Yule was suddenly impatient to be rid of the window-glass above his side port. Not recalling the sorcery for withdrawing this vexing panel, he smashed it repeatedly with a hammering fist until it was no longer obstructing his hearing, and he was able to take in the roar of his Uncle Hoar’s summer breath along with the crack of the thunder ahead that should rightfully be his and his alone!
Mother, these warriors honor and mock me at once, having stolen my thunder for their use! They shall pay the price of mortals.
After many leagues the two riders pulled off of the Great Processional Road onto a lesser track. He followed at a distance, and then, at a crossroads, heard the sound of their thunder up a gravel-strewn dirt track that branched off of an even lesser track to wind up into some wooded hills.
He turned off the lesser track and up the gravel-paved drive—at last a real warrior’s track—and eased his charger quietly through the trees. At last, off to the southeast, he spotted a worn-down manner house and a barn. The warriors had taken another lesser track across an un-grazed pasture to a barn where a dark-skinned goatherd with a sky-colored carriage not unlike Yule’s charger awaited with a nervous companion.
These warriors parley with goatherds?
These are well-dressed goatherds, perhaps chiefs of their ilk. Perhaps they come bearing tribute?
Yes, it is so.
Sure enough, he bore witness as the chief inspected the contents of what appeared to be an apothecary’s case, and then proffered a number of parchment notes that served as coin among men in these lean times.
That settles it! He is worthy, a chief, well-guarded, and being paid tribute by a supplicant tribe. To strike now would be a thing of honor.
But I am swordless?
Oh, but I bestride my night-black charger!
Yule pressed the drive plate to the floor of his chariot and the mechanical charger roared across the pasture with the power of what must have been three-hundred horses! The warriors and the goatherds stood in stunned amazement for a few seconds and then glanced at each other as if laying blame for betrayal one upon the other. The goatherds then scurried into their carriage even as the chief stood bravely and produced a handgun, leveling it at Yule as he thundered into their midst. One slug penetrated the glass panel before him and grazed the back of his right hand behind the small finger as he crashed with tremendous force into the brave chieftain.
The bursting carcass of the slain chieftain was still flying through the air to come to rest far behind Yule, even as he turned the wheel that controlled his charger and brought it crashing into the legs of the henchmen. He had not wished to ruin the pants. But war is war—especially when War is involved—and things get messy. When the henchman’s legs shattered just above the knees most of the pants-length was ruined. In an effort to save the rest of his battle-won attire Yule turned wide around the prone and crying man, brought down the northwest corner of the barn, and pressed the drive plate to the floor once again in pursuit of the fleeing goatherds, who were now pulling away in their carriage.
The blood-chase; no finer game under Heaven—the pursuit of broken foes!
Yule brought the charger up to full speed quickly and crashed into the flank of the goatherds’ carriage with a pleasingly loud impact that sounded like the crashing together of massed shield-walls. The goatherd carriage tumbled over and over, coming to rest on its wheels. The lesser goatherd was slain, his lifeblood already spurting out of the side of the crumpled carriage as it came to rest.
The goatherd chieftain had been spared by Yule’s fickle little sisters—Mother’s prissy meddlesome tarts—the Three Fates. For he crawled forth and armed himself, stunned as he was, with a fine burnished handgun, a weapon without the ugly square lines of those favored by the long-haired chieftain and the taboo-enforcer of the hanged God who had unfortunately neglected to kneel before a pitiless rival god.
I would have such a handgun, shimmering as it does beneath the sun.
As the man staggered to his feet, weaving as he bled and panted and began cocking and leveling his fine handgun, Yule tore off the side panel of the goatherd’s slain mechanical steed and leaped over the upturned side panel, diving earthward with the executioner’s stroke. The mighty stroke with the crude sheet of flimsy metal failed to properly decapitate the worthy goatherd chief. But his throat did open, spilling out both air and blood as the goatherd’s spirit took flight, inevitably fated to spend eternity in the Underdark as a shade. But he would be a shade of some status, as he had been sent to Old Soul-Eater’s eternally dank lair by his favorite nephew—I, Yule, God of War!
