PodCastle 438: Defy The Grey Kings - a podcast by Escape Artists, Inc

* Author : Jason Fischer

* Narrator : Wilson Fowlie

* Host : Graeme Dunlop

* Audio Producer : Peter Wood

*

Discuss on Forums







First appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies #180.





Rated R, for frequent and bloody violence.





Defy The Grey Kings

by Jason Fischer

There are many ways to kill an elephant. When that mountain bears down on you, shaking the earth and screaming for your blood, show no fear.

Only without fear will you see the truth. They are quick, even draped in chain and iron, but you are quicker by a whisker. They fight like devils, but it only takes three people who know what they are doing to bring an elephant down.

They are afraid of you.

All elephants can die.





I bring you two things today. Iron, sharp and true, and a story. If you don’t gain the truth of things from this, you would best drive these blades into your own hearts.

I have slain many enemies, both grey and pale. I’ve learnt things in that awful quiet, the moments of pain and sorrow after the fury, where men like me pass over the dead and dying. The road that brought me here is slick with blood, and if you do not listen to me carefully, your own deadly road will wash you away.



I was born a slave, like all of you. My master was a hoary old bull known as Ascaro, one of the Bull-King’s champions. Twenty feet high at the shoulders, and even past his prime he was a quick devil, though old muscles were turning into fat.

Where other elephants cover themselves in tattoos and silk and let the scriveners carve boasts upon their tusks, Ascaro only ever wore his scars. The end of his right tusk was shattered from an enemy axe, and a lucky blow had taken his left eye long before I ever drew breath.

I spent many hours scouring his hide with brushes and bronze scrapers, and I knew that grey map of his battles well. He drank melon wine during his mud baths, and when his one eye turned red and crazed, he played his favourite game with the house slaves. Without warning, his trunk would flick backwards, and those of us cleaning his back would have to dodge his drunken fumblings and try not to slip and fall. The first slave to fall into the mud bath was the one that he would kill that day. He would pin them down with his foot, exerting just enough pressure to hold them under the mud.

I would stand on that heaving back with perfect balance, and not once did I cease my endless scrubbing, staring only at my broom as someone else drowned in the mud.

His lieutenants and lackeys would cheer him on while he murdered a human being for no reason. Even the house poet would stop plucking the bouzouki with his trunk and join in the laughter. Just before the bubbles finally stopped, Ascaro would step down hard, crunching bones. He would pluck each corpse out of the mud, tossing it across his great hall. Each body fell with a meaty smack, arms and legs a muddy broken tangle. The elephants would roar and laugh at the sight, each of them screeching that horrible deep-throated rasp that every man loathes.

I survived the bath game longer than any of the other slaves in the house of Ascaro, and only then did my master look upon me with value. He took the broom from my hands and gave me to a man named Mouse.

“This one dances well,” Ascaro told Mouse. “Teach him to dance with a knife.”



Mouse was a hulk of a man, almost as scarred and grizzled as our master.

Further episodes of PodCastle

Further podcasts by Escape Artists, Inc

Website of Escape Artists, Inc