In Which I Offend Boomlay And Then Sprint Off To My Doom

“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.

“Nobody,” I said.

“I’m joining your quest,” said Boomlay.

“No you’re bloody not.”

“You owe me money. I am accompanying you until you pay me.”

Selladore greeted Boomlay with a low bow, and dished her up a bowl of stew. Glob offered the witch a slight nod of acknowledgement. Edgar was too busy nibbling grass to notice (apparently worms do that). I never thought it possible, but I was beginning to envy the simple lifestyle of the captain of my guard.

“Selladore, do not give this woman any stew. She is not joining us.”

“Yes I am.”

I looked at Selladore pleadingly, but he offered me no backup.

“Look,” I said, turning to Boomlay, “thou simply cannot join our quest because thou art too old. It’s nothing personal, per se, it’s just that – well, peril awaits! Heroic deeds and grave danger and high adventure and so on.

“Pretty soon we’re going to arrive at the evil prince’s castle and there’s going to be a very big fight and one of us will likely die – probably Glob or Selladore, if I’m being completely honest. There will be lots of stabbing and tearful gallant speeches and kicking and swinging from chandeliers. And it will be no place for someone as old and mad and leathery as— what?”

The camp was silent, my companions staring at me as though my hair were spaghetti. Glob dropped the apple she was eating. I shrugged and went to pour myself a cup of wine. I sat by the fire and warmed my feet, and heard a familiar sniffling somewhere behind me.

Selladore crouched down so he was eye to eye with the blubbering old woman and held her tenderly by the shoulders.

“Tell me my dear, could you stab someone? If you had to? Could you hurl a vat of burning tar in the face of a screaming barbarian? Could you kick a hunchbacked prince from a high tower, or slice a speeding arrow in two halves with the flash of your blade?”

Boomlay sniffed and wiped tears from her cheeks. “Yes, I think so.”

“Bollocks!” I yelled over my shoulder.

“Pay him no mind, my girl. It’s been a long quest for all of us. Of course you can accompany us if you wish. I’ll look out for you.”

“Thank you, sparkly man. And… I thought maybe it might be nice if we all rode in my carriage together.”

“No!” I cried. “I will not have my bold arrival at the gates of my Queen’s evil captor be heralded by the waft of boiled cabbage. No.”

“You was perfectly ‘appy to ride that mucky pig until it got et.”

This was the first time Glob had spoken in about a week and I blinked in shock at hearing my stable girl’s voice. I had quiet forgotten her gruff tones. I’d grown accustomed to her merely glaring at me every time I said anything.

“Do not speak ill of fair Margaret, Glob. Thy callousness is unbecoming. She was a good pig.”

“And for the record, I in’t dyin’ for you. I’m only ‘ere cos me foot got tangled in’t stirrups. And I doubt Selladore’s too keen on dying an’ all.”

I admit I didn’t quite catch all of that, but I had understood enough. I turned to the pirate.

“Thou wouldst not give thine life for our quest?”

His face flushed with guilt, then hardened. “Well I mean, if it’s all the same, I’d rather not. It’s rather more your quest than our quest. Isn’t it enough that we’re accompanying you at all?”

I snorted and turned back to the fire, leaving my companions to revel in their self importance. They didn’t care about Astra at all. Nobody understood. There was no time for silly carriages and old ladies and stupid arguments in pretty ice towns. None of it mattered! Only Astra mattered. I had done my best to endure all the silliness, but my patience was wearing thin. I missed my girl, I had to save her, and if it cost me my life and all of their lives, so be it. SO BE IT!

This may be difficult to understand, but you see, as King, it’s hard to really connect with anyone. Yes, you have a lot of meetings and lots of people to bathe you and dress you, people to plump your pillows and warm your socks and slice up your food, but all of your relationships are rather… leechy. Everyone is either afraid of you, plotting to murder you (one a week, honestly), or trying to suck up to you in the hope you might toss a pouch of doubloons  in their direction.

Astra changed all of that. From the moment we met, she was never afraid to tell me I was out of line. She told me when I was being unwise, or mean-spirited, or mental. I remember once several years ago, a peasant boy stole a handful of dumplings. I was in a particularly bad mood that morning and had planned to have him boiled in a big pot with various herbs – a fabulously ironic statement punishment. Astra told me I was being a wanker, and I backed down. In the end I simply had him pelted with dumplings in the stocks for three days. See? You need that input as a ruler.

Astra was the better half of me. No – is. Not was. She is the better half of me. And so, while my mind ground slowly through the raw meat of my worries, I sat up late into the night, chugging red wine and singing softly to myself and wishing I still had both hands but mostly just wishing I still had Astra.

*****

In the morning I was nudged awake by the worm. Without a word, I picked myself up and mounted my donkey, Alfonso. The others climbed into the cabbage with Boomlay, who had in one evening apparently usurped my friends. I never thought it’d be possible for me to feel jealous of a little saggy magician with dewy eyes.

It mattered not. I rode ahead, putting as much distance between the big purple cabbage and myself as possible, so that my entrance into the city of the evil prince would be separated from the miasma and thereby almost as noble as I had envisioned (except for my generally mashed-in appearance).

We rode over meadows, through fields of heather. We trundled through shallow streams with flashes of silver fish darting the shallows, and we traversed ancient woods with little mud tracks worn through over hundreds of years of thoroughfare and questing. I had never ventured so far west, and an irritating weed began to take root in my head: this was no longer my kingdom, and it was much prettier than my own. My heart clenched at the thought of Astra feeling disappointment upon our return to our own domain.

We had been riding for several hours when first the gnarled towers of Bloodroot crested the horizon. Even from afar they gave my soul a cruel jolt; their turrets and minarets were immaculate, they were straight and tall and true – more so than any tower in Pugglemunt. What kind of ruler builds towers like that? What was he trying to prove, ey? Ey?! It was tacky – that’s what it was. No taste at all. O! I hated the prince with an explosive rage, and every brick and window and chimney stack in his city vexed me further. If Vena had harmed her a hair on her head… no, no. T’would not do to allow my thoughts to wander that way. I could not afford to lose my wits, alone in a hostile city.

I should have come with an army. Why didn’t I come with an army?! I should have waited for my soldiers to mobilise, then marched here along the Great Valley Road – it may have taken longer, but I’d have arrived with a force to be reckoned with. Instead I was drawing up to the city limits perched atop a blind old donkey with a vanguard composed in its entirety of three smelly people and a little worm riding in a blasted purple cabbage on wheels. What the tits had I been thinking?

With every step that brought me nearer to my beloved, my heart hammered faster against the bone confines of my chest. I dug in my heels to drive Alfonso to go faster, but he could only manage a gentle trot. I glanced at the sky: Vena’s note had suggested they would wed under the full moon, but that was an annoyingly vague sentiment with a large margin for error. The moon was certainly big at the moment. Was it full? I couldn’t tell. Perhaps they were due to be wed this very day. Oh, gods, no! I began to clear a distance between myself and the cabbage, pulling away on Alfonso. There was no time to waste. The end was in sight.

I knew my body may be ruined imminently, mangled by a hail of arrows screaming over the walls of Bloodroot, but it mattered not. Astra was so close that I could almost smell her hair – bugger the naysayers, I was going to save my love!

Suddenly, as the gleaming turrets loomed over me and the ranks of helmed guards manning the walls became visible, my heart blossomed as I imagined her proximity. She was here! She was in this city, held captive, alone and scared, and nothing on the whole dirty great Earth was going to keep me from her.

A lightning bolt burst inside my chest and screaming electricity streamed through my entire body, and I was not afraid. With a manic laugh, I drew my sword. Astra!