Travels With a Fairytale Monster

by Elizabeth Gannon

  Rowland approached the railing and looked out over the water towards his new prize. “Huh.” He frowned. “Looks like the men aren’t quite done mopping up yet.”

  Uriah joined him at the railing.

  Rowland had at least a hundred men in his private pirate armada, so the news that they hadn’t yet overpowered resistance on the vessel was rather surprising. They should have finished with the fighting and been well on their way to emptying their prize’s cargo by now.

  Uriah leaned against the familiar wooden railing of his ship, trying to see what the problem was.

  “I think,” Rowland strained his eyes to see the action, “it’s just… that little bitch?” It came out sounding like a question, almost surprised by the sight.

  Uriah nodded in agreement, spotting a woman as she battled her way up the stairs to the quarter deck of the Adithian craft. “Yep.”

  The female soldier was wielding a bow and seemed to be giving her opponents a bit of trouble. Much more than Uriah would have expected, given the number and skills of Rowland’s crew.

  She stabbed a man in the face with an arrow, then promptly fit it into her bow and shot another attacker with it. All of which was done in the time it took Uriah to blink twice.

  “Huh.” Uriah said again, unable to think of anything else. He was too amazed to think clearly at the moment.

  “Just kill her already!” Rowland yelled at the men, apparently losing his patience. “Kill the bitch and toss her corpse in the hold for the trip back! And do it quickly, dammit! I want my prize!”

  Another wave of attackers surged forward, straight into the woman’s line of fire.

  She cut them down even faster than she had the others, her hand a whirl of motion as it flashed from quiver to string, quiver to string, effortlessly hitting Rowland’s men like stationary targets on the archery range.

  “Send the rest!” Rowland bellowed. “Send everyone, I don’t give a shit!”

  His screams attracted the woman’s attention though and she turned in one smooth motion to aim at them.

  “That bitch is dreamin’ if she thinks she can hit us at this distance.” Rowland scoffed. “And with this crosswind?” He made a dismissive sound. “Pft.”

  Uriah’s eyes locked with the woman’s.

  His life had given him the ability to immediately size up an opponent and understand what they were capable of. It was really the only way to stay alive in the violent hellhole which was his homeland.

  And in that moment… he knew.

  Not only could she hit him, she was going to.

  She let loose the arrow and Uriah dove to the side, dodging it by inches. The deadly projectile instead hit one of Rowland’s men in the neck as he walked up behind Uriah. The man then toppled overboard, carrying a serving tray of tea with him.

  Uriah frowned in irritation.

  That had been his tea kettle.

  He crouched down behind one of the cannons, trying to stay out of her line of fire.

  Undaunted, the woman aimed her next arrow high into the air so that it arced in from above him. He swore again and rolled to the side to avoid it, just in time to meet a third arrow the woman had somehow managed to shoot through the narrow opening between the posts of the deck rail. The projectile glanced off the metal surface of the cannon, changing direction so that it went directly into his back, just below the shoulder blade.

  He cursed, toppling onto the wooden deck, trying desperately to pull the arrow free, but finding that she had placed it in the perfect spot so that he couldn’t reach it.

  That shot was impossible.

  Uriah had been around warriors his entire life and there was no one who could have hit him from that distance and angle.

  “Holy shit!” He gasped in utter amazement, the grievous wound almost forgotten. “She made that shot!” He pointed at the woman. “Ha!” He put his head back, laughing in good-humor, amazement, and considerable pain. “HA! Did you see that!?!” He asked rhetorically, not really caring if Rowland had actually survived the arrow barrage or not, but feeling like someone else should bear witness to the woman’s feat. “Did you fucking see that!?!”

  “I see that she got you pretty good, yeah. You should get that seen to right now. Looks bad.” Rowland agreed, not sounding nearly as amazed as he should have been by the woman’s accomplishment.

  But Uriah didn’t care.

  This wasn’t about Rowland.

  Fuck him if he couldn’t appreciate an artist.

  Uriah hauled himself to his feet, stooping slightly in pain. Rationally, he knew he should stay where he was, but he felt honor bound to stand back up. He removed his hat and held it out to the woman in genuine respect. The action caused the pain from the arrow in his back to become even more excruciating, but Uriah didn’t care. This was a matter of professional pride. He believed in giving credit where credit was due, and the woman had effortlessly removed him from the fight. She’d simply beaten him. Straight up.

  And he was so impressed by that.

  “That was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen!” He yelled across to her, still holding out his hat to her. “It’s an honor to see your work. I will wear the scar with pride.”

  Assuming he lived, anyway. The wound felt deep.

  The woman paused for a moment, then reached up to quickly remove her conical helmet and its attached leather flap which covered the back of her neck, as if it were interfering with something. With the helmet gone, the girl’s long dark hair blew in the wind behind her, like it was dancing.

  She was wearing the Lamellar armor and scaled skirt common to the Adithians, which was made of leather and iron. Hers was more ornate than the usual footsoldier’s however, a large emblem of a silver wolf on her breastplate gleaming in the morning sunlight.

  The citizens of the Union of the Southern Isles were a stunning people, all in all. Especially the Adithians.

  This woman had them all beat though.

  Her exotic features and skin tone were so strangely attractive that he literally had to lean against the railing again, just to stay on his feet.

  She took his breath away.

  True, some of that could have been the fact that she had just shot him with an arrow and it had probably pierced his lung, but he remained reasonably sure that his current breathing difficulties had more to do with the woman herself, rather than the severe injury she’d just inflicted upon him.

  She was, without a doubt, the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his life. Talented to, since he’d never seen anyone who could have made that shot.

  Uriah respected talent even more than stunning beauty. In fact, in his mind, they were one and the same. Talent was beauty, when you came right down to it.

  His people believed in magic and witchcraft and all the mystical bullshit which seemed to be hidden in their murky swamps at night. Personally, Uriah had always thought that whole idea was ridiculous and merely a symptom of a bored and angry people, looking for anything to take their minds off of how shitty their lives were. But in this particular case, if someone had told him that the woman was some kind of witch, using a spell on him, he might well have believed them.

  The woman’s muscular legs were braced on the deck, and he began to wonder what it would feel like to run his hands up them…

  He wanted to know everything about her. Touch every inch of her. Hear her whisper his name in his ear. Run his fingers through her shiny black hair. Look into her eyes as she smiled at him and know that she was his and his alone. And that she always would be.

  Uriah’s heart was beating fast just imagining it— and also probably because of his blood loss from the arrow wound— like all he’d been through, his whole life, had been designed to lead him here. To this moment. With her.

  He had never wanted anything more in his entire life than he wanted that woman.

  She was gorgeous and accomplished and had just singlehandedly killed at least two dozen men.

  He didn’t even know her name. />
  But Uriah could happily spend the rest of his life just looking at her. She was… a work of art. A beautiful, deadly, captivating work of art.

  He found her absolutely hypnotizing.

  The woman continued staring at him as well, looking vaguely perplexed and uneasy. A gust of wind blew by, allowing her dazzling hair to blow in the breeze again. From the looks of it, she’d once had it up in a complicated ceremonial style, but now it danced around her face teasingly, as if inviting him closer and drawing attention to how perfect she was.

  He had the strangest feeling come over him, which he’d never before known.

  Like he was meeting his best friend, for the first time. It was recognition mixed with relief… but also some amount of joy. Like: “Oh, there you are! It’s so great to meet you finally! I’ve missed you!”

  Uriah didn’t believe in love at first sight. Not at all. The Grizzwoodians were not a romantic people, least of all himself. He was not capable of love and even if he were, it wouldn’t be for some random woman he didn’t even know. But what Uriah did believe in was the idea that certain people were… special. That there existed some extraordinary… something about them, which when you were in its presence, made you take notice. Made you feel something which no one else could make you feel. And you could call that whatever you wanted, from just being bored with commonplace idiots and being excited to finally meet someone interesting, to choosing to view it as one of his mother’s sentimental bedtime stories. Whatever it was, certain people gleamed in the dwindling light of this dull dying world.

  And this woman was one of those people.

  He winked at her flirtatiously, a smile of absolute joy crossing his face, recognizing how special she was and how lucky he’d been to stumble across her like this.

  She shook her head, as if to clear it, and brought her recurve composite bow to bear again, which was accented with the same expensive silver detailing as her armor. The weapon looked like it cost more than Uriah’s entire ship.

  He swore, preparing to duck to the side again, this time hopefully to a spot she couldn’t hit. If such a location existed. Despite his honorable intentions to simply be near her— and his less than honorable desire to study how her body moved when she was naked—he really didn’t want her to kill him today.

  His being dead would make the courtship so much more problematic.

  Luckily for him— and unluckily for the girl— she didn’t get the chance to shoot him again. Her hand gracefully reached for an arrow… but she found the quiver strapped to her back was empty.

  The girl swore loudly, her voice was delicate and was marked by the most adorable little Adithian accent, which made the profanity sound both musical and erotic. A lot of people tried to kill Uriah, but none of them had been so goddamned appealing as this girl was. It would almost be worth dying, just to see her in action. Besides, if he lived, she’d be so sad. It was mean to deny her victory when she wanted it so badly.

  Rowland’s men surged forward towards her and Uriah felt a momentary twinge of panic. He couldn’t explain it, but somewhere along the line, he had started voting for her. True, if she won the day, she’d probably kill him, but he couldn’t help but root for her anyway.

  She was the better warrior. On equal footing, she would have beaten anyone here. Uriah included.

  For some reason, he found that unbelievably attractive too. Perhaps because he came from a warrior culture himself, or maybe it was simply because the girl was so beautiful that he’d find pretty much anything she did sexy, even murdering his friends.

  Whatever the reason, he didn’t want to see Rowland’s men cut her down.

  Not in the slightest.

  Surprisingly, the woman dashed towards the men, diving onto the deck and came up in a roll, carrying several arrows she’d grabbed from the wooden surface. She quickly fired off one, killing an attacker, but the others were upon her before she could let loose another projectile.

  One of the men swung his sword, cutting her bow in half.

  Uriah’s heart sank, recognizing that the fight was now over.

  The girl, however, came to no such conclusion. She drove her handful of arrows straight into the man’s chest, then drew a short szable-style dueling saber from her waist and started hacking away at the other men with it. From the looks of the blade, it was a goddamned ceremonial weapon, but she didn’t seem to care.

  It could cut flesh and that was all that mattered to her.

  He shook his head in utter amazement. “Wow.” He breathed to himself, even more smitten with this girl now.

  She just kept going.

  Take her ship, take her men, take her bow… take all of it, she’d continue fighting.

  He had such respect for that.

  Sadly, it was looking less and less like the woman’s story was going to have a happy ending. Her real artistry was apparently the bow, and although fairly capable with her blade, there was no question how it was going to turn out when faced with overwhelming numbers. Her stance was textbook, graceful and flawless, but it was suited more for one-on-one fencing against an honorable opponent, rather than a ship full of degenerate pirates.

  Still, she somehow managed to take down four more of the men before they finally wrestled the weapon away from her. She broke the neck of a final pirate with her bare hands before the others overtook her.

  “Hold the bitch down!” Rowland commanded, hurrying across the gangplanks back to his own ship. “Don’t let her get loose!”

  Rowland’s men began to kick the woman as she struggled to get free. She smashed the heel of her boot into the face of one of Rowland’s first mates, driving the man’s nose through his head. He fell limply to the deck as the girl continued to struggle.

  “Rowland!” Uriah yelled at the other captain, stalking after him. “Tell your men to stop immediately!” He pointed at the girl. “She’s unarmed!”

  “Are you kidding!?!” Rowland cried, sounding like that was a genuine question. He made his way into the captain’s cabin of his vessel, no longer concerned with the matter. “If they let that woman up, there’s no telling how many more of us she’ll kill!”

  “With what!?!” Uriah stormed into the cabin after him. “They’ve taken her weapons! What could she use to harm them? Insulting insinuations about their paternity? Vicious glares? Strangle them with her shiny hair?”

  “That woman is more dangerous than you can possibly imagine.” Rowland began to rifle through papers on his desk. “Just take your 5% and leave, Uriah. Let my crew handle their own business. You read the letter, you know what has to happen and why. Frankly, it doesn’t make sense to me either, but that’s the Adithians for you.”

  “The Adithians are monsters, Rowland.” Uriah reminded him bluntly.

  “The world is filled with monsters, Uriah.” Rowland opened one of his drawers. “And who are we to judge? You and I have never been on the right side of anything and you know it.”

  Rowland was right, of course.

  Uriah paused in the doorway, his eyes moving to a bowl of fruit sitting on a nearby table.

  Goddamned fruit basket. It was always there to ruin Uriah’s life. It had been the cause of all of this; the reason why Uriah couldn’t get ahead in this world.

  The fruit basket was going to kill everything he loved. Take everything he had. Again.

  Uriah wasn’t a hero. Not by any means or definition. Or squeamish. Any other person in the world, there was a very good chance he would have followed Rowland’s suggestion, kept walking, and never looked back.

  In fact, it was almost certainly what would happen. There was little doubt, even in his own mind.

  He wasn’t proud or embarrassed about that fact, it simply was the way it was. He was a terrible human being, from a land filled with terrible human beings. No better, no worse.

  Any other person in the world would have been on their fucking own in this situation.

  But this wasn’t any other person in the world.

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nbsp; Uriah’s people believed that what you wanted was yours. You wanted it, you took it. And once something was yours, you were duty bound to defend it from harm or anyone seeking to challenge your possession of it. If it was yours, it stayed yours. The Grizzwoodians often took that split-second decision to unhealthy levels, gaining a bit of a reputation in the world for being the most jealous and possessive people who ever walked or crawled. They were mindless, violent barbarians, and not even the gods could help a man who stood between a Grizzwoodian and what he considered his. It didn’t matter if it was his chair, his broken cup, or his woman, a true Grizzwoodian would fight for any of them. All of them. Against any odds or opponent.

  With every goddamned breath in his body.

  Because it was HIS.

  Not that Uriah really lived his life according to the teachings of his people. Truth told, he didn’t care about his homeland’s beliefs any more than he cared about what other pirates expected him to do.

  All Uriah cared about was the fact that he wanted the girl.

  Period.

  He wanted her smiles, he wanted her body, and he wanted her talent. It was all his already as far as he was concerned. He’d seen her, he wanted her, she was his.

  So none of that other bullshit made a damn bit of difference. It wouldn’t have mattered to him if the people of the Grizzwood had all been god-fearing pacifists, or if he had sworn some kind of blood-oath to the other pirates where he vowed to never take their prizes.

  Uriah wanted her.

  He was going to take her.

  End of story.

  It really didn’t matter how the pieces were arranged on the board or where this little scene was playing out, Uriah was going to take her anyway.

  He’d take her from his brother, or his king, or his treasured friend.

  He’d take her if they were all standing in a church, or a graveyard, or at her 50th anniversary to her beloved husband.

  He’d take her anyway.

  Because he wanted her and he was selfish and he simply didn’t give a shit about anything but that.