The King's Henchmen: The Henchmen Chronicles - Book 1

by Craig Halloran

  Holding his hands out in a gentle manner, the sasquatchlike creature said, “First off, thank you for the chickens. They were a delicious appetizer.” He licked his fingers and burped out a feather. “Excuse me. And, again, I’m grateful that you set me free. I’m happy to repay the debt, but not without a proper introduction. My name is Solomon. Solomon Paige.”

  “Uh, nice to meet you, Solomon,” Abraham said. With inquisitive eyes he asked, “Do all troglins speak like you?”

  “Troglins speak, but not like me,” Solomon admitted. “I’m a bit of an outcast. Not because of my speech but some of my other mannerisms. It’s a very lengthy story, and I’d probably die of old age before I managed to tell it all.” He raked his fingers through his long gray hairs, which were thinning on the top. A few of his animal-like fingernails were missing. One shoulder stooped lower than the other. The muscles underneath his fur had probably bulged with the firmness of a young gorilla’s at one time, but now, the hardened sinew sagged. He still must have been seven hundred pounds of man. He wet a thumb and smoothed over his bushy eyebrows. “Forgive me for eavesdropping, but I overheard that you are venturing into the Spine. Are you aware that my king dwells in crags and caves of those magnificent hills?”

  “We know,” Horace growled. “Everyone knows about the troglin that come down out of the mountains and raid villages. The women are carried off, the children eaten, and the men with arms ripped out of their sockets.”

  The Henchmen gathered around, their hard eyes locking on Solomon. Fingers tapped on their weapons.

  Solomon scanned the group. “No doubt, there is truth to the stories that you have heard.”

  “Heard?” Horace tamped the butt of his spear on the ground. “I’ve seen it with my own eyes! Wild beastmen creeping down from the mountain and slaughtering everything in sight. I’ve seen the devastation with my own eyes! Captain, he was probably one of them! I say we kill him.”

  “I’ve made my decision,” Abraham said.

  He was fascinated with Solomon. The hairy old brute spoke better than he did. And something modern about his mannerisms perked his interests too.

  “I’m not judging someone without proof.”

  “Of course not,” Vern said. “You’d rather we lowered our guard first so it’s easier to kill us.”

  “Shut up, Vern,” Abraham said.

  Solomon made a peaceful gesture with his hands and said, “I’m not debating the actions of my kindred. They are very territorial people. If you invade that territory, they will react. But they are content in the Spine’s gaps. I’ll tell you this, if you cross their path without some sort of guidance, you will have a fight on your hands.” He looked up at Abraham. “May I ask what possesses you to traverse the Spine of Titanuus?”

  Abraham threw him a softball question. “Ever hear of the fenix?”

  Solomon’s soft eyes grew. “Yes. I even know where it lives.”

  67

  Led by a troglin wearing shackles and chains, the Henchmen traveled up into the Spine. No one talked to Abraham, not even Sticks. Horace, with the help of Vern, had them all convinced that the troglin would lead them straight into his den. Abraham didn’t rule out the possibility, but they needed some sort of guide. Solomon would be as good as any. Plus, Abraham liked the troglin. He spoke more like the people he was used to being around.

  I’m either stupid, crazy, or brilliant. Maybe all three. I don’t know. But when I truly wake up, I’ll have a lot to talk about. Maybe I’ll write a book.

  They rode all day, not stopping, through narrow paths without incident. That gave Abraham time to reflect on the dream he’d had when Lord Hawk knocked him out with the slumber smoke. If there was a blessing to be found in Titanuus, it would be that it kept his mind off the past. The loss of his wife and son made his heart ache every day. He could never stop thinking about the accident, could never escape from it. He relived the horror over and over. He didn’t want to relive it again but felt ashamed for trying to forget it. He needed an escape.

  The painkillers had given him a needed escape. They not only relieved the pain but also took the burden off his mind. He’d lived like a zombie for years, walking in numbness to the outside word, refusing to cope with his problem. But the time came when he had to pay his dues. That time came all too soon. The bills stacked up. The collectors came. He was miserable. He’d been on top of the world and crashed down out of the sky. And he hadn’t even hit rock bottom yet.

  I shouldn’t like this world. But I kinda do. Forgive me, Jenny. Forgive me, Jake. I miss you.

  The company came to a stop on a plateau halfway up the base of the mountain as they moved away from the sea. It was a patch of grass and shrubbery, with wild blue-purple berries in the branches.

  Solomon pointed at the bushes and said, “The birds can eat them, but you can’t.” He sat down and hung his head. “By the Elders, my back hurts.”

  Abraham’s dismounted his horse, which was lathered in sweat. He was too. “I thought it would get colder in the mountains.”

  “Why would it do that?” Solomon said. “You are closer to the sun.”

  “Yeh.” The setting sun started to dip beneath the sea. “Huh, looks like the sun is going for a swim.”

  “They say the sun lights the waters from underneath,” Solomon said. As the others started to make camp, he asked, “Abraham, I have a question I’d like to ask while the others are not around.”

  He eyed the troglin suspiciously and said, “All right. What is it?”

  Solomon eyed his backpack that hung from the saddle. “How did you acquire that pack?”

  His eyes narrowed. “I found it in a tunnel, the north end of the Old Kingdom. Why?”

  “That design is very unique. Is that a pirate sewn into the pack?”

  “I don’t know, maybe. It sort of looks like a buccaneer or a pirate.”

  Abraham felt a tingle run up his spine. The two of them were having a mental chess match with one another. Or so it seemed. Whatever was going on, Solomon was very intelligent. Abraham could see it in his eyes.

  “Have you ever seen a pirate before?” he asked.

  “In a manner of speaking? Um…” Solomon rose up and looked over Abraham.

  Abraham looked over his shoulder. The Henchmen were keeping their distance, setting up tents, including his own. “I don’t think they are going to bother us. Were you getting at something?”

  Solomon lowered his voice and said, “When I stepped out of the dungeon, you said, ‘Holy Harry and the Hendersons.’ What does that mean?”

  Abraham’s heart skipped, but he played it cool. “I don’t know. It’s just something I picked up. Why?”

  “I’m going to say a few words. I’m curious if they might seem familiar. Television. Movies. Pittsburgh.”

  Goose bumps rose on Abraham’s arms. “You’re from Earth, aren’t you?”

  “Pittsburgh, to be exact.”

  “Holy moly. Tell me more.” Abraham cast a backward glance. No one was looking. “So this is real? I’m not dreaming.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that. Sometimes I think that I’m dreaming or trapped in a nightmare,” Solomon said. “Back home, I was a vegetarian, and now, I’m trapped, or transformed, into this carnivorous body. I abhorred meat, and now”—he patted his stomach—“I can’t get enough of it. I still appall myself, but when I’m hungry, I’m dangerously hungry.”

  “I can’t believe this. So, you’re from Pittsburgh?”

  “Born and raised. I taught nutrition classes at Duquesne University. I was a well-educated hippie and driving a red VW bus. I thought I knew it all.” Solomon shook his head and cast his stare toward the sky. “So, I’m driving down to West Virginia University for a series of nutrition seminars. I’m in my love bus, toking reefer, and jamming to the Beatles, when I cross through a sun ring of light in the Fort Pitt tunnel. I was pretty sure that I was tripping when my bus went from pavement onto dirt. The engine died, and I’m wandering aimlessly throug
h a tunnel. That’s when I crossed paths with, well”—he ran his hand over his body in a showy motion—“this horrid version of Chewbacca.

  “At that point, I was pretty certain that I was tripping. Being a nutritionist, I had a thing for ’shrooming back then. Needless to say, I shouldn’t have been behind the wheel because sometimes when I was, it felt like I was flying. Anyway, this old and shabby troglin body pounced.” He held up two fingers and firmly said, “It wrestled me down and consumed me.”

  “It ate you?”

  “I can’t explain it, but it consumed me, entirely, in a very weird out-of-body experience. The next thing I know, I am it, and me is gone.” He flapped an arm, shaking his hairy, dangling triceps. “Now I’m this. Is that what happened to you?”

  “Something like that. So what year was it when you left?” Abraham asked.

  “Nineteen ninety. You?”

  “Two thousand and eighteen.”

  Solomon paled. “Oh my.”

  68

  The Henchman traversed the rugged mountain terrain for two more days. Per Solomon’s advice, they abandoned the wagon. It was sound advice, for the farther they traveled, the narrower the passages in the rocks became. The Spines’ foreboding landscape was full of surprises. The wild mountain goats were bigger than horses, the dragonflies the size of crows. Pumas with blood-red coats lurked in the rocks. Strange valleys were nestled in the hills, which could contain entire civilizations. Hot breezes would come and go. The air was dry and stagnant at times, but in some spots, it became so humid that sweat soaked their clothing like rain. All in all, the treacherous trek was borderline miserable.

  Abraham shifted in his saddle and used a cotton jerkin like a towel to wipe his face. He rode with Sticks at his side. She was the only one making conversation with him. Apparently, he’d gotten too cozy with Solomon. In privacy, he’d shared his history with Solomon. They seemed to hit it off—maybe too much. The others were grumbling, so they decided to keep their distance. Earning the trust of his men had been hard enough. Now, he was asking them to put their trust in a man-eating troglin.

  “Everyone is giving me the cold shoulder, even you?” he asked Sticks. “Care to open up about what you are feeling?”

  “You’re the Captain,” she said. Her two ponytails were down, and the ends of her brown hair were damp. “You decide. We follow.”

  “I might make the final decision, but I still like to entertain advice from my men. No one is saying a word.” He looked back. Bearclaw and Vern rode five horse lengths behind them with sour looks on their faces. “Even Vern is keeping his mouth shut. Not even a jab.”

  “You’re letting a monster lead. Not you. Besides, it’s a fatal mission anyway. Everyone knows it. We won’t be coming back.”

  Abraham gave her a stern look and said, “We aren’t going to lose. I don’t know how we are going to win, but we aren’t going to phone it in.”

  “Phone it in?” she said.

  “It’s an expression from my world. It means give up before we’ve even started.”

  “I see. Well, at least I might get to see a fenix before I die. That should be something.”

  Abraham smiled. “See, that’s a positive way of looking at it. Keep your little chin up.”

  Sticks made an odd expression and tipped her head back.

  “That’s better.”

  Tark and Dominga returned from the front. They’d been scouting ahead with Solomon. Their brows were knitted together.

  “What’s going on?” Abraham asked. “Where’s Solomon?”

  “He’s waiting ahead at an impasse,” Tark said. The lean, athletic bearded black fighter dripped with sweat. He wiped his brows with a forearm. “He said he’d wait for the others to catch up. It’s treacherous.”

  “Let’s go, then,” Abraham said.

  The Henchmen rode another mile until they caught up with the troglin. Solomon waited in front of a fiery chasm that had split a small forest of leafless, vine-covered trees. The chasm blocked the path with a stream of lava flowing through it. It was very wide, too wide for the horses to jump or cross.

  “Crap,” Abraham said.

  Horace dismounted and marched over to the fiery gap. “Well done, troglin. I can only hope this is the river where the fenix lives.”

  Solomon shook his head. “No. This passage was free and clear before. Believe me, I’ve traveled these peaks for years. This is what happens as a result of the Spine contracting. It’s always in travail. The fires below seep out when the rock cracks as Titanuus’s body bows.”

  Abraham believed Solomon. The vegetarian turned troglin had spent years in the Spine, trying to find a portal back home. He’d first arrived in the Spine in his VW bus. It was here that the troglin consumed him.

  He lifted his eyes. Thick corded vines hung in the surrounding trees’ dead branches. Apparently, a thriving forest had been there at one time, but the vein of lava destroyed it.

  “Solomon, is there another way around?”

  The troglin lifted a long arm toward the rugged cliffs overlooking them. “It will be a dangerous climb, either up or down.” He reached out and grabbed one of the vines that hung in the trees that dangled over the fiery gorge. “It’s possible to use these vines.”

  The blackened trees were leaning over the gap from both sides. Some of them had fallen over and rested against each other.

  Abraham waved the two male Red Tunics over. “Are you good climbers?”

  Both the young men nodded.

  “Take your hatchets, climb over using the vines, and chop down more of those surrounding trees. We’ll do the same from this side and make a bridge for the ones that don’t climb so well.” He glanced at Horace.

  “I can swing in the vines,” Horace said, “carrying two people at the same time.”

  “Let’s play it safe. And maybe we can get the horses across.”

  The two Red Tunics tucked their hatchets into their belts and hustled over to the chasm. The pair of wiry men, slight in build, jumped up and grabbed hold of the vines. The vines made for a natural ropelike bridge that dangled over the burning chasm. Using the gnarled knots in the vines like steps, they started crawling over the twenty-foot-wide chasm.

  Abraham dabbed his face with his shirt and said, “This will work out.”

  A fiery wormlike creature burst up out of the molten lava. It had a head like a snake and little legs like a centipede. As it rose out of the lava, the Red Tunics screamed. One of them chopped at the monster with his hatchet. The fire worm opened its mouth, struck, and swallowed the fighting man whole. A second fire worm popped up out of the lava and closed quickly on the other trembling Red Tunic clinging to the vines. It gobbled the man up.

  The fire worms plunged back into the liquid and vanished beneath the surface.

  The Henchmen lined the edge of the chasm with their crossbows and spears pointed at the molten surface. They eyeballed the churning stream of death. The dark outlines of the fire worms could be seen swimming away below the surge. They were gone.

  Abraham’s heart raced. “That was fast.” He glanced over at Twila, the last Red Tunic, who was shaking like a leaf. “Looks like you’re the last.”

  69

  Using their hatchets, the Henchmen built a bridge and managed to safely cross the chasm of lava. No more fire worms appeared. The horses wouldn’t cross with riders, but with effort, they finally traversed the bridge.

  Loaded down with heavy packs, the horses climbed through the clouds hugging the mountain peaks. The lathered-up horses whinnied and nickered often on the trek. The company led the nervous horses up the winding mountain paths on foot.

  “Your hairy friend knew about those fire worms,” Horace said, leading his horse by the reins. He was huffing and puffing up the hillside, using his spear like a walking stick. “I wonder what he has in store for us next.”

  “He’s not leading us to a trap, if that is what you are getting at,” Abraham said. He and Horace were alone, as far as he coul
d tell. He couldn’t see twenty feet ahead or behind because of the fog. “We’re going to go forward, not backward. Besides, we don’t have anywhere else to go.”

  Horace’s horse nickered and snorted.

  “We should have left the beasts behind. This mountain spooks them,” Horace said.

  “You should have said something earlier.”

  “I hate leaving good horses behind.” Horace’s eyes slid up to where Solomon led at the front. “I bet if we left them, his kindred would eat them. They’d have a feast and laugh at us right now.” Horace twisted his bull neck around and scanned the rocky ledges above. “I bet there are troglin all around us. Waiting to pounce on his signal.”

  “You’ve made it abundantly clear that you don’t like him. I get it. But you need to move on, Horace, unless you have a better idea on how to find a fenix.”

  “Sorry, Captain. This is unfamiliar territory. It makes my stomach queasy.” When Horace’s horse nickered, he petted its head. “Easy, beast. Easy.”

  “We all feel the same.”

  Abraham moved along, carrying sixty pounds of gear on his shoulders for fear of the horses bolting away with it. They were jumpy, too jumpy to ride. His legs burned, and his lower back was on fire. They’d been walking for two days. The mountain was a hot and humid mess, like the dark recesses of a jungle. A breeze came but quickly went.

  “Man, I’d do anything for a Dilly Bar right now.”

  “Pardon, Captain?” Horace said.

  “It’s a dessert in my world, an ice-cold cream coated in chocolate. You’d definitely like it.”

  “Sounds tasty.”

  “You have no idea.”

  The group walked until dark, taking turns on watch but staying close together. Solomon didn’t sleep, that Abraham could tell. He still hadn’t said another word to him. The next morning, the Henchmen geared up. The horses finally settled, so they loaded them up again and headed up the twisting paths, which ran along cliffs and into the clouded mountain peaks. Finally, hours into the long ride, they emerged from the clouds and came face-to-face with more mountains.