Chapter 12
For days, Iris looked continuously over her shoulder, expecting Archon to come for her at any moment. But he did not. He seemed to have either lost her trail, or more likely, she thought, given what she knew of men, lost interest in her.
She tried not to think about it, or him. She tried to put the whole thing out of her mind and pretend that it never happened. She had a mission to carry out, and it seemed that her message was spreading.
At the next village, she did not arrive as she usually did, without anybody seeming to be the wiser. There was a crowd waiting at the village signpost, at least fifty men and women all eagerly staring at her as she came off the back of the hitch-wagon she had caught a ride with.
“Iris!”
A man who had to be the village mayor or chief, given the ludicrous hat he was wearing, called her name.
She looked around, then pointed at herself questioningly. “Are you talking to me?”
“You are Iris, daughter of the burned chief.”
“Yes. I am.”
“Everybody has gathered to hear you speak,” the mayor beamed. “We are honored to have you here.”
“They have? I mean, of course. They have.” She tried to sound serious, as though she expected people to be there, waiting to hear her speak. She had become something. She had become someone.
That thought made her extremely happy.
Preparations had been made. Usually she stood on a table in the pub, but in this village they had prepared a plinth in the middle of the village square so she could be seen from every angle by lookers on.
It did not take her long to take her place and begin the speech she had given so many times before.
“The king who lays claim to this planet is a tyrant. He claims the fruits of our toil, but provides us nothing in return!”
She was speaking with her cunt still aching from the king’s rogering, and she could not help but wonder if he had perhaps given her something after all. Iris knew how babies were made. She knew that a man’s seed flooded a woman’s womb and in there grew new life. What happened when an alien king fucked a human woman?
“I… uh…” she had distracted herself with the sudden terrifying thought.
“You were saying about the tyranny,” someone said helpfully.
“Oh right, yes, the tyranny. So…”
Chapter 13
“Why did you not take her? You found her. The hunt is over.”
Naxus was not pleased to see Archon without the human who had become quite a thorn in the general’s side. He had gone to the trouble of leaving his ridiculous palace and traveling to Archon’s mothership just to have a whinge about the whole situation.
“I wanted to hurt her a little. I wanted to show her that she was in my control, and that I could find her and punish her as I pleased.”
“And then you let her go? What was that supposed to show her?
“I don’t need you to question me, Naxus. You are in dire danger of having your forked tongue torn out if you continue to undermine me in my actions.”
“Are you threatening me because none of your previous advisors had the stones to tell you when you are behaving in a thoroughly self indulgent manner?”
Archon glared at Naxus for a long moment, a litany of possible punishments flitting through his mind like the battering wings of a moth attempting to destroy itself on a particularly attractive flame.
“You will treat me with respect. You will not…”
Naxus smirked.
That facial expression was his last mistake. Archon’s fist closed, and he drove it into the general’s jaw with a swift punch of what he considered to be justice. Naxus staggered backward, a hand going to his face, the other hand making a fist in kind.
“You would strike a… mph!”
The last part of the sentence was the part where Naxus punched Archon right in his teeth, a blow which caused the general’s own fist to start bleeding.
It had been a very long time since anybody had punched Archon in the face. Kings were usually immune from such dental events. For a moment, he was too stunned to make any kind of retaliatory action.
In that moment, Naxus’ life passed before his eyes, his expression taking on all the hallmarks of horror as the realization of what he had just done sank into his brain. Action had preceded thought when he punched his king, and now he was certain that death was going to follow.
He was, therefore, very much surprised when the king laughed, a genuine, deep belly laugh which emerged as he wiped the blood from his royal nose.
“You’re a wild one, aren’t you, Naxus.”
“Not accustomed to taking blows and not returning them, my liege.”
“At any rate, the disagreement is not a major one. It is not as if she will be difficult to find now we know her name and parentage. A simple scan of the planet should reveal the location of her genetic cluster if it becomes an issue.”