“Don’t touch that!” the guard screeched. His face was red and his pike was vibrating his hands were shaking so hard.
“Are you okay?” I asked. “You seem a little worried about something.”
“We have reports that someone matching your description was in an altercation along the Queen’s Highway. Was it you?”
“Probably,” I said, trying and almost completely succeeding in not laughing at the excitable little dude. “Was this altercation me whooping the shit out of half a dozen or so highwaymen that tried to rob and murder me and my friends?” A little exaggeration, honestly. I don’t think they wanted to kill anybody until I screwed up their plans to get rich quick. Or at least to make me poor quick.
“Our reports describe you attacking a band of merchants and making off with all their jewelry and gold, breaking one poor craftsman’s arm, and leaving them tied up alongside the road.”
“Part of that is true,” I admitted. “I did break one of the robber’s arms, and I did leave them tied up on the side of the road. The bit about them being merchants? I don’t think so, unless merchants have developed a habit of attacking other merchants’ wagons and trying to steal their wares.”
“Well, we have to get this sorted out,” the fairy said. “You’ll have to come with me to the castle, right away.”
I almost protested. I almost said I was innocent and how dare he assume that his random sources, who I didn’t even have the guts to stand in front of me to make their baseless accusations, were right and I was wrong. Then I remembered that I wanted to go to the castle, and I got much more agreeable.
“You’re right,” I said.
“I am?”
“Of course you are. The only way we’re going to get this whole mess figured out is by going to the castle right now, without any further dilly-dallying.” That was a first for me. Never, in my thirty-some years on this planet, had I used the phrase “dilly-dallying.” And I thought I never would. But if I’d ever met anyone, human or otherwise, that looked like they would be opposed to dilly-dallying, it would be this dude.
I climbed down off the wagon’s seat, grabbed my pack out of the footwell, and reached up to shake Oakroot’s hand. “Don’t worry about Redfern,” I said. “I peed on all his evidence last night. He won’t even be allowed inside the castle, and you won’t have to deal with the blemish on your reputation.”
“Why thank ye, lad,” he said, gripping my hand in his. “Ye’ve been a most pleasant companion, and a stalwart protector. I have complete faith ye shall overcome whatever obstacles await ye at the castle.”
I barely knew what he said. I think it boiled down to “kick ass out there.” “Yeah,” I said. “You too.” I nodded to Redfern but honestly had no interest in saying goodbye, or anything else, to him.
“Lay on, Macdougal,” I said to the guard.
“It’s Macduff, sir,” he corrected.
“Not if you’re talking about the liquor store nirvana in South Carolina,” I replied. I waved off his confused look and motioned for him to lead on. I followed the guardsman through the streets of Tisa’ron for a solid half hour before we came to the gates of the castle. These ten-foot double doors were also guarded by a passel of men with crossbows, longbows, polearms, and battle axes, and they all looked very much like they knew how to use those weapons.
“Please stay close to me, and please don’t speak,” my escort said. “I gather from your running commentary as we passed through the city that you find yourself amusing. It will all go better for you if you assume that everyone here is completely lacking in a sense of humor.” I wasn’t exactly sure what he meant by saying that I find myself amusing, but I kept my mouth shut until we entered the throne room.
Then I couldn’t help it. My jaw hung open like an automatic flycatcher, and my head spun around like a bearded Linda Blair as I tried to take everything in. The throne room was everything I’d ever imagined about a magical fairy castle, and more. It was like somebody hired Walt Disney and J.K. Rowling as their decorators. The room was huge, easily the length of a couple basketball courts end to end, and tall. The walls climbed up and up to a huge vaulted ceiling, and every single surface was decorated somehow.
Every wall was hung with tapestries or painted with murals, and this wasn’t the kind of boring shit you see in old movies or castles back home, this was some straight up Hogwarts shit right here. The tapestries depicted battle scenes, and the scenes played out on the tapestries. The images were trapped within their own tapestries, but there were fairies, dragons, humans, centaurs, dryads, dwarves, elves, and all sorts of monsters and beings that I didn’t recognize. They flew, fought, and wreaked havoc within their borders for minutes at a time, then reset themselves to the beginning of the scene. I stood there watching one scene of knights jousting on dragons several times before my escort got impatient.
“Come on,” he said.
I ignored him.
“You need to move,” he said, his voice a little lower and tighter.
I stuck with what I was good at—ignoring him.
“Move, now, human.”
Nope. Didn’t happen.
“Fine,” he huffed. I felt a sharp pain in my right butt cheek and whirled around. The guard was holding his pike and grinning a nasty grin at me.
“Can we go now?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. Asshole stayed unuttered. Now that I was facing him, he had a spear pointed at my johnson. I’m brave, but I’m not that brave.
We walked half the length of a football field, then my escort motioned for me to stop a good fifteen feet from the throne. Four guards flanked the dais, and a pair of thrones sat upon it. One throne stood empty, but on the other one was the single most beautiful creature I’d ever seen. Titania, the Summer Queen, sat on her throne with a regal dignity that shone through without her saying a word. She was a tall fairy, and even seated, her presence was undeniable.
Her hair shimmered down over her shoulders in waves of blonde, light brown, and streaks of strawberry blonde. Her perfect complexion was enhanced more than marred by a light sprinkling of freckles across her delicate nose, giving her the impression of someone perpetually in the bloom of youth. Her long arms had a delicate strength to them, and her posture held the quiet grace of someone accustomed to being the center of attention.
The guard beside me dropped to one knee when he got to about ten feet from her, and I did my best to do the same. The effect was ruined when my knees rang out like rifle shots and the guardsman beside me dropped his pike to draw his sword. The polearm fell to the marble floor with an echoing clatter, and the guards on the dais sprang into motion. Two of them leapt in front of the queen, a short sword in each hand, while the other pair charged down the steps at me, double-headed axes poised to strike.
The smaller guard beside me reached for his sword, but since I was the only one not surprised by the sounds emanating from my kneecaps, I had the presence of mind to grab him by his sword arm and his belt buckle, lift him off his feet, and hurl him into the path of the charging axemen. The three fairies went down with a clatter of silver chain mail and bronze weapons, and I was relieved to see that none of them fell on the blades or anything. They were just doing their jobs, no need for them to get hurt over it.
One of the other guards left the queen’s side and rushed at me, his swords held low and ready. I picked up the fallen pike and jabbed him in the belly with the butt of it. He ran into the wooden pole at full speed and dropped to the floor like a sack of very battered potatoes, all the air gone. He made it back to one knee without a long enough pause for me to explain what happened, so I rapped him on top of the head with the pike. His eyes crossed and he dropped back down to the floor, flopping onto his belly and probably breaking his nose when he landed.
“Now stop it,” I bellowed. Time froze around me as the sheer volume of sound I produced registered with the delicate, fair folk. I’m a big dude, and that means I can move a lot of air when I put my mind to it. And my
mind was definitely to it just then because I knew if the guards untangled themselves from one another, I was probably going to have to seriously hurt somebody to keep them from burying a big axe in me.
“I am not here to hurt anybody,” I continued speaking in my best drill instructor voice. I’ve never been in the service, but I watched Full Metal Jacket a bunch when I was a kid, so I know how yell. “I will put the big stick down.” I did.
“I am just here to clear up a misunderstanding about me and some bandits I beat the hell out of on the road.” And break a bunch of humans out of your dungeon, I didn’t add.
“Misunderstanding? I think I understood you perfectly when you laid hands on the queen’s cousin, robbed me, and left me tied up in the woods, you round-eared human piece of dung.”
I knew that voice. It meant all kinds of bad things for me. I peered past the lone guard protecting the queen and saw the owner of the voice standing on the dais beside her. The queen’s cousin was my old buddy from the highway, the fairy that I lovingly called Scar.
Shit.
Chapter 10
Shit.
I looked at him again. Yep, still the same little bastard I beat up, robbed blind, and left tied up in the dirt beside the road.
Shit.
I beat the hell out of the queen’s cousin. I shot the queen’s cousin. I knew it wouldn’t kill him, or do any permanent damage, but I’d still shot him.
Shit.
Amy’d been telling me for years that my shoot first, ask questions never attitude was going to have consequences. Now it looked like those consequences were sitting on a throne in front of me in the form of a gorgeous fairy queen.
Oh well, in for a friggin’ penny, as they say...
“Hey, Scar, how’s the leg?” I asked, pasting a big grin on my face.
Scar’s face went instantly red and his hand drifted toward the leg I shot. He got control of himself, but I saw it. And I knew by the look in his eyes that he saw me seeing it, and that pissed him off even more.
“Your Majesty, this human piece of excrement just admitted to assaulting me on the highway! I demand that he be executed immediately!” Scar screeched.
“You make demands of the queen, Scar? That’s pretty brazen, even for a cousin. That’s the kind of bold, rash behavior I’d expect from a man who would lead an attack on a merchant’s wagon in broad daylight. But I’ll give you credit, I didn’t see this coming. I didn’t expect you to be royalty. I just thought you were a common little pissant robber. Now I see that you’re a royal little pissant robber.”
He flushed even further and took a step toward me, his swords clearing their sheaths with a hiss that echoed through the silent throne room. I drew Bertha and pointed the barrel straight at his chest, cocking the hammer back with a loud click.
“Take another step, dickhead. I don’t give a shit if you’re the queen’s cousin, her boyfriend, or her damn manicurist, you come an inch closer to me with those skewers and I’m going to put you on your ass.” He froze, then smiled and stepped back, sheathing his blades as he did.
“You see, Your Majesty? He’s obviously violent and deranged. He threatened my person right in front of you. What kind of idiot does that? What species of moron comes into the queen’s throne room and makes threats against her family?
“What kind of royal cousin attacks a wine and beer merchant on the road to Tisa’ron? What kind of royal cousin leads ruffians and thugs to prey on innocent citizens? What kind of royal cousin isn’t man enough to face a mere human in single combat, but hides behind half a dozen allies and minions, then comes running to the queen when he gets his ass beat?”
“STOP.” Titania stood up and glared at both of us. “Chauvan,” she turned to Scar, so I reckon that was his name, “you have long been a smear on the honor of this family. You have all the morals of a jackal, without the redeeming qualities. But you are my blood, and an insult to you is an insult to the throne, and that cannot be brooked.”
“But,” she went on, “robbing travelers on the Queen’s Highway is an insult to queen and kingdom, and that is tantamount to treason. The penalty for striking a member of the royal family is fifty lashes, while the penalty for treason is death.”
I stared at Scar. Fifty lashes for beating up a bandit? That was gonna suck. But not as much as him getting his ass killed for playing Robin Hood in the woods. Without the whole giving away the money thing, of course. Scar looked like something he ate disagreed with him. Probably that heaping spoonful of reality that Titania had just poured down his throat.
“But,” the queen said after Scar and I had a moment to process the depth of the shit that we were in. “But, we have a festival tomorrow to celebrate the one-hundred-fiftieth anniversary of my coronation, and I need entertainment. The past several anniversaries have been painfully dull affairs, with hardly any bloodshed. I think the two of you should remedy that.”
Shit. It was really starting to be my favorite word, at least as far as fairies were concerned. I bet whatever the queen had in mind was gonna hurt at least as much as fifty lashes.
Titania sat back down on her throne, assured that she had our full attention. Her guards were back on their feet now, if a little wobbly. The one I poked with the pike had blood streaming down his face from his jacked-up nose, but he stood his post without blinking an eye.
“I offer you a choice. You can accept the punishments handed to you by the laws of the land, or you can compete against each other in a public duel, tomorrow at dawn.” She looked at Scar and smiled. “You have long touted your skill as a warrior to whomever would listen, cousin, so I am certain that you have no qualms about battling a mere human before your peers, your family, your business associates, and the entirety of Tisa’ron.”
She turned her gaze to me, and I felt my knees buckle a little. I’ve heard of women that can freeze men with a look, but this chick straight melted me. I managed to tune back in when she started to speak.
“And you, human. You seem larger than most, and if you bested my cousin the first time you fought, you must have some proficiency in combat. So I assume you find this an acceptable option?”
“That depends,” I said.
One perfectly sculpted blonde eyebrow climbed so high on her forehead that I thought it was scaling Everest. “It depends? On what?”
“On how the fight is supposed to go,” I said. “Are we fighting to first blood, unconsciousness, death, or some other random thing? If we’re fighting to the death, I should probably take my chances with fifty lashes. I’ve got a pretty good chance of living through that, better than my chances of surviving a fight to the death with a lying, cheating, stealing shitbird of a fairy like your cousin, anyway.”
The queen looked at me for a long moment, then laughed. “You are correct, human—”
“Bubba,” I corrected.
“Excuse me?”
“You keep calling me ‘human’ like it’s a synonym for ‘asshole,’ so I figured I should just tell you my name. It’s Bubba.”
“Bubba, then. You are correct, Bubba, that my cousin is a well-trained warrior and ruthless in battle. So your weapons will be magically blunted, and you will fight until one of you is unconscious or otherwise unable to continue.”
“Sounds good to me,” I said.
“I suppose it is what the humans call a ‘win-win situation,’” Scar said. “I avoid summary execution at the hands of my favorite cousin, which could make future family gatherings awkward, and I get the added pleasure of beating some manners into this giant clod of a human. I shall return on the morrow and deliver your thrashing, human.” He gave his cousin a florid bow, his nose almost touching the stone floor, and swept out of the room like he owned the place.
I looked around and bowed to the queen. I wasn’t as grandiose as Scar, mostly because I don’t bend that far, and partly because if I tried, I’d almost certainly fall on my own face, and I’d already seen how that worked out.
“I reckon I’ll go find me a
bar and a bed for a little while. I’ll see y’all in the morning.” I turned to go and found a couple of big fairies with big axes looking at me with murder in their eyes.
“Hey guys,” I said, “sorry about that whole beating you up thing. No hard feelings?” I stuck out a hand. They both just stared at it. Either the handshake was a foreign concept in Fairyland, or there might have been some hard feelings.
“And just where do you think you’re going?” the queen asked from behind me.
I turned back to her. “I thought I should probably get prepared for tomorrow. By drinking a lot. And maybe sleeping. But definitely drinking.”
“The only thing you’ll be drinking is water, human. And I’ll provide you with very secure sleeping quarters. Very secure.” She nodded to the guards, and they each grabbed an arm.
I shook them off easily, then said, “Look boys, I don’t go for the holding my arms and marching me places thing. If you want me to go somewhere, one of you walk in front, one of you walk in back, and we’ll go there, easy-peasy. But you put your hands on me again, I’m gonna take those axes away from you and shove them where the sun don’t shine. We clear?”
The guards looked at me, then looked at Titania, then back at me. “Your Majesty, would you tell your boys here that it’s okay not to manhandle me? Otherwise I’m going to have to break them, and you don’t want to replace guards over something this trivial, do you?”
“It’s fine,” the queen sighed. “Just escort him to the dungeon. Bubba, please don’t hurt the guards or try to escape. I find you somewhat amusing, and I would hate to turn you into a frog before you pummel my cousin tomorrow morning.”
I nodded at the queen, bowed again, and turned back to my escorts. “Let’s go, boys. I can’t wait to see what’s for dinner. I’m starving.”
*****
Midsummer - A Bubba the Monster Hunter Novella Page 7