Soldier of the Old God

Short Story / Fantasy

Bori strained his legs and lungs to keep Keresh in sight. His friend wove through the trees with the focus of a fox marked for death. The excitement that had fueled Bori at the beginning of their run from the village had worn out. The waning day snuffed the soft light filtering through the trees, and the pleasant calm of the sunlit forest would soon give way to the blanket of night. The bright greens in the canopy would mature to a verdant velvet with only the barest suggestion of moon and star beyond. Then, they would be at the mercy of the trow, whose ears were as sharp as their rows of teeth. The sound of two young boys skittering through the depths of the forest would ring like a dinner bell for those wicked, ravenous creatures. Most trow were no bigger than Bori himself, but their bloodlust far outweighed their stature. He tugged at the leather strap that kept his wooden sword slung securely to his back. As his chest brightened with effort and his feet dodged root, rock, and shrub, Bori’s mind ran through their Master’s swordplay drills. He wondered if striking straw dummies and clumsy sparring partners really prepared him for the creatures of the night-washed wood.

Keresh finally stopped short at a trunk, fallen and long bereft leaves.

“Here,” he said with a small grin. Keresh was born with a chin bent to one side, and it always gave him a smirking, somewhat insolent look that had earned him many an ear-boxing from the elders of the village. “We need to go this way. The ground here is covered in snares.” The earth before them was indeed choked with thick brush and brambles, twisting like billows of smoke transfigured and tangible. Keresh pointed up the length of the once mighty tree. It rose in an incline, the very top resting on a large boulder. Beyond that point, the trees broke and revealed the violet-pink of a dusky sky.

“I’m worried,” whispered Bori, shame reddening his cheeks. “How do we get back?” Keresh blew a disgruntled noise out of his mouth.

“I’ve been here before, remember?” he said with an easy shrug. “Don’t mewl, now. There’s a pond and a little river we can follow back. It takes a little longer, but — ” Bori squared his jaw and shook his head. Itches riddled his legs and arms, and his ears kept playing tricks on him. Over the rapid beating of his heart, he thought he could hear chattering voices and pattering feet behind them.

Keresh sighed and stretched his legs methodically, like their Master had trained them. Then he hopped onto the trunk. He crawled, hand-and-foot, up to the top of the boulder. He made good time, as the tree’s knots and limbs served as fine arm- and footholds, and Keresh had always been as quick as a cat. Bori cursed as his friend reached the top and promptly hopped over into pink and purple. He heard a sound of rustling grass followed by a breathy, relieved laugh.

Bori was not as fast as Keresh, nor did he find balancing an easy or enjoyable task. He had to grit his jaw to keep from frightening himself and falling onto his head into the brambles below that reached up toward him with cloying fingers. He reached the top of the boulder, feeling its rough and crumbly surface under his hands and knees.

At the break in the trees before him, Bori’s quick breaths caught in his throat and his heart took flight. Keresh had led him to a vast meadow that spanned much larger than their village of a hundred people. Straight across from Bori’s vantage point, a short line of dark green trees showed that the forest continued far beyond. To the right, Bori noticed a dip in the land and also the purple peak of a mountain in the distance. The meadow seemed a dreamworld, a place in-between.

“See?” called Keresh from below. Bori looked down to see him jumping up and down. He gestured at the top of each hop to another boulder that Bori had not noticed before. He narrowed his eyes and realized that it was not just a boulder, but a huge face made of stone! It was stuck in the ground, chin and cheek nearly buried and overgrown with foliage. The eyes were wide, as if in surprise, each bearing a dark hole in their centers. The nose was broken, shorn off by either time or the impact of some great fall. The mouth was a purse little expression that suggested a detached mockery. “Worth a run home in the dark, eh?”

“What is it?” he asked, calling down to his friend.

“I’m thinking it might be one of those ‘Idols’ the old man talks about,” said Keresh, intrigue strewn unabashedly across his face.

“Soldiers of the Old God,” Bori thought aloud. A chill ran through him. Their Master’s stories about the Old God and His Kingdom were always filled with dread and foreboding. Stories of conquest and destruction, and a hatred of all things weak and small. Bori wilted in the tall face’s presence. The dark pits of its eyes seemed to deepen the longer Bori stared into them.

“Come on, Bori.” Keresh threw a stick up at him and it clanged hollow against the boulder. “Are you scared? It’s a dead head.” He picked up another stick and flung it directly at the face. Bori winced as it struck but, again, there was only a benign, hollow sound.

“I wonder if I can get one through its eye!” He laughed and ran toward the head.

“Wait!” Bori squeaked. “Let me climb down.”

“Jump, jump!” said Keresh, over his shoulder. “The grass will catch you like water, like the deep part of the river!” To prove himself, Keresh jumped as high as he could and fell, bum-first, into the grass. He crushed the feathery tendrils with his unceremonious drop and disappeared into the growth, but he rose up quickly with a huge smile. Bori steadied his breath and rolled off the rock in a hesitant bundle. He scraped his knees and back on the rock, but his landing was indeed soft, even bouncy. The grass tickled his skin and a thin blade of it ventured into his nose. He sneezed, scaring a nearby flock of cindertails out of the grass and up into the air. He watched the birds fly up and turn toward the sloping part of the meadow. Bori scrambled up, the grass fluttering back up to stand with him.

“It’s got a hole in its head, too…” Keresh stood staring at the crown of the head, his hand ready with a small stone.

“Keresh,” said Bori, walking steadily toward his friend. “Cindertails flock to fields of war.” The small, mostly white birds, with their short necks and round cheeks, looked nothing more than a striking sparrow. But their feathers were painted with stories of death, so their Master said. Coal-black tails speak of funeral pyres, and red-tipped wings of recently spilt blood.

“Then maybe the old man’s legends about the Wars are true.”

“We should tell him about this place.”

“Ugh,” sighed Keresh. “Then he’ll want to study it and won’t let us come near it again for weeks, or maybe ever!” Keresh reeled back and hucked the stone toward the crown. The stone sailed in a perfect arc into the hole in the statue’s head and he whooped with triumph.

“Keresh — !” Bori gripped the hilt of his sword with his hand. As the stone clattered within the head, there was a sound of grinding and its dark irises began to glow a bright blue. Keresh gasped and staggered back. The earth rumbled underneath their feet, and Bori felt the dirt loosen under him. He only stumbled, but Keresh’s body fully disappeared into the grass. Bori cried out and went into a crouch to keep from falling over. The ground suddenly stopped shaking and the glow in the stone face faded.

Bori’s chest heaved in small bursts. Muscles tight with fear, he crawled on hand and foot to the place where Keresh had fallen. The earth had opened up into a short pit, with Keresh crumpled at the bottom. His friend looked up, face, hair and clothes covered in dirt. His eyes were as wide as the statue’s and his hands were shaking.

“I am not hurt,” he said, incredulous. He patted the ground with his hands. “More stone. M-more stone!” Bori reached out his hand to Keresh.

“Come, we need to go back,” he said. “We can return when we have more time, after we tell Master — ” Bori stopped short as a piercing shriek shattered the air behind him. He spun around, hand on the hilt of his sword. Night had fully fallen and a mass of yellow eyes peered at him from the line of trees. Two trow — alphas, marked by the bristling hair on their heads and shoulders — emerged from wood, their eyes lighting their heads like lopsided lanterns. Their wide mouths broke apart in jagged smiles between their long, drooping ears. They raised their rough-hewn wooden spears and gave a rasp call. The trees shook with their rally. Then, they charged. Bori swung his sword down into the pit.

“Take it!” he screamed to Keresh over the shrieks and chitters of their foes. “I’ll pull you up!” His friend jumped and grabbed the weapon. He clambered up the side of the pit, digging his feet into the loose soil. He reached the top and, with Bori’s mighty skyward thrust, was flung into the air and out of the pit. Keresh unsheathed his blade as he landed, and then the trow were upon them.

The boys swung and bashed and cut as best they could with training weapons. The elders had carved their swords for efficacy, if not lethality. They could withstand hours of training and even rash schoolyard clashes. Bori and Keresh knocked the wind and sense from trow after trow, each one disappearing into the folds of the meadowgrass as they lost their will to fight. The wild things had strength in their numbers, but no sense of strategy. Still, the trow were hungry and persistent, and the boys suffered bites, slashes and jabs. They managed to fell a good number before Bori took a trow spear to his side.

“Agh!” he grunted as he swung his blade at the head of the attacker. His sword landed true with a satisfying crack and the trow fell limp as a ragdoll, joining its fellows in the grass. Bori staggered back, bumping Keresh.

“Oi!” said his friend, wrestling a trow off his arm. “You hurt?” Bori wrenched the spear from his side and felt a blossom of pain followed by a warm gush of blood. He swung haphazardly at the trow in front of him, who licked their lips at the widening red splotch on his tunic. Clawed hands reached forward, grabbing his clothes. Keresh put a rough arm around Bori, and then punched backward, away from the line of trees that would lead them home. They pressed up against the great stone face. Bori held his bloody hand and sword out in front of him, smacking and shoving the faces of trow away. They licked the sticky, warm blood from their faces like sweet syrup. “Come!” Bori felt a prodding on his shoulder, a tugging on his shirt. Through blurred vision, he saw Keresh jabbing his finger at the face.

“The Idol,” he thought aloud, his mind slow as old jelly.

“Up!” cried Keresh as a trow sunk its teeth into his shoulder. “Up!” The trow reached Bori and they did not hide their excitement. They emitted squeals of joy as they sunk their claws and teeth into him, blood bubbling from between their teeth. Bori yelped and dropped his sword. He punched and kicked, his head clearing with the help of sheer mortal panic. Keresh’s sword and sandals scraped against the stone face as he jumped once and slid back down. Trow descended on him but Keresh, quick as a cat, tried again. His hands met holds where the stone head’s face met its neck. He bucked his legs back as he did so, sending two trow down to the grass. He pulled himself up and then held a hand down. Bori considered for a half-second to try to grab his sword, but the pain and fright overwhelmed him. He jumped for his friend’s hand, desperate, trow clawing at his back. Keresh yanked with a yell and dragged Bori upward onto the head.

“Keresh,” wheezed Bori, for he had not the strength to wail. “They can still catch us.” Keresh did not answer, but pulled his friend higher toward the crown of the head. Bori fell onto his forearms and stomach, while his wounds leaked onto the stone, which shone near white in the moonlight. The blood ran in tiny rivers down onto the crown and into the hole. The bright yellow eyes of the trows, sprinkled like bright stars in the grass, surrounded them. Bori heard the sound of a wooden sword against stone, against flesh.

“Stay awake!” cried Keresh. Bori’s eyelids fluttered, but he willed them to stay open. He thought he saw a faint blue glow shining from the crown. He inched forward and gripped the edges of the cavity. He shakily peered into the abyss. “Bori!” There was a low, grinding sound. The earth quaked. The Idol shook as if a chill had run through it.

“Keresh,” his voice had weakened to a whisper. “Hold on.” He dropped into the crown of the idol.

Bori’s vision clouded with puffs of red before exploding into lightning blue. He saw nothing, but only felt his body rise up into the air, as if flung by some great force — though he did not yet feel the sting of death. The voices of the trow lost their sense of triumph and pealed into a crescendo of wails. There was a distant cry from Keresh. Bori tried to blink and a grinding of stone gave way to a view of the land, laid out like a map before him. He stood suspended in the sky, every limb a dead weight, surveying the earth like a lead angel.

“Bori!” he heard a voice from far below. He looked down, the movement accompanied again by the scraping of stone, and nearly lurched forward into a fall. “No!” The ground was far beneath him, now, and between Bori and the ground was the stone body of the Idol — a skeleton of sculpted earth, stained with the brown and green gore of the earth. The arms — Bori’s arms — hung listless at his sides. A small figure, only visible because of its shaking, cowered between Bori’s stone toes.

Keresh. Bori’s jaw felt as set as a stubborn walnut. He ground his teeth together. With the crackling sound of pebbles falling down a mountain side, he wrenched open his mouth. The only sound he could emit was a low rumbling sigh. Keresh yowled, dropped his sword, and ran, his tiny figure stumbling over the grass. One of his Keresh’s arms seemed to bend the wrong way as he swung it forward with each full, vain stride. No, don’t run away. Don’t leave me like this.

Bori jerked his right leg forward and watched as the stone foot shot out far ahead of Keresh before crashing into the field, sending up a cloud of dirt. Bori thought he heard more trow wailing, but now further off and within the trees. Birds lifted up from their hidden places and scattered. Keresh fell to the ground like a scared goat, clutching his oddly bent arm. Bori lowered to his left knee, casting such a dense shadow over Keresh that he could barely see him.

“No, no, no, no,” sobbed the boy. Bori followed the sound and hovered a stone hand above him.

You need to see me, then you will understand. Bori lowered his hand down onto Keresh and curled his fingers over the boy. But Keresh scrambled and squirmed. He tried to get away. Bori pinched his fingers together in a quick snap of a motion and every sensation from the boy ended. A shudder ran through Bori, straight through his stomach. He brought the giant stone hand up to his face. The joints of each finger glowed the same lively blue and its fingers dripped. Wayward pieces of something fell from his fingers as he examined it, but his curiosity was soon overtaken by a wave of euphoria. His vision flashed and then restored, again.

With a rumble, his stood up straight. His knees did not feel so knocked nor his arms so listless as before. He had gained — regained? — a sense of power. And a hunger for more.

The Soldier turned his head, neck grating, toward the boys’ village — the weak boy he had destroyed and the foolish boy that had awakened him. Their memories echoed through his head, mapping a trail to the humble set of huts, each filled with another ounce of power.

An old and seething whisper in his hollow head telling the One Story of an empire long lost, a people betrayed, and all the useless pieces of fodder standing in the way of rebirth. He stepped forward toward the trees, a mere chest-high inconvenience, and pushed through.