“What do you mean we’ve no more massage oil?” I cried, thumping my fist on the breakfast table. “The orgy is tonight!”
“I’m sorry Sire,” said Sir Sleeves, his head hung low in shame. “The chef thought it was cooking oil. It’s all been used up.”
I blinked at this, my eyes swivelling slowly to the fork of roast chicken halfway to my mouth. Then I gave a shrug and ate it: plenty of it would have gotten into my body either way, I supposed.
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The morning after our starlit exchange, Glob was back to normal, gruff and crude. But I saw something else in her now, behind the muck and the pong and all the eye rolling. There was something in her eyes that wasn’t there before. Or perhaps it was always there, and I simply hadn’t looked long enough. Don’t get me wrong, she still spat and belched and smelled like the inside of a horse, but after that night, she always looked a little different in a way I could never quite explain to anybody else.
The rest of the ride home was largely uneventful, save for a broken spur on the cabbage, a distressing shortage of cheddar, a run-in with the roving sentient hailstorm known as ‘Khrark’ that absolutely clobbered us and gave everyone two black eyes, as well as a brief but intense skirmish with the notorious outlaw Thunderlung and her marauding band of electric skeletons. Overall though, it was smooth sailing, as far as the Great Valley Road is concerned.
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I spent the rest of the afternoon in a fog of grief-induced mania, periodically attempting to leap out of the moving cabbage in a bid to abandon society and ‘live with the animals’. I don’t remember saying this, but Selladore assures me I was gibbering for hours about my longing to integrate myself with the wolves that roam the forests of the Valley Road. In the end my companions grew weary of my escape attempts and strapped me to the roof of the carriage. I don’t know why they had to shackle me spread eagled across the rounded top of the cabbage instead of just tying me to the seat inside, but whatever.
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The next few days were a drunken blur. I vaguely recall being abducted by a gang of squat-legged woodland orcs and roasted on a spit for a while, and I obviously escaped with my life intact and my skin unroasted but I’ve no idea how. It seems I was also hexed by a warlock at some point, because although I have no memory of meeting and/or being cursed by such a character, for a whole 24 hours I couldn’t speak. Instead, every time I opened my mouth there came a series of shrieks like the bewildered mooing of a cow.
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Observe your narrator now, his heart freshly pulped, his ego pureed, as he sits alone in a tavern off the Great Valley Road, bedraggled and hammered. I had left infernal Bloodroot on a stolen horse and begun the journey home to my kingdom. Not that there seemed much point in being a king anymore. All I wanted to do was lie in the gutter and shout insults at the moon.
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The trio of plumed soldiers had blossomed without warning into a regiment of plumed cavalry. Two dozen gleaming horsemen now blocked our path into the palace; two dozen lances aimed squarely at our noses.
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Impetuous, I leapt from Alfonso’s back and began to sprint to the city gates. I heard Selladore call out for me, somewhere far behind, as though in another world. All that mattered now was Astra.
With the grace of a sunbeam I raced betwixt the baffled guards, who could only turn and call out to me in vain. I lighted over the city streets, unable to think of anything but my beautiful wife. The city was but a blur. I shouldered my way through the throng of peasants and followed signs for the cathedral, readying myself for the fight of my life. I could hear the church bells!
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“And who might this young woman be?” asked Selladore as I stalked back to camp with Boomlay tottering along behind, her arms crammed full of pots and pans. Her cabbage was bringing up the rear, apparently of its own accord.
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A NOTE ON THE DESTRUCTION OF GALANTHUS:
Actually, it turns out it’s a jolly good thing that fair Galanthus sank into the sea. Much later on, I read up on the town – slightly out of guilt from being a possible instigator of its implosion – and it turns out that Galanthus was home to the highest number of racists per square metre on the entire continent. The town had also held the title of ‘Scam Capital of the Six Kingdoms’ since 1243, and three separate hate groups called Galanthus their home, these being: The Anti-Troll League, The Elf Punchers, and the rather ambiguous General Loathing Society. All in all, they were a rotten bunch and you shouldn’t feel too sorry for them.
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“I told you!” cried Selladore as we stood watching my beloved pig sinking into the watery abyss.
We’d made it several miles, winding through the ranks of gnarled frozen fingers, when Margaret had misplaced her trotter and plunged through the ice. The hole around her grew, and within seconds she was in the middle of a large watery ring. She didn’t do a very good job of treading water. Through the ice, we watched the vague pink shape of my steed sink away from us.
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