A Company of Heroes Book Two: The Fabulist

by Ron Miller

  Behind her, the powerful faerie king throws his opponent to the ground, her wings shattering and her luminous body guttering like an exhausted candle. He rises from the semiconscious queen and turn, seeing the distant figure of the princess breaking through the ferns and stalks at the far side of the arena.

  “Bronwyn!”

  She looks back at the sound of her name. She sees violet eyes that flame like aurorae and a tall figure that steps from the distant shadows. She stands her ground, however, not hypnotized as before, but with the resolve to see through whatever is coming. Legs braced, fists clenched, shoulders back, chin down. She sees grinning teeth glowing like embers in a furnace. The breath glows and sparkles, and hissing steam hits her in the face. “Watch, human!” the steam says.

  A firefly light illuminates a circular space between them, and she watches.

  Bone-white hands dance in the ivory light like ecstatic spiders; fluttering harvestmen that jerk and flicker while strangely intricate patterns and devices appear written in soil and pebble. The spider-legs pirouette and gambol, scratching webs in the circle of light, to a nerveless tune invented a millennium earlier. Tiny vials of colored liquid appear, join the gavotte, and there is a splash here and a dab there and a strange intimation of order is suggested. Then the pattern is finished and the spiders are again merely hands.

  A quiver shakes one of the particles of dust near the center of the circle. It quivers again and it is a golden mite, a brazen toy gnat with tin wings and a clockwork body. It gives a clicking jump into the air and hops and puffs from gnat to mosquito to fly to shining, golden bee. In a quick series of mechanical jerks it became as large as a hummingbird, though very much different in form and color (already she can see a tiny tufted tail and that it stood on four sturdy legs).

  Then, as quickly as a balloon inflated at a vendor’s tank, and with much the same hiss and squeak, the gryphon is as large as a Great Dane. Bronwyn feels the recoil from a sharp glance of molten copper eyes, before a final burst flings the monster to its full height, far above her head. She holds breath and heart still in utter, utter awe. The gryphon’s own breath rumbles and thunders like a distant storm while sparkling steam hisses from its nostrils as though from a charged Bessemer converter. Archangel eyes and nervous wings. Wings like a metalsmith’s dream: plated lace, platinum feathers, brass scales of an Ibrailan intricacy. It has lightning for muscles and thunder for flesh and the gryphon looks at the faerie king only.

  “Seize her!” he orders in a voice that explodes in Bronwyn’s brain. And it obeys.

  Its steel claws have enveloped her like a cage when, with a shriek like a steam locomotive, the gryphon disintegrates. Bronwyn is scooped from the earth, tumbling into a huge, soft hollow, and the pit of her stomach wrenches with the sensation of rising rapidly. She looks up and for the one dizzying moment before she loses consciousness she sees, towering above her like a mountain, the abundant, boundless, heaven-crowned figure of Thud Mollockle.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  AWAKENINGS

  Bronwyn awakens in brilliant sunlight, a canopy of pale blue stretching over her. She is on her back, lying against a grassy knoll, cushioned by the cool, resilient leaves, awash in small yellow flowers, a tiny stream chuckling good-naturedly not far from her feet. There is not a tree immediately within sight, which is something to be thankful for. She lies there without moving for several long moments, wondering if she has just experienced the most peculiar and disturbing dream of her life. An argument against that is the presence of Thud, his spherically smooth face distorted by concern, who sits perched like a moored zeppelin on a rock by the stream. Did his presence argue against the dream or for it? If for it, when did the dream start? Is it part of the dream that he had thrown himself from the deflating balloon? Because if it wasn’t, how is it possible that he is here, now, undamaged? Or, even more likely, she is still dreaming and what she had thought was a dream had been merely a dream within a dream. It is terribly confusing, and her head hurts even more than it had when she awoke.

  Thud has seen her eyes open and approaches her. “Princess? Are you awake?”

  “How would I know?”

  “Well, your eyes are open. How’re you feeling?”

  “Awful.”

  “Oh. Can I get something for you?”

  “A new head?”

  “All right.”

  “Never mind,” she says, not wanting to know what Thud has in mind. “I’ll be fine. I’m just awfully confused about what’s been going on. Did you or didn’t you jump from the balloon?”

  “Sure, I did.”

  “But how can you still be alive?”

  “Why not?”

  “But you must’ve fallen five hundred feet, at least!”

  “Really?”

  “So what happened?”

  “When?”

  “When you fell from the balloon.”

  “I didn’t fall.”

  “Yes you did, I saw you.”

  “I jumped.”

  “All right, you jumped. Then what happened?”

  “When?”

  “My head can’t take this now. I’ll talk about it later. Oof!” she finishes, sitting up. She is naked under a tattered, perforated, blanket-like cloth and she gathers it around herself. Her head spins like a roulette wheel for a few seconds; it stops on her number and she feels a little better.

  “Where’s the baron?”

  “He’s trying to find some food.”

  “Food?”

  “There’s a farm over there,” Thud replies, pointing. Bronwyn looks and sees that there is not only a farm but also what amounts to a small village or hamlet about half a mile away. She and Thud are atop a gently sloping rise that puts her eyes at about the same level as the low, thatched roofs of the buildings and huts.

  “I hope he brings some clothes,” she says, suddenly aware that she is sitting in the middle of a hundred acres of sunny field wearing nothing but a ragged blanket. “You know, I had the strangest dream or hallucination. It is all about faeries and you came to my rescue . . .”

  “I remember that! Are you sure you were dreaming?”

  “I was hoping so. What happened? What’d you do?”

  “I saw all those lights and heard all that noise: singing and such-like. You know? I went to see what it was. I found a pretty garden with all these flowers and there is a big circle in it and it is full of all these little people. They are only about this big . . .”, he holsd a thick forefinger and thumb about two inches apart, “ . . . and they are dancing and singing and then I saw you.”

  “Me?”

  “Uh-huh. And you are only about this big, too.”

  “I was?”

  “Uh-huh. How did you get so little?”

  “I don’t know. Go on. What happened?”

  “I’m not sure. There is suddenly all this fire and light and noise and then there is this big cat with wings. It jumped on you so I busted it and picked you up.”

  “And then?”

  “Then I wrapped you up in my hanky and brought you here.”

  “Where’s here?”

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind. I’ll ask the baron. Then what happened?”

  “In the morning you are big again.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Musrum . . . it wasn’t a dream. What was it, then? “Where’s Gyven?”

  “Gyven?”

  “Yes, Gyven. He’s not here?”

  “He stayed, Princess. You took him to the faeries, and he stayed. like he says he would.”

  “He did?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I see,” she says, experiencing a peculiarly hollow sensation, as though someone has just taken out a scoop of her insides with a spoon.

  “There’s something funny.”

  “Funny?”

  “Uh-huh. My hanky got big, too, the same time you did.”

  “Your hanky? What . . . you mean this?” she says,
holding out a corner of her covering. “This’s your handkerchief?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Holy Musrum!”

  “Here comes the baron!”

  “Finally.”

  “Bronwyn! You’re back with us, at last!” he cries happily, seeing the princess sitting erect and, better yet, conscious. He walks with a jaunty stride, dressed, as Bronwyn noticed, in rough peasant’s clothes similar to those worn by Thud. He is carrying a large bundle that she desperately hopes contains clothes for her, too. It does and while the baron courteously (though, had she but known, after much internal debate) turns his back, she quickly dresses. He answers as many of her questions as he can. He tells her they are now in the Duchy of Lesser Piotr.

  “What? How could we be there? The duchy’s due north of Toth, and we were being carried by a west wind.”

  “It must’ve been during the storm; the wind direction must’ve changed without us noticing. We are lucky we didn’t end up in the drink. We’re on the isthmus that attaches the duchy to the Londeac mainland. We only missed landing in the sea by a few miles, it turns out.”

  “What’s that village?”

  “Cosmopolitan City.”

  “That’s a little ambitious, isn’t it? There can’t be more than a hundred people living there.”

  “Seventy-five. But they’re active community boosters.”

  “So it would seem. What do we do now?”

  “The duke’s capital, Diamandis, isn’t very far, two hundred and fifty or three hundred miles on easy roads.”

  “So far?” she sighs, rising from the knoll and brushing the grass from her clothing. “It seems like there’ll never be an end to this.”

  “There will be,” assures the baron.

  The peninsula occupied by the Duchy of Lesser Piotr, really a large island attached to the mainland by a narrow neck of land, is for the most part pleasant, gently undulating, cultivated land, devoted mostly to orchards and vineyards. The duchy itself is semiautonomous with few towns larger than Cosmopolitan City, usually little more than a post office, tavern and dry goods store, often all combined in one, and a few squat, cozy-looking, thatched houses. The roads are generally well maintained and safe. Bronwyn, Thud and the baron walk three or four days out of the week, covering fifteen or twenty miles each day, and work the remainder. Or, rather, to be both accurate and fair, they hire out Thud to work. The huge man is more than equal to the girl and the older man put together . . . by a vast margin. Any effort Bronwyn and the baron might have added would have been insignificant. They feel, therefore, that since Thud has only to expend a small fraction of his available strength and energy to earn food and lodging for all three, it is not in any way unfair to ask him to do so. Thud accepts this role as cheerfully and complacently as he does everything Bronwyn asks of him. As a result, the trio never lack for comfortable places to sleep and had more than enough food. They are even able to replace the fifth-hand boots the baron had found with nearly new ones of much better quality, and they all are able to add a welcome change of clothing to their meager baggage.

  Bronwyn grows to enjoy this leg of her odyssey. The days are warm, bright and breezy, the roads are firmly packed and neither too steep nor too winding, and there is plenty of simple, substantial food. She is growing very strong and clean-feeling and that feels pleasant, too. It is late spring and the orchards and vineyards are filled with busy people from dawn to dusk. When they aren’t working with them (or watching Thud work with them, to be perfectly accurate), it is nice to hear the friendly shouts of greeting as they pass, or to join some family in their noonday meal within the shade of some ancient tree left in a field for just that purpose.

  Conversation between the three, however, grows less daily, or conversation between Bronwyn and the baron does. Thud is never an avid participant. Talking to him is more often than not little different from talking to one’s self . . . nevertheless a not unuseful faculty. Still, it requires, always, someone else to start the intercourse. When Bronwyn and the baron grow quiet so does Thud.

  Perhaps the above ought to be amended slightly in the interests of accuracy. The baron, strictly speaking, never becomes entirely quiet. Conversation in the sense of verbal intercourse grows sparse, but the baron never stops talking, he only requires an audience. He has a seemingly unending supply of stories, mostly about himself, that would have filled libraries full of bound dime novels, and in fact had nearly done so. His anecdotes, however, eventually fade into a kind of background noise not much different from the buzz and ringing of the insects in the fields. Fortunately, he never seems to notice that the princess’s attention has wandered.

  As she so often does when left to her own devices, Bronwyn grows introspective. The events that occurred during her stay with the faeries occupies her mind almost to the exclusion of all else. She doesn’t know what significance to attach to what had happened, or nearly happened, to her. Somewhere beneath the repugnance and violation that she knows she feels and knows she ought to be feeling is a nagging sense of pleasure, an odd sensation that she has discovered something important about herself. It is difficult for her to label what had happened as a near-rape, which would put Spikenard’s efforts on the same level with the sailor’s on the Upsy Daisy. There seems to be some fundamental difference, though she can’t quite put her finger on it. That she should even be considering a difference vaguely annoys her. She tries to rationalize it by arguing that Spikenard had not tried to rape her, he had attempted to seduce her. A semantic difference, perhaps, but what are words without semantics but a series of silly noises? The idea she knows she is skirting around, avoiding it at the same time it fascinates her, is the notion that she may not have resisted Spikenard even if she had not been hypnotized by him.

  Bronwyn is not only corporeally virginal, but inexperienced as well in most, if not all, of her body’s potential for both creating and experiencing pleasurable sensations. The idea is still something that causes her extreme discomfort; the ecstasy she can still recall so vividly from that night in the forest still causes a frisson of excitement in the pit of her stomach, simultaneously with an acute sense of humiliation and wrongdoing. There had been no purpose to the pleasure she had experienced, and that bothers her; she had abandoned all civilized proprieties and turned herself over to wholly animal instincts. It seems altogether wrong. Thinking back to the abandon with which she bared herself, physically and emotionally, she feels humiliated. Yet . . . when she tries to call back one of the fading remnants of the sensations she had felt, the rawness, purity and completeness seems irresistibly satisfying and right.

  Bronwyn isn’t entirely to blame for these confused feelings. She is the product of a society that simply does not acknowledge the existence of sensuality. She is not only unaware of her body’s capability to produce such intense sensations, she has been unaware that such feelings even exist. Her body’s physical reactions to Gyven confuse and upset her; but the way in which it responded to Spikenard is absolutely frightening. There is a power within her she has been wholly unaware of. It is as though some carnal beast, perhaps that infamous reptile, had wrested the reins of her body from her, thrust her into a back seat, and whipped into a full gallop that which had never before been goaded past a sedate pace. She not only doesn’t like losing control, she doesn’t like losing control to something that apparently knew far better than she what to do with her body, and wasn’t the least bit hesitant to prove it.

  She has been long taught that thinking about her body and its functions is wrong, a perversion and in bad taste, that enjoying any of the pleasures of the senses, save sight and sound and, just minimally, taste, is more than wrong, it is sinful.

  Concerning these inbred injunctions she is having, if with some difficulty, second thoughts.

  They are perhaps half a day from Diamandis, after a night’s rest the following noon would see them in the capital. For the third time in as many days, Baron Milnikov stops in a village to write and post a letter.


  “What are you doing?” Bronwyn asks.

  “I’m, ah, letting the duke know of our approaching visit.”

  “Why write now? We’ll be in the city tomorrow morning, probably before that last letter could arrive.”

  “True, true. One never knows, though.”

  “A little pessimistic for you, isn’t it?”

  “Just getting, ah, cautious in my old age, my dear.”

  That night they treat themselves to rooms in an inn, happily squandering Thud’s hard-earned money. They luxuriate in a hot meal with ale and wines, scalding baths with thick soap and soft beds with feather comforters.

  Bronwyn has slipped into a long nightshirt loaned to her by the innkeeper’s daughter, and is about to retire when there is a light tap at her door. She asks who it is and to her surprise it is the baron’s voice that replies. She asks him to please come in.

  “May I speak to you just for a moment?” he asks.

  “Of course!”

  “I know you’re tired . . . we all are.” Bronwyn has never seen the man look so elderly, stooped and weary. There is little of the heroic or devil-may-care about him now.

  “Won’t you sit down?”

  “No, thank you. You need your sleep. I just wanted you to know something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Just that whatever happens . . . I loved you as I would my own daughter.”

  “I know you do. And I love you, too, Baron,” she replies semiautomatically.

  “Thank you. I’ll hold on to that, Princess, and I’ll try to always believe it, no matter what.”

  “What’re you talking about? You’re just tired. You’re one of my dearest friends, and I’ll always love you. You know that.”

  “Well,” he sighs, opening the door, “we’ll see what the future holds. Good night, Princess. Pleasant dreams.”

  “I hope so. Good night, Baron.”

  The door shuts softly. Bronwyn snuggles into her downy nest and completely forgets about the baron’s visit.