Chapter Six: In which I remind the reader of just who Ellwood Cyrene is.

I looked at Ellwood Cyrene, her face lit by the light of the full moon.  That’s right, I said “her face.”  I had known Ellwood Cyrene for many years.  We had fought side-by-side in countless adventures.  And during all that time, I was under the impression that she was a he.  She walked like a man.  She talked like a man.  She fought like a man.  She pretended to be a man.

Then I found out that she wasn’t a man.  I found out she was a woman.  Then I found out that she wasn’t just a woman.  She was a queen.  The queen.  She was Elleena Posthuma, Queen of Aerithraine, Guardian of the Faithful, Protector of the Realm, and… a whole lot of other things.

“I thought you were over all that,” she said.

“Over what?”

“Over what you were just talking about, about me being the Queen and all that.”

“There are certain situations in which a man can get over all that,” said I, “and there are certain situations in which he can’t.”

“Well, what made it so intolerable all of a sudden?” she demanded.

“Oh, you well know what it was!” said I, striking an intimidating pose.

“You’re still angry that I wouldn’t marry you and let you be the king.”

“I never wanted to be the king.  All I wanted was to live a long life with my resplendent and enticing, though somewhat robust and virile wife, to whom I was properly married, I might add, and my eight to twelve imaginative and perspicacious children, whom I also might also add would not be bastards, because I would have been married to their mother!”

“I see you got a new thesaurus,” she said.

“I would have been a great king!” said I.

She reached out a hand and stroked my face.

“Let’s not rehash this again.  Let’s enjoy the time that we have.  We could have a little family reunion.”

“I would,” spoke I, “but I am leaving posthaste, with… um, haste, which is to say, right away.”

“But I want… But I thought you would… What about…?”

“Spare me your half sentences.  You have sentenced me enough to last a lifetime.”

With that, I turned and walked back into tavern.  I didn’t even look back to see if she was looking at me.  I had just stepped inside the door, when I ran into my daughter.

“Come.  We must pack up and get out of town right now.”

“Right now?”

“Yes, that is what I said.  Right now.”

“Perhaps that is for the best,” she opined.

“Get our horses,” said I.  “I will gather up our things.

I hurried up to our rooms and gathered our meager, which is to say small and not in any way many, possessions, returning to find Ethyl standing by the tavern’s entrance, nary a horse in sight.

“Where are our noble steeds?”

“They should be here in a moment,” she said.  “I paid the tavern boy a silver coin to saddle them and bring them forth.”

“I thought you preferred to do that yourself,” I noted.

“Oh, um, yes… normally.  Right now, I’m still a little shaky from the whole ordeal of the giant attack.  I mean that it was an attack by giants, and not a giant attack, as in a big or large or Brobdingnagian attack, because as far as I know, it wasn’t more than four or five giants.  And I’m not shaky because I was frightened either.  It’s because I was excited.  I felt a surge of adrenaline that I’m sure would have resulted in heroic efforts against the giants had I only been six or eight inches taller.  Besides, given the location of this town, a silver coin placed in the pocket of the tavern boy might well do a great deal to build up the local economy and make it a more prosperous place to visit should we venture here again.”

“You must be filled with adrenaline,” I noted, “as heretofore, I don’t recall you ever speaking five sentences at one time, usually being prone to limit yourself to a few expletives, and here you’ve gone and spoken seven sentences all at once, and several of them quite long ones.”

“Um, darn tootin’,” said Ethyl.

The tavern boy arrived leading our two noble steeds, which is to say horses.  They had been saddled and looked well-rested.  My steed was the noble warhorse Hysteria, who had been my companion on countless adventures over the years.  In truth, she was getting a bit long of tooth, which is to say old, but I would never tell her so, as it is impolite to discuss the age of ladies and horses and Hysteria was both.  She was still capable of a good long gallop in full barding, which is to say armor for horses, though truth be told, I often had to promise some delicacy to be given in the future before she would demonstrate that capability.  She was also prone to bouts of depression, which I attributed to her recently having given up both chewing tobacco and gambling, neither of which are appropriate for horses or ladies or lady horses.  Ethyl’s mount was a pony, which is to say a small horse, but not small because it is young, but just small in general—a compact horse if you will.  His name was Acrimony, and Ethyl had picked him out as a colt when she was only four years old.  He was a light bay, which is to say brown, and was covered with a caparison, which is to say a cloth horse covering, emblazoned with the Dewberry coat of arms.

I quickly mounted Hysteria and watched as Ethyl attempted to do the same to Acrimony.  He pranced around and even turned to snap at her, but she slapped him soundly on the top of the head and told him, “Knock it off, you!”

“Is he upset to be leaving in the middle of the night?” I asked.

“One might assume so,” Ethyl replied, climbing up into the saddle and pulling back on the reins.

Acrimony quickly fell into line, seeing who was in charge.  If there is one thing that little girls know how to do, it is how to manage a horse.

“Come,” said I.  “It is time for this town to see the back of us, which is to say, it’s time for us to go.”

“Yes, Father,” said Ethyl, and she gave me an odd look.  “I’m so happy that we are together.”

This warmed my heart, for it was the first kind word that I had heard from the girl’s lips in a long time, or maybe ever.

“Me too,” said I.

And we rode off down the trail, into the wilds of the far north portion of The Fallen Lands, just south of the great glacier known as The Skagarack.

Chapter Four: In which Ethyl and I take our baths, and the town is invaded, as is inevitable in these types of stories.

I made my way up to my room, and just as the tavernkeeper had promised, I found a hot bath waiting for me.  It had been a good two weeks since I had a hot bath.  I had suffered through several very cold baths in the interim, and I can tell you, that a hot bath beats a cold one any day of the year, except maybe summer, but certainly any autumn, winter, or spring day of the year.  Peeling off my clothes, I slipped into the tub.  It was only about three feet around, so my arms, legs, and my head hung over the sides, but my torso was happy.

My torso was still feeling nice and warm, when the door opened, and my daughter entered.

“Look around,” said I.  “Is there some soap and a clean cloth somewhere?”

Ethyl found both items sitting on a chair by the door and handed them to me.

“Go wait in the other room,” I directed.  “As soon as I get out of this bath, you’re getting in.”

“But I had a bath last week!” she growled.

“You must wash some of that grime off of you, lest some wild animal drag you off, thinking you’re its long-lost cub.”

“At least then I won’t have to take a bath.”

“So you think,” said I.  “It will be your luck to be dragged away by a cave lion.  You’ll be longing for a bathtub after a cave lion licks you clean with its rough tongue.  I can tell you that from experience.”

With a rude gesture, she turned and left.

As loath as I was to leave the warm embrace of the bath, I didn’t want my child left with nothing but cold water, so I quickly soaped up, rinsed off, and dressed in my night shirt.  Then, I went to the other room to fetch the girl.  I was forced to pull her by her ear back to the first room, wrestle her to the floor so that I could strip off her filthy clothes, and then throw her bodily into the water.  Luckily for her, the tub was just her size.  She only agreed to use soap when I told her that if she didn’t, I would make her take another bath on the morrow.

When she was finally passably clean, I dressed her in her nightgown.  It was a cute pink garment, made of the finest, softest wool in all of Aerithraine, and had the image of Castle Dewberry embroidered upon it.  Castle Dewberrywas our home, though we had not been back since before Ethyl’s first birthday, so she had no memory of it.  She crossed her arms and made growling and hissing noises as I brushed her hair.  If a cave lion had only heard her, it would have reinforced the idea that she was its missing cub.

“There now,” I told her.  “You make a charming and presentable girl, which is to say that I could present you to… a king or queen, if I had a mind.  Perhaps to the Queen of Aerithraine.”

“She’s a wicked slattern!” hissed Ethyl.

“Be that as it may,” said I.  “We could present you to somebody.  It would have made your mother so proud… bless her departed soul.”

“Tell me what she was like?” asked Ethyl, in the rarely heard tone of tenderness.

“What would you like to know?”

“Was she beautiful?”

“She was extremely beautiful,” I said wistfully, which is to say, full of wist.  “She always wore beautiful dresses and she never even once dressed in pants and pretended to be a man.”

“Why do girls have to wear dresses?” grumbled Ethyl.  “Dresses are stupid.”

“But you look so cute when you are in a dress, with ribbons in your hair and your cheeks all rosy.”

“When I grow up, I’m never going to wear a dress!” she hissed.  “I’m going to wear pants and go adventuring!  If you think dresses are so great, then you wear one!”

“I am a man and so I do not wear dresses, not even for fun, and not even for seven months one time to avoid the army.  As for you, hop into that bed right now.  Tonight, I want you to think about what you just said and what your poor, dear, departed, saintly, deceased, beautiful, dead mother would say.  I shall be next door if you need anything.”

I went back to the other rented room and dropped down onto the bed.  I was asleep instantly.  I frequently fell asleep instantly, as I was usually exhausted from dealing with my unruly offspring, which is to say my daughter, which is to say Ethyl.

It seemed I was asleep only a minute, when I was awakened by the sounds of shouting and the clanging of sword and shield.  Grabbing my own sword and my own shield, I ran out of the room.  A quick glance next door showed me that Ethyl was still asleep.  I hurried down the stairs and out the door.

I almost immediately ran into a giant leg.  It was attached to a giant body, which is to say, a giant.  It was not Thurid Njärlbjörnsdöttir, for it was a male giant.  He carried a huge axe in one hand and a torch in the other.  He looked about ready to toss that torch onto the tavern.  Not wanting that to happen, I stabbed him in the kneecap, which was just about at eye level with me.  With a cry, he dropped to his knees.  But before I could stab him in an even more tender spot, he arched his back and fell forward, struck from behind.  As the giant dropped into the dirt, I came face-to-face with the warrior who had finished him off, which it to say, killed him.  It was Ellwood Cyrene.

Chapter One: In which I ponder the theoretical limit of pies.

It was the largest pie I had ever seen.  When I say that, you can rest assured that it means something, because I am Eaglethorpe Buxton, famed around the world as a heroic adventurer, a brilliant author and storyteller, and a connoisseur of pies.  There are some who would insist that I am a connoisseur of pies first and foremost, but that is not true.  While it is true that there are some who would slanderously, which is to say with much slander, espouse that Elwood Cyrene is a more heroic adventurer than me, there are none who could claim, even slanderously, that there is a better storyteller.  On the other hand, I would freely admit that my cousin Celia is at least the connoisseur of pies that I am, though perhaps not the eater of pies that I am.  In any case, it was a large pie.

“That must be the world’s largest pie,” said I.

“It is a large pie,” said the man standing opposite me, who was the local tavernkeeper.  “I don’t know about the world, but it is the largest pie in Fencemar, for it is baked in the largest pie pan that could be found in the town.”

“Not surprising,” said I.  “I would imagine that not a bigger pie pan could be found in Celestria herself.”

“Notwithstanding that,” said he.  “If she could have come by a bigger pan, our piesmith was more than ready to make a bigger pie still.  In fact, she expressed great disgust that this was the best we could do in cast iron production.”

“I should like to meet this piesmith,” said I.  “First though, I would like to eat a slice of that pie.”

“Then have a seat,” said he.  “It’s a sovereign for a slice, but that slice is a full meal for a grown man and his three grown sons.”

“Then there may well be enough for me,” said I, “and my daughter.”

“Come in here, Ethyl!” I called.  “It’s pie for dinner!”

“Ethyl is a lovely name,” said the tavernkeeper, but he stopped and stared at the seven-year-old ball of spit and anger that stomped into the room.

“Her real name is Ethylthorpe,” said I.

“It’s Ethyl!” she hissed, “and I’m sick of pie!”

“Lovely child,” said the man, but he was being polite, or he was mistaken, or he had some kind of degenerative eye disease, because Ethylthorpe Buxton was not a lovely child.  She wore a pair of baggy overalls and a stained shirt, and she was covered in dirt from head to toe.  She had snot running from her right nostril and bloody scab on her forehead.  Long gone was the lovely pink and yellow dress that I had ordered her dressed in that morning, and now, the only indication that she was a girl and not some kind of grotesque miniature half-ogre, was her long blond hair, and in it, only one of my carefully braided pigtails remained.

“You’ll sit there, and you’ll eat that pie,” said I, “and you’ll like it, or I’ll give you what for!”

She sat down at the table I had selected, crossed her arms, and stuck out her tongue at me.  I unwrapped my heavy cloak and put it on the back of the chair.

The tavernkeeper went to the pie and cut out a slice, which he placed on a wooden platter only slightly smaller than a wagon wheel.  Then he and two of the tavern girls wrestled it to my table, which it completely covered.

“Not to put too fine a point on it,” said he.  “I did say it was a sovereign.”

“That you did,” said I, tossing him the required gold coin.

“You folk are from Aerithraine,” said he, showing the obverse of the coin, which is to say the front, upon which sat the image of a beautiful woman.  “I recognized Queen Elleena.”

“She’s a beastly hag!” growled Ethyl.  “And I don’t want a huffleberry pie!”

“You will show some respect!” I growled right back at her.  “Respect for huffleberry pie, if not for the queen!”

“Hmph!” she hmphed.

“I come from Aerithraine originally,” I explained, “but I’ve been living in Lyrria some seven years now.”

“I’ll get you some forks,” said the tavernkeeper.

“Not to fear,” said I, whipping out my fork from my shirt pocket, which I call my fork pocket, for it is the pocket in which I carry my fork.

I glared at Ethyl, until she too produced her fork, waving it at me insolently.  Like mine, it was made of fine silver and featured a stylized E on the handle.

I sat opposite my dirt-encrusted offspring and took a bite of the pie.  It was very good.  Despite huffleberries not being my favorite, something that I was not going to admit to my unclean progeny, it was sweet and tart, and the crust was first rate.  I had expected huffleberry pie, because we were traveling in the far north of The Fallen Lands, just along the southern border of the great glacier known as The Skagarack, and in the far north of The Fallen Lands, just along the southern border of the great glacier known as The Skagarack, there were no fruits to be had except for huffleberries, which only grow where it is too cold for any other plant to grow that isn’t mostly made of pine needles and pine cones, which is to say pine trees.

“Eat your pie,” said I.

Ethyl grumbled but took a bite.

“You should be happy to get a pie,” said I.  “You know there are some places in the world where a man would kill for a good pie.”

“You know there are some places in the world where a man would kill for a good pie,” she repeated mockingly, which is to say, full of mock.

“Oh, how sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child,” quoth I.

“Plagiarer!” she said, jumping to her feet, taking an accusing stance and pointing at me.  “You did steal that line from William Shakespeare and his play Macbeth!”

“Nonsense,” said I.  “I did take that line from Eaglethorpe Buxton and his play MacElizabeth, and I am allowed, as I am that self-same Eaglethorpe Buxton.”

“I’ve heard of you,” said a tavern girl, stopping at the table.

She was quite attractive, with short vanilla hair and cherry lips, and her generous breasts threatened to fall right out of the top of her blouse, the top three buttons of which were undone.

“And what have you heard, my dear?” I asked.

“I have heard that you are a teller of tales, quite free with your coin, and the greatest lover in all of Duaron.”

“You know me well,” said I.

“Can I bring you a beer?” she asked.

“You are not only lovely,” said I, “but you’re clearly very smart, which is to say, yes, beer.”

“How about her?” she asked, nodding toward Ethyl.

“Bring me a beer too,” said Ethyl.

“Oh, sit down already,” I ordered her, for she was still standing accusingly.  “Unless you sit, no beer for you.”

She sat.

“We have milk,” said the tavern girl.

“I’m lactose intolerant!” hissed Ethyl.

“What does that mean?”

“It means that milk is too good for her,” I said.