by Loki Renard
Even as he thought these terrible things, Archon knew his heart was not in all of them. But he had to pretend it was. Even for himself, the illusion of brutality had to be maintained at all times. Mercy was weakness in the eyes of the common man.
“There what is? That could be anything. A tree. Or a shrub,” Archon scowled and squinted at the place he thought the soldier was pointing.
It was taking much longer to locate his quarry than he had imagined it would. The infrared scanners had not been operational during his abduction of the villagers, because the heat from the dragon sent them into overdrive and damaged them. That meant they were limited to much more traditional means of finding a person - looking at pictures taken from orbit and comparing movements across them.
“Enhance,” he said, as much to himself as to anybody else. He tapped on the screen and with each tap, the picture zoomed in and the resolution somehow became higher, until the image of a young human woman with brown eyes and brown hair, her face daubed with orange clay, and a small bone ring piercing her right ear, and another through her septum, was revealed.
There she was. As plain as day, albeit slightly pixellated. He felt a pang at seeing her face again, still contorted in that rebellion. She was looking up in the captured image, no doubt staring at the ship which retrieved him. He expected to see an expression of horror twisting her pretty features, but if anything she actually looked somewhat… annoyed?
Was it possible that the dragon attack and everything in the aftermath including the king’s own attempt to claim her had seemed like an inconvenience?
Archon had seen the faces of the other villagers not only when they first saw the dragon appear, when he had swooped over their village and made his presence known. There was terror in their eyes, not this ferocity which almost matched, if not exceeded his own rage.
In the image, it was obvious that she had managed to lace her clothing back together in a manner of speaking. It looked as though she had cut strips from the back in order to make little ties to hold the front together. She was resourceful. Quick on her feet. A survivor.
The rage of ego he had previously been consumed by started to abate as something more powerful began to creep into his consciousness: respect.
The last place Archon ever expected to find his match was in the eyes of a feral little human rebel who had no right to gaze on him with so little fear. Though the image was nothing but a still frame, a grab from the past, he felt his ardor quicken, a rush of desire which only served to intensify his lust for the hunt.
Unaware of the king’s reaction, the surveillance tech flipped to another frame. In that picture she had turned. A dark image could be seen on her left shoulder.
“What is that?”
“Enhance!” The surveillance tech declared, and once more, the image was enhanced to reveal a tattooed image of what appeared to be a small mammal.
“So that is my prey,” King Archon said. “A girl with face piercings and a dog tattoo.”
Chapter 8
WELCOME TO THE HOTEL VEZGAZ
NO SOLICITORS
NO RELIGIORS
NO SHIRT, NO SHOES, NO SERVICE
NO ELECTRONICS
PROPRIETOR RESERVES THE RIGHT TO TELL YOU TO FUCK OFF
The sign was as welcoming as any sign like it could be. Iris pushed her way into the bar, elbowed her way through the patrons, and finally claimed a place at the bar.
“Gittoutoftheway,” the bar tender growled at the brawny men who had been monopolizing the expanse where alcohol was available. “There’s a lady present.”
They hadn’t noticed her. She was too short and round a figure. Curvy if you took the cloak off, which she had no intention of doing. That would only invite attention of the kind she did not want from piss-soaked men who were here for the wenches as much as the food and brew.
“Thank you,” she said.
“You look like you need a stout draught,” the barkeep said.
Those few words were hardly the most wild expression of kindness, but it took very little kindness to make tears come to Iris’ eyes. She was so tired, and so scared, and so sad, that the little comment designed to sell her beer was enough to make her almost burst into tears.
“Maybe more than a stout draught,” he said, seeing the way her eyes filled with tears. “Maybe something harder.”
The inn was loud. A minstrel was trying to tune his lute, and there was a group of singers humming tunelessly, warming up for their later performances.
“Do you have a room I can have for the night?” She wiped her tears on the cloak and tried to compose herself. Now was not the time to break down. Later, maybe. But not here in a room full of loud and dangerous men.
Iris had been a trapper and hunter her entire life. She knew how small animals would behave when they felt they were in danger. She also knew how their furtive movements would draw the attention of predators, and if they were weak and injured, then they would be even more likely to be caught. She had to maintain the appearance of strength. The weaker she felt, the stronger she had to appear.
“Got a room up there, got good food down here. Got a hot fire and something like decent company. No need to worry about anything that happened outside that door. This, in here, this is a world outside the world. What happens in Vezgaz, stays in Vezgaz.”
“The king burned my village, and everybody in it.”
The bar keeper did not say a word, just poured a shot of the highest intensity liquor he had in his bar, a viscous amber liquid which trickled rather than flowed into the glass which awaited it.
“Drink this,” he said. “Then tell me what the hell you’re talking about.”
She did as she was told. She didn’t know the bar keeper, and he didn't know her, but that was immaterial. She was feeling lost and afraid, and he had the sort of face that people trusted. He would never have made it as a barkeep if he didn’t.
“The king came down from the sky, he rode a burning dragon, and he destroyed my village. Burned absolutely everything. Destroyed every building, and every single one of our people. I escaped because I was out gathering. Everybody else is dead. Gone.”
Saying the words made her feel very strange on the inside, as if it were all somehow less real for having said it out loud. She looked up at the barkeep, half expecting him to laugh at her, or dismiss her as one of the mad women who got into the ergot and started dreaming up flying monsters and kings.
Instead, he let out a long sigh and shook his head. “There was word of fire last few days. Some claimed to have seen dragons. We didn’t believe them, because dragons aren’t real, but the smell of smoke and death on you is real enough.”
Iris hadn’t considered her smell. She was filthy with the kind of dirt which didn’t lie. The truth of her story was written all over her with filth, sweat, and human soot.
There was a small space around her now, people were giving her a berth, as wide as they could given the press of humanity in the bar. Her story had been overheard and was being relayed from person to person through the crowd.
Within a matter of minutes, it was as if the story had taken on a life of its own. The moment it was told, it started to spread in ripples through the tongues and ears, replicating and repeating, mutating with every retelling.
Almost nobody was interested in verifying the original source, she noticed. She was sitting almost entirely alone in a crush of people telling her story, some of them telling it with far more authority than she had told it in the first place.
“So the king, he comes down here, starts killing everybody with a six headed dragon which ate every villager.”
“No, it wasn’t a dragon. It was a really big fire breathing elephant.”
“Elephants don’t breathe fire, and they don’t fly, and how would the king even fit an elephant on his space ship?”
“How would he fit a dragon?”
“Good point. It was probably a machine, not an actual dragon. You know the lizard king loves his ma
chines. It’s why we’re not allowed them.”
“Have an ale, lassie. You’ve earned it. Bringing the word of the king’s atrocities,” the barkeep said. “We’ve lived too long under the rule of some sky man who allegedly flies about the place… have any of us ever seen this king who rules us?”
“I have,” Iris said. “I saw him when I saw everything else.”
“And what does he look like?”
“Like a man crossed with a dragon.” The words escaped her mouth before she really had a chance to think about them. They were blurted and burbled, escaping because she didn’t want to keep them inside. She wanted to tell everybody in the inn. The real story. Not the one with an octopus which was developing in the far corner.
She stood up on the nearest table and banged two mugs for attention.
“My village was burned,” she declared, those words making the inn fall remarkably silent incredibly quickly.
“I’m not giving another coin to one of those sob stories! Sounds like horse shite to me!”
“Shut it, Graxnar!” The barkeep shouted. He was a big, barrel chested bear of a man, and he ruled over the bar as a private fiefdom. Graxnar and all his woodcutting mates fell silent when he told them to, because there wasn’t another place in walking distance where they could get cold ale and good meat.
“Our village refused to give up our grain! We almost starved last winter, and we decided not to pay the grain tax this year. The king is not of this world, or any world close to us. We have never seen him, nor has any other person on this planet, that we know of.”
“YOU HAVE TO PAY YOUR TAXES! WE ALL HAVE TO PAY OUR TAXES!” Someone shouted at her. “RULES IS RULES!”
“For what? We starve so some distant king can live?” Iris flung her arms the same way the chief of the tribe had flung his when he first told them that they would no longer be paying the grain tax. “We did not owe any king any allegiance. So we didn’t pay. And he came. He came on wings of fire with furious retribution spewing from monstrous mouths.”
She was really beginning to hit her stride now. The words were flowing through her, taking her with them. She wasn’t saying what she wanted to say. She was saying what had to be said. The truth was using her as its emissary, and so her voice was strong, perhaps even strident.
“That king, the king we have never laid eyes on before displayed himself to us with vengeful cruelty. He laid waste to our homes. He destroyed every heirloom, every bit of clothing, every precious person. He murdered every soul in his path, and he did it for nothing but grain. He did not need our grain, he has food to last millennia, he has the power of the stars at his fingertips. We needed our food to survive. We grew it through our own labor. We tilled the soil. We bled when we cut ourselves on sharp rocks. We plucked the grains, we threshed them, we stored them. Not for some distant king with birds of fire who unleashes his rages on the weak and the poor, but for our own bellies. And we were right to do so!” She punched the air with a slight fist, her eyes burning with righteous fury.
RAWWWWRR! YEEESS! DOWN WITH THE KING!
The crowd agreed with a general foaming cry. None of them had ever been particularly fond of paying taxes to the alien king, but it was something of a tradition they had been born into and come to respect for no reason other than they had been told that they respected it.
Now that they thought about it, alongside the horror of a destruction of a village, it seemed particularly unfair and rather pointless. The collectors always told them that their taxes paid for the roads, but most of the roads were nothing more than muddy tracks made by goats, enlarged by deer and then finally crashed through by the broad withered horses which did most of the work.
“NO MORE TAXES!”
“DOWN WITH THE KING!”
“Are you all forgetting about the part where he burned everybody alive?” A voice came out of the crowd, rather deep and sonorous, the sort of sound which carried without trying.
“MAYBE SOME TAXES!” The patrons amended their chant. They were not brave, or even particularly rebellious. They were simply swept up in the excitement of what felt like a new idea, a promise for change.
Iris’ father had always said that much of human history could be explained by the fact that humans, as a general rule, did not care what change was promised, as long as something was going to be different.
A pack of minstrels struck up a rousing tune to accompany the mood. “OH HO HO, THE KING BURNED A VILLAGE! SMOTE IT WITH HIS WILL-AGE! HE MADE BLOOD DO A SPILLAGE!”
They were not terribly good minstrels, but the drinking meant it didn’t matter. The same modus operandi applied to the art on the walls, which had been done by the local society for women who painted with their forefingers. They painted with their forefingers because their hands were occupied with flasks of wine.
Iris was beginning to feel better. She had not expected to find allies so quickly, or so easily. But she had forgotten the appeal of a damsel in distress. She was a young woman, or at least, a young enough woman that men of all ages felt protective of her as well as interested in her carnally.
She had never been with a man. Not because she wasn’t inherently interested in them, but because having a father who used his axe to split the skull of the first fellow who dared to lay a hand on her as she was coming of age ensured that there had been no further suitors - and now that she was fully of age, she was far more acclimated to trapping and gathering than to searching out mates.
So it was that she had very little understanding of the corollary of the mood swelling in the bar. Where there is a damsel in distress, there must also surely be a hero who rescues her, and having rescued her, makes wildly free with her loins.
Every male in the bar besides Floyd the Fabulous, who was playing pipe to his fellow minstrel’s fiddle, was now thinking about fucking the maiden who had stood up and made such an impassioned speech about tyrant kings and taxes.
Now that the speech was over, Iris found herself still very much on the table, but much less inclined to get down and join the fray. There were hands snaking toward her out of the mass of men, big brawny, hairy hands with agendas she did not care for.
“Let the lassie alone!” The barkeep came to her rescue again, batting the revelers out of the way with a mucky towel which had wiped down the bar so many times it was verging on becoming sentient in its own right, colonies of bacteria forming civilizations of their own, perhaps even suffering under their own tyrant kings. One never knew.
Iris was grateful for his intervention, but she knew it was not over. Having stirred up one tavern full of drunk field laborers, she was hardly on the cusp of a revolution. Not yet. But perhaps if she went to a hundred taverns, and told her story a hundred times, perhaps then the people would begin to turn on the king. Perhaps the story would take on so much of a life of its own that she herself would not have to tell it anymore. Maybe it would spread of its own volition, much like the king’s fires had done as they tore through thatch, reed, and even daub to leave nothing but a smoldering cairn where her life had once been.
Chapter 9
Before embarking on any hunt, it was common courtesy to let the groundskeeper know. That was the only reason Archon bothered to return to Naxus’ ridiculous palace, where the general met him with his usual smirking insolence.
“Naxus, I have come to hunt my prey. I will need the full resources of your army. I trust you have spies?”
“You’re talking about the village girl, aren’t you.”
Naxus surprised Archon with his knowledge and indirectly confirmed that he had spies.
“I am. What do you know of my prey?”
“That prey is currently stirring what could amount to a global uprising,” Naxus drawled.
Archon turned to face the general, only barely managing to hide the sneer which tried its best to appear on his face whenever Naxus was in the vicinity. The general had been hospitable, but that in itself was a problem. Archon was not a noble to be hosted. He was the king of
all he surveyed. He expected deference, not tolerance. Groveling, not hospitality.
“What are you talking about?” The question came out, biting and impatient.
“I’m saying I’ve found your prey, your majesty. A girl escaped the village, but saw everything you did. She believes that you killed everybody there. She also claims you attempted to ravage her, but were repelled by her blade.”
“You found my prey?”
This was another insult to the many injuries Naxus had delivered to Archon’s ego.
“At least in the sense I know where she has been, and what she has been doing. I haven’t bothered to catch her. It has been most amusing, actually.”
“Why, pray tell, has it been amusing?”
“Well, you would think that having burned a village to the ground, the humans would be more afraid of you.”
“I would think that,” Archon agreed. It was the entire reason for having done it in the first place.
“I’ll let my advisor, Matematicus, explain,” Naxus said, gesturing to a furry creature with glasses and a squint.
“The human, Iris, has been going about stirring up rebellion in the provinces. Productivity is already down 2.3 percent,” Matematicus said. “If that trend continues, we could be looking at substantial losses carried through the next quarter.”
A sensible species might well have witnessed the show of unrelenting brutality, and decided to pull their collective heads in and behave themselves. But humans were not a sensible species. And Archon was not a particularly sensible king.
Archon did not care about losses, substantial or otherwise. He cared about the hunt.
“If you’re keen to put this rebellion down, we can find her with drones and probes. We can use the technology we have embedded around the planet to find her quickly…” Naxus trailed off as the king interrupted him.