When Gods Quarrel

Nia shook her head. "We have only seen the minotaurs. But Erchasos has many beasts at his call."

"Indeed, but I won't worry about what else could be out there. Six minotaurs seems like something I can handle. A good ambush and two laid low by pistols would usually be enough to put the rest to running, but in service of their god they'll likely fight to the death. No matter, I've my sword and some spice, they won't trouble me. I'll do it."

"Wonderful!" Nia cried, and the other faces light up with delighted relief. "Will two pounds of silver be enough?"

Aranthir bit his lip. He thought of his status not that long ago, when he had a second horse, a page, more armor, and a lance. Two pounds of silver would not put him back to that status, but it would buy him many nights in inns and keep him from falling any further. And, despite the magnificence of the temple, these priests were not so rich as to be able to afford much more.

"It will," he said, and Nia urged her subordinate to fetch the money with a hurried wave.

"Thank you, Aranthir, you have made us all so happy. Here, we will show you two to a place where you can sleep."

She rose and led him and Serai into the rear of the temple building where a door opened into a narrow hall lined with cells. Nia brought them to the door of a cell and pointed in.

"This was occupied by one of the servants who has since fled, Aranthir. I hope you will find it good enough for tonight."

The cell was not much to look at; small with a narrow bed and thin sheets, it would be of little comfort on a cold night. But it was spring and looked to be a warm enough night. The servant had taken all of her things with her, leaving the cell nearly bare, just the way Aranthir preferred it anyway. He had spent enough nights in cheap inn rooms that he was used to such accommodations.

"It will do," he pronounced. Nia nodded.

"If you need anything, just ask," she said, then bid Serai to follow her and they moved off down the hall. Aranthir shut the door, ate some salted pork from his pack and arranged his things for the night. He checked his pistols, ensuring that the wheellock mechanism and powder were all in working order for the morning. He was in the midst of preparing new cartridges for them when there was a knock at the door.

Outside stood the redheaded acolyte who had taken his horse. She was a pretty, willowy thing, with pale skin and green eyes, a slender waist, and long legs underneath her acolyte's skirt. Her face was drawn, and he detected an anxious tick in her posture.

"Your horse is stabled and fed, sir," she said in a sweet voice with a slight tremor. Her arms were crossed over her stomach and her eyes darted to either side as she stood in the hall.

"Thank you," said Aranthir. "What's your name?"

"Ambra, sir. I am only recently arrived here in service of the goddess."

"You seem frightened," Aranthir said, trying to be soothing.

"I am," she replied, her face now betraying her concern. "I wish I had not come here."

"Do not fear," he said, "I will defend the temple from those monsters."

"There are so many," Ambra protested. "And you are only one. Nia called on the lord, but our messenger has not returned."

"If you are so afraid, why do you remain here?"

Ambra shifted on her feet and her eyes dropped toward the floor. "I do not know where to go," she said quietly. "So I stay here like a sheep waiting to be slaughtered."

"Not a sheep," Aranthir reassured her. "You have a guard dog now. Get some sleep, Ambra. You will see things differently in the morning. And thank you for taking care of my horse."

Ambra nodded anxiously, and he shut the door.

The night passed quietly enough and Aranthir rose with the dawn to scout out the garden. He found the place where the minotaurs had scaled the wall earlier in the day, using a tangle of vines growing over the outer side of the wall. He thought to lie in wait just on the other side, but minotaurs had enough bestial cunning in them to not be so predictable. Instead, he set a few basic snares at key junction points in the garden and retreated to the cupola to wait. He kept low to the ground, aware that he would be skylined to any careful observer from the ground. He wanted to keep the presence of a defender a surprise to the marauders.

The views from the cupola were excellent, affording him a view of the fields all the way down to the river. Yet there were patches of woods and tall grass all around the temple, providing many concealed approaches for the minotaurs. Leading up to the west side of the temple was a tree-lined lane wide enough to accommodate a cart traveling in each direction. Aranthir set his pistols out on the railing before him and his eyes set to searching the countryside for any sign.

He watched the concealed approaches most closely, ruling out anywhere where peasants worked the fields. The minotaurs were here to attack the temple, and would avoid revealing their presence to laborers in the fields. He watched the gaps between the woods for any sign of the marauders making a quick dash from cover to cover, and studied the movement of peasants along the lanes to rule out any approaches that would have been revealed further out.

Near midmorning, a single bird burst upward from the brush near the north side of the temple wall. Aranthir raised his head from the cupola floor in interest, and his eyes focused in on the thicket it had flown from. The thorned branches were moving, and against the wind.

His hands went to his pistols and he put a foot on the ladder down, but paused. From the thicket, where would they go next? His trained eyes plotted approaches from the thicket, winding their way up a dry creek bed to a grassy patch just below the wall. From there, they could scale the wall and land in a grove of orange trees. The grassy patch would be a brief moment of exposure for them, but the grove made for a good marshalling place as they regrouped from the climb.

The other approach offered more cover, leading across a short lane to a small field studded with tall bushes, then under a great willow tree to the wall, where they could climb it and land in a flower garden. While the first approach looked worse from outside the wall, on the inside he could tell that the second approach led to an exposed place within the garden. If they could see what he saw, they would choose to climb over the wall into the orange grove, not the flower garden.

He was unsure of how much knowledge the minotaurs retained of the interior layout of the grounds, but knew from experience that the beasts had an unusually good memory. The orange grove would make a more appealing spot for them, and he scrambled down the ladder to set up an ambush there.

He dashed through the main chamber of the temple to find all of the remaining acolytes and servants gathered there around the sacred pool, with Serai singing to them.

"They're coming," he said as he rushed through. "Bar the doors, stay away from the windows, and don't open anything until you hear my voice. This will be over quickly."

Without waiting to see if they obeyed, he ran out the door and plunged into the thick foliage of the temple garden. The branches snapped and scraped against him, painfully loud for the keen ears of both elf and minotaur to hear. Aranthir slowed his movement as he neared the wall, crouching low in a cluster of bushes beneath an oak tree. He laid his sword on the ground before him, hefting a wheellock pistol in each hand.

He waited, ears cocked to the wind. Not far away, he could hear the beasts grunting and snarling. A faint smell of sweat, blood, and animal musk floated on the breeze. Aranthir breathed deep, steeling himself for battle. From the opposite side of the wall, he heard the clawing of bestial hands on the plastered stone. He took a deep breath as the first horned head appeared over the wall.

The minotaur was tall, standing at least a foot over Aranthir's own frame of more than six feet. Its powerfully muscled arms hauled it over the wall to drop to the soft earth with surprising stealth. The monster sniffed the air, its black nostrils flaring as it hefted a crude battleaxe in both hands. Long black horns curved back from its monstrous head. The minotaur stood up from its crouch and looked around.

Another minotaur clambered over the wall, then another, and another, until seven of the beasts stood in the garden, their thick, scarred chests rising and falling with the hungry breathing of predators on the hunt. They muttered something to each other in the tongue of beasts, and Aranthir let himself exhale. The lead minotaur, a russet-furred monstrosity holding a great club of bone, snarled into the lush greenery of the garden.

They smell me, Aranthir thought. No time to waste. He stood bolt upright from his hiding spot and leveled the pistols, one at the russet-furred minotaur, the other at the beast standing just beside him. The minotaurs' heads snapped toward him in surprise. They didn't realize I was so close, Aranthir thought wryly as he pulled both triggers at once.

The wheels spun. The minotaurs roared as one. Sparks flew into the flashpans. The russet-furred minotaur lunged for Aranthir, club rising high into the air. Aranthir stood his ground, keeping the pistols leveled on their targets. The powder sparked and exploded.

There was a roar of thunder and flame, and he heard the shots strike true. Bone cracked, flesh was rent, blood spattered across the garden and the invaders alike. No sooner had the shots left the muzzles than Aranthir discarded the pistols and drew his sword from beneath a bush. He gave the invaders no chance to recover as he plunged through the smoke with death on his blade.

The first minotaur fell before it knew what was upon it. Aranthir burst from the smoke cloud and clove the beast's head in two. It died without a word, and Aranthir had turned to a new foe before the shorn-off half of its head had even fallen past its shoulders. The next beast looked up in surprise, distracted by the thrashing kicks of the russet-furred beast on the ground. Aranthir slashed a mighty gash in its shoulder, and the beast roared in agony. It staggered back, but before Aranthir could deal it a deathblow, another minotaur came rushing forward.

Aranthir darted back from the beast's hungry axe and the jagged edge swung just in front of his nose. He backed away two steps and turned his blade on another. This time, he cut low, feeling the jolt of his blade cracking against the thick legs of a minotaur. The monster howled and toppled to the earth. Its gnarled hand snatched at his ankles, trying to haul him down as well, but Aranthir hopped over the grasping claw and skittered out of reach.

His dodging carried him right into the reach of another monster, this one a tall, black-haired creature with a brass ring in its nose. The minotaur dripped caustic bile from its jagged teeth as it snapped its jaws at him, all to provide a distraction from the cruel-edged axe hurtling toward his knees. Aranthir threw out his arm, blocking the axe at its haft. His arm rang and his shoulder jolted, but the blade did not cleave him like a log. His pursuer came after him, only to catch a foot in one of the snares Aranthir had laid, giving the half-elf time to recover.

The other minotaurs left standing were shaking off the sudden shock of his attack. Like a wolf pack, they closed in around him to seal off any exit. Three remained, all towering head and shoulders over him and armed with crude but fearsome implements of death and violence. The carefully placed and tended plants of the garden were trampled under foul hooves in the fray.

Aranthir slowed as the minotaurs closed in. Behind them, the other four minotaurs lay dead or dying. The big russet-furred beast lay gasping in a flower bed, a great red wound covering his heart. Aranthir met its eyes and smiled. The beast heaved its broken chest and raised a grotesquely bloated finger toward him.

"Kill the elf," it gasped, and then fell back to the dirt.

Its companions did their best to oblige. From three directions they attacked, axes flashing and maws roaring. Yet Aranthir was ready for them. He ducked beneath an axe blow, parried another, and darted out from between the three of them, slashing at the knees of one minotaur as he passed. His blade bit through flesh to crack bone, and the minotaur screamed as it went down. It crashed to the ground, plowing through a bed of flowers and into the feet of its companions as they all converged on the place where Aranthir had just been. The monsters tangled together, and Aranthir leapt forward again. His sword flashed, blood flew, and in a few mere moments, all three of the monsters in the pile lay dead.

He stepped back to consider his work. Swift thrusts to the bases of their necks had done the work, and the monsters lay in a pile as their blood dripped down into the soft, dark soil beneath them. Aranthir smiled to himself and turned to the others who lay wounded near the wall. The russet-furred minotaur was alive but only barely, its breathing labored and shallow. Beside it, its lieutenant felled by Aranthir's pistol lay supinely in the grass, arms to either side as it stared blankly up at the sky. Behind them, the minotaur with the great rent in its shoulder leaned against the outer wall, clutching its wound while its axe lay at his feet. And lastly there was the minotaur with the broken knee, hobbling pathetically around the garden as it tried to reach the wall and climb back over.

Aranthir walked back to his pistols and casually picked them up. The minotaur against the wall stared hatefully at it, still clutching its wound. Aranthir began to calmly reload his weapons, staring the beast down as he did. The minotaur snarled in an agonized rage. Aranthir rewound the wheellock without taking his eyes off the monster.

Slowly, it summoned its lust for battle again. Its breathing slowed and became deliberate. It ceased clutching its wounded shoulder and bent, with a pained effort, to retrieve its weapon in its offhand. Snarling again, the minotaur lumbered forward at Aranthir, gaining speed and fury with each fall of its hooves. Aranthir stood his ground calmly, his hard green eyes daring the beast to come onward.

The minotaur lunged across the final yards, raising its axe above its horned head in both hands. Aranthir could see in the monster's eyes what a toll the pain was taking. Wild red orbs fixed on him, the beast's mouth opened wide with a crimson promise of a painful, prolonged death as jagged teeth gnashed.

Aranthir's hand snapped up, leveling the pistol at the minotaur's face. Its eyes widened with sudden realization, but it was too consumed by fury, bloodlust, and its own motion to duck aside. The wheel whirred and the pistol cracked. A geyser of bone and blood erupted out the back of the beast's thick skull, and it crashed to the soft ground at Aranthir's feet. Its axe, raised high in the air, turned end over end as it dropped from the monster's hands to stick upright in the dirt.

Aranthir smiled to himself again. Only the crippled minotaur with the broken knee remained. Treading contemptuously on the corpse of the minotaur he had just shot, he reloaded again and calmly dispatched the final beast with a blast to the back of the skull from close range. It was so desperate to escape that it did not even hear him coming.

He retrieved and reloaded his other pistol, then leisurely strolled along the winding path back toward the temple door. Passing in front of the temple gate, he stopped. The great bronze gate stood open, though he had closed it the night before. In the mouth of the portal stood a majestic white unicorn.

Its coat was alabaster shining in the morning sun, and a long golden mane flowed in the breeze, though the beast stood still on ivory hooves. A gleaming, pearlescent horn jutted from its head and the unicorn fixed two fey green eyes on Aranthir.

But that was not all, for riding bareback on the unicorn was a fey knight. Beneath armor of bark, Aranthir could see that the knight's skin was green like summer grass, and a wild beard of red and brown sprawled out from beneath its helm. The knight turned to stare at Aranthir, his eyes glowing gold. In one hand it carried a gnarled staff flying a mossy standard, and its other hand extended to point at Aranthir.

"Ho there, champion," the knight boomed in a voice of rolling thunder. "I am Vitelaz, Herald of the Wild God."

Aranthir's hands dropped to his pistols, but he stopped himself and merely regarded the fey knight with a cautious eye.

"I am Aranthir of Ildranon," he replied slowly, "a wandering mercenary."

"Indeed you are," Vitelaz replied. His eyes seemed to cool, turning from gold to brass. "Yet Nystra has chosen you for a champion in this quarrel."

"What quarrel is this?" Aranthir demanded. "Your master has sent his beasts to sack the temple, but these priests know nothing of any quarrel."

"Nor would they," replied the herald. "The Wild God's quarrel is with the Lady of Song and Dance. Her servants are merely the appendage of Hers at which He strikes.

"These people have done nothing wrong," Aranthir countered hotly, but the herald raised a hand.

"It is not the place for mortals to question gods. My lord has sent me to deliver His tidings, and I shall. You are chosen as champion, so you must face the trials."

"What trials? Your minotaurs? They are dead, all of them."

"They were but the first," Vitelaz replied, and Aranthir's heart sank in disappointment. "There will be more on the morrow."

"How many more?" Aranthir demanded.

"As many as the Wild God chooses to send. It will go on until the quarrel is settled."

"And how will it be settled?" Aranthir closed his hand about his sword's hilt, but the knight did not move.

"With a battle of the champions. The Wild God will send His minions to slay you. Slay them, and the temple will be spared, and the quarrel settled. Fail, and the temple will be laid to waste, its occupants carried off to a horrid death."

"Isn't there another way we might settle this?" Aranthir asked.

"The Wild God wants not for gold, or for anything else that mortals might care for. The quarrel will be settled in the old ways that gods have always settled things."

"I suppose you leave me little choice then," Aranthir muttered. "What now, we fight?"

"I am merely a herald. Rest now, Aranthir of Ildranon. Tomorrow, the Wild God's new champions will arrive, and the trials will resume."

Without another word, he turned his unicorn around and rode off into the woods and fields outside the gate. Aranthir stood watching him pass through the tall grass and wheat until he rode into a copse of trees and did not reappear. He scowled to himself, checked his pistols one more time, and headed for the temple door.

It was nearly dark when a servant rode into the garden on a mule. Nia was waiting by the pool with Aranthir and rushed out to meet him. His face relieved, the servant dismounted and bowed to her.

"Prioress, I'm most relieved to see you alive! I feared the worst!"

"Yes, Aranthir here slew the beasts, but the Wild God's herald promises more on the morrow. What does the lord say?"

The servant grimaced. "He has promised to send his son and a some of his guard in the morning."

"Morning?!" Nia scoffed. "Bad enough he hasn't sent them by now, we would all be dead if not for Aranthir! But the morning?!"

"I am sorry, prioress. I begged and pleaded all day, but he would not let me leave until an hour ago."

Nia's face darkened. "He hopes we will all die," she said. "I'm sure of it. He wants the vineyards by the river, and hopes that if the temple is destroyed, he can claim it for his own estate."