The Iron Wolves

by Andy Remic

  “He makes my skin creep.”

  “Keep your thoughts to yourself, Granda. After all, he is our… king.”

  Granda nodded and went back to work, thankful King Yoon’s attentions would be focused on his friend and superior. Isvander was a patient man. And from what Granda had seen of King Yoon recently, Isvander would need all his skill and patience to survive.

  First came the drifting sounds as King Yoon and his entourage swept up and up the spiral steps towards the summit of the construction. There were giggles from Yoon’s sycophantic hangers-on, there was raucous braying and chatter, loud obnoxious voices that made Isvander and Granda exchange worried glances. This wasn’t just Yoon; this sounded like his entire bloody court!

  Next came the smell. Expensive perfumes imported from Zalazar and the southern Ice deserts of Zakora. Isvander wrinkled his nostrils. They might as well be distilled from the rotting fish-guts of the Rokroth Marshes, for all the pleasure they offered the Chief Engineer.

  And finally came the King himself. King Yoon strutted from the staircase, head high, a light sheen of sweat on his pale waxen brow from the climb, but still proving he had hidden stamina, for the climb was a long, hard one, and during its course he’d left half his retinue behind.

  “Isvander!” boomed the King, voice an uneven shrill as he strode forward trailing red silk and lace, and embraced the Chief Engineer awkwardly. “I see your work progresses apace.” He laughed, and the trailing members of his court (some of them still wheezing from the climb), laughed and giggled alongside him as if they’d caught some strange, foreign plague of comedy.

  Isvander eyed his King and Monarch with a wary eye. King Yoon was tall, well over six feet in height, and as broad and athletic as his warrior heritage would suggest. After all, was King Yoon not a direct bloodline descendant of the incredible Battle King, Tarek, the very king who fought and was victorious over thousands of invading mud-orcs during the War of Zakora? Had King Yoon not been trained in sword, spear and bow from his earliest childhood moments? He could fight as soon as walk, and had proved himself a warrior on many occasions, leading skirmishes south into Zakora when regular uprisings of the nomadic people threatened either the watching Garrison Towers, or indeed, even the Desekra Fortress which guarded the pass through the Mountains of Skarandos.

  Had King Yoon not shown great courage in battle? Great leadership and tactical skills? Great physical strength and, indeed, honour and loyalty from his soldiers earned by his love and concern for them? It was even said he’d fought a lion, and slain it by standing his spear against a rock and letting the beast charge him. Not the actions of a coward.

  Yes, decided Isvander, as he watched King Yoon strut about the tower summit, wandering dangerously close to the edge, which had no barriers and gave a dazzling, vertigo-inducing view – straight down to the waiting city below. Yes. King Yoon was all those things. Had been all those things. But he was changing. It was subtle, but he was changing.

  Now, King Yoon had his long, thick, shaggy hair dyed an unrealistic deep black in order to disguise the grey. He wore a thick, white makeup, accentuating his already pale skin and filling the wrinkles of his ageing face with excess. It caught in the creases of his skin and made him, along with the false gleam of his panther pelt, look more like an out-of-work stage actor than any noble King of note. He wore a robe of thick red velvet which ran from neck to ankles, but had strategic vents at both front and back that, when Yoon moved, and if one were to catch an unfortunate glimpse, displayed flashes of his genitalia and backside, depending which way he turned. From his throat and sleeves flowed long scarves of silk and lace, and again all Isvander could imagine was some actor in a contemporary stage piece relaying a part from foreign shores. The Drakerath Empire was traditional. Men wore leather, cotton, chainmail; its foresters wore greens and browns; and in the Marble Cities even dandies wore more subdued colours of green and red. King Yoon’s current fashion statement was… odd.

  With sinking heart, Isvander watched the rest of the entourage assemble. There must have been twenty men and women. The men wore ornamental armour and silks, with many a decorative carved leather codpiece on show, whereas the women dressed in gauzy thin cottons and laces which flowed and described succulent curves and revealed a worrying lack of undergarments.

  Isvander licked his lips, as many of the entourage giggled for no apparent reason.

  “Highness! Please, stay away from the edge!” cried one young man, moving forward and resting his hand casually on his own protruding, quivering codpiece. Isvander winced. The movement was too oddly familiar to be natural.

  “Listen to me, Pepp. I am divine!” intoned Yoon, solemnly. “I will walk where I will, for none shall dare take my life, not god, thief nor beggar!” Yoon edged closer and stalked along the very edge of the platform. Tiny stones, scuffed by his silk sandals, clattered away into the vast, awning abyss.

  Isvander coughed. “Still, Highness, I think… Pepp? I think he may have a point. It would be a sad day if you were to fall.”

  “Nonsense!” Yoon stopped, turned suddenly, and a breeze whipped his silks away behind him, far over the edge of the precipice. “I will not fall! Indeed, I cannot fall!”

  A low wind moaned, kicking up stone-dust on the platform, which swirled past King Yoon and disappeared into the distance. Isvander licked his lips again. Nervous now? He didn’t want to be even vaguely responsible for Yoon’s death, no matter how tenuous the link. And he was instinctively aware that if Yoon fell, somehow, no doubt some way, he would end up shouldering the blame.

  “Highness, look at this!” cried one woman. She was kneeling by a half-finished stone-carving of a gargoyle. “Isn’t he cute? Isn’t he divine?” In her crouch, her short silk skirts had ridden up revealing, in Isvander’s opinion, far too much pale white thigh-flesh and the quivering pink of revealed puckered lips.

  Yoon strutted forward, a walk so far removed from the battlefield as to be alien. “Yes, indeed, it is determinably cute and bulbous. As are you, Jamanda, my sweet ripe fruit.” He took the woman’s hand, and she rose, and he kissed her deeply, tongue in her mouth, apparently unaware that he had an audience; an audience that did not presently include his wife and queen.

  Jamanda broke away and swooned, and her hands eased out and stroked King Yoon’s flanks in an over-familiar way. “Would you like to, Highness?”

  “Later,” coughed Yoon, and seemed to remember where he stood. He turned to Isvander. “You there. Chief Engineer. I see progress is being made at a considerable pace. I am happy with the work. Although,” his hand swept an empty area, “I would like more gargoyles. More gargoyles on this level.”

  “Sire?” enquired Isvander, softly. “I think you’ll find you have already specified an inordinate amount of gargoyles for this level. Indeed, I think the plans show the current number of gargoyles to be… Granda? Do you know how many gargoyles we are carving for this level?”

  Granda flashed Isvander a filthy look, as if to say: don’t drag me into your dirty sycophantic warbling. “Three hundred,” he growled, and lowered his head again, as if the rancid, thick perfume in the air was making him sick. Which it probably was.

  “Three hundred, Majesty,” said Isvander, with an easy, open smile.

  “Not enough,” snapped Yoon, and clicked his fingers in rapid quick succession until a young man in bright green silks ran up to him and produced a long tube from a long leather satchel. Isvander felt his heart begin to sink.

  “Surely, not more plans, you simple, giggling, face-painted bastard? Just stick to dyeing your hair and humping your many and varied mistresses, both men, women and young boys if all accounts are true, and we’ll get this bloody tower built on time, you fucking imbecile, right?” That’s what Isvander wanted to say. Instead, he held a tight smile to his tight face, and muttered, “Surely, the plans are locked, Sire. To make more changes could further jeopardise a stable foundation which, I assure you...”

  “Nonsense.” With a swipe o
f one hand, Isvander’s concern, and indeed, engineering skill, was dismissed. Pepp and the green-silk architect unrolled the plans on the floor, and King Yoon crouched, his cock dangling obnoxiously from the venting slit in his red robes.

  Isvander glanced to the other masons on the wide stone platform. Wisely, everybody kept their eyes down, hands busy on their work. Isvander moved to King Yoon.

  “More gargoyles?”

  “Yes! More gargoyles! I want two hundred extra gargoyles! And we have also revised the height of the tower. I require the Tower of the Moon to elevate for another thirty levels.”

  “Thirty…” Isvander stood, mouth open, unconsciously staring at his monarch’s child-maker. He snapped out of his shock. “But Highness, the sheer weight of another thirty levels would guarantee a necessitated modification to the foundations… we’d need extra footings, capable of supporting vast…”

  “Nonsense! Krolla! Explain it to him.”

  Krolla, the man in green silks, explained it to a solemn, narrow-eyed Isvander. What he explained was insanity. This was a man who did not understand the simple relationship between the size of a building’s foundations, and its subsequent allowable height and weight. The math he proposed was illogical. Wisely, Isvander kept his mouth shut and his eyes from the bare naked breast which King Yoon was stroking idly, then licking, in open view of his braying entourage.

  Krolla finished his architectural and mathematical lecture with a wagging finger. Chief Engineer Isvander gave a single nod of tight-lipped acquiescence. What was the point of arguing? Who could argue with the insane? And indeed, what was the point being Chief Engineer if nobody listened to your engineering experience?

  “So, as you can see,” Yoon was strutting around again, sunlight gleaming from his black hair, his heavy robes swaying regally around his silk sandals, “not only will the Tower of the Moon be named the Tower of the Moon, one day, it may even reach as high as the moon!”

  Somebody giggled.

  Isvander kept his face painfully neutral. And realisation struck him. Surely… surely Yoon didn’t think he could really build a tower that high? Was that his aim? Truly? Gods, he’s getting worse! He’s plunging fast into a deep pit of madness, and he has the money to do it and sustain it. What can I say to bring him back to reality? How can I help the King?

  Pepp stepped forward. He had an inordinately high forehead, greased back curls, and a laugh that could crack glass at fifty paces swifter than any crossbow quarrel. “Surely, Highness, a tower could never touch the moon?”

  There was an awkward silence.

  King Yoon took a threatening step forward, and glowered down at Pepp, who shifted uneasily in his long, pointed, black leather boots. When Yoon spoke, his voice had dropped to a low, animal growl. “If I say the Tower of the Moon touches the moon, then touch the moon it shall!”

  “But, that’s impossible,” said Pepp, like a stubborn dog with a rotten bone.

  Yoon’s hand slammed out, grabbed Pepp by the throat, and in a few shocked seconds he dragged the choking nobleman to the edge of the platform where he held him out over the vast drop. Pepp’s boots scrabbled on stone, scarring their highly polished leather. Pepp choked and kicked. Yoon’s arm was rigid, muscles standing out like iron.

  “See that? Down there, you pathetic little maggot? You see my city? My country? Do you see my whole world? My fucking world?”

  Pepp tried to agree and choke at the same time. One boot slipped and his body swayed out over the drop.

  “It’s MY WORLD!” screamed Yoon, and gave a short giggle. “Do you want to see it more closely? Well, Pepp, that can easily be arranged! Oh yes!” His fingers opened their grip.

  Isvander watched in grim horror as Pepp seemed to suspend for a moment, a look of dismay on his stupid painted face. Then he fell, screaming like a little girl having her hair pulled, arms and legs swimming as if he might paddle his way back to the tower’s summit.

  Most of the entourage rushed to the edge of the platform and gazed down, watching Pepp fall. And land. He landed hard. There came a distant slap, muffled, almost unheard. But disconcertingly real. His body seemed to separate into many different pieces.

  Isvander heard it. So did Granda. Both men exchanged a solemn glance. This is getting out of control, said Isvander’s gaze.

  This is already out of control, came Granda’s grim response.

  “So then,” King Yoon slapped Isvander on the shoulder, his voice merry, as if they had just shared some jolly triviality, a glass of port, a humorous anecdote about a turnip, and now they were parting as old friends and comrades. “You can do five hundred gargoyles, lad? Surely?”

  “Of course, Majesty,” said Isvander.

  King Yoon strutted to the steps. His entourage, talking happily, trailed after him. From somewhere, one had produced a crystal decanter of wine. Several were drinking, their lips slick, glasses waving gaily. King Yoon stopped. The entourage stopped. They walked when he walked. They stopped when he stopped. They were a gaily coloured, perfume stinking shadow.

  “Well, we understand one another perfectly, then, Chief Engineer Isvander.” Yoon’s dark eyes seemed to gleam as he stared hard at Isvander for just a little bit too long. They drove into him. Seemed to worm inside his brain… and turn it inside out.

  “Perfectly,” said Isvander, mouth full of ash.

  King Yoon stepped onto the spiral of stone steps and descended three. Then he stopped again. He glanced back at Isvander. “Oh yes. Be a good boy, and send somebody out there to clean up the mess, won’t you?”

  “I will see what I can do, Great King,” croaked Isvander.

  Yoon smiled, and along with his gaudy group of giggling followers, disappeared from view.

  ZORKAI

  King Zorkai was a tall, powerful man, early thirties, with a forked black beard, thick bushy black hair and piercing blue eyes. He was an incredible swordsman, archer, bareknuckle fighter, and had hunted and killed lions, tigers, bears and wolves for sport with nothing but his bare hands and a short spear. He lived to fight. He lived for war. He lived to die. With three wives and seven children, he had secured his bloodline, his longevity and now, in the prime of his health, and strength, and ferocity, with an able experienced army to back him, nothing was a threat to the King of Zakora. Nothing.

  And the fact he had killed all three of his brothers and seven cousins who could potentially fight for the crown also added comfort to his present Kingship. King Zorkai was a man who knew where he stood. He was a man who did not like surprises.

  Which is why, when the scout reports came in, he listened, frowning. The reports spoke of a woman with a hundred or so “rabid, twisted creatures”, advancing rapidly through his domain. They were challenged by a cavalry unit of three hundred, who engaged them in battle, according to one report, although – insanely – the scrawled message spoke of “horses turning on their riders and eating them”. Zorkai’s men were killed. All of them.

  Zorkai sat, rubbing his whiskers in thought, and refusing to immediately dismiss the report, although he knew he would have the scout flogged in the city square, then nailed to the Betrayal Cross. Horses turning on their riders and eating them? He’d been heavy on the grain spirit, no doubt.

  Zorkai stood and walked to the rough sandstone windowsill of the Desert Palace, looking out over the city. His city. Zak-Tan. Fifty thousand sandstone dwellings, mostly two storeys high, many painted white to reflect the heat of the sun. Here and there Prayer Towers rose from the throng of buildings, and great swathes of people moved amidst the narrow streets and alleyways. He could hear music from a nearby bazaar and the shouts of traders selling silks, spices, honeyed milk, salted fish and many sweetmeat delicacies. The city was a thriving ants’ nest and he enjoyed watching the scene, listening to the people, soaking up the atmosphere of the place he had helped build, helped create! His father, the late King Zentak, had brought together ten wandering desert tribes, sowing the seeds of the Zak-Tan dream. They had conquered other trib
es and built a city of tents. As they expanded, and built up their army, they had invaded neighbouring desert areas, conquering and becoming wealthy beyond their dreams. Architects were drafted from “more civilised” lands to build, initially, a fortified palace – which is where Zorkai now stood. Despite being surrounded by the soft flowing desert, there were also the Salt Plains to the south and southwest: hard-packed, lifeless and unforgiving. But able to bear cavalry. King Zentak was the first of the desert kings to buy horses from the northern lands of Vagandrak, to learn the secrets of breeding and cross-breeding, and to expand his army with cavalry. Within ten short years, his army was unstoppable. Eight thousand foot warriors and nearly three thousand cavalry soldiers with long spears and expert training; there was no other force for a thousand miles that could challenge his supremacy. Except Vagandrak. But they hid behind their mountain walls, the Skarandos Range; hid behind their massive fortress, cowering like children.

  “Is everything well, my love?”

  Zorkai turned, and frowned again. It was his wife, Shanaz, dressed in flowing red silk and leaning seductively against the wide arched doorway.

  “No, it is not. I have garbled reports of some mad woman with a collection of monsters and horses that eat themselves.”

  Shanaz considered this. “That is… strange. Still, come to my bed and I will take your mind from such petty distractions.”

  Zorkai stared at her. Shanaz was his most recent wife and, he suspected, a trouble-causer. His first two wives had certainly not taken well to her, and he’d caught the three squabbling on occasion.

  “There you are, Shanaz! We’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

  Hunta and Marella came through the door, both wearing long black silks and shawls, and Shanaz did not turn, instead looking towards the king as she said, “I was here asking my husband to bed, as you two had announced you were going to the market to buy vegetables.”