Battle on the Mountain of the Gods

Most people probably wouldn’t consider this short story to be “Horror” and I  may agree in some ways.  However, horror itself is an emotion born in human minds, and, though this story may not be full of ghouls, monsters and blood, I believe the battle between a person and his/her own “gods” is just as horrifying as any beasts.

Horath was a region nestled in the mountains of old, and beneath the shadow of the greatest of these mountains, lay the small village of Orgal.  Considered by many as the “people of the Gods,” the Orgalians were dedicated to a life of worshiping their deities, and none were as dedicated as Rogda.

Once a great warrior, Rogda had now retired his ax and shield and had committed himself to a life of prayer and thanksgiving to the Gods who had kept him alive through all of his past battles.  He spent several of each morning’s hours in the temple at the base of the Mountain of the Gods and, up until her pregnancy, he had spent them there with his wife Agdetha.

Agdetha’s beauty was known throughout Horath, but no man could ever feel about her the way Rogda did.  He loved her more than anything below the peak of the mountain and spent every minute, that he wasn’t praising the Gods, praising her.   He was soft with her and, therefore, understanding of her when she no longer wished to spend the morning hours at the temple with him.  After all, the various bends and bows of the worship ceremonies were far too strenuous for a woman in her late months of pregnancy.

It was during the start of the frost season when, kneeling towards the great mountain, Rogda spoke one of his many prayers of thanks within the temple walls.  “Thank you Lords and Lordesses for the many things you have given me, ” he spoke, “and with your blessing, I ask that my first child be born healthy and full of love for each of you, and for his mother and I.”  He turned and gave a thankful nod to the priest, and then to the parents of Agdetha, who had been silently praying behind him. Before they could nod in return, however, a young man, Agdetha’s nephew, came running into the temple, smelling of smoke.

“You must come quick Rogda, your hut is burning!”

“And where is my wife, young man?!” he questioned, already rushing to the temple’s double doors.

“She cannot be found, sir,” the boy could do no more than stare at the floor and gasp for breath as he spoke this news.

Upon arriving to his hut, he found it surrounded by villagers and smoldering, a pile of ash on the earth.  He looked desperately around for his beloved Agdetha, but found her nowhere.  So, summoning the courage of his warrior past, and whispering a quick prayer to the Gods, he dove into the ashes and began to dig.

He did not feel the burns forming on his hands and legs as he dug, he felt nothing at all except for a sense of duty for the task at hand, until he found her.  Buried where their marital bed once was, lay the skeleton of the most beautiful woman Horath, and the world, had ever known.  Rogda felt his chest collapse as his eyes fell upon the skeleton’s  hands, which were wrapped around the bones of a prenatal child at it’s midsection, his prenatal son.

For hours, Rogda paced around the ashes, carrying the two sets of bones, which were held intact by the few pieces of charred flesh that the fire failed at destroying.  He wept, he yelled and he shivered in front of the audience of Orgalians who had continued to gather there, but he did not pray.

Finally, he rested the bones where he had found them, and stood in front of the villagers.  He grimaced when he realized they were all, including the parents of his diseased wife and child, staring at the holy peak of the mountain in silent prayer.

“Today I asked the Gods for their blessing in bringing me a healthy child, full of love for them, and the Gods destroyed everything that means anything to me.” He held is posture and gaze strong as he spoke to the audience, but could not yet bring himself to look upon Agdetha’s parents.

“I lost not only the woman I love, but my unborn child as well and, in an act of cowardice and disrespect, the Gods also burned away my ax and shield! So i ask, who among you will spare me a weapon, so that I may climb the Mountain of the Gods and defeat them in combat?! ”

The silent crowd instantly became a sea of whispers and mumbles, but no one spoke directly to Rogda. Not until the priest made his way on top of a stone wall to address him.

“My son, fires are common at this dry time of year.  It is pure blasphemy to accuse the Gods of such horror,” he shouted, waving his arms for all the crowd to see.

Rogda ignored the priest’s speech, and walked directly in front of the grieving parent’s of his lost love.  “Not even you, sir, will grant me a weapon to avenge your daughter’s murder?”

Agdetha’s father’s eyes fell to the floor, and Rogda walked away from him.

“I will defeat them with nothing more than the burned hands of a grieving husband then,” he said calmly, and stepped towards the base of the mountain.

Once he had made it far enough from the crowd that he could no longer hear them cursing him, he allowed himself to begin to shed tears again. “Mourn as you travel, but regain your anger when you arrive,” he thought to himself, and then noticed the sound in the dead bushes around him.

“Whoever follows me, know this, I am on a quest for vengeance and if you are here to end it, I will end you.  Show yourself!”

From the bushes came the young boy, Agdetha’s nephew, who had given him the news of his blazing hut hours earlier.

“I’m here to accompany you, Rogda,” he spoke timidly, “please believe that, although I could do nothing to stop the fire, I feel incredible guilt for your loss.”

“My boy, you have nothing to feel guilt about, it is them who should apologize,” he said to the boy, gesturing towards the peak of the great mountain, “I cannot allow you to come with me. A battle with the Gods is something a man must do alone.”

“Sir, they say that only four men have ever attempted to climb to the holy peak in order to defeat the Gods and none have succeeded,” the boy trailed off and looked at the earth at his feet.

“Believe me, I will not fail, boy.  Now return to your family, they are mourning.”

“At least take these sir,” the boy said, removing a short sword from his belt and a fur coat from his back, “good luck to you Rogda.”

 

For several days Rogda climbed the mountain.  He fought the cold, the wind, and his own mind.  He slept very little, huddled under the fur coat against the mountain’s hard flesh.  He ate nothing, but drank from melted snow in his palms.  He walked, he climbed and he thought.

Finally, in the early morning of his eleventh day of climbing, he came upon a site different than the blank white and grey he had grown so used to seeing.  In front of him was a cleared area, free from the boulders and ice mounds that the rest of the harsh mountain offered.  Against the mountains side was a smoothed out area, almost like a flat wall of a home, and against this wall sat four frozen skeletons, each with its own weapon and armor.  Above them, carved into the stone of the cleared area, were the words “TURN BACK!”

“They intend to scare me from this battle with a gruesome warning?!” Rogda thought, filling with rage as he realized that he was only a short climb from the peak. “I spent my life in praise of you! You took my happiness and I won’t be frightened away!” He began the climb to the home of the Gods.

It took only several minutes of climbing before he felt his hand hit flat ground, and he knew he had made it.  He stood and drew the sword that the young boy had given him.

Every snow-filled gust of wind appeared as a god to him, and he raised the blade to each of them.  He took swipes into the white abyss, and never felt a single landed blow.  His heart raced, his mind was in battle mode.  His eyes darted around the peak until, finally, they rested on the snow below him.

He examined the snow and realized he was looking at his own tracks.  He had already covered nearly every inch of the small peak, violently thrashing and hitting nothing.  He stood in cold realization for nearly an hour, before he climbed back down the face of the peak.

When he arrived at the clearing, he removed his fur and rested it evenly over the laps of the four skeletons.  His eyes moved to the warning, which he now knew wasn’t placed there by any gods, and, before he threw it from the mountain’s edge, he used the short sword to carve a message into the stone.

He rested his tired back against the cold skin of the mountain, and became the fifth skeleton below the message, which now read:

“TURN BACK!  We are all alone.”