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  • Aphrodite's Reward Ch. 01

Aphrodite's Reward Ch. 01

123

Warning: The following story contains explicit violence, explicit sex, unfair racial stereotyping of goblins and ogres, bald-faced lies and innuendo, treachery, lazy misappropriation of pagan gods and goddesses, unsafe rooftop stunts, ego-driven consumption of alcohol, mass immolations, impalings, irreverence, arson, assault on religious workers, sentient-on-sentient devourings, divinely sanctioned sexual promiscuity, conscription, passive-aggressive posturing, adults playing with their food, undemocratic government, oral sex, adultery, destruction of private property, coarse language, questionable speech patterns, nudity, unwitting insults, completely incidental anal sex, looting of corpses, human-on-goblin violence, copious spattering of blood, numerous fantasy tropes, a lesbian temple orgy, self-important nobles, workplace accidents, negotiations in bad faith, falls from a fatal height, weaponized bedding, dine-and-dashing, breaking and entering, stalking, surveillance, frenemies and the sorcerous abuse of a dragon...

...though not all in the first chapter, of course.

*

Davos chose to die in front of the Temple of Aphrodite. It seemed like the best possible place.

Five minutes before that, he'd never entertained such a thought. He still expected that the soldiers manning the city's high walls could hold until dawn. For much of the night, he stood in the streets below while real soldiers up above defended the city with bows and spears. Davos hoped that his duties as a conscript would amount to only a sleepless night followed by a long day of clearing carts, wagons and other barricades from the city's streets.

Like all the other sailors and dockworkers conscripted from the waterfront, the young man wore little in the way of arms or armor. His black ponytail hung from beneath an ill-fitting leather helmet. He had his cutlass and an old crossbow that one of the regular soldiers shoved into his hands. Beyond that, all he had for his protection was his loose blue shirt and tan sailor's pants.

Some, like Davos, came along willingly. Others required coarse persuasion. A mere handful of regular soldiers waited along with them, scattered among and behind the conscripts to maintain order and ensure no one ran. Davos wondered if those soldiers had been chosen because they had the influence to secure a safer assignment, or because they were too unreliable to put on the front line.

"Do you know how to use that cutlass, Westerner?" asked the man-at-arms beside him. Baleth, if Davos remembered correctly. Davos's fellow conscripts mostly wielded cheap spears and axes better suited to craftwork than fighting; Davos at least had his weapon from the ship's stores.

He wondered how many of his comrades even knew how to use their weapons. He wondered how many had ever been in real battles. He wondered how many would stand their ground and how many would run. Clearly Baleth wondered the same thing.

"I've been in a few fights," Davos nodded. His plain-spoken accent sounded casual and even a bit lazy compared to the crisp enunciation of words in Loewen.

"Do you hail from a warship?"

"I've only served on merchant ships," Davos shook his head.

"How does that pay?"

"The pay is lousy," Davos grinned in spite of himself. "Meals are small and usually cold, living space is cramped and you're usually sore just from holding yourself upright and steady all day long, but you get to see the world, at least. It got me out of Murried."

Baleth frowned. "That's why you took to sea? You just wanted to travel?"

"Well," Davos shrugged, "it might've had to do with the girl my parents decided I had to marry."

"Hunh. Ugly one?"

"No, kind of pretty, actually," Davos said. "Her family had much more money than mine. It's not as if she was a bad catch."

Baleth's eyebrow rose. "Then why didn't you stay and marry her?"

Again, Davos shrugged. "Didn't love her."

A terrible roar split the night and fire swept across the top of the city wall. Flames consumed archers and men-at-arms crowded on the battlements, fully engulfing some and leaving others crawling away or even leaping off the platform. Davos saw the source of the flame for only a moment. It was larger than most ships he'd seen, with broad wings and a black sheen to its scales that partly reflected the flames. He saw its glowing green eyes as it passed overhead. He felt the hot wind of the air pushed forward and down as it flew past. Between the noise and the rush of wind, it seemed as if the whole world shook.

He may have heard laughter, too, carried through the night on those wings, but he wasn't sure. There were soon other things to worry about.

Survivors on the walls tried to rally, but the effort soon turned to cries of pain and panic. Dozens of smaller, humanoid black shapes came leaping over the side onto the walls. Blades flashed. More screams split the night. Too few men remained on the walls to hold back the goblins, who appeared to hardly need ladders or ropes to scale the walls from the other side.

"Bet you wish you'd married the girl now," Baleth grunted, and then called out loudly, "Hold ground! Sergeant Carstwick!" he yelled across the line to his right. It wasn't that broad a line; the city streets were no more than ten yards across. "Sergeant Carstwick, are we--Sergeant? Where are you--?"

Davos didn't need to look. He knew the fat sergeant was already running as fast as his chubby legs could carry him, and that others ran with him.

"Baleth!" Davos yelled. A sea of dark shapes and the green flames of goblin fire flooded the other end of the street. Goblin slingers hurled their fire in every direction, burning houses and shops as well as setting parts of the barricade alight. The charge came in almost the same breath.

He loosed a bolt from his crossbow. His target stepped aside just in time, as did the goblin behind him, but the third one back took the shot in the gut and collapsed. Davos only struck home because the number of targets made it hard to miss. The fires made it easy enough to see the mass of charcoal black skin, mismatched armor and hungry yellow eyes.

Others should have taken advantage of the enemy's crowded positioning to put more of them down, but too many fled. Davos didn't even look to see how lonely he was. He didn't dare.

"For the king!" Baleth yelled. "For your homes! For glory!" He stood tall to hurl his spear. Whether or not it hit anything, Davos didn't see; he focused on reloading his crossbow. When he looked up, Baleth flew backward from the barricade with three arrows and a pair of spears in him.

Davos had just enough time to shoot the first goblin to leap atop the barricade before his crossbow was no longer appropriate to the fight. The goblin's eyes bulged and its mouth full of broken, jagged teeth fell open. Davos found the sight too unsettling to consider whether its reaction was one of pain or anger. It fell to the cobblestone street beside him, dead from the bolt in its chest.

Many other goblins took its place as Davos drew his cutlass and snatched up his shield. He swung his blade, parried, slashed and dodged. He battered opponents with his shield as often as he used it to block their attacks. Soon, he had no time to look up from the melee.

Other men stood their ground along with Davos. How he stayed alive through those five minutes was beyond him, though much of the credit surely belonged to those others who refused to flee. Boasting was not in his nature; even when faced with a trio of opponents, one hammering away at his shield, another trying to get through his parrying cutlass, and the third between them looking for an opening, Davos presumed that everyone else around him had it worse.

Davos knew he was proficient. He didn't doubt his abilities. Yet he never would have predicted he'd be the last man standing out of the whole line.

More goblins streamed from the broken gate at the walls to the city and ran right past him, leaving their brethren to dispatch this last human soldier. Sooner or later, he realized, one or more would pause to pitch in. Three-on-one was impossible enough; four or more opponents would be far more than Davos could handle.

The one on his left swung further out to the side, drawing out Davos's shield. The goblin on the right lunged, forcing Davos to parry. He knew, even as his sword came up, that he was open to the center opponent now. No time to think.

Lunging in with his sword out low, the goblin, too, was exposed. Davos stepped forward to meet his middle foe, bringing his foot down hard on the goblin's knee. The step saved him from being skewered by his opponents to the sides.

Yellow eyes winced shut on the middle goblin's round, vicious face as his knee buckled. Davos brought the edge of his shield and the basket hilt of his cutlass together on either side of the enemy's head. The goblin made a quick, painful noise and collapsed.

Davos spun around, giving ground quickly, now backing toward the oncoming hordes rather than away. He had nowhere else to go. His opponents followed him, ready to exploit, but Davos did the unexpected again. He squatted down low, sweeping out with his shield to clip one across the knee. The slashing blade of the goblin to his other side passed over Davos's head. He retaliated with a slash of his own, cutting deeply into the goblin's abdomen to leave him falling in a screaming heap on the street.

The remaining foe backed off. Davos had his first chance to see how much of the city was already in flames, and how little of the guard or the army remained, and how freely the goblins looted. He realized there was nothing left of the line he fought to maintain.

He heard that terrible roar again, and the screams of burning and dying people that accompanied it.

The final goblin opponent grabbed at the small horn hanging from a leather string around his neck and blew for aid. Other goblins looked up from their looting or their burning to hiss at him, to hoot and howl and yell for his blood.

The army had been overwhelmed. Resistance crumbled. Goblins streamed into the city. Davos had only to decide whether to hide—from goblins who could see in the dark, and could hear and smell much better than any human—or to pick a place to make his final stand.

Davos ran. The few goblins to get in his way were either battered aside by his shield or fended off by his blade.

He came to a rise overlooking the walled estates and temples of a wealthier neighborhood and spotted a likely place. Davos had little love for the rich, and no personal loyalties to any residents of Loewen, but there were always the gods and their ideals.

Love seemed like a good cause to die for. He'd never really known it in his young life--he'd known love of family, and of friends, but since taking to sea, his romances were limited to weak moments in taverns with women who usually expected payment. The marriage his parents arranged had more to do with land ownership and favors owed between elders than the interests of bride or groom.

Love had eluded him, but he never gave up on his hopes. He was too young for that, and knew it.

There would be no such romances for him now. Love was for people who would live through the night. At this point, it was little better than a myth. As he heard the padded feet and huffing breath of his increasingly large mob of pursuers, though, he considered that it was a better myth to die for than the majesty of the queen or the sanctity of this city--neither of which, truth be told, were his. His ship arrived only recently, and he owed this queen no allegiance. It was a pleasant enough city, but not a city with a special place in his heart. He'd been conscripted right off the docks.

Davos set his gaze on the towering roof of the temple of Aphrodite and ran. Dying for a foreign city and for someone else's monarch seemed silly. Dying to protect symbols of love seemed at least relatively worthwhile.

* * *

Bodies and blood tarnished the broad white stones of the Plaza of the Divines. The city of Loewen was famous for the beautiful religious district, with large temples to Odin, Isis, Aphrodite and Frey facing one another in a broad, open square. Shrines to other deities could be found in the square and beyond it. Statues and carvings in marble walls depicted the successive arrivals of the gods to the world, the struggles between pantheons, the deaths of some and the ascensions of others. Loewen's market district was just as famous and larger in scale, yet such bustling activity did not make for clean tiles and ornate statuary.

Ariella, High Priestess of Aphrodite in Loewen, thought herself blessed to live and worship in such a place of beauty. That she would die here frightened her, certainly, but knowing that the dragon and the goblin horde would destroy the district and slaughter everyone within it broke her heart.

Blood stained her hands and her white robes. Some of that blood was red; more of it was black. Before she dedicated herself to the goddess twenty years ago, Ariella had been the daughter of a retired knight who refused to let his daughter be defenseless. She knew how to use a blade, and though she was not as well-practiced as the soldiers and knights who lay dead in the square, she nonetheless fought for her temple and her city.

Few of her peers and fewer of the laypeople of the city expected to see the slender, red-haired beauty tear into the goblins with a sword. Ariella cut down more than a handful of them before the two ogres showed up--and even one of those ogres now huddled against a statue, clutching at the wide gash she'd cut into its thigh.

The other ogre, unfortunately, made for more trouble than she could handle alone. The grey-skinned brute held both her long red hair and one twisted arm in his hand. Towering over Ariella at half again her height, the ogre's shaggy black hair and beaten leather clothing stunk of offal and worse. It wielded a massive club in its other hand, ready to smash either Ariella or whoever might charge in to rescue her. The odds of the latter went well beyond grim. Coming within a blade's reach of the ogre meant venturing within the reach of the much greater monster looming behind him.

The black dragon's claws dug scars in the marble stones of the plaza. Its breath had already set alight several shrines and the Temple of Frey. The bodies of dozens of men and women who died trying to fight the beast lay in a ring around it. Beyond that ring, between Ariella, the ogre and the dragon, and all the goblins crowding near the beast, stood the Prince and his Companions.

The carnage paused for a boasting match between the woefully overmatched Prince Alaric and the lunatic goblin riding the dragon's back. Ariella could have slapped both of them, were she able.

"Begone with your mob of savages and your foul beast!" bellowed Prince Alaric. He stood clad in his shining plate mail and clutching his father's sword, surrounded by his armored comrades. His long blond hair, released when he took off his helmet for the exchange, billowed in the wind. He was tall. Strong. Handsome.

Had he been born mute and with a few shreds of humility, Ariella might have taken him up on his advances. In spite of all of the fear and anguish brought on by the imminence of her death, Ariella's murmured prayers were interrupted by a single, sardonic plea: "Lady of Love, if I am to survive this night, please do not leave me indebted to this man for it. Anyone but Prince Alaric."

The goblin standing between the shoulders of the dragon cackled loudly. He held his shaking arms out wide, clutching a staff that glowed with the same eerie green light as the dragon's eyes. A similar, fainter green light shone in an arc around the goblin, protecting him from arrows and spears. It deflected sorcerous flame and lightning, too, as the burned corpse of the prince's companion wizard attested.

"Demands not yours to make!" shouted the goblin shaman. "Demands mine! For my people!" His voice was low for a goblin, well within the range of human males. "You surrender land beyond Blue River!" he snarled, waving his hand to the southwest. "No more soldiers! No more humans! You pay us tribute now. Two bags of gold, each season, for every bag we have ever paid you. And... five of your females! Each season!"

"You wretched bastard!" cried out Romis, first of the Companions. His axe shook in his hands. "You wouldn't know what to do with gold or women if you had them!"

"I know it hurt you," replied the shaman. "That enough to know."

Laughter erupted from the goblin's troops. Romis and the other Companions grimaced. Ariella did, too. The shaman's demands for territory and gold might have been bitterly acceptable--perhaps after Alaric had been battered and humiliated--but the demand for women went beyond the pale. There would be nothing for it but further bloodshed.

Ariella's eyes swept the plaza. Terrified faces peered out from behind the walls of shrines and temples. In times of strife and danger, the religious district usually offered shelter. Now it offered only front-row seats to further horror. Somewhere behind her, her acolytes waited inside the Temple of Aphrodite to defend the sacred space with their lives as she had instructed. She wished they wouldn't have to see this before they died.

"So be it," Alaric said with a deep breath. He stepped out from the line of warriors, leaving behind his helmet and his comrades. Ariella noticed the telltale white glow of magic on his shield and sword. She wondered if it was that magic or the audience that strengthened his backbone now, for in private his courage was not so great.

She knew a great deal about the royal family. She knew the emphasis his mother placed on earning one's place. She knew the crown would never pass to him without some deed to show it had been earned.

It would have been difficult, she considered, to arrange a more spectacular opportunity than this for a prince to demonstrate his mettle.

* * *

"Oh fuck oh fuck get out of my way!" Davos shrieked, broadly swinging his shield to knock the kneeling goblin out of his path. The goblin screeched as he was flung away from looting its dead victim, and then again as the mob of goblins pursuing Davos through the streets trampled him to death.

Davos ran on. He leapt left and right whenever he dared, making as difficult a target of himself as he could for the arrows, spears and other missiles flying his way. Something glanced off the side of his helmet, causing him to stumble, roll and force himself back up again, never breaking his forward momentum.

Maybe I'm doing some good here, he thought. Maybe I'm causing a distraction. Giving some cityfolk a chance to flee. Buying time for defenders to rally.

Or maybe I'm just going to die horribly in a fucking gutter.

The howls for his blood grew louder, as did the racket made by his ever-growing horde of pursuers. He couldn't imagine what made him so much more attractive than easier, slower targets. Perhaps goblins were just as attracted to crowds as humans. Everyone assumed there must be something important, otherwise there wouldn't be a crowd, so why not join in and find out?

Davos hated crowds. He hated this particular crowd most of all.

The streets ahead teemed with goblins just like the ones behind him. He came to the rear of a great temple, perhaps Frey's by the look of it, and found a smaller crowd of goblins gathered there. Debris and flame blocked the path around the temple to either side. The walls of the temple to Frey bore cracks and scars.

The biggest and nastiest-looking of the goblins up ahead unlimbered his warhammer with both hands. His compatriots stepped up. The trap looked ready to close.

Davos ran on. At least his pursuers had apparently run out of things to throw. He picked the goblin on his right and headed straight for him, figuring this was it.

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