The Alien King’s Prey (Royal Aliens 1)

“Have an ale, lassie. You’ve earned it. Bringing the word of the king’s atrocities,” the barkeep said. “We’ve lived too long under the rule of some sky man who allegedly flies about the place… have any of us ever seen this king who rules us?”

“I have,” Iris said. “I saw him when I saw everything else.”

“And what does he look like?”

“Like a man crossed with a dragon.” The words escaped her mouth before she really had a chance to think about them. They were blurted and burbled, escaping because she didn’t want to keep them inside. She wanted to tell everybody in the inn. The real story. Not the one with an octopus which was developing in the far corner.

She stood up on the nearest table and banged two mugs for attention.

“My village was burned,” she declared, those words making the inn fall remarkably silent incredibly quickly.

“I’m not giving another coin to one of those sob stories! Sounds like horse shite to me!”

“Shut it, Graxnar!” The barkeep shouted. He was a big, barrel chested bear of a man, and he ruled over the bar as a private fiefdom. Graxnar and all his woodcutting mates fell silent when he told them to, because there wasn’t another place in walking distance where they could get cold ale and good meat.

“Our village refused to give up our grain! We almost starved last winter, and we decided not to pay the grain tax this year. The king is not of this world, or any world close to us. We have never seen him, nor has any other person on this planet, that we know of.”

“YOU HAVE TO PAY YOUR TAXES! WE ALL HAVE TO PAY OUR TAXES!” Someone shouted at her. “RULES IS RULES!”

“For what? We starve so some distant king can live?” Iris flung her arms the same way the chief of the tribe had flung his when he first told them that they would no longer be paying the grain tax. “We did not owe any king any allegiance. So we didn’t pay. And he came. He came on wings of fire with furious retribution spewing from monstrous mouths.”

She was really beginning to hit her stride now. The words were flowing through her, taking her with them. She wasn’t saying what she wanted to say. She was saying what had to be said. The truth was using her as its emissary, and so her voice was strong, perhaps even strident.

“That king, the king we have never laid eyes on before displayed himself to us with vengeful cruelty. He laid waste to our homes. He destroyed every heirloom, every bit of clothing, every precious person. He murdered every soul in his path, and he did it for nothing but grain. He did not need our grain, he has food to last millennia, he has the power of the stars at his fingertips. We needed our food to survive. We grew it through our own labor. We tilled the soil. We bled when we cut ourselves on sharp rocks. We plucked the grains, we threshed them, we stored them. Not for some distant king with birds of fire who unleashes his rages on the weak and the poor, but for our own bellies. And we were right to do so!” She punched the air with a slight fist, her eyes burning with righteous fury.

RAWWWWRR! YEEESS! DOWN WITH THE KING!

The crowd agreed with a general foaming cry. None of them had ever been particularly fond of paying taxes to the alien king, but it was something of a tradition they had been born into and come to respect for no reason other than they had been told that they respected it.

Now that they thought about it, alongside the horror of a destruction of a village, it seemed particularly unfair and rather pointless. The collectors always told them that their taxes paid for the roads, but most of the roads were nothing more than muddy tracks made by goats, enlarged by deer and then finally crashed through by the broad withered horses which did most of the work.

“NO MORE TAXES!”

“DOWN WITH THE KING!”

“Are you all forgetting about the part where he burned everybody alive?” A voice came out of the crowd, rather deep and sonorous, the sort of sound which carried without trying.

“MAYBE SOME TAXES!” The patrons amended their chant. They were not brave, or even particularly rebellious. They were simply swept up in the excitement of what felt like a new idea, a promise for change.

Iris’ father had always said that much of human history could be explained by the fact that humans, as a general rule, did not care what change was promised, as long as something was going to be different.

A pack of minstrels struck up a rousing tune to accompany the mood. “OH HO HO, THE KING BURNED A VILLAGE! SMOTE IT WITH HIS WILL-AGE! HE MADE BLOOD DO A SPILLAGE!”