Date: Tue, 9 Feb 2016 09:19:19 -0700
From: Michael Offutt <kavrik@hotmail.com>
Subject: Chapter 4 - The Orb of Winter - Gay Science Fiction

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and find the folder that says "The Orb of Winter" and then open that up to
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Please check out my books on my website.

				   *****

			       Chapter Four

   Kian stood in the darkness, the weight of Bloodbane comfortable at his
back. Near him, his great lion Cyrayalayeth feasted upon the remains of a
large stag he'd killed only ten minutes earlier. He reached down and
plucked a fine sheaf arrow from the body. He mused a moment at the silver
fletching and straight black shaft made of ironwood and wondered how much
it would cost to get cibrian arrowheads like Fiver had obviously done. Then
Kian placed it in a beautiful leather quiver next to his feet. The wind
picked up and tossed the tree limbs of the ancient aspen around him so that
they rattled in the cold. Through the helmet, he smelt snow. It left a kind
of bitter taste on his tongue, but he wasn't sure why.
   "Eat up, old boy," Kian said to his gargantuan lion, and affectionately
slapped its flank. He grabbed the quiver in his left hand; the ornate
silver and black saddle he used to ride Cyrayalayeth in his right. Then he
set them both just inside the entrance to his modest tent.
   Kian stood for a moment to appreciate the stars above the canopy. A
smooth black appeared here and there through thick clouds that rolled in
off the coast. In those small spots not lit by lightning or disturbed by
the roll of thunder, a handful of white sparks hung in the frigid air. A
thousand feet to the east, the sound of forks striking pewter plates, the
crackle of logs in stoves, and Ephram rutting away atop his ginger-haired
paramour floated into Kian's sensitive ears.
   "I swear those two fuck like rabbits," he uttered under his breath
before stretching his limbs. A small pop in his spine brought waves of
relief. That's when the first snowflakes started pelting his armor, and he
caught two in the palm of his gauntlet to examine their shapes.
   "I beg your pardon?" Fiver asked.
   Kian, startled, whipped his head to the right. How is it I didn't hear
him?
   "Sorry," the hare-foot said, raising his paws. "I make no sound in the
woods. It's a gift of Rhya...I didn't mean to surprise you." To
demonstrate, Fiver put his full weight on a stick, snapping it
underfoot. But no sound resulted.
   "You didn't surprise me," Kian lied. "I knew you were there."
   "Of course you did. You'd be the first then." He perked up his ears and
gazed toward the camp. "Ah, you meant them. It's them that fucks like
rabbits. Valion knights...sexy devils...or so they say."
   "I wouldn't know anything about that," Kian replied, crouching with ease
upon a large rock.
   "Hunter's not your real name, is it?" Fiver asked.
   "No."
   "And you're not going to tell me what it is are you?"
   Kian just remained silent.
   "In your line of work it probably pays to be guarded. Still, you got
anyone? Anyone that cares about you?"
   Again, Kian said nothing.
   "I've got a wife and a dozen kits. It all happened so suddenly. They
live in my home that I call `The Warren.' If you do have someone, stranger,
and I hope you do, it'll help to think about them when things get at their
darkest."
   "I don't need anyone," Kian replied.
   Silence followed his statement.
   I guess the coney's run out of things to say. Who's he to advise me
anyway? For once, Kian took joy in the fact that no one could see his
face. Just thinking of his boyfriend Talen in some far away land brought
tears to his eyes. I haven't seen him in a year...
   "Everyone needs someone," Fiver said. "I'd imagine that's true for a
hare-foot as well as...an elf?"
   Kian shook his head. "Nice try, but no."
   "Human then, but what kind of human? Amserran? Noremarian? Thularumite?"
   Kian remained silent.
   "Sometimes, it's nice to let our walls down a bit, you know? We've been
traveling companions for six months now," Fiver said. "Does it matter if I
know your race? You know mine."
   "Six months and five days," Kian corrected him.
   "You're here exclusively because you were commanded to be here by your
church, aren't you?" Fiver asked, whiskers twitching.
   Kian didn't answer, but cocked his head to the right. On the heads-up
display inside his helmet, he caught a flicker of heat. It showed as a
flash of red amidst the blue black of the tree trunks. He used his nose pad
to enlarge his field of vision, and that's when he saw them: several large
figures shambling between the trunks. He could hear them too, bones
clacking as they scraped against one another, joints held together by
strong sinew that looked like gristle. As the resolution improved, he
realized he stared at giant skeletons in armor...as many as twenty. And
behind them rode the two Timeron knights he'd identified not even twelve
hours earlier.
   Kian's mind raced. How did they find us? Could they have tracked me?
   "What is it?" Fiver asked, staring back toward the camp. "Your body
language is tense as a yew tree."
   "Tethyr's teeth," Kian swore. He decided he didn't have time for a reply
and vanished into the night.
   Kian reappeared next to a colossal spruce and ducked under the branches,
moving as silent as the wind itself. Coming down from the ridge on a game
trail and only a hundred feet or so from their camp lumbered the first of
the hulking skeletons in piecemeal bronze plate. The wind and the snow
picked up, rattling the tree limbs. He placed his palm on Bloodbane's hilt
and tightened his fingers; in response the grip of his sword writhed like a
handful of living worms. A second later, transparent veins detached and
grew toward his wrist. As strong as steel, they inserted themselves into
his right vambrace, accessing small holes in Kian's armor hidden behind
silver filigree.
   The tubes punctured his delicate skin like sharp needles; the pinch that
followed settled down into a burning pressure after a moment or two. Kian
gritted his teeth and watched as his blood pumped through the clear tubes
and into the grip of the sword. He slid Bloodbane from its sheath, and the
cibrian blade glowed a pale red in the darkness.
   Then the sword exulted in his hand; filled his mind with images of
carnage, broken bones, and mutilated flesh.
   Stop it, he commanded. It lashed out against him for a moment, and the
psychic assault left him with a nosebleed. Then the bloodthirst retreated
into a frothy hunger that took root at the edge of conscious thought.
   Head throbbing, Kian whirled and smote the massive trunk at a sharp
angle, cleaving it in two. Then he ran at it with all his strength,
shoulder first, digging in with his heels and attempting to shove the
massive tree from off its base. Sticky with sap, it slid forward, and then
began its long descent, taking with it other trees that had grown entangled
with its limbs until it collided into the lead skeleton. Its upper branches
rained needles and snow clumps over an acre; a thunderous crash shook the
very ground on which the tents had been pitched.
   Two of the giant skeleton warriors lay pinned under the massive tree and
now the nearby camp erupted in pandemonium.
   A Kandaleyan bard by the name of Dallin Christopher grabbed hold of a
horn with a golden mouthpiece and blew upon it. "We're under attack!"
   The giant skeletons surged forward, slowed by the presence of the huge
fallen trees. Two of them got their ribcages tangled up in stray
branches. Kian leapt upward and landed on a mammoth boulder whose crest put
him ten feet above the path. Even then he managed only to stand head to
shoulder with a fourth skeleton warrior that turned upon him in unbridled
fury.
   In its skeletal hands, the monster held the most massive bardiche Kian
had ever seen. In fact, all of them did. But this monster thrust its weapon
directly at Kian with intent to kill. The assassin parried the rusty blade
with Bloodbane's edge; a thousand sparks flew into the night sky. Tapping
on the inside of his helmet with his tongue, he caused the twin cibrian
wrist blades to pop out of a sheath on his left vambrace. He used that to
deflect another blow coming from a second warrior that slid down the path
and collided into the rock face beneath Kian's feet.
   More sparks flew as he defended twice more. Then he slammed Bloodbane
through the eye socket of one skeleton; blood and gray matter spewed forth
and the thing fell into the mud.
   "Stab them through the eye!" Kian yelled out.
   In the brush to Kian's right and about fifty paces from where he stood,
an ursuul warrior named Zalgun emerged. He wore battered ursuuli plate mail
and fought with two claymores that he held in a considerable monkey
grip. Kian frowned as he busied himself with incoming attacks because he
could not provide aid to this soldier.
   Zalgun screamed and ran at a fresh skeleton swinging his dual great
swords at the massive bone tibias of the undead warrior. Both blades struck
with enough strength to shatter rock, but the bones didn't even chip. The
skeleton raised its foot and kicked Zalgun back into a tree where a sharp
limb impaled him instantly, feet dangling over the snow, and blood spouting
from his lips.
   "Stupid," Kian uttered.
   Kian invoked his quantum sidestep. To the outside world, he vanished in
a microsecond and reappeared from out of thin air ten feet above the
giant. From Kian's perspective, he took a trip through a strange umbral
realm in which the real world faded into an eerie shadowy reflection of
itself. Then he plummeted with sword moaning and pointed straight at the
monster's skull. Bloodbane slid through the skeleton's thick helmet with no
resistance. Only one breath later, a cone of old coagulated blood and gray
matter sprayed forth, pelting the fresh white powder at the thing's feet.
   Kian smelt something fouler than shit, and it almost made him retch.
   As the thing collapsed under him, Kian briefly touched the skeleton's
shoulders with the balls of his feet before somersaulting backward and into
the middle of three huge bone titans circling a pair of elven Valkyries
wearing battered plate and carrying shiny scimitars. He'd come to know the
women as Salina and Shae, and they fought back to back, blades whistling as
they deflected blows from incoming bardiches. Despite being elvish, these
ladies had normal-sized eyes unlike those belonging to Henna.
   "Ladies," Kian said, giving them a salute with two fingers to the dome
of his helmet.
   Then cibrian cleats sprung from his boots, he leapt six feet off the
ground and side kicked the patella of one giant skeleton while
simultaneously lashing out with Bloodbane on an identical foe to his
right. Kian's attack shot out with so much speed that the force generated
by just his feet shattered the bronze plates over the knee cap. With bone
unprotected, the cibrian cleats made quick work of the giant's
joints. Kian's athletic and graceful move cut the skeleton's leg off at the
knee, bones snapping and shattering into a hundred pale white
chips. Meanwhile, Bloodbane cut through the bronze cuirass of the other
skeleton, hewing it into two pieces. As the armor fell, Kian's sword
managed to cut so deep that it cleaved the spinal column in half. The giant
fell in two pieces, its legs and chest still animated but much less
dangerous. Kian landed with the elegance of a cat, and the two girls rammed
their scimitars into the sockets of the giant whose head now stood within
reach.
   But a third skeleton barreled down on them with savage purpose.
   This fresh foe would have skewered both girls through the middle, but
Kian flickered and reappeared in front of the blade taking the full force
of it in the chest. Rusty bronze met a corobidian metal killsuit, and the
entire bardiche shattered under the force. Even with his heels dug in, the
blow threw Kian twenty feet. Just before he struck ground, he teleported
again and came to a skidding stand in inch-deep snow only a few steps from
the two girls.
   That's gonna leave a fuckin' mark, he thought, a throbbing ache starting
in his chest.
   The skeleton tossed the ruin of its weapon into the muddy brush and
swung at Kian with a fist two feet wide. In a single flash of lightning,
Kian blocked its blow, swung his blade up and severed the arm at the
shoulder. He rolled between the giant's bony legs, dropped the arm, and
then leapt twelve feet into the air to land on its vast bronze
pauldrons. The undead monster, unable to follow Kian's unearthly speed,
didn't see the death blow coming; Bloodbane emerged from its mouth, driving
old blood and brains before its ruddy blade.
   As it collapsed, Kian rolled to his feet. "Go back to the camp," he said
to Shae and Salina.
   They nodded and fled.
   Kian looked around. He spotted Fiver shooting arrows at one. On the
fifth such attempt, the hare-foot ranger finally brought one down. Akagi
raced here and there swinging his kanabo and avoiding the blows from one
giant that just refused to go under.
   "Akagi! You've got to destroy the skull!" Kian shouted.
   Akagi continued to swing at ribcage, leg, foot, and everywhere
in-between.
   "Idiot," Kian said, shaking his head in frustration.
   And then Ser Ephram appeared in full plate, crimson cloak streaming
behind him. He slammed his gauntleted fist into the armored chest of one of
the creatures while raining down blows with his sword held high in the
other hand. Tomoluk, grunting, felled one with his axe only to get
hamstrung by a bardiche, causing the minotaur to fall into the ground
howling in pain. Two ursuul warriors from camp bull-rushed that skeleton
and drove it back into a ditch where it fell low enough that they could
smash its head to smithereens using two massive mauls.
   Up the trail, more of the skeletons emerged in the snowy night. The
druid Henna slowed them by casting a spell. Green light whorled around her
fingers and extended outward in curling streamers of fine mist. These
glowing tendrils sprouted vines with thick glossy leaves and luminescent
thorns. As they struck the ground, it's like the earth itself rose up to
attack the bone titans; three such giants got completely entangled to the
point that they couldn't move.
   I love magic, Kian thought.
   But the show wasn't over. Two more bone giants rose up near Henna. Kian
watched as she reached into a pouch and then threw a handful of rocks at
them. As they struck, each warrior turned to stone, arms and armor
petrifying alongside bone.
   "Tethyr's teeth," Kian gulped, feeling sweat trickle into his eyes.
   A whistle caught Kian's attention.
   The Timeron knights appeared and they gestured wildly at Ephram who, as
a Valion knight, was considered a mortal enemy. On their way to the dashing
Crimson Guard, they cut down two of Ephram's men, literally cutting them in
half with a swish of their razor capes. Each also held a longsword in one
arm, darting it in and out like a viper. Another man fell screaming, his
armor pierced in three places and blood squirting from his neck.
   Kian vanished and appeared in front of one of the knights. It whirled
its razor cape and Kian blocked with Bloodbane. Red sparks erupted from the
edge of his weapon. The knight angled it slightly up, but Kian moved too
fast for him. It felt like liquid quick flowed through his veins, and Kian
rolled under the cape and came up into the knight's groin with his dual
cibrian wrist blades. But, the cibrian scraped along the outside of the
corobidian armor, harmlessly deflected.
   "Fuck," Kian cursed.
   "The shadow thinks he can fight!" The Timeron knight said behind his
helmet. "Don't you know shadows always get swallowed by the darkness?"
   "You try to swallow me, you just might choke," Kian taunted. He parried
the punch coming at him; blocked the kick.
   On their left, two female cyclotitan legionnaires from Ephram's camp
joined the fray to help Kian fight the Timeron knight.
   "Get back!" Kian yelled. "You don't have the training!"
   The tall soldiers laughed and swung their halberds at the Timeron knight
who knocked them aside with his shield. Then he decapitated both women with
one giant cleave of his broadsword. Fountains of blood gushed into the air
as their bodies fell toward the ditch.
   In the next instant, the one on Kian lunged at him with tip pointed at
his heart.
   The edge was razor sharp and anointed with the bitter poison of
contempt. However, the lithe assassin dodged the Timeron's expert
remise. Kian's boots skirted the edge of that ditch, which now served to
split their battlefield into two halves. The entire time he dodged and
weaved (on just a couple inches of crumbling real estate) Hunter
demonstrated an unearthly balance and range that shattered any ideas of
human flexibility.
   A swoosh of the knight's sword had Kian sidestepping. A downward strike
made Kian parry. A massive sideswipe and Kian ducked under the blade, his
entire bodyweight balanced on just ten long toes.
   The evil knight called upon some inner strength and thrust blow after
blow against Kian's defenses. They sliced the air with such power that the
vacuum created by his movement created an audible snap. Somehow, the
assassin was able to dodge, deflect, parry, and retaliate with his own
carefully orchestrated punches, kicks, and slices with the wrist blade.
   Every riposte he made against the assassin of the silver rose ended in
failure.
   And then the knight made a miscalculation and overstepped.
   Kian instantly kicked the knight's blade with the sole of his cleated
boot and sparks showered the ground around them. He landed a punch in the
Timeron knight's chest, caving in the armor around his knuckles. Lightning
fast, Kian struck again across the helmet with his other gauntleted fist.
   This dropped the Timeron knight almost into the mud.
   Hunter flickered away in the next instant because he knew that the
knight was still dangerous. Blood dripped from the Timeron's helmet; Hunter
balanced on one foot and popped his knees one at a time to get himself more
limber.
   The Timeron knight lifted his visor up, blood trailed from his right eye
and a bruise spread across the skin. His helmet drew tight as second skin
where Kian had struck him. He was never getting that thing off, not without
cutting. The strength Kian wielded bordered on supernatural.
   "No one can dent corobidian armor," the knight spat. "But you managed
and with one blow. How? Who the fuck are you?"
   "Living Death," Kian said, voice calm. He hopped up and down lightly
upon his toes, fists held out defensively in front of him, sword held
tight, and he stood just out of reach.
   To his right, the other Timeron knight clashed with Ephram in a titanic
struggle. The sweaty Crimson Guard slammed blow after blow upon the armor
of the cape-dancing Timeron knight, ducking and weaving under the razor
cloak of his adversary, and somehow surviving powerful strokes that would
have killed a normal man.
   Obviously, both of these men were anything but normal.
   Then Ephram took a terrible blow as the Timeron knight drove his sword
through a chink in Ephram's armor. It emerged out Ephram's left side, and
dropped him to one knee.
   "Unnnggghhh!" Ephram cried out, spitting bloody foam between his teeth.
   Then Akagi appeared, wielding the kanabo, and launched himself from a
boulder arcing the kanabo down in a killing blow. His target? The Timeron
knight's skull.
   Thinking he had the assassin temporarily distracted, Kian's opponent
jumped to his feet and struck forth with his blade—a mistake that would
prove fatal.
   Hunter, black dragon assassin of the silver rose, countered with
astonishing speed and fell back upon his scapula. Using all his strength,
he struck the knight in the chin with the bottom of his left foot. It hit
with such force it lifted the Timeron knight off his feet. Hunter
teleported and kicked again from the air before the Timeron knight even
landed and it hurled him into the ditch. In the next instant, Kian beheaded
him with a single stroke.
   "So much for asking me to the dance," Kian stated.
   Hunter spun to witness Akagi's victory only to see the Timeron knight
choking Akagi by the throat. The kanabo lay discarded in the muddy snow,
and Akagi's face had started turning blue.
   That went arse over tit faster than a whore on discount night.
   Wasting no time, Kian flew at the Timeron knight and executed a flying
scissor heel hook. In one fell motion and twist of his exceptionally
muscular body, Kian took the much bigger knight down. As they slammed into
the mud and snow, Akagi fell free of the knight's grasp.
   "You fuckin' coward! You come at me while I'm distracted?" The Timeron
knight managed to squeeze out of his mouth as Kian locked him up with his
limbs. "I'll—aah—arrrgghhh!"
   He screamed helplessly as Kian adjusted his hold to bend the knight's
knee to places it was not meant to go. Finally, the assassin snapped the
leg in half. Afterward, he let go and got to his feet over the Timeron
knight that now writhed painfully in the snow. Kian drove his twin wrist
blades down over his helmet, pinning the guy's head in place.
   Next he surveyed the battlefield. Snow flurries could not hide the dead
and broken men of Ephram's camp. Nor could they obscure the bones of huge
skeletons, which covered an entire acre of forest. However, shadows moving
here and there told Kian that they'd won even if it came at great cost.
   "Don't kill him," Ser Ephram ordered, blood spewing from his
armor. Still, the young knight managed to stand despite his heinous
wounds. "He has questions to answer."
   The Timeron knight tried to reach for his sword again and Kian flicked
it away with his armored toes. Then he punched him once in the head—a
pressure point—and the Timeron knight lost consciousness.
   Ephram stared at the assassin of the silver rose, bloody sword hanging
limp from a hand with two broken fingers. The tall knight regarded the
scene with an awestruck expression. He glanced once at the Timeron that
Kian had killed and then back onto this one that lay unconscious on the
snow at Hunter's feet.
   "What are you?" Ephram asked.
   But Kian didn't answer.

				   *****

The next part is available on my website at
http://slckismet.blogspot.com/p/discussion-board-for.html under the label
"Chapter Three" if you care to read ahead.