Chapter 1

The first thing I knew following the big flash of white light was that I was standing in the middle of a dirt road and I was buck naked—not even a G-string or shoes. The road was running through a forest, and I could see some heavy brush growing along both sides of the road, but the interior of the forest did not have much, if any, undergrowth. This seemed like a foolish place to stand while I had no clothes, so I moved to hide myself in the brush until I could figure out how to get some clothes.

Just as I reached the bushes, I saw a man and woman walk around a curve in the road. The woman was a real “babe,” but the man seemed very ordinary to me, except that he was hardly more than 5 feet tall. The man was wearing a short leather tunic and cloth pants of a sort of gray color. On the other hand, the woman was wearing a dress with a short skirt and long pants that tucked into leather boots. On her head was what the Army used to call an “overseas cap.” A jaunty feather was sticking into the cap. Her whole outfit, except for the black boots, was a striking red.

The man appeared to be armed with a fighting knife in his right hand and a club in his left hand. The woman was carrying a short bow and had a knife and a quiver of arrows hanging from a belt around her waist. An arrow was in place on her bow, but she had not raised or drawn it.

I suddenly realized that I had no frame of reference, so I just assumed that they were dressed and armed normally. That made my condition even more awkward.

I was trying to figure out whether or not to call out to the couple as they got close to me. They were about 10 feet away when a man with a crude club jumped from the bushes on the other side of the road and came up behind the couple. Without a word, he hit the man in the side of the head with his club, and I could see blood spurt and hear the sound of the skull breaking.

I was galvanized into action as soon as the blow landed. The attacker had grabbed the right arm of the woman and was pulling her toward him. Obviously, he had no good in mind for the woman, so I jumped at him. I do not have any idea where the idea came from, but my first thought was to hit him in the throat to smash his windpipe. That was easy to do because he had not even seemed to notice me.

Naturally, his first reaction upon being hit was to turn loose of the things that he was holding and use both hands to try to reopen his crushed windpipe. Of course, he couldn’t do that, and he collapsed to the ground.

The woman turned toward me and said, “Thank you for...” At that point, she realized that I was naked, and she did a double take. She stared at my bare crotch for about 15 seconds before she resumed speaking. “Thank you for saving me from a very unpleasant situation. I don’t know what occasion you are undressed for, but you seem to have all of the tools that you would need.” She didn’t seem particularly upset by my lack of clothes, but her hand was resting on the handle of her knife.

She was still starring at my crotch, and I could feel myself blush as my cock began to come erect. “Please relax that tool of yours for now, but I must say that it is quite impressive. Possibly, we can put it to use later.

“Where did a giant like you come from?”

I suddenly came to the realization that I had absolutely no memories of my life before that flash of light and discovering that I was standing naked on a public road. That was what I told her, and she acted as if she accepted my explanation at face value.

“I wonder if Fate put you here to rescue me from that ruffian. I am on a quest for the gods, and I obviously need a bodyguard. Are you interested in that job?”

Hell, what other choice did I have? I sure needed more information before I could strike out on my own. Also, there was no doubt that I needed clothes. I took the job. I had no idea what the pay was, but that would have made no difference since I had no frame of reference. At least, I did have a chance at some usable clothes.

I stripped the two men, and between the two, I did find pants and a tunic that I could wear. I was able to wear the attacker’s boots, so that problem was solved. In the process, I found a pair of gloves. Out of curiosity, I slipped them on, and they fit like a second skin; however, my hands felt a bit peculiar for a few seconds, but everything returned to normal very quickly.

“Okay, Boss, I guess that I am ready to start work. What do you want me to call you? I do remember that my name is Lincoln Mathews, but everybody called me Linc, so you can do that if you wish.”

“Okay, Linc. My name is Eglos, so you can call me that. Here, let me look at your gloves.” Eglos examined my gloves for a couple of minutes. “There is no doubt that those gloves have some magical powers, but I don’t recognize what they might be. I can’t imagine what they might do for you, but I suggest that you keep wearing them. Surely, they will do no harm. I wonder why Closos did not wear them? Maybe he was waiting to find out what magic property they had before he put them on. Well, now he will never know.”

That sounded reasonable to me, so I kept the gloves on. They did not seem to make my hands overheat, so I figured that it would not hurt to wear them. I picked up Closos’ fighting knife to have some sort of obvious weapon, but I was not sure that I would know how to use it. Hell, it might work fine as a bluff, so I figured that it was worth keeping. If not, I could sell it. I carried the knife in a sheath at my belt, so my hands were free.

Eglos had a pouch on her belt that she wore like a fanny pack. When lunch time came, she pulled out some bread and cheese for us to eat and a bottle of watered wine to drink. The stuff that she removed from her pack was larger than the pack! How the hell did it all fit in there?

When I asked, she said, “It is a magic pack that can hold almost anything, though you can eventually overload it with too many things. That was why I told you to keep the pack when you took it from Closos’ body.

We sat on a couple of large rocks beside the road while we ate lunch. I was not tired from the walking, and neither was Eglos. Had I done a lot of walking in my previous life?

We resumed our journey, and I asked Eglos how much longer the journey was going to take. “I don’t know. I was told that I would know when I had completed my quest, but I have no idea what or when that could be. I’ll just keep going until I know. I have nothing else that I had rather be doing.” Okay, I guess that my job would run indefinitely until I got tired of it or until Eglos got tired of me.

We walked for a couple of more hours with only a little change in scenery. Suddenly, 15 or so little humanoid creatures ran from the brush toward us. Eglos said, “Goolies! Be ready to fight when they reach us.”

I drew my fighting knife, and suddenly I knew exactly how to use it. The Goolies were not armed with conventional weapons, but their teeth and fingernails looked like formidable weapons. Eglos began firing arrows at the Goolies as soon as they showed up, but they knew a lot about avoiding an arrow by dodging around.

As soon as a Gooly got close enough, I jumped to the attack. That maneuver seemed to catch it completely by surprise. Apparently, the Gooly expected me to run away as had all of its previous victims. Anyway, I dispatched this Gooly with a slash across its throat. Blood flew everywhere, and I had my first Gooly.

Another Gooly grabbed at my right arm that had the knife, but my left arm was free, so I smashed it in the face with my left fist. That was a real surprise to me! I hit the Gooly in the nose with my fist and drove most of its face back into its head. I had no idea that I had hit the beast that hard! It was as if I had been wearing a steel glove, instead of the leather one.

When the third Gooly attacked, I foolishly stabbed it in the chest. Somehow, my knife got wedged in, and I did not have time to remove it. That Gooly was dead, but it had effective stolen my knife from me. However, I was now hitting the Goolies with just my hands, but the effect was as if I had replaced my hands with two maces.

By then, the Goolies were too close for Eglos to use her bow, so she was fighting with her knife. She had enough experience to know not to stab a Gooly in the chest, so she was able to keep her knife. Between the two of us, we managed to kill every one of the Goolies that attacked us. And that was a pleasant accomplishment in more ways than one.

When the fight was over and I was cleaning the gore from my gloves, I discovered where I had been bitten in the wrist by a Gooly. The sleeve of my jerkin had been penetrated by the creature’s teeth, but not the cuff of my glove. I guess that I should start calling my gloves gauntlets because the cuff extended up my forearms well beyond my wrists, and seemed to provide the protection that I would receive from bracers. That was very good news!

Eglos showed me how to cut open the demons and remove the spleen. Inside the spleen was a gold nugget. A single nugget was not worth very much, but 9 of them, my share, was a sizable reward for my work. We dragged the corpses to the side of the road and left them for the scavengers that would be along that night.

That was the end of our encounters that day with anybody or anything, but we did not come to a town where we could spend the night. We stopped when we came to a small stream and moved back a little way into the woods. We followed the stream to a small clearing where we made camp.

One of the things that Eglos had in her fanny pack was a tent. It seemed quite small to me, but I was assigned the duty of setting it up while Eglos fixed us a supper. To my amazement, even though it was quite small on the outside, there was plenty of room for two people on the inside. That was another of the great things about magic.

Anyway, Eglos had said that we were both going to occupy the tent that night, so I had laid out the two sleeping mats a foot or so apart. Eglos called me to supper before she had time to inspect my work inside the tent, and we ate an excellent supper just as the sun was setting. Dammit, I was going to have to check on what Closos had stowed in his fanny pack that I was now using.

There was nothing to cleaning up after supper so we went to the tent. Eglos was appalled when she saw the way I had laid out the sleeping mats. Her face clouded up and she looked like she was on the verge of crying. “Linc, what have I done to turn you away from me? Was it something that happened today, or was it something that I did at supper? I thought that we were going to fuck tonight, but it looks like you have turned that down.”