Grossblogger

What is this? It’s a free sample, a chapter from Game of Cohens which, if one were smart, one would purchase now by clicking here. Our story thus far: Two ousted royals, Daenisse Tarnower, a depressed, silver-haired, 14-year-old princess; and her brother, Crown Prince Wysenhymer, are wandering foreign lands after their father, the Cohen of Vaisnisht, was deposed and slain. In the hope of acquiring an army to reclaim his crown, Wysenhymer has betrothed Daenisse to a major barbarian chief, Doggo the Uncircumcised, Grand Kublai Kohen of the feared Horse Goyim…

It was her wedding day and Daenisse Tarnower was all verklempt. Not so much from the fear of espousing a complete stranger who also happened to be a seven-foot-tall, painted savage, though that too was discomforting, but from her brother, Wysenhymer, who kept smacking her.

“Stand up straight,” he yelled.  Whack! “Stop slouching. Stick out your chest, what little of it there is. Smile! Why are you always weeping?” Slap!

“Discipline is a lovely thing, your graceful,” said Ehud Intaglio, their wealthy but nervous host, a macher in the exclusive Hampkins resort area of East Diaspora. “but we don’t want the bride should be black and blue.”

“I am the Cohen!” said Wysenhymer. “I know what’s best for her. Black and blue are her best colors.”

“Of course, your graceful,” said Ehud, treading carefully. “But the Horse Goyim don’t like anyone beating their women except them. Should they hear of it, they might get a little, you know, wroth, and when they get wroth, believe me, it isn’t good.”

“She is not yet theirs. Until that animal tieth the knot with her, I’m the one who gets to slap her around.”

Ehud shrugged. “You know best, your graceful.”

“Bloody straight I do,” said Wysenhymer. “And never forget it. Did you get the marriage contract signed?”

“Um, actually nay,” said Ehud. “The Horse Goyim believeth not in writing. They say it is the tool of the wily, the cunning and the slick. But the Grand Kublai Kohen vows to honor the agreement and he is a man of his word.”

“He will supply me one hundred thousand fierce warriors to take back Vaisnisht from Bobby the Usurper?”

“Soon, I am sure.”

“Soon I’m not interested in. I want now. I want right after the wedding, I want.”

The third man in the tent cleared his throat.

“The Horse Goyim cannot be noodged, your graceful,” said Sur Jordon Morganshtern. “Noodging infuriates them. Doggo the Uncircumcised will fulfill his pledge, I am sure, but only when the stars are aligned in the shape of a knish or some such barbarian mumbo-jumbo.”

Sur Jordon was a disgraced knight who had left Vaisnisht after he was discovered being overly friendly with a cow. Even though he had offered to do the honorable thing and wed the animal, eyebrows were raised, smirking ensued and Cohen Bobby had exiled him. Over here in the East, Sur Jordon had hired out as a rent-a-sword and experienced many exhausting adventures amongst the Horse Goyim, the Hums, the Babbletopians, the Gauloise, the Vichygoths the Moo Moo, the Kickapoo, the Inka Dinka Dudu and other impossibly colorful tribes and realms of Diaspora. Upon learning that Wysenhymer had arrived on these shores, Sur Jordon had sworn himself into the service of the wandering Cohen. He was now the royal security consultant.

GONNGGGGG!

“What’s that?” said Daenisse, nearly jumping out of her stunning crimson wedding gown. Tailored according to ancient Horse Goyim sacred tradition, it covered everything except her breasts and her cunthel.

“That’s the wedding bell, mine Princess,” said Ehud. “It is time.”

“Good,” said Wysenhymer. “Let’s get this mishegoss over with. Oh, wait! I must give my beloved shvester one more zetz for good luck.”

He punched Daenisse in the arm. “Ow,” she said. The one hundred slave girls provided by Ehud took up her extremely long train and the bridal party moved outside, Daenisse walking a bit unsteadily as she couldn’t see much through her heavy scarlet veil.

Waiting for them were Horse Goyim as far as other eyes could see, all of them mounted on their khsteeds. Doggo the Uncircumcised had brought his entire kublikhar with him as well as their khwives and their khidds. Man and woman alike were dressed in leathern vests and loincloths with beads and tchotchkes dangling and jangling from their ears and noses and the green ceremonial khalikoskarf wrapped around their throats. As they espied Daenisse, the horde began chanting an eerie, high-pitched warble, at the same time causing their mounts to jump straight up and down as if on springs, a trick that of all the world’s peoples only the Horse Goyim had mastered.

“Khere khomes khe khbride,” they cried in their indecipherably alien tongue.

Daenisse was terrified by the din, by the barbarous spectacle before her and by the thought of the no-doubt painful deflowering that lay ahead, which she had read about in a tourist brochure given her by Ehud. My gods, I’m being sold to sweaty savage brutes! I’m losing it. I’m getting hysterical! No, wait. As satisfying as it would be to totally freaketh out, I must not. I am Princess Daenisse of House Tarnower. I carry within me the blood and seed of the flying, fire-breathing rhino. Sounds silly, I grant, yet it be true! On my oath, I shall keep it together no matter how swinish things may get.

Ehud had rented a vast beanfield for the wedding, as the Horse Goyim believed all important occasions should be held outdoors; indoors was where gonifs and shysters practiced their foul deceptions. Now the bridal party walked through the field, the Horse Goyim parting before them, pointing and giggling. At last they reached the khuppah where waited the groom on his virile black stallion, both their fierce faces unsmiling.

She had seen Doggo but once before. He hadn’t come into Ehud’s manor the day of his party but simply sent word to Ehud to bring Daenisse out on the balcony, where she vamped in her scanties as Doggo galloped by with six hundred of his closest hordebuddies. He glanced up at the silver-haired princess and shot Ehud a thumbs up. He was a bulvon of a man with long, black, braided hair down to his pupik. His muscles, glistening with bear grease, had rippled and pippled in the sun and his primitive shwanze throbbed against his flimsy loincloth, threatening to burst it asunder.

The ceremony itself was brief. A priest wearing a horse head fashioned of papier-mâché tied the knot, using a short length of hemp. Then he got the bride and groom hitched, using a hitching post. Then the groom crushed the head of a slain enemy with his boot. Finally, the priest muttered some sacred consonants in Klothkhaki, the tongue of the Horse Goyim, and turning to Doggo the Uncircumcised, said, “Khyou khmay khnow khschtup khe khbride.”

Doggo reached down, snatched up Daenisse with one hand, tossed her on the back of his horse and galloped off with a lusty shout of “Khi Khyo Khsilver!”

Oo, thought Daenisse, he’s strong like a bull!

A few miles away from the milling, cheering crowd, Doggo abruptly halted his fiery steed in a dense grove of shadewood trees and leapt to the ground. He lifted Daenisse off the horse and flung her high in the air. When she came down, he caught her with one big hand and deftly whipped off her gown with the other. Then up and down she flew again and this time, off came her shoes. Then her silken undergarments. Now she was altogether sans raiment and naked as well.

The next time she descended, Doggo quickly moved his large but surprisingly nimble body so that she landed gently upon his broad shoulders, facing him. His long, thick tongue flicked out, took a look around and dexterously crept into her virginal cunthel, where it performed wondrous and surprising maneuvers.

“Zounds!” said Daenisse. “Also, yowzah!”

Mayhap, she reflected, barbarian life may not be as bad as I had thought. After a brisk hour of highly athletic consummation proceedings, Doggo and Daenisse galloped happily back to the reception, which was in full swing.

He liketh me, she thought. He really liketh me.

In Ehud Intaglio’s vast dining hall, the guests were feasting on a traditional Horse Goyim entree, a baked mouse inside a fried pigeon inside a poached opossum, inside a broiled warthog inside a roasted sheep, inside a steamed camel inside a barbecued elephant. Doggo led his new bride to the dais, where servers brought them chalices of honeyed wine and platters heaped with slabs of baked mouse inside fried pigeon inside…you know.

Daenisse found she suddenly had a huge appetite and was energetically tucking into the dish when Wysenhymer appeared at her side.

“Well, shvester,” he said. “Judging by the big, kaka-eating grin on the punim of the barbarian, it looketh like you’ve well slaked his primitive urges, fortunately for you.” Daenisse blushed prettily. “Now remind him of his vow to loan unto me a mighty host with which to win back mine rightful throne.”

“But brother,” she said. “Mine hot husband and I speaketh not the same tongue, except—sigh—the tongue of love. And this I do mean literally.”

“Contradicteth me not!” Wysenhymer shouted, slapping her face.

This was an epic, historic mistake, of which the minstrels would long sing.

Doggo put down the camel leg he was gnawing, pulled out his khuttyoface, the razor-sharp, hammer-and-sickle-shaped weapon carried by all male Horse Goyim over the age of two, casually disemboweled Wysenhymer with one swift, economical stroke and resumed his dining. The late Wysenhymer slumped slowly to the floor, pigeon and mouse meat seeping revoltingly out from his not very attractive kishkas. None of the Horse Goyim around them bothered to stop eating, drinking and klopping each other over the kup, which was their version of conversation.

Taking a sip of honeyed wine, Daenisse thought, I’m liking this fellow more every minute.