Dan the Warlord

by Hondo Jinx

  If Dan looked frightened or cautious, the prince would write him off as a weakling.

  “He will most likely write you off as a weakling no matter what you do,” Tatiana had said matter-of-factly, “but if you are to have any chance at diplomacy, you must radiate strength.”

  The males of her species were very aggressive, she had explained. Respect was not a default setting; it had to be earned. Meetings among panther-men were loud and argumentative, with sharp criticism and frequent posturing, each side probing the other for weaknesses. Her people weren’t trash-talkers like humans and elves, however, and they weren’t prone to bluffing. They were skeptical, brutally honest, and menacing. Rather than insulting one another, they pointed out an adversary’s actual weaknesses, disadvantages, and shortcomings.

  So Dan strode through the swirling, steamy air with his head held high and no expression on his face—even when he drew close to the black dot hovering five feet above the tracks and finally saw exactly what it was: a gigantic, powerfully built black panther man sitting in midair with his eyes closed, his legs crossed, and his forearms laid across his thighs, as if he were meditating upon an invisible stool.

  Dan stopped ten feet away.

  Razah didn’t look like a prince. He looked like the blood-drunk, badass warrior-monk Tatiana had described.

  He wore no glittering crown, no ostentatious baubles, and no fine regalia.

  He wore only loose-fitting gray pants tucked into golden bands that encased his shins yet left his feet bare, much like the golden bands that covered his forearms but left his huge fists exposed.

  His face was brutal and serene and, in its way, handsome. Serious scars crosshatched his muscular, black-furred upper body.

  Prince Razah’s nostrils flared, and he spoke without opening his eyes. “I smell you, barbarian,” he said, his voice a low grumble. “I smell your sweat and fear.”

  “I’m sweating,” Dan said, “but I’m not afraid.”

  Razah opened his eyes. Jet black pupils split luminescent green irises. “You are afraid,” the panther-man said. Moving with the fluid grace of a powerful predator, he unfolded his legs, stepped onto the tracks, and stretched to his full height of perhaps seven feet. “Look at me,” he said, stretching his muscular arms wide, “and look at you.”

  Dan thought about putting his flag to use right then but held back.

  Not yet. Talk first.

  Dan stared into the bright green eyes and said, “I didn’t come here to compare dick sizes, buddy. You want to talk business or what?”

  “Business,” Razah rumbled, drawing the word out into a dangerous chuckle. “What business?”

  “You’re the one who invited me,” Dan said. “Remember?”

  “I wanted to see you,” Razah said. “To smell you. To understand what sort of man overthrew Bannon.”

  “Well, now you’ve seen me,” Dan said.

  The hulking black panther took a step forward. Again, Dan was tempted to swing the standard—but he once more resisted the temptation.

  Stay cool. Timing is everything.

  “Bannon was old and foolish,” Raza said. Then he looked Dan up and down and snorted with obvious contempt. “You are small. The Jungle Kingdom has nothing to fear from the west.”

  “We want an alliance,” Dan said.

  “An alliance?” Laughter rumbled out of Razah’s thick chest. “Alliances are struck between equals. You are a mouse petitioning a panther. You don’t want an ally. You want a protector.”

  Dan grinned. “We are far more powerful than you imagine.”

  “You are a human,” Raza said, “so you are bluffing. Bannon also bluffed, but he made my father laugh and was smart enough to deal with the Duke of Harrisburg.”

  “Trust me,” Dan said. “I’m going to deal with the duke.”

  Raza chuckled. “Ah, so you do have a sense of humor after all. We understand that the wizard nearly killed you.”

  The fuck? Dan thought. How does he know that? And so quickly…

  Then he pictured Lady Galina, the panther-witch. The Court of Kah’Dreel likely had several such shamans in its employ.

  “Yes, he tried to kill me,” Dan said. “A lot of people try to kill me. But I’m still here. My would-be killers, on the other hand, are dead. Just as Blivet and the duke will soon be dead.”

  “Big words for a tiny man,” Razah said. “But again, we have learned to doubt the words of humans. Better to trust their actions and their smell—and you smell of fear.”

  “Mostly I smell of sex and blood and bacon,” Dan said. “If you think you smell fear, you better get your nose checked, because I sure as Hades aren’t afraid of you. Like I said, I’m not looking for protection. I’m looking for an alliance. The War of the Dukes is coming this spring.”

  “Yes,” Raza said. “And the war will be fought on your soil, not ours.”

  “Is that so?” Dan said. “And how do you know that?”

  “The duke said as much when we met with him—and struck an alliance.”

  And there it was, just as Tatiana had proposed—and just as Dan had assumed, coming into this meeting. The Jungle Kingdom had already joined forces with the Duke of Harrisburg.

  “And what if the Duke of Harrisburg loses?” Dan said.

  The panther shrugged his massive shoulders. “That is of no concern to us. The war will be fought on your soil, not ours, and we will not fight alongside the duke. Our alliance is simple. In return for certain goods and assurances, we have given the duke an easement of passage through our great kingdom. That is all.”

  “Yes, but what if The Duke of Pittsburgh wins? What if he utterly kicks the shit out of your buddy and keeps rolling? What then?”

  Razah grinned, showing his huge, white fangs. “We formed an alliance with the Duke of Pittsburgh before even speaking to the Duke of Harrisburg. The dukes will have their war. One will win, one will lose. Either way, the Jungle Kingdom remains.”

  “What about after the war?” Dan said. “Whoever wins this war is going to flood the Wildervast with colonists. They’ll build roads and towns and rails.”

  “Again, this will happen upon your soil, not ours,” Razah said.

  “So you think,” Dan said. “But the Wildervast is very small compared to the world beyond. When civilization comes, it will come in a flood not a trickle. The settlers will quickly exhaust my land and look eastward toward the Jungle Kingdom. First for resources, then for acreage.”

  “If they try, we will crush them,” Razah said. He whisked the air with a dismissive wave. “Enough of your pitiful fearmongering, barbarian. We will not help you. Go back to your castle and enjoy your wives while you still live.”

  “You’re making a mistake,” Dan said.

  “Speaking of mistakes,” Razah said, “my sister’s handmaiden, Tatiana, fled our kingdom and now hides within your walls. Give her back to us.”

  “Yeah,” Dan said, drawing it out, “that’s not going to happen.”

  “We will pay you one thousand gold pieces.”

  “Nope.”

  “Five thousand.”

  Dan shook his head.

  “Ten thousand gold pieces, then,” the panther said, irritation building in his voice. “An unthinkable fortune for a disloyal, disobedient deserter.”

  “Looks like we both wasted our time coming here today,” Dan said. “Tatiana is one of my people now. You can’t have her. Not for any price.”

  A low grumbling—half-laughter and half-growl—vibrated within Razah’s throat. He reached out and placed a huge hand on Dan’s shoulder.

  Inwardly, Dan tensed, ready to swing the flagpole; but outwardly, he forced his face and muscles to remain calm.

  “We will have Tatiana,” Razah said. “No one deserts the royal family without facing consequences. No one. If you will not accept a bounty, let us talk instead of repercussions.”

  “Like I said, Tatiana is one of my people now,” Dan said. “That means I won’t hand her over to yo
u. No matter what you offer or threaten, the answer is no.”

  “For many years,” Razah said, “I have tried to understand the concept of human courage. Acting boldly in the face of fear. Having never been afraid, I could not fully understand, but now I understand that you are being courageous. Your fear-stink is overwhelming, and yet you speak defiantly. A very strange and irrational trait, courage. But it seems to me that courage must often be foolish as well. Now, for instance.”

  Razah’s big hand tightened ever so slightly, and the needle tips of the warrior-monk’s claws punctured Dan’s clothing and pricked his shoulder.

  “What good can courage possibly do now? Here you stand, hundreds of yards from your valley, suspended upon a narrow rail over the mouth of hell itself. You have no weapons, and you are in the grip of Prince Razah Kah’Dreel, the greatest warrior of the Jungle Kingdom, who could toss you to your death with a simple flick of his mighty wrist. You do understand that the Duke has offered a bounty for your death?”

  Dan nodded. “So I hear.”

  “Surrender the deserter Tatiana,” Razah said, and his claws sunk deeper into the meat of Dan’s shoulder, “or I will throw you off this bridge and collect the bounty myself. Then, when the duke invades, we will accompany him and retrieve the traitor from your fortress.”

  “Throwing me off the bridge would be a big mistake,” Dan said, and smiled up at the hulking warrior-prince. “And when I say big mistake, I’m talking an epically bad, once-in-a-lifetime, colossal and irrevocable fuck up.”

  Rich, dark laughter rumbled from Raza. “Courage and bluffing? Yes, you are very human. Please enlighten me, puny barbarian. Why would throwing you off this bridge be a big mistake? What could you possibly do about it?”

  “Me?” Dan said. “I couldn’t do anything. My friends, though?”

  And now, finally, Dan waved the standard back and forth two times to each side then held it still in the air high overhead… the agreed-upon signal that his people back at the edge of the cliff had been waiting for.

  Half a second later, a rapid-fire pang-pang-pang-pang-pang-pang exploded behind Dan, and the standard jerked in his hands as steel balls punched holes in the flag and shattered the upper pole to splinters.

  Prince Razah ducked his head and hunched his shoulders. His bright green eyes flared, and his lips curled back, baring a toothy snarl.

  “Meet the Fist of Fury,” Dan said. Working together, Agatha and Thelia had completed the wagon-mounted gun designed by Thelia’s long-dead ancestor—and just in time. Powered by a quasar of self-perpetuating fire, the mobile Fist was smaller than its mounted predecessors but just as deadly. “If you touch me again, my people will put rounds straight through your eyes and blast out the back of your skull.”

  Dan let the ruined flagpole drop into the void.

  “The offer for an alliance stands,” Dan said. “If you come to your senses and want to accept, send a bird. But I’ll leave you with a word of caution. If you ever fuck with me again, we will burn your jungles and rain steel death down on your kingdom. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Prince, I’ll be going. You stink of fear—and it turns my stomach.”

  13

  I Only Have Eye for You

  Dan entered Agatha’s forge and grunted with surprise.

  Normally, the forge was hot as the hinges of Hades, ringing with the song of hammer and anvil, and cast in wavering red light, the glow of hot coals dappled in black slivers of the dark shadows that never seemed to leave the deep cavernous chamber. But this morning, the room was cool and silent, lit only by a single fire.

  “Agatha?” Dan called into the shadowy recesses. Where was she? Why wasn’t she working? Was she grieving over his departure?

  The lovely cyclops was smitten with Dan the way that only a monster girl could be smitten for a man. She had told him as much when he’d been Bannon’s prisoner. And while Agatha lacked the confidence to flirt with him, she blushed prettily and stammered every time he saw her.

  Agatha was self-conscious about her size. She was several inches taller than Dan, incredibly busty, and stacked with the muscle of a woman who spent her days—and often her nights—pounding hot metal with heavy hammers.

  Even more so, Agatha was sensitive about her single eye, which she thought—quite inaccurately, in Dan’s opinion—made her hideous. As Dan understood it, most cyclopes shared this insecurity.

  No matter how many times a man told such a cyclops she was beautiful, she would not believe him—even if she was desperate to believe his words. A man could conquer her insecurities in only one way, and despite Agatha’s loveliness, Dan was not ready to take on yet another wife at this point.

  Dan avoided the topic and hadn’t mentioned Agatha’s beauty since he’d been Bannon’s prisoner. If he went down that path, he would need to give constant reassurance, and she would never believe him for long. Talk about exhausting. You could only tell an insecure woman that she was beautiful so many times before you started to resent her stubborn insecurity, and Dan did not want to resent his sensitive, kindhearted blacksmith. So yeah, he avoided the topic—normally.

  But this morning, when Agatha ducked under a darkened archway and stepped into the light, he couldn’t help but say something.

  “Agatha, you look gorgeous.”

  The pink-skinned cyclops blushed cherry red. She had replaced her usual filthy gray tunic with a clean, black tunic cinched at the waist not by her broad leather tool belt but by a length of rope the color of hot coals. Her skin, usually shiny with perspiration and smudged with soot, shone bright and clean in the firelight. Her long hair, normally gathered into a pragmatic ponytail, today framed her pretty face in a shimmering cascade of mahogany waves.

  “Don’t tease me, Dan,” Agatha said, shyly looking away.

  “I’m not teasing,” he said. “You look hotter than a forge.”

  Blushing even more brightly, Agatha raised her eye and smiled. “Thank you. Today is a special day. I have something for you. Something you’re going to love.” And from behind her back, she revealed a gleaming sword.

  Dan’s eyes went wide. He recognized the sword at once. It was his trusty bastard sword, the twice-broken former two-handed sword that had once housed his pain-in-the-ass mentor, Wulfgar… but now, instead of one blade, it had three.

  “Holy fuck, Agatha!” Dan said. “That is awesome!”

  Agatha fell to one knee, bowed her head, and held the sword up to him in both hands. “This sword is my One True Forge, Dan, the masterwork of my life, forged in an ecstasy of creation as the spirits of my ancestors quickened within me. Never again, even if I should live a thousand millennia, shall I make its equal. And I give this sword to you now as a symbol of my undying love and devotion.”

  “Wow,” Dan said, staggered by gratitude. “Thank you so much.” His own words sounded lame to him, but he was so mesmerized by the strange—and yet strangely familiar—sword that he could muster no better. “It looks like my sword but also like another sword that I saw long ago.”

  “That is the power of the One True Forge,” Agatha said. “The smith transcends herself, creating an item that is perfect in every way, including facets beyond her understanding.”

  He took the sword from her and sliced the air.

  The pommel was familiar and comfortable, as were the weight and balance, shockingly enough. He had expected the sword to be either weightless like a magical blade or ponderous due to the extra blades, but the fit and feel were perfect, exactly the same as the sword he had come to know and love.

  How was that even possible?

  “The blades are sharper than obsidian, sharp enough to slice a falling silk handkerchief into three pieces,” Agatha said. “They will never dull—and yet they will also never cut you, even if you carry the sword naked upon your bare back. This sword belongs to you and you alone.”

  “Wow,” Dan said again. “Wow, wow, wow.”

  And then he remembered the name of the corny, yet oh-so-frigging-cool movie wher
e he’d seen the three-bladed sword: The Sword and the Sorcerer. Apparently, the magic behind Agatha’s One True Forge had somehow not only made a sword that fit him perfectly but had also tapped into his mind to design his ultimate weapon. Of course, the sword in The Sword and the Sorcerer had been remarkable for more than just triple blades. It also had a crazy power, the very definition of corny-but-cool, the ultimate symbol of what made sword-and-sandal movies both stupid and totally awesome.

  “The outer two blades fire double as projectiles,” Agatha said. “You can fire them like crossbow bolts, one at a time or simultaneously, whichever you desire. Once you return them to the pommel, they will be ready to launch again.”

  “No shit?” Dan said, amazed. It was just like the movie sword.

  Standing, Agatha laughed happily. “Test the sword. Fire the blades at the wall. They won’t break or bend, won’t even scratch.”

  Holding the sword in both hands, Dan aimed the blades at the wall. He felt no trigger, no button, no firing mechanism whatsoever. He couldn’t remember how the movie sword had fired. A button, he thought. “Um… how do I fire this thing?”

  “As I am yours, so is the sword,” Agatha said. “As I am pledged to your service, so is the sword. Use your mind, your heart, your will, and we will do your bidding.”

  Dan shrugged, checked his aim, and wished the blades would fire.

  Instantly, both blades leapt from the sword. And they didn’t lob away in slow, arching trajectories as had the blades of the movie sword. They shot straight out, quick as lightning bolts, and hit the wall in a spray of sparks.

  “Yes!” Dan roared.

  But his celebration was short-lived because a second later, he realized just how powerful the sword was—and what that power had done. The blades were half-buried in the wall. “Oh Hades!”

  Even if they were unbreakable, as Agatha claimed, it would take hours to free them from the stone. He didn’t have hours. In minutes, he would be riding out into the valley with Holly, Ula, Nadia, Zamora, and a hundred of his toughest soldiers on a mission to recruit barbarians and parlay with the Duke of Pittsburgh.