“MAX!! LOOK OUT!! A MONSTER!!”
“Monster” was perhaps the best term they could have summoned even had they been given a week to carefully think the matter over. After all, while perfectly formed in his functionality, Harold was of freakish size, and his large eyes, razor-sharp beak, and blade-tipped wings would have frightened a hardened warrior, let alone Konulans, which are not known for their combative natures.
Max let the worm complete its drop, which, though not so fortunate as to find a hole, did in fact begin making one for itself at a pace comparable to that of a dog digging his way frantically under a fence. Only seconds later, not even Harold’s keen eyes could have spotted it, for it had burrowed itself completely underground.
As Max looked up, he agreed with Laura’s descriptor but had no time to ponder it deeply. He found himself scooped up in talons that encircled him and imprisoned him, leaving him not the slightest chance of escape.
Harold then flew towards Laura and Laura’s parents, who were perched horrified on a branch, and certainly would have flown away, had it not been for the fact they didn’t feel comfortable turning tail and skedaddling while their future son-in-law was in the talons of this freakish beast.
“Attention! Attention!” cried Harold with great authority.
All the konulans flew close, though still a dozen feet or so out of Harold’s range. It pains me to inform you that one of your number has been found guilty of high treason—against Master himself!”
They felt confused at this language. Only the despicable Tristan had been referred to as “Master,” and they had thought the pholungs were frightening enough. But this beast defied description.
“Sadly, I must say I don’t think this is news to all of you, as some of you undoubtedly were willing conspirators with Max here.”
Max made a feeble attempt to say something about his innocence, but a quick squeeze with Harold’s talons silenced him.
“However, as Master’s mercy is far greater than we can ever possibly comprehend, he has decided that only the ringleader shall perish.”
They were doubly confused now. The idea that playful Max was the leader of anything—let alone a conspiracy—was implausible, but . . . was it? After all, he did seem to enjoy being the center of attention. Perhaps he one day dreamed of taking Master’s place. All the Konulans were paying close attention.
“The sentence has been issued; there is no appeal.”
And having said that, Harold quickly tore off Max’s head, and tossed the body towards the ground. Several spurts of blood went spraying onto numerous Konulans that had come closer and closer, due to their insatiable curiosity.
“The penalty has been paid. But take heed, lest you should one day flirt with the idea of rebellion, as undoubtedly many of you have. Master would unlikely be so merciful if faced again with rebellion.”
And having delivered his pronouncement, he went flying off towards Master. He had a package to deliver.
As soon as he was out of sight, the wailing and lamenting began. They all huddled around Laura, offering her comfort, for they knew she must be suffering the worst. Yet, they couldn’t help but think they should maybe keep their eyes on her. After all, could she too have been infected with Max’s tyranny?
They tried not to think of that, as right now they knew Laura needed their unconditional support.
Chapter 21
As Harold flew thousands of feet above the terrain of Dachwald headed east towards Master, he felt relatively good about what he had done. A traitor had been removed, a public example had been made of him, and thus a hard lesson had hopefully been instilled in the ranks of the untrustworthy flying mice.
But a small part of him felt a little bad. Had he somehow done the same thing while still a mere Konulan himself, he was pretty sure he would have felt good through and through about the deed. But he realized treacherous Max had no chance against a flying terror such as himself. But that was okay, he told himself, because after all it wasn’t a fight, and it wasn’t murder. It was an execution, and whether it had been carried out by a small bird or a hulking spectacle such as himself was really beside the point. He was but a mere instrument in Master’s hand.
This assuaged the small amount of guilt he had relatively well, but he still suspected that he would feel better once he delivered Max’s treasonous head to Master and put the whole thing behind him. He didn’t particularly enjoy keeping company with the grisly object in his talons, and he dared not stop to hunt, lest he lose the object of his mission. Upon arrival, perhaps he would get a real mission—something far more worthy of a creature of his potential.
Then, a pang of worry struck him, as he realized he was starting to become far prouder than he had ever been before. How could he possibly consider this to have been an insignificant mission? Though small in size, Max’s deadly skills of persuasion had influenced the entirety of the pholungs to join against Master in one deadly surprise attack, which he had only narrowly survived. Even Master’s cat had been flung from the cave, like some worthless item.
Thus, he realized to his satisfaction that Max’s fate had been not only deserved but probably far too merciful. Furthermore, he realized he had better lose his sensitive conscience fast because Master most likely had far bloodier tasks ahead for him.
When Harold arrived in the forest on the outskirts of Ringsetter where he had last met with Master, he was not overly surprised to find he was not there, but he was disappointed nonetheless. He now had the onerous dilemma of deciding what to do with the unpleasant burden he was carrying around. Master had told him to “bring” him Max’s head, but was he perhaps being a bit figurative? Surely, having separated Max’s perfidious head from his torso was sufficient; after all, Master would know whether Harold was lying upon hearing the report that he had killed Max. He didn’t need the head as proof.
Harold was finding himself more eager by the moment to get rid of it, so he decided the next best thing to handing Max’s head to Master in person was to deposit it in the same part of the tree where Master had been sitting when they last spoke. Although . . . that wouldn’t quite do: One good gust of wind, and that head would go flying off into the forest. No, he had better insert it inside some nook of the tree.
Harold scanned the tree with his telescope eyes, and quickly enough he discovered an adequate spot. He felt a prodigious burden lifted from his spirit as the gruesome object disappeared into the small hole of the tree.
Now, he had a new problem. He had absolutely nothing to do.
A sudden rumbling of his stomach begged to differ. He hadn’t eaten in a couple days now. To his delight he realized that he could make that a very short-lived problem. There would be no poking around for worms like in the old days. No, he was going to have a hot meal.
He immediately took off into the air, and once he reached two thousand feet he began scouring the ground for the meal of his choice. As he now knew of no animal—other than perhaps the largest of bears or the longest of anacobras—that would be too dangerous to take as his dinner, he now had the problem of an overabundance of options.
He had always had a particular dislike of cocky personalities, so he thought that so long as there were multiple options available he may as well see if he could sniff out any prey items that seemed particularly worthy of becoming dinner. His stomach told him not to be overly picky about it.
As he soared above scanning the ground closely, he noticed a rather obnoxious wolf who kept giving terrible nips to his fellows who were attempting to obtain their fair share of a kill they undoubtedly had assisted with a great deal. In fact, in Harold’s estimation, it was most likely the others had done more than their fair share. He had seen enough.
With the sun at his back, he wrapped his wings around his body and began to spin as he plunged headfirst two thousand feet towards the wolves. Once he felt he had adequate speed—which was nearly three hundred miles per hour—he unwrapped his wings and let his accumulated speed drive him forward
in a low swooping motion.
Just as the wolf prepared to give another terrible nip to a fellow wolf who—after patiently waiting for the greedy wolf to satiate his hunger with one bloody mouthful of meat after another—dared take a small piece of the kill, Harold struck. His talons sunk deep into the wolf’s sides, puncturing his heart and lungs. Harold whisked him off in an instant, and though shocked, it did not appear that the other wolves particularly missed the nipper.
Harold looked below him, as he soared upwards, and noticed that all of the previously excluded wolves were now munching away contentedly on their meal. Harold felt happy knowing he was adding a bit of justice to the world, something he intended to do quite a bit more of.
Chapter 22
Given the relative ease with which Harold could satiate his ravenous hunger—there being few instances where obtaining a meal exercised more than his ability to choose—there was a lot of extra time to fill. And from the moment Harold arrived back in the woods near Ringsetter and did not promptly come in contact with Master, he knew that Master must have gone far away, likely for an extended period of time.
Thus, he needed some activity besides hunting to keep himself occupied. He recalled that Master had said he would one day have a new master and that his name was Ed. Harold became curious as to whether this Ed character possibly lived nearby. As Harold explored the area, he soon learned that there was only one house in this section of the woods. So, he began to wonder if perhaps Ed lived there. After all, it was near where Master had been hiding.
Whenever he wasn’t hunting, he kept a vigilant watch on the house, whether it was by lurking at the top of one of the many giant trees nearby, sailing through the air lazily in large circles thousands of feet above, or, on some occasions, swooping down stealthily to land on top of the house. While his telescope eyes allowed him to see all goings-on from far above, and his sensitive ears allowed him to understand words spoken outside the home from that height, hearing conversations inside the home from high above was not possible.
Thus, whenever he noticed the owners were inside the home he carefully glided on top of the house so lightly that not even a watch dog would have heard anything touch the roof. Harold quickly learned the dynamics of the household: a hardworking lumber man and a timid housewife. He would have been bored beyond all hope with this particular surveillance mission (Harold had to think of it as a “mission,” or he never would have started it in the first place), had it not been for the fact that, quite early on, he heard the name “Ed.”
This would have been sufficient to convince him that voluminous man hours—or, in this case, bird hours, but Harold was familiar with the concept of man hours and had the bad habit of applying it to himself—were necessary to see what he could learn about this family, but there was no longer any question in the matter after he heard Janie and Richie (he learned their names relatively quickly) talk about how Ed’s studies were going with the venerable professor who had taken him away for a top-notch private education. Apparently, they received an occasional letter from Ed.
Harold recognized immediately that Ed had been taken away to be groomed as a wizard, and, if he had what it took, he was going to one day be Harold’s master, but only when Master gave the go-ahead. However, Harold was open to bending the instructions . . . a little. It was a habit he noticed he had been acquiring little by little since his body was transformed. He figured that if Ed was to one day be his master, and Richie was Ed’s father, then technically Richie could be considered Harold’s interim master until Master came back.
After all, Harold had carried out his last mission dutifully, brought back proof thereof, and was awaiting further instructions in the area he and Master had last met. Surely, Master wouldn’t have given him this enhanced body to just laze about munching on wolves all day. No, he felt it was implied he keep very busy in this new body and put it to good use. Furthermore, if Ed were to one day be his master, he wouldn’t exactly be pleased if some harm were to befall his father.
That settled it for Harold. He had better make sure no harm befell Richie. However, as far as carrying out missions for him, that was another matter. He would have to get to know this Richie and see if he was worthy of being an interim master.
At first, he found Richie a terribly boring surveillance target. He felt his own body grow weary just watching the backbreaking work the poor man did from early morning until mid-evening. If not for his years of experience surveilling humans, he might have thought the poor fellow was serving some form of court-ordered punishment for a heinous crime, but he realized that ironically humans did this sort of work often and voluntarily!
He learned from many a night perched on top of the house that this fellow once had a bad habit of putting large quantities of alcohol into his body and then slapping his wife around. He felt grateful that was a matter of the past, as his new hobby of singling out bullies in the animal kingdom for dinner might have caused his instincts to react in a way not entirely beneficial to Richie. Harold felt an immense sense of relief this instinct wouldn’t be put to the test against his knowledge that he must protect the father of his future master.
Harold also felt quite happy for the poor fellow when he learned that he had decided to quit his daily torture in the lumberyard, although he questioned the intelligence of a man who had waited until his early thirties to do so.
Richie’s new occupation was a bit of a mystery to Harold. Soaring thousands of feet above was a must in any heavily populated area, as he didn’t think it wise for the sighting of a bird of his size to become local gossip. He knew how gossipy humans were; they were almost as bad as the flying mice—of which he had once admittedly been a member, but that seemed so long ago that he almost convinced himself occasionally it was all a dream.
Gossip about a large bird could attract hunters. And that would force Harold to have to flee the area, which would spell the end of his surveillance of Richie and, more importantly, his protection of him. Thus, he rarely descended below two thousand feet when surveilling Richie’s activities in the town of Ringsetter. He saw Richie go into the store, but that was about it.
Had he swooped down and planted himself on top of the store he might have learned a great deal more about Richie’s activities, but alas, whereas Richie’s house had no witnesses around, the act of landing on top of Richie’s new place of employment would have been a spectacle that stole everyone’s attention. Thus, it was only by the occasional hint of Richie’s work in discussions at home with Janie that Harold was able to learn the rudimentary aspects of Richie’s job, which sounded rather dull to Harold.
Harold was beginning to feel rather sorry for himself. He used to be responsible for the discovery of the knighting of a man of common birth as foretold by a prophecy that would be the signal for Master’s country to reassert her greatness, and now he was babysitting a store clerk.
Thus, it was with immense interest that Harold saw Richie leaving work early one day driving a wagon—something Harold had never seen before—which Richie then took into the woods near his home and then frantically began burying the contents, with the exception of one barrel, which he left uncovered long enough to use its contents to plant the beginning of a rudimentary garden.
Harold’s sense of smell rivalled perhaps even that of sight and hearing (no small feat), and he thought the seeds Richie was planting smelled awfully similar to a green powder he had seen Richie use on one occasion and that he had seen many people around town using. He realized Richie was involved in some kind of chicanery when he saw him then put a few empty barrels into the wagon and then drive off.
Harold was quite excited by the journey. He had never heard of, much less seen, the city of Sivingdel before. He had detected some hostility when Richie passed by a group of rather violent-looking young men in a disgusting cesspool on the edges of Sivingdel, and for a moment he thought he was going to have to perform Cyclone, grab these young toughs, and fling them several hundred feet into the air. Admitted
ly, he was a bit disappointed when it proved unnecessary.
Harold knew immediately what Richie was up to (there had been little doubt from the time he planted the garden) when he took off towards Sivingdel on horseback carrying a round sphere of this green substance that drove humans crazy. He expected the possibility of violence was imminent, as Harold had already heard the humans around Ringsetter whining and moaning about how much it cost now to get this substance.
He had thought for sure he was going to have to help Richie when the gang of bullies tried to rob him, and it was to his immense astonishment that he saw that Richie was no ordinary man. The ferocity and skill with which he had battered these hooligans into submission, killing one with a single punch, thoroughly impressed Harold, who had seen his share of human fights before.
He felt euphoric upon realizing this wasn’t all some big mistake and that Ed must be a very special kid because he certainly had a special dad. His confidence in Master was restored immediately, as he had been starting to wonder if Master’s desperate circumstances had caused him to pick a successor that was slightly below the mark.
The Republic of Selegania Boxed Set: Volumes One through Four Page 30