Window Shopping: Kingdom Without a King- Part 5

So a warrior, a traveler and a zombie walk into a courtyard...

Well we ran actually. Praesus charged forward first clobbering an archer with that brutal club of his. This man had the misfortune to be strolling by in close proximity when the prison doors swung open. A small squeal escaped him before he dropped to the ground. Praesus was then on his way to his next foe, targeting two other archers closest to him in the yard.

I sent the zombie guard shambling towards the dickhead throwing rocks at Old Rufus. I saw the look of confusion on the rock throwers face, “Harold? Harold??” His expression then gave way to terror, “Harold! HAROLD! NO!!” I saw the guard tear into the man's neck, his arm went immediately limp and the remaining stones in his hand clomped to the ground. I had no idea blood could be so dark as it spurted from the wound, and then flowed down the man’s shirt.  

I darted for Rufus himself, to see how I might get him free. He was only chained up with a clasp, thankfully. I undid the simple mechanism. “Rufus old boy! Good to see you!.” The dog bypassed me, and then lunged beyond me, knocking another guard to the ground. This guard dropped a horned instrument to the hard packed dirt. One of the guards Praesus was pursuing peeled off made a run for the horn. “Don't let them call reinforcements!”

Praesus said nothing in reply. Instead he stopped, lining up a shot with his club. He aimed perfectly at the guard nearest the horn, and then let the club fly. It went wide arcing just past the guard’s left hand side. I was frantic, knowing that we were barely scraping by with these odds, it would be impossible if more troops arrived. Who knew how many armed individuals were at the ready to attack us in this place. Looking over at the zombie guard, he was still rending flesh from the stone throwing man’s body. Despite pausing his chase, Praesus had actually caught up with the other guard. He grabbed the man, and let their momentum carry the two of them into the stone wall of the courtyard. The two men collided with a muffled ummph, the guard absorbing the brunt of the impact. I turned my attention elsewhere as Praesus proceeded to repeatedly shove the man’s face against the hard stone. All the while, Rufus was struggling with the guard he had knocked over. The dog was trying to clamp his muzzle over the guard’s entire neckline. Dust from his fall mixed with the blood on his body created an unusual clotting effect. Everyone was occupied it seemed.

I had no choice, it was going to have to be me. As the final guard closed in on the horn, I closed in on him as well. I did my best imitation wrestling takedown; scooping the guard’s left leg, and lifting it, and his ass outward, throwing him off balance, then forcing him down with my own weight. A cloud of dirt surrounded us as we scrambled on the ground. I had landed on top of him, just shy of his knees. I only had a moment to swell with pride at my single leg before the guard kicked me in the face. I reeled backwards, my head and neck snapping backwards as he sounded the horn. That was until Praesus crept from behind him and broke his neck violently and quickly.

Praesus and even Old Rufus looked to me, and even the dog seemed to be casting judgement from his aged eyes. “Shit. I’m sorry.” It was all I could manage as from each section of the courtyard, the buildings, and domiciles themselves poured more guards answering the horn’s call.

At least a dozen guards enveloped our position. I saw archers leveling bows at the three of us, swordspeople with shields at the ready. Spears and scythes poked and prodded Praesus, Rufus and myself, maneuvering us to the center of the courtyard. Some of those that had arrived began to survey their fallen friends, the alarm in their eyes turning to anger.

A voice shouted to the group, “Should we string them up?”

A booming voice cut the air, “No,” a man pushed past the crowd. I recognized him, he was the first archer I encountered when Rufus and I had arrived here. “They are dangerous, too dangerous to set up gallows and the like. We kill them here, on my word.”

Old Rufus gave an ill-timed bark for punctuation as he paced between Praesus and myself. “You’re not helping,” I whispered.

The man knelt before me, “You’ve caused  lot of carnage since your arrival here,” his eyes flew to Praesus, “both of you.” His gaze went back to me, “Strangely convenient for a man you claim is your enemy, no?”

“You locked us up together, you gave us no choice but to conspire!” I realized during the course of my shouting that he was not at all paying attention to my words. He was surveying the courtyard meticulously.

When he finished he turned back to me.“Harold Rambly. Garreth Lee. Jonathan Tomy.” The man paused, getting in closer to me, looking down at the body nearest to me, he all but whispered, “Miguel Cervantes.”

“You took us prisoner! Gave us no-” I was kicked again, this time in the mouth.

As the man continued with his diatribe, I could see the mob behind him eager to exact revenge. The man, clad in a smoky grey leather armor, drew his sword and placed it at at my throat, applying just the slightest pressure to my Adam’s apple. The sensation made me gulp in revulsion.  He spoke once more, cocking his head back in a manner that made his dark hair flip upwards momentarily, “You took the lives of these men. And I, Anton Allaine will be the one that takes your life in reckoning.”

Window Shopping: Kingdom Without a King- Part 1

As the purple light grew stronger, I could make out only a few footprints that remained in the dissipating snow. I had no way of knowing who they belonged to. As Old Rufus and I approached the gate, it reminded me how this was already our second journey.

The first started nearly the same, and not long ago. This creature had been there, nearly from the start. As it would happen, I was lucky to have him by my side.

I looked to him, but Rufus still had his head hunkered low, he was sniffing the ground intently. We were now within a few hundred yards of a weathered door, giant wooden planks sealed by a large metal brace and rivets that looked almost modernistic. Together they formed an ingress as big as the entrance to an airplane hangar.

The door was surrounded on both sides by the perimeter that the gate formed. The gate itself seemed to stretch into infinity in opposite directions. Directly surrounding the entrance, the snow had either been disposed of, or had melted away, as it was nearly non-existent. Tundra grass and dirt were exposed in countless patches and tufts.  Flanking the door small bushes, devoid of leaves, begged to be put out of their misery. To look at them was to know they had been burned. Except for one curious thing, a speckle of green couldn’t hide even behind the scorched bushes. It was a pine bough, fresh enough to still have it’s scent. Preasus?

As soon as I had noticed the pine bough Old Rufus seemed to as well. He darted forward. When he did this, I heard a shout from above. My eyes followed the noise, up and up for seemingly forever. Until I saw a dot of a man perched in a tall turret.

“Restrain the beast. And tell me, what business do you have here?” the voice was steady, and I noticed the man speaking had drawn an arrow from a quiver upon his back. It was primed and rested taught in his bowstring.

“Rufus, come back here.” Old Rufus unconcerned about the archer, lazily returned to my side. “Don’t shoot! Err, don’t fire. My name is...well my name isn’t important. I followed a man here, a umm, a villain!”

The man in the tower hollered, “Keep your sights on him. I’m going to meet him.” Then he disappeared out of sight.

It took me a moment to realize he wasn’t talking to me. My eyes followed his gaze. There was a second turret, again with a platform at its apex, on it was another archer, this one a woman.

“Call reinforcements. Don’t move stranger.” the woman shouted down. Her lip curled in a smile. She seemed to be thrilled to have something to aim at.

“Do you want me to hold up my hands?” I shouted up to the woman.

She shrugged, “If I shoot you, I’m not going to shoot you in the hands.” I pondered this for a moment until I heard a horn sound from within the walls. It was a single long note. The machinery behind the walls groaned and squealed. Moments passed until I heard the mechanisms of the great door being swung open.

When it finally was moved aside four men and another woman greeted me. By greeted, I mean they all gazed at me with dour expressions. I waved, and Old Rufus wagged his tail with minimal effort.

The lot of them had swords, except for the first archer who pushed past the crowd and spoke, “You stated you followed a villain here?”

“That’s right.”

“What did this villain look like?” said a bulldozer of a man with a broadsword at the ready.

“Umm, blonde hair, long, in braids.”

The archer spoke again, “This man is your enemy?”

I don’t know why but I laughed, “You could say that.”

The group narrowed their eyes at me. The female archer, still atop her post yelled, “You want me to shoot him?”

My entire body flinched at the question.

“Not yet.”

“Yet?” I asked.

The archer spoke, “The man with the braids was caught in front of our walls a short time before daybreak. He was covering his footprints with a branch. Sort of the behavior that inhabitants behind the wall might find suspicious. Don’t you agree?”

I nodded.

“Much like the fact that another stranger shows up just after we’ve locked him up. Again, odd don’t you agree?”

“Wait a second,” I raised my hands, begging off.

“Shoot him.” the archer commanded.

Before I could argue any further a white light lit up my right temple, and my vision went black. The last thing I heard before I fell to the ground was, “Get the dog.”


TO BE CONTINUED!