A Triumph of Souls (38 page)

Ehomba replied in his usual unshakable, even tone. “I do not need their gratitude, undying or otherwise.” He nodded leftward,
to where the giant was maintaining his steady rate of destruction. “Nor am I in the business of teaching lessons to rampaging
giants or anyone else. My obligation draws me westward, to a destination that is, at long last, within reach if not sight.”
Supporting himself
partially with his spear, he took a step to his right. “We will go around.”

A disbelieving Simna’s expression darkened. “I wouldn’t have thought you a coward, Etjole.”

The herdsman was not moved. “Or a fool either, I hope.” Walking past the swordsman, Ehomba started up a narrow side canyon
that led, if not due west, at only a modest inclination northward. Without a word between them, Hunkapa Aub and Ahlitah followed.

With his eyes Simna implored the others as they trooped past. When he found himself contemplating the last of the big cat’s
tail, he abruptly drew his sword. Waving it over his head and howling a defiant war cry, he spun and charged directly down
toward the village and its ponderous, methodical enemy.

“Simna, no!” Ehomba’s entreaties were ignored. Gritting his teeth, he started after his friend, hurdling grass and small rocks
with long, lithe strides, holding his spear parallel to the ground beside him. Exchanging a glance, Hunkapa Aub and the black
litah followed—at a sensible and leisurely pace.

Simna had already dashed in behind the giant to take a swipe at his ankles. The blow missed the main tendon but left a significant
gash in the side of the left foot. Letting out a howl, the giant turned and brought his enormous hammer around in a sweeping,
descending arc that would have smashed every bone in the swordsman’s body—if he had remained standing where it was aimed.
Quick as a jerboa, he’d darted out of its way. The wind of its passing ruffled his hair.

“Hoy, you great towheaded sack of pig piss! It’s a little different when we fight back, isn’t it? Come on, come on!”
He proceeded to taunt the giant with gestures as well as words. “Surely you can handle one tiny fella like me!”

Grimacing, the giant brought an enormous foot up and stamped down, only to find that once again Simna ibn Sind had skipped
nimbly out of the way. Not by the margin the swordsman had intended, however. The giant was clumsy, it was true, but he was
not as slow as Simna had first supposed. His defiant smirk began to develop a nervous twitch.

Ehomba arrived with sword in hand. He was furious, but not at the giant.

“What do you think you are doing?” he snapped at his imprudently energetic friend.

“Saving what’s left of a village for the good of its innocent inhabitants.” Panting, Simna stood close to the herdsman. “You
pick your noble causes, I’ll pick mine.”

“There is nothing noble in a senseless death.” Ehomba noted that the giant was watching them warily, trying to determine the
orientation of its next blow.

“I don’t plan on dying.”

“No one does, but it happens just the same.” Taking a deep breath, Ehomba addressed the giant. No matter who, or what, his
adversary, he firmly believed in trying reason before the sword. “Greetings, imposing one! Why are you destroying the village
Khorixas?”

Red eyebrows dense and tangled as berry thickets drew together. “What ‘village’ Khorixas? There is no village by that name.”
Callused and scored, a free hand indicated the ruins among which the oversized speaker was standing. “This miserable blot
on the earth is Feo-Nottoa.” The hand rose to smack sonorously against the broad chest. “I am the Berserker Khorixas!” The
great hammer started to
rise threateningly. “You should know the name of the one who is about to kill you.”

“Why kill us?” Ehomba wondered aloud. “Why destroy this simple town?”

The head of the hammer lowered slightly, hovering. “I am a Berserker, and this is what Berserkers do. White teeth showed unpleasantly.
“I am happy to be a Berserker. I like to destroy, and mangle, and exterminate. If I am fortunate, before I expire I will be
able to eradicate every town and village in the southern part of the Curridgians.” With his free hand he wiped his massive
brow. “Annihilation, it is hard work.”

“Hoy, it stops here!” Sneering, Simna gestured at his tall, laconic companion. “This is Etjole Ehomba of the Naumkib. Master
of magic and all the necromantic arts, conjurer supreme, wizard of wizards, defender of the enfeebled and all who are preyed
upon by bullies and ruffians!”

“I am not a bully,” the Berserker Khorixas countered stiffly. “I am a professional.” He squinted down at the two men. “And
he doesn’t look like much to me.”

“Leave now.” Simna took a challenging step forward. “Depart, flee, run away, before you are reduced to oblivion or slaughtered
where you stand!”

“I’ll take my chances,” the Berserker Khorixas declared confidently, “but first I will make a paste of your bones to spread
upon my bread for tomorrow morning’s breakfast.”

Simna stood his ground—making certain it was proximate to Ehomba’s. As the stern-faced herdsman unsheathed the sky-metal sword
and prepared to defend the two of them, the Berserker could be seen fumbling with the head of the majestic mallet. The coarse
cord that secured
the protective leather cover was untied and the tough brown casing removed. Exposed to the clear mountain air, the silver-gray
hammerhead gleamed metallically. Extensive crystalline striations caught the sunlight and held it. The swordsman’s jaw dropped.

The colossal hammer of the Berserker Khorixas was forged of the same sky metal as Etjole Ehomba’s ensorcelled sword. And there
was a lot more of it.

Without preamble or warning from its owner, it was promptly brought around in a vast, sweeping arc, its passage through the
clear mountain air generating a deep, reverberant humming. Simna leaped one way and Ehomba the other. The hammerhead struck
the ground between them, ringing all the way to the center of the Earth and setting up subtle vibrations in the lush mudcress
fields of Pridon on the opposite side. It was a blow that would have crushed lesser men to a damp pulp—or men less attuned
to the behavior of creatures such as giants.

Despite the fact that his heart had sunk somewhere to the vicinity of his ankles at the sight of the unveiled hammer, Simna
did not flee. Having precipitated the confrontation, against Ehomba’s wishes, he was honor-bound to stay and fight. But not
to stand and fight. That way lay rapid demise. Instead, he darted and dodged, making sure first of the location and direction
of that deadly maul before dashing in close to strike at the giant’s legs with his own sword. His exceptional agility and
skill allowed him to deliver several stabs and cuts, but the wounds were shallow and only succeeded in further enraging the
already incensed Berserker.

From a nearby slope, the black litah and Hunkapa Aub observed the battle. “Hunkapa not want Etjole to die,” the
shaggy hulk commented mournfully. “Hunkapa go and help!”

“You’ll only get in the way.” Ahlitah moved to intercept his ineloquent companion. “Leave it to the herdsman. Many’s the time
I’ve seen him extract himself from desperate situations.” Fiery yellow eyes surveyed the arena of conflict. “He’ll do the
same here.”

“And if he not?” Hunkapa Aub observed the flow of battle dubiously.

“Then he will die, and that prattling monkey with him. And I will try to find my way back to the veldt, and you to your mountains,
and the sun will set tonight and rise tomorrow and the world take not the slightest notice of his strivings or ours. That
is how it has always been and that is how it will always be.” A muted snarl sent every small rodent within hearing scurrying
for their burrows.

“Ehomba will find a way to win, or he will not. If he cannot defeat the giant, it’s certain you can’t.”

“You could help too,” Hunkapa Aub pointed out guilelessly.

“I have sworn to support him.” The majestic ebony cat hesitated. “But I’d be in the way as well. There is a time to stalk,
a time to pounce—and a time to wait. I think this is a time to wait. If you’re sensible, you’ll do the same.”

So Ahlitah and Hunkapa held back and watched. Hammer blow after hammer blow descended, cleaving the air with monstrous streaks
of its etched metal head. Each time, its intended targets jumped or twisted out of the way. But avoidance, too, demands effort,
and both men were growing tired.

“Do something, Etjole!” Breathing harder and faster than was reassuring, Simna ibn Sind wielded his sword as
he yelled to his companion. “Blow him into a mountain, bring down a piece of sky on his head!” Even as he shouted this advice,
the increasingly desperate swordsman knew he was suggesting the impractical. With he and Ehomba forced to dodge as often as
they were, any wind the herdsman called up was as likely to blow them off the mountain as it was the giant, while anything
falling from the heavens would smash into the ruins of the village with an unearthly indifference to whoever happened to be
standing there.

Astoundingly, instead of striking at the Berserker, instead of cutting at his legs and feet and trying to bring him down,
Ehomba was doing his utmost to taunt him further.

“Bruther, what are you doing?” Simna was badly confused. “The one thing we don’t need to do is make him any madder!”

But the herdsman seemed not to hear his friend as again and again he darted dangerously close to the giant before skipping
spryly out of his way.

“Ai
, you doddering dolt, you clumsy buffoon! Is this the best you can do? I am smaller, but too quick for you. No wonder you
beat up on houses. Buildings cannot run away, or they too would make you look silly and laugh at you!”

Infuriated, the Berserker swung the great hammer in swifter and swifter arcs, until the air howled and shrieked in the grip
of the artificial storm created by its wake. Unlike the tiny humans who were tormenting him, he did not tire, but appeared
to grow stronger and more determined with each swing. The hammerhead hummed, whistling through the air like the piece of burning
sky Ehomba’s sword had called down to annihilate the imperious Chlengguu. Soon it was a terrible silver-gray streak, a blur
that obscured everything behind it. Not even a swordsman as skilled as the redoubtable Simna ibn Sind could avoid it forever.

There was nowhere to hide. The stone structures of doomed Feo-Nottoa were as cardboard beneath that irresistible chunk of
sky metal. Even a cave, had one been close at hand, would have been an insufficient refuge, for in the hands of the Berserker
Khorixas even a mountain could be pounded to rubble.

An exhausted, tiring Simna, lungs heaving and legs aching, was bemoaning his likely fate even as he cursed his rash impetuousness,
when Ehomba suddenly darted forward at what appeared to be the absolutely worst possible moment. The swordsman screamed a
hoarse warning, but his tall friend did not hear. Or he heard, and chose to ignore it. Simna froze as the hammer descended,
describing an arc that looked certain to impact the charging herdsman fully.

At the last instant, Ehomba dodged. Not back, away from the falling hammerhead, nor forward as a wrestler might have done
in an attempt to slip beneath his adversary’s guard, but sideways. As he did so he ducked just enough, brought around his
own weapon, and with both hands swung it as hard as he could, forward and up. To Simna’s experienced eyes it looked like a
futile gesture. The sword was bound to shatter against the much larger, infinitely heavier hammerhead.

It did not. Too fast even for the swordsman to see, the edge of the herdsman’s blade struck the backside of the swooping hammer.
In so doing it imparted to that tremendous swing all the additional momentum of which its master was capable. Impelled forward
and upward by the force
of its own rising on the backside of the swing and boosted by Ehomba’s unexpected strike, instead of slowing down, the immense
hammer continued to rise. Instinctively maintaining his grip, the startled Berserker Khorixas rose with it.

When he realized what was happening he contemplated letting go, even if it meant abandoning forever the incomparable tool.
But by the time understanding penetrated that thick, unkempt skull, it was too late. The hammer had carried him too high.
If he released his grip now he would fall long and far enough to break his neck, for even the spines of giants are made of
flesh and bone.

So not only was he forced to maintain his grip, but he was compelled to strengthen it with the addition of his free hand.
Berserker and hammer together, the one whistling and the other howling imprecations, rose into the cloud-free sky. Ehomba
watched until giant and giant’s weapon were a blot, then a dot, and finally a speck of indeterminate dust soaring over the
southern horizon. Then he took a deep breath and started to shake.

“By Gowerben’s footsteps, that’s putting the arrogant assassin in his place!” A sweaty but elated Simna ibn Sind bounded down
from the rock on which he had been standing and rushed to congratulate his companion. “Maybe it’s as you say that you’re no
sorcerer, long bruther, but it’s a master of unexpected gifts you are! I only wish that—“

The herdsman whirled on his friend with a fire in his eyes that for the barest, most intangible of instants exceeded that
of the black litah. Rising and descending, his closed fist caught the swordsman flush on the side of the face. The report
was loud enough to reach Hunkapa Aub
and Ahlitah, who with the battle won were descending to rejoin their human companions.

Reflexively, Simna started to bring up his weapon even as he fell backward. Despite his shock, he caught himself halfway through
the gesture. He landed hard on his thighs and backside. Not content with having delivered the blow, Ehomba strode forward
until he was standing over the fallen swordsman. Glaring down, he shook a long finger in his friend’s face. The hallucinatory
blaze that had momentarily flared behind his eyes had vanished, but he was so furious that he trembled as he spoke.

“Never, ever, do anything like that again, Simna! Not in my presence or before my eyes, or I swear by all that the Naumkib
respect and honor that I will abandon you to your infantile foolishness and let you perish!”