Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ The Battle of Barding ❯ The Battle of Barding ( Chapter 1 )

THE BATTLE OF BARDING

By Reanna King

It all started with an uncanny desire to wear a hat with bells on it.

“How can you say that? How can you resist the bright, cheerful jingling of bells?”

No, that wasn't it. It wasn't my wish to don musical headwear. It was when I started trying to entertain people at the most inappropriate of times.

“Speaking of funerals, I have a delightful skit pantomiming a narcoleptic dragon falling on an old woman and her grand-daughter. Now this dragon…”

No, that wasn't quite it either. It was the songs.

“Dagen was an ineffectual lad,

Emptied his chamber pot late one morn.

Looked a bit cross

Well, that's his loss

“If he doesn't—wait! No!”

When it came to my friends emptying their pot, I did not wish again to be mistaken for a gutter. Unfortunately I found these lyrical outbursts to become more and more uncontrollable over the course of the months I became infected with the disease that scourged our formerly peaceful village of South Sable.

South Sable, in the northern regions of the kingdom of Jigsaw and the smallest settlement in the duchy of Bytre, was run by the families of thieves and rogues who'd decided to settle down. I'd moved there just a few years ago when I'd turned twenty, and while I was not a thief or the ancestor of one, the people of South Sable welcomed all outsiders with open arms, in exchange for a small fee—which was more often than not taken from us unexpectedly and while we weren't looking. Indeed, the village of South Sable had some odd customs, but I found it to be an idyllic paradise with its narrow little paths lined with brush that thrived with brilliant leaves and flowers, small quaint hovels and meandering streams, all surrounded by rolling knolls and sunny forest. However, that was all shattered by the Barding Sickness.

Now, the name of the affliction somewhat explains itself, but just telling what it does cannot begin to describe its horror. One by one, our village's citizens woke up one day to find themselves becoming minstrels and jesters, feeling uncomfortable in anything but colorful, gaudy clothing (I felt insecure to the point of paranoia if my shoes did not have pointed toes) and becoming inconsolably depressed if not allowed to sing someone's praises or tell jokes from time to time. I had become a fool, despite my friends' insistence that I had always ascribed to that profession.

What's worse is that I found out these insuppressible urges came at the worst possible time, my sense of judgment completely blinded. I found myself horrified when I started reciting bawdy limericks after my neighbor told me his daughter had been carried away by a demon, but it was literally impossible to stop it. When the daughter returned professing her love for the demonic lad and declaring her engagement to him, I offered to play at the wedding, utterly mystified why her father was not as happy as she and refused to pay for the ceremony.

This was a horrible development. I didn't want to be a bard; my dream was to be a town crier: Fellik, the greatest town crier in the kingdom! Every evening I dreamed of becoming employed in Sela, the great magical capital of Jigsaw and amazing everyone by crying all the way to the tallest tower in the palace! If only the royal family had a princess for me to marry instead of two princes, my fantasy would be complete. For love truly was the reason for all of my aspirations. It was the only thing in my idyllic life that I lacked.

But it mattered not. Until a cure was devised, my life ambitions would have to wait, especially since my friends regretfully asked me to leave our humble hovel, being unable to withstand my affliction for any longer, accentuated with a firm, but surprisingly gentle kick to the rear.

It had been almost two months since I left South Sable, and I now dwelled in the Howling Woods, not far to the south. You see, the Howling Woods has the strange property of producing anguished moaning and screaming noises that no one has been able to find the source of. Other than that, it is quite beautiful, and groans of anguish are surprisingly musical if you think about it. I and a number of other afflicted individuals from South Sable and nearby towns like Nai, Asher and Juste formed a bit of a settlement there—that I, personally, thought to be at least as quaint and idyllic as South Sable with the added consolation not needing to keep a constant vigil over my purse. While I admitted it was still crude, and a week into our daily meetings we were still working out what to call it and what our patron deity should be, I honestly believed our progress to heave been steady and productive. By gods, I wanted to believe it.

At the moment, the entire village was—well, I'd like to call it “humble.” It consisted of a single canvas tent erected by the few of us who'd arrived first. I imagined that more would join us as soon as they managed to dance, juggle and otherwise perform their way to the Howling Woods, which was surrounded by some inhospitable territory: Like the Gibbering Hills which will leave anyone who stays too long speaking incomprehensible gibberish and the Swamp of Dire Poets, a muddy, dark glen haunted by the souls of poets whose work was so depressing they were exiled to live and die there.

“Well, by nature we've got a strange quirk that will trip up wanderers and traveling parties of heroes, causing hilarious hijinks to distract them momentarily from their quest,” Ahji said. “Every town needs that, for that is best.” Ahji was an old man of tradition afflicted with poetry recital. Unfortunately, his rhymes lacked about as much life as did his skin (it resembled the tanned leather I often saw in the market), and he was expelled from his home after a failed attempt to rhyme “table” with “feeble” at a public recital caused a woman to black out, several small children to cry and the dogs in nearby neighborhoods to howl and bark for hours.

Byura nodded firmly. “I agree.” Byura, a well-built farmwoman—so tanned was this woman that if she outstretched her arms, they looked like tree trunks and her fingers like powerful, gripping roots— was cursed with the urge to juggle. No object she could pick up was safe, and some say she once attempted to juggle her town's temple of Seibra and had managed to remove four bricks before she'd snapped out of it. Even now she eyed the pile of firewood outside our makeshift canvas and wood pole shack hungrily, like a gryphon eying a mound of treasure.

I sat silently, listening to the conversation, trying deep in my heart to convince myself that we were actually accomplishing something. It was rather like meeting a demon in a dim alleyway and trying to believe he just meant to sell you flowers or apples (Demons, as a rule, are not only notorious for their ferociousness but their stubborn refusal to take into account the sexual preferences of their victims.). However, there was one fortunate consolation, and one voice of sanity among us: a young elven woman with milky smooth skin and black hair that flowed over her delicately pointed ears down to her shoulders like a waterfall at midnight. It drew one in with its darkness as much as her cool, calm gaze. How I wished to sing her praises and declaim fate's cruelty for not allowing her beauty to shine on me until then!

“Why are we already making long-term plans?” she asked. “This may wear off, and all we'd have to do is camp out here until it blows over—speaking of blowing, did you hear the one about the wolf and the pigs?” The elf girl paled in horror at her comedic outburst. “Oh gods, not again…”

The origin of the barding disease itself always remained a mystery, but some thought it was a side effect of a magic storm, a sudden flux in an area's magical energies that caused random and strange occurrences. The effects of these mysterious squalls usually wear off eventually, but in the mean time, the northern part of the kingdom, where the affliction had spread, was in chaos where the disease was most prevalent. “Do not fret,” I said softly, far too nervous to lay a hand on her delicate shoulder. “We shall plan for the worst but hope for the best.”

The young woman, my midnight violet, fidgeting madly with the hem of her dress to keep from juggling the fruit at our table turned to me with a mystified look. “Like?”

“Like… building a stage! Wait, no!” That wasn't what I meant! “We need to establish the necessities!”

She smiled, like the moon emerging from behind a storm cloud, or gentle, sparkling ripples lapping at a lakeshore at sunset. “Like shelter, trade with other settlements… For food, materials, textiles…”

I nodded. “… and bells for our hats! - no!” These slips of the tongue were getting embarrassing.

Byura gestured to me, barely stopped by the uneasy pause. “I think what Fellik means to say is that we are currently juggling—” She twitched visibly. “… many tasks.”

“Instruments!” called a voice vehemently from the far end of our makeshift table. “Especially dulcimers and mandolins! And horns… flutes…”

While he muttered on, I stood up to try to calm the storm of suggestions I had unwittingly conjured. I wanted desperately to just run out there, but I was hopelessly entangled in this now. Without a cure, I had as much hope as a single strand has of wriggling free of a tapestry. “Shut up! For just a second!” I hollered, not daring to look any of them in the eyes, instead focusing the patterns the moss grew in on a felled tree outside. My voice echoed through the depths of the Howling Woods and changed to an anguished scream that pierced the silence commanded by my outburst, fading to a sickly gurgle at the end. I could imagine producing a similar sound if impaled through the neck with a red-hot barbed spear.

That calmed things down nicely. We resolved to elect a mayor of our town, which after minimal discussion was dubbed “Barding.” No one there was really qualified to lead much of anything more than a performance of “My Lady, She Smelleth Like A Fishmonger `Neath Her Dress,” if that. Not even sure how I got to be the head of this meeting, I realized with no small amount of chilling distress that I might be elected to the position of mayor, tethering me inescapably to these people. I didn't want to have to actually do anything! The silent faces that stared back at me with dumbfounded reminiscence of a granite slab did little to reassure me that any of them felt differently.

However, a solution presented itself to me with such suddenness for a moment I floundered mentally, contemplating which deity to thank for the revelation. Lagan, the barrel-chested, bush-bearded man whose forearms took up much of our makeshift table—and could probably split it in half if he were promised a pint of ale if he succeeded—was the assistant to the captain of the guard of the Duchy of Prill. Surely, he would be suitable for an office of authority! “Lagan, do you—”

He held his chin, his hand buried in his peppery, graying beard like he was searching for something. “Have an opinion as to a suitable leader?” Feeling my plan slip away, I opened my mouth to correct him, but he immediately added, “I do…”

He set his lower jaw firmly as if expecting it to be punched, and stated, “We need... a trebuchet.”

A trebuchet! I trusted his logic. If anyone looked like he could straighten us out, it was him. Still, part of me was skeptical. Perhaps offering to sing his praises would iron this whole thing out—no, plain words would have to do. “Lagan, I understand in your previous line of work you had better resources, but we can't afford a trebuchet.”

Lagan looked at me like a hand had sprouted from my forehead and waved its middle finger at him.

“Lagan. Er…” the raven-haired elf girl ventured, looking demurely into his eyes. How ironic it was she was the only one of our company I didn't know by name! I would sing her praises all night and into the golden morning! “What do we need with a trebuchet?”

For a moment, Lagan's gaze wandered about the little shanty like one watching a flitting fly. With a nod and placing careful significance into his short reply, answered, “Melons. People like to see melons launched from trebuchets. It's funny. And that having been said, I elect Fellik the major of Barding and delegate to him the acquisition of said trebuchet.”

I began to contemplate what kind of wizardry would make it possible for me to sink into the dirt floor.

With a jerk Byura raised a heavily muscled, darkly tanned forearm, almost looking as if she intended to strike Lagan with the back of her broad hand. “We can't even afford melons, you stupid ox!” she yelled past chapped, sneering lips.

Old Ahji spoke up, his creased jowls creating the illusion of the speech ventriloquist dummy, and disappointingly enough, it turned out to be in verse. Ahji may have been cursed to speak in poems, but there was no poetry about him and his verse sounded exactly the same as his usual half-hearted muttering.

“That grubby man with the barrel chest

With waxy great ears and ale for blood

Picks the frail and effeminate as best

To lead us wandering through the mud!”

He scoffed. It sounded more like a labored grunt than a nonchalant display of scorn, and a bit of silvery hair blew airborne before coming back to rest on his dark, furrowed brows. “If I didn't see us all doomed within the week I'd find it funny.”

I looked at Ahji. He didn't look like he'd even last that long. Hunched over the table like a vulture, his spindly talon-like fingers and bowed, birdlike arms gripped its edge as if he expected it to disappear at any moment. I was frail and effeminate?

At this moment in time, I had reached the point where one makes the famous assumption that their situation cannot worsen any further. Of course, the gods always seem to see that view as some kind of hubris and invariably make things even worse.

The wall in our crude shanty furthest from where I was standing collapsed. True, it had only been constructed of thick canvas reinforced with wooden stakes. But it was our thick canvas reinforced with wooden stakes, now reduced to a thick canvas slumped over Ahji and Lagan's heads and bowing ungracefully into a pile on the floor, and broken wooden stakes in the rough clutches of men who wore mismatched, disheveled clothing decidedly belonging to the profession of banditry.

“The village o' Barding, I pr'sume?” the middle one of the trio of cutthroats smirked.

They certainly were bandits, down to the last cliché gaps in their teeth. The three of them stood side by side like pillars in front of a temple: big, hard, and likely possessing a similar capacity for intelligent thought, or they would have realized that we were currently using the wooden stakes they now held to support our shelter. Or perhaps they were just naively inconsiderate, like a child who can't comprehend that the second piece of candy is for his sibling. I presented my theory to the bandits, politely yet resolutely, hoping for a peaceful resolution.

The largest of the bandits (though using a superlative to identify an individual in a group that all appeared to be at least twice my size seemed useless) spread a dark frown across his dark face, resembling a chasm cutting through a dusty field. “An' pr'aps you can't comprehend that I could tie yer legs in a knot wit' one hand and push yer head into your chest with th' other.”

That not seeming a comfortable position for my body to be situated in, I hurriedly amended my statement.

The young woman with the jet hair stood up, gods bless her. “You three seem capable enough. Why bother pestering people like us?”

The bandit to the leader's left, lanky but only in comparison to his companions bowed slightly with a crooked smile, baring what few teeth were contained in his mouth. “Well lady, we've had a bit a' trouble lately. Keep getting run down by miller's youngest sons and tomboyish peasant girls and pussycats in fashion'ble footwear lately.”

“Been a rash o' that goin' `round,” the third bandit added, nodding mournfully. He was squatter than the other two, but no less imposing.

With a possessive grunt, the second bandit waved the third off dismissively, not appreciating the interruption. “So we decided ta' start simple.”

“Start small,” the third clarified.

The leader of the three crossed his thick, rippling arms across his chest (which looked like he had tried to swallow a keg of ale sideways and got caught on the way down) and set his expansive chin. “An' a village is a village, e'en if it's just one li'l shack, an' we ransacked it in just a cuppla minutes! Thought a town a' jesters and minstrels'd fall quick, di'n think this quick!”

The third, squat bandit drew a kris dagger from a ragged leather belt crossed over his broad waist. “All we need is a li'l something ta' show for our trouble, and our reputation's set.”

I did not care for sharp objects, at least when there was a possibility of said object intruding on the privacy of my insides. Looking at the rest of my company, who had by now dug themselves out from under the canvas, I could see that resolving the conflict had been placed in my humble hands. Care must be taken, and tact was absolutely necessary.

“Are you completely stupid?” In hindsight, I probably could have chosen my words with a bit more care and tact.

“'parently yur cursed wit' singin' AN' bein' stupid!” Judging from the bandit leader's expression, the middle-finger waving hand living on my forehead had surfaced once again. His fist tightened around the handle of the club he held at his waist. “Jagger, Dren… how `bout you two take care a' these charmin' people? There's one thing I see here that's worth somethin' and it's mine!”

Upon assessing his horrible, hungry expression, his intentions were clear.

“You cannot have our fruit, bandit,” Ahji finally spoke up.

“That right, you—what?” No, it was clear as a crystal dagger thrust into my heart that not only did the bandit leader have his sights set on the lovely black-haired elf girl, but that I was powerless to stop him! I had no weapons, let alone the skill to use them, and no magic at my disposal.

But then, there came a realization. I realized that no matter what fate I met with, I needed to do what was right. It was also true that I realized I didn't have much left to lose, and those with the least to lose could more often afford to be brave—or at least foolhardy. This flowed through me, making me feel quite profound. I interposed myself between the bandit leader and my pale forest flower, which I unfortunately realized was much like using a bucket to dam a river.

“Stay away, bandit! You shall not sunder her purity with your filth!”

The bandit's beady eyes stabbed into my heart. “What're you talkin' about? I want you, Puppie Pot!”

“P- puppie Pot?!” I squeaked with a feeble shudder. This, I thought with no small amount of bitterness, was a peril unspoken of in the tales of brave heroes who face all odds and as such was completely unprepared for this eventuality. But at any rate, the dagger started to look merciful.

He reached around with a hand that could strangle me all by itself, and firmly wrapped his fingers around my neck, which suddenly gained a childlike smallness by comparison.

“I'm sorry, you beast,” I managed to squeak out, “but I'm not interested in bestiality.”

The bandit's growling reply must have been enchanted with some kind of transmutation spell, because I could have sworn that it turned my knees to butter that would buckle under the slightest physical pressure. “If you wanna die,” he rumbled, “just say so instead a' wastin' my time.”

The young woman's sigh could easily have been heard through naïve ears as one of scorn for my rashness, but my trained ones recognized it obviously as a wistful sigh of almost breathlessness in the face of selfless bravery. I turned back to gaze into her cool, midnight blue eyes, neatly and conveniently turning my left cheek to receive a powerful swat from the bandit's other hand, sending me end over end into the dirt.

Once the world had stopped turning over on its end (which I thought inconsiderate considering my delicate situation) I was able to see that the rest of our company wasn't faring much better against the bandits. Even Lagan had been thrust back onto our crude table, turning it on its end until it came to a rest unceremoniously on his boulder-like chest and freeing the fruits from the woven basket they'd been sitting in.

They rolled and bounced off the table and frolicked through the dirt until they were trampled underfoot by Byura, her broad arms scooped up some of the falling apples and juggled them into the face of the nearest bandit, who had a very inhospitable-looking short sword drawn. Anything Byura picked up became a dangerous projectile.

Anji stepped up and began quite an epic poem but ended up rhyming “duty” with “today.”

“G- good gods!” the ganglier of the bandits gasped, clutching his midsection.

The shorter bandit doubled over, screaming along with the Howling Woods to drown out the dreadful poetry.

All around us the Howling Woods transformed the grunts and cries of battle to resounding screams and moans of agony. I had to do something—if nothing else, to distract myself. Resolutely, I donned my belled cap, now sodden with mud and speckled with dirt and grass, and drew forth my mandolin. The part of me that acknowledged I was infected with the dreaded barding disease tried to pull the rest of me back, but it was far too late: I began to sing.

“You desired to wreck and ransack, blood and gore

To destroy and maim and rape and pillage.

But upon yourselves, brought something more

When you ransacked this lil' village:

Our urge, it seems, to sing and be outrageous

You'll find to be undeniably contagious!”

By gods, it was horrible, but I didn't have time to do anything but improvise. The point was to at least make these villains nervous that if they remained in our company they'd become like us. However, the bandit leader seemed unfazed, and I barely leapt aside as his sword slashed, nicking my instrument and slicing a broad cut across my tunic.

“I cannot stand the song you've sung! I'll break yer legs and cut out yer tongue!” the bandit roared. Another apple fell to shuffling feet as he kicked it forcefully, sending it careening just past my face and splattering against a tree.

Obviously, he no longer finding me worthy of the epithet `Puppie Pot.' I'd have to try harder. I dodged around the fallen table, apologizing for treading on Lagan's hand.

“Consider this, ere you meet my fate!

Before my life from me you bereave—“

I ducked the bandit's next swing. His sword slashed through the canvas behind me with considerable authority.

“Turn back now, it's not too late!

You'll be dancing jigs if you don't leave!”

Yes. The rhythm and rhyme seemed adequate on that one. But still my foe pursued, his dagger slicing the air like a dragon's whipping tail.

With every failed attempt at cutting me apart, the bandit's rage grew, and veins stuck out on his neck and head like squirming serpents under his reddening skin. “Damned bard, yer mockery ends here! I'll have yer head fer a flagon wit' a handle from yer ear!”

“That hardly sounds sanitary!” I apparently was not so much focused on coordinating myself safely as quipping and singing—I tripped on an apple and flew backwards. I managed to catch myself on the upturned table, but my midsection was dangerously exposed, and with several bladed weapons being swung about in the area. I did not apologize to Lagan for stepping on his hand again, for I feared in my moment I would have my insides rudely spilled out by the bandit leader's dagger, and figured that before I died, I could save time by apologizing for both.

“Now, belled fool, yer luck's run out! I'll use yer skull t' hold my stout!”

I gulped. He really seemed set on that using-my-head-as-drinkware idea. Leaning backward, fed up with the edge of the table digging into the small of my back, the whole thing tipped back… and onto Lagan, who I realized as I tumbled to the ground beside him had just been rising to his feet.

“Hey. Jyllen. Was tha' a rhyme just now?” one of the leader's companions ventured to the leader.

“No `twasn't—urk!” Jyllen slumped onto the overturned table. Mercifully, Lagan still was covered with it, so he wasn't impacted directly by the falling bandit leader.

The voice of my lovely evening rose, holding over her head a now broken wooden stool, sung out, clear as flute music resounding through a misty swamp at night. How I desired to join my vocal accompaniment with hers in choral harmony! “Now get out! Or we will beat you so bad your own filth won't be able to identify your body!”

Surely, such grace and poise was normally only spoken of in legends and Ladies' Academy manuals.

Hopelessly tangled in the pile of table and Lagan, I was unable to even make a feeble attempt to stop the taller, lankier bandit as he seized the lovely young woman from behind, pulling her blouse so forcefully I feared he would tear it. “Stop right there, lovely elf! You're just making it worse for yourse--” The bandit made a face like he'd just noticed mold on food he'd half eaten.

“Were you about ta rhyme?” the stout bandit asked, pointing his dagger accusingly.

“Nah, I wasn't!”

“For the last time, I heard you rhyme!”

“Now yer doin' it!”

Jyllen staggered dizzily to his feet, trying in hopeless desperation to hold his head high and seem wholly indifferent about his situation, or the painful bruise that was surely forming on the back of his head. “Less' get arselves outta this rubble, these people ain't worth the trouble!”

I, too, pulled myself, gracelessly to my feet as the bandits conversed in increasingly clever rhyme about adding jesters to their groups of people to avoid, and in trying to conquer that nice safe hollow tree stump they saw a ways back. Unceremoniously, they stumbled away, attempting a confident swagger, but with the occasional retreating glance when they thought we weren't watching. The Howling Woods sighed-- a stiff evening breeze swept over our ruined camp as we wordlessly watched them withdraw.

Exhaling the breath I held while watching the bandits retreat, I examined the cut in my bright purple and blue shirt. It was a shame, but perhaps I could hire a magician to mend it with magic for me. Lagan, despite being shoved around and fallen on a fair bit, was the first to try to mend our shack. Beneath the rising canvas Lagan was attempting to tie to some nearby trees, I found myself, as sweet fate would have it, falling into the eyes of the elven woman, who was doing her best to pull together her torn blouse. She spoke, the sound of a soft wind signaling the oncoming chill of winter caressing a field of grass.

“You're a fool,” she smiled.

The smile melted away everything. The jealous cries of the Howling Woods, the broken table, the canvas, the trees all were drawn into her eyes, dark and soothingly cool like the bottom of a lake.

“Of course.”