by Simon Archer
I could already feel that this was going to be a session of ‘Harsh and Brutal Lessons with Lord Dragonoak’ today. I only hoped that it would end as quickly as possible so that we could all move on to more important things. But maybe this was important. Even with their loyalty, they could have still found ways to work around my leadership to do whatever evil things their hearts desired. Maybe this would have been a blessing in disguise. We’d just have to have seen how Gmork responded to my authority being enforced.
The angry Wolf seethed, then took slow steps, filled with the residual angst of a tantrum left unfinished. All the bunnies kept their eyes on him as he moved along in his snail pace. Eventually, he made it over to me, snarling at me as he stood there. The insubordinate punk was trying to intimidate me, like a rebellious teen who just got a new stepdad. I had more than enough fight left in me to handle him.
“What is it, my lord?” He sarcastically addressed me, motioning his head over to the scared Rabbits. “I was only treating the slaves the way that they’ve been treated for the past several thousand years. The way that tradition demands. This is just natural for us. We live on top, and the slaves cower beneath us. That’s just facts, my lord. It’s the natural order.”
As if Timberpine’s wizard-leg immortality trick wasn’t cheating to the highest degree? How do you win a duel to the death against someone who doesn’t die? If anything, I was wrestling a bear without my arms or flying a plane with no wings. But I beat him dead and got where I needed to go. No matter the issue, I got it done.
“Apologize,” I commanded, popping my neck. “You’re getting punished even if you don’t, but I will be far more merciful if you do.” I knew how this was going to go down, and I was getting myself a little limber beforehand.
“These hares don’t deserve my piss in their cups to drink, and they don’t--” Gmork could only get that much disrespectful talk out before I had locked his bottom jaw in my hand and ripped out one of his teeth with the other. His wails of pain echoed through the courtyard and out into the town as Gmork held his mouth, his hands soaking in blood dripping from the missing tooth that I held. The Rabbits didn’t move from their spots but quaked in place at the noise of the wailing Wolf. He fell to his knees, holding his mouth still as his wails turned to whimpers.
“Who did you think you were apologizing to?” I asked him as I knelt down by his face. “By taking the discipline of the slaves into your own hands, you disrespected me. You’ve shown me that you don’t think I’m capable of dealing with the servants as I see fit. I can now see that you think I’m weak. And by not recognizing that disrespect, you’ve shown how little you actually understand the situation you’re in. Do you understand now?”
Gmork, still not ready to understand humility, jumped over to the crowd of hares, grabbing one by the throat. Before he could do anything else, like trying to eat him, I kicked him in the chest, knocking him over and forcing him to let go of the hare he was holding captive. I didn’t let him have any slack, charging him and slamming him into the wall beside us.
Other Wolves had come out, many of them Estate guards, hearing all of the ruckus. When they saw Gmork and me at each other’s throats, they stopped to watch. More Wolves had come pouring in, encircling the outer edges of the courtyard as they all waited in anticipation for the outcome of this match.
As Gmork went for a slash against me, I deflected it by the elbow, throwing him off balance to open up a free hit. Taking that free hit, I punched him in the throat, keeping him from breathing for a moment. With his hands reflexively grabbing his neck, I threw him to the ground, stepping on his back. I pulled his arms up, bending them up in the air at the wrong angle.
“Why do you protect them?” Gmork struggled to get up but had no leverage in his position. “They are weak! They are born with weakness! If we don’t put them down where they are supposed to be, that weakness will rot away at everything you have built! The natural order protects all of us from destruction, just as it always has.”
“If you mention the ‘natural order’ ever again, to anyone, I will make your punishment more severe than I’ve already decided to.” I wrenched up on his arms to the point that they wouldn’t move anymore. “Now that you’ve both defied me and, worse, threatened another life inside my estate, under my service, I’ve had to increase the severity far higher than I wanted. But I can’t let that behavior just slide.”
I wrenched his arms up more, the pitch-black mutt howling as I did so.
“Do you think your ‘natural order’ is stronger than me?” I asked with another push of the arms. “What right does it have to challenge me? Even if it could, it’s too much of a coward. It’s only sent weakling after weakling to defend itself. Every last one that the order you love so much has sent to fight me, your best examples of how successful it is, have all died. If your natural order is truly so strong, why doesn’t it challenge me itself instead of hiding behind those who’ve grown weak off of it?”
“They were lazy.” Gmork strained to say. “If they had always kept gaining more power and bigger packs, they would never have lost to you.”
“And why did they get lazy?” I asked him. “Why would they have gotten so weak if they were living under the ‘natural order’ that’s supposed to be keeping you all strong? It seems that beating people into thinking they’re weak gets you thinking you’re strong yourself, and you overlook those who can beat you. Your order lets them get that way. It tells them that they got what they have because they deserve it. They never did. Hell, I don’t even deserve any of this.”
“Then how did you take it, if you didn’t have the strength to deserve it?” Gmork asked through teeth gritted by the floor. “Why do you have all of these servants if you didn’t earn your right by strength to treat them as they are? You were once a slave. Now you’re a Wolf in hare’s clothing! That takes strength. Don’t tell me you would abandon all of that strength you’ve earned for a sad attachment to these weaklings.”
“The only thing I’ve earned is the privilege to serve,” I said, pushing ever more against the bones stopping me from pushing his arms further. “None of this is mine to abuse. It’s by abusing this power that I embrace weakness. By serving and protecting those below me, I embrace the strength I need to conquer anything that would stop me. Serving and protecting gives me the strength I need, so everything I do should be a service to others, so I may always be stronger than anyone I have to fight. Even this here is a service to you. I don’t want to do this to anyone, but I will if I have to if it means I can get you to understand. It’s my duty to strength to protect those that I serve, and to keep them from endangering others I serve.”
“This is nonsense!” Gmork was still incredulous. I was still hoping I could get to him. He was one of mine now, and I would have liked to keep everyone safe. “You would have all of us embrace weakness by lowering ourselves under these vermin! How would cleaning and trimming make you strong? Strength comes from fighting!”
“Strength comes from having a reason to fight,” I corrected him. “If you fight only for the sake of strength, your strength is hollow. It’s actually a weakness that you’ve embraced to make you feel better about becoming weak, even to fool yourself into thinking you’re not. Think about it. I’ve beaten you, completely square, and I’m physically weaker than you. But I’m much stronger than you’ll ever be if you keep loving this weakness you’ve eaten up like cowshit.”
“There are other lords,” Gmork spat out. “Stronger than me. Stronger than Timberpine. Stronger than the Baron. If you struggled against Timberpine, you’d die in a second to the others. They are the true examples of the natural order, and they’ll crush you.”
“I’ll be dealing with them in due time.” I yanked his arms up yet again. “While others have a lot, I make the most out of a little. I’m the king of crushing others above my weight class. If you don’t believe me, believe what happened. Believe what you already know. Timberpine had magic that allowed him to fly and be unkillable. I had three
guns. He had a giant estate, many pack members, and even more slaves. I had a small piece of land, a handful of Wolves, and one slave to my name. He was a Wolf noble, second only to the Baron. I was a Rabbit-looking lord from somewhere far away. Timberpine challenged me. He lost. So, who do you think was stronger? The guy who had all of those magical advantages, noble titles, and bloodline gifts, the guy who’s sucking every power out of the natural order that he possibly could, or was it the guy who killed him in a challenge, the guy who has you pinned down with nothing but his bare hands? Imagine what I’ll be able to do with all of Timberpine’s resources.”
The mangy, black wolf had nothing to say to that. Honestly, I was talking big, but it was all about confidence, luck, and recognizing assets for what they are and what they could be. Anyone could have done it if they really tried. I don’t think that I could run up to the Baron now and fight him, no, sir. You didn’t need an IQ above fifty to see that was suicide, even with everything I had now. But I was going to take him down, along with whoever else I needed to in the meantime. Just needed to evaluate my options right after this lesson in obedience.
“Do you have something to say to me?” I gave him one final chance.
“I concede.” He leaked out. “My strength submits to yours. I--”
“Does it, really?” I pressed into his back. “What did I want from you before?”
“… I apologize.” He grunted out begrudgingly. “I shouldn’t have disrespected you. These are your servants, and I will not question how you treat them or how you command your pack members to treat them either.”
“Perfect.” I sighed in relief, though I didn’t believe the sincerity. “You’ve saved yourself from much of the fate I had planned by picking up some humility and some true strength. But you still disrespected both the Rabbits and your fellow Wolves by resorting to being an animal and living as if you still served Timberpine. So, to make absolutely sure that you’re honest about what you’ve just said…”
I wrenched against his arms until the bones in his shoulders cracked and snapped, forcing a howl from his teeth. Yes, it was harsh. Yes, it was necessary. There was a method to my madness. Without knowing if he was telling the truth or just going to sow dissent among my people, it was either this or kill him outright.
“Your fate is now in the hands of the Rabbit healers.” I rendered my judgment, setting his arms down as gently as I could. “I’ll have no use for those who are unfit to serve me in any work. If your arms do not become usable again, I’ll have no choice but to kick you out of the pack and out of my estate.”
Of course, that wasn’t true at all. I could have found a use for him if he was just a torso. That was just to make sure he had incentive to listen. If he continued to be a stubborn ass, he would have already resented me and refused the help of the healers, and his arms would never have healed properly. He wouldn’t be a real problem for anyone, especially me, if I needed to deal with him again. If he was actually going to listen and obey, he’d submit to the healer’s instructions to get the treatment he needed. Now I had to keep any prejudices building on the Rabbit’s end from messing with Gmork’s treatment.
“Where are the healers?” I addressed all of the Rabbit slaves, keeping my foot at the base of Gmork’s spine. “I need a volunteer to take care of Gmork here as he heals and to make sure he’s in an able condition to serve later. If the volunteer fails to heal him to my standards, I will kick both of you out into the street.”
As expected, they weren’t exactly getting all up at once to do this, which was the point. I’m sure that he’d done his fair share of abusing slaves under Timberpine, and he may have been more than willing to do so. So were many Wolves that I’d be taking under my wing. I’d be crippling my own war effort if I rejected thousands of Wolves on past crimes without giving them a fair chance to redeem themselves.
The Wolves who had gathered felt their own muscles with worried faces, wondering what would happen if they were injured critically in a fight or an accident happened to take their own arms away. It must have been something they were worried about every day, being fit to serve and be protected in their pack.
From what I had seen, being a part of a pack was a lot about being protected by strength as well as serving it out of pride. While a Wolf was expected to be loyal until death, they would have only been at risk for anything that their pack leader commanded them to do, or if they were threatened by a more powerful pack leader or lord. If they did die, they could die proudly. They lived under the confidence that their pack leader was stronger than them and could protect them, but whatever killed them was also strong, and would be honorable to die to. Those same leaders were also protected in their own packs, all the way up the chain.
If they were ever deemed unfit to serve in any way for any reason, especially by Timberpine and especially for different reasons than just crippling injury, I’m sure they would have been kicked out into the wilds. If they weren’t able to fight, they would have never been challenged, and they’d be packless until they died. And if these Wolves were indeed somehow unaging, that could be forever. Forever the weakest, forsaken by strength. It’d be eternal torment. Some of them may have deserved it a hundred times over, but that wouldn’t make it any less terrifying.
I could feel Gmork tremble by my foot at the weight of the fear of judgment. Felt like my hunch was right about Gmork being a willing extension of Timberpine’s cruelty, or at least an effective one. And that Gmork didn’t have the confidence to go it alone with broken arms. This ultimatum was for his sake as well. Whoever was going to heal him was going to have to be devoted to the task without any thought to abusing him during the healing. I also wanted him to get the best care he could, and he’d have been sure to get it this way. As disrespectful and assholish as he was, he was one of mine, now, just like any Rabbit. I wasn’t going to abandon any of them.
The silence among the crowd deafened the entire mansion. Under my foot, I could feel Gmork trembling a bit, the fear of his judgment and his treatment of the Rabbits eating him alive. I’d put the judging rod in their hands, now. It was now up to them to decide if he was willing.
“If there is no healer that wants to volunteer, you will have forced my hand.” I eventually cut through the quiet. “I’ll have all of you thrown out along with Gmork since he will not be healed to fitness for duty, and you have chosen to disobey me by not healing him. You would only be allowed to return if Gmork is brought back with intact and functioning arms.”
God, I hoped I didn’t have to commit to that one. I was sure I had the basic field medicine skills I needed to train a new set of healers, but that was not something I had time for. I also didn’t have the time to deal with a mutiny from the other Wolves if they thought I was favoring the Rabbits. And I couldn’t have the Wolves and Rabbits fighting inside my home if they kept hating each other. Someone had to come and bridge the gap, and I couldn’t have believed that it had to be now. This was almost getting too much for me to handle. I was banking on at least one of them having the decency to save this estate from falling apart from under me. I had faith that there’d be one.
“If I may, your grace.”
An elderly servant bunny stepped forward as my heart skipped from the explosion of relief I was just given. No banishments today. She was a small and frail creature, barely over four feet tall. As rabbit-like as she was round, and probably sixty at least, with whitish-pink fur over her whole body, she slowly hopped to the front of the crowd as they split open for her.
“I was a healer once.” The old bunny continued. “I was chosen for propagation by Lord Timberpine in the hopes of replacing my talent. It would be my honor to help this Wolf return to work as you have willed, as well as return to work myself if only you would spare the other healers from your wrath. Rest assured, you will have him back in better condition than ever. I took pride in my work in my healer days, and I shall do so again for the sake of my fellow healers.”
Under my foot, Gmork was suc
king in breaths between sobs he was trying his damndest to suppress from being seen by anyone. Without the use of his arms, though, the tears flowed out one by one, betraying his emotions to everyone who was looking. You bet your ass he was going to be thankful for this for the rest of his Wolf life.
“I mean no offense when I say this, ma’am,” I said to preface my query. “Given your apparent age, you were still able to produce offspring?”
“She’s a bunny matron, your grace.” Bugs said. “Amongst bunnies, there are those who are born infertile and those who are born able to reproduce as long as they live. Bunny matrons discovered by the nobles were always put into breeding. In recent days, that seems to have been her good fortune, as she was not sold to the Baron like the other bunnies. It also ensured that we kept one of the best healers that have ever graced this estate.”
“So,” I looked down at the old healer. “Would you be willing to heal anyone I would put into your care, not just this Wolf?”
“Of course, your grace.” She curtsied as much as her fragile legs would let her. “I would heal any that you deem necessary in your wisdom.”
“All of my pack members?” I continued to probe, though I knew her answer already. A kind soul like that was reliable as the sunrise. “All the servants? Any in my household? No matter where they came from? No matter who their masters were before me? No matter what offenses they’ve committed against me or mine now, before, or in the future? Any who I would claim under my service as a lord?”
The shoulders of all the estate guards loosened. With a healer, they’d always have been able to heal up when they needed it. They’d never be unfit, and therefore they’d be at risk of getting kicked out as long as they played it safer.
“If my lord does not discriminate, your grace,” she lowered her head, “what place have I to think myself better than those who would claim you as their lord?”
“Would you teach others to heal as well?” I probed further still. “Any I deem fit for the task? Would you teach them to teach others I’ve also selected?”