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God of the Hunted
by Taz
Author's notes: Inspired (sorta) by the Xena ep "Old Ares Had A Farm."
"Put that dirty thing in my mouth? No way!"
The Mortal concept of food was a little hard to stomach to a being used to living on smoke and incense, but eventually he got it -- and even learned to grow his own.
It turned out that he had a knack for farming and the garden outside the cabin door bloomed. That is, it bloomed until the fatal morning he went to pick a salad and discovered his neat rows of parsley, lettuce and carrots had been decimated in the night by some wanton criminal who had tasted every plant and, yet, consumed only the sweetest and the juiciest!
With his tracker's eye he examined the prints and the spoor the marauder had left behind. It was easy to identify the perpetrator. Rabbits! "This means War!" he vowed.
He was back in his natural element, strategizing and executing a campaign. And, yes, there were plenty of enemy combatants captured and killed and he took great satisfaction in making well flavored stews and lining his mittens with their hides. But no matter what tactics he employed, each new morning revealed more gnawed vegetables.
He began to detect a malign and malefic intelligence behind the assaults. No common member of the Family Rodentia (Anachronism!) could have outwitted the cunning traps he designed or evaded the fences he built (they had bits of metal that banged together and made a fearful noise) or withstood the smelly herbs he planted between the rows.
Out there, somewhere, was an enemy almost worthy of him.
Rejecting poison as a coward's weapon (besides, he had this primitive god thing about eating your enemy), his genius came up a Secret Super Weapon, a compound bow of laminated horn. (Okay! Okay! The Parthians had been using them for years.) And tracked the foe to a lair beneath a sticker bush, one chill morning. He stood above the hole, poised and alert. The weapon was drawn. The arrow was pointed.
And, behind him, a voice said, "Eh, what's up, Doc?"
09/25/06
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