The Jouster's Lance

by A. J. Marcus

  Chapter 3

  Dale yawned and his ears popped. He’d been on the road all day, driving from Waxahachie, Texas, up to Larkspur, Colorado. He’d stopped in Amarillo to fuel up, check on his horses, and get a quick bite to eat. He and the horses were used to long drives between fairs, but they weren’t normally on the road the day after one fair ended to make the opening of the next. If he’d worked with the jouster troupe before, he wouldn’t have pushed to be there so quickly, but he’d had to take a couple of days to learn their routine and people. In exhibition jousting, it was important to know the people enough to trust them. One small slip and a jouster could end up trampled by a horse or impaled on a breakaway lance.

  The small town of Larkspur was perfectly situated between Denver and Colorado Springs. Dale was a little surprised at how small the town was. There were only stop signs at one intersection between the highway and the fair site. He’d enjoyed watching the mountains grow once he cleared Pueblo. He’d had a small taste of them coming through Raton Pass, but those mountains hadn’t been as majestic as what he’d glimpsed around Colorado Springs. He hoped he’d have time to go exploring deeper into the Rockies once he learned the troupe.

  “Damn,” Dale muttered as he nearly missed the turn into the fair site and had to jam on his brakes. Behind him, in the trailer, the horses stomped nervously at the sudden stop. “Sorry, guys,” he said reflexively, even though he knew they couldn’t hear him. He hated anything that caused his horses discomfort.

  He made the turn into the grounds and immediately spotted several trailers and a small corral with powerful horses moving about it. He was angling the truck toward the dirt drive when a black Jeep with the top down darted in front of him.

  “Damn it!” he shouted as he hit the brakes again. He wasn’t going fast, but the brakes locked, throwing his maps and the remains of lunch to the floor and causing the horses to stomp again in irritation. He glimpsed long dark hair hanging over broad bare shoulders. The girl in the passenger seat was shouting and hitting the driver. Dale flipped them off as they disappeared through the gates.

  “Welcome to Colorado,” he muttered as he started the truck moving again and continued toward the other trailers.

  As he backed the trailer into place at the end of the line, a spindly man came running out. Dale rolled down his window. Warm air hit his face, but it was noticeably cooler than Texas had been.

  “Hey, I’m Dale O’Toole, the new jouster. I take it this is a good spot to park?”

  “You’re the new jouster, huh? Sure, that’s fine. Max—he’s the joust director—will want to know you’ve made it in,” the man said.

  Making sure he was lined up correctly in his mirrors, Dale set the parking brake and turned off the truck. Before he got out, he grabbed the pouch of horse treats from the passenger seat, thankful they hadn’t slid onto the floorboard when he’d locked the brakes for the black Jeep.

  “Do you mind helping me get the horses settled? Then we can go find Max,” said Dale.

  The man’s narrow face lit up. “Sure, I’m always available if folks need help.” He offered a slender hand to Dale. “Name’s Charles, but most people around here call me Chipmunk.”

  Dale stifled a chuckle. A lot of full-time rennies had nicknames. “Pleased to meet you, Chip. I answer to Dale or Diederik equally well.”

  “I thought I recognized you.” Chip’s eyes grew wide. “Diederik, the Demon Duke of Denmark. I saw you down in Houston a few years back. They were doing that flaming whip thing in the finale. That was really something to see.”

  Dale laughed as he opened the horse trailer. The flaming whip act was something he and Ralph only did in certain circumstances. At several of the fairs he worked, there was too big of a chance for fire. That, and he got tired of his beard getting burned off. He kept it short and stylish, but he liked his dark beard; it added to his character.

  “Haven’t done that one in a while. They were having a drought last year down in Texas.”

  Champion and Pyre whinnied in unison as he stepped into the trailer. Chip stood quietly as Dale inspected the two horses before untying them. He’d looked them over in Amarillo but liked to check them for any sign of accidents before turning them out in new corrals. Both horses were fine, so he led Pyre, the big-muscled blood bay, out of the trailer. The horse stepped easily down.

  “Hold him here just off to the side and wait for me. We’ll lead them into the corral at the same time.” He handed the red cotton lead rope to Chip. “His name’s Pyre.”

  Chip looked up at the sixteen-hand gelding. “You’re a big horse, aren’t you, Pyre.”

  The horse looked at the scrawny man with apathetic eyes. Dale knew he’d be all right with the new human.

  Champion stared at him with relief as Dale walked back into the trailer. He stroked the gray’s forehead as he undid the lead rope and led him out.

  Chip showed Dale around to the side of the corral where the gate was. Four other horses trotted up, led by a huge palomino that must have been at least part shire. The palomino pushed forward to get closer to the two newcomers. Dale’s horses assumed submissive postures, the way they did when meeting other horses for the first time. They were as used to traveling from fair to fair as Dale was, and knew how to deal with other horses.

  Dale removed Champion’s halter, gave the horse a treat, and swatted him on the rump good-naturedly. He took Pyre’s lead rope from Chip and repeated the process. The two horses moved cautiously among the strangers, sticking together. Dale watched in silence for a couple minutes, pleased none of the horses seemed overly aggressive, before he turned to Chip, who had settled against a fence post.

  “Why don’t we go find Max?” he said, opening the gate.

  Chip nodded. “Sure are some nice-looking horses you’ve got there.”

  Dale couldn’t help but smile. He loved it when people complimented his horses. He tossed the halters and lead ropes in the cab of the truck as they walked past. “Thanks. I’ve put a lot of hard work into them.” “I think this fair owns the horses for the joust,” said Chip.

  Dale fell into step alongside the other man and raised an eyebrow. Even in the troupes he was used to, the ones that moved from fair to fair together, each jouster owned their mount. It made for a much better show, and even though everything was well choreographed, knowing the horse helped limit surprises that could be deadly. “Really” was all he said.

  Chip led him to a small trailer that sat on the edge of the small heavily wooded campground south of the open space for the corral. After a short knock, a stout man of average height opened the door. He leaned heavily on a well-worn cane.

  “Hey, Chipmunk, what’s up?”

  “Hey, Max, I found that new Jouster you’ve been waiting on.”

  Max looked beyond Chipmunk. Tired brown eyes met Dale’s hazel ones. “Mr. O’Toole?”

  “Mr. Brown, please call me Dale.” Reaching around Chip, he extended his hand.

  “Most folks around here just call me Max.” His handshake was firm and strong, delivered from a large rough hand. “Chipmunk, thanks for showing Dale the way over,” he said in a dismissive tone while motioning Dale into the trailer.

  “Thanks, Chip,” Dale said, pausing on the threshold to shake Chipmunk’s hand again.

  “Any time, Dale,” Chip said with a smile. “If you need anything, most folks around here can find me pretty easy, so just let me know.” “Thanks, I’ll do that.” Dale returned the smile as he stepped into the trailer.

  Dale had been in smaller offices, but this one obviously doubled as Max’s living quarters. Max walked heavily over to his desk; every few steps, the cane landed hard, giving a slight boom in the confines. Dale wondered why they hadn’t heard it from outside.

  “So, Dale, looks like you made good time from Scarborough,” Max started as he plopped down into his chair behind the small metal desk.

  “Got an early start and the road was pretty good,” Dale replied. He stood there, waiting
for his new boss to indicate he could take one of the chairs in front of the desk.

  “Please, Dale, have a seat.” Max gestured to the two worn chairs. “There are a couple of things we need to talk about.”

  Dale eased himself down and waited for the man to continue.

  “Dale, you come highly recommended, and we’re happy to have you as part of our troupe. I just wish it were under better circumstances.”

  “I heard about the accident through the grapevine,” Dale interjected.

  Max nodded. “It serves as a reminder how dangerous even a well-choreographed joust can be. Thanks for coming so quickly. Before we get into the details of how we work around here, there is something I’d like to address. You bill yourself as Diederik the Demon Duke of Denmark.”

  Dale nodded. “That’s right, sir.”

  “We’re going to need to change that up a bit,” Max sighed. “In all honesty, I like the sound of it, but the festival coordinator and a lot of the locals won’t. We have a very strong religious base around here. Folks won’t take kindly to the word demon. Since like most fairs, we believe each knight should take turns winning, there is likely to be an uproar if a demon duke wins even once in a while. Now the Duke of Denmark part works all right with the court story we have here, so if we could either go with Diederik the Duke of Denmark, or maybe Diederik the Dark Duke of Denmark, either of those would be fine.”

  Dale frowned. He’d spent years building up the Demon Duke’s following. On the Internet, he had a decent number of fanboys and fangirls, and they would show up to see him perform. He’d also worked it into his performance, occasionally snarling at folks and such. But since he’d changed his schedule, he’d need to go along with the changes in his character. He also didn’t want to get a name on the circuit for being a prima donna who was hard to work with.

  “Let’s go with the Dark Duke of Denmark, then,” he said.

  Max smiled and made a couple of notes. “Good, that will make the folks here a little happier. Like I said, some of them wear their religion on their sleeves, and we don’t need Focus on the Family or the World Prayer people showing up to picket the fair because of a demon performer.”

  Dale suppressed a chuckle. They never knew, it might be really good publicity for the fair; a bunch of folks protesting could be good free advertising as long as it didn’t bring the wrong kind of pressure down on people.

  “Now then, starting tomorrow,” Max continued. “We’ll be doing practices, since we only have four days until open, and you’ll be getting to know everyone. We’ll be working like dogs to get it all together. It says here you brought your own horses.”

  “That’s correct,” Dale replied. “Brought two. Chip said something about the other horses being owned by the fair?”

  Max shook his bushy blond head. “Not the fair, but me. These guys are great actors and good horsemen, but most of them also do community theater when the fair isn’t in season, so they opt to just use my horses. Saves them the hassle of keeping their own. Since the cast hasn’t changed much over the past few years, it’s given the horses and jousters a chance to get to know each other.”

  “Is it all right if I use my own horses?” Dale hoped it would be.

  “Oh, sure. That accident cost us a horse as well as a jouster. I’ve been trying to find a replacement, but so far, no one is willing to part with a trained jousting horse.”

  Dale nodded. He knew most serious jousters valued their horses and the training that went into them. Finding a replacement horse would actually be a lot harder than finding a replacement jouster. One of the advantages of staying in an established troupe was that folks had extra horses if one went lame or had an accident.

  “I figure tomorrow will be soon enough to introduce you to everyone,” Max said. “Besides, I think most everyone has either gone home for the night or into Denver for dinner.” Over the next hour, Max explained the idiosyncrasies of the team, giving Dale insight on how they worked before he would meet them the following day.

  Chapter 4

  Austin straightened his black pirate hat in the mirror.

  “I don’t know,” he said, turning toward Jasmine, who was putting the final fluff on her many-layered brightly colored skirt. “Leave it loose or pull it back into a ponytail?” He ran his fingers through his long brown hair. He’d deliberately let it grow out in the past year, thinking it would improve his pirate look. It had been a pain during the winter when it had been mid-length, getting in his face but not long enough to pull back. He’d used way too much gel back then, just to keep his sanity and not cut it off.

  “You’re doing pretzel duty early, then in here?” she asked, pulling on the strings that tightened her leather bodice over her ample bosom.

  “Yeah,” he replied. He sat down to pull on his black leather boots.

  “I’d go ponytail. It’s warm enough today that it will feel better than having it down.” She straightened her large pewter pin inscribed with “my eyes are pretty too.”

  He took the hat off and bundled his hair into the black elastic tie. Then he put the hat back on. “Better?”

  “Oh yeah.” She smiled as she grabbed her three-pointed hat. “You’ll be beating them off with your pretzel pole.”

  Austin glanced at the clock in the pirate shop’s back room. “Shit, I need to get over to the pretzel shop and get loaded up so I can be at the gate in time for cannon.”

  Jasmine laughed. “You have fun with that. I know how you love to handle the big poles.”

  “You too,” he replied as he headed out the door.

  “Hey.” A large Hispanic man with four children in tow flagged down Austin. He’d been peddling pretzels for two hours and was already starting to get sick of the smell of mustard. He stopped and waited for the man to reach him.

  “How much?”

  “Two dollars apiece, m’lord,” Austin replied. Although there was a sign at the top of his pole indicating the price, most people didn’t bother to read it.

  “How much for five?” the man asked as one of his daughters began pulling on his hand.

  “Ten dollars,” Austin replied, resisting the urge to roll his eyes at the man’s inability to do simple math.

  The large man frowned. “No discount for buying five?”

  Austin shook his head. “Nope, we don’t have volume discounts.”

  “Fine, give me five,” the man grumbled as his daughter began to whine.

  Austin lowered his pretzel pole so the family could reach the knotted bread. “Take your pick.”

  “Daddy, I don’t want a pretzel, I want to see the fairy,” whined the little girl.

  “Take a pretzel, then we’ll go see the fairy,” the father growled as he took one for himself after handing Austin a ten-dollar bill.

  “But she’s right there.” The girl pointed, ignoring the pretzels hanging before her.

  Austin looked over his shoulder and saw the fairy, decked out in shades of blue. She’d been at the fair for a few years and was really good at working the crowd. “Why don’t you take your pretzel and see if the fairy might want it,” he said to the girl. “If she doesn’t want it, then you can eat it.”

  The girl snatched a pretzel and dashed for the fairy. The father mouthed “Thank you” as he dashed after his daughter with the other three children obediently in tow.

  “You know that was an evil trick,” a squeaky voice said from behind him.

  Austin turned and saw Chipmunk standing there, holding a pole similar to his own, but filled with bags of popcorn.

  “Hey, Chipmunk, how’s it going?”

  “Not too bad, but the fair is just starting,” he replied. “Did you have a good winter?”

  Austin shrugged, not really wanting to go into the dramatic details of his roller-coaster love life. “It could have been better.”

  Chipmunk nodded. “I understand. Well, the first joust is about to start. We should amble over there, see if we can get some sales from the crowd.”


  “Wow, I hadn’t realized it was getting close to noon,” Austin said, picking his pole up so he could head down the hill to the jousting field.

  “Yeah, time flies when you’re out walking about,” Chipmunk said.

  Before Austin could say anything else, a patron distracted them by wanting to buy popcorn.

  “See ya down there,” Austin said as Chipmunk stopped to make a sale. Chipmunk just waved.

  The crowd going down toward the jousting field grew larger. The joust was one of the big reasons people came out to the Renaissance fair, and the first joust at noon every day gave them their initial look at the spectacle. This year, with the new jouster, the fair had been posting about the new Dark Duke of Denmark on their Facebook page. Austin wanted to see the man, see how he compared to the previous dark knight. He was stopped several times by folks wanting pretzels, so he missed the king’s opening speech, but he really doubted it was any different than what he said every day at the first joust. He’d caught the show several times over the past few years and, like many regulars, could recite it almost word for word.

  Austin found a place behind the crowd, in some shade, to stand. He lowered his pole to the ground and waited for customers to come to him as the jousters thundered out onto the field.

  John the Bold, Knight of Justice and the Right Hand of God, rode out first, followed by his second, the Earl of Canterbury and also a Knight of the Holy Cross. The crowd cheered. Then the new guy, Diederik, Dark Duke of Denmark, rode out on a beautiful gray horse. Austin’s breath caught. With short black hair and a neatly trimmed black beard, Diederik was one of the most handsome men he’d seen all day. Even with the armor he wore, it wasn’t hard to tell the man was in pristine shape, with a slender waist and broad shoulders. First impression: he was an awesome replacement for the previous dark knight.