Granny Trudy vs Aunt Dolly

The boar charged. Hungerford stood, staff raised, barely got the spell out while the tusked maw of doom bore down on him.

“Get away from the boy!” Trudy was suddenly in front of him and took a swing.

How he was going to explain to his master in the afterlife that he not only died before completing his mission but also took one of his charges with him, Hungerford did not know. But in the next moment he found he wouldn’t have to.

“Miss Trudy?”

“What?” Granny Trudy massaged her aching knuckles and dug the ointment out of a skirt pocket.

“Did you just uppercut a giant boar?”

The beast lay unmoving and cross-eyed on the ground.

“Of course I did. Oh, that smarts! Punching things was so much easier before the rheumatism. Where is our great and terrible adventurer when you need him? Mole!”

“How in all underworlds…” Munck began as Mole finally came panting up bent at an odd angle, and his face, which hitherto had presented a grimace of unworldly pain, immediately split into a wide grin. “I say! Miss Trudy, what a punch!”

Granny Trudy shrugged. “I always had a mean right hook.”

“That is not an explanation!” Munck trembled.

“No, I’ve always been that way, they called me Right Hook Trudy when I was a girl. Didn’t make me too popular with the boys. How do you think I ended up with your father?”

“Um … Miss Trudy, I’m not your son …”

“I know that, that’s what I said. Now, which of you will drag the beastie to town? If you load it on the cart, the horse will go flying.”

“We’ll bring a tusk in as proof, as requested,” Mole decided. “And mark the position on the map. There’s good eating on this thing. Oooof.”

“Need the rolling pin again?”

“No, it’s fi… yes, please.”

Munck, shaking with the near-death experience, had a few minutes to calm down as Trudy went to work on Mole’s back. The wizard tried to ignore the noises that were coming out of the mountain man. At one point he giggled.

Tusk removed, they headed back to their wagon and found it blessedly still at its destination.

“You stretch out in the back, Mole,” Trudy said. “I’ll just sit in front.”

“Good plan,” Mole, walking carefully like someone had braced his legs with stilts, clambered in and turned on his back, not light as a feather but most definitely stiff as a board.

The cart rolled along carefully, since every stone and bit of gravel made Mole wince or rather make a noise that Munck feared would attract local wolves.

Now that his head was clearer, he turned to Trudy, sitting perfectly upright next to him. Every now and again she massaged her hand. “Do you remember when I asked if you had any special powers?”

“Punching things is not a special power, boy.” She reached into her apron pocket. “Here, have a butterscotch. Calms the nerves.”

Hungerford plopped the sweet into his mouth and did indeed feel better. Until the cart hit a pothole and Mole made a sound that put demons to shame.

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Mole had to be put on bedrest until a member of the local healers’ guild could see him in the morning. Munck, who shared a room with him, did not sleep a wink that night. It would be nice to say that this was out of worry, however it was the mix of enormous snores that rattled the pictures on the wall paired with the painful “ahooos” that erupted every time Mole tried to turn.

After the warrior had been somewhat restored by mid-morning, and Hungerford had been offered an elixir of wakefulness for a reduced rate because the healer felt sorry for him, it was time to test a hypothesis that the young wizard had been puzzling over since the previous day.

To this end, he borrowed Mole’s extensive collection of weapons.

“Miss Trudy, would you hold this sword for a moment?”

“Why?” Trudy, who had slept reasonably well, though her punching hand was bothering her even after the healer had seen to it, eyed the wizard’s bloodshot eyes and hoped he would not ask to be put out of his misery. In that case, she would recommend a big axe, swords made the whole thing too messy.

“Indulge me.”

Trudy did and couldn’t. “That’s heavy!”

Hungerford himself could barely lift it, but this made no sense. They both regarded the sword for a confused moment. “I don’t understand. What happened to your super strength?”

Scratching her chin, Trudy couldn’t answer that even if she wanted to. “Of course, there was the time I punched the lights out of Soren Gram for getting fresh. Maybe it only works in pig-related circumstances?”

“Oh, I’ve seen this before,” Mole nodded, gingerly stretching his back and arm muscles. “Back in my adventuring days, I travelled with a boy, scrawny like you, Munck. Well, of course I thought he won’t be able to hold his own, and the first five enemies we encountered beat his backside pretty badly indeed.”

“What is the point, Mole?” Hungerford sighed, who of course had never gotten his backside beaten by the bigger boys at the academy, certainly not multiple times a week.

“Anyway, it came to pass I got my foot stuck in a rock crevice and the snakepeople assassins were closing in. Suddenly, the scrawny boy, who really could have passed as your brother, Munck, he jumped up and punched one of the assassins right in the head. Why, when I tell you that thing went flying ... and he dealt with the others just like it. So it turned out he could only use his powers if someone was in grave danger.”

“Hogwash,” Trudy commented. “In that case, I’d have carved the boy’s head in with a rolling pin long ago.”

“Or a potato,” Munck added.

Mole shrugged enormous shoulders. “Seems a part of you knew the skinny boy was no real threat.”

“Can we please stop commenting on my body?”

Trudy patted Hungerford’s bony shoulder. “Don’t take it to heart, Ford. Do you want a butterscotch?”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Hungerford accepted, since it might at least put some meat on him.

“Anyway, with Mole resting for another day, you might want to find our next destination,” Trudy decided and made for the stairs.

“And where are you going?”

“I’m going out to take a walk, maybe sample the local bakeries. Unless that’s against my probation, warden?”

Hungerford gave up. “Just … be back before dark, yes?”

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Unlike Hungerford, who brooded over tattered scriptures and maps, Trudy had a splendid day. For one, her rheumatism was behaving that day. With her share of the reward for taking care of Pig Pen, she bought some hardly used clothing, a decent travel bag, and some items of daily use that the boys never thought about, such as soap, wash cloths, and brushes. It put her in mind of her own two sons when they were young, had to be forced into the bathtub by means of bribery and blackmail, too. Once she had resorted to desperate measures and ambushed Bert, the younger one, with a bucket of soapy water. The girls were so much easier to raise, were, not had been, because as far as Trudy was concerned, the raising never stopped.

Loaded with her shopping, she found a bakery that did modern things, as she would call it. Trudy was not as a matter of course opposed to modern things, provided no one was doing things any different from the way they had always been done. Now she was finding out that you could, in actual fact, put pansies and violets on breads, and the cupcake with the rose in it tasted like biting into a perfume bottle.

“But why?” she kept asking the young woman behind the counter who was slowly losing patience, while the grandmother of the house stood behind her, shrugged, and explained: “It’s what young people like nowadays, they think it’s pretty,” which was Grandma Esperanto for “Personally, I think they’ve all gone mad.”

After this encounter, Trudy looped around the shopping mile, which was a sight to behold with its flower decorations on every shopfront, where they looked much nicer than in baked goods, until she found a table of old ladies outside a teahouse that she could sit near until she was asked to join. Ten minutes later, they were swapping war stories of the grandchildren. Twenty minutes later, Trudy bought the next round of tea and cakes. A half hour later, she was exchanging addresses with Gladys, Ethel, and Rose.

Nice work for an afternoon, all in all, though what she truly wanted more than anything was to bake, even if it was only a tart or a quiche. At this rate, she was going to forget which part of the rolling pin was up.

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Hungerford met her outside the inn when she returned, his usual trembling worry-wart self. “A half hour more and I was going to contact the city watch …”

“Yes, yes. Here, take this.”

Something wrapped in paper was pressed into Munck’s hand. “What is it?”

Trudy walked him through the contents like he was a small child, which to her mind he’d always be. “This is called a brush, I’ll show you how to use it later. This is a washcloth, which brings us to this, soap. It’s on a ribbon, so you don’t lose it and have no excuse. I got lavender for you, calms the nerves, and chamomile for Mole.” She’d kept the expensive lilac one to herself.

“Thank you. Uh. Why?”

“I’ve a baker’s nose, you might trust me on this. Also, that stain on your robes has been there for days now. Did you eat? Are you hungry?”

“I could eat,” Hungerford said, deciding it was better to ignore the personal sleight.

“So stop moping around. Call Mole down, I’m not spoon-feeding him.”

She stalked by Hungerford to put the day’s loot away before supper.

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They’d been underway for the better part of a week, and the cart did make things go more smoothly. “Only one to go,” Hungerford tried for optimism. “Someone named Nug. This should be the right area.”

“You’ve been saying that about every area so far,” grumbled Trudy, eyes gliding over endless fields to either side of the road. Every now and again, an assemblage of houses popped up like daffodils. She’d been daydreaming about all the treats she could be baking now that strawberries were coming into season. Strawberry and rhubarb pie, strawberry cheesecake, those cookies with the cheese filling, swirled pound cake, the little puff pastry squares with custard, the thing that was just layers of leftover biscuits, strawberries, custard, and cream which only had to be chilled in the cellar but was so refreshing …

“I wonder who it’ll be,” Mole said, leaning back in the cart. “Imagine, three people, born the same day in the same way …”

“Not like that happens every day all over the world, I’m sure,” Trudy continued her grumbling, but the sarcasm went right over Mole’s balding head. She was getting too old for this, long roads, strange lodgings, unfamiliar food cooked by people who apparently had never eaten anything before and were forced to improvise. And Hungerford’s and Mole’s relentless optimism made her want to pelt both of them with potatoes. At least it would be something to do.

“I’m sure we’ll all get along,” Mole went on. “Ha, we might be like the Flanelli brothers. Did I ever tell you about the Flanelli brothers? Halfling triplets they were, and rascals to a man. I first met them when they were robbing my group.”

Since Trudy had nothing whatsoever to do, she asked: “How does a halfling rob a big thing like you?” And enjoyed watching Hungerford, who hated long stories, squirm.

“I thought they were one very tall man. See, they were standing on each other’s shoulders wrapped in a really long cloak, turned out to be their modus operandi, they called it. Anyway, what they did next was they’d hop off and start circling. Boy, I can’t tell you how difficult it is to catch something that’s moving fast at knee height.”

“Hold that thought, Mole,” Munck said, stuffing bits of wool into his ears. “Alright, proceed.”

“Anyway, before I knew it, they’d tied my bootlaces together …”

Hungerford adjusted the wool and heard no more.

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Munck asked around every settlement they came across and now after six more stops he seemed to be getting a handle on their target. The wagon rolled on, following faint rumours of a saintly elderly lady that had once fallen out of the sky.

“Oh sure I know her, she always helps out at the orphanage,” was one.

“Yes, I know her, she brings library books to the infirm,” was another.

“Once she spent all winter knitting jumpers for the convalescent home.”

“Know her? She collected all that money for the hospital over at Taschfort. Shame it was stolen by bandits …”

“Sure, if you see her, tell her I got another one of those plates she likes, the ones with the cats on it.”

“She’s a very sweet old lady. We call her Aunt Dolly.”

Hungerford was almost ecstatic. An old dear who enjoyed knitting and decorative plates with pictures of cats on them should be easy to convince of the righteousness of his cause. Maybe she would even be a good influence on the other two.

“Excuse me,” Hungerford asked when they’d arrived in a sleepy market town that seemed more used to cattle drives than visitors, “we’re looking for Aunt Dolly.”

The lady he’d approached shifted a basket from one hip to the other. “I think I saw her go into the pub.”

Hungerford’s eyes fell first on the sign of The Monkey’s Arms. The woman tapped his arm.

“Not this one. You don’t want to go in there. The Butchside Barbarians are in town, that’s their haunt.”

Munck looked at Mole, who shrugged. “What are they, a local gang?”

“Oh yes, and fierce they are. Try The Monkey’s Head.”

“Right, we’ll try that for now.”

As with most decisions in his life, Munck regretted this one.

He had hardly opened the door when a full-grown man was coming towards him back first and severely ignoring the laws of gravity.

“Little help?” he mumbled under the fallen barbarian, or whatever he was. The leather-and-fur ensemble might just be a fashion choice. Mole rolled the man off Hungerford with an easy push.

The tavern was in a state that no one wanted to clean up after the brawl ended, which was at least likely to happen in this century. Munck grabbed the hem of his robes to not drench them in spilled beverages and possibly other substances. Trudy in her sensible dress and Mole in his huge boots followed.

Hungerford almost didn’t want to ask, but he bent down to the man who had fallen onto him before.

“Do you know someone named Aunt Dolly?” A shaky finger pointed to the middle table before the man fell unconscious. Hungerford followed and gulped.

The air was thick with pipe smoke and cooking fumes and blue with cursing. Slaps and punches echoes off walls that had once been hung with hunting trophies and patron pictures before either had been misused as impromptu weapons. Bits of fur and chainmail littered the floor on which their wearers landed in regular intervals only to jump up and into the fray again. ‘Aunt Dolly’ was in the middle of the mess, up on the table holding a man twice her size in a headlock while finishing her drink.

“That can’t be her.”

“Maybe she has a card of identification,” Trudy shrugged.

The portly woman on the table took this moment to yell, “Here comes Dolly!” before kicking the man she was choking back into the crowd and following elbow first.

“So this is a bar brawl, is it? Which colour are we rooting for?” Trudy said conversationally, evading someone being flung in her direction.

“It’s not a game, Miss Trudy!” Hungerford ducked a flying pint, trying to figure out how to get to the old lady in the middle. By now, the Butchside Barbarians – Munck had no doubt he had read the room right and they had read the pub sign wrong – had spotted the newcomers.

As the biggest target around, Mole was immediately rushed. “Don’t worry about me, Munck,” he said, a drunkard hanging from every limb. “Go talk to the aunt, I’ll handle these. Ha, might make them cry ‘uncle’!”

Unperturbed by the goings-on, Trudy gestured at Hungerford. “Do that bubbly shieldy thing. You’ll get hurt.”

“Miss Trudy, you need to leave, you’ll get hurt!” Hungerford cried to a bunch of empty air where an old lady had stood a second before.