Philip Palmer - Hell Ship

“What has happened here?” I asked, amazed.

“I am now,” said Sharrock proudly, “King of the Kindred.”

“It was a hard fought battle,” bragged Sharrock.

“It was indeed, sire,” said Gilgara, the former Kindred leader, who was now, despite his appalling injuries which made it so hard for him to walk, Sharrock’s loyal second in command.

“Picture the scene,” said Sharrock dramatically, “there was I! I was-”

“I do not,” I said dryly, “wish to picture the scene. Big fight; lots of blood; you won.”

“I bested the Kindred leader in single combat!”

“And why does that qualify you to be the leader?” I said angrily.

Sharrock was flummoxed. “It proves I am the mightiest-”

“It proves you are the best at hurting! That’s all. The best at brawling with a stick or sword or with bare fists. Does that make you a leader?” I was so enraged, my cape became erect and my body inflated.

“Yes,” said Sharrock. “And next, I shall unify the tribes. There are bipeds like myself living at the foot of the Further Mountains who do not acknowledge Gilgara’s authority, but rather serve the tribes of renegade and nomadic Kindred. I will go and fight these nomad giants and make them honour my leadership, and then free those slaves too.”

“You would do that?”

“I must,” said Sharrock.

I had nothing more to say to him.

By now, I was nursing a terrible rage. I had helped this creature, comforted him when he was vulnerable; and now he was aiming to become a dictator.

But what could I do to stop him? The answer was: nothing! Unless of course I was willing to challenge him to a battle, and fight and defeat him. For then he would be compelled to bend to my will.

And this of course, I could do easily; so easily it was laughable. For all his warrior pride, Sharrock was utterly puny and minuscule compared to me. I could defeat him with a single blow, or swallow him like an insect, or crush him and smash him under my feet whilst barely noticing he was there.

But I would never be willing to fight Sharrock. For I was fond of him. I thought of him as a friend. And I could not bear to hurt him.

And, too, I was fearful that in the heat of battle, I might end up hurting Sharrock so severely that he could not heal, and he would end up crippled or even dead. For violence is a madness; once you allow it to possess you, it is not easy to return to the ways of sanity.

And this was why I had, so many years ago, forsworn violence. After my two ghastly combats with Carulha, I had resolved never again to use brute force to achieve my goals.

I had been a monster twice; I would not be so a third time.

Fifty Kindred maidens came to me in the night, longing to possess my body; despite their giant size, they were beauteous indeed. But I sent them all away.

Ten warriors challenged me the next day, before I had broke my fast, and I declined them all. One of them sent a sly arrow aimed at my head and I was only just swift enough to snatch it from the air and smash his skull.

I was, in truth, not much enjoying my life as King of the Kindred. I had many responsibilities; underlings constantly pestered me for decisions about matters of which I knew nothing, and cared less; and all in all, I never had a moment to myself. I felt as if I had inadvertently adopted a country full of needy children. And I yearned for my days as a nomad with a loyal wife and a small family, who would happily fend for themselves whilst I went off adventuring.

Sai-ias was avoiding me now, I knew, and I regretted that sorely. For I had come to enjoy her company, despite her ghastly appearance and her vexing habit of sighing through her tentacles to betoken annoyance at me. And I did furthermore comprehend her unease; she feared no doubt I was becoming a dictator. Ha! No thought was further from my mind! Power for me was like sobriety for a Southern Tribesman; a state of being to be temporarily, and only briefly, endured.

I also saw the power of Sai-ias’s argument about the need for us to avoid violence whilst upon this already-violent world. For if we kept fighting with each other, how could we ever hope to fight and vanquish the Ka’un?

And yet I had been impelled to act. And as a result of my actions, there were no more slaves in my Kingdom. All the bipeds were now free.

Free? Whilst the Ka’un kept us confined in this unnatural habitat?

Yes, that irony did indeed trouble me. But I had done all I could.

Gilgara joined me after I had broke my fast that morning, and when I went tramping in the mountains, he followed me like a limping shadow. He was pathetically devoted to me now. I had beaten him in combat so I was his “master”; that was the way the Kindred thought.

It was however, I had to concede, an impressively well organised society. Instead of retreating to dismal cabins at night, the Kindred had used hull-metal tools to carve caves out of the smooth rocks of the artificial mountains; and they had installed artificial lights in each of these caves. Stories were told there; private caves were set aside for sexual congress; the larger caves were even decorated with artwork in what I recognised as a naive style; though abstract coloration was also a favoured mode.

The variety of biped species here was dazzling and extraordinary, but the physical similarities between the different species also startled me. The females all had breasts with nipples and haired love-niches (and since I was King, they often flaunted them at me) and loved to discuss the minutest details about the characters of others. Whereas the males all had cocks; and walked with a swagger; and wore groin-hides and capes and boots of hues which almost but did not quite match. The numbers of eyes varied, but all the smaller bipeds, and the Kindred too for that matter, had mouths and tongues and feet and hands and ears. Some creatures however had healed-up holes on their bellies where their mother’s cord had been cut, which I found exceeding strange.

I found many of the females attractive, but did not sleep with any. I found the males highly annoying; they were all so competitive, and whiny. And I realised I was missing the company of the giant sentients. Cuzco was a monster, but he was magnificent nonetheless. And Fray was a brute, but she inspired an awe in me, especially when she ran; that, to me, was true poetry. And Sai-ias-well. She was like no other creature I had ever met before.

But I had chosen my destiny; to teach the Kindred to respect the rights of others. And to forge the smaller bipeds into a proud and free and unified community of individuals loyal to a common cause.

If only the bastards weren’t so irritating.

For the Kindred were by instinct and nature supreme bullies. And the idiot smaller bipeds had actually chosen to enslave themselves! These stupid less-pride-than-a-warrior-who-fucks-his-own-scabbard creatures-how could they have done such a thing?

And yet, I supposed, in some ways the state of slavery simplified matters. For if you are a free spirit like myself, you will be constantly challenging the way things are.

But when the world is intolerable, and life is irrevocably unjust; might it be better, perhaps, to just blindly serve?

I could never pursue such a course myself of course. Nor could I truly condone the actions of these self-deluded fools. But in a curious way, I found I had acquired a sliver of compassion for my fellow bipeds and their frailties.

I was soul-pacing-restless though. I had fought and lost and fought and lost and finally fought and won a glorious battle; and now there were no more battles to fight.

I thought again about the biped slaves still living at the foot of the Further Mountains. I had told Sai-ias I would liberate them, and I resolved to do so; because at least that would give me an excuse to leave the village for a while.