by Robert Bevan
Tim smiled. “You bet your green smoky ass I would.”
Ravenus pecked frantically on Julian’s chest. “Please wake up, sir! I have no idea what’s going on, and I’m terribly frightened.”
“For fuck’s sake!” groaned Cooper. “I wish someone…”
Tim’s heart skipped a beat. “Cooper, no!”
“…would tell that fucking bird…”
“Shut up! Shut up!” There was no choice. It was act now or risk being stuck here forever. “I wish we…”
“…to shut…”
“…were all back…”
“…the fuck…”
“…at the Whore’s…”
It was a photo finish as to whether Cooper said “up” first or Tim said “Head”. Tim looked at Ravenus, who was now flapping and hopping more frantically than ever, now that no sound was coming out of his mouth.
“Oh no!” Tim looked around at what might be the only home he would know for the rest of his life, and the people he’d have to spend it with. Dave and Gabruk were on their knees in a glistening grapple stalemate. Felicia was sobbing nakedly on the floor. With Ravenus silenced, Cooper rolled over and farted himself back to sleep. Julian was still out cold.
“I’m sorry,” said Bazuul. “I’m going to miss you, Tim.”
Tim looked up at the teary-eyed djinn. “What do you mean?”
“Your friend spoke the truth. Felicia was drunk, and sought some measure of vengeance on Gabruk. Or maybe she just wanted to make him jealous. No wish was involved.”
“Then that means…” Tim saw Bazuul’s hand raised, fingers about to snap. He lunged onto the bar and hugged the Decanter of Endless Beer.
The next thing he knew, he was back in the Whore’s Head Inn, his arms wrapped around a splintery wooden table leg instead of a silver pitcher of infinite beer. Ah well, he’d tried.
“Jesus, Dave!” cried Tony the Elf. “Get off me! Why are you naked… and slimy?”
Tim stood up and confirmed that Julian and Cooper had both arrived as well. They were still sound asleep on the floor, as if nothing had happened. Maybe nothing had. Maybe it had all been a bad dream.
Tim sighed, slipped his hands into his pockets, and nearly had a heart attack when he felt something long and metallic in one of them.
The bell! Bazuul forgot to take it. Tim had a second chance. He could do it all over again, making real wishes this time. He could wish himself and all of his friends back to Earth, back in their real bodies.
He nervously pulled the item out of his pocket, and discovered it wasn’t a bell at all. It was the silver spoon Bazuul had provided him with to taste the pukka pukka nut.
Tim smiled at the spoon. “Well played, friend. Well played.”
The End.
Genital Harpies
(Original Publication Date: February 26, 2016)
Julian laid down his cards. “Three deuces.” He carefully kept his expression neutral to avoid indicating that he already knew he’d won.
Raggart, the leader of their bugbear captors, grinned at him from across the crude three-legged table. His yellow fangs pointed every which way, like a pack of blind people trying to give directions. He calmly laid his cards flat on the table next to the small pile of copper and silver coins which had accumulated over the past few rounds. “It seems your luck has run out, elf. I have a pair of nines.”
Ideally, poker a game in which all players should be familiar with the rules. That was especially true when money was involved. That was even more especially true when one’s opponent was only keeping one and one’s friends alive for the entertainment they could provide. It was Julian’s high Charisma score, and the ranks he had in the Diplomacy skill, which had made the difference between being brutally murdered and enjoying a friendly card game. These same character attributes had also served him well in patiently and delicately explaining how “all reds” did not constitute a flush. He didn’t know how much further Diplomacy could carry him.
Julian swallowed hard. “I’m afraid three twos beat two nines.”
The fur on Raggart’s forearms bristled out as his grin changed to a sneer. “How can that be? Three twos only adds up to six. Two nines add up to...” He frowned, counting on his black-clawed fingers until they were all used up. “... more than six!”
“That doesn’t matter,” said Julian. “A pair of anything isn’t as... Three of a kind is harder to...” He was choking. He needed to hand this off to someone with a higher intelligence score. “Tim, you want to field this one?”
Tim looked at Julian like he’d just asked him to disarm a bomb with a pair of hammers. “Fuck no!”
They were unarmed and outnumbered. The only thing keeping them alive was this game. He might be only prolonging the inevitable, but it was better than giving up now and dying.
Julian looked at Cooper, who was three knuckles deep into his left nostril. Not exactly a think tank. Dave was terrible under pressure, and apparently a shitty poker player as well. Tim was just this side of sober, he and Ravenus (and, of course, the bugbears) being the only ones who could stomach the snot-like booze the female bugbears had been serving them. It was up to Julian to come up with a plan, but he needed Tim to help buy some time. He looked pleadingly at Tim.
Tim rolled his eyes. “Fine.” He looked at Raggart, who was impatiently drumming his claws on the table. “The values of the numbers on the faces of the cards only come into play when two or more players have equal numbers of matching cards.”
Julian understood why Tim had been reluctant to explain. Julian could barely wrap his head around that explanation. He didn’t know what the bugbears would make of it. Tim needed a nudge. “For example...”
Tim flipped over the remainder of the deck. The top two cards were a king and a queen. “Okay, this works. Let’s say two of you have a hand where nothing matches, but one of you has a king, and the other has a queen. Who wins?”
“The player with the king,” said Horrig, a fatter bugbear with a long scar running down his left cheek seated between Dave and Cooper.
Tim nodded. “That’s right. Because a king is higher than a queen.”
“He likes to think so,” said Grella, who Julian had come to assume was Raggart’s wife, or whatever the equivalent was in this tribe. She looked at Julian’s empty bowl. “Oh dear, you must be starved. Do you want some more stew?”
Julian looked down at the crude wooden bowl. Whatever that stew was, it smelled like diseased rat boiled in raw sewage. Of course, Ravenus had lapped it up like it was made of cotton candy and heroin. Julian was just thankful to be able to get the bowl away from him.
“Thank you, ma’am. I couldn’t eat another bite.”
Ravenus flapped his wings excitedly. “I could!”
Julian replied in a British accent, hoping none of the bugbears were familiar with the Elven tongue. “Eat Tim’s.” He passed his empty bowl up to Grella and switched back to the common tongue. “It was delicious.”
“Thank you,” said Grella. “That stew has been in my family for five generations.”
“The recipe, you mean?”
Grella snorted through her ursine snout. “Heavens no. There’s no recipe to speak of. We just throw whatever we catch into the cauldron. Aside from that, it’s just a matter of keeping the fire going.”
The fact that Julian and his friends were included in “whatever we catch” was clearly not lost on Tim. He was as white as a sheet. Julian nodded for him to continue his card lesson.
Tim rifled through the deck until he found another queen. “What happens when the king faces off against two queens?”
“Good times, eh Chief?” said Flargarf, seated between Raggart and Julian. He was the only bugbear Julian had gotten a glimpse of during the ambush, easily recognizable by his red right eye. Where the ‘whites’ of the other bugbears’ eyes were a milky yellow, Flargarf’s right eye was blood red, like maybe a blood vessel had burst in there. Julian hoped it wasn’t a bad case of pinkeye.
“Wrong,” said Tim, less diplomatically than Julian was comfortable with.
“How dare he call himself a man, much less a king, when he can’t best two –” Raggart’s eyes darted toward the back of the cave where his wife was tending the bubbling cauldron. He leaned in and lowered his voice. “– women?”
“The statistic improbability of obtaining a higher number of matching cards is more important than the rank of any individual card.” Tim’s explanation was once again lost on the bugbears. “Let’s continue with the example and see if you get the hang of it.” He spread the cards around on the table until he found a second king, which he placed next to the first king, opposite the two queens. “There. Now we have two kings. Who wins?”
Horrig scratched his furry chin. “The one who isn’t stabbing himself in the head?”
“What? No. That’s not even –”
Flargarf pounded his fist on the table. “Trick question! It’s the one with the larger army.”
Tim buried his face in his hands, then let out an exasperated sigh. “Come on, guys. I’m trying to make this as simple as I can.”
Flargarf stood up and wobbled for a moment. He steadied himself against the table and leaned over Tim, making clear their vast difference in size. “Take that tone with me again, halfling, and tonight I’ll be picking halfling meat out of my teeth with halfling bones.”
Julian was close enough to smell that horrible drink, thick on the bugbear’s breath.
Tim held his cup with both trembling hands and stared wide-eyed at the Flargarf’s jagged and crooked teeth.
“Sit down, Flargarf,” said Raggart. “I believe I understand now.” He looked at Tim. “In theory, seven ones would defeat one eight.”
“Correct!” Julian blurted out when he saw Cooper start to speak. To placate Cooper, he added, “In theory.”
Raggart spoke to his two comrades in their native tongue, which sounded like a bear speaking German while being stabbed. When he was finished, the other bugbears grumbled and nodded.
He shoved the pile of copper and silver coins toward Julian. “Very well, elf. You win again.”
Julian shoved the pile back to the middle of the table. “Winning is easy when your opponent doesn’t understand the game.”
Raggart grinned and shoved the coins back toward Julian. “Losing is easy when you’re planning to eat your opponents after the game is done.”
Flargarf and Horrig chuckled. Cooper let out a long, rumbling fart, the smell of which was masked by the overpowering stench of bugbear stew. Tim and Dave looked expectantly at Julian.
Julian kept his cool. He had no doubt of the bugbears’ intentions, though he hadn’t expected them to lay them on the line quite so soon.
See and raise.
“Now that we’re on a level playing field, what do you say we make it interesting?”
Raggart narrowed his eyes. “What did you have in mind?”
“One more round,” said Julian. “You and me. If I win, we walk out of this cave alive. If you win, you all can eat us.”
Raggart nodded. “You have yourself a deal, elf.” His companions, predictably, chuckled softly to themselves.
“I’m afraid I’m going to require some sort of assurance that you’re going to honor your end of the deal.”
“Is my word not good enough for you?” Raggart challenged Julian. “Have you the audacity to come into my home and call me a liar to my face?”
“Dude,” Cooper said to Julian. “That is kind of rude.”
Julian couldn’t believe he had to defend himself to Cooper. “We didn’t ask to come into his home. They beat us unconscious and dragged us here in sacks.” Diplomacy wasn’t always about sugar coating. Sometimes it involved telling it like it is. He turned to Raggart. “If you would murder us, it’s probably safe to assume you would lie to us as well.”
Raggart frowned. “What kind of assurances would you like?”
“Give me a minute,” said Julian. “I haven’t thought that far ahead.” What kind of assurances would be acceptable by both parties? Any guarantee regarding their safety was also dependent on their word that, upon losing, they would voluntarily allow themselves to be boiled to death in a cauldron. Julian couldn’t see the bugbears accepting those terms.
“Swear to Zabir,” said Dave.
The bugbears’ eyes widened. Dave had apparently struck a nerve, but Julian had no idea why. He was about to ask, when Cooper beat him to it.
“Who the fuck is Zabir?”
“Bugbears are goblinoid creatures,” said Dave. “Zabir is the deity of the goblins.”
Cooper scratched his ass thoughtfully. “I thought that was David Bowie.”
Dave ignored Cooper. “They may lie to us, but they wouldn’t dare break an oath they made to Zabir.”
“You ask too much, dwarf,” said Raggart. “These terms are unacceptable.”
Screw that. Dave was rarely useful for anything more than a healing spell, but he had just rocked the shit with this one.
“If you intend to honor your part of the agreement,” said Julian, “then you should have no problem with Dave’s terms. Maybe you’re just afraid of being outmatched.” He glanced down at Raggart’s empty glass, then back up at Raggart.
Raggart, Horrig, and Flargarf were the only three bugbears in the cave who hadn’t already drunk themselves into comas, but they weren’t far off. Julian’s group, with the exception of Tim, was stone-cold sober. If it came to a fight, a bugbear victory was no longer a foregone conclusion.
Julian was impressed with himself. If Raggart had picked up on his innuendo, he would understand that Julian was presenting him with a gift. He was making the cowardly-but-smart option (letting them go to avoid bloodshed) seem like the brave option (not being afraid to accept Julian’s challenge). He wasn’t this devious in the real world. This was the result of having put all of those ranks into his Diplomacy skill.
Raggart placed a large, red-hilted dagger on the table and raised his right hand.
Flargarf grumbled something in their native language. He raised his voice, looking back at the cauldron, and then at Raggart.
“I am afraid of nothing,” said Raggart. He sliced his open right palm with his dagger. “I swear by the mighty Zabir, I will be true to my word.”
Julian looked back at Dave, who nodded. “Good enough for me. Dave, could you give him a quick heal so he doesn’t bleed all over my cards?”
“Sure.” Dave reached over and touched Raggart’s fingertip. “I heal thee.”
Raggart sighed with the exhilaration that came from magical healing and wiped the blood from his palm on Horrig, who had by now fallen asleep.
He stared coldly at Julian. “Deal the cards, elf.”
Julian’s handmade cards were too big for his slender elf hands to shuffle the conventional way, so he shuffled like a six-year-old, smearing the pile of cards all over the surface of the table, then shoving them all back together again.
He dealt the cards until he and Raggart each had five. His crude shuffling saw Raggart right out of the gate with three kings, a far better starting position than his own hand of complete crap. The Arcane Marks that Julian had put on the back of all the cards identified each card with electric blue light that only he could see, but they weren’t going to help him this time. They were fucked.
“I’ll take two cards,” said Raggart, much to Julian’s complete lack of surprise.
When Julian looked across the table, he was shocked to see that the cards Raggart had discarded were two of his three kings. Was it possible that he was this stupid? No. He was intentionally throwing the game. Julian’s innuendo had successfully made Raggart reassess the situation he was in, and the likely outcome.
Julian slid the six off the top of the deck, along with the Jack underneath it, giving Raggart a nice hand of sweet fuck all.
There was just one problem. Raggart’s decision to sabotage his own hand left him with a king high, which still beat the crappy hand Julian had dealt himself.
The Five of Clubs sitting on the top of the deck wasn’t going to help him, but he really only had one choice. Discard everything and hope for a pair of something or an Ace.
He slid the Five toward him, then stifled a sigh of relief at the Ace underneath it. The next three cards were crap, but he had what he needed. He gulped as he looked at the front of his cards, then gasped in fake horror.
“Cooper, Dave, Tim, Ravenus,” Julian said as solemnly as he could. “I’m sorry. I’ve failed you.”
“Fuck,” said Cooper and Dave. Tim snored. Fear of being boiled to death was clearly not enough to keep him from slipping into a booze-induced coma.
“I must say, sir,” said Ravenus. “I admire your calm in the face of impending doom.”
“Shut up, Ravenus,” Julian snapped. “I’m not calm. I’m very nervous and scared.”
“But you don’t seem nervous to me, sir. Quite the contrary, you seem –”
“Shut up, Ravenus!”
“Very well, sir.”
Cooper and Dave were buying Julian’s act, as were the bugbears, if Farlgarf’s hungry grin was any indication. It would take more than a gulp and a gasp to override Julian’s Empathic Link with Ravenus, though, which was now letting him know that Ravenus’ feelings were hurt.
Suck it up, buddy. We’re almost out of here.
“The game isn’t finished until the cards are turned over,” said Raggart. He flipped his hand over, and Julian feigned amazement.
“Sorry, fellas,” said Julian, flipping over his cards. “Looks like it’s just not your day.”
The bugbears’ reactions were the exact opposite of what Julian had anticipated. Flargarf’s grin widened as he lifted a crude club with spiked with nails.
Raggart looked alarmed rather than relieved. He drew his dagger and slapped Horrig in the back of the head. “Wake up!”