Disenchanted

by Kroese, Robert

  DISENCHANTED

  Robert Kroese

  DISENCHANTED

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright © 2012 Robert Kroese

  Originally published as a Kindle Serial, November 2012

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by 47North

  P.O. Box 400818

  Las Vegas, NV 89140

  ISBN: 9781611093858

  For Speed Pony

  Table of Contents

  Map

  Episode One

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  Episode Two

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  Episode Three

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  Episode Four

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  Episode Five

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Episode Six

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Episode One

  ONE

  By most accounts, Boric the Implacable was, while he was alive, an incomparable badass. By all accounts, he was an even bigger badass after he died.

  For most people,[1] death marks the end of one’s career, whether that career is baking bread, blowing glass, or — as in Boric’s case — hacking other people to pieces with a sword. But for Boric, death was just another bullet point on his already impressive ass-kicking résumé.

  Whether death improved Boric overall is a matter of some debate, but there’s little question that it enhanced him professionally. In addition to his already impressive catalog of badassery, death granted him invulnerability, the importance of which can’t be overstated in Boric’s chosen profession. There were some negatives, of course, but even these could often be turned to his advantage: those who were not convinced to surrender by rumors of his combat prowess and invulnerability could be compelled to yield when they caught a whiff of his rotting-cabbage-mixed-with-rancid-bacon odor. Still, he couldn’t deny his relief when the flesh still doggedly clinging to his bones began to desiccate, leaving him smelling more like the attic of an old farmhouse and less like a can of beef stew that has quietly gone bad in a forgotten corner of the farmhouse’s pantry.

  Boric’s birth was unremarkable, being only the first of many experiences involving a vagina, lots of friction and grunting, and the copious secretion of bodily fluids. His death, on the other hand, was quite interesting. It happened like this:

  Boric the Implacable needed a new coat. As the King of Ytrisk, a middling kingdom composed of six nearly forgotten provinces cobbled together at the periphery of the Old Realm, Boric generally got what he wanted, and in this case what he wanted was a coat that would keep him from freezing to death while walking from his bedroom to his throne room. Like most medieval castles, Kra’al Brobdingdon was designed to keep out every enemy except the unsleeping chill that had, in fact, killed more of the citizens of Ytrisk than all of its foreign enemies combined. Boric therefore commissioned the weaving of the Warmest Coat in All Ytrisk. Some three months after he had issued the command, just when the icicles hanging from Brobdingdon Tower had begun the maddening drip, drip, drip that signaled the end of winter, just when Boric had all but forgotten about the Warmest Coat in All Ytrisk, four of the royal weavers appeared in his throne room, bearing something that Boric at first mistook for an emaciated bear.

  In fact it was the Warmest Coat in All Ytrisk, and it lived up to its name. Within minutes of putting it on — or, more accurately — crawling inside of it, Boric was sweating something fierce. Despite the fact that he could see his own breath, the throne room seemed to have become suddenly, oppressively warm. Every beat of his heart sent out waves of heat that were then corralled mercilessly by the coat and sent hurling back at him. It was like being baked alive in a loaf of bread. Boric nodded in approval. This was indeed the Warmest Coat in All Ytrisk. In fact, it was probably the Warmest Coat in All the Old Realm and quite possibly in the Uncivilized Wastes of the North as well.

  Then the itching started.

  The outside of the coat was made of wild mink and the liner inside was fine silk stitched over cotton. The bulk of the coat, however, was the finest Ytriskian wool. Ytriskian wool was renowned in all Dis for its warmth, its durability, and, most of all, its excruciating itchiness. It didn’t matter that Boric had a layer of clothing and a two-layered lining between his skin and the Ytriskian wool; trying to ward off the itchiness of Ytriskian wool with a few layers of fabric was like trying to frighten a wolf with a daffodil. The insidious, wiry tendrils of Ytriskian wool clawed through the fabric until they reached Boric’s warm, soft flesh and began to itch it.

  The itching started in his chest and rapidly spread to his armpits and then down his sides and over his shoulders. Once it had engulfed his entire back, it shot down his arms. Even his hands, which were uncovered, and his lower legs, which were encased in leather boots, began to itch in sympathy with the rest of his body. It was unbearable.

  “Get it off!” he howled in a regrettably unmonarchical manner. “It itches! Get it off!”

  The royal weavers struggled to extricate him from the mass of fabric, finally collapsing in a sweaty heap in the throne room, with the Warmest Coat in All Ytrisk threatening to smother them en masse.

  Boric tore off his clothing and spent several minutes scratching every inch of his skin. At last he spoke. “What is the meaning of this?”

  The head of the royal weavers got to his feet. “Sire, it is the finest in Ytriskian wool. Unmatched in warmth, durability, and, unfortunately, itchiness.” He walked to a window. “Behold, your highness. The Ytriskian sheep.”

  Boric glanced out the window. Kra’al Brobdingdon was located at the edge of the city, overlooking the treacherous but verdant hills to the north. Following the head weaver’s gesture, he located a grassy knoll strewn with rocks. Some fifty sheep occupied the knoll. Half of them were eating while the other half appeared to be rolling about on the rocks in a very unsheeply manner.

  “By Varnoth,” muttered Boric in dismay. “What are those sheep doing?”

  “They are itching,” the head weaver replied. “Centuries ago, the Ytriskian shepherds were instructed to breed the sheep with the Warmest Wool in All Ytrisk. As you see, they succeeded. However, no other considerations were taken into account, and today the Ytriskian wool is so itchy that even the sheep can hardly stand to wear it.”

  As Boric watched, one of the sheep stood at the edge of a crevice, its dim sheep eyes surveying the gap, its small sheep brain weighing its options. After a few seconds, the sheep gave a short bleat and then leapt into the chasm below. Boric could have sworn that he saw a look of relief on the sheep’s face.

  “This shall not stand,” growled Boric. “What of the Peraltic wool?”

  “The Peraltians have stopped trading with us,” said the head weaver. “They are allied with the Skaal, who as you know are still upset over our trade agr
eement with the Blinskians.”

  “Is that so?” asked Boric, rubbing his beard with his fingers.

  Three days later, the Kingdom of Ytrisk was at war with the Kingdom of Skaal. As any historian will tell you, wars tend to be the result of any number of complex socioeconomic and political factors, but to the extent that this war could be said to be about anything, it was about the Itchiest Coat in All Ytrisk.[2] The nominal goal of the war was to take control of Kra’al Weibdrung, a poorly insulated observation tower in the Dagspaal Mountains just over the River Ytrisk, which marked the uneasy border between the Kingdom of Ytrisk and the Kingdom of Skaal. From Kra’al Weibdrung, the Skaal could see what the Ytriskians in northern Ytrisk were up to, which at any moment was mostly trying to keep their sheep from committing suicide.

  Still, the Ytriskians resented this lookout tower, considering it an incursion on their territory. Boric the Implacable was determined to oust the Skaal from Kra’al Weibdrung because it would demonstrate to all the Old Realm that the Ytriskians weren’t going to take their shit anymore. And once Ytrisk had demonstrated its non-shit-taking-ness, the Peraltians might rethink their alliance with the Skaal, or at least occasionally overlook it and send a few nonsuicidal sheep their way. Anyway, that was the plan.

  Unfortunately, Kra’al Weibdrung was an eighty-foot tower with sheer rock walls. It had one entrance, which was only accessible by scaling a two-hundred-foot cliff in full view of the famed Archers of Kra’al Weibdrung, who were known for being able to skewer a sheep from three hundred yards.[3] Kra’al Weibdrung was, for all practical purposes, impenetrable. The only way to take Kra’al Weibdrung was to cut off the Skaal supply route and wait for the archers to die of starvation. And that’s exactly what Boric the Implacable and his retinue of soldiers did.

  The Skaal, for their part, weren’t about to try to send supplies up a two-hundred-foot cliff; it was hard enough to keep the tower supplied when nobody was trying to kill them. The Skaal realized shortly after they’d finished building Kra’al Weibdrung that they had made a terrible mistake: the fort was nearly impossible to keep supplied and in any case taught them nothing about the Ytriskians other than the fact that their sheep were seriously troubled. They’d have been glad to desert Kra’al Weibdrung if it weren’t for the loss of face that would ensue. The Skaal archers, knowing that no supplies were forthcoming, decided to take the offensive.

  The two hundred or so Skaal who had been walled up in the tower rappelled down the cliff under the cover of night. They took cover and the next morning their crack archers shot volley after volley of arrows at the two hundred or so Ytriskian aggressors, who waited a hundred yards across the plain. The archers, being accustomed to shooting from great altitudes at large, slow-moving, easy-to-spot animals with brains the size of tangerines and almost no will no live, found their skills wanting against the men across the field wearing metal shirts. The men in metal shirts, for their part, quickly tired of having their metal shirts dented by arrows and charged.

  The Skaal didn’t stand a chance. Besides being out of practice at anything other than playing cards and firing arrows into sheep, they had as their leader a cowardly imbecile by the name of Captain Randor. It had been Captain Randor’s idea to advance on the Ytriskian belligerents, but once the battle started, he was nowhere to be found. In contrast, Boric the Implacable led the Ytriskian charge with a battle cry that struck fear into the hearts of the Skaal warriors — even the one who had once skewered a sheep from three hundred yards. The Ytriskians slaughtered half the Skaal and disarmed the remainder, sending them home to report to King Sharvek in Skaal City about the fall of Kra’al Weibdrung.

  Boric handpicked a contingent of his most expendable soldiers to man the tower of Kra’al Weibdrung, and together they scaled the cliff wall. The men waited at the foot of the tower while Boric climbed to the top of the tower to address them. He walked to the edge of the parapet and began, “Brave men of Ytrisk — ”

  He had intended his address to be somewhat more comprehensive than this but was forced to cut it short, having been stabbed between the ribs with a broadsword. Captain Randor, it seemed, had been hiding under a pile of rubbish at the rear of the tower and had been compelled by his cowardly and imbecilic brain to stab Boric the Implacable in the back. Captain Randor was one of the few who had not yet heard what a stupendous badass Boric was. That was about to change.

  Boric spun around, blood spewing from fresh gashes in both his chest and his back. He calmly drew his sword, took two steps toward Randor and sliced his head clean off. Randor’s head and body fell separately to the cold stone floor, with a thud! and a tink!

  This latter surprised Boric. Military men were supposed to thud! or clank! to the ground. Only sedentary nobles and merchants tink!ed.

  Boric, feeling dizzy and light-headed, shambled toward Randor’s corpse, which was still making an impressive effort to pump blood to Randor’s head. His head unfortunately lay some three feet away — an insurmountable distance for even the most robust circulatory system. Wheezing and coughing up blood, Boric felt underneath the corpse, finding a small cloth purse full of coins. He tore the purse from Randor’s belt, spilling its contents on the stone: forty gold coins. Boric’s mind reeled: setting aside the fact that no soldier would carry that much money into battle, no soldier would have that much money, period. Each of those coins represented a month’s wages for a Skaal captain.

  Before he could fully analyze the situation, Boric fell to the cold stone floor, dead. Boric’s reputation as a badass unmarred by the desperate final act of a cowardly imbecile, his spirit readied itself for its journey to the Hall of Avandoor, where he would enjoy an eternal banquet with the other stupendous badasses throughout history. He hoped to sit next to Greymaul Wolfsbane or, in a pinch, Hollick the Goblin-Slayer. On second thought, Hollick the Goblin-Slayer seemed, from what Boric knew, to be the sort who would hog all the mead. Boric would insist on sitting near Greymaul. Surely his slaying of the Ogre of Chathain twenty years earlier, if not the decapitation of Randor, had earned him that much.

  Boric couldn’t hear the shouts of the men below, who didn’t realize he was dead and were nervously handing him possible lines for his speech. “I salute you for your brave, uh, service to Ytrisk,” one of them offered. “I declare this a national holiday with, um, free beer,” another suggested. “And dancing girls!” shouted a third.

  All Boric heard were the haunting cries of a Wyndbahr — one of the great, white, winged bears that served as steeds to the Eytriths — the spirits who escorted warriors to the hallowed Hall of Avandoor. The Wyndbahr alighted with a thump on the stone floor next to Boric, its giant, bird-like wings pushing powerful gusts of wind over Boric. The Eytrith leapt from its back. She was a fierce-looking woman, tall and beautiful, and bathed in a sort of bluish-gray light. She wore fine-meshed chainmail and a silvery breastplate that made her cleavage into an inviting crevasse between two vast, snow-covered hills. Her blond hair was braided in a ponytail that reached her waist.

  “Boric of Ytrisk,” she intoned, “thou hast been summoned to the Hall of Avandoor!”

  “Kick ass,” Boric replied, unable to contain his enthusiasm. Wondering if there was a rule against fraternizing with the Eytriths, he got to his feet.

  Actually, his feet remained exactly where they were; his spirit was now standing over his body, regarding the pierced husk of flesh with some derision. “Good riddance!” he said, giving himself a kick in the ribs. He was surprised to see the corpse jerk in response to the blow.

  “Boric! There is no time to lose!” the Eytrith hissed. “Thou must mount the Wyndbahr!” She was already back on top of the great winged beast.

  “Right,” said Boric. “Mount the Wyndbahr.” He moved toward the creature, but something was holding him back.

  “Be not afraid,” said the Eytrith, patting the creature on the neck. “He biteth not.”

  “Afraid!” howled Boric. “Boric the Implacable fears no creature on Earth or in
heaven! I just can’t seem to…”

  The problem, it was becoming clear, was that Boric had died clutching his sword, and his brain had never had a chance to issue the order to release his grip. Boric, the spirit, was holding the sword as well. While death had broken the connection between Boric’s flesh and spirit, the flesh-hand and spirit-hand still overlapped on the hilt of the sword, and now he was playing tug-o-war over the sword with his own corpse.

  “Thou will have to drop the sword,” said the Eytrith.

  “Drop my sword!” cried Boric. “A warrior does not enter the Hall of Avandoor unarmed!”

  “We can get you a new sword,” said the Eytrith, dropping her formal tone. “Seriously. We need to go. I’ve got six more warriors to deliver today. If I show up late, they start wandering around, scaring the shit out people. And if they wander too far, I can’t find them, and I get behind schedule. Please, for Grovlik’s sake, just drop the sword!”

  Boric was stubbornly attempting to pry the sword from his cold, dead fingers. “Damn you,” he growled at himself. “Let go!”

  But Boric the Implacable was as stubborn in death as he was in life, and he wasn’t about to surrender his sword — not even to his own spirit. For this was no ordinary sword: it was one of the seven Blades of Brakboorn — designed by the Elves of Quanfyrr, forged by the Dwarves of Brun, and blessed by the Gnomes of Swarnholme.[4] This sword, known as Brakslaagt, was the blade that slew the Ogre of Chathain, minced the Trolls of Trynsvaan, and banished many a chunk of salted pork that had been stuck between Boric’s molars. He wasn’t about to leave it to be buried with this pathetic meat-sack.