Midsummer - A Bubba the Monster Hunter Novella

by Hartness,John G.

  “What’s your name, traveler?”

  “Bubba,” I replied.

  “Pleasure to meet you, Bubba. I be Oakroot, master brewer and master sampler, too!” He laughed again, a hearty rumble that shook the whole cart. He shook the reins, clucked his tongue at the horses, and we were off.

  The road was mostly shaded, so the ride in the open cart was cool, if a bumpy trek sitting on a couple of two-by-fours. We rode for a few hours, then stopped at a small village with a couple of picnic table sitting in a clearing in the middle of a dozen or so houses. The cart was surrounded by fairy children as soon as we stopped, all of them clamoring for some trinket or candy. Oakroot laughed and reached into a pocket, pulling out a handful of colorful treats.

  “Catch, ye wee ragamuffins!” He tossed the candies into the air, and half a dozen children sprouted wings and launched themselves into the air, snagging candy on the wing. The rest of the children grabbed and scrambled for the few sweets that fell to the ground, then unfurled wings of their own and flew off after their friends to enjoy the delicious distraction.

  “Nice,” I said, climbing down and popping my back. I rubbed my ass, which hadn’t seen that kind of abuse since Grandpappy caught me sneaking a cigarette behind his barn. He laid into me with his belt, whooping my ass ‘til his shoulder hurt, then he switched arms and tore my butt up some more. I didn’t sit down to eat for most of a week, but I also never smoked cigarettes again. We won’t talk about some of the smoking I did in college, but I passed all the mandatory drug tests to play football, so that’s all that mattered to me anyway.

  “Not used to riding that long, lad?”

  “Not in a wagon with a board for a seat,” I replied. “Where I’m from, we have seats padded fit to beat the most luxurious chair you’ve ever seen.”

  “You must truly be a pampered lot, then. I hope you can actually use that blade if we have need of it.”

  “Worst comes to worst, I’m pretty good at just punching things until they fall over,” I said. “You need me to do anything?”

  “Well, I thought this might be a good place for some lunch, so why don’t ye get that small keg from the tail of the cart and set it up over on yon table? I’ve got some food and plates and such in my pack.” He walked over to one of the picnic tables and set his small knapsack on it. I went to the tail of the wagon and grabbed the little keg, throwing it onto one shoulder and carrying it easily.

  “Nice, lad. Ye’ve got some use to you after all,” Oakroot said as I set the keg on the table. He laid the keg on its side, pulled a couple of wooden wedges from his pack, and jammed the wedges under the keg to keep it from rolling. He reached into his pack again and pulled out a wooden spigot, then pulled a cork from the end of the cask and tapped it with the spigot. The whole process took about ten seconds, and that included him rummaging around in his pack. I was obviously dealing with a professional. Once again into the pack he went, this time emerging with a pair of tankards, plates, and forks.

  “What else do you have in there?” I asked with a chuckle.

  He looked up at me. “Well, lad, our food is in here, as well as most of me tools, me bedroll and cloak, a few trinkets I’ve picked along the road for me lady love and a couple of items that I’ve acquired in me travels that I thought I might be able to sell for a pretty penny once we get to Tisa’ron.”

  “In that little pack?” I gave him a look. The pack wasn’t any bigger than a child’s bookbag, with a drawstring top and a couple of shoulder straps. All the stuff he described would have taken a steamer trunk, especially if he was bringing enough food to keep us both alive, and since he set out two plates, I assumed he was planning to share.

  “Oh, lad, I forget ye aren’t from around here,” he laughed. He did that a lot, but I didn’t mind. It was a rich, hearty laugh, full of amusement and good cheer, not a malicious laugh at the ignorant hillbilly. Or I guess ignorant human in this case. “This be me sack of many things. It’s got a wee piece of magic attached to it. When I reach into the sack, me arm comes out in a room back at me house. Me wife keeps everything I like to have when I travel laid out on a table, so it’s just a matter of feeling around until I find what I’m looking for. Or, if she’s home, she hears the bell and comes to put whatever I need right into me hand.”

  “Bell? You’ve got some kind of magical alarm in your house so she knows whenever you open a portal to your house?”

  “Well, after a fashion,” he agreed. “When I had the wizard who sold me the sack set the portal in our spare room, I rigged a bell just off to the side of it. So now, if it’s daytime when I’m using the sack, I reach out and smack the bell first thing. Then Thistledown comes running to help out. Sometimes she even kisses the back of me hand. That’s nice when I’ve been on the road too long.” He wore a lovesick little smile when he talked about his wife.

  “Oh. Yeah, just hanging a bell is probably much easier than some kind of magical alarm,” I said.

  “Indeed, lad. Indeed. Spell maintenance is quite expensive, don’t you know. But now, enough jabbering, let’s eat before those little sprites get back here and harass me for candy again!”

  Lunch was delicious: a nice little plate of sliced ham, or something that looked and tasted like ham, bread, and some vegetables of various colors. It was all rich and full of flavor, and filling, but not heavy like so much food back home. And Oakroot’s beer was good enough to send the Pope on a bender. It had a nice crisp flavor, with just a hint of oak in the aftertaste. The beer had a pleasant side effect, too. It made my ass stop hurting but didn’t get me drunk or make me tired. When I was done with the meal, I felt rejuvenated and re-energized, like I could ride for days. Which I really hoped I wouldn’t have to do.

  We packed up our leftovers, Oakroot untapped the keg and put the cork back in, and I loaded it back onto the cart. I had just turned back to the table when I saw a tall fairy walking to the table, a scowl on his face and an air of authority surrounding him like the cloud of a broccoli fart. He marched over to the table and stood over Oakroot, who just calmly kept packing away plates, cups, and utensils like he didn’t have a care in the world. Or like he didn’t give a single shit about the newcomer.

  I leaned on the side of the cart to watch. There didn’t seem to be any imminent danger, unless getting bitched at suddenly became physically damaging, in which case I’m gonna be in traction the next time Amy gets pissed at me. That woman is way too smart for me, and she uses her vocabulary like a weapon when I get under her skin.

  The grumpy fairy stood there, arms crossed and toe tapping, as Oakroot finished tidying up. When the last plate was scraped over near where a dog napped by the base of a tree and my companion slung his pack over one shoulder, he finally snapped.

  “Were you planning to speak to me, Master Oakroot?” His voice even sounded officious and pissy, all high and nasal. I didn’t like him from the moment he stomped up all pissed-off looking, but when he started talking with a voice like Gilbert Gottfried, I decided I might have to punch him after all.

  “I wasn’t, actually, Master Redfern. I was hoping that ye would be so occupied with your brewing that ye wouldn’t notice that I was in town at all. And now, look! I be almost on me way.”

  “You cheated, Oakroot. You are a cheat and a liar and I demand satisfaction.” The puffed-up man drew himself up to his full height, which was probably all of five-eight. Tall for a fairy from what I’d seen, and certainly tall compared to the almost spherical Oakroot, who barely crossed five feet, but he still didn’t cut a very imposing figure. And Oakroot was certainly in the “gives no shits” category.

  “Then ye should return to your home and satisfy yourself, Redfern. I have no interest in you that way, so I certainly won’t be taking care of it.”

  I tried. I really tried to keep my composure and not laugh. I knew any sound I made was just going to escalate things, and I also knew that I needed to get my ass to the capitol so I could actually start the hard part of this task, the breaking
into the capital and rescuing the human children part. But I couldn’t do it. One jerk-off joke, and Oakroot had me braying laughter like an oversized donkey.

  Redfern glared at me, his pointy ears trembling with rage and his manicured black eyebrows running for his hairline. “What. The. Hells. Is. That?” he asked, disgust dripping from every word.

  That was a poor choice on his part. Or maybe I was about to make a really poor one on mine. I don’t like condescending assclowns, and I really don’t like being sneered at. I walked over to the assclown and stuck out my hand.

  “I’m Bubba,” I said.

  Assclown just stared at my hand like it was something really nasty. And it wasn’t. It had a little ham grease on it, but I’d wiped most of it off on my jeans, so I was relatively clean. For someone who’d slept in the woods and hadn’t bathed since yesterday morning. But he didn’t need to know that.

  “What is a Bubba?” Redfern asked me, his lips curling so far up into a snarl that I thought he was trying to show off his dental work.

  “A Bubba is a human. What is a Redfern?” I kept my hand there, just hanging out. I could hold that pose for a while before I started to stiffen up, and I thought I might enjoy making things as awkward as possible for this douche.

  “I am Kyreon Redfern, and I am the Master Brewer of the District of Haf’narion.”

  “Good to meet ya,” I said, reaching out and taking his hand and forcing a shake on him. He looked like he didn’t know whether to throw a punch, run away, or piss himself.

  “Now, what can we do for ye, Redfern?” Oakroot asked. “We’ve got business in the capitol and really shouldn’t dally.”

  “I will have you know that I have lodged a formal complaint about you with the Brewer’s Guild and am traveling this day to Tisa’ron to present my evidence.” He gestured to a pony tethered to a post a few feet away.

  “Evidence? What evidence, you daft bastard?” Oakroot asked. His face, calm just seconds before, started to turn red at Redfern’s accusation.

  “I have evidence that you cheated in this year’s Spring Brewing Festival, and I’ll be presenting that to our queen herself. If you’d like to accompany me, I’m sure she will give you an appropriate opportunity to defend yourself.” He crossed his arms and looked down his long, pointy nose at Oakroot.

  Wait a minute, this tool was going to present his case to the queen? In person? I’m not a terribly religious man, despite taking a paycheck from the Catholic Church, but in that moment, I thanked everything I’d ever believed in. This scrawny bastard might be a doucherocket, but he was a doucherocket that could get me into the castle.

  Chapter 7

  By the time we were a mile out of the village, I regretted my decision. By the time we were two miles out, I regretted taking this case. By the time we’d traveled two hours, I regretted ever being born. The two brewmasters bickered constantly, and about everything. And I do mean everything. Redfern had to stop to piss, so Oakroot griped about how slow our progress was now that we had this asshat slowing us down. Oakroot’s wagon was loaded down, so Redfern bitched about the cart slowing us down. Then Oakroot started bitching about Redfern bitching, so I just climbed down out of the cart and walked ahead.

  The loaded cart was moving along at about a brisk walk, so I jogged a hundred yards or so to get ahead of the two grumpy fairies, or at least to get them out of earshot. I rounded a bend in the road and just barely caught a glint of metal in the trees off to one side of the road.

  Ambush.

  Shit.

  I turned to the side and faced the nearest tree, whipping out Little Bubba and taking a long piss while I listened intently for any noise coming from ahead of me. The bandits were quiet; I had to give them credit for that much. If one dude hadn’t screwed up his camouflage, I never would have known they were there. But I did, and that gave me all the advantage I needed.

  There’s only one thing to do when you know you’re walking right into a trap—spring it. But springing the trap on your terms flips the script on the bad guys who think they have the element of surprise. The element of surprise is now in your favor, and that’s real important when you know from the get-go that you’re outnumbered. Being three times the size of your opponents also helps ease the burden of being outnumbered. I tucked Little Bubba away and zipped up, then turned back to the trail. The cart was still out of sight, a couple hundred yards behind me on the road, but I knew they’d be coming into earshot soon. And that was human earshot, not even taking into account if fairies had better hearing because their ears are bigger. I knew I had to act fast, so I walked out into the middle of the road, weaving a little like I was drunk.

  Then I started to sing. Now, for the record, I don’t sing. Ever. There’s a reason for this. My voice has been described as the sounds of two cats screwing in a dishwasher. Now I’ve never heard two cats screw in a dishwasher, but I can only assume it’s not a pleasant sound. That’s the unfortunate thing about my singing—everything. But I belted into the theme song for all intoxicated rednecks everywhere—Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Southern National Anthem—“Sweet Home Alabama.” I sang it loud, and I sang it as proud as if I actually was from Alabama, which thank God, I am not.

  I made it all the way to mangling the line about Neil Young before a slim fairy dude leapt from the trees beside the road and intercepted me. He was slim, like every fairy, besides Oakroot, that I’d encountered, and short even for one of the fair folk, barely five feet tall. He might have weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet, and his rapier looked a lot more like an overgrown toothpick than anything I should worry about, but I knew better than to ignore the potential a sword has for inflicting damage.

  If it sounds like I’ve got a little bit of a hang-up about getting stabbed since the whole deal with my brother Jason, then it’s only because I do. If you have any problems with that, I’d like to refer you to the story where I had a foot of steel sticking out of my back, and then almost died at the hands of a succubus nurse while I was “recovering” in the hospital. It’s the billing department of the hospital that’s supposed to suck out your soul, not the nursing staff. So yeah, I’ve got some issues with swords. At least with other people having them. I have no problem swinging one myself, as evidenced by me drawing mine when the second mini-Dread Pirate Roberts leapt into the middle of the road, black bandanna mask and all.

  “Hand over your purse, traveler, and I won’t be forced to kill you,” he said, twirling his blade in a moderately convincing fashion. I probably would have been worried if I was unarmed, if he’d surprised me, and if I wasn’t three and a half times the little bastard’s size. As it was, I figured I’d had worse fights than scrapping with a fairy holding a pigsticker in the middle of a dirt road.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “Why don’t you give me that little toothpick and I won’t wedge my foot so far up your ass you taste shoe leather every time you eat a meal?”

  “What?”

  “I said I ain’t giving you my money. So piss off before I give you an ass whoopin’.”

  “Human, do you understand how this works? I jump out of the trees, wave my sword around, you give me your purse, and run away screaming. That’s the natural order of things between bandit and traveler. Don’t start thinking and screw up the way things are supposed to run, now. Just hand over the loot and no one gets hurt.”

  “Let’s try this,” I said. I took three quick steps up to him, putting myself right in front of him and inside his sword’s swing. Then I balled up one fist and laid it across his face with extreme force. In other words, I punched the little wannabe bandit right in the nose.

  “Ow!” He staggered back and sat down on his ass right in the middle of the road. “That hurt!” he hollered, looking up at me. I took another step forward and planted my foot across his blade, pinning it to the road.

  “It wasn’t meant to tickle, shithead. Now give me your purse and get the hell out of here.” This had to be the worst ambush in the history of bandits. This guy
would get written out of any decent dashing rogue story, no question.

  “No problem, giant. Just stand there for another few seconds until...ah, there we are.” The fairy’s demeanor changed completely. The foppish bravado was gone, replaced by a cunning grin. The same time he turned off the stupid kid act, I heard shouts from back down the road. It sounded like something was up with Oakroot...son of a bitch.

  “You were the decoy,” I said, looking down at the thief.

  “I’m the smallest. I get the jobs that require the least actual fighting. I climb things, slit the occasional throat, and act helpless. Then the briers go in and kick ass. We all have our jobs.” He grinned up at me again, and I kneed him in the mouth. His hands flew back to his face, and I raised the foot pinning his sword to the ground. I reared back with that foot and put my size sixteen in his chest. I heard at least three ribs crack, and this time when he fell back onto the dirt road, he wasn’t faking the whole writhing in pain bit.

  I picked up his rapier, took the hilt in one hand and blade in another, and carefully bent the sword in half, making sure not to cut my fingers to shreds. “If you try to follow me, I’ll break every bone that’s big enough for me to fracture. Do you understand me?”

  He nodded, and I turned to the noise. I put on the gas and sprinted the length of two football fields until the fracas came into view. I was pretty blown up by this point, between my little scuffle with the other fairy and running back to this fight. But I sucked it up and drew my sword as I rounded the last bend.

  There were six fairies total, with two of them holding Redfern and Oakroot at sword point while two of them rummaged through the cart, looking for something that wasn’t beer or wine. Another fairy was going through a pack I recognized as Redfern’s, and given the fact that it was still sitting on the ground, no one had gone through Oakroot’s bag yet. A magical bag like that was far too valuable for anybody to leave laying around, even in Fairyland.