Middenly Charms

© 2017 by Walter Reimer


A hearty thank you for the use of characters by  eocostello set in  tegerio’s Realm of Faerie universe!

Thumbnail arts by  tegerio, with color by  marmelmm!


Part 17.



Ugh.

That’s about all I can say, thinking back on it. Taking a magically-impelled dive into a castle midden should be nobody’s idea of fun.

I hit the surface with a nasty sound like a post-ball landing in mud, which had the benefit of breaking my fall. It was also fairly liquid, which had the benefit of completely saturating my uniform and fur with fermented spraint. In sum, pretty much a good news, bad news situation.

I broke the surface gasping for air, and desperately wishing that my nose would go away and come back only when it had something pleasant to smell. It was a very dirty buck that clawed for the edge of the pool and finally succeeded in crawling out onto the grass. I lay there for a few minutes while I tried to figure out what the Netherhells had happened.

“Here, Cinneadh, look at this,” and I opened one eye to see two wolves in filthy, stained work clothes looking down at me. “Some’un’s tossed awa’ a perfectly guid deer, they have.”

“Are ye certain, Penda m’lad? Och, ye’re richt,” and first wolf’s coworker prodded me in the ribs with his rake. “’Ee, Penda, I think ‘ee ain’t deed, ye ken.”

“He ain’t?” Penda pinched his nostrils shut as he bent down a bit closer. He didn’t pinch them in time, though, and sputtered through his mouth. “Bdbdbdbdbdb, are ye alright . . . Buck?” he asked in a very nasal voice.

I sat up and said as he stepped back, “I think so.” I muttered a cantrip or two and the effluvium that I had been dunked in sloughed off me in a wave to puddle around me. Luckily it hadn’t had time to harden. I managed to get to my hooves and applied a few more cantrips after stepping clear of the puddle. The nastiness that had gotten into my fur, my ears, up my nose (yech!) was removed very quickly, thank Fuma.

The smell? Not so much, and I resolved to get a bath before I did anything else.

I paused as I went around a corner of the castle wall to get something not immediately identifiable but clearly nasty out of my hooves, and placed a paw against the stones to steady myself.

And immediately threw myself away from the wall, huffing and puffing to blow out the flames that abruptly appeared on my paw. I had forgotten the layers upon layers of wards that covered the castle’s defenses. I sat up and picked what appeared to be a feral neck bone from between my hooves, got to my feet and went in search of a bathtub.

Two hot baths scented with pine oil helped (barely), so I got back into my Elfhame Rangers uniform. The clothing seemed to lose the odor a bit easier than my fur. Fortified by another cup of strong tea, I went in search of the guides that I was told at breakfast would be available for us.

Finding a guide was a simple matter. I just walked up to one of the guards, a tall and powerfully-built fellow who was in plate armor with a full helm that obscured his features. “Excuse me,” I said, resisting the urge to knock on the guard’s breastplate (I didn’t see any sign of a doorbell), “I was wondering if I might have a guide assigned to me.”

Much to my surprise, the guard doffed the helm, revealing that it was a femme. The wolfess gave me a look like she’d just found an interesting form of insect life and asked in a gruff tone, “A guide, tha say? Why?” She tucked the helm under one arm and rested a paw on the sword at her hip.

“I wish to tour the High Lair, and visit the Hall of the Dishonored,” I replied, recalling what Prince Erik had called the place.

“Och aye?” She gave me another hard stare. “Wait here, sirrah,” and she walked off, returning a few moments later with a decrepit-looking fellow who had a slovenly look about him. “Here’s a Docent,” she said tersely, and stalked off, leaving the two of us looking at each other. Under his cloth-of-silver robe, he looked rather thin and under fed.

“Docent?” I asked.

“It means I docent get paid,” the fellow said in a smooth, oily tone. “Ye wish t’see th’ Hall of th’ Dishonored? Follow me, then.” He sniffed at me suspiciously as he walked past, but shrugged, and we started off.

“Been on this job long?” I asked, trying to make small talk.

“Ever since Grand Duke Malcolm.”

“What happened to him?”

He glanced back at me. “He’s gorn orff.”

“Where did he go?”

An ear dipped. “That’d depend on what sort o’ life he led, Master o’ Elfhame. Knowin’ Malcolm, though, he’s sittin’ in sommat warm an’ uncomfortable.” His shoulders shook as he chuckled quietly to himself. “As Unseelie an ol’ bugger e’er ye met. He’d have this ring on his right paw, y’ken, an’ he’d twist it ‘roond ‘fore shakin’ paws.”

“Yes?”

The Docent chuckled. “Auld Malcolm could crush silver-steel cups with that paw.”

“Oh, I get it now.” I’ve known a couple of furs who would do that.

“Randy auld bugger, too,” the wolf prattled on. “Some say that he had a couple hoondred bastards. He’d tell ye tha, straight.”

“Aye, an’ ye’d get it frae him, sairtain,” came a voice from above us as we entered a high-ceilinged hall, and my ears went straight up as the Docent looked up crossly.

Above us, hanging upside down, was another wolf, this one even scrawnier than the Docent. I had thought he was hanging by his heels, like my old friend Estvan Silverbrush, until I noted the rope that was knotted around his ankles. “What are you doing up there?” I asked.

“Hangin’ around,” the lupine said. His voice sounded a bit odd, and I chalked that up to his awkward position.

“And ye’ll likely stay there till Her Grace deigns to shoot ye doon,” the Docent growled. “Master, allow me ta introduce th’ steamin’ canine hangin’ upsy-doon frae the ceiling. He is, an’ I’m quotin’ from the latest issue o’ Jane, the Lowfolk Femme, Count Seumas ‘Nadgers’ MacMoriarty, the defending seven-time belchin’ champion an’ spokesfur fer stoomach remedies.” The unfortunate Count gave a soft belching howl in response.

“What did you do to get up there?” I asked.

“I offered Her Grace a super, top secret spell.” MacMoriarty said, “which I’ll offer ta ye fer a price.”

I was a bit intrigued, just as a professional matter. I actually had no intention of buying something that could be construed as a state secret. Still, no harm in asking a few questions. “A price, eh? How much?”

“We’re willin’ ta sell it ta ye,” the Docent said, “fer th’ low, low price o’ six hunnerd in gold.”

Six hundred?!

Must be quite a spell. “If I spend that, I need to know what I’m getting,” I said reasonably. “What is it?”

“It’s secret.” MacMoriarty wagged his tail, and started to slowly spin around.

“I presume, then,” I said, “that if I buy it from you, I get the secret.”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“Ye get th’ business,” the Docent supplied helpfully as, with a bit of paw- and arm-waving, the suspended wolf managed to re-orient himself.

“It’s a secret?” I asked. MacMoriarty nodded. “Even from you?”

“Aye.”

“Isn’t that a bit, well, you know, odd?”

The Docent said, “Truth in advertisin’, laddie. Elves dinnae lie.”

“Ayyyye,” MacMoriarty said happily. “I said I’d sell ye a secret, an’ by th’ Alpha’s Toeclaws, it is!” The look on my muzzle must have mirrored some skepticism, and the strung-up wolf added, “Well if I TOLD you, it wouldn't be a secret any more.”

The Docent gave another sage nod. “That's how we ensure it's a secret. If no one knows what it is, it will always remain a secret.”

“That’s logic!” came from above us.

I had clearly been assigned a twit as a guide. “Tell me,” I asked, “Are either of you related to a family in the Empire, named Winger?”

There was a moment of contemplation before they both shook their heads in the negative, and the Docent rested a paw on my shoulder. “He’s been upside down for several days now, and all the blood’s rushed to his head.” He peered up at his acquaintance. “Clearly, all that blood’s in an unfamiliar place. Let’s move on to the Hall.”

“Thank you,” I said as we resumed our walk. “I’m told that there’s a memorial to Aelfric, the Great Wolf – “

“Aye, there is,” the thin wolf said, but added nothing to his reply.

The Hall of the Dishonored was on the eastern side of the High Lair, not far away from the Throne Room and the hall where we’d had dinner the previous night. Unlike the brilliant white walls next door, the Hall was made of gray, roughly-hewn stone, with the magically-powered lamps supplemented by the morning sunshine coming through high lancet windows. The entrance was graced with lupine skulls, a particularly large specimen directly over the doorway. “Who were these?” I asked.

My guide said, “Th’ last o’ th’ Auld Clans, slain by th’ Wolf Queen in th’ Long Ago.” I looked up at them again as we entered the Hall, resolving to tell the Wolf Queen’s current incarnation about the trophies of her last visit to the Gray Horde.

The memorials were arrayed along the walls, on the walls, and on balconies overlooking the main floor. A few were free-standing, and we headed for one group. “O’er there’s Laird Aelfric Hjort-for, or Deer-Fodder,” the Docent said as he pointed.

Laird Aelfric’s stone effigy wasn’t made of marble or granite. Instead it was made of sandstone, the Great Wolf shown wearing his clan tunic, plaid and kilt, and all of them looking as if they’d been soaked. He looked a bit undignified, prostrated on his belly with his rump in the air, tail between his legs and his kilt up over his back. The haft of a broken sword was in one paw, and the sculptor apparently wanted to make a point – parts of Aelfric’s stone arse were marked in red ochre, as if someone had been spanking or whipping him.

That ‘someone’ drew my attention, because it was supposed to be me.

Now, just to recap, I’m about five feet four inches from the bottoms of my hooves to the top of my head; i.e., without my admittedly misshapen antlers. I also don’t have the finest physique in the Shining Land; Netherhells, to my dying day I’ll never really understand what Anastasia sees in me.

Still, the amount of care the artist put into this likeness of me would surely garner him an ant-cart load of lawsuits for slandering every deer in Faerie – roe, farrow, red, whitetail, you name it.

First, it was made of granite, not sandstone, and towered over me. I guessed it stood over seven feet tall with a rack that easily stretched from one brawny shoulder to another. The physique – by the Lady, it could have rivaled one of Fuma’s Holy Consorts, with its Imperial and Royal Army uniform meticulously detailed and exact in every part.

The statue had its right hoof firmly planted on the back of Aelfric’s neck, its paws on its hips and head slightly back in a haughty posture. A phrase I read once – ’the sneer of cold command’ - curled the lips on its stone muzzle. By contrast, Aelfric’s expression was one of shame and humiliation.

A small metal plaque sat on a plinth near the sculpture group: Aelfric MacCedric. Washed out of the succession. The Docent gave a grim chuckle as he reread the inscription, and tucked his paws into his sleeves.

“Did – did Laird Aelfric have any immediate family?” I asked.

“Aye. Aeldred th’ Inept, his eldest cub,” the Docent replied. “Ye ne’er saw him, I’m thinkin.’ Got hisself lost tryin’ t’find th’ field.” He shrugged and rolled his eyes.

“So, he survived Mossford?”

“Aye, he were judged too clumsy to die with his sire. He were put in an unlocked room as punishment.”

I gave him the eye. “An unlocked room? How’s that going to help any?”

“Kept pushin’ on t’door, when th’ sign read ‘Pull.’” The scrawny wolf chuckled. “He’s now captain o’ th’ guard at th’ Wand’ring Gate. He’ll learn, by-and-by.”

He showed me a few more memorials, notably one of a magic-user who had pooked before he looked. Bits of the hapless fellow, primarily the tip of his muzzle, his tail and one paw reached out in supplication, protruded from the wall. A small sign by the paw admonished visitors to not use the paw to hang their cloaks on.

Altogether, both the idea of this hall, and the individual experiences that caused some furs to end up in the hall, were educational. A keen insight into lupine thought.

Especially grim humor.

Judging from the angle of sun through the windows, it was getting close to lunch, so I thanked the Docent, wished him luck in getting his associate down from the rafters, and said that I would be back to learn more about the Great Horde.

“Och, there’s a fair bit more t’see, Master o’ Elfhame,” he said. “Enjoy yer luncheon,” and he bowed to me before leaving the Hall.

In the distance, I heard bells as the Noon-Howl began.



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