Queen nevere & KuColon: A Romance of (odde) Sortes

Long, long ago, in a Great White Land far to the north there lived a warrior-queen and warrior-king. The clouds loured low in the sky over this land: its inhabitants simply loured. For this Great White Land was torn by stryfe and woe. To the East of The Snows beside the Glasse Greene Ocean lay the Timberlands of the Greywolf. These lands were ruled by Queen Nevere, a proud, somewhat moody woman and an adept of the intricate arts of shape-shifting. Though she had taken many men to her bed, none had earned her rapture: for the Queen gave little paws to fules, dazzes and sychelike twittes. At last, under complaint from her subjects, she accepted Mace, the nigh-invisible Prince of Myste & Fogge as her consort. But she refused to crown him: she reserved that doubtful 'privilege' for one unnamed.

Her people spoke an odd archaic language. For whyche reason they were thought simpletons by the Elite Curtiers of the Kingdom of Knuville in the caninised West. There the warrior-king KuColon, the Hound of Knuville ruled with rod of flame. Roastings, firings, toastings, burnings, or simply singeings , not even A Wanderer venturing into his kingdome escaped. A bellicose half-man/half-dog, he was given to barke, bytche and lengthy ramblings on the obscure (to the sane) inter-species sex-appeal of the famillia rodenta. Not even his long-suffering Grand Vizer, Texthell, to whom, betimes, he delegated the ruling of his kingdom culd shayme him to picking on creatures his own size - despite her very tall, pointy black hat sprinkled with tin-foyle starres and waving a stripy pequena wande about in a threatening, wizard-like fashionista.

Nevere and KuColon had a long and quarrelsome history. For legion yeares they rained depredations on each other's heads, wished each other every dog's-breath ill possible. It was as if some supernatural force compelled them, baffling the subjects of their respective kingdoms.

Nevere had long coveted the legendary Great Brown Bull of KuColon. The great bull supplied her arch-foe with a steady streame of epick bullshyte, the envy of corrupt (or plain inept) rulers everywhere. Would that she had the Bull she would be his equal. Steaming pyles of choice, prime-cut bullshyte that woulde spellbind her subjects. She coulde hunt them with picayune ramblings, teach them to mynce their turds.

Long, oh-so-long! she had dreamed of raiding Knuville and making off with this fabulous beast, more fabulous than the Unicorn, more far-fetched than the belief that the dodo could be resurrected from the skeletal dna of Portuguese sayelors or that Charleye Sheene might inspire an audience to anything other than a panick-strycken stampede for the exits. For this Bull was KuColon's Muse, a great beast that never ran out of awesome, noisome and-then-some bullshyte.

She could bear it no longer: she determined to raid KuColon's lands and make off with his bull once and for all. For envy made her complexion green - never a good look. The thought had no sooner entered her head, than she set off, her chariot tilting to the left, her chin to the right, the red-light of battle in her eyes.

Long she travelled through The Snows, her greate greywolves running beside her. At length, she found KuColon standing in a shallow ford near the borders of her lands. As he washed himself in the stream he filled the air with loud 'warrior' cries, while thumping his chest like a silverback spotting a National Geographicker eyeing his girl through a lens・.

''I've seen more fire in the comb of a week-old bantam cock. The size of your temper wouldn't stop a dung beetle in its tracks.'

KuColon jumped, startled. He looked up and saw Nev, the light of battle glittering in her eyes. His battle-frenzy suddenly deflated. 'What? What did you say?'

'You heard me.' Nevere folded her arms and stood with her feet slightly apart. The wolves lay down and settled around her feet: they could always rely on their mistress to put on a goodely show.

'If I put the flat of my blade across your backside, you'd feel its size soon enough,' threatened the warrior, waving his sword in the air.

Nevere stepped over her wolves and into the ford, uncaring of getting her skirts wet. 'Come on then, you poxillated bag of pus - I'd like to see you lay that rusted piece of scrap you dignify with the name 'sword' on me!'

'The weapon is yet straight and true, though it may well buckle from contact with your leathern rear, you flea-bitten nag!' shouted KuColon.

Nevere's lips tightened: when it came to a roasting, she could give as goode as she got. 'No nag would look upon your boar's snout of a nose without it would fall flat on its back with the shock of the ugliness, you pit-faced son of a weasel!'

Gripping his sword with both hands KuColon lifted it high above his head and waded further into the water. 'It'd be a fine day for us all if the vampyres descended from the air and took you off with them, only they wouldn't want to visit the misery of your permanent presence upon themselves, you foul-mouthed harpy!'

Nevere shook her spear at him. ''They'd be glad to have me. But I'd not spend my days spinning cloths of gold and suckling the blood of rodents while a flat-footed, knock-kneed, flap-eared not-yet-weaned-from-his-mother's-milk young whelp like you is loose upon the earth!'

'You couldn't spin yourself the rib of a newborn's cloak, nevermind cloths of gold, you fat-rumped, rat-eared, yellow-eyed daughter of a braying ass!' roared the warrior scything his sword through the air.

'A poor judge you of my spinning skills you boss-eyed son of a squint-eyed bear!'

KuColon suddenly stood stock still and let out a great shout of laughter. 'Better judge I'd be of spinning than you ever a spinner, O Nev, even though I be so afflicted. Maybe it's jaloisie of your sisters' skills that has made you take up the spear instead. ' He laughed again, bringing his sword down to strike the flat of its blade against his open palm.

'No jaloisie brings me here KuColon, but the wish to give the Great Brown Bull a good home. You have flogged him hard. Forced him to produce great, steaming piles of gormenghastick bullshyte these long, wearie years. He needs the tender touch of a woman to make him whole.'

'Far from tender your touch ever was O Nevere, Queen of the Timberlands of the Greywolf. And your consort Mace bears the scars of his marriage to you to prove it!' He began to move towards her, beating a slow rhythm agains his open palm with his sword-blade, the water now to his knees.

'His scars were of his own acquiring O KuColon, Hound of Knuville. He was warned often enough to stay clear of chariot-racing when he'd taken too much of the honey-beer. Better he felt the weight of my boot on his backside than be plunged in to the ditch with horse and chariot of top of him!'

She was now only a spear's length apart from him and thrust it before her until its point rested square in the middle of his chest.

The shout left the warrior's voice. 'Hollow rings your concern for your consort, O Nevere, when you'd have my head on your pillow and scent my ear with the perfume of your desire.' He closed his free hand around the spear-point, the strength from his tight, balled-up fist stopping its advance.

Nevere stared at him before recovering herself to speak. 'Flattering you are to yourself O KuColon, when my wish is butto reach over and smack your chin til the jowls be banished from your rub-crowned head!' She made to jab her weapon at him but his grip held fast.

He pulled on the spear deflecting it sharply to one side to protect his breast. The speed of the movement almost unbalanced her.

'Sharp your tongue O Nevere, sharp as the rasp of a cat's cough on a winter's morn, but do not deny your coming to me last night in a dream and your offering to me of yourself, wanton as a whore of Labrador!'

'It is you, KuColon, who is guilty of resort to the sorcerer's art. Do not deny that your form slipped into my sleep last night and sought to lay itself beside me in my bed!' retorted Nevere,
panting with the effort of holding onto her weapon.

'To no such stratagem do I own, O Nevere, for I was laying onmine own pallet fending off the offerings from your brazen shape!' He tugged harder on the spear.

'No means have I a mere mortal woman to enter the dream of another. Whatever shape you dreamt KuColon, was of your own fashioning. Lay not the blame for that on me!' She struggled to hold on to her weapon but it was sliding fast from her grasp.

'The shape, O Nevere, was you.' A new softness had crept into the warrior's voice. 'You, who with your sorcery would have me beneath your spell, and make me weak with yearning for you. Do you deny it?' Only the length of his sword lay between them now.

The spear slid from Nev's suddenly nerve less hands and fell with an unnoticed splash into the ford. Her gaze locked with KuColon's. 'No sorcery have I ever used KuColon upon any man for his desire,' she replied, a catch in her throat. 'Whatever lies within your breast springs from a source beyond reach of ruse.'

KuColon remained still. Then he spoke. 'You have laid an enchantment upon me O Nevere,' he said softly. 'Why else do I face the flat of my sword to you so that it may not harm you? Why do I not raise it above your mocking head and cleave it in two?' Suddenly he released his sword from his hand. It landed with a splash to lie beside her spear in the shallow waters of the ford.

(To be continued....)