A Fantasy Picaresque Ch. 01

I followed the cries to the stables, and discovered a horrifying sight: my Ottilie, flat on her back, with a flabby, hairy beast between her milky white thighs, thrusting away brutally. Assuming that a delicate creature like her could never have consented to such a violation, I grabbed the brute and flung him from my girl. Had he been some simple villager, I feel certain he might have crashed into the stable floor into a heap, bruised but more or less unhurt. This shabby creature, however, crumpled into a ball and seemed to be unconscious. In the moment after, I locked eyes with Ottilie, who had a look of fear and horror that I mistook at the time as stemming from her assault.

"What have you done?" she asked breathlessly.

I was angered—I thought I'd been rescuing her, of course. I looked at the man I'd tossed aside, laying in a heap several feet away. He was motionless, and when I turned him over, blood streamed from a cut on his forehead. He was badly hurt, though I assumed he would live. He was also dressed unusually well.

"Do you know who that is?" she asked me hysterically. "It's the heir to Braunloch! Baron Welkenschwanz's son! He'll have your head for this!"

Her words rang true immediately, and I knew my life was over. Yet I couldn't conceal my disappointment, that Ottilie would not offer any appreciation for my act of heroism.

"Well, if I'm dead," I huffed, "I'd at least like a 'thank you' for rescuing you from this beast."

She looked at me with narrowed eyes. She seemed to think for a moment before speaking.

"I suppose it doesn't matter now that you're a dead man," she said, in a voice that sounded as if it came from someone else. "I'm no virgin. Pavel has been plowing me since the day I turned eighteen. He may not have your tool, but he has...other things to offer."

At this moment, I felt a sick kind of relief that I had never truly fallen for Ottilie. That did little to lessen the sting I felt, knowing she'd strung me along only to sleep with the Baron's son behind my back.

"So you would marry me and have me care for this fat sack of manure's bastards, eh?" I asked bitterly. "You're quite the whore, Ottilie."

"Says the man feeding his donkey cock to half the village wives," she replied. "Women talk, you know. I would have happily been your wife and let you have your fun, if only you would have let me have mine. Pavel's money could have helped us, and all I needed to do to get it was let him stick his puny member in me whenever he wanted. Once you'd stuffed me with that monster, I doubt I could have even felt Pavel's little thing any longer."

I was dumbstruck by the cynical, but undeniable logic of Ottilie's diatribe. She had never been the delicate flower I'd assumed. Had Evelyn known that all along? I hadn't the time to consider such matters—my life was all but forfeit if I couldn't escape the village while I had time. The fat man, his pants still bunched around his ankles, began to moan.

"Ottilie, I'm a dead man if I don't run. If you have any sympathy for me at all, help me to escape."

Though her mercenary good sense should have told her to leave me to my fate, she must have harbored some residual affection for me, her erstwhile husband to be.

"Take his horse and flee. Stay off the roads and head over the heath towards Sicherburg. You'll be safest in a town, if you can find a way to get inside the walls."

"What should I do for food?" I asked.

As a farmer, I had always occupied my time tilling and harvesting. I'd never touched a bow or blade, and had no capacity for hunting or knowledge of which foods in the wild were safe and which harmful. Ottilie rose, straightening her rumpled skirts, and strode purposefully towards the quivering heap beside me. Rolling Pavel onto his back, she pulled off his signet ring and handed it to me.

"No honest man will accept such a thing as payment," she told me ominously, "but most men you meet out in the wild won't be honest. Take his dagger, too. Oh, and one last thing—never come back here."

My pride was wounded, though in truth Ottilie's quick thinking did indeed save my life. I seized Pavel's dagger and set out on his horse, leaving behind everything I'd ever known to flee for my life into the unknown. I had a pang of regret—what if he couldn't identify me? Could I have stolen back into the crowd, watched the displays of magic and feasted, hoping that the Baron's son would never speak of the incident out of embarrassment?

I'll never know how that would have turned out. Because I ran, I betrayed my guilt in the assault on the Baron's son. Such a crime against a noble would have undoubtedly been punished with death. Yet death still hovered over me, as I fled on horseback, unsteady in the saddle. As I bore down, ever westward on the way towards Sicherburg, my mind raced.

I had become, quite by accident, an outlaw. I knew not what fate would have in store for me now.