Godslayers

Erid said I wasn’t allowed to captain the captured pirate ship. She said I’d sunken enough of her boats. When I protested it was just the one time, Pellonine got a look on her face like a whole bunch of puzzle pieces had fallen into place. I didn’t like that look.

The pirates we’d captured had gone straight to the rowing decks to await trial and sentencing. It was just a formality; the next Oathkeeper we met was getting slapped with a request for about two dozen debt bondage contracts, sticking them to those benches for the rest of their lives. Erid and Pellonine had distributed the new captives across our task force, displacing enough rowers to fill up both decks on the Fool’s Errand. Well, minus one—one guy tried to make a break for it and fell overboard. The sailors had laughed. I caught Dal Salim murmuring a blessing, too quiet for any ears not manufactured by the Eifni Organization.

Pellonine, in her capacity as the Trade Fleet equivalent of an admiral, had christened the captured ship Thresher, ignoring my recommendation to name it “Leeroy Jenkins.” I don’t care if no one on this planet got the reference. It was objectively hilarious. I could prove it, but Val refused to do the math for me.

The sun was setting when we sighted Baros for the first time. It was already far off the closest trade route, and a fog bank obscured it from view for most of the approach. Horcutio’s sanctum was well-hidden to all except those who already knew where it was.

I was in battle dress: kinetic mesh under cargo pants and a warm cotton shirt, capped off with combat books and wreathed in a hakmir. All black—camouflage wasn’t on the green list of allowable warfare techniques, and I had a cloak if I really needed to be sneaky.

As for Dal Salim…

“You don’t have to go,” I told him. “You’ll have to carry these memories for a long time.”

He considered me, expression unreadable.

“Was this not our deal?” he asked. “You bought a witness.”

“Woah woah woah,” I said, holding my hands up. “I didn’t buy nobody. We don’t have a contract, you can do whatever you want. Stay home, fuck around, jump overboard if you want.”

“A contract does not exist only because it is written, hm?” Dal Salim rubbed the greying stubble on his chin. “And if the contract is unwritten, so much more the powerful. I’ll trust a man’s heart before his lips.”

“I paid Erid to set you free,” I said. “Doesn’t mean I bought you. Your freedom is yours.”

“Freedom,” Dal Salim repeated thoughtfully. “The ship that’s free is at the mercy of the wind and tide. It’s the anchored ship that withstands the storm.”

I rubbed my eyes. “So are you coming or not?”

“Of course,” he said.

So now he was standing next to me. Erid had forbidden him from taking a weapon, but I’d talked her into letting him borrow some armor and a shield. He was technically my bodyguard, even if I was going to be the most deadly thing on the battlefield.

The four of us stood on the deck and watched the island come into view. We had two ships heading for the harbor—the Thresher, to block it off, and the Perseverence, to keep the pirates suppressed with arrow fire while they tried to escape past it. The others formed a strike force consisting of four ships: the Fool’s Errand, the Sel Pelucunues, the Rubiades, and the Sword of the Striver.

Most of our skirmishers were onboard the Perseverance, where they’d be more useful. The thick jungle terrain of Baros’s northern side made missile combat less viable. Instead, we’d moved all our heavy infantry to the strike force so we could hit the temple hard and push inland. Shield wall combat wasn’t especially adapted to jungles, but it wasn’t like the pirates were trained for this either. The whole point of a secret island is that you don’t have to fight there.

As the island approached, I mused that amphibious landings were much easier in the days before machine guns.

“Lilith to Ragnar. Strike team about to make landfall. How’s the water?”

“The water’s great,” Markus said. “I love the climate out here. Reminds me of home.”

“We haven’t detected any megafauna,” Aulof said with humor in his tone. “Markus, you can go swimming after the operation.”

“There’ll be too much blood in the water,” said Markus. “The sharks can smell it from miles away.”

“No sharks, remember?”

“Horrifying monster lobsters, then. This ecosystem is terrifying.”

“Maintain mission readiness,” Aulof laughed.

“Aye aye, captain,” I subvocalized. “Any supernatural threats to worry about?”

“I’m getting readings for a holy site,” said Val. “That would seem to confirm the temple’s location. There’s also faint readings of a low-strength demigod blessing, but it’s inconclusive. Maybe used to live here.”

“Who used to live here?” I asked.

Val said a name.

“Oh, right, that guy,” I said. “I’ll let the captain know we’re good to go.”

I tapped Erid on the shoulder. “Hey, boss.”

She gave me a wry glance. “What is it?”

I held up one hand in a hold on gesture and gave the sky a lazy look.

“Okay, great,” I said. “Just wanted to let you know the stars are right, and we’re good to assault the island.”

“Is that so.” Erid looked up at the cloudy sky, then back at me. “I’m sure we’re all grateful for your blessing.”

“Not mine,” I said, trying to keep a straight face. “The stars’.”

Erid sighed. “I suppose we’ll just carry on, then. Are you staying behind, or do I need to worry about a knife in my back the whole time?”

“I’m on your side!” I protested. “I helped in the last fight!”

“Deprived me of good labor, more like,” Erid said.

“On second thought, maybe you oughta start worrying about that knife.”

Erid grinned viciously. “Name the time and place, Calamity.”

“Keep it in your pants, woman,” I said.

*

The Trade Fleet descended on Baros like a falling sword.

The Sword of the Striver and the Rubiades were smaller assault ships designed to be maneuverable in naval battles, with single rower decks and shallow bottoms. They swept ahead of us, pulling in close to the island and anchoring to the beach. Boarding ramps plunged into the surf, disgorging columns of marines.

Behind them, Sel Pelucunues and Fool’s Errand withdrew oars and drifted behind them. We also dropped our boarding ramps, but down to the smaller ships. Our infantry crossed over to them, then onto the beach behind the others. Erid stumped down the ramps with impeccable balance, followed by me and Dal Salim.

Warm saltwater came up to my thighs, sticking my clothes uncomfortably to my legs. That was definitely going to chafe by the end of the night. We waded onto the beach proper, where the marines were forming up into a proper phalanx.

It was pretty ingenious how they organized the whole thing. They arranged themselves into six columns. Each marine held their spear in a fist and reached out until that fist touched the shoulder of the marine in front of them. Then they about-faced to the right, having assembled a formation from the bottom up.

Erid and Pellonine watched the whole process approvingly.

“Weren’t you a trade captain before all this?” I asked her. “Your dudes seem pretty well trained.”

“Funny thing about that,” she drawled. “Just happened to a handful of skilled officers among the survivors of that pilgrimage. Damnedest coincidence, really. You really didn’t check who you recruited, did you?”

I looked away. “It seems to have worked out.”

“Alright, Idiot,” said Erid. “Can those ears of yours hear the temple?”

I nodded and walked a couple paces up the beach. “Yo, commander.”

“South-southwest of your position. Minimal life signs, few human.”

“What about that demigod Val picked up?”

“We’re getting something. If it’s a demigod, it’s not a powerful blessing. Your force shouldn’t find him a significant obstacle.”

I gave Erid the go-ahead and we marched into the forest.

Standard operating procedure was to march in columns and make a ninety degree turn at the site of the battle. In this case, we’d decided that was a bad idea. There was limited room to maneuver in the jungle; better to meet any resistance in good order.

The tradeoffs or not marching in a column immediately became apparent. There weren’t any good paths through the jungle, and the branches were low enough to require soldiers to duck their heads and lower their spears. The line came apart almost immediately, terrain and vegetation holding some back while others pushed ahead. I strolled through the jungle unhurriedly, pausing every so often to blast a hole with the kinetic translator in my sword. Erid, Pellonine, and Dal Salim walked behind me, the pirate philosopher keeping his shield at the ready to defend us womenfolk. Bless his heart.

Within ten minutes we’d lost all semblance of a front rank, or even ranks at all. The jungle resisted our passage, funneling columns of troops around trees or boulders into each other’s paths, causing backups. By the fifteen-minute mark, we’d had our first casualties—two men had stepped wrong and badly sprained their ankles.

An anguished scream rent the night.

I took at stance, quickly checking on the rest of the command team. Erid and Pellonine had drawn their swords; Dal Salim was moving to put himself between them and the scream.

“Back up,” I told him. “I got this side, you need to watch our backs.”

The advance had stalled on our side, and Erid quickly ordered a halt while we investigated. The injured man was close to us; I approached cautiously, keeping one eye on my comm’s sensor readout.

He was still breathing by the time I got there. That wouldn’t be the case for long. A sharpened stake had been driven into his chest under the collarbone; if he’d been standing a foot to the right, it would have skewered his heart. Might have been luckier that way—from the wetness of his breathing, it sounded like he’d punctured a lung. The only treatment that could help him was onboard the Ragnar, and I wasn’t fighting the commander on that again.

“What happened?” Pellonine demanded.

“It was a trap,” said one of the soldiers near us, pointing ahead with her spear. Some kind of wood-and-vines contraption was hanging loosely from a tree trunk. “Toulera kicked something on the ground to clear the path. Then that whipped out of the trees and got him.”

I spared the dying man one last glance and moved to inspect the booby trap. I tapped it with my sword, watching it rock on the branch. Someone had built a tripwire trap using only sticks and vines—that seemed like the kind of thing that only worked on a movie set.

I turned to the others.

“Do any of you recognize this style of trap?” I asked.

No one did.

“These waters boast many lineages,” said Dal Salim. “Secrets travel all over the sea.”

“What’s he talking about?” asked one of the soldiers.

“He’s saying this style of trap could have come from anywhere, because there’s a lot of diverse cultures represented among the sailors here,” I translated.

Erid gave me a look. What? You spend a couple weeks hanging around someone, you start figuring out how they talk.

“Let’s form up into columns,” Pellonine said. “If there are more traps, we want a thin front. We should have done this from the start.”

“I guess hoplite warfare wasn’t designed for jungles,” I said. “Yeah, let’s do it. There shouldn’t be many hostiles in the area.”

Erid shook her head. “You and your—”

Movement flickered in the corner of my eye and I lunged. Erid jerked back, raising her sword, but I wasn’t striking at her. My sword flashed out, clanging loudly as I knocked a throwing knife into the canopy with a shower of sparks.

I whirled toward the knife’s origin, sword outstretched, Dal Salim settling in behind me with his shield raised like he belonged there. The kinetic translator hummed as it charged.

There. A man without a shirt, with soot-blackened skin and criss-crossing vine bandoliers stuffed with knives. He had another knife in his hand, but froze when we made eye contact.

I fired first.

The kinetic translator released a wave of force that quickly became a deadly shell of compressed air, stripping bark, leaves, and branches and shredding them into a shrapnel blast that ripped through the woods right where he’d been standing.

As the dust settled, there was no body. But my comm was picking up the faint signal of a demigod, and he hadn’t left the area.

“We’ve got a problem,” I said.

“What?” Pellonine asked.

I narrowed my eyes.

“Vietnam.”