Queen of the Deep - Belly of the Beast

“Get up you fool!” a harsh male voice whispered. Ikinya pulled open his heavy eyes. It was dark, and only slivers of light pooled down beneath the canopy of trees. He was in one of the mountain forests. He could not for his life recall how he had gotten there. His body was badly scraped and bruised. He could feel that without having to see it in the light. Ikinya’s eyes finally adjusted to the shaded darkness. The man hovering above him was Mbogo, one of his men. Mbogo was a reliable man, and a skilled fighter. He had taken more than one arrow and survived. Being a man his size, it was hard not to become the target of every archer in the east. Ikinya could not imagine why this man now looked so frightened.

“What is it Mbogo? Where are we?” Ikinya asked. Mbogo looked down on the man confused.

“Do you not remember? Have you been resting here on the forest floor since the day we first came to these cursed lands?” Ikinya stood, stretching his achy muscles. “It must be so and likely why you are still alive. She hunts us like animals for a great feast.”

Queen of the Deep - Ikinya's Folly

“Is this her? Is this the woman that my men have so feared to bring to me?” He said in an amused roar. His men were seasoned, trained, battle proven soldiers who were taught from childhood to not fear death. War had been their mother’s milk, their bedtime stories, and their very life blood, yet suddenly his troops were stricken with fear and of a woman no less!

“This is she Great Ikinya. We beg of you, tread lightly with this woman!” A soldier said approaching with the woman in tow. The soldier, towering over the woman, escorted her forth with such fear and trembling one would think she, and not he, had dealt death to many.

Ikinya watched closely as the woman approached. She was pleasurable to watch, to be certain. Her long skirt, dyed purple, rustled the grass at her bare feet. The blue wrap slung over her right shoulder covered her full breasts, but left the rest of her athletic torso open to view. A long, thick and ornately patterned braid traveled far down her sculpted shoulders and poised back.