Monster Empire

by Michael-Scott Earle

  Calli’s joy was infectious, and I found myself clearing my throat and blinking back a few tears myself as she continued to spread her arms wide and danced and sang.

  Nika took Calli by the hand and led her down to the river while Sawsaw and I loaded up Charlie’s wagon with the loot. When we got the load down to the water, we found the two women swimming and laughing. Nika was delighted by Calli’s beautiful fins, but she was even more impressed by my new wife’s ability to catch fish.

  “Sawsaw?” my son asked as he stood on the wagon bench beside me.

  “Go ahead, I got this,” I told him.

  He cheered and did a backflip off the wagon. Then he raced over to the river, ran along a tree that hung over the water, and surprised his mother with a cannonball. I watched my women frolic in the water and smiled at Sawsaw’s joyous laughter when Calli let him ride on her back. He held onto her fin when she dove deep, and three seconds later the two shot out of the water. They spun in the air as multi colored water droplets cascaded around them, and Calli’s elegant fins sparkled in the sunlight, changing from violet to azure, pink, orange, and aquamarine.

  The sight of my two beautiful women and my happy son filled me with a contentment that I had never known on Earth. At that moment, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was the luckiest man in the universe, and I let them play in the water for another fifteen minutes before they all climbed back on the wagon.

  I drove the horse up the hill toward our homestead, with my treasure and family in the wagon.

  The thought of more monster wives and monster children excited the hell out of me. I had been a little nervous about a second wife, and how she was going to fit into our little family, but now that I heard Nika and Calli chatter like best friends, I knew that we had found a special woman. It was almost like destiny, or maybe more like déjà vu. I felt like I had met these two women before. Perhaps it was only in my dreams. Perhaps I was just high on endorphins.

  All I knew was that fate seemed to be smiling on me.

  When we reached the homestead, Nika helped Callie to dry off her fins. My first wife watched mystified as the long fin changed into two long shapely legs, and soon the three of them were racing up the stone path toward the house.

  I drove Charlie around the terrace fields and tied him off to the barn. It occurred to me to tend to the treasure first, but I just had to see Calli’s reaction to the home that I had built.

  “This cove is so warm and cozy,” the beautiful siren was saying when I walked in. Then she turned to me and added, “Did you really build this yourself?”

  “Yeah.” I gave my pants a little hike and guessed that I probably looked like a strutting rooster.

  But hey, I was king cock, and this was my castle.

  “It is amazing,” she said as she ran her long fingers over one of the side support beams.

  “Nika and Sawsaw helped a bunch,” I said, “and there was already the stone wall.”

  “He’s being modest,” Nika said with a wave. “He is the greatest warren builder in the world. You just wait and see what he builds with the goblin treasure.”

  Calli nodded excitedly as Nika spoke, and her wide eyes turned to investigate the home more. Sawsaw took her by the hand and led her around, answering most of her questions with “Sawsaw,” or “dadda,” but Calli understood his meaning just as easily as his mother and I did.

  Nika hugged me and gave me a big kiss as Sawsaw explained the fireplace to Calli.

  “Holy shit!” he yelled and pulled his hand back from the fire to show her it was dangerous.

  “You did so good, Ken Jewell. She is perfect,” Nika whispered to me.

  “She is, isn’t she?” I said with a smile.

  “Where did you find her?”

  I told her the story of the goblins and the big cauldron, and how I thought they were trying to cook a human woman. When I explained how Calli had used her siren song to thwart the goblins, Nika became very excited.

  “She will be very good for our army,” she said dreamily, “and if the children she gives you are anything like her, they will be very powerful. They will all sing together and give all of your children increased strength. You will see.”

  “I think you are right,” I said as I imagined having a school of merbabies swimming around in the river and chuckled to myself.

  “How did Sawsaw do in the underdark?” Nika asked.

  “He was amazing. Just like you said. We both killed a bugbear and slaughtered those goblins like it was a walk in the park.”

  “He is such a good boy,” Nika said with a contented sigh.

  “We got a shit ton of loot,” I told her.

  “How much is a shit ton?” she asked, intrigued.

  “A mining cart full. We got diamonds, rubies, emeralds, gold, silver, and jewelry. Even some adorned weapons and armor. But it wasn’t a tenth of what your father has down there.”

  “I can’t wait to see it,” she said excitedly. “Did you get the minotaur balls?”

  “Yeah,” I said, but before I could ask her what she intended for us to do with them, Calli came back around to the front of the house.

  “I absolutely love your cove,” she said. “You both know how to make such wonderful things.”

  “Thank you,” Nika responded. “Do you know how to make things as well? You look like a very clever woman.”

  “My people live mostly in the water,” Calli answered. “We don’t make beautiful coves like this. Our homes are deep beneath the water in natural caves. But I have other skills that will benefit the family, such as fishing and underwater farming.”

  “Let’s not forget your amazing siren song,” I reminded her.

  “I have many songs,” she happily explained to Nika. “Some make you faster and stronger, others make you happy, and others make people I don’t like sad. I can still learn others, and I can teach our babies.”

  “That sounds like a wonderful ability,” Nika said affably. “You are going to fit in just great!”

  Sawsaw came running into the house and dumped an armload of loot onto the kitchen table. Nika gasped, and her eyes sparkled with the reflections of all the precious stones.

  “Dadda!” he said, and then he scampered back out the door.

  I helped him bring in the rest of the loot, and we all sorted through the pile that took up almost half of our living room. Given what I knew about the monetary system in the neighboring villages, I guessed that I had enough treasure sitting in front of me to last an entire lifetime.

  But only if I wanted to live a normal life.

  Nika wanted me to be a king, no, an emperor of the entire world, and I wanted that too. This money wouldn’t go that far when I factored in building fortresses and feeding an army of monster babies.

  I was going to need more. A lot more.

  After an hour spent marveling at the loot, Nika started cooking dinner for the four of us. Calli was very interested in learning how to cook food, since her people lived on a diet of mostly raw fish and seaweed, and together the women made a hearty meal of potatoes and grilled chicken. I figured that with our fortune, we could afford to kill one of the hens, and it was a special occasion anyway.

  The four of us enjoyed our meal, and Calli asked us all a hundred questions. She was very interested to learn that I was from another planet, and was even more impressed when I told her that on Earth, humans had figured out how to make flying machines. When I told her that we had gone to our world’s moon, the beautiful siren giggled and insisted that I was teasing.

  Sawsaw was infatuated with the newest addition to the family, and he insisted that we bring her outside to look at the stars when night fell. Nika thought that it sounded like fun as well, and even packed a basket with apples, bread, cheese, and chocolate. I added a bottle of mead to the basket, and we all walked down to the river.

  The red moon hadn’t yet risen, and the stars were shining bright in the dark sky. I lay on the blanket with Nika to my right and Calli to m
y left and reminded myself that I was the luckiest sonofabitch in the whole universe.

  I was about to suggest that we take a swim in the river when I heard a gunshot in the distance, and I knew immediately that something had set off the tripwire I had placed in the cave leading to the underdark.

  “Did you hear that?” I asked the others.

  They seemed not to have noticed, but as we listened to the still night, another sound rose in the distance.

  It was the steady beat of drums.

  “Oh, that’s a goblin war party,” Nika said as she yawned.

  “A war party!” I said as I shot to my feet.

  “Yep,” Nika said with a wide smile on her face. “They must have tracked you from the underdark.”

  “Oh, no!” Calli exclaimed.

  “Shit!” Sawsaw added.

  “Do not worry, Calli,” Nika said. “Ken has built us a strong warren, and he has added many defenses. The goblins won’t defeat us. Instead, we will slaughter all of them and take their loot. It will be fun. You will see.”

  The drums sounded pretty far away, but I guessed that the war party would arrive in less than fifteen minutes.

  “Nika, how many goblins are there usually in a war party?”

  “It depends. Sometimes there are as few as five,” she said, and I breathed a little easier, but then she added. “But you stole my father’s treasure, so he probably sent a few hundred.”

  “A few hundred?” I gasped.

  “Yes,” Nika said happily. “Isn’t it so exciting? This is our first chance to show the denizens of the underdark how powerful we are.”

  “Alright, everyone, let’s move. We’ve got to get into position.” I pointed up back at the homestead, and we all began to grab our picnic supplies.

  Then we raced back up the hill.

  When I got inside the house, I grabbed all my gear and then helped Sawsaw strap two bejeweled daggers to his belt. Then he pointed at two dwarven hatchets, and I gestured for him to take them. My goblin wife chose a short sword from the pile of loot, and Calli took up her gleaming trident. Once we were all armed, we hurried up onto the battlements that faced east.

  I scanned the ridge, and saw torchlight in the distance, perhaps a half a mile away. If the goblins were smart, they would fan out north and south and attack us from different angles, but my trip lines would alert us to such a maneuver.

  “Calli, do you know how to throw a spear?” I asked as I gestured to the many spears strategically placed along the inner defenses.

  “Of course,” she said and held up her trident. “Every siren is trained for battle.”

  “Good,” I said. “Nika, do goblins, you know, ever negotiate?”

  “Oh no, Ken Jewell, not with treasure thieves they don’t.” She offered me a delighted smile. “They are coming to fight, and if they find out that I am here, then they will try to bring me back as well.”

  “Momma?” Sawsaw asked with worry painted on his cute face.

  “It’s alright, honey,” Nika laughed. “Clan Jewell is powerful. These stupid goblins from my father will not be victorious.”

  I liked Nika’s enthusiasm, but I didn’t share her optimism. If there were upwards of a hundred goblins in the raiding party, we would be hard pressed to defend the homestead.

  The drums continued to sound in the distance, and the glow of the many torches lit the ridgeline less than a mile away.

  “Come on, Sawsaw,” I said as I gestured down the hill, “let’s get the drop on them. Maybe we can confuse them and make them think there are more of us than there really are.”

  “Sawsaw!” he declared as he clanged his little hatchets together.

  “You two stay here,” I told Nika and Calli. “We’ll be back before they arrive.”

  “Happy hunting,” Nika said happily, but Calli was worried, and she hugged both me and Sawsaw tightly.

  “Be careful out there,” she said after she had kissed me on the cheek.

  I led Sawsaw through the gate, secured it behind me, and then we both sprinted down the slope toward the river. Five minutes later we reached the goblin war party and watched from behind a big boulder as they marched across the ridge single file. I counted sixty of them, all heavily armed, and wearing armor fashioned from bone and dirty leather pieces. Their weapons ranged from clubs to short swords and spears, and I breathed a sigh of relief when I realized that there were no archers.

  Nika always told me that goblins were good at sneaking, but the war party didn’t seem concerned with stealth. The drums echoed heavily down through the valley as the goblins chanted.

  “Kill the human, get the loot, cut off his head, steal his boots.”

  I had to admit the little song had a ring to it.

  “Alright, Sawsaw,” I said as I kneeled beside him. “We’re going to creep up behind them and take out the ones at the end of the line. Strike hard and get out fast. Don’t be seen.”

  “Sawsaw,” he whispered and offered me a fist bump.

  I tapped the little guy’s fist with mine, and his skin suddenly changed color. When the war party passed our hiding spot we quietly tip-toed up on the two goblins in the back. They held black banners and didn’t appear to be armed, and they went down quietly as Sawsaw and I slit their throats.

  We plucked two more from their ranks and cut their heads off with our axes. The goblins made so much noise as they marched that it wasn’t hard to go unheard as we stalked them, and we had killed eight of them by the time anyone looked back and noticed that they were gone.

  “It’s the human!” one of them screamed when he saw me, but a second later, Sawsaw rode him to the ground and stabbed him about twelve times in a matter of seconds.

  “Fall back!” I yelled to Sawsaw, and we both hauled ass down the south side of the ridge toward the river.

  Spears thudded into the ground in our wake, but we managed to reach the trees which lined the river. I glanced back and saw that ten of the goblins had broken off from the main group to pursue us, but the others continued toward the homestead. They were less than a half a mile away from the top of the hill, and I guessed that they would reach the first wall in a few minutes.

  I needed to get back to Nika and Calli, but first I had to deal with the goblins that chased after us.

  Sawsaw tapped my leg and put his finger to his lips, then pointed behind the tree that we hid behind. I nodded and listened, but I didn’t hear any sound of footsteps.

  “Goblins are good at sneaking,” Nika’s voice said in my head, and I held my breath.

  A few seconds later, Sawsaw suddenly stabbed a goblin in the neck as it stalked past. I hadn’t heard the goblin at all, even though the ground was littered with small branches and pine cones that should have easily given it away.

  Another one emerged from the shadows and grabbed for my son, but Sawsaw twisted and spun out of the way, and I stabbed his attacker in the heart with my buck knife.

  “Dadda,” Sawsaw said as he pulled me along after him.

  This was goblin warfare, and I didn’t question my son’s tactics.

  He led me to a small clearing among the tall oaks and urged me to follow as he scampered up the tree. The branches hung low enough for me to reach them, so I pulled myself up onto a thick one and waited with my son twelve feet above the ground.

  Thirty seconds later, six goblins emerged from the shadows and crept across the clearing. I glanced at Sawsaw, who nodded at me, and together we leapt out of the tree. Sawsaw landed on a goblin’s back and stabbed him in the eye, while I took out two of the monsters with axe and knife as I fell on them. The others cried out and turned to attack, but Sawsaw was already on the move. He danced around them and slashed their heels, and I finished them off with my sword and buck knife when they turned to try to fight him.

  The drums stopped, and Sawsaw and I shared a look.

  “Momma,” he said urgently.

  “Come on!” I told him, and we raced through the trees until we reached the bridge. The
n we both hurried up the hill to the house.

  The remainder of the goblin war party gathered by the eastern wall. They didn’t attempt to spread out and surround the homestead, and I was grateful for their inept leadership.

  I led Sawsaw through the western gate opposite the goblin horde, and when we reached the battlements, we found Nika and Calli crouched down behind the eastern wooden inner wall.

  “Ken Jewell!” Nika cried happily as I rushed over with Sawsaw.

  “We killed a bunch of them,” I told her.

  “Sawsaw!” my son said as he mimicked slitting throats.

  “I’m so glad that you weren’t hurt,” Calli said as she gave Sawsaw a big hug, and my son pushed out his chest with pride.

  “Stand and declare yourself leader of clan Jewell,” Nika said. “Show them your might!”

  I spied the goblins through one of the many murder holes in the battlement wall. They seemed to be waiting for something, and they loitered in loose formation fifteen feet away on the other side of the pitfall traps I’d dug out.

  “I am Ken Jewell, leader of--” I said as I stood up on the wooden walkway so that the invading group of goblins could see me.

  “King of Clan Jewell!” Nika hissed.

  “I am the King of Clan Jewell,” I said. “And you will never defeat me!”

  “Tell them that you will chop them into little pieces and then eat their babies,” Nika urged from where she sat huddled with the others.

  “What?” I whispered down at her. “I’m not going to eat goblin babies.”

  Nika popped up and threw a spear at the gathered goblins. It hit one of them in the throat, and blood sprayed from his neck as he thudded to the ground.

  “My king will kill you all and eat your babies!” Nika screamed.

  Then Calli popped up beside her and shook her fist in the air.

  “He’ll piss on your corpses and cut off your balls!” the siren screamed.

  “Balls!” Sawsaw reiterated fiercely.

  The goblins all shared looks that varied from fearful to indignant. The fattest of all the goblins rode on the back of a large lizard, and he stood in his saddle and pointed at me. He was adorned in real metal armor and carried a long spear.