The man dangled a blood stained battle ax over his head. With a quick, jerking swing, the cleaver blade connected topside with a hooded figure's skull, splitting his cranium to the jaw. Blood gushed out in a vapourous spatter. The figure seized, a wet gurgle rose from his severed nape, and he fell slump to the cave floor. Bone and bits of brain were flayed sideways.

	Thele looked up, his chest red and heaving.  "Is there any other that wishes to cross arms and come to blows?" he bellowed.

	His eyes scanned the cavern. The men surrounding him wore black tunics and loose cowls. In their hands, they held backswords shining like polished silver in the torchlight. These curved instruments, once held high as they chased him up the mountain and into the tunneled burrows, were now wavering at the pointed tips. They looked to each other, unsure at his words. They muttered amongst themselves and a few gazed at the ground where a dozen bodies already laid butchered, soaking in puddles of scarlet clay at their feet.

	For a moment, Thele felt as though he had gotten to them. That the men would run off, routed by their losses. Then one of them spoke out, more resolute than his brothers. He stood a head taller than the rest, guarding the tunnel entrance. His voice was like liquid poison. "Phiaos wishes all things in the material dead. We are her Agents, the Agents of Phiaos, and the servants of the Priests of Phiaos! We shall not come undone in our holy mission and our holy war. Let die the flames of the unclothe! Este, Esta, Estu!"

	"Este, Esta, Estu!" The Agents stirred. They rallied with the speaker and began to clamor, barking in tongues or hissing like coiled gutter snakes. As they loomed closer on him, they prodded with limp thrusts of steel and swings of steel, bringing Thele nearer to the rock wall at his back.

	"Kill him," the speaker grinned. "Kill him and serve Phiaos' will and honor your oath!"

	Thele grunted, baring his teeth as they approached. He crouched down in a stance and he readied his weapon, his fingers knuckle white on the ax shaft. The sweat pouring off his body glistened like sheened lamp oil. He could feel their eyes on him. Something was different now than before. These men were changed, transformed. He saw it in the way they moved and how they circled like a pack of ravening wolves, ready to strike at any heart-pounding moment.

	Thele lept before they got the chance to completely surround him. Once, twice he hewed through flesh. Crimson blood strings flew out in arcs and severed arms wheeled through the air, landing with a clunker somewhere in the shadows. Men screamed and ran or fell to the floor after him, clutching for phantom limbs as heads rolled like thrown balls and blue guts vomited out from slashed bellies.

	He swept away scores of them. Bodies fell to the wayside and mottles of dust rose and choked the air and everywhere there was red painted carnage. Yet more charged. It was as if they were propelled to him in a sleepless trance. Over and over, he chopped and blood poured and men grappled upon him and he would crunch their fore lobes with the butt head of his ax and all around him the men were screaming or letting slip raged curses like a stumbling horde of meek and hungry fools.

	It didn't matter how many he killed. They were all replaced by another. Soon, he would be overwhelmed by a mob of mad animals.

	Then, at the back of the cave, past a sea of bobbing robes, he saw the leader standing, rigid as a metal worked statue. Thele studied him through the frantic motions of his swingarm and the flickering flame light. The man's eyes were shining from his shadowed hood as though they were falling stars in the void. He observed as his lips shifted, whispering.  Every sound he uttered produced an effect on the men like strange magic. Some jerked upright and swung blindly, while others shot back from the crowd and awaited for windows to strike at him.

	Thele recognized what was happening. He had seen such things only twice before, in lands far to the north. Old phrases and Godless words that enflamed the soul to devil horrors.

	With a bent elbow, he rose an arm above his head. With his free hand, he balled his fist, shattering the face of any man that came too close towards him. Taking aim, he breathed in, steadied his body, and hurled the shaft handle. With a whistle, the hatchet flew through the air. All ducked away save one.

	The great big chopper struck, digging deeply into breast muscle. Rib bones cracked and splintered and the leader jerked sideways in surprise. He took two steps back, his body swaying in an invisible wind. Liquid dripped from his hood. With a choking whimper, the speaker fell to his knees, reached out a hand to his chest, and then fell rearward.

	The men became deathly still. Some blinked in confusion. Others stood dumbly looking about themselves. Slowly, they all turned. A gasped wail arose from them.

	With their eyes transfixed on the body, Thele continued to attack them. He stole a knife from a turned waist belt and sliced open the neck artery of the one who owned it. He rolled and stabbed two more men in quick succession. The rest looked back at him in awe, in fear. They began to run away.

	He went after them, all going off into the tunnels. A sorrier lot he had scarcely seen. They were bounding away as though long-armed death were nipping at their heels, faster than any heathens fearing for their lost souls. Some stomped or crawled at the ground on all fours like cockeyed apes, trying to escape from him. Their nails bent outwards or cracked like glass as they clawed at the ground.  Any that fell behind and came too close, he stabbed dead.

	After cutting down several men, Thele ran up a bend and saw sunlight reflecting off the limestone walls. An exit from the mountain.  He heard the men ahead cry out in relief. They cried, and he heard them jumping. He turned in time to hear their prayers turn to screams, their legs kicking in the air out of the open cave mouth. The thudded whack of flesh striking stone echoed into the corridors a moment later.

	Slowing, he came upon the hole: a lipped edge, razor-thin as though the mountain had been sliced through the middle. Below was the bottom of a canyon, a hundred feet falling. He peered over the abyss and watched as several flailing bodies broke against boulders, busting apart like ripe melons.

	All gone save him. The fools.

	Thele stared. Soon, he began to laugh. Sweat dripped from his brow like hot wax, and his chest heaved, and his lungs crackled. Slain by their own stubbornness. So much for their gods. He looked down at the heaped mess, blood running down the scree obelisks like spiderwebbed veins.

	He turned away and went back for his ax.

	The tunnels were long and split off at several points. Only by following the pitter platter of urine and dropped blood did Thele arrive back to the gruesome scene. When he got there, he saw that his ax was still stuck in the leader's shattered chest, its handle sticking out as though it were an embedded spear.

	He went for it.

	Suddenly, the hair on his back burned. Nerve fire prickled his skin. He heard the dull clatter of rustled leather. He waited a heart beating moment and then twisted, dodging a bladed thrust from the shadows. Out then stepped a man, missing his left arm: a trickling stump. An agent still left fighting, the dehodded face contorted with folded rage. He swung again with a battle holler.

	Pulling a carver knife from his ankle sheath, Thele rolled away from the swing. He pranced back, stood, and twisted the razor blade in his hand and hucked it. The shard of metal flew in the air and pierced the man's eyelid, lodged up to the hilt. The one armed man went down wailing, clutching his brow with a trembling hand.

	"Damn you!" he hissed. "Damn you damn you damn you!..." he panted, his body trembling. "Damn you! What-what is your name so that I may curse your spirit to Phiaos?"

	Thele knelt down to him. He wrapped his fingers around the knife grip. "You are not the first to damn me, man or god."

	He pushed palmwise against the man's forehead and yanked the knife out from the socket, pulling with it strings of purple vein and eyeball. The man screamed until Thele cut his neck with the same blade. Everything was silent once again as the head fell cradled to the side.