by Kevin Hearne
Mounted riders charged out of the gate, perhaps a dozen of them, clanking and snorting and shouting, and Gustave knew they would catch up to Ralphee quickly.
“Pilot! Deploy anticavalry now!”
Metallic chunking noises vibrated like tuning forks in Gustave’s skull, and shortly thereafter he saw little automaatti scurrying across the fields toward the horses at a frightening speed. He realized that he had not asked for any specifics regarding what would happen to the riders and feared that he may have just ordered their deaths.
He need not have worried; from the back of each spider-like automaatti, two smaller ones launched to wrap around the heads of the riders. The golden mechanical legs locked behind the skull and squeezed. The riders promptly ceased to care about chasing Ralphee; they clutched at the automaatti on their heads and most of them fell off their mounts in their efforts to get free, dropping their swords in the process while screaming, “AUGH, SPIDERS!” Once on the ground, the automaatti let go and scuttled away in search of more riders, for these weren’t cavalry anymore but slow-moving men in armor, busy with panic attacks. Only two riders remained in the saddle, but neither was armed now, having dropped their weapons in an effort to get free of the automaatti.
Ralphee looked over his shoulder, wild-eyed, worried that the centipod was coming to slay rather than save him. But the craft slipped behind him, blocking the road, and Grinda ordered the pilot to open the door on the starboard side and lower the stairs for the boy. The horses of the two remaining riders veered sharply to either side to avoid colliding with the centipod, and that finally threw their riders. They thunked against the metallic prophylactic and stopped screaming about spiders, which was a relief.
“You can call off your spiders now,” Gustave said, as he’d had quite enough of yelling.
“I am recalling them now,” the automaatti replied. “The centipod is happiest with her spiders inside her!”
Gustave noted that some of the riders were trying to remount and might be successful eventually. But Hurlga’s brother was boarding now, chest heaving and dark hair plastered to his sweating forehead, and Gustave doubted that Ergot’s men would threaten the centipodial mother of spiders.
“Thanks for that,” Ralphee said, “but who are you, and are you going to kill me?”
“I’m King Gustave. Your sister, Hurlga, sent us.” There was no question that Ralphee was Hurlga’s brother, for he really did look just like her: stout and pale-skinned, albeit flushed at the moment, same brown eyes and semi-squashed nose, same impressive hair on the forearms, sort of like an anvil wrapped in patchy fur.
“Hurlga? Is she all right?”
“She’s perfectly safe.”
“Oh, whew! Wait, you’re the king who needs his backside wiped by my sister?”
“Well, not anymore, that was only at first—”
“How can you lead the country if you can’t clean up after yourself?”
“I have awesome friends and cool gnomeric rides. Speaking of which: Pilot, set a course for the Toot Towers. Full speed until we lose all pursuit, then you can slow down.”
The centipod lurched into movement, and they all retired to Gustave’s lounge area and asked the oatmeal chef to surprise them with a refreshingly mealy repast.
“Let me ask you something, Ralphee. How did Lord Ergot learn that your sister is in my employ?”
Ralphee’s face scrunched up in disgust. “I told his men when I applied for a bricking job in the Skyr. Thought it sounded mighty impressive.” He leaned in. “I didn’t tell him about your problematic boom-booms, though. Promise!”
Gustave and Grinda shared a look. “Lord Ergot is building in the Skyr?” she asked.
Ralphee blinked. “Well, yeah. All the housing. For the halflings and humans moving into the old gnomelands, now that the gnomes are leaving.”
Grinda closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose for a moment, then took a deep breath before continuing. “This is all news to us, Ralphee. Why are halflings and humans moving into the gnomelands?”
“They’re laborers like me, moving there to help rebuild the gnomelands after the natural disasters.”
Grinda threw up her hands. “What natural disasters?”
“Are you kidding me right now? The ones that drove the gnomes into Bruding!”
Gustave looked at Grinda, his eyebrows raised. “I think I might have an idea what Lord Ergot is up to with the halflings.”
She shook her head and gave a short, wry laugh. “It’s both a power grab and a real estate scam. First destroy their homes and then rebuild them, with halflings and humans living among them to keep control—and act as a standing army.”
“But why, though? What’s his end game?”
“The game is ending your reign, Gustave, and starting his own. Feeding and supplying an army capable of taking Songlen is expensive. By this time next year he’ll have all the money he needs to pull it off.”
Gustave made a menacing sort of sound, halfway between a growl and a bleat. “Unless we remove him first.”
Grinda beamed at his understanding. “Exactly so.”
“Excuse me, sir?” a guard interrupted. “There is a very large force pouring out of Bruding in pursuit. Lord Ergot is leading them.”
“How large a force?”
“More than a hundred mounted.”
Gustave’s stomach roiled again, and he longed for the pleasant release of an emergency plop drop. A hundred riders was far more than the automaatti defenses could handle.
“It would seem that Lord Ergot is quite keen on removing you first,” Grinda said.
“Oh, poop,” Gustave muttered.
“Different fritters for different critters.”
—LÅTTA SENSS, in Oh, My Scattered, Covered Chunks, It Is So Dwarvelish to Be Understanding of the Foibles of Others (shelved in “self-help”)
It was almost teatime, and bellies were grumbling. By the time they were to meet Faucon at Dinny’s, no one had settled on how to broach the subject of Remy with the halfling. There was significant argument about whether they should bring it up at all.
“He never said that Remy was his partner or wife or anything,” Båggi pointed out, “so it’s not like he lied to us. There’s no reason to confront him. It was a simple miscommunication.”
“I don’t think there’s aaanything simple about it,” Agape said. “The story was thaaat Remy was crushed by a staaatue, right? So in honor of thaaat, he pays to have a memorial staaatue erected of his pet pigeon? How is thaaat not a sign of mental illness?”
“It makes sense to me,” Båggi said.
“How?”
“He is a halfling obsessed with justice, with balancing the scales. A gnomeric statue fell down and killed his pigeon, so he thinks it perfect to raise a statue of said pigeon and make the responsible gnomes fall down, so to speak.”
“That’s unbalanced, Båggi,” Kirsi said.
“But it is symmetrical.” Båggi hastened to explain when Kirsi’s brows furrowed and her lips pursed in disapproval. “Oh, my friend! My fine bearded friend! I don’t disagree with your assessment. Or with yours, Agape! I’m merely saying Faucon might think his response was reasonable. His behavior adheres to a code, as Gerd has pointed out to us. Please do not question his past today. He is suffering as it is.”
Agape’s and Kirsi’s shoulders slumped, conceding, and Båggi wondered if he had done the right thing. He wondered that on a near-constant basis now. Should he have ordered the large cup of kuffee with three Teabring sugar bombs? He had hoped it would induce a state of euphoric bliss, but after a couple of sips he thought it might merely detonate his pancreas. He enjoyed discovering the taste sensations of other nations, but, as with cabbage, he’d learned that some of them were more explosive than others.
Onni pointed out the window. “Here he come
s.” It was easy to spot Faucon just now; he was the only halfling hobbling down the street next to a gryphon, and everyone gave them a wide berth, although many halflings stopped and exclaimed over Faucon’s feet. “Hey, I think he’s walking much better now.”
“He has a huge bag of yogurt-covered cranberries. That’s a new waistcoat too,” Kirsi noted.
“Mmm-hmm. Very fancy,” Onni agreed. “Possibly even schmancy. Maybe the next time I want another cardigan, I’ll get a waistcoat instead.” Even Båggi noted Kirsi’s appreciative eyebrow raise.
They all waved through the window to Faucon and he waved back. Soon he was negotiating the hungry-hungry-halfling throng near the door while Gerd planted herself right outside the window and stared at them through the glass, her library bird perching on the shoulder joint of her right wing.
Will someone please look at the list of omlet fillings and tell me if they have ladybugges, crickets, or grasshoppers?
Båggi scanned the menu quickly and said, “I’m sorry, Gerd, they don’t have any of those. They do have chocolate chips and/or mung beans.”
I will settle for ten mushroom-and-bacon omlets, she said. If you would be so kind as to order them for me and have them brought out, I will pay for them with one neck feather. Neck feathers are extremely valuable, and you will tell yon halfling waitress so. I will listen to my library bird recite Hurp Blep’s Saga of Claw and Craw while I wait here.
Båggi promised he would and then they all greeted Faucon and made room for him in their booth. He beamed at them.
“I feel much better,” the halfling said. “The podiatrist has given me a supply of topical anesthetic while my feet heal up, which allows me to walk without pain. He had high praise for your invention, Onni, and wondered if you might be willing to either license the design or make more. I am not the only halfling with such needs.”
Kirsi made a small eep of joy and Onni said, “Wow. An honest-to-goodness practical invention that works!”
“Your father would be so proud!” Kirsi said, and Onni fiddled with his sparse beard while looking supremely pleased with himself.
“It’s been quite a fine day, if you don’t count the mermaids,” Onni said, then gestured to the ovitaur while speaking to Faucon. “Why, Agape learned that the wooden carvings she’s been leaving in place of saltshakers are highly prized art. She’s famous AF!”
Faucon blinked in surprise. “Truly? That is…”
Agape looked like she was going to lower her head and ram him. “Justice? Haaave I broken any law if the people do not feel wronged?”
Faucon pursed his lips. “Tommy Bombastic felt wronged.”
“Not arguing thaaat. I’m aaasking about the people who came out ahead because what I left behind was worth way more than a saltshaker, aaand they profited.”
“That is ethics, not law. By committing theft, you unequivocally broke the law. Whether it was ethical to do so is debatable.”
Agape’s head lowered another inch. “Let’s debaaate.”
At just that moment, Faucon’s tummy rumbled. “Let’s eat something instead and enjoy a friendly debate later.”
Båggi could not stop smiling as they ordered cakes and tea for themselves and omelets for Gerd, then whiled away a pleasant hour conversing and feeling safe and cherished. It was a shame, he thought, that more hours could not be spent thus, and then he realized that perhaps they could have a few more such hours before the day ended. He inquired whether the halfling server might know of a dwarvelish inn nearby.
“Certainly,” the halfling said. “It’s called the Frothy Pint, and it’s located across the river in the Pruneshute Forest. You can catch a ferry easily at the bank, and signs on the other side will direct you to the inn.”
“Have you been there, then?” Båggi asked.
“Oh, yes. It’s quite a popular drinking establishment because it’s the only place you can get true pints near here. It’s technically outside of the Caskcooper city limits and therefore not bound by the half-pint law. And you don’t have to take a bath first.”
“What?” Båggi’s jaw dropped.
“Well, you can if you want to, but plenty of people around here don’t. They have two separate service areas. One is called the Great Unwashed, and that’s for folk who merely want to eat and drink, and it’s kept entirely separate from the other wing of the inn, which is traditional dwarvelish service.”
Båggi released the breath he’d been holding, and everyone laughed at his clear signs of relief.
“You’ll be well taken care of there, sir,” the server assured them, and with that endorsement, Båggi had little trouble convincing the others that they could do with some proper Pruneshute pampering.
After Faucon settled the bill, they took the ferry across the Rumplescharte River to a sturdy and much-used dock, where Båggi was delighted to see other dwarves chatting among a gaggle of drunken halflings waiting to board the ferry and stagger home. There would be no need to follow signs when friendly dwarves were ready to lead them directly to the Frothy Pint.
“Oh, there you are!” one dwarf called, waving at Båggi in a way that suggested that they had perhaps been long friends briefly parted or were long-lost cousins. “If you’re headed to the Frothy Pint, I’m your guide to the perfect pour. Follow us, foine friends!”
It was not a terribly great distance to the inn, but neither was it a brief walk, especially to the panting and winded gnomes; it was at least fifteen minutes through the trees along a winding path before the Frothy Pint came into view, at which point their dwarvelish guide turned and walked backward, shouting over the many babbling conversations in progress. “Food and drink only to your left, plus the road to Nokanen! Full dwarvelish service to your right!” This was repeated several times, and almost all of the humans and halflings that had joined them on the ferry split away to the left. The only other folk headed toward the fragrant baths were a pair of halflings who swayed this way and that, arms around each other’s necks. Something a bit stronger than a pint, much less a halfling half-pint, wafted from them.
“You want full dwarvelish service, my good sirs?” the guide asked, uncertain.
“Zat include a nice dwarf lass?” one of the halflings said, waggling his caterpillar-like brows.
The other halfling barked a laugh. “Got any elves, maybe? Orra nice dryad chick? Know their way around the woods is what I hear, in either case. Maybe that little gnome has three or four friends?”
Kirsi squeaked in shock, and Gerd hissed.
“Oh, my outraged outergarments,” the guide said, turning beet red. “That is not—that is—please don’t? I mean…we encourage our guests to refrain from misogyny?”
It was clear to Båggi that their guide was indeed outraged but that he also was sworn to uphold the Really Nice Rules of Hospitality and Hoedowns and that to insult his guests might cost him his job or worse—a Beard Shaving of Don’t Do That Againness.
But Båggi had taken no such orders, and neither had his Telling Cudgel.
“You are drunk, friends,” he said, pronouncing the word friends in such a way as to make it clear that they were not. “Perhaps you’d like to sleep it off here in the charming forest or, as the rest of your party seems to have done, take a pint in the inn?”
“Oh, yes!” the guide agreed. “Please do take these tokens for a free half-pint!” He held out two golden coins, but one of the drunk halflings batted them away.
“We’re not here for free beer, bro,” he said, wobbling a little with his hand on his sword. “And we don’t much like being told what to do. You’ll back me up, eh?” He upnodded at Faucon, who sternly shook his head.
“I will not, eh,” Faucon intoned, hand on his own sword.
The drunk halfling took a step toward Kirsi, who flinched, and Båggi’s cudgel was already in his hand and swinging for the halfling’s knee, as that gamb
it had worked in his favor previously. Right before the cudgel connected, Båggi realized that he rather hoped the halfling didn’t explode, and he also noted that he didn’t seem to have as much control over the cudgel’s effects as he’d hoped to have.
“Sorry!” he gulped as the cudgel connected.
Luckily, the halfling merely fell over, howling. The cudgel had no protuberances, no spikes, no coruscating beams of justified doom. It was simply a cudgel and had done what cudgels did, which was a very normal and yet annoying level of violence, at least in the eyes of someone who wasn’t a half-drunk halfling lying on the ground with a broken knee.
“You bet you’re sorry!” the halfling screeched. “I’ll sue you! I’ll tell the Dastardly Rogues about this, and your name will be grass, you see if it won’t!”
“Ha ha! That is not my name! In fact, my name is—”
But Faucon put a hand over Båggi’s mouth.
“What my client means is that any jury would consider what had just occurred to be an incident of self-defense, and as the Rogues are an illegal enterprise, we very much doubt that will come to pass. Now take those tokens, plus these ten fickels for your trouble, and go find another inn.”
Faucon held out a handful of coins, and the halfling sneered as he took them. As for the dwarvelish guide, he, too, pulled out a bag of tokens.
“Free drinks next time you’re here! But not now, ha ha! Much later!”
The halfling looked like he might reject this peace offering and start a fight, but Båggi quietly put his cudgel up on his shoulder, and Faucon put his hand on his sword, and Gerd hissed, and the two halflings took their consolations and drunkenly wobbled off into the night, muttering about how the gnome wasn’t very pretty, anyway, and any species that encouraged their women to have beards should probably go ahead and die out.