Critical Failures IV

by Robert Bevan

  He leaned toward the goblin. “And if you wouldn’t mind snipping off a small lock of my own hair. Just a few strands will do. Don’t eat them.”

  The goblin obliged, his wide open mouth next to the half-elf’s head, like he was about to bite into his skull. He took a few strands of grey-white hair as close to the scalp as he could, held them taut, and yanked one of his sharpened teeth through them.

  The half-elf winced. “Thank you.” He sat up and rubbed his head where the goblin had bitten his hair off. He wound his own long and thin strands of hair around the top of the bundle of much coarser dwarf hair. The end result looked like an old-timey fingerprint duster. “Perfect.”

  Chaz was beginning to lose the flicker of hope he’d had in this plan.

  The half-elf got down on the floor, looking through the bars of his own side of the wagon. After examining both ends of the quarterstaff he’d had hidden under his bench, he seemed to favor the bottom end, which he passed slowly and carefully through the bars.

  Chaz’s fingertips were getting sore from continuous and intense lute-playing, but he continued plucking those strings, forcing himself to ignore the pain by trying to figure out what the hell the half-elf was up to.

  Occasionally, the half-elf would pull the bottom of the staff back into the wagon and examine the end, but Chaz couldn’t think of what he might be looking for. It wasn’t until the fourth such occurrence that Chaz noticed a difference.

  The bottom of the quarterstaff was getting progressively thinner. The half-elf was grinding it to a point on the edge of the wagon wheel. It was a clever display of ingenuity, but Chaz still didn’t see how it was going to help them escape. Even if they managed to catch the soldiers by surprise when the door opened, the chains would raise everyone’s arms, leaving them all incapable of wielding a makeshift spear.

  Chaz gulped. All of them, that is, except for him.

  That was this crazy half-elf’s plan? For Chaz to single-handedly dispatch two armored kingsguard with a sharpened stick?

  Chaz’s feelings must have been written all over his face. The next time the half-elf examined his spear tip, he glanced up at Chaz.

  “What troubles you, bard?”

  Chaz thought it best to get his thoughts out in the open, so that maybe the half-elf could put his cleverness to work on a better plan. “This plan isn’t going to work.”

  “How can you say that?” asked the half-elf, only peripherally paying any attention to Chaz, most of his concentration still focused on further sharpening his spear. “You don’t even know what it is.”

  “I figured it out.”

  “Did you now?” The half-elf smiled to himself as he slowly rotated the quarterstaff between his fingers.

  “I can’t do what you need me to do.”

  The half-elf pulled in his staff. The bottom wasn’t a conical point as Chaz was expecting. It was narrow and pointed, like a hypodermic needle at the end of the plunger, or like one of those sticks people use to pick up trash on the side of the road. He looked at his work with a satisfactory nod, then up at Chaz.

  “You’re already doing what I need you to do. Just keep doing it.” He looked down at the orc, still peering through the bars. “Have you seen anything yet?”

  The orc grunted. He looked terribly uncomfortable. “Lots of fucking trees out there,” he grumbled. “But none with a blue stripe.”

  “Of course not,” said the half-elf. “I made that up.”

  The orc turned around. “You wha–”

  The half-elf plunged the pointy end of his staff into the orc’s right eye. The orc struggled for a few seconds, but the half-elf had the advantages of surprise, elevation, and two legs. He twisted the staff and pushed it in even further until the orc finally stopped moving.

  “What’s the matter, bard?” said the half-elf. “You look rather surprised for someone so intimately knowledgeable of my plan.”

  Chaz just continued to gawk, his fingers strumming on autopilot now.

  “Push him this way,” said the goblin. “I want his hair.”

  The half-elf shook his head. “You can have all the hair you want once we’re free. I need him to stay on this side of the wagon.” As if the orc wasn’t quite dead enough for him, he gripped the staff with both hands and shoved it in just a little harder, then pushed it forward until the pointy part snapped off.

  Chaz missed a note, making it sound like the lute was reacting to the grisly scene.

  The half-elf wasn’t yet finished molesting this orc’s eye socket, it seemed. He took a knee and plunged two fingers in.

  That was more than Chaz could handle. He stopped playing.

  “Bard!” snapped the half-elf. “What are you doing?”

  “What am I doing?” asked Chaz. “What the hell are you doing?”

  Clunk, Clunk, Clunk. Someone was banging on the front wall again. “I don’t hear any music!”

  The half-elf pulled the broken spear tip out of the orc’s eye socket and looked up at Chaz. “I’m getting us out of here. Now play your song!”

  Chaz nodded and picked up his instrumental surf rock just where he’d left off.

  The half-elf wiped off some of the blood and eye-goo from the spear tip on his pants, thenpicked up the bundled dwarf hair. He carefully inserted the pointy end of the spear tip into the wide end of the hair bundle. His fingerprint duster now had a handle.

  Satisfied with the miniature broom he’d created, but apparently unsatisfied with the amount of mutilation he’d performed on the orc he’d brutally murdered, he knelt down and removed the orc’s prosthetic leg. After separating it into its component parts. He discarded the foot and the part that fit over the stump, but kept the shaft, a foot-long steel pipe.

  “Is this part of your plan?” asked Chaz, or do you just really not like him?”

  The half-elf peered through the bars for a moment, then stood up. “Now’s the time. We only get one shot at this. Are you ready?” He inserted the tiny broom into the metal pipe.

  Finally, something made a little sense to Chaz. “A blowgun.”

  “You catch on quick, bard,” said the half-elf. “Are you ready for your next assignment?”

  “You want to request a song?”

  The half-elf closed his eyes and shook his head. “No, I don’t want to request a song.” He bent down and slid what remained of the quarterstaff across the wagon floor to Chaz. “When I tell you to, you’re going to shove this stick through the bars and into the wheel spokes.”

  “Okay.” Chaz tried to rethink the half-elf’s plan. They stop the wagon and get the soldiers to open the back door. The chains would still force the half-elf’s hands up, so he’d have to keep the loaded blowgun in his mouth. It still seemed so far-fetched. He might get lucky and kill one of them, although Chaz deemed even that to be highly unlikely. What about the other one? Was he hoping they’d line up and he could blow the dart straight through the first guy’s head? Again, he felt compelled to raise an objection.

  “I don’t get how you mean to take down two armed soldiers with a homemade dart,” said Chaz. “Maybe you should think about this a little more.”

  “Maybe you should shut up and do what you’re told.”

  Chaz looked down at the dead orc. “Okay.”

  The half-elf lay down on his stomach and looked forward through the bars. “It’s time. Bard, put down your lute and get on the floor. Remember to wait for my word.”

  Chaz did as he was told, nervously setting his lute on the bench. He lay down parallel to the half-elf and held the quarterstaff with shaky hands. On his left, he could see the wheel spokes turning clockwise at a leisurely rate. Ahead of him, he could only see a horse’s ass, and a bit of forest beyond. The road must be getting ready to veer right.

  Clunk, Clunk, Clunk.Captain Reynolds was banging on the wall again. “I didn’t tell you to stop playing, bard. If I have to stop this wagon, you’ll be –”

  The wagon jerked forward as a horse screamed in pain. The wagon w
as moving faster.

  “Julian?” said Chaz.

  The half-elf sprung to his feet, jumped onto the bars at the top of the wagon, and bunched his body up as close to the ceiling as he could. “Be ready bard!”

  “Stop, you crazy animals!” cried Captain Reynolds. “Gareth, grab the reins!”

  The wagon rumbled along the road, leaning left as the horses veered right. Chaz held the staff and got ready to shove it as hard as he could into the wheel spokes. They weren’t trying to stop the wagon. They were trying to flip it.

  “Now, bard!” said the half-elf. “Now!”

  Chaz shoved with all of his might. His world jerked, spun around, and finally crashed. When it was finished, he decided that it probably hadn’t been as dramatic as it felt like while it was happening. They hadn’t flipped the wagon, so much as just tipped it over. The cage hadn’t broken open, if that’s what the half-elf had been going for, but there did seem to be a lot more chain spilled all over the place. The crank mechanism that controlled the back door and the prisoners’ arms must have busted.

  When he felt more orientated, he looked up to see the half-elf strangling the goblin to death with a length of chain and slamming his face down into the side paneling.

  His second murder of the hour complete, the half-elf turned to Chaz, then sprung toward him like a pouncing cat.

  “Shit!” screamed Chaz, curling into a ball and raising his arms over his face.

  After a few seconds of not being murdered, Chaz peeked out from behind his arms. The half-elf hadn’t been after him. He was holding Chaz’s lute by the neck, waiting at the back door.

  The half-elf kept his ear to the door for a moment, then pulled back and kicked it open. The chains offered no resistance, but the door stopped suddenly after only having opened about two feet wide.

  “Ow!” shouted Gareth. “My face!”

  The half-elf continued listening at the door, nodding slowly. When the time was right, he smashed the business end of Chaz’s lute over the head of Captain Reynolds, who never saw it coming.

  He pulled the lute into the wagon, where Captain Reynolds dropped in a heap at Chaz’s feet. He repeated the move when Gareth stumbled into view. He armed himself with the captain’s sword and rooted around under the captain’s cloak until he produced a ring of keys.

  After unlocking the manacles on his own wrists, the half-elf tossed the keys to Chaz. “Chain them up.”

  “You aren’t going to kill them?” asked Chaz, trying not to sound like he was encouraging the idea.

  “Of course not,” said the half-elf. “Why would I?”

  “You didn’t seem to have any qualms about killing the orc and the goblin.”

  “They were in for rape and murder. It would have been irresponsible to set them loose.”

  “And what are you in for?”

  The half-elf smiled, handing over Chaz’s destroyed lute. “Remember what I said about Captain Reynold’s wife?”

  Chaz looked up from his lute. “You were serious about that? You fucked his wife?”

  “He caught us in the act.” The half-elf sighed. “But it was worth it.”

  “You called her a pig.”

  “She is a pig... sometimes.”

  “I don’t understand what you mean.”

  The half-elf smiled again, like he was being deliberately obtuse, and was finally tired of the joke. “She’s a wereboar. I have what you might call an unconventional sexual appetite.” His eyes glazed over like he was lost in a pleasant memory. “She was in hybrid form at the time. You’ve never heard a woman squeal like that.”

  “That’s so disturbing.”

  “We need to go before they wake up. We can’t let them know which way we’ve gone.”

  “Does that mean you’re not headed into town?” asked Chaz. He’d hoped to be able to make the rest of his trip in the company of such a capable fighter.

  “We’re absolutely headed into town,” said the half-elf. “Cardinia is where the women are. It’s too risky to travel by road. But there are other ways to breech the city walls.”

  “Such as...?”

  “Such as shutting up and doing what you’re told. Now let’s go.”

  Chaz lowered his head. “Okay.”

  Chapter 23

  The stout oaks and elms of the forest grew closer to the road the farther south they traveled, eventually giving way to spindly cypresses as the lush grass turned to muddy water. Where the hard-packed earthen road stopped and the wide cypress-planked boardwalk began, an old, weather-beaten wooden sign greeted the party.

  WELCOME TO PORTTOWN

  “We should dismount,” said Dave. The boardwalk appeared sturdy, supported by living cypress trees on both sides and wide enough for a large wagon to travel on, but he didn’t want to take any chances. The last thing he needed was to fall through and be trapped underwater under a panicky horse.

  Julian nodded. “Their spell duration is about to run out anyway.” He pointed at the sign on the side of the road. “We should take that, too.”

  “The sign?” asked Stacy. “What do we need that for?”

  “We need to start taking souvenirs wherever we go,” Julian explained. “If Chaz fails to tell everyone where we are, or if we’ve gone somewhere else by the time help arrives, they can find us by looking at the inventory on our character sheets.”

  “Not a terrible idea,” said Tony the Elf. “But what will you tell people who question you for carrying around obviously stolen city property?”

  “Two of us could carry it together, facing down,” said Dave. He didn’t really like the idea of backing one of Julian’s crazy schemes, but Tony the Elf needed to be taken down a notch. “Nobody would even know.”

  Tony the Elf shook his head. “You two fools do whatever you want. As long as we’re just wasting time, I’m going to give my feet a rest.” He sat down on a wide-capped cypress knee and began to remove his boots.

  Julian looked at Dave. “Thanks.”

  Dave nodded. “Sure.”

  “Couldn’t we just go to, like, a souvenir shop or something?” asked Stacy.

  Julian laughed, which surprised Dave, as it was the exact sort of suggestion he’d expect to come out of Julian’s mouth. Maybe he was finally learning the ropes.

  “Where do you think we are?”asked Tony the Elf. “Disneyworld?”

  “I was just trying to be helpful.”

  “Maybe we can find some cool keyring, or one of those caps with the Mickey Mouse ears.”

  “Keep talking, Tony the Elf,” said Stacy. “Maybe you’ll find my foot in your ass.”

  Julian raised his hand like he was trying to get the teacher’s attention. “Hey guys, come on. Keep it civil. If we find something smaller and more portable when we get into the city, we’ll ditch the sign.” He grabbed the top left corner of the sign. “Grab the other side, Dave. On three, we’ll both give it a good hard yank.”

  Dave grabbed the bottom right corner and prepared to yank.

  “One... two...”

  “What do you two think you’re doing with that sign?” said an older man’s voice from behind Dave.

  Julian looked past Dave. “Jesus!” He quickly let go of the sign. “Um... Nothing, sir. It looked crooked, so we were straightening it out.”

  Dave turned around and saw a naked old man standing on the road. He looked like a fat David Attenborough who life hadn’t been kind to.

  “It doesn’t look crooked to me.”

  Julian forced a cheerful grin. “You’re welcome!”

  “That sign has stood there since before I was born,” said the naked old man, the tip of his withered old dick peeking out from a snow white tangle of pubes. “Before Cardinia opened the harlot legs of her own seaport. Back when this place meant something. PortTown may have fallen under hard times, but I’ll not stand here and watch her be vandalized by outsiders.”

  He walked toward the sign as Julian and Dave backed away, stretched his arms up in the air, and, sprayed
a jet of steamy, foul-smelling piss on one of the posts that held it up.

  As he continued to saturate the post, he looked at Julian and pointed at his own piss stream. “Do you know what this means, boy?”

  Julian shrugged, trying not to gag at the pungent odor. “I don’t know, sir. Urinary tract infection?”

  The old man redirected his stream to the other signpost. “It means that this is my town. You got that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I won’t tolerate any other cats.”

  “Cats?”

  The old man ceased pissing and walked nakedly toward Julian, whose face was locked in a fight-or-flight struggle. “Now come here and let me smell you.”

  “What? No!”

  But it was too late. The old man gripped Julian by both arms and sniffed at his face and under each arm.

  “Nyegh,” said the man, releasing Julian and turning toward Stacy. “Is it you?”

  Stacy took a step back. “I'm warning you, sir. Do not touch me.”

  The old man snarled. “Aye. Stand still then, so I can smell you.”

  “I, um... I suppose that’s a fair compromise.”

  He sniffed at her face, but nothing in his face or his dong showed any sign of arousal. “Lift your arms.”

  Stacy reluctantly acquiesced, allowing the crazy old bastard to sniff each pit to his satisfaction. “This is starting to make me uncomfortable.”

  “Which one of you is it?” He started walking toward Tony the Elf, who was quickly re-lacing his boots. Dave the dog snarled and barked as he approached.

  “Take it easy, Dave,” said Tony the Elf. “We seek no trouble.” He raised his arms. “Just smell me and be on your way.”

  “Aye,” said the old man. “I’ll be on my way once I find the pussy I smelled.”

  Stacy gasped. “I beg your pardon!” Dave couldn’t tell if she was more offended by the naked man’s crude language or because she’d already been ruled out.

  The old man ignored her, concentrating on thoroughly sniffing Tony the Elf.

  “Bah!” he said, evidently unsatisfied with the amount of ‘pussy’ coming from Tony the Elf’s armpits. He snarled as he surveyed the scene until he locked eyes with Dave. “You! Halfbeard!”