by Tim Akers
They produced an arsenal of pool noodles and established a defensive perimeter.
“Not today, sweetheart,” Esther snapped. She slid past me, bowling through the drunken band, shield up and head low. They went down like soggy bowling pins, flopping to the ground with noisy consternation. We followed her through the breach. I apologized profusely, for all the good it did.
“The marshals shall hear of this!” the Bawdiest of the Black Bards shouted at our retreating backs. “They shall know of your impertitudinousness!”
“That’s not a word!” Matthew shouted.
“I am a bard!” the man responded, which seemed to be all the answer that was necessary.
Having witnessed Esther’s negotiation skills and the impact her shield could have on the soft flesh of the other faire goers, the crowd scattered before us. We had a clear path to the beer hovels where we had first sighted the Fetch. Unfortunately, by the time we got there, the doppelganger was nowhere to be seen.
“Does anybody see anything?” Esther asked. We stood in a circle, weapons out, looking like a bunch of crazed cosplayers who had taken the act a little too far.
“No. But I think we have other problems,” Tembo said. He pointed.
The marshals had found us on their own. And when I say marshals, I mean bouncers...guys who missed their calling as battering rams and human sledgehammers and were forced to settle with roughing up rowdy tourists at ren faires. They were carrying batons, but at least one of them had pepper spray, and I knew those robes concealed all manner of taser-related paraphernalia.
“We gotta go,” I said. “Those guys won’t screw around. And I don’t want the kind of incident we’d cause by knocking out civilians with fireballs.”
“Now you’re thinking. But we can’t go yet,” Esther said. “We need to find that Fetch.”
“Then we need a new plan,” Matthew said.
“Everyone scatter!” Esther shouted, then jumped into a beer hovel, crashing through the cardboard back and bringing the false front down.
“Got it,” Bethany said, and then literally just disappeared into a cloud of smoke. Tembo wasn’t far behind, whipping his hands around in a growing pattern of light that surrounded him, then shot off into the air, apparently taking him with it. Matthew lowered his hood and strolled away. No one ever suspects the healer.
Chesa looked over at me.
“Good luck, dude,” she said, then shoved me toward the marshals and started running in the opposite direction.
“What the hell!” I shouted, but then the nearest marshal put his hand on my shoulder and spun me around.
“Alright, asshole!” he yelled in a voice that probably didn’t have any other settings besides Loud and Louder and Oh my God Loudest of All. “Fun time’s over!”
“Sorry, man,” I said, then finally freed my sword from its knot. I punched the pommel into his belly without fully drawing the blade, then dodged to the side when he tried to grab me again. I heard the jagged discharge of a taser and saw the device in the marshal’s meaty fist. Getting tased in chainmail long johns was something I’d never experienced, but I imagine it sucks pretty hard.
A knife appeared in the marshal’s chest. At first, I thought it was one of Bethany’s, but when I whirled around, I caught a glimpse of the Fetch just as it disappeared into the crowds once again. I turned back to the marshal. The man went to his knees with a look of shock on his face. He stared down at the blade buried in his heart.
“The hell?” he whispered, then fell forward. The crowd of marshals stumbled to a halt, staring down at their fallen friend. Their shocked faces quickly turned red with fury.
“Get that sonuvabitch!” the largest brute yelled.
I turned tail and ran.
Chapter TWENTY-SIX
A FAIRE FIGHT
I stumbled through the narrow alley of the beer hovels, upsetting brew carts and barreling into drunken celebrants like tomorrow’s hangover. A few of the marshals stopped to attend to their fallen comrade, but those who followed were gaining fast.
“Stop that guy! He’s got a knife!”
I had a great deal more than a knife, but I wasn’t going to stop to argue the point, not when there was a marshal possibly bleeding to death in my wake. The shouts were enough to draw the attention of the crowd. My sword was enough to keep them away. In the rapidly clearing lane, I caught sight of the Fetch, just as it ducked through the last hovel and onto the tourney grounds. By some chance I had caught up to it. As I reached the picket fence that marked off the grounds, a trumpet sounded, followed by the raucous shout of hundreds of voices.
The grand melee was starting. Perfect.
The capstone of any decent Fren Faire, the grand melee was an enormous clash between two forces, mass combat at its finest and most well-padded. Hundreds of thoroughly insulated maniacs on each side rush forward, battering one another with rattan blades and flimsy spears, shouting in agony when one of the roaming judges declared them wounded or dead, or simply keeling over when the moment felt appropriately dramatic. I had done my share of melees, and always found them terrifying. The crush of bodies, the screams of my enemies, the rush of charging across the field waving a heavy stick...it was an intense experience. There was a time when I would have called it the most exciting thing I had ever done, but that was before the whole dragon incident.
The point is, this was the worst possible place for two people with very sharp weapons to be. But then, I imagine the Fetch knew that.
The field was lined with judges, each one dressed in bright white and carrying red and black flags, to signal injuries and disqualifications. The Fetch ran right past one of them, carrying a wickedly barbed knife in each hand, the strange gray robes of its body fluttering behind it. The judge raised one of his flags.
“Sir John Rast?” the man said, apparently recognizing me in the doppelganger’s features. “Those are not approved weapons, Sir John! You must clear the field immediately. If you do not clear the field—”
“He’s not going to stop,” I yelled as I passed. “And neither am I.”
“Sir...John?” There was more yelling, but I was completely focused on the chase. I felt the weighted bag of a disqualification flag thud into my back. I kept running.
The melee was just starting, so the two sides had yet to join. Padded bodkins fell around me as I ran, their soft heads bouncing off the ground, a couple thumping me in the head and chest. A few red flags arced in from the perimeter, indicating my faux injuries. When I didn’t slow down, they were joined by black flags. I bent my head and rushed forward, more determined than ever to end this before it got messy.
First, my parents’ house. Then my friend Eric. But now the unreal world was screwing with my Fren, and that was a step too far. I was going to tear this guy’s face off when I caught him, no matter how long it took, or how many faces.
The Fetch was in front of me, running right down the middle of the field, where the opposing armies would eventually meet. The distance between the forces was rapidly closing. Unlike the light steel and cotton padding of the ren faire crowd, I was humping my way across the field in authentic plate, designed and forged in true medieval fashion. It was built to withstand actual warhammers and dragon claws and had the weight to prove it. I was struggling. My breath came in whooping gasps, and the sweat running down my face and back was not making this any easier. Black spots crowded my vision. I began to worry that I was going to pass out.
The first lines of the western army reached the Fetch. An enthusiastic rank of skirmishers, wearing only light leather and armed with javelins, surrounded it and started stabbing it mercilessly. At first, the creature ignored them, but when one of the reenactors grabbed its arm and pointed angrily at the red flags lying at its feet, the Fetch answered by slashing the man viciously across the chest. He went down, blood streaming from his cuirass, the armor parting easily under a blade that it was never built to turn. His friends stared in shock at their fallen friend.
; “No!” I shouted, redoubling my effort, pushing back at the rings of darkness that clouded my vision. And then the armies joined, and I lost sight of the Fetch.
A shieldwall crashed into my blind side, pushing me to one knee and nearly knocking my sword out of my hand. I had to tuck the blade against my leg to keep from accidentally lopping someone’s foot off, and then I was suffering the hammering of blunt instruments against my helm. I raised my shield and stood up.
“You’re dead, man. Don’t be an ass,” one of the shieldmen said. I pushed him back with my pommel, and he and his friends took offense. “Come on, man. Take the flag and go home!”
“I don’t think you understand how serious this is,” I said. “There’s someone killing people out here.”
“Holy shit, that’s a sharp!” one of the others said, pointing to my sword. He raised his voice and waved his spear in the air. “Sharp! Sharp!”
“Damn it,” I muttered. There were already marshals wading through the fray in my direction. Fortunately, an enthusiastic charge of knights bulled their way into our little circle, and the melee flowed over us.
Given the narrow vision slots of most of their visors, and the frenetic pace of the melee, it was no surprise that the danger my sword presented was quickly overlooked. The alarm was raised, and those marshals would catch up to me eventually, but my immediate problem involved moving forward without sustaining a concussion from the rest of the fighters. I assumed a defensive posture, fighting mostly with my shield, resorting to the sword only when I couldn’t avoid it. The blade did its part, cutting through the rattan and padded steel of my attackers, severing a number of swords and leaving confused re-enactors behind. At least I wasn’t hurting anyone. Yet.
Suddenly I was standing over the injured skirmisher. His eyes were wide, and he was gasping for breath. I thrust my sword into the grass and took a knee at his side, snapping my visor open to get a better look at the wound. He looked at me weakly as I tore the straps off his cuirass and threw the breastplate aside. A single wound in his shoulder was seeping blood into his Green Day t-shirt. He grabbed my hand.
“Am I dying?” he asked. The sound of his voice, so damned young and scared, was a punch in the gut.
“Not yet,” I said. “We’re going to get you some medical help. Where are your friends?”
“They went after that guy...the one who stabbed...” his eyes lost focus and his head lolled back on the grass. I grabbed his shoulder and shook him out of his shock.
“If Matthew were here, he’d bless you or something, but I’m a little short on holy light. So this will have to do.” I tore strips out of his ruined underpad, binding them tight and stuffing them in the wound. They started soaking up the blood immediately, swelling to fill the gap. I used his harness as a compress. “Come on, man. Stay with me! Fight it! Fight it!”
“Hey! You get the hell away from him!”
I looked up to see that his friends had returned with a medic. The man clearly didn’t understand the seriousness of the injuries, because if he had, the melee would have been halted. As it was, fighters still swirled around us. I stood up.
“You need to call a halt to the fight!” I shouted at the medic. He was dressed in cartoonish priestly garb but carried a modern medical pack. He ignored me and knelt next to the injured boy. “Are you listening! There’s someone out here killing people!”
“Someone?” one of the boy’s friends asked. “Don’t you think I recognize your face? It was you! You’re the one who did this!”
“Now, wait a second...” I backed slowly away, pulling my sword out of the grass, shield arm raised defensively. “It’s not me. It’s just someone who looks like me. Honest.”
“No way, I’m not an idiot. It was you. Same face, same armor, same shitty grin.” He and his friends produced cudgels. Definitely not approved weapons, but I suspect they were beyond caring.
“I don’t want to fight you. See to your friend, and just leave me out—”
“Will you people stop screwing around! This guy’s really hurt!” the medic snapped. I could hear panic in his voice. “I can’t get the bleeding to stop. It’s like...it’s like...”
“It’s like the wound isn’t real,” Matthew said as he appeared out of the crowd. I went to my knees.
“Thank the gods. The Fetch stabbed him. Can you fix it?”
“Sure,” he said. Matthew nudged the medic aside and put both hands over the wounds. The boy’s eyes were fluttering, and his skin was as pale as spoiled milk. There was a warm cloud of light, and the smell of fresh fields and golden honey filled my nose. Then the cuts were gone. The bloody strips of my makeshift bandages lay over clean skin. I laughed so hard I was crying.
“Snap out of it,” Matthew said to me. “You’ve got a job to do.”
“Where are the others?” I asked, climbing back to my feet. I blew my nose on my sleeve, then settled my visor back into place.
“Lost in the crowd. We’ve tried to get the judges to stop this nonsense, but something’s going on. This whole field is slipping into the unreal. They’re going to start killing each other for real pretty soon.”
“Are you...are you serious?” I looked around. The melee was pretty hectic, despite the presence of truly injured and the medics trying to attend to them. I didn’t see any flags flying either. When my eyes settled on the band of skirmishers, their cudgels had become short swords. “Huh. Okay then.”
“Find the Fetch. Stop this, before we have a real incident on our hands,” Matthew said. He stood up and pulled his mask up. The alabaster glow of his skin was barely noticeable. “I’ll do what I can here. But get going. Time is running out.”
“But, if we could find Tembo, or at least Esther—”
One of the skirmishers lunged at me. His blade skated off my shield, pricking into my shoulder before I knocked it away. Another of them swung, harder this time, yelling as I blocked the blow. And then they were all rushing me, doing their best to put their magically summoned blades into my completely mundane guts.
“Now!” Matthew yelled. There was a wave of light, and the skirmishers fell over like gathered wheat. They lay at my feet, sleeping fitfully in the middle of a battle. I looked up at Matthew. His face was drawn, and the only light was the ember burn of his eyes. “Stop screwing around, Rast!”
I left him there to care for his charges. It wasn’t long before I realized how right he was. There was something wrong with the melee. This battle was no longer pretend and was slipping into something more diabolical. I didn’t see any more bodies, but the fighting was pitched, and the blades sharp. There were a lot of injuries, a lot of knights and squires limping away from the front lines with blood on their faces and panic in their eyes. No one seemed to know how to land a killing blow, though. Or maybe some part of their minds still hung on to the real world and was staying their hand. Gods knew how long that would last.
Amid the chaos and the crash of battle, I heard more desperate screams. I plowed my way in that direction, using my shield to batter my way through rank after rank of confused reenactors. The screams got closer, and then I was among them. And there was the Fetch.
It stood in the middle of a clearing spotted with blood. A couple of injured fighters were being dragged away by their companions. A shieldwall formed around the Fetch, bristling with spears that poked and jabbed whenever it got too close. Before I could get any closer, Sir Thomas Tomasson, the champion of every tournament from here to there and back again, strode into the clearing.
Whatever magical change had come over the melee, it had done Tom Tom some good. His armor was already a work of art, custom forged and perfectly fitted, with flowing heraldic tabards and pennants, and a wolfhound crest on his helm that looked so real it could bite. Under the influence of the unreal, Tom Tom had become a knight in the truest sense, carrying himself with a nobility that modern man could only aspire toward. His face shone with dignity, and the black curls of his hair spilled out in oiled ringlets. The crowd quieted a
s he addressed the Fetch.
“I know not what you are, monster. You wear a face I recognize, that of a knave and a scoundrel, whose blade is not worthy of this field. But by the grace of God, I sense that you are not him. You are something else. Something fouler and more base than any man. So,” he settled his helm onto his head and lowered the visor, then drew his sword. His blade was as bright as sunshine, the hilt shining with ivory and silver. “Defend yourself, scum. And may God judge the just, and lay vengeance on the unclean!”
For the briefest moment, I was embarrassed. He recognized my face but didn’t think much of me. I felt myself blush, both with anger and self-pity. But then I remembered who Tom Tom was, and what he had taught me, and a generation of aspirant knights across the country. He had developed a style that won him countless tournaments.
The same style that had gotten me killed dozens of times under Clarence’s tutelage.
“Sir Thomas! Wait!” I shouted. I tried to muscle my way into the clearing, but the shieldwall held me back. “Wait!”
The Fetch didn’t wait. It pounced forward, knocking aside Thomas’ sword and stabbing quickly at the knight’s chest. Thomas didn’t skimp, though, and the true steel of his breastplate turned the Fetch’s blade. Startled by this attack, Thomas stumbled back, batting the Fetch down and swinging with his beautiful sword. It was a classic Tom Tom move, delivered with the kind of strength needed on the tournament ground, his shield moving to protect scoring opportunities, his feet braced for the counterattack. Only the Fetch wasn’t going to counterattack, not in the way Tom Tom expected. No, the Fetch was in this to win.
The creature rolled away from Tom Tom’s attack, then grabbed the knight’s overextended arm and held on. Thomas tried to pull free, but that brought his feet too close. The Fetch kicked once, twice, and Thomas’ knee buckled, sending the knight sprawling. With a scrabble of claws, the Fetch landed on his chest. Tom Tom swatted at him, but it was too late.
The Fetch bent its head and laid tiny teeth into Thomas’ throat. Thomas screamed, but the sound became garbled as the Fetch bit through his chain coif, crushing his throat. It leaned back, cheeks slick with blood, and roared. This was an inglorious end for such a decorated knight. But it was the end.