by Adam Carter
Aside from a pair of worn and soiled trousers, the creature wore no garments.
“Lord Rathbone,” Rianne said, stepping forward and placing a clenched fist to her chest in some form of salute, “we bring you prisoners taken from the steps of the palace.”
After several moments of silence, the eyes of the reptile-man flickered open, and a long, thin tongue shot from the slit which was a mouth, before darting back inside. The creature regarded Rianne with cold eyes and said, “You have the audacity to dissturb me with thisss? You have interrupted my meditationsss to bring unto me prisonersss who would besst sserve our usess in the palace dungeons?”
“My Lord, I only adhered to the standing order of ...”
“And now you sseek to dictate my own sstanding orderss to me?”
“I ...”
“Out, guard. Get out, and pray I do not sselect you for my sscientific sstudies of the dissection of your primitive sspeciess.” The two guards departed and the creature Rianne had named Lord Rathbone gazed at the prisoners with uninterested eyes. “Sso,” he said at last, “I am ssuposed to be impressed by thiss sshow of defiance?”
“Defiance?” Kiel asked. “We haven’t defied anyone. All we did was approach the palace steps.”
“All you did?” Rathbone laughed. “All you did? Do you not know that it iss treasson to approach the royal palace unssolicited?”
“We’re kind of new in town,” Darkthorne said, “and we haven’t yet ...”
“Sso, you are sspies from the army camped at our very doorsstep? You are emissaries of King Callum through General Ashuss, come to assassinate me in my own home? Well, speak the truth or snuffer the consequencess.”
“We’re not assassins,” Tarne said defiantly.
“Maybe we should check the note the king sent to Ashus to make sure of that,” Darkthorne suggested. “I mean, who knows, this guy may well be right.”
“We did not come here to kill anybody,” Tarne insisted, shooting a glare at Darkthorne which told him he had best shut up if he knew what was good for him. “We have come not to dictate, but to negotiate.”
“Negotiate?” Rathbone asked, curious now. “Negotiate what?”
“A settlement,” Tarne said. “King Callum wishes for peace within the lands, that is all.”
“If he ssuess for peace, he should remove his soldierss from my gatess.”
“He has a point,” Sparky said.
“And what if they were removed?” Kiel asked. “Would you then enter peaceful negotiations with the king?”
“Why would I not? I am a peaceful creature who wantss only peace.”
“Peaceful creatures do generally want peace,” Darkthorne said. “You’d make one lousy diplomat with repetition like that. No wonder the king doesn’t like you.”
“Jagrad!” Tarne hissed.
“Your friend iss not afraid to sspeak hiss mind,” Rathbone said.
“I often think,” Tarne said tartly, “that my friend does not even have a mind, my Lord.”
“Ah, resspect from one among you at lasst.” He settled where he sat. “Sso, you wissh to sspeak of peace with me?”
“We do,” Tarne affirmed.
“Who iss your appointed leader?”
“You ... you really don’t want to talk with our appointed leader,” Tarne assured him quickly.
“Now just hold on a moment,” Darkthorne said. “You three are my vassals, right?”
“According to the king,” Kiel said, “but not in reality.”
“And is the word of the king not law?” Darkthorne asked.
“Not in Charrok,” Rathbone said.
“Thank heaven for small mercies,” Kiel said. “Just shut it, Jagrad, and let us handle this, OK?”
“Well,” Rathbone said, his tongue tasting the air as it had been doing every few seconds since he had awakened, “now that we have that ssettled, perhapss we sshould begin to talk termss.”
“Terms?” Kiel asked.
“For the ssurrender of the palace of King Callum III.”
“I don’t think the king’s quite ready to surrender just yet,” Tarne said nervously.
“The world belongss to the Nagass,” Rathbone insisted, “and we shall reclaim it from the humanss who have infessted our realm, no matter what the cosst to the human population.”
“What happened to our peace talks, exactly?” Kiel asked.
“Ah, ssorry. I forgot. Perhapss you should arrange for the king himsself to come to Charrok. I sshall perssonally guarantee hiss ssafety.”
“You just said you wanted to murder him,” Darkthorne said in shock.
“That doessn’t mean I would not like him to come here sso that it would be eassier to do that. Perhapss I could pay you in order to do thiss for me?”
“We shall not sell out our species for money,” Kiel said defiantly.
“I sshall triple whatever the king is paying you.”
“Give us a million times the amount,” Darkthorne said, “and a million times zero is still zero.”
Rathbone blinked in momentary incomprehension, his tongue flicking out again while he tried to comprehend this. “You mean to tell me you’re not even getting paid for rissking your livess in coming here?”
“More fool us, I know,” Tarne said. “Look, maybe we should just go. It’s pretty obvious we’re not going to get very far here.”
“Go?” Rathbone asked with a sneer. “But you have only jusst arrived. I inssist you sstay for dinner at leasst.”
“Let me guess what’s on the menu,” Darkthorne mumbled.
“For the last time,” Kiel said angrily, “I do not eat human beings.”
“No,” Rathbone laughed, “but I do.”
The group drew their weapons, although the sane ones among them were already conscious of the fact they had been left them. They knew there was some danger they could not see, something the terrible darkness did hide, and while they were attempting to avoid combat and the revelation of such, they knew now that they were being forced into taking just such an action. Darkthorne, conversely, just reckoned there was a good fight coming his way.
“You draw your weaponss towardss one who ssits within the ancient protection of the candle circle of the Serpent lord Sset?” Rathbone was half parts horror and indignation. “Come forwardss then, if you do not fear the circle of light.”
“I don’t fear candles,” Darkthorne said, striding boldly forward.
“Wait,” Kiel cried. “It might be dangerous.”
“Good enough reason to let him try before us,” Tarne said. “Or even instead of us.”
Darkthorne stopped his approach to the snake-being, particularly when he heard no counter-argument from Kiel. “I thought the two of you were supposed to be my friends,” he said.
“Self-survival comes first,” Kiel said. “Sorry.”
“Well if that’s your attitude,” Darkthorne said indignantly, “then maybe I won’t attack this character at all.”
“Swell,” Tarne said. “We never wanted to attack him in the first place.”
“He just threatened to eat us.”
“And if you hadn’t provoked him ...” Tarne’s voice trailed off.
“Uh, excuse me?” Rathbone asked. “But big monster snake-man still sitting over here?”
Tarne was in two minds as to whether she should put her sword away and attempt tact again. “Lord Rathbone, I ... hold on, what happened to your lisp?”
“Oh, uhm ... yess, it’ss sstill pressent,” Rathbone hissed, flicking his tongue out again for good measure.
“No, it disappeared,” Tarne said, frowning. “And why is it you always manage to say things with lots of esses in them?”
“Well I ...”
“Is he even a snake at all, do you reckon?” Kiel asked of the others.
“That is ...”
“Might make a nice handbag,” Old Man Robes suggested.
“I ...”
“He had some cheese in his pocket,” Sparky said,
munching on something.
“I ... I ... I ...” Rathbone sighed, hung his head for several moments, sighed again, then rose, stepping out of the circle of candles and taking care not to knock any over with his tail. “I guess you’re just going to have to come with me, then,” he said with a sad shake of his head, his tongue no longer tasting the air, his lisp having deserted him also and his presence now seeming somewhat less regal and imperious.
“What just happened?” Tarne asked, still reeling in disbelief as the snake-man moved off through the darkness, taking a torch with him as he approached a door previously hidden by the absence of proper light.
“I suppose the only way to find out would be to follow him,” Kiel said, marching across the room.
They allowed Rathbone to lead them in silence, all the while attempting to stare at the joints in his body, searching for seams they could not find. Soon enough, they arrived at their destination and emerged onto a balcony overlooking a grand arena. The great amphitheatre held many seats, and upon every one there sat a single snake-creature, or else the creatures were upon their feet, jeering the combatants within the arena.
The balcony to which the party had been led was spacious, although there was only one other being seated within. She was also a snake-creature, and looked up as they approached.
“Reptant,” Rathbone said, “I have brought guests from King Callum’s court.”
“What good timing you have, Rathbone,” the creature named Reptant replied. “You’re just in time for the games.”
And within the arena below, two humans fought for survival.
FUTURE CHAPTER
The Nagas were not going to win.
Every year, a contest was held at the Higher Institution of Nagas and Geological Education, and no matter how much effort the other side put into the contest, it was always won by the Nagas. The university had been established when the human race had first made their peace with the Nagas, and the competition was seen as a friendly way by which the students might compete without bloodshed. Each team entering the competition had the task of developing and building a simple one-person glider which would perform a series of complex and well-orchestrated aerial stunts. With all the recent development in faster-than-light travel, and the government funds mainly going into the restoration of the Martian colonies after the huge sandstorm of the previous summer, little interest was being taken in the competition from outside eyes; although, for those students whose gliders were being entered into the contest, it was a matter of honour that they compete to the best of their ability. The Nagas had never lost the competition, and many of the human students each year vowed to change that statistic.
Thus far, none had ever succeeded.
Things, perhaps, were about to change at last.
“You want to check the rudder on this thing?” Heather Tarne asked from where she sat within the glider. It was a magnificent piece of work and had taken more time to complete than any of them had spent on their studies, although they knew that even should they fail everything else, if they could just beat the Nagas, they would have so many doorways open to them they wouldn’t care about their upcoming degrees. As soon as a human team defeated the Nagas, they would become heroes of the human race. Their images would be used to sell everything from motorcars to crisps, and they would take a royalty in everything. They would never have to work again, so long as they could defeat the Nagas.
“Rudder seems fine to me.” Sparky was their main engineer on the project: indeed, that was the degree for which he was studying. If he had a real name, Tarne didn’t know it, although everyone knew him as Sparky. He was slightly younger than the rest of them, very good with his hands, and had a mind as sharp as a piranha’s maw. He was also addicted to gambling and had fingers able to move fast enough to perform amazing feats with a pack of cards (all except winning money, it would seem). Tarne had long suspected he would have made a great pickpocket in another life.
“Then maybe the mainframe,” Tarne suggested.
“Mainframe’s fine, too,” Sparky said. “I checked it this morning. You sure you’re OK, Heather?”
“I’m fine, I ... I just don’t ... Look, explain it to me again why I have to be the one who goes up in this thing.”
“Because you’re the lightest,” Sparky said.
“You’re only slightly heavier than me, and besides, you know so much more about aerodynamics.”
“You can stop the pleading, and don’t you dare go with the doe-eyed look, Heather, because you know it doesn’t work on me.” Sparky took another chocolate digestive from the seemingly never-ending pack from which he was always snacking and said, “Besides, you know you have that clairvoyant thing.”
“I do not have a clairvoyant thing.”
“You see things before they happen,” Sparky said, adopting his best Liam Neeson voice, which wasn’t very good at all, “that’s what makes you such a good pilot. It’s a Jedi trait.”
“A what?”
“Je ... you never watch old films, do you?”
“Sparky, I’m still really not comfortable with this whole flying thing.”
“Well nor were the Wright brothers, but they still gave it a shot, and look what happened to them.”
“Yeah, they went a few metres and then they crashed.”
“Ah, but everybody remembers ‘em for it, yeah?” He chewed on his biscuit. “Trust me, you’ll be fine.”
“That’s easy for you to say: you’re going to be down here on the ground.”
“Where it’s safe. Joking!” he said when she shot him a baleful glare. “Nowhere’s going to be safe with you flying, Heather.”
Tarne twisted the lever and the rudder narrowly avoided slamming into the side of Sparky’s head.
“That’s the spirit, girl,” Sparky enthused. “Just do me a favour though and save it for the Nagas.”
“How are we doing?” Sara Kiel asked, stepping into the room then and casting an impressed eye over the machine.
Sparky laughed. “The Nagas’ll never know what hit ‘em.” The three friends had studied at the university for several years now and were all ready to graduate. They knew there was every chance that after the parting of the ways they would never see one another again. They had become close friends over the last few years, and this was the one final thing they would do together. With an engineering degree, Sparky had the entire star system open to him, for there was call for good engineers on the outer moons. Kiel was studying an archaeology course and her life for the future would likely keep her Earth-bound, since there was no life outside of Earth whose history she might study. Tarne had all but completed her course in mental development, for she had been tested at an early age and had been discovered as possessing one of those rare minds attuned to the ley lines of the Earth. As such, she had many options open to her, ranging from teaching to the military. The latter were extremely interested in using young people with this form of talent in their various offensive programmes.
There was, however, a fourth member of their little group, and as Sparky reached for another biscuit, he asked after him. “Where’s D.T.?”
“On the roof,” Kiel replied. “Drunk. With two girls.” She frowned. “Pretending he can fly.”
“I’m almost sorry I asked,” Sparky said. “Actually, no, this I gotta see.”
“What about the test?” Tarne asked as Sparky hurried towards the door.
“It’ll work out,” Sparky promised her. “Laters.”
“I don’t believe him sometimes,” Tarne said, slumping in her control seat. “I mean, it’s Sparky who wants to get this thing in the air. I really couldn’t care less if it never flew anywhere.”
“I’m sure you don’t mean that,” Kiel said.
“I don’t see what’s so good about beating the Nagas anyway. I mean, they’re just naturally good at this sort of thing.”
“They are inferior,” Kiel said. “We should defeat them, and that is why we must.”
�
�Because they’re inferior?”
“Yup.”
“Help me down from this thing.” Tarne struggled free of the harness holding her to the glider, barely needing the help for which she had muttered.
“I sense I’ve said something wrong,” Kiel said to Tarne’s somewhat harsh silence.
“Really? And I wonder what that could have been.”
“It’s about the Nagas, isn’t it? Because I don’t treat them the same way as I treat human beings.”
“I notice you’re not apologising for it, Sara.”
“Like I ever would,” Kiel said indignantly. “They’re inferior, and that’s why I called them inferior. They’re sub-human, nothing more, nothing less. They are what they were designed to be, and as such, yes, they’re inferior.”
“They’ve grown beyond what they were conceived as being, Sara, even you have to admit that.”
“Fine, then go marry one.”
The Nagas was a race of beings artificially evolved from the deoxyribonucleic acid of reptiles. With the colonisation of some of the worlds closest to Earth, the human race was expanding outwards across their own star system. Thus far, travel between the planets still took several months, even a couple of years, to reach the outer fringes of human civilisation settled upon several of the moons of Jupiter, and there were always risks involved in such distant travel. During the Twentieth Century, monkeys had been sent into space so that human lives were not put at risk, as were other animals including dogs and cats. In order to travel to other worlds, a species was required which could operate the basic functions of a shuttle, and perhaps even take samples upon landing which a computer-projected shuttle could not. Oxygen checks were needed upon living lungs, survival had to be tested, and so on and so forth. For this they had required a monkey, but a very specialised monkey. Tests had been performed, and soon the experiments had turned from primates onto reptiles. Snake genes were found to be more resilient than anyone had ever considered, and within a few short decades the tests had progressed to the point that they had at last a bipedal creature standing slightly taller than a human, and able to hold basic intelligence within its utilitarian brain.
