The queen had swept to her left, curling her arms in close, and came up right next to Qul, her blade heading toward his throat. Qul barely had time to think. He ducked, and Ilo’s sword caught him under the chin, shredding his flesh in an instant.
Rolling away to his right, Qul shook his mane and let his blood run freely to the ground. He tossed one pole aside, changing his stance to better defend himself from the unerring speed of the queen. Squared off once more with the queen close enough to be easily within Qul’s reach, Ilo struck out to her right, cut back, and executed a flawless feint that left Qul whirling in the wrong direction.
Her sword hit him again, coming up and slicing away a good chunk of the skin on his back, somehow finding one of the gaping crevasses the guard with the axe had left in his armor. Again, Qul howled in pain. He knew his bulk was too much to match the queen’s speed. She twirled again, moving gracefully in her steel armor, and slammed the hilt of her magnificent sword into the space between Qul’s breastplate and his arm, one of the few places even remotely exposed on his body. She knew every place to strike him, and he felt defenseless against her precision.
She hit him again, finding yet another gap in his arm. Her blade drew a gout of blood from a tiny place where the tassets of his armor didn’t quite meet due to his having outgrown them. Qul huffed in pain, spinning his pole from side to side in an attempt to keep the fast minotaur at bay. He only needed to land a single strike on her, but had to catch her first.
A plan began to form in his head, though he had trouble thinking it through as he meekly fended off a myriad of well-placed stabs. Accepting a devastating hit on the opposite side of his chest from where the guard’s sword was still impaled, Qul charged past Ilo, heading toward her children with his bloody horns lowered.
The queen shrieked behind him, following in a rush exactly as Qul had expected her to. He lifted himself up at the last possible moment, the guard’s sword finally jostling free of his insides, and turned, placing his pole firmly against the wall above one of the younglings. Ilo couldn’t stop in time—and she rammed herself several inches onto the pole with a scream.
“Finally,” Qul panted, doubling over and unhooking the straps on his breastplate to let the battered armor fall.
Queen Ilo fell backward, stunned and bloody, her wound far from fatal. Her children watched in horror as Qul’s heavy, armored hoof came down on their mother’s shoulder, turning the meat and bone into a thin layer of pulverized carnage. The queen bellowed out in utter agony, dropping her sword to the stone.
He loosened his gauntlets and let them fall at his side. There wasn’t much air moving through the underground complex, but it still felt refreshing on his sweat-soaked hide. Fighting in his full armor had taken its toll on his nearly limitless constitution, and he could feel the end of the fight drawing nearer with every breath.
With a smile on his hairy face, Qul smashed his other hoof down on Ilo’s right leg, instantly rendering the limb useless. Even if Ilo lived through the night, she would never walk again. Qul, somewhat weakened by his wounds, ripped his pole upward in his grasp. Whenever he flexed, he felt the gash in his side heaving more blood onto the floor of what would soon become his home.
He took a step back from the prone queen and leveled his pole with her neck. She wore a gorget attached to her breastplate, but it didn’t matter. With the full weight of Qul’s huge form behind his swing, even the stone beneath Ilo’s flesh gave way. It took a moment for the echo of the strike to fade, and then the only sound was the violent, wracking sobs coming from the three orphaned heirs cowering just a few feet from their slain mother.
Qul approached them with his pole parallel to the floor, eager to give them each a quick death. There was no honor in fighting lesser opponents such as younglings, but Qul could not allow them to live.
Battered and exhausted, he emerged from his clan’s royal bedchamber several minutes later.
His clan.
And it truly was. Regicide was the way of the minotaurs, and he had been gloriously successful. For a moment, Qul considered leaving his poles behind and taking the royal sword as his chosen weapon, an act which would have upheld tradition. But it had ultimately been the queen’s duty to assign him a real weapon from the armory when he had reached the appropriate standing, but that had never happened. Qul set the sword at an angle against the wall where he kicked it once, easily shattering the blade.
With his two poles in his right hand and Ilo’s head in his left, he walked back onto the royal platform above the fighting pit where the rest of the clan had gathered.
“Ilo is dead,” he announced flatly. He tossed the head down onto the arena floor and then had no idea what he should do. The clan waited for him, for some sort of proclamation, but he didn’t have anything to say. He was their king, but he hadn’t thought that far ahead.
His rage had finally subsided, and without its constant companionship, Qul began to feel the depth of the wound on his side and the many lacerations on his back. The pain was monumental, and he struggled to keep his legs squarely beneath him. From the distance across the cavern, he figured the clan could probably not see the extent to which he had been wounded, and that pleased him. Qul didn’t know anything about how to govern, but he assumed he was giving off a strong presence of command by not letting his blood be seen.
After a few tense moments of silence, Qul nodded and turned, content that his position was undisputed, though secretly he feared an attack. He knew no stories of minotaurs challenging a regicide shortly after the act was completed, but it was a worry he harbored nonetheless. In his state, he wasn’t sure he could fend off even the weakest of his clan.
His clan.
Again, Qul had to smile at the thought of being a leader. In one night he had gone from the lowest possible position within the guards to a monarch—a beast to be feared and respected. Looking down at his hands, he knew why. The half-orc had been right.
“Of course I was right,” the strange shaman said, stepping from a nearby shadow to show himself.
“You can read my thoughts?” Qul asked quickly, suddenly full of fear the likes of which he had not experienced in two decades. “You’ve tricked me again, haven’t you?”
The shaman appeared to mull over the question a bit before responding. “Well, not exactly, King Qul,” he mused. “I truly am happy that you are king.”
Qul tried to stem the blood flowing from his side, but his fingers only slightly held back the stream. “I’ll still kill you,” he growled, though there wasn’t much strength behind his words.
“Oh, I doubt that, my king,” the shaman said. He stepped around to Qul’s side, inspecting his grievous wounds. “But your time for glory will come, Qul. Do not doubt that.”
“What do you mean?” the newly made king said, his vision starting to blur. He hadn’t realized how far down the side of the cavern wall he had slumped. Luckily, he was out of the rest of the clan’s view. He knew he could not portray weakness.
The shaman set himself to a bit of casting, making motions and uttering sounds that Qul had no chance of comprehending. A wisp of smoke issued up from his green hands and then vanished with a quiet pop. “There is a war coming, king of the minotaurs, and I will need your clan before long.”
“What?” Qul didn’t know anything about a war. “Orcs?” he muttered. “Half-orcs? Like you?”
The shaman laughed, tossing his staff from hand to hand as he peered down at the weary king. “Humans,” he whispered, a sinister smile spreading across his lips. “And I need a king.”
About the Author
Stuart Thaman was born and grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio. He attended Hillsdale College and currently holds degrees in politics and German as well as a concentration in classical political philosophy. Now the author of four best-sellers, Stuart Thaman’s latest release Shadowlith debuted at #2 in the United States and #1 in both Australia and Canada. He currently lives in Burlington, Kentucky, with his wife, his Boston terrier nam
ed Yoda, and three adorable cats: Ichabod Crane, Mr. Bagul, and Eleven.
You can catch up with all the latest news at www.stuartthamanbooks.com and be sure to join the mailing list for free books every month! Follow Stuart @stuartthaman on Twitter and be sure to add him on Goodreads too!
Check out the entire world of The Goblin Wars
Siege of Talonrend
Death of a King
Rebirth of a God
More Epic Fantasy by Stuart Thaman
Shadowlith: Book One of the Umbral Blade Series
Blood and Ash: Book One of the Chronicles of Estria Series
Horror by Stuart Thaman
For We Are Many
Vatican Massacre
The Minotaur King Page 6
