Aug 29, 2015
As promised, here's a brand new Vengar the Barbarian story for your Saturday night amusement. If you're not familiar with Vengar, he's a parody of pulp barbarians like Robert E. Howard's Conan and Kull the Conqueror, so the following should be read with tongue firmly planted in cheek.
Vengar's first two adventures are $0.99 at Amazon:
All set? Good. And away we go...
Vengar the Barbarian in... To This Arena Born
It was well into the ninth month of the Hyperbolic Age, a ludicrous time that time itself drank to forget and would be terribly embarrassed to remember. Echoes of Atlantis’ violent destruction had only just grown quiet, but no one would notice amid the blood-curdling cries of the innocent, the raucous howling and hollering of soldiers, and the ceaseless clash and clang of their countless swords and axes. This was an age of conniving conquerors clutching at counterfeit crowns, marching their heartless legions back and forth across the Thousand and One Kingdoms to claim and reclaim every inch of the map, all the while trampling civilized folk under foot.
It was a time of red skies and roiling smoke… of twisted sorcerers working in league with ancient and otherworldly abominations… of casual brutality even at formal functions. In a word, the Hyperbolic Age sucked. It sucked mightily, with a force and ferocity that can still be heard today.
Breathe soft, dear reader, and listen close. There… Do you hear it? Do you hear the cacophonous sucking of that apocalyptic epoch long passed?
Well, then you should probably get your hearing checked, but anyway…
In a world overcome with chaos and catastrophe, where violence was the lingua franca and most people’s mother tongue, there was one wandering warrior whose actions spoke louder than any other’s. He was a burglar, a vandal, a self-styled lothario and something of an alcoholic. He was the rightful king of a misplaced throne, destined to visit every corner of the ancient world while leaving naught but ruin in his wake. His name was Vengar, and despite a secret talent for interpretive dance, he was a barbarian.
At this precise moment, he was chained to a wall. Consciousness stirred within him and his muscle-bound eyelids audibly creaked open, revealing a torchlit dungeon with a sandy floor. Were there more light, he would have seen many decades worth of bloodstains and skeletons, but there wasn’t and so he didn’t.
“Not again,” Vengar uttered in a voice too low for even an elephant to hear. This was, by his reckoning, the eleventh time he’d woken up chained to a wall in a dungeon, though he didn’t put much faith in his reckoning and admitted that the count could be much higher. During his misspent youth, he regularly woke up chained to walls, tied to caravans, or rowing great longships, and the frequency with which he found himself in such captivity only increased with the dawning of the Hyperbolic Age. Where a wiser man might have courted caution, mighty Vengar learned only that his stone fists could reliably extricate him from damned near any predicament.
Thus, he did not struggle against his bondage nor shout obscenities at the unseen guards. He simply relaxed and waited, hoping that he’d not been chained up as breakfast for some unspeakably savage beast.
And in due time, his patience was rewarded. He heard the telltale jingling of keys, shuffling of boots, and the mindless chatter of overpaid buffoons.
“But I was thinking,” one buffoon yammered, “that if two swords is good, then maybe I should have three.”
“I don’t get it,” the other said.
“Three swords,” the first reiterated. “Three. They’d call me Belric Three Sword, and sing songs of my glorious exploits.”
“But what would you do with the third sword?”
“Dalric, my lad… I’d kill people with it.”
“Oh. Ohhhh! That’s brilliant.”
Vengar spied the two silhouettes waddling through the flickering dark, their round and squishy frames hinting that a nightly feast was their chief exercise (and perhaps greatest adventure). No one would be singing any songs of their exploits, three-sworded or otherwise.
They approached. “Oi, prisoner,” the one named Belric said. “It’s your turn upstairs. Don’t make no problems, and I won’t be forced to give you the shiv.” He patted the knife on his belt to punctuate his idle threat.
Vengar twisted his lip and stared hatred at the husky guards, who both staggered back from the psychological impact.
“I don’t like the looks of this one,” Dalric said in a quaking voice. “Mayhaps we should just stick him ‘tween the ribs and move on to the next.”
Belric shook his flabby head. “Naw. Lord Jerxes paid a dozen fighting camels for this hulking behemoth. We’ll be in a world of hurt if he doesn’t make it to the arena.”
Vengar’s emerald eyes lit up. An arena! He was sure he had a date with an executioner (or something even worse), but truth be told, he quite liked arenas. He might have even volunteered had he known.
“I will come peacefully,” he said, and made a placating gesture with his hands that loudly rattled his manacles.
“See,” Belric said with a satisfied grin, “nothing at all to worry about.” He lifted his giant keyring, sorted through the keys, then crouched down and released the master chain. Before he could take hold of it, though, Vengar lurched free of the wall and smote the top of his head.
Belric slammed face-first into the dirt and his corpulent body went limp.
“You smote him!” Dalric shouted in shock and awe. He clumsily fumbled for his sword and added, “You lying scoundrel!”
While his fat fingers failed to free his blade, Vengar stepped forward and knocked the last bit of sense out of his head. The titanic blow sent Dalric rolling several yards before finally coming to rest against a pile of dusty bones.
The barbarian grinned and cracked his knuckles. “And now you too have been smitten,” he said, flashily flexing his verb conjugations.
It only took him a few precious moments to find the appropriate key and release the rest of his bonds, after which he snatched up Belric’s dull blade and then retraced the guards’ route out of the dungeon. Along the way, he saw the many other prisoners also chained to walls, dressed like himself in simple loin-cloths that revealed their chiseled abs and prodigious pectorals. They were each fine specimens of masculine might, but none could match the sheer monstrosity of Vengar’s nigh-superhuman stature.
Just when he thought he might get lost in those shadowed catacombs, the barbaric brute heard a sound like endlessly crashing waves. It was the applause of several thousand spectators, whooping and clapping in praise of some vulgar display, and this came as music to his ears. He climbed a flight of stairs and could feel his spirit lifting up and up.
The tunnel grew brighter, and when Vengar turned one last corner, he could see the blinding light of day at its end. His stride became more swaggerful, he allowed his broad shoulders to sway back and forth, and his thick lips twisted into the most devilish of grins.
A scrawny page waited by the exit, eyes wide with surprise at the sight of a prisoner unaccompanied by guards. “Ummm… Hello?” he said. “You must be the next contestant.”
Vengar growled. It was (one might fairly guess) a growl of agreement.
“What… errr… What’s your name… so… so I can announce you?”
“My name is Vengar,” Vengar said, in a voice like a bubbling volcano. “Slayer of sorcerers… flayer of fools. I am the wandering king of a forgotten throne… a wayward soldier without a home… the butcher of Tensara and plunderer of Polokia. I. Am. Catachlysm. Made. Flesh.”
“Vengar,” the page said. “Got it.” Then he scurried off into the light.
The crowd grew quiet and Vengar heard the page’s squeaky voice rise up. “Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to present… ummm… Vengar… the barbarian!”
Vengar sighed, momentarily massaged his temples, then marched out into the field of combat. As his eyes adjusted to the sunlight, his sandaled feet crunched in the dirt and grit, and he navigated around still-quivering piles of mostly human gore. Here a hand. There a knee. Severed ears and noses littered the ground like peanut shells on a popular tavern’s floor.
Vengar raised up his thickly muscled arms and bellowed with such intensity that inland seas might retreat at the sound of it, and in response… the audience offered a collective “meh.”
“You dare meh me, you gormless curs?” Vengar shouted.
And the crowd mehed again.
His myriad muscles rippled under the weight of such indignity and his neolithic brow grew tight, but before he could fully devolve into pure animalistic rage, a friendly hand slapped his boulderish shoulder. “Think nothing of it,” a plucky voice said.
Vengar turned and regarded the voice’s owner, a small but powerful looking fellow with a jaw like a treasure chest. Superficial nicks and scratches decorated his compact frame, as did numerous splashes of other people’s blood.
“You see,” the small man said while pointing toward another gladiator some dozen yards away, “their hearts already belong to him — Dramaticus, prince of the arena.”
“But,” Vengar said incredulously, “he’s so… dainty.”
“Lithe,” the squat gladiator replied, “but nonetheless deadly.”
The lean and flexible Dramaticus stood at ease unbefitting the arena, and he looked out across the packed stands with eyes of piercing blue. He rested an all-too-fine sword over his shoulder, where the waves of his flaxen hair lightly brushed its mirrored surface. On his mouth rested a tender smile, rich with charm and self-satisfaction.
Vengar immediately hated him.
“I hate him,” Vengar said sullenly. “If you’ll pardon me, I’m going to go over there and chop his head off.”
“Whoa there, Vengar. That’s against the rules.”
Vengar stopped mid-stride. “Come again?”
“We are all of us the battle thralls of Lord Jerxes. We stand together and fight whatever horrors the pitmasters set upon us, but never each other.”
Puzzlement overtook Vengar’s face, as if we were attempting basic arithmetic. “I don’t…” he stammered. He scratched his head. “But then…” His lip curled as though he smelled a month old fish. “How does any of this work?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, this isn’t my first arena. Usually, I fight legions of other men until I win back my freedom, then have lunch.”
“Oh,” the gladiator replied. “Yeah, this is a little different. Here, it’s all about currying the audience’s favor. Win their hearts, and they may grant you your freedom. But it’ll never happen.”
“Why the hells not?”
The other man pointed toward Dramaticus again. “Because they love him most of all, and he’ll never leave. He’s a creature of this arena… the son of two gladiators, born right over there in the dirt and gore, and he’s never known another life.”
Vengar sighed. “Tell me, what cursed city is this?”
“Farzia,” the short gladiator said.
“And what’s your name?”
“I’m Boxur of Spulch.”
Vengar clasped his shoulder. “I hereby charge you with this sacred duty, Boxur of Spulch: when all is said and done here, remind me to burn Farzia to the ground.”
“It would be my pleasure, Vengar.”
As soon as Boxur had finished speaking, a chorus of horns blew a warbling tone like a pod of sexually frustrated whales. Vengar located the hornsmen in a box above the ring, their numbers flanking a thin and dusky blade of a man dressed in the finest of purple finery. This was doubtlessly Lord Jerxes, sovereign king of Farzia, and Vengar made a mental note for later murder-related purposes.
Then there arose the clatter of armor and rumble of boots, as a hundred fresh troops rushed into the arena from every direction.
“Make ready!” Boxur shouted.
Vengar glanced about at the other gladiators and took stock of them. Boxur stood beside him holding a great axe in his stubby arms, and his jaw was so tight Vengar worried it might crack in half. Further on, Dramaticus raised his fancy sword and held the tip out, almost like a dancer beckoning a new partner. And of the other half-dozen or so gladiators, none were interesting enough to mention.
Vengar looked down at the rusty sword in his hand then up to the charging horde of doomed soldiers, their eyes overflowing with a potent cocktail of bestial fury and absolute terror. Not content to wait for his prey, he charged headlong into the fray.
The fray was not at all prepared for him.
The vicious barbarian tore into his foes like a windmill blade broken loose by hurricane winds and sent tumbling through a field of daisies. His dull sword chewed through armor, flesh, and bone, while his empty hand took hold of men and flung them end over end like ragdolls. On and on, he swung and slashed and punched and gripped and threw, threshing the hopeless fools like so much wheat, leaving only a smear of charnel chaff at his feet.
When the last nearby enemy fell to pieces, Vengar’s terrible wrath petered out and his massive rib cage heaved from the exertion. He thrust his shoddy sword into the air expecting the cheers of his ten-thousand new admirers, but only their indifference greeted him.
He lowered his sword and thrust it up again, but still there was no response.
“What in the hell of Paternus, the home filled with a hundred unimpressed fathers?”
He turned wearily and looked to the other gladiators, who together had killed less than half as many troops as he had, yet were eliciting a fully unreal volume of applause. Then he saw the truth and it turned his stomach inside out…
Boxur chopped a hapless soldier’s throat, who dutifully slumped over dead, after which the squat gladiator stopped to perform some kind of dance that involved rhythmically stamping his feet on the ground. He finished his lively step with a flourish before moving on to the next target, while his fans laughed and screamed in joy.
Further on, Dramaticus danced and pranced elegantly like a beautiful and murderous swan. Each step, pirouette and stab flowed into the next, interrupted here and there by a series of claps or a fanciful pose. In response, the entire crowd went positively insane; men screamed and doused themselves in their tankards of ale, while women stripped off their robes and hurled them down into the ring.
“This is deeply wrong,” Vengar muttered to himself. “So very deeply wrong.”
For just a sliver of an instant, he entertained the idea of unleashing his skills in interpretive dance… but NO! He had too much respect for bloody spectacle to ever sully it with such levity. So instead, he took a seat amid the dismembered bodies of his fallen foes and watched the others make a mockery of everything he held dear.
It took the others a half-hour to finish their flamboyant work, cheered on all the while by Farzia’s demented denizens. Vengar watched as their performances became ever more elaborate—Boxur would stamp and tap for nearly a minute after every kill, while Dramaticus began to flip in the air, roll on the ground, and occasionally slow dance with the corpses—all to keep the crowd simmering at a fever pitch.
And when it was done, Vengar stood up, dusted himself off, and strolled back to rejoin the group. He patted Boxur on the head as he passed by, shook some nameless gladiator’s hand, and then came to Dramaticus, who was once again at ease with his sword resting on his well-oiled shoulder.
“That is SOME SHOW you put on,” Vengar said.
Dramaticus flashed his most charming smile, his perfectly white teeth glinting in the midday sun. “Why thank you, kind neophyte. I’m sure in time, you too will…”
In one lightning-fast swing, Vengar separated Dramaticus’ head from his neck while several thousand gasps sounded in unison. That head, complete with its handsome face and feathery golden locks, arced up into the air wearing an expression of perfect surprise. It seemed to hang there for a second as if the audience’s silence somehow held it aloft before finally plummeting back to the dirt where it bounced, rolled, and came to a stop.
“What have you done?” Boxur shouted in horror.
“Improved my mood,” Vengar answered. “Immeasurably.”
A lone voice began to boo, and soon others were booing, too. “Boo!” they lowed like agitated cattle. “Booooooooo!”
“Now they’ll never love us!” Boxur blurted in an apoplectic fit. “They’ll never set us free!”
But Vengar didn’t care. As rotten fruit started to pelt him from every direction, he was overcome with a feeling of deep satisfaction, and he wore a cocky smile worthy of the late, great Dramaticus himself. The crowd might never love him, but at least they’d never again ignore him... and for Vengar, that was enough.
Well… that, and burning Farzia to the ground, but such is a story for another day.
The end.