Qul growled and balled his fists, dropping to all fours. As a quadruped, even a sluggish minotaur could run nearly as fast as a well-trained horse.
The two beasts took off across the rocky plain heading southeast toward the human city. Their hooves pounded the ground, sending a shower of pebbles and dirt behind them. Qul only hoped they would be quicker than the royal guard he knew would be following them.
Qul figured they were somewhere roughly twelve miles east of their mountain home when they finally saw signs of human activity. The two minotaurs crested a small rise in the land and saw the end of a herd of sheep being led by a small handful of human farmers.
“You’re sure this is it?” Kitri asked skeptically. She shifted her weight side to side and her armor clinked gently in the wind. Her hooves dug several inches into the ground from the immense weight of her body and equipment.
Qul watched the fifteen or so humans as they ushered their sheep along a dirt trail. “There are no other human settlements,” he said slowly. “What are they doing so far from their walls? They brought no soldiers to protect them.”
“Perhaps these are not the right humans,” Kitri said.
“They have to be,” Qul answered.
Kitri looked back over her shoulder. “And what of the guard you said was tasked with their slaughter?” she asked.
Qul shook his head. The farmers were getting closer to their position, and it wouldn’t be long before their silhouettes were spotted, assuming they wouldn’t be mistaken for trees or boulders on the horizon. “He’ll be here later,” the burly minotaur concluded. “We have to kill them now.”
Qul and his sister dropped back to their quadruped forms with a flurry of dirt and hooves. They heard the humans screaming in terror as they approached, and the fear fueled their pounding cadence.
The first human to die had been brave. He had held his shepherd’s hook out before him as though he alone could stop the stampede, but Qul hadn’t even slowed. Four humans were left dead by the time Kitri and Qul stopped their charge and stretched to their full, monstrous heights.
Kitri drew her pair of maces and set to work quickly, thrashing her weapons from side to side at the fleeing human scum.
Curiously patient, Qul was slower to join the open fray. His eyes searched the scrambling humans for any sign of a mystical scroll or other priceless artifact. He saw nothing. Pole in hand, he leapt forward and fell on top of the nearest farmer, an older human with a scraggly beard and no semblance of a weapon. His pole shattered the man’s skull and blasted the vertebrae from his back in a single strike.
Qul knelt to investigate what was left of the tattered corpse. He ripped the man’s robe from his carcass and tossed it aside, searching everywhere for a scroll. The farmer had nothing.
Moving to his next victim, Qul stormed between the terrified sheep to a middle-aged woman with tears streaming down her face. She cowered, and then Qul ended her life in a flash as he nearly tore her in half at the waist. Again, a search of her corpse yielded no artifact.
A bellow of frustration left Qul’s lips. He leaned back and slammed his pole into the ground, furiously shattering the earth beneath him. Something clinked off his armor, pulling his attention to a small human boy standing behind him. Qul did not recognize human ages very well, but he figured the child to be very young since he was barely taller than the minotaur’s belt.
“Téras!” the boy screamed incomprehensibly, clutching another rock in his hand. Qul didn’t know a single word of the human language or he would have asked the boy where the scroll was hidden before ripping apart his pathetic, underdeveloped body.
With a shrug, Qul stomped toward the boy and loosed all of his pent-up frustration. He lifted the screaming child by his scrawny shoulders, hoisting him high above his horns. With a guttural release of rage, he yanked the human down hard over his head, impaling him on both horns and silencing the child’s cries. A torrent of blood washed over Qul’s face as he rent the human in half, tossing the two ragged chunks of meat to his sides.
Then everything was quiet except for the incessant baying of the scattered sheep. Kitri was standing thirty or so paces away, and she hadn’t broken a sweat. The ends of her maces were covered in gore, and the rest of her was completely unscathed. She didn’t even appear to be breathing heavily.
“Search their bodies!” Qul yelled at his sister. “The scroll must be here somewhere!”
The two minotaurs rooted fruitlessly through the human remains. When they were finished, Qul couldn’t shake the feeling that he had been gloriously tricked, that something grandiose was happening back at the mountain that the half-orc had perfectly orchestrated. A thousand ideas flew through his head, each more grim than the last.
“We have to go back,” he growled, reluctant to give his sister any more information than he thought absolutely necessary.
Luckily, she nodded silently and dropped to her hooves to speed back the way they had come, confident that her brother spoke with purpose. Qul took them on a slightly circuitous route in case they ran into the other guard, but they saw no other humans or minotaurs on their way back to the mountain.
Qul only felt more nervous when he arrived at the mountain to find nothing amiss. Kitri cleaned and stowed their gear, and Qul stalked through the halls of their mountain home in search of some bit of news, but every conversation he heard was just as mundane as all the others. He struggled to wrap his mind around what the half-orc’s purpose must have been. When he had thought through every possible scenario, he finally decided that he had simply attacked the wrong caravan of humans.
He beat his fists against his cot in frustration once he was safely within his quarters, though it didn’t help to ease his troubled mind. Too frustrated to think of departing the mountain once more, he resolved to make another expedition the following morning, and if he again found nothing, he would tear the half-orc limb from limb until there was nothing left.
Chapter 5
When dawn broke, a call rang out through the halls of the mountain, and Qul was summoned along with the rest of his clan to the large chamber at the center of the complex. His fingers shook as he strapped on a bit of armor around his legs and torso, though none of the other guards appeared to share his nerves. In fact, none of the other guards even knew what was happening.
Together as a unit, the royal guards marched from their barracks toward the audience hall, their arms and armor clinking and rattling with every step. As the only minotaur still without a weapon, Qul felt weak. He felt exposed. When they arrived at the cavern, Qul couldn’t shake the thought that he had just marched to his own execution.
He saw Kitri, her armor shining brilliantly in the torchlight, standing across the chasm where Queen Ilo would arrive. Curiously, the station adjacent to her was empty.
“Perhaps the other guard went out and died,” Qul mused under his breath. He knew it couldn’t be true. Even if the other guard had run into battle against several scores of human farmers, he would have emerged without a scratch. Untrained humans were as threatening to battle-hardened minotaurs as insects. At best, a swarm of either would only prove to be a nuisance. Even if the guard had come up against an entire regiment of armored, well-trained human cavalrymen, he should have at least returned to the mountain with his life.
Kitri stepped forward from her post, her hand not far from her sword at her side, and opened the door to allow Queen Ilo into the chamber. The entire assembly sank to one knee as they quickly fell silent.
Ilo strode to her small platform with a smile on her face. She lifted her hands, and every minotaur in the cavern stood at once. When the noise settled once more, Ilo looked pleased. Behind her, the guard Qul had seen on the mountain summit stepped forward wearing a brilliant suit of mail covered in the clan’s sacred etchings.
Qul’s heart sank through his chest. Ilo began delivering a loud and thunderous speech, but he didn’t hear a single word. The other guard had claimed the scroll, and the other guard was re
aping the reward. Unable to even watch the ceremony take place, Qul spent the hour in the cavern staring intently at his own hooves and concocting a myriad of plans in his head for how he would slaughter the half-orc living at the summit.
When everything concluded, Kitri followed Ilo and her new personal guard back through their private passageway. All the other minotaurs filtered out of the audience until Qul was the only one left. He stood near the back of the cavern, dumbfounded and crushed, letting his rage simmer to a violent boil.
Qul stepped out of the mountain only a moment after dusk. He knew he was taking a risk with most of his clan still active within, but he didn’t care. He held one of his exercise poles firmly as he trudged through the biting cold. The path was familiar enough for him to follow, and his seething hatred kept him plenty warm.
The summit of the mountain was silent. No light came from the half-orc’s shallow cave. No voices drifted through the wind to his ears. Determined, Qul came to the front of the cavern with his pole held out before him—and there the half-orc sat, a cunning smile spread across his face.
“You,” Qul growled, his hot breath frosting in the air.
The half-orc let out a sarcastic gasp. “Me?” he said, placing a hand over his chest. He looked up, slowly rising to his feet in the process.
“You betrayed me,” Qul stated evenly.
Ever one for showmanship, the half-orc smiled and tossed his staff easily from one hand to the other. “Truly, I did not expect to see you so soon,” he said. “Especially with the impending wedding of your beloved queen, I thought you would have preparations to attend. Perhaps a ball in her honor? A masquerade? Do minotaurs have such trivialities?”
There wasn’t enough room in the small cavern for Qul to execute a full overhand swing of his exercise pole, so he stepped forward, spun a complete circle with his pole held horizontally against his side, and swept the area where the half-orc was standing with blinding speed.
His strike should have rent the poor half-breed clean in half.
But Qul was alone. The half-orc was gone—vanished without a trace.
Chapter 6
Qul spent the next twenty years wondering why the mysterious half-orc shaman had tricked him. What had the half-orc accomplished by sending Qul and his sister out of the mountain for a morning? The singular question had burned a hole in the minotaur’s mind, and it was a constant plague that tainted his every waking moment.
During the first several years since Ilo’s marriage, Qul had visited the summit often. Eventually, his treks through the snow had become less frequent, and more wind-blown debris had piled up inside the shallow cave each season until it was too small to be of any use. Qul had asked the other guards once if they had seen a half-orc prowling around the mountain, but the question itself had raised too many suspicions, and he knew he was alone in his torment. He had never mentioned the shaman to Kitri, and she had seemed content enough to let the slaughter of the farmers fall from her memory. Over the years, Qul saw his sister less and less as her duties guarding the queen increased. As she gained more and more prestige within the clan, Qul saw himself slipping deeper and deeper into obscurity. At some level, he was glad he had grown apart from his sister. He burned with anger, and that burden was not something he was eager to share, especially with a highly esteemed member of Ilo’s personal retinue.
It was not uncommon for a new member of the guards to require a considerable amount of time to become accepted by the others, but even twenty years after winning his Brood-Fight, Qul still had not been elevated from the lowest possible rank within the hierarchy. He still fought only with his exercise poles, though he was not permitted to even spar. He trained daily with his heavy poles, often banding six or seven of them together to give himself a challenge.
At night, once Qul had completed his solitary training and returned his exercise poles to the armory, he frequently sought to enhance his already monumental endurance. He took to wearing a harness and dragging a heavy log through the tunnels of the mountain, sometimes running for several hours before collapsing from exertion. Still, despite his rigorous training regimen, he had never been promoted. Other minotaurs had won their Brood-Fights, joined the ranks, and advanced beyond him, but he did not care, nor did he ever attempt to advance.
Around his fifth year of training, the others had begun to notice how quiet and brooding Qul was. Some of the guards had attempted to encourage him and bring him fully into the fold, but he had been ever aloof, constantly absorbed in his own thoughts, doing little with his time that did not involve his training.
And his training, ever-present and brutally difficult, had paid off. Even by minotaur standards, Qul had become immense. He towered over the other guards and often had to duck to enter the subterranean rooms. When passing by him in the corridors, other members of the clan often had to turn sideways to avoid pressing into his enormous bulk. Every inch of his body was covered in corded muscle, and even his horns seemed to have somehow grown in size and stature.
And then, more than twenty years after Ilo’s marriage, Qul finally saw a sign. It was small, perhaps inconsequential, but it was enough.
Qul awoke in a sweat, his skull throbbing with a deep-seated headache. He had dreamt a nightmare, but it had been nothing different than most nights. Accustomed to the crushing stress he had brought upon himself and the splitting migraines that often accompanied that stress, he waited on his cot for several minutes before opening his eyes. He could hear the other guards preparing for their day nearby, and he shut out their sounds as readily as he did everything else.
Finally, when his headache had subsided, Qul sat up to stretch and rub the sleep from his heavy eyes. There, on the wall across from his small wooden cot, was a symbol etched into the stone. Only the smallest fraction of light made it into his quarters, but Qul didn’t need it to know what he saw.
Magic.
The shaman had returned, and the damned creature was taunting Qul or perhaps sending him a message—maybe even requesting his presence.
Qul didn’t care what the strange symbol meant. He knew what it meant for him, and a wide, vicious smile spread across his face. Wasting no time, Qul exited his small chamber and turned directly for the armory. He grabbed three bound exercise poles from their resting place against the wall and then strapped on his armor, encasing his tough hide in blackened steel.
Several of his clan mates saw him as he trudged toward the apex of the mountain, but Qul did not care. He did not answer their questions, and he barely even gave them a second look.
Once again on the familiar frosted slope, he finally paused for a moment to collect himself. His thoughts were scattered, though they always found their way back to the seething hatred that had been his only company for two long and brutal decades.
When his breathing had steadied, deep and visible in the frozen air, Qul tested the strength of his arms. The three bound poles weighed somewhere over a thousand pounds. He gave the makeshift weapon an easy swing above his head, using only one meaty hand. As though his muscles knew what he was about to commence, his arms begged to meet the meager resistance of a half-orc’s flesh. Every ounce of his body yearned for carnage.
Slowly, Qul proceeded along the snow-covered path to the summit of his mountain home. He paused before turning the final corner, inspecting the fresh snow for any signs of recent activity. The ground ahead was undisturbed, and no voice drifted out from the shallow cavern—for a brief moment, the world stood still.
Then he turned, stomping his hooves and swinging his poles, hoping to catch the half-orc by surprise and end the battle before it ever had a chance to begin. There, against the far wall of the cavern, the half-orc lazily lounged. Qul’s bundle of poles moved with blazing speed, and they crashed into the side of the rock with such a resounding force that several feet of snow were knocked from above the opening and fell on the minotaur’s horns.
Qul’s attack had missed, but not by much. Had the half-orc been in the center of the
cavern, the foul, green-skinned creature would have surely been torn asunder.
“My, what a display,” the shaman mocked, his eyes casually taking in the sight of the enraged warrior before him.
Qul stepped forward to put himself in range and swung again. A second thunderous report answered his attack as his poles hit the opposite wall, and he realized that the shaman’s body was incorporeal.
“Must you make such a racket?” the half-orc chided, his image flickering in and out of existence.
“I’ll kill you,” Qul growled, two decades of wrath clouding his mind and slurring his words.
The half-orc laughed. “Well, you’ve made that abundantly clear, wouldn’t you say?”
Stepping another foot into the cave, Qul turned from the image, his dark eyes searching desperately for flesh and bones to destroy.
Laughter echoed all around him. “Please, please, do calm down,” the half-orc said. “Surely you cannot be upset?”
Qul smashed his hoof so hard into the ground beneath him that he chipped away a sizeable chunk of the floor. “Come out. Face me,” he demanded.
“I think I would rather stay alive,” the image continued. “Besides, I have a task for you—something I think will make you rather pleased, actually.”
“I’ll never believe your lies!”
“Oh, this time I tell the truth,” the image replied.
Qul turned back and rammed his three poles forward, blasting several pounds of rock from the wall. He held his weapon steady, directly in the center of the half-orc’s projection, but it did no good.
“Come now, Qul. Do you think I would go through so much trouble to craft the perfect king over the past two decades just to trick you?” the shaman asked with a jovial voice.
“Ilo’s king… You made him. It should have been me!” Qul roared. His anger finally consumed him and, unable to control the shaking in his hands any longer, he let his poles fall from his grasp to clatter against the stone. He beat his fists against his armor, pounding dents into the massive plate and screaming until his throat was raw.
The Minotaur King Page 4
