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The Court of the Gray King

By Draconicon

Wanjala Xasan, third-born of the Chieftain Wanyonyi, had raised his people to glory. The elephant stood on the backs of those that had fought against his people, and had become more than a chieftain, more than a mere warlord. From his hold erected at the northern point of the Bur desert, where the sands met the sea and one could gaze at the glittering shimmer that came from the great water, he had brought his people to a greater destiny. He had become, as those across the sands and in the neighboring lands called him, the Gray King.

And it was to the Gray King that they sent their gifts. In his court, beneath the sun and sheltered only by blankets of silk and wool that were likewise gifts to his people, the elephant king received his visitors, smiling as he did.

His court, such as it was, was new to the land. Before him, in the days of the Chieftain Wanyonyi, Bur was little more than a village on the edge of the desert, gifted with access to the sea but little more. The old chieftain had done little for the people other than maintain their status quo, trading with neighboring Abyssinia, being small and inoffensive as a mouse despite their stature as great elephants. The lions west of them were always on the lookout for the chance to gain their lands, but they had always been too small to bother with.

In a mere ten years, Wanjala had changed that. Where his father had endured the occasional trader and the diplomat of the Abyssinians, he received gifts from the south and north, and from across the sea to the east. They came to him...and the Abyssinians could no longer put off their conquests, nor conduct them. He had grown, and now, they watched him for different reasons.

It is in this court, in the court of the rising Gray King, that this story begins.

Seated upon a throne of polished wood and warmed leather, Wanjala Xasan looked over those that had come before him. With one leg over the side of his throne and freely lounging over the other, the elephant was not what some might have assumed, considering the reputation of his conquering army. Rather than the great muscles of a powerful warrior, or the stern gaze of a man that was used to dealing with bloodthirsty enemies, he was a man of a growing gut and the beginning consequences of indolence settling in. He wore a golden chain around his neck that ran down to his belly-button, crossing over pecs that were still firm, though beginning to soften, and his leather skirt ran down to his knees, though spread open enough to draw the eye of one unfortunate, or perhaps fortunate, enough to stand before him. His sandals were discarded, for what use did a king have for them upon his throne?

Yet, for all that, he still had a twinkle in his eyes, that same twinkle that had warned those of wisdom in his childhood that this man would be a terror to those that would oppose him. That twinkle descended upon those that came before him that day, and they bowed their heads.

Aside from his court - a group of motley creatures that seemed to be drawn equally from his lands and the powerful among it as they were from the landless and the foreign - the visitors were distinct and obvious. A lion of the Abyssinians, garbed in the yellow and black of their lands, bowed at the waist and kept one hand on his scimitar. A shark, attended by a young camel, stood behind him, kneeling on all fours with his head to the ground. A giraffe, a merchant prince bejeweled with the products of his own land, stood behind them all, bowing his head and no more to the great elephant.

Wanjala received them all with a smile, slowly sitting up properly, or, perhaps, as properly as an elephant may. The sun beamed through from above, and while he and his court - dressed more modestly than he - were gifted with shade, the visitors were not. He leaned forward, his trunk falling behind his hands as he knitted his fingers together.

"Be welcome to the court of Bur," he declared. "One and all, be welcome."

"Your Majesty." The lion bowed his head again as he stood up. "I would speak to you privately."

"Would as you like, you shall not. I hide nothing from my court."

"This concerns -"

"Concerns our expansions to the south, through Hayq and the lands that you've been eyeing for the last five years." Wanjala chuckled. "They came to me, oh gray mane. I did not come to them."

The lion gripped the hilt of his sword, but did not draw it. He was not so foolish as to threaten a ruler in his own court, no matter the power of his homeland. Yet, at the same time, he lowered his head, refusing to step away.

"You cannot believe that you can stand against the Abyssinians. The Black Pride will come and claim its due, when the time is right."

"And when is that time, pray tell?"

"When it is right."

"Then until it is, speak of something else. When someone comes to me asking for aid, then the Gray King shall give it. When someone comes to me demanding submission, then they will have none."

Wanjala leaned back on his throne, his head tilted back just enough to show the smirk behind his trunk. The lion fumed, obviously, and stepped forward. The elephant guards at the king's side leaped forward, spears at the ready, and the lion pulled his scimitar from his waist.

The clack-clack of weapons against weapons lasted for only a second before Wanjala held his hand up.

"Hold, hold."

The bodyguards of the king stepped back, and the lion was left unscathed save for a hint of fur shaved from his cheek. He panted, his blade held forward as Wanjala stood up.

"Your anger does you no favors, young man. You will find a shallow grave in the sands if you do not temper yourself."

"I stand for the Black Pride. You would do well to listen. The Pride is looking at your lands, and they see what you have become. They see what you will become without our guidance. Nothing but another roving party of marauders. I come with the offer to join."

The lion turned, his wrappings sweeping out behind him as he addressed the court.

"I come with an offer for all those here. For those from the holds of Massawa, from Dahlak and Lasta! The Black Pride offers you the chance to join us. We offer you all a place beneath the banners of the Pride, among the kingdom.

"You need not bow to this warlord, this man that does nothing but sit on his throne. His witchcraft -"

"Take a care what you say, speaker for the Pride," said a younger, tanned lion that stepped from the back of the court, from behind the throne of the Gray King. "For not all of us are here by conquest. I would wager that most are here by choice, not submission. By joy, not by fear. Speak your tales of terror to another, who would be more like to listen."

The ambassador of the Abyssinians turned with narrowed eyes, and all bit off a chuckle, for the antics of Lencho - the king's lion - were well known throughout Bur and its allied lands. A jester of a man from who knew where, the lion had appeared at Wanjala's side shortly after he began his conquests, and it was said that he had the ear of the king, if not more. The lion sauntered between his dark-furred opposite and his monarch, a simple wrap of leather running down one leg and leaving him uncovered along the other side, nearly exposing his manhood to all. He stood with one hand on his hip, pointing down at the Abyssinian.

"Or do you so fear the words of my lord and master that you must silence him before he can offer you anything?"

"Silence, hissing lioness. All know that you lost your pride, and your manhood. Crawl behind his throne, and shave away the remnants of your mane; cease staining the honor of true lions with that thing."

"Oh, this?" Lencho tossed his head back, and the beaded braids of his mane, wrapped in balls of mahogany and sandy, lighter woods, clacked against each other. He laughed, bringing his arms to his chest and crossing them. "You bring dishonor with your shrieking. Are these the first barbs you've felt? You feel far more like a lioness than I, so surely you should have experience."

"I deal them. I am not here to suffer them."

"Clearly; you are too inflexible for that. Go. Flee to your masters. Mine shall not bow to yours."

"The Black Pride -"

"The Black Pride. Ha!" Lencho turned, his arms spread wide as he gestured to the court. "Raise your voices, my friend. Tell our friend what we think of the Black Pride of Abyssinia. Tell him what we feel for our King!"

And so the crowd cheered, and the sands shook with the devotion that they felt for their lord and master. Wanjala chuckled, gesturing to both sides with waves of his hands, calling for more until the time was sufficient for them to stop. The booing and hissing that followed was more than sufficient to chase the Abyssinian lion from their court, his shadow fleeing before him into the sand dunes and towards his camels. Several guards looked to Wanjala for permission to pursue, but the king shook his head, denying them. There was little point chasing a beaten man, was there?

He turned his attention to the court again, and the shark and giraffe looked up at him. Wanjala smiled, shaking his head.

"I apologize to all for that outburst. Such a coward should not have been allowed in my court in the first place."

"I told you, my master, that they would send only the worst," Lencho said.

"Yes, Lencho, yes. Now, be silent. You have said more than enough."

The court chuckled, for even they knew that the words of Wanjala were not sufficient to stop up the lion's mouth. Such a feat required far more substance, it was said, usually between titters. The monarch turned back to his visitors.

"You will be given tents, servants, and comfort for the rest of the day and night, and I will speak with you first thing in the morning. For the moment, there are other concerns that I must address. A pity that being 'King' means so little for your time, is it not so?"

His words drew laughter from the court, but there were those - particularly among the sharper-eyed members of it - that understood that there was something that the King would have to address. Their neighbors were not so apathetic as to leave them alone forever. Sooner or later, someone would have to address the growing threat of the Abyssinians, and when that happened, a greater war than any before would erupt across the desert and the mountains to the west.

"Away to your tents. My Council. Attend me."

The King's Tent was a grand structure, fitting to the name and taller than any other in the traveling village that had become his court. The red walls and purple tassels brought color and life against the black walls of the tent as seen from outside, and the tall spires that lifted the four corners of the tent gave room for the metal cages that held the lights that the King and his court saw by.

For there was one word said right by the visiting gray-mane: the King was well-practiced in magic, and that magic was active, even now.

As Wanjala gestured to the iron-wrought metal, gifts from across the sea that had been gifts before, brought from further abroad than even he could imagine, green lights began to glow. They whispered, passing to and fro between the spokes of metal, chattering to one another in voices too low to make out but loud enough to know that someone was talking. The dead, as ever, were keen to speak with those that they could no longer reach, whispering whatever words and thoughts they had left to those that likewise shared the earth and deep dark with them. In exchange for their light, Wanjala provided them the chance to speak to each other, and they seemed happy with it.

The tent was well-prepared, with a broad table spread out in the center with a map upon it, but it went ignored in favor of the dried fruits brought from the coast, and the water kept in a steep ewer. He tilted it, pouring one cup after another as his Council came.

First, of course, was Lencho. The nearly-naked lion stepped through the tent flap, bowing his head and smiling as he always did. Slender and whip-quick, he all but danced across the floor, swaying as he moved.

"I would have almost called you displeased, my master," he said. "My antics usually bring you such joy in the court."

"Yes, but our ambassador had already had his pride wounded. You didn't need to rub salt further in the wound."

"He was waiting for the chance to spring his offer. My words only called him out for how pathetic it was. Truly, my Master, who would care to be under another...ahem, another's rule besides your own?"

Wanjala chuckled, the flirtation as familiar as ever. His Master of the Ears and Eyes had many, and he knew that they were all designed to lure another into a false sense of security, to allow for manipulation of many sorts. He would be a fool to believe that he was exempt from the same treatment, though it was flattering to think that the lion would care for him so much.

The best that could be said for Lencho was that they had an arrangement, both of the courtly and carnal sort, and that was sufficient for him, unto the point of an inevitable betrayal. The lion was the sort that had backstabbed other masters in the past, and Wanjala did not know what might cause it, only that it was certainly possible.

Nevertheless, he smiled as the lion pressed in from the side, one soft hand pressing against his stomach and attempting to go lower. He seized the slender lion by the hand, pressing a cup of water to it instead.

"The heat has made you dizzy. Drink, first, and then see if you still have such an appetite."

"My thirst for you is never slaked, my master."

"So you say, until you see someone new."

"You wound me, my master," Lencho said, though he did not disagree.

The banter was broken with the appearance of two other members of the Council, the twin wild dogs Maina and Makena, brother and sister that served as his diplomat and the watcher of his coin together. They were similar to one another, dressed in a lash of hide across the chest and a loincloth across the hips, with Maina being vaguely more slender with a slash of white across his face, and Makena with wider hips - and, of course, the other feminine protrusions - and a slash of white across her belly. They bowed together, the siblings smiling as they stood.

"Master," they said together.

"Please, drink," the elephant said, gesturing to their cups.

They moved as one at all times, in sync with one another to startling degrees, and it was no less so now. They stepped forward to take their cups, and then leaned in, kissing the elephant on either cheek. Wanjala chuckled, shaking his head as he remembered how they had entered his life.

It had been during the campaign through Massawa, when he had been leading his armies for the first time. Leading well, too, though not without casualties here and there. The twins had been camped out at an oasis, and had brought with them a small army of their own. Not to fight, but to negotiate, and to make an offer. The twins had shown him the power of confidence, diplomacy, and currency, and they had earned themselves a place at his side as a result.

Of course, they often went closer than his sides, but that was a different matter.

Fourth was his Warchief, a position that he had filled after he had first allowed the name of the Gray King to be mounted upon his shoulders, when it was imperative that he had a second that would take up the wars if he was not present. For all that he had assumed it would be one of his own people, he was somehow unsurprised when Faraji had ended up being the best candidate.

As tall as Wanjala, Faraji's stocky build was hardly a surprise for a rhino, though his muscular gut and thick shoulders put even the greatest of the species to shame as he walked across a battlefield. Wielding weapons that he drew from harness upon harness draped upon his back, the man was no less than a walking battalion, and woe betide the soldier that had to face him on the battlefield. He was the only man to stand against Wanjala's own hand, and had left his own mark. The elephant touched a hand to a scarred tusk, and the rhino did the same to his horn.

"Memories will never fade," Wanjala said, though with a rueful smile.

"Indeed. But they will grow distant."

"Particularly with progress. Your water," the elephant said.

That was four of the five, four of those that had supported him and guided him further and further along the path of unifying the lands that flowed in and out from beneath the Black Pride. They had stoked his fires, fueled his ambitions, and, if he was honest with himself, there were times when he felt like they used him as a figurehead, something to advance the causes that they believed in while the people believed in him.

So long as it took them further towards the goal of securing Bur, of creating a better land for his people and those that joined them, then Wanjala had no complaints.

He looked at the tent flap, half-expecting the Sand-Caller to just turn up without warning, to appear in a gust of his namesake without a word. It was a shame that he did not; they were far more dramatic than merely seeing the crocodile step through the tent flap.

Seris was from the north, far to the north, but had come seemingly at the growing legends, appearing shortly before the fall of Faraji and his subsequent joining of their cause. It was from the crocodile that he had learned his own magic, or rather, perfected it; the old man's knowledge had been a boon to him and his land, but it was hardly where it came from. Wanjala kept that secret close to the chest.

"My friend," was all he said, passing the final cup to the crocodile.

They gathered around the table, with Lencho on the far side, the twins on either side, and Faraji and Seris standing with Lencho. As they leaned forward, looking over the map, Wanjala could already feel that their attentions were on anything but the matter at hand. The wild dogs reached between his legs, pressing under his leather skirt, and the smirk from Lencho told him that the lion was merely waiting his turn.

"If we can focus?"

"The Gray King should be tended to," Lencho said.

"And he will be. Extensively. After we plan. Hayq cannot wait forever."

"It can wait a night."

"With the gray-mane running -"

"I can deal with him. Grant me the fastest camel, and I can catch the fastest horse in the sands," the lion said.

"I know how you would deal with him. Enough of our rivals lie in the sands already; let's not add another to the tally. He will be allowed to flee; it does our cause better to see him flee in terror and fury than it is to leave him a mystery for others to find."

"..."

"And in the meantime, we plan. Hayq."

It was a massive desert just to the south of what Bur had become, with a coastline that was hardly developed, but flat and easily reached from the sea. Roads passed through it, allowing a direct trade route from the Abyssinians to the west through Hayq to the coast, and if they were to absorb it - which they had been trying to do for years - it would grant them what they had always wanted from his own land: access to the sea, and all the trade that passed through.

The gains from that would be enough to finance all kinds of wars, wars that Wanjala had no wish to see come about. Hayq gained him nothing, and would cost his people no small amount of resources to hold, but to deny it to the Abyssinians was reason enough to take it.

But more than anything, they had invited him. The people of Hayq, in the form of the son of the local warlord, had called him in to take charge. Five years of negotiations, five years of building up forces locally, conspiring with all those that were interested in helping him run the desert land: it was about to come to fruition.

"Maina. I want you to leave tomorrow. Travel to the southern oasis and make sure that you counter anything that lion says; he may be allowed to speak, but so are we. And I want you to be good and loud about every sin the Abyssinians have committed."

"Of course, Master. I will dredge every crime from living memory for them to see," the wild dog said, bowing his head.

"Makena? Check our merchant contacts with him. I want to make sure that they're ready to fund this properly; we'll do our part, but they have to do theirs, as well."

She nodded, as she always did, answering silently. His eyes flicked to Seris.

"Old friend, have you seen anything in the sands?"

"They have little to say of this. I imagine that they fear the bloodbath to come, and the muddied earth," the crocodile said with a shake of his head. "They are silent before war."

"Then hopefully the war is over before it starts. If we do this right, it shall be."

"That is my hope, as well..."

"Faraji."

The rhino nodded, pointing to the map, west of the main encampment of the Hayq forces, near the mountains that led further to the Black Pride.

"Here. I'll make sure nothing comes through. No interference from the Pride."

"Good...good."

"And I -"

"Will be at my side, Lencho," Wanjala said, looking up before the lion could finish whatever he planned to say. "Suffice to say, I do not trust your mouth anywhere but where I can hear it."

"Ah, but my master, you wound me."

"I notice you continue to avoid correcting me, however."

"One should never trust a lonesome lion. We have our own needs, our own...inclinations."

"Hmmph. With that, I leave," Faraji said, though with a good-natured smirk. "I should make sure my own men aren't...indulging...as this one seems so intent on."

"An indulgence now and then saves more men than your blades," Lencho said. "And I'm sure you'd enjoy it, if you tried it."

"Women for me, lion. Goodnight, sir."

Nodding, the rhino turned and left the tent. Seris absented himself, though not before passing over several wrapped up pieces of parchment. Knowing them for the lessons of his next spells, Wanjala nodded, setting them to the side.

That left him alone with the three teasing members of his Council, and all three looked up at him with their tongues lapping over their lips. Wanjala chuckled, shaking his head.

"I suppose it was inevitable; you tasted the King, and now you must taste him again."

"But of course, Master," Maina said, his hand slowly running up the elephant's thigh.

"We have been given gold. How can we settle for dross?" Makena asked, her hand resting on his rump.

And of course, Lencho leaned forward until he was able to crawl across the table, dragging himself across it with all the grace of his feline nature, until he rested on the table proper. He crossed his hands, resting his chin upon them, his tail flicking back and forth over his back. A smile grew ever larger as he leaned in, tapping his nose against the King's leather skirt.

"Allow us to please you, Master. It is, after all, your due, and your responsibility. After all..." Lencho leaned his head to the side, drawing his braids away to reveal the symbol etched into his neck. "You marked us...and you must give us what we need."

"Feed us, Master," Maina all but hissed.

"Please, Master..." Makena growled.

"Give us what we need, Master, and we shall make sure you will never, ever lack," Lencho said, slowly lifting the leather skirt, freeing the growing gray shaft beneath.

And, as he always did, Wanjala Xasan, the Gray King of Bur, surrendered to the inevitable, inescapable strength of his servants.

The End

Summary: A little CK3 inspired story that I decided to write up. The growing court of the Gray King is quite odd, and certainly not all that it appears.

Tags: No Sex, M/solo, Male Nudity, Flaunting, Flirting, Groping, Teasing, Harem, African Species, Elephant, Lion, Wild Dog, Crocodile, Court, Royal Court, Hunger,