Michael Mathias - Kings, Queens, Heroes, and Fools

Krenson Rhone, tired and weary from his two day ride, came to the gates of Odava’s keep with high expectations, and even higher hopes. It didn’t seem to bother him that no one asked who he was as he entered. The men there greeted him pleasantly and escorted him to the overlord’s dining hall. It came as a great shock to Krenson that Lord Pa’Stryn’s headless body sat at the head of the table.

King Jarrek promptly stepped out of the darkness with a malicious snarl showing beneath his red-wolf skull helmet. He chuckled just before he hacked off Krenson’s sword hand. After gathering as much information as he could, Jarrek took his head too. He put the body with Pa’Stryn’s men’s corpses in the cellar. By dawn the keep was empty save for the carrion. The hundred and thirty-five slaves that had been held there were escorted into Valleya and freed. Then, Jarrek and a few of his men delivered their fourth chest to King Ra’Gren.

Ta’Ken just happened to be at court the day the fourth chest arrived. He was in the middle of telling the King about his consortium’s generous bounty. Ta’Ken almost laughed when Krenson Rhone’s head was pulled from the chest. His amusement ended when Lord Pa’Stryn’s came out next. In fact, he was appalled. Knowing that his own keep was now the closest to the Valleyan border and the farthest from O’Dakahn, he decided to up the bounty to a hundred thousand golden fangs.

The whole situation was getting out of hand. O’Dakahn was the profitable seaport cesspool city it had always been, but the other cities of Dakahn were getting edgy. The good folk, the merchants and crafters, the barrel makers and farmers, and especially the river men, were starting to wonder if they were truly protected by the lords they paid their tariffs to. Even the gambling and prostitution rings were losing custom. Ta’Ken had no intentions of losing his slaves to the Red Wolf. He hired a dozen bodyguards and two dozen more men to fortify his keep. Then he left O’Dakahn to go protect his home.

If Ta’Ken could have seen the look on King Ra’Gren’s face three days later when he pulled the tenth head King Jarrek sent him from the chest, he would have been mortified.

That day Ra’Gren began to fear. Holding Ta’Ken’s severed head in his lap, and hearing the state of disarray his kingdom was descending into, he decided to make a statement that even King Jarrek and his vigilantes could not ignore. It would be a statement that would put an end to all of it.

He summoned the main slave traders in the kingdom to his throne room and personally purchased from them a hundred of the youngest and most innocent Wildermont slaves available. The next day, in the vast trading square near O’Dakahn’s shipping center, King Ra’Gren had his hundred Wildermont innocents form a line. Every day, thousands upon thousands of people gathered there to hawk and trade their wares, but they were all cleared back for the spectacle. One by one Ra’Gren had his new slaves beheaded. After the last terrified little girl’s body collapsed at his blood-spattered feet, Ra’Gren had the hundred heads piled into a wagon and then staked a Wildermont flag in the mound.

“Leave this in the square as a reminder,” he ordered, as he and his retinue rode back toward the castle. “Anyone who tries to move it will join them.”

“ ‘… when Sorgisee first landed his ship at the mouth of the Pixie River, he thought his crew was the first to set foot in that land,’ ” Hyden read to them. They were sitting at the booth table in the ship’s little common room. Brady was lounging on the divan barely listening, and Oarly was in his cabin under the blankets. It had been a long two weeks at sea since they left the Island of Kahna. All of them, save for the dwarf, were getting restless.

“ ‘After exploring up the river Sorgisee found that he was wrong. A village of dwarves greeted them kindly, and though their languages differed, they communicated with hand signals and crude gestures. Further north they found the elves, who could speak to them in the common tongue of the age. The little folk danced at the elves’ feet and fluttered around them like butterflies. The elves told them that there were other men, far to the west, harsh and pale men who sought to own the land instead of share it. The elves also spoke of giants, men as tall as trees that ranged as far south as the Willdee… Willda…’ ”

“Wilder Mountains,” Phen said. “Your reading has improved,” the boy added encouragingly. “But could you read to yourself for a while. This is tedious work, especially on a rolling ship.”

Phen wasn’t being rude on purpose. Captain Trant had given him an old unused logbook. With his tongue held at the corner of his mouth, Phen was meticulously copying the foreign text of the old book he had found in the serpent’s lair into it. He wanted a copy he could look at and study that he didn’t have to worry about damaging.

“I think I’ve had enough reading for the day anyway,” Hyden said, not offended. “How many more days?” he asked Brady. Hyden had asked the question a dozen times already that day, and both Brady and Phen answered in exasperated unison.

“Four more days!”

Hyden laughed aloud, as much at himself as at them. “I’m going up,” he said. “Talon wants to stretch his wings, and I might just tag along.”

“Braggart,” Phen huffed jealously, but with a smile. “If you would let me wear my ring, I might just be able to see through the eyes of a hawk like you do.”

“Aye,” Hyden ruffled Phen’s hair. “And you might turn into a fat hairy gruek and try to bed Oarly as well.”

“Ewwww!” Phen made a sour face. “I’m not Gerard you know.”

“Aye,” Hyden responded seriously. “But I love you as if you were my brother, and if I would have kept the ring he found when he offered it to me he wouldn’t be where he is now.”

“Aye,” Phen dropped his head, now sorry for bringing up such a subject. The truth was he was sort of afraid of the ring he had found. Not afraid to keep it dangling next to the key on the silver chain around his neck, but afraid to slip a finger through its inviting hole.

“If Captain Trant is right, then in a few days, you might be able to start deciphering your book,” said Hyden as he started up the stairs.

“Do you really think it’s pirate code in the book?” Phen asked before Hyden could get out the door.

“It’s probably recipes for old fish wives,” Hyden said letting the door slam shut behind him.

Brady laughed from the divan. “Or it’s directions on how to get eaten by a sea serpent,” he said.

“I hope it’s a spell that tells me how to turn my wise ass friends into toads,” Phen said with a hopeful grin on his face.

“It would probably turn Oarly into a prince, then,” Brady joked.

They both laughed at that.

After the chuckle, Phen dipped his quill and went back to work. Brady resituated himself on the divan and went to sleep.

Hyden deftly climbed the mast. He shooed Babel out of the crow’s nest and made himself comfortable. The strange blue monkey hung around in the rigging for a while but soon disappeared from view. Talon was gliding alongside the ship and Hyden closed his eyes, seeking the hawkling’s vision. After a moment he changed his mind and tried to find Talon’s sight with his own eyes open, like he had been forced to do in Dahg Mahn’s trial. The sensation came to him easy enough and the spectral image of the world spread out before him. He could see more than was physically there. He could see the nature of things, their power, and their essence. In the depths of the sea ahead of them he made out a swirling school of little fish and the dark intent of the larger ones darting in and out of the cluster to feed. On the horizon he saw the colors of the wind and the different layers of warmer and cooler air. Out of view to the right of the ship, he knew lay the vast swampy marshlands. They separated Dakahn and lower Westland, and somewhere in those deep marshes was Claret’s abandoned lair. He looked to his left where the maps he’d studied showed nothing but an endless expanse of sea. To his great surprise, something revealed itself out in the beyond. The prismatic color of slow pumping wings soared over the sea on a course parallel to the ship’s. Whatever it was, it was powerful and full of both good and evil intent. Its aura was that of a great predator and full of wild powerful magic. As it noticed Hyden’s magical vision, or maybe the radiant power of the dragon tear hanging near his heart, the thing veered its course closer to the Seawander.