Kevin's Watch

The following is a sample story I wrote to promote my novel "A War of Apes" which can be purchased here:

This story is designed to introduce the protagonist from "A War of Apes," Rungrin. It is completely free for you to download, cut and paste, print, share and otherwise disseminate.


I fell before the eyes of my comrades, worthy apes who whispered my name in awe when they spoke of my deeds. The Zambourdians had meant it that way. With my great arms tightly bound around my barrel chest, I was forced to walk this whole way on my hind legs, and the unnatural strain had proven too much for even my steely resolve. The Zambourdians prodded me with spears and forced me to take to my trembling, bucking, hind legs again. I staggered over stone shards, thorny, scrappy brush, and scalding hot, sand. Flies landed at my eyes and bit savagely, relishing the free blood feast my face had become. My brothers in arms marched above us on the lip of the ravine, looking down glumly at my plight. Some of those apes could snatch a few strides now and then on all fours before the Zambourdians tormented them again. The Zams taunted those proud fighters and enslaved them. I, being the strongest, biggest, most revered veteran captured among them, had been singled out as an example, for execution.
The march into the badlands had taken all morning, and now even some of the Zambourdians began to loose their footing. The sand had grown looser and finer. Dust made my nose run, more food for the insects that swarmed around me. Stubborn pride remained in my eyes. These dirty humans had bested our troops in combat, and managed to capture many of us with knotted ropes, caked in hot tar. The tar burned and grabbed. The knots had been rigged with cruel hooks and barbs. Even still, I had been snared by ten men before they could even slow the wild swings of my broadsword upon their heads. These Zambourdians were filthy, cruel people. My execution would be meted out by creatures I had never heard of nor cared to know—Deeves.
Now one of the Zams slipped in the sand and uttered a panicked cry. He jolted to his feet, wild eyed, and peels of mean spirited laughter rasped from his fellows. But beneath those crab-shell helmets and the leather plates of armor, those stinking humans showed no levity. Their own terror of the Deeves seemed to gnaw at them and put them in a sterner frame of mind. Sending a victim into their pits was grim business, and every shift in the earth seemed to taunt them with visions of bottomless shafts where bloodthirsty, subhuman fiends waited for them. It is known that Zambourdians, savage though they are, will not fight at night. Now I understood why. Their long history of living where the Deeves dwelt beneath them had ingrained a terror of the dark, deep within their souls.
At length we halted before a great yawning blackness in the earth, a well that snatched the very floating dust and drew it into darkness. A few quick glances rewarded me with signs of fear on the part of my captors. On the ridge overhead, they seemed grateful for their distance. Here they shifted in their boots, grimaced as though their flesh crept., and struggled to swallow air with knotted throats.
A Zambourdian, however, will not be denied moments of bravado. Their captain blew his Shofar and barked an order to attention. Spear shafts thudded on the ground in unison, then clicked across the broad, bronze breast buckles of their leather war rigs. When they had shown the proper decorum, their captain looked them up and down and spoke.
“We, the high army of Zambourdia, proclaim defiance to the lords of (here my comprehension of speech failed me, the human’s lips went “bar bar bar.”)! They sent mercenaries—apes! Well, they have sent us slaves. And you will all attend well the fate of those who wax proud before Zambourdia. This ape, your hero… Runsnot…”
“Rungrin!” I objected, only to be rewarded with a vicious spear jab.
“Rungrin!” called the defiant apes on the hill. This sparked a renewed effort to subdue them with spears.
“Attention!” growled the captain, “I will have order!”
After they had settled down he continued, “Now this ape, Runsnot, has much esteem among you hairy brutes. It appears you still have spirit, though we keep him in bondage. Look at him, see the dirt daubers best him! Still you will not submit to the yoke. Where we send your great warrior now, there is no return from. The Deeves below live for naught but stealing men from the face of the earth and burying them alive in their dark, unknown larders. So here ends the sagas you sing of Runsnot…”
“Rungrin! Rungrin!” my loyal apes began to chant again. This time they would not be silenced. The Captain blew his Shofar, attempted to shout the rest of his preamble to my execution. Failing that, dispatched some of my guards to help subdue them. In the clamor a strangely soft mannered Zambourdian stepped close to me, passed something into my hands and whispered, “I see her murdered each night on her birthday… bring her peace… I beg you.”
I touched the object with care, for it was razor sharp… a knife!
“In your palm, fool! Quickly!” hissed the soldier, “To cut too soon is to plummet. To cut too late is to be served on their accustomed platter.”
“Bring who peace? Who lives in such horror?” I blurted, scarcely comprehending what had been told to me.
“There is no time!” the Zambourdian pleaded, “remember timing. May U’Jodg guide you!”
Meanwhile my comrades continued to protest the insult the Zams had given me. The captain screamed a furious order to raise swords. Scabbards hissed and the restlessness was crushed by the sound of severed heads hitting the scraggly ground.
“Toss those down here at once!” the captain commanded.
The four heads of apes thudded down before my feet, faces still snarling with defiance. The spatter of blood turned black in the foul, dusty air. The captain snapped to a brisk march and stood directly before me. In his vanity, he ignored me and addressed the subdued apes who watched from the ridge.
“You will watch the remainder of this execution in silence or join your brothers here!”
The captain kicked the heads, one by one, into the pit. A vague but undeniable sound came from far below. I imagined things springing to life, sampling the taste of ape flesh, perhaps the first they had ever eaten. I almost brooded on the sickening rustling in the blackness below, but to do so would be to loose an opportunity. I lurched forward suddenly and slammed my full weight against the captain of the Zambourdians. With a terrified shriek, he skittered over the yawning hole and shot down the terrible shaft. His cries dwindled and stopped with a distant thud and another terrible, rustling sound. The man who had given me the knife looked overjoyed that I had killed his captain. Not so the second in command, who scowled at me in disgust.
“Enough of this!” yelled the lieutenant, “send him to the Deeves!”
I thought briefly of using the knife, cutting my bonds and making a stand right here… but there were too many of them. They were too well armed, and too many of my comrades were at their mercy. It was easy enough for them to push me to the ground—I had walked on my hind legs too long. From there I was surrounded by boots and gauntlets and finally I hung in space, dangling on a chord as they began to lower me.
I glanced up at the dwindling window to the sky as they lowered me. The mercy of a quick death was not what they had in mind. I began to think about the rope, how long it appeared. I tried judging my distance by the size of the mouth of that pit. I tried to reason the depths below from what I recalled of the captain’s screaming and how it had diminished when he fell. My brow furrowed and sweat filled my eyes. Thankfully, even the flies would not go down this hole. My grasp of numbers and distance is less than even most apes, but I had faith that my senses and my keen battle instinct would not let me down. I began to test the knife against my chords—it was well that I did. They did not yield to the blade as willingly as I was accustomed to. I felt I had better begin the work of freeing myself. I fretted quietly in the dark while above me the mouth of the pit began to blur away in the dusty bends of the pit’s walls. Soon I could scarcely see my own skin and it became difficult to keep tabs on how fast they lowered the rope. As some of my chords snapped apart to the bite of the knife, my body fell into the tenuous grasp of others. Snapping, straining, and burning, accompanied each complete cut. I fiercely tried to gauge the strength of the bonds that held me, and the depth of the void that I dangled above. The ropes creaked and re-settled often. My weight shifted, and I worked with grim steadiness, trying to reason out how far above the floor of the pit I might be.
Even as I imagined a terrible void beneath me, my foot touched sand. Quickly I straitened out my legs to give me some leverage and I flexed my thick, knotted muscles against the ropes. As the rope grew slack above me, my bonds fell aside—and not a moment too soon. I smelled the foul flesh of naked dirt people pressing upon me. I hunkered into a crouch and swung out blindly with my knife. My torso twisted and I shifted my weight adeptly on my aching hind legs. I knew I could not afford to brace myself on the ground with one of my arms, for I heard them dancing about in the dark, surrounding me. I could not guess their strength or how they might be armed. What manner of creature sought my death in this lightless belly? I did not know. I began to graze flesh with the knife and I heard faint moans of pain—unlike the sharp cries of wounded men. It filled me with eerie revulsion, but I did not press them. If I could bury the knife in the body of one, dozens might pin me before I could pull it out. I shifted my weight and lashed out, determined to keep the stalemate until somebody gave up.
Rocks began to whip past my ears. Some landed, stinging as they bounced off my chiseled muscles. The pain raised my hackles and brought a hateful roar to my fly-stung lips. Now I dashed around in small circles, occasionally thumping into some clammy, sickening body in the dark. With each blow I landed, the self absorbed, gassy moaning of these creatures made my flesh go cold. Whatever they might be, they were less than any human or ape. They seemed to be weak.
“Deeves!” I called, mocking them, “blind maggots, I think! I’ll send you to a hell even you wouldn’t be comfortable in!”
I heard them plan something. They spoke in hisses, a meaningless porridge of alien wind. They seemed to be keeping their distance and falling back a bit. I heard someone fumble with something heavy and then stop. The next thing I knew, something sliced through the air almost nipped my ear—a sword! One of them had retrieved the captain’s sword and now tested the weapon in his unaccustomed grasp. I didn’t wait for the next swish of the saber before ducking. It whipped over my head harmlessly and I ground my teeth together, concentrating on the source of the dangerous weapon. Before it could swing again I lunged blindly ahead and sent the evil creature sprawling out before me. I bent down and hastily groped the insensate Deeve. Its slimy flesh made me shudder, but I had to find the sword quickly. A few quick feels and it was mine, but not before I gleaned some unwanted impressions of what these Deeves were made of. I felt a huge hand with broad, shovel-like nails for digging, a huge lipless mouth full of needle sharp teeth, and a sickeningly saggy, long neck.
Half a dozen of them fell on me as I grasped the sword and rose up. I tossed them aside and heard their ghastly, simpering moans again as they flew violently to the ground. Now I could take a crouching stance, with one arm on the ground and one wielding the saber. These creatures shocked easily and had poor reflexes. The one I had knocked to the ground and snatched the sword from was only now beginning to get up. I cursed the darkness and took a guess as to his position. Instinct, luck, or both rewarded me with a perfect slash. The saggy body snapped in half, spine and all. Now their eerie voices lifted in concern. I had killed one of them. I felt the darkness between our bodies growing wider. I heard their muttering grow more distant. I had won a brief respite. I would use it to find the dead captain. His flimsy saber had already won me a chance to rest and wrack my thick brains for some way to survive.
Here, in the dark, I could only hope to find the captain by his scent. I smelled blood and I smelled human, but I could not make out where the body lay—until it seemed to me I could smell something else. Roses? Yes, I smelled roses. Roses and lavender and something else, something I had smelled before while journeying in the north, where men hunted whales. Ambergris. That was it. Yes, now I recalled smelling that on the captain before, when he came to taunt me each day after my capture in battle. The savage Zambourdian did not seem like a fop, yet he wore perfume. I will never understand humans.
I found the body quickly and turned the pockets over, cutting away his leather armor with the knife one of his men had given me. That man himself had shown perplexing signs of unexpected tenderness. “bring her peace,” he had said… and what had he said? He saw her each night, on her birthday… saw her murdered!
An uncontrollable shudder seized me as I fumbled in the dead human’s kit, hoping to find a tinderbox and something to burn. Any light at all would be more than welcome, though it might be the last light I would ever see. I took off the man’s belt and strapped it on. If I found anything, a belt would be handy to tuck things away in. Now I wore his scabbard too, but I kept the sword poised to strike at the first sound of movement.
Suddenly, I felt the sand shift under my feet. I spun around and peered into the unyielding blackness for a moment before I realized the earth had begun to vanish beneath me. I recalled those horrible gigantic hands with those shovel-like fingernails. In half a moment I felt them grasp at me from below! I flung myself away from the growing pit and kicked the corpse of the Zambourdian captain into that sinister opening. That kept my foes busy long enough for me to find solid ground to stand on again.
As soon as I gained my footing I sprang toward the unsettling sounds of strange feet crawling through tunnels. At length my outreached hand grasped a cavern wall and I allowed myself to lean against it and catch my breath. I spent the next few hours following the contours of the cavern and its offshoots, trying in vain to find a shelf of rock where I could rest without fear of some horrid pit opening up beneath me. The shifting sand moved beneath me each time I tried to rest, and because I carried a sword with one hand and had to feel my way with the other, I continued forcing myself to walk on two weary legs. Each time I chanced to lower my guard and take a little respite, I would hear something move. I would rise up and whip my sword in the air, and invariably I would notice some hidden assassin hurling past me to avoid the deadly blade. Each time the Deeve had been lurking up to me, ready to throw me off so the rest of them could swarm me. Each time the feel of the creature’s body rushing past me came alarmingly close. A lesser warrior might have lost his nerve long ago and made some deadly error, but I did not relent a moment. Stubborn as I was, I knew there would be no way out. Sooner or later they would wear me down and the sagging, rotting, hideous denizens of the underworld would have me.
I grimly realized that no one had ever emerged alive from this labyrinth. I saw no way to survive this ordeal, but I persisted. I went on, hour after hour in the dark. I had surely gone the rest of the day and all night without sleep. Fatigue began to touch me with a kind of fever, and I began to see lights swimming around me and hear voices in my ear. My legs had become clumsy and crippled with pain. My eyes watered and my head tilted on my shoulders each time my eyes grew heavy. Now and then, when I flushed out some lurking assassin, he had enough of an edge to lash out and strike me. More than once my breath hissed through my teeth as some blow to my sword hand nearly wrenched my weapon from my fist.
I began to look at myself as a doomed ape at the end of his rope. I took wild swings at phantoms that my mind produced in its fever. At times waves of eerie peace filled me and I knew I was treading not just on sand, but in some distant land of spirits. Eventually a strange calm penetrated all my senses. Somehow it came to me that my pursuers had abandoned me to plan some other tactic. Perhaps they meant to let me collapse in the sand where they could come and take me at their leisure.
However it happened I began to hear the strange, heart wrenching sobs of a child. I heard the cries and ran to them but each time I drew near, the sobbing stopped. A floating, drunken feeling surged in and around me. I caught furtive glances of some dusty waif, head between her knees, curled up on the floor, crying. Finally I felt that I should stop, and with infinite calmness, close my eyes and let the vision come. I realized that I might have to abandon all contact with reality and fall asleep, but I resigned myself to surrender to this new sensation that came over me.
The instant my eyes closed I saw her clearly, lying in tears, in a tattered dress. She was a Zambourdian child of perhaps seven or eight years. No matter how I reached to her and called to her, she would not reply. I opened my eyes and tried to walk to her, but when my eyelids lifted she vanished. I realized that it was foolish to keep my eyes open when I could not see anything to begin with. As long as my eyes were shut I could see her. So I walked to this vision with eyes closed and a tenuous grip on consciousness. The urge to sleep was powerful, something that seemed unbearably hard, but I forced myself to walk toward the girl. With each step a new vision whirled between me and the sobbing child. I saw the man who had given me the knife, restrained by his fellow soldiers. I saw his arms reaching out desperately ahead of him while other soldiers snatched the girl from his grasp.
“Daddy!” she cried, “Daddy, help me!”
Another step and I saw unspeakable horrors visited on that child by the Zambourdian soldiers. Then, in a flash, I saw the father begging on his knees before the captain of the soldiers.
“You wouldn’t take her from me!” he cried, “not my daughter, I beg you!”
“In the old days,” mused the captain, “no Zambourdian would suffer his firstborn daughter to live, but would sacrifice her so that the gods might bring him strong boys.”
“Captain, you have no heart!” cried the man.
“You tried to seduce my wife,” complained the captain, coldly.
“That isn’t how it happened!” he objected.
“You wish to make an accusation? Do you dare call my wife something she is not?” the captain threatened.
“No, no! Forgive me! It was my fault. Take me instead! Please take me instead.”
“I have a special…” began the captain, choosing his words carefully, “love for children. This vial of perfume is hers.”
He held up a vial and waved it casually around.
“A gift for her birthday, scented ambergris from distant ports…”
“Good perfume,” said the captain, “It will last for many years. I shall wear it. I shall smell it. I shall smell it and always remember… the pleasure of what I am about to do.”
The captain rose and smoothed out his garments in a shockingly casual and revealing manner. He left a screaming man babbling in the chamber.
I went forward, seeing things no ape should see, signs of the very depths of depravity that the creature called man can sink to. And when it was through, the captain lifted that vial of perfume to his nose and inhaled deeply. His face waxed pensive, as though he might summon the will to stop time and allow every nuance of that horrible, special moment penetrate his mind. Then he lifted the bleeding, ruined child he had befouled and lowered her to the Deeves. When the rope had gone slack and the screaming stopped, the captain opened a pouch on his belt and tucked the vial snugly within.
The captain opened a pouch on his belt!
I opened the pouch and felt a long, glass vial beneath my fingertips. My head swam. I saw a broken man struggling to keep his sanity, lighting candles on a birthday cake that no one would eat. I saw him dream of her, crying her name: “Nophraone!”
I saw him take to the battlefield to win his captain’s trust, but within I felt the man’s hatred and dark plan for a cold, calculated vengeance.
A battlefield, afire, and awash with blood stretched out before my eyes. Apes bound in tar covered ropes were led down to dungeons.
“Let us make an example of one, my captain… let us make an example of their strongest warrior!”

Again I could hear his thoughts, almost like words in my ears: “I have heard of Rungrin. They call him ‘the Killer Ape!’ I know he will kill you the moment you give him a chance!”
“Nophraone,” I croaked. My voice was weary and broken with emotion, but the delicate, weeping ghost recognized her name and lifted her head.
“bring her peace!” he had said.
I opened the vial and smelled the sweet perfume. It was almost too much for my big, ape heart to bear. I leveled my breathing and managed to speak again.
“I have something here that is yours… something which never should have been taken from you…”
I gently went on all fours and held out the vial. Nophraone’s eyes went wide and she reached out and grabbed it. Then, suddenly, the child flung her dear little arms around my enormous, savage, animal neck and buried her face in my fur, hugging me, kissing me, and crying.
And then, perhaps just because I had grown too weary, I, Rungrin, “the Killer Ape,” broke down and wept. I hugged the helpless little ghost and sobbed in great rasping breaths until I seemed to loose all of my senses. Abruptly she was gone, but not completely.
Some consciousness remained linked with mine for a little while, just long enough to give me a second sight. It showed me where the tunnels went. It showed me where fresh pits to the surface were being dug to trap wandering surface dwellers. Before I had even fully returned to my senses, I neared the surface. I locked my gaze on the pathetic shadows that tried to hide themselves from the dim sunlight as they lay their trap. I lifted that feeble excuse for a sword and charged, massacring the loathsome creatures. I threw away that puny weapon as soon as I had finished, and for good measure I discarded the belt that I’d taken from that wretched fiend. I was at loathe to see any trace of him reach sunlight. Finally, at long last, I walked on all fours into a cold winter morning.
When the Zambourdians saw me next, they would flee in horror. When my comrades saw me again it would be only after I carefully stole the keys and weapons I needed to free them. When the apes took the dark desert city of Zambourdia they would be inspired and heroic. I decided on that morning to spare no effort to find one suffering Zambourdian soldier and allow him to leave those battlements alive. But first I would find some high ground, with plenty of sturdy boulders to lie on. Tonight the darkness will visit many horrors on Zambourdia. Today this ape will sleep.