A Princess of Fae

A Princess of Faë

 

~A True Tale of Magic, Adventure, Excitement, and Disdain~

(Not to mention a warrior-hero, wizard, thief, ogre, and goblin who must contend with a dragon, demons, and angry imperial soldiers. Oh, and there’s a Magic Sword too.)

 

Volume 17 of the Trägheit Triumphant Trilogy

 

//That’s a joke, people. You should laugh at it.//

 

**Ignore that guy, dear readers. He’s just the idiot author. I’m the narrator and my opinion is much more important. He thinks he’s clever just because he alliterated. He doesn’t know that Trägheit is a German word meaning lethargy " which describes him exactly.**   

 

//Shut up smart-a*s.//

 

**See what I have to put up with?**

 

By

Bob Craton

 

**Remember what I told you about him.**

 

 

Be Advised: This is a work of fiction and any resemblance between characters in this Tale and actual real persons is totally unintentional and very unfortunate.

 

Also, this text contains Naughty Words not suitable for children, puppies, and other gentle beings.

 

The person responsible for the titles has been sacked and replaced by a llama . . . no wait, that’s another story.

 

All art by Bob Craton using materials from Dover Publications.

**That’s because he’s too cheap to get a real artist.**

//I said shut up!//

**Sigh**

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Episode 1: The Tavern

 

Appalled by the idiocy, she looked up in disgust at the strip of metal which gave the Iron Bar Tavern its name. It was attached above the door. Demonfolk could not step over cold iron but they had no trouble walking under it. She considered leaving but she’d gone to a lot of trouble to find this forsaken place, and her last informant had sworn that the man she sought spent much time here. Sighing, she pushed the door open . . .

. . . And was assaulted by stench. Smoke and rancid cooking smells were the least of the problems. The aromas of unwashed men (some had not been washed since their mothers last changed their diapers) and flatulence (what could men eat to produce so much noxious gas?) were much worse. The boisterous crowd failed to notice her at first, but when she headed for the bar, a burly drunk with a particularly ugly face saw her.

“Hey, look! A girlie!” he shouted and suddenly every eye turned to her.

Her long loose robe and hood hid her figure and most of her face, but her petite size implied she was an underage girl rather than an adult woman. Not that it mattered to brutes such as the denizens of this tavern. The drunk stuck out a leg to block her passage.

She stopped and stared at him. Only the high level of alcohol in his blood kept it from freezing solid in the frigid glare of her icy blue eyes. The crowd hushed as they watched. The drunk broke eye contact but forgot to move his leg out of her way. Without a word, she reached and picked up the mug the man was using. One sniff of the bitter brew that passed as beer in this establishment informed her of its exceptionally high alcohol content, but it was the mug itself that drew her attention. Big, thick and heavy, it was made of pewter and would hold a full quart of beer. Yes, it would do nicely. She extended her arm and held the mug beside the man’s ear.

Then she stood on one foot and pirouetted.

A prima ballerina could have moved as gracefully as she did but not with such speed and power. As she spun away, she stretched her arm to its full length and leaned her body to maximize the diameter of the circle the mug traveled. At the end of its rotation, the mug hit the drunk square in the face. His nose disappeared, partly splattered sideways and partly pushed back into the space where a normal man’s brain would be. His eyes rolled back in his head and he fell to the floor. Three little yellow birds appeared and flew circles around his head, their twittering clearly audible.

For a long moment, the crowd was silent. Then a man yelled, “Old Rayburn’s been cold-cocked by a wee slip of a girl! Dam’dest thing I ever saw!” Hoots and raucous laughter exploded around the room. Apparently, Rayburn’s misfortune was the funniest thing any of these men had witnessed during their entire lives.

Ignoring them all, she walked to the bar. A strand of hair had escaped her hood during her movement. Shiny, golden, and with the artistically perfect amount of curl, it hung down to her waist.

“Thank you, miss,” said the barkeep. “Rayburn’s a deadbeat who’s always late paying his tab, and smashing his face like that will bring me extra business. Men will want to come hear the story. Here, have a brew on the house.”

“I wouldn’t drink that swill if you paid me.”

He frowned, but not too much. Looking in her eyes was like being on a ship headed for an iceberg. Or at least it would have been if the barkeeper had ever been on a ship and knew about icebergs, but that’s another story. He started to speak but she cut him short.

“I’m looking for a man named Aretino. Do you know him?”

“Can’t say that I do . . . no, wait a minute,” said the barkeeper. He turned to a man sitting at a nearby table. “Hey, Gurdo. You’ve ridden with Tino before. What’s his real name?”

“Airy-Tino. Why?”

“And his last name?” demanded the girl.

Gurdo shrugged. “Dunno. We just called him surly.”

“Could it have been Aretino Searle?”

“Yeah, maybe,” replied Gurdo with another shrug.

“Do you know how to find this man?” she said to the barkeeper.

“Sure.”

“Then give me directions to where he is and be precise.”

“Easy. Right over there.” He pointed to a corner in the back of the room.

She looked and saw a table but no one sitting at it. Her head snapped back to the bartender.

“Not at the table, dearie. Under it,” he explained.

As she turned, she told the barkeeper, “By the way, if you set your wards correctly at the door and windows, you wouldn’t get those annoying little birds when someone gets knocked out.” She reached the table in the corner and looked underneath. The man lying there was dirtier and stinkier than average, and in this place, average was really disgusting. And he was as thoroughly unconscious as the man whose head she had bashed.

“Oh s**t,” she muttered. “This can’t possibly be right.”

 

Episode 2: Up from the Ditch

 

Waking up was a slow and difficult process for Tino but he gradually became aware of three unpleasant facts. One, he had a sharp pain in his ribs; two, he was shivering with cold; and three, he was soaking wet. When his eyelids fluttered, cruel sunshine assaulted his pupils and the lids scrunched shut again. Then another pain stabbed at his ribs, this one worse than the first. Drawing upon all of his erudition and elocution, he spoke as clearly as he could.

“Ow!” he said followed by “argh!” and “umph!” As his consciousness level rose, he perceived that he was lying half submerged in the water of a roadside ditch. That explained his cold and wet condition, and soon he discovered the cause of the pains in his ribs " boots. Although not big, they were sturdy and had wicked pointed toes. As he watched, one boot drew back with the obvious intention of kicking him again.

“No! No-o-o-,” he begged mournfully and the boot withdrew its threat and planted itself back on the ground. He struggled to crawl out of the ditch. Then he tried sit up. After a minute or two, he half succeeded and managed to hold his torso at a 45° angle while leaning on one arm. From this position, he observed that the feet in the boots were connected to legs which were covered by an ankle-length green skirt. The wearer also had a long robe in a darker shade, but Tino was limited to noticing one thing at a time in his current condition. He tilted his head back to see the face of his tormentor and gasped.

She was an angel.

Well, that’s what he thought at first, but let’s face it folks, first impressions can be deceiving. The hood of her robe was pushed back and the rising sun was directly behind her head. Her long silky golden hair flowed all around like . . . well, um, like silk made of gold, I suppose. The sparkling morning sunlight illuminated her hair so brightly that it did indeed resemble a halo. It was just a matter of hair color and sun angle, however, and not an indication of celestial virtue.

“Are you Aretino Searle?” she demanded.

“Huh . . .?”

“I am Damsel Delicia de la Green`leaf. I seek the warrior-hero Aretino Searle. That cannot possible be you, can it?”

“Um . . . huh?”

From the damsel’s delicate cherry-red lips poured forth a stream of unpleasant words, none of which would ever be approved by a publisher’s censor and which concluded with a reference to the man’s allegedly unwed parents.

She turned directly to the narrator and fumed. “Cut out that excrement. Your job is to tell the story exactly as it happens and not clean up the language.”

**This action, of course, violated an age-old tradition in storytelling whereby characters are not allowed to speak directly to narrators. Nevertheless, your worthy narrator acquiesced.**

Damsel Delicia called Tino a b*****d and told the narrator to cut out that s**t. Satisfied?

With an unflattering grunt, she turned her attention back to the man. His hangover hadn’t fully begun yet because he was still drunk from the night before. The quantity of alcohol remaining in his body would have made most men go blind, but Tino was an experienced drinker with extraordinary capacity. The girl realized she would never get anything useful from him until he dried out. She thought to herself, this worthless piece of excre . . . um, s**t could not possibly be who she wanted. Still, he did have the dark hair and long straight nose shown in the picture, and he was about the right size . . .

**Please allow the narrator to clarify something at this point. Since this tale has been translated for residents of other worlds, the units of measurement used in Damsel Delicia’s homeland are irrelevant. Suffice it to say that Tino’s height and weight were approximately: 6’6” and 270 pounds; or two meters and 123 kilograms; or 4.3 cubits and over nineteen stone " take your choice. Now we shall return to the story.**

. . . so she chose to continue. Turning to the pony beside her, she removed a pair of gloves and a small vial from its saddlebag. The pony had been standing there all along, of course, even though Tino hadn’t noticed it before. The girl looked down. The man was still in a half sitting, half lying position.

“I hate to waste a good potion but I’m not willing to wait for you to sober up.”

“Huh . . .?”

She cursed under her breath, fortunately not loud enough for the reader to hear. Planting a booted foot against his chest, she pushed him down flat on his back and knelt beside him. Putting on the gloves first, she pinched his nose until he opened his mouth to breathe. In one smooth movement, she poured in the contents of the vial then shoved his chin up to close his mouth. Even drunk, he could still sense the vile taste from the vial. He had no choice, however, so he swallowed so she would let him breathe again. When she released him and stood up, various noises came from his mouth. They weren’t really words, just claptrap that sounded like gag, sputter, and yuck.

“It takes a while for the potion to be fully effective, but you should be able to walk in a few minutes,” she told him. “In the meantime . . .”

Tino saw the dreaded boot coming towards him again and rolled away from it, causing him to splash into the ditch again " which is exactly what she intended. Then she threw a white object which thudded against his chest.

“That’s soap, in case you don’t remember it. Try to scrub off a little of your stink, at least.”

The previously clean ditch water rapidly turned ugly.

 

Episode 3: A Sobering Experience

 

The farther Tino walked, the clearer his head became. The girl had tied a rope around his waist while she rode her funny looking pony ahead of him. The other end of the rope, naturally, was tied to the pony’s saddle.

“Hey sister, how long do I have to walk like this?” he called out.

“Until I say you can stop and don’t call me sister.”

“You’re a mean little b***h,” he muttered. She heard him but ignored his comment. Had he been coherent during her earlier expressions of invective, he would have known that b***h was a very mild word by her standards. “What did you say your name was?”

“I’m surprised you remember that I told you. I said it was Damsel Delicia de la Green`leaf.”

“Your name is Damsel?”

“No, you idiot. That’s a description. My name is Delicia. This week, anyway.”

“Uh, this week?”

“Shut up.”

Tino shook his head but stopped immediately because it made him dizzy. Then the harsh reality of his situation sank in. He was a big strong man and yet a girl had captured him and was leading him around like a dog on a leash. His self esteem, which was just rousing from its alcohol induced stupor, was crushed by the humiliation of it all. His self esteem had a lot of previous experience getting crushed and now it urgently wanted him to get drunk again so it could return to its preferred state of unconsciousness.

“I could use a little drink back here.”

“No.”

“Just a sip to steady my nerves.”

“Absolutely not.”

“This isn’t fair.”

“Why should life be fair?”

He fumed for a moment but couldn’t think of a clever comeback. He didn’t know how the potion worked, but it had effectively removed the alcohol from his system, making his entire body " not just his self esteem " crave booze.

“Listen, if I don’t get a drink, I’ll get the shakes and then . . .”

“Quit whining,” she snapped. “I’ve got another remedy which will make you feel better, but you can’t take it until six hours after drinking the detoxificant.”

“De-tox-i-what?”

“The potion I gave you. Now shut up and walk faster or I’ll speed up and drag you.”

He thought about that for a moment and his newly detoxified brain actually figured something out.

“You won’t drag me,” he asserted. “You came looking for me, which means I’m important to you for some reason. If I’m important, you wouldn’t want me to get hurt.”

Delicia turned in the saddle to look at him. “Don’t get cocky, a*****e. First, I doubt that you’re the man I’m trying to find. Second . . . ah hell, I guess I wouldn’t really drag you after all, but not because I give a damn about whether you get hurt. I just don’t want Rainbow to get tired.”

It took a while but Tino eventually realized that the pony was named Rainbow. Odd, he thought, since the animal was white as clichéd snow. It was also slender and delicate looking, not stocky as ponies should be. But then, just as he predicted, Tino got ‘the shakes.’ His head ached and his gut threatened to puke up everything inside him, including possibly his liver, spleen, and other organs. He didn’t talk for a time.

 

When they had plodded along for the required time, Damsel Delicia stopped in the shade of a roadside tree. Still in the throes of an epic hangover, Tino collapsed. She tossed him a bottle of water and a lump of tightly compressed herbs.

“I’m going to eat lunch and rest now. You chew that and swallow all of it. In a little while, you need to answer some very serious questions.” She watched until he finished the herb-lump. “By the way, that stuff not only cures hangovers, it stops you from ever drinking again.”

He didn’t like the sound of that last part. Or at least, he thought he didn’t. His head hurt too bad to be certain.

 

An hour later, he said, “Don’t I get any lunch?”

“If you’re hungry then you’re ready for questions. Whether you get any food depends on your answers. Look straight in my eyes and don’t lie. I can tell if you speak truth or not.”

He looked and found that her blue eyes really did have a chilling effect.

“Is your name Aretino Searle?” she demanded.

“Yes.”

She blinked in surprise but her truth-sense never failed. Without doubt, that was his name. Still, something didn’t seem right. She pulled a book from a leather satchel. The title was: “The True Adventures of the Great Warrior-Hero Aretino Searle the Virtus.”

**A narratorial comment about translation is again required . . .**

“There’s no such word as narratorial. You just make up phony crap so you can sound grand,” growled the girl, once again violating the maxim that characters must not speak to the narrator.

**Ahem. The book in question is of a type which might be called ‘pulp fiction’ in some other worlds. Since the word pulp implies shoddy paper and printing, it is accurate in this case. The book cannot possibly be fiction, however, since it has the word True in the title. Authors never claim something to be true unless it actually is.**

Turning back to Tino, she covered the name with her hand but left the rest of the title visible and held it up. “Do you recognize this book?”

“Hell yes, but before you jump to conclusions, that last part, ‘the Virtus,’ isn’t part of the name, just a title, sort of.”

“Spell your name,” she insisted, making sure he still couldn’t see it on the book cover.

“A-R-E-T-I-N-O S-E-A-R-L-E.” He was paying close attention to her exact words now.

Again he told the truth but something still seemed wrong. Then it occurred to her.

“Aha! Then the story in this book must be false!”

“No, it’s not.”

“It’s true?”

“Every word.” When sober, Tino was a fairly intelligent man and he believed what she had said about her truth-sense. Before she asked a question in a form he couldn’t answer precisely, he repeated himself. “My name is Aretino Searle and that book is a true story.”

“Well, I’ll be damned. You’ve really gone to hell since this was written.”

Sensibly, Tino kept his mouth shut.

 

**Surely, clever readers have noticed that he said ‘my name is’ rather than ‘I am’ and the book is ‘a’ true story not . . .**

“Shut up,” he hissed. “She might hear you.”

 

Episode 4: Tin Armor

 

Damsel Delicia did not tie Tino with the rope when they continued on their way; in fact she insisted that he keep his distance. Even after his ditch dip, his odor was still unpleasant. She kept him within earshot, however, so she could keep asking questions.

“Where’s you armor?”

“Never had that much,” he replied. “Just a chainmail hauberk, shield, and helmet. You can’t travel with a lot of heavy stuff like breastplates and such.”

She nodded. That matched what the book said. “But where is it now?”

“Lost it.”

“Lost it? You mean you left it someplace and couldn’t find it again? What kind of idiot are you?”

“Not that way. Lost it in a dice game.”

“Ah, that kind of idiot. I can’t believe you’re the same guy who slew the three headed beast of Cerberus and routed the entire Army of Darkness single-handedly.”

Tino looked away and kept very, very quiet.

“Well, where’s your Magic Sword? Surely you didn’t gamble that away?”

“No, my brother has it.” His eyes looked down and he blushed deeply as he spoke. Obviously this embarrassed him.

“Why does your brother have it?”

“Our father said he should carry it now.”

Actually, that made sense, Delicia thought to herself. If a warrior degenerated as much as Aretino had, the Sword should pass on to a more worthy hero. “Will your brother give it back to you?”

“He doesn’t like me very much.”

“Can’t say I blame him. Where is he now?”

“Far away.”

“Be more specific.”

“Far, far away.”

“Stop bullshitting me,” she said in a tone that made him wince.

“Alright, he lives in Sargasso-by-the-Sea.”

“Hmm, that’s not all that far out of our way. Maybe we should stop by and visit.”

“He’ll never let go of the Sword. And where are we going anyway?”

“Maybe I’ll think of something else about your brother, and we’re going to a place called Faëoria.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Of course not. We don’t exactly advertise its location,” she replied.

“Why are we going there?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

“Wait, what I meant to ask is why am I going there?”

“Because you’re hungry and don’t own a thing except for the tattered rags you’re wearing. You don’t have a penny to your name and no one is going to hire a bum like you. I’m offering you employment. I’ll buy what you need to wear, get you a horse, and feed you every day. Either come with me or crawl back into the ditch and starve.”

His stomach growled and he didn’t argue. He didn’t even complain about the puffy little pastry she had given him for lunch, sweet but not manly food at all. There was one thing he wanted to know, though.

“How did I get in that ditch in the first place?”

“I paid four guys at that tavern a copper penny each to carry you to the hut where I spent last night. They got lazy and just dumped you in the ditch so I made them give my money back.”

She got a refund from four of those ruffians? Tino didn’t doubt it for a moment. “How much are you going to pay me?”

“I’ll decide later when I see what you’re worth.”

“What if I don’t agree?”

“Then get back in the ditch.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Quit repeating yourself.”

Tino decided to stay silent for a while. From time to time, he glanced at the girl and tried to estimate her age. Based on her size, he would guess twelve, maybe thirteen, but he had his doubts. Her face was perfect, her complexion unmarred by the skin eruptions common to teenagers. As an aside, he noticed that cherry red was the natural color of her lips, not a shade of lipstick, and her eyes tilted up just a bit at the corners. Something just didn’t seem right about her.

Oh well, her age didn’t matter to him anyway. Despite his weaknesses, he still had scruples. If she was an underage girl, he would never think of doing anything improper " and if she somehow was older than she looked, well, there was still the fact that she scared him. Besides, she wasn’t his type at all. He liked dark haired women with lots of curves and big . . .

**Now, really! As a respectable narrator, I must object to this gratuitous insertion of vulgarity. Not only is it rude but it represents only wishful thinking by Aretino and does not describe any event which might actually occur.**

“Spoilsport.”

 

Late in the afternoon, they reached a village and found an inn. As promised, Damsel Delicia purchased new clothes then paid the innkeeper extra to let Tino scrub clean in a water trough. The innkeeper burned the old clothes then buried the ashes.

In the morning they bought a horse for Tino, a big draft-horse which could not run fast but was strong enough to carry his weight, and then visited the local smithy. The blacksmith, a big black man named Smith, did not make armor himself but he had taken a hauberk and sword in trade and offered them for a cheap price.

The girl examined the chainmail suspiciously and asked, “Is this real steel?”

“Not exactly. It’s mostly tin.”

“This sword is lousy too.”

“Yes, I know,” admitted Smith. “I sharpened it as best I could but the metal’s poor and won’t hold a proper edge. That’s why it’s so cheap.”

“Will the hauberk fit my associate here?” she asked as her eyes moved from the chainmail to Tino.

“It should fit his shoulders. It did come from a big man, but " no offence to your associate " it’s going to be a tight squeeze across his gut.”

She laughed and said, “We’ll take it.”

When they were outside, she turned to Tino and said, “You do need to lose some weight, fat boy. Fortunately, I have a potion for that.”

He grimaced when he took the small bottle she handed him, but the liquid in this vial wasn’t quite as vile as the first vile vial had been.

**I must have words with the author. This is the second time he has used that ridiculous joke. Inexcusable. If he repeats vile-vial again, I will delete the words to save the reader’s sense of humor from further abuse.**

“Shut up and let me think. I need to decide what reinforcements we need. A wizard would be nice and maybe some more muscle,” said the girl. “And a good thief could be helpful, too.”

This book is available at both Amazon and Smashwords:

 

Reviews

[Bob Craton]

“Ridiculous to the point of absurdity,” The Fantasy Weekly News

“Goes beyond the norms of polite society,” Elf on a Shelf

“Filled with obscure references to other stories. Anyone who gets all of the jokes should be mildly amused,” The Sarcasm Review

“Does this guy think anyone will believe these are real quotes?” The Truth Hurts