The guard dropped to his knees, snatching his helmet off and clapping his hands to the side of his head. My opponent took a couple of wobbly steps back, cradling his now-broken hand against his chest and saying things that I assumed were faerie curses and not insults about my mother, given that she was sitting right there next to her mother, the Winter Queen. I didn’t bother to ask. I just slammed the pole into the knight’s right arm, then swung around to tag his left knee, then I spun the pole around and jabbed him in the gut.
That move works a lot better when the jab-ee isn’t wearing an overpriced tin can around his middle. My poke didn’t have any more effect than if I’d reached out and thumped the tip of one of his pointy ears, and by then, the knight had knelt down and drawn the dazed guard’s sword. He came at me, but his swings were clumsy in his left hand. I blocked one, then tagged him on the side of the head with my stick. That was a lot more effective, making him step back and shake the stars from his vision. While he did that, I smacked his wrist with the pole, sending his sword tumbling to the floor. Then I reversed my grip on the pole, putting the jagged end that used to hold an axe blade up against his now-exposed throat.
“I don’t want to kill you,” I said. “This is supposed to be until a knock-out surrender. So surrender, and I won’t have to see how much blood you have to lose to be knocked out.”
The faerie knight glared at me, but said nothing. I pulled the pole back and rapped him on the top of the head with it. “Don’t be a dumbass. You got no outs here. Just tap out and I won’t have to do any permanent damage.”
“You couldn’t if you tried, human.”
“Yeah, ask Titania’s cousin Chauvan. He’s in a hole in the ground now because he didn’t think I could hurt him. Now yield, dipshit.” I snarled at him and saw his eyes go a little wide. Good to know my exploits in the Summerlands from last year weren’t a complete waste of time.
The knight dropped to one knee and held up both hands. “I yield. I am vanquished.”
I took a step back, watching him to make sure he wasn’t going to try anything funny. I didn’t know just how much knights in Fairyland were like Knights of the Round Table, as far as chivalry and not cheating and stuff went.
Apparently not too far, since one of his knight buddies stepped up beside him and lopped off his head with one stroke of his sword.
“What the hell did you do that for?” I hollered.
“Knights of the Fae do not yield. We fight, and die, for our queen. The only way we may be vanquished is in death. If you do not have the honor to take his life, I do.” The taller knight glared at me, and I recognized him as the one that killed the ogre earlier. I had a bad feeling that this dude might turn out to be a problem later.
Granny stood up and clapped, magicking away the dead knight and repairing the guard’s halberd.
I handed him his axe-on-a-stick, then walked back to the table and got a drink of fruit juice. “What’s next, Granny?” I asked with a grin.
“You will rest through the early portions of the second round, which is good. For in the second round, you face Ulfthren, the Troll Prince,” Mab said with a chilly smile.
I looked over at the slimy dude with razor-sharp claws at the end of each finger. He grinned at me, then picked something from between his teeth. It took me a second, then I realized that it was a piece of arm from his first-round opponent. Great, my opponent in the next round literally ate the last person to battle him. That’s when I really started to regret not getting that accounting degree.
9
Amy ducked her head and gave a tiny curtsy as she passed the guard on the way out of the Great Hall. Skeeter did the same, complete with curtsy. “We gotta go pee,” he said. “Which way to the royal loo?”
The guard looked confused, then chuckled. “To the right, then around the corner. Second door will get you into the kitchens, then there’s a privy in there.”
“Thanks, mate,” Skeeter said, tipping an imaginary cap to the man and walking off down the hall in the direction the guard indicated.
“I couldn’t tell if that was a horrible Crocodile Dundee impression or if you sounded like Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins after nine shots of whiskey,” Amy said.
“Take your pick. We’re out of there. Now we just need to make sure that Bubba’s sister isn’t here, find some clue to where she might be, and find something to break whatever spell Granny Psychopath has cast on Mrs. B. And I really do have to pee,” Skeeter replied.
They walked down the stone hallway and turned into the door to the kitchen. Their senses were assaulted by a myriad of smells, every one of them delicious, and the bustling sounds of a dozen people all moving around quickly in a small space. Amy’s mouth gaped as she watched half a dozen near-collisions, avoided only by last-second spins, turns, and course adjustments, all by women carrying trays laden with steaming bowls of soup, trenchers of meat and gravy, platters of vegetables in all the colors of the rainbow, and trays of mugs filled to the rim with sparkling juices and ciders. In the center of the maelstrom of activity, a rotund faerie woman with a red face and frizzy red hair sticking out every which way under a grease-spattered mob cap whirled in circles like a faerie Tasmanian Devil, pointing at minions and shouting instructions, corrections, additions to pots on stoves, and finally, after the pair of newcomers stood there for a long moment watching the insanity, yelled to them, “What do you two want? I don’t have time for noble looky-loos, so if you came to filch an extra dessert, tell Mab’s overstuffed grand-ape that he needs to go on a diet anyway!”
“Um…we just want to know where Princess Ygraine’s daughter is taking her meals tonight since she wasn’t in the Great Hall with the rest of us,” Amy asked.
Every person in the kitchen froze, one woman stopping so abruptly in front of Skeeter that a huge gout of soup splashed from a silver tureen right onto his chest. There was a loud clatter as a spoon dropped to the floor, and the cook spun back to Amy with a look of pure horror on her face. “The Princess Nitalia? Is she here?” She spun back to her subordinates, fury turning her face splotchy and red. She snatched up a wooden spoon and began to lay about her like a knight surrounded by enemies. “Which one of you,” whack, “idiots knew the Princess was here,” whack, “and neglected to tell me?” Whack whack whack, each delivered to the head of a nearby kitchen helper with the flick of a wrist, leaving minions rubbing their scalps and wincing.
“Wait, ma’am, wait!” Amy called. “We aren’t sure the Lady Nitalia is even here, but we are here to find her if she is. Would you please stop hitting people and listen to me?”
“Yeah, she’s banging on them heads like she’s leading a steel drum band,” Skeeter muttered.
The woman stopped hitting her assistants and waved them out of the kitchen. “Leave us. Take those dishes to the Hall. We’ll be finished by the time you’re back.” A stream of faeries and humans bee-lined for the doors, leaving a trail of delicious scents behind. She stepped over to Amy and Skeeter, spoon still held like a sword. “Now, what is this about looking for the princess?”
“We came to your land in search of her. Her mother is very worried about her.”
“Oh, aye,” the cook nodded. “I could see her practically dripping with concern as she appraised the looks of her suitors tonight.”
“She’s under a spell, you bitch,” Skeeter growled.
Cook spun on him, swinging the spoon around in a looping arc to catch him square atop his head. “Call me that again, little human. I have many recipes for human idiot, and I’ve not had stock to test them in a century. Of course Mab bespelled her daughter, you fool. She ran away once. You can’t imagine the Queen of Winter would allow a slight like that to happen twice. Or go unanswered should the opportunity arise, which it did the moment you band of merry jackasses stepped into her domain. Why would you come here in the first place?”
“Our transportation wasn’t the most reliable,” Amy replied. “But you said that Nitalia isn’t here? Do you know where she m
ight be?”
“The princess was here,” the cook admitted. “And she was a delight. Loved my cooking, didn’t beat the serving wenches if the food wasn’t piping hot when it arrived. Do you have any idea how hard it is to keep food even a little warm in the Court of Winter? There are random snowdrifts in every hall! But no, Lady Nitalia vanished from here months ago. No one has heard from her since. The queen is near-frantic with worry, not that she would ever admit to it. She fears the princess has been taken by her grandfather and is now a captive of the Summerlands.”
“Would that be all that bad?” Amy asked. “Is Titania any more nuts than Mab?”
The cook’s eyes went wide, and she laid the spoon across Amy’s lips. “Don’t speak that name here! If the queen hears you, she’ll have you beheaded for a certainty! And yes, the Queen of Summer is every bit as insane as our beloved queen, but even more cruel.”
“Somehow I find that hard to believe,” Skeeter muttered.
“What did I tell you about interrupting your betters, human?” Cook snapped at him, thwacking him on the forehead with her spoon.
“You didn’t…never mind,” Skeeter started to protest, then gave up as he saw the spoon coming his way again.
“Would you mind pointing us in the direction of the princess’s chambers so that we may look for any hints her abductors may have left behind? We are unfamiliar with the Summer Court, so any information we can uncover will be exceeding helpful,” Amy asked, a deferent look on her face.
The cook preened a little to have a lady of such apparent high station asking her help and admitting her ignorance, which was exactly what Amy hoped for. “Of course, dearie. You just come over here and take this tray. The men never question a woman laden down with foodstuffs, no matter how fine her clothes.” She handed Amy a tray, then put an empty plate on it, and covered the whole thing with a huge silver domed lid. Amy hefted the mock dinner to her shoulder and listened intently as the cook gave her directions to the princess’s tower.
Seconds later, they were back out in the hall, Skeeter leading the way as Amy followed with her “burden.” “That was pretty good back there,” Skeeter said. “I’m glad you could talk to her. Everything I said just seemed to piss her off.”
“My mother worked as a sous chef for a caterer when I was in high school. I picked up extra money running food on some of their parties. I learned real fast that anyone who is in charge of a kitchen is the king or queen of that little domain, and you’d better show the proper deference. Those lessons came in handy when I started working in D.C.”
“I bet. Only none of the old men in DEMON will hit you in the head with a spoon if you interrupt them.”
“No, but there are a couple of senior field supervisors with enough magic to make your mouth disappear. One of them did just that to a guy I dated my first year in the agency. He was a little bit of a loudmouth—cocky, with an inflated sense of his importance to the organization. He looked pretty ridiculous walking around for three days with no mouth.”
Skeeter gawked at her. “How did he not die? You need to at least be able to drink something!”
“No, you need to be able to ingest fluids,” Amy corrected. “He had to have an IV until he wrote out a three-page apology that he promised to read in front of our morning briefing as soon as his face was put back together.”
“Did he?”
“Oh yeah. There was about a zero percent chance he was going to screw with the guy who could make his mouth disappear. Especially not on Salisbury steak day in the cafeteria. We broke up after that. I realized that I really liked him a lot when he couldn’t speak, so it probably wasn’t going to work out now that he had his voice back.”
“Then you met Bubba.”
“Oh, no. This was better than ten years ago. There were a lot more mistakes between that guy and Bubba. But there’s not enough tequila in the world to get me to tell you some of those stories. Now, pay attention. The princess’s door should be hidden in that section of wall right…oh shit.”
“What is it? Oh shit.” Skeeter followed her gaze to the man standing guard duty in front of what appeared to be a blank stretch of wall. It was Captain Falarun, one of the officers they’d fought, and beaten, when they first escaped the dungeon. He turned to the pair, smiling as he saw the tray of food.
“Oh, good, Cookie did save me a tray from the feast…wait, I know you…” He opened his mouth wide to shout an alarm, and Skeeter ran forward. The skinny man reared back and punted the faerie knight between the legs with all his might, only to immediately fall over, clutching his toes.
“Kicking the man in armor while wearing slippers is not the smartest way to begin a fight, human,” Falarun said with a smile. “The big one was annoying, but at least he wasn’t stupid.”
“You talk too much,” Amy said. The knight’s head whipped around to focus on her, and he caught the tray Amy swung full in the face. His head slammed into the stone wall with a sickening crunch, and his eyes went vacant. He slid to the floor in a clatter, and Skeeter dragged himself to his feet.
“I don’t know what’s worse about that,” Skeeter said, flexing his toes and grimacing in pain. “Breaking all my toes, or having somebody think that Bubba’s the brains of the operation.”
“Oh, definitely the second,” Amy said, stepping through the illusionary wall behind Falarun and leaning back out to grab the unconscious man’s shoulders. “Now grab his legs, and let’s get him hidden before somebody comes to investigate that racket.”
They wrestled the guard through the illusion, then Skeeter limped back out and gathered up the discarded plate, tray cover, and badly dented tray. “You really knocked the shit out of him, you know that?”
“Well, I wasn’t trying to make him faint from laughing, like some people I won’t mention.”
“That’s cold, Amy. Cold. Now, where’s the princess’s bedroom?” He looked around the open space tucked away in the wall, then looked back at Amy. “This doesn’t look like a princess’s bedroom.”
“Have you ever been in a princess’s bedroom, Skeeter?”
“No, I gotta admit that. I’ve been to bed with a few queens, but no princesses.”
“Oh, good lord. Maybe I hit the wrong one with the tray,” Amy groaned. They were in a large room filled with half a dozen pools, each around eight feet in diameter and filled with water. Steam rose from several, but they seemed to cool as they got farther from the doorway. The arrangement looked familiar, more so when Skeeter caught sight of the shelf laden with towels along a nearby wall.
“Are we…?” he started to ask.
“Yes, Skeeter, we’re in the royal bathroom, not the royal bedroom. The cook lied to us, and by now has, no doubt, alerted every guard in the castle that we’re poking around where we’re not supposed to.”
“Well, I’m glad to see that we can screw up just as bad without Bubba around as we can with him. What next?”
Amy looked down at the unconscious Falarun. “Well, I am an employee of a shadowy branch of the United States government, and we happen to have a man right here who probably has information we want. Tell me, Skeeter. Have you ever heard of waterboarding?”
10
I had a little time to rest up while I watched the other bouts of Round Two, and I needed it. There were three of the faerie knights still in the running. I was the lone human, or mostly human. I figured I was going to have to learn about being part faerie at some point, see if it got me any kind of magic powers. I mean, if close to forty years of living and almost twenty of hunting monsters hadn’t shown ‘em to me, I didn’t have real high hopes, but you never know.
The other half of the new competitors were one vampire, a troll, some kind of shadowy figure that my eyes wouldn’t focus on no matter how hard I tried, and the skinny kid with the red ball cap. Two of the faerie knights met up first, and they obviously knew each other and respected one another. They saluted with their swords, then set to whalin’ on each other like two gorillas fighting ove
r the lone female ape in the zoo. Reminded me of a story I heard about this monster hunter chick in Cleveland one time. Sounded like a badass. But I digress. After a solid five minutes of beating the tar out of each other, one faerie stumbled, and the other one caught him right upside the helmet with the flat of his sword. The now-concussed faerie spun around and collapsed flat on his back. The other dude raised his hands over his head, celebrated for a few seconds, then went to check on his fallen buddy. I was impressed with his sportsmanship, and thought if Mama had to marry any of these assholes, he’d be my pick.
There was no such sportsmanship or kind feelings in the next match. The vampire squared off against the last faerie knight and beat his ass from pillar to post. The knight took one swing at the vamp, who just leaned out of the way of the blow, then stepped behind his armored opponent and punched him in the back of the head. His helmet rang with the impact, and he dropped to one knee. The vamp grabbed the knight’s non-sword arm, planted a foot in the guy’s armpit, and yanked the arm clean off, armor coming with it. Then he swung the arm like a steel-clad baseball bat into the knight’s face. The faerie lay on his back, blood pouring from his shoulder, as the vampire legitimately ripped his arm off and beat him half to death with it. He kept the whooping going long after the faerie stopped moving, then stuck his face in one end of the severed limb and sucked it dry. He dropped the desiccated arm onto the unconscious knight’s chest and turned his blood-soaked face to Granny, who nodded at him and waved away the remains of his fallen opponent. I reckon that’s another way to score a decisive victory.
The skinny dude in the red hat and the shadowy guy squared off next, and I was pretty interested in watching this match, frankly. Mostly because I didn’t know what either one of these things were, but also in part because I might have to tangle with one of them before my day was done, and I needed to know what, if anything, would hurt ‘em. Their match started off kinda tentative, with them circling around each other, trying to get a sense of what the other one was doing. The shadow-thing glided more than walked, but maybe that was just a side effect of me not being able to really focus on seeing its feet, or really any other part of it. The skinny dude just circled, his eyes never leaving his opponent.
Monsters, Magic, & Mayhem: Bubba the Monster Hunter Season 4 Page 15