Perilous Jaunt Chapter 20
Chapter 20
Peter
** ** Around three weeks later, we arrived at the bottom of the Fanged Peaks. We had managed to make our way through the rest of Ulpis' Kingdom without any more troubles, but I was doubtful that our luck would last much longer. The Fanged Peaks would take somewhere around a week to cross. We would probably spend two or three days going up them. It would then have probably taken us three days to cross over to the south side of the Peaks and a day to walk down. However, that would only happen if we didn't run into a blizzard or God-knows-what-else.
Dante had returned from a nearby town, where he had bought white parkas for all three of us, which were lined with tons of wild animal hide to keep us warm. Before Dante had left Esme and I to fetch the parkas, I was afraid of him going alone. The Talth were still looking for us, so I told him to take Esme along and just leave me tied to a tree. He wouldn't listen, though, claiming that one lone wolf wouldn't stick out very much and that a wild fox or a wild coyote could have eaten me if I were left tied up alone. Still, I worried about him and was relieved when he came back to our camp, carrying all three of our new parkas with a smile on his face. We soon put the parkas on, Dante untied my arms and we set out.
Luckily, we made great time and almost reached the top of the mountainside in a single day. Of course, the wind was practically smacking us in our faces the whole way up. It also didn't help that my parka was a little big for me, so the hood kept blowing off of my head the entire day. I would have left it down, but the wind was so freezing that, after not wearing my hood for a second, it felt like icicles were forming underneath my ears. At least it was a clear sunny day and we could see where we were going, though.
We made camp that night, only five miles from completing our steep walk up the snowy mountainside, and we slept in our parkas on top of a giant rock, which was the flattest place we could find. It was really uncomfortable, considering how many bumps and tiny edges of rock were stabbing me in my ass as I was trying to sleep. But at least my jacket kept me warm during the night, which was twice as cold as the day had been. The wind did die down, thankfully, once the sun disappeared for the night. Sadly, it started snowing and I began to miss the wind because I had to keep standing up to shake blankets of snow off of my chest. It also didn't help that Dante was unable to catch us any food, since most of the wild animals lived higher up on the mountain, where the ground was even. At least, that's what he said. To me, the Fanged Peaks were so cold that I didn't see how anything could survive there. Still, Dante assured me that there would be plenty of opportunities to eat later. He said that the reason all of the prey where further up on top of the mountains was because there were trees, foliage, berries and other things that allowed the Peaks to be habitable.
The next morning, we resumed our climb. Only, that day, Dante carried me on his back, since the snow level had risen so much that it came up to my neck, making it impossible for my small legs to walk. Fortunately, it had stopped snowing right after we started walking and the wind had not returned.
"Hey, Dante," Esme said to my right.
"Yeah?" Dante grunted, as he pulled his leg from a bank of snow and took another step.
"Pass me your wineskin," Esme asked. "Mine's all out,"
Dante's right hand let go of my leg, which came out through his arm pit, and went down to untie the his wineskin. Once it was untied, Dante tossed the wineskin to Esme. "It's only water,"
"Doesn't matter," Esme said and brought the wineskin to her lips after she popped out the cork.
After a moment, Esme squinted her eyes and furrowed her forehead before lowering the wineskin.
"It's frozen!" Esme announced.
"Damn it!" Dante cursed.
"Well," Esme said, handing the wineskin back to Dante after putting the cork back on it, "looks like we'll just have to be thirsty for a little while,"
"There's rivers on top, right?" I asked.
"Not ones that aren't frozen," Dante sighed. "We'll have to stop at the Iron Pass and buy some wine,"
"Yeah," Esme laughed. "I'd bet you'd like that,"
"What?" Dante asked.
"Oh, please!" Esme said, rolling her eyes. "You wanna try and fuck Queen Santel! Don't tell me you haven't heard about her reputation,"
Dante sighed and shook his head in denial. "No, I don't want to sleep with her,"
"Reputation?" I wondered. "What do you mean?"
Esme gazed at me with surprised eyes. "You don't know?"
"Of course he doesn't, Esme," Dante answered for me. "He's not as much of a gossip as you,"
"It's true!" Esme protested.
"Murder is one thing," Dante explained. "People tend to keep those stories pretty straight. But all that crap about king's and queen's sex lives are just fantasies,"
"Not Queen Santel!" Esme said.
"Sure," Dane agreed, sarcastically.
"I wanna know!" I said, looking over at Esme and hoping she would tell me.
"Well," Esme spoke with a proud smile, "ever since her husband, King Santel, was executed at the end of the Yurl War, Queen Santel's been a bit...lonely. Apparently, she's fucked a few of her knights. I even hear the captain of the City pays her regular visits,"
"And nobody says anything about it?" I asked.
"Of course they do!" Esme said. "I've heard a story about a knight who was standing outside Santel's door on guard duty one night and heard the Queen moaning her captain's name. He could hear the bed shaking, too. I've even been told that she showed up to her knights' armory once, naked, and let all the men getting off duty take turns fucking her,"
"Yeah right," Dante said, shaking his head. "The first story might be true, but the second story is a complete lie,"
"Drunk men don't lie," Esme said.
"If half of those stories were true, she would be up to her knees in children," Dante pointed out.
"Maybe she has the knights cum in her ass," Esme suggested.
"She could be sterile," I said.
"Still," Dante said, "I find it hard to believe that the Queen of the Fanged Peaks just strolled into the armory, got on the floor and spread her legs. Do you have any idea what its like being fucked in an armory?"
"Is that an invitation?" Esme teased.
"No," Dante answered, coldly. "But armories are freezing, reek of musk, are filled with rusted swords and are usually cramped. Not a very ideal place for sex, don't you think?"
"Not unless you're into being fucked by a group of men," Esme said.
"Trying to tell us something, Esme?" I asked, jokingly.
The kangaroo busted up laughing, her head drawn back to howl at the sky. "I'd be lying if I said I hadn't tried it,"
"Oh, God," Dante sighed in despair.
I, on the other hand, laughed at Esme's honesty.
Esme, once she managed to stop laughing, shot Dante a smirk. "Come on, Dante. You didn't think I was a virgin, did you?"
"No, I didn't," Dante said, unhappily. "But I didn't need to know that you were in an orgy,"
"It wasn't technically an orgy," Esme said. "There were just three guys and me,"
"How do you even start an orgy?" I snickered at the dirty story.
Esme's smile almost reached her eye patch now. "Usually, you start off drinking in a tavern. Then, you hit on all the workers after everyone but you is gone, which ends with you hopping up on a table and shaking your bare ass around like there's tomorrow,"
"I really didn't need that visual in my head," Dante groaned.
Esme's eye narrowed evilly above her grin. "Oh? Should I tell him about the time we slept together instead?"
"What?" I screamed, nearly kicking Dante in the ribs with surprise. "You slept with each other?"
"Yep!" Esme said, nodding with pride. "And it was Dante's first time, too!"
My mouth hung open in astonishment and my tongue nearly froze after tasting the cold morning air.
"I actually liked it better when you were talking about your orgy," Dante whimpered and kept his head foreword, not daring to look at Esme.
"Oh, come on, Dante!" Esme giggled. "You had to have your cork popped at some point. Better to have a friend do it than some whore!"
"How did it happen?" I asked, after my tongue finally thawed.
"It was right after we first met each other," Esme began her riveting tale of lust.
"Oh, fuck me," Dante muttered under his breath.
"Already did, babe," Esme laughed and winked at the wolf before resuming her raunchy story.
"I had just spent the whole day trying to teach old Dante here how to fight with a sword. And let me emphasize the word 'trying' here. Anyways, I noticed him staring at my tits a couple of times while we were practicing. Of course, he was nineteen at the time, so it wasn't surprising that he was a little pervy.
"So, after it got dark and I showed him how to make a fire for the first time, I turned to him and said, 'So, you're a tit man, huh?'
"He tried to act like he didn't know what I was talking about, so I took off my shirt and asked him if they looked as good as he thought they would. He wasn't able to say much after that, so we fucked each other four times and fell asleep,"
I rubbed Dante's shoulders like he was warming up for a fight. "Four times? That must be a record!"
"I was nineteen," the wolf brushed my compliment aside.
"Nineteen and pent up!" Esme added. "I wasn't able to walk straight for week. Not that it wasn't worth it,"
"And how come you guys aren't a couple?" I asked, imagining Dante and Esme together for the first time.
"It was a one-time incident," Dante said. "We haven't done anything since and have decided to just be friends,"
"I don't remember saying we couldn't do it again," Esme said, winking at Dante a second time and obviously trying to piss him.
"It was mutually inferred," Dante mumbled.
Eventually, we finished scaling the mountainside and reached the top, where the ground beneath us flattened out and was full of trees. I was also happy that the snow level had now dropped down and remained just below ankle level. It was about midway between noon and sunset, so we hiked a little longer, only now I walked alongside Esme and Dante.
Soon, we arrived at an open circle, almost clear of bushes and trees. There was no wind howling in our ears and no birds chirping above us in the trees, almost as if the forest knew what was about to happen.
"Get 'em!" a voice screamed from out of nowhere.
Suddenly, seven Talth emerged from the bushes and behind some trees in front of us, unsheathing their swords and knives.
"Shit!" Esme cursed as she drew her knife an adjusted her legs into a fighting stance.
Dante turned his head to me, just before pulling out his gun from its holster. His eyes were filled to the brim with urgency. "Run!"
I turned and fled into the trees behind me, glad that Dante had taken the ropes off of me before we had begun climbing the mountain the day before. As I ran, I heard three gunshots blast behind me that were followed by three loud thumps, which I guessed were the sounds three bodies falling down into the snow.
After running for about a minute, I stopped, figuring that I didn't want to get lost by accident. If that happened, there was no way Dante and Esme would be able to find me, meaning I would be out in the wilderness without any weapons or hunting skills. Hell, I didn't even have a map.
Soon, I saw a bush to my right with some leaves that were stained with a mist of white frost. I ran over and jumped into the bush, crunching some of the branches as I fell into it.
I remained there, crouched and surrounded by the smell of dirt and roots, barely able to see my own hands with the help of the few rays of light that poured through the spaces between the leaves. The sounds of steel clashing against steel rang through the air as loudly as church bells and were followed by loud shrieks of bloody pain. All I could do was hope that Dante and Esme would be fine.
Pawsteps approached me and I was just able to make out a figure, which blocked some of the sunlight that entered the bush. As the figure drew closer, my nose was able to pick up the smell of a mongoose, who I was now able to see held a sword.
I then realized that I had left pawprints behind me in the snow and hadn't bothered to cover them up, which was probably how the mongoose had followed me.
"Found you, motherfucker," the mongoose said, stopping only a step away from my hiding place.
Then, he lunged toward me, lifting his sword up into the air, ready to bring it down onto my head and smash it open like it was a cabbage.
Almost instinctively, I dashed out of the bush and tackled the mongoose, who was exactly the same height as me, throwing him off his balance and causing him to fall onto his back with me on top of him.
Before the Talth could even try to swing his sword, I kneed him right in his balls, causing him to accidently drop his weapon in the snow beside him.
Quickly, I grabbed the handle of the sword and stood up, pointing the tip of the weapon at the Talth's throat, which shivered with every breath he took while he cupped his testicles. At first, I was surprised that the sword wasn't heavy. Then, I noticed that the sword was smaller than Dante's, which meant that it was fashioned for smaller species such as otters, mongooses and weasels.
"You can't do it," the mongoose sneered at me, not even bothering to look at his sword, which was only an inch away from cutting him. "You don't have the balls,"
You can't have a boyfriend, Peter! What would the people think?
_ Wine is a proper drink. You can't drink ale if you want to be respected._
_ You can't be a king and not be married. What will you subjects say?_
"Can't?" I repeated, the words bringing back memories that made me boil with rage. "You sound just like my father,"
Suddenly, I drove the glistening steel into the mongoose's throat, ripping his neck open and spraying blood all down the front of his tunic. It wasn't as difficult to kill someone as I had always thought it would be. Really, the hard part was just deciding whether or not I should have killed him. After remembering that he would kill me if I didn't do anything, I made my choice. Once that was done, it was just like cutting a piece of butter, smooth and quick.
The Talth's eyes widened in surprise at what I had done. He then began to gag on his own blood, which came bubbling out of his mouth and down his chin. A moment later, the bubbles stopped and he was dead.
I slid the tip of the sword out from the dead Talth's still-bleeding neck and waited to see if he would get up. When he didn't, I kneeled in the snow next to him and unstrapped the sword sheath from his side once I set the sword down to my left. I half-expected the Talth to grab my hands as I took the sheath from his belt and tied it onto mine, but was glad that he didn't.
Once I put the sheath on my belt, I picked up my new sword, turned and followed my pawsteps in the snow back to Dante and Esme, hoping for the best.
Abruptly, I stopped running and stood there alone in the woods. What was I doing? Just under a year ago, I was a prince who wanted nothing more than to sit around and drink, against my father's wishes of course. For God's sake, my father never even let me train with swords, even though I wasn't interested in them anyways. He always said a king is meant to rule and a soldier is meant to fight. Yet, there I was, the firstborn son of King Gannish, rushing into a battle with a sword I didn't know how to use, just so I could save the people who were taking me back to my father against my will.
This was the moment. Right then and there, I could have run away. Dante and Esme were too busy fighting off the Talth to worry about me. I had a sword and a disguise, which meant nobody would recognize me once I headed back down the mountain and hid in the closest town. I would probably have had to steal some gold for food after the little money I still had ran out, but that wouldn't be too hard. Drunken idiots are always loosing their money. I could have done it. I really could have. Dante and Esme never would have been able to catch me.
Yet, for some strange reason, I couldn't make my legs turn me around and run the other way. Esme and Dante had been kind while talking with me and sharing the food that they caught. They didn't beat me or anything. Instead, they discussed ideas with me and told some interesting stories, too. Esme even stopped calling me "Tiny Prince" because she knew it bothered me. But, most of all, they actually cared about what I had to say and treated me just like anybody else. They had even protected me when things got rough, willing to risk their lives. And they weren't overly friendly like all of the people that served me back in Lowpive, who probably would have smiled at me if I spat in their faces. I had never been treated with as much dignity or honesty as I had been in the short time that I knew Esme and Dante. And what if Dante and Esme had died? If I didn't help them, their lives could have been in serious danger.
With the idea of Dante and Esme laying dead in the snow twisting my stomach and burning my heart with anguish, I ran ahead to where I had left them, hoping that it wasn't too late. Friends don't leave each other behind.
_ _ When I arrived back to the clearing, blood still dripping from my sword, I took in the scene as I quickly caught my breath.
Three Talth lay on the ground, their heads ripped open by Dante's gun and their swords still tightly held in their hands.
Meanwhile, to my left, Dante was trying to fend off two Talth, a jackal and a red panda, evading their attacks while using trees as cover. His left cheek had a huge gash, which was spewing fresh warm blood down onto his shoulder. The parka sleeve on his left arm was also torn open and bore streaks of blood in its stringy open flaps of cloth. That wound, unlike the one on his cheek, must have been serious because I noticed that Dante's left arm hung limply at his side like a rock, forcing him to only use his right hand to wield his sword.
Esme, who was fighting a raccoon, was in more or less the same condition that Dante was. Her stomach had a sideways slash across it, which barely had any blood coming out of it. Meanwhile, Esme's arms were all torn up, her flesh and parka mixing together by the adhesive of blood. Her eye was dreary and even seemed almost unfocused as she blocked one of the raccoon's attacks.
Since Dante was fighting two Talth at the same time, I decided to help him first.
Quietly, I crept forward and decided to attack the jackal, figuring that he was probably a bigger threat than the red panda. Luckily, both of the Talth had their backs to me. I lowered my new sword and jammed it halfway into the jackal's back. The Talth released an agonizing scream and dropped his sword onto the ground in surprise. I began rotating the blade inside of him, ripping through his chest as I did so, and caused a waterfall of red to pour out of his back while his screams became louder.
The red panda, realizing that his friend was hurt, turned his head back over his shoulder to see me. Before I could pull my sword out from the now quiet jackal, the red panda faced me, revealing his sword, and lunged forward to strike.
Before the panda could finish me, the tip of Dante's sword popped out of the Talth's right eye, freezing the red panda in horror as he shook with pain. Blood trickled out of his eye and ran down to bottom of his eye socket, where it overflowed and spilled down his cheek.
Dante's sword withdrew itself back through the panda's eye, causing the eye to squirt out a stream of blood that made the flaps where Dante's sword had cut it shake back and forth. The red panda then fell forward, nearly crushing me, and stained the snow with red.
I then yanked my sword from the back of the limp jackal, who, much like his dead comrade, dropped onto the ground, lying facedown. The gash I had torn into the Talth's back now revealed his pinkish-purple insides that twisted and curled together like worms, which also shifted under the strong current of blood that was pouring down towards his legs.
"Longsword," Dante admired, staring down at my red-stained sword. "Not bad. Where did you get it?"
I raised my sword and looked at it with. "One of the Talth chased me and tried to kill me with it,"
"And you...?" Dante asked.
"Beat him to it," I smiled and lowered my sword. "Hard to believe, huh?"
Dante's eyes suddenly widened. He then looked up into the distance at something behind me, only to further widen his eyes and open his mouth in horror.
Esme.
_ _ I turned around to follow Dante's gaze, only to see Esme being restrained by a knight in a suit of armor, who held the kangaroo's arms behind her back as he kicked away her knife, which had been lying on the ground.
There were another two knights holding down the squirming Talth raccoon, cursing and threating him to stop moving.
However, in between the two knights that held down the Talth and the knight who held Esme, there were three other knights that moved towards Dante and I. One was carrying a spear and the other two to his right were aiming crossbows directly at us. They, along with the other three knights that were restraining Esme and the Talth, had their helmets open, so I was unable to know what species they belonged to. All of their chests, however, bore the crest of a snow leopard head that cried tears of steel down along its cheeks. Santel.
_ _ "What happened here?" the knight with the spear demanded.
Dante took a deep breath and stepped beside me. "The Talth came out of nowhere and tried to kill us,"
"Why the hell would the Talth want to kill three random people?" the crossbowman, just to the spearman's right, wondered.
Dante remained silent, unable to come up with a good answer.
"Wait," the second crossbowman gasped. "Are you the ones Osric put the bounty on?"
"Don't be stupid, James," the spearman said. "It's a wolf and an otter they're looking for. This one's a ferret. The Talth probably were just trying to rob them. They're the fucking Talth, for Christ's sake. That's what they do,"
"Either way," James spoke again, "Queen Santel will want to speak with them,"
"Fair enough," the other crossbowmen said and tightened his grip on his weapon. "Come with us, now!"
Dante and I glanced at one another and, realizing that we had no choice, cleaned our swords in the snow before sheathing them. We then allowed the knights to escort us further into the woods, after they permitted Esme to pick up her knife and walk freely. However, they still held onto the Talth. We got onto the main road a few minutes later and continued walking towards the Iron Pass, where Queen Santel's judgment awaited us.