I looked around to my friends and saw the same thought reflected in their eyes. Well…shit. Now what?
7
Mab gestured to the Master of Ceremonies, who stepped to the center of the room. “Our entertainment for the evening shall be a trial by combat for the hand of the lovely Princess Ygraine.” He gestured one slim hand to Mama, who stood up and curtsied. Polite applause filled the room. Granny leaned over to me and said, “I know you believe that I am being capricious and cruel, bespelling your mother to find this all a wonderful idea. Understand that nothing could be further from the truth. I know how much she cared for both of her husbands and would never force her into an arranged marriage. I am cold, but I am not often cruel.”
I didn’t bother to remind her of my time in her torture chambers. If she was finally being nice to me and not threatening to throw me back in the dungeon, I figured I’d let it ride. But of course, I couldn’t completely let it go. “So what’s the plan, Gran? Sounds like you’ve definitely got one. Wanna share it with your boy here?”
“I have a plan, grandson. It is a very simple plan. I shall hold a tournament, and my daughter will marry the winner. Look at these competitors. Do they not all appear to be worthy fathers for you?” She waved her arm, and I looked out over the bunch of dudes and critters lined up in front of me. There were half a dozen faerie knights—tall, thin, stupidly handsome guys with swords and shields and gleaming armor. There were a couple of random humans in the mix—big ugly mothers who looked like they bench-pressed Buicks in their free time. But the half dozen or so that worried me were the monsters. I recognized the troll, a huge gray beast with ridiculously long arms ending in jagged claws. And I figured the hairy bastard that looked to be about nine feet tall with a jutting lower jaw and a pair of curved tusks jutting out from his mouth was probably an ogre. But I didn’t have any idea what the wiry little gray-skinned guy with the red baseball cap was supposed to be, besides creepy. He just stood there smiling and showing off double rows of pointed teeth, like somebody shoved a shark’s mouth in a midget’s face. There was a vampire, and what looked like some kind of fish/man, and one shadowy looking something that I never could really focus my eyes on.
“What the hell, Granny? Not all of those things are faeries,” I protested.
“No,” Mab replied, and I could almost smell the disdain dripping from her words. “There are quite a few humans in the mix as well.”
“And monsters!” I almost shouted, but managed to keep my voice down. After all, some of those monsters were real close, and I didn’t have any of my guns.
“Yes, as I said, there are humans and other lesser beings. Hopefully none of them will emerge victorious.” Mab didn’t bother to look at me, but I could see the corner of her mouth turn up a little. I got the impression that she’d like nothing better than for the troll to win and Mama to have to marry the slimy bastard. Well, that wasn’t going to happen. I motioned for Joe to scoot over, and he came and knelt beside my chair.
“You gotta enter this thing, pal,” I said, keeping my voice low. I knew Mab could hear me, just like I knew this was part of her plan all along. She was the frigging Winter Queen, after all. There was no way she wasn’t thinking three steps ahead of me.
“What are you talking about, Bubba? I can’t enter the tournament. I’m a Catholic priest. I can’t marry your mother! Besides, most of those things look like they’ll tear me apart.”
“Yeah, but most of them look like I could take ‘em,” I said with a lot more confidence than I felt. Joe obviously smelled bullshit but held his tongue.
“So what, I’m going to enter, then sprain my ankle and tag you in?”
“That’s pretty much what I had planned on, yeah. Then while I’m fighting the tournament to keep Mama from marrying a troll, Skeeter and Amy can turn this place upside down to find Nitalia.”
“You really think she’s here?” Amy whispered.
“Not really, but I think she was here. If y’all can find any clue to who took her, that’ll be a big help when we get out of here and start looking.”
“Damn, Bubba,” Amy said. “That’s almost a real plan. It’s kinda like I’m rubbing off on you.”
“Well, I think I did still volunteer Joe to fight a troll, so don’t go signing me up for MENSA just yet,” I said.
“Yeah, no kidding,” Joe agreed. “And by the way, how do you expect me to get into the tournament? There’s sixteen dudes standing there. I doubt Mab is going to just let me jump right in and screw up her tournament brackets.”
“You let me worry about that,” I said. I pushed my chair back from the table and stood up. “Granny, I’d like to inspect the competitors before our entertainment begins. Would all the humans please step forward?”
Five guys moved up. One of them was a monster of muscle and bad tattoos, not anybody I wanted to think about my mother sleeping with, but nobody I wanted to screw with either. Two more were big dudes, looked like they could handle themselves in a scrap, but nothing too impressive. I guessed they were cannon fodder for the troll—just there to make shit interesting for the court. One guy was skinny as a rail and had more knives strapped to him than I had hair on my arms. The last guy was pretty boring, just an average-looking guy who kept glancing at the ogre and the other monsters around him like he was trying not to shit himself right there in front of the queen. That was my guy.
I stepped up to Joe Average and looked him up and down. He was about five-eight, maybe a hundred seventy pounds. “You don’t want to be here, do you?” I asked.
“No, sir.” His voice shook when he looked up to speak to me.
“Why don’t you run away now?”
“Queen Mab said she would flay my entire family while I watched if I didn’t take part in the tournament.”
“That’s too bad,” I said. Then I turned back to my grandmother, who watched me intently. “Granny, this man can’t fight for Mama’s hand in marriage. He’s injured.”
“I see no injuries, Robert. What is wrong with him?”
“Sorry,” I whispered. Then I swung around, threw an uppercut with all my weight behind it, and slammed my fist into the little dude’s jaw. I heard a crack, then a thump, followed by another crack as his head hit the floor. “He has a broken jaw and a concussion. He cannot compete. But fear not for the integrity of your tournament, Grandmother. I have a champion to put forth. I present to you, Joseph the Elf-Bane!” I swept my arm toward the head table, and Joe stood up, giving us a little wave.
“Hi,” he said, completely deflating my big buildup. So much for a theatrical entrance.
Mab sighed. “Take your place among the competitors,” she said to Joe. “Let’s not delay this any further.”
Joe jogged around to stand in the spot vacated by the little guy I decked. “Try not to get dead,” I said, turning to go back to my seat.
Mab scowled at me as I sat down, and I looked to my left to see that Amy and Skeeter were gone. They used the hubbub created by me decking one of the entrants to slip out of the hall unnoticed, at least by me, and unhindered by the guards. Hopefully they could come up with something that would point to my sister’s whereabouts while Joe and I tried to keep Mama from marrying an ogre. Or anybody, really. I was way too old to have to go shoot another father. That’s the kind of shit that wears on a man, I swear.
The tournament started off without any real surprises. The troll ripped his opponent limb from limb, despite the Master of Ceremonies announcing that all preliminary bouts were to be fought until a competitor was unconscious or surrendered. I mean, I reckon the human that fought the troll was unconscious pretty soon after he got bitch-slapped with his own left leg, but I couldn’t really tell from where I was sitting. Dude’s eyes were definitely closed when the troll held up his severed head and drank blood from his throat before wiping his ass with the guy’s hair and dropping the head to the polished marble floor.
“I reckon I’m glad I’m not the fella that has to clean that up,” I sa
id.
“Be more thankful you aren’t the man who was just slaughtered by a troll, grandson,” Mab muttered back to me. Then she waved a hand through the air in front of her, and all the blood, limbs, and entrails vanished into a puff of snowy air.
“Can you teach me that trick?” I asked. “I have the worst time getting blood out of my leather jacket. And my leather boots. And my blue jeans. I usually just assume my t-shirts are a goner after every fight, but if your magic works on cotton, too, then we might have us a party.” Granny looked over at me, and the glare on her face dropped the temperature in the room ten degrees. Usually that’s a metaphor, but when your grandmother is the Queen of Winter, it’s legit. I could see the breath in front of my face as I turned back to the action just in time to see a pair of faerie knights finishing up their duel. Spoiler alert: the faerie won.
Another human got taken out by the skinny thing in the red hat that looked like a psychotic middle schooler. It swarmed up the tall dude like a spider monkey and choked him out in about eight seconds flat. Then it casually walked off to the side and sat down again, not even breathing hard or breaking a sweat. A pair of guards hauled the unconscious human off, and the ogre took the floor.
Another one of the faerie knights stepped up, his helmet tucked under his arm. He bowed to the head table, bowed to the crowd, then bowed to the ogre. He slipped the helmet on over his auburn hair and drew his sword. The ogre didn’t bother with any of that chivalry nonsense; he just took one step forward and slammed his arms straight down, trying to shatter his opponent’s head with his fists. Problem was, there was no head there to shatter. The knight stepped a foot to the right and neatly hamstrung the huge monster with one stroke of his blade. I heard the tendons behind the ogre’s knee snap like a bowstring, and the monster dropped to its knees. Raising its head to the sky, the ogre opened its mouth to let out a shriek of pain, but no sound came out save a slight gurgling hiss as the blade slipped through the ogre’s neck and severed its head from its shoulders. The head was the size of a beach ball, but without anywhere near the bounce as it dropped to the spotless ice-blue carpet, turning quickly to purple as the ogre’s crimson blood fountained from the stump of its neck.
The knight stepped up to the dead ogre, wiped his sword clean on the beastie’s pants, and kicked the corpse over to land on its side. Then he turned back to Mab, bowed again, and walked over to sit next to the other winning faerie. Granny magicked away the remains again, and the last remaining knight stepped into the clear space. He looked around for his opponent, and Joe got a shocked look on his face when he realized that he was the last one standing for Round One.
“Couldn’t be anything simple, like the ogre, could it?” he called to me.
“Kick his ass, padre!” I hollered back.
“He’s got a sword, Bubba. I’ve got a crucifix and a prayer!”
I hated to disagree, but I was pretty sure he only had a crucifix.
8
I had a sudden thought. “Hey Granny,” I said, leaning over to Mab. “What if nobody acceptable to you as Mama’s husband wins the tournament?”
Mab looked over at me, suspicion arching higher than her eyebrows. “What do you mean by that, Robert?”
“Well, it occurs to me that there are some people here that you wouldn’t let Mama marry no matter what, so I was wondering what happens if one of them wins the whole shebang?”
“I suppose if there are no winners that I consider suitable matches for my daughter, then she would be free to remain a spinster, should she so desire. But I must say, I consider all of the entrants to be perfectly suitable mates for Ygraine.”
“Even the troll or the ogre?”
“They are no less deserving of love than the human swine she married when she ran away from me,” Mab said, a cruel smile twisting up one corner of her mouth.
I managed to hold back the angry words that leapt to my tongue, but just barely. “But I wouldn’t be acceptable, would I? I mean, I know we ain’t in the US of A, but some things are pretty universal, ain’t they?”
Mab looked like I was something the cat puked up in her favorite pair of shoes. “No, Robert, you are the furthest thing from an acceptable match. Even if you were not a blood relation, I would never allow anyone of my line to mate with…you.”
Damn. Granny was harsh. But she told me what I needed to hear. “Joe!” I hollered, standing up. “Get up here!”
Joe looked from me to the faerie knight standing across the floor from him and held up one finger. “Excuse me just a second.” Joe ran over to stand in front of the table. “What do you want, Bubba? I’m busy figuring out how to beat this guy’s ass right now, so unless you’ve got Bertha hidden under the table, maybe you oughta let me get back to it.”
“Yeah, you just got replaced on the card, pal,” I said. I raised my voice so everybody in the hall could hear me. “By my right as a member of the royal family, I am entering this tournament. I do not consider any of these men or beings a fair match for my mother, the Princess Ygraine, so I shall win this contest and her freedom to choose her own husband. I shall cut through these foes like a scythe through wheat, leaving none standing in my wake.”
Joe looked at me, appreciation on his face. “That wasn’t bad, Bubba.”
“I’ve been reading a bunch of old Conan books. I just tried to talk like those dudes.” I came around the table and nodded to the knight, who looked bored. At least, as much as anybody could look anything when their whole face was wrapped in metal.
“Begin!” the Master of Ceremonies shouted, and the knight whipped his sword up and came at me. He moved pretty damn quick for a guy wrapped in steel, and I barely got out of his way. But I did, spinning to the right and planting my foot right in his ass. He sprawled face-first on the stone floor with a clatter but rolled over and sprang to his feet a lot faster and nimbler than anybody in plate armor ever should. Magical assholes, every one of them.
He advanced on me a lot more slowly this time, swinging his sword side to side like a viper moving across the sand. It was almost hypnotic, if I could forget for a second that he wanted to open my guts up like a stripper’s miniskirt in the VIP room. I didn’t forget. I just kept backing away until I bumped into one of the guards in the crowd ringing the fight. The guard shoved me in the back, but I turned around and grabbed him by both wrists, pulling him into the fighting circle. He struggled, then pulled away from me, but not before I spun him around and yanked the big two-handed sword out of the holder on his back. He glared at me, but I was armed now, so I didn’t much care.
Sword fighting wasn’t much on my curriculum at the University of Georgia, but ever since getting Great-Grandpappy Beauregard’s sword back from Jason, I’d spent some time studying it. This claymore was bigger than Grandpappy’s sword, but the principles were the same. The knight charged me, stabbing with the point of his sword, looking to make Bubba-kabobs, but I sidestepped his thrust and knocked the blade aside. I spun my sword around in a cut to the man’s neck, forcing him to bring his sword up fast to keep me from ending the fight in spectacular fashion real fast. Sparks flew as our blades crashed together, and I used the force of the rebound to spin me around and slash at his knees. A six-foot sword has a hell of a lot of momentum, so even though he caught the slice on his metal greaves, it still crashed into his leg and knocked him to the ground. I gave up on any kind of reasonable sword fighting when he went down and chopped at him like I was going after a copperhead in the front yard with an axe. My sword clanged again and again off the stone floor as he rolled away from me. After three huge swings, I had to step back for a breather, and he slowly staggered to his feet.
I’d only landed one decent shot to his shin, but rolling over and over in full armor left him bruised all over like he’d just rolled down a big hill in a tire. He sucked in a deep breath and came at me again, his sword held low and pointed straight at my belly. He was barely ten feet away when he lunged for me, so instead of trying to do anything fancy, I just flun
g the sword at him.
He was too close to stop or duck, so the hilt of the big claymore caught him right in the faceplate. His feet went out from under him like I’d clotheslined him, and he sprawled flat on his back. His sword skittered across the marble tiles, and his head hit the floor with a metallic crash. I took two quick steps to him and stripped the helmet from his head.
“Do you give up?” I asked. He didn’t answer, just slammed a gauntleted fist into my ribs. Okay, so I reckon that was kind of an answer, just not the one I wanted. I crumpled to the side and rolled to my feet, one hand wrapped around my bruised ribs. The knight got to his feet, too, but at least this time he had to work at it a little and didn’t just pop up to his feet like a damn mutant ninja faerie or something.
We squared off against each other again, this time without swords and him without his helmet. I was still in the stupid double and hose I’d been wearing all night, so I was at a pretty sizable disadvantage as far as defense was concerned. He crept forward, throwing little jabs with his metal-clad fists like he was trying to rope-a-dope me or something. I took a step back, then another, then another, then felt a bar across my back as the guard with the big axe on a pole pushed against me.
“That’s far enough, human,” the guard growled in my ear. I looked over my shoulder at him, hoping that my opponent would take the bait. He did, taking two big steps forward and swinging at my head with a huge right hook that would have broken my skull if it had landed.
I didn’t let it land, though. I spun around, grabbed the guard’s pole arm in both hands, and kept right on spinning. I let go of the guard just as I got turned back around toward the knight, and the guard staggered backward right into the path of the punch meant for me. Metal fist met metal helmet, and the resulting CLANG sounded like a church bell on Sunday morning. The guard clapped both hands to his head, which meant that there was a six-foot stick with an axe blade on it just falling to the floor in front of me. I grabbed it, snapped the head of the halberd off across my knee, and spun the stick over my head like a really fat Jackie Chan.
Monsters, Magic, & Mayhem: Bubba the Monster Hunter Season 4 Page 14