by Shae Hutto
“I’m Claire Grant,” sang one of the guards in a mocking falsetto. “I need to see the Queen!” Both guards laughed.
“What did you say her name was?” called a voice from the troops on top of the wall. Claire’s consciousness stopped receding as she realized the danger. Nausea was replaced with something different. Rage forced itself up out of her chest and pushed back the dizzying light show in her eyes. Her mismatched eyes opened. Four guards blurred, twitched and became two. One of them was yelling up at the troops on the wall. The other was looking at her with suspicion. Her wand dropped out of her sleeve and into her hand. The spell for eruption that she had recently tried to learn raced through her mind. She wasn’t sure she had it right, but it seemed close enough, although she probably was mixing more than one spell inadvertently. She murmured the words as the troops flew into a flurry of activity on the wall and both guards turned to look at her with alarm.
“I said my name is CLAIRE GRANT!” she screamed at them and pointed her wand at the gate. There was a pop as pressure equalized and an odd sound from beneath their feet. But nothing very noticeable happened. Both the guards looked ready to dive out of the way but then looked smugly at the red-headed girl standing before them with a swelling face and a look of fury furrowing her brow. The guard who had hit her drew back his hand to hit her again. Before he got the chance, the ground under the gate exploded upwards sending dirt and rocks and troops flying hundreds of feet in the air as a massive worm with a gaping maw filled with yellow, serrated teeth burst from the subterranean depths. It thrashed in anger as it ripped the gate from its hinges and battered the wall to rubble, crushing the soldiers to jam. One guard dropped his halberd and ran as fast as his armor would let him. The one who had hit Claire stood, staring at the worm in paralytic horror.
Claire summoned her flaming lasso and used it to whip the guard off his feet and toss him into the air above the worm, who snapped him out of the air and swallowed him whole. As quickly as it had appeared, the worm dove back down into the earth and vanished, leaving nothing but destruction in its wake. Claire wiped a trickle of blood from the side of her head.
“That’s not what I expected,” she said. “But it’ll do, I guess.”
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Amanda was having to practically drag Stan with her as she ran along the wall, looking for a way down. When they came to a stone stairway leading off the wall and into the courtyard, she ran down it two steps at a time. As she approached the bottom of the stone stairs, Amanda realized her error. The courtyard of the castle was a hive of frantic activity. Soldiers, servants and functionaries rushed about in apparent chaos, each intent on his or her own specific task. Troops marched about, shoving all before them out of the way as they rushed to where they were needed for the defense of the walls. From the shouts and screams and sounds of war, it appeared the castle was under attack from every side by an army of unknown size. If she concentrated, she could make out the sounds of Connix to the north and other types of armed conflict on the other side of the castle to the east. There was no sign yet of any disturbance to the south. In the jumble of humanity and discordant action, not to mention the darkness, it seemed an ideal situation for them to blend into. Unfortunately, there were few women, no red dresses, no saxophones and no black people in evidence, and the darkness was largely banished from the more active parts of the castle by a plethora of torches and magical illuminations.
“We’ll just have to risk it,” said Amanda, more to herself than to Stan.
“Risk what?” asked Stan.
“Death, probably. Imprisonment, certainly,” she remarked with some degree of satisfaction at Stan’s horror. “Don’t sweat it, Stan,” she continued. “I have significant advantages.”
“Like what?”
“You mean besides my stunning good looks?”
“Uh huh. Besides those.”
“Let’s hope you don’t have to find out, big guy,” she replied absently. Amanda had spotted a small, insignificant door into the castle proper that was poorly lit and largely ignored. “Follow me, handsome.” She stalked across the courtyard with a purposeful stride, not looking at anything around her, obviously intent on a mission. She hoped Stan had the presence of mind to do the same, since people tended to not bother other people who looked like they had a job to do. Amanda wove her way in between soldiers and sorcerers and flunkies by the score. Their goal was just a couple of steps away when there was a small ruckus behind her.
“Watch where yer goin’, darkie!” someone yelled, and she heard the neighing of an agitated horse. Warily, she turned to find Stan caught between a rearing horse bearing an officer of some kind and a platoon of marching soldiers. Stan, instead of scurrying out of the way as quickly as possible, was staring in belligerent indignation at the man on the horse.
“What did you call me, you fat piece of…” he cut off abruptly as Amanda put him in a choke hold from behind and dragged him off his feet and toward the door.
“Don’t mind Remus,” she remarked with a grin. “He’s already in for the whipping of his life. I’ll just add a dozen more strokes for this impertinence.”
The soldiers marched on but the horseman, who was unable to continue until the platoon had cleared the way, looked at her with keen interest.
“Who might you be, madam?” he inquired with authority as he stroked his long white whiskers with one gloved hand.
“I’m Anne of Cleves,” she replied as she continued to drag a struggling Stan toward the little door. “I’m nobody, really. Just the mistress to the Count of Long Island,” she finished, trying to think quickly.
“The count of what?” he asked as he began to dismount. “Stop,” he said with a tone of voice that clearly conveyed an expectation that he would be obeyed. “Stop immediately, I say!” he said much more loudly to the closing door as Amanda escaped inside with Stan in tow. Seconds later, he rushed through the door after them. If anyone had been watching they would have seen a bright flash from under the door and heard the discharge of an energy pistol, followed by the sound of a large body hitting a stone floor.
“Too bad this thing doesn’t have a stun setting,” lamented Amanda as she stood over the corpse of the gaudy officer. There was a hole burned clean through his chest and she could see the floor through it.
“What’s that dial on the side?” asked Stan, pointing at her blaster.
“Oh,” she said in mild astonishment. “I never noticed that before. What do you know, there is a stun setting!” she said as she twisted the dial to the clearly marked stun position. “Sorry dude,” she said to the corpse on the floor. She took a few seconds to look about her and then at Stan. “I’m sorry about the Remus stuff, Stan. I couldn’t afford to let your totally justified righteous indignation get us arrested.”
“No worries,” said Stan grudgingly and kicked the corpse of the mustachioed officer. “Racist butthole got his anyway, didn’t he?”
“That he did, Stan. That he did. Now where are we?”
They were in a dimly lighted room that evidently served as a storage area for cooking supplies. Barrels and burlap sacks were stacked everywhere. From the sounds and the heat coming through the only other door to the place, she would guess they were in close proximity to the castle kitchens. She motioned toward the door and they were beginning to make their way through the tangle of dry goods when the earth shook violently and they clearly heard the world end outside. Well, it could have been the world ending, or a Five Finger Death Punch concert, a birthday party for a seven-year-old or a castle wall being annihilated by a giant, toothy earthworm. They had no way to know which it was. They did know that several stacks of barrels and sacks collapsed. When Amanda dug her way out from under a collapsed pile of bags filled with pecans, she discovered Stan nursing an ankle. A barrel of pickled herring had fallen on it and he doubted very much that he could walk.
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“Ramses,
” said Roger to the little alien monkey. “We have to get through that gate. Do you think you could eat the hinges?”
Spanky nee Ramses looked at the gate and then at the sorcerer who had replaced the wounded one atop the wall who was firing lightning into the night willy-nilly and then back at Roger. His face looked mournful but his eye lit up and flashed green. Roger saw the look Spanky directed at the sorcerer and he aimed his crossbow at the black robed man.
“Don’t worry,” he told the alien. “You get to chewing. I’ll perforate his noggin, proper like.” He let the bolt fly and not only was it deflected by some sort of magical barrier, it left a glowing red line in the air that clearly led directly back to him. “Oh, crap,” he said and started running. Gardener took off running in the other direction. Weenie didn’t know why everyone was running or who to follow. His hesitation cost him. Although none of the shower of crossbow bolts hit him, he was too slow to jump out of the way of a web of green lightning the sorcerer threw over the area. He was trapped and by the piteous yelping and howling, the green web was causing him pain. Roger and Lieutenant Gardener both circled back around in the darkness to see if they could help Weenie.
Spanky had one of the hinges chewed through and was working on the second when the sorcerer noticed him and aimed a bolt of lightning at him. The lightning failed to score a direct hit because the sorcerer and several soldiers fell off the wall when it shook violently from the thrashing Claire’s giant worm gave the south gate. The second hinge melted from the magical onslaught and the shaking caused the door to fall down. A wounded Spanky was under it when it fell and nobody saw what happened to him. Roger and Gardener gave up trying to free Weenie and charged the wounded soldiers who littered the ground on their side of the wall. When Gardener skewered the sorcerer, the web vanished, releasing an angry Dalmatian with black hash marks on his hind quarters where the net had burned him.
Panic took over on the top of the wall. With their leaders dead, their gate breached and their wounded being slaughtered, many of them chose to flee. Gardener and Roger charged through the open gate, bloody swords leading the way and immediately found themselves outnumbered and desperate on the other side of the wall. They suddenly ran out of opponents when a black and white demon with teeth hurtled out of the darkness and attached itself to the sergeant’s face, snarling and snapping. Blood flew and nobody wanted to be there anymore. They ran. Roger tried to catch his breath, heaving and rasping. Gardener had hardly broken a sweat.
“Good show!” he said happily as he rubbed Weenie on his bloody head.
“Nick,” Roger managed to say between ragged breaths. He pointed with his sabre at a heap lying on the ground a few feet away. Nick was out cold and bleeding from a shallow gash in his chest, but he was alive and they couldn’t find any obvious life threatening wounds. Gardener slung him over his shoulder.
“Let’s go,” he said.
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Claire strode through the destroyed gate, eyes ablaze and frizzy red hair forming a nimbus around her head. She was practically daring anyone to try and stop her. Wanton destruction was flying from her wand as she sent fire and lightning across the courtyard at anything and everything. Soldiers and civilians alike ran screaming from her wrath. Finally, someone appeared who dared to face her. A man in scarlet robes walked calmly into her path and stopped. Arcane symbols glowed on his raiment and his serene face bespoke complete confidence.
“You can’t win,” he said in the silence that descended around them.
“Bite me,” she replied and launched a stream of snow balls at his head. They splashed across his magical barrier and exploded into steam.
He arched one eyebrow and made a lazy gesture that sent flames howling to engulf her. They wrapped around her own barrier and when they were spent she was still there.
“You’ll have to do better than that,” she said. His next attack was the black lightning that did so much damage to anything it touched. He played it over the area for several seconds and when it was over, Claire was nowhere to be seen. The man cautiously approached the smoking, blackened area, looking for any sign of the red-headed menace. He poked the periphery of the black area with his booted toe.
Claire, hidden by her Elven cloak in the shadows of a building off to the right of where she had been, almost caught him by surprise. Blinding white lightning blasted out of her wand and impacted the shield he barely had enough time to shift to his left. Even before the lightning cut out, a fireball was in the air, and then a whirling storm of blades. Claire pulled out all the stops, using every spell she had ever taken the time to learn. Attack after attack flew at the man, driving him back as he desperately used counter spells to deflect or dissipate her attacks. He was retreating and she was moving around to the side so their relative positions were reversed, but he wasn’t being hurt and she didn’t know how long she could keep this up. They were so concentrated on trying to kill and not be killed that neither Claire nor the red wizard heard the triumphant scream from the skies or the beating of great leathery wings.
A mighty wind buffeted them and threw Claire to the ground. The red wizard had time for one scream of horror before the dragon landed on him, pinning him to the scorched and blackened earth with one talon as he slowly pulled his head off with his snout. Blood sprayed in a fountain and glistened wetly on the great wyrm’s scaly hide. He winked at Claire. Or was it a blink? He had only one eye, so Claire didn’t know if there was a difference. At any rate, his eye closed and opened again. With a hiss, he launched himself back into the black night; an angel of death and demon of salvation come and gone again. Claire picked herself up off the torn and tortured turf, resisting the inclination to lay down and rest. She gathered her reserves of strength, mentally noting how much energy the use of strenuous magic takes out of the caster.
Claire looked about, trying to get her bearings. She was alone in the dark, deserted courtyard. The screams and explosions and inexplicable cacophony of violence had receded and continued to wane as most of the wall’s defenders fled the castle in fear and blind panic. Claire took a moment and tried to tame her rioting, rebellious hair and headed for the castle proper, her wand at the ready and her senses alert.
She walked with a purpose toward the torches that marked the main entrance to the castle through a portcullis that was, of course, down and obstructing her path. Claire didn’t even consider finding a more receptive entrance. She was focused and on the shortest path to the interior. How much of an obstacle could metal grating be, anyway? Physically trying to move the portcullis up proved to be futile; she couldn’t even make it rattle. There was no obviously visible mechanism for raising the gate. She briefly considered summoning the massive worm again, but knew she couldn’t accurately recreate the spell she had cobbled together. She flailed the portcullis with incandescent lightning and succeeded in heating it to a searing cherry red, but the metal held and didn’t budge. A fireball passed through it with no visible damage, the flame quartered by the bars and splashing harmlessly on the stone hallway behind. Claire was rapidly running out of energy. In a last effort, she summoned the flaming lasso and latched onto the gate. With a mighty heave, she pushed it up with all her magical might. There was the sound of metal straining and with a crash, the mechanism holding it closed gave way somewhere in the wall and the portcullis flew up. Warped as it was from her lightning attacks, it lodged halfway up and stuck fast.
Claire entered the castle, her shiny black riding boots clicking on the polished stone floor. Behind her was a broad path of blackened, twisted devastation. Ahead, somewhere, was the Queen.
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Amanda pushed a turnip cart through the nearly deserted kitchens. There were no turnips in the cart; instead, it held a golden saxophone and a black adolescent jazz musician with a busted ankle. She turned a corner around two large, stone ovens and nearly ran over a young woman who was busy putting some sort of p
astry that looked like severed fingers in yet another stone oven. Amanda managed to stop the cart without running down the cute young pastry cook or dumping Stan on the floor. She did bang his ankle against a kettle suspended in a cold fireplace. He let out a subdued howl of pain and sucked his teeth. Amanda was about to go around the girl when she realized she was potentially wasting a valuable opportunity. After all, she had not one clue where she was going.
“You, girl,” said Amanda imperiously to the woman who looked like she was probably twice Amanda’s age but was aging well. “What’s your name?” The tone of assumed authority and the stunning splendor of Amanda’s dress convinced the woman she was speaking to a social superior.
“Naomi, miss,” replied the woman in an accent that sounded almost English to Amanda, but not quite. Welsh, maybe? “How can I be of help?” She curtsied awkwardly.
“Naomi,” said Amanda to the petite little cook. “Do you know where the royal family is?”
“You mean the Queen?” asked the woman in some confusion. Her face wrinkled like there was something nagging at the edge of her memory but she couldn’t put her finger on what.
“No,” replied Amanda. “I mean the King and his family. I’m looking for them and all I know is they are enchanted and asleep. Ring a bell?”
“Oh!” said Naomi. “How could I have forgotten that? Of course!” She smiled with relief as the mental itch resolved itself.
“Hi, Naomi,” said Stan from his recumbent position in the cart, apparently attracted to her smile. “My name’s Stan. Friends call me Stan the Man.”
“Why are you in a turnip cart?” asked Naomi. Stan looked abashed.
“I hurt my ankle,” he replied sheepishly. “Now I’m a freaking gimp.” Stan the Man pouted.