Owin dove at her but was swatted away again as if he was nothing more than a scuttler on somebody’s arm.
The naked bitch spoke through gritted teeth. “I’m going to cut your cock off, Blue Romarus. It will be Mother’s for as long as she wishes.”
The king gasped and wheezed, “No! Please…I’m…sorry!” He kicked and thrashed. His hands hopelessly grasped at the arm pinning his neck. With her needle hand, Gosha pulled down the king’s trousers.
What the fuck do I do? Baskie racked his mind for the Blind-Seer’s wisdom. Only a fuckwit enters a fight he knows he can’t win. I can’t win this one. He stood frozen to the spot, staring at the back of the naked woman.
King Romarus managed to grab her needle-wielding hand but she bit his wrist. The king yelled in pain, “Please, I’ll do anything. Don’t fucking do it! Please!” His voice strained. Then his eyes locked onto hers and his tone sounded calmer. “I’ll do that thing again with my tongue. I’ll make you moan like I did earlier. I promise.”
“Pretty Blue, your tongue was not that skilled,” she said, tickling his face with the needle.
King Romarus cried out as she scraped the needle across his eyebrow, causing blood to bubble above his eye. His hand strained against her effortless strength.
Baskie crept behind her. He slowly raised his spear.
She moved the needle down over the king’s crotch.
CLUNK!
She froze. From behind, Baskie heard the doors begin to open and the desert sun pierced through the growing gap. The Skip’s tampering with the odd box at the side of the doors seemed to have worked. He had control over the door. Clever Wallace, Baskie thought.
As Gosha hesitated, King Romarus knocked her off. He fumbled to pull up his cottons. Owin staggered to his feet and made a break for the door. Baskie followed, looking over his shoulder to check on King Romarus, who took his first step to run to freedom. Gosha grabbed his ankle. The boy king’s eyes widened and he crashed to the ground. Romarus scrambled back to his feet. Still in her clutches, he stomped on her head with his free foot. Baskie was sure he heard the king apologize as the woman’s skull bounced off the hard metal floor.
She let out an almighty roar. It was as if her booming breath knocked Romarus off his feet as he stumbled backwards. The raging bitch still clung to his ankle. With one swing, she whirled the king around on his back and he slid along the floor twenty footfalls. The powerful woman stood between Romarus and his escape route.
Baskie watched from under the arch of the large open doorway. The Skip worked on a box outside of the hive. The box of tangles sparked just like the one inside did.
“Stop! We have to get King Romarus out first!” Baskie shouted at the Skip, who had started working on closing the door. Owin was bent over, hands on knees in the sand, trying to catch his breath and steady himself.
Back in the darkness of the entrance hall, Gosha approached Romarus. A throng of footfalls echoed from deep inside the tunnels.
“There’s more coming!” Owin shouted, breathlessly. Brick ran back inside with his heavy backpack. Baskie followed him in. Twelve of Grietum’s rats entered. The halfwit walked within ten footfalls of the gang and poured half of whatever was in the heavy sack, onto the metal floor.
Baskie neared Gosha and punched her in the lower back. She swayed slightly, dropped to a crouch and swiped his legs. His body hit the floor, hard. Romarus tackled her around the waist and they both landed on top of Baskie. As he tried to wriggle free, he saw Grietum’s rats swarm around the pile that Brick had poured on the floor. That’s the dust from the blood flower! Three naked figures came running past the guards and sprinted for freedom. The escapees were ignored as the rats scrambled to the pile of dust like hungry animals around a carcass.
CLUNK! The door began to shudder. “Brick, get out of here! You can’t help us with her. You’ve done all you can!” Baskie shouted as a pair of sweating tits pressed in his face while King Romarus’s hands wrapped around Gosha’s neck from on top.
Brick slung the sack over his shoulder and as it settled, he nearly fell backwards. He made a break for the huge hulks of metal beginning to edge closer together.
Gosha threw an elbow at Romarus’s face. He grabbed his nose and fell backwards. Her attack focused on Baskie next. She had him pinned under her. He lifted his knees to his chest, squeezing them under her stomach. With a thrust, he tried to kick out but she didn’t budge. Her forearm was pinned over his neck and he gasped for air. Baskie wrapped a leg behind her head. He locked it in place with a hand and bashed her in the face with his other fist. Air! She lifted. Romarus had recovered. He stood behind the dazed Gosha and squeezed his arm around her neck, choking her. “Go,” the king shouted. “Run!”
Baskie hesitated for a second. Gosha’s eyes were clouding over. Her mouth foamed at the corners of her twisting dark lips. The blue specks across her reddening face began to turn purple.
He looked towards the gang of rats—they were still feasting on the pile of dust and some of them were writhing on the floor in ecstasy.
Baskie sprinted for the huge doors which were now grinding past halfway shut. He’s got a minute at best, he thought as he ran out to the heat of the sands, turning to look back into the darkening entrance hall.
He heard Romarus muttering to the near-dead woman, “Shit, I’m fucking sorry.” The king’s chin quivered as he stared blankly with his arm choking Gosha. “Please fucking die.” Baskie knew the feeling of taking a life.
Gosha’s flailing hand grasped back. With pinpoint accuracy, she grabbed the king’s balls and twisted. He winced in pain. They both stood and squared up to each other. Gosha spat and stared at the boy king with manic, bloodshot eyes. She threw a combination of punches at Romarus’s face. He parried them off so quickly it was as if he knew they were coming. Romarus’s small body corkscrewed in the air, threatening a kick. She backed off. Another corkscrew, still no kick. Gosha went for a punch. Another corkscrew from Romarus ended in a high crescent kick, contacting his naked attacker across the face.
The gap in the door was only ten footfalls wide and was still closing. Romarus made a break for it. Gosha pursued. She seized his shoulders from behind. The boy king halted, grabbing her wrists and launched her over his head. She landed in the gap of the door, now only five footfalls wide and still closing. Gosha stepped back into the darkness towards Romarus. He threw a punch to her face. She caught his fist, locked his arm in an attempt to break the elbow but Romarus grasped her wrist with his free hand and twisted. She screamed as if she was giving birth. Baskie heard a snap, followed with another guttural shriek from Gosha.
“Shit,” Romarus muttered in a high-pitched tone. It was as if the king felt bad every time he hurt her. He recoiled away from her.
Baskie ran back into the darkness and barged Gosha deeper into the entrance hall. She staggered, injured. Baskie made a break for the slither of a gap in the door and pushed Romarus out into the sand. As Baskie squeezed into the gap after the boy king, he felt the pressure of the huge metal hulks press on him. The powerful crush was on his chest. Owin grabbed his hand and pulled him out from the incredible grip of the doors. He lay on the sand, catching his breath. The naked escaping blues, who had passed them in the entrance hall, caught his eye as they ran towards the hills behind Grietum’s Hive.
BOOM! The doors slammed closed, echoing into the hills and dunes. Then, for a moment, there was silence.
“We have to go back for the others. And what about the ones that ran off into the hills? My friend Louis was with them. They’ll die in this heat!” Owin shouted at the Skip, who was already leaving, walking towards the duneback and the tent.
Baskie backed up his friend, shouting, “Why are you walking away? You said we were going to help them and free them!”
The Skip turned sharply as he stopped walking. “We gave them the best shot we could. And those three are heading into the hills. They’ll find shelter there. Now we leave, or we’ll get hunted down by half
a hundred cock-less strong-men after they’ve recovered from their wobbling drooling ecstasy because of him!” He pointed at Brick and shook his head.
“That’s all you fucking cared about. You just wanted to hurt her!” Baskie waved his hand back at the hive. “You couldn’t give a shit about the people. Those men in there will probably get hunted down and killed because of you! Or her rats will turn on her when they don’t get their fill and she’ll get killed…and you said you never kill people!” He was up in the Skip’s face jabbing a finger in his chest.
The Skip pushed him away and he landed, arse-first, in the hot sand. “I said I never kill anybody. If they do it for me, then so be it. And I regret the blues in there but they had their chance and what we did today saved countless lives. If that,” he shouted, pointing at Brick’s sack, dumped on the sand, “got into the kingdoms it would tear people’s lives apart.” His face changed as if he was looking back to a distant memory. The Skip’s eyes locked onto the sack. He stared. With a sniff he snapped out of it, saying, “That bitch had to be stopped. She’s ruined too many lives.”
This wasn’t just about stopping this evil dust leaking into the kingdoms, Baskie thought, sensing other motives more personal to Wallace Ryder.
Wallace the Skip walked over to the sack and reached for the opening. “This has to be emptied out into the wind and allowed to float away and sink into the sand.”
Brick quickly slapped his hand away. “King Womawus wanted it, so it wiw stay in that sack,” he said, with spit spraying out of his unusually round mouth.
The Skip ignored him and went to open the bag. Romarus tackled him to the ground and pinned a knee to his chest. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me this is what you wanted all along?!”
The Skip brushed sand off his face. “You got what you wanted. You got your lost prince and you wouldn’t have had a chance to find him if it wasn’t for my help. At the same time, you helped save the kingdoms from that shit.” He swung an arm in the vague direction of the sack of dust. The Skip switched on his best ridicule tone, saying, “And anyway, the plan would have been too complicated for you.” He turned to Baskie. “I just told him to go in, fuck, trap them in the throne room and leave…something he could understand.”
Romarus rose with a blank expression. “Nope,” he muttered, as if telling himself not to rise to the Skip’s words. He was clearly boiling with anger; his head shook and his chin quivered. Marching over to the duneback, he hopped up and kicked his heels into the beast. “Prince Baskerville,” he shouted through gritted teeth, breathing deeply, “I’ll take you to the coast and from there you can take a ship to the Wetlands.” Brick slung the sack over his shoulder and scrambled after his king.
The Skip stood and brushed himself off. “You take that dust out of here, you will only bring ruin to wherever it is you plan to sell it.”
King Romarus rode away and held up nine fingers to the Skip in insult.
“What about me?” Owin piped up, sounding like a lost child, turning to Baskie.
Baskie was frozen to the spot and didn’t know whether to follow King Romarus and go home, stay with his friend and return him safely to the island, or try to help the Skip to stop the king and his halfwit aide from wasting all of their efforts. As he watched Romarus gradually plodding further away on the duneback, with Brick closely in tow, he saw a smaller sack flung around the halfwit’s neck. The opening burst with a blood-red color. Baskie stood next to the Skip and whispered, “This is more serious than you think. He’s taken some of the actual flower too. If they figure out how to grow them and the process of making that dust, it could be out across the Known World.”
“Well help me stop him then,” the Skip whispered back.
“There’s no way we could take him by force. You need to think. Skips always have a plan.”
“I never planned for witless loyalty like that.” He pointed at Brick, still stumbling after the duneback that was carrying his king.
The Skip’s eyes widened and he shouted, “I can help you find your brother!”
His brother? What the fuck is he on about? “Is this a trick?” Baskie asked, quietly.
“No…I don’t think so anyway. If my sources are correct…it is not a trick. If they’re wrong…then yes…I suppose it is a trick.” Wallace rambled on as usual, not making particular sense. It was as if he was trying to convince himself of his own plan.
Romarus pulled the duneback to a halt. “What did you say?”
“I will help you find your brother,” the Skip shouted, then paused. “What was his brother’s name?” he whispered to Baskie out of one side of his mouth.
What the fuck was the firstborn of Locutus called? Baskie racked his brains trying to think. “Costalus…I think,” he whispered, hoping his memory served him correctly.
“Costalus. I know where he is,” the Skip shouted. “I hope,” he added silently.
Owin butted in like a spoilt child. “But what about me? I just want to go home.”
“That is exactly where I am hoping we are all about to leave for, my dear-annoying-curly-haired friend.” The Skip patted Owin’s annoying curly hair.
Costalus is on the Mother’s Island? Baskie always knew there were boys of royal blood on the Mother’s Island who the Mister took as infants and brainwashed. Docháran was clearly from the Peak Kingdom and he was sure that was the name of one of the sons of King Sáran. Which one is Costalus though? The Mister must change some of their names if they were not old enough to remember where they truly came from.
“My brother was taken when he was a baby. He is dead,” Romarus said blankly, not turning to face them. Brick waited patiently next to the king’s mount.
The Skip whispered to Baskie, “Tell me, was there a boy on that island, your friend here calls home, with two differently colored eyes?”
Saul! It seemed obvious now. His face is much like Romarus in so many ways. “His name is Saul and I see Romarus in him. He even sounds like him.”
The Skip chuckled. “Clever Wallace! Oh I am good,” he congratulated himself then shouted to the king, “He is quite alive. And if you were to destroy what your aide is carrying, I will take you to him.”
Owin whispered in Baskie’s ear, “Romarus isn’t a chosen brother though so—”
Baskie couldn’t listen to Owin’s shit, so he butted in quickly, telling him, “Totally different kind of brother. All you need to know is your annoying curly head is going home.” He heard his own words and worried he was beginning to sound like the Skip.
Romarus hopped down off the duneback. The king and the Skip walked towards each other.
And then the Prophet Maran closed the Beast’s Eye. Only the chosen avatars and the kings—descendants of the gods—may set foot on its soil.
Prophecies 3, The Maran
Londenia
Eyes Opened
We’ve made it, Londenia thought, when she saw a shining round wall far off in the distance. She turned to look back at her traveling party of twelve. Only Queen Londenia and Queen Se’rel remained of royal status. Her guard was made up of just eight, led by L’Gon and H’Gon from the Wetlands. The two healers, Celóndas and Sandunion, were still by her side. And there was the Watch King’s bastard son, Taigo.
There had been no choice but to abandon the Fair Blue Maiden three days ago. She sank into the Bay of Blue after succumbing to King Anthony’s tampering. But they were clear of the Kingdom of the Dead Cities before they were forced to jump ship, making the rest of the journey to the border of the Still Cities on foot.
It was as if Taigo had been sent by the gods to protect them. Every night after they made camp, he would double back into the green forests of this empty land and set traps so any attempt by King Anthony to follow and ambush their party, would be foiled with an array of Meeren contraptions and trickery. This however didn’t help Londenia sleep any easier. At night, she would lie awake, alone in a makeshift shelter, which was little more than some tree branches. When she closed her e
yes, King Anthony was there. His mother, Ilar, also haunted her dreams. The old woman’s bitter words and curses played on her mind.
The relief of seeing the Still City watch post of the Burrow soon faded away as she thought about what little remained of six of the Ten Kingdoms. Three of the kings were dead, and one king—her king, Romarus—was somewhere searching for King Stewart’s son. Her father, King Kalon of Long Kingdom, was likely hundreds of leagues to the south-east, searching for what might remain of the King of the Broken Arm’s land and people.
At the foot of a hill, one hundred footfalls away, stood the round wall, twenty footfalls high. She saw sentinels dressed in long green robes, pacing the top, perhaps ten of them. As their party drew closer, one of the men on the shining wall reached inside his cloak and sounded a horn.
Within moments, riders emerged from behind the round wall on gray broncos with horns wrapped in green cloth. They rode out with their vivid emerald-colored robes draped down over their broncos’ hind quarters and formed a line twenty strong. Queen Londenia held a hand up and her band of followers halted. As she lowered it they knelt to greet the riders from the Burrow.
The thundering of the hooves stopped and the leader of the pack hopped down off of his adorned bronco. Londenia addressed him, calling out, “I am Queen Londenia of Last Kingdom. We were attacked on our way to your lands and this is all that remains of our party. My people…” She paused at those words as she found it strange to be calling another queen, and another king’s son, her people. “My people require food, shelter and water. The magisters of Mor requested we come to their city but before we continue, we must rest.”
The Burrow guard leader responded in the slight rhythmical dialect that was common in the land of the Still Cities: “Queen Londenia, my men will escort you within our wall. We have been told to expect a much larger party than what we see before us.”
A Poisoned Land (Book 1: Faith, Lies and Blue Eyes) Page 37