Chapter 264 - Blood Gods in Exile part 9

We began skinning our prey after feeding. We took the brains, too, so that we could use the oils to preserve the hides. By some strange coincidence, the brain of every animal renders up enough oil to treat the entire skin, but before you can oil the skins, they must be dried and all the fat and hair scraped off them. We had soaked the skins in a mixture of wood ash and water, then stretched them upon a wooden frame I erected at the mouth of the cave, but the skins have to dry for several days before you can process them any further, so we were quite naked when Bhorg returned to our cave in the Urals with his new friends.

We smelled the mortals long before they arrived, of course, but did not go out to meet them. We had decided to allow Bhorg to bring them to us, still not certain what it was that he intended to do with them. We did not think he had tricked them into following him just so we could devour them. There was plenty of animal life in the mountains to satisfy our bloodthirst.

"He must mean for us to make blood drinkers of them," Zenzele surmised. "Or perhaps they want to ally themselves with us."

"We shall see," I replied, but I was terribly curious, and more than a little apprehensive.

They arrived shortly after nightfall.

We heard their voices ring out in the forest, drawing slowly nearer, and then they were just outside, and Bhorg told them to enter, that his mistress awaited them.

Zenzele and I rose as the nomads stepped into our shelter. We met them side-by-side, our eyes shining in the firelight, our naked flesh gleaming like polished stone. The jaws of all six men dropped to their chests. Almost as one, they fell to their knees. Had I not Shared with Zenzele, I would not have known their words, but their language was familiar to her, and so it was familiar to me.

"It is the Mother and the Father!" the one named Hammon gasped.

His companions echoed the sentiment, their voices high with awe and fear.

"Bhorg spoke the truth!"

"It is the Mother of Heaven!"

I had to access my Shared memories to familiarize myself with the mythological deities they had confused us with. The Mother and the Father were the gods of the nomadic mammoth hunters of the Eastern Dominions, a people called the Orda, which in their tongue meant "walkers" or "wanderers". Like Ilio's people, the Denghoi, the Orda had nearly gone extinct along with the giants they once hunted.

Zenzele appeared amused, but I scowled. Walking toward them, I said, "Get off your knees! We are not your Mother and Father!"

Their leader, Hammon, glanced toward Zenzele, fearful and confused. "But… your woman…"

I knew why they'd reacted as they had. Their pictorial representations of the Mother and Father featured a female figure drawn in black and a male figure drawn in white. Their Mother was the goddess of the heavens, the starry night sky, and their Father was the god of the earth, a being of white stone.

It passed through my mind that I could use their religious ecstasy to my own ends, but I rejected the thought. I could not abide being called a god. I did not know then that in order to defeat Khronos I would have to accept the mantle of godhood. Not just accept it, but embrace it.

"We are blood gods, yes, but not the Creators you've mistaken us for," I explained, trying to be a little more civil to the frightened mortals.

As Hammon and his men rose uncertainly, I turned my attention to Bhorg.

"Why did you bring these men here?" I asked.

Bhorg leaned against the wall of the cave and crossed his arms. "I have brought men to help us make war on the God King. Why else do you think I brought them here? You cannot expect the four of us to defeat Khronos and all of his warriors. You said so yourself the night we escaped from Fen'Dagher. We must raise an army to fight him. Well—" and he gestured to the Orda, "—I have brought you your first recruits! I promised to make them immortal in exchange for their service."

Zenzele glanced at me expectantly. We had discussed just such a thing when Zenzele sensed Bhorg returning with the mortals. It would have to be done. In order to defeat Khronos, we would need many immortal warriors. But now that the time had come to embark on our war with the God King, to start raising my army to challenge him, I was hesitant. I did not wish to curse these foolish mortals as I had been cursed.

I addressed the men. "You know what such a thing entails?"

Hammon's throat pulsed as he swallowed. "Yes. As we journeyed through the mountains, Bhorg told us how you will make us into gods."

"You will thirst for blood. You will crave it every moment of your waking lives. It will drive you mad at times."

"We will have your strength, your speed. The giant one told us so," Hammon countered. "We will skip across the clouds as if they were stones in a pond, see in complete darkness like the great cats, hear the flapping of a fly's wings. And we will be immortal. We will never grow old, never get sick, and we will never die."

"Your lifespan will be greatly increased," I said. "If you are lucky, you may become an Eternal like Zenzele and I. It will be impossible to destroy your body if the ebu potashu makes you thus. But the price is high, and you may be killed when we wage our war on Khronos. He is powerful, and he has many warriors at his command."

Hammon glanced back at his men, then shrugged. "Grasp for immortality, or starve slowly on the flatlands? It is not much of a choice. So far as I know, we are the last of the Orda. Our children are dead, and our women have all run away. But if we become gods, we can preserve the memory of our people until the end of time. Perhaps that is why the Mother and Father led us to you. Perhaps the fates are not as cruel as we believed."

I grinned bitterly. "Be not deceived, mortal. The Fates are cruel. The Fates are nothing if not cruel."