Gnochi paused for a moment to throw the daggerettes a fraction higher in the air. “My arms grow weary.” Then, as each daggerette fell, he threw them at each of the six guards surrounding him. The first two guards dropped to the ground, impaled by the tiny blades before they even were aware of Gnochi’s actions.
Those small blades, poisoned by weeks of slumbering in winterbush, shocked and paralyzed their targets. The men fell to the ground, their mouths contorted in quiet agony.
After the initial shock of their companion’s demises wore off, three of the remaining guards charged at Gnochi. One was felled by a daggerette that pierced the thin armor covering his shoulder. The second lost his footing on a discarded mint and fell onto his face. Gnochi promptly tacked the felled man’s chubby neck with a daggerette. The third managed to draw his sword and approach within a few paces of the bard. Wanting to maintain his surprise advantage, Gnochi snatched the dagger and threw it the moment the guard charged at him. The small blade stuck squarely into the man’s right eye.
Five of six guards lay dead or dying on the carpet. The only remaining sword between Gnochi and Providence, the commander of the keep, retreated before the king, his body close, so as to shield him from the last daggerette.
“Don’t block me, you fool. Kill the assassin.” Providence kicked the commander in the back. Off balance, the commander rushed forward and splashed in an expanding puddle of blood pooling on the silk carpet.
As Gnochi hurled the last daggerette toward the commander’s head, his target flinched. The movement was almost enough to spare the man from the small blade, but the daggerette sliced through the man’s meaty neck, spilling yet more blood on the floor.
Gnochi walked back to where he had set down The Royal Lyre. He lifted the guitar again and looked towards Providence. It was at this moment when someone burst into the chamber. The man who entered, gasped at shock of entering to find a scene of death.
Holding the guitar by its neck, Gnochi ran straight at the guard. He wielded The Royal Lyre as though it were a sword of legend.
Gnochi heard the king yell, “Get him, boy! Kill the assassin!”
Within an arm’s stretch of the new guard, with the guitar base swinging in a wild arc at the man’s head, he heard a voice say, “Gnochi?” At the very last moment, he realized that the guard was Roy.
The same restraint which allowed him to flatten his blade when sparring with Zara in the menagerie, enabled him to rotate the guitar so any damage was less concentrated. The base of The Royal Lyre splintered off as it smacked into the skull. Roy collapsed, unmoving, to the ground. Despite the severity of the hit, his chest rose and fell with regular, light breaths.
“Wasn’t expecting you to be here, friend,” Gnochi whispered, apologizing. He turned his attention to what remained of the guitar in his hand. Its neck remained intact, however spotted it was with blood. A half-arm’s length of the blade, black as the night sky above the keep, gleamed as it stuck out gracefully from the end of the guitar neck.
Gnochi heard labored footfalls approaching. He spun, lurching out of the way of a jabbing sword that Providence wielded.
“You’ve doomed everyone in Nimbus to imprisonment and death,” the king said between ragged breaths. “I’ll kill every one of you multicolored flits.” He swiped with a blade he had filched from one of the now deceased guards. Gnochi had little trouble parrying the king’s untrained attacks. “Don’t you have anything to say?” Providence rested his free hand on his knee and took in large gulps of air. He kept his now bloodshot eyes trained on his assassin.
“The fable. Don’t you want to know how it ends?”
“Yes, do take your time.” A smile split Providence’s face.
“I’d hate to disappoint you, but no guards are coming to your aid. No one is coming to your aid,” Gnochi said, lashing out with a quick slice and knocking the king off his stance. He flicked the flat of his blade into the meat of Providence’s ribs. The king recoiled from the swipe as though he had been mortally wounded. Sometime during the duel, Providence’s circlet had flown from its niche on his head to where it now sat in one of the spreading pools of blood forming on the floor. He cowered on the ground for a moment, spitting out a mint that looked soaked in blood.
“The wolf snuck into the neighboring farmer’s pastures late one night,” Gnochi said, walking toward the king and forcing him to crawl backward. The king’s retreat through the expanding pool of blood drew thick lines across the stone and carpet. “In one precise motion, the wolf shaved off the wool from one sheep with his sharpest claw and draped the coarse hair over his own coat. He snuck close to the human under the guise of a sheep and then proceeded to kill the man. One cut through the neck from ear to ear.” Color abandoned Providence’s face. One hand flew to his meaty neck to ensure that it remained unscathed.
“Seeing the sheep cowering from him, the wolf released them to their own bidding. Clearly the wolf would hunt them, but on another day.”
The king fumbled from where he knelt to stand, but with his knees wobbling, he looked more like a beggar than a king.
“I can pay you. I’ve got money, electricity, power!”
Gnochi shook his head. “And do you know what the wolf did after it killed the human and released the sheep?” He watched the king’s body shake with fear. “The wolf returned and killed the bastard farmer too!” With a grimace painted on his face, he rushed toward the king and stabbed The Royal Lyre through Providence’s chest.
“It was too late,” Gnochi said. “They were dead. The pack was already dead.”
Providence sunk to the ground next to one of the other corpses. Gnochi moved to head back to where Roy still lay incapacitated.
◆◆◆
As Providence knelt, his lucidity ebbing behind death’s cowl, he had one last moment of clarity. Next to his hand lay one of the assassin’s poisoned blades that was stuck in a guard’s eye. He yanked the blade free from its ocular prison.
The loud, suckling noise must have reached the bard’s ears, for he turned in time to see Providence expend his last ounce of life throwing the daggerette. The projectile flew too wide to impale Gnochi in the skull, as he had hoped, but he saw the bard, in a sluggish effort to dodge the blade, slide in the growing pool of blood and crash to the ground, his head thudding hard. Knowing that he had missed, a frown formed on his face. From split lips, bubbles of blood dribbled down his chin and mingled with his beard.
◆◆◆
Gnochi became aware of a red sheen that filtered over half of his vision. He lay with his face resting in the blood of a deceased guard and hoped that the poison had diluted enough that it would not kill him. He urged his face up out of the crimson puddle, but his muscles mutinied, refusing to act. His eyelids sunk, pulling him into the darkness of sleep.
About the Author
Matthew Travagline was born and raised in the Mid-Hudson Valley of New York. He likes to think that the odd assortment of jobs he has worked (including: on a farm, in retail, as a park ranger, and in cybersecurity) has prepared him for writing about fantastical settings and futuristic quandaries. Find him on most social channels (Twitter: @MattTravagline; Instagram: Page_1_Bard; Facebook: Fantasy Author Matthew Travagline). Alternatively, visit his website: matthewtravagline.com and keep updated through that medium. And if you made it this far, Matt would implore a review from you if such would not burden you too much. Reviews, aside from ink and unmarked journals, are the lifeblood of any independent author and boost their standing in the mighty algorithm of life. Any and all are appreciated.
The Harbinger of Change
Gnochi and Cleo's adventures in Lyrinth continue in the final installment of the Gleeman's Tales Duology, which begins immediately following the action of book one!
Acknowledgements
Both Gleeman’s Tales and the tales of Gnochi Gleeman are more than the mutterings of one man. So, I wanted to take this time to thank those who helped me get from the soil to the treetops.
Firstly, there are the three pillars of my writing career. Mom. You bribed me to read one summer. Now, I am a reader for life. Mr. Casey. You read my The Giver Ch. 24 (an assignment) aloud to the class despite the prevalence of death and destruction within. I learned that what I had written might not have been complete rubbish. Ms. Searle. Your class was among the most challenging I have ever taken. I’d like to think that I’ll be haunted by the kiss-of-death for the rest of my life, but I know that I am a better writer for it. Thank you.
Professor McGlinchey. Your lectures were captivating, and I enjoyed our discussions about British Literature. Of course, had I not taken your courses, I might never have wondered what would happen if Chaucer was born under the lead of a fallout shelter or in an irradiated wasteland. I also wouldn’t have written about Cowboy Gawain either, so there’s that.
There are many who read (or listened to) a version of Gleeman’s Tales that was not in the state it is today. Sara. I am ever grateful for your contributions, critiques, and unquestioning support. My betas: Steve, Sarah, Gabby, Joe, Barbara, Peter, Tom, Tammy, Pawan, Frank & Ant. Your combined support, critiques, questions and comments have all shaped Gleeman’s Tales into the novel that it is today. Thank you all.
And you, Gabriella Padilla, who brought Gnochi to life through your art. Thank you.
My readers. For so long, Gnochi and I were alone together. Now you’re here! Thank you for sitting by the fire and listening to an old bard recount this tale.
[Exit, pursued by a bard.]
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