He wouldn’t get knocked out, Glenn thought. At worst it’d be like getting walloped in a pillow fight. Not a bad way to go down…then he realized his thoughts were getting him aroused again. Toting the bra around, he searched for more coins as a distraction. A few skittered across the hardwood stage, first at one end, then the other.
Glenn was sure they were making him run back and forth, but that was okay. He’d swallow his pride further, if it meant hope for Kim. He was sure that was Stephi’s motivation.
More laughter and cheers ensued, not as enthusiastic as before. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Stephi leading the young man around the stage, in what he recognized as the Tango. The young man’s chin repeatedly collided with her chest as he tried to keep up with the unfamiliar steps and moves. The music didn’t match the dance, but nobody in the audience cared.
A few men stood and approached the stage to volunteer, but Derek aggressively intervened and pushed them back.
Stephi ended the dance with both her and the aroused and red-faced youth facing the crowd. She bowed, and he followed suit.
A few more coins rained down from above and some from the benches and tables on the main floor. Glenn started to pick them up but turned to Stephi when she squealed, both in surprise and distress.
To Glenn’s amazement, Stephi grew. His short stature affected his perspective but, based upon the young boy next to her who’d turned to see what was wrong, she added maybe four or five inches. Being already tall, Glenn knew that couldn’t be good.
Even worse—at least in the short term—two buttons from Stephi’s blouse popped, with at least one more straining, barely hanging on. She’d grown; her clothes hadn’t.
The audience roared and clapped and cheered, thinking it part of the act. Maybe it was? Glenn just wasn’t sure.
Coins rained down from the second tier, and flew in from the benches and tables. Coppers, silvers and a few gold. An enticement for Stephi to go further, turn the act from PG 13, to R, or even X.
Glenn hurried around collecting coins, giving up on trying to fill up Stephi’s brassiere and just dumped everything onto her cloak. When he was on the far right side of the stage, he dropped a few copper and silver in front of the performing musicians. It seemed the right thing to do.
However, when Stephi bowed, hands over her blouse, making sure she didn’t lose any more buttons and she didn’t fall out, more than a few spectators weren’t interested in “the right thing to do.”
“No!” “If she ain’t stripping I want my coin back!” “Teasing elf bitch!”
Glenn had never been in a crowd that went bad, but he’d seen riots and sports brawls on TV. He was a freaking gnome.
Some men rushed the stage. Derek intercepted the first two. Ron jumped in, as did several blue-clad workers. Glenn ducked a chair hurled onto the stage. He stuffed Stephi’s bra into his belt and met her eyes. She took several hesitant steps back, unsure what to do. He gathered up the edges of the cloak, turning it into a sack.
A tankard struck the shield hanging across his back. Ale splashed across the stage. That reminded him of his tankard filled with coins sitting a few feet away. He grabbed it and looked around. Everyone was on their feet, many shouting in anger, others egging on those rushing the stage.
They were in trouble. “Run!” he urged Stephi. “Out the back.” Looking over his shoulder again, he knew there’d better be a back way out. The front door wasn’t an option.
Chapter 14
Glenn followed Stephi backstage. She must’ve been thinking clearly as she’d grabbed her rapier. She ran awkwardly, like her shoes didn’t quite fit, but she was still hard to keep up with. He felt like one of Santa’s elves, with a sack of coins over his shoulder and a tankard packed with the same tucked under his arm like a football.
Stephi ducked around a curtain and followed a narrow path between painted boards, crates, frames, curtains and various other stage props. She turned right into an open area. She knocked aside an elderly man. He dropped butt-first on a folded tarp.
“Sorry,” she called over her shoulder.
Glenn slowed. “You okay?”
The guy, a little stunned, nodded. It wasn’t every day a guy nearly got run over by a gorgeous seven-foot elven maiden, her bouncing chest half hanging out of her blouse.
“Is there a back door?”
The old guy stared at Glenn. “Yeah.” He pointed down a narrow path to the right.
“Marigold! Back this way.”
“You can’t leave,” the old guy said, getting his bearings.
Glenn gave him a hand and helped him back to his feet. The riotous noise around the stage hadn’t abated. “We ain’t going back out there.”
The man straightened his blue vest. “Every act owes the house twenty percent.”
“Are you the accountant?” Glenn asked.
The man nodded and gazed up at Stephi who’d just come up behind Glenn.
Stephi looked down at Glenn, one hand holding her blouse closed. “I said I was sorry.” Then to the man she said, “I really am, but we gotta get out of here.” Her eyes darted back toward the stage.
“I’m Pelver Himsal, Assistant Business Manager for the Blue Bugle.”
Glenn shoved the tankard full of coins into the man’s chest. “Here’s the Bugle’s cut.” It might not have not been the smart thing to do. They needed every coin to pay the temple priest for her spell. He convinced himself that there were probably more Bugle employees backstage, in the offices somewhere. Giving him the coins might keep him from calling someone to stop them.
“Use it to improve security,” Stephi added.
Pelver Himsal held the tankard, unsure what to say.
“That way,” Glenn said, pointing toward the back door.
A rough-looking man pulled aside one of the stage curtains. Another man, wearing blue, tackled the rough man from behind.
Stephi turned and ran. “I’m outta here.”
“I’ll catch up,” Glenn assured her, not sure if it was true. What chance did a dachshund have catching up with a greyhound?
“We good?” Glenn asked the business manager.
The old man’s eyes followed the beautiful elf, a hint of wistfulness in them. Maybe it was confusion.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” Glenn hefted and adjusted the cloak-sack over his shoulder and trotted toward the backdoor.
Weaving between stacked crates and barrels, racks with blue shirts and vests, and broken chairs and tables, Glenn found the back door. Stephi had removed the metal bar and left it open. Opened inward? Must not have fire marshals checking for safety.
Glenn glanced out into the alley, allowing his eyes to adjust. He didn’t see anyone, and pulled the door closed so that the interior light wouldn’t shine on him. The alley was narrow, with the wall of a tall wooden building facing him six feet away. Broken crates and other debris were scattered about.
Glenn’s hand slipped to his cudgel. The covering sock was still there. He listened. Did he hear Stephi’s footsteps retreating to the left? He tried to orient himself to the front of the building, and to where the Temple of Apollo was. Shouldn’t she be going to the right?
Chase her, or make his way to the temple? Staying in the dark narrow alley seemed like a bad idea.
The chances of catching up with the long-legged elf? Stephi knew the rally points. Temple, he decided, and hustled right, quietly as he could.
Glenn didn’t think he had the equivalent of forty gold coins. Maybe Kirby had been able to steal some during the mayhem. Maybe Ron had won a few. Maybe he could sell his healing services to the church.
Those thoughts and concerns cluttered his mind as he made his way down a secondary street. There were street lights, and a few folks out and about. They stared at him as he passed. He did his best to walk so that the coins didn’t jingle, giving away what he carried.
After several blocks he spotted a loud group of men with swords and shields. They shoved and threatened a lone travele
r. The man fell to the ground and then scampered away.
Despite the few magical street lights scattered about, Glenn figured he’d spotted them before they’d seen him. He ducked into an alleyway. Weeds sprouted near the base of the buildings that lined it but there wasn’t anything to duck behind, and one of the streetlights managed to cast a glow several yards in.
A rat scampered away as the gnome backed in deeper. Sweat began to bead on his brow. A voice, actually two came from behind him. One was higher pitched, a woman’s. Another was deep, deeper than a man’s, and louder than the woman’s, but muffled so that Glenn couldn’t understand what was being said. The higher-pitched voice didn’t sound like Stephi. He was pretty sure of that.
The aggressive, boisterous group was getting closer to where the ally opened onto the street, so Glenn retreated further into the alley. He glanced deeper through the shadows, seeking the source of the voices and spotted three individuals. Straining his eyes, he saw a woman standing in the alley. She was glaring up at some hulking brute that was pointing down at her. Next to the brute stood a smaller individual. The brute was built like Derek, big and muscular, and the smaller individual reminded Glenn of Kirby. The woman looked about average size, so it wasn’t Stephi.
Releasing a sigh of relief, Glenn pressed against a wooden wall between two tufts of weeds and waited for the group of men to pass by. While doing so, something tugged at his conscience. That woman down the alley, facing a half-goblin and something else, far bigger and probably meaner. If it were Stephi, he’d be there in a second. But could he ignore the woman’s plight?
He thought of Kim and the cloak holding the coins to get a Tether Spell. That was his priority…but could he live with himself in the morning? He held his breath as the five men strode past, loud and laughing, and shoving each other in a rough-handed manner.
After they passed, more questions shot through Glenn’s mind. He knew he should help the woman cornered in the alley. Maybe they were friends and just having an argument. In an alley? Then what was the woman doing in the alley?
He peered again down the alley. The woman had short curly hair, hanging almost to her shoulder. His cousin would call them noodle curls. She wore a blouse with the sleeves rolled up, a skirt that reached mid-calf and heavy boots. On her hip hung a scabbard holding a curved dagger, and sitting just behind her boots were two dogs, the size of terriers.
The half-goblin had a short sword on his hip and a vest of chainmail armor. The hulking individual next to him was a woman, on second glance. Vestigial tusks jutting up from her lower jaw reminded him of the ogre he and his friends had fought. Half-goblins, why not half-ogres?
This female brute had long scraggly hair and wore leather from neck to knee. Not tight fitting except for the metal-studded bands on her arms. Her boots looked like larger versions of the skirted woman’s. The woman brute held a walking stick or a staff in her right hand, both ends shod in metal.
The dogs wouldn’t be any help. Maybe they could annoy the half-goblin, until he took a few seconds to hack them up.
He tried to listen, but could only catch the harshness of the woman’s tone. Was she giving the two a tongue lashing? That was when the half-goblin put his hand on his sword’s hilt, threatening to draw it. The half-ogre finally spoke loud enough for Glenn to hear.
“I’ve broke bones for nicer words than that, Lovelace.” She shook her staff menacingly, and the woman named Lovelace took a step back.
That was good, Glenn thought. At least the human could see something in the near darkness. Her two little dogs barked several times and snarled.
Glenn set the cloak of coins between the tufts of weeds where he was standing, and placed half of a broken crock on top of it. Pulling his shield off his back, he began walking down the alley, toward the three, muttering to himself what kind of idiot would stick his nose into what was likely a hornet’s nest. He knew it was dumb, but also right, and into that hornet’s nest he was going to shove his nose.
“I’m not going to tell you again—” The woman stopped in mid-sentence as her dogs turned and growled at Glenn’s approach.
Hey, he thought. I’m on your master’s side.
That part of the narrow alley smelled like an outhouse. The wall to the two-story building behind the woman looked well maintained, with a bit of ivy clinging half-way up in parts. A stout door was set in the middle, just behind the woman and her dogs. The other building was a little taller but leaned to the right at a slight angle. The boards looked more rickety, with several cross boards hammered in place. Both had windows in the upper level. The building behind the woman’s were shuttered closed. One on the other side had shutters hanging open.
The half-goblin’s head swiveled to face Glenn as he got within ten feet. He laughed. “You summon one of your misfit little friends for backup?”
Glenn kept his shield at his side, but rested his hand on his cudgel. He mustered as confident a voice as he could. “Thought I heard a dispute, and decided to check to make sure there wasn’t any problem.”
One of the dogs trotted over to sniff his boot. Glenn ignored it, keeping his eyes on the two half-humans. Then it occurred to him, maybe they weren’t the bad guys.
That thought died quickly when the brutish female snarled, “Beat it, little gnome, before I stomp your scrawny ass into the mud.”
“I’m so done with this conversation,” the woman—Lovelace—said. The curls in her hair straightened, as she muttered something.
“What the hell?” the female brute shouted, dropping her staff. Her hands went up to her face and disappeared in a grayish-black globe surrounding her head. “You bitch!”
Glenn had only a fraction of a second to see the results of the woman’s spell, because the half-goblin drew his short sword. Glenn pulled his cudgel, flicked off the sock cover, and interposed himself between the woman and the sword wielder, shield held ready.
From behind Glenn, Lovelace said, “Roary, take your wife inside and I’ll cease the spell. If I hear from you or your unruly band again, realize my patience is at an end.”
Her two dogs crept forward, one to either side of Glenn. They growled, emphasizing their owner’s displeasure.
Glenn kept his gaze locked on the half-goblin, Roary.
After a second or two of indecision, while his wife continued a string of cursing, Roary sheathed his short sword. He walked around his wife, who was shaking her head and trying to bat away the engulfing darkness. Picking up her staff, he said, “Give me your hand, Buellean.”
“I expect that by dawn someone from your abode will be out here cleaning my wall?”
Roary grunted and nodded. “This way,” he said to his wife, kicking open the door behind them and leading her in. “Duck your head.”
Buellean was too busy still cursing to listen. Thump! Right where Glenn figured her nose would be.
After the door slammed shut, Glenn turned around. As he did so, a soft light twice as bright as a candle emerged in the woman’s hand. She was definitely a magic user.
“And who might you be, my little gnome friend?”
Glenn didn’t care to be called a “little gnome” but she’d said it in a friendly, non-derogatory manner.
He put away his cudgel and slid his shield across his back. Looking around he picked up the sock and stuck it over the business end of his weapon. “My name’s Jax. I thought you were in trouble. Sorry.”
She laughed. As she did so, curls returned to her hair. With the light he could see she had brown eyes that matched her brunette hair. She had full red lips, expressive eyebrows and faint dimples when she smiled. “You have my thanks for your concern. There is a definite lack of it in this city.”
“You’re called Lovelace?”
“By some.” She extended her hand. “But my friends call me Keri.” She looked down at her feet. “And this is Chilli, Skunks’ Bane, and Rocky the Indomitable.” The first dog she’d named had wiry hair, white with black patches. The other, smooth short hair
, white, but with a half tan face.
Glenn and Keri shook hands until her attention fell to his belt. With a raised eyebrow, she said, “Either you sling some mighty stones, or you’ve recently acquired a souvenir. Or maybe a trophy?”
Glenn looked down at himself to see what she was staring at. Stephi’s brassiere. He’d stuffed it into his belt. His face went red. “Uhhmm.”
“I see, you’d rather not talk about it.”
He pulled it from his belt. “It’s not that, exactly…”
“Give me a minute,” she said, “and we can go inside. Right you are in that an alley is not a place to linger, especially after nightfall.”
She turned and walked over to the wall partially covered in ivy. Some of it glistened, and there were streaks stained in brown.
Glenn looked up across the alley to the open window. It was where the outhouse odor was coming from. “They dumped their chamber pot?”
“Pots, and not the first time,” she replied, lowering her hand that held the magical light. “That’s what happens when swamp frogs move in across the alley.”
This world had neighbor disputes? He shrugged to himself. Why not?
While Glenn was distracted, something tugged his left hand. He jump and, before he could hold tight, one of the woman’s dogs had yanked Stephi’s bra from his hand and scuttled away, dragging it by the strap. The other dog bit into one of the cups and they began a tug of war. “Hey,” he said, remembering not to shout as he stepped towards the dogs.
They snarled and tugged back and forth, rolling around in the mud.
“I need that—I mean a friend needs that.” He took a step closer and they moved away, still pulling and chewing. He couldn’t kick or club the dogs, so he dove for the bra, missing. “Give it back.”
“Rocky, Chilli, bring that here.” The two small canines stopped and looked at their owner, nubs for tails wagging. “Now, you two.”
Outpost: A LitRPG Adventure (Monsters, Maces and Magic Book 1) Page 12