by S J Cavanagh
Plate Armor and Spacesuits Both Hold Farts
Copyright 2012 By Steven Cavanagh – All Rights Reserved
Cover Image attribution: ~ sammydavisdog and jurvetson on Flickr.
Editor: ~ Various
Table of Contents
Girl Power
Spin Doctor
$ave G@1axy F@$T!
One for the Robed
Hot Discs
Weeding
Elf Esteem
Girl Power
“Shaz, do I have someone in my teeth?”
My foot stopped pumping the bellows, and the mist of Patina Conceal #5 slowed to a dribble. I wiped my hands on my skirt and stepped away from Noelene’s tail. “Show me.”
The dragon’s head swung down like a drawbridge. I inspected the portcullis.
“No, but some of the magneta snout gloss got on your teeth. Just a moment,” I said, picking up the fifteen-foot-long cottonlance.
A dragon’s breath is very hot even without using their fire-gland, so I have to be quick to swab their teeth. Even more so with the girls, they don’t like to stop talking for long. Add in Noelene’s nervous state, and my arms were a blur.
“There,” I said, stepping back. Her breath smelled of cow and she’d eaten a flock of birds that morning, but experience has taught me not to flinch. Dragons are incredibly vain.
Good thing, too, or there wouldn’t be employment for working gnomes like me.
“Thank you, dear,” said Noelene. She shuffled over her hoard of coins to peek out of the cave for the twentieth time that morning.
“Hey,” I called. “What did I say about moving around? You have to give the foundation time to dry.”
She didn’t answer, snaking her head back inside and peering into the rack of polished shields she used for a mirror.
I unplugged the barrel of patina conceal from the spray pump, and replaced it with the bronzer.
“You look great, honest,” I said. “Not a day over seven hundred and fifty, and that’s before I apply the blush and wing shadow.” They never believe my compliments, no matter how sincere, but they do believe I care.
“Does my butt look big?” Noelene asked, rocking it from side to side in an avalanche of gold coin.
I looked up at the draco-derriere. I was reminded of another appointment with her, at a village. I had actually seen her sitting next to the broad side of a barn.
“It’s a matter of scale,” I blurted. Noelene’s head swung around again, and heat washed over me.
A wise gnome once said: ‘Never, never drop your guard when talking to dragons’. Another one, in fact several, also said: ‘Shaz, you talk too damned much’.
“Some people could think a dragon so thin had blazemia,” I said, talking fast and thinking even faster. The rare eating disorder burns up a dragon’s food before it reaches the stomach. Quite a tragic phenomena, but chubby dragons love being told they have it.
“But I know you,” I went on. “You’re naturally thin. Your mother was just the same.” I pointed to a dragon painting at the back of the lair, made by cavemen. Every one of their pictures looked like a stick.
Noelene flushed with pleasure, and turned back to the mirror. I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand. Some days I can sweat off whole pounds doing this job. It would be an ideal weight-loss regimen if it didn’t make me dive into comfort food the moment I got home.
“Could you hurry up with the bronzer please, dear?” urged Noelene, folding and unfolding her wings.
“What’s the rush?” I said, loading the tub of sliced cucumber back on my cart. “You said the knights were a good two leagues away, and they’re on foot.”
“I want to look my best when they arrive.”
“But they’re coming to kill you!”
“That’s no excuse not to look respectable, Shaz dear. They’re still guests. I don’t want someone weaving tales about what I look like on a bad scale day.”
I sighed and began to work the foot pump again. There’s just no arguing with dragons.
By the time I hitched up the cart and left, my ankle ached from working the pump. I felt satisfied, though. Noelene looked gorgeous. On top of my consulting fee, she had also bought six barrels of cleanser and toner. My little bag of gold was almost full.
I was glad I didn’t have to walk. Rastus, the mule drawing my cart, did a good job for a rickety old dear. If you work in the dracosmetics industry you must use mules, and they have to be old, diseased, or both; dragons give a whole new meaning to the term ‘fresh horses’. Since your mule has to stand in a dragon’s lair for hours at a time, blindness or dementia can also be a plus.
“Avast!”
I had no idea what a Vast was, but I stopped Rastus, raised my hands and hoped it wasn’t a term for a gnome with an arrow through her head.
Four armored knights, in different shades of luster, jangled out of the bushes and onto the road. Their leader, clad in gold, held a glowing lance and an accusing expression.
“Sir Iron, watch for more of them,” he ordered. “Sir Silver, check the wagon. You there, you’re a non-human, aren’t you?”
Humans. It’s always about them.
“He’s a gnome,” said the silver-clad knight as he moved forward. “You can tell by his pointy hat.”
“Her,” I corrected. Humans find it hard to accept that female gnomes have beards. That’s not so much of a problem for me, as it gets burnt off on occasion.
“What business have you on this peak of Princess Rewb’s realm?”
“I’m visiting a friend. What’s it to you?”
Sir Silver shot me an indignant glance. He motioned me off the cart, and began to look over my stock.
“Stay your insolent tongue!” Sir Gold barked. “I should… Sir Cadmium, why do you tarry at the rear?”
The fourth knight was barely an adult, if I knew humans. He fidgeted, clearly nervous.
So was I. These people were armed and onerous.
“Up here with me, man!” urged Sir Gold. “Fear not, I’ll have Sir Lead watch over… Sir Lead?”
The bushes rustled again and a fifth knight in dull gray armor plodded slowly into view.
“This armor thing is a bloody stupid idea,” he wheezed. “Next dragon we kill, I’m gonna be Sir Aluminum.”
“No insubordination in the ranks!” Sir Gold bawled. “Dare you question the precepts of our order?”
“Knights should be founded by a knight, not a lunatic alchemist!”
“Sir Mercury was a great man! If I have to—”
“Over here,” Sir Silver called. “I’ve found something!”
Conversation cut off as training took over. Sir Iron fitted a bolt to his crossbow. Sir Lead loped forward and unhitched Rastus so I couldn’t take off with the cart. I didn’t know why. If we’d made a run for it, Rastus could have been overtaken at a comfortable walking pace.
Sir Silver raised the canvas at the rear of my cart, exposing the application pump.
“He’s a dragonsprayer!” the knight exclaimed.
“I’m a dracosmetics consultant. Any idiot could hose on some scale moisturizer, but I…”
Sir Gold hefted his lance. “You are a traitor to the Princess!”
“She does a lovely tail massage, though,” said a voice from above.
Noelene landed on the road, rearing to her full height and showing her best side.
“I believe you came to see me?” she purred.
“Silence, wyrm!” Sir Gold shouted, as his men readied their weapons. “Princess Rewb has decreed that dragons are a blight on the realm and we, the Knights of the Periodic Table, have come to see you slain!”
Sir Gold seized the opportunity. “Charge!” he bellowed, hefting the glowing lance.
Noelene found the knights fierce, bold, and a little tough.
“Crunchy,” commented Noelene, spitting out a gold breastplate, “with a soft center. They just melt in your mouth.”
I pointed to a quivering bush. “You didn’t kill that one.”
“Aw,” crooned the dragon. “He’s just a little one, and so scared. It’s all right, hatchling. I know your heart wasn’t in it.”
Sir Cadmium’s head blossomed from the bush.
“You can go home and tell everyone you fought bravely,” offered Noelene.
He probably thought she was showing pity. Men always take what you say at face value. I knew there was more to it, though. Noelene was letting him go because he had seen her just after a beauty treatment.
“I can’t fight bravely,” he said bitterly. “Look.” He held up his blue-white sword, and bent it easily with one hand. “It’s soft. My armor is, too. It’s all cadmium.”
I stared in disbelief. “They sent you into battle equipped like that?” Males are hard to understand. Human behavior defies logic. Put them together, and I give up.
“Every knight in our order uses a different metal. We once used this suit and sword for training, but the Princess ordered all men and equipment into active duty. She gives our orders now. Her quests must be fulfilled.”
“Or what?”
“Or no one in the realm can marry.”
Noelene blinked like sails snapping in the wind. “Who is she to say whether a girl can settle down with sir right?”
Noelene has become quite motherly since her daughter flew the coop.
Pain washed over Sir Cadmium’s face. “She’s the one who has all our women, including my betrothed, locked inside her castle.”
Noelene’s pupils blazed, and a snort of smoke marred her snout gloss.
“Trying to kill me knight after knight is just rude, but now I have more than enough reasons to pay this girl a visit.”
She flexed her wings. “Up you hop, little human. Males can give directions, at least. Are you coming, Shaz? I’ll need a touch up on the way.”
I looked to the mule-less cart. Rastus had either bolted during the battle or, more likely, become bored and wandered off.
“I’ll get my carry bag,” I said.
I had heard many tales of what it was like to ride on a dragon. They all seemed to involve Princesses, dresses and long flowing tresses, teased back gently by the wind to expose perfect cheekbones to the sun's caress.
The rain lashed my hat clean off my head, and it felt as if my beard would soon follow. I couldn’t open my eyes in the whipping torrent. All I could do was maintain my death-grip on the dragon's spines and be thankful I could no longer see the soggy checkerboard of fields far below. The strap of the carry bag bit into my shoulder and the greasy breakfast I had eaten sat uneasily in my stomach. Noelene’s body heaved with the movement of her wings, up and down. And up. And down.
Fortunately, Noelene remembered her passengers before we went too far into the hailstorm. She alighted on a small hillock in a valley, and showed us the courtesy of holding out a wing to provide us some shelter. I showed her the courtesy of waiting until I climbed off before throwing up.
Noelene had a long face. “My ‘do has run.”
I looked up at the powdery streaks on her neck. “But, I put on the weather mist before I left. This must be a strong storm.”
“It’s her doing,” said Sir Cadmium. “The Princess.”
The dragon’s nostrils flared. “You didn’t tell me she knew magic!”
The human’s throat bobbed. “I thought everyone knew. The Princess has even killed a dragon.”
Noelene considered this for a moment, the hail drumming on her open eyes.
“A young dragon? Purple scales, green spines?”
Cadmium nodded, terrified.
“My daughter.” Noelene sat motionless for a long moment. “Let me guess,” she said. “This Princess has also killed or banished all of your priests and monks.”
Sir Cadmium gave a start. “How could you know that? Does priestly power threaten her own?”
“In many ways,” said the dragon. “But I suspect this Princess has somehow learned dragon magic.”
She shivered, releasing a staccato avalanche of hail. “We must be careful. We wait for the rain to stop, and then find a priest and an innkeeper. After a touch up, of course.”
I opened my bag, and began to select products.
Twinetower keep, ringed with the town’s eventime lights, jutted from the basalt peak like a candelabra. Its two great columns spiraled together as if their builders could plait stone.
Noelene glided to a stop in front of the main gate. We slid to the ground.
“The Princess lives at the top, I suppose?” said Noelene.
Sir Cadmium nodded. Noelene rolled her eyes.
“What is it about altitude and creatures that can’t fly? It’s pathetic.” She pointed a claw to the town below. “Off you go, Cadmium dear. Find an inn or two, and your lady will soon be safe. Ready, Shaz?”
I looked at her makeup again. She looked okay, but I don’t get best results if I only have my carry bag. “Maybe first I should apply a little—”
“No time,” Noelene said. “Mind your beard.”
A thick gout of fire blasted from her mouth and washed the gate. Noelene played the flame over the wood until her breath ran out. A section of cinders crumbled.
“In you go. Good luck.”
She stretched her wings to the sky. A wave of air swept over me, and she soared upward.
I burst through the gate to find the courtyard full of bewildered girls. “You’re free!” I shouted. “Head for the taverns below!”
Some of my audience just stood there like salesmen on Medusa’s doorstep. Others ran for the gate with a look of glee on their faces that only liberated women could have. I chose one of them at random, a redhead in a fine riding cloak.
“One question before you leave, girlfriend. Which way to the dungeon?”
Once I reached the bottom of the mossy stairs, the cheering of women and crackle of fire faded to silence. My footsteps echoed on the stone. I attempted to tiptoe—a difficult thing in long pointy shoes—and rummaged through my carry bag for some sort of weapon.
I peeked around the corner. Sitting on a rough wooden chair, the dungeon guard wore steel plate armor. A white beard flowed out of the full-face helmet like a ruffled cravat.
The helmet turned in my direction and he stood up. I was committed now.
“The Vast!” I cried, hoping a human war cry would scare him. As he lifted his trident, I sprang into the guardroom, brandishing my three-foot-long manicure file.
A strange, tense battle ensued. The old codger moved as slow as Rastus, and I couldn’t tell if the squeaking was his armor or rheumatism. On the other hand, I only came up to his waist and had no idea what I was doing. We strained and swung for a couple of minutes, to no avail.
By the time a plan came to me, I’d removed most of the rust from his greaves and breastplate, and my beard was well trident-combed. I dropped the file and lured him closer to the chair, then sprang upon it and poured half a bottle of scale polish remover into his visor. He performed an interesting impression of a juggling mime, and toppled backwards with a clank.
I tied his hands with my bag strap, then held my breath—that remover is strong stuff—and lifted the visor. Within the mass of wrinkles and wool, two glazed eyes struggled for independence.
I snatched the long chain of keys from the wall and ran between the cells. Most were empty, one imprisoned crates of food, and the last contained a disheveled man in priestly robes.
“You’re free, father,” I said, as I unlocked the door. “But I’m afraid it’s a conditional release. Here’s what I need y
ou to do…”
By the two hundred and twenty third stone step, I wished I’d brought him along instead of following Noelene’s plan. Priests are always going on about carrying each other’s burdens, aren’t they? My burden was me, and every knee-high step only aggravated my aching legs.
From the four hundredth step up the entwined towers, I could feel the stone shake from the battle raging above. Noelene roared as only a dragon can. The hum and crackle of mighty magic implied that the Princess wielded immense power.
What business did a dracosmetics consultant have, walking into such a clash of titanic forces? Common sense kept tapping me on the shoulder and asking for a mention in my will. But I had a solid reputation of going the extra mile for my customers. I only regretted that the extra mile in question ran up a sixty-five degree incline of sadistic stonework.
I crawled up the last few steps to a great platform, open to the sky and ringed by a nose-high (to me) parapet. Noelene tottered at the edge of it, breathing hard and looking terrible. Her snout gloss had been smudged halfway down her throat, her scales were ruffled in random directions (she hates that) and her left foreclaw hung limp at her side. Her rolling eyes said that she’d had enough. She flapped to maintain balance.
Sixty feet away stood the other tower, topped by a similar platform. A glowing woman floated twenty feet above the blackened stone, white dress and dark hair billowing. She had some kind of scepter in her hand, raised like a conductor about to start the final movement.
“The last one screamed for days!” cried the Princess.
“Hey,” I said.
The Princess snapped me a glare that made me fall backwards. I never knew eyeballs could scream. She watched Noelene sag to the stone like a deflating balloon, and floated across the gap between the towers.
“Who disturbs my sport?” she thundered.
I swallowed. I felt like a roach looking up at a shoe, but there was no going back now. I had to trust that Noelene’s hunch was right, and use my skills honed by thirty years of beauty consulting.
“Sorry to disturb you, your ladyship, but there was a fire at the main gate and I spoke to Mabel about it. You know Mabel, whose cousin comes from South Longshadow? Of course, you can’t trust the word of everyone from Longshadow, because once I…”
I rambled on with this gibberish as long as I could, not giving her a chance to get a word in. Some people have said I can talk the wheels off a wagon, and I hung my life on the chance they were right. The Princess flicked her gaze between Noelene and I, but the dragon just lay on the stone, no longer a threat.
My ideas ran low, but I noticed that the glow around the Princess had lessened. She lost altitude too, but by then I had switched to Princess-flattering topics. She didn’t notice her power waning until her feet touched the stone.
That snapped her out of it. She threw another one of those screaming glares, pointed the scepter at me, and commanded: “ASMELIANUS!” I threw up my arms.
Nothing happened.
The Princess looked at the scepter as if it was a lemon she’d just sucked.
“So it is dragon magic.” I breathed. “Drawn from the same source of magical purity that humans offer to dragons. You had almost a hundred virgins locked up in here. It must take a real sick kind of evil to use your own people as a magic wellspring.”
The Princess pouted. “But I can draw upon them from miles away, and no counter-magic can block girl power! I’m invincible!”
I straightened my skirt. “Oh, it isn’t blocked, honey. You’ve been keeping these virgins from their sweethearts for years. That priest you had downstairs knows the wedding service by heart, too.”
“They… they’re all married?”
“One of your more sensible knights booked some inns for the occasion and er… roused the men. More wedding nights begin with every passing moment. It’s over.”
The smug smirk slid off my face when the Princess raised her arm again. Sure, the scepter didn’t glow any more, but it was hard and covered with dragon shaped pointy bits that could cave my head in like a pudding. Like the scepter hitting a pudding, that is. Not a pudding hitting my head. Unless the pudding had been made by my Aunt Edna…
I stood there, rendered helpless by my inner gossip. The Princess’s wild eyes bored into mine, and then vanished as a doughy sword blade wrapped around her head.
“Cadmium!” I cried, as the young knight appeared at the top of the stairs.
The Princess tore chunks of the weapon from her face and slammed the scepter into Cadmium’s stomach. He crumpled down the stairs. She swung back to me.
A dragon foreleg came into view, claw curled. There was a sharp flicking sound and the Princess sailed into the air like something picked from a nose. She landed on the other tower’s platform in a heap, and lay still.
Noelene slumped on the stones again, shaking a couple of them loose. “That was for my daughter.”
I ran to the top of the stairs as Cadmium emerged. He had a deep scepter-imprint on the armor of his stomach, and had jettisoned his last meal, but he’d live.
“You should have seen the communal wedding,” he wheezed. “There was so much happiness and hope. I’m free now, Noelene. We all are.”
Noelene’s cheeks flushed a nice pink, even better than the light coral of my snout care range. “Aw, it’s just the same old story,” she said. “Courageous dragon saves helpless knight from ferocious Princess. But you came back and helped, Cadmium. That showed mettle.”
“Not very smart though,” I put in. “You should have stayed there and gotten married too. You were only giving the Princess more power, because your lady was a vir…” I stopped when I noticed his beet-red face.
“The Princess,” said Cadmium hurriedly, pointing a finger, “she’s moving.” On the other tower, the lump of white dress stirred and gave an audible groan.
“She’s powerless now,” said Noelene. “I’ll just fly over there and squash her.”
“She should be publicly executed!” spat the knight.
“Nah,” I said. “Both of those are too easy. Besides, eyes and complexion like that don’t come along every day.”
The Princess lives, if you could call it that, in a niche in Noelene’s cave. Half of her right shoulder accidentally dissolved two months ago, and one of her legs is covered in boils that won’t go away, but the SPCH hasn’t found out yet. Noelene is a legend among dragons and, if you’ll pardon the expression, I’m doing the proverbial roaring trade.
And, if anyone asks, none of my products have been tested on humans. Honest.
Spin Doctor
