Mickey Reichert: Godslayer

She lowered her head until billows of golden hair obscured her face. Her knuckles whitened about her dragonstaff, and she spoke in a dry, quavering whisper. "After your dream I sought Vidarr's guidance. He didn't respond." She raised water-glazed eyes to Larson's curious stare.

A reply seemed necessary, but Larson could think of none. He tried to keep a patronizing tone from his question.

"Does he usually answer you?"

"With images at least." Silme threw back her locks to reveal a face drawn with concern. "I'm his favored attendant. Something terrible has happened."

Unfamiliar with the dealings between gods and men, Larson could offer no real reassurance. He reached for Silme, but Kensei Gaelinar caught his forearm with a tortured cry. "Look there!"

Larson followed the old man's stare. White smoke funneled toward the sky from beyond the next rise. Gaelinar broke into a run, and his companions followed. Larson stubbed a toe in his haste, and his soft, doeskin moccasins did little to dull the impact. Cursing and limping, he caught up with Gaelinar at the hilltop, and the scene below made him forget his pain. Flames danced around an overturned wagon. Beside it, two men pinned a struggling figure to the ground while a third swayed, locked to the wild lurches of the prisoner.

High-pitched, panicked screams drowned Larson's own attempts at breath and cut him to the heart.

Every man draws his limit at an atrocity no amount of coercion could force him to commit. Larson's was rape. More than once, he had turned away while peers in uniform shamed and killed daughters before their helpless fathers. Too moral to join in, at the same time he was unable to risk provoking men on whom his life depended. So he had remained silent, seared by the guilt of a tacit condemnation which might have been approval for all it served the victim or his own conscience. All these thoughts condensed to a boil of emotion.

"Wait!" screamed Silme.

But Gaelinar sprinted down the roadway, howling, " Allerum, charge!" And, hearing his cry, the bandits scrambled for weapons.

After nearly a year of staking his life on strangers' orders, Larson obeyed Gaelinar without thought. He ran within thirty yards of the conflict before he remembered he could not wield his sword. He stopped abruptly as Gaelinar leaped at one of the rapists. Steel chimed as the bandit's sword crashed against the Kensei's shoto. Gaelinar's katana cut a silver arc and cleaved the bandit's neck.

Before Larson could react with even a gasp, one of the bandits closed the gap between them, brandishing a knife in his left hand and a short scimitar in his right. Forced to defend himself, Larson grasped Valvitnir's hilt and pulled. The sword came free with surprising ease and blazed blue as Larson made an awkward lunge. His opponent retreated before the longer weapon.

Larson thrust repeatedly. The bandit redirected the wild strokes with deft flicks of his scimitar. Sweat trickled down Larson's face in a cold stream.

Patience and skill would win this match, and he fell short on both. He hoped Gaelinar would finish his own battle before Larson lost the advantage of distance. Then, he caught sight of the mud-caked figure on the road. The victim of the bandits' cruel assault was a young boy.

Anger broke Larson's timing. His opponent dodged under his guard. Steel lanced toward his throat. Sacrificing balance, Larson caught the bandit's left wrist in his hand. The scimitar jarred around his crossguard, and the close range rendered Valvitnir useless. With his right hand locked to his enemy's wrist, Larson scarcely had time to react to the scimitar which flashed for his chest. He dropped his sword. Steel tumbled, and the hilt struck his stubbed toe. Pain shot to his knee. His freed fingers fended off the bandit's other wrist. The scimitar quivered inches from his cheek.

A gasp broke from the bandit with the odor of rotting teeth. He yanked free with a strength which wrenched every tendon in Larson's forearm. The elf responded sluggishly. The scimitar would cut him down before he could regain his grip. Resigned to a second death, he dodged as best he could. Suddenly, steel flashed from the shadows. A hunting blade in the grip of the ravaged child severed the bandit's hamstring, and he reeled backward. Larson's foot lashed into his opponent's groin. The bandit dropped, limp as a rag.

Sweat stung Larson's eyes and splintered the scene to bluish points of light. He dropped to his knees beside the writhing bandit. His hand closed on the hilt of the abandoned scimitar, and he thrust for his enemy's heaving chest. The bandit cringed flat with a strangled whimper, eyes wild with fear. Realization battered Larson like a blow.

He pulled the strike a finger's breadth from the bandit's heart, and the scimitar flopped from his hand like a wounded quail. The man is helpless. Have I become so callous I kill without thought?

The bandit's lips set, puzzled. A shadow fell across his drawn face, and light flashed overhead. Larson sprang aside as Gaelinar's katana whisked past him and carved a line of blood across the bandit's throat. The body spasmed in death, its face locked in surprise permanent as a mask.

Larson heard himself scream. His mind tore free from his body, plunging him into an older, more familiar world. Comprehension darkened, than broke in a flash to memory of boot-scuffed dust flickering in the midday heat. It was noon, time for him and Brent Hamill to replace Gavin and Fisher as perimeter guard. Hamill was a newcomer to Aku Nanh, a one week "fucking new guy" who had not yet seen his first fire fight. Though Hamill's inexperience endangered them, Larson liked him and felt obligated to help him through his initiation into Vietnam.

The past few weeks had been unusually quiet which pleased Larson but made many of his companions bored and impatient. Hamill's eyes jumped excitedly as he eyed the wall of sand bags which enclosed the fire base. Larson spared an encouraging smile. As they neared their station, a single shot rang above the general din of conversations. Fisher's good-natured curse was nearly lost beneath Gavin's laughter.

Larson dodged around a grass hut, Hamill close behind. At the perimeter, Gavin hunched over his gun while Fisher baited him like a catcher on a baseball field. Hamill's eyes widened with inno -cent interest as Larson called to his companions. "What are you doing?"

Gavin glanced over his shoulder and gestured Larson forward. When Hamill and Larson reached the sand bags, Gavin pointed across the tank-cleared plain. A stooped figure waddled along a winding road, barely discernible as an elderly woman. "So?" asked Larson.

"Five bucks to the guy what hits her," explained Fisher with a fiendish smile. "Try your hand?"

Hamill made a pained noise. Larson looked quickly from newcomer to friend, then transformed the shocked movement into a negative toss of his head.

Gavin shrugged and returned to his task. The M-16 spoke once, the woman continued undaunted, and Gavin crawled aside. Fisher moved into position. He spat on his hands, wiped them on his overlarge pants, and hunched over the gun.

Larson avoided Hamill's frantic glances. He knew Gavin and Fisher were merely working off hostility. The woman walked well beyond reasonable, target range, and, apparently, she had taken no notice of their potshots.

Hamill grew more distressed. He caught Larson's forearm, and his grip tightened painfully as Gavin and Fisher passed the M-16 twice more between them. When Larson finally turned his attention to Hamill , the newcomer mouthed the words, "Make them stop."

Larson shook him off, not comfortable with the situation, yet unwilling to side with an FNG against friends. Hamill balled his hands together and paced wildly. Crazed beyond understanding, he stopped without warning, swung his M-16 from his shoulder, lined and fired. Soundlessly, the old woman fell to the ground.