I touched my tentacle tip to Sharrock’s throat; no pulse.
I lifted his body up with one tentacle and put it in my mouth. And I breathed in through my spiracles, and out through my mouth; in; out; in; out; filtering the air so that all that remained in my mouth cavity was pure oxygen.
Then I spat Sharrock out gently. His body twitched; his blood was oxygen-rich now. His heart had started beating.
“Can you heal his body?” I said to Fray, and Fray grunted an affirmative, and stood up on her huge back legs; and began to piss upon Sharrock’s bloodied body. Fray drank every day from the well of the water of life, and her piss was running clear; so I knew this was the best way to heal Sharrock.
And after a few moment’s stupefaction, he realised that that Fray was pissing on him.
And Sharrock groaned, and sat up, and tried to dodge the torrent of healing urine; but in his confused state, he turned the wrong way, and his eyes and nostrils and mouth took the brunt of the cascade of hot, steaming Fray-piss.
“No need to thank me,” said Fray, in her kindest tones.
It took Sharrock two days to recover sufficiently to speak. When he did, though blind and scarred, he was unrepentant.
“You fought the Kindred?” I asked.
“Indeed, I fought those wretched, cowardly, viler-than-a-Southern-Tribesman Kindred,” he said, proudly.
“And lost?”
“I concede that I lost,” said Sharrock proudly, “yet I was not defeated. For Sharrock will never ever EVER be defeated!”
I sighed, from my tentacle tips. “Did you learn nothing,” I said acidly. “From your experience with the arboreals?”
“Yes,” said Sharrock. “I learned that monkeys shit a lot when they’re up trees; you really have to keep your wits about you.”
“You learned that revenge is futile!” I roared. “That was the lesson. That was why-”
“My people,” said Sharrock, “are in captivity. It’s up to me to save them.”
“Even if they don’t want to be saved?” I asked him, nastily.
“Even then,” said Sharrock proudly; and his nobility, and his courage, revolted me.
“Come,” said Lirilla, and this time I found Sharrock in the desert; stripped naked and baking in the sun. The Kindred had cut off his ears and his eyelids, and carved strange inscriptions on his bare flesh from head to toe. His red skin was burned and blistered by the sun’s rays; and he was parched, and croaking.
And his eyes, so recently healed, were now blinded once more by the sun’s rays; yet even so, there was about him a look of triumph.
“Come,” said Lirilla, and once more I came.
I found Sharrock this time in the encampment of the Kindred. His body was broken and bloodied; his teeth had been smashed out; he had lost one eye (those poor eyes!). And I began to seriously wonder if his body could continue to regenerate after these tremendous beatings; it was taking him longer and longer to return to his full warrior strength after each appalling defeat.
But today, I realised, he was surrounded by scores of kneeling Kindred; who were offering him obeisance.
I looked around. The slaves were no longer in shackles. They were free.
And Gilgara, the giant Kindred Chieftain, was on the ground; blood flowed from a terrible cut in his head; and no one paid him any heed. There was a slow thundering noise; a clapping; the Kindred were saluting Sharrock’s triumph in what had evidently been a long, and bloody, and brutal unarmed combat between Sharrock and Gilgara, the leader of the Kindred.
“What has happened here?” I asked, amazed.
“I am now,” said Sharrock proudly, “King of the Kindred.”
“It was a hard fought battle,” bragged Sharrock.
“It was indeed, sire,” said Gilgara, the former Kindred leader, who was now, despite his appalling injuries which made it so hard for him to walk, Sharrock’s loyal second in command.
“Picture the scene,” said Sharrock dramatically, “there was I! I was-”
“I do not,” I said dryly, “wish to picture the scene. Big fight; lots of blood; you won.”
“I bested the Kindred leader in single combat!”
“And why does that qualify you to be the leader?” I said angrily.
Sharrock was flummoxed. “It proves I am the mightiest-”
“It proves you are the best at hurting! That’s all. The best at brawling with a stick or sword or with bare fists. Does that make you a leader?” I was so enraged, my cape became erect and my body inflated.
“Yes,” said Sharrock. “And next, I shall unify the tribes. There are bipeds like myself living at the foot of the Further Mountains who do not acknowledge Gilgara’s authority, but rather serve the tribes of renegade and nomadic Kindred. I will go and fight these nomad giants and make them honour my leadership, and then free those slaves too.”
“You would do that?”
“I must,” said Sharrock.
I had nothing more to say to him.
By now, I was nursing a terrible rage. I had helped this creature, comforted him when he was vulnerable; and now he was aiming to become a dictator.
But what could I do to stop him? The answer was: nothing! Unless of course I was willing to challenge him to a battle, and fight and defeat him. For then he would be compelled to bend to my will.
And this of course, I could do easily; so easily it was laughable. For all his warrior pride, Sharrock was utterly puny and minuscule compared to me. I could defeat him with a single blow, or swallow him like an insect, or crush him and smash him under my feet whilst barely noticing he was there.
But I would never be willing to fight Sharrock. For I was fond of him. I thought of him as a friend. And I could not bear to hurt him.
And, too, I was fearful that in the heat of battle, I might end up hurting Sharrock so severely that he could not heal, and he would end up crippled or even dead. For violence is a madness; once you allow it to possess you, it is not easy to return to the ways of sanity.
And this was why I had, so many years ago, forsworn violence. After my two ghastly combats with Carulha, I had resolved never again to use brute force to achieve my goals.
I had been a monster twice; I would not be so a third time.
Sharrock
Fifty Kindred maidens came to me in the night, longing to possess my body; despite their giant size, they were beauteous indeed. But I sent them all away.
Ten warriors challenged me the next day, before I had broke my fast, and I declined them all. One of them sent a sly arrow aimed at my head and I was only just swift enough to snatch it from the air and smash his skull.
I was, in truth, not much enjoying my life as King of the Kindred. I had many responsibilities; underlings constantly pestered me for decisions about matters of which I knew nothing, and cared less; and all in all, I never had a moment to myself. I felt as if I had inadvertently adopted a country full of needy children. And I yearned for my days as a nomad with a loyal wife and a small family, who would happily fend for themselves whilst I went off adventuring.
Sai-ias was avoiding me now, I knew, and I regretted that sorely. For I had come to enjoy her company, despite her ghastly appearance and her vexing habit of sighing through her tentacles to betoken annoyance at me. And I did furthermore comprehend her unease; she feared no doubt I was becoming a dictator. Ha! No thought was further from my mind! Power for me was like sobriety for a Southern Tribesman; a state of being to be temporarily, and only briefly, endured.
I also saw the power of Sai-ias’s argument about the need for us to avoid violence whilst upon this already-violent world. For if we kept fighting with each other, how could we ever hope to fight and vanquish the Ka’un?
And yet I had been impelled to act. And as a result of my actions, there were no more slaves in my Kingdom. All the bipeds were now free.
Free? Whilst the Ka’un kept us confined in this unnatural habitat?
Yes, that irony did indeed trouble me. But I had done all I could.