to lift it. A warrior without peer, victor of countless battles, master of great works, destroyer of the same, and ruler of all he surveyed. Never knowing fear or doubt, or at the least shrewd enough to never allow himself to show as much.

  Combined with his immense stature and iron will, it had made him seem like the living embodiment of some God, descended among mortals to show them the way. Prophetic in his vision. Divine in his power.

  On occasion he had been given to rants. Invective laced tirades that slandered anything that happened to pass through his mind, descending into gibbering madness. Speaking in Tongues, the priests and shamans had said. The rage he displayed had been seen by many as the mark of the Gods. The words in an unknown language were interpreted to be the language of the divine. His communications with the worlds beyond men.

  Now…now, it just made him look like a man who’d lost his fucking mind, Andre concluded. Any man who didn’t fear what they would be facing, and facing soon at that, didn’t fully grasp their situation. Or was flat out insane.

  But then, claiming to be able to understand this terrifying opponent was pure hubris on his part, and Andre knew it. To the extent of his knowledge, this keep of granite and steel, was all that remained on the whole face of the world.

  Wrought by the hands of the Ancients and added on to over the passing years and centuries by men until it had become the sprawling fortress of Faro. Commanding trade lanes over land and sea alike, making the men who dwelled within rich and fat and complacent.

  It had stood a sprawling bastion, proud and impenetrable since time immemorial.

  Until The Hammer had come and taken it all from them.

  Andre was no more than a boy living on a farm with nothing more than the shirt on his back when that had happened. Far too young to know or care what was happening. And now he was a man, seasoned in battle, with nothing more than the fine and sturdy plate he wore over his chain hauberk and the large axe strapped across his back. He supposed he owned the drinking horn that he sipped his ale from as well. But such things were insignificant now.

  Rightly, all things were insignificant now.

  Beside him, in the great feasting hall of the once enormous and foreboding fortress of Faro, were collected the last of mankind. A scant thousand people, just over half that number including women and children. A few score slaves worked behind the scenes to keep food and drink flowing, but as far as anyone knew, that was the totality of what remained of humanity.

  The entirety of the human race beyond the walls of Faro was gone. Ground to dust and cast into the wind, resting on the ash heap of history.

  Andre supposed that somewhere in the jungles and deserts far to the south, or in the frozen wastes of the far north, hiding in some long forgotten cave or tomb of the Ancients, there might be a handful of others. Survivors that had somehow escaped the fate of almost every other living thing on the face of Grama. But they would be little more than savages. Clad in furs or rags, if they even wore clothing, and sleeping in their own filth. Cowering in fear before a simple torch.

  Beyond that, they were not his people. They did not matter.

  He looked about the great hall as The Hammer’s words still rang. The eyes of the last of mankind were fixed upon the great warrior. Some filled with hope. Some with fear. Most glazed over with drink and narcotics.

  A coward’s way of dealing with the situation, he mused. Though if he were honest with himself, he was just as much a coward as any of them. The only reason he avoided excess of the heavy drink and drug-laced smoke was that he wanted his thoughts and mind to be unclouded when the time came. The fear of dying without making a good accounting of himself was strong. Meeting his end had always seemed some distant thing to worry about when he was an old man. Now, it stared him in the face, grinning and fangs bared in hunger.

  A dull thud in the distance followed by intense rumbling beneath the feet simultaneously put the exclamation point on his thought and the words of The Hammer. Fragments of plaster rained down from the ceiling, already cracked by earlier waves of the bombardment. Somewhere another huge chunk of the fortress’s immense walls would be collapsing under the intense barrage, peeling echoing thunder across the face of Grama.

  A ripple of murmurs followed in its wake before The Hammer motioned for silence. He raised a single arm, clad in heavy plate, scarred and dented with tolls paid in battle. A constant thing over these past years since the demons had first reared their ugly heads in the world of men.

  The situation had initially seemed a Godsend for men like The Hammer. He’d won a kingdom through battle and then grown it into an empire by the same. He led his armies over the face of the known world. Left with no immediate external foes to face, he’d been forced to actually rule. Something he had been inept at. The intricacies of court and the accompanying politics had proved to be something the man was ill-suited for.

  The empire he ruled over had begun to stagnate and economic crisis had loomed large. If something wasn’t done, half of the empire would be at risk of starvation in the coming decades. The great man who had forged the globe spanning kingdom with his own two hands and the heavy weapon clenched in them had grown sullen and depressed. With no real enemies left to fight, his life seemed to have lost meaning.

  But then that all changed when The Eaters arrived.

  Rumors spoke of them in the far-flung lands covering the surface of Grama, carried by traveling merchants that plied the sea lanes and long roads. Eventually refugees had started showing up on the borders of The Hammer’s empire. Raiders and displaced tribes alike seeking to flee to safety. Hoping that distance from what pursued them would provide security.

  In meeting with his high councils, The Hammer had seemed as a man reborn. Somewhere out there, in the distant lands of Grama, marched an implacable foe. Drawing ever closer and closer to his own borders. It was only a matter of time until he found skulls ripe for the harvest with his great maul. And then everyone would be reminded of the place of such petty matters as field management and tax collection.

  Armies were raised and the core of The Hammer’s loyal followers, the same men he had led in battle so many years ago as he had forged his kingdom, were summoned to him. Levies collected and trained, drilled, and armed. A storm was coming that had consumed the other kingdoms of the world. It would shatter itself on the bulwark of armor and blades that The Hammer would command against it, and then it would be ground into the blood-soaked dust of the earth.

  And so the tide of refugees grew. Any who could flee, did so. Leaving behind home and hearth in a desperate attempt to save their lives. Hoping that distance, time, and the armies of The Hammer would save them.

  But they hadn’t.

  The same demons that had destroyed their lands and everything within them followed them there. Into the lands of The Hammer. Killing and consuming all in their path.

  The Hammer had been like a man reborn. Being crushed under the weight of his crown, he was rejuvenated at the prospect of war coming once more. His back straightened and stiffened. The muscles of his shoulders swelled to comical proportions as he began to drill again with his heavy maul, leading his personal bodyguard in their daily training.

  When the numbers of refugees grew too much to manage, The Hammer returned to his tribal roots for a solution. His armies rode forth to dispatch raiders and put chains on refugees, taking them as slaves. His scouts stole into the darkness to seek out his new enemies, these Eaters, and pinpoint their location so that he could slaughter them.

  No such thing had happened.

  What few scouts returned to The Hammer’s lands carried tales that made them sound mad. Things of steel and flesh that mocked the shape of men, but constantly shifted their forms with the power of chaotic magics. Some demonic force drove th
em in their mindless slaughter of anything in their path.

  Men whispered in fearful voices that The Eaters were nigh invulnerable to mortal weapons, save for the scant few that had been produced by the Ancients that still worked. They were things that rose from their own deaths unless completely dismembered and burned. Things that were the equal of any dozen of the greatest knights in skill of arms, moving so fast as to make a mockery of the lifetime such a man had spent training in the use of sword and armor. Things that ate the men and women and children that they slaughtered without pause.

  It simply was not possible to fight them. Not possible to defeat them. Not once in all the tales told about The Eaters had they ever been turned back.

  And behind them came the curse. A mass of crimson light that devoured everything. Man, animal, plant, birds in the skies, and even the ground of the earth itself.

  In those dark times, that was when Andre had found a sword thrust into his hands. He had hesitated at first, but he realized that there was no other way. He would fight, and through some miracle triumph, or he would die. Devoured by some demonic being.

  And fight, he had. The first battle he’d faced as a young man, so long ago that he wasn’t sure how many years had passed since then, had been against raiders. Desperate men fleeing the advance of The Eaters from beyond the borders of the empire.

  They came in the night, seeking to steal what they could from the collective of farms that Andre had been born on and had lived within since that same day. Food, women, and weapons. Anything of value that they might sell. They would make sport with anything they could fuck while they ate what they could. Then they would kill everyone. No living witnesses meant no one that could send them to the gallows with an accusatory finger pointed in their direction.

  That night, Andre had secreted himself away in a communal barn to await the company of a neighbor’s daughter. He could just barely remember her name as The Hammer bellowed his rage to what little remained of humanity on the face of Grama. Sara had it been?

  Though certainty of the name eluded him, he could remember her face in intimate detail. She’d been so ugly. But her body had been fit for purpose and she had been willing. And to a teenage boy, that was all that mattered.

  The first clue that something was wrong had been the sound of the girl approaching. The sound of one set of feet and suddenly many more in rapid motion and a squeak of fear from the girl’s lips before she was silent.

  Instantly, he’d known that something was wrong. A scythe with a short haft found its way into his hand without thought. The weight familiar and comfortable after so many years of swinging it and others just like it during harvest.

  He wasn’t sure what he was expecting when he emerged from his hiding place in the barn and into the darkness of the night, but half a dozen armed men hadn’t ranked near the top of the list. Even in the dim light of the night, he could see that they were filthy and unwashed. Their faces showed something that he would come to know all too well in the coming days and years. Desperation. Madness.

  Silently, he’d approached them, weighing his options carefully. Others moved in the distance, and he would need to raise an alarm. But doing so would alert them to his presence. Creeping closer and closer, unnoticed in the dark of the night, he saw them standing over Sara’s prone form. What looked like blood spread from her head, and her feet twitched.

  “Did you have to go and kill her before we could use her?” One of the dirty men asked another in a low voice, harsh with anger.

  “Don’t get pissed at me, you daft cunt,” another answered, hefting a club. The same he no doubt had just crushed the girl’s skull with. “You can still use her if you want. Still warm and all.”

  Andre’s mind blurred white with rage. He’d had no feelings for the girl, but she was one of his neighbors. Part of his community. And these filthy savages had just murdered her. Before he could use her.

  The first blow of the scythe shocked Andre almost as much as the men he attacked. A wide swing connected cleanly with the neck of one man, neatly removing his head and sending it rolling. Men stopped and locked their gazes on the rolling head, momentarily frozen before they realized what it was. Another began to scream before Andre cut both of his legs out from under him with a single swipe of the long blade.

  The rest of that night blurred into a mish-mash of indistinguishable memories. Flames. Blood. Screaming. And more men dying.

  Two men out of nearly two dozen had been captured before it was all said and done. They pled for their lives, telling tales of inhuman monsters and the demons that commanded them. Devouring all in their path and poisoning the very earth itself with their presence. They’d only done what they had done, because they’d had no other choice.

  Their protests were screamed into the dawning light as they were crucified, their story never changing. They had to. They’d been driven to it by The Eaters.

  That had been the first Andre had heard of them. He’d assumed that the men giving voice to such things were every bit as crazy as they had looked. Full of shit, as it were.

  When the constables had arrived the next day and taken in accounts of what had happened, they’d conscripted Andre on the spot. Though he still couldn’t remember most of what had happened, there had been plenty of witnesses who could.

  Armed with the scythe, he’d marched among the raiders, harvesting them like ripe shoots of long grass. Almost single handedly, he’d slaughtered fifteen men before the militia had arrived to deal with the rest.

  The Hammer’s words echoing against the walls of the great chamber drew him back to the present, if only for a moment. The huge man, clad in his heaviest battle plate, motioned with his fists and his massive maul, spewing invective against The Eaters and their Gods. Prophesying that it was the will of the Gods of War that only the strongest of men remained.

  Here, the chaff had been separated from the wheat. The strongest of the strong were what remained, and in a storm of steel and rage they would prove themselves worthy of the Gods they served by obliterating The Eaters on the field of battle and driving them back from the walls of Faro before chasing them across the whole of the world. Slaughtering them every step of the way back into the darkest pits of Hells where they had been born.

  Then, a new race of men would populate the world of Grama. Perpetuating a line of the strongest. They would build empires without rival in the whole of human history.

  Men cheered at the words of The Hammer, but Andre was not one of them.

  In the far distant past, now so long ago that it seemed another life, he was one of those men cheering as The Hammer promised glorious victory against the demonic foe.

  With the constabulary, Andre had learned how to properly use a sword, and after putting it to good use against raiders and other violent refugees as well as citizens of the empire attempting to take advantage of the disorder, he’d even been granted mail. A rare thing for one so young and new to the ranks.

  The transition from a life of simple farming and trying desperately to get laid, to one of constant travel, violence, and whoring had been shocking to him at the time. Shocking and fascinating. It was as if suddenly he had been given government sanction to do all of the things he’d always daydreamed about, but believed would never come to pass.

  But he adapted to it quickly, and save for his baby-face, in a few weeks there was little to suggest that he wasn’t a grizzled veteran of the constabulary. Men fell on his sword with regularity, and others began to heed his advice in a fight. In a short time, Andre was commanding sergeant of his own constable unit. Tasked with bringing brigands and foreigners living illegally within the borders of the empire to justice.

  Even that had grown easy. A decent living made on blood, intimidation, and extortion. Easy women and easier drink at every stop. What more could a boy in his late teens want in life?

  Yet there were always the tales of The Eaters. With time, the flood of refugees pouring in to the empire grew and grew, each telling their own version of what the raiders at the communal farms had said just a few years ago. Demons and monsters were devouring everything before them. Literally everything. The people, the animals, the trees, even the birds and insects. Leaving nothing living in their wake save for isolated stretches that remained untouched and surrounded by The Curse.