The Hogman's Homunculi and the Angelwing Massacre: Chapter Twelve!
Everyone's got a plan until something unexpected drops out of their bottom.
Welcome to chapter twelve. Valeria takes a major shine to Darov while something deeply disturbing happens to Tavian. Other things also happen.
Trigger warnings for anal annihilation and oblique references to Mr T.
By the way if anyone is actually reading this fucking thing, which I doubt, please give it a like. I could do without the ball ache of posting chapters every week, so if no one’s reading it I’ll stop.
Also, buy my latest book here. I can’t remember what it’s called or what it’s about or how much it costs, sorry.
Enjoy!
Chapter Twelve: Dawn of the Homunculi
Valeria had decided The Sod That was the finest tavern in all Denovia, so it was the natural location for a boozy conference with Hissaq and Prince Darov the following afternoon. The veranda was closed due to rain, so the trio huddled in a cosy booth near the crackling fireplace with Darov and Valeria facing Hissaq, who was picking at a bowl of stew.
The prince wore civvies, specifically a pair of floral linen hose and an old school thugby[1] shirt stolen from Prince Josep. The clothes, his stubble and unruly hair anonymised him, and he went unrecognised by the other patrons. Like a dainty bird drinking from a puddle, he took sipped a wine which was lamentably inferior to his usual tipple.
A couple of off-duty kastal guards were grumbling about Darov at the bar, unaware the man himself was mere feet away. “If I were alone in a room with no windows with that inbred retard…” one of them said. The prince strained to hear what the man wished to do to him if they were alone in a room with no windows, but the remainder of the sentence was lost in the hubbub. Darov’s non-coup had generated extra work for the kastal forces, not least because of an influx of rounded-up hooligans into the dungeons. Each individual had to be tried, released without charge or ideally, in terms of cutting down on paperwork, discreetly murdered.
He started when Valeria clapped him on the shoulder, then left her hand there a little longer than necessary. “Relax Dar,” she said, sotto voce, “You’ll not be murdered today at least. No one’ll recognise you, the state you’re in.”
She kept calling him Dar. It wasn’t as bad as D or Big D, but it wasn’t far off. And he was acutely aware of her thigh pressing against his. Shuffling to the far end of the seat had proven fruitless; she simply followed him along the bench as if they were competing in a slow arse-shuffling race.
She grinned and ruffled his hair. “You’re on edge, I’ll get you another.” She squeezed past Darov without waiting for him to move out of the way and headed for the bar.
“Bloody woman has no respect for my standing,” Darov hissed.
Hissaq flapped a hand and shrugged. The food, the scent of pipe tobacco and the drumming off rain on the roof were having a narcotic effect on him. “She’s a Frayan, what do you expect? Ah, she’s a good kid, not usually this lary though, I must admit. I wonder if she’s showing off for some reason, Dar.”
“Don’t you start. You seem to have a weakness for uncouth associates. Speaking of which, would you care to explain why your weird little hogwrangler friend tried to murder me yesterday?”
“Don’t know. He’s not a murderer, hasn’t got it in him. I think something happened to him though. You remember he said he wasn’t himself on the way out of that barn?”
“I should have him hanged.”
“I’ll pay him a visit, and you’re welcome to join me. If there’s anything left of him after his wife has finished with him, that is.”
Darov rustled up a smirk for the first time.
Valeria returned with more wine for Darov, Guinness for Hissaq and a tankard of Uncle Artyom’s Gort Stimulator for herself. She squeezed in next to the prince, clonked her tankard against his wine goblet and took a swig. “How’s the next book coming on, my liege?”
“It’s not.” Darov said with a dyspeptic grimace. “Fan, are you?”
“I am. Your sex scenes are fuggin out there. The one with the Gliesan, the android and the stable boy in the zero-grav chamber? Demented, I loved it. A sex scene over a hundred pages long is quite a thing. Who’s your ghost writer?”
He treated her to a withering stare and spoke very clearly. “My what?”
“Your ghostwriter.”
“The art is mine own, entire.”
“Really? I assumed someone wrote them for you.”
“Why would that be, pray tell?”
She bit her lip and twirled a strand of hair. “Well, it’s just your books are so long and complicated, with loads of big words. And you seem so…” She trailed off.
“So what? Speak freely, woman.”
“Well…so simple.”
“Do not speak freely anymore.”
“Ah, I’m ribbing you. Stick at the writing, Dar, you’re good at it.” She grinned and spoke to Hissaq. “How’s the stew?”
He shrugged. “Not like it used to be. The landlord warned me as much. The new regs are costing them a fortune. Compulsory hand washing, proper wages, what have you. Nanny state bollocks. My father and I used to come here for stew of an evening after he finished his deliveries. They used to buy in turnips and knuckle-taters from the farms around Tavian’s place and Rookie Hole, still muddy. Now they get the cheap crap from Koessanor and it’s not the same. Just another benefit brought by the friendly Guild of Project Managers. The queen loathes them.”
Valeria yawned loudly. “Gods, I wish I hadn’t asked. You two are a pair of miserable old fannies.”
The conversation moosied along. Punters came and went and by the time the barkeep lit a couple of lamps to defy the advancing hours Hissaq and Valeria were well lubricated. Darov meanwhile remained stiff backed and regally reserved. He asked politely after Joyec and received a polite answer. Valeria lost half a purse-full of francs losing at skittles to a raucous bunch of young farmer types. She challenged one to an arm wrestle and lost that too.
When Darov left to visit the outhouse, Valeria tottered over and grabbed Hissaq by the lapels. She drunkenly tried to focus on him. “It’s not working, he’s still sober.”
“I told you it wouldn’t. The man drinks heroic amounts of the finest wines available to humanity, all day every day. It doesn’t even touch the sides when he’s morose like this.”
They had planned to get Darov tipsy before tapping him up for help with the investigation. It had backfired, for they were drunk and he clearly was not.
“Anna ‘nother thing,” Valeria slurred, “I love him.”
“You’re an idiot.”
Darov returned to the nook, interrupting the conversation. He stared at them suspiciously. “What?”
Hissaq shushed Valeria with a warning finger. “Listen Darov, we need your help.”
“I repeat: what.”
“We have to question every duke of Carteffi. We need you to provide the warrant, get Josep’s signature if you have to.”
Hissaq recounted their investigations: the massacre of the graphomorphs, the wealth of scandium in the caverns, the crude drawing of an unknown duke. And for flavour: the toxic dust, the visit to Spank and the pop-up mining operation in the Spewpot Wastes. Valeria chipped in here and there, describing the veneriads in gory detail. Darov listened in silence, expressionless.
“Can you do that for us, Darov?” Hissaq said.
Gradually, the muscles of Darov’s face sagged until the look he gave Hissaq was one of utter desolation. “I can’t. At least not yet. I need your help, in fact. I was hoping to get you drunk before asking you.”
Hissaq closed his eyes for a moment and opened them again. “And you’ll only help us if we help you.”
Darov stared into his wine and nodded.
Valeria looked from one man to the other, peeking at them over the top of her tankard as she guzzled down more beer.
Hissaq said quietly, “What is it, Darov?”
“Mother stopped my allowance and I’m in debt to Jake Norwich, the guru fellow. I either have to pay the debt or steal a mysterious imperial communications cube from Lord Ulay’s chateau for him.”
Hissaq frowned. “So that’s what that escapade with Josep’s ship was about. How much is the debt? I could lend you a little.”
Darov said a number and Valeria just managed to turn her head aside as beer sprayed from her mouth.
“Bloody hell,” Hissaq said. “How did you get into such a hole with that charlatan?” He narrowed his eyes. “There’s something else, isn’t there. What’s he got over on you? A bastard running around somewhere?”
“There probably are a few running around, but it’s not that. Jake’s got proof that Princess Katarzyna and I were courting.”
This time it was Hissaq who sprayed beer. “Explain.”
“It was years ago, before she met Josep. Just a fling, more friendly than passionate. But Jake’s threatened to spill it.”
Hissaq held his head in his hands and groaned. “Oh Darov. Josep would have you killed, or divorce Katarzyna. Or both. Fuggin hellshite, there’d be a constitutional crisis.”
“Exactly. You need to help me, Hissaq.”
Valeria leant her head on Darov’s shoulder and spoke in a dreamy murmur with her eyes closed. “Don’t worry, my prince, I am at your service. You can count on me.”
Darov gently eased her off him with a finger and she came to rest propped against the opposite wall.
Hissaq thumped the table and stood. “Alright, burglary it is. There’ll be a copy of the blueprints of Ulay’s chateau in the kastal archives, they have to be registered by law. Valeria, wake the fugg up. Now Darov, you know and I know there’s only one man who can wrangle his way through a shitpit like this and come up smelling of tulips.”
Darov looked at Hissaq like a starving man beholding an angel carrying a plate of sausages. “Who?”
“Tavian.”
***
“John Tavian, by the golden bling of B’yay Barakuus, you be eating like a shorse.”
Tavian stuffed more bacon and coddled eggs into himself and nodded. He made a twirling gesture with his finger to call for patience while he swallowed another mouthful. “By my troth, I implore thy mercy. A luffing sail am I, for I were abducticated by a goddess yestereve who had her wicked way with me. Rode me like she’d laid her last hundred Francs on me to win the Penrick Derby. Hips like an Old Earth traction engine. The old chap is as raw as a—”
Brondag blushed. “Oh, shut up you.”
“Gratificating to know I was missed.”
“I’ll not deny it.” She was quiet a moment. “What happened, John?”
“I told thee already, Bron, it’s a perplexion. I wandered witless from the woods of Gallmore, remembering nowt. A little girl wished to murder me and by happenstance I joined an assassin’s guild. Nearly, anyways.”
She scowled at him. “I never did hear such foolishness. Is the fence in the north field fixed?”
“Aye.”
“And the ferrets are wheedled?”
“And wrangled, aye.”
“And have ye shaven the hooves of Geoff the bullhog?”
“Aye, my love. He was a smidgen indignant but a punch to the balls set him straight.”
“Best way with that one. Have ye helped wee John up the valley with his homework?”
“Not yet love. I could not locate my old protractor for—urgh!”
Tavian shoved away from the kitchen table. His chair clattered over and he staggered towards the door in a tortured stoop, groaning and clutching his belly. He felt like a red-hot metal ball was melting its way through his body towards his rear end. Beads of sweat popped into being on his forehead.
Brondag held him around the shoulders but he shook her off. “A cramp is all. I would visit…the outhouse…backed up down south…leave me be a trice.”
Tavian banged open the farmhouse door and staggered out into the yard, bent over as if negotiating a small tunnel. The merrily painted red outhouse was fifty yards distant but it might as well have been fifty miles. Brondag stood framed by the doorway watching concernedly.
Inside him, developments shifted up a gear. The pain’s acuity lessened, but a swelling insistence made itself known in the region of his bowels. High above him, data was logged with perfect fidelity in the solid state storage of an ion-powered aerial drone.
The outhouse was too far, and Tavian whimpered in the knowledge that he wouldn’t make it. His hands a blur, he unbuckled his belt and dropped his trousers and undergarments. He squatted in the yard holding himself steady with a hand on the fence of the ferret pen.
The pressure in his nethers reached a point he would scarce have believed possible for any living thing to endure, and from him burst a howling groan. Sweat poured from his brow, slickening his silver hair. He ground his teeth so hard a molar cracked and he spat a chunk out and stared at the little white thing on the ground through a veil of tears. Miguel the faithful old shorse chewed on his hay.
A surging wave of pressure, respite, then another wave even greater. Another, the waves of pressure overlapping now into a single irresistible swelling which blotted out all thought.
And finally, a crowning. A wavering falsetto of relief escaped his lips as a weight plopped from his arse to the ground below. He straightened his knees as much as he was able, and recuperated with his hands braced on his thighs, panting as if he really had been ridden like a shorse in the Penrick Derby. Miguel baa-whinnied and flounced away.
Brondag stomped from the farmhouse towards him.
“Forgive me, my love,” Tavian said, gingerly testing the skin of his arsehole with an exploratory finger. “Chagrined am I to have shat upon our tidy farmyard. I beg thy forbearance.”
His wife’s eyes grew wide as she approached. She was not one for whispering but whisper now she did. “John, what is it?” Her gaze was fixed on the space between his feet.
Tavian widened his stance and looked down. A thing writhed there inside a membranous sac, as if one of his kidneys had been granted independence and had ventured to make its escape from his body. A portion of the sac distended, thinning almost to transparency, and finally split. An arm appeared, then another, then a head. The thing inside the sac dragged itself free of its slimy prison and pulled itself erect. Tavian squeaked. It was a small, fully formed replica of himself.
The homunculus wiped fluid from its eyes and silver hair, and pondered Tavian’s uncovered balls, swaying in the air.
[1] Thugby is the most brutal organised sport in Cartreffi, though more popular with the refined upper classes. It is played on a square field with a deep pit dug at each corner. Four teams of six men play at once, each attempting to incapacitate as many opposition players as possible, by any means possible, before throwing them into their pit. The game ends when three teams are unable to continue, and the remaining team is declared victor. The game derives from a dark period of Cartreffi history: squads of men representing rival lords competed to round up as many supposed witches as possible from neighbouring villages, throw them in a pit and set them on fire. The victorious lord would reward the winning villagers with a feast paid for by the losers.