The Godlost Land

THE

GODLOST

LAND

The Godlost Land

Greg Curtis.

Copyright September 2014 by Greg Curtis.

Digital Edition.

Dedication.

This book is dedicated to my mother Ruth Curtis and my sister Lucille Curtis, my biggest supporters, harshest critics and all round cheer team, and without whom this book would not have been written. It's also dedicated to my father gone too soon but not forgotten.

Advisory

This book contains adult content.

Chapter One

Harl was heading back to his smithy when the minotaur attacked him, and his first thought when he saw the monstrous beast charging him was as ever – why? He was getting damn sick of the Goddess and her beast army. If it had just been a solitary bear or a mountain lion going about its business he would have been so much happier.

It was five years now, too long for anyone to carry a grudge – although why Artemis might even have one to begin with he didn't know.  But it appeared she had – it was the only explanation there was for what she was doing – and for five long years she had waged a war against the people of the five kingdoms.

War though was the wrong word to describe it. Ritual mass murder and enslavement was closer to the truth. Extermination was still nearer the mark in his view. And there were so few free men left to kill. She had murdered people in the hundreds of thousands, maybe the millions. Wizards, priests, soldiers, nobles and those of mixed blood. In fact anyone who could possibly offer her the slightest resistance. In fact any of them still around were lucky to be breathing. It was testament to her murderous fury that there were now so few people left to stand against her at all.

It also didn't bode well that she could send her beasts out to attack so far away from where her stronghold was. Harl lived at the very southern edge of the Rainbow Mountains, the southern most realm of the five kingdoms. The Goddess on the other hand had descended from the heavens to make her home some three hundred leagues north in Lion's Crest in the Kingdom of the Lion.

But of course Artemis wasn't just anyone. She was a goddess, and she could send out her armies of twisted beasts – her priests called them chimera – to the furthest reaches of the world to hunt down those who defied her until the end of time if she wanted to. She quite probably would. Or at least until the end of their days. And when she was finished there would be no one left save her followers. Those who had accepted the yoke of her service. Slaves in all but name. How sad a land would that be? How sad was it already?

Still, that was a matter for later. For the moment there was nothing to do except kill the beast or die a nasty death at its hooves and horns. But at least it was a minotaur and not one of the other chimera. Minotaurs were predictable. Leonids by contrast were much more dangerous. And Harl truly hated harpies, although thankfully there were very few of them around. It was hard for them to fly in the higher altitudes of the Rainbow Mountains. Furies he assumed had the same problem though thankfully he'd never encountered one.

Harl dodged its rush nimbly. He'd had plenty of practice over the years. He might be a wizard – of a sort – but he was capable in battle without the need to call on magic. He had to be because his magic was not that useful as a weapon.

He was an arcane smith and crafted magical weapons and armour – he didn't cast fire balls. Fortunately as an arcane smith he had practised from childhood with all the weapons he crafted, and for the past five years that practice had become the difference between life and death. A difference that many others didn't have. He had no idea how many mages had died trying to survive by use of their magic alone and who had been reduced to piles of bleached bones scattered across the five kingdoms, but he suspected the number was large.

The minotaur streaked by him, head down, seeking to gore him on the huge pair of bone spears sticking out from its head. They always did. Whatever magic the Goddess had used to create the twisted beasts may have left them with the upright postures of men, but still they had the minds of bulls. They instinctively charged at their opponents head down and then when they got them down tried to trample what was left. Harl was familiar with the tactic.

As the beast rushed by him Harl spun and drew his sword from beneath his billowing robes. He wore them whenever he was out in the forest. Not for warmth or to cover up the tatters that were the remains of his forester leathers, but simply to hide the sword. Under Artemis' temple law no one was allowed to carry weapons – which was why when he went to town he left it behind and instead carried some exceptionally deadly knives hidden under his clothes. Then he waited for the beast to turn around and charge him again.

He was calm as he waited. Five years before he wouldn't have been. Five years before when the Goddess had first arrived in the land and her chimera had started rampaging through it he had not seen such a creature before. He hadn't known what to do – like so many others. And though he had stood and fought as the city fell he had taken a number of injuries as he had been driven from Lion's Crest. But over time as he had run into her creatures again and again, he had learned their natures and their weaknesses. The minotaurs were big and powerful and armed with some truly deadly weaponry. But they were also slow witted and attacked as the bulls they resembled. All he had to do was dodge and they would rush by in a roaring charge, while their weight meant that they would be slow to stop and turn around. That normally gave him the time he needed to defend himself.

This time however, he wasn't going to be able to use his normal ruse of dodging into the trees, where his smaller stature and nimbleness would give him the advantage against the brute. There wasn't the room. On one side of the track there was a six foot high sheer bank leading up to the forest where the beast had come from. It would take him too long to climb that. And on the other  side there was a steep descent into more forest. The minotaur had found a good place to ambush him. Which meant he'd have to face the creature head on.

This time when the beast charged him Harl went low, dodging to the other side and at the same time laying out his blade flat at knee height.

The tactic worked as well as it usually did. Some of the minotaurs were smart enough to realise that he was going to dodge again, but they still never managed to work out which way he'd go. And they never thought to look down.

The ice blade sheared straight through the minotaur's knee, cutting it as though it was water, and a heartbeat later as it tore past him he heard it scream. Then it collapsed on to the ground and slid along the grass track, still probably wondering what had happened. Harl didn't give it a chance to find out.

Even as the beast slid Harl was up and chasing after it, and a moment later he leapt on its back. Then in a move he'd practised too many times before, he sent his blade slicing through the back of its neck. A heartbeat later its head rolled away and the battle was over.

Seeing that Harl breathed a sigh of relief. With only one minotaur to face the battle had always been in his favour, but it was still never certain. Not even now. And the beast had been huge. This one had to have stood seven feet tall without counting the two feet of curved horns, and it must have weighed as much as two normal men. It also seemed that most of that weight was muscle. Since it was naked he could see the way the muscles hung like slabs of beef on its massive body.

But he also had to wonder anew just what he'd killed? He was never sure. He knew what the beast was and where it came from, but not how the Goddess had brought it into being. Some said the chimera had once been men, transformed through her divine will into whatever they had become. And he didn't like the thought that he had just killed a man, even if it no longer was who or what it had been. Others said she bred the beasts, mating bulls, lions and other creatures with women and raising the offspring. According to the most ancient of tales that was how the first of the minotaurs had been brought into the world.

In a way that was worse. Not because of what it was, but because of how it had come into existence. A creature born of the most vile act imaginable. But if that was true then it was Poseidon who had forced that first mating. Angered by a king who refused to pay him the respect he was due he had toyed with the queen. But that was Poseidon not Artemis. Still others claimed it was black magic. That the Goddess had given her priests the darkest of demon magic. That the demon king Xin in Tartarus itself supplied her with her beastly soldiers.

Whichever it was – and always assuming there wasn't another still worse explanation – it was good that the creature was dead. Especially when he saw that its horns were covered with dry blood. The beast had already killed someone, probably only in the last day or so. And had he not stopped it, it would have continued its bloody life. In the end that was what Artemis had brought them into being for. To hunt down her enemies.

Now at least another soldier in her beast army would kill no more. Though of course there were plenty more left to take its place.

The beast dead, Harl set about burning the horns. It was safest so they said. He wasn't sure if the stories were true, but it was said that Artemis would know that one of her soldiers had died and would send other beasts after the first and that they would locate it by the magic in its horns. Unless they were burnt. It was best that they were completely reduced to ash according to the stories so that no magic remained. Even Artemis' servants couldn't locate ash.

For leonids it was the teeth that had to be burnt so they claimed, and with manticores it was the stinger. He wasn't sure what needed to be burnt in the case of cerberi. All of them probably. As for the harpies and furies it didn't matter. They were simply too diseased and poisonous to let any part of them remain unburnt.

But that was all guesswork. Everything about the Goddess of the Hunt was. No one knew why the Goddess had suddenly changed from being a peaceable and well liked goddess into this nightmare that had descended to the world. Or why she had started bringing these twisted creatures into the world through her Great Temple. What had happened to her noble steeds – the unicorns? Or her true hounds of the hunt – the griffins? No one even knew why she had chosen to descend into the world of men and dwell in Lion's Crest instead of remaining in the heavens. It was said by her priests that she was on a hunt. But they had never said what she hunted or when the hunt would end. All they had were guesses. Anyone who actually did know the answers was probably dead.

It took Harl a moment to summon the flame within him. It always did, even though he was gaining so much practice in burning things since he'd rebuilt his smithy. But then he was an arcane smith; an enchanter. His magical focus was mainly on instilling magic into things like his ice blade. Not casting wild magics as a true mage or wizard could. It was why even though he had magic, most wizards wouldn't class him as a true wizard. To them he was just a glorified smith. Still, he soon had a spark between his fingers, and with a gesture he tossed it at the minotaur's head.

It caught fire. It should. After all, he did this every morning when he lit his pit, and as rocks were notoriously resistant to flame, his sparks were always hot. Harl watched as the minotaur's head slowly became a blazing bonfire in the middle of the grass track, horns and all. And then because he hated doing half a job he kicked the flaming head toward the beast's body and let the fire spread.

In time there would be nothing but ashes and char remaining. A black stain on the mud and grass track that would sooner or later be washed away by the rain. And that was as it should be. Harl mightn't know why the Goddess had descended to the world. Nor why the huntress had become a vengeful, murderous fiend determined to destroy the five kingdoms and probably many more in time. But he did know that it was best that nothing of hers remained in the world a moment longer than it had to. Not a beast, not the priests that controlled them. Not even her mercenary temple guards. They might not be monsters or practitioners of dark magic but they took her coin and killed the innocent for her. They were soldiers not guards. In his view they had no right to live either.

Unfortunately he could do little about the priests. They stayed in their temples and rarely ventured forth beyond whatever town they were in. He could do not much more about the temple soldiers. They wandered a little further afield, keeping the people in order and making certain they didn't forget their tributes, but usually not that far and never alone. They didn't usually venture into the wilds, so they were safe from him as well. It was the beasts that roamed the forests looking for anyone who wasn't a follower, making the towns the only safe place for people to live. They were the only ones of the Goddess' armies that he could kill. And he did so whenever the chance arose. It arose quite often.

The Goddess' law was a simple one really. You lived on bended knee or you were hunted down and killed.

The question he had to ask though was whether the beast had simply been out wandering the lands looking for anyone to kill who refused to live in the towns under the temple's strictures, or if it had been sent out hunting him specifically? The priests might have finally realised that he wasn't a local. That he just pretended to be one from time to time. But if they had he thought, surely they would have sent a leonid after him? They were better hunters.