How to Rescue a Dead Princess (2 page)

Then, as he watched, the kiriki picked up a large fallen branch in its mouth, turned around, and returned to the edge of the quicksand, holding the branch out for Randall to grab.

“I'll be gosh-darned to heck,” Randall remarked, taking hold of the branch with his free hand. The kiriki backed up, slowly but surely pulling Randall out of the quicksand onto solid ground.

Randall got to his feet, wiping some of the gunk off his shirt. The kiriki stood there, regarding him closely.

“You're not such a bad guy after all,” Randall told it.

The kiriki pounced, knocking Randall onto his back. Its cud-soaked jaws snapped at Randall's face as he desperately tried to push it away. Its claws scraped violently against his chest, causing Randall to gasp with pain. The creature snarled and growled as it viciously attacked him.

Then, with a burst of strength, Randall threw up both of his hands, slamming them against the underside of the kiriki's belly. It turned its head as flames jettisoned from its mouth, and the creature began to stagger away, coughing and choking.

Right into the quicksand.

As it realized it was caught in the muck, the kiriki began yelping in terror. Randall lay on the ground and meditated about how much his body was hurting. The yelping turned to a puppyish whimpering as the kiriki rapidly sank to its torso.

Randall looked over at it, and stared into its pleading eyes. This didn't particularly please him, because he was still supremely ticked off at the rotten little creature and didn't want to feel sorry for it.

“I'm sort of obligated to save you, aren't I?” Randall wondered aloud. “As much as I'd like to just let you sink.”

The kiriki howled in fright.

“Fine. I'll save you, then we'll be even.”

He picked up the same branch the kiriki had used to pull him out and extended it toward the creature. It latched its jaws tightly around the branch, and Randall, straining a bit with the effort, pulled it out of the quicksand.

The kiriki dropped onto its side and lay there, panting. Randall hesitated, then slowly began to approach it. The kiriki turned and looked at him gratefully.

“I have to leave now,” Randall told it. “Sir William is already going to rearrange my body so that my head never sees sunlight again.”

The kiriki whined. It twisted its head and tried to lick some of the quicksand off its scales.

“You'll be okay. Just find a waterfall or something to wash off in. I've got to get out of here.”

The kiriki continued to whimper pitifully. Randall sighed.

“You're going to get me in a lot of trouble, I hope you know. You better appreciate this. Tell all your kiriki friends.”

He knelt down next to the creature. It suddenly dove at him, snarling, trying to rip out his throat with its teeth. Randall smashed his fist into its chin, knocking its jaws together with a loud
clack
. The kiriki squealed and took off running into the forest, its tail tucked between its legs.

“Lousy mutt,” Randall grumbled, as he headed back to the castle.

“YOU'RE LATE,” said Sir William.

“And you're filthy,” added Princess Janice.

“And you smell terrible,” said Sir William.

“And you're tracking dirt all over,” added Princess Janice.

“And your shirt is torn,” said Sir William.

“And you didn't brush your teeth,” added Princess Janice.

“And your hair is uncombed,” said Sir William.

“And your earwax is leaking,” added Princess Janice.

“I should break your neck,” said Sir William.

“I should have him break your neck,” added Princess Janice.

Randall stared at the floor and tried to look ashamed. He could see his reflection in the smooth tile, and used it to adjust his expression to the proper degree of penitence. Mouth turned down slightly, eyes filled with regret, nose not involved. When it appeared Sir William and the princess were either done chastising him or pausing for breath, he looked up and favored both of them with his finely tuned expression.

“Wipe that ridiculous expression off your face,” ordered Sir William. “You look like you're about to give birth.”

Randall glanced down at his expression again. No, he looked ashamed all right. Perhaps gravity had disrupted the effect when he raised his head. He looked up again, this time making a great effort to hold the expression in place.

“How dare you give me that seductive look?” asked the princess. “You're not worthy to lick the dried lint from between my toes! I'll have your unappealing carcass thrown into the coal mines to test bats for rabies!”

“I'm sorry,” said Randall in a small, hopefully ashamed-sounding voice.

“That's better,” remarked Sir William. “Now go get cleaned up. Quickly! We can't have you escorting royalty looking like a vagrant! What will people say?”

“'Look, there's a vagrant escorting royalty. How tacky!'” offered Randall, helpfully.

“Sir William, go see that the horses are ready,” said Princess Janice. “I think your squire needs to be taught a lesson.”

An uproariously funny comment about giving his old teacher a call sprang into Randall's mind, but he had the good sense to squelch it. Then he decided that it wasn't nearly as amusing as it had seemed at first, and forgot it altogether.

Sir William exited the chamber, shutting the door behind him. After he left, the princess shook her head. “He really is a wiener, isn't he?”

Randall hesitated. Agreeing that a knight was a wiener didn't seem overly wise, even when the wiener status had been bestowed by a princess.

“It's okay,” she said. “You don't have to say anything that would result in Sir William showing you a guaranteed cure for masculinity. I just want to get out into the open that he's a jerk. When a man's a jerk, it doesn't matter if he's good-looking, as Sir William most certainly is. Really, when you think about it, so what if he has gorgeous eyes that just about bring me to my knees? And a smile that makes me tingle inside. What good is that if he's a jerk? Do you know what I'm saying?”

Randall nodded that he did.

“And those bulging biceps, that ripple when he walks? Who cares? I'm not even concerned with his chest of pure, throbbing muscle that glistens with wet, delicious beads of perspiration and is like solid steel when I run my hands along it.”

She shivered with excitement.

“And his rear? Oh, sure it's firm, perfectly-shaped, and tightly-packed. Sure, it makes my salivary glands lose control. Sure, I want nothing more out of life than to grab hold of it and just
squeeze
!”

She mimed this with both hands.

“But he's a jerk, so who cares?”

“Not me.”

“So if I scold you, it's simply because a princess must take a knight's side over that of a squire. It's not because I agree with him. And certainly not because I'm driven to the brink of madness with lust. Do you understand?”

“I believe so.”

“Good. Go get cleaned up. I need some privacy.”

HALF AN HOUR later, they were riding along the countryside. The princess was on her own horse, Squish III. Her body pressed forward into the wind. Her long, golden hair flew out behind her. Randall wondered if she'd notice later how much of it was missing.

She was a fairly attractive woman, which was interesting because everyone agreed that both the king and queen had more than a trace of canine in their appearance. At twenty, she was the youngest of the three princesses, and the only unmarried one. She was also the only one who had more than the brain power of lard. Princess Janice frequently acted as a diplomat between the nearby kingdoms, and had been responsible for such projects as the Pet Leash Law (revoked two weeks later when a certain dog owner got carried away with role reversal), organizing the Six Kingdom Music Contest (which, sadly, promoted a great deal of ill-feelings when the winning song was “Spank Me With Your Tongue"), and the very first September Fool's Day (also the last, though she couldn't possibly have foreseen the immense number of distasteful gags involving umbilical cords).

Randall was curious about what she was going to do in Rainey Kingdom, but neither she nor Sir William had volunteered the information, so he didn't ask.

They rode throughout the morning and well into the afternoon, stopping only for lunch and to give the horses an occasional back massage. Then, around three o'clock, a series of events was triggered that could best be described as “bad.”

“I don't recall this being here before,” said Sir William, bringing his horse to a stop. Randall and the princess stopped on each side of him. They were at the edge of a thick, dark forest. A trail led into the trees, but they could only see it for a few feet before it was engulfed by darkness.

“It wasn't,” agreed Princess Janice. “I've been this way several times, and there was never any forest. There's some sort of magic at work here.”

“Or an agricultural breakthrough,” added Randall.

There was a large wooden sign nailed to a tree. The nail looked suspiciously like bone, and the words looked suspiciously like blood. The wood was, mercifully, wood.
Beware! You Are About to Enter the FOREST OF DEATH
!

“I wonder what creative genius came up with that name?” Randall muttered.

“I'll go first,” offered Sir William.

“I'll ride in the middle,” offered Randall, “just in case they think the person in the safest position is the one they should attack.”

Sir William drew his sword. “Let us go. Slowly.”

Carefully, the three of them directed their horses down the path into the forest. All light seemed to vanish. They could hear the wind, but none of the leaves were rustling. Thud began to whinny softly, and Randall stroked the horse gently along its neck. This unexpected touch scared the living daylights out of the animal and caused it to rear up onto its hind legs, dumping Randall to the ground. Thud turned around and took off running back in the direction of Mosiman Kingdom.

“Are you all right?” Princess Janice asked. “How many fingers am I holding up?” She lifted her left hand and held up three fingers.

“Three,” Randall replied. He blinked. “On each hand.”

“Get up, squire,” said Sir William. “We haven't got time for this nonsense! Or any nonsense, for that matter.”

Randall sat up. Then he lay right back down again to make a more difficult target for the numerous arrows he could see pointing at them from amongst the trees.

“I think we have kind of a serious problem,” Randall noted.

An arrow sailed through the air, swishing right past Sir William's face. He turned Crunch around in the direction from which the arrow had been shot. “Come out and fight like a non-female!” he demanded.

Fifteen or sixteen non-females stepped out from their forest cover. Most of them were holding bows and arrows, ready to fire at the slightest provocation. Then, after an appropriately dramatic pause, the leader stepped out into the path directly in front of Sir William and Randall.

“A female,” muttered Sir William. “I've always hated irony.”

She was at least six feet tall, with an ugly scar that ran down her left cheek, crossed over her chin, went back up the other cheek, took a sharp turn to her nose, circled around one nostril, went down over her lips, did a figure eight where it intersected with the other part of the chin scar, then moved around her neck in a poorly-drawn smiley face.

“Make a move, we kill you,” she said.

“Thus explaining your reasoning behind having all these arrows pointed at us,” Randall observed.

Sir William started to tell him to shut up, but only got as far as “shu—” before something more important came to mind. “What do you want?” he asked.

“The princess,” the woman replied.

“You can't have her.”

“We've already got her.”

Randall looked around. The princess and her horse were gone without a trace. These people were efficient if nothing else.

“You will return her or face my wrath!” shouted Sir William.

“Oooh, I'm quaking in my bloodstained booties,” said the woman, trembling a bit to make sure the full brunt of her sarcasm reached him. “Maybe we'll give her back, maybe we won't. That all depends on you.”

“What do we have to do?” asked Sir William.

“For right now? Lose consciousness.”

The men who hadn't been holding bows began throwing rather large rocks, striking Sir William and Randall in the head and making the process of losing consciousness go by with very little effort.

RANDALL woke up from the recurring nightmare where he was in a public place wearing only a loincloth. Except this time the loincloth was replaced by poultry.

He was seated at the edge of a clearing, with both arms firmly chained to a tree. Sir William was seated next to him, also chained and still unconscious. At the other end of the clearing, maybe fifty feet away, Princess Janice kept with the chain motif on her own tree. She was awake, and gave Randall a frightened look that he was more than willing to return.

The men were standing around, discussing politics and the unfortunate depletion of natural resources. Their leader sat on a stump directly in the center of the clearing. She was holding a clear crystal the size of an apple. When she noticed that Randall was awake, she stood up, set the crystal down on the stump, and took a step forward.

“Somebody wake up the knight,” she ordered.

“Wake up, knight,” said one of the men.

Sir William woke up. “How dare you restrain me like this?” he shouted. “When I get free I'll kill the lot of you!”

The woman rolled her eyes and walked over to him. She smiled, then kicked Sir William in the chest, driving the breath from his lungs with a loud
oooomph
!

“What did you think about that?” she asked.

“I found it disturbingly pleasant,” Sir William admitted.

“Shut up.” She stepped away from him. “Let me introduce myself. People call me Scar.”

“Seems appropriate,” said Randall.

“It's short for Scarlet.”

“Obviously.”

“Now, pay close attention, because I'm going to explain the current situation to you. Your princess will be held for ransom. You two are going to be killed and dumped.” She thought for a moment. “Well, I guess you didn't have to pay
that
close of attention, it's a pretty simple situation, really.”