Chapter 4

When the goat man fell, Io came running up to me and commented, “It looked to me like your new weapon worked like the best of charms. Do you have a name for it yet?”

“Yeah, it just dawned on me to call it Demon Bane, meaning that it is death to all demons. Of course, I am including monsters as well, but putting them in the name would have made it too long.” We both laughed at that and turned to relieving the goat man of his fanny pack.

Io said, “Oh, look, Jim. You have hit the jackpot! There must be at least five gold coins in here and a handful of silver and copper coins, too. However, I think that there is nothing else of value here.”

“Okay, let us take a look at the goat man that you killed.” As we walked toward the body, Io commented that we should hurry before the body vaporizes, because that was also when the fanny pack would vanish. That was news to me, but I didn’t say anything. Io unfastened the fanny pack just as this body vaporized, and she commented, “I was glad that I was not holding the fanny pack when the body disappeared.”

“What would have happened then. Would your hand have also disappeared?”

“I do not know, and I sure am not going to try to find out by experiment!” Okay, I could agree with that.

There was nothing attractive about the two spears or anything else that the goat men had, so we just left them where they were to vaporize. We walked of in the direction that the goat men had come from. A scan of the plains had not shown anything that looked like it needed investigating, so we just arbitrarily picked a direction and started to walk that way. We got about half a mile from our last stop when we saw something worth looking into.

There was smoke rising from a house and suddenly a burst of flame. That suggested that there would be demons there and probably monsters, too. We began to trot toward the burning house, and that was when we saw several demons standing around, and I could see two of the buffalo-like monsters there with them. I could not imagine why the huge beasts would hang around with demons, but what did I know?

We were afraid that the demons and monsters would leave before we could get there, so we broke into a run. We were both wearing boots, and the solid, but flexible sole made running easy. I am not sure why it was, but I had no trouble pulling away from Io, then it dawned on me. Her weapon was designed for shooting at a distance, where as my weapons were all close contact weapons, so I had to be close to my victims, and Io was better suited by being some distance from her targets.

Io stopped running and pointed one of her crossbows at a buffalo monster. She let fly with a string of shots. The monster collapsed to the ground after five shots. I didn’t know if that was a routine requirement or not, but I was glad to see one of the huge beasts out of the fight.

By this time, I had reached a goat man, and I reacted before he did. Why was that? He certainly had no trouble seeing me coming toward him. Well I did not stop to contemplate the question, but snapped my wrist to use Demon Bane to cut off the demon’s head. Okay, one down with at least six more to go. As far as I was concerned, I had established the efficacy of Demon Bane, so now I used it or my sword to dispatch each goat man as I came to him, whichever was more convenient.

I rounded the corner of the building and standing in front of me was one of those eight-foot-tall, 900 pound demons. It had just risen out of the ground. I knew that because I could see the hole closing under the demon. I wondered if it were here to counteract Io or me, or maybe both of us. Just as I was thinking that, I saw out of the corner of my eye another of the buffalo monsters collapse to the ground.

Oh, damn, I had ignored that giant demon for too long. Apparently it could move much faster than I had given it credit for. Anyway, its morning stars were coming at me from opposite sides, and I was just about to be sandwiched between the two. They were moving so fast that I had no chance to dodge from between them. I was flabbergasted when the two morning stars came together with me between them, and the two crushing heads shattered instead of smashing me to a gruesome pulp.

It looked like my latest ring was doing its job better than expected, even without a diamond to boost its abilities. Of course, I could not move for a moment after being struck by the huge morning stars, but I was waked from my momentary shock by the ludicrousness of the expression on the giant’s face when its morning stars shattered. Obviously, that had never happened before to this monster, and I made sure that it would never happen again by using my sword with its longer blade to cut off the head of the giant.

I happened to look through the open door of the cottage, and I saw a small chest in the way of a trail of fire. I ran into the cottage, grabbed one of the chest’s handles, and pulled the chest out of the cottage just as the roof fell in. Man, that was a close call!

I opened the chest and found it to contain a money bag containing I knew not how many coins, but I certainly was not going to let the demons confiscate it. Also, there were a pair of gloves and a pair of bracers in the chest. I removed those three items from the chest and dropped them into my fanny pack. They could be examined later.

Shortly after that, I felt a thud against the back of my head, and I spun around to see what was there. Dammit, I had been hit on the back of the head by a club swung by a demon that was a skeleton, but dressed in humanoid working clothes. It was even wearing a hat with a broad brim. I didn’t know what to make of this creature, but I did resent being struck from behind by something that had sneaked up on me.

Well, I countered the blow of the club by administering one of my own with Demon Bane. As expected, the strike shattered the body of the skeleton, and it did scream as it flew apart. It had no lungs nor throat structure, so where did that scream come from? I was beginning to think that Isbardia was inhabited by a lunatic or else by a child having fun with its toys.

Uh-oh, I happened to think of Io and to wander what she was up to. I certainly hoped that she was okay, but I wasn’t sure because I hadn’t seen her in some time. Now that I was outside of the cottage, I could see that there were no living demons left for us to fight. I saw that Io was scurrying around snatching the fanny packs from the dead monsters as fast as she could. It dawned on me that I should help her before the bodies began to vaporize. If they did, we were going to lose any number of goodies because I was daydreaming instead of doing my part to help Io.

Pretty soon, I saw that we had covered the area where there were dead demons and monsters, so it was time to gather up the things that Io and I had looted and stow them in our fanny packs until we could look at and sort them later. Just as I thought that, I began to hear poofs of moving air, and the bodies of the dead demons and monsters began to vaporize.

We walked in an arbitrary direction again as we left the cottage. Not for the first time I wished for a map. Figuring out which way to go would be a lot easier if there were a map. At least we would know where to find the houses and small settlements. That was of interest because the demons and monsters tended to gravitate toward the settled areas. Anyway, I was very annoyed at the lack of maps. I figured that it would do no good to mention this to Pete, but I was going to do it anyway just on principle.

We climbed a small hill and could see in the distance what looked like a moderate sized settlement, possibly as much as a small town. At least, we should find more of the enemy around there. That settlement looked to be about a mile and a half to the northwest. At the rate we were going, we should get there in about 30 minutes. Of course, that time was assuming that we did not get into any fights, but we were not going to avoid any. After all, that was precisely why we were out there in the field. It didn’t take us long to come across a road leading us where we wanted to go. The walking was easier on the road, so we took that. Also, we both felt that we were more likely to run into our quarry if we walked along the road.

We walked steadily and had almost reached the settlement when we spotted a veritable army of skeletons armed with bows and possibly fire or lightning arrows. They could have plain non-augmented arrows but somehow that did not seem to be very likely. Io lamented the fact that we did not have some breastworks to shelter behind as we fought with the skeletons, but we would just have to cope with fighting pretty much in the open.

It made no difference to me because I had to charge in and get close and personal with the skeletons, but Io with her crossbow could stand off and fight. The skeletons could do the same, but most of them seemed to prefer to get close during a fight. That didn’t make much sense from the skeleton’s point of view, but if that were the way they wanted to fight, I was happy to let them have their way.

I couldn’t get an accurate count of our opposition, but I estimated that there could be as many as 100 skeletons in this mob, and every one of them would be happy to kill us both. In fact, that was what they were going to try to do. They had just seen us, and here they came. We were lucky to find an area of loose sand which was bothersome to the skeletons because there was nothing to keep the sand out of their joints, and that seemed to be painful for them. We didn’t have that problem with our flesh and skin as a covering, so the sand gave us a small advantage, and I was happy to get any sort of edge that I could find.

We managed to situate ourselves so that Io was on the opposite side of the sand from the skeletons, and they would be shooting at each other across about 40-60 yards of sand. She was happy with that, so I did not argue. Meanwhile, I waded into the sand so that the skeletons would have to walk in it to get to me. I was sure that my magic ring and my special leather armor would do a good job of protecting me from the skeleton’s arrows. I had yet to find out what magic, fire or lightning, had been added to their arrows, but I was not worried because I had protection against both.