Emperor of Shadows

by Mike Truk

  I heaved her up. She wrapped her thick legs around me, crying out in shock and delight when I smashed her into a bookcase; shelving shattered as I began to pound away. She laughed, cursed me, and hit me, coming again and again.

  We fucked our way across the room. Wrestled. Fought. Scratched. Slapped. Laughed. Growled. Cried out in pain, in pleasure. Knocked holes in the wall, demolished the furniture. At one point, we fell clear through a wall into the bathroom beyond, continuing to fuck amidst the ruined lathes and plaster. Occasionally we’d subside, heaving for breath, only for one of us to place a dominant hand atop the other, provoking an immediate reaction.

  No matter how many times I conquered her, she never stopped fighting back, relishing being provoked. I was driven to ecstasy by being controlled, used, again and again.

  I was fucking her in the middle of the room when Tamara awoke. In hindsight, I can see how it might have been a disturbing sight. Yashara was buck-naked by that point, on all fours, ass in the air, head pinned to the ground by my foot. I was having my way with her, slapping her cheeks as I went while she cursed and struggled, when my acute senses picked up movement and a gasp.

  Tamara had awoken and pressed back to the ruined end of the bedframe. Eyes wide, she stared at the pair of us.

  I slowed my strokes but didn’t quite stop. Yashara felt too good for that. Noticing, she turned her head about to stare at Tamara, and I heard the grin in her voice.

  “Want to join in? We’ll be… gentle.”

  Tamara shook her head violently, scrabbled to her feet, and fled the room.

  I should have gone after her. But in that form, I didn’t care enough. I wanted to finish with Yashara first.

  So I smacked her ass as hard as I could, causing her whole body to jolt, and returned to work as she cursed me with every oath she’d ever learned on the caravan trails.

  Dawn was breaking when we finished. Light filtered into the room, thin columns that caught in the dust.

  Yashara was done. Her hair was plastered to her sculpted body, every inch of which was bruised, reddened, and drenched in sweat. She murmured something, tried to pick herself up, and sank back down onto the rug.

  I stood there, drinking in the sight. How long had we fucked? Seven hours? I’d lost track of how many times I’d come ages ago. By the Hanged God’s jubilant ball sack, I’d never felt so alive, so powerful, so in love.

  Moving forward, I scooped her off the ground. Her head lolled against my chest, her eyelids flickering and closing.

  She was out.

  I carried her to the shattered bed, laying her down on the mattress, which was thick enough to insulate her from the broken frame beneath. Grabbing a blanket, I draped it over her slumbering body. I smoothed her hair from her face, leaning down to kiss her dark lips, then rose with a satisfied groan.

  By all rights, I should have been half-demolished. She’d punished me as much as I had her, but my king troll constitution left me feeling as if I’d just awoken from a deep and restful sleep. I stepped through the broken wall into the bathroom, gratified to see that the tub hadn’t tipped over. We’d had it filled earlier in case Tamara needed a source of clean water, and now I stepped into its cold center with a sigh of relief.

  I reverted to my human form by the time I was done cleaning myself, and emerged, shivering and dripping, to drag a towel out from under a fallen block of wall. Toweling off, I stepped back into the bedroom.

  Yashara was awake and curled up on her side, smile content and smug like that of a cat that had cornered the cream market.

  “Hey,” I said, moving to sit on the mattress’s edge, feeling decidedly more nervous now that I was back in my human form.

  She reached out with her dark hand to cup my thigh. Her yellow eyes smoldered. “Hey.”

  “You all right?”

  “Better than all right.” She yawned, stretched languorously, and then smiled at me again. “I hurt in all the right places in all the right ways.”

  “Good,” I said. “I can’t tell you how happy it makes me, having you back.”

  “Hmm,” she rumbled. “I…” She yawned again. “… am suitably pleased.”

  I chuckled. “You going to rest up?”

  “Mmmhmm.” Her eyelids began to close. “Yes. Can you do me a favor?”

  “Anything.”

  “Send up some veritas tea. I need to drink some before it’s too late.”

  “Too late?”

  “Mmm,” she said, nuzzling her face deeper into the pillow, eyes closing at last. “Yes.”

  “Too late for what?”

  One eye opened. “For me to conceive. You must have filled me with…” She paused, actually doing the math. “A bucket and a half of your seed.”

  I blinked. “Oh. Right. Sure.”

  Her eye closed again. Her voice grew soft and distracted. “I love you more than I can say, Kellik. But… I won’t… bring another king troll… into this world.”

  And with that, she relaxed, falling asleep.

  I sat there, studying her beautiful face, so at ease now, so calm after our night of torrential passion. I felt my heart stuttering in my chest. Her words, so calmly uttered, transfixed me deeper than any stab.

  “Won’t bring another king troll into this world.”

  It wasn’t that I’d thought about kids - wanted Yashara pregnant now, or anytime soon. But the utter finality of her words. Did the others feel the same way? Cerys? Tamara? Netherys?

  Did I blame her? No. Of course not. Or… maybe I did. I didn’t know.

  Head swimming, feeling unsure of myself, I rose to my feet and studied the savage queen’s slumbering form.

  I’d send for the tea.

  But suddenly the future looked even bleaker.

  A life without making a family, without children.

  I moved to the door, and paused. Everyman Jack had tried to kill me, said my father ordered every child he sired murdered. I’d survived against all odds, and if Tamara hadn’t healed me, changed my matrix - who knows how I would have turned out.

  A vision came to me: the dream of a temple filled with moaning, willing, pleading women, all of them competing to suck my cock.

  A vision which stiffened me even now after the night’s excesses.

  Would I succumb to that temptation? Did every king troll eventually turn into a monster? Surely my father had indulged in such a manner during his time.

  Yashara sighed and turned over, exposing a long expanse of pale green thigh.

  I didn’t blame her. But I was still hurt more than I could express.

  Frowning, I stepped out of the room, and closed the door gently behind me.

  Chapter 14

  The White Lioness arrived a week early. Reports streamed in from scouts, many of whom could barely stay ahead of the advancing forces. I fancied I could hear the battle litanies before the armies vanguard even came into sight. For the reports were fantastical, even fanciful, and I couldn’t credit their veracity until I saw them with my own eyes.

  Standing atop the battlements, I watched the horizon, the gentle undulation of hills that rose beyond the endless fields that fed the city. Watched amongst thousands, standing amidst a knot of captains, councilors, and exemplars. Watched as the far slopes of the hills began to swarm, to be engulfed by minute shapes that came without order, without ranks, but raced toward us, arms outstretched, screaming for glory and beautification.

  I placed my gloved hands on the crumbling merlon before me and peered over its weathered top. Keeping my features schooled, I sought to exude calm, to be a focal point of control as mild panic washed across my forces.

  The foes came at us like nothing I’d ever heard of. They streamed forward, simply running, sprinting, weapons gleaming in hand, even though they were miles yet from us. A great ragged mass, their cries and screams faint but growing stronger.

  “A deluge,” whispered Captain Drussander by my side.

  There was no sense to it. No reason to sprint over the field
s. To crash through the hedgerows, to ignore the roads, to plow through the soft loam. No reason to expend themselves so. I saw those on the lead edge going all out, only to finally lose strength and fall back, or trip, to be trampled and devoured by their own army.

  And yet still they came. The sound growing louder, like the surf against the wharves in the Bay of Ruin.

  All of them clad in filthy white, the White Sun outlined in gold upon their chest, daubed with paint, crudely stitched, or obscured by filth. They came screaming, weapons gleaming, ranging from spears to blades, from pitchforks to clubs.

  “Look up,” whispered Cerys, and I raised my eyes from that endless rabble to see motes come flying over the hill peaks, hundreds strong. A great cloud of midges resolved themselves slowly into winged horses, clad in segmented plate that gleamed silver, their white wings beating powerfully, their riders bearing what looked like lances whose tips were stars in the morning light.

  And then the central core of the army appeared, cresting the far hills, noticeable not for coming more slowly, but for running forward in rough ranks, massive battalions that seemed to stretch across the horizon. Rippling like a blanket of white ants, devouring all in their wakes.

  Then horns sounded, great, clarion calls that stirred those charging below to greater excesses, their screams redoubling, their faces raised toward the sky, their hands grasping, their feet pounding the earth like a thousand drums.

  Captain Rory spat a wad of tobacco out into the void. “Are they… are they just going to come at the wall?”

  “Won’t go well for them if they do,” said Yashara. She’d taken over military operations since her recovery, and half-scared the men into accomplishing the impossible. Even so, it hadn’t been enough

  We’d done everything possible in the week we’d been afforded, but had counted on a second one in which to complete our preparations. Yashara’s plans were still born. The quarter-mile beyond our walls was churned up with half-finished trenches she’d planned to fill with shit-smeared spikes; we’d only gathered three-quarters of the supplies she’d decided we’d need to defend the walls. As impressive as the simmering cauldrons of pitch set every ten yards were, I knew we’d been aiming for one every five. Sheaves of arrows were set beside every archer, but not enough to last three days, much less ten. Yashara had hoped to get in another crucial few days’ worth of drilling, work on how to switch shifts, how to repel ladders, how to carry the wounded down to the streets below.

  No time now.

  Up and down the walls of Port Gloom, massive and ruinous, patched here and there with fresh stone and mortar, our archers shifted their weight, stared out at the ocean of faithful with wide eyes.

  “Easy,” I called out, pitching my voice to carry. “Stay calm and collected. Nobody panic. We’re atop huge fucking walls. They’ll dash their brains out if they come at us like that.”

  The power in my voice calmed the anxious, causing more than one man to step back up to the wall.

  But the range of my voice was limited. For every hundred soldiers I could calm, thousands more were staring at the advancing horde with fear and despair.

  What else could I do? How did you match a fervor that led an army to race to battle across hundreds of miles, leaving the bodies of the exhausted strewn in its wake like the passage of a hurricane? Scouts had reported the madness, the full tumult with which the army advanced, without order or measure. A full quarter had fallen behind, lame or injured, dead of exhaustion or heart attacks.

  And now, at the very end of their miraculous trek, they were sprinting toward us as if the White Sun itself was giving them strength.

  Perhaps it was.

  The distance between our walls and their vanguard narrowed to a mile. Half a mile. Their screams were growing louder, reverberating off the walls. I decided to jog along the battlements, reinforcing my commands for calm and focus. Everywhere I went our forces solidified their resolve, but it was too little.

  Pogo’s mercenaries hadn’t materialized from Carneheim, after all. Were due to arrive four or five days from now, marching south at a hurried but rational pace.

  Perhaps that’s why the Lioness had made haste.

  I looped back just as the army reached the quarter-mile mark, the first of the trenches. There, to my immense relief, they stopped, slammed to a halt as if they’d hit an invisible wall. They stood, jeering and shaking their weapons at us, stumbling forward as the pressure behind them built but coming no farther.

  I returned to stand atop the Field Gate with the others. A quarter-mile was too far for our archers to reach. Nothing we could do but watch.

  The pegasi wheeled in stately formations over the army, but also refused to draw closer.

  And now I saw other wonders. A giant was marching up to the fore, fully twenty yards high. He was clad in huge swathes of white wool, his huge chest covered in a battered breastplate soldered together from who knew how many sheets of iron, its center emblazoned with the White Sun.

  There were knights, scores of them, steeds caparisoned in white, who, having approached at a slower pace to not blow their mounts, now forced a path through the masses without care, reaching the fore to put up their lances and raise their visors.

  Netherys leaned forward, resting her chin on her palm with her elbow on the wall, and shook her head. “That’s a lot of people to kill.”

  Captain Drussander took off his helm, wiped the sweat from his brow, then replaced it. “You are optimistic, Lady Netherys.”

  “No,” said Yashara grimly. “She’s just stating the facts.”

  The wall of sound had died down - the screams and cries, the shouts and imprecations - but now, without warning, the whole bleeding mass of them, ten thousand or so strong, broke out into song. It was vast ocean of noise whose meaning I could barely make out, unified in tempo and rhythm, rising and falling as the faithful cried out the litany.

  Then they began to part, dividing into two vast masses as a small delegation rode down their center. A bannerman held a standard up high, a vast field of white cloth which the wind blew out in a dramatic manner as they drew close to the front, showing the White Sun in all its glory with a Lioness picked out before it.

  But my eyes were locked on the figure riding in the lead.

  Mounted atop a huge destrier, clad in plate armor, her head encased within a polished helm, a luxurious cloak of white fur falling from her shoulders to drape over the rear quarters of her mount.

  The White Lioness.

  There, at long last.

  Aurora. The hereshen.

  The huge army fell silent as she rode out before it. The air seemed to ache with expectation, and I felt like I couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe.

  Only that slender figure existed. Everything else fell into the background.

  Then she drew her blade and raised it high, so the morning light gleamed along its length; the army gave vent to its full fury and delight, a huge wave of sound crashing down upon us.

  I clenched my jaw, watching as she did nothing else. She simply sat there, blade raised high.

  I could only marvel at her power. At how she’d turned this mass of faithful believers into fanatics? How had she conquered Olandipolis so quickly, and then found the means to march on Port Gloom without respite?

  Even with my king troll powers, I blanched at the thought of trying to pull off such a complex endeavor. The logistics alone would have defeated me.

  But there she sat.

  Calm. Poised. Blade raised.

  Staring right at me.

  “Now they make their camp,” said Drussander, voice shaky. “And we’ll parlay to hear their terms. Should take the rest of the day for them to set up, which means -”

  The White Lioness chopped her blade down so that it pointed at the walls, and her army convulsed in ecstasy.

  And charged.

  Ten thousand men came pounding toward us, flowing over the half-dug trenches, leaping them or falling in them to be buried underfoot. W
eapons waving, pouring forth, every face growing larger and more distinct with each passing second, eyes bulging, mouths open in frozen screams, feet pounding the earth, knights charging; over them all, the pegasi came swooping down, lances leveled, glorious wings furling as they fell into dives.

  “The giant!” screamed someone. “Stop the fucking giant!”

  It was coming right at us. Each step covered eight yards, and finally, it managed to break into a run, lurching forward, club the size of a street swinging back and forth, its head studded with huge bolts of black iron the size of my head.

  “Archers!” Yashara’s voice was a bright clarion call. “Draw!”

  Men fumbled their bows, drew the fletching to their cheeks.

  I took a deep breath, came back to myself.

  We weren’t defenseless.

  As the lead attacker crossed the green markers set in the dirt, Yashara swiped her arm down and screamed, “Loose!”

  Two thousand arrows leaped forth, whistling into the sky, a dark cloud that seemed to hang at their apex for a trembling second before plunging and sinking amidst the charging horde.

  Screams sounded as entire ranks crumbled and were devoured underfoot.

  Netherys had both blades in her hands, was staring right up at the charging pegasi. “Kellik? How about now?”

  “Now is good,” I said, turning to stare at a knot of sullen individuals standing off to one side. “You four. Destroy the pegasi.”

  They couldn’t resist my command. As one they stepped forth, and changed.

  One bloated up into a giant toad of a man, mouth fully two feet wide, body growing mottled and slick. The other burst through his clothing, black horns emerging from his brow, skin turning crimson, muscles writhing into massive existence across his huge frame. The woman grew tall, her skin darkening to black, her hair becoming a mass of snakes. The last had a pair of dragonfly wings burst out from his back, his body turning insectile and alien.