The Knight of the Lady in Green
A rogue meets a slightly unstable champion of a trapped princess.
Wordcount: 1861
It was the late evening in the small hamlet. The work of the day had been done, the merchants were packing their carts, the homes and shops where shuttering their windows, the fires of the wives’ hearth were heating just as the flames of the smiths’ furnace were being allowed to cool. Only one place was going to see business tick up as the Sun went down, and that was the tavern.
Amethyst played with the coin in her hands, twirling it between her fingers. She grimaced at the sound of merriment from across the street. The single copper was all see had, and it would afford her neither beer nor bed.
She needn’t complain, her stomach took up that job already. All the troll-holes she could find in a week’s ride had been picked clean, the days of easy loot seemed to be ending. She’d need to go back to hunting if she was going to have some of the finer things, again. Not animals, of course, she didn’t like hurting what she wouldn’t eat, and it’s not good money, anyway.
No, there was a reason she was waiting outside the tavern.
The noise picked up inside. Amethyst stopped twirling the coin. This seemed to be it.
The tavern doors swung open, and the barkeep – a man made strong from a lifetime of lifting inebriated adventurers – stepped out and threw what seemed to be a patron with a slight figure onto the mud in front.
“Don’t you be coming back ‘ere, causing ruckuses and recruiting drunks out of my bar!”, the barkeep boomed at the person he had thrown.
The person immediately sat up and pointed to the rails for hitching the horses, and bellowed “Barkeep, what of the feed for my horse?!”
“That old nag?! It’s ready to keel over dead! I’d tell ye to find someone more foolish than yeself to buy it alive, but seeing as yeself on your lonesome is the most sorry lack of sense I’ve ever come across I’ll tell ye that the butchers is down that there street! Good night to ye!”, and with that the door was slammed shut, leaving the figure and Amethyst as the only two in the street.
Amethyst grinned. A fool, and a fool that seemed to have been thrown out for causing trouble rather than running out of coin. She rubbed her chin, trying to decide on the scheme she was going to pull on this soul to relieve them of their money.
“Greetings!”, a voice screamed in her ear, nearly making her jump out of her boots.
“Gods in- what’s your deal, bub?!”, said Amethyst, spinning to meet the voice, one hand on her sword in its hilt.
It was a woman, clad in cloak and armour. Unlike Amethyst’s own cheap tunic, this armour seemed like it was worth something when it was new, but now it was horribly rusted, Amethyst couldn’t imagine it not making an awful creak whenever the woman moved in it, which made her wonder how she snuck up on her. Which made her realise, the figure thrown out of the tavern was gone! Unless…
“Your astute reflexes tell me you are of the quality that I require!”, the woman spoke, in the same voice that argued with the barkeep, “I seek the aid of the brave and the bold in this land to follow me in the recovery of a treasure!”
Amethyst eyed the woman’s face. She was smiling, the kind of smile that often quickly led to a village being burned down.
“Uhh, is this…”, Amethyst had a hunch that she needed to answer carefully, “…is this treasure yours?”
“‘Mine’?”, the woman looked away, “My heart is rich in courage, the coffers of love I hold for my sweet is vaster than any treasury owned by mortal kings, and my mind is encrusted by the tales of valour and dignity of the distinguished heroes of our shared past, but my purse, alas! there is not a penny in it, and I would have it none other way.”
“‘Does she always talk like this?’”, thought Amethyst, beginning to squirm under the stare of the woman. She wasn’t quite sure if she had yet blinked, “Then, uhh, what’s the treasure? I’m down for, heh, ‘recovering’ treasure. What’re we looking at, what’s the haul?”
The woman shook her head, “No, no, to even try to value it would insult its true preciousness. No relic, no jewel would ever be its match. For it is--
“Yeahyeahyeah, I’m in! Jeeze!”, Amethyst had scammed nearly everybody else in the hamlet and this odd woman was broke, in possibly more than one sense of the word, so she decided she had nothing better to do, “Let’s go get this treasure!”
“Excellent!”, said the woman, “You might have sensed that I am a knight, and I have had trouble keeping down a squire. These honourless days will be our ruin. But you, so bold to begin an adventure that you have little true grasping of, you have the makings of a squire in the first rate! In our time you will earn riches and renown, and everlasting glory will be your final prize, for you shall be the squire to Madam Lazuli, Knight of the Lady in Green!”
The woman, Madam Lazuli, ended with a flourished, leaving Amethyst nearly agape.
“OK.” Amethyst started, slowly, “Only 20% of that, tops, sounded good. For now, I’m in, but I want the details.”
Lazuli, somehow, grinned even wider, “Of course, my dear…umm, what was your na--?”
“Amethyst.”
“Amethyst! My dear Amethyst, a captain of men in arms never hides details from them that they are fully capable of understanding. He decides the course of action and they follow, to the death if needed, his hiding the course will only sow doubt in them. What castle walls could be so solid as the will of those riding to what they know to be their glorious doom?”
A bead of sweat ran down Amethyst’s neck. The started walking to the horse rails, Lazuli’s arms around her.
“Our quest is simple, but the prize is matched by none other. You needn’t worry of not gaining handsome reward even if I forgo my own, the Lady is fair and wise and will know what you’ve done for her.”
Amethyst scratched her ear, feeling the nerves in her head beginning to tingle in worry, “And, uhh, what are we going to do for her, exactly?”
“We’re going to kill a dragon.”
“And where is this go-- wait, WHAT?!”, Amethyst shook away, “A DRAGON?! WHAT DRAGON?!”
The Madam Lazuli stared rather blankly at her new squire, not foreseeing the sudden change in attitude, “Why, the Dragon of Caste Beta, of course. Alexinus the Horrible, Refuse of Hell, Her Most Damneded Impoliteness. Our Lady is trapped by that monster, and we shall serve her by slaying it. Where is your horse?”
Amethyst could feel a blood vessel trying to pop. She tried to see if Lazuli was at all drunk, if Amethyst was after all just enrolled in some extended joke. She saw nothing in the taller woman’s eyes, aside from a window into utter sobriety and a glimpse into a will that completely terrified her. Somehow, she knew that this woman meant it when she said she was going to the dragon that had been the scourge of the neighbouring land for many years, and even more bizarrely she felt the need to talk her out of it.
“But…but…have you…like, even seen a dragon before?!”
She wanted to smack her head against a wall for sounding so lame.
The Madam Lazuli replied, “My dear Amethyst, I assure you, I have read extensively on the slaying of dragons, and we have all that we need to face this one and a thousand more like it! For we do not draw our swords in fear or hatred, we take arms to aid the weak and defend the innocent.”
Amethyst was on the verge of a heart attack. “Yeah, that’s great and all, but like, you know what a dragon is, right? ‘Claws of spears, teeth of swords, an inferno that can fly’, also have severe anger issues and not really keen on us little guys with our swords and our wanting their big piles of gold?”
Lazuli’s face suddenly looked bileful, “‘Their piles’. The dragon we shall kill owns not a coin that it sleeps on, every last piece is that of the Lady. Worry not, I have seen this dragon, and this Lady is real, as I see in your eyes you doubt she exists.” Her face now softened, “But oh! with how I speak of her, how could she be real? Ah, but she is, my dear Amethyst! It was in my earliest days as a knight, when I first took to sword and saddle to aid whoever I came across. I passed near the castle, long conquered by Alexinus, just far enough away to not rouse the beast, when I saw her, in her tower. Her flowing green dress, her golden locks, how she shone like the brightest lighthouse, held within the cruelly charred tower. She looked upon me, a knight lost in her travels, and she spoke. She had given me my purpose, Amethyst, to free her by destroying her captor. There is nothing I desire more than to do this task. I could never take a bounty again after I receive what she deemed worthy of me, even if it was only the order to go on my way. I love her, you see. Yes, it seems ridiculous, but I love her completely, my heart is hers. I scorn every moment I used the world ‘love’ before the day I first saw my Lady.”
“…you don’t know her name. Do you?”
Lazuli waived Amethyst’s comment, “Bah! No name to my mind, and I know many fair names, could surely do her justice! But enough talk, I ask again, where is your horse?”
“I, wait, wuh…”, Amethyst’s mind was going numb at trying to comprehend the lunacy of this woman. Her insanity was like the Sun. Difficult to directly look at. Hence, she was quickly getting used to avoiding it, “I don’t have a horse.”
The Madam Lazuli grimaced, “Then Pumpkin shall need to carry us both.”
Amethyst started shaking, “Wh-who’s Pump--“
Lazuli stood before a brown horse at the rails, an old and sorry looking creature worn down by years. However, it’s golden eyes, more youthful than it’s body, flashed in the evening light, “Pumpkin is my loyal steed. She and I would go to the gates of Hell, so long as it was together.”
Pumpkin lifted her head and licked Lazuli’s face.
Before Amethyst could back away and try to forgot this evening, Lazuli had her picked up and mounted on the horse. “Wait, what’re you doing?! I signed up for plundering loot, not--“
“Hold tight, my dear Amethyst! For we ride!”
As Pumpkin galloped out of the settlement with her passengers, Amethyst quietly debated to herself.
Who was crazier? The crazy woman, or the sane woman who followed her?
