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Stories from the Verse
A Dozen Verses
Chapter 154: Cooper 124
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Slade 299
“Wait.” One Fey stood, and all of the rest turned to look at him, save his Queen. “He has not proved his valor. A king must be brave, must he not?”
Cooper just stared at him. He could see if he fought back, it would be an offense, and if he agreed, it would be worse. Instead, he waited on the back of Farwalker with Tom muttering words down at Farwalker’s hooves, words that if they were spoken more loudly might be very uncomplimentary.
“Hush, Tom,” Cooper said quietly, and Tom silenced himself.
“Well? Are you not going to say anything?” the Fey snapped. At this point, Cooper understood Christ not saying anything to Pilate. If the other side was determined to do evil, and they were fishing for an excuse, then just stare at them, and let them walk out to the end of the limb of the tree on their own.
“Well, I say he is a coward,” the Fey tittered mildly, but the Humans just stared at the Fey, whom Cooper noted were drastically outnumbered. Previously the Humans had not dared to look with more than a second of disfavor at their Lords and Ladies, but now they eyed them steadily and coldly. The Fey, a pawn of his queen, tried to pass this off as uninteresting, but did not quite achieve it. Having thousands of people glare at you is not something even a narcissistic popinjay would enjoy.
“Let him prove his valor with this fifty,” and he threw out an armload of mice in front of him and as each mouse hit the ground of the field it transformed into a man, a few with sword and shield but mostly men with spears and a very few with bows. In their mouths they had buckteeth, and they moved with quick jerks, but those were the only signs of their origin.
"These mouseketeers stand in for those who all fought for their places in the rankings, and you have to prove yourself against them. So, if you and your, your 'god', can defeat all of them, you can be in the final competition." He waved a hand, and the field rapidly filled as the fifty fighters spread out ready to fight.
Mister Justice turned Farwalker toward them, and said to his companions, "We are in Sovereign hands." Then he extended his left hand and swept it from left to right. The glove’s force hit the new enemies, and they all staggered, some dropping shields, some falling on their backs, faces, or left sides, two or three fleeing from the field.
One remained.
"You were saying?" Mister Justice said. Riding forward, he feinted wide, leading the enemy’s sword wide, and reversed his wrist and stabbed down through the mouseketeer rendering him limp. The mouseketeer fell, to join many others on the field of combat. It had been easy, and was a nice validation that his ten years of sword practice on the tropical island had not been wholly wasted.
The Fey enchanter struggled, cursed, and shrank inside himself until he fell, leaving behind a white silk overrobe. After another moment that, too, was gone. The collected Fey looked at Mister Justice with horror sketched on their mouths, and then with grim hatred as the Queen of Night shrieked.
“Send forth the Man King; let him slay this imposter!”
A tent opened and out rode a huge man with great jowls of fat around his chin, stuffed into a polished red armor. Underneath him a cousin of a Clydesdale bore his immense weight.
“I can beat the horse,” Farwalker said confidently.
“He’s big.” Cooper was not just referring to the horse. The Dying King, who slowly rode toward him with his haunted eyes, was a huge man, about the same height as Cooper but his arms were thicker than Brian’s thighs. There was zero doubt that in a contest of walking Cooper would win hands down. But as he saw the Herald come up with a golden chain with loops on both sides for hands, the chain a mere fifteen feet long, he realized that he was going to be chained to a man who weighed more than twice what he did. Despite all the waifu girl martial arts movies, superhero movies, and zombie shows he had watched back in California, he knew that the person with much less weight was at a serious disadvantage. This man’s belly was almost as big as the whole of Cooper. Plus, if he used his glove like he just had, he’d be jerked along with the target.
The chain’s clasp was affixed about his right wrist; the Herald softly said the Fey were left-handed. The Dying King, his manner gloomy, took the chain about his wrist, and the clasp had to be expanded to its fullest to even get around the beefy joint. Already the man had begun to sweat badly, and Cooper was worried that the simple exercise of riding out here on a warm day might be enough to give him a heart attack.
“You don’t have to do this,” Cooper said gently to the man across from him, who blinked, startled to realize he had been addressed.
“I made my vow. I had my seven years of pleasure. Payday is today.” The man’s words slurred, and Cooper wondered if he might be drugged. The Herald looked up at Cooper with surprise as Cooper moved the moose closer. The almost-Clydesdale tried to move back, but a quick hold from the Dying King let him know that his rider still had control. Farwalker snickered at the horse, and the horse’s eyes rolled in fear. Cooper thought he had a decent chance to win against the Dying King, but Farwalker and the almost-Clydesdale, whose shoulders were nearly to Cooper’s head, both were sure that the moose would win.
For a second, he considered the advice of a basketball coach, ‘just win, baby’, but he wanted more than that. Instead, he reached out his arm. The Queen stood, and suddenly flung a sliver of sunlight, a crystal spear, upward, and it flew in a great arc to thunk right next to the horse. The shard of crystal, a spear with a dark core glittering in the light, caught the King’s eyes. For a second hope was there in his eyes, and he looked alive, and not half-dead.
Having reached out his arm, Cooper touched the King’s wrist.
“You don’t have to die today, sir.” He spoke gently, as persuasively as he could.
“If I kill you, I get seven more years of life,” the king moaned. Sweat broke out on his brow, and Cooper saw he looked terrified.
“I cannot guarantee the future, but we do not have to kill each other. You can be free.”
“Can you understand?” the King asked, and Cooper nodded, confident that he could. Then the King clasped his other hand over Cooper’s and muttered. “I want to be free, to reject the–” he shuddered in great agony, and then it passed on to Cooper, who found indeed that he had not understood. He felt as if a melon baller were scraping out his insides, one scoop at a time.
“Hold your promise,” the Queen roared. Standing, her eyes terrible, her face like ice, night dripping from her fingertips, she demanded obeisance from the King. “Take up the Spear of Midnight, and slay the imposter. It will aid you in your fight.”
He had to think of something else to focus his mind on past the pain.
Gargling out the words, he began to sing, to mutter.
“Savior, like a shepherd lead us.…”
The Herald reached up, and touched the King’s thigh, whose great voice boomed out as well.
“Savior, like a shepherd lead us, much we need thy tender care….” He sang in a profound bass, between gasps of pain, and Cooper looked up and waved his other hand as if a choir director. Tom joined in, then Farwalker, and each shuddered from pain. The Queen screamed on, and others of the Fey joined her, and vile threats poured from their mouths, but as they came to the end of the first stanza, Cooper drew breath and cried out loud.
“Look not in fear or anger to them, your enemy. Instead, look to your redeemer.”
He began to sing again, repeating the first stanza, and the crowd joined in, first a few dozen, and pain wracked them, and then more, and as they did they turned away from the Fey. No more hate flowed toward the Fey, nor did fear. The song leapt from lips to lips, and they began to sing it the third time through, and barely any pain came to any of them, and none heard the Queen crying out in rage or power.
Coming to the end, all turned from their contemplation of greater things to the stands where the Fey no longer stood. Not a single Fey remained, nor any of their garments. Indeed, the tents that had been beautiful were revealed to be tawdry, raggedy things, and the beautiful field to be a dusty badland.
“I still will have my revenge.”
Cooper heard the hissing voice of the Queen of Night in his right ear, and the Spear of Midnight twitched in the soil, and the side of the haft of the spear, sharper than steel blades, slashed into his thigh. Spurting blood, he fell off Farwalker and began to think to pray, but a great confusion oppressed his thoughts, and the last thing he saw was the now not Dying King looking down sadly, and Tom trying to lick his face and tell him he would be all right.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with eleven other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #536: Character Confrontations. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
