Fuzzily, determinedly, Fodder forced his eyes into some shadow of reluctant obedience. The nearest smudge swam woozily into focus, solidifying into scaly grey skin, vicious curved claws, and four long toes that impatiently tapped the grassy ground. From somewhere overhead came a leathery rustle.
“’Fraid not, mate,” said a gravelly voice. “Nice try, though.”
And then suddenly the ground was shaking, or at least that was how it felt as a pair of legs clad in thick, hide-bound fur pounded into Fodder’s line of sight, scattering the cluster of grey-scaled feet from its path with violent abruptness. A meaty fist thrust itself across the dazed line of his vision, closing around the front of his mail shirt and hauling him upwards with a vicious jerk.
A vast face filled his world, wild bloodshot eyes glowering with almost enough force to be physically painful as they peered out over the top of a truly epic bush of a beard that smelled like a badger’s backside.
Thud the slain Barbarian grinned. It was not a pretty sight.
“Gotcha!” he snarled.
* * *
Erik had time only to catch a glimpse of the curved outline of an oar before he flung himself to the ground, solid wood missing the side of his head by mere inches. Even as he scrambled to his feet, scrabbling for the hilt of his sword, the oar swung again with deadly force, knocking his feet from under him and hurling him to the ground. A hand lashed out, ripping his sword from his grasp as the point swung round and came to rest against his throat.
Bewildered, battered, and astonished, Erik stared up into the bloodied and drawn face of Prince Tretaptus of Mond.
There was no mistaking him. Although Erik had only ever seen his picture on the wedding notices that they had passed on the roads of Nyolesse what felt like years before, the profile was not one to be forgotten easily.
“Prince Tretaptus?”
The distinctive nose of the prince screwed up quizzically. “How did you…oh blast, the wedding notices.” He pulled a face. “I’d forgotten about those but, of course, it just said.” His hand gave an odd sort of tremor and he frowned with reluctant irritation. “And that’s quite enough of trying to make me stumble and drop my sword, if you don’t mind.” He addressed his obscure remarks to the general air around him, glaring with an odd pointedness up towards the empty sky. “I’m better than that, thank you very much. I will not be made into a clumsy oaf again!” He smiled, quick and fleeting, as his odd gaze shifted back to Erik once more.
“You know, this is easier than I expected it to be!” he remarked, conversationally. “Possibly it’s because I’m only having to work against a single point of view. But, you know, I think what really matters is going into it in the full and certain knowledge that you are exactly who you are.” He nodded, his lips twisting thoughtfully. “Yes,” he added absently. “I do think that might be it.…”
He’s completely insane. The thought dropped unbidden into Erik’s head. The man is a raving, nonsense-spewing lunatic…
With a sword.
Elder and the others couldn’t be far behind him. If he could just keep him talking…
“You kidnapped the princess, didn’t you?”
The prince cocked an eyebrow. “Well, I helped,” he said rather diffidently. “But I wouldn’t want to take all the credit.”
“But why? She’s your betrothed. You were going to marry her and—”
Tretaptus’s long sigh killed off the remainder of Erik’s sentence. “Look,” he said almost sympathetically. “We both know you’re just trying to keep me talking, and I do need to get to the point. And I want you to know that I really am terribly sorry about this. But I hope you’ll understand that what I’m about to do is for the good of everybody, because this quest, you see…well, it has to be stopped. And since this quest is all about you, well…” He shrugged apologetically. “Now just hold still.” The sword teased sharply against the skin of Erik’s neck. “Honestly, I promise you. Having your head chopped off really isn’t so bad.”
The sword pulled back and then descended, the blade slicing through the air—
And then with shocking violence, Prince Tretaptus was hurled backwards. The sword flew out of his hand and clattered away to splash into the water as he tumbled to the ground with a gasp of pain.
“Mysterious powers!” Erik heard him rasp. “Forgot the mysterious powers!”
But Erik had no time for any more of the prince’s mad ravings. Scrambling to his feet, he hurled himself over to where the princess lay, her fingers twitching and her eyelids continuing to flutter. He had to get her out of here before—
The impact of the oar drove all the breath from Erik’s body. Tretaptus was already half on his feet, moving with shocking speed as he brought his original weapon back to bear.
“I’m sorry!” he gasped. “I really am, but I have to do this!”
The oar swung ruthlessly round once more, the force a harsh contrast to Tretaptus’s apologetic expression. The second blow lifted Erik clean off his feet and sent him tumbling with a splash into the river. For a moment, he scrambled desperately as the weight of his clothes dragged him down, but suddenly he was gasping on the beach once more, the water abandoned by means beyond his understanding. And then, from atop the waterfall, he heard a gloriously familiar call.
“Erik? Erik!”
Elder! It was Elder! He was…
“Oh, blow! That’s torn it!” The oar descended onto Erik’s head with a sickening crunch. The world swam in a haze of blood and darkness and hollow agony…
But then there was light, soft and gentle and calling him back again.…
“Erik! What happened?” Elder’s bearded face was leaning down over him through a mist of colours and painful sound, the glow around his fingers shining brightly as it leached away the head wound that might have otherwise taken his life. But Erik had no time for his near miss; he shook away his mentor’s concerned hands and dragged himself to his knees.
“The princess!” he gasped out. But one glance across the little beach was enough to tell him that both mad Tretaptus and poor Princess Islaine had gone.
“It’s Prince Tretaptus!” he gasped. “He’s turned traitor! He hit me over the head and tried to chop my head off! And he’s taken the princess again!”
“Tretaptus?” Erik hadn’t seen Sir Roderick arrive—he could only assume that Elder had propelled him here using whatever magic he had used to cross the river himself. “But the man is nothing! A sniveller and a coward who never deserved our noble lady’s hand! Why would he take her when she was already so unworthily his?”
“I know not.” Elder had come to his feet, pulling Erik up behind him as he glared into the nest of trees that lined the riverbank with eyes so filled with fire that it seemed impossible that the very leaves themselves did not shudder under the force of them and burst into angry flames. “But when we find him, I will make him sorry for it.” His terrible eyes snapped to Roderick. “Gather the others and bring them here quickly. We will pursue this foul turncoat and rip these woods into splinters if needs be in order to bring him to justice. This will end by sundown!”
Erik sighed as he stared into the dark trees with grim determination. He could only pray that the beautiful lost soul he had touched so briefly would soon be safe once more. For how much longer could this absurd pursuit drag on?
* * *
“Bugger.”
Shoulders’s summation from over his right shoulder pretty accurately summed up Fodder’s feelings on the matter. He was tempted to echo it himself.
“Yep,” he replied.
“Well put,” Flirt added from behind and to his left. “So. Now what?”
Fodder shook his limbs tenderly. The chains around his wrists and ankles chafed tightly, though he could hardly blame Thud for that piece of ruthlessness, given the trouble they’d been causing.
“The chains feel pretty secure,” he remarked, struggling to maintain a straight and level tone as his mind screamed at him. “It’s kind of f
lattering that they’re that worried about us.” He worked his wrists again as the metal bit uncomfortably into his skin, feeling the shoulders of his friends as they pressed together in their back-to-back huddle. “Bit inconvenient, though…”
“Inconvenient?” There was a low, dangerous note to Shoulders’s tone. “We’re chained up in a huddle waiting to be dragged off to spend the rest of our natural lives strapped to a rack in a deep, dank dungeon, and you call it inconvenient?”
“What would you prefer I called it?” Fodder tried and failed to keep the frustration that he had been desperately suppressing out of his tone. “You think I’m not every inch as frustrated as you? We were doing so well; we were getting the hang of it! We were so close!”
“Calm down, both of you,” Flirt’s voice snapped from behind them. “This isn’t over yet, is it? Not until they’ve got the princess.”
The chains rattled as Shoulders jerked. “For all we know, they’ve got her already!”
Fodder felt his eyes drift towards the tree line, to the vivid glow of Narrative light hovering away towards the riverbank. Had Dullard managed to stay conscious? Had he kept hold of the princess? Had he been able to enter The Narrative and keep control of his wits?
They could only hope.
It was all they had left.
But even if Dullard was free, it didn’t mean much to the three in chains. For them, the Quest was over. Surely not even Dullard would be so foolish an optimist as to try and free them. Only a Narrative Hero would be able to pull off such a feat against such odds, and Dullard, talented as he was, had no such advantage, especially with a bitchy and recalcitrant prisoner like Pleasance in tow.
It was always so easy for the Merry Band when they got into these kinds of scrapes. If this was The Narrative, he was sure, one of them would have found a magically secreted lock pick somewhere up his sleeve and would be working to unlock their padlocked wrists in the concealment of the back-to-back huddle that Thud, in his Narrative-minded way, had indeed placed them after the chains had been secured. On a whispered signal, they would have broken their bonds, grabbed their weapons from a convenient heap nearby, and taken out a goodly number of their opponents in their brave rush for the safety of the trees. He had been the victim of such charges on several occasions.
Fodder knew they should be plotting their getaway. They should be talking in codes and whispers, planning their audacious flight to escape the dungeons they had so battled to avoid. But the truth of the matter was that they were chained in a heap with no way to break their bonds and no reasonable expectation of getting free unaided. Without a fresh idea or outside intervention…succinctly put, they were buggered.
“I don’t suppose either of you have a lock pick secreted up your sleeves, do you?” he inquired hopelessly.
“Lock pick?” Shoulders gave a snort. “Why would I have a lock pick? I don’t know how to pick locks!”
“Just a thought,” Fodder muttered gloomily. “Mind you, the state of us, it’s not like we’d get far in a fight if we could get free.” He sighed wearily. “How’s your elbow, Flirt?”
His sigh was echoed. “Sore, but healing. It’s not a bad break, and it’s my left one so it could be worse. I reckon it’ll be good as new in a couple of days or so.”
“Just in time for the dungeons,” Shoulders added acerbically. “That’ll be handy. And my ribs are still killing me, since you didn’t ask. I reckon I’ve broken at least four.”
Fodder gritted his teeth, resisting the urge to point out that Shoulders’s ribs would have been his next enquiry. The last thing they needed now was to bicker.
Fortunately Flirt headed off any further remarks on the subject. “What about your neck, Fodder?”
Fodder tried an experimental turn of his head but the lolling wobble immediately suggested that this wasn’t a good idea. At least his head was back on straight.…
“I reckon I’ve done a couple of vertebrae,” he said, wincing at the shooting pain the movement had sent scurrying down his back. “My head’s a bit loose and my neck’s ruddy sore, but I’ve had worse. It’s not unbearable. If I tilt my head sideways, my helmet’s there to keep it steady.”
“They could have asked if we were hurt,” Shoulders groused, and Fodder could sense his glare as he stared out at the ring of captors that encircled them so casually. “They must have been able to tell we were damaged.”
“It’s not their fault.” Flirt’s voice was low, but Fodder was nonetheless sure that he could see several bat-like ears swivelling in their direction. “With Thud howling at them like that, what else were they supposed to do?”
“I’ve never had any problems with them,” Fodder added with equal quietness. “In fact, when I’ve chatted to Gibber, Fang, and Frenzy, we’ve always got on quite well.”
Flirt leaned closer, her curly hair escaping the grasp of her helmet to tickle against his sore neck. “Are any of those three here?” she asked softly.
And therein lay the problem. Fodder had absolutely no idea.
For in his pursuit of them, Thud, it seemed, had tired of relying on Preen’s Disposables in his effort to gain revenge and had decided to call in the big boys. Looped around them in a firm, if rather reluctant-looking circle, were just over a dozen claw-fingered, heavy-toothed Assorted Freakish Creatures.
Fodder had always liked working with the AFCs. He had spent an enjoyable half hour a couple of Quests back discussing tactics with Fang and Frenzy before a pitched battle and, of course, he’d played chess with Gibber after the latter had eaten his innards in an ambush. But the trouble he’d always had in trying to strike up any kind of permanent friendship was that, more than any other person in the land, it was impossible to know what an AFC would look like from one Quest or even one scene to the next. When he’d chatted to Fang and Frenzy, they’d been altered into orcs with heavy jaws, boar-like faces, and leathery green skin. The Gibber who’d eaten his innards had been a vicious goblin with saw-like teeth and spindly limbs. He’d met them stretched and stout, broad and bandy, scaled and furred, reptilian, insect, and beast alike. Fodder had the utmost respect for their work, but their ever-shifting features made it very difficult to have any idea whom he was talking to.
The AFCs of this Quest had no specific name; they were simply the creatures. Their appearance was basically monkey-like, excepting the fact that few monkeys were known to have huge bat-like ears, grey-scaled skin, vast leathery wings that protruded from their backs, and mouths overrun by an unnecessary number of teeth. In Narrative, they were a terrifying force designed to strike fear into the hearts of all unfortunate enough to cross their paths. Out of it, however…
As best he could, Fodder glanced around at the professional monsters holding them captive. One of the nearby AFCs was sharpening his claws thoughtfully with what looked like a nail file. Another was peering into his friend’s mouth as he helped him to adjust his teeth into a more pleasingly crooked arrangement. Yet another was consuming an apple in a messy hail of peel as he mulled over what looked like a sheet of fresh instructions. And as for the rest—well, most were slouching around or lingering with their arms crossed and looking, in spite of their frightening appearance, not remotely threatening at all. What they mostly looked was bored.
Bored and irritated. And to judge by the huffy half-glances they were slipping in a certain direction, the source of their irritation was something they and Fodder shared.
“I don’t care what it’s doing over there! This is more important!” Thud’s rising holler was enough of a distraction to pull Fodder away from his own internal conversation in time to hear the far more reasonable retort.
“Forgive me, but it is not up to you or me to tell The Narrative what is important, Thud. The Narrative decides for itself.”
“But it’s decided wrong!” Like a toddler having a tantrum, the huge, bearded brute actually stamped his foot in fury. “We’ve got them, right here and now! We have to wipe them out.”
“But we don’t
have the princess! And that, I think you’ll agree, is more important!” The Officious Courtier whom Thud was haranguing was a tall, prim, white-haired man with loping limbs like a fastidious scarecrow and a nose that was both highly distinctive and very familiar. Fodder could see that it was from his Uncle Primp’s side of the family that Dullard had gotten both his most distinguishing facial feature and his infinite well of patience.
“But I want to kill him back!” Thud’s roar almost shook the nearby treetops. “Why can’t that be Torsheid’s big entrance? Why can’t he stride in, having wreaked glorious vengeance for his brother’s death on the two bastards and the stupid wench that stole the princess in the first place?”
“Wench?” Fodder felt their shared chains jerk as Flirt’s head whipped round furiously. Her shoulder dug harshly into his arm as she yanked at her bonds. “Wench? Why that…”
“Ow! Flirt!” Shoulders’s exclamation implied that Fodder was not the only one getting a battering. “Bloody hell! We didn’t say it!”
But the chains continued to twist painfully at the Barmaid’s struggles. “I’ll give him wench, the stupid, smelly, weak-blooded, ham-fisted, bottom-slapping git! I’m not taking this, not from him, not anymore! Not after I’ve had to put up with his groping, dirty hands and his slobbery, beardy lips, having to smile as he gave me bruised thighs and a pinched arse! Just unchain me and get me my sword, and I’ll give that bastard wench! I’ll—”
The tirade stopped in its tracks, halted by the firm but gentle placing of a grey-scaled, many-clawed hand over her face. The monkey-faced reptilian AFC who had silenced her shrugged his winged shoulders with a smile that was almost apologetic.
“Look, pipe down, yeah?” he said, his voice both reasonable and unexpectedly normal given that it was emerging from a mouth with more teeth than was good for it. “’Cos Beardy over there ain’t going to give a monkey’s what you think, but if you keep on yelling, he might just ask us to shut you up and we don’t want to do that any more than you’d want us to. We don’t want to be here any more than you either, but it doesn’t look like any of us’ll be getting a choice about it. So just pipe down. Okay?”
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