Denizens and Dragons
Page 22
“And as soon as they buggered off,” Gramma embellished, “you started moving. And that Chortley lad, he waded in and chopped up the king’s robert so I reckon that’s the last we’ll see of him. And when he chopped at the machine atop you, we saw it had Brianna in it. Oh, her mother were right cheesed off when Brianna disappeared and we was forced to tramp our way back. But then she saw her and I think she knew. Brianna’s the real witch of the Hemlocks now and I reckon her mother’ll hand over the power soon enough.”
Bill looked at the old woman. “Which is ironic, given that my powers have all gone.” It was true, he couldn’t as much as light a fart now. He was plain, ordinary, Bill Strike.
The band struck up and, after the happy couple had performed a reluctant pirouette, Bill felt a familiar hand on his shoulder. “Come on then, let’s be having you.”
“Oh come on, why do I have to dance? It’s not our wedding!”
Brianna smiled. “Would you deny me this one moment? After all, I’m not getting the marriage I so wanted.”
“Sarcasm suits you so well,” Bill said as he took her hand and led her to the dance floor.
They held each other tenderly as Brianna, with scarcely more skill than her not-husband, guided Bill in a formless shuffle. Bill ran his hand down the naked skin of her back, his mind wandering into memories of recent pleasures and anticipation of future ones.
“Well, I still think it’s a pity you wouldn’t take my name,” he whispered.
There was a moment’s pause. “Just be grateful I didn’t make you become a Hemlock. Imagine that!”
Bill did. Not a pretty picture.
“But it does leave us with the problem of what we call our children...” he said, “...when we have them,” he added quickly
“Well, you certainly seem to enjoy practising,” Brianna said, drawing him closer.
Bill smiled as he rocked gently. The two of them a pair of orbiting stars with no regard for any others in their firmament.
“It doesn’t matter, the name thing,” Bill said after a blissful while. “We’ve got plenty of time to sort it out.”
Brianna drew him to her and laid her head on his shoulder. “Plenty of time,” she whispered, “about eight months, I’d say.”
Acknowledgements
With special thanks to the following:
Peta Partner - for her support, proof-reading and superhuman patience
George Partner - his enthusiasm
Dene Mills - for excellent proof-reading (ie it’s her fault if you find any typos) ;-)
And to my supporting cast: Kirsty Manning, Lucy Partner and John Howick
The Wolf of Wool Street
I hope you’ve enjoyed this humorous fantasy series. Ignis Bel, who plays a relatively minor role in this book, was actually created as a character before any of the others. If you’d like to find out more about him, take a look at The Wolf of Wool Street - a quick read in which Ignis finds himself having to defend the apparently indefensible in the shape of Woger the Wolf.
It’s completely free, very funny (and a little scary) and you can download it using this link or by going to https://scrib.me/WoolStreet
Once you’ve got your book, I’ll keep you up to date as I publish new books (though you can, of course, unsubscribe at any time).
The Robot Empire
AS A KID, I GREW up on a diet of science fiction and fantasy. I’ve read The Lord of the Rings at least a dozen times and am also a big fan of David Gemmell.
I also enjoy the classic sci-fi of Isaac Asimov, Arthur C Clarke, Greg Bear, Ray Bradbury and others. So, I created an entire series of fast-read novels called The Robot Empire.
There are six books in the series (it’s now complete) plus a prequel. I’d love for you to have a free copy of the prequel - get it by clicking this link Robot Empire: Victor or go to https://scrib.me/VictorDD
Endnotes
Chapter 1
1 A kind of sea bird. A bit like a discerning gannet
2 Of course Brianna wouldn’t actually knife him. She would exact her punishment over a long, long period and make his life such a misery that, given the choice, he’d have gladly taken the knife in the goolies.
3 Big F***ing Gorillas
Chapter 2
4 The Amelia was a flying machine made out of the miraculously light featherwood, found only in the deep jungles. Sadly, fire resistance is not amongst its many marvellous properties and so the Amelia crashed and burned having been attacked by the garrison at Crapplecreek on the basis that they didn’t know what it was.
5 Blackjack Strike’s skin was the colour of coal and he was a lithe man. Flem was a stocky farmer with the pale complexion typical of his region.
Chapter 3
6 Generally speaking, this tended to be reinforced by threats involving sharp instruments, divestment of lands and the precarious positions of family members.
7 Well, he did raise the Crapplecreek garrison to launch a hopeless attack on the Faerie King. And there was the inexplicable level of concern he’d developed for his soldiers. But, at this point, Chortley was still maintaining his inner self-image as a selfish bastard and ignoring evidence to the contrary.
8 Conveniences are so called because using one is generally much more convenient for all concerned than the consequences of not doing so in time.
9 The sort of patio that, in the right sort of cosy TV mystery series set in rural England, might be revealed to contain the mortal remains of Uncle Vernon’s exotic, and very rich, second wife.
Chapter 4
10 Jessie Hemlock didn’t read much, but she held that, possession being nine tenths of the lore, she’d better have a copy.
11 The Chocolate Frog is a very rare amphibian from the deep forests of Owimbaway. Legend has it that, if you put the frog in a bowl of hot water and slowly turn the heat up, it’ll melt and die before it realises there’s anything wrong. The legend is, of course, complete bollocks since no Chocolate Frog has survived more than ten seconds in the company of a human. Chocolate is, after all, chocolate.
12 Anyone who’s received a parcel delivered by MyHermes or Yodel will know exactly what I mean
13 Pheasants are the true dunces of the avian kingdom, giving a bad name to the bird brains of the world.
Chapter 6
14 Locally known as Shep the Lep, or the Lepper Schlepper
Chapter 8
15 A good choice. It’s far easier to enjoy something made entirely from desiccated locust if you convince yourself that the squishy bits are just raisins.
16 Admittedly, lizards that talked and wore red bowler hats and other miniature items of clothing
17 Chortley and his father had always enjoyed a love-hate relationship. In roughly a ratio of 1:100. Count Walter had been a bastard (as was Chortley), but he had seen his son brought up at court and had provided an education, of sorts, and training in the art of being a homicidal tyrant. In all, Chortley considered himself lucky. Certainly more fortunate than most of the Count’s subjects - even those who still possessed the complete range of appendages.
Chapter 9
18 The pub you hoped you’d be too pissed to reach or, for those with particularly robust livers, remember
19 Heroes in the ironic sense of having done all the hard work, but getting none of the credit. A bit like eating the skin off an apple (as your mum told you) only to find it was rotten inside
20 The licker couldn’t hold her liquor
21 A bit like ginger ale, but with sharp edges and a powerful kick.
22 Mother Hemlock’s cast-iron conviction that she was right about everything meant that, when she wasn’t entirely sure, she felt compelled to come up with a plausible explanation and leave it to the universe to rearrange itself to suit.
Chapter 10
23 Trees are surprisingly social beings and so the nobles of their phylum, such as those Bill was gazing at in awe, decided to solve their ostracisation [a large flightless bird of the equator] by organising events
of their own. And so was born The Tree Party.
24 Ask your grandparents
25 Parsleysaurus
Chapter 11
26 He wasn’t very brainy. At least, not once the zombies had finished with him.
27 In truth, she’d always bossed the flora and fauna in her garden around - it was just that she now had a ready excuse should anyone have the cheek to question her.
28 Yes, it’s spelled that way - check out Amateur Grammatics https://books2read.com/u/49x6BW
29 And, given that Gramma would confess to having fewer brain cells than a decapitated chicken, this was not something he would readily admit.
Chapter 13
30 Which Jessie could never have won - you can’t beat what isn’t there.
Chapter 16
31 Johnny and Clive were runaways from the oppressive laws concerning mixed marriage that operated in their home country. They eloped to the more civilised north where there was no law to stop them marrying. Johnny was a chimp and Clive an orangutan. Johnny’s troop had said they could accept that Clive was a male and even that he was of a different species, but to them ginger was beyond the pale.
32 Which translates as “I can be as rude as I like”
33 The Foolish Empire occupies huge swathes of the far west. The Foo consider themselves the originators of every important invention in the history of humankindThis is, of course, rather foo-lish.
Chapter 18
34 Though if she’d thought further she’d have realised that no artist could be arsed to climb up to a first floor window to burgle a house.
35 It’s a universal constant that the most stupid fashions begin in the creative community. What, last year, would have been laugh out loud funny is, this year, de rigeur. The comb-over is just the latest in a long line of bloody idiotic fashions that include skin tight jeans with legs half the necessary length, slicked up Edwardian hair and, worst of all, ridiculous beards that are so stupid that all evidence of them will be destroyed when the world comes to its senses, leaving a gap of a couple of years in the photographic record.
Chapter 19
36 Future archaeologists will probably believe there were two subspecies of Homo Sapiens inhabiting the world in our time - Homo Sapiens Plebius (the common man - or woman) and Home Sapiens Scumbagus (Over-represented in the tombs of the ruling classes).
Chapter 20
37 In the imagination, elfs are beautiful, slender, creatures with perfect skin. In reality, they’re scaly bastards with sharp teeth.
Chapter 22
38 Brianna had her short sword, Flem his staff and Willy flourished his loo brush.
39 Lama is the principle that you get what’s coming to you in the end. Not to be confused with the fabled Lama Lama Lama Lama Lama Chameleon which not only comes, but also goes.
Chapter 23
40 The Bezide-ems are the most violent and short-tempered of all elf races. If you ever meet a tribe of red faced elfs, beware. It could be that they’ve been out in the sun or have exerted themselves too much. Or, if your luck’s out, they could be simply Bezide-ems Elves.
41 A Tripocryte
42 He was a Cardinelf
Chapter 27
43 Flaxbottom had introduced this group of birds as the Thrusting Cocks. Velicity had taken on the delicate task of explaining why this probably wasn’t the best name.
44 The Stop Cocks
Chapter 31
45 You know, the sort of chairs with nice comfortable seat cushions. And lying, on the middle of the cushion is a particularly spiky sprig of holly. Because posh chairs are for looking at, not sitting on. Unless you’re a nob.
Chapter 33
46 A term derived from the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, one of the major religions in the Brightworld, where the most revered object is the Holey Colander.
Chapter 34
47 Appreciable to a 20 year old - largely invisible to anyone else