(Bull’s-Eye: page 2 of 3: page 1)
Incensed, the king scraped glop from his eyes and mouth, picked his ears and nose clean, and when he observed the nature of the malefactors, grew instantly more enraged by several orders of magnitude. Peasants! What gall! It’s said his brown eyes momentarily turned a devilish shade of carnelian. (Although most scholars regard that particular detail as wholly apocryphal, I think it goes to show you the kid’s doomed mother may have had it right all along.)
“I am Díobhar, your king, ruler of all the great land of Cuilinn!” the slime-soaked, red-eyed thing screeched from the puddle. “I command you, be silent at once!”
It was his most obnoxious voice, but he was covered in large quantities of something not altogether unlike chocolate custard and he had carelessly run off and left his big gold ring with its royal seal and his big gold crown with its ostentatious inlay of jewels back at the castle—along with his whole toadying entourage. In addition, his team of horses had come unhitched and had scattered, and the gilded frame of the carriage was buried in the mud with its remaining three wheels fruitlessly spinning round at the sky, so who could blame the peasants for ignoring his edict and chortling all the more? Which, of course, seriously infuriated him. He made to lurch out of the puddle right then and there and slay them both on the spot… until he realized that in his rush to escape this morning, he had also neglected to bring along his royal sword. Or, in fact, any sword or swordlike object whatsoever. Drat! Was there anything he hadn’t forgotten?
“I will avenge my pride,” he vowed indignantly. Squealed, really. “You will feel the sharp blade of my revenge when it comes between you!”
As you might expect, the use of metaphor did not come easily to him.
When his threat produced no observable effect on Leathne or fair Taoilte, the king resorted to cursing them, something at which he excelled. After all, even then most oaths tended to be monosyllabic. But the lovers continued to chuckle and giggle as they turned their backs on him and gamboled right out of the clearing. Though they were beneficent folk by nature, as was the general character of those born to Rodhuirachna, they did not feel the least impelled to come to Díobhar’s aid, for he was far too rude and horrid and, moreover, had treated them with unforgivable disdain. King of Cuilinn? No, no, the realm could not possibly be headed by such a crass lout, or it would surely have collapsed on itself eons ago. (History was perhaps not their best subject.) That carbuncular boor could stay in the mud puddle until he solidified and was trapped there for good—a monument to stupidity, crudity, and conceit.
Which was almost what happened. But that ending really doesn’t shimmer with the stuff of legend, does it? No. So… accompanied by a lot of slurping and squelching from the mud and an unusual set of profanities invented that very day on his part, King Díobhar eventually extracted himself from the goop. He located one of the royal horses, harnessless and saddleless and munching contentedly on the meadow grasses, and then had to persuade it that he was not a monster—not one unfamiliar to it, anyhow. He hauled himself onto the creature’s back, pointed the animal in what he hoped was the proper direction, wrapped his arms about its neck, and whooped it into a gallop. He closed his eyes and prayed he wouldn’t fall off and get trampled to death. No danger of that, alas. By the time he reached the castle, he had dried through and through in position.
Though his face was webbed in the horse’s mane and his lips literally sealed shut so that he was unable to cry out anything other than, “Mnh mnh-mnh MNH!” as he approached, the soldiers guarding the main gate nevertheless drew their lances aside, indicating that the drawbridge should be lowered and the filthy rider allowed entrance. With all his limbs glued in place, he hardly posed significant threat. (This was, you should remember, a more innocent time, long before the days of fanatics armed with elaborate timed incendiary devices and willing to reduce themselves to moist grisly bits in the name of—well, whatever.) The soldiers within drew buckets of chilly algae-slick water up from the moat—no sense in wasting perfectly good well water, after all—checked quickly to make sure none of the venomous aquatic serpents that lived in said moat had coiled themselves at the bottom of the buckets, and doused the mysterious horseman until his coat of mud sluiced away. Suffice it to say that by the time Díobhar’s boots finally hit the cobblestones, followed a moment later by his buttocks, water rose from his sodden clothes in spirals of steam, he was so fervid with rage.
When they realized exactly who the drenched stranger was, the king’s soldiers resigned themselves to their probable fates and began to plan their final words, but the Dolt presently had more pressing issues weighing on his little mind than the debatable disrespect of his guard. He had never been the least bit beyond prevaricating to save what little face he had left at the end of any day, so he stood, raised his chin, flared his nostrils, and relayed his story through chattering teeth, naturally omitting certain details regarding his inelegant kerplash and instead saying that some unspecified number of brigands had leapt from nowhere and frightened the horses into a stampede—although I suspect he did not use the actual word “brigands.” He ordered his carriage and horses be retrieved and the insolent common girl with the audacity to cheer on his predicament brought to him before sunrise—for of course it was her face alone he recalled from the otherwise indistinguishable visages of the marauders—then he stalked out of the courtyard in search of the pride-soothing warmth of fox fur and handmaid companionship and a bottomless pint of a local ale so hearty it sometimes got stuck halfway to the belly and had to be knocked loose with a blow to the sternum.
Late that night, a contingent of well-motivated soldiers rode into Rodhuirachna, snatched all the brunettes of a certain age from the straw and down of their cots, and rode out again. The girls were lined up in the king’s private chamber at the foot of his great canopied bed, and when the soldiers finally managed to rouse Díobhar from his slumber, he rubbed his eyes vigorously, squinted at the bounty in the torchlight, then plucked Leathne from the group. (For all his faults and flaws, it seems he possessed keen eyesight and a remarkably accurate memory even in the grip of a postcoital alcoholic stupor.) The other girls were hustled off to service the king’s guard and various lecherous nobles, while Leathne was drenched in perfume, draped in silk and velvet finery, and ornamented with jewels befitting a queen… not coincidentally because King Díobhar had every intention of making her his consort. Soon.
Problem was, the archbishop of the Old Church, that late institution’s sole surviving clergyman, was terminally incapacitated due to mercury poisoning—something to do with the court’s careless wizard and a botched weather spell, I think, but that’s another story altogether—and, being comatose, quite unable to officiate at the royal marriage ceremony. The oozing greenish head of the very last bishop of the New Church was mounted on a post outside the dungeon so that the hapless archdeacon chained within, convicted a sennight ago on charges of heresy and high treason and awaiting death at the stake, was obliged to look at it—to smell it, at the least—day and night until he was reduced to ash. Were it not for the fact that Díobhar had already ordered the fellow’s tongue cut out so he could not continue to bray his innocence through the tiny barred window of his cell and thereby convert more hearts to his ignoble cause, and the additional fact that the order had been carried out before the wax imprinted with the royal seal from the king’s big gold ring had even hardened on the sheepskin, Díobhar might have temporarily exonerated the wretch and reinstated him in the erst New Church long enough for him to preside over the wedding. But what was done was done.
Meanwhile, a phalanx of bounty hunters had been dispatched to hunt down the founding pastor of the Holy Chapel of the One True Almighty and the Most Righteous People of the Green and drag him back to the castle—alive, as coercing a dead man’s tongue to voice the marriage sacrament was beyond the province even of the King of Cuilinn, and the King of Cuilinn himself would be at least the fourth or fifth man to admit it. This pastor was reportedly proselytizing way out in Meaghníonn, a mostly unexplored territory at the northern frontier, but the truth is he was probably only hiding from the king. A wise move, all things considered. Now, Díobhar was no believer in the Holy Chapel of the One True Almighty and the Most Righteous People of the Green, especially as he had no idea what such belief might entail, but he’d already eradicated the Old Church on the grounds that it would not let him gamble or fornicate, then founded the New Church and a few months later proceeded to liquidate it as well when he discovered he was actually expected to attend an occasional sermon and make the occasional confession in order to be considered for salvation. Double drat! He should have paid more attention to the details of the church’s creation. He was the king, for heaven’s sake. That confessing stuff was for people who had things to feel guilty about.
There wasn’t yet enough in the coffers to fund his proposed All-New Church—no priests, no choirs, no books, simply a cavernous room with several benches and long rows of colorful windows where you could go to feel close to whatever godlike entity chose to drop by on any given day. The One True Almighty, after all, was none other than Díobhar—although who those Most Righteous People were and of what Green they spoke was a complete mystery to him—so the Holy Chapel of Blah Blah Blah ostensibly belonged to him, and therefore its founding pastor could be said to possess sufficient stature to oversee the nuptials of a king. Better that than submitting to the fabled bloody bonding rites of those dread pagan priests and priestesses in the foul Heathen Lowlands. Egh!
Díobhar told Leathne the two of them would wait out the interim until the pastor’s apprehension practicing for the future. While he had to attend all those boring battle strategy conferences and treasury meetings and diplomatic pouting matches, she could play checkers and eat imported chocolates and finger the strings of every harp in the music hall. For a time, at least, she would not have to besmirch her lips nor sully her form with his purulent flesh. (I doubt he uttered that last part in so many words, but you’ve got to figure he was thinking, “Hey, whatever works….”) Such reprieve was little consolation for Leathne. Her heart belonged to her gallant Taoilte alone, and all the chocolate in Cuilinn could not assuage her woe at being parted from him. She wept, she raged, she fell mute. She even tried kicking her captor in the balls. Díobhar cooed, roared, pleaded… and retched. Still Leathne would not bend. So the king decided maybe he could wait for love and for his queen. What he really wanted right now was a little vestal nooky. What he didn’t know wasn’t going to hurt him, right? That he survived as long as he did is proof enough.
Back in Rodhuirachna, the normally forbearing and sunny Taoilte was restless and distraught. He picked at his lute, brooding on his dilemma. Here he was, the kindly doting gentle passionate sweet fair gallant normally forbearing and sunny beau, and old Mud-Puddle Díobhar—who, as it turned out, really was the king, of all the rotten luck—had his girl! Taoilte was no fighter, but something definitely had to be done about this kidnapping, and soon, or that feculent beast in the castle would almost certainly put his—his—in Leathne’s—in her—ugh! It was enough to give a mooning lover the dry heaves.
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