Granny Trudy vs Pig Pen

“… hundred-and-twenty hours at the retirees’ community centre.”

The gavel banged on the judge’s desk.

“Hear, hear!” commented Mole from the auditorium and was immediately shushed from all sides.

“Well, at least we still got the reward,” Hungerford counted small victories. “And we got out with our skin, haha. For a moment there I thought questing would be dangerous. It’s actually rather a bit fun, isn’t it?”

“My feet hurt,” was Trudy’s commentary.

Mole, on the other hand, seemed immensely amused. “That was just your warm-up, boy. You’ll get a taste for it soon.”

“If I don’t see a cup of tea soon, there really will be blood,” said Trudy, and Munck was inclined to believe her.

“And it was a good thing you have a keen eye, Miss Trudy,” went on Mole. “To spot it was a prop. My back was seizing up a bit right then.”

“Never fear, I still have the rolling pin. Let’s go.”

They were about to get up when the plaintiffs and a bespectacled woman who served as court-appointed lawyer stopped by them.

The tall robber apparently named Lanser – it became clear what had set him up for a life of misdeeds – addressed them. “Excuse me, Miss Trudy? It was Miss Trudy, yes?”

“What is it?”

“We wanted to thank you for setting us on the right path again. Albeit with some ear-pulling. Literally, that one mile. So, seeing as we won’t leave town for a while, we want you to have our old theatre wagon.”

“Absolutely not, this is a trick!” Munck raised an accusing forefinger. “They’ll say we stole it and put us in community service, too!”

“See, I told you,” Lanser turned to the lawyer. “That’s why we brought the deed.”

A piece of paper was presented. “Please sign here,” the bespectacled woman droned. “It’s parked in the courtyard out back and it will be released to you this evening.”

Trudy pulled the paper up close until it almost touched her nose and read every syllable before, seemingly satisfied, she signed with a flourish. “That’s decent of you boys.”

“First step to betterment,” Lanser tried for a joke and the troupe moved on towards the doors. They were almost out of the building when the actor found himself tapped on the shoulder.

Trudy pulled a note out of her apron and handed it over.

“What’s this, ma’am?”

“My custard recipe. You’ll make a lot of friends at the centre. Now be good boys!”

With a final flick on his ear, Trudy turned and left.

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“Now be a good boy,” Balgimantas said and shook the knuckle bones that adorned his staff, “take the chicken bone and feed it to the chimaera.”

Hungerford sighed and looked up at the windmill. It had started life as a windmill, it would likely die a windmill, in as far as buildings died. But as a dutiful apprentice, he stepped forward reverently and placed the chicken bone before the door.

“Oh yes, he’s really digging in,” he called to Balgimantas, who giggled with glee. He was a good master, he just had his episodes, Munck kept telling himself. More of them happened with every passing week, like a series that got increasingly popular.

“Now, mighty chimaera,” Balgimantas raised both shaking arms. “I beseech thee, tell me the way to the Children of the Sky!”

The windmill stayed obstinately silent.

“Chimaera, why won’t you speak?”

“Perhaps it wants a beef bone,” Hungerford suggested, gently coaxing the old master away and back towards the road that led to the inn they were staying at.

“Pah! Back in my day, they were perfectly satisfied with anything you gave them. Alas, things have changed so very much…”

“They don’t make them like they used to,” Hungerford quoted a favourite phrase of his master’s.

“Exactly! Or was that a sphinx? No, those buggers are in charge of crossword puzzles. I know, we’ll summon a demon ...”

“How about after dinner, master? Why don’t you have a nice nap before?”

A nap tended to reset the old wizard’s brain. When he woke up, he would have forgotten all about this foolish, not to mention highly illegal idea to summon anything from the Far Realms. Maybe it had worked that way sixty years ago, but certainly the times had been a-changing.

And it worked brilliantly again that day. After a nap and his supper, Balgimantas was in high spirits. Hungerford brought him his digestive brandy while his master bathed in the cloud of smoke eliciting from his pipe.

“Ah, thank you, son.”

Munck always startled when the master accidentally or not called him son. Hungerford only remembered his parents as two towering figures that refused to move when he stretched tiny grubby hands towards them. After that, he only knew the freezing halls of the wizard academy until the principal had announced trials for an apprenticeship. Hungerford had passed the trials three and so from age fourteen onwards had followed Balgimantas. Most of his duties included laundry and keeping the old man fed and mostly on track of his endless number of tasks, all while learning magic so ancient it hardly worked anymore. In turn, the old wizard took care of him when he remembered who Hungerford was and sometimes even on days when he didn’t.

Hungerford looked over his master’s shoulder at the mess of spidery handwriting that formed his master’s notes.

“Master, I do think, if you permit me saying so, that we could find the children quicker if we ordered this a bit, by date, say, and if we then compared our findings to the news of that time period…”

“Nonsense! I don’t need newsy papers. We are wizards, my boy! We trust in the stars! It’s a nice clear night, too. To the roof!”

He had trusted in the stars up to his dying day, which had followed two weeks later. The funeral had been the usual affair at the last academy Balgimantas had served at, and Munck was named his heir and ceremoniously handed the staff and his master’s bundle of papers.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Balgimantas had never allowed him access to all his scriptures, tomes, or assorted napkins with scribbles on them. For seventy years he had been on this quest. Now it was Hungerford’s turn. He wouldn’t disappoint the old master. At least he wouldn’t have to deal with the whims of old folks again. Children he could possibly deal with, especially if at last one guardian came along, at least Hungerford hoped it worked that way. As much as he’d appreciated old Balgimantas, he’d had enough of people over sixty for a lifetime.

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Hungerford woke from his memory to the sound of petty bickering.

“No, no, I tell you, it’s blackbirds.”

“I think I know the rhyme I grew up with! It goes ‘Sing a song for sixpence, Pocket full of lies, Four and twenty black clouds in rivers over skies.’ And then ‘The king was in his counting house …’”

“Oh no, the king was in the chamber. ‘The king was in his chamber, Dreaming in the waves, The queen was in the boneyard, Digging all his graves.’”

“What in the world are you arguing about?” said Hungerford, stepping out of the room he had to share with Mole for the night. Out in the hallway, both Trudy and Mole turned almost apologetically.

“Just an old skipping rhyme we remember differently,” Mole began, and Hungerford was immediately questioning why all old children’s songs had to be so darn gruesome. It would give a normal kid nightmares.

“I remember it perfectly, thank you,” Trudy glared at the warrior. “I was skip champion at Miss Schreck’s School for Girls four years in a row, and I can hardly imagine you skipping.”

“Not without everyone in the wider area thinking there’s an earthquake,” Munck said before he could stop himself.

“Ha!” Mole broke into a laugh like someone who liked a jibe when it was as funny as it was true. “Let’s put a pin in it for now and see about breakfast. I could eat a boar.” And with that, Mole went ahead downstairs. Trudy shook her head at him just slightly.

“How did you sleep, Miss Trudy?” Hungerford asked cautiously as they followed.

“I got this close to committing felony.”

“What? Why?”

Trudy sat down at the table Mole had reserved for them. “Because the wooden cots in the local prison can’t possibly be harder than the beds here! Did you eat?”

“Not yet…”

“Me neither, go ask what they have.”

As a form of punishment for possessing healthy legs, Munck was sent back and forth eight times to fetch various dishes and another three times because Trudy’s tea was too weak for her taste. When he was finally allowed to sit down, the exercise made him take seconds.

“We should finish off one last quest for money,” Mole said around a mouthful of thick bacon.

“You boys just let me know if you need saving again,” Trudy remarked innocently, which caused Mole a great deal of amusement. The other patrons were staring. Hungerford tried to hide behind his fried egg.

The adventurer freed a smudgy piece of paper from the pocket of his leather trousers. “There we go.”

Munck took it. “Apprehending and or extremitating … there’s a spelling mistake right there … a giant boar called Ol’ Pig Pen.”

Trudy squinted over his shoulder. “Who names a pig Pig Pen? Are you sure it’s not Big Ben?”

“That should earn us enough for a while,” Mole said, looking less at the spelling and more at the thrice underlined numbers. “And it’ll be quick, too. We can take the cart!”

Hungerford thought of their price. He had examined it last night. The quest to apprehend bandits had earned them a lightly used cart, which was to say that the next pothole would collapse the rickety thing like a house of cards. The roof consisted of moth-eaten red fabric which had endured so much weather it was by now more of a rusted brown and kept rain off almost as well as tissue paper.

“We might need a horse for it,” he suggested.

Mole seemed confused. “Can’t you conjure us up a magic steed?”

“I never even heard of that spell!”

“There used to be one, our wizard could do it.”

“Don’t you have a dictionary of spells or something?” Trudy asked. “Look it up in there.”

“It’s a grimoire, and no, it’s not in there," Hungerford explained, trying to stay calm.

“But have you checked?”

“Yes, Miss Trudy.”

“Oh, hand it to me, I can probably find it.”

Hungerford stood up with finality. “I’ll ask the landlord for the nearest stable.”

“Do you want me to check your grimmerling in the meantime?”

“No!”

“Touchy.” Trudy turned back to her tea as the boy stalked off steaming.

“I’ll say,” Mole agreed. “Youth these days. You just want to help and they fall into a huff. This reminds me of the time we had an apprentice assassin travelling with us, he always had to complain about something too, I was just trying to be helpful painting dots on the ogre where it was easiest wounded …”

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It was a crisp, delightful morning as the old mare pulled the rickety cart precariously over the forest road.

“Slow down, I just ate! This isn’t a race!” Trudy commanded from the covered back of the wagon.

“We’re barely moving as it is,” Hungerford, forced into the role of driver because Mole had tried to relive an escape episode from thirty years ago, said sighing. The way was longer than expected; the desired boar had last been seen in an outcrop of forest around a farm some miles from Rossburg.

“Are we there yet?” asked Mole, who had equally been banished to the back.

“No. I’ll tell you when we are.” He shifted on the uncomfortable seat, and not only because they’d passed over a lot of gravel. “Say, I’ve been wondering … the prophecy says nothing about your special powers.”

“What powers?” Trudy asked suspiciously.

“Well, I just thought, what with your way of birth and all, maybe you have certain abilities?”

“Can’t think of one. The only power I have is creating baked goods that would make kings fall in love with me, if they ever bothered to do the shopping.”

“I forgot how humble you are,” Hungerford mumbled.

Mole laughed. “Ha! I was the tallest baby in the history of my hometown, it made the evening paper.” This was hardly surprising, given the man was six foot six at an age where decent people began to shrink like so many pullovers in the hands of an inexperienced laundress. Even the muscles refused to go off and see the world, though some had acquired the company of a well-kept beer belly, which Mole affectionately called his treat vault. His beard, Munck learned against his will, was called Horace. Actually, Horace the Second.

Hungerford stroked his beardless chin. “That’s vaguely disappointing. I’d thought you’d … be able to fly, use magic, something of the sort.”

“Can’t even magically detect a boar,” Trudy grumbled. “Neither can you, apparently.”

Hungerford kept his head on a swivel. “I wonder why they put a reward on a boar of all things. It must be pretty fierce.”

Trudy waved that away. “It’s bacon what doesn’t know it yet. You’ll be fine. Maybe you’ll finally show us some magic.”

“Yes, I’ve been wondering about that,” Mole nodded. “You’re far less fireball-inclined than any wizard I ever knew. What are they teaching you at the magic academies these days?”

“I’m perfectly capable of casting a fireball if I have to.”

“Well, if you say so. Are we there yet?”

“No.”

The farm that Pig Pen had been spotted from was the humble homestead of the Daringers, who flat out refused to seek out better farming land on account that they had ‘always lived here and the pumpkins may be on the small side but hey grow just fine, thank you.’ South of this picture of tradition Mole spotted tracks. Munck allowed him to share the driver’s seat under the solemn oath of no shenanigans, just tracking.

“We’re close now,” Mole whispered. “Wouldn’t be surprised if Pig Pen was hiding behind this grove.”

“Alright, then we better get going.” Munck jumped off the wagon.

“You boys do that, I’ll watch the cart,” Trudy said without any intention to move.

“What?” Hungerford spluttered. “You can’t stay out here alone! There might be bandits. Actual ones this time.”

“Hogwash. Now go on and deal with the piggy.”

Mole’s shovel-sized hand came down on his robed shoulder and led him along. “Never fear, Mole and Munck will earn glory today! Come on, Munck, we can handle the beast.”

Hungerford kept looking back at the cart while they walked, where Trudy now fed the poor old mare carrots, until the trees got in the way.

His ears suddenly picked up a rustling, and Mole made meaningful eyebrows. “Over there. It’s coming toward us. Ready your spells. I’ll hide behind a tree and ambush it.”

“It’s going to see you in a … hello? Mole?”

But Mole, true to his name, had vanished. Munck turned a few times to spot him. It shouldn’t be possible for a man his size to hide anywhere.

Careful not to make a sound, Hungerford took his spellbook from his belt and leafed to the page for fireballs. Only a little refresher, not like he had forgotten how it worked, haha. He fumbled for a moment for the flask that contained the sulphur when he felt hot breath on his head.

“There you are, Mole. You shouldn’t vanish like …”

Hungerford turned around and could feel the colour flee his face as he stared into a snout the size of his head, attached to several hundred pounds of furious hairy doom.

Pig Pen’s hooves scraped over the ground to leave arm-long trenches. It huffed once, the musk that radiated from it almost powerful enough to cause a faint.

“Fireb…”

A war cry of “Chaaaaarge!” came from the tree beside him.

“Here we … Ooooooh nooooo…” Mole let his sword drop and clutched his back instead.

The boar did charge. Hungerford saw himself reflected in the tiny mad eyes of death. “…ballaaaaah!”