by Thomas Head
“Yes, well. Then won’t you be so kind, Mister Eber.”
“Allow me to be a bit impolitic, liege, but it’s Captain Eber, sire. And our own liege, King Alberik, has arranged a rather grand open fire feast to tell you the tale himself!”
“The king?… A feast you say?”
“Indeed, liege! And indeed again.”
“Then help me up, good captain.”
* * *
They led me out of the homely little abode into the crisp, moving air of a lovely spring afternoon. It was amusing to see that I was nearly as tall as the little home in which I had recuperated. That is to say, I was as tall as the visible parts. The builders had dug what would become the floor from the ground itself,. And the roof, instead of thatch, was merely and extension of the hillside, such that it was made out of the turf itself.
It was really quite brilliant, I mused. Then I turned, less it should appear that I was gawking. These Watershed Folk seemed friendly, as approachable as a pleasant dream, but they were also quite taken with manners. I did not wish to offend them. I turned my stare down a winding river trail, watching as some hundred or so members of a parade, or maybe a welcoming warband, came skipping up toward us. I did not see anyone that resembled a lord, much less a king, this fellow they called Alberik.
However, the little fellow didn’t have to be here, I realized. As they spilled around the little home, his well-equipped chefs and fiddlers were holding his banner aloft. And soon they were marking out little plots and places for chairs and tents.
The entire affair seemed rather serious, all in all. The little men nodded grimly to each other, working right away. Some were digging smoking pits, while others were driving tent pegs or unrolling large tens of painted canvas. A few nodded to me in acknowledgement, but it seemed more like recognition, which was no doubt a result of their affable air. In either case, they were very industrious, which is why, perhaps, others politely acted oblivious of me.
* * *
Beyond the workers, Cullfor was playing some manner of halfling football. They were nearly into the river at one point, and the two great herds of boys were making a rowdy time of it, dashing, ebbing, jostling, kicking and bobbing and roaring this way and that along the riverside with that unmistakable oblong ball of porcine leather.
My father and I used to play “Arwegian Rules” football, too. That is to say, we’d play until someone was down with a snapped bone, or some dulling injury to the head. The freckled old man was never gruff or mean, but vex him on the old Muttondon Slide and he’d punch the ground, or any nearby tree, and he’d walk away in angry whispers.
“I’ve never understood the fun in that particular sport,” Dhal said, wrapping herself around my arm, watching him play.
In truth, I understood little of why it was fun, either. I knew only that it was. I’d heard tell, in sheepish and hushed tones, that kings played in the privacy of their courtyards. I suspected this was true, but in truth have no idea. But I know I’d seen priests and monks let loose of their of their austere, clerical focus, and do that most magical of things, which was to just… play. I’d seen dwarves and men settle old scores with a round of it. Twice in the same burg, I’d seen blood feuds settled and divorces finalized upon the outcome.
I grabbed Dhal’s head and kissed the top of it. I wondered if a stern dislike of football was inherent to women everywhere, for my mother said that some ancient devil had invented the sport to busy the demons in hell so that would not coup. At other, less flustered times, she merely called it a game for villains and rodents.
I looked away, vaguely envious. That, and I saw little Cullie sneaking a sip of beer, which a child should never do—not before supper.
A white-garbed old chef dropped to his clean little knees in front of one of the pigs that was to be roasted that evening. He looked it over, nodding. For a brief moment, he almost sobbed. Then he began spanking the carcass repeatedly with a small mop full of honey.
Again, I looked away, hungry now.
A couple of soldiers were standing in front of little pub across the field with the sign of a sparrow over the door. They carted armloads of apples, talking low. They wore helms but no chain mail. Their dagger-sized swords were in their scabbards. Both of them nodded across the courtyard to a thick young halfling. The fellow was not just chubby, he had the bobbed hair of a poet. When they had nodded again, they pointed to me. The fellow began walking toward me with a look on his face that suggested he did not like what he was going to have to tell me.
“King Fie, may I presume?” the man asked, so softly and with such a high and feminine voice that I had to pinch Dhal to stop her from giggling.
Dhal, of course, pinched me back.
“Right you are, good sir. And who do I have the pleasure of addressing?”
“Reino, sire. Reino Rainiest, Harold to the Right Jolly King Alberik.”
“Yes, we’ve gathered that much,” Dhal interjected.
Reino chuckled, fortunately.
“A pleasure, Harold Reino,” I said.
“Likewise, sire. Though it is with a great deal of displeasure that I must confess, last year’s potato crop was rather thin. There will not be enough to fry up for this evening’s feast, I’m afraid.”
“Good!” I thundered. “I despise potatoes!”
“Ya, then! Most good!”
“Most good indeed!”
* * *
I kissed Dhal again and paused. For some reason, I suddenly wanted to ask her what had brought her into the heart Yrkland to live among the dwarves. At the same time, I didn’t want to ask. I suppose the silly truth was that I wanted her to read my thoughts and simply tell me her tale.
“When I first came to live in the borderlands, my dwarven uncle had gotten into some sort of tangle with a bear,” I said. “I killed it, and I supposed I saved his life. I suppose that it is why he adopted me as a nephew. But these little men, these Watershed Folk, they welcomed me without killing so much as a rabbit.”
Dhal seemed to be thinking of some properly non-insulting way to express the thing in her head.
“You killed a dragon for them, handsome.”
By now, I was thoroughly taken off my ruse. In fact I could not remember why I had even brought up that business with my uncle.
“Well, I was in a party that killed a dragon. Though I would confess I had somewhat more selfish motives in place when I went after her. Do you suppose they truly think I was aiding them somehow?”
“Well, I know they do. But they know your motivations as well.”
“And now they will feast with us and call me a king? I’m afraid you have me at a scale of disadvantage I find difficult to express.”
She nodded, too softly, the way you would with a child. She looked off for a moment, seeming to form her next sentence in her head before she spoke it.
“They call you a king because you are a king.”
“By what right?”
“The Halfling-King wanted to tell you the story, handsome. Let me tell you another story instead.”
“About what?”
“A beautiful woman, as radiant as she was cunning.”
“I met one like that once. She was so damn radiant they used her to read by. From the dwarven village of Beergarden, if I remember correctly.”
She grunted, then quipped something under her breath.
“I can’t recall her name,” I added.
Then I received a punch to my healing head.
Chapter 50
The field before us sloped away from the farmhouse, and Dhal and I found a rocky ledge and sat, watching Cullie.
Here in the cool afternoon light, Dhal gave me her tale.
It is not a glorious tale, she told me. But I suppose it is somewhat romantic, in its own sad way. And I’ll say this, most people, whether they have a good life or a bad life, cannot put the “where” and “why” together to know exactly how it all come to where they were. I can, for I have only the narrative of how I c
ame to be. You see, it is in the telling that a life gains a sense of direction. To see it, to be a part of it, one is often blind to its arcs and its themes. We are more than our tales, handsome, just as we are more than our names. But our names identify our person. And our tales identify our lives. At any rate, my father was a handsome man, a trader, I am told. He admitted to my mother once that I was almost half elf. He was staring at one, contemplating something very stupid when heard someone call her their wife. He decided to let the she-elf go. There would be others, elves and women alike, coming along for favors from the rich traders while they were frozen in the bay. When a second group had stopped, my father had had more time alone on the ice, moments to think, and moments to become lonely. He wanted a soft company. He wanted a heartfelt voice and a warm breath on his neck, if only for a night in the comfort of his blankets. Someone to talk to. But he said none of these women approached him. He suspected they feared the look in his eye. But they said nothing. And when they did not, curiosity had won out. He went to his cabin and looked into a mirror of polished silver. A pustule stared back at him. He had the plague. Such is life, he told himself. It cannot help but put its heel on fallen men. In the end, too, he realized he was mad at himself. A dwarf lad he had saved from the river, had fought him off, and when at last he had him back ashore, the lad kept apologizing. The apology was getting heavier and heavier in his head, and he knew something was wrong. That he had saved a suicidal dwarf was nobody’s fault but his, he decided. He wanted to sit, he told my mom. But he knew what his mind would do if he did. He needed to ride out for help. He found it in a branded woman. My mother was a healer. But she was too good at it. She had been prosecuted as a witch by the High Court of Ivornos, and banished from the Ivornon Empire. She had been banished to a small isle known as Patris. Soon, though, word came to the courts that boats had been piloted to seek her out, and so she was banished again, this time into the Eastern Wilds. Though I do not know what she meant by it, exactly, she said that, here, her life had become little more than her situation. She mere lived. Worse than that, it was as if she merely existed. But when she met my father, she had again found in him the stirrings that, once, long ago, had made her heart so gentle. I would suppose that is why she loved him. I cannot say. My father, Dhefur, was the one man she failed to heal. And Rheal, my mother, died giving me life. If she had not sought company and comfort with the dwarves of Beergarden, if she had not told them her sorrowful tale, I would not be able to tell even this much. Indeed, I would not have lived to tell anything to anyone. But I did. And I can.
Chapter 51
The sun was high, just past its zenith. The air was cool, though, veiled in a hint of the ocean’s salts. When I looked at Dhal, she smiled at me so warmly I felt almost intoxicated. My arm was damp with sweat where we had held each other.
I pulled my arm free, and kissed her, and I was humored when she yawned, seemingly trying to focus. Then I followed her gaze through a grove of tall walnut trees to a great, sluggish caravan.
The king’s party was coming.
As the procession approached, I was not surprised at the jolliness, nor the great enormity of its revelry and noise, but at the flocks of swallows that swooped almost playfully around them like tremendous, animate clouds. A fog of them surrounded the wide, merry parade that stretched from a half a mile, from the smallish stretch of airy woods at the north of the valley down toward the river.
The leviathan came slowly, merrily. And by the time it arrived, cresting one of mossy, meandering hillsides, the sun was an orange sliver, low over the western hills
Chapter 52
I stood, leaning against an old apple tree. With narrowing eyes and a smiling face, I wondered and studied at how these Watershed Folk worked, at how much was brought. There was a surprising amount of wealth in this land of halflings, and I could only speculate at how they came about it. Where they plunderers, these little men? Did they employ stouter folk than their own? In my thoughts, these people were very much human, though smaller, and I wondered if they were truly like us. Certainly we were alike in their fondness of merriment. Were their thoughts purer? Where they philosopher farmers, poet warriors? Did their thoughts run so remarkably deep as their generosity? It was all such a happy scene, the very air warmed on their arrival. I could only imagine they were magic, each of them, a lost colony from some ancient, happier land, smiling sojourners, or the children of seafaring jesters.
There were no squires, I noted. Soldiers had donned only what armor they would bring, so there would be no blood-sport. And they did not employ so much as a shield-wife to help with their loads. Even the two or three clerics I saw did their own work. Or at least they aided in it, for by necessity, they had help; I watched as they guilted a few younger halflings into being taught how to unpack the Holy Implementia properly, how to unroll the wine from consecrated blankets, how to set up the relics, gingerly removing from reliquary chests. But most of the work seemed to have been done by professional porters; drafthorses were carted and artfully laden with the king’s cargo, which was handled by three dozen or so scurrying halflings who had piled everything just so. Hundreds of things were all unbundled and unlashed from several lengths of rope. And the smaller bits of luggage began to arrive: eating tools, some oil and cooking tools, and some cloth and chairs and tables. There were little women all around, aiding the porters, and the five hundred or so halflings that crowded the field had organized a half a million small things, then began dancing and singing almost immediately.
In watching the nonsensical fun, I felt the same decadent sense of abundance I had with the my uncle and friends in in Goback Tavern. Already the meadow was being transmogrified into something that resembled a hamlet. There was a growing calm in my mind. Bread or oatmeal was boiling in every pot across a hundred small fires, and the meadow was alive with those smells.
It was wonder, I thought, that these fine people had remained so nebulous, so unseen to the men of Delmark and Dragonfell. Some said it was because their war with the trolls had kept those fearsome beasts from invading our land. Others said it was because they paid great tithes and ransoms to our King Gulltop. I had no idea. But that they were was enough. And it was difficult to describe the incredible happiness that the thought of this brought.
* * *
It was nearing dusk. I gathered Dhal into my arms, as much to steady myself as to show my love, and amid the crazed greetings, I would feel the same happy closeness from hundreds of people, folk I had never met.
Then, as she and I kissed each other’s heads, King Alberik’s hearty, elongated greetings floated over the enormous noise of conversation and laughter. Relatively unseen, he sifted through the crowd, unguarded, nudging past thousands of faces.
We met at a spot where a great open fire rose like a whirling pillar.
When he stood before us, I saw why he was their king. His face was the epitome of jolliness and merriment. His was blond and fat, but more muscular than I had supposed. His was smiling widely with ruddy cheeks and a pair of happy eyes that twinkled with a cornsilk glint. He chinbeard was spectacular. He spread his arms wide and said
“Forgive my bluntness, King Fie, but by damn it is good to meet you!”
“My thanks, liege.” I stammered.
“Come! Let eat and drink and talk, then you can thank me, liege. Thank me with a few good tales!”
I bowed. “Then I assure you, my liege, you will be thanked beyond reckoning.”
I had heard it said once that the King of Delmark never got a moment’s rest. As a youth, I had taken for granted that this was an exaggeration. But when a trader came into Goback Pub, talking of a dinner he’d shared with King Gulltop, he said that in the two hours they dined, not three minutes passed without him being asked to sign something, grant something, or otherwise acknowledge on thing or another. It was therefore somewhat amazing to me that the other halflings had simply let us be. Though many were sitting near the king, laughing and drinking across from him at th
e head of the mead bench, none bothered him with business or requests. Mead-benches downhill from him were alive, rocking with laughter. But nearer, they all simply went about drinking, which they did a seriousness and focus that approached the amusing.
After what could have been an hour of two of drink, the maids came. A score of them. They came with armfuls, stacking the table with oddest assortment of food I had ever beheld. Before us was heaped large piles of fish and smoked pork. Then came eggs. There were links of sausage and dozens of toasted bread slices. The next wave plunked down an array of fried creatures, varying in size from hamster-pigs to something that resembled a river-weasel.
When they were done, there was feast enough to feed half the people in the meadow, but it was apparently all for our bench.
The last thing to arrive was more beer. It came in a two-gallon barrel, scored with plain lettering that read ALBERIK’S BROWN SOUR.
King Alberik made a soft, happy noise. He drew a breath, closing his eyes as he wrapped his little pudgy hands around the barrel.
Then he glugged, for a full minute. I must confess, I marveled. I studied the dark rivulets streaming down the ripe cheeks and watched his gullet as it engorged and bobbed, ballooning like the belly of a winded toad. When the little man clunked barrel down, it sounded half-empty. He wiped his mouth. Then he nodded to it.
“Drink, liege.”
I allowed himself a grin. To be heralded as a king was not something a body is easily adjusted to, not even when the moniker comes from another king. But king or not, life had brought me to admire a certain amount of decadence. Precisely this amount, to be honest.
