CUT

  Head divided from temple to temple, brains spilling.

  A spiked club bounced from my pauldron harmlessly.

  CUT

  Diagonally across, from shoulder to lower rib, surgically slicing, the white ends of bones brilliant against the avalanche of blood and gore.

  A sword shattered on the armor of my arm, I didn’t feel it.

  CUT

  Through the top, straight down, the two sides of the man peeling apart, tendrils of blood and mucous stretching as the halves flopped to the ground.

  A spear slid into my armpit, cutting something. Pain sparked, just a grain of pain, but grains upon grains did mighty dunes make.

  I fought a forest, an infinity of men. They were soft meat to my power, but the endlessness of them was impossible.

  A surge and they rushed against me, piling on each other. Even my strength faltered under the crushing weight of bodies. I pulsed SHIELD, the kinetic blast scattering them. With a mighty two-handed sweep of my sword I clove a half dozen, all at chest height. Some torsos fell in two, their cavities fountains of blood. Others fell with organs spilling. All died.

  And on they poured, endless and fearless in their drug-addled frenzy.

  And then, of all times, the voice in my head.

  I crushed a skull with my fist.

  I kicked a man, the force collapsing his rib cage like matchsticks, his body hurtling back to carry several more into a fall.

  A sputter of BEAM shredded two men.

  I staggered, the ground beneath me drenched with blood and slick with the gore that had been trampled to red slime by so many feet.

  A sword blade skittered along my arm, doing no harm, until it snagged at the joint of my elbow. There a spark burst and pain stabbed at me. I felt the strength ebb slightly. The man who delivered the blow became two halves of a man a moment later.

  I had thought myself at the height of alarm. My heart found a higher gear to rattle at. I swung and swung, CUT blazing in the darkness, spraying pieces of men against the walls of the street.

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  They were pushing me back. It seemed impossible that they could. I was the god of death and they mere skin-wrapped bags of meat, and yet it was true. Their weight pressed on me, my boots sliding over the river of blood that coated the street.

  I glanced behind me. The soldiers were gone with Olaf and Magneblade. The citizens remained. They were pouring out of the gap in the wall, but the throng was too great, too many of them were too slow. If I couldn’t break free of the rush of men, make some room, then they would be slaughtered. I saw women there. Girls. Young girls. I knew what fate would await them.

  I could have sent Olaf to take them first. But the soldiers were the priority. I felt cold dread spearing me at what my choice might cost them.

  I killed twenty men in half as many seconds. A spear wedged itself in me, wriggling through the density of my armor to pierce my flesh. Not deep, but enough to make me bleed.

  I thought to Enki.

  Enki seemed unaffected by my peril.

  I hacked and they stabbed. More wounds opened in my armor. More lives ended in bloody carnage at the end of my sword.

  I found the barest energy to go on.

  I hacked, my vision wavering. Hundreds of bodies lay in the street, hundreds of men killed by my hand. The wounds were adding up. A hatchet smashed at my helm, glanced off without harm, but caught on the armor at my neck and agony speared through me. Blood gushed.

  I said,

  A fresh wave, a tidal wave, of humanity charged into me. My boots slid as my muscles strained. I was beyond the bottleneck now. They were streaming past me. I cut, abandoning defense, slicing at the men who charged at the defenseless citizens scrambling for escape.

  They hadn’t been the priority. Thousands more huddled behind the walls of Boston. Getting Lance’s knights and the trained soldiers out of the fort would save many more lives than the ones threatened here. It was true. In terms of cold logic it was true. That did little to salve my feelings when I heard the first girl shrieking.

  But I couldn’t. I knew the cause needed me. I could feel the dagger Katya had given me, pressing against my thigh. She’d asked me if I wanted to be prince or puppet. I’d taken the challenge and set events in motion. But the world plotted against me. Events conspired to neuter me. Danefer strove to erase my will, my exertion to do something to control my own part of the story.

  The cold logical part of me knew that I needed to be gone. Even at the cost of the innocents. If I fell here hundreds of times more innocent people would be murdered… or worse… there was a whole city to fight for… but I was trapped. The weight of bodies bore down on me. Axes, spears, swords and clubs rained on me. Ninety-nine out of every hundred bounced from my armor with impotent effect. But one in every hundred found a chink and caused a spark to burn, or smoke to spew, or blood to flow.

  I became an animal. Enki’s voice was there, somewhere, beyond a haze of distant warbling. My sword hacked, slashed and stabbed. Men died by the hundred as they flowed over and past me. I weakened. Men and women screamed behind me.

  It darkened. I weakened. Even as I darkened, my sword kept chewing through humanity, everything was an avalanche of blood, gore and slopping organs.

  There was no escape.

  I sagged. My sword was suddenly too heavy.

  Then a boom.

  A titanic boom. An earthquake in the air. The darkness of the bodies pressing on me was gone. There was space. I could breathe. I blinked, confused. Another rush of kinetic energy, rippling out like an explosion, sending them scattering like leaves in a raging wind.

  Olaf stood above me.

  Then I was on his shoulder.

  I felt him hesitate. I knew he was looking at the screaming, struggling citizens.

  There was no saving them. But there was saving me. Saving me meant more to the bigger picture.

  I wonder what it cost him. A soul like him, ever giving and ever caring, to leap through the gap in the wall and carry me to safety while leaving those men and women, and little girls, to the dark end that fate had written for them.