The King's Blood (19 page)

Kaltar tried to not squirm, as the second hand embarrassment grew palpable off the Bothers. Chance was still clinging to his scroll as a life preserver in the middle of a desert, while Chase waved his slingshot around at anyone who was talking. Whatever was supposed to be happening seemed to be not happening correctly. Out of the corner of his eye, Aldrin caught a few other red robes, having exited the shops in time to bear witness to the utter meltdown, shuffle back in as if they had no idea who those two idiots breaking down on stage were. One was trying to wiggle out of his order's robe, forgetting he had nothing more than his ducky emblazoned underthings on beneath.
 

"Wasn't the grasshoppers twenty feet tall?" this fresh voice prompted from the shade of a stubborn elm tree that refused to grow olives no matter how much the local populace threatened it.
 

Chance drug his finger through the scroll, trying to find any mention of the size of the grasshoppers. There was one account from a man's great grandfather that lived through the grasshopper annoyance that some could grow to the size of your hand, but that was it. He looked up at Kaltar, confusion and fear radiating off him.

"And the proud citizens of Hammerfeld knew they could not hope to defeat these giant monsters on their own," the voice continued to prompt.
 

"Um, probably," Chance shouted back, afraid to agree. Chase pointed his slingshot to the voice parting the audience as it moved closer to the stage.

Kaltar was tearing through books he stored in his pockets in the case of an insect invasion encore, while his associate flipped through those same books but in their original elvish just in case some purists demanded that the flavor of the grasshopper soup got lost in translation. Aldrin tried to reach up over the two of them to see the voice's owner, a woman's tone, proud and forceful as always.

"So, they called upon the one warrior they knew could save them and sent for Casamir," the voice said proudly. At the warrior's name drop, the crowd stopped mumbling about how they should probably be getting to their dirt farming and mud pies and started to whisper excitedly about this previously unknown tale in the life of Casamir the Dragon Slayer.

"Did he have his trusty sidekick with him?" the silversmith and part-time birthday clown asked.

"Yes, of course. Casamir couldn't risk his own life battling thirty foot tall grasshoppers that would scissor a man in half with their jaws, without Humphrey tottering along beside him."

Chance looked out again at Kaltar, who paused in his research, watching the crowds turn in their favor. The boy mouthed "HELP ME," but the professor was fascinated with this turn of events.

"So, what happened?" the pilgrim asked, trying to shoo off a pigeon gnawing away at her holy hairpiece.

"Um," Chance again ran through his lines, trying to find any mention of this. Chase peered over his shoulder as well.

"For the love of..." the narrator's voice mumbled before grabbing a hold of the stage's floor and hauling herself up. Aldrin smiled as Ciara scrambled up, her tortured dress snagging on the unfinished wood. It had been nearly two weeks since she last cursed him out and he managed to keep her from seeing him that entire time. To accomplish that he had to be hyper aware of where she was at all times, which kept her on his mind more than was probably healthy.

The crowd gasped and grew even more curious at the sand worm standing before them singing the lost verse of their beloved hero. Unknown to them, Dunlaw itself also had tales of a warrior named Cass and his assistance with one of the mothers of the Triad. But they wouldn't have recognized the homage due to much less belching and farting in their tales.

Her dark skin and exotic hair caught the imaginations of even more townsfolk hovering on the edges of the square disturbance, pulling them in. Ciara clapped Chance hard on the shoulder, "Well, tell them."

"Tell them what?" he tried to whisper to her, forgetting in his near death state of embarrassment to lower his voice.

"About how Casamir..."

"And Humphrey!" the pilgrim added, who had a small ink drawing of the sidekick on her wall growing up.

"And Humphrey," continued Ciara, still looking at Chance while projecting to the audience, "rode into town...on two pure white stallions...with rubies in their manes, and the town's vassal dropped down upon his knees crying tears that his daughter had been taken by those murderous beasts."

Chance's eyes, a deep pool of gray fear, wobbled a bit as Ciara tried to shake a word out of him. All he did was meep and continue to stare. He'd been training for this story for almost the entire trip and there'd been no mention of murderous kidnapping grasshoppers anywhere.

But Chase had heard this tale before, albeit with a cabal of goblins taking the place of the grasshoppers and the horses being played by a set of giant gila monsters Casamir raised and trained from hatchlings. Still keeping his slingshot out, he picked up the tale, "And Casamir said, 'If'n you want me to bring her back alive that's another coin extra.' Then Humphrey added, 'And if'n you want him to marry her that's a whole sack of gold extra,' and he laughed so hard at his joke his pants fell down."

Ciara smiled at the other brother, whose eyes seemed to be focused about ten miles away, "Of course the Vassal gladly took the deal, hoping that the heroes would never discover his great secret. And Casamir rode off deep into grasshopper territory, with Humphrey braying at his side," the crowd was silent, hanging upon her dangling words. "And then he farted," she added to thunderous applause.
 

Kaltar turned his unnamed associate around and, on his back, jotted down upon vellum everything Ciara said, and a few [additions] from Chase. At one point he ran out of paper and took to inking the tale all over the man's robes, only pausing when he ran into a seam.

Casamir, bolstered by the trusty human pachyderm at his side, stumbled upon a cave [no, a cavern with giant flying gnomes inside it!] Yes, you've never heard of flying gnomes because Casamir slaughtered them all, one by one, picking them off with an arrow [that he set on fire!] As the lumps of charred corpses lay smoldering on the ground, Humphrey leaned over and picked one up, chewing on the wings. "Just like me mother used to make," he'd say, digging a bone out of his teeth.

With a still alight gnome as a torch, the two made their way treacherously deeper into the cavern, [the scattering sound of many legs trampling on the rocks all around them.] As they approached the heart of the cavern the light lifted and [a dragon came swooping down out of the mountain!]

A dragon? A d...ragon, yes of course, dribbling fire out of its roaring mouth over the gigantic grasshoppers. For the two were mortal enemies because of, um, the dragon called the grasshopper's mother a wench once. And Casamir, the mighty dragon slayer, knew then how he could defeat the grasshoppers and save the Vassal's daughter [the princess!] How can she be a princess, she's not even nobility and, uh, yes the Princess! Because the Vassal had been charged with keeping her safe as a baby after her father was killed by the Dragon that wanted his land.

So, Casamir climbed to the highest rock cliff while Humphrey coated his stripped skin in butter. At a low whistle, the loyal companion began to jump up and down, waving his mighty stomach towards the dragon and shaking his ham hocks and everything else his mother would never admit she gave him.

"Canne ya na see the big juicy dinner right in front of ya, ya big flyin' salamander? Ding Ding Ding," Humphrey taunted, his voice growing higher with each sentence, "I'm a poor defenseless maiden who's never even touched herself, please come eat me."

The dragon broke off from his grasshopper attack, and swooped towards the side of bacon ready to be fried up. As Humphrey swung his hips back and forth like the women that worked the night shift, the dragon swooped close into the cliffs.

At that moment Casamir jumped, his arms stretched out wide while the winds whipped his cloak around him very dramatically. One hand stretched out and, in a miracle, grasped a hold of one of the dragon's forehead horns. But the rest of his body slipped, and he dangled helplessly by a single grip.

The Dragon roared, spinning in a rage trying to snap at the human wafting like a torn flag off its head. When that didn't work, he flew straight at the rocky cliffs, attempting to scrape Casamir like sheep shit off a boot. But Casamir was too smart for the dragon, and as soon as his boots found purchase amongst the crags he swung himself up onto the monster's neck and grabbed onto the reins.
 

Riding the Dragon like a bull, he pulled and shoved the head down, spraying flame all across the grasshoppers that had been uh standing there the entire time watching to see what was going to happen. For some reason. Meanwhile Humphrey, his body still glistening from the buttering, charged in, chopping away at thoraxes and wings, and creepy little spindly legs.

As the last giant grasshopper lay twitching, Casamir [drove his sword through the dragon's neck, severing the spine.] Uh, yes, and the evil dragon, who no one liked at all, crumpled to the ground, sending Casamir rolling.
 

The man popped up, grinning wildly as the princess' bonds finally snapped free and she ran into his arms [crying, "My hero!"]

An' then Humphrey farted.

It was a kind of magic the historians had never seen before. While the girl spun this fantastical yarn about nothing at all important droves of people poured into the street each absently dumping coins, food, gloves, and room keys into the hat that one of the fruit peddlers started passing around. By the time it got to Kaltar, there was over three weeks worth of work inside.

Already the crowd was howling for more, some running off to get their friends saying, "A teller of them true lies is here!" The other historians had wandered out of their hidden exile and were clapping along just as enthusiastically.
 

Ciara smiled, soaking up her first taste of undivided attention, "All right. One more," she looked to her partner in entertaining lying and asked, "What will it be?"

"Casamir versus..." But after the dragon, Chase was all out of ideas. The pause was becoming dangerously palpable; as the crowd began to shift, afraid that their own minds were about to start thinking again. Chance, his fingers still wrapped around his scroll, flipped it over to the B-side and read, "the black death, a pestilence upon the people who bathed in rat droppings."

Ciara blinked once at him before smiling wide at the crowd and announcing, "Casamir versus Death!"

The clapping was more deafening than a thunderstorm. In the unbridled enthusiasm, a few loincloths were tossed on stage.

CHAPTER TWELVE

"
E
nter," the voice was distracted, papers collapsing over the side of the desk.

Ciara cracked the door carefully, a plate balanced in her hand. Chancellor Medwin had his head buried down as if he were smelling the pages of the torn manuscript on his workspace. "I noticed you weren't at dinner, so I saved you the last piece of pie."

Her little performance with a third encore where Casamir fought a vampire and then neutered a werewolf, went so well she found her pockets laden with sweets, a new dress tossed over her shoulder, and two fresh pies stuck under her arms. Rather than try and force a near bushel of apples into her waning stomach, she opted to share them with the rest of the historians who were beginning to treat her as a bit more than just a piece of self-moving furniture. Chase and Chance seemed to have melted the most by her ability to secure enough of a grant they need not worry about operation costs for two months. Or perhaps it was because she saved their hides from more than a few of the professor's rulers.
 

"Set it upon the table by the door, please," Medwin said, his face finally rising as he stared off into the distance. His red glasses were off, the ghostly eyes all the more evident in the waning sunlight filtering through the caravan's few murky windows. Ciara placed it down and, not really expecting anything more than a grunt, turned to leave.

"I heard about your little exercise in the town square," the tone was impenetrable. He was either about to congratulate her on a job well done or run her out of the country by wind surfing wagon. He rose slowly, and reached his hand out to check the edge of the desk, "How does it feel to make history?"

"I," Ciara blushed, and looked down, "I didn't do anything important."

"No? With a few words, you altered the history of every ear in that town square. Even a few members of the order talk about your yarns as if they could have actually happened. Perhaps we need to have another symposium on critical review skills."

He walked steadily towards her, his hands brushing across the buckling walls as his feet shuffled around piles of books. She dodged to the right as he made for the pie table, scooping it up in his hands. Even through his dressing down of her, he couldn't turn down fresh apple pie. The scars on his gummed cheek bounced and folded anew with each bite.