Chapter 4:
Dawn, er, dawned in the enchanted Valley of Misery, with Prince Jollyrei tied to a post in the central courtyard of Hangentreivitch’s castle facing the stipes on which the Princess Messaline was to be crucified. He couldn’t help thinking that he was not doing a great job of rescuing her. He ran through the various fairy tales he had read. Crucifixions didn’t factor largely in any of them. The three bears (Russians do like stories about bears) didn’t, it seems, finally crucify Goldilocks.
He could only hope that as things reached a critical stage in the proceedings, the Firebird would return, do something magical and mysterious, and allow him to save the princess. He was sure this was a fairy tale he was in, so something would have to work out. He was, after all, the younger brother, and probably the less competent brother at that. Things always worked out for them. He felt a little better about this, but that did nothing for the pain in his shoulders, due to the way he was bound to the post, or the pain in his eye, due to the way the guards had punched him in the face when he had objected to being tied to the post.
Something was happening. A noise across the courtyard alerted him to the start of the day’s events. The castle was still quite dark, but the sun gleamed in a pale, baleful manner, enough to give the courtyard a dreary gray look. Hangentreivitch came through a wide doorway, followed by some of his guardsmen, and then a beautiful blonde haired woman. She wore a simple but elegant white gown which was not in any way properly accessorized by the rough beam of wood she was carrying across her shoulders. That must be Messaline, Jollyrei thought, always quick on the uptake.
The party of guards led Messaline to the stipes and then took the beam off her shoulders and laid it on the ground at the base of the upright post.
“It would seem that nobody is willing to ransom you properly,” said Hangentreivitch, “which really does not bother me at all. But given that is the case, I am going to have to crucify you.”
Messaline trembled slightly.
“First, however,” said Hangentreivitch, “I am going to have you whipped. That will be a nice preliminary for our show today. And I almost forgot to mention that you have an audience. This,” he motioned to Jollyrei, “is Prince Jollyrei of Russia who has come all this way to see you crucified.”
“Actually, I came to rescue you,” said Jollyrei gallantly.
“Merci,” said Messaline, “I think. How was this rescue going to work?”
“It’s not quite working out how I planned, I’m afraid,” said Jollyrei.
“But you’ll watch the crucifixion,” said Hangentreivitch.
“Don’t have much choice at the moment,” said Jollyrei.
“No, you don’t,” said Hangentreivitch. “Proceed,” he added to his guardsmen.
The guards took Messaline by the arms and pulled her to the stipes. One of them made to strip her dress off her, but she pushed him away, and then gracefully removed the garment herself. She stood pale and naked in the gray light, goosebumps forming on her skin. The guards took her arms and bound them above her head to the upright. Her back was to Jollyrei and he had a chance to fully appreciate the various curves as Hangentreivitch motioned for the whipping to start.
Messaline took 20 of the best from a burly guardsman with a short stranded whip, until her back and bottom were criss-crossed with red streaks. She had taken them bravely, only crying out during the last five or so. She was breathing heavily as they cut her down.
They dragged her forward and pulled her down onto her back on the floor of the courtyard, and positioned her on the crossbeam. Her arms were stretched on the wood and bound in place.
This would be a good time for someone to free him to dramatically save the day, thought Jollyrei. He strained against his bonds and looked around for the telltale signs of help.
There didn’t seem to be anyone there. “Look,” he said, “can you just hang on for a minute or two?”
Apparently the guardsmen were not interested in fitting into the narrative structure, or perhaps felt they were in a different sort of story, because they just ignored him and set to work with a large hammer and sharp spikes. Messaline’s cries sounded like defeat to Jollyrei as they nailed her wrists to the beam, and then hoisted the naked woman aloft to fix her crosspiece to the upright. Then she screamed in agony again as they nailed her feet in place.
She panted and gasped for breath a few times before looking at Jollyrei. He was quite shaken by the completely unfairytale-like event. He was also quite angry. “This wasn’t supposed to happen,” he shouted.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Hangentreivitch. “In my experience, it happens quite a lot. But do feel free to try to rescue her. She’ll be up there 2 to 3 days before she dies. Mind you, I did promise to torture you today, so you can only have a couple of hours while I have breakfast. After that, you’ll be too busy to rescue anyone.” He strode off and vanished inside the castle.
“It’s not a good rescue so far,” said Messaline.
“No,” said Jollyrei miserably. “I don’t have a lot of experience at this.”
“What experience do you have, owww?!” said Messaline.
“Well, I lose horses regularly, I used to hang around a palace a lot, my father is evil, probably insane, and I have recently been captured by two different sorcerers,” he said. “Nothing that would really help in a rescue.”
Just then, however, there was the noise of beating wings, and over the walls flew the Firebird. A red squirrel in a shining steel helmet and waving a small broadsword was riding the Firebird and shouting “Death from above!” at the top of his lungs. The Firebird landed and Rodentsov leapt off. He scrambled up the post to which Jollyrei was bound and cut the ropes that held him. The Firebird meanwhile had changed to her Eulalia form and had grabbed his sword in its scabbard. As he collapsed, she tossed it to him, which would have been a great heroic scene in any movie starring Errol Flynn. Errol would, of course, have caught the sword, and his enemies would have been as good as vanquished. Jollyrei had very little feeling left in his hands and had a foot cramp to boot, so he collapsed on the ground and the thrown sword’s hilt hit him in the head.
Eulalia rushed over to him, “Sorry, sorry,” she said pressing her cool hand against his head. Jollyrei thought it odd she should have a cool hand, when her dress was on fire. He allowed her to help him to his feet, where he stood swaying for a moment. Eulalia handed him his sword belt again. He seemed to come around to the situation.
“This is supposed to be a fairy tale,” he said. “Now look at what we have. This story is fast turning into a bloody horror-thriller. I got an erection watching them crucify a naked princess. It’s probably crucifixion fantasy erotica by now.”
Eulalia and Rodentsov rolled their eyes. “You know,” said Rodentsov, “you don’t have to tell everyone absolutely everything.”
“We thought we should come back,” said Eulalia. “I mean, we felt bad about abandoning you.”
“Yeah,” said Rodentsov, “Really sorry about that. A bit of panic there. Won’t happen again.”
“Shall we rescue the princess now?” suggested Eulalia.
“Will that help now? It's a bit late,” said Jollyrei. “They’ve nailed her there. There’s probably all kinds of damage, and she’ll might just die anyway…”
“No, listen,” said Eulalia. “We didn’t just run away…”
“Really sorry about that,” said Rodentsov. “Did I say that already?”
“…but we went and got help,” said Eulalia. “Come on, we have to get her down!”
Jollyrei and Eulalia ran to the cross. They were just getting it down when two guards entered the courtyard and noticed what was going on.
“For England, Harry, and St. George!” yelled Rodentsov, charging the guards. They seemed taken aback, possibly by the inexplicable insertion of an English Shakespearean battle cry in a Russian story, but more likely because a 20 inch tall squirrel (that’s quite large) was charging them with a broadsword. Even so they were two large guardsmen and Rodentsov realized suddenly that height does matter in a sword battle.
“Some help here would be nice!” he yelled.
Jollyrei and Eulalia got the cross down.
“Soon!” shouted Rodentsov, dodging a thrust.
“We need some sort of pliers, or a crowbar for these nails,” said Jollyrei.
“HELP NOW!” shouted Rodentsov somewhat desperately.
Jollyrei looked up to see the two guards about to finish the gallant squirrel. Drawing his own sword he charged forward, shouting “I hope I know how to use this thing!”
Apparently he did, because his surprise attack finished off one guardsman almost immediately, and he managed to do in the second as well a minute or so later. The thrust of a squirrel sword into the back of the guardsman’s knee helped quite a bit, but the two guards were dead, and one of them had a pair of nail pulling tongs.
“Rather an odd battle cry,” said Rodentsov to Jollyrei as they worked on getting Messaline un-nailed. “I hope I know how to use this?”
“I never know,”said Jollyrei. “I’m a bit two dimensional. Being in a fairy tale is like walking around with partial amnesia the whole time. I know there’s a princess, but I have no idea whether I ever learned sword fighting. It’s rather gratifying to know that I did. I wonder what else I know how to do.”
“Open the gates,” said Eulalia.
“Oh yeah,” said Jollyrei. “That’s easy. I meant like real skills that I don’t know I have…”
“I mean really open the gates now,” said Eulalia. “We need to get Messaline some help.” She had wrapped Messaline’s gown around her, but there was a lot of blood and the princess looked like she might go into shock.
“I’ll get the gate,” said Rodentsov.
“Not so fast,” said Hangentreivitch, “striding across the courtyard. He held a large black sword in one hand and a bottle of his Seagram’s potion in the other.
“I see you have your potion,” said Jollyrei, drawing his own sword. “You may find you need it.”
“Oh,” said Hangentreivitch, “this isn’t any potion. Many bottles were distilled and distributed throughout the world, but this is the One Bottle. In my opinion, Seagram’s rules the others.” His black sword came crashing down in a blindingly fast arc. Jollyrei barely had time to react and deflect the blow.
After that it was lots of clanging of metal and various Russian curses. Jollyrei put up a good fight as Rodentsov and Eulalia carried Messaline to the castle gates, but he was clearly outmatched by the black sword and power of Seagram’s wielded by the tall sorcerer.
The black sword swung around almost like it was in slow motion. Jollyrei tried to parry, but his sword was cut in two.
“Oh no,” said Messaline and Eulalia together.
“Bugger,” said Rodentsov. He started struggling with the bolts on the gate.
"There was a magical looking glow around the edges of the gates, and they suddenly burst open, throwing the squirrel backwards. The Sorcerer Wragg strolled in, followed by a number of Goblins.
"Well, we may be slow," he said jovially to the Firebird, "but we get there in the end, eh? Is this the Princess Messaline? Lovely to meet you. I say, what's going on over there?" He looked at where Jollyrei and Hangentreivitch were preparing for Jollyrei's inevitable demise.
Hangentreivitch the dark sorcerer advanced ominously on Jollyrei, who was lying on the courtyard floor holding his broken sword. He smiled ominously as he raised his great black sword.
But Jollyrei took up his broken sword, and with the hilt-shard he cut the bottle of Seagram’s from the hand of Hangentreivitch and took it for his own. Then Hangentreivitch was for that time vanquished, and he forsook his body, and his spirit fled far away and hid in waste places; and he took no visible shape again for many long years.
Jollyrei lay panting on the ground, staring at the empty black robe and yellow hat.
“You owe Tolkien for that one, I think,” said Wragg, strolling up and offering his hand to help Jollyrei up.
“What happened?” asked Jollyrei.
“Oh, you inadvertently destroyed the source of much of his power,” said Wragg. “All us sorcerers have these little weak spots. I have a weakness for pastries, for example.”
“So he’s dead?” asked Jollyrei.
“No, no,” said Wragg. “He’ll be back. They always come back. Certainly around here they do. Don’t let’s hang around. We need to get the princess to safety where I can work my healing magic.”
Rodentsov had turned back into the great gray wolf and was lying beside Messaline with his head in her lap. She seemed quite content, stroking his head, despite the obvious pain it caused her.
Eulalia looked uneasy. As Wragg and Jollyrei got to the gate, she said, “I told you I have mysterious powers, right?”
“Yes,” said Jollyrei, “you mentioned something about them.”
“Well, one of them is that I can sense things about people that I am with.”
“And you can sense something about the Princess?”
“No,” said Eulalia, “not her, but about you, or rather, your brother.”
“Phlebas?” asked Jollyrei. “What about Phlebas.”
“He’s in trouble,” she said.
“Isn't everyone in this story? I don't think the author really knows where any of this is going. I suppose we have to go help Phlebas then,” said Jollyrei.
“How would you do that?” asked Wragg. “You seem to have lost my horse.”
“Oh, right,” said Jollyrei. “I sort of let him go when we came in here. I’m apparently not good at holding on to horses.”
“I could eat a horse about now,” said the wolf.
“Let me go,” said Eulalia. “I can fly faster than any horse, and I will be able to find Phlebas.”
So it was that the Firebird flew north towards the lands of cold and hunger where Phlebas was, and Jollyrei helped Wragg place Messaline on a stretcher. Wragg commanded four of his Goblins to carry Messaline back to his palace. This went quite well, especially after two of the Goblin stretcher bearers couldn’t decide who should be on the left and who on the right, and hacked each other to pieces. They were replaced and the small procession got moving, with the wolf walking quietly by Messaline’s side.
“So what really happened to Hangentreivitch?” asked Jollyrei.
“He got himself caught in your fairy story,” said Wragg. “We’re all caught in it for the moment. That’s how I know Messaline will be healed. Until the story works itself out, some things just have to happen.”
“I hope the Firebird will be okay,” said Jollyrei.
“I’m sure she’ll be fine,” said Wragg.
“You can sense it magically?”
“No, no. It’s just something one says to help you feel more relaxed,” said Wragg.
“But you’ll be able to heal the Princess? How will you do it?” asked Jollyrei, “only it’s not much of a fairy tale rescue if she’s crippled for the rest of her life.”
“Don’t worry,” said Wragg, “You can trust me. I’m a sorcerer, you know. We’ll have her up and about in a chapter or two.
And so Messaline, Jollyrei, and the wolf were the guests of Wragg the Sorcerer at his palace, while the Firebird searched for the lost Phlebas, who was himself caught in a tangent of this story in which there was grave peril, and potentially all kinds of exotic dangers that I can’t really describe here, because I haven’t really written them yet, and anyway, they don’t fit in this chapter.
To be continued…
