Read Barbarian King Page 29

nothing unreal about the low hung savage head and the great curved fangs that glistened in the light. On noiseless padded feet it approached like a phantom out of the past. It had to be something from an older grimmer age, the ogre of many a nightmare...another saber tooth creature that resembled a bulldog. Most had not looked upon one of those primordial brutes their entire lifetimes. Immemorial myths spoken and heard over the years lent the creature a supernatural quality induced by its ghostly color and its fiendish ferocious forms.

  The creature that glided along just outside the wall was longer and heavier than the critter the President had previously encountered, almost as bulky as a bear. Its shoulders and forelegs were so monstrous and mightily muscled as to give it a curiously top-heavy appearance though its hindquarters were more powerful than that of the previous mongrel. Its jaws were massive and its head was brutishly shaped. Its brain capacity was small. It had room for no instincts except those of destruction. It was a freak of carnivorous development, evolution run amuck in a horror of fangs and talons.

  This varmint was like the monstrosity he had glimpsed before. He no longer doubted the brute’s power. Like a whisper at the back of his consciousness rose the vague thought that only the black arts, or a demon could establish a domination over such a tiny brained, mighty-thewed beast.

  The monster moved past the palisade of timber and the barred narrow entryway without appearing to notice the humans cowering and looking down from the palisade. This thing was no grubber. It hunted only the living in a life dedicated solely to butcher. An awful hunger burned greenly in the wide unwinking eyes; its hunger not alone of empty space, but the lust of death dealing. Its gaping jaws slavered.

  The great beast suddenly sank into a crouch and stared on at those primitives who watched it and waited...waited for someone to make a mistake.

  Numbly members of the tribe took steps back from the wall then to the ground and then ran to hide from the appalling ferocity.

  BamaOay wondered if the creature would attempt to leap up over the wall, then like a saber tooth drive its sword-like fangs into someone’s thick skull killing them outright.

  IllaryHay abruptly squealed out shrilly and a second later with an ear-shattering screech as the beast sprang.

  BamaOay had never dreamed of such a leap, such a hurtling of incarnated destruction embodied in that giant bulk of iron thews and ripping talons. Full upon the wood breastworks the thing struck and the wall shook under the bestial impact. The reason for the sudden attack was soon discovered; the thing had caught one of the rail-thin street urchins in its jaws. The giant fangs tore away the guy’s whole head first shearing through bone as easily as through flesh, then tearing the body apart. The codger’s head lay like a gourd just outside the enclosure looking face up. The geezer must have had some happy final thoughts, or dementia for a broad smile could just be made out under his blood-soaked beard grinning from ear to ear. Perhaps the fool was just happy to have finally gotten out of this misbegotten dimension.

  BamaOay glared almost paralyzed, his brain refusing to credit what his eyes had seen. In that leap the great animal had almost cleared the wall, but only succeeded in catching its prey because the stupid onlooker was leaning over too far to see what was what.

  The mangled body was now dragged from the wall and carried off a short distance for a little afternoon brunch. Gutting the skinny corpse like a fish, the huge talons were used to instantly disembowel and partially dismember the remains into agreeable bite-size chunks. BamaOay retched suddenly. He had never seen something get knocked off that way before; he had never dreamed a creature lived that could make such a red ruin of a human body in that flicker of a second.

  The saber tooth vanished soon after getting his fill of the grizzly feast and a few moments later a deep roar sounded through the forest receding in the distance. He still shrank back in fear.

  The Werlick, Toe’Jum, stepped from behind a hut when the “all clear” was given. Waving his hand to the woodsman, he managed to be heard shouting, “Come, we safe now. Let’s go get that drink.”

  And so, the mission, BamaOay’s mission to become the Jackass King continued...

  Conclusion

  The Battle of Endora

  In this barbaric, dark dimension, the Jackass people differed little from the Democrats of his original world save for being cannibals. BamaOay felt the ground shake underfoot from the accompanying horde of marching, hobbit-like feet, huge, hairy and unmanicured. An earthquake of an army of primitives he had held under his spell for almost a year now, since his arrival in this here-thereto unknown world. They had been marching as one into this valley led as if by the Pied Piper himself with magical wand in hand, a woman’s driver.

  He raised his staff for his subjects to see then yelled, “Halt!”

  Instantly, a chorus of the prehistoric women gathered about him and set about beating their chests and heads...letting out with horrifying wailing and emitting a high pitched loud noise that accompanied the rapid movement of the tongue and the uvula...ululating...the jackass’s battle cry. Their maddening rattling bleated out across the valley as frothy foam flew from their shouting orifices.

  Black curses dribbled through the King’s parched lips. The great veins swelled and throbbed in his temples, and his teeth gnashed spasmodically. BamaOay covered his ears trying to muffle the horrible sounds of the sirens, but after just a few seconds of their railing he clearly showed he had had enough. Waving both his hands frantically, flat with palms down, moving them from his chest out as a sign like a movie producer would use to stop a scene. “Cut!”

  The screaming banshees had no idea what it was BamaOay was trying to say...no one in his camp had thought to clue them in on any signals. Naturally, they took his sign to mean, “Scream louder.”

  The balling, head and chest banging, near inhuman screams spiraled upward in ferocity; all the while the commander in chief was now making another sort of gesture with one of his hands. Looking desperately at anyone with a pointy stick, or bone ax and with one hand covering one ear he brought the other to his throat and with his index finger and repeatedly made the gesture of a stroke in the air from one side of his neck to the other. The ordinary primitives in his war party had no idea what the sign meant, but two of his closet entourage did, and with a necromantic strangeness the two gigantic figures rose up to carry out his command. The skunk skins of their protective armor showed these two goons were part of the King’s Royal Guard. Smelling like a skunk was thought by their master to be a way of warding off opponents during close order fighting, a sign of their King’s brilliance and common sense approach to warfare.

  “Whores,” demanded one through his mud caked beard, his eyes squinted cold and with much savagery, “shut pie holes!”

  The ranting chorus of bitches quickly fell silent.

  The other warrior shouted, “Bring the King’s throne forward.”

  Something resembling a life guards chair was dragged slowly forward from somewhere in the throng of bodies. After a time of impatient foot stomping the King was eventually hoisted onto his throne by the pair of Royal Guards.

  The Barbarian King was dressed in full battle regalia: a black and white skunk skin hat, Daniel Boone in style, it covered the bald spot atop his noodle, a permanent reminder of the day he and IllaryHay were whisked to this world over a year ago. BamaOay was bare chested save for a matching pair of skunk-skin breeches, and of course, he wore his by-now tattered pair of Oxford golf shoes with metal cleats worn down to the soles. In hand he carried his magic wand, a woman’s, oversized driver and dented from his many battles. He had worked hard to improve his long, lanky, undersized, stick legs, but still looked more like a Johnny Bravo cartoon-like character than ‘the Hulk.’

  "Jackasses!" cried the King, now standing shakily upon his perch, so that he could be seen among his horde.

  "Look at me!” he cried.

  “Damnit, look at me you Jackasses!”


  BamaOay paused giving more, and more of his people time to gaze upon his magnificent figure.

  “I have brought you here to this place so we can defeat our longtime enemy once and for all,” he paused for effect, “and tonight I guarantee we will be feasting on their corpses!”

  His hair-clad giants answered with roars of approval and heaving their stone age weapons up into the air.

  “That’s right my Jackasses, tonight we will be ripping out their hearts, casting them into our fires and eating like never before!"

  The chieftain from across the battlefield heard the jackass bitches’ high pitched racket with their primordial flapping of both tongue and that thing hanging from the back of the mouth from afar. He then noticed the first wave of the cannibal horde had begun to hesitantly approach.

  "They’re coming," grunted a voice. "Haste—we must ready ourselves for the fight."

  "They won't stop that stupid chanting," growled another, his voice indicating irritation. "They’re something else—"

  Trajan looked about into the eager faces that surrounded him. The chieftain was surrounded by tall golden-haired warriors in mail and furs.

  "Men, let’s go kick some ass!"

  "By all that is holy, Trajan," gasped another, "we won’t rest until we strike all those ‘thick heads’ down."

  Trajan