Amy limped over to his side, stopping cold at his elbow. “Shit. That’s a lot of flowers.”
“Yeah,” Skeeter agreed. They stepped into the room, and Skeeter took a long look around. The room was simply furnished, but well-appointed. Tapestries covered the exterior walls, huge woven depictions of grand battles. Faerie knights riding dragons battled giants, ogres, and trolls in one. Another showed varying scenes of Mab throwing bolts of raw magical power against a hideously deformed woman in green robes and a crown, flanked by men and women adorned in similar colors, all scattered dead on the ground. Yet another was a life-size portrait of Mab woven into a giant wall hanging, enchanted with an illusion of snow falling in background of the tapestry.
“Nothing like a modest ruler,” Amy said.
“Yeah, and Mab is nothing like modest,” Skeeter agreed.
The tapestries covered every inch of bare wall between the two large wardrobes and the door, stopping only at the edges of the huge canopy bed that dominated the center of one wall. Skeeter stepped into the room and pulled back the drapes surrounding the bed, and flowers spilled off the bed to join the carpet of lilies, tulips, roses, and other varieties that covered every inch of the floor from wall to wall.
“Huh,” Skeeter said. “More flowers. What do you think it means?”
“Well, Skeet,” Amy said. “Flowers don’t really grow in winter, do they?”
“Nope.”
“My guess is they were left here as a message to someone.”
“Us?”
“I doubt it. Nobody knew we were coming to get Nitalia. No, this looks like a more political statement to me. Kind of a big middle finger to Mab.”
“The kind of thing you’d say to somebody you used to be married to?”
“Maybe, or maybe something you’d say to somebody who used to be married to your current husband?”
“You think this was Titania?” Skeeter looked around before he said the name, like he was afraid the Summer Queen would step out of a wardrobe and attack at the mention of her name.
“Kinda makes sense, doesn’t it? She gets her granddaughter and gives the finger to Mab at the same time.”
Skeeter thought for a moment, picking up a rose and smelling it while he pondered Amy’s suggestion. “Yeah, this looks like the kind of petty bullshit that blows these people’s skirts up. So now what?”
“Now we go downstairs and tell Bubba not to worry about the tourney, ‘cause we know where Nitalia is.” She turned and stepped into the parlor.
“What about his mama? Don’t we still need to keep her from marrying a troll?” Skeeter said, following her. He, once again, wasn’t watching too closely where he was going, so when Amy stopped in front of him, he walked right into her back again, making them both stagger forward. “What the shit, Amy?” He stepped to the right to see around her. “Oh.”
“Yes, human,” General Falarun said from the parlor. The battered faerie guardsman stood with three grim-faced men in full armor holding halberds. “Oh, indeed. You didn’t seriously believe that you could assault a member of Her Majesty’s personal Honor Guard with no consequence, did you?”
“Well…kinda,” Skeeter said.
“I have heard the torturer misses his playthings. He will quite enjoy having you returned to him. Get them!” He swept an arm toward the humans, and his men moved into the room, two going for Skeeter and one for Amy.
Amy looked at the division of the soldiers and smiled. “Just one for the girl? Yeah, that’s going to end badly.” She stepped up to the knight, spun around the head of his halberd to get inside the radius of his swing, and grabbed the shaft of the long weapon. Instead of wrestling with the bigger, stronger man for the weapon, she just held on with both hands and dropped straight down onto her back. As the halberd levered the knight up off his feet, she planted both of hers in the man’s armored belly, flexing her knees then snapping her legs straight. The faerie vaulted right over her backward, slamming into the doorframe of the bedroom in a crash of armor and flesh. Amy came to her feet, picking up the discarded polearm from the downed guard.
“Skeeter, duck!” Amy yelled, and the thin man dropped to the deck. She swung the halberd in a huge arc, crashing into the pair of guards that were advancing on her friend. The big axe slammed into the first guard, knocking him into the second and sending them down in a tangle of metal-clad faerie. Skeeter sprang to his feet, grabbing a sword one of the men dropped and started flailing at their helmeted skulls with it like a percussionist in a steel drum band.
Amy turned the halberd onto Falarun, jabbing his mailed stomach with the point of the axe. “You can surrender, or I can really start to use this oversized can opener on your gut. Your call.”
Falarun stood staring at her for a long moment, then Amy saw his eyes widen just a touch. That was the cue she was waiting for. She slid her hands up on the haft of the halberd, jabbing the butt end of the axe back under one arm, right into the gut of the first guard she clobbered. She whirled on him, clanging the butt of the axe into his helmet with a bell-like ring. Then she spun back to the dispirited faeire, a smile stretching from ear to ear.
“Now, Captain, about that surrender?”
14
I didn’t watch the other fight in the third round. I was a little busy getting Joe to bandage me up so I could quit bleeding all over Granny’s tablecloths. Not that she cared, since anytime a drop got too close to her, she just waved a hand and magicked it away. I was sitting on the floor in front of Mab’s table, listening to my bones try to knit and groaning every once in a while when I saw Joe sit up a little straighter.
“Hey, that’s not fair,” he said, then he stood up and looked at Mab. “He can’t do that, can he?”
“Do what, human?” I heard Granny speak over my head, and the way she said “human” you woulda thought it was the nastiest slur she could think of. I had to face facts: my grandmother was a racist. Or a speciesist, I reckon, since I’d seen faeries of all different colors running around and she didn’t seem to hate them. Maybe it was dimension-ist, since by all appearances she liked the trolls and ogres better than she liked humans. Yeah, that’s it. My grandmother was a dimension-ist. Family—can’t live with ‘em. Pass the beer nuts.
“He’s got that other faerie healing him! That won’t make for a fair fight. Not to mention the fact that he’s in full armor, and Bubba’s been fighting in a doublet and hose this whole time!” Joe protested.
“Not much to worry about there, padre,” I said. “I got a run in my stockings in that last fight, so if I can manage to get my leg high enough to kick this dude, I’m gonna pretty much be fighting commando under this serapé.”
Joe looked down at me. “That is very high on the list of things I never, ever want to think about, thank you.”
“Rule number one—don’t visualize. We are in a dangerous line of work, Joe, and some things just can’t be unseen.”
Granny’s voice cut through my witty banter. “You are welcome to use whatever weapons or armor you choose, and you may utilize any healing magics that you have open to you. There is nothing in the rules against that. It is not my fault that you have chosen to battle through this contest without fully exploring the rules.”
“But your men confiscated all our weapons and gear. We don’t have any of it!” Joe yelled. I tugged on his pant leg, planning to remind him that yelling at the psychotic faerie queen in her own castle probably wasn’t the smartest thing he could do, but then I gave up. He works with me; smart is right off the table.
I heard a bell-like tone ring through the air, and there in front of me was all our shit. My pants, my boots, my 3XL Black Badge Division t-shirt that I ordered off the Wynonna Earp TV show website, and maybe most importantly, my underwear. I ain’t particularly bashful, but I didn’t relish the idea of Granny’s entire court getting acquainted with Bubba Jr. Laying atop the pile of clothes was the most beautiful sight in all of Fairyland: Bertha. My beautiful Desert Eagle pistol in her shoulder hol
ster gleamed at me just like a drunken sorority girl winking at a pledge right after the last keg ran dry.
I hauled myself to my feet, trying not to drip too much blood everywhere, and limped over to the pile of clothes and gear. I reached up under the doublet, ripped the overgrown pantyhose off without bothering to take them down slipped my drawers on, then stripped the rest of that frou-frou crap off right in the middle of the Great Hall, to no small number of gasps from the assembled faeries and other magical critters. I looked around and growled a little. “What? Ain’t y’all ever seen a man with tattoos before?”
“I’m not sure they have seen one quite so large, grandson,” Mab said.
“Well, let ‘em get a good look,” I grumbled, pulling on my jeans. “Hey, Granny, before I go getting my favorite t-shirt all bloodied up, you wanna send a healer over her to patch me up a little?” I figured as long as she was being magnanimous enough to give me back my guns, I might as well ask for the whole world.
“I don’t think that would be quite fair. I do not wish to show favoritism to any one competitor, after all.” I figured she’d say something like that. But it wasn’t the first time I’d heard “no” from a woman, and I figured it wouldn’t be the last. Oh, well.
Apparently, his vow of celibacy kept Joe from getting quite so sanguine about rejection because he pressed the issue. “I don’t think it would be a question of favoritism, Your Majesty. After all, you wish to provide as great a spectacle for your audience as possible. Up to this point, all the duels have been well-fought contests. It would be a shame to have the final bout be so one-sided as to bore those assembled for your tournament.”
That was pretty good, I thought. Appealing to her pride and making it seem like it was about her. Maybe dealing with church politics had taught Joe a thing or two. Mab considered his words, then spoke. “Your words have merit. Healer!” She waved a hand, and the little faerie that healed us every night after the torturer got finished with us appeared in a flash of light.
The little dude looked up, startled, like he’d been in the middle of something important when Mab teleported him. “Oh! You again. My goodness, what have you gotten yourself into this time? Even Brandis of the Long Blades has never done work this rough.”
“Well, there was a troll,” I said. The little dude’s eyes went wide. “But I killed him. Then there was a redcap.” His eyes bugged out even more. “And I killed him. But now I gotta face this faerie over yonder wearing the tin can.” I pointed at the knight across the room. “And I gotta kill him. But standing is kinda hard. So if you could patch me up so I can go whoop this guy’s ass, I’d really appreciate it.”
He looked at me, then at the knight, then at me, then at Mab, the whole time more and more sweat just beading up on his little bald head. Finally, I reached out with the shredded remains of my pantyhose and rubbed his forehead dry. “Dude! Get your shit together and heal me. I got some faerie ass to kick.”
He jerked and shot one last look at Mab. When she nodded, he stepped closer to me and held up his hands. His palms glowed with a soft yellow light, and as it reached out to envelop me, I felt my wounds start to close. One rib snapped into place with a crack, and I yelped. I didn’t wince manfully or grit my teeth; I yelped like a stray dog run over by a pickup truck. That shit hurt. But most of it was fine, and after a couple minutes of getting magicked on, I was fit as a fiddle.
And hungry as hell. I threw on my t-shirt, strapped on Bertha, my Judge revolver, Great-Grandpappy Beauregard’s sword, and hooked my caestae to my belt. The metal-and-leather spiked gloves were my favorite Christmas gift ever from Amy, and before getting to Fairyland, I’d replaced the spikes with cold iron studs so I could actually hurt these bastards if I ended up scrapping.
Who was I even kidding? I knew I was gonna end up punching the shit out of somebody, so I made sure it would hurt as much as I could. I patted the little healer faerie on the shoulder and stepped over to Mab’s head table. “Thanks for the gear and the mojo, Granny. I promise to put on a good show for you.”
“Just try to last long enough to make it entertaining. None of Sir Null’s previous opponents have lasted more than a minute.”
Well, that didn’t sound good. I leaned over the table and grabbed a hunk of something that looked like a roasted turkey leg off my plate. Healing and getting healed takes a bunch of energy, so while my little medic was about to fall over, I was just hungry as hell. I wolfed down the “turkey leg,” which was probably some magical creature that I’d never heard of, and washed it down with some of the fruit juice Mab had in our glasses. I would have preferred a Guinness to carb up, but apparently the magic of Fairyland doesn’t extend to making good beer.
“That was yummy, Grann-o. What was it? Baby dragon? Phoenix? A goose that laid golden eggs?”
“Turkey.”
“What?”
“Turkey. It’s a large, stupid bird, but the meat is delicious.”
I’ll admit, I was disappointed. Not just that it was turkey, but it wasn’t even like some kind of magical turkey. Just regular old dumb-as-a-rock turkey. Oh well, still yummy. Properly fortified, I turned to my opponent. “Let’s do this,” I said over my shoulder.
Mab stood up, and the murmur of conversation in the room shut off like somebody flipped a switch. She raised her hands and said, “Ladies, Gentlemen, and Beasts of all races, I thank you for attending my feast and tournament!”
I really wanted to mutter something about them probably having less of a choice than I did but decided this would be a bad time to provoke the psychotic magical faerie queen. And Skeeter says I never learn anything.
“We have now moved into the final round of our contest, pitting my grandson, Bubba—” Wow, I never heard anybody sneer my name before. I didn’t particularly enjoy it. “Versus Sir Null, a valiant Knight of the Fae. Will the competitors please step forward?”
I walked to middle of the room, standing across from the last of the faerie knights. Six of these dudes started the tournament, all in gleaming armor covered in curlicues and decorations. Except this dude. His armor was jet black and completely unadorned. His helmet was smooth, with a visor that looked more like a smoked glass motorcycle helmet than a suit of armor. His features were completely obscured, but I remembered from watching him fight in the first couple of rounds that he moved like he was wearing regular clothes, not like he was wrapped in steel with his visibility hampered. Mab wasn’t joking; he really had cut down all his opponents in less than a minute. But he’d never run into anything like me.
He was slender, even in armor, and only came up to about my chin. He had a long sword strapped across his back, and I’d seen him wield it one- and two-handed. He didn’t have a shield, so I didn’t have that to worry about, but I wasn’t real sure how tough that armor was. Whatever, I thought, if it gets to be too much of a pain in my ass, I’ll just crack him out of that shit like a lobster. He stepped up to me and gave me a nod. I nodded back, and Mab clapped her hands twice.
“Duelists, remember the rules of the tournament. There are none. You shall battle until one of you concedes or is rendered unconscious. Should death occur, it will be a regrettable, but unavoidable, accident.” The way she said that last bit let me know exactly how much she would regret me having a fatal accident on the end of this dude’s sword. “Now, for the hand of my daughter, either in marriage or freedom—begin!”
The knight drew his sword, the raspy hiss echoing through the Great Hall. He spun the blade in great arcs around his head and in front of him, advancing on me cautiously, one foot in front of the other as he glided forward. One step. Two steps. Three steps. With the fourth step, halfway to me already, he raised his sword above his head and charged.
So I drew Bertha and put three fifty-caliber rounds right in his chest. He went down like somebody hit him in the chest with a sledgehammer, which I reckon wasn’t too far off the mark. His sword skittered across the stones unheard over the clatter of his armor crashing to the floor, and he slid
backward several feet before the momentum of the bullets dissipated. I blew off the end of my pistol and holstered Bertha, mugging for the crowd a little. They looked at me in stunned silence, as if they couldn’t believe I took out the badass with the blade in ten seconds.
Or like they couldn’t believe what a colossal dumbass I was to turn my back on an opponent without making sure he was dead. I barely had time to register the sound of metal-clad feet rushing at my back before the son of a bitch put his shoulder in my spine and tackled me to the floor.
I guess faeries are pretty tough, after all. Shit.
15
“Well, that didn’t go as planned,” I said to Joe.
“That’s good to hear,” he replied. “Because if you planned to do nothing with that hand cannon besides piss off the little man with the big sword, I would have to call you an idiot.”
“You call me an idiot all the time.”
“Good point. You should move now.”
I did. I dove to my right, tumbling across the stone floor in an awkward roll, but getting enough separation from Sir Null to avoid being cut in half. Sir Null? What the hell kind of name is Sir Null anyway? He’s probably some kind of faerie douchebag whose real name is Chad, uses mustache wax, and won’t shut up about CrossFit.
I didn’t have too much time to dwell on the douchiness of my opponent because he kept trying to cut my head off. After dodging for a minute didn’t seem to be doing the job of tiring him out nearly as well as it was tiring me out, I figured I’d better fight fire with fire, so to speak. I would have rather fought fire with fire, literally, but I didn’t own a flamethrower. Making a mental note to see if Amy could get me a government surplus flamethrower if we ever got back to our dimension, I drew Great-Grandpappy’s sword and turned to face the knight.
Monsters, Magic, & Mayhem: Bubba the Monster Hunter Season 4 Page 18