“That’s incredibly rude, not to mention speciesist,” snapped Gunther, shooting Benji a glare.
“Royal privilege by proxy, I can say what I want,” Benji shot back, feeling only slightly hypocritical about it. He turned his attention back to Lars. “You’ll do fine. Just make it up as you go along. You look the part, and that’s what matters!”
He did look the part, too, when he was trying. In those brief moments, Benji could have sworn that Lars was a terrible upper-class noble who deserved to be deposed for crushing the common folk under his bootheel while laughing at their fate and profiting from their misery. Except the facade didn’t hold for more than a few minutes in a row before Lars suddenly seemed to remember where he was and the enormity of what he was doing, and then he suddenly looked like a panicked puppy who’d just peed on the floor.
“And we’re not leaving you yet,” Calarian added.
“You’re not?” Lars said, relief clearly written across his handsome features.
“We’re not?” Benji echoed. They’d helped out for a whole day, and really, that was more than enough ruling in his book.
“No, because we haven’t completed the quest,” Calarian said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Mountain trolls, remember?”
Oh. Damn. Benji kept forgetting those.
“Fine. We’ll stay and help with the trolls,” Benji said, “but for now, Calarian and I are going to go and fuck. I’ve changed my mind about the alchemist, though. I feel like a horizontal oarsman.”
“Ooh yes, we haven’t done that for a while,” Calarian said eagerly. “Do you want to be the rower or the paddle?”
“Rower,” Benji smirked. He and Calarian fist bumped, and then he took Calarian’s hand and led him from the hall and up to their chambers. Well, Calarian’s chambers. Benji had been shown to rooms of his own, but he’d just shrugged and dumped his knapsack in Calarian’s chambers. What was the point of having separate rooms when they’d be spending every night in the same bed anyway?
The decor was all pale paint and golden pine furniture, with exposed beams and truly awful curtains covered with cabbage roses. The floor was littered with cowhide rugs, and there was a fireplace against the far wall with a stag’s head mounted over it. The soulless glass eyes were distinctly judgemental, and Benji resolved to cover it with a blanket later.
The wallpaper was green and white pinstripes, and a white coverlet bearing a pattern of startlingly yellow crocuses covered the enormous four poster bed that took up half the room. It was a strange combination of cheerful and hideous, and Benji couldn’t decide if he was charmed or disturbed by it. The bed itself appeared exceptionally comfortable and definitely sturdy, and Benji had plans to test it. Vigorously and repeatedly.
The room also boasted a gorgeous set of bay windows with stained glass inserts along the top of the glass that cast colourful patterns on the walls. There was a magnificent view of the alps through the windows, which were apparently very different from mountains somehow, although Benji couldn’t say how and didn’t care enough to find out. The odd clank of a cowbell could be heard through the open windows, as well as the occasional distant strains of somebody yodelling, or possibly a cow in pain, Benji couldn’t actually distinguish between the two.
The stunning countryside was certainly restful to look at, but it wasn’t the view Benji was interested in right now. He shucked off his shirt hastily and made a hurry up gesture at Calarian, who'd stopped getting undressed for no good reason Benji could see. Calarian tilted his head and asked, “Do you really think Lars will be alright ruling?”
Benji shimmied out of his trousers and dropped them on the floor. “I don’t care. We’re here to deal with trolls, not stupid humans and their stupid hierarchal systems of rulership, and I don’t see any trolls right now so stop talking, you’re killing the mood.”
Calarian snorted. “Am not. Nothing kills the mood for you. You were happy to feel me up on the tower with a dead duke right there.”
“Hmm. True.” Benji looked Calarian up and down, enjoying the broad shoulders, pale skin, and pretty cock on display. Calarian really was stupidly attractive—almost as attractive as he was. “Now come over here so I can lock my oar in.”
Calarian prowled across the room, pressed Benji against the wall and muttered, “Row my boat, Benji.”
Benji’s cock was taking a definite interest, and he was just imagining all the ways he could make Calarian go cross-eyed when they were interrupted by an enormous crash that shook the very walls of the castle, followed by a furious hammering on the door and a shout of “The trolls are attacking!”
Benji groaned when Calarian pulled back and scrambled to get dressed. “Do we really have to stop?”
“It’s a troll attack, Benji,” Calarian hissed with an arched eyebrow. “Get dressed. You can fuck me later.”
Benji put his clothes back on, but he grumbled under his breath the whole time. This was just unfair. Between dead dukes and stupid human problems and troll attacks, he wasn’t going to get any sort of dicking today, was he?
Chapter Three
The mountain troll was about fifteen feet tall, as broad as four men, and very, very dead. Calarian crouched on the ground some distance away from the outer wall, and studied the odd scene.
“It sure is a bad day to be the street sweeper in Tournel,” Benji said, his boots crunching on the dirt as he came to stand beside him. He stretched and then dropped his hand and began to play with Calarian’s hair.
Calarian pulled his head away. “Shh. I’m concentrating.”
Benji sighed loudly and stomped away again. Benji really only enjoyed two things, orgasms and revolution, and he got cranky when he was denied either of them.
Calarian studied the corpse of the mountain troll: it was large and leathery, a greyish colour like some sort of subterranean slug, if slugs were made entirely of muscle and bristly hair. It was wearing a loincloth, thankfully, and also a helmet of some kind. Unfortunately it had been wearing the helmet on its elbow for some reason, so it hadn’t done a thing to save its skull when it had crashed into the wall of the town. Mountain trolls weren’t very smart. They were honestly some kind of miracle of nature, because nothing that stupid had any business walking around upright and trying to breathe at the same time. But mountain trolls were stubborn as hell. They basically said “fuck you” to evolution the moment they were born, and kept living just to be arseholes about it. They were tenacious in the same way that mould was. Or genital warts.
Calarian pivoted slightly and looked over his shoulder. Dusk was creeping in, and the dark mountains loomed up behind him. He could see the path the mountain troll must have taken—being as stupid as they were, they tended to follow the path of least resistance, like water trickling down a slope. There was a hedgerow with a troll-shaped hole in it several hundred feet away, and furrows in the dirt road that led down from the nearest mountain, like something very big and heavy had dug its heels in trying not to trip and fall.
And yet, if this was a mountain troll attack, why wasn’t there a single weapon on the troll? Apart from the helmet and the loincloth, the thing was completely naked, defenceless apart from its sheer bulk.