The toadok stopped and turned around.
Caroc squatted in the water reeds again and tried to quieten his breathing. His bow was still trained on his target.
The creature’s yellow eyes scanned the surrounding vegetation. It squinted directly at him. It had spotted something, perhaps the arrows in his quiver, the vibrant green fletching out of place with the drab browns and mottled greens of the reeds.
One of the boys squealed as his friend dropped a worm down the back of his shirt. The toadok turned its attention to the ruckus. The child was squawking now. The worm had wiggled into his pants and slipped between his arse cheeks.
Only feet away, the toadoks waited for the offending item to be removed—even toadoks are respectful when such a situation occurs. Caroc pulled the bow string taut, all he needed to do now was release the arrow. His fingers trembled.
The boy dropped his pants. Caroc could see the boy’s pale bottom jiggling up and down as he searched frantically for the unwelcome guest. Found, the worm was held up and offered to his friend who steadfastly refused it.
Sweat rolled down Caroc’s forehead into his eyes. He tried to blink the stinging pain away.
The toadoks waited patiently for the boy to put his pants on. As soon as he’d fastened his belt, they emerged from their hiding places amongst the rocks and tall grass. There was a brief struggle. One toadok was lashed across the face with a fishing rod, and another had a worm thrown at him. The boys were easily subdued and swallowed whole to be transported back to the village—guests of honour at the feast.
Caroc still had his arrow notched and ready to fire as the last of the toadoks disappeared into the forest. The roar of the river replaced the boys muffled cries.
Morwen dozed in the warmth of a sunbeam. They’d had the morning to get acquainted. She had nothing but time on her hands now her patients were dying as fast as they were brought into the makeshift hospice. What a way to wait out the apocalypse.
Her sleep in was disturbed by a thud, and the bedroom door flew open. “You were right. He’s cheating on me.” Morwen opened an eye, squinting in the bright light. Her sister, Anwen—who else—stood at the end of her bed, her eyes and nose red from crying, fists bunched at her sides. “He’s a weasel. I want him dead,” she spat.
Morwen sat up. Szat, who was sleeping curled into a ball like a cat, poked his head out and eyed a half-eaten pie on the bed stand. Morwen passed it to him without thinking, and the demon retreated back under the blankets to create as many crumbs as possible. “I’ve got a better idea,” Morwen said.
The first demon Morwen summoned was too attractive. Her only revolting feature was a pair of obscenely large breasts, and Morwen was sure Goron would have a differing view on those. The next had long legs, the third a shapely behind like an overripe plum, the fourth summons was perfect. The demon had the enviable physique of a plucked turkey left out in the sun to bloat. Her blotchy face, flecked with enlarged oily pores, ended in fleshy jowls sagging over folds of fat.
“He won’t sleep with that!” Anwen exclaimed bile rising to the back of her throat at the thought of such things.
“Demons can change forms at will,” Szat said. He’d finished the pie and poked his head out from under the blankets for the show. To illustrate his point, he turned into a spring lamb and began to leap around the bed before quickly becoming exhausted.
“They make love and fall asleep in each other’s arms. The next morning we gather everyone we can and parade them into his bedroom. The demon…”
“My name’s Botha.” The demon’s jaw was constrained by her many chins. Her cheeks, as fat and plump as new pillows, muffled her voice and made her hard to understand.
“…sorry, Botha will be in her natural form, and Goron will be a laughingstock.”
“I love it.” Anwen clapped her hands and twirled around the room.
Morwen grinned. This was what being a warlock was all about, not nursing the hopelessly sick, or in her case, being forced to euthanise them so she could get some peace and quiet.
Botha grinned too. She didn’t understand why.
“Go, you know what to do.” Morwen arched her back and slipped out of bed.
“Oh, he likes blondes the most.” The demon paused, the door half open. “You might also like to change your scent. The aroma of latrines isn’t seductive unless you’re trying to mate with a sewer rat.”
“Make yourself smell like a beer, he’ll find you irresistible,” Anwen added. Botha grunted in assent.
“I do like the plan.” Anwen walked to the window and stole the sunbeam.
“But?”
“Some woman one day will be desperate enough to open her legs to him. I want him to be miserable to the end. Couldn’t we curse his love life somehow?” Anwen said.
“I don’t think we have many days left, but yes it’s possible. I’m not opposed to curses as you well know.” Morwen wiggled the phantom of a missing toe and finger. “You know the blood price though don’t you? A finger or a toe, or their weight in flesh, if you’ve none left to go.”
“You’ve still got eighteen. You don’t mind do you?” Anwen gave her cutest little sister smile.
“Even if I could do it, I wouldn’t. I suspect I’ll need all mine by the time I’m finished in this world. The sacrifice has to be your own.”
Anwen bit her lip and glanced at her fingers, then her toes which she couldn’t see beneath her shoes. She took a deep breath, “I’ll do it. What do you suggest, toe or finger?”
“Toe for sure, you won’t even know it’s gone.” Morwen kept a meat cleaver in a chest at the end of her bed with all her torture and maiming equipment. Szat helpfully found it for her.
Anwen perched on the edge of the bed and took the shoe off her left foot. Her eyes were wide, and she looked like she might burst into tears. “Why did you cut off your own finger?”
“To show what I’m prepared to do if somebody trifles with me.” Morwen knelt down beside Anwen’s foot. Anwen jerked it away and tucked it safely under the bed.
“Isn’t there any other way?” Anwen pleaded.
“No.” Morwen didn’t feel at all sorry for her sister. She’d warned her about Goron, and a blood price was the just the lesson she and Goron needed.
“What about the blood, shouldn’t we put down a towel and get a bandage ready?”
“Szat will clean it up.”
“I’m not so sure anymore.” Anwen let out a piercing scream and jerked her foot, minus one toe, from under the bed. Szat scrambled out wearing a coat of dust and a bloody toe clamped between his teeth. He spat it on the floor while Anwen continued to scream.
“The little toe would have been preferable.” Morwen picked up the severed digit and placed it in a stone bowl. Anwen wrapped her foot in Morwen’s blanket and rocked to and fro cradling the injury. Her skin was ashen, and her eyes were bright with tears of pain. Szat was busy taking the room apart looking for food and failed to notice the baleful looks she shot at him.
“What sort of curse do you have in mind?” Morwen sprinkled some pungent herbs on the wound and bound it with a clean bandage. Szat, having ransacked the room and not found a morsel of food, collapsed on the floor in a sulk.
“Every sexual relationship he enters into turns out to be a disaster.”
“So, just like your one?”
“Shut up.”
“Szat, will you do the honours?” The demon’s right hand blazed molten red and, as casually as if he were flicking a spit ball, he shot a mini fireball directly into the stone bowl, igniting its contents.
“Kaexo kl’t grotl aerb aerb larau dv v’tl. Maexo Gauar ag Saerkvaab’t raqo r’go ae kadobv ag ouuaut aerb vae’r.” Morwen spat the words out as if they were poison on her tongue. A shadow, its shape vaguely humanoid, appeared from the opposite wall. Anwen screamed in fright. It floated across the room, halte
d momentarily by the bowl to scoop up the burning toe, and disappeared.
Morwen, who’d grown visibly paler, steadied herself with a hand on the stone wall. “It’s done, from now on he’s in for a miserable time in the love department.”
Goron swam through the dull ache of sleep to wakefulness. Pain waited for him. He groaned and pressed the palms of his hands against his throbbing temples, squeezing so hard the skull of a lesser man would have popped like a ripe tomato. He rolled his tongue around and sucked at the inside of his cheeks trying to coax out some moisture, but there was none to be found. A tankard of stale ale stood nearby, and Goron drained it in a few gulps.
A high arched window showcased a grey dawn—weren’t they all now. It was as if the weather mirrored how the castle and inhabitants felt.
His stomach refused the ale. Goron managed to turn his head in time and paint the stone floor with his puke. His stomach now settled, he sat up and worked at the pain in his temples and above his eyes with strong fingers. It helped. The physical misery reduced, his mind searched for the cause of the uneasiness he felt.
Some of his guards had died, a common occurrence during a night of heavy drinking. No, that wasn’t it. Through the fogginess of his brain, a hazy memory of Anwen’s face emerged, beautiful and enraged.
She’d caught him last night with Jasin. By Murdus’s grey beard! How could he be so stupid? He’d thrown the most beautiful woman in the castle away for a quickie with one of his guards.
Maybe he was being hasty. Anwen wasn’t one to hold a grudge, and he’d been caught only the once. He was sure she’d take him back if he promised to change his ways, not drink, and stay true. Cheered up, he lay back on the pillow and closed his eyes. That Jasin though, she sure knew how to please a man.
He’d almost finished with his personal business when the door creaked open letting in a line of torchlight from the corridor that illuminated his erection like a beacon. Goron covered himself with a blanket and pretended to be asleep while he peeked through half closed lids to see who the visitor was.
The dark silhouette outlined in the doorway was much too shapely in all the right places to be Anwen or Jasin. The visitor crossed the room, her footfalls silent, and her gait, like sex in slow motion. Goron stopped pretending to be asleep.
The woman didn’t pause at the end of the bed. Without breaking her glide, she stepped up and crossed the mattress until she was standing over him. The grey light from the high arched window undressed the shadows from her. She was naked, her sex open and wet, breasts like towering mountains high above him. He didn’t recognise her—not from this angle. “Who are you?” he croaked.
“Botha.” Her voice was deep and throaty.
“Botha.” He repeated the name again, “Botha.” It wasn’t a very pretty name. Why couldn’t it be something like Crystal? She straddled him, gripping him with strong thighs. “My name’s…” Goron didn’t finish; a breast was forced into his mouth. Just one more fling before I make my vows to Anwen.
A whisper opened Goron’s eyes. Was he still dreaming? The room was full of women. Every woman he knew in the castle. He smiled and opened his arms. He had enough love for them all. His affection for them wasn’t returned, though. They glared down at him, some whispering to those around them, others shaking their heads in disappointment.
The woman in his bed stirred and mumbled in her sleep. He’d forgotten about her, Crystal, or whatever her name was. Anwen’s not going to like that, he thought.
“How could you? She’s revolting. You’re both revolting,” Anwen said.
The others murmured in agreement.
That was harsh, Goron thought. From what he’d seen of Crystal, she was spectacular. He looked across to her to refresh his memory and recoiled in fright. Crystal was hideous. She looked like a fat plucked turkey. Had he really been that drunk he’d thought her a nubile goddess?
“Your standards are getting low,” Morwen said. More murmurs of agreement came from the other women.
“And to think I wanted him to fill me up with babies,” a plain-looking kitchen hand, whose name Goron didn’t even know, said.
“I let him sweet talk me into his bed last year. Now he’d be lucky if he could chat his way into a sow’s pen.” The face looked vaguely familiar.
“That’s nothing. I was going to marry him,” Anwen said.
“Ladies, please,” Goron said, his voice cracking. “I never slept with this…this thing.” Images of his sexual antics with Crystal flashed in his mind. His lips curled in disgust.
“My name’s Botha,” the demon said woken by the commotion from the bevy of women.
“That’s not all, Goron,” Morwen said. She was at the foot of the bed presiding over the court. Her dark robe billowed around her—caught in some spectral draught.
“Oh, me, can I please tell him?” Anwen said. Morwen nodded. “We’ve cursed you too. Your love life is forever doomed.”
Goran had heard how powerful warlocks’ curses could be. His gut clenched and acid surged up his throat. He was going to heave again. Where was his stomach finding all this food? He threw back the blankets and, naked, stumbled to his feet. Before his feet began their journey to the latrines, only one minute away, a spray of foul-smelling slops splattered over the hems and shoes of the disgusted women.
Defeated, Goron hung his head in shame, “Anwen please, you’re the only woman for me.”
“The only person, you’ll be touching is yourself,” Anwen said. The room emptied. As Anwen swept past, Goron dropped to his knees and clasped the hem of her dress. She snatched it from him and followed the other women, slamming the door behind her. Goron stared at his vomit-smeared hands then raised his eyes to the demon in his bed, grotesque in the grey light.
Goron hated guard duty. He could be chasing pretty women, getting drunk, or even sleeping. Anything was better than standing on the ramparts in the steel wind and darkness. Still, the illusion that he was one of many guards had to be maintained. He shivered and pulled the hood of his woollen cloak over his head. Normally he wouldn’t deprive the women folk of the opportunity to admire his handsomely rugged face and lustrous, golden hair, but what did it matter anymore?
Tonight’s shift was worse than normal. Thoughts of his public humiliation plagued him. There wasn’t a woman in the castle who didn’t know he’d been in bed with a repulsive demon. Those that hadn’t witnessed it had certainly heard about it. The pretty women ignored him, and the others looked down their noses at him. Morwen was right. His love life was doomed, curse or no curse.
Jasin walked past in tight leather leggings—the kind that made her arse look like a ripe peach—and a chest-hugging, chainmail shirt. Goron smiled desperately. The smile wilted when Jasin shook her head in disgust. She hadn’t talked to him since the incident, nodding her head curtly at any orders he gave her. “Aw, come on,” Goron growled in frustration. He’d had sex with a repulsive demon not slow roasted a kitten over a fire.
He stopped to warm his hands by a brazier and stared moodily out over the wall. It wasn’t a clear night. Dark clouds were blowing in from the east, but to the west, beyond the darkness of the forest, he could see the mountains, their snow-covered peaks bright white in the light of the moon and stars.
I’m a fool to stay. There’s only celibacy and death. Maybe there’s a woman out there somewhere who doesn’t know who I am. The moon peeked out from behind a black cloud illuminating the fields and hundreds of squat, potbellied creatures who crept through the grass to the castle.
Goron shifted from the glare of the brazier and leant out over the wall for a better look. His eyes hadn’t deceived him. “Toadoks,” he roared.
Curse that ranger, Caroc. What the hell was he playing at? He was meant to be keeping the toadoks’ numbers down or, at the very least, forewarn the castle they were about to be invaded.
The two other guards on the wall, Jasin
and Halwyn—his youngest at seventeen—looked out over the wall and joined their cries to his.
Goron reached for the carved horn dangling from his neck and pressed it to his lips. The metal was cool and tasted metallic, like blood. He sucked in a great gasp of air and blasted out a note. The doleful sound filled the night and was answered by shouts and cries from within the castle.
The toadoks reached the wall. They didn’t need ladders. Their webbed feet worked just fine on perpendicular surfaces. Even if the other guards got there in time, a dozen men and women couldn’t stand against so many—it would be a death sentence. “Halwyn, Jasin,” he bellowed.
The two guards hurried to him, their faces pale and taut in the lunar light. Halwyn dropped his spear. It clanged on the stone of the wall walk then rolled off the side into the darkness.
“Sorry,” the boy gasped.
“Order a retreat to the keep, I’ll hold them as long as I can. Go!”
Halwyn took off at a sprint. Jasin turned to follow him, then spun around and grabbed Goron’s cloak. She pulled him roughly towards her and kissed him savagely. Then she too was gone. Only the smell of her musk leather and sour sweat lingered.
Goron inhaled and grinned. Memories of her flesh filled his head. Maybe there were still a few woman in Wichsault who couldn’t resist his charms. That was something worth fighting for.
Goron unsheathed the huge battle axe from his back. The well-polished steel shone as brightly as his eyes—violence was nearly his favourite thing.
Two green, webbed hands appeared over the edge of the wall joined by a set of bulbous, yellow eyes. The eyes glanced left to right. They saw no threat until they glimpsed the blur of an axe. The bulging orbs had no time to widen in horror. With its head cleaved in two, the toadok dropped soundlessly from the wall.
Dark Rot Page 2
