Wrote a bit more of my experimental novel The Vulture this morning. Here’s chapter 2 told from the perspective of a different character this time.

If you’re young or prudish I would advise you to please look away now.

Chapter 2

Chabald

My sword dripped red blood in a growing puddle on the floor. I stared down at the body at my feet. I had just killed my own brother, and as I had predicted they would be my emotions were mixed. But I didn’t have time to worry about those just then. You see my brother, being King of Realh Dorn, I mean having been King of Realh Dorn, had been well protected by guards, castles, magical wards, and even beasts of lore that the common people don’t even know about. Luckily for me I only had to face two of his guards. Although to call them mere guards would be insulting. These men were his bosom buddies, generals in his armies, advisers on policy, carousers in his drunken escapades to the brothels and pleasure-domes down by the river in Phun. They were mightily pissed off that I had just killed their best friend and adored leader.

But surprised too. They had no idea that I wanted to kill him, or even that I harboured more than a normal brotherly dislike for him. That’s what gave me my precious seconds.

‘You’ll pay for that,’ I heard Jakol say. Jakol was older than my brother but idolised him like he was a younger man looking up to a father figure. What I heard was more like ‘Yoooo-uuuu-llll ppppp-aaaa-yyyy …’ and then the tip of my sword had stabbed him twice hard in the stomach and he was doubled up in pain on the floor.

You see I’m Bachtrian trained.

And I had dropped a Phunish pill before I came here, two in fact, and I wasn’t operating on the same plane of existence as normal men at that moment.

But Phalan was coming at me hard and fast. He was younger than Jakol and younger than my dead brother. He was from the street and fought as dirty as I had learnt to. I managed to dodge his blow and sidestepped neatly up the wall of the chamber, grabbing hold of light fittings as I went, but they snapped off as I grabbed them and I felt my grip defeating me and my feet were suddenly scrabbling for purchase on the smooth walls. As my old master Pietaar would have said, I should have practiced more. I should have practiced in a chamber just like the King’s ante-chamber until I had every eventuality of combat just right. But there hadn’t been time for that. Correction, I had been too impatient for that. I wanted my sister back in my bed again, and out of my brother’s. And the only way I was going to do that, she had said, was if I proved I had the bigger cock, metaphorically speaking.

But this was the combat equivalent of premature ejaculation. I was in an awkward heap on the floor, and Phalan was standing over me, his sword poised to stab or slash me. He hadn’t made the mistake of raising it high in the air for a devastating killing blow, as he could see that I still had my weapon grasped in my hand.

But for some reason he didn’t strike immediately. He was saying something to me. I shook my head trying to clear the effects of the drugs out of it.

‘Say again,’ I said to him as I realised that he was waiting for me to answer him.

‘I want you to tell me why before I kill you,’ he snarled.

I grinned up at him. ‘I did it for love.’

He shook his head. ‘What the f…’

‘No it’s true,’ I countered. ‘I think you can guess. You know how much I love my sister. She commanded this.’

‘The Queen? That vile whore! She will pay for her treachery,’ he was snarling again, fairly frothing at the mouth at the thought of punishing and killing the most beautiful woman in Realh Dorn.

I was salivating myself, but more at the prospect of sucking on her breasts when I told her the good news. My cock was swelling as my mind touched on the thought of undressing and pleasuring her.

‘You did this just to sleep with a woman?’

I nodded.

‘You are in love with her?’

I nodded again.

‘Then you’re a fool?’ said Phalan. He was backing away from me now, and I had the opportunity to sit up. This could be problematic I realised. I hadn’t intended on making public the Queen’s involvement in this. It was supposed to be an unknown assassin, so that the court and the people who were loyal to us would assume that the Blues had done this cowardly act. I would then naturally step into my brother’s place and assume the mantle of the crown and reluctantly the wedding bed of the Queen-Goddess, my sister, and be joined physically and figuratively to the land of Realh Dorn.

But if one of my brother’s trusted lieutenants escaped and spread the word of what he had seen, who would have been believed?

I didn’t want to find out. My hand went to the throwing knife at my side and in a moment it was spinning through the air. It caught Phalan on the upper arm. A mistake as he wasn’t dead just wounded. He grinned and opened the door behind him and was gone. I was too stunned to respond. I could hear him shouting. ‘Guards! Guards!’

I knew all the ways out of the chamber and how to quickly make my getaway across the castle roofs and walls. That wasn’t the problem.

The problem was going to be my sister.

Related articles

• The Vulture – Chapter 1 (marklord.info)