Calarian shrugged, and turned his attention back to the path in front of them. “We build the path, make it a priority. We make sure everyone knows it’s to be kept clear, because there’s always some absolute moron who tries to set up a pretzel cart or a face painting stand as soon as there’s an empty space. We post a guard on the tower to warn us when the next troll is coming so we can clear the way, and then we wait.”
“We?” Gunther sneered. “Does this mean you’re running the duchy along with the duke now?”
“I was using the royal we—or rather, the noble we, not we-we,” Calarian clarified, and then snickered, because he’d just said weewee. He glanced over to see if Benji had heard, but Benji was ignoring him. Calarian deflated a little. Oh well. He consoled himself that he’d tell Benji later, after he’d double-blown him, and they’d laugh about it together.
Gunther glared at him, and Calarian straightened up and glared back, saying, “What I meant to say was, as the kings’ representative, I would suggest that Duke Lars build the path, keep it clear, and post a guard on the tower to watch for the next troll. Your Grace, what do you think?”
Lars nodded eagerly. “I concur. Gunther, arrange a council meeting, and we’ll draw up the plans. Calarian, are you coming?” His eyes were bright, eager, and Calarian looked around to see if Benji wanted to come too, but he’d disappeared somewhere, probably still sulking. With a shrug, Calarian followed Lars back to the castle.
Chapter Four
Benji stomped through Tournel, alternately glowering at everyone he passed, and nibbling at his gingerbread horse. He’d started out with a gingerbread man, a gingerbread cat, and a gingerbread horse, but he’d demolished the man and the cat before even leaving the bakery. He was trying to savour the horse by snapping the legs off and sucking them until they dissolved in his mouth, but he couldn’t help from shovelling the entire thing in his face by the time he reached the town square.
Benji hated humans, and he hated Tournel, and he especially hated how everyone said a cheery “Good morning!” to him when they saw him, but he loved gingerbread. For the past three days, gingerbread had been the only pleasure in his life, since most of the food here was for enthusiastic carnivores, and he wasn’t even getting laid, apart from a couple of admittedly spine-meltingly good back to back blowjobs the other night. But now, Calarian was too tied up in his plans to “save the town”, and apparently there was no room for even a quick slippery friar in those plans.
“Save the town,” Benji muttered, glaring at the town square. Frankly, he wanted to burn the whole place to the ground. Apart from the bakery, of course.
In the last three days Tournel had been transformed into a busy little anthill indeed. Men and women rushed back and forth on the impromptu earthworks outside the gate, curving and then levelling the road in their hopes that the next mountain troll would roll right down the track like a marble, and not bounce off the sides and knock down everything in its path. Inside the town, carts and stalls had been shifted off the street so that there was nothing in the way, and Benji had to grudgingly admit that there was now a relatively clear path, on a gentle downward slope, that cut through the heart of Tournel from the mountain-side gate on the east of the town, to what would hopefully be the exit-side gate on the west.
Lars and Calarian’s plan was audacious, and Benji would have admired it if he could have brought himself to give a flying fuck about the stupid humans of Tournel. (The gingerbread baker excepted. Benji would defend that man with his life.)
He wiped gingerbread crumbs off the front of his black shirt and glowered at the town square. And then he smirked and snorted, because Calarian was looking a little bit flustered as he stood and stared at one pretty major roadblock on his and Lars’s little mountain troll highway: the pond in the town square with the ugly fountain in the middle of it.
Lars hovered by Calarian looking serious and attentive, and Benji kind of wanted to go over there and push them both in the water. But he didn’t, because he was pointedly ignoring them, and if he pushed them in the pond then they’d know they were getting to him. He settled for glowering instead.
“Good morning!” chirped a golden-haired apple-cheeked little cherub of a child.
Benji glared at it for a moment, but it didn’t seem to take the hint. “Um,” he said. “Death to all kings.”
“Death to all kings,” the child parroted, dimples appearing as it beamed up at him.
Benji felt a little better, then. He peeled himself off the wall he was leaning against, tousled the tiny human’s golden curls, and decided to go back to the bakery and buy more gingerbread.
On his way there he was distracted by the crash of metal on metal and the wall of heat emanating from an open doorway. He stepped inside the doorway, squinting in the fiery glow inside, and his breath caught at the sight of the woman working at the forge.
Did he say woman? No, she was clearly some kind of alpine goddess. She was tall, with muscles that would make Lars look like a stripling. Her blonde hair was pulled back into a thick ponytail, but tendrils escaped and framed her red face. Her sleeves were rolled up, revealing swirling blue tattoos running up her forearms, and her biceps bulged. Her skirts were hitched up as well, and Lars caught a glimpse of a thigh that could crush a man’s skull—and he had a feeling that if she asked for volunteers they would all go willingly. Her skin glowed with sweat, and sparks flew as she slammed a hammer down onto whatever piece of metal she was currently trying to flatten into a pancake. Benji wasn’t sure she needed the hammer to be honest. She looked so fierce that she could probably have just yelled the metal into submission.
“Watch out, pretty boy,” the woman said as a shower of sparks flew in Benji’s direction.
Pretty boy? Benji had never been so simultaneously offended and turned on in his life. Clearly this woman was his previously undiscovered humiliation kink come to life. He hooked his thumbs into his studded belt and crooked an eyebrow at her. “Excuse me, human?”
“You really want to test how flammable you are, cutie pie?” the woman asked.
Benji wondered how much charcoal dust he’d absorbed into his pores after living in the Swamp of Death. He took a step back.
“Smart boy,” the blacksmith said.
Benji hated her. He also kind of wanted to lie naked on the floor so she could step on his balls and make him cry. It was very confusing. He lingered, glaring suspiciously, while the blacksmith finished what she was doing, finally immersing the glowing metal in a tub of water. The water hissed, and steam billowed throughout the workshop.
The blacksmith set the metal aside. “Now, what is it that you need, cutie?”
Benji narrowed his eyes at her. “I am not cute.”
The blacksmith folded her arms over her ample chest and laughed. “Whatever you say.”
Benji curled his lip and strutted forward. “Actually, I’m very interested in knives. For all my murdering.”
The blacksmith was unperturbed. Her mouth curved into a smile, and her blue eyes sparkled. “Is that so?”
“Yes,” Benji said. “I’m an anarchist. I want to burn the world down, and assassinate the ruling classes while I’m at it.”