Stories of Calik – Shawsworth Part One

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Stories of Calik are Tales of a wild land filled with bandits, mercenaries, whores, rapists, assassins, murderers, brigands, outlaws, crooks and cannibals.

Other Stories of Calik in this Series:
Lata the Lawless

Eskwick woke with a start; her sleep had been restless of late but infinitely preferable to the continual torment that was consciousness in the hellish world of Calik.

Her trusted friend and sole companion, Tanor the Ranger had all but vanished and a week had passed since his departure.

Tanor was a hunter, a skilled tracker who could take down a deadly Deslid from 200 yards and a respected figure in these parts.

The Deslid too were hunters and the only surviving species of animal besides humans who remained on Calik. They resembled something similar to a small rhino but bereft of the frontal horn.

What these deadly monsters lacked in charging power, they made up for with the huge talons bestowed upon them that could tear a man to pieces in seconds.

Blessed with a dull green skin that provided a decent level of camouflage and weighing up to a ton, an adult male was a force to be reckoned with and most sane humans kept their distance from these unpredictable dangerous beasts.

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The flesh and meat of a Deslid was tough and chewy but a welcome distraction from the humdrum taste of vegetables that most of the population of Calik digested on a daily basis, and so the Rangers were born.

“I’m happy to stick with my boring vegetables’, she thought pensively peering down at the hard-calloused hands of one who worked the land.

Eskwick was a farmer, a simple woman who yearned nothing but a peaceful life.

Living she thought was anything but tranquil and though she shunned towns and their folk, the nearby outpost of Shawsworth was a necessity for vital commodities.

At 25 years of age, she was attractive and struck a fine figure with short braided hair the type labourers generally donned, the continual manual work naturally keeping her in good shape.

She was also rather tall at 5’11 and of athletic build, an attribute that occasionally worked in her favour when dealing with scumbags despite her outward appearance being rather demure.

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Being detached from the town had saved her from what most women eventually succumbed too, a hustler and seducer of men.

A visit to Shawsworth was an ordeal in itself being was a town of few morals.

Making deals with either ruthless murderers or desperate alcoholics was far from an ideal situation and so she dared not venture to this cutthroat barbarous frontier town without Tanor to accommodate her.

"Where are you Tanor", she murmured to herself feeling an unnatural tenseness. He was not exactly her betrothed despite her suppressed feelings toward him.

Nurturing a relationship was a dangerous game that could play into the hands of prospective foes. Relationships were for fools and had no place here.

Shaking off the worry, she prepared herself for the journey to Shawsworth, a place fraught with danger for a single female traveller.

The rains plummeted down from the sky like dull leaden sheets as Lata the Lawless trudged toward the closest point of civilisation.

Streaks of lightning crossed the sky closely followed by bellows of thunder and the light was fading as a town slowly began to come into view.

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He was exhausted and hunting maggots like that one was taking a toll on him. The supposed benefits of devouring his prey didn’t seem to have that old energising effect anymore. Was this a side effect of his age?

Shaking his head in confusion Lata made for the Tavern, the same one where he had encountered the Ranger perhaps a week beforehand.

“I could do with a few whiskies followed by a scabby whore”, he thought licking his lips in anticipation.

Women were in short supply at these shanty towns but there were always a couple who would sell their bodies for a few silver coins or even for nothing.

If you could find one with more than a few teeth, that was a bonus. Good looking whores were a rare breed and he had not seen one in years.

This particular town was a miserable depressing shithole as far as he was concerned. Shawsworth was the name as he recalled, or something like that.

The men were either quivering cowards or languished drunkenly around the bar area with an occasional fight breaking out where nobody, in particular, was the victor or loser.

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It was his second visit and with the only person with any balls gone he was going to rule this place with his chaos and pandemonium until boredom set in again.

There was plenty of meat to sink his teeth in for sure though his lust for flesh had temporarily subsided and been replaced with a different one.

Lata now had an urge of a more natural primal type that was common in red-blooded males; being out in the wilds did that to a man.

Approaching the tavern doors likened to something from the old west, he swung them open in earnest and took in the predictable sight of perhaps a dozen men propping up the bar, all at different levels of inebriation.

This town really was pathetic and its occupants equally so. Striding forward purposefully, the ruthless killer cannibal entered the building.

Original Fiction (c) Slobberchops, July 2019.

To be continued...