Great Ape, Chapter Five: Painwatch LAST FREE CHAPTER!

[Lord Zombiac]

Chapter Five: Painwatch

As Lady Laplis strode to me, lust burning in her eyes, the dim light revealed the wispy thin nature of the scant garment she wore.

So much of her body was visible now, causing my breath to catch from my intense yearning. Where light struck, the tone of skin curved in ways that revealed all of love’s ripened fruit.

Those areas that were hugged by shadow seemed framed by those that were not, so that their hidden depths begged to be touched and discovered.

Her faint smile went to a playful pout and she tilted her head and half closed her smoldering eyes as she reached out to me with her eager hands. With that hungry stare focused on my fully aroused body, her breath quickened in her desire and approval.

She coupled the contours of her throbbing body close to mine as those hands groped eagerly and the languid lips pressed feverishly against mine.

I joined her eager touching and exploring with my own, and she could not contain the faint moan that rasped through her twitching frenzied mouth to my own.

“Zombiac... I have wanted this for so long. My fire is high!”

She guided my hand, with a slight tremble, to the nethermost part of her and my touch revealed new, yielding warmness that threw me into levels of passion and expectation that overwhelmed me.

Both of our bodies now writhed and jerked into one another in measured strokes. The parts of us that were most awakened now rubbed with exquisite sensation and richly rewarding thrumming pleasure.

Fires of joy illuminated visions of the ways our bodies were free to pleasure each other. Each image flashed through my mind and hers, beckoning us with acts of lustful abandon, so close, so imminent.

She gasped and moaned in a louder, urgent voice, half strangled with panting and throbbing. As we thrust ourselves together, our bodies found that moment of consummation and the penetration of our pleasures became joined and complete.

Here the dream changed.

I began to call her by another name. One I had never heard before.

“Tsaza! Tsaza!” I cried... then the darkness withdrew her from me before I could glance at the face which had changed and the body which had become different. Satanic lights filled the face of Baelbozurg as he laughed in some dark victory of which I could not guess. A terrible sense of utter loss filled me as I wept the new name... “Tsaza! Tsaza!”

Then I woke up shaking and gasping, my body tingling with a sudden loss of emersion. I lay in my tent with the hard earth prodding me and the darkness lulling me back to a state of relief and calmness.

In the darkness I heard the distant, fervent, and rhythmic moaning of Lady Laplis who, in her tent, must have been lying with one of the many men I had seen her beckon to before, at the evening’s campfire.

Was it Kayd, the ebony black, long haired, man at arms she had engaged as her champion? Was it Ben Torru, the lithe, pale, costumed dandy? Was it Hogoar, the effeminate, submissive serving boy who was far too young to be lusted for in any wholesome way, but who Lady Laplis had most explicitly invited into her tent?

The faces all flashed in my mind with a sense of loss and desperation. I panicked that she had not made any advances to me, stinging with the realization that she did not want me.

I hear her cry out in utter climax, and then silence, soon followed by loving laughter.

“Not me!” screamed my brain.

“Shut up!” I told myself, “she will desire me someday. I will wait!”

Here I closed my eyes and tried to press the idea into my heart, as though my wish could burrow permanently within me and transform me, somehow, into a man such as they.

I covered myself in images of her smiling, recollections of sweet things she had said to me. It soothed me and allowed me to bury myself in self deception and I was satisfied and happy once again. She loved me, there could be no doubt of that. She dallied with others for the time being, but she loved me and soon that love would turn to desire.

I sighed and ebbed back into the comfort of sleep, but as I drifted off, some part of my mind betrayed me and called me a fool.

In the morning I woke to the sounds of camp being struck and our company preparing itself to leave. Soon we would be at Painwatch. I would see the faces of those who dwelled in other fiefdoms, and wonder who might be a friend or who might be a foe.

It would be my debut as a new vassal of Baron Urklar, a trusted and welcomed part of his community.

I stepped into the sunshine and began my daily habits. Baron Urklar, the first to have awakened greeted each person of the busy company and gave them hot biscuits that had been slathered in butter, and stuffed with scrambled eggs.

“Eat, Zombiac!” he called cheerfully, holding out my measure of the provisions, “we will arrive at Painwatch early this afternoon!”


I accepted the food and began my work of taking down my tent. Before long the entire camp had mobilized, but I had not been swift enough to walk behind Lady Laplis and her man at arms. I walked with Singfellow Treymark and his young wife Gughtrip. Singfellow was shirtless, as usual, revealing the brown and yellow splotches on his ruddy skin. He looked like a spotted animal, striding merrily through the green beneath the dappled sunlight. He carried his mandolin, which he strummed as he walked, his long curved sword hanging on his belt over his golden satin pajamas. His wife was very small and scantily clad in animal skins. Gughtrip carried a large halberd and had a belt full of throwing knives. Her sandy blonde hair was pulled up into a top knot and when she spoke, her abnormally long teeth made her hiss and sputter like a tea kettle.

Singfellow, Gughtrip and Urklar were all Yight-sharf; they had within them the blood of an extinct race of men known as the Yights who were killed a hundred years ago in the great northern purge. Killed in that time were the Yights, their flesh eating horses, and the gigantic, white, upright walking snow apes. All had been deemed worthy of destruction when their love of eating human flesh had gotten out of hand. Of the three it was Gughtrip whose lineage was strongest. Her accent was wild and barbaric, and she seemed to surpass all in strength and endurance.

She had won, for the third year in a row, the right to bear Warclover’s halberd and battle standard to Painwatch, fighting in a yearly tournament. Her first such victory had been at the age of sixteen. She won at all games and had an endless capacity for drink.

We filed along a narrow path between thick trees where the sun grew dim and abruptly halted. There were two men in the road who greeted us and asked to speak with our Sheriff. One wore white and a broad rimmed hat. He had hair like straw and a shaven face. His eyes were dark and full of a quiet intelligence. It was he who Lady Laplis recognized, and she called him “Wooly.”

The other man was garbed in the softest buckskin with high buckled boots and a colorful cowl of bird feathers. Much of his face was obscured, but he was also clean shaven and wore a bone through his nose. He carried a mighty staff.

“Wooly Dorpgarn!” called Laplis, “we are honored to have you greet us so far from Painwatch. Are there not preparations to be made in your family’s lands?”

“This year we are annexed into the Kingdom of Levinhudnia,” replied Wooly, “and as a token of good faith, many of their soldiers remain to do my work. This is well, for there are more important duties at hand for me.”

Here he gestured towards the stranger.

“Greetings, fighters and revelers of Warclover,” announced the mysterious figure, “I am Nedhollow Meander. I come to your mountains and attend your ceremonial battle as a guest. I am a scribe and a mystic, a poet and a wanderer. I come here seeking the horn of an ancient beast, once worshiped as a god. Heydal’s Horn is full of power, and is of great use to me.”

“This year at Painwatch,” Wooly said grimly, “there may be more blood spilled than usual. Cloudhyrre is determined to shadow Nedhollow Meander’s every move and wrest the horn from him if he finds it. I charge your Shire with protecting the rights of this man to what is his. Do you accept?”

“Friend Dorpgarn,” said Laplis, “consider the mystic in our protection. There will be two sober and able bodied fighters with him at all times.”

Baron Urklar strode forward and greeted Wooly with a bow.

“What of bloodshed?” he asked, “Painwatch we fight each year to ease the tensions between our rivals. It is Cloudhyrre and us this year?”

“It is,” said Wooly, “and they will be hardened against you if Nedhollow should find his relic.”

“And do the rules of combat still stand?”

“Blunted weapons only. The side who has the first kill or grave injury, or who has the first fighter to back down and surrender looses.”

Then Wooly turned to me and said, “and fighters new to Painwatch may only use sticks and stones as they find on the field for battle.”

I had been told of this, so I nodded and smiled.

“Cloudhyrre will not allow any of their men to surrender, I take it,” mused the Baron.

“They will likely punish anyone to do so with death,” answered Wooly.

“Then we shall not surrender either,” announced the Baron, loudly, “but there will be no death penalty. Sheriff, you may mete out any other censure you wish.”

Lady Laplis nodded in agreement and the conversation became more casual. Our company took stride again and filed down the mirky forest path. As we marched important facts came to each person to pass along, down the line. In this way all eighty nine of our people learned certain things.

“Since we have faced Cloudhyrre five years in a row they claim the right of frenzy,” Singfellow told me.

“What is the right of frenzy?” I asked.

“All except the new may carry a deadly weapon. If a life is taken, Wooly will ring the bell one hundred times. During that time deadly combat will be joined. If a new fighter can find a weapon during frenzy, he may use it. You can, of course, skip out on the battle. Then next year will not be your first Painwatch.”

“I will not skip out,” I said, “I fight with my friends!”

“Then there may not be a next year for you,” hinted the shirtless musician, grimly.

“But if there is no next year for someone else, it will not be because Zombiac sat drunk around a campfire while others fought.”

This pleased Singfellow and he smiled.

“Stay close to me, Zombiac, and I can help you ‘find’ something suitable to fight with, should frenzy be called!”

We continued to walk and talk until the forest grew open once again. The way grew steep downhill and we went from switchback around to switchback until the walk leveled out into a broad, rock strewn plain. Plumes of smoke rose in the distance. By afternoon we began to hear the distant murmur of voices, throngs of gay voices in revelry.

Here was Painhold, the lands of Dorpgarn’s people. The grass was thick and green, and broken by the great trees known as crown juniper, two or three times the size of ordinary ones. Pink and purple thickets of timber sage clustered here and there. The fir trees of the hardy mountains were present, though less plentiful, and the rocky outcrops were stunningly gorgeous, with stone of every hue.

Tents and pavilions came into view as people went by excitedly and children ran wild with wooden swords. The smell of food was thick and nearly everyone seemed to carry a vessel filled with drink. Here and there stood rugged men in purple and blue garments and dull spiked mail of some blackened metal. They wore sandals, capes, and plumed helmets, all with standardized patterns of blue and purple. They carried blue kite shields with the purple serpent insignia of Levinhudnia. These were the Levinhudnian soldiers.

“Wooly has opposed this,” remarked Singfellow, “but they say now that Cloudhyrre may open their coffers to hire some of these Levinhudnians for the battle, if Nedhollow finds his prise. Some of our fighters are angry and scared from this news, but Nedhollow assures us that if he has his Heydal’s Horn, it can help us fight them. It will make us faster, keener of sense, and able to slough off blows that would otherwise maim or kill.”

“I am ready,” I said grimly.

“It may not come to that,” sighed Singfellow, “if the Mystic finds his fetish under cover and with enough support, he may spirit it away. Painwatch has kept the peace in these lands for centuries, Zombiac. Many of our people have never known true war. Tend to the gaiety and high spirits. You would never know, would you? Never know that this may be the eve of the bloodiest conflict many of our people have ever known.”

“I am ready,” I simply said again.

Then the order was issued to set up camp. Somewhere I heard a sword being honed. Already two men stood in shadows looking Nedhollow Meander up and down. Then I heard the name “Bloodthroke” spoken and shivered. I went to find Urklar, but he was missing, so I found Lady Whitelore and told her what I knew.

“I heard the name Bloodthroke the Elder spoken,” I told her, “he would be a stranger to these lands, if he is here.”

“But if he is not?” she asked.

“Even if he is not here, it bodes ill for me. It means he has found me. Bloodthroke is an assassin sent by Baelbozurg.”