It was only as I was out of the premises of the castle that I realised it wouldn’t have been a bad idea to bring my sword along—the real one not the wood one. My face was more or less well known to the people of Drastak and there might be some goons hiding in the capital city who would only be happy if they could kidnap me so that they could demand a ransom to my father. On the positive side, the night had set in. As long as I kept my distance from any source of light, I should be okay.
I moved fast along the streets of the city. I knew the way to the librarian’s house. My father had made me and my brother remember the locations of the houses of all those people who worked in the castle. I reckoned all that my father taught wasn’t as useless as I had previously thought it to be.
After a while, I reached the vicinity of the librarian’s house. I watched from a short distance as old Minnata reached his house. He had set off from the castle earlier than me, but he had old legs while I had youthful ones, which were presently even more youthful thanks to the vague promise of treasure.
Minnata opened his door and went in. I heard what I thought was a little cry of recognition. I reckoned Zunzu was waiting for him inside.
Minnata closed his door and now I hurried to it and put my ear over it. Thankfully, there were not many people in the street in the particular section of the town, or they would have taken me to be a thief or something like that.
Minnata was speaking inside in an angry and frustrated voice.
“Look, I couldn’t have come earlier!” Minnata said, “I cannot suddenly leave the library without reason before my hours are over! Now tell me the why you wanted to meet me.”
“Big reason,” I heard the voice of Zunzu say, “Urgent. Gulor, your brother, sent map.”
“Oh, fine,” Minnata said and I heard the sound of a chair creaking as he sat down. “Tell me about the map.”
“Brother in goat king treasure quest,” Zunzu said, “Woman comes and attack! Brother sends me to you with map.”
“What? Attacked?” Minnata said and there was much panic in his voice this time. “What woman?”
“Powerful woman,” Zunzu replied. “I not recognise.”
“Why didn’t you tell about this to me earlier?” Minnata said.
“You not listen.”
There was a pause for a few seconds.
“None of these locations seem to be in Abhaya,” Minnata said.
Just then there was the great noise of glass breaking from the other side of the house. And then I heard sounds of people running inside Minnata’s house.
“Who are you!” Minnata let out a cry. This was immediately followed by the sounds of a struggle. Then there was a shriek from Minnata. What was happening inside? I tried to push open the door but it was bolted from the inside. Were there intruders inside the house? I was suddenly afraid.
I found myself incapable of doing anything. Minnata and Zunzu were definitely in some kind of trouble inside and I needed to help them, but I could just not think of doing anything. I felt miserable as the sounds inside continued as though someone was hitting somebody which was most likely the poor Minnata. A shudder took over me. I couldn’t help but inwardly mock myself. I wanted adventure, eh? The first signs of trouble and I had lost the ability to move.
A couple of moments later, I heard the intruders exiting from a window on the other side of the house. Everything became still. Was Minnata dead? I got goose bumps at the thought. The librarian had been more or less a good person. I definitely did not want anything bad to happen to him.
With the intruders gone, some of the senses returned to me and I found myself in control of my body again. I tried again to push open the door, but in vain.
But there were windows…
The windows were closed though. Wait, why didn’t I just go to the other side of the house through which the intruders had entered?
A chill ran down my spine. What if they were nearby and what if they attacked me? I already sucked at combat and I would stand no chance against them.
Come on, Timmy, get some guts! A small voice protested inside me. I reluctantly decided to heed to the small voice.
I went round the house. One of the windows on the other side of the house was open. The window panes had been broken perhaps with stones, so that the intruders could unbolt the window from the inside and enter.
It wasn’t easy to climb up to the window and enter the house, but somehow I managed it.
“Minnata,” I called aloud, “Are you all right?” A part of me however was certain that Minnata could be anything but all right.
Very slowly, I moved to the front room of the house in which the struggle had taken place. The moment my eyes fell on the floor, I felt like someone had hit me on my chest with a hammer just over my heart.
Minnata was down on the floor in a pool of blood. He had been stabbed repeated times on the chest, and he also seemed to have sustained hits on his face which was covered in bruises. His eyes were dazed, as though he was just hanging on to the last bit of life. Not far from him in one corner of the room was Zunzu, unconscious and bleeding from the side of his mouth.
Minnata saw me and blinked at me, indicating me to go closer to him. I knelt down. My entire body was shaking. Minnata was a dying man and he was perhaps going to survive only a few more moments.
“The… map,” Minnata said and it was clear from his pained expression that even speaking a couple of words was requiring him a lot of effort, “get it… please… Stop my killers.”
And just like that Minnata died. His blank eyes kept staring at me in a last plea to avenge him. For a while I remained as I was, too struck by what had happened. If only I had done something when the intruders had first come, Minnata might not have to die. I could have just created some noise outside which would have scared away the intruders. If only I had had the presence of mind.
Chapter 4
I began to sob.
I just couldn’t control it. Tears streamed down from my eyes. I felt like I, and not the intruders, was the reason behind Minnata’s death. I cried violently, so that I almost struggled to breathe. With a shivering hand, I closed Minnata’s eyes out of respect for him.
Just then I saw that Zunzu was stirring.
I wiped my tears and got up. I brought water from the kitchen and sprinkled it on the face of Zunzu. Zunzu was in much pain, but he got to his feet, even though he struggled to maintain his balance. He ran to the dead Minnata and began to slap Minnata’s face, as though expecting him to magically revive.
I felt pity for Zunzu. I picked him up and took him away from Minnata.
I swallowed before I spoke.
“Tell me, why did they kill him?” I asked.
“Killers ….wanted … map,” Zunzu answered in between sobs. “They took map away.”
“Can you lead me to them?” I asked. Even as I spoke I was rather aware that it was an idiotic question. How could Zunzu lead me to them? He had been knocked out cold by the intruders. He hadn’t even known that the intruders had exited through the window.
For a moment, Zunzu stared at me blankly, his eyes glistening in the light of the lamp on the nearby table. And then he abruptly nodded.
“Yes,” he said and he looked at me with determination. “Yes! Put me down.”
I placed Zunzu on the floor.
Zunzu closed his eyes and clasped his small hands as though in prayer. Was he activating some kind of a spell?
All of a sudden Zunzu began to glow. All around us footsteps appeared, glowing ones, but they were all fading rather fast.
“Spell not last long,” Zunzu said. Basically, he was saying that we needed to hurry if we wanted to catch the killers and get the map. I picked up Zunzu. Wherever his glow fell, the footsteps became visible, but they also disappeared quickly enough.
Leaving the dead Minnata, I rushed to the window through which the intruders had left. I could see the footsteps of the intruders outside on the lawn.
I moved out as fast as
I could through the window carrying Zunzu and I raced after the traces of the footsteps.
“Who are these people?” I asked Zunzu, even as I sprinted fast.
“Same who attacked Minnata brother,” Zunzu said.
“Did they kill his brother as well?”
“I not know,” Zunzu answered and from his tone I could determine that he really hoped the brother had not been killed. I wondered if Zunzu (or whatever creature he was) was some kind of pet to the brother.
Finally, a short distance ahead, my eyes fell on a fast moving group that was going into an alley.
“Are those the ones?” I said, holding Zunzu’s head towards the group. All the members of the group were wearing hoods which hid their faces and there was one member who I reckoned was a lady. Even though the glow of Zunzu didn’t reach so far away to join the traces of the footsteps with the intruders, Zunzu nodded vigorously.
I broke into a run and covered the small distance relatively fast.
“Hey!” I cried as I entered the alley myself.
What the hell was I actually thinking?
There were at least five of the intruders. How did I think in my wildest dreams that I could actually tackle them singlehandedly? Me, of all cats! I who couldn’t even hold a sword properly!
The intruders saw that I was carrying Zunzu and then ran further into the alley.
“Leave me,” Zunzu said, realising that carrying him was slowing me down even though he wasn’t that heavy. Zunzu began to flap his wings and took to the air.
As the intruders were turning a corner, I fired an air arrow at them.
It was only one of the two spells that I had learned in my life till then. I only had the basic version of the spell, still the air arrow hit one of the intruders and he fell to the ground. His friends however quickly helped him up to his feet. But it did slow the group such that I gained on them.
I shot another air arrow. My air arrows were not extremely powerful. All I ever used them for was to kill pests and mosquitoes in the castle. But every time one of my air arrows hit an intruder they shrieked and grabbed their body part where the air arrow had hit.
Suddenly the intruders stopped. I too came to a halt. Had the group realised that I was alone? Zunzu didn’t count much after all. All of the group members turned towards me. A chill went down my spine.
“Grab him,” the lady intruder said, pointing at me. Her face was shrouded by her hood, but she had a rather manly voice.
The other intruders unsheathed their swords and came for me. Zunzu took flight at once. I couldn’t believe that he had left me so easily at the first instance of me being in trouble.
In my desperation, I shot an air arrow at the intruder who had come closest to me. The air arrow hit his hand, even though it was his head that I had originally aimed for. His sword fell to the ground, closer to me than to him. I activated Human hands and was quick to pick up the sword and I lifted it just in time to block an attack from one of the other intruders.
I threw a kick at the cat, who was considerably larger than me in size. I was aiming for the stomach, but I accidentally hit his groin. He let out a yelp, clutching his privates and fell to the ground.
One of the other intruders swung a sword at me. I dropped down and the sharp blade sailed just over my ears. My heart meanwhile was hammering madly in my chest.
I sprang back to my feet, but just then I felt strong arms grabbing my stomach from behind. It was the lady! She was strong and she had snuck up to me from behind while I had been too busy with the other intruders over whom she obviously held command.
I tried to shake her off, but she simply wouldn’t let me go. The intruder I had hit on the groin finally stood up. His hood had fallen back and his burly face was visible despite the darkness. His eyes were shining with vengeance.
He removed the human hands spell from one of his hands and turned it into a paw. This he threw at me. I turned my head sideways, but the lady was holding me such that I couldn’t evade the blow. The claw of the cat hit my face hard and pain enveloped my face, even as I felt blood ooze out from the several spots that had been pierced by the nails of the cat.
The cat raised his paw again to attack me.
With the hilt of the sword that I was holding I hit the lady’s face as hard as I could. She gasped as I struck her and her hold around my stomach went lose for just a moment. As the other cat threw his paw again at me, I was able to jump sideways. The cat instead hit the female.
“Sorry, my lady!” the male cat cried at once, his voice dripping with guilt, even as I scrambled away from the group.
“How dare you?” the lady said, furious. She slapped the male cat right at the face.
“Give me the map,” I demanded, wielding my sword. I was so surprised at having survived the group of intruders for so long that I actually managed to speak boldly.
The lady withdrew a white sheet of paper from one of her pockets and showed it to me.
“You want this?” she said to me and there was much anger in her voice, likely from having been hit on the face twice. Once by me and once by her own servant. She quickly pocketed the map, “Come get it.”
“My lady, you can just kill him with a spell of yours,” one of the other cats said.
“No spells. I am not taking any chances,” the lady said as she approached me fiercely.
I swallowed. There was something about the confidence of the lady that frightened me, as though she didn’t at all think that I had any chances against her. I was afraid. In my desperation, I threw an air arrow at her. She dodged it rather gracefully, and I could see her draw her lips in a mocking grin.
I considered my option, my temples throbbing. At that moment, I wished so much that I had put my energy into learning at least a little combat earlier. I realised that my best chances of survival were through a bloody fight with the lady.
I threw all caution to the air and charged at the lady. She suddenly dropped to her knees and swung her leg in a kick which caught me and I tripped and fell face first to the ground. My sword bounced away from me as well. The lady wasted no time in kicking my face with her foot. Darn it, it hurt so badly.I lost health.
She kicked me on the head repeated times, such that I felt lightheaded and unable to think clearly. Then she picked up my sword and raised it, poised to decapitate me with the sword.
But at that moment there was a great shout. In one end of the alley, I saw at least a dozen figures running towards me, most of them holding swords and lanterns. Leading them was Zunzu with wings. He hadn’t deserted me after all!
“What the heck?” the lady muttered, her attention fixed on the coming cats. Though I wasn’t feeling very much in control of myself due to the kicks on the head, but I had earlier seen the pocket in which the woman had put the map. I put in the last ounce of energy still left in me and pushed myself up just enough so that my hand could reach the particular pocket. By the time the lady realised what I was doing the map was in my hand.
I grinned at her. Why I grinned I didn’t really know myself.
“We must run, my lady!” one of the other intruder cats shouted, great alarm in his voice.
The lady grabbed the map and there was a small tug of war between me and her over the small piece of paper. She had the sword and she could have just used it to chop off my fingers with which I was holding onto the map, but perhaps because of her panic at the approaching cats led by Zunzu, she didn’t think of this.
The result of the tug of war was that the map tore exactly in the middle, such that I got one half of the map and the lady got the other half. She snarled and tried to grab my part of the map too, but the cats had already reached us.
“I’ll get you,” the lady said to me, sheer venom dripping from her voice. And then she turned at her servants. “Run!” she yelled. And their group fled even deeper into the alley. I felt a dizziness take over me as Zunzu landed just next to me. I felt like I had no energy left and I fell back to the ground. Stars appeared in m
y vision and everything turned black.
Chapter 5
Someone sprinkled water on my face and I felt a hand shaking my chest.
“Prince Timmy,” a fearful voice said, “Are you all right, prince?”
I opened my eyes to see a number of cats around me. Zunzu was sitting on my stomach. The cat who had been shaking me was an elderly one. He had been clearly frightened of the possibility of me dying.
“I… I am okay,” I managed to say though I noted that I sounded weak.
“Who were they, prince?” the elderly cat said.
“Did you catch them?” I asked. “They killed Minnata, the librarian.”
The elderly cat shook his head.
“Unfortunately, we failed to catch them, prince.”
At that moment, I realised that I was still holding the half of the map in my hand. I reckoned none of the other cats had noticed it till now, being too concerned with whether I was well. Quietly I put it inside my pocket. For some reason, I felt that the fewer people knew about the map the better.
The cats wanted to take me to the castle. Initially, I refused because I didn’t want my father to know that I had snuck out of the palace with a false excuse. It was aching so bad all over my body that I eventually allowed myself to be taken to the castle. Someone brought a stretcher and then I was taken on it to the castle. I closed my eyes along the way. I dozed off, I was so tired. And when I opened my eyes again, I found myself in the hospital wing of the castle on a bed.
The head physician was next to my bed and she had a vial in her hands.
“Drink this, you’ll be all right,” she said.
I emptied the contents of the vial and immediately I felt a rush of life within me. I could feel all my open wounds filling up. I felt reenergised. I knew what the potion was. It was one of those very rare health vials that could be used to reclaim one’s health instantly.
“Would you like to talk to your family?” the physician asked. But before I could reply a message popped up in my vision even as a great sensation took over me.
Congratulations!
The Goat King's Wives Online Page 2