War God for Hire- Gladiator by David Burke (books under 200 pages .TXT) 📕

the far side. Heck, his first studio apartment when he got called up to the bigs had been larger than this.

Kyle looked at her, trying not to be intimidating. She immediately babbled at him; but once again, her words made no sense.

Ild’engel came to his rescue, though, and translated for him. “She is asking if you need anything.”

He took another look around the small home. He might be a fierce competitor, but he’d be damned if he was gonna take food from those who didn’t have any to spare. So, Kyle asked, “How do I ask her where I can find work? I better figure out how to make money before I starve to death.”

Ild’engel’s voice sounded genuinely perplexed at that point. “Wait. You want to do menial tasks? Didn’t you understand anything that I said about being the reincarnated war god?”

Noticing that Freja wasn’t leaving, but just kept staring at him, Kyle thought, “Look, we can talk about this in a minute, but just tell me how to ask her that.”

After practicing a couple of times, Kyle managed, haltingly, to get the words of his question out. Unfortunately, Freja looked even more appalled than Ild’engel had sounded. She rushed into her house and prostrated herself at his feet. Her forehead was pressed to the dirt floor and she was visibly trembling.

“She thinks you are unhappy with their hospitality and fears you will smite them all.”

“Dammit, why would she think that?” Kyle demanded of the voice in his head. By this point, he was beyond trying to decide if the voice actually existed or not and was just plain angry. He knew that she had something to do with this.

Probably whatever she had told him to say last night. He cursed himself. Kyle had known at the time it was a fool’s move to repeat words he didn’t understand, but he was completely dependent on her.

“I had you recite a very traditional invocation from the gods which implied that you are a messenger of the gods, come with dire news. It is true enough, in a way.”

“Fine, but we are going to have to talk about this. Now you need to help me clean this up. I need food and a place to stay. For that I need money and for that I need a job. I need to learn the language, too, unless you want to keep translating everything for me. I assume they need day laborers here too,” Kyle thought fiercely.

“Krig would have never—”

“I’m not Krig and we don’t have time for this shit. This woman is literally groveling at my feet,” he snapped, interrupting her.

“That is what mortals do before their betters. Fine, I am bound to you for now. So, I will see how this plays out.”

With that, the voice in his head coached him through a conversation. It was awkward and time consuming, but Kyle was pretty sure he was picking up some idea of a few basic words, and maybe even some of the ways they conjugated verbs. Other than baseball, linguistics had been one of his few interests; he might as well put it to use.

The end result was that while Freja was still very nervous, she sent one of her daughters running to get Lucas. When he returned, the two talked very rapidly and Kyle’s virtually non-existent understanding of the language wasn’t enough to pick up a word or two that he heard.

He was then forced to convince the man that he truly wanted to go and do manual labor, just as he had with the woman. It was amusing, in a frustrating sort of way, but Kyle figured he was either gonna laugh or pull his own hair out.

Eventually, Lucas agreed to lead him to the quarry where he worked and ask if the foreman needed any more work.

Kyle borrowed a few more words from Ild’engel and bid Freja adieu before he ducked and squeezed through the door frame. As they walked through the town, he began to get a sense of just how big he was. If he was anything like Krig had been, he must be nearly eight feet tall, but also wide and imposing. People scurried out of his way.

“As they should. It is only right. Even those with very little ability can sense the amount of essence that is oozing out of you. That is one of the first things I am going to have to teach you, how to contain that, otherwise one of your siblings will eventually take note, even if you are but a shadow of your former self,” Ild’engel said inside his head.

Kyle chose to ignore her. He was more one for taking in his setting and wanted to learn his own way around. He paid careful attention to the path they took and took special notice of the places where there were street vendors selling various goods.

At least he was dressed in a thick tunic of some type, with trousers and sturdy, if plain, boots. Kyle couldn’t help but wonder how it was that he appeared like this, instead of in a fancy suit of armor and sporting a bunch of weapons. He mused that this wasn’t a very good look for a war god, but then again, he didn’t actually know all that much about fighting. Sure, he had been in his share of scraps as a kid, but after finding baseball, he had been so single-minded in his focus that nothing else mattered.

When they reached the edge of the city, he saw two interesting areas outside the walls. No one stopped them, as they walked through the open gates to leave the city. Kyle noted, off to his right, what appeared like nothing so much as the Coliseum in Rome on top of a large, flat topped hill. It had the oval shape of a modern football stadium but appeared to be made of gleaming, white stone.

He didn’t get much time to look at it though, as Lucas led them