Page 10 of Morfran, Dark Lord Reformed

I beheaded men for a living, little girl, he wanted to threaten. Begone.

He had approximately thirty-seven seconds of peace before someone even more obnoxious visited him. It was the one who’d snared him in the net out in the woods: Hugh. He came in with a proud expression and a puffed-up chest, which Morfran decided made him look like a gangly, bloated-bellied stork.

A bloated-bellied stork with a blade strapped to its waist.

“Is that my sword?” Morfran sat up as high as he could, angrily incredulous at the image. His sword had become something of an icon to his legacy as Dark Lord of Ruthven™. Black and wicked-looking, it was forged with sweat, tears, and red food dye #7, and a blood amber in the pommel topped off the sword’s devilish appearance. It was so popular kingdom-wide that his men had taken to having their swords styled in a way just like it, and Morfran was quite pleased to know he was a trendsetter among his villainous peers.

Now this…this peasant with an inflated head was walking around wearing it. Morfran repeated himself, growing angrier by the minute. “I said, is that my sword?”

“No,” Hugh replied, stepping just inches out of his reach. “It’s my newly acquired sword.” He pulled it from the sheath and began swishing it with flair. “She’s quite a beauty, isn’t sh—”

He dropped it. Morfran ground his teeth together as it rattled to the dirt floor.

Hugh plucked it back up as if nothing had happened. “So.” He rested the flat part over his shoulder like it was a club. “My father told me you’d been nothin’ but full of lies earlier. You gonna start answering truthfully now? Because if you don’t, think how embarrassin’ it’ll be for you to be tortured by your own sword.”

“You’re the one they sent to torture me?” Morfran asked, and despite his agitation, he sincerely meant the question. This idiot couldn’t even hold a sword properly. Perhaps if he was sent to torture him, the other revolters were equally pathetic. Despite everything, the thought offended him. Surely they could have sent someone actually intimidating to torture him?

Hugh’s chin dipped deep as he nodded a little too vigorously. “Of course. I’m the one they always send for…eh…stuff of this import.”

Morfran huffed. “If you could tell them to bring the actual torturer in, I’d appreciate the haste. And while you’re at it, could you ask them what type of torture it’ll be? Whipping? Maiming? Removal of fingernails? I’d like to be mentally prepared.”

Hugh looked mildly disturbed. “Are you tortured on a regular basis?”

I married Ravana, so…yes.

“Look,” Morfran said tiredly. “I stand by what I’ve said. I’m just a goat farmer whose lands were burned down by our lord’s men—”

A horrendous noise shrieked somewhere outside the hut. He fell silent. It sounded like a dozen cats all shrieking different, discordant tones at once. Morfran went stiff. “Is that my lute?”

“No,” Hugh replied snootily, as if Morfran were an idiot for suggesting it. “It’s Pete’s newly acquired lute.”

The only things keeping Morfran from murder were his bound wrists. “I want my things back,” he snapped. “And where are my goats? If any of you hurt Benjamin and her kids in any way, I’ll tear your hands off.”

“See, that vehemence there”—Hugh straightened, pointing the tip of the sword at Morfran like it were a finger—“is why I don’t believe you’re just some random farmer. There’s more to you than you’re saying, and you’re not fooling none of us.”

What would they do if they knew who he truly was? Perhaps it would be advantageous to reveal himself. At least then they’d stop treating him like dirt and give him the respect and fear he’d earned.

But no. He’d left that life behind the moment he abandoned Ravana’s side. He’d left covertly under a new moniker because he wanted to live out a quiet life now, and although he enjoyed garnering fearful respect from any and all, you couldn’t live undisturbed if people were constantly peering out from the corner, pointing and whispering, “Anger him even once and he’ll remove your nose with forceps.”

Never in his life had Morfran used forceps to remove any appendage from a person, but that was how his reputation had developed when he’d wed Ravana fifteen years ago and invited her into his war room. Before, he was just known as their standard Dark Lord. He’d usurped Good King Richard—who was aptly named, for his name was Richard, and by all accounts he was a good king—and took the rebelling nearby cities by force, then swept southward and conquered the independent kingdoms and added them to his domain.

It was thanks to Ravana’s influence that people began tacking the adjective “Evil” before “Dark Lord.” He was sick of it. He wasn’t Evil. He was just Dark. Evil rulers kicked puppies. Dark rulers kicked people. Vast difference. Besides, he beheaded people who deserved it, cleanly and swiftly and fairly, and that was the end of it.

“All right, my new friend, I hope you’re ready for this.” A massive man parted the hut’s door flap, striding into the room and blocking out the dusk light as he did so. It was Brim; behind him, also blocking the light, were at least three or four other men roughly the size of oxen, and they all halted when they saw Hugh poised on a crate before Morfran.

Hugh instantly teetered forward to his feet, keeping the sword inconspicuously at his side as he fidgeted. “I gave him a fierce talkin’-to to let him know what he can expect from you tough lot.” He gave Brim and the others a firm jerk of a nod. They just stared. “Right. Well. I’ll just be on my way, then.” He swung the sword back up to his shoulder like it was a club—nearly swiping Morfran’s head with the movement—and started marching confidently towards the exit. That confidence lasted for two and half seconds before he had to squeeze himself around the muscular men, all of whom refused to budge, and his squirrelly frame eventually oozed between them like watery slime, and he was gone.

Morfran watched him leave with both relief and dread. On the one hand he was utterly annoying. On the other, these men now huddled in the room were clearly the cream of the crop of the forest dwellers: upper bodies built like thunderhead clouds, fists as large as cow skulls, thighs that were twice the size of that smallest, toothless child who had wandered in earlier.

What do you lot do for a living? Morfran gaped. Chuck trees and break stones between your thighs for fun?

Brim rubbed his face in the wake of his son’s antics, then dropped his hand and asked Morfran, “Are you going to answer our questions truthfully now? My daughter didn’t seem to like whatever it was you told her, and she’s a smart woman.”

Morfran considered the men. They held no weapons to maim him with and no tool kits filled with devices for removing appendages. No raw meat juice to pour over his foot, and no starved dogs to gnaw on it freely. Their hands and belts were free of any items, so he figured it’d just be the good ol’-fashioned Beat ’Em Bloody torture method. It could be much, much worse.

He grimaced. “Not smart enough if she didn’t tell you I was innocent.”

Brim only grinned in reply, as if he were hoping he’d say that.