A Hard Day's Knight: Short story - fantasy/humour

[Trollheart]

A hard day's knight

Weary as he was, he was glad to feel the powerful haunches of his horse beneath him, the animal's breathing almost as laboured as his own. The rain beat down and the wind lashed him, but his heart was singing. Beside him, secured to the pommel of his saddle, the bag bounced from side to side, making a wet slopping sound each time it tapped off the flanks of the horse. He felt slightly queasy when he imagined its contents, but reminded himself firmly that this was his prize, his trophy, the evidence that he was, not only a man, but a knight.

As he had done several times already, he turned sharply in the saddle at the sound, but again decided it was just the high harsh wind keening in the trees as it bent the smaller saplings towards the sodden ground. His senses, he told himself, were on high alert, and who could blame him? Yet, a small voice inside him which he sharply silenced insisted that this sound, the one he had been hearing since heading back, was not the wind.

Squaring his young shoulders, he ignored the voice, ignored the sound, did his best to ignore the wind and the rain, and even ignored the bag he carried on his pommel. The village could not be far. They would welcome him with open arms. He would be a hero. His heart rose as he envisioned the rapturous reception he would receive, and other parts of him rose as he considered which of the village lasses he would be required to bed first. Gratitude, he smiled to himself, was always a great aphrodasiac. No doubt they would fight to be first, but they needn't worry: he was man enough for them all.

But who will take your virtue? Asked the annoying voice. He shushed it with a mixture of anger and embarrassment. It didn't matter, he assured himself. Nobody need know. Nobody would dare to ask. And after the first of no doubt many, it would no longer be true anyway.

He would no longer have to endure the sneers of his brothers.
The Virgin Knight.

How the name stung.

But they would see.

They would all see, when he returned home.

He would be a hero.

He would be a man.

The sound came again, and this time it was even harder to convince himself that it was only the wind. It sounded like something pushing forward, coming through the trees – literally, through them; shoving them aside, knocking them down...

He squared his shoulders again. It was the kind of thing you did when on a quest.

He had read it in a book.

Oh, nobody need know this was his first quest either. The fact that he had been taunted by his siblings until he had left Little Bigbottom, determined to seek fame and glory, was a story which it was not necessary they hear. They would not care.

He had done it.

Results were all that counted. Nobody remembered all the failures, the wasted years, the pain and the yearning, the fear and the shame. All of that vanished once you successfully completed your first quest.

The book had said so.

And it would be right.

He could feel it in his bones.

He was a hero.

That sound again!

He turned with a sort of annoyed grunt, expecting to see nothing in the mist-shrouded and rain-lashed wood.

He was right.

He saw nothing.

But he glimpsed... something?

Just the barest suggestion of movement, a flicker of colour, a dancing light, like a marsh wisp or a brightfly, casting a tiny illumination for just long enough for him to be uncertain it had ever been there, before it was gone.

He squared his shoulders again. His horse neighed in concern; Sir Horace knew that animals were said to be more sensitive to danger than humans, but at the same time, a horse was a dumb animal. A fine steed, a valiant charger (especially skilled, this one, at charging the opposite way from danger, truth be told) and a faithful companion, but at heart relatively stupid.

Not like him.

Those two he had met along the way, the peasants, the ones who had tried desperately to dissuade him from his quest.

He was not to be dissuaded.

He was a knight.

He was a hero.

He was Sir Horace.

He was victorious.

And now, the cheerful lights of the tiny village, a hamlet really, faintly glimmering through the darkness, a darkness he, Sir Horace, was about to cast back. They were free.

He was a hero.

How they would praise him.

**
The blast of heat from a well-built fire hit him like a warm blanket thrown over him as he pushed open the door of the tavern and strode inside, the heavy sack slung over his shoulder as if he were bringing presents to the children at winter festival. He was, in fact, did they but know it, bringing gifts, but not only to the children. To the whole village.

"What will it be, stranger?"

The innkeeper was a round fat man with a round fat face, a washcloth slung over one arm as he smiled at the newcomer, wincing slightly at the howling wind that entered with him, this quickly subdued by the roaring fire.

"Peace!" Sir Horace hefted the bag on his shoulder, shifting the weight, beads of perspiration running down his face, though he would have said they were merely raindrops. Still, raindrops have seldom been known to make a man red in the face. "Joy!" he went on, and on the third word slammed the heavy bundle down on the counter, where it make a squelching sound. "Deliverance!"
"Come again?" The barman looked mystified, and a little annoyed at the stranger's bag, which was clearly leaking some sort of... red... His eyes opened wide. "Is that... is that blood?"

Instead of answering, Sir Horace eagerly untied the bag, lifting from it his prize, his eyes shining.
"Good people of..." He realised with some chagrin that he had forgotten the name of the village, so had to settle for "This village! Your nightmare is over!" he announced, holding up the head. "I have slain the dragon!"

Immediately, dead silence fell on the inn. All eyes had briefly glanced in his direction as he entered, as do the eyes of most locals when a stranger arrives, but then usually slide away and back to their drinks. With this announcement, however, every eye in the tavern was locked on him.
Sir Horace waited for the cheers to begin.

The cheers, he reflected a trifle uneasily, were taking a damned long time to begin.

What was wrong with these people? Hadn't they heard him?

"I said," he reiterated, annoyed at having to repeat himself, "I have slain the -"

But the last word was cut off as a woman screamed, and a general wail went up around the inn, muttered voices rising to what seemed like angry shouts.

"We heard you." The innkeeper's eyes were no longer twinkling, but hard. And sad. His cheerful mouth was now turned downwards into a scowl. He drew back, not in fear but it seemed distaste. And not of the severed head that was leaking blood all over his bar. "Get out. You're not welcome here."

Sir Horace stared at him, sure he had either misheard, or that he was the victim of some odd local joke. He held the barkeep's frosty stare, his own gaze hardening. Dismay and disbelief began to turn into cold anger in his heart. Didn't these bumpkins know who he was? Didn't they realise what he had done for them? Why were they treating him as if he had tracked cow dung in here?
"My good sir." He decided to cleave to the knights' code of chivalry, though what he really wanted to do was cleave this insolent fellow's head from his shoulders. Still, that was not how it was done.
 
He had read it in a book.

"My good sir," he repeated, tapping the skull of the dragon for emphasis. "I have taken it upon myself to rid you of this evil dragon, and I would expect -"

"Who asked you to?"

The question, rudely cutting him off mid-sentence, took him by surprise, both in its content and in its ferocity. He blinked; he really couldn't come up with an answer. Never, in all the many books he had read about knights on quests, had anyone ever asked such a question.

It just was not done.

"Excuse me?"

"Who asked you to?" repeated the barkeep, and Sir Horace was uncomfortably aware now of movement behind him. Unlike the half-glimpsed shadow he had felt on the way back here that was definitely the wind, this one could not be ignored or discounted. Men were shuffling forward, unfriendly looks were being cast in his direction. The muttering began again. Sir Horace felt for his sword, realised with a cold shock he had left it outside on his horse, and swallowed hard.

"Well..." he began, but that was as far as he got, the barkeep leaning forward threateningly into his face. For a moment, Sir Horace thought his great quest might very well end here, in this dingy little tavern in a village whose name he couldn't remember, with a broken bottle to the head.

He was confused, and scared.

None of this was in the books he had read.

"You damn knights," hissed the barkeep, his face inches from that of the village's deliverer. "You're all the same, you are. Think you can go around righting wrongs and doing great deeds, while the rest of us just get on with life. Think you're better than us. Never stop to think whether or not you're right."

"Right?" Sir Horace fairly exploded with wounded pride, notwithstanding that he was now more or less surrounded. This was, after all, something he understood, something familiar, something he knew about. Or at least, something he had read about. "Right? Of course I'm right! Why would I not be? Sir, I have just delivered your village from the plague of the -"

But again he didn't get the chance to finish, as the barkeep – whom, he supposed, had either elected himself or been chosen as the spokesperson of this little tavern, and by extension, the village – snapped "Plague? What plague? What do the likes of you know about the likes of us?" He now appealed to the crowd, like a master orator making his case to a court. "You ride in here, see a dragon and think I'll kill that, I will. Never consider asking if we wanted it killed, did you?"

"Uh..."

"Well, we didn't. None of us. We didn't ask you to come 'deliver' us, did we? Didn't ask anyone to come 'deliver' us. And you know why?" Without waiting for an answer, he charged on. "Because we don't need to be delivered! Well," his voice sunk almost to a whisper suddenly. "We didn't."

Sir Horace was determined not to give up, and like any good knight pressed his attack, believing, as the innkeep had said, he was in the right.

"But now you're free!" he pointed out, again tapping the severed dragon's head. The blood had slopped over the side of the bar and run down the counter, pooling now on the floor in a sad little puddle of dark crimson.

"We were always free." The innkeeper shook his head. "You knights!" The word was loaded with contempt. "You only see things in black and white, don't you? Dragon, bad. Dragon, kill. Village, oppressed. Maidens," here his eyes narrowed in a way that said I know what you thought, what you hoped for, but not here, my son! "Maidens, grateful. Well not here they're not."

Unable to quite figure out what had gone wrong with his grand plan, Sir Horace stood open-mouthed. In that moment of almost perfect silence, the sound he had heard – or thought he had heard – before, while riding back from his quest to the village, came clearly, and rather too close for comfort.

A thumping, rushing sound. A flapping sound. A howl.

The innkeeper looked up at the ceiling, made what the knight took to be a sign against evil. The rest of the tavern's patrons copied him.

Somewhere in the crowd, a girl began crying.

As if it would never stop, the blood kept dripping to the floor in thick wet splashes.

Something tightened in Sir Horace's bowels, then as a further roar and screech rent the night air, rather quickly and quite embarrassingly loosened.

"We had found a way, we poor, simple folk," the barkeep told him, "to co-exist with the dragon. Not that you asked, but back many years ago, decades even, one of us did it a service. It was hurting, and we – we, poor, simple folk, not like you knights at all, who would have killed it – we helped it, and in gratitude it not only did not kill us or our livestock, but protected us. We lived in harmony with our dragon. It was our defender. It was," he swallowed thickly, bright tears in his eyes, "our friend."

The full horror of what he had done began to dawn on the young (and still, for now, and likely to remain, Virgin) knight. Another piercing cry tore the night. The sound of something heavy beating against the shrieking wind.

"I suppose," the barkeep sighed, keeping his eyes on the ceiling as the sounds increased in volume, "this was your first quest?"

"Nonsense!" snapped Sir Horace. "I – well, that is, I have – ah, my experience... um." It seemed pointless to deny it, so he nodded a little shame-facedly.

"Be your last one, too," the innkeep told him.

Sir Horace's eyes flashed. "Are you threatening me, sir?" he snapped, again going for his sword before remembering that it was outside, well out of his reach. Of course, he could go out for it. A matter of a few quick steps.

But that meant going outside.

Outside, where the approaching sound was.

"Not I." The innkeeper shook his head sadly. "But you see, there's one thing you don't know about our dragon, which you might have done, had you asked."

"Oh yes?" Still smarting from the perceived challenge, the knight gave him a hard stare. "And what's that, pray?"

"Our dragon was female."

"So?"

"This head," the barman indicated the knight's grisly trophy, "is that of a male dragon."

Something suddenly constricted Sir Horace's throat. He knew he was going to die a virgin.

"You didn't kill our dragon," sighed the innkeeper, running his hands along the bloodstained skull. "You killed her baby. And one thing you don't mess with," he told the knight as the sound of something heavy landing on the roof came to their ears, "is a mother's child."