Kevin Wright's Blog: SaberPunk - Posts Tagged "high-fantasy"
Review of 'Kings of the Wyld' by Nicholas Eames
Sometimes when reviewing a book, I tend to get lost in minutiae and overthink things. What did the book mean? Was it good? How was it good? Or was it bad? Did it meet or fall short of my expectations? In reviewing ‘Kings of the Wyld,’ I’m using a much simpler system: speed of the read.
I burned through ‘Kings of the Wyld.’ And it’s a fair chunk of words, just shy of five hundred pages. To give some perspective, I read it in on a family vacation that did not allow much time for anything other than walking, going on rides, growling at my children, and passing out with sore feet. Amongst all that, I managed to read it in four days, squeezing in reading sessions each night while my wife and kids did the smart thing and passed out, readying for tomorrow. So I read it pretty fast. Considering.
I find that there are books I enjoy while reading them but never really feel the need to get back to. I just sort of drift along through them and enjoy as I read. ‘Kings of the Wyld’ was not like that. I was looking forward to getting back to it, looking forward to burning through another chunk. To me, that’s the hallmark of a good book. You can analyze it, dissect it, do whatever you want to it, but if you want to get back to reading it when you’re not, you know you’ve found it. So… Read ‘Kings of the Wyld.”
‘Kings of the Wyld’ is a high-fantasy novel that follows the exploits of a band of past-their-prime mercenaries come together for one last job. A fairly simple plot but done well, extremely well. In fact, everything about ‘Kings of the Wyld’ is done extremely well.
And as I said, it moves. There isn’t a dull spot in the whole novel, and where there could have been lulls there were generous doses of humor to lubricate it along. All the characters pull their weight with the funny business, from the sarcastic internal monologue of Clay Cooper, the pov character, to the antics of easily the craziest character, the wizard, Moog. Even the psychopathic killing machine Ganelon manages a few lines that’ll make you chuckle. I didn’t find myself laughing out loud while reading it, like some of the reviewers I’ve read, but I chuckled, and I was also in a two-bed hotel room with sleeping kids whom I didn’t want to wake on pain of death.
Humor is a big part of the book, but it’s not all. The action scenes are top notch. From skirmishes to massive warfare, the scenes are all entertaining and over the top awesome.
And I apologize for going a little emo here, but there are truly some heartfelt moments in the novel and not always where you’d expect it. My favorite moment in the entire book concerns the relationship between a pair of brothers, Dane and Gregor. Sounds pretty run of the mill, but it’s not even close.
So ‘Kings of the Wyld’ is a funny fantasy novel, but it’s not just that. It’s way more. Read it and check it out for yourself. You’ll be glad you did.
Kevin Wright, author of ‘Lords of Asylum’
http://amzn.to/242AqeO
I burned through ‘Kings of the Wyld.’ And it’s a fair chunk of words, just shy of five hundred pages. To give some perspective, I read it in on a family vacation that did not allow much time for anything other than walking, going on rides, growling at my children, and passing out with sore feet. Amongst all that, I managed to read it in four days, squeezing in reading sessions each night while my wife and kids did the smart thing and passed out, readying for tomorrow. So I read it pretty fast. Considering.
I find that there are books I enjoy while reading them but never really feel the need to get back to. I just sort of drift along through them and enjoy as I read. ‘Kings of the Wyld’ was not like that. I was looking forward to getting back to it, looking forward to burning through another chunk. To me, that’s the hallmark of a good book. You can analyze it, dissect it, do whatever you want to it, but if you want to get back to reading it when you’re not, you know you’ve found it. So… Read ‘Kings of the Wyld.”
‘Kings of the Wyld’ is a high-fantasy novel that follows the exploits of a band of past-their-prime mercenaries come together for one last job. A fairly simple plot but done well, extremely well. In fact, everything about ‘Kings of the Wyld’ is done extremely well.
And as I said, it moves. There isn’t a dull spot in the whole novel, and where there could have been lulls there were generous doses of humor to lubricate it along. All the characters pull their weight with the funny business, from the sarcastic internal monologue of Clay Cooper, the pov character, to the antics of easily the craziest character, the wizard, Moog. Even the psychopathic killing machine Ganelon manages a few lines that’ll make you chuckle. I didn’t find myself laughing out loud while reading it, like some of the reviewers I’ve read, but I chuckled, and I was also in a two-bed hotel room with sleeping kids whom I didn’t want to wake on pain of death.
Humor is a big part of the book, but it’s not all. The action scenes are top notch. From skirmishes to massive warfare, the scenes are all entertaining and over the top awesome.
And I apologize for going a little emo here, but there are truly some heartfelt moments in the novel and not always where you’d expect it. My favorite moment in the entire book concerns the relationship between a pair of brothers, Dane and Gregor. Sounds pretty run of the mill, but it’s not even close.
So ‘Kings of the Wyld’ is a funny fantasy novel, but it’s not just that. It’s way more. Read it and check it out for yourself. You’ll be glad you did.
Kevin Wright, author of ‘Lords of Asylum’
http://amzn.to/242AqeO
Madam Spew - Chapter 1 - The Swamp Lords Chronicles
Chapter 1. The Quest
Acolyte Spew waddled across the muck floor of the hovel, a bone stiletto jutting tooth-like from her fist. “Forever don’t always take so long as you think it might, boy,” her croaking voice sawed the sweltering air like a bog owl’s screech, “sometimes it takes but a moment.”
“Blow it out your arse, hag.” Malving’s vision began to clear. To focus. Where was he? His hovel. The floor. His hands were bound! “RRRrrrrg… What the Craw do you want?”
The croaker crept forward with amphibian coolness, her round red croaker eyes blazing.
“Let me go!” Like some half-drowned kitten, he batted at her stiletto.
“After I just finished tying you up?” Spew hopped closer, the slap of her belly against the ground splashing slime and brown putridity alike. “Pretty-pretty pink.” She draped her slim fingers on his forehead. Petted him. Left four snail trails glimmering. “So soft. So smooth.” Her eyes narrowed. “I could cut out your heart and wear it beating round my neck as a pendant, boy,” she loomed over him, eclipsing the light, “or … I can not.”
“Huh?” Malving grunted. “What?” What in hell was she saying? If he could just slip free. Just his hands. One hand. Almost… He was bigger. Stronger. He’d beaten stupid croakers raw before. His face burned crimson as he struggled. “Cannot what?”
“Can … pause … not.” Spew articulated the stiletto like a teacher’s pointer.
“What!?” Malving spat. Come on.
“Cretin!” Spew raised her stiletto overhead.
“I know you are but what am I!” Malving barked.
“I’ll shut you up for good!” Two-handed, Spew stabbed down.
Malving jack-knifed a squirm.
Snap! Spew missed wide, breaking her stiletto blade off at the hilt. “Damn you!”
Malving wriggled further back through the muck. The blade had landed behind him. Somewhere. He had to get it.
Laughter filled the hovel.
Spew whipped around. Her glare choked the laughter dead.
Malving’s newfound hope plummeted through him like Swamp Rat stew. The fat croaker hag wasn’t alone. He squinted past her. Into the dark corner of the hovel. A shadow gallery of silhouettes stood lined up against the far wall. Watching. Snickering. Five of them. Elbowing each other. Whispering.
Yes… Now he remembered. Villains. Blackguards. Weirdos. All of them. Spew had come to his sty. To buy a pig, she’d claimed. And when he’d gone out back? All six had jumped him.
Malving squirmed closer to the blade. She hadn’t noticed it. Almost…
“Ahem…” Spew adjusted her purple wig. “As I was saying before I was rudely interrupted,” she cast the gallery a fell glare, “I can, or conversely, I can not cut out your worthless heart. It depends solely upon you and your attitude. Forthwith.”
“Wartback,” Malving hissed.
“Tsk. Tsk.” Shaking her head, Spew withdrew a fish club from within her bag.
“I’m just a kid,” Malving pleaded at Spew. At the five. But his fingertips touched the blade! “You gonna just stand there and let her gut me?”
An uncomfortable silence blanketed the room.
“Well, that was the plan,” one finally admitted.
“Ridiculous,” another scoffed, “can’t gut anyone with a fish club.”
“You bunch of sissies!” Malving seized the blade! “Took six of you to kidnap one kid.”
“Is he questioning our villainhood?” One was obviously taken aback.
“It was five, really,” another confided behind a hand. “Spew barely helped.”
Behind his back, Malving sawed feverishly at his bindings.
“A worm on a hook you are, boy.” Spew polished the fish club on her robe sleeve. “And the nether-gator’s come cruising.”
“GET BACK!” The bindings split off his hands, and Malving surged to his feet, stiletto blade forth. “I’ll cut you!”
Feet pounded across the mud floor as the shadow gallery trampled one another fighting for the exit.
Malving smirked as he watched them fighting at the door. He turned to Spew, “Just you and me now, hag” and tore after her—
“!@#STOP#@!” Spew’s command reverberated through space and time, sundering reality in waves of purple energy. A cavernous echo whipped swirls of indigo energies devil dusting away.
Magic. Black Magic.
A hair’s breadth from stabbing Spew, Malving stood quivering still as a statue, teeth gritted, sweating, whimpering, arcane forces slithering on him, in him, through him.
“Pathetic.” Taxed ragged, gasping, Spew wiped her mouth.
Malving sneered, the only thing he could do.
“You’re nothing but a fodder, boy.” Spew plucked the bone blade from Malving’s inert hand, turned to the shadow gallery, all five of them jammed in the doorway. “Grab him. The Ribspreader wants him.” Her grin oozed evil. “A new project.”
Acolyte Spew waddled across the muck floor of the hovel, a bone stiletto jutting tooth-like from her fist. “Forever don’t always take so long as you think it might, boy,” her croaking voice sawed the sweltering air like a bog owl’s screech, “sometimes it takes but a moment.”
“Blow it out your arse, hag.” Malving’s vision began to clear. To focus. Where was he? His hovel. The floor. His hands were bound! “RRRrrrrg… What the Craw do you want?”
The croaker crept forward with amphibian coolness, her round red croaker eyes blazing.
“Let me go!” Like some half-drowned kitten, he batted at her stiletto.
“After I just finished tying you up?” Spew hopped closer, the slap of her belly against the ground splashing slime and brown putridity alike. “Pretty-pretty pink.” She draped her slim fingers on his forehead. Petted him. Left four snail trails glimmering. “So soft. So smooth.” Her eyes narrowed. “I could cut out your heart and wear it beating round my neck as a pendant, boy,” she loomed over him, eclipsing the light, “or … I can not.”
“Huh?” Malving grunted. “What?” What in hell was she saying? If he could just slip free. Just his hands. One hand. Almost… He was bigger. Stronger. He’d beaten stupid croakers raw before. His face burned crimson as he struggled. “Cannot what?”
“Can … pause … not.” Spew articulated the stiletto like a teacher’s pointer.
“What!?” Malving spat. Come on.
“Cretin!” Spew raised her stiletto overhead.
“I know you are but what am I!” Malving barked.
“I’ll shut you up for good!” Two-handed, Spew stabbed down.
Malving jack-knifed a squirm.
Snap! Spew missed wide, breaking her stiletto blade off at the hilt. “Damn you!”
Malving wriggled further back through the muck. The blade had landed behind him. Somewhere. He had to get it.
Laughter filled the hovel.
Spew whipped around. Her glare choked the laughter dead.
Malving’s newfound hope plummeted through him like Swamp Rat stew. The fat croaker hag wasn’t alone. He squinted past her. Into the dark corner of the hovel. A shadow gallery of silhouettes stood lined up against the far wall. Watching. Snickering. Five of them. Elbowing each other. Whispering.
Yes… Now he remembered. Villains. Blackguards. Weirdos. All of them. Spew had come to his sty. To buy a pig, she’d claimed. And when he’d gone out back? All six had jumped him.
Malving squirmed closer to the blade. She hadn’t noticed it. Almost…
“Ahem…” Spew adjusted her purple wig. “As I was saying before I was rudely interrupted,” she cast the gallery a fell glare, “I can, or conversely, I can not cut out your worthless heart. It depends solely upon you and your attitude. Forthwith.”
“Wartback,” Malving hissed.
“Tsk. Tsk.” Shaking her head, Spew withdrew a fish club from within her bag.
“I’m just a kid,” Malving pleaded at Spew. At the five. But his fingertips touched the blade! “You gonna just stand there and let her gut me?”
An uncomfortable silence blanketed the room.
“Well, that was the plan,” one finally admitted.
“Ridiculous,” another scoffed, “can’t gut anyone with a fish club.”
“You bunch of sissies!” Malving seized the blade! “Took six of you to kidnap one kid.”
“Is he questioning our villainhood?” One was obviously taken aback.
“It was five, really,” another confided behind a hand. “Spew barely helped.”
Behind his back, Malving sawed feverishly at his bindings.
“A worm on a hook you are, boy.” Spew polished the fish club on her robe sleeve. “And the nether-gator’s come cruising.”
“GET BACK!” The bindings split off his hands, and Malving surged to his feet, stiletto blade forth. “I’ll cut you!”
Feet pounded across the mud floor as the shadow gallery trampled one another fighting for the exit.
Malving smirked as he watched them fighting at the door. He turned to Spew, “Just you and me now, hag” and tore after her—
“!@#STOP#@!” Spew’s command reverberated through space and time, sundering reality in waves of purple energy. A cavernous echo whipped swirls of indigo energies devil dusting away.
Magic. Black Magic.
A hair’s breadth from stabbing Spew, Malving stood quivering still as a statue, teeth gritted, sweating, whimpering, arcane forces slithering on him, in him, through him.
“Pathetic.” Taxed ragged, gasping, Spew wiped her mouth.
Malving sneered, the only thing he could do.
“You’re nothing but a fodder, boy.” Spew plucked the bone blade from Malving’s inert hand, turned to the shadow gallery, all five of them jammed in the doorway. “Grab him. The Ribspreader wants him.” Her grin oozed evil. “A new project.”
Madam Spew - Chapter 2 - The Swamp Lords Chronicles
Chapter 2. The Chosen One
A maelstrom of screaming demon skulls tore through the chamber. Eldritch energies and arcane forces sparked like lightning, bouncing off the ceiling, rattling the skeletons and iron masks spiked to the walls. Within the safety of the pentagram etched into the floor, before the Altar of Woe, the two Wrackolytes stood yet untouched, protected by an invisible shield-barrier.
“Do you see her?” Abzgorn the Ribspreader hissed.
“By Sanctos…” Lorgex the Eyes growled. “I’ve harnessed the demon, but… ” His old bones creaked as he straightened from gazing into the empty sockets of his seer-skull.. “Spew cannot hide from me. Not from the Eyes.” He wiped smears of sweat down either side of his leather slicks then started patting down his pockets. “Damn.” He looked to his torture slab across the room.
“What in the Craw—?” Abzgorn asked. “Stop!”
Through the invisible barrier Lorgex suddenly leaped, arcane winds searing his skin, his lungs. Ducking, dodging, screaming, he skidded to a halt at his slab. “Where?” Across it he searched, scattering a thousand haphazard trinkets and paraphernalia in the process. “They’re here. They must be!”
“Hurry, you old fool,” Abzgorn watched on in growing irritation. “The ice you tread was rotten already.” He adjusted his hold on the Elder Sign, held quivering above him, generating the shield-barrier. “Grimnir’s teeth.” He winced as arcane an eldritch horror slammed the barrier.
“Curse you!” Lorgex swept his arm across his slab, a hailstorm of sharp instruments clattering onto the floor.
“The High Wrackolyte has already considered castrating your appointment as Wrackolyte,” Abzgorn roared. Cracks began to fissure through the barrier. “Fail me now, and I shall will it done!”
“I need more goblin eyes—” Lorgex looked under his slab.
“The barrier is failing!”
“They’re here—”
“Curse your eyes!”
“I left them right here!” Lorgex sweat coursed down his liver-spotted egg of a head. Airborne ethereal demon-skulls buzzed past him, snapping with sharp, pointy teeth. “I know it.” He snatched up his torture bag, looked under it, cursed, then dove back into it, rifling through with reckless abandon. Metal forks flew, spike-spirals, chisels and other horrible blood-crusted instruments all over his shoulder. “Aaaarch!” He upended his bag, flung it against the wall and started slamming his puny fists against the slab.
“Damn you, Spew!”
“I-In m-my b-bag!” The Elder sign in Abzgorn’s hands vibrated so badly his teeth chattered. A demon-head broke through the barrier, biting onto his leg. “Arrgh!” He kicked, flinging it off. “The b-bottom left—”
Lorgex was there in an instant, elbow deep in the bag, rifling through it, ducking demons, yelping at the burn of hellfire gales. “Aha!” Lorgex yanked a jar free. Orc eyes stared out numbly from within. He deflated. “The demon won’t like these…”
“Do it!” Abzgorn roared. “Give it something! Or I’ll see Spew made Madam and you—” that thought went unfinished as spurting balefire drove him to one knee.
“She’ll be no Madam!” Lorgex ducked another skull, dove across a slab and hurled himself back into the pentagram. Blood streamed from a myriad of cuts and bites to his head, his face, his arms. “No damned wart-back croaker’ll be a full Wrackolyte.” He latched onto the Elder Sign alongside Abzgorn. “Not while I still live and breathe!” As one … they rose.
“Enough. Forget her quest—”
Lorgex’s blue eyes beamed ravenous in the polychromatic swirls. “You know the object of her quest?”
“Go!”
Lorgex obeyed, abandoning Abzgorn and the Elder Sign for the Altar, the seer skull perched atop it. Abzgorn screamed in pain. Lorgex drew the jar from his slicks and smashed them on the altar. Snatching two rolling orbs and took up the skull. “Yeouch!” It snapped at his fingers. “Please — what quest?”
Abzgorn withered beneath the falling barrier. “I… Rrrrrg… cannot say…”
“But you must!” Lorgex begged, kneeling, contorting now beneath the collapsing barrier. “You must tell me. I must know—”
“Harness it!” Abzgorn cried. “Do it now, or we’re doomed.”
Leaning his head back, holding the skull above him, staring into its bulging eyes, Lorgex squeezed his thumbs into the eye sockets. The aqueous-humors squirted, pouring down his arms, first a trickle then raining down onto his face, his own eyes. The seer skull moaned luridly. Its jaw slackened hanging now open. Sated.
Abzgorn collapsed to the ground, dropping the Elder sign rolling across the floor. Cold silence filled the room. The demon-heads were gone, the arcane energies harnessed.
Dark words Lorgex muttered then, the language of pain and jealousy and rage, the tongue of fear and hate. Of the Woebringer. The clear juices upon him began to hiss, steaming, sizzling as though Lorgex were aflame. The white steam swirled around him, entering him through his mouth, his nose, his ears, his eyes. The crypt shook, a cacophony of vibration, tools dancing across the torture tables. Lorgex shuddered in ecstasy as he SAW…
“I can see her, Abzgorn. Her shade. She walks— No, she rides,” Lorgex whispered. “Yes… Yes… She rides in the company of others. Five.” Lorgex stared deep into the eye sockets. “Yes… Yes, I see you, Spew. What is it you’re doing? Where is it you’re going? No. Coming. You are coming here, yes, but what are your words? What are you saying? What task has the High Wrackolyte set you?”
“There is no one else with her?” Spent, broken, exhausted, Abzgorn lifted his hooded head from the stone floor. Barely.
“No. I see nothing — wait. There is more.” Lorgex’s face peeled back in a rictus of ecstasy. “She rides atop a child — a pilloried child?” Lorgex muttered. “Who is he?”
“She brings him here?” Abzgorn asked in awe. “Now?”
“Who is this child?” Lorgex turned. “I must know! You shall have whatever you want of me! Name it.” He blinked, seeming to lose his balance for an instant, legs wobbling, but regained it by clutching onto the Altar. “Is he a sacrifice?”
“I-I cannot say,” Abzgorn gasped.
“Tell me!” Murder in his eyes, Lorgex stood above him, the seer skull raised for a killing blow.
“The child is the one sent to usher in a new age of darkness.” Abzgorn cringed. “Blood of the Ancients reborn anew, he shall lead Grimnir’s hordes forth from the Craw. He shall destroy and defile all that is Shagra’lor! Spew brings the Chosen One! The Chosen One of Grimnir!”
“What? No. It cannot be.” Lorgex clutched his chest. “It must be me! It should be me! It shall be ME!”
A maelstrom of screaming demon skulls tore through the chamber. Eldritch energies and arcane forces sparked like lightning, bouncing off the ceiling, rattling the skeletons and iron masks spiked to the walls. Within the safety of the pentagram etched into the floor, before the Altar of Woe, the two Wrackolytes stood yet untouched, protected by an invisible shield-barrier.
“Do you see her?” Abzgorn the Ribspreader hissed.
“By Sanctos…” Lorgex the Eyes growled. “I’ve harnessed the demon, but… ” His old bones creaked as he straightened from gazing into the empty sockets of his seer-skull.. “Spew cannot hide from me. Not from the Eyes.” He wiped smears of sweat down either side of his leather slicks then started patting down his pockets. “Damn.” He looked to his torture slab across the room.
“What in the Craw—?” Abzgorn asked. “Stop!”
Through the invisible barrier Lorgex suddenly leaped, arcane winds searing his skin, his lungs. Ducking, dodging, screaming, he skidded to a halt at his slab. “Where?” Across it he searched, scattering a thousand haphazard trinkets and paraphernalia in the process. “They’re here. They must be!”
“Hurry, you old fool,” Abzgorn watched on in growing irritation. “The ice you tread was rotten already.” He adjusted his hold on the Elder Sign, held quivering above him, generating the shield-barrier. “Grimnir’s teeth.” He winced as arcane an eldritch horror slammed the barrier.
“Curse you!” Lorgex swept his arm across his slab, a hailstorm of sharp instruments clattering onto the floor.
“The High Wrackolyte has already considered castrating your appointment as Wrackolyte,” Abzgorn roared. Cracks began to fissure through the barrier. “Fail me now, and I shall will it done!”
“I need more goblin eyes—” Lorgex looked under his slab.
“The barrier is failing!”
“They’re here—”
“Curse your eyes!”
“I left them right here!” Lorgex sweat coursed down his liver-spotted egg of a head. Airborne ethereal demon-skulls buzzed past him, snapping with sharp, pointy teeth. “I know it.” He snatched up his torture bag, looked under it, cursed, then dove back into it, rifling through with reckless abandon. Metal forks flew, spike-spirals, chisels and other horrible blood-crusted instruments all over his shoulder. “Aaaarch!” He upended his bag, flung it against the wall and started slamming his puny fists against the slab.
“Damn you, Spew!”
“I-In m-my b-bag!” The Elder sign in Abzgorn’s hands vibrated so badly his teeth chattered. A demon-head broke through the barrier, biting onto his leg. “Arrgh!” He kicked, flinging it off. “The b-bottom left—”
Lorgex was there in an instant, elbow deep in the bag, rifling through it, ducking demons, yelping at the burn of hellfire gales. “Aha!” Lorgex yanked a jar free. Orc eyes stared out numbly from within. He deflated. “The demon won’t like these…”
“Do it!” Abzgorn roared. “Give it something! Or I’ll see Spew made Madam and you—” that thought went unfinished as spurting balefire drove him to one knee.
“She’ll be no Madam!” Lorgex ducked another skull, dove across a slab and hurled himself back into the pentagram. Blood streamed from a myriad of cuts and bites to his head, his face, his arms. “No damned wart-back croaker’ll be a full Wrackolyte.” He latched onto the Elder Sign alongside Abzgorn. “Not while I still live and breathe!” As one … they rose.
“Enough. Forget her quest—”
Lorgex’s blue eyes beamed ravenous in the polychromatic swirls. “You know the object of her quest?”
“Go!”
Lorgex obeyed, abandoning Abzgorn and the Elder Sign for the Altar, the seer skull perched atop it. Abzgorn screamed in pain. Lorgex drew the jar from his slicks and smashed them on the altar. Snatching two rolling orbs and took up the skull. “Yeouch!” It snapped at his fingers. “Please — what quest?”
Abzgorn withered beneath the falling barrier. “I… Rrrrrg… cannot say…”
“But you must!” Lorgex begged, kneeling, contorting now beneath the collapsing barrier. “You must tell me. I must know—”
“Harness it!” Abzgorn cried. “Do it now, or we’re doomed.”
Leaning his head back, holding the skull above him, staring into its bulging eyes, Lorgex squeezed his thumbs into the eye sockets. The aqueous-humors squirted, pouring down his arms, first a trickle then raining down onto his face, his own eyes. The seer skull moaned luridly. Its jaw slackened hanging now open. Sated.
Abzgorn collapsed to the ground, dropping the Elder sign rolling across the floor. Cold silence filled the room. The demon-heads were gone, the arcane energies harnessed.
Dark words Lorgex muttered then, the language of pain and jealousy and rage, the tongue of fear and hate. Of the Woebringer. The clear juices upon him began to hiss, steaming, sizzling as though Lorgex were aflame. The white steam swirled around him, entering him through his mouth, his nose, his ears, his eyes. The crypt shook, a cacophony of vibration, tools dancing across the torture tables. Lorgex shuddered in ecstasy as he SAW…
“I can see her, Abzgorn. Her shade. She walks— No, she rides,” Lorgex whispered. “Yes… Yes… She rides in the company of others. Five.” Lorgex stared deep into the eye sockets. “Yes… Yes, I see you, Spew. What is it you’re doing? Where is it you’re going? No. Coming. You are coming here, yes, but what are your words? What are you saying? What task has the High Wrackolyte set you?”
“There is no one else with her?” Spent, broken, exhausted, Abzgorn lifted his hooded head from the stone floor. Barely.
“No. I see nothing — wait. There is more.” Lorgex’s face peeled back in a rictus of ecstasy. “She rides atop a child — a pilloried child?” Lorgex muttered. “Who is he?”
“She brings him here?” Abzgorn asked in awe. “Now?”
“Who is this child?” Lorgex turned. “I must know! You shall have whatever you want of me! Name it.” He blinked, seeming to lose his balance for an instant, legs wobbling, but regained it by clutching onto the Altar. “Is he a sacrifice?”
“I-I cannot say,” Abzgorn gasped.
“Tell me!” Murder in his eyes, Lorgex stood above him, the seer skull raised for a killing blow.
“The child is the one sent to usher in a new age of darkness.” Abzgorn cringed. “Blood of the Ancients reborn anew, he shall lead Grimnir’s hordes forth from the Craw. He shall destroy and defile all that is Shagra’lor! Spew brings the Chosen One! The Chosen One of Grimnir!”
“What? No. It cannot be.” Lorgex clutched his chest. “It must be me! It should be me! It shall be ME!”
Madam Spew - Chapter 3 - The Swamp Lords Chronicles
Chapter 3. Mugger’s Folly
“Come back and fight!” Acolyte Spew tore her whip round in snapping circles above her head. CRACK! “Come back!”
Atop the marsh-oak pillory fastened about Malving’s neck and hands, Spew clutched on like some tree-frog goddess. And upon that altar of pillory wood and flesh she was wrath incarnate. And before her wrath they fled, a stumbling mass of arms and legs, bone weapons and rattling armor, stinking bodies scrambling madly for escape— Regrettably for Spew, the ‘they’ were four out of the five mercenary guards she had hired on implied-retainer. And the only reason she had not fled before them was the simple fact that for her mount she had chosen a stooped thirteen-year-old pig boy who was muzzled, pilloried, and dead-tired from the fifty-pound croaker attached to his head.
Spew glanced to her left. Only Izula still stood by her, and only because she was extremely stupid. The giant sword she wielded trembled between her grotesquely knuckled fists. Her huge croaker pupils had constricted to pinpricks of black on yellow. And she was drooling. Copiously.
“A pity.” Lorgex the Eyes smirked as the greater portion of Spew’s entourage fled down the back alleys of Cesstern.
“That’s Acolyte Spew, you shriveled abortion.” Spew feverishly tore about for some sort of escape.
“Give me the Chosen One, and you can go free,” Lorgex crossed his skinny arms.
“The wha—?” Spew raised a non-existent eyebrow.
“Relinquish him not and my chitterling horde shall chew the very flesh from your bones,” Lorgex sneered. “It is said croakers are something of a delicacy in chitterling cuisine.” He smiled so wide that for a moment Spew thought the drum-tight skin over his emaciated face might rip free of the skull so prominent beneath.
“Eat-eat, chew-chew, froggy-froggy,” the chitterlings chattered. They stood waist high all about Lorgex. A ragged pack of them. Stooped, giant man-rats they were, with all of the charm of sewer rats coupled incestuously with the morals and opposable thumbs of men. Like paired gravestones, huge slanted chisel teeth jutted from beneath dripping whiskered muzzles.
“He’s mine.” Spew blustered herself up. She had to get the hell out of here. There were too many foes — one was generally too many. “Be gone, Lorgex, or Izula, here — hey, stop drooling.” She nudged her with her whip handle. “Ahem, Izula will give you and your rats something to chew on!” So long as that something was Izula and not Spew.
“Attaaaaaack!” Spew screeched.
In response, Izula huffed hard and slow then started foaming at the mouth, which was, possibly, an improvement over the drooling? Either way, it would still take the chitterlings a few precious moments to eat her. Then the boy. Of course, by then Spew could be — staring down the long crooked alleyway she calculated her torpid land speed — not very far. She was built for many things: power, torture, seduction. Alas, speed was not on that list. Then her eyes lit upon it — the heaped garbage pile from the Swamp Rat Tavern. The back door lay buried somewhere beneath that glacial midden-heap. Somewhere…
“Very well, Spew, you had your chance.” Lorgex raised both of his twizzled arms. “Take them, chitterlings! Bite them! Gnash them! Sharpen your teeth on their marrow!”
A wave of red eyes and chipped teeth and damp hairy limbs broke over Izula and surged round Malving’s legs. Spew struggled amidst the tide to hold on as Malving screamed in muzzled terror, turned to flee but was knocked from his shackled feet, slamming pillory first to the ground.
“Gimpy! Do not gnaw the man-child!” Lorgex ran forward. “NO! Gimpy. Bad Gimpy!”
Spew’s whip flew from her hand as she smacked down hard, bouncing twice and rolling hard like a wad of snot. Into the Swamp Rat’s midden heap she slammed, an avalanche of filth and animal bones cascading down, engulfing her immediately as dozens of clawed rat feet stomped towards her. Sniffles and snuffles and teeth gnashed through the trash all around her, searching.
“Bring him to me, Gimpy!” Lorgex screamed. “No! No bites—”
As Spew scrambled free of her tomb, a huge chitterling soared through the air, tackling her. Its bulk pressed her deep into the midden heap. Suffocating. Claws digging in. Slavering, its whiskered rat muzzle pressed toward her face, teeth bared to the black gums. Snap! A roar suddenly exploded up the alleyway. Piercing squeals instantly followed flying rat carcass.
Spew’s chitterling sprayed black breath as it hissed down to gnaw into her—“!@#STOP#@!” — spat Spew dead to rights into the chitterling’s face. Her voice fissured the air.
The chitterling froze. It blinked. Twitched.
Spew weaseled and clawed, sputtering from beneath the frozen rat-thing, scrambling towards the Swamp Rat’s back door. She hopped onto the door handle and pulled with all her might, but the door would not budge. “By Grimnir’s black name, open this door!” She pounded away to no avail. She turned and the huge chitterling was moving again, at her feet. But something was different.
It lay twitching…
It lay dying.
It lay dead.
It’d been cut in half below its stomach. Black tentacles of gore and innard trailed it like some doomed comet’s tale. A yellow wind oozed down the alley, and in the distance, Spew could hear the flesh-peddlers’ hawkings from the Sickamore Slave Market.
“Izula…” Spew whispered.
In the alley, nothing moved.
Flies buzzed.
Lorgex was gone. So too Malving.
No matter. Spew yet lived.
She adjusted her purple wig and tiara. Brushed herself off.
Clutched her torture bag.
She found Izula amidst the circle: the circle of limbs, of torsos, of rat heads flung about as though some sort of great razorback tornado god had inhaled them all in one great gout, chewed them up, then vomited them all forth. Impossible to tell how many.
Gashes and flaps of hanging green skin covered Izula’s body. Blood eeked out. Her long, bone saw-sword lay across her chest, clutched red in her monstrous hammer fists. Her eyeballs lolled back beneath barely cracked lids.
Spew reached forward, tentatively, closing Izula’s eyes then touched the hilt of the blade with a delicate wet finger. Fine craftsmanship, really. The work of a master bone-smith. It would fetch a good price at market. Her armor, too. And, perhaps Izula had some other goodies as well. Oooh. She rifled Izula’s corpse.
“Crrrrrrrrrrrrrrroooooooooak…” Izula croaked meekly.
“Hop toward the dark.” Spew dug into a coin purse.
“Crrrrrrrrroak…”
Spew upended the coin purse. It was full of teeth. Spew hadn’t paid her yet. And that meant she still owed her the implied-retainer. And a debt owed and left unpaid was possibly the one thing Spew could not swallow. Bad business. Word would get out. No more meat-shields to work for her. Protect her. Die for, and more importantly instead of, her. And Izula had proved rather useful in that function, despite the overwhelming drooling problem. Spew looked around in awe, counting chitterling heads. Five… Six… Eight… Nine!
All by herself.
“Croooooak…” Izula coughed up a dribble of pink foam.
Yes, Izula was useful, but more importantly, she was very stupid. And very stupid meant she was probably very loyal as well. And very loyal people were generally very willing to do stupid things for other people. And Spew was habitually asking people to do stupid things for her.
“Grimnir’s grimy ball-sacks…” She pushed back her indigo sleeves. Scraping a handful of dirt from the muddy streets, she packed it into a ball and shoved it into her mouth. And she chewed. And she grimaced. And she swallowed. It went down like a wire-haired cat. Hocking deep from within the bowels of her black soul, she tore open Izula’s cavernous maw, and spat the black earth bile in. She closed Izula’s mouth, her shattered skull shifting and scraping like a bag full of pottery shards beneath Spew’s hands.
Leaning in close then, Spew whispered, “!@#LIVE#@!”
And live she did.
“Come back and fight!” Acolyte Spew tore her whip round in snapping circles above her head. CRACK! “Come back!”
Atop the marsh-oak pillory fastened about Malving’s neck and hands, Spew clutched on like some tree-frog goddess. And upon that altar of pillory wood and flesh she was wrath incarnate. And before her wrath they fled, a stumbling mass of arms and legs, bone weapons and rattling armor, stinking bodies scrambling madly for escape— Regrettably for Spew, the ‘they’ were four out of the five mercenary guards she had hired on implied-retainer. And the only reason she had not fled before them was the simple fact that for her mount she had chosen a stooped thirteen-year-old pig boy who was muzzled, pilloried, and dead-tired from the fifty-pound croaker attached to his head.
Spew glanced to her left. Only Izula still stood by her, and only because she was extremely stupid. The giant sword she wielded trembled between her grotesquely knuckled fists. Her huge croaker pupils had constricted to pinpricks of black on yellow. And she was drooling. Copiously.
“A pity.” Lorgex the Eyes smirked as the greater portion of Spew’s entourage fled down the back alleys of Cesstern.
“That’s Acolyte Spew, you shriveled abortion.” Spew feverishly tore about for some sort of escape.
“Give me the Chosen One, and you can go free,” Lorgex crossed his skinny arms.
“The wha—?” Spew raised a non-existent eyebrow.
“Relinquish him not and my chitterling horde shall chew the very flesh from your bones,” Lorgex sneered. “It is said croakers are something of a delicacy in chitterling cuisine.” He smiled so wide that for a moment Spew thought the drum-tight skin over his emaciated face might rip free of the skull so prominent beneath.
“Eat-eat, chew-chew, froggy-froggy,” the chitterlings chattered. They stood waist high all about Lorgex. A ragged pack of them. Stooped, giant man-rats they were, with all of the charm of sewer rats coupled incestuously with the morals and opposable thumbs of men. Like paired gravestones, huge slanted chisel teeth jutted from beneath dripping whiskered muzzles.
“He’s mine.” Spew blustered herself up. She had to get the hell out of here. There were too many foes — one was generally too many. “Be gone, Lorgex, or Izula, here — hey, stop drooling.” She nudged her with her whip handle. “Ahem, Izula will give you and your rats something to chew on!” So long as that something was Izula and not Spew.
“Attaaaaaack!” Spew screeched.
In response, Izula huffed hard and slow then started foaming at the mouth, which was, possibly, an improvement over the drooling? Either way, it would still take the chitterlings a few precious moments to eat her. Then the boy. Of course, by then Spew could be — staring down the long crooked alleyway she calculated her torpid land speed — not very far. She was built for many things: power, torture, seduction. Alas, speed was not on that list. Then her eyes lit upon it — the heaped garbage pile from the Swamp Rat Tavern. The back door lay buried somewhere beneath that glacial midden-heap. Somewhere…
“Very well, Spew, you had your chance.” Lorgex raised both of his twizzled arms. “Take them, chitterlings! Bite them! Gnash them! Sharpen your teeth on their marrow!”
A wave of red eyes and chipped teeth and damp hairy limbs broke over Izula and surged round Malving’s legs. Spew struggled amidst the tide to hold on as Malving screamed in muzzled terror, turned to flee but was knocked from his shackled feet, slamming pillory first to the ground.
“Gimpy! Do not gnaw the man-child!” Lorgex ran forward. “NO! Gimpy. Bad Gimpy!”
Spew’s whip flew from her hand as she smacked down hard, bouncing twice and rolling hard like a wad of snot. Into the Swamp Rat’s midden heap she slammed, an avalanche of filth and animal bones cascading down, engulfing her immediately as dozens of clawed rat feet stomped towards her. Sniffles and snuffles and teeth gnashed through the trash all around her, searching.
“Bring him to me, Gimpy!” Lorgex screamed. “No! No bites—”
As Spew scrambled free of her tomb, a huge chitterling soared through the air, tackling her. Its bulk pressed her deep into the midden heap. Suffocating. Claws digging in. Slavering, its whiskered rat muzzle pressed toward her face, teeth bared to the black gums. Snap! A roar suddenly exploded up the alleyway. Piercing squeals instantly followed flying rat carcass.
Spew’s chitterling sprayed black breath as it hissed down to gnaw into her—“!@#STOP#@!” — spat Spew dead to rights into the chitterling’s face. Her voice fissured the air.
The chitterling froze. It blinked. Twitched.
Spew weaseled and clawed, sputtering from beneath the frozen rat-thing, scrambling towards the Swamp Rat’s back door. She hopped onto the door handle and pulled with all her might, but the door would not budge. “By Grimnir’s black name, open this door!” She pounded away to no avail. She turned and the huge chitterling was moving again, at her feet. But something was different.
It lay twitching…
It lay dying.
It lay dead.
It’d been cut in half below its stomach. Black tentacles of gore and innard trailed it like some doomed comet’s tale. A yellow wind oozed down the alley, and in the distance, Spew could hear the flesh-peddlers’ hawkings from the Sickamore Slave Market.
“Izula…” Spew whispered.
In the alley, nothing moved.
Flies buzzed.
Lorgex was gone. So too Malving.
No matter. Spew yet lived.
She adjusted her purple wig and tiara. Brushed herself off.
Clutched her torture bag.
She found Izula amidst the circle: the circle of limbs, of torsos, of rat heads flung about as though some sort of great razorback tornado god had inhaled them all in one great gout, chewed them up, then vomited them all forth. Impossible to tell how many.
Gashes and flaps of hanging green skin covered Izula’s body. Blood eeked out. Her long, bone saw-sword lay across her chest, clutched red in her monstrous hammer fists. Her eyeballs lolled back beneath barely cracked lids.
Spew reached forward, tentatively, closing Izula’s eyes then touched the hilt of the blade with a delicate wet finger. Fine craftsmanship, really. The work of a master bone-smith. It would fetch a good price at market. Her armor, too. And, perhaps Izula had some other goodies as well. Oooh. She rifled Izula’s corpse.
“Crrrrrrrrrrrrrrroooooooooak…” Izula croaked meekly.
“Hop toward the dark.” Spew dug into a coin purse.
“Crrrrrrrrroak…”
Spew upended the coin purse. It was full of teeth. Spew hadn’t paid her yet. And that meant she still owed her the implied-retainer. And a debt owed and left unpaid was possibly the one thing Spew could not swallow. Bad business. Word would get out. No more meat-shields to work for her. Protect her. Die for, and more importantly instead of, her. And Izula had proved rather useful in that function, despite the overwhelming drooling problem. Spew looked around in awe, counting chitterling heads. Five… Six… Eight… Nine!
All by herself.
“Croooooak…” Izula coughed up a dribble of pink foam.
Yes, Izula was useful, but more importantly, she was very stupid. And very stupid meant she was probably very loyal as well. And very loyal people were generally very willing to do stupid things for other people. And Spew was habitually asking people to do stupid things for her.
“Grimnir’s grimy ball-sacks…” She pushed back her indigo sleeves. Scraping a handful of dirt from the muddy streets, she packed it into a ball and shoved it into her mouth. And she chewed. And she grimaced. And she swallowed. It went down like a wire-haired cat. Hocking deep from within the bowels of her black soul, she tore open Izula’s cavernous maw, and spat the black earth bile in. She closed Izula’s mouth, her shattered skull shifting and scraping like a bag full of pottery shards beneath Spew’s hands.
Leaning in close then, Spew whispered, “!@#LIVE#@!”
And live she did.
Madam Spew - Chapter 4 - The Swamp Lords Chronicles
Part 4. A Vintage worthy of Spew
“Grim-damned Luzgar…” Spew growled. Luzgar, the Swamp Rat Tavern’s owner, had not only low-balled Spew on her chitterling-stew offer but had also charged her a delivery fee to drag the carcasses into his bar which had left Spew with but two copper plogs scraping sadly in her bag. And two would make nary a dent in her debt to Abzgorn.
Lorgex would take the bounty.
The credit.
The coin.
“And Grim-damned Lorgex.” Spew glanced up at the Obsidian Gates, a warped giant’s skull, its open mouth the Black Temple’s entrance. A long night of alms collections lay before her. Best get earning to recoup the losses, maybe pay Abzgorn the Ribspreader back a trifle, promise the rest, hope he didn’t kill her in her sleep. Or her awake. And better sooner rather than later. She took her post at the gates, mentally preparing herself to accost anyone who ventured near.
“Halt!” a challenge rang out. “Who goes there?”
“Shut your gob-holes,” Spew croaked. There were two guards guarding the Obsidian Gates, she knew, though she could see neither. “It’s me. Again.” There were always two guards, and they were always hiding. “Imbeciles…”
“It is our sacred duty,” said the second guard solemnly, possibly hidden behind a potted angler plant.
“We have to ask for verification, Acolyte Spew,” whined the first guard, who might have actually been the potted angler plant. “You shan’t grow cross. As it stands — ooh — someone approaches — Shhhhh! Hide. Don’t tell him we’re here. Please!”
“Hail, Grimnir,” Spew said to a figure as it stumbled drunkenly — it had to be drunk or it would never wander near the Black Temple — from the dark and into the temple wall, passing out nearly within the teeth of the Obsidian Gates. Spew hopped tentatively toward it. “Give to the Temple of Grimnir, or I’ll curse your loins flaccid!”
The goblin twitched once or twice. Then it burped and farted. Simutaneously.
“Shhhh. Don’t move,” whispered the second guard. “He’s right at your feet.”
“Did he see us?”
“I don’t think so. Spew, did he see us?”
“Did she do that to him? He looks fairly flaccid.”
“Pathetic.” Spew commenced one of the more common and less savory tasks of the Alms Acolyte: rifling through the pockets and orifices of drunk and indigent goblins. The problem wasn’t not knowing what she’d find. It was knowing exactly what she’d find. Spew began tossing teeth, hairballs, pig ears, and other such dregs and grossery over her shoulder.
“Find anything?” the first guard hissed on bated breath.
“A half-drank flask of Gat’s Green-spume.” Spew held up a bone flask and shook it a bit. “Hmmm. Fetch a plog. Maybe.”
“How old?” the second guard drooled audibly.
“Eh?” Spew sniffed it, ventured a swig. Swallowed. Shuddered. “Two days.”
“Ooh. Vintage,” the first guard groaned. “Might we sample it?”
“Nads on a zombie, you two are.” Spew took another swig of the sour red. They called it Gat’s Green-Spume for its color on its way out which was not uncommonly instantaneous and exceptionally explosive. “Worst. Guards. Ever.”
“Alas,” whispered the second guard, “we’re miscast as guards. If it weren’t for the gossip we garner, I don’t know how we’d get on.”
“Ooh, gossip, yessss,” the first guard whispered. “Anything juicy we might glean from your recent travels and travails? Scuttlebutt as of late centers upon Wrackolyte Lorgex the Eyes and you. Back alley fisticuffs. Kidnappings. And intrigue.”
“Oh, do tell.”
“Have you two seen Lorgex?” Spew looked up sharp.
“Not more than an hour ago,” the second guard whispered. “He came through with a pilloried boy in tow. Who was he? A fugitive?”
“Probably just a sacrifice, right?” the potted angler plant broke in. “A good sacrifice, though, yes? A blood tithe, maybe? Or a stranglee? Is he the son of a king? Yes? No…?”
“The son of a king?” Spew rasped, incredulous. “He’s naught but a pig boy.”
“Heh? Then why’d Lorgex bring him directly to the High Wrackolyte? Please, oh please, tell us. We can keep a secret. He’s the seventh son of a seventh son, yes?”
“Lorgex did look rather pleased with himself for someone his advanced age.” The angler plant nodded emphatically. “Ooh! Acolyte Spew, forgive me. The High Wrackolyte requested your presence as soon as you got in. Said she has some business to work out between you and Lorgex. In the lower crypt.”
The torture crypt! Spew gulped. Business with the High Wrackolyte Diathama Sneering typically involved the asystematic removal of one’s vertebrae from whatever orifice lay anatomically furthest away. She clasped her torture bag under arm, pivoted on heel and commenced marching directly toward Westleaf. It’d only take her about a year or two to get there…
“She said that he’d be scrying for you,” said the first guard. “Lorgex, that is. And she’d expect you directly.”
Spew froze, one foot poised mid-step. Lorgex! Damn his scrying eyes! Damn, damn, damn. Could she run? No. Hide? No. There was no escaping the Eyes. No evading them. Not for long. She’d best go. Take her prescribed dose of medicine. Hemlock most likely. Or perhaps the High Wrackolyte was excessively drunk and would somehow see fit to lay mercy on her. Or maybe she’d just kill her once and not torment her eternally through resection-resurrection.
Crestfallen, Spew moped back in through the Obsidian Gates, wishing Izula had been conscious enough to accompany her. She might have been useful. Spew could have dressed her up in a purple wig and robe and pawned her off as herself.
“Grim-damned Luzgar…” Spew growled. Luzgar, the Swamp Rat Tavern’s owner, had not only low-balled Spew on her chitterling-stew offer but had also charged her a delivery fee to drag the carcasses into his bar which had left Spew with but two copper plogs scraping sadly in her bag. And two would make nary a dent in her debt to Abzgorn.
Lorgex would take the bounty.
The credit.
The coin.
“And Grim-damned Lorgex.” Spew glanced up at the Obsidian Gates, a warped giant’s skull, its open mouth the Black Temple’s entrance. A long night of alms collections lay before her. Best get earning to recoup the losses, maybe pay Abzgorn the Ribspreader back a trifle, promise the rest, hope he didn’t kill her in her sleep. Or her awake. And better sooner rather than later. She took her post at the gates, mentally preparing herself to accost anyone who ventured near.
“Halt!” a challenge rang out. “Who goes there?”
“Shut your gob-holes,” Spew croaked. There were two guards guarding the Obsidian Gates, she knew, though she could see neither. “It’s me. Again.” There were always two guards, and they were always hiding. “Imbeciles…”
“It is our sacred duty,” said the second guard solemnly, possibly hidden behind a potted angler plant.
“We have to ask for verification, Acolyte Spew,” whined the first guard, who might have actually been the potted angler plant. “You shan’t grow cross. As it stands — ooh — someone approaches — Shhhhh! Hide. Don’t tell him we’re here. Please!”
“Hail, Grimnir,” Spew said to a figure as it stumbled drunkenly — it had to be drunk or it would never wander near the Black Temple — from the dark and into the temple wall, passing out nearly within the teeth of the Obsidian Gates. Spew hopped tentatively toward it. “Give to the Temple of Grimnir, or I’ll curse your loins flaccid!”
The goblin twitched once or twice. Then it burped and farted. Simutaneously.
“Shhhh. Don’t move,” whispered the second guard. “He’s right at your feet.”
“Did he see us?”
“I don’t think so. Spew, did he see us?”
“Did she do that to him? He looks fairly flaccid.”
“Pathetic.” Spew commenced one of the more common and less savory tasks of the Alms Acolyte: rifling through the pockets and orifices of drunk and indigent goblins. The problem wasn’t not knowing what she’d find. It was knowing exactly what she’d find. Spew began tossing teeth, hairballs, pig ears, and other such dregs and grossery over her shoulder.
“Find anything?” the first guard hissed on bated breath.
“A half-drank flask of Gat’s Green-spume.” Spew held up a bone flask and shook it a bit. “Hmmm. Fetch a plog. Maybe.”
“How old?” the second guard drooled audibly.
“Eh?” Spew sniffed it, ventured a swig. Swallowed. Shuddered. “Two days.”
“Ooh. Vintage,” the first guard groaned. “Might we sample it?”
“Nads on a zombie, you two are.” Spew took another swig of the sour red. They called it Gat’s Green-Spume for its color on its way out which was not uncommonly instantaneous and exceptionally explosive. “Worst. Guards. Ever.”
“Alas,” whispered the second guard, “we’re miscast as guards. If it weren’t for the gossip we garner, I don’t know how we’d get on.”
“Ooh, gossip, yessss,” the first guard whispered. “Anything juicy we might glean from your recent travels and travails? Scuttlebutt as of late centers upon Wrackolyte Lorgex the Eyes and you. Back alley fisticuffs. Kidnappings. And intrigue.”
“Oh, do tell.”
“Have you two seen Lorgex?” Spew looked up sharp.
“Not more than an hour ago,” the second guard whispered. “He came through with a pilloried boy in tow. Who was he? A fugitive?”
“Probably just a sacrifice, right?” the potted angler plant broke in. “A good sacrifice, though, yes? A blood tithe, maybe? Or a stranglee? Is he the son of a king? Yes? No…?”
“The son of a king?” Spew rasped, incredulous. “He’s naught but a pig boy.”
“Heh? Then why’d Lorgex bring him directly to the High Wrackolyte? Please, oh please, tell us. We can keep a secret. He’s the seventh son of a seventh son, yes?”
“Lorgex did look rather pleased with himself for someone his advanced age.” The angler plant nodded emphatically. “Ooh! Acolyte Spew, forgive me. The High Wrackolyte requested your presence as soon as you got in. Said she has some business to work out between you and Lorgex. In the lower crypt.”
The torture crypt! Spew gulped. Business with the High Wrackolyte Diathama Sneering typically involved the asystematic removal of one’s vertebrae from whatever orifice lay anatomically furthest away. She clasped her torture bag under arm, pivoted on heel and commenced marching directly toward Westleaf. It’d only take her about a year or two to get there…
“She said that he’d be scrying for you,” said the first guard. “Lorgex, that is. And she’d expect you directly.”
Spew froze, one foot poised mid-step. Lorgex! Damn his scrying eyes! Damn, damn, damn. Could she run? No. Hide? No. There was no escaping the Eyes. No evading them. Not for long. She’d best go. Take her prescribed dose of medicine. Hemlock most likely. Or perhaps the High Wrackolyte was excessively drunk and would somehow see fit to lay mercy on her. Or maybe she’d just kill her once and not torment her eternally through resection-resurrection.
Crestfallen, Spew moped back in through the Obsidian Gates, wishing Izula had been conscious enough to accompany her. She might have been useful. Spew could have dressed her up in a purple wig and robe and pawned her off as herself.
Exodus - Chapter 4. - The Chronicles of Swamp Lords
Part 4. A Regrettable Relapse into Immorality
“… FATHER SAMHARM, WAKE UP! Father, stay with me!”
It was Garmon Hawke. He shouldn’t be here. He should be … somewhere. On the Old Ways west … leading them … somewhere. His garron stood by whickering softly in the failing moonlight. It came to him. “You should be leading them to the Down Chapel.” Father Samharm struggled to sit up. “Urhh…”
“Don’t move, Father.” Garmon Hawke adjusted a lantern on the ground. “Nurk and Nergril are leading them. They’re able. Hold still.”
“They are that.” Father Samharm’s head lolled to the side. “Where is she? Spew? Her minions? I feel suddenly…”
“Still in the barn.” Garmon Hawke glanced up the hill at the barn. Someone was hammering away inside.
“No,” Father Samharm wrenched himself up, but a splitting pain felled him boneless back to slime, “they’ll escape.”
“You’re hurt.” Garmon Hawke pulled his hat on. “I stitched you up best I could, but… Only you can heal you. It’s bad, Father. Real bad.”
Father Samharm glanced down at his chest. A long stitched twine line ran from his sternum to lower belly. Ichor leaked from between the sewn halves. “Gruesome…”
“Shoulda seen it when I had to shove your guts back in.” Garmon Hawke dragged a hovel door over and tossed a coiled length of rope down beside. “Now don’t — don’t move. I’m gonna to tie you to this door and drag you to…” He swallowed. “We’ll catch up to the others.”
Father Samharm nodded twice even though he knew it wasn’t true.
“You hear me? You gotta heal yourself, Father,” Garron Hawke said, forming a knot expertly between deft hands. “Get to it.” He looped it over Father Samharm’s massive shoulders and then worked it under his arms. He snugged it firm.
“I have not the strength, Garmon.” Father Samharm placed a heavy hand upon his friend’s shoulder. “Go. Leave me here. I’m too damned heavy. Too damned…”
“Sorry, father.” Garmon Hawke looped the rope round Father Samharm’s waist. “This is going to hurt—” He cinched it tight.
“Uhhhh!” Father Samharm groaned. “It was the she-croaker. Not Spew. The other one, the one with the saw-sword.” He licked his pallid lips. “She nicked me…”
“Nicked you, huh?” Garmon Hawke raised an eyebrow. He pulled a knot tight with his teeth then spat it out the loose end. “Good thing she didn’t cut you square, eh?”
Father Samharm laughed, his body convulsing slightly. “Sanctos damn you, don’t make me laugh.” His stitches drew tight, biting, threatening to burst. “Why’d you come back?”
Garmon Hawke turned from his garron, a knot now neatly tied to the saddle horn. “Damned chitterling came bolting at the wagon column clear out of the dark,” he said. “Damned thing come on charging us. I feathered him twice through the eye and still, he kept on coming. Nurk bashed him in the leg and sent him packing — what passes for brains leaking out the side of his head. Didn’t slow him a stitch, though. Tracked him back here. Lost him up in the muck. Yonder. Crafty little thing.” He spat chaw into the muck. “Reckoned I’d come check on you while I was in town, make sure you was alright.”
“Was I?”
“Naw. Looked worse than my ole grandpappy.”
“Elson?”
“No. The dead one.”
“You must leave me,” Father Samharm pleaded.
Garmon Hawke guided his garron forward, dragging the cyclops onto the door. “Easy, girl. Easy.”
Something within the barn cracked.
“Rrrrrrrg!” Father Samharm grunted. “They’re almost free. Please.”
“Just got to secure you to the door,” Garmon Hawke said. “Just hope no one opens it.” He glanced up at the barn. His eyes were wide for an instant; then they narrowed. More wood shattered. Someone was shouting. Pointing. He reached for his crossbow.
“No.” Father Samharm laid a hand atop Garmon’s. A sharp hiss of pain escaped his lips as he reached into his robes and rifled around. “They would kill you.”
“Maybe,” he sniffed, “maybe not.”
“Will you not leave me?”
“No dice.”
Father Samharm sighed. “Very well.” He withdrew a small roll of parchment from his robes. “I shall be dead by morning, Garmon.”
“Then I’ll bury you in clean soil.” Garmon Hawke worked back on the ropes. Looping. Tying. Tightening.
“Across the river?”
“Aye. Across the river.”
“This is folly,” Father Samharm said.
“Maybe.” Garmon Hawke was nearly finished securing him to the door. “Don’t believe in miracles, Father? Crisis of faith? Sanctos wouldn’t be pleased.”
An arm poked out of the barn door. “I see you!” A head poked out. Madam Spew. “I’m gonna whip the skin off your bones!”
“Sanctos owes me no miracles, Garmon.” Father Samharm’s hands trembled as he unrolled the scroll before his eyes. “My soul has been thrice-damned for the horrors I’ve committed. These past five years, though… All the good work,” he shrugged awkwardly, “been hedging my bets.”
“You and me both, Father, you and me both.” Garmon Hawke pulled another rope tight. “Now you shouldn’t fall off. If Sanctos don’t owe you nothing, how about somebody else?”
“I was hoping you could call in a favor,” Father Samharm said.
“A vicious old criminal like me?” Garmon Hawke chuffed a laugh.
Father Samharm glanced up at the small garron. She whinnied in fear as Madam Spew and her horde burst free from the barn. “Does Swifty have wings?” Father Samharm glanced down at the parchment. He shuddered. It should have been burned it long ago.
“Even if she did, she couldn’t carry your lead carcass.” Garmon Hawke swung up into his saddle. War cries followed as Garmon Hawke cried, “Yaaaah!” to his garron and the little horse pulled forward, dragging the cyclops along quickly, evenly. Just not quickly enough. For the horde gained.
Father Samharm clutched the parchment close to his great eye and despite the pain, despite the jostling and the blood loss and horde gaining, he read it, mouthing out the words, gurgling out the sounds, blood bubbling from his lips. The ground began to shake beneath him, the moonlight snuffing out like a candle flame. A dark foulness emanated from his contorted speech as a static charge filled the air, crackling, thunder rolling within the earth itself. The garron neighed in terror, squealing forth madly as lightning ripped down from the heavens, forking infinitesimally, exploding, showering the village in a deluge green sparks.
Swifty’s hooves pounded.
Smoke cleared.
“Gods damn it,” Garmon Hawke turned in his saddle as he rode on, “you missed them all, father!”
Father Samharm did not answer.
“… FATHER SAMHARM, WAKE UP! Father, stay with me!”
It was Garmon Hawke. He shouldn’t be here. He should be … somewhere. On the Old Ways west … leading them … somewhere. His garron stood by whickering softly in the failing moonlight. It came to him. “You should be leading them to the Down Chapel.” Father Samharm struggled to sit up. “Urhh…”
“Don’t move, Father.” Garmon Hawke adjusted a lantern on the ground. “Nurk and Nergril are leading them. They’re able. Hold still.”
“They are that.” Father Samharm’s head lolled to the side. “Where is she? Spew? Her minions? I feel suddenly…”
“Still in the barn.” Garmon Hawke glanced up the hill at the barn. Someone was hammering away inside.
“No,” Father Samharm wrenched himself up, but a splitting pain felled him boneless back to slime, “they’ll escape.”
“You’re hurt.” Garmon Hawke pulled his hat on. “I stitched you up best I could, but… Only you can heal you. It’s bad, Father. Real bad.”
Father Samharm glanced down at his chest. A long stitched twine line ran from his sternum to lower belly. Ichor leaked from between the sewn halves. “Gruesome…”
“Shoulda seen it when I had to shove your guts back in.” Garmon Hawke dragged a hovel door over and tossed a coiled length of rope down beside. “Now don’t — don’t move. I’m gonna to tie you to this door and drag you to…” He swallowed. “We’ll catch up to the others.”
Father Samharm nodded twice even though he knew it wasn’t true.
“You hear me? You gotta heal yourself, Father,” Garron Hawke said, forming a knot expertly between deft hands. “Get to it.” He looped it over Father Samharm’s massive shoulders and then worked it under his arms. He snugged it firm.
“I have not the strength, Garmon.” Father Samharm placed a heavy hand upon his friend’s shoulder. “Go. Leave me here. I’m too damned heavy. Too damned…”
“Sorry, father.” Garmon Hawke looped the rope round Father Samharm’s waist. “This is going to hurt—” He cinched it tight.
“Uhhhh!” Father Samharm groaned. “It was the she-croaker. Not Spew. The other one, the one with the saw-sword.” He licked his pallid lips. “She nicked me…”
“Nicked you, huh?” Garmon Hawke raised an eyebrow. He pulled a knot tight with his teeth then spat it out the loose end. “Good thing she didn’t cut you square, eh?”
Father Samharm laughed, his body convulsing slightly. “Sanctos damn you, don’t make me laugh.” His stitches drew tight, biting, threatening to burst. “Why’d you come back?”
Garmon Hawke turned from his garron, a knot now neatly tied to the saddle horn. “Damned chitterling came bolting at the wagon column clear out of the dark,” he said. “Damned thing come on charging us. I feathered him twice through the eye and still, he kept on coming. Nurk bashed him in the leg and sent him packing — what passes for brains leaking out the side of his head. Didn’t slow him a stitch, though. Tracked him back here. Lost him up in the muck. Yonder. Crafty little thing.” He spat chaw into the muck. “Reckoned I’d come check on you while I was in town, make sure you was alright.”
“Was I?”
“Naw. Looked worse than my ole grandpappy.”
“Elson?”
“No. The dead one.”
“You must leave me,” Father Samharm pleaded.
Garmon Hawke guided his garron forward, dragging the cyclops onto the door. “Easy, girl. Easy.”
Something within the barn cracked.
“Rrrrrrrg!” Father Samharm grunted. “They’re almost free. Please.”
“Just got to secure you to the door,” Garmon Hawke said. “Just hope no one opens it.” He glanced up at the barn. His eyes were wide for an instant; then they narrowed. More wood shattered. Someone was shouting. Pointing. He reached for his crossbow.
“No.” Father Samharm laid a hand atop Garmon’s. A sharp hiss of pain escaped his lips as he reached into his robes and rifled around. “They would kill you.”
“Maybe,” he sniffed, “maybe not.”
“Will you not leave me?”
“No dice.”
Father Samharm sighed. “Very well.” He withdrew a small roll of parchment from his robes. “I shall be dead by morning, Garmon.”
“Then I’ll bury you in clean soil.” Garmon Hawke worked back on the ropes. Looping. Tying. Tightening.
“Across the river?”
“Aye. Across the river.”
“This is folly,” Father Samharm said.
“Maybe.” Garmon Hawke was nearly finished securing him to the door. “Don’t believe in miracles, Father? Crisis of faith? Sanctos wouldn’t be pleased.”
An arm poked out of the barn door. “I see you!” A head poked out. Madam Spew. “I’m gonna whip the skin off your bones!”
“Sanctos owes me no miracles, Garmon.” Father Samharm’s hands trembled as he unrolled the scroll before his eyes. “My soul has been thrice-damned for the horrors I’ve committed. These past five years, though… All the good work,” he shrugged awkwardly, “been hedging my bets.”
“You and me both, Father, you and me both.” Garmon Hawke pulled another rope tight. “Now you shouldn’t fall off. If Sanctos don’t owe you nothing, how about somebody else?”
“I was hoping you could call in a favor,” Father Samharm said.
“A vicious old criminal like me?” Garmon Hawke chuffed a laugh.
Father Samharm glanced up at the small garron. She whinnied in fear as Madam Spew and her horde burst free from the barn. “Does Swifty have wings?” Father Samharm glanced down at the parchment. He shuddered. It should have been burned it long ago.
“Even if she did, she couldn’t carry your lead carcass.” Garmon Hawke swung up into his saddle. War cries followed as Garmon Hawke cried, “Yaaaah!” to his garron and the little horse pulled forward, dragging the cyclops along quickly, evenly. Just not quickly enough. For the horde gained.
Father Samharm clutched the parchment close to his great eye and despite the pain, despite the jostling and the blood loss and horde gaining, he read it, mouthing out the words, gurgling out the sounds, blood bubbling from his lips. The ground began to shake beneath him, the moonlight snuffing out like a candle flame. A dark foulness emanated from his contorted speech as a static charge filled the air, crackling, thunder rolling within the earth itself. The garron neighed in terror, squealing forth madly as lightning ripped down from the heavens, forking infinitesimally, exploding, showering the village in a deluge green sparks.
Swifty’s hooves pounded.
Smoke cleared.
“Gods damn it,” Garmon Hawke turned in his saddle as he rode on, “you missed them all, father!”
Father Samharm did not answer.
Exodus - Final Chapter. - The Chronicles of Swamp Lords
Part 5. The Broken Wagon
THE GREEN LIGHTNING EXPLODED wherever it struck, blasting Madam Spew and company tumbling to the muck. The horse and its rider tore off through, dragging the wrackolyte traitor behind, hooves thudding, fading off into darkness. Heavy smoke hung in asphyxiating tentacles, the stench of singed flesh and burnt wood penetrating, entwining, permeating the fetid swamp air.
“Izula…?” Madam Spew groaned, cracked an eye, puked off to the side. That was … impressive. The others groaned on the ground. Yet… No one had been hit. No one killed. No one even a little maimed. “Urgh…”
Something trudged off in the sizzling mist.
“Gimpy…?” Madam Spew sniffed, taking in the intoxicating aroma of residual dark magic. Of necromancy. Of raw power. “Izula…?”
The something unseen trudged closer. Thick, heavy footsteps.
“Izula!” Madam Spew clambered to her feet. “Donvannos! Mindel! Gimpy!” A thought struck her numb. They had not been the targets. “On your feet!” The lightning had struck what it was supposed to strike. It had struck everyone in the town. Everyone not living. “Run!”
A thick-bodied monstrosity trudged suddenly out from the smoke — a flensed troll, its musculature still sizzling, cracking with each movement. The rope round his neck was cooked into its flesh. Other figures approached from behind, shambling zombies stutter-shuffling through the muck and mist.
“The whole town…” Madam Spew stepped back in awe.
“Help…” Donvannos gasped from the ground. His leg was caught beneath a fallen corpse-pole. “M-My leg. Madam, please!”
Madam Spew shook off the awe. “Is it broken?” Because if it was…
The zombie-troll lurched their way, long taloned arms reaching.
“No… Rrrg… Just stuck,” Donvannos grunted. The muck underneath was soft and though Donvannos looked contorted, it was possible the leg was intact.
But if it wasn’t…
Izula raised her saw-sword again, stricken with gore, and stepped in the path of the zombie-troll.
THUD… THUD… THUD…
The zombie troll stomped loomed above Izula, the undead horde at its back.
“Back. Into the barn!” Madam Spew pointed up the hill. “It’s the only way!”
“Croak…?” Izula eyed back at Donvannos.
“Leave him!” Madam Spew commanded.
“Damn you, Spew!” Donvannos ripped a steak knife from its sheathe and placed it between his yellow teeth. He struggled, trying to free his leg, his mullet shivering like a spastic porcupine. But it was no use. The corpse-pole was too massive. “Izula, Kill me!” he begged. “Please.”
Izula flinched for a second then looked to Madam Spew.
“Damn you!” Madam Spew spat. “Go! I shall see to Donvannos. Get inside. Secure that door and be ready when we come. Do it!”
“Croaaaak…” Izula croaked, but she obeyed, ducking a swipe of the zombie-troll that would have split her in twain.
Mindel was already halfway up the hill.
“GLAAH…!” The zombie-troll loomed gigantic, the stench of undeath, the perfume of some cyanotic flower, preceding it.
Madam Spew gulped.
Donvannos tore open his collar and wrenched the steak knife from his teeth. “See you in Hades, Spew!” he growled, holding the knife to his own throat. He closed his eyes, tensing.
“GLAAAAHHHH!”
“Put the knife down, you fool.” Madam Spew didn’t even offer a sneer, she just pushed her sleeves back, cracked her knuckles, and stepped into the path of the zombie-troll. “And it’s Madam Spew.”
As the undead troll reached for her, Madam Spew raised her hands before her and grasped the zombie-troll’s head in effigy, “*@!THE CRAVEN LORD COMMANDS YOU!@* ”
A spasm wrenched the troll-zombie from head to toe — Madam Spew as well — a battle of wills ensuing. The other zombies closed in all the while, stumbling, clambering, clawing onward.
“*@!DAMN IT, I COMMAND YOU!@* ”
The air froze, cracking, fissuring, as the zombie-troll’s will crumbled and it succumbed to her.
Madam Spew pointed at the corpse-pole — “*@!LIFT!@*” — she croaked as she turned, stumbling up the hill for the barn.
“GLAAAH!” The massive troll-zombie grasped the corpse pole and lifted it slowly, inexorably, like some machine, until it was tipped higher than its head. “GLAH!”
“Ha!” Teeth gleaming like a wolf, Donvannos was on his feet sprinting the instant the weight lifted. He weaved up the hill through the closing snare of dead flesh. As the barn door closed, he dove through the barn door — smashing Madam Spew aside — the instant before it clogged open with the limbs and biting heads of the walking dead.
Izula fought to close the door. “Croak?!” She ducked as an arcane beam shot past her.
From within the recessed darkness, Mindel stood, his enraptured face illuminated by his glowing hands, the yellow sizzle of arcane powers. He opened his clenched fists and shot the yellow light at the zombie horde. The light seared into flesh, sizzling like cooked bacon but the door was still open. Chipped nails and crooked teeth bit and chewed and pulled ever closer through the jam-packed door.
“GLAAAAAAH!”
Unconscious, Madam Spew lay upon the floor, blood seeping from the corners of her crimson eyes, mere inches from the reach of the zombies.
Izula stepped back, grunting as she hacked her massive saw-sword down into the tangled mass of arms and legs. The wall of the barn groaned, bowing inward under the press. Timbers sagged. Squealed. Shuddered. Izula’s massive fists pulled the saw-sword halfway to the ground as it cut through flesh and bone but then halted, grasped by dozens of fleshless hands.
“GLAAAAH!”
Foam started pouring from Izula’s mouth, her huge eyes constricting to pinpricks. She grunted like a musk-ape as she lumber-jacked her sword back and forth, sawing back and forth, limbs and heads and hands raining down in thuds and chunks. But it served only to dislodge some, and on they came pouring in an avalanche of grasping, pulling, gnawing, and drawing her bodily into the amoeba of undeath.
“Let go the sword!” Donvannos danced back as a zombie crashed forward.
Another arcane flare sizzled into the zombies.
“GLAAAHHH!”
“CRRROOOAAK!” Izula roared as black teeth tore into her arms and legs. But then she bit back! Dead muscle sloughed off between her needled jaws. Her huge fists still grasped the massive saw-sword in the tug-of-war between her and the horde. Her doughty form fast disappeared beneath the crushing of wave.
“CROOaak…!”
And then she was gone.
“Let go the sword!” Donvannos slashed with his knife.
“Donvannos!” Madam Spew clambered to her feet. “Get back!” She wiped blood from her lip. “!@*GRAB IZULA*@!” Madam Spew pointed, black energies pouring off her hellfire.
The mound of scrambling dead exploded instantly as though a giant mole had burrowed beneath its midst. Bodies flew, scattered, broke. The dead wailed.
The zombie-troll tore through the surface of lesser dead. In its massive arms lay Izula.
“!@*NOW GO*@!” Madam Spew commanded, and the very air warped with power as the zombie-troll disappeared beneath the dead press.
Corpses rained down. Through. Clambering across the floor. Scattering like pins.
The three retreated.
“Grab a lantern!” Madam Spew croaked as she climbed the lone high point in the midst of the barn, the broken wagon. “Donvannos! Mindel! Up here!”
“Arrgh!” Donvannos lost his cape as he tore back against the grasping dead and pulled himself up the wagon’s side.
Atop the wagon bed, Mindel blasted another zombie, but he was worn, near finished, his arms and fingers cooked to a quivering black.
“The lantern!” Madam Spew screamed from her perch atop of the wagon, an oasis in a desert of flensed dead, an island amidst a sea of striated meat. Arms reached from all around, cracked nails scraping runnels in the wood as the dead hauled themselves up.
“GLAAAHHHH!”
“I have it!” Donvannos snatched a lantern from a hook.
The wagon rocked, threatening to tip. Donvannos nearly fell. And the sea of dead clawed their way up.
“GLAAAH!”
“Break it!” Madam Spew tore her whip free. Amidst the sea of grasping arms, she sidestepped, ducked, tore a leg free then slung her whip straight upwards with a CRACK! It wrapped snug round a beam. Then, despite her soft hands, her skinny arms, and her blobulous frame, she began to climb.
Mindel scrambled up after, practically on her back.
“GLAAAAHHH!”
Glass shattered below as Madam Spew reached the beam.
Mindel hauled himself up and collapsed across next to Madam Spew. He was as pale as a corpse, hanging across the beam limp as a dishrag.
“I’ll get Donvannos!” she croaked. “Then you light the oil!”
Then she was scrambling across the beam, holding onto supports as she made her way towards the door. She tied off the whip and dangled it down. Below, Donvannos leapt from the wagon, grabbing it, dangling inches above the sea of grasping claws.
“Mindel!” Madam Spew bellowed.
A sickly yellow flash illuminated the air below, exploding shadowed light across the roiling rage of meat and teeth beneath. The flash lasted an instant, replaced a moment later by a roaring inferno that swept out in all directions.
The wagon was on fire. So were the zombies. So was the barn.
“GLLLLAAAAAHHHH!”
“Ahhhhh!” The three yelled.
Donvannos clawed his way up the whip, to the beam, half of his mulleted mane torn free of his blistered skull.
Behind, Mindel swayed, his eyes closing—
“Mindel!” Donvannos nearly fell grabbing him, steadying him through force of will alone. “Madam?!”
“Wait!” Madam Spew screeched through black smoke.
“What?!” Donvannos clutched onto the comatose sorcerer.
Below, some vestigial mechanism of the fear of fire had instilled a vigorous madness into the dead. They began tearing into one another in some attempt to escape the conflagration. Smoke billowed up in gouts. Flames roared up the posts, across their beam. Black soot stained the ceiling, choked the air.
“GLLLLAAAAAH!”
“Madam—”
“Get ready !” Madam Spew tore her wig off her head and tucked it into her cloak.
“For what?” Donvannos gagged.
“!@*COME*@!” Madam Spew bellowed above the cacophony of death.
Nothing happened.
“Madam!” Donvannos could barely hold Mindel up.
A massive troll-like blur smashed in through the doorway, bowling aside zombies and driving a wedge of trampled dead ten feet into the barn. A momentary wedge. Right below them.
“NOW!” Madam Spew gulped.
Madam Spew fell like a stone and crashed into the clearing below. Two thuds landed beside.
“GLAAAAAHHH!” The horde of conflagrated dead stampeded toward them.
“Hurry!” Madam Spew hacked and coughed and spat black ash as she scrabbled blind over twitching corpses and pulled herself out through the door. She sputtered and tripped and rolled herself out into the cool night air. She couldn’t move. She was done for.
“GLLLLAAAAHHHH!” The conflagrated horde struggled out the doorway.
Donvannos and Mindel lay beside her, dead to the world.
Madam Spew closed her eyes as she collapsed, spent, giving herself to infinity.
“CROAK!”
Madam Spew’s heart leapt!
Between her and the burning horde, Izula stood waiting, bent, busted, covered in bite marks but the massive two-handed bone saw-sword poised yet in her gnarled fists.
Huffing and puffing and puking, Madam Spew crawled on hands and knees away.
Izula’s grunting and croaking coupled with the SWISH and the THUNK of her saw-sword, followed by the THUD of zombie limbs raining into the muck, was a medicinal balm.
Mindel lay upon the ground, smoking like a dying ember. Whether he was dead or not, Madam Spew did not care. Donvannos lay … somewhere. There. His chest rose and fell as Izula killed the dead.
Madam Spew hacked and spat char and smoke. As she drooled precious clear fluid into the muck, she fished her purple wig out from her cloak. It was stained. Singed. Smoking. But still whole. Madam Spew clutching the ragged scrap to her breast, weeping thanks to the Dark Lord for another chance.
THE GREEN LIGHTNING EXPLODED wherever it struck, blasting Madam Spew and company tumbling to the muck. The horse and its rider tore off through, dragging the wrackolyte traitor behind, hooves thudding, fading off into darkness. Heavy smoke hung in asphyxiating tentacles, the stench of singed flesh and burnt wood penetrating, entwining, permeating the fetid swamp air.
“Izula…?” Madam Spew groaned, cracked an eye, puked off to the side. That was … impressive. The others groaned on the ground. Yet… No one had been hit. No one killed. No one even a little maimed. “Urgh…”
Something trudged off in the sizzling mist.
“Gimpy…?” Madam Spew sniffed, taking in the intoxicating aroma of residual dark magic. Of necromancy. Of raw power. “Izula…?”
The something unseen trudged closer. Thick, heavy footsteps.
“Izula!” Madam Spew clambered to her feet. “Donvannos! Mindel! Gimpy!” A thought struck her numb. They had not been the targets. “On your feet!” The lightning had struck what it was supposed to strike. It had struck everyone in the town. Everyone not living. “Run!”
A thick-bodied monstrosity trudged suddenly out from the smoke — a flensed troll, its musculature still sizzling, cracking with each movement. The rope round his neck was cooked into its flesh. Other figures approached from behind, shambling zombies stutter-shuffling through the muck and mist.
“The whole town…” Madam Spew stepped back in awe.
“Help…” Donvannos gasped from the ground. His leg was caught beneath a fallen corpse-pole. “M-My leg. Madam, please!”
Madam Spew shook off the awe. “Is it broken?” Because if it was…
The zombie-troll lurched their way, long taloned arms reaching.
“No… Rrrg… Just stuck,” Donvannos grunted. The muck underneath was soft and though Donvannos looked contorted, it was possible the leg was intact.
But if it wasn’t…
Izula raised her saw-sword again, stricken with gore, and stepped in the path of the zombie-troll.
THUD… THUD… THUD…
The zombie troll stomped loomed above Izula, the undead horde at its back.
“Back. Into the barn!” Madam Spew pointed up the hill. “It’s the only way!”
“Croak…?” Izula eyed back at Donvannos.
“Leave him!” Madam Spew commanded.
“Damn you, Spew!” Donvannos ripped a steak knife from its sheathe and placed it between his yellow teeth. He struggled, trying to free his leg, his mullet shivering like a spastic porcupine. But it was no use. The corpse-pole was too massive. “Izula, Kill me!” he begged. “Please.”
Izula flinched for a second then looked to Madam Spew.
“Damn you!” Madam Spew spat. “Go! I shall see to Donvannos. Get inside. Secure that door and be ready when we come. Do it!”
“Croaaaak…” Izula croaked, but she obeyed, ducking a swipe of the zombie-troll that would have split her in twain.
Mindel was already halfway up the hill.
“GLAAH…!” The zombie-troll loomed gigantic, the stench of undeath, the perfume of some cyanotic flower, preceding it.
Madam Spew gulped.
Donvannos tore open his collar and wrenched the steak knife from his teeth. “See you in Hades, Spew!” he growled, holding the knife to his own throat. He closed his eyes, tensing.
“GLAAAAHHHH!”
“Put the knife down, you fool.” Madam Spew didn’t even offer a sneer, she just pushed her sleeves back, cracked her knuckles, and stepped into the path of the zombie-troll. “And it’s Madam Spew.”
As the undead troll reached for her, Madam Spew raised her hands before her and grasped the zombie-troll’s head in effigy, “*@!THE CRAVEN LORD COMMANDS YOU!@* ”
A spasm wrenched the troll-zombie from head to toe — Madam Spew as well — a battle of wills ensuing. The other zombies closed in all the while, stumbling, clambering, clawing onward.
“*@!DAMN IT, I COMMAND YOU!@* ”
The air froze, cracking, fissuring, as the zombie-troll’s will crumbled and it succumbed to her.
Madam Spew pointed at the corpse-pole — “*@!LIFT!@*” — she croaked as she turned, stumbling up the hill for the barn.
“GLAAAH!” The massive troll-zombie grasped the corpse pole and lifted it slowly, inexorably, like some machine, until it was tipped higher than its head. “GLAH!”
“Ha!” Teeth gleaming like a wolf, Donvannos was on his feet sprinting the instant the weight lifted. He weaved up the hill through the closing snare of dead flesh. As the barn door closed, he dove through the barn door — smashing Madam Spew aside — the instant before it clogged open with the limbs and biting heads of the walking dead.
Izula fought to close the door. “Croak?!” She ducked as an arcane beam shot past her.
From within the recessed darkness, Mindel stood, his enraptured face illuminated by his glowing hands, the yellow sizzle of arcane powers. He opened his clenched fists and shot the yellow light at the zombie horde. The light seared into flesh, sizzling like cooked bacon but the door was still open. Chipped nails and crooked teeth bit and chewed and pulled ever closer through the jam-packed door.
“GLAAAAAAH!”
Unconscious, Madam Spew lay upon the floor, blood seeping from the corners of her crimson eyes, mere inches from the reach of the zombies.
Izula stepped back, grunting as she hacked her massive saw-sword down into the tangled mass of arms and legs. The wall of the barn groaned, bowing inward under the press. Timbers sagged. Squealed. Shuddered. Izula’s massive fists pulled the saw-sword halfway to the ground as it cut through flesh and bone but then halted, grasped by dozens of fleshless hands.
“GLAAAAH!”
Foam started pouring from Izula’s mouth, her huge eyes constricting to pinpricks. She grunted like a musk-ape as she lumber-jacked her sword back and forth, sawing back and forth, limbs and heads and hands raining down in thuds and chunks. But it served only to dislodge some, and on they came pouring in an avalanche of grasping, pulling, gnawing, and drawing her bodily into the amoeba of undeath.
“Let go the sword!” Donvannos danced back as a zombie crashed forward.
Another arcane flare sizzled into the zombies.
“GLAAAHHH!”
“CRRROOOAAK!” Izula roared as black teeth tore into her arms and legs. But then she bit back! Dead muscle sloughed off between her needled jaws. Her huge fists still grasped the massive saw-sword in the tug-of-war between her and the horde. Her doughty form fast disappeared beneath the crushing of wave.
“CROOaak…!”
And then she was gone.
“Let go the sword!” Donvannos slashed with his knife.
“Donvannos!” Madam Spew clambered to her feet. “Get back!” She wiped blood from her lip. “!@*GRAB IZULA*@!” Madam Spew pointed, black energies pouring off her hellfire.
The mound of scrambling dead exploded instantly as though a giant mole had burrowed beneath its midst. Bodies flew, scattered, broke. The dead wailed.
The zombie-troll tore through the surface of lesser dead. In its massive arms lay Izula.
“!@*NOW GO*@!” Madam Spew commanded, and the very air warped with power as the zombie-troll disappeared beneath the dead press.
Corpses rained down. Through. Clambering across the floor. Scattering like pins.
The three retreated.
“Grab a lantern!” Madam Spew croaked as she climbed the lone high point in the midst of the barn, the broken wagon. “Donvannos! Mindel! Up here!”
“Arrgh!” Donvannos lost his cape as he tore back against the grasping dead and pulled himself up the wagon’s side.
Atop the wagon bed, Mindel blasted another zombie, but he was worn, near finished, his arms and fingers cooked to a quivering black.
“The lantern!” Madam Spew screamed from her perch atop of the wagon, an oasis in a desert of flensed dead, an island amidst a sea of striated meat. Arms reached from all around, cracked nails scraping runnels in the wood as the dead hauled themselves up.
“GLAAAHHHH!”
“I have it!” Donvannos snatched a lantern from a hook.
The wagon rocked, threatening to tip. Donvannos nearly fell. And the sea of dead clawed their way up.
“GLAAAH!”
“Break it!” Madam Spew tore her whip free. Amidst the sea of grasping arms, she sidestepped, ducked, tore a leg free then slung her whip straight upwards with a CRACK! It wrapped snug round a beam. Then, despite her soft hands, her skinny arms, and her blobulous frame, she began to climb.
Mindel scrambled up after, practically on her back.
“GLAAAAHHH!”
Glass shattered below as Madam Spew reached the beam.
Mindel hauled himself up and collapsed across next to Madam Spew. He was as pale as a corpse, hanging across the beam limp as a dishrag.
“I’ll get Donvannos!” she croaked. “Then you light the oil!”
Then she was scrambling across the beam, holding onto supports as she made her way towards the door. She tied off the whip and dangled it down. Below, Donvannos leapt from the wagon, grabbing it, dangling inches above the sea of grasping claws.
“Mindel!” Madam Spew bellowed.
A sickly yellow flash illuminated the air below, exploding shadowed light across the roiling rage of meat and teeth beneath. The flash lasted an instant, replaced a moment later by a roaring inferno that swept out in all directions.
The wagon was on fire. So were the zombies. So was the barn.
“GLLLLAAAAAHHHH!”
“Ahhhhh!” The three yelled.
Donvannos clawed his way up the whip, to the beam, half of his mulleted mane torn free of his blistered skull.
Behind, Mindel swayed, his eyes closing—
“Mindel!” Donvannos nearly fell grabbing him, steadying him through force of will alone. “Madam?!”
“Wait!” Madam Spew screeched through black smoke.
“What?!” Donvannos clutched onto the comatose sorcerer.
Below, some vestigial mechanism of the fear of fire had instilled a vigorous madness into the dead. They began tearing into one another in some attempt to escape the conflagration. Smoke billowed up in gouts. Flames roared up the posts, across their beam. Black soot stained the ceiling, choked the air.
“GLLLLAAAAAH!”
“Madam—”
“Get ready !” Madam Spew tore her wig off her head and tucked it into her cloak.
“For what?” Donvannos gagged.
“!@*COME*@!” Madam Spew bellowed above the cacophony of death.
Nothing happened.
“Madam!” Donvannos could barely hold Mindel up.
A massive troll-like blur smashed in through the doorway, bowling aside zombies and driving a wedge of trampled dead ten feet into the barn. A momentary wedge. Right below them.
“NOW!” Madam Spew gulped.
Madam Spew fell like a stone and crashed into the clearing below. Two thuds landed beside.
“GLAAAAAHHH!” The horde of conflagrated dead stampeded toward them.
“Hurry!” Madam Spew hacked and coughed and spat black ash as she scrabbled blind over twitching corpses and pulled herself out through the door. She sputtered and tripped and rolled herself out into the cool night air. She couldn’t move. She was done for.
“GLLLLAAAAHHHH!” The conflagrated horde struggled out the doorway.
Donvannos and Mindel lay beside her, dead to the world.
Madam Spew closed her eyes as she collapsed, spent, giving herself to infinity.
“CROAK!”
Madam Spew’s heart leapt!
Between her and the burning horde, Izula stood waiting, bent, busted, covered in bite marks but the massive two-handed bone saw-sword poised yet in her gnarled fists.
Huffing and puffing and puking, Madam Spew crawled on hands and knees away.
Izula’s grunting and croaking coupled with the SWISH and the THUNK of her saw-sword, followed by the THUD of zombie limbs raining into the muck, was a medicinal balm.
Mindel lay upon the ground, smoking like a dying ember. Whether he was dead or not, Madam Spew did not care. Donvannos lay … somewhere. There. His chest rose and fell as Izula killed the dead.
Madam Spew hacked and spat char and smoke. As she drooled precious clear fluid into the muck, she fished her purple wig out from her cloak. It was stained. Singed. Smoking. But still whole. Madam Spew clutching the ragged scrap to her breast, weeping thanks to the Dark Lord for another chance.
Something Borrowed Something Spew - Chapter 1. - The Chronicles of Swamp Lords
Part 1. The Bruiser Bride
A MOUNTAIN OF IVORY cow suede eclipsed the hapless vestibule in the Black Temple’s entrance, casting a long, great shadow across the loaded pews. There it paused, waiting for its big entrance. The bride.
“By Grimnir…” Madam Spew mouthed as soon as her enormous croaker eyes adjusted to the wave of dark. What in shades was she? Human? Madam Spew squinted. Mutant? The result of eons of inbreeding? All three? By the Dark Lord, she was even more repulsive than the groom.
The groom. Madam Spew turned to him. He who stood before the Bleak Altar, gawking at his bride to be. Guffawing silently. Like an idiot. Because he was an idiot. These Sloddergumpians. The groom continued giggling. Drooling. Until Madam Spew leaned over the altar and backhanded him — SMACK! — across the face.
He settled then. A little…
The music commenced with the bride’s first step down the aisle. Her particular form of step being more of a spastic hobble. CLANK! … THUMP! … CLANK! … THUMP! All eyes were riveted to her as she fought her way down the aisle, tearing swathes in the carpeting with her left leg, the foot of which ended in a rusted garden rake. And her face…
“Thank the Craven Lord for veils…” Madam Spew muttered. But not loudly. She was mean and cruel, and maybe even stupid, but she was a survivor. And croakers weren’t overly popular in these parts. Or any parts, really.
The groom’s tongue hung dripping like an engorged leech as he stared at the scandalous amounts of ankle and rake tine peeking from beneath his bride-to-be’s gown. And as his eyes clomb skyward to her continental bosom, defying gravity with the aid of taut cow-udder suede, erect cow-teats jiggling intact, he nearly fainted.
The best man, Stymie, the groom’s own brother, stood sullen at his side, toothless, gumming at the last link of a sausage chain. And he’s the good looking one…
Madam Spew horked a rocket of phlegm behind the Bleak Altar. She averted her eyes from the groom and his burlap sack-jacket, so named either for its construction material or what the rips exposed through it.
By Grimnir! What had she done to warrant this assignment? Had she killed somebody? Maimed somebody? Of import? Ten days’ stomp west through the Craw. Not even a useless meat-shield to stand between her and whatever the swamp vomited up to eat her. To perform nuptials because the resident geezer Wrackolyte, rather than continue his appointment here, had opted to saw off his own head. Was that even possible…? A close look at the mutants fouling the pews told Madam Spew the geezer had the right idea.
CLANK! … THUMP! … CLANK! … THUMP!
The bride neared the altar—
Madam Spew stifled a giggle. No — no… Compose thyself… Calm… Don’t look up…
“Here Cometh Yon Bride” was rendered with surprising skill. Surprising because the two-man band rendered it wholly through the arts of jug blowing and armpit farts, though considering the ensuing stench it is possible not only armpits were involved. As the bride reached the altar, the song ended upon a long and inspiring note of high-pitched flatulation. A surreal silence followed…
“Ahem…” Madam Spew stared at the ceiling, the only safe place. Tears oozed from the corners of her crimson eyes. Stifled giggles bucked her blubberous frame. “Well now,” she said, fighting for the words to start the nuptials. Any words, really, any that wouldn’t get her killed, “that … certainly … was, now … wasn’t it?” Madam Spew raised an eyebrow. “Eh?”
The bride stood bawling next to her groom.
Tears of joy?
Madam Spew glanced at the groom, middle finger lodged wriggling up to the knuckle — the second knuckle — in his left ear. And it was a middle finger because he only had three. On each hand.
Possibly not tears of joy…
Madam Spew adjusted her purple wig and bone tiara and forced herself to look upon the couple, and to do so without laughing. To focus. FOCUS! She had to get through this. Just another test she must endure at the promise of advancement. Advancement brought power. Power brought better assignments and meat-shields to escort her through swamps. And then more power. “Let’s kill this quick, okay?” she said.
Crickets chirped. Followed by blank stares.
“We are gathered here today to bind these two…”
She galloped through the ceremony like a rabid deer and soon approached the end. This was it. The big finish. She had made it. Deep breath. Go. “Lusty Weggins, do you take Cornmelia to be your woefully dreaded wife?”
Lusty giggled and guffawed and wiped his brown waxy finger on his bride’s dress in a repulsively affectionate manner.
Cornmelia nearly vomited.
Madam Spew just stared at Lusty, awaiting an answer. Tapping her foot upon the altar. Staring soon evolved into murderous glaring.
“Well, cretin?” Madam Spew muttered from the corner of her prodigious maw. “Yes? No?”
A grumble rumbled through in the audience.
“He can’t talk,” Cornmelia sobbed as she leaned forward. “He were born with limp-tongue. He wrote ‘yes’ … on my gown … in earwax.” Her voice broke, spluttering on. It would probably continue on for about fifty years or so, barring the blissful intervention of a boil plague, or suicide, murder.
“Right.” Maintain. Carry on. “And do you, Cornmelia, take this … this … THIS? To be your woefully underfed husband?” Behind her hand, she whispered. “You can say ‘no.’”
Cornmelia blew her nose again and glanced back at the best man, a forlorn glance, then back at the groom. Her gaze fizzled and died, writhing on the floor. “I … I do.” Her head fell in defeat.
Lusty guffawed and hopped and slapped his thigh, dancing around like an inbred mutant, which he almost certainly was.
“Are you sure?” Madam Spew peered at Cornmelia.
“Yes…”
“Really, really sure?”
“Y-Yes,” Cornmelia whispered into her turnip bouquet. “Please, do not ask me again.”
“Right.” Madam Spew’s voice rang out through the church. “Then, through the power vested in me by the Craven Lord Grimnir, I now pronounce you— Wait! Is there any one amongst us here today who feels emphatically that these two should not be allowed to … to breed?” She looked around. “Anyone … anyone at all?” Please…?
Echoes…
Stares…
Glares…
The best man glanced away, gumming a knuckle…
“Perhaps emphatic is too big a word,” Madam Spew said. “Does anyone feel … strongly?”
Nothing…
“Mayhap someone has a slight misgiving?”
Still nothing.
“Perhaps someone wants to comment on the weather? Or the structural integrity of this church? Anything…?”
A grumbling rose now in the pews.
Cornmelia wept openly.
Grumbling devolved to rumbling.
“Why ain’t we got us a real Wrackolyte?!” someone yelled.
“Cause he sawed his own head off rather than go on living here!” Madam Spew hollered. “And after a half day here, I wholly condone his decision!”
A rotten wool blanket of dead silence fell upon the church. But the grumbling soon persisted. But not from the crowd. Huh? From outside? The altar vibrated beneath Madam Spew’s feet. A candle danced. An act of the Dark Lord…?
Cornmelia bawled into her bouquet.
Madam Spew glanced up at the chandeliers rocking. “Right.” She drew her ceremonial bone knife and a wooden chalice. “Place your hands over the altar.” Madam Spew positioned the chalice underneath their hands and placed the knife upon their pink wrists.
“So, then … by the power vested in me by the Craven Lord Grimnir, I now condemn you, man and—”
The front doors burst open and a scarecrow of a man rattled in.
“WHAT NOW?” Madam Spew stamped her foot.
“Lord Slaughterhand’s a coming!” the scarecrow screamed. “Killing everybody! We gots to hide! We gots to run!”
Hoof beats pounded outside the church. Armor flashed past the windows. Riders stampeded innocents.
“Oh thank you, Craven Lord,” Cornmelia whispered.
A MOUNTAIN OF IVORY cow suede eclipsed the hapless vestibule in the Black Temple’s entrance, casting a long, great shadow across the loaded pews. There it paused, waiting for its big entrance. The bride.
“By Grimnir…” Madam Spew mouthed as soon as her enormous croaker eyes adjusted to the wave of dark. What in shades was she? Human? Madam Spew squinted. Mutant? The result of eons of inbreeding? All three? By the Dark Lord, she was even more repulsive than the groom.
The groom. Madam Spew turned to him. He who stood before the Bleak Altar, gawking at his bride to be. Guffawing silently. Like an idiot. Because he was an idiot. These Sloddergumpians. The groom continued giggling. Drooling. Until Madam Spew leaned over the altar and backhanded him — SMACK! — across the face.
He settled then. A little…
The music commenced with the bride’s first step down the aisle. Her particular form of step being more of a spastic hobble. CLANK! … THUMP! … CLANK! … THUMP! All eyes were riveted to her as she fought her way down the aisle, tearing swathes in the carpeting with her left leg, the foot of which ended in a rusted garden rake. And her face…
“Thank the Craven Lord for veils…” Madam Spew muttered. But not loudly. She was mean and cruel, and maybe even stupid, but she was a survivor. And croakers weren’t overly popular in these parts. Or any parts, really.
The groom’s tongue hung dripping like an engorged leech as he stared at the scandalous amounts of ankle and rake tine peeking from beneath his bride-to-be’s gown. And as his eyes clomb skyward to her continental bosom, defying gravity with the aid of taut cow-udder suede, erect cow-teats jiggling intact, he nearly fainted.
The best man, Stymie, the groom’s own brother, stood sullen at his side, toothless, gumming at the last link of a sausage chain. And he’s the good looking one…
Madam Spew horked a rocket of phlegm behind the Bleak Altar. She averted her eyes from the groom and his burlap sack-jacket, so named either for its construction material or what the rips exposed through it.
By Grimnir! What had she done to warrant this assignment? Had she killed somebody? Maimed somebody? Of import? Ten days’ stomp west through the Craw. Not even a useless meat-shield to stand between her and whatever the swamp vomited up to eat her. To perform nuptials because the resident geezer Wrackolyte, rather than continue his appointment here, had opted to saw off his own head. Was that even possible…? A close look at the mutants fouling the pews told Madam Spew the geezer had the right idea.
CLANK! … THUMP! … CLANK! … THUMP!
The bride neared the altar—
Madam Spew stifled a giggle. No — no… Compose thyself… Calm… Don’t look up…
“Here Cometh Yon Bride” was rendered with surprising skill. Surprising because the two-man band rendered it wholly through the arts of jug blowing and armpit farts, though considering the ensuing stench it is possible not only armpits were involved. As the bride reached the altar, the song ended upon a long and inspiring note of high-pitched flatulation. A surreal silence followed…
“Ahem…” Madam Spew stared at the ceiling, the only safe place. Tears oozed from the corners of her crimson eyes. Stifled giggles bucked her blubberous frame. “Well now,” she said, fighting for the words to start the nuptials. Any words, really, any that wouldn’t get her killed, “that … certainly … was, now … wasn’t it?” Madam Spew raised an eyebrow. “Eh?”
The bride stood bawling next to her groom.
Tears of joy?
Madam Spew glanced at the groom, middle finger lodged wriggling up to the knuckle — the second knuckle — in his left ear. And it was a middle finger because he only had three. On each hand.
Possibly not tears of joy…
Madam Spew adjusted her purple wig and bone tiara and forced herself to look upon the couple, and to do so without laughing. To focus. FOCUS! She had to get through this. Just another test she must endure at the promise of advancement. Advancement brought power. Power brought better assignments and meat-shields to escort her through swamps. And then more power. “Let’s kill this quick, okay?” she said.
Crickets chirped. Followed by blank stares.
“We are gathered here today to bind these two…”
She galloped through the ceremony like a rabid deer and soon approached the end. This was it. The big finish. She had made it. Deep breath. Go. “Lusty Weggins, do you take Cornmelia to be your woefully dreaded wife?”
Lusty giggled and guffawed and wiped his brown waxy finger on his bride’s dress in a repulsively affectionate manner.
Cornmelia nearly vomited.
Madam Spew just stared at Lusty, awaiting an answer. Tapping her foot upon the altar. Staring soon evolved into murderous glaring.
“Well, cretin?” Madam Spew muttered from the corner of her prodigious maw. “Yes? No?”
A grumble rumbled through in the audience.
“He can’t talk,” Cornmelia sobbed as she leaned forward. “He were born with limp-tongue. He wrote ‘yes’ … on my gown … in earwax.” Her voice broke, spluttering on. It would probably continue on for about fifty years or so, barring the blissful intervention of a boil plague, or suicide, murder.
“Right.” Maintain. Carry on. “And do you, Cornmelia, take this … this … THIS? To be your woefully underfed husband?” Behind her hand, she whispered. “You can say ‘no.’”
Cornmelia blew her nose again and glanced back at the best man, a forlorn glance, then back at the groom. Her gaze fizzled and died, writhing on the floor. “I … I do.” Her head fell in defeat.
Lusty guffawed and hopped and slapped his thigh, dancing around like an inbred mutant, which he almost certainly was.
“Are you sure?” Madam Spew peered at Cornmelia.
“Yes…”
“Really, really sure?”
“Y-Yes,” Cornmelia whispered into her turnip bouquet. “Please, do not ask me again.”
“Right.” Madam Spew’s voice rang out through the church. “Then, through the power vested in me by the Craven Lord Grimnir, I now pronounce you— Wait! Is there any one amongst us here today who feels emphatically that these two should not be allowed to … to breed?” She looked around. “Anyone … anyone at all?” Please…?
Echoes…
Stares…
Glares…
The best man glanced away, gumming a knuckle…
“Perhaps emphatic is too big a word,” Madam Spew said. “Does anyone feel … strongly?”
Nothing…
“Mayhap someone has a slight misgiving?”
Still nothing.
“Perhaps someone wants to comment on the weather? Or the structural integrity of this church? Anything…?”
A grumbling rose now in the pews.
Cornmelia wept openly.
Grumbling devolved to rumbling.
“Why ain’t we got us a real Wrackolyte?!” someone yelled.
“Cause he sawed his own head off rather than go on living here!” Madam Spew hollered. “And after a half day here, I wholly condone his decision!”
A rotten wool blanket of dead silence fell upon the church. But the grumbling soon persisted. But not from the crowd. Huh? From outside? The altar vibrated beneath Madam Spew’s feet. A candle danced. An act of the Dark Lord…?
Cornmelia bawled into her bouquet.
Madam Spew glanced up at the chandeliers rocking. “Right.” She drew her ceremonial bone knife and a wooden chalice. “Place your hands over the altar.” Madam Spew positioned the chalice underneath their hands and placed the knife upon their pink wrists.
“So, then … by the power vested in me by the Craven Lord Grimnir, I now condemn you, man and—”
The front doors burst open and a scarecrow of a man rattled in.
“WHAT NOW?” Madam Spew stamped her foot.
“Lord Slaughterhand’s a coming!” the scarecrow screamed. “Killing everybody! We gots to hide! We gots to run!”
Hoof beats pounded outside the church. Armor flashed past the windows. Riders stampeded innocents.
“Oh thank you, Craven Lord,” Cornmelia whispered.
Something Borrowed Something Spew - Chapter 2. - The Chronicles of Swamp Lords
Part 2. The Perfect Knight
IT HATH BEEN TOLD by all that Good Prince Gildemaar was the perfect knight.
With the setting sun gleaming off his gold gilt spike-plate and helm, the ancestral War-Hammer of a Thousand Burning Suns gripped burning above his head as he sat astride his white war-destrier, Purity, he certainly looked the part. A golden lion blazed upon his shield.
And was that noble beast not a true reflection of the Good Prince? Was he not noble and fierce and deadly, but only when necessity forced his hand? And such a sad misfortune it was that necessity had forced it so very many times.
The Good Prince shifted his iron glare to his left and then right. Flanked he was by his Eight, four to each side, all armored in silvered spike-plate, all Captains, his Paladins of Sanctos, each one the pinnacle of knightliness, the best, excepting of course when compared to each other, for they were all equals. Though, the Good Prince was a first amongst equals for he was so clearly superior to all of them. And in every way imaginable.
“O’ Captains … my Captains,” the Good Prince spoke, and because he wore a gleaming golden helm, and his perfect lips regrettably could not be seen to move beneath it — though it brings much pleasure to imagine them to do so — it seemed his voice thundered down from the very heavens above to grace the ears of the Good Captains like the Lord-God’s own voice might. Perhaps even more so? “See how the villains seek succour at the stone teat of their dark lord and master?”
The destriers bristled beneath the lobstered-steel legs of the Nine and scraped and kicked their spike-shod hooves in the dirt. Yea, verily, could they too smell the reek of evil wafting up from the town. But truly, to call it a town would be to disrespect all well-intentioned towns in the realms of Shagra’Lor. Call it rather, a shite-burgh, for that was what to all eyes indeed it appeared to be.
“I see naught but women and children, Milord.” Captain Illnius Rageheart squinted. “A few old men with rusted farming tools.”
“Yea … villains.” The Good Prince hefted his war hammer. “The one chance in their tragic lives to truly be purified, and yet they scurry like rats to their dark temple.”
“The temple ‘tis the sole structure not burning,” Captain Illnius explained. “And they cannot hide within the surrounding fields for we hath set those ablaze as well.”
“And what dark rites perform they behind yon scabrous walls, me wonders?” the Good Prince pondered.
“A wedding celebration, Milord,” Captain Illnius answered. “Before torching the eastern fields and after trampling a crippled waif — I espied a peasant maid in wedding garb at the Black Temple entrance—”
“A maiden fair, you sayeth!?” The Good Prince stood instantly erect in his saddle. “Set to marry against her will, no doubt? In yon temple? Yea, a beauty methinks?”
“Methinks it were good we espied her from afar, Milord,” Captain Illnius drew his sword, “for it were plain even at a distance she were far from good.”
“A maiden fair forced into a vile pact of forced matrimony, servitude, slavery,” the Good Prince growled. “No doubt she shall be forced to undergo the vilest of the Craven Lord’s dark breeding rituals. The forbidden practice of occult lustations. I … I shudder to think, to imagine, to picture — yes, Oh, yes, yes, YES! Picture in my mind’s eye the heinous crimes soon to be pene — perpetrated. Ahem. A dark priest no doubt is present to seal this corrupt bargain?”
“We espied a corpulent croaker priestess—”
“A dark-frog champion!?” the Good Prince roared, gripping Purity’s reigns so tight his arm shuddered. “We shall cleanse her with Sanctos’s holiest flame!”
“Shall we set a pyre, Milord?” Captain Illnius asked.
“Aye, Captain!” He lifted his burning war-hammer. “The whole temple shall be the pyre!”
IT HATH BEEN TOLD by all that Good Prince Gildemaar was the perfect knight.
With the setting sun gleaming off his gold gilt spike-plate and helm, the ancestral War-Hammer of a Thousand Burning Suns gripped burning above his head as he sat astride his white war-destrier, Purity, he certainly looked the part. A golden lion blazed upon his shield.
And was that noble beast not a true reflection of the Good Prince? Was he not noble and fierce and deadly, but only when necessity forced his hand? And such a sad misfortune it was that necessity had forced it so very many times.
The Good Prince shifted his iron glare to his left and then right. Flanked he was by his Eight, four to each side, all armored in silvered spike-plate, all Captains, his Paladins of Sanctos, each one the pinnacle of knightliness, the best, excepting of course when compared to each other, for they were all equals. Though, the Good Prince was a first amongst equals for he was so clearly superior to all of them. And in every way imaginable.
“O’ Captains … my Captains,” the Good Prince spoke, and because he wore a gleaming golden helm, and his perfect lips regrettably could not be seen to move beneath it — though it brings much pleasure to imagine them to do so — it seemed his voice thundered down from the very heavens above to grace the ears of the Good Captains like the Lord-God’s own voice might. Perhaps even more so? “See how the villains seek succour at the stone teat of their dark lord and master?”
The destriers bristled beneath the lobstered-steel legs of the Nine and scraped and kicked their spike-shod hooves in the dirt. Yea, verily, could they too smell the reek of evil wafting up from the town. But truly, to call it a town would be to disrespect all well-intentioned towns in the realms of Shagra’Lor. Call it rather, a shite-burgh, for that was what to all eyes indeed it appeared to be.
“I see naught but women and children, Milord.” Captain Illnius Rageheart squinted. “A few old men with rusted farming tools.”
“Yea … villains.” The Good Prince hefted his war hammer. “The one chance in their tragic lives to truly be purified, and yet they scurry like rats to their dark temple.”
“The temple ‘tis the sole structure not burning,” Captain Illnius explained. “And they cannot hide within the surrounding fields for we hath set those ablaze as well.”
“And what dark rites perform they behind yon scabrous walls, me wonders?” the Good Prince pondered.
“A wedding celebration, Milord,” Captain Illnius answered. “Before torching the eastern fields and after trampling a crippled waif — I espied a peasant maid in wedding garb at the Black Temple entrance—”
“A maiden fair, you sayeth!?” The Good Prince stood instantly erect in his saddle. “Set to marry against her will, no doubt? In yon temple? Yea, a beauty methinks?”
“Methinks it were good we espied her from afar, Milord,” Captain Illnius drew his sword, “for it were plain even at a distance she were far from good.”
“A maiden fair forced into a vile pact of forced matrimony, servitude, slavery,” the Good Prince growled. “No doubt she shall be forced to undergo the vilest of the Craven Lord’s dark breeding rituals. The forbidden practice of occult lustations. I … I shudder to think, to imagine, to picture — yes, Oh, yes, yes, YES! Picture in my mind’s eye the heinous crimes soon to be pene — perpetrated. Ahem. A dark priest no doubt is present to seal this corrupt bargain?”
“We espied a corpulent croaker priestess—”
“A dark-frog champion!?” the Good Prince roared, gripping Purity’s reigns so tight his arm shuddered. “We shall cleanse her with Sanctos’s holiest flame!”
“Shall we set a pyre, Milord?” Captain Illnius asked.
“Aye, Captain!” He lifted his burning war-hammer. “The whole temple shall be the pyre!”
Something Borrowed Something Spew - Chapter 3. - The Chronicles of Swamp Lords
Part 3. Hot Feet
“UH, EXCUSE ME,” Cornmelia tugged gently at Madam Spew’s robes, “is we, me and Lusty, proper married?”
The Black Temple of Grimnir was packed near capacity. Filthy bodies crammed against each other like rats in a meat-pie. Bodies pressed against wall and window, struggling for breadth and breath, for a glimpse of the armored wolves circling the church. Corpses littered the ground outside.
While the wretched farm folk were trying to gather information, tally the dead and living, assess the hopeless situation, identify resources in some effort to cobble together some sort of last ditch effort that might result in mass salvation, Madam Spew was the only one doing the sensible thing. She was panicking.
A total lack of humility and character is required for a true panic, and Madam Spew had been blessed with dual vacuities in trump shades. And it wasn’t a cursory half-assed, stunted white-knuckle panic. This was the true beast of panic, the full grown, three-tusked-monstrosity-snorking-liquid-foaming-fear-out-its-rubbery-black-maw breed of panic.
Madam Spew’s keen instincts of self-preservation had driven her as deep within the inner sanctum of the church as possible. To the late Wrackolyte’s chambers. It was a small chamber. A chamber without windows, doors, or other obvious means of egress. With but a single door’s distance away from the main hall fracas. A thin door. A thin old decrepit door. In short, she was screwed.
Her sole hope lay within a horribly locked trapdoor in the middle of the floor. Possibly it led to a massive deep-earth labyrinth of lower crypts and secret escape routes out into the swamps. But it was equally possible that it was merely the late Wrackolyte geezer’s
privy.
“Grimnir damn your hinges!” Madam Spew keened in panic, pounding the trapdoor with her tiny green fists. Pupils constricted to a slit, she squealed as she yanked on the handle. “Arrgh!” She fell back. The trapdoor was locked from the inside, or stuck, or just too damned heavy. Fever-mad, she scoured the Wrackolyte’s den. Tossing the bed, scattering reliquaries, emptying drawers.
There had to be some escape. Something. Somewhere. The geezer’s suicide-saw? Anything. But there wasn’t. Only the trapdoor. She recommenced yanking and screaming.
“Um, Madam, is me and Lusty married?” Cornmelia repeated.
“Curse your leg, no!” Madam Spew ceased her fruitless yanking. Cleared her throat. Dabbed jittering tears from her crimson eyes. Her hands were raw. “You didn’t drink that freak’s blood, did you? And I didn’t consecrate the ceremony, did I? So, no, you ain’t married. Course, we’ll both be dead in about five minutes, so what’s it matter?”
“Oh, praise you, Madam.” Cornmelia fell to her knees and grasped Madam Spew in a suffocating embrace. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
“Ulp!” Madam Spew’s eyes nearly burst. “Put me down.”
“Sorry.” Cornmelia plopped her down. “What do we do now?”
“What do we do?” She adjusted her purple wig. “Are you serious? What happens if we can’t open this trapdoor?” She stomped the trap. “Lord Slaughterhand comes in and kills us along with everyone else in this crap-hole.” The furor in the main hall grew. Madam Spew glanced over. “Lock the door. Hurry.”
Cornmelia clanged over to the chamber door and slid the burglar-bar across it.
“HEY!” a muffled voice yelled from the main hall. “The Slaughterhand’s saying we can all be purified if we bring the croaker-witch to him! To justice! He’ll purify us! All of us! Show us the light! Hooray! We’re saved!”
A great cheer arose in the main hall, all bustle and burble chattering loose. Feet pounded across flagstones, drapery was torn from housings, and pews were overturned in a sacrilegious search for salvation.
“Where is she?!”
“Don’t know!”
“I saw her go into the den!”
Feet pounded outside the door.
Someone pounded on the door. “Open up, ya hear?”
“Bite me, you inbred freakers!” Madam Spew tore at the trapdoor handle, her webbed feet scrabbling for purchase. “Rrrrrrrg!”
“LET US IN!” the mob roared.
“Come on,” Madam Spew slobbered at the trapdoor.
“I can open it.” Cornmelia stood akimbo. “But, then I get to go with you.”
SLAM! Behind them, the chamber door jumped nigh off its hinges as the Sloddergumps attacked it.
“Deal!” Madam Spew cried, hopping back.
Cornmelia plopped down and began unscrewing her leg. “I … I can hear something moving inside.” She looked up. “Oh, Madam, what’s down there?”
Madam Spew stared at the trapdoor. What horrors lay within the sacred sanctum of the Dark Lord? Any horror. Every horror. Slicerpedes? Warped chitterlings? Was it the dead Wrackolyte himself? Had Grimnir blessed his bones with the gift of undeath? His last act in life had been his own murder. What other powers might such a venal act grant? Madam Spew salivated. Was he even now waiting in the darkness, waiting for the warmth of blooded walkers to free him? To satiate his dark thirst? Madam Spew looked Cornmelia in the eye. “It’s, probably nothing. Go ahead.” She hid behind a chair. “Open it.”
Pounding again at the chamber door—
“Open up, froggy!”
SLAM!
The door flexed more with each subsequent strike—
SLAM!
But the burglar-bar held. Somehow.
Cornmelia removed her peg-rake-leg and pounded the tines between the trapdoor and frame. She spit on her palms and rubbed them together, gripping the peg leg two fisted, then tore back with the slow inexorable strength of continental drift. Her back flexed, hide dress ripping, her thick arms bulging, shivering, veins standing up as torrents of blood gushed through them, udders shivering as she grunted like whatever her dress had been made of. “Errrg… Come on!”
The burglar bar cracked at another slam.
Valiantly, Madam Spew sprinted across the room and threw her weight against the peg leg and — CRACK! Something gave, and Madam Spew and Cornmelia scattered across the floor.
“Uh, Madam…” Cornmelia held her snapped peg-leg up in vain.
But the trap door lay agape. Dust swirled from its depths as something within its cryptic bowels stirred.
“UH, EXCUSE ME,” Cornmelia tugged gently at Madam Spew’s robes, “is we, me and Lusty, proper married?”
The Black Temple of Grimnir was packed near capacity. Filthy bodies crammed against each other like rats in a meat-pie. Bodies pressed against wall and window, struggling for breadth and breath, for a glimpse of the armored wolves circling the church. Corpses littered the ground outside.
While the wretched farm folk were trying to gather information, tally the dead and living, assess the hopeless situation, identify resources in some effort to cobble together some sort of last ditch effort that might result in mass salvation, Madam Spew was the only one doing the sensible thing. She was panicking.
A total lack of humility and character is required for a true panic, and Madam Spew had been blessed with dual vacuities in trump shades. And it wasn’t a cursory half-assed, stunted white-knuckle panic. This was the true beast of panic, the full grown, three-tusked-monstrosity-snorking-liquid-foaming-fear-out-its-rubbery-black-maw breed of panic.
Madam Spew’s keen instincts of self-preservation had driven her as deep within the inner sanctum of the church as possible. To the late Wrackolyte’s chambers. It was a small chamber. A chamber without windows, doors, or other obvious means of egress. With but a single door’s distance away from the main hall fracas. A thin door. A thin old decrepit door. In short, she was screwed.
Her sole hope lay within a horribly locked trapdoor in the middle of the floor. Possibly it led to a massive deep-earth labyrinth of lower crypts and secret escape routes out into the swamps. But it was equally possible that it was merely the late Wrackolyte geezer’s
privy.
“Grimnir damn your hinges!” Madam Spew keened in panic, pounding the trapdoor with her tiny green fists. Pupils constricted to a slit, she squealed as she yanked on the handle. “Arrgh!” She fell back. The trapdoor was locked from the inside, or stuck, or just too damned heavy. Fever-mad, she scoured the Wrackolyte’s den. Tossing the bed, scattering reliquaries, emptying drawers.
There had to be some escape. Something. Somewhere. The geezer’s suicide-saw? Anything. But there wasn’t. Only the trapdoor. She recommenced yanking and screaming.
“Um, Madam, is me and Lusty married?” Cornmelia repeated.
“Curse your leg, no!” Madam Spew ceased her fruitless yanking. Cleared her throat. Dabbed jittering tears from her crimson eyes. Her hands were raw. “You didn’t drink that freak’s blood, did you? And I didn’t consecrate the ceremony, did I? So, no, you ain’t married. Course, we’ll both be dead in about five minutes, so what’s it matter?”
“Oh, praise you, Madam.” Cornmelia fell to her knees and grasped Madam Spew in a suffocating embrace. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
“Ulp!” Madam Spew’s eyes nearly burst. “Put me down.”
“Sorry.” Cornmelia plopped her down. “What do we do now?”
“What do we do?” She adjusted her purple wig. “Are you serious? What happens if we can’t open this trapdoor?” She stomped the trap. “Lord Slaughterhand comes in and kills us along with everyone else in this crap-hole.” The furor in the main hall grew. Madam Spew glanced over. “Lock the door. Hurry.”
Cornmelia clanged over to the chamber door and slid the burglar-bar across it.
“HEY!” a muffled voice yelled from the main hall. “The Slaughterhand’s saying we can all be purified if we bring the croaker-witch to him! To justice! He’ll purify us! All of us! Show us the light! Hooray! We’re saved!”
A great cheer arose in the main hall, all bustle and burble chattering loose. Feet pounded across flagstones, drapery was torn from housings, and pews were overturned in a sacrilegious search for salvation.
“Where is she?!”
“Don’t know!”
“I saw her go into the den!”
Feet pounded outside the door.
Someone pounded on the door. “Open up, ya hear?”
“Bite me, you inbred freakers!” Madam Spew tore at the trapdoor handle, her webbed feet scrabbling for purchase. “Rrrrrrrg!”
“LET US IN!” the mob roared.
“Come on,” Madam Spew slobbered at the trapdoor.
“I can open it.” Cornmelia stood akimbo. “But, then I get to go with you.”
SLAM! Behind them, the chamber door jumped nigh off its hinges as the Sloddergumps attacked it.
“Deal!” Madam Spew cried, hopping back.
Cornmelia plopped down and began unscrewing her leg. “I … I can hear something moving inside.” She looked up. “Oh, Madam, what’s down there?”
Madam Spew stared at the trapdoor. What horrors lay within the sacred sanctum of the Dark Lord? Any horror. Every horror. Slicerpedes? Warped chitterlings? Was it the dead Wrackolyte himself? Had Grimnir blessed his bones with the gift of undeath? His last act in life had been his own murder. What other powers might such a venal act grant? Madam Spew salivated. Was he even now waiting in the darkness, waiting for the warmth of blooded walkers to free him? To satiate his dark thirst? Madam Spew looked Cornmelia in the eye. “It’s, probably nothing. Go ahead.” She hid behind a chair. “Open it.”
Pounding again at the chamber door—
“Open up, froggy!”
SLAM!
The door flexed more with each subsequent strike—
SLAM!
But the burglar-bar held. Somehow.
Cornmelia removed her peg-rake-leg and pounded the tines between the trapdoor and frame. She spit on her palms and rubbed them together, gripping the peg leg two fisted, then tore back with the slow inexorable strength of continental drift. Her back flexed, hide dress ripping, her thick arms bulging, shivering, veins standing up as torrents of blood gushed through them, udders shivering as she grunted like whatever her dress had been made of. “Errrg… Come on!”
The burglar bar cracked at another slam.
Valiantly, Madam Spew sprinted across the room and threw her weight against the peg leg and — CRACK! Something gave, and Madam Spew and Cornmelia scattered across the floor.
“Uh, Madam…” Cornmelia held her snapped peg-leg up in vain.
But the trap door lay agape. Dust swirled from its depths as something within its cryptic bowels stirred.
SaberPunk
My favorite genres are fantasy, science fiction, and horror. I'll be reviewing fiction books and roleplaying games from those genres.
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I'll also o ...more
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