"What is happening here?" she asked.
"These cucks were found in the forest this morning. Red Wolf soldiers snooping ahead for their knights," said Borlin. "We have been asking them some questions and not always liking their answers."
Yurka added, "They say they were hunting deer." She chuckled. "Right behind trees within sightseeing view of the city. They're scouting for their army. I think they plan an attack, but they won't say when."
Vendronia sighed. She neared the man on the right, whose face had taken the least number of blows because he could still hold one of his eyes open, unlike the other. This man cringed as Vendronia neared, recognizing her. He trembled more. "What say you, cuck?" she quipped. "Will there be an attack?"
The man hesitated in exhaustion before shaking his head. He looked to be in his twenties with brown longish hair and a patchy beard.
Yurka smashed his nose with a backhand. "Speak up when the Crone Mother asks you a question! She might just turn you into a toad and stomp you into slime!"
Blood gushed down the man's face from his nose. It hung over to one side freakishly. He tried to speak, but at first, just gurgled blood and snot. He heaved and vomited red-streaked liquid over himself, strengthening the bile scent near him. Finally, he groaned, "Today."
"What?" Yurka said. "I thought I told you to--"
"Quiet, Yurka," said Vendronia. "I heard him. He said today. The Red Wolf Army attacks today."
"Is this true, cuck?" Borlin asked the other man.
He bobbed his head ever so slightly in an attempt to nod. The man was older, maybe in his late thirties with silver-flecked hair thinning rapidly on top of his head. His eyes had swollen shut and the left side of his face appeared as if he had grown a fat purple onion there. His breaths came short and infrequent.
Varl Borlin turned to Yurka and said, "Prepare the army for battle. Have them fortify the city entrance." He looked at Vendronia then. "Build her a scaffolding for her rituals with protective shielding from arrows."
"It will be done!" said Yurka. "What of these two?" she asked, waving her wideblade towards them.
"Do what you wish with them," said Borlin. "Maybe add some more cocks to your belt." He laughed a strange-looking laugh with his permanent half-frowning scar.
Yurka smiled and walked over to the younger man and taunted him by dragging the cornered tip of her wideblade from his knee up to his crotch. "Maybe I'll cut this one's before I take his head. But I will make him hard first." She hissed and flitted her tongue at him.
Borlin raised his double-bladed ax high into the air and proclaimed, "Trogs! Fortify the city entrance! Today is a day we honor Torvul and Adon! The cucks come to attack, but we will be waiting to chop them to pieces!"
The trogs within earshot of his booming voice shouted back at him, "Oaagg Tu!! Oaagg Tu!!"
Borlin headed out to begin giving orders for fortification.
Yurka chopped off the older man's head then, in a single swift stroke. The head bounced and rolled across the cobblestones, its jaw still opening and closing in spasms. The body spurted blood for seconds and convulsed before it went limp.
Yurka went back to the younger Red Wolf soldier and grabbed his cock and stroked it to get him erect.
Vendronia couldn't bear to watch. She turned away and started towards the trogs who were gathering rapidly to help build the structures for defense of the city.
* * * *
The front lines of the Red Wolf Army stood still watching the city of Nodet. Vendronia stood atop a thirty-foot scaffolding the trogs built for her just behind their line of warriors whom waited behind scraps of wall and defensive stakes. Trogs were not as familiar with defense, and some of them made skeptical faces when Borlin had explained to them they were to fortify. Trogs raided most often and went through these kinds of military structures themselves. They'd learned that they could be effective.
Vendronia had already drawn her ritual circle and star and set her incense to smoking. The trogs had built a wooden arrow shield for her to stand behind should she need cover, but they left the scaffold open for the Red Wolf Army to see the witch in all her glory, so that some of them may remember the horror she unleashed upon them before. She did not know if she could do it again. It wasn't a spell or a ritual that caused the summoning. It had to be something the King of Scion had put within her. Last time, as awful of an experience as it'd been, she'd eaten a spider and that'd seemed to trigger the summoning. So she'd brought a glass bottle of fire ants with her this time. She'd scooped them up from a mound a few paces outside the city entrance. She didn't know how effective fire ants would be against an army, but she knew that their bite was very painful. Her anxiety swelled the more she thought about it. What if nothing happened at all this time? Her ritual would do nothing more than it had ever done in previous raids when she was still the stained girl. The bloodskin. Would her stamping her feet and singing be enough if that's all that happened? Would their belief alone in her ritual propel them to defeat the cucks this time?
It began then with the snap of loosed arrows. The Red Wolf Army launched a cascading rain of them. The mass raced towards them like a cloud of needles growing into shafts. The trogs raised their shields forming a wall above their heads just before the Red Wolf Arrows tore through them and left little flags of red fletching sticking upwards. Many trogs grunted in pain as some of their arms caught an arrow, though it was more of a nuisance than a serious injury in their massive arms. Trog shields dwarfed the shield of a cuck by three times. Arrow cover was extensive and cuck arrows rarely dealt a mortal blow. Still, it wasn't impossible to down a few trogs with a precise shot in the throat or chest.
The mounted knights charged next with lances poised followed closely behind by foot soldiers with pikes, halberds and longswords.
Varl Borlin shouted, "Oaagg Tu!!! Oaagg Tu!!"
"Oaagg Tu!! Oaagg Tu!!" came the trogs clamoring reply along with another shield wall formation to protect the frontal assault of knights.
Vendronia's hands began to shake as she tried to uncork the fire ants to guzzle them down her throat. The more she thought about them biting the insides of her mouth and throat, the less she could control her shaking. She had become the Crone Mother of the trog. A trog Crone mother by blood would not fear pain to ensure victory in war. She twisted the cork to loosen it and saw the ants gather beneath it in a frenzy. What if they bit her hand rushing out of the bottle just as she opened it?
The drumming of hoof beats intensified. She felt the ground vibrating her scaffolding beneath her feet just before a cacophony of rapping and clanging exploded as the knights met the trogs in battle. She started and the bottle of ants slipped from her fingers, fell to the planks on the scaffolding and rolled out off the edge. She dropped in a desperate effort to grasp it a second too late.
She sighed and stared at it in the grass below. Soon, Red Wolf Knights pushed back the trogs and the skirmishes neared her. She would have to climb down to retrieve the fire ants. She stood up quickly and was about to head down the makeshift ladder when she saw someone, she recognized amongst the Red Wolf Army. About fifty paces behind the knights on horseback stood the man in her dream who had sat up in his bed and spoke to her. Curiously, he didn't seem to be trying to fight. He stood there holding a longsword at the ready, staring intently at one of the Red Wolf Knights on horseback. The man from her dream was on foot, an older soldier. His armor didn't match the gleaming scarlet painted steel of the Red Wolf Army. He looked like a sellsword. She watched as his face twisted into anger. He seemed out of place to her for some reason she could not discern.
A huge hornet landed on the ladder inches above her right hand and began to crawl upward, shuffling its wings and pumping its hind end up and down.
19
KAZIMIR
"Oh my! At last, at last! Sweet sister star-blessings! The World Maker has delivered us to paradise!" announced Xolin, fanning himself with a foldable reed fan from his costume bag. His voice was even more
effeminate when something tested his tolerance. "I hope they have some melons, or grapes or something juicy! I've about starved to death on these stale nuts and hard pieces of cheese!" He said the last word as if it offended him.
Kazimir laughed, despite his own diminished strength. Xolin was so ridiculous on occasion you couldn't help but giggle. Sometimes, Kazimir welcomed Xolin's self-victimization. It was often so exaggerated, it proved healthy entertainment.
Kazimir himself needed something to distract him from his aching back muscles and saddle-sore bottom. The desert sun had cracked his lips, and he could no longer feel his legs around the saddle.
"Zexultan is hardly paradise," said Nochtli. "Unless you're a rat or maybe a black-market merchant. Hardly nothing's illegal to sell or buy. It's also the nexus of the slave market."
"We need to be vigilant," Kazimir added. "Even children in the street will stab you in the back. I've heard there's a secret assassin's guild here that employs children."
"How absolutely appalling,' said Xolin. "Can't we not just go around?"
"Unfortunately, not," said Kazimir. We need food and water. The camels must rest if we are to make it out of Belaz."
"All this to meet some freak of nature witch," said Xolin. "I guess she must be important, or you wouldn't put us at such risks."
"She is," Kazimir assured. "Ravnaz women are said to be born with magic so powerful, many were imprisoned on their day of bleeding and executed after they gave birth if they were lucky."
"Oh my!" said Xolin.
Kazimir continued, "Most were executed if discovered by the Belazonian ancestors. The archive texts I've discovered cite this as the reason their race dwindled into extinction."
"I don't mean to change the subject, but what about this frightful look I've taken on?" asked Gretta. "I mean. Tell me it goes away. Not trying to doubt you, of course, I just need to hear you say it."
"It will," said Kazimir. "If it makes you feel any better, it's spreading over me, too." He pulled down one side of his robes to show his back-shoulder blades and right arm. His pitch-black skin had gone ashy and withered with festering sores. "It's an illusion of course, but I can feel the wounds with my fingers, though they aren't there. And the smell! It's all my fault, I know, but we're alive to tell the tale. Just look at it this way. No one will rob us or try to sell us to the slavers."
"Oh, no! It's on me! It's on me! My poor beautiful skin!" Xolin cried out. "I've got it on my chest."
Kazimir turned back in his saddle to see. "It's not just your chest."
Nochtli and Gretta both beamed with smiles, Gretta's looking quite macabre but still a smile of amusement.
Xolin's mouth fell open. "Is it? No! Don't tell me that!" He shook his head frantically. "I don't want to even hear about it. I'll stop this animal right here and camp the night until it goes away. I won't go into that city without my handsome face."
"It's on your face," said Kazimir. "We'll just pretend we're in make-up for a show."
"Guess, I'll be a handsome corpse at the very least," said Xolin.
"Do you think they will believe that?" asked Gretta.
"If we put on a show, they will," Kazimir assured.
"What about me?" said Gretta. "I've never performed any acting."
"Can you sing?" asked Kazimir.
Gretta didn't answer.
"Oh, you can! How wonderful!" said Kazimir.
"I didn't say that I could!"
"Nor did you say you couldn't, which is all the tell we need," said Nochtli.
Gretta inhaled deeply and began to sing; her voice was a high tenor and resonated with delicious vibrato:
"We've come the black shores seeking wisdom.
We've come to the black shores seeking time.
We've come to the black shores for our kingdom.
No other land will take on our kind."
Everyone rode in silence for a moment.
Kazimir finally said "I'm not gonna lie. That's probably the best singing voice I've ever heard. Enchanting."
Gretta might've been blushing the way her coy smile framed her face, but it still appeared terrifying inside the undead illusion. "Thank you," she said.
Kazimir nodded. "Well, we best think of something soon. We're here."
They crested one of the larger dunes and Zexultan stood before them in the indigo of what remained of sunlight. A labyrinth of red brick cubic buildings dotted by the amber glow of hundreds of lamps. Kazimir crinkled his nose in revulsion when the desert breeze brought an odor of urine, he could almost taste. In the distance, a band played music in a key and tempo so unconventional Kazimir closed his eyes for a long moment trying to decide if it were two songs being played at the same time by different musicians. He couldn't decide. "At least we have the shadows to hide the effects of the spell now that it's getting dark," he said, trying to be optimistic.
"Indeed," Xolin said.
Nochtli chuckled.
"I want to find us an inn," said Kazimir. "Since my face hasn't been affected, I will be the one to speak to the innkeepers."
"Has my face been effected?" asked Nochtli.
"Of course, it isn't," said Xolin. "You're always the lucky one, but don't tell me you want to talk to innkeepers."
"Oh, certainly not," said Nochtli. "I just wanted to know. . . about my face I mean. I'm not good at haggling, and you know I clam up when I have to converse with people I don't know."
"No argument there," said Xolin.
"Nope," affirmed Kazimir.
Kazimir rode in front as they filed down the sand streets of Zexultan. The lower-class districts made up the outer rim of the city so the homes here stood narrow and packed close together. Most of them had rags and mismatched patchy tunics and robes hanging on cord between them. Occasionally, a shadow moved under a dingy overhang or into an alley ahead of them. The city seemed infested with brown spiky lizards with forearm length torsos and equally long spiny tails. They flitted and darted from shadow to shadow like cats, hissing at the four of them as they rode past.
"Gretta, did you not travel through Zexultan on your way to Belaz City? You must have been well protected by your escorts," said Nochtli. These were good questions that Kazimir wished he'd thought to ask.
"Well, honestly I . . .it's funny but I really don't remember any city," she said. "I do know we traveled this way, but the group had abundant provisions and plenty of room to sleep in the wagon. Perhaps they went around it."
"I see," said Nochtli.
"You hear that, Kazimir? They had abundant provisions, she said." Xolin made a point to clear his throat. "Why didn't we get a wagon? Seems like a solid preemptive move to me."
Kazimir rolled his eyes. "I don't own a wagon, and I most certainly can't afford one."
Xolin said nothing for a moment, then offered, "We could've rented one, perhaps. Maybe one with escorts?"
"You know he's a bit too frugal for that sort of thing, Xolin," said Nochtli.
Gretta could be heard giggling under her breath.
"Everyone needs to stay quiet," Kazimir warned. "We don't need to draw any attention we don't want."
As he spoke, a small gang of children stepped out into the road in front of them about thirty paces. Kazimir counted seven of them, all tan-skinned, within a year or two of twelve years old, and wearing sackcloth or haggard, cotton, long tunics.
"Gretta, Xolin, keep your faces hidden." Kazimir reined his camel, motioning for those behind him to do the same.
The children came at him on both sides with grimy finger-nailed hands opening and closing up at him. They pleaded, "Bifigs, bifigs, bifigs!" This word Kazimir had never heard. He assumed it was probably a local peasant cant, and he had a good idea as to what they wanted him to put in their hands.
He smiled and pulled out seven Belazonian copper stars and hoped that it would suit them. He handed one to each of them, but as they took them and stuffed them into their pockets, they seemed more insistent, putting their hands back up and raising the
ir voices, repeating the word, "Bifigs, bifigs, bifigs!"
Kazimir's nostrils flared. "I don't know what you want! Now move along! We must go on our way!"
"Why don't you give them some of that hard cheese?" asked Xolin. "Here I'll give them all of mine." Xolin rode up near them, holding his hood together with one hand, and they came at him with palms up. "Here's some yummy cheese," he told them pinching off crumbles from what was left of a cheese block. "Mmmm, yummy yum!" he said with unctuous enthusiasm. It was odd how he could be such a convincing actor but seem so transparent in daily life.
They took the bits, staring at them skeptically before they bit into them and chewed. They made puzzling faces, their brows squishing together. A couple of them said to one another, "Bifigs?"
Xolin told them in all seriousness, "Sorry I don't have any figs."
One of the younger ones, a girl, frowned up at Xolin and pinched her nose together. "Gurfa!" she said.
"I know it's awful," Xolin affirmed. "It's bad, but we've been made to eat it all day." Just as he was trying to tie back up the saddlebag he'd opened, his hand slipped from its hold on his hood and exposed his necrotic face to the little girl.
She screamed and ran away bellowing, "Hechi Donya! Hechi Donya!"
"That was real, real bad," said Xolin. "I must look real, real bad."
The other children backed away from them, but as Kazimir spurred his camel forward and the rest followed suit, he glanced back and saw that they were slowly trailing them.
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