‘Please don’t make us do this,’ one of the women whimpered.
Sigurd ignored her plea as Hrothgar, grinning savagely, unzipped his trousers to haul out the python that hung between his thighs.
‘Tippawan, turn on the studio lights, get the cameras in here and rolling, and let’s get this over with. I have a meeting to get to shortly,’ Sigurd instructed gruffly, ignoring the women’s gasps and cries of horror.
The Thai man took off his aviators and stepped over to a switchboard where he turned on a number of bright lights, and then Hrothgar, with his enormous manhood now hanging out of his trousers, strolled over to a sofa beneath the lights, where he sat down and leered at the women with his pitiless emerald eyes. Tippawan left the room and returned a few moments later, wheeling in a video camera on a dolly, which he pushed over to Hrothgar and turned on.
‘The camera is rolling, sir,’ Tippawan announced.
‘Excellent. Hrothgar can have a good old time with these sluts for the next half hour or so. But first, however, you will bring me my sword.’
Tippawan bowed and scuttled out of the room.
‘You, yes you!’ Sigurd barked, pointing at the woman who had interrupted him earlier.
In another corner of the room the woman he had previously throttled was only just starting to recover from the violence he had wreaked upon her. He glanced over at her and malice crackled with the fury of hot coals in his eyes. Moving deliberately slowly, he turned to the woman who had had the gall to ask him to spare them.
‘Stand up bitch,’ he growled. ‘Come here and repeat what you said a minute ago. I didn’t hear you the first time.’
A deathly hush fell over the women, and the one who had spoken realised that she had made a grave error.
‘What are you waiting for, my dear?’ Sigurd asked, smiling sweetly, his eyes aflame with a terrible anger.
‘I’m sorry sir,’ she whimpered. ‘I’m so very sorry, I didn’t mean to—’
‘I still can’t hear you. Speak up.’
‘I’m so, so, so very sorry sir,’ she gasped. ‘I honestly didn’t mean to, I, please sir, I’ll do whatever you say, and…’
‘Well come here then. I ordered you to come here, so fucking DO IT!’
Tears were streaming down the woman’s face, and a little bubble of snot was alternately inflating and deflating at the corner of one of her nostrils.
‘I’m starting to lose my temper, whore. You don’t want me to lose my temper. Hurry … the fuck … UP!’
The woman slunk over to Sigurd, and her abject terror was painfully obvious; her limbs were trembling like boughs in a gale, and a sudden gush of urine ran down the inside of her thighs as she quivered before the huge man.
‘Repeat your plea,’ he said softly.
‘I, I—’
Sigurd’s balled fist slammed into her stomach with the force of a deftly swung mace. The woman buckled over in pain, but as she did Sigurd arced his knee up in a vicious Muay Thai knee uppercut, and the point of his knee smashed into her face and sent her sailing backwards to land in a crumpled heap. Dazed and moaning, she weakly spat out a mouthful of blood. The other women suppressed screams of fright and horror behind trembling hands.
‘Let this be a lesson to you all,’ Sigurd. ‘This world is a great field, and you are the sheep. You are nothing. You are weak and helpless. You do what you are told, and you follow the flock with blind, unquestioning obedience. You do not think, you do not analyse, you do not question … you merely consume until eventually you are consumed – like the rest of the fucking flock out there! You see, whores, there is never a shortage of sheep in the world. They live to eat and follow and buy and fuck and gossip and sleep, and be just like one another, never questioning, never stepping out of line. This is how all of you vermin eke out your meagre, meaningless existences upon this rock, isn’t it? By Thor, calling you “sheep” is a compliment, actually. “Cockroaches” is what I should call you mortals. Worms, insects, lice, parasites … fucking tapeworms!’ He paused here to take a breath and straighten his silk tie. ‘Still, let’s say “sheep” though; I’m feeling generous today. So, sheep, I am a wolf. Well, a bear, in fact, but let’s keep running with the sheep and wolf metaphor. This world is run by wolves like me. We are the strong, and we feed off your flesh and your blood … and our hunger is never satiated, our thirst never slaked. Might makes right, sheep, might makes right, remember that! A truer sentiment has never been uttered; old Thucydides got it so right all those thousands of years ago when he penned that phrase. We, the strong, we take because we can. And you, the weak, you are taken from because you cannot stop us from taking. Never forget that. Never forget who holds true power in their hands. Now be good, obedient little sheep and the wolves may spare you for a time. For a time … ’ Sigurd paused here to cackle in a baritone rumble. ‘Unfortunately for you sheep though, the wolves have decided that they’re eager for dinner, and you are all looking very juicy. We’ll eat you up and shit you out, and your dismembered remains will fertilise the grass for the rest of the herd, who will simply carry on with their mindless cycles of consumption … oblivious to your tragic fate.’
Sigurd let out another bellow of derisive
