Monster Hunter Memoirs: Grunge - eARC

by Larry Correia

  “Oh, that’s all?”

  “The second document is a letter of intent. You agree to have one week to analyze the contract and to return to this place after that week to sign it. I, in turn, agree upon that night to take the Harper’s Challenge in expiation of having caused you mental grief and suffering in the removal of the Princess from your imprisonment as well as this somewhat hostile negotiation. Should I pass the Harper’s Challenge you must sign the document. Should I not, you get me and Shallala back. I’ve already signed the letter of intent.”

  “Very thorough,” the Queen said, making a face. “What’s the catch?”

  “None, really. We killed a lich and since then it’s been a monster migration. We need something in Seattle to keep out other big baddies. Simply Shallala’s presence will do that to an extent. Even if something is stupid enough to take on a Princess of Faerie and her court, and my company of human Monster Hunters backstopping her, nobody is stupid enough to take you on. The smart powerful entities will avoid her principality and that is all I seek. And the upside is you don’t have to put up with her day after endless day. I’ve only been dealing with her for a week and I understand the desire to mystically bind her to just shut the hell up!”

  “We see eye to eye in that at least. You do realize why she was imprisoned. You would release my daughter once again upon this innocent world of unsuspecting humans?”

  “Valleyspeak is a trial,” I said. “But we need someone to pin down Seattle.”

  “Valleyspeak?” the Queen snapped. “Do you think that is all? That was simply the straw that broke me! Tie-dye! She invented those horrible tie-dye T-shirts!”

  “Oh,” I said, wincing. I hated those.

  “Bell-bottom jeans!” the Queen shrieked, angrily. “The kind that get all ratty on the ends! Mood rings! My daughter invented mood rings! Would you have that monstrosity once again cast upon your unsuspecting mortal population?! And Birkenstock sandals! She even convinced the Germans, who should know better, to wear ugly green socks with them! She is insane!”

  “I wasn’t aware of those,” I said. “I have to possibly agree…” No, stick to the path. Don’t let her dissuade you. Fey were notoriously deceptive. “We need someone to pin down Seattle. Shallala can do that.”

  “Why the Harper’s Challenge?” the Queen asked.

  “Because Harpers are held in high esteem by the Fey,” I said. “Right now you’ve been, in the human terminology, disrespected. I stole your daughter. I’ve forced you to come to this place to negotiate. Even if there is an upside, and I think there will be several, you still need to save face. I will put my life and soul on the line by the Harper’s Challenge. And if I succeed, other Fey will see that you were up against not just any human, but a Bard. That allows you to save face. Bards have always been the bane of the Fey.”

  “And you think you are good enough?”

  “We shall see.”

  “Are you aware of the full details of the Harper’s Challenge?” the Queen asked.

  “I must play the whole of the night without stop or let and note perfect.”

  “And songs I have never heard before,” the Queen noted. “And I listen to everything. I even sort of like Jimi Hendrix. Speaking of Seattle. Heart I can live without.”

  “Oh?” I squeaked. “Uhm…Entirely new songs?”

  “Yes,” the Queen purred in a decidedly catlike tone. “Entirely new songs.”

  “Oh,” I said, pulling at the mail by my throat. Carefully.

  “And for three nights consecutively!” the Queen said.

  “Three nights? I thought it was only one!”

  “Hah!” she laughed merrily, the sound having timbres so alien I again wanted to turn tail and run. “Three! I may allow my wayward Princess to infest your pathetic city, Human. Let Seattle bear the brunt of her insanity. It deserves it. But when you fail in the Harper’s Challenge, your body and your soul will be mine! And now you are bound to perform for me.”

  She bent down, scrawled her name in burning letters on the letter of intent, picked up the thick contract and disappeared. The knights disappeared into the hole which snapped shut. And they were gone.

  “Phil!” I yelled into the darkness. “You, you know, want to call EOD and have them start getting me out of this stuff?”

  Christ that took a long time. You ever watched EOD guys sweat? Nobody sweats like EOD. I hated the one guy whose hands kept trembling.

  CHAPTER 21

  A week later, as the salmon sun set behind Seattle’s omnipresent clouds, the preparations were complete. The field was freshly mowed, the last of the caterers had fled, the team was gone and once again it was just the feynikin Princess and myself up on the kite field awaiting the arrival of the Faerie Queen and what I suspected this time would be her whole Court.

  Caterers?

  I had studied every record I could find of a survivor of the Harper’s Challenge. I knew damned well it had to be new music. I knew damned well that it was for three nights, not one. I also knew, from the sparse records of survivors, that there was more to it than that. The Fey were awful, ugly, scary at an evolved, primal, level. Playing note perfect was easy for many musicians. Playing it surrounded by monsters? Without a single muscle trembling so much as once?

  But the Fey had a weakness. “True” Fey were susceptible to being bound by music. This was where Stricken’s hint to do my homework came in handy. Every description of survivors was the same. It wasn’t that you couldn’t rest at all. But when they were in the presence of music they were charmed, held, captured. All of them from the Queen on down. The only ones who were not were their servitor races. That used to be elves I guessed, before they got left behind.

  And it wasn’t that you could take no break nor breath. When you stopped playing they took a short time to throw off the spell of the music. You could take an occasional breath, a sup of wine. If you had some with you. And if, in that locked state, they were exposed to sunlight, they became permanently bound absent powerful magics. They “tunt stun at dawn litte.” They “Putaḷē jhālē.” They “égine agálmata.” All the records were the same. You could bind them all night then turn them to stone at morning’s light.

  I suspected it was not “stone” but into feynequins. I wasn’t, however, planning on testing it. I was just going to play this straight down the middle.

  The other “issue” was “ne’er sup of the faerie.” Don’t eat their food, or drink their wine. A pretty good and what appeared accurate description was by a contemporary of Thomas the Rhymer in the Oxford Secure Vault. In it the Harper, one Gadal Thane, wrote of avoiding the trap of fey food by drinking from his iron flagon of ale. He had apparently taken the Harper’s Challenge three times and in one had used “the liquor of the Irish monks” to get the court drunk. But he “ne’er supped of the faerie” and knew of others who had failed that particular test.

  So instead of supping of the Faerie, I had brought sup.

  Specifically, a number of high end Seattle restaurants had been approached. A very reclusive foreign noble, wealthy, was resettling in Seattle or would at least be here frequently. She often dined out and had a very large entourage. Were they willing to provide some samples? We’d defray the cost but not pay full.

  A surprising number the answer was “sure.” Part of that was quiet assurances from various movers and shakers that the “noble” was the real deal.

  There were tents set up covering tables filled with all sorts of goodies. Everything from donuts to maison French. And, yes, Saury was there. There was forty thousand dollars in just alcohol. No servants. I assumed the Queen would be bringing her own.

  I hadn’t worn the Faraday suit. I had worn it the last time assuming, it looked like correctly, that it would prevent the Queen from reading my mind. This time, I really didn’t care if she did or not. Better that she see the determination.

  I had a steel cooler full of holy water and sacramental wine on a steel table with a bunch of steel cups to drink
from it in case I lost one. Steel chairs in case my feet got tired. And a steel barrel of bows and two spare violins. It’s easier to change weapons than reload, restring if one broke, in combat. And this was combat, make no mistake.

  The park had been cleared of all visitors and was surrounded by MCB.

  I’d had months to prepare and called in a lot of favors for this.

  It appeared that the MCB didn’t want to be here. My argument was if it worked Seattle would be a “safe” zone from major monsters. We’d stop having to burn Troll Kings at King Street Station, ’cause it was “King Street” and he was a Troll King, with flame throwers and leave them with the difficult task of explaining. A recent battle on Laurelhurst Park with some sort of entity called “Mayhem” was another example. They were still trying to explain all the damage and the insurance companies were angry.

  They thought I was nuts. They’d brought in SRT. I was pretty sure their Special Response Team was going to be pissing in the wind if the Queen got a bee in her bonnet. If it had been up to the MCB agents, they probably would have just shot me in the face and written a suicide note, but whoever Stricken was, he’d kept his part of the bargain.

  But we weren’t going to be disturbed, that was for sure.

  This had been scheduled, planned and prepared for months. It was two nights before Litha, the shortest night of the year. So not only was I not having to play as long as, say, at mid winter each night would be shorter than the last. Not by much but when you have to fill three nights with entirely new music anything helped.

  As the last bit of sun dropped below the horizon, a large slit began to open in the ground at the summit of the hill. And the Hunt exploded forth.

  For just one moment I was sure it was on. That the Queen had gotten so ticked off by being in check from a human that she was going to war. The Hunt burst forth and spread out, their mounts questing for threats, keening at the moon. The noise was unearthly, scary, alien. The sound had to carry as far as the UD. What the non-MCB agents and Marshals on the outer perimeter of the event must be thinking I had no clue. They’d been told they were providing security for a foreign VIP.

  Very foreign. Not of this world.

  But The Hunt didn’t attack. They simply scouted, checking out the venue and the surroundings. They didn’t even approach the officers at the base of the hill. I could tell they scented them, spotted, them, were aware of them. But they didn’t approach close enough to be spotted.

  Finally, the Huntsman went back to the portal and entered for a moment. Then the rest of the Court began to arrive.

  First, again, the knights. The light hadn’t entirely faded from the sky and tiki torches had been set up to illuminate the scene. I wish we hadn’t done that last bit. They were more clear in the torchlight. Massive, alien, scary, their armor was made in a scale pattern that seemed to replicate dragon-skin. Their weapons were axes, swords, hammers, all sorts of medieval armament again playing violet and blue fire over their edges. This time they too were on mounts. Similar, again, to those of The Hunt but more massive. Their paws left divots on the manicured lawn of the kite hill. Those were up to MCB to explain.

  Then wave after wave of every sort of fey creature. Trolls, including massive ones such as the Troll King. Ogres by the score. Brownies and a dozen other different types of small beings. Kelpies and boggles. Lions and tigers and bears, oh, my.

  There must have been a billion dollars in PUFF on that hilltop. I wondered if MCB had a B-52 in orbit. Probably. And some MCB Senior Agent watching through night vision scope had to be thinking “One call. All I gotta make is one call…”

  The various monsters had at first come over to play “scare the Harper.” I ignored them and lightly bowed the strings in various well-known and easily played violin pieces. Then they smelled the food and booze. That got their attention but none of them touched it. They just circled around, talking, waiting. Some of the ogres were drooling and nobody drools like an ogre.

  Finally, Queen Keerla Rathiain Penelo Shalana appeared, this time on a sedan chair borne by six enormous Ogre Magi. She was not in glamour this time. And it appeared that Fey Queens must continue to grow as they aged. She was massive, and fey-ugly. Her face was much more dragon like than Shallala’s and her body seemed more solid and armored as if her skin had hardened over the years.

  The sedan chair held a large comfortable sleeper sofa that looked very much like it had been made by Broyhill. The Queen knew she was going to be more or less in stasis for hours and intended to be comfortable.

  There were five tents on the hilltop. Most of the food was under cover in two. Two others with booze. And the largest set up in the center where I was stationed along with the Feynikin Shallala. The sedan chair was brought into that tent and set on the ground. The massive Ogre Magi took up station around the Queen protectively.

  “Well, Harper, we are come,” the Queen said.

  “Would you and your court take sup of the foods here presented, Queen Shalana?” I asked, strumming lightly through Bach’s Sonata 1 in G.

  “I see you are not taking sup of ours,” the Queen said, looking around. “You cannot avoid the Challenge by offering us tempting morsels.”

  “I’m not avoiding it but it’s going to be a long three days for all of us. I’m fine. Already ate and I’m ready to play. But a lot of caterers went to a lot of trouble to put all this out. Feast, Queen of the Fey. Let your court enjoy the viands of this fine land. When you are prepared, I shall be more than happy to fill your soul, what you have of one, with music such as you have never heard.”

  “As I have said, I have heard many tunes, Harper,” she replied.

  “Have you ever heard tunes not made for violin on violin? You said something of being a fan of Hendrix.”

  I brutally switched from the light Bach piece into the solo from Hendrix’s Voodoo Child. I could see the Queen settle into stillness which seemed to spread out through the whole court. Every troll, ogre, and boggle of the night slowly stopped moving around and turned into what were virtually feynikins.

  Then the True Fey among them began to dance. Even the Hunt, which had dismounted, began to dance. Knights swung and bounced, The Hunt went through wild leaps and bounds, noncombatant Fey were leaping among them. Trolls made the most spastic sort of dances. They were worse than junior high nerds. Ogres just thumped their massive feet and pounded their hands together. Even the mounts of the Hunt and the Knights were rocking back and forth on their leads, their horrible bodies writhing to the music.

  Servitors danced through the mix, bringing food and drink to the Queen. Who could not take it from them.

  I wound to the end of the piece and paused.

  “Truly, Queen,” I said. “We’ve gone to a lot of trouble to make you and your people happy at this party. Eat, drink, be merry. I will play, lightly and known pieces, whilst you enjoy yourself. Then, when you are ready for the Challenge, tell me. I have more than enough to satisfy you through a thousand nights much less three.”

  “I did some digging into you, Harper,” the Queen said, clearly unhappy. “I probably should have before accepting this challenge. But you are known as a warrior, not a minstrel.”

  “Eh,” I said, doing a quick riff from Jungle Love. “I’m a man of many parts.”

  “We shall partake of sup,” the Queen said, lying back on the couch. “As the Harper said, eat, drink, be merry. When midnight comes, we shall engage in Challenge.”

  Trolls have the worst table manners you’ve ever seen. The rest of the Fey were not much better. It’s like they were still stuck in “throw the leftovers on the ground. The dogs will finish them off.”

  Which the Mounts were doing.

  I’d been okay with the Fey. I’d faced monsters before. Once I’d seen them I was pretty much over it.

  Fey eating was like Fey-ugly. Not something anyone with a queasy stomach should observe. Clean-up was going to be a bitch.

  “Why are you doing this, Harper?” the Queen said, down
ing a large crab cake in one bite.

  “I like a challenge,” I replied, still lightly bowing the violin though. “We truly do need something to stabilize the supernatural in Seattle. I could not figure out a way to do it that wouldn’t get me on your bad side and I’m trying to get off of it. Fey, from what records exist, both fear and respect Harpers above all other humans. This way I might be able to get back on your better side and not have to be looking over my shoulder the rest of my life.”

  “Given the contract you presented me, it would be tough for me to take action against you. Or your company or are related to or anyone you’ve ever known or so much as met.”

  “I considered leaving my mother and brother off the list. But you’d like them too much.”

  “I think not,” the Queen said. “Your mother I’ve met. I rather loathe boot-lickers. Your brother is of another faction and even for a human despicable. So, no.”

  That my brother Thornton was “of another faction” was interesting. I made a note to look Thornton up and find out what he’d gotten himself into. I wasn’t sure, then, whether that was to see if I could get him out of it or see if he’d made himself PUFF applicable.