Send a spelling or grammar correction to: Tracy Johnson
Back to Empire on the HPe3000 Home Page
There was a timeless moment before he hit the ground. The dissipating fog was a grey roof overhead, glitters of starlight shining through. Passing the edge of a cloud Ragnar could make out the half-lidded shape of Vatun's eye, what these Southerns called Luna.
Looking into it he could feel the lost god's presence. It washed over him like a chilling flood. He shivered, then let the cold claim him.
He was Vatun's hand. The lost god's vengeance made flesh.
The realization filled him and cooled his blood. Time returned in an eyeblink. His rage was gone and Ragnar skidded across the ground, first on his shoulder, then tumbling to a halt.
For a moment there was nothing, no movement, no sign of life. Then he breathed, inhaling the air like a smiths bellows, then a great heaving sigh. He felt as if he'd just woken from a deep and dreamless sleep.
He lay there on the hard, cold ground for a moment. Something important he needed to remember, something. . . ah, 'Kill the Ogre.'
Ragnar sat up with a start and looked about. Where had that ogre gotten to..
* * *
Only a few moments had passed, but it felt like an age. Emiel had thrown his other knife and it struck the half-orc, Threefinger, squarely in the stomach, dropping him. He lay doubled in pain upon the porch.
The other half-orc, Splittoe, turned and ran back inside. Emiel followed.
The ogre stood, balanced on unsteady feet, as its lifeblood spilled out in a torrent. Its lefthand was gripping its stomach, seeking to hold itself together. With its righthand it swatted at the spear Ted jabbed toward its body.
***
Ragnar put his hand out and braced his arm to lever himself from the ground. Beneath his fingers he felt the steel blade of his axe, his skin stuck momentarily to the freezing metal, lifting it slightly, then its weight pulled from his flesh, back to the oerth.
"Yes." he said aloud to himself. Vatun was smiling on him. A promise of a short and dangerous life from what the skalds had sung.
He grabbed the axe and threw himself to his feet. A wave of pain swept over him. He remembered more now. The ogre. Broken ribs for certain, he thought in the back of his mind.
Ragnar's charge across the ground was not so quick or agile as it had been only a moment before, but he did not have far to go.
The ogre had missed Ted with a forceful lunge, swayed on its feet and left an opening. Ted sunk the spear deeply into the great open wound.
It bellowed once more. A cry of defeat and defiance. The ogre knew its fate, Death was already beside it, reaching out, but still a not clawing its soul away.
With both hands the ogre clenched Ted's spear and broke the wooden shaft in two. It staggered forward in a rush. Ted had only the splinter-ended half of the spear to fend of the attack. He failed.
Ted did no more than poke the ogre in its chest, his arms went as weak as a child's at the sight of the blood-spewing monster looming over him. It swatted the spear away and out of his arms and with a vicious backhand blow then struck him across the head.
Ragnar could hear the crack as Ted's head snapped to the side, then saw his body follow, lifted up by the force of the blow. Ted collapsed in a heap a few feet away.
The ogre staggered on. It saw the man, the one who had brought death to it, and its last desire was to drag him down as well.
Ragnar did not rush, but he walked straight toward the beast. As it stretched out a shaking arm, reaching across a widening gulf between life and death toward him, Ragnar, with a sure and steady swing, severed that hand from the ogre's body. It had no time to react, it did not even realize the loss, though it sought to grip the man's throat with a bloody stump. Its hand lay on the ground at its feet.
The hard swung, edge of steel which ended its hold on life, the ogre never felt.
* * *
(To Be Continued)