“You lolled by fountain and golden hall

Until that frenzied morn;

When we burst the gates and breached the wall

And cut you down like corn.”

-Verse 7

CIVILIZATION:

Her eyes glowed amber, her skin golden as the lusty sun. She lay next to him on downy-silked cushions along the Fountain edge—the morose faces of his Uncles Minor: Fierce Leopard, Tiger drunk and frothing for fight, and Old Uncle Lion, saying little and thinking less, having given up chariot and sword to his son, now scouring the marshland for the Wolfmen. The damned priest was gone away from this fountain, so pleasant without his reminding the drinker of the God’s portion indicated by the mechanical “leaping” of the golden dolphin in its brass-bellied pool.

She kissed him, “My Master, I will tell of their plan.”

She smiled at him and raised her eye brows to the men, all of whom hungered for her brassy form, dressed in nothing but a string of pearls.

‘It is War we speak of, Old Bull tramping the marsh dens—so I should stand, though it wearies one so…’

Grunting, sounding older than his years, paunchy Bell regarding his uncles, one drunk, one dull, one cruel, motioned to his consort, “She was ill-treated, sister of a deposed chief.”

She—whatever her name was—he had only been using her for three days, rose in one languid motion and pointed, with an oddly accurate sense of direction for a huttish princess reduced to a pleasure slave, “Upriver, Lords, the Wolves who cast me out have an eye on the bridge and custom house on the Road to Iss.”

Uncle Leopard took charge, directing Lion, “Hold the walls. Tiger—to the Bridge.”

Turning to look at Bell, Uncle Leopard, frantic with eager light, approached with a fatherly hand on his back, and pointed to her ankles and snarled, “Do not play me wrong, Hutty—I have the gates My King.”

Her eyes blazed with defiance, but her body and mouth affected a demure pose—he had to have her, the first manly notion of his thirty years!

“Out, all of you!” for once sounding the King.

The courtiers, eunuchs, acolyte spies, the counts even, vanished, and she, yes She—SHE wilted to her knees. He took her head in his hands and waited for the four doors to close. SHE slid up his body and wrapped her legs around his legs, in a wrestling way, wound her arms, stronger than his, about his, causing him to wonder, and in an instant wonder no more, as his soft, throat the pallor of ivory, was enclosed within the ravenous teeth of this wicked, huttish whore!

BARBARISM—

“That fool Bull is beating the rushes for his singing bird!” snarled Rainier, Count of the Leopard Clan, First Chariot of Ar, as he prowled towards the lightly defended Bull Gate. “That is where the stroke will fall, Buck—mark my words!” he seethed over his shoulder to his groom—a good boy he had named Buck; a runner and ass-wrangler of strong spirit.

A fat woman bumped him while hustling a clutch of gutter waifs—“How does a poor person get fat in Ar!” He kicked the last one across the street to help it along, picking up his pace to the double, not liking the ringing of bells on the walls, all around, the sound of general assault.

“Buck, take note of this fumbling mess, this scene that would not have breathed into life if the Leopard Paw were foremost in Ar.”

“Yes, Lord, I am attentive to your words.”

“Good boy, Buck,” he gasped as he jogged along, unused to footman’s duty, master of the ass-cart he was. Behind them, in the city center, rang the Bell above the God’s Golden Bowl.

“Damn,” he growled, and our “King is already done his tryst and joining the general herd in the panic!”

A mob of elderly and toddler poor, worn out or not yet bred up to good purpose, rushed towards him in a panic from the open gate ahead. His chariot was there, he saw, as he hip-tossed a crone and trampled an orphan. Blackenstand and his troop were battling behind their chariots, before the Bull Gate—“Shit Rain, Piss Flood!” he bellowed as he ran flat out, Buck keeping by his side, bearing his shield and spear more easily than his lord bore his scabbarded sickle sword.

His eyes were not so keen as they once were, unable to sort the chaos at the gate a mere spear cast away. “Good boy, Buck, are those Wolves, Forest Hutters or Fish Whelps, crowding Blackenstand at the gate?”

“All, and more, Lord; for the toilers of the field are there too, swinging their shackles, falling on spears.”

These words, reflecting bright, trusted eyes, spurred him on to the inner gate. Blackenstand fell, dragged down by toils, a mob of savages mixed with ditchers and haulers surging about the few swordsmen.

His heart pounded heavy in his chest as he caught at his elusive breath. A long, lean Wolfman stalked near, and, thank God, as the last of Blackenstand’s troop was gutted, Rainier found his voice, “So the Wolf affronts the Leopard in his den!”

The man, aged prime, with an Ar cheek brand, merely glowered under scowling brows, grounding spear, dropping shield, and drawing a Bullguard sword.

“What think you, Good Buck?”

There was a pause, and in a touch of weakness, he slid his eyes towards the Son of is Heart, as the others died at their gates. Buck smiled, slid his Master’s shield onto his left arm, patted him encouragingly on the back of his arming vest, and whispered, “When uncles duel, a nephew stands aside.”

Realizing Good Buck had brought that slut tigress into their fold, he felt the Hand of Fate upon his nape—his soul buoyed by the honor that he alone faced many, that his shade would haunt their memory.