by J. S. Volpe
* * *
Ludwig van Beethoven was almost ready to fly down into the orc-fucking town itself and start tearing apart whatever hadn’t already burned in search of that turd-touching bird-thing, when the selfsame turd-touching bird-thing finally saw fit to show itself.
It flew up from behind something that had once been a long, low wooden storehouse but now looked more like a log in a brightly blazing fireplace. The bird-gorgim did a few quick loops in the sky above the burning buildings in the center of the village and then soared off to the north, heading right in Beethoven’s direction but a hundred feet lower down—low enough that it didn’t notice Beethoven’s dark figure against the cloud-filled night sky.
And it had Beethoven’s coat tied around its neck by the sleeves.
“You fucking fucktard!” Beethoven bellowed as he streaked toward the gorgim as fast as he could.
It spotted him when he was thirty feet away. Its beak opened in surprise, and its ink-black eyes widened. It veered away from Beethoven at the last possible instant and with a few vigorous sweeps of its mighty wings, shot northeast toward the edge of the woods.
“Oh, no, you don’t!” Beethoven bellowed. “You cannot escape the wrath of Ludwig van Beethoven so easily!”
He flew after it. This time, since he hadn’t been flying for almost an hour and was relatively well-rested, he was able to maintain the speed necessary to close in on it.
Sensing his approach, it looked back over its shoulder at him as he rapidly closed the gap between them. It chattered something at him—as before, he couldn’t decipher the snappings of its bright yellow beak—then began zigzagging about as quickly as it could, presumably in an effort to throw him off.
Its ploy didn’t work; Beethoven was able to match its weaving course with ease. The gap between them grew smaller and smaller, and finally Beethoven was within arm’s-reach of its feet.
He reached out and grabbed its right ankle. It pumped its leg up and down and back and forth, hoping to shake him off, but Beethoven held on tight. He clenched his teeth and pulled himself forward far enough to reach the gorgim’s right calf with his other hand. He planned to haul himself up along the damned bird-thing’s body until his jacket was within reach. Until the clipping was within reach. That was the important thing. Everything else was trivial in comparison.
The gorgim twisted its upper body around and swept a wing at Beethoven’s face. Beethoven sneered and grabbed at the wing. He came away with a fistful of blue feathers. The gorgim opened its beak wide enough to fit a grapefruit inside—Beethoven guessed it was shrieking or whistling or whatever the fuck birds did when they were in pain—and then swung itself around and down, diving straight toward the ground three hundred feet below.
As they streaked groundward, Beethoven pulled himself upward another hand’s-length along the gorgim’s leg. The hem of his jacket fluttered barely four inches beyond his reach now. If he could just pull himself up a little more…
He became aware of voices shouting on the ground below, and as he and the bird-gorgim spun about as they plummeted downwards, he caught a few quick glimpses of three gorgim and two humans—a man and woman who looked vaguely familiar—about five hundred feet to the west, all of them pointing and yelling at the falling duo. The quintet started running toward the spot where Beethoven and the bird-gorgim would crash if they didn’t pull up in the next few seconds. One of the gorgim, a tall man with a big beard, drew his sword as he hastened forward.
Screw them. No one was going to stop him from getting his clipping back. No one.
At the last minute, the bird-gorgim broke out of the dive and swerved toward the trees. Beethoven’s feet struck the dirt hard enough to gouge two short furrows in the mud and send sharp pains shooting through his ankles.
“Bastard!” Beethoven screamed. “The extent to which you will be fucked for this will be truly breathtaking!”
The woods were only a few hundred feet ahead now, and Beethoven realized that if he was going to make his move, he’d better do it now. Given that most birds lived in trees, Beethoven suspected that the feathered fuckface would definitely have the advantage in the woods.
As the bird-gorgim pumped its wings until it was streaking toward the trees like a bullet, and as the three gorgim raced along in pursuit (not noticing that the two humans had slipped away at some point in the last ten seconds), Beethoven mustered all his strength and willpower and managed to pull himself up just far enough to snag the hem of his jacket.
“Ha! It is mine! You have just become Ludwig van Beethoven’s bitch, you worthless cunt-faced fatherfucking pus-bag!”
He tugged on the jacket, but it was tied so tightly around the bird-gorgim’s neck that the fabric merely stretched a little.
“Gah! You insufferable fuck!”
He tugged harder. There was a sharp tearing sound and half the jacket came away in his hand. The other half remained tied around the bird-gorgim’s neck, flapping like a short tattered cape.
“Son of a—” Beethoven began to say, and then they entered the woods.
The bird-gorgim immediately veered sharply to the right, sending Beethoven swinging out in a wide arc and slamming back-first into the trunk of an oak tree. The force of the blow sent an explosion of pain across his upper back and stunned him enough to make him let go of both the bird-gorgim and the section of jacket. He thudded to the ground and lay there unmoving. The piece of jacket fluttered down next to his head.
Thrown off-balance by the force of the collision and the sudden loss of its two hundred and fifty-pound ballast, the bird-gorgim lost control and smashed head-first into an elm. Its limp body collapsed in a heap at the base of the tree.
For a moment there was silence in the woods, except for the faint whisper of falling leaves, and then Beethoven moaned and sat up. The world tilted first to the left, then to the right. Beethoven made a hurking sound, leaned over, and vomited a stream of milky liquid onto the grass.
“Fucking fuck!” he said, rubbing his back. “Fucking bird tree gorgim fucking bullshit! Ludwig van Beethoven hates you all!”
Scowling, he snatched the piece of jacket off the ground and examined it, turning it this way and that. Luckily, it was the piece with the inner pocket, and with a blissful smile, Beethoven plucked the clipping from the pocket and clutched it to his breast.
Then he heard multiple sets of footsteps crashing through the brush toward him from the edge of the woods. The trio of gorgim!
Beethoven scrambled to his feet, planning to run, but the simple movement of getting up made everything spin. He swayed on his feet, then slumped against the tree trunk.
“I think they went this way!” called a thick burbly voice about fifty feet to the west.
“Are you sure?” said another, possibly female voice.
“Yeah, I think so.”
Beethoven glowered in the direction the sounds were coming from, then pushed himself away from the tree trunk and staggered off to the southeast. It was the wrong direction, of course; he needed to head west. But the three gorgim were approaching from the west, and there was no way he could fly until he was out of the forest, so he planned to simply head southeast, then slowly circle around to the west once he was well away from the damned gorgim.
He passed the bird-gorgim. It looked dead. Its eyes were open—were they even capable of closing? Beethoven couldn’t actually recall seeing the creature close its eyes or even blink, but then again, he’d had plenty of other things on his mind—and its chicken beak was striped with blood.
He flashed it a demented, triumphant leer, then spat on it.
His back throbbing with pain, his beloved clipping gripped tightly in one hand, he stumbled off into the dark woods.