The Ice Dragon King & The Slave-Queen

Chapter 12 - The White-Skinned Prisoner

It had been a month since King Einar had gotten married. He never imagined that he would be content with life as a husband, but here he was, sitting on the verandah, on his cushioned seat as he watched the birds drink from the small fountain. He smiled as his thoughts returned to his beautiful wife, still asleep in his bed. Many months ago, when he first found out that he was to be married in exchange for a world of peace, he had been skeptical. He always thought of himself as someone who couldn’t be tied down to one woman. He wasn’t a womanizer. He had just never experienced a real attachment to any one woman before — never something more than just sexüal gratification.

When his wife first confronted him about his past dalliances, he was ashamed. Truthfully, King Einar never imagined that he was going to marry a virgin. From the first time he had known how to use his c**k, he had never been with a virgin — and not for lack of trying. But on the night he found out that she was a virgin, the shock he first felt slowly turned to shame.

King Einar couldn’t deny that a small part of him was filled with pride that he was her first, but a large part of him was filled with anger and regret. He was angry at himself because, when he first found out through the reports from his ambassador that she was sexually experienced, he told himself that he didn't mind, that he knew everybody had the rights to satisfy their séxual needs. Yet, when he found out that she was a virgin, he was glad. At the same time, he regretted that he could not match her in that same sense, feeling like his past experiences had somehow made him tainted. Why he felt this way was beyond him. He was a man and men do these things, especially when they feel that rising need inside them. No one would fault him for this natural instinct. Yet as he lay awake next to his wife last night, after satisfying them both, he couldn’t deny that she was the pure one and he, well, his enemies knew better who he was.

Which brought his mind back to the prisoners he had kept in the secluded cave cells for the last couple of weeks.

“What is your name? Just tell me your name,” King Einar said to the dark-skinned prisoner. From the first time the king found out that the dark-skinned prisoner spoke in the Alkebulan language, he had only used that language with him, which none of his warriors understood. So, most of the time, the king would be left alone with the prisoner, speaking to him, questioning him, trying to extract information from him, but to no avail.

The dark-skinned prisoner sat quietly on the other side of the cell, his body skinnier now after weeks of scarce food and drink. King Einar had instructed his men to only feed the prisoner a piece of bread every three days with only one small cup of water to wash down the bread. He did this because he wanted the prisoner to suffer, but he did not want the man to die of hunger. He just wanted to use food as a way to make him talk. King Einar was silently grateful that the prisoner had eaten the food, almost worried that he would choose to die rather than be kept a prisoner in the cold, dank cell.

Even though King Einar had only withheld food and drinks for two weeks, it was evident that the dark-skinned prisoner's body size and weight had been reduced significantly. The only unchanged thing about him was that he was very tall, but it was apparent that his stomach was now slightly incurved and his eyes were hollow. The only thing that irked King Einar was that, even though he had been starved, the dark-skinned prisoner still would not talk, no matter how much the king tried to coax him every day.

“Why is it so hard for you to tell me your name, man? Just let me know your name and then we can then move on from this very long interlude. I can then ask you a more important question and we can both move on to something else,” King Einar sighed after a while, feeling quite bored that he would only end up talking to himself whenever he came to see the prisoner.

As King Einar sat on the floor outside the dark-skinned prisoner’s cell, his back against the cave wall, he stared at the prisoner, noting that the man’s eyes were kept downcast from the moment the king arrived up until that moment. King Einar didn’t want to kill the Alkebulan prisoner. He was not quite sure why he wouldn't kill or hurt the man physically, but his instinct was telling him that there was something more to the prisoner that met the eye. He felt like there were many things he could learn from the man.

The death of the fair-skinned prisoner came easily, however, one that King Einar did not feel any remorse for at all.

One day, King Einar was incredibly irked by the way the prisoner kept flicking his eyes back and forth at him, so he decided he would do his famous interrogation method. He dragged the fair-skinned prisoner named Tar’mach by his neck, pulled him all the way to the bay, shoved him into his boat, and rowed them both to his hidden ice cave. King Einar's heart was filled with fury the whole time he was with Tar’mach, his mind contemplating the best way to scare Tar’mach into submission and get as much information as he could from the prisoner before he kills him. King Einar would make sure to do all that — and more — before he would shove the prisoner into the ice-cold lake water and let his Draki have his way with the prisoner.

The white-skinned prisoner, Tar’mach, was stubborn too at first. He was worse than the Moor. All the way as King Einar rowed the boat to the ice cave, Tar’mach was adamant to sit as straight as he could in the boat, not caring that his head or his body would sometimes hit the rough cave wall or the mineral formations jutting out of the cave. Even after they arrived at the ice cave and after King Einar tied the boat’s rope to one of the larger flowstones on the cave floor, the prisoner behaved as if being in a cold ice cave with eyes covered was just another regular day for him. The only thing that King Einar relished seeing was when the sight of Draki, as the ice dragon’s head slowly got out of the water, his light blue eyes large and intimidating, made Tar’mach start to palpitate, his heavy breathing causing steam to come out of his mouth and nose. Not long after that, as Draki brought his head closer to Tar'mach, the white-skinned prisoner couldn't control his bladder and urine slowly trickled down his feet, unnoticed.

“What? What is that?!” He screamed in fear, in a language the king didn't understand, his voice echoing in the large ice cave.

King Einar didn't mind that the prisoner spoke in a language he didn't understand. The king had a feeling that the prisoner actually understood his language because his eyes often betrayed him.

“Let me introduce you to my friend,” King Einar said softly as he stood next to the prisoner, his voice dangerously low, his eyes sliding past Tar’mach as he walked to his ice dragon.

As King Einar stood a few feet away from his ice dragon, the king reached out his hand to Draki and Draki’s large head came closer to King Einar, his snout seeking King Einar’s hand energetically, asking for a pat on his scaly head. Yet the ice dragon’s friendly action made Tar’mach slip on the wet flowstone, making a loud slapping sound as he fell flat on his back, too consumed in fear to be discreet. Because of this, the ice dragon’s head swiveled toward the prisoner, curious, watchful. Tar’mach struggled to get as further away as he could from King Einar and his ice dragon, even though he knew in his heart that he had nowhere to go.

King Einar doesn’t usually use the help of Draki when it comes to interrogating his enemies. All his life he had only brought three men whom he believed with all his heart were his enemies, into the ice cave. He was young and reckless back then, and he knew that bringing enemies or prisoners to Draki was a surefire way to get what he wanted — truth. He knew that any normal person would fear for their life if they ever saw Draki. He was right. He managed to get even the tiniest bit of information out of the prisoners because of Draki.

Many years ago, when he brought the first two prisoners to Draki, shivering in the boat, their eyes darting left and right in fear, they knew they wouldn’t be able to leave the cave once Draki showed himself. The same thing happened to the third prisoner, the one whom King Einar believed was directly involved in the murder of his father. Yet even though the prisoners knew that they had nowhere to run once they were introduced to the ice dragon, they still spilled out every single piece of information that they kept secret to King Einar. In the end, the hunch he had about all those men was accurate.

It was from one of those men that King Einar found out that his father’s death was not natural. For years after, he was consumed with hatred and resentment. King Einar made it his goal in life to find his father’s murderers based on the three men’s information. He devoted five years of his early reign, saling with his warship, Skadi, and some of his fiercest warriors in tow, in search of his father's murderers. Alas, all of his efforts to search for the murderers were in vain. Instead of finding his father's murderers, King Einar ended up making a title for himself instead. A cruel title that was spread far and wide, known by many men across the sea and in many kingdoms.

In search of his father’s murderers, King Einar had made the mistake of letting his men run loose, allowing them to bring chaos, destruction, and fear wherever they went. These men had carried his banner and spoken of his name as they ran through one village after another with their axes, swords and spears. Some of them, unbeknownst to King Einar, had even r***d young women and other men's wives during those times. In the end, after so many years, he still didn’t find the people responsible for his father’s death, but he did leave painful marks in those villages, leaving blood and tears that didn't belong to him.

A few years later, when he first found out he was dubbed “The Destroyer and Bringer of Misfortune” on the same night his Skadi docked at the North Sea Port, he decided there and then that he should close that chapter of his life and work hard on becoming a good king for his people and kingdom instead. Not long after that, he returned to his lands and his kingship a changed man. He decided there and then that he would become the greatest Varangian king in history, a peaceful king like his father, and he would start doing it from home.

Still, when it came to the matter of extracting information, however, King Einar knew that it would be the same with the white-skinned prisoner Tar’mach as it had been with any other prisoners in the past. The only important part is to make Draki's presence known.

“What is your name?” King Einar asked the prisoner as Draki's head hovered quietly above him.

“Tar… Tar’mach,” the prisoner stuttered, his eyes darting from King Einar’s face to the large ice dragon behind him and back again.

“Ah.. So you do understand the Norse language?” King Einar raised his left eyebrow, looking amused.

The prisoner, Tar’mach, nodded. Tar'mach could not get up from the flowstone, his legs kicking the slippery stones in the hope he could move on to higher ground, away from Draki, but immobilized by fear, he just couldn’t make his legs move the way he wanted them to. The frigid temperature inside the ice cave had begun to numb his limbs even before Draki appeared. Nobody in the world could withstand the cold in the ice cave the way King Einar did.

“Who are you? I want you to elaborate in detail. I want to know everything,” King Einar said as he approached the prisoner.

Tar’mach looked up at King Einar but as the king approached, his eyes grew bigger until it looked like his eyeballs were going to fall out of their sockets. King Einar realized that Draki’s head and slithering body was following closely behind him, still curious about the prisoner. King Einar didn’t mind it, however. He liked the effect it had on the prisoner.

“Speak, man. Tell me your name. You better hurry. You have not much time left,” King Einar warned as he folded his arms in front of his chest and looked down at the frozen prisoner on the ground.

The man couldn’t look at King Einar anymore, so he closed his eyes. His body was shaking like a leaf — both from the cold and fear.

“My name is Tar’mach,” he whispered softly, visible steam coming out of his mouth.

King Einar waited for more information. He wouldn’t repeat himself twice.

The prisoner, Tar’mach, took a deep breath before continuing, “I come from a place in the far South, where the temperature is warmer than here and where the sun is much hotter. I come from an old khanate that was destroyed recently by a very powerful clan. The people who made it out alive are now dispersed all over the world. Most of us are trying to do whatever we can to survive. I managed to find my way to the free ports, working with a trader for food and lodging. It was only when I was indebted to him that I became a pirate.”

Tar’mach opened his mouth to say something else but King Einar cut him off immediately.

“You lie,” King Einar accused him plainly.

“No king, I do not lie. It is the truth, I swear,” Tar'mach said, and he opened his eyes. Tar'mach made the mistake of looking up because, this time, he lost control of his bowels entirely as Draki’s head moved closer to him. Draki's big head was only two feet away from Tar'mach's face before the beast stopped moving. He breathed in the air, making Tar'mach feel like he was about to suck the skin off Tar'mach's face, and then he bared his sharp black teeth at the prisoner, his instinct in tune with King Einar's emotions. Both King Einar and Draki did not trust the prisoner.

“Please, please, King! Please trust me! I am not lying! Please, please don’t let this beast kill me! Please,” Tar’mach cried, trying to scramble on all fours so that he could cling to the king’s leg, but afraid that a wrong move would make the ice dragon kill him. He burst into tears, sobbing, begging the king to trust him, swearing to every God he knew that he wasn't lying. He promised he would tell King Einar everything as long as the king would tell his beast not to eat him.

“Fine, I'll do this once for the Gods,” King Einar said, relishing the prisoner's fear, knowing that the truth was within his grasp. King Einar pushed Draki's snout a little to the side and said, “Tell me the detailed truth Tar’mach!” King Einar commanded once more, his voice gruff, his patience running low.

“Yes, yes. Forgive me, King. Forgive me,” Tar’mach repeated a few times. He tried to steal a glance at Draki, whose head was still only a few feet away from him, but he quickly closed his eyes, horrified.

“I am one of the Khazars, Your Grace. The Khazar is a race that came from the northern Caucasus region. My father and grandfather were part of the Khazarian khaganate, a very powerful trading empire that commanded the western marches of the Silk Road. I, however, was born after the fall of the Khazarian empire. My mother was a Byzantium woman whom I had never met but I was raised with some of the Khazar's values, after my father,” Tar’mach began.

“If that was the case, then your race is originally from somewhere in the southeast. Correct?” King Einar asked.

“Yes,” Tar'mach answered.

“How did you learn the Norse language? Have you been to any of the Varangian kingdoms before?” King Einar asked.

“No, I have never been to the Varangian kingdoms or met any Varangians before. But, I am fluent in nine languages, King. It is compulsory for me to learn these languages in order for me to survive,” he replied.

“If you said your kingdom had fallen, then how did your father and you manage to survive?” King Einar asked next.

“Our people assimilate into other races or religions. In order to stay alive, some of us converted to Judaism, some left for Constantinople. Some of us married into the Umayyad Caliphate or the Sassanid Empire. Some joined the Hungarians and some even followed the Rus’,” he stopped, his face scrunched up in disgust, “the same people who destroyed us.”

“What? The Rus’ destroyed your people’s empire?” King Einar asked, surprised.

King Einar was a descendant from the Kievan Rus’, a powerful khaganate where his great-grandfather came from. King Einar’s great-grandfather was a powerful man on his own, a warrior with a large number of followers, all of whom were warriors as well. During the reign of the Rus’ king, King Einar’s great-grandfather and his followers weren’t very keen on the way they ruled and decided to break off from that branch. The Rus’ king was a powerful and great man on his own. He didn’t care that King Einar’s great-grandfather wanted to leave. He saw King Einar's great-grandfather as a friend and gave his blessings for the man to make his own way in the world. King Einar’s great-grandfather, along with his most trusted men and their families, found a land somewhere north-west to where they came from and established his own ruling kingdom across the Norwegian Sea, the same lands that King Einar now called home.

King Einar grew up learning the histories of the Rus’, learning about their powerful trade routes, learning about his family tree, and his ancestral bloodline's history. But he had never known that the Rus’ were responsible for destroying the Khazars. He had heard and read about the Khazars and how they were in charge of the major artery of commerce between Eastern Europe and Southwestern Asia, but most of those details are only found in journals and the teachings that were passed down to him from elderly, learned men.

Tar’mach told him how the Rus’ attacked the people in his kingdom and how they basically massacred everyone that stood in their path. Tar’mach’s father had managed to run from the butchery but only after he saw his own father, sisters, and his young wife murdered in front of him. Like many Khazars who managed to run away from the chaos, Tar’mach’s father went undercover to protect himself. He changed his appearance and his accent, even going as far as changing his voice, introducing himself as a Byzantium to anyone he met, so that his true identity would not be known. Tar'mach's father was fearful of the Rus’ after seeing the brutality they had done to his family members. He hated the Rus’, what they did to his people and what they represented. One day, he met a Byzantium woman and married her. She gave birth to Tar’mach but left them both soon after because she couldn’t understand the sufferings and traumas experienced by her husband. She left because she did not want to equate herself with her husband’s damaged mind and soul.

King Einar knew about the trading routes that Tar’mach was speaking about. He knew the Rus’ had taken over the trading routes only a few decades earlier, but he had never known that the Rus’ annihilated the people there as if they were nothing. He had never imagined the people who shared his blood would go that far.

King Einar didn’t let the chaos in his mind show in his face, however. “What about the Moor? Is he your companion? How did he become your partner in crime?” King Einar asked.

“The Moor is not my companion. He was a slave. He was sold at the free ports when I last went there. I met the Moor on the same night I was about to accept my latest employment from the strange man,” Tar’mach answered.

“Strange man? What strange man? What was the employment?” King Einar prompted.

“To destroy your ship that returns from the Celtic kingdom. The strange man told us to “destroy the Varangian’s ship and everyone on it”. He was quite a peculiar man. His had a strange voice, a grating sound,” Tar’mach's eyes seemed far away, as he recalled what happened that night.

“Who was this strange man?”

“I didn’t know. None of us knew. It was already dark outside, in the hour of the wolf. The strange man met us in between large ships that were docked at the port. The place was covered with shadow. We couldn't see who he was. In fact, we could hardly see our own hands in front of us. He wore a long cloak with a hood that covered his entire face. That was one of the things that we found unusual, since it was warm outside, but we didn't care to ask him anything. He just gave us the instructions, the coordinates to your ship that we were supposed to destroy and four small bags of gold. None of us asked anything else from him. It was the code,” Tar’mach explained.

“The code of the pirates?” King Einar asked.

“We were mercenaries, King,” Tar'mach corrected him.

“Hmm. How many were involved in this employment? Was the Moor paid to go with you as well?”

“No. There were only eight of us on the ship, excluding the slave. The plan was to stay on the course and the coordinates given by the strange man and then leave for the Mediterranean Sea. The slave was only brought along with us so that he would be sold off when we got to the Mediterranean Sea after we destroyed your ship. The only problem was, there was no ship on the day we were supposed to destroy it. Only the following day did we see a ship with a female figurehead. We figured that it was a Varangian ship. No one else owns ships with figureheads like that,” Tar’mach replied, his speech was slower than before. Tar'mach could feel that his mind was less sharp, and that he was feeling sleepy, like he was drugged.

The numbing temperature of the ice cave was beginning to weave its magic on him. King Einar knew that in a few short moments the prisoner was going to be lulled into sleep. His body temperature right now was decreasing slowly. It had been decreasing very slowly that he didn't even realize the cold numbing feeling in his limbs had disappeared. It had been happening since they first set foot in the ice cave, his lungs slowly filled with the ice-cold particles, his mind slowly shutting down just like his heart, but he would only realize that he was dying when it was too late.

King Einar would then have the privilege to decide his fate: let him drown in the lake, leave him in the seawater and let the ice gators have their way with him, or let Draki play with him before, well, eating him, most definitely.

“What is the warship that you targeted or was it a different ship?” King Einar asked his final question.

Tar’mach tried to sit up but it took him a great deal of effort even to push his forearms from the uneven stones. Tar’mach was not stupid, however. The prisoner knew something was incredibly wrong with him right then. He turned his face up to look at King Einar who was hovering over him, his face blasting with loathing so deep it could've buried someone.

Tar'mach was filled with rage when he said these to the king, even though the words that came out of him were only above a whisper: “You should die. All of you Varangians should die. Your heathen blood was tainted from the first of your ancestors all the way down to you. You only know how to plunder, how to destroy and how to kill. You are as bad as all of them! No, you are worse than them! You and your bloodline should be cursed for all the destruction you have and would cause to the world. You truly are the bringer of misfortune. You and the bastards you would father should—.”

Crack! The sound of Draki’s sharp, great teeth sinking into Tar’mach’s body would’ve made the queasiest man immediately throw the contents of his stomach out. In fact, right at that moment, the contents of Tar’mach’s stomach were spilling out onto the flowstone — organs, and blood splattering on the flowstone, staining them thick dark red, the smell of iron filling up the air.

King Einar looked at Draki who was chomping down on the prisoner, Tar’mach, noisily. Then, he shrugged.

When the prisoner started to whisper his venomous words, cursing him and his bloodline, King Einar’s heart started to pound wildly. He could feel his blood rushing to his brain, rage quickly overcoming his sensibility, telling him to just cut down the man that was spewing hatred in front of him with his sword. The problem was, his hands just wouldn’t do what his brain was telling him to do. And a split second later, blood spurted onto his tunic, only this time it was not the blood of a large shark, only the blood of the prisoner, Tar’mach. Draki had felt his master’s blinding rage and thoughts and he decided that he would do what the king couldn’t with his hands. Draki killed the prisoner instantly and continued chewing his body without a second glance at King Einar.

His ice dragon was never one to waste dinner.