Fractious (13 page)

"Cool!" Lug said, taking the thing. "What is it?"

"A watch."

"To watch what?"

"It's supposed to tell time," I said.

"What's time?"

My eyebrows shot up. I shook my head. "It's a belt."

"Cool!" He unhooked the strap and wrapped the thing around his waist. Surprisingly, it
actually fit. He buckled it in the last hole after sucking in his lack of gut and the watch face itself
covered a good part of his groin area. "Cool!" he said again.

"So can I take the horse?"

"What else you got?"

"Just the clothes on my back," I said.

"I'll take 'em."

"Um..."

After much negotiation, Lug accepted the offer of my shoes and socks plus the watch
and a large lock of my hair that he was now wearing as a wig. Bob the horse had no saddle but
was lashed with groceries. I also had to help Lug unload the groceries and get them in the house.
Afterwards, as I was pulling the reins up over Bob's nose, I said, "So what's with the purple
shirt?"

"Oh this?" he said, flapping the front of his livery. "This was my grandfather's. He used
to be a member of the king's guard."

"Oh," I said. "I thought they wore green top hats."

"They do now," Lug said. "They used to be sophisticated. Now they look like
dopes."

I nodded. I couldn't exactly disagree.

"So hey," Lug added as I led Bob over to a large rock to mount. "You said you were
searching for Amergin, right?"

"I'm supposed to kill him, yeah."

"Here's a hint. He hates peaches."

"Peaches?"

"Yeah," Lug said. "Don't know why but he
hates
them. With a passion."

"So what? I'm supposed to lob peaches at his head or something?"

Lug shrugged. "Dunno. I just know he hates peaches. Good luck!"

I got my legs around Bob's middle and turned his head around. Lug and his grandmother
waved goodbye as I kicked the horse and got him moving. I waved back, glad to have met them.
And I kept the peaches thing in my head, hoping that somehow it would come in handy. I
couldn't even begin to guess how throwing peaches was going to help me in any way, let alone
where in hell I would get peaches. I hadn't seen even one peach tree in all my time in Tuatha
Dé land. But I kept my eyes peeled for one as I rode.

* * * *

Bouncing along on the back of Bob, my ass ached and my balls complained, but I still
made good time. I got to the fork in the road and took the other path, following it carefully lest I
get lost. I soon discovered yet another sign post, except this one had legible signs. I took the path
that said it led to Black Mountain, hoping that this time I was headed in the right direction. The
other sign led to a town with the unlikely name of Unlikely. I thought it highly unlikely that Cu
and Crista had gone there, and I was right. At least, partly right.

I came across them at midday, startling Cu and Crista as well as the ponies, who both
bolted at the sight of me and Bob. Crista put her hand to her heart and Cu went running after the
ponies.

"Sorry!" I called after him, sliding off of Bob's back and rubbing my bruised ass.

"Where did you come from?" Crista said. "I thought we'd lost you for good."

I huffed. "Did that thought make you happy?"

"No," she said. "Cu kept propositioning me."

"Sorry," I said.

"It's okay. It's kinda flattering. Kinda."

Cu came back with both ponies in tow. "Where the hell did you get that
thing
from?"

"This is the sword we bought from Tat," I reminded him, gesturing to the sword that was
once again strapped to my back.

"Not that," Cu said, pointing even harder. "That!"

"Oh!" I slapped my forehead. "This is Bob. Say hi, Bob."

Bob lifted a foreleg and waved hello.

"Bob?" Crista repeated.

"I didn't name him," I said with a shrug. "Lug named him."

"Who is Lug?" Cu said. "W
hat
is Lug?"

"You were right the first time," I said as I sat down and continued to explain. When I
was done, we all stood back up and got on our way again, this time back to a group of three plus
ponies and now a horse with the unusual name of Bob.

We walked until nightfall, and by the time night fell, I knew we were going to be out in
the open. Crista had told me that she and Cu had stayed in the town with the unlikely name of
Unlikely the night before. In separate rooms, she assured me. The town wasn't too far from the
fork in the road. But this night...

"So are we really going to sleep out here, Cu?" I said as I tied Bob to a nearby tree. He
snuffled my hair and blew warm breath on my neck. I patted his nose and went to join Cu and
Crista.

"Where else do you expect us to sleep?" Cu said.

"I dunno. Couldn't we find a house or something? Pitch a tent?"

"What tent?"

I shrugged.

"What are you so afraid of?" Crista said.

"Who said I was afraid?" I answered, acting tough and puffing out my measly chest,
which deflated a moment later.

"Bob did," Crista said, pointing at the horse.

Bob shrugged his shoulders and suddenly became interested in an interesting patch of
green grass.

"Well, the old woman I met said there were things in the woods that would eat us," I
said. "Possibly slowly."

"That sounds unpleasant," Crista said. "But you have your sword."

"Yes," I said. "But that's what got me in trouble on the road."

"That's because you weren't paying attention," Cu said to me as he came into our vague
camp with an armload of fire wood. He set about clearing brush and making a teepee out of the
wood. "Fire'll keep the critters away."

"Ew, I hate critters," Crista said, shivering.

"You can sleep next to me," Cu offered, licking his lips in a less than sensual manner,
which made Crista shiver even more.

"That's okay," she said. "I'll take my chances."

"Hey, Fractious!" Cu called out to me. "Make yourself useful and help me get this fire
going. I got me a brace of pigeons to roast up."

"Won't that attract the critters?" I knelt beside him and banged two rocks together to
make sparks. "And what's a
brace
?"

"Eh," Cu said with a typical shrug, unwilling as always to answer what he considered to
be my stupid questions.

"Well, I don't want to be eaten," I said, drawing the sword from behind my back. "I'm
sleeping with this under my pillow tonight."

"You don't have a pillow," Cu reminded me.

"Oh... Yeah. Right."

We got the fire going and spitted Cu's two pigeons, which apparently made a brace,
even though I wasn't sure if that was only true of pigeons or if you could have a brace of other
things. They made a measly meal but at least we all ate a little. Cu even let me have some,
stating we were out of bread and he hadn't thought to buy any in Tara. I knew he was lying when
he pulled out a half loaf of bread and began munching on it.

"That's bread," I said. "You said we didn't have any more bread."

Cu looked down at the obvious loaf of bread. "This isn't bread," he told me. "It's...
salami."

I smiled, somewhat delighted. "Whatever."

Cu only continued to eat his bread, breaking off a piece to pass off to Crista when she
asked for some salami. Later that night, as the fire continued to roar, we sat around in
companionable silence, listening to the rustling in the woods around us. Crista moved closer to
me, and so did Bob the horse. The ponies shuffled closer to Cu, probably finding comfort in
someone more their size. The rustling grew more and more intense then suddenly the fire went
out in a
whoosh
!

I heard noises as I got to my feet, swinging my sword carefully lest I lop off the wrong
heads but my valiant efforts didn't last long. I heard Cu cussing up a storm then a loud thump
then a thump like something landing hard on the ground. I heard Crista give a tight scream then
another thump. Then I heard a thump and
felt
a thump on the top of my head.

I should have known. I really should have known, but even though I'd heeded the
warning given me by Lug and his grandmap, I still ended up hung upside down on a stick being
carried through the forest by little men who resembled the half-goat woman I'd seen in the orgy
city of Tara. I could hear shrieking which may or may not have been a foreign language but
somebody had hit me so hard over the head that things were a little fuzzier than usual. That
wasn't helping much of anything. That and the fact that my head kept hitting the ground as I
bobbed and bounced along.

When I finally was able to get my wits about me, which took a while, all things
considering, I could see Crista was in the same predicament as I was. She was being carried by
four large goat men. She seemed to be unconscious.

When I turned my head around as far as it would go, I could see Cu also tied to a stick.
Behind him, I could just barely make out Bob the horse, who was walking with his head hung
low, his nose brushing the ground. I assumed the two ponies were with him but I couldn't see
them.

We bounced and bobbed along for a while, and I listened closely to the shrieking dialect
of our captors in hopes that I could pick out a word or two, but all I could understand was,
"Shriek!" and "Shloom!" which didn't make much sense to me. After what felt like eons to my
head, which was filled with blood from being upside down for so long and still hitting the ground
on occasion, the group came to a clearing in the forest which was filled with huts made from
pine bark and branches.

The group of goat men dropped me like a ton of bricks, letting my head crash to the
ground. I tried to rub my head, but the fact that my hands were tied together made that
impossible. So I rubbed my head on the ground to try and regain my senses, but that only got dirt
in my eyes that I couldn't rub out. With eyes watering like fountains, I saw a couple of blurry
goat people come to me and cut my bindings.

I shot to my feet, fell over because my feet were still tied but managed to yell, "Now,
Bob!"

Bob just stood there, blinking.

"Damn it," I muttered just before I was surrounded. "Stupid horse."

Amidst shrieking and shlooming, I held up my hands, trying to make them see that I was
unarmed. That didn't seem to matter, since they began pointing pointy sticks at me. "What do
you want from me?" I finally bawled, halfway to sobbing.

"Don't provoke them," I heard Cu say from behind me.

I turned, managed to get to my feet and sought refuge behind him after a good amount
of hopping. "Who are they?"

"The Goat People," Cu said.

"Really?" My voice cracked. "Nobody could think up a better name for them?"

"What better name could there be?" he said. "They've got goat legs and goat feet and
people torsos and people heads with goat horns growing out of them. Goat. People."

Crista decided to come to at that moment. She sat up in the dirt, groaning and holding
her head.

"Crista!" I called. "Are you okay?"

"Aside from a massive headache, I'm fine," she said. Then she looked around. "Oh yeah,
aside from all these funny goat people dancing around me."

The Goat People were doing just that; dancing around her. They were shrieking and
shlooming and throwing their hands up in the air, and waving their pointy sticks in the air too.
Crista staggered to her feet, which was easy for her since her feet were not tied, and the Goat
People all looked up into her face. Then suddenly they were all on their knees with their
foreheads to the ground, circled around her.

Crista looked at me with wide eyes but all I could do was give her the same wide eyed
look. One particular Goat Person stood up before all the others. He wore a feathery hat on his
head and bells around his fetlocks. He shloomed at Crista and pointed at her head with his pointy
stick.

"What do they want, Cu?" Crista said, as she tried to back away from the Goat Person
with the stick. "I really don't want to be shish kabob."

Cu listened closely to the shrieking and shlooming of the Goat Person, his head cocked
and his eyes thoughtful. After a moment, he said, "No clue. Sorry!"

"What do I do?" Crista cried, sounding a bit panicky.

"Show 'em your boobs!" Cu suggested.

"Not what do you want me to do!" Crista yelled back, now holding up her hands and
trying to appear innocent. "What do
they
want me to do?"

"Do a little dance!" I suggested.

"What?"

I did a little demonstration shimmy.

Crista followed my lead but this only seemed to anger the dancing Goat Person and his
pointy stick jabbed at her stomach. Crista stomped a foot on the ground and reached out to grab
the stick. She caught hold of it between her hands and yanked it out of the free hands of the Goat
Person who was tormenting her. She jabbed back and the Goat Person jumped away, the bells on
his feet jangling loudly. The other Goat People suddenly jumped to their feet and began roaring,
"Shloom!" at the top of their lungs.

"Well, hey now!" somebody cried out from somewhere behind me. Everybody turned in
that direction, including me. A tall, lanky man wearing pink stretchy pants and a white silk shirt
was approaching us with a saunter that was unmistakable flamboyant. "Who are these lovely
folks you've brought me?"

The Goat People suddenly stood in orderly fashion, lined up in rows with their spines
straight and their chins up. The bell-laden Goat Person came forward and bowed his head,
running through a string of animated shrieks. He pointed back over his shoulder at us.

Crista had joined Cu and me and was standing behind us, peeking over my shoulder,
although she would have gotten an even better view over Cu's shoulder.

The man in the pink pants flipped his wrist at the bell laden Goat Person, who moved
out of his way. "I'll see for myself," he said as he approached us. "Hey, ya'll."