Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Elven Princess (6 page)

Princess Jholeira and I, and of course
Hysteria, made our way east, following the road which is called the
East Road, which is only appropriate, as it goes east… and it is a
road. I had pretty much accepted that the girl thought she was a
princess. She was convincing enough as she told me of life growing
up among the royalty of the elven wood. I listened to her
descriptions, because you can never have too much local color to
throw into a story, but I didn’t commit much to memory as far as
the events of her life were concerned. There just wasn’t much of a
plot there. But to return to the point, generally speaking, if
someone thinks they are a princess, I have found that it doesn’t
much matter whether anyone else thinks they are or not.

At tea time we stopped and I made a fire,
brewing some coffee and whipping up a pan full of biscuits. These
were not like biscuits in Aerithraine. There biscuits are crunchy
little sweet things—what my poor old father called “cookies” though
you bake them instead of cooking them. These were what they call
biscuits in Lyria—something in the sort of a soft scone made with
flour, salt, and animal lard. If we had only had a bit of honey
they would have been quite good, but alas I had no honey. They
filled us up though and both Jholeira and I were glad for them.
Hysteria didn’t think very much of them though and she was mopey
again for the rest of the day.

We traveled until dark was starting to
settle. I had just decided that it was time to look for a campsite
when my little orphan princess spotted the lights of houses some
distance away. We continued and arrived at a thorpe, which is to
say a hamlet or a small village. It was very small too, having only
a single inn and half a dozen farm houses. The inside of the inn
was warm and inviting. We were greeted at a large counter just
inside by a husky innkeeper with arms like tree trunks and hands
like hams. He had thick whiskers on either side of his face and
when he smiled he revealed that both front teeth were gone.

“What can I do for you?” he asked.

“We would like a room.”

“Two rooms,” said the girl. “And stabling
for our horse.”

“Ixnay on the ootay oomsray,” said I. “I
don’t have the money to pay for the one. I was hoping I might pay
for it with my storytelling…”

“Is that the good-for-nothing no-count
Eaglethorpe Buxton I see?” called a voice from the doorway
beyond.

While the proprietor squinted at me as if to
see if it truly were the good-for-nothing no-count Eaglethorpe
Buxton in front of him and not a good-for-something mathematically
fluent version, I turned to see my accuser. There in the doorway
was my oldest and dearest friend-- Ellwood Cyrene. He had a mug of
ale in his hand and a smile on his face. He looked quite at home
having left his armor and swords off as he relaxed, though I could
see the two daggers he kept in his belt, the one he kept up his
right sleeve, and the one inside his back collar, as well as his
knife in his right boot and the throwing stars in his left.

“That cannot be Ellwood Cyrene,” said I.
“walking around defenseless and drunk.”

He stepped forward and we embraced. It was a
manly embrace. He held onto me a bit too long, but what of that? He
was a bit tipsy no doubt. No one could ever doubt the manliness of
Ellwood Cyrene.

“This is for two rooms and stabling,” said
Ellwood, tossing the innkeeper a big gold coin. “No doubt
Eaglethorpe will want to pay for his supper with
story-telling.”

The proprietor’s face lit up. “It has been a
long while since we’ve had a storyteller.”

“And it will continue to be a long while,”
said Ellwood, punching me in a very manly way on the shoulder. “I
said Eaglethorpe wanted to pay for his supper with story-telling. I
didn’t say that he could. Come my friend, let me buy you a mug of
the muddy liquid that passes for ale in these parts.”

And throwing his arm around my shoulder, in
a very manly way, he led me into the common room of the inn. The
orphan princess followed. We sat at a rough-hewn table and Ellwood
waved for the serving wench. She was attractive, though not as
plump as I like, and she didn’t have any of the buttons on her
blouse undone, and it didn’t matter anyway because she had eyes
only for Ellwood, who gave her a wink in return.

“Ale for my good friend,” he said. “And…
when did you get a pet boy?”

“She’s a girl and an elf,” I whispered to
him. “But I want to keep it quiet. You know how much trouble women
can cause.”

He nodded sagely, and then smiled at the
wench. “A glass of milk for this poor pathetic ragamuffin.”

Jholeira playfully stuck out her tongue at
him and the serving wench let loose with a peel of musical laughter
as she went to get our order. Ellwood bought round after round as
we sat talking of our service in the Great Goblin War and about our
many adventures together. At some point, when neither of us was
paying attention, the wench brought us a loaf of bread and a joint
of beef and we ate like kings.

We had almost finished our supper, when
Ellwood left to answer nature’s call. I had gotten up several times
by that point, but Ellwood is renowned for his large bladder. As he
walked away, my little elf girl leaned over to me.

“Have you ever noticed what a pretty man
your friend Ellwood is?”

“Yes. I mean no,” I answered. “Absolutely
not. How, why, how would I notice something like that?”

Ellwood had just returned when the husky
innkeeper appeared in the common room and made an announcement. His
announcement wasn’t loud and it needn’t have been. The room wasn’t
that large and there weren’t that many people in it. I counted
sixteen, ourselves included. There were the three of us, the
innkeeper and serving wench, six men and two women who were
obviously locals—farmers no doubt, a traveling tinker; a
sell-sword, which is to say a mercenary, who from the looks of
things had not been doing too well; and a darkly cloaked figure in
the corner. Now one might expect a darkly-cloaked figure in the
corner to be the cause of potential mischief, but the truth is that
I have hardly ever been in an inn or a pub or a taproom or a tavern
or a bar or a saloon that didn’t have a darkly-cloaked figure in
the corner. Most of the time, they do nothing more than mind their
own business. It’s only those few who end up in stories causing
trouble, that the name of darkly-cloaked corner lurkers everywhere
becomes tarnished.

“We are privileged to have in our presence
today,” said the innkeeper, “the world famous story-teller
Eaglethorn Beltbuckle.”

Ellwood snorted into his recently filled
cup. Was it his twelfth or thirteenth refill? I stood up.

“Eaglethorpe Buxton at your service.” I
casually moved around the room to find the best spot for
story-telling, eventually settling on a stool near the fireplace.
“And this is the story of the Queen of Aerithraine.”

“Oh God! Not her again!” shouted Ellwood.
“Don’t you have any new material?”

The sellsword at the bar began to get up,
whether in defense of the Queen or of my story-telling or just to
make for the outhouse I don’ t know, but a single steely look from
Ellwood put him in his seat again. Apparently neither of them had
any doubt who was top dog.

“I shall recount the tale of how I sold my
sword to get a poor but beautiful farm girl out of prison and then
slew a werewolf using only this fork!” I triumphantly pulled the
fork from my fork pocket.

Suddenly the darkly-cloaked figure in the
corner jumped to his feet. He swept aside his cloak to reveal black
armor and a dozen long thin knifes on a bandolier across his chest.
He began plucking the knives and launching them directly at Ellwood
Cyrene, so quickly that seven were in flight at one time before the
first met its destination. That destination was not, as had been
intended, the torso of my friend, for Ellwood had jumped up at
almost the same instant. With a quick flick of his wrist, he
deflected the first two knives toward the wooden bar, where they
stuck with loud thunks. He ducked to the side of the third and
fourth knife, then grabbed the fifth, sixth, and seventh right out
of the air and sent them back at the cloaked figure. By this time
the assailant had thrown two more knives, but Ellwood easily dodged
them. One of them hit the wall just near my head. The other went
into the fireplace causing a cloud of embers to float up into the
air like fireflies. And then it was all over, for the three knives
that my friend had returned to the would-be assassin had all found
their marks-- one in the man’s right hand, one in his chest, and
one in his throat.

Everything was quiet for one moment, then
chaos erupted as the townsfolk and the traveling tinker rushed this
way and that to get out of the way of a battle which was already
over. In thirty seconds, the three of us and the darkly-cloaked
dead body were the only ones left in the room. Even the sellsword
had fled.

“That’s better,” said Ellwood. “Everyone
likes a werewolf story.”

I recounted my story of the farm girl and
the werewolf, at least so far as I had revised it up to that time,
to my friend and my half-orphan companion. I’m not going to tell it
now, because I want to make some final editing before it sees
print. You should always get a true story just right before you
print it.

Afterwards we made our way up to our rooms
and I have to say that they were quite nice. I would have half a
mind to write up a review for a travel company and give that
particular inn three stars if only I could remember what the name
of the little town was. In any case the rooms were very nice, all
the more so since they were free to me. I made sure that my little
elf princess was settled in and had the door locked before
preparing for bed myself and was just about to lie down when there
was a knock at my door.

I pulled the portal open a crack to find
Ellwood Cyrene. He leaned in very close to me. I could smell the
ale on his breath.

“I have something to tell you,” he said.

“Yes?” I leaned closer only to better hear
him.

“I’ll be gone when you wake Eaglethorpe,”
said he. “Don’t continue on the East Road. There will be a battle
fifteen miles east of here tomorrow. You will have to make a
detour.”

“Alright.”

“And Eaglethorpe?”

“Yes?”

“Be careful, won’t you?” He reached up his
hand and brushed aside a strand of hair from my forehead. Then he
turned and walked down the hallway to his room.

The following morning found both Jholeira
and me awake and refreshed. So we made an early start. It was not
as early as Ellwood Cyrene who had left at the crack of dawn.
However when I went down to the common room that morning, not only
did I find that my friend had paid for breakfast for my elf girl
and myself, but he had left a package for me as well. Wrapped in a
large oiled cloth were several pounds of dried beef, a wheel of
yellow cheese, two or three pounds of raisins and a small cloth
sack with a half dozen coins in it.

Ellwood Cyrene never seemed to be in need of
money, despite the fact that he seldom took payment for his many
acts of manly heroism. I have seen a bucket of gold coins gathered
together by a town to pay the hero that saved them from the threat
of a raging monster, only to have it politely refused by a smiling
Ellwood Cyrene. I have seen him pass out coppers to every orphan in
a six block radius of the inn in which he was staying. To be fair I
have seen him plunder more than one baggage train, and on numerous
occasions he has rifled through the pockets of a man he has just
stabbed-- but who hasn’t done that, when you get right down to
it.

I was not able to procure any oats for my
poor steed, which is to say Hysteria, but I did get a small bundle
of dried hay to supplement the small amount of forage we were
likely to find in that country in winter.

We set off on the East Road, but following
the advice I had been given, we soon turned off to the north,
following a cattle path that wandered over the hills and down into
the valley. Our new path veered off from our previous course, but
not enough that I thought we would lose our way. In fact at tea
time, we stopped among a small copse of trees at the top of a hill.
From this point we were able to look down to the south across a
vast valley. True to Ellwood’s warning, a great battle was being
fought. It was impossible to tell who the two sides were, as their
banners at this distance were too difficult to read. All that was
certain was that both sides were humans. I took some small pains to
make sure that we weren’t spotted, but considering the distance and
the chaos on the battlefield, I judged that there was little chance
of it.

After journeying the remainder of the day,
we made camp just off the path in a little hollow which had been
formed by three massive boulders piled one atop of the other two. I
can only imagine that some giant piled them up thus as there was no
nearby mountain down which they might have slid to come to rest in
such a fortuitous configuration, which is to say a pretty good
shape.

“We should reach the edge of Elven Wood
tomorrow,” I told my companion.

“Really? I don’t seem to recognize any
landmarks.”

“Maybe when we get closer,” I offered. “How
long since you’ve been home?”

“Six or seven years I would suppose.”

“That must be tough, being without your
family for so long.”

“Yes.” She sighed. “And what about you?
You’ve been without your family for quite a while now too.”

“What?”

“How long has it been?”