Why I Can't Have Nice Kings Page 13

  Jackal fired her crossbow. The bolt landed dead center of where her attacker’s face had been, but Fox had effortlessly dodged it. The whip lashed out again, catching Jalev on his right arm, and then struck Jackal’s bow, ruining her effort to reload. There were no bushes to toss my sword at, so I tried to slash the whip. Unfortunately, whips are really hard to hit, especially when their owner doesn’t want you to. The wagon behind Fox would never mess with me again, though, especially since my sword would likely never leave its side. I gave up after a few strong tugs.

  Fox tried a few more slashes, but my companions were too quick for her. “I’m going to guess by the jackal-shaped helmet that you are Wolf’s and Cat’s newest companion.”

  Jackal tried to load her crossbow but fumbled the bolt again as Fox’s latest blow landed inches from her face. “Yes.”

  Fox reached her whip back for another strike. “A pity, as you remind me of myself when I was your age. I was hoping to be the one to kill my old squamate and our captain’s son. It gives me shivers to think about the old letch rolling in his grave.”

  I was separated from Jalev and Jackal by the length of the wagon. Being that I was unarmed, the least dangerous person there, and not very interested in the battle, Fox had given up on me after I had lost my sword. I wondered if this was their way of giving me an opportunity to finally be the hero. It would be just like these morons to put my heroic moment right after the part where I lost my sword to a wagon and to let it be by hitting a woman. Granted, she looked like she worked out and could probably take out a mountain lion in a fair fight, but still, it was wrong to hit a woman. Unfortunately, I didn’t see any knockout gas nearby, and even if she agreed to a battle of wits, I was sure it would end with me getting slapped. Fortunately, my mind is a highly tuned tactical machine, and I came up with a brilliant idea in the nick of time.

  “Hey, Fox, over here.” I waved my arms like I was doing jumping jacks to let her know I was serious.

  Her whip caught my left pinky to let me know she was also serious. “What is this? Bring Your Idiot Brother to Work Day?”

  “No, we’re not related,” Jackal and I said in unison.

  Fox gave Jackal a pitying look. “It’s OK if he is. I have a son just like him, minus the beard and pants.”

  I wasn’t sure what fault she found with my pants. I mean, sure, they weren’t the kind of things a noble might wear, and you could still kind of see where I had wet myself earlier, but they were way more stylish than anything the other peasants were wearing. Maybe she meant the opposite, and she really liked them. Whatever her meaning, I took it as an insult that fueled my anger and charged.

  Unfortunately, being angry does not fuel the whole “thinking” thing, and I forgot the earlier lesson about not charging in a straight line if someone is aiming at you. Her next strike caught me right in the calves, and I tumbled to the ground. My legs burned horribly, and I doubted I would ever be able to wear shorts again.

  “You bitch,” Jackal said. “You’ve crippled poor Harry.”

  I couldn’t see what happened next, being as I was having my daily face-to-face meeting with my old friend the ground, but it sounded like Jackal’s next bolt found its target. There was definitely screaming involved, and my mouth was full of dirt, so it wasn’t me. The next thing I knew, I was being hoisted up by Jackal and Jalev.

  “That was very brave of you, Harry,” Jackal said.

  “Bravery and stupidity do seem to mean the same thing to you warrior types,” Jalev said, “but it did work.”

  I was very glad that I had so much dirt covering my face, as it completely hid the tears. “Where did she go?”

  “Your friend’s bolt caught her right in her whip arm, so Fox fled. Which means she has a head start on the wagon, though, fortunately, she went the wrong way.”

  Jackal looked down at the ground. She seemed to focus on some blueish scraps of paper littered roughly every few feet. “But I left a trail, and she’s headed right for our wagon.”

  Jalev’s eyes darted back and forth between the direction we had come from and the direction the scraps of paper pointed. “Err . . . yes. It seems I got mixed up in the excitement. You are quite correct. Your wagon should be just around the corner, there. As you should be able to find it easily, and I am not much use in a physical confrontation, why don’t you go on without me and I’ll . . . go look after my circus. I am sure my people need my leadership to direct them in this time of crisis after all.” He bowed and then darted back the way we had come.

  After I was sure he was out of earshot, I stopped Jackal before we rounded the corner. “I think he’s up to something. Did you see the way he kept eyeing my bag before? I’ll bet he ran back here and took it while we were busy with Platypus and Manatee.”

  Jackal cocked her crossbow and gave me a wry smile. “Then he’ll be very disappointed when he discovers that the package isn’t in your bag. I stopped to tie my boot and took the package out of your pack. I have it now.”

  I, of course, had known that all along. I’d just wanted to give her a chance to take credit for all the hard work she had done. The character, and by extension the actress, had seemed like she needed a boost in self-confidence, and I was more than happy to give it to her. As I’ve shown, I was overflowing with self-confidence and had more than enough to spare. I was also well aware that she’d still had her pack on the whole time.

  Jackal pointed around the corner and made hand signals like they do on military shows. I had no idea what her signals meant, but I wasn’t armed anyway, and even if I had been, there likely wouldn’t be any bushes to fight.

  “So, if we have the item, why are we going back to our trailer?”

  “Because that’s where Jalev wants us to go, and I want to throw him off the fact that I have the package.” She scratched her forehead.

  “But we don’t actually have to go back there. He already thinks that’s where we’re going.”

  She stepped away from the corner. “You’re right. We should go get the others and get out of here. Hopefully, with the chaos, no one will even realize we’re gone.”

  “So, we’ll just follow your trail back to them.”

  “Unless they’ve moved. If they’ve moved, where do you think they’ll be?”

  Suddenly, a new flame shot into the sky, twice the size of any of the previous flames, followed by screams of “Where are his pants?”

  “Cat!” we said in unison.

  What’s The Return Policy on Villains?

  It didn’t take long to find the source of the noise, as a giant flame is pretty easy to follow. It’s like a crude version of the glowing arrow you have to follow in video games. The sound of all of those voices made it even easier. The hard part was overcoming my natural instinct to run in the opposite direction of either of those things.

  After we cleared through the smoke, we found a large group of people congregating in front of Jalev’s trailer. The trailer was an absolute wreck; all of the windows were broken out, the door was ajar and missing one of its hinges, and most of its contents seemed to be strewn over the ground. Wolf stood next to Jalev, who was kneeling down, massaging the forehead of the prostrate Brodus. A capuchin monkey held Brodus’s hand. We pushed through the crowd that always seems to form whenever there’s a crime.

  “Where are Platypus and Manatee?” I asked.

  Wolf shook his head. “We disabled both of ’em, but before I could tie them up, Cat thought he saw an invisible man take the package and run off.”

  Jalev turned from massaging Brodus’s head with a wet cloth. “And the gentleman in the panther helmet must have followed him here.”

  “I thought his invisible man was also intangible?” I said.

  Wolf grimaced. “Cat’s not much of a thinker.”

  “I’m a doer,” Cat said as pulled himself out of a nearby pile of debris.

  “Whatever his reasons,” Jalev said, “he inadvertently charged straight into a very visible, very tangible person as he
was assaulting poor Brodus.”

  “Is Brodus all right?” Jackal said. “Will he live?”

  “He appears to be fine. No noticeable damage. Brodus, what did he do to you?”

  Between sobs, Brodus gestured toward his armpits and belly.

  Jalev inspected both areas. “I don’t see any damage besides a little redness, and it’s fading quickly. What exactly did he do, Brodus?”

  Brodus rubbed his eye and regained his composure. He then reached out with one finger in a slight hook shape and tickled Jalev’s right armpit.

  Jalev giggled. “Stop it, Brodus. This is no time for levity. My goodness, do you mean—? No, it couldn’t be. Not the bandit!”

  Brodus nodded.

  “It’s the Tickling Bandit! Oh my God. Hide the children. Pull out your armpit protectors. Carry a fresh pair of pants whenever you leave your house!”

  The crowd gasped and began to talk animatedly amongst themselves. Some of the people even ran away in terror. The monkey screeched and jumped up and down. Clearly, this was supposed to be a big deal. What was I to do without a fresh pair of pants to put on? This villain might be a threat for Big Bird and Elmo, but he had no business being in my world.

  “But, how could it be?” Wolf said. “He hasn’t been seen in over fifty years.”

  The monkey shrugged.

  Evidently, they had recruited this crowd from a children’s show. In no other place could someone called the Tickling Bandit actually induce terror instead of mockery. I guessed Gargamel and the Trix Rabbit were otherwise occupied.

  “How, exactly, did someone tickle a seven-foot cyclops into submission?” I said.

  “The Tickling Bandit is a master of the martial art of Tickle-Shen,” Jalev replied. “According to legend, a Tickle-Shen master can knock out a knight in full plate armor in half a second. It is a lost art from the east, allegedly from Zelahadon, which was thought to have disappeared over 200 years ago, until the bandit appeared.”

  Isn’t it against the Writers’ Guild rules to employ a class of kindergarteners? That would be a violation of child labor laws, wouldn’t it? My guess was that the bandit was Jalev wearing a mask, like on Scooby-Doo. “That’s . . . awful, Jalev. At least they didn’t get anything important.”

  “Unfortunately, they took your package from Hammurabi,” Jalev said. “You see, I swiped your bag.”

  Jackal gave him a big smile. “Actually, I pretended to tie my boot and took it. It’s in my bag now.”

  Jalev sighed. “Look again, dear. I swiped it from your bag while you were fighting Fox.”

  Jackal set her pack down and pulled the contents out. She rolled her eyes at him as she pulled out the velvet bag, then gasped when the bag turned out to contain a brick and not a wooden box.

  “You really should have protected it better,” Jalev said. “The fate of the kingdom rests on that. How couuuuuld you lose it? Do you want us all to die?”

  “Well, maybe just Cat,” Jackal said half-heartedly.

  “If I were dead, who would have captured the invisible man?”

  “By The One, Cat, there is no mute, invisible, intangible man.”

  Cat scratched his head with a fork. “Then what, exactly, did I catch?”

  “More stupidity?” Wolf said.

  “You can’t catch that. It’s a fast runner.”

  “That’s fascinating, Cat,” Wolf said, “but let’s get back to the important part. Jalev did take our package. Who do you work for? Was this whole Toothy Three attack just a distraction so you could take it, and then they double-crossed you?”

  Jackal pointed her crossbow straight at Jalev’s head. She was only a few yards away, and it would have been nearly impossible to miss at that distance.

  Jalev raised his hands in surrender. “If I took it to sell or give to some evil organization, do you think I’d inform you? I could have just told you that Brodus’s assailant took it, without the part where I had my hands on it. I may be a thief and a con man, but I’m a patriot first. I would never do anything to threaten the safety of my homeland. Sure, I may steal now and again and again and again, but losing this could doom our country. Besides, Hammurabi sent word of you travelling through here. He paid me off so I wouldn’t steal it, and I swore to help you all on your way. I’m an honorable thief, after all. I’ll even let you borrow Mr. Monkey to help you out.”

  Wolf lowered Jackal’s weapon.

  “Fine, but I’m not calling him Mr. Monkey,” I said. “That name is awful.”

  “Cat Junior?” Cat said.

  “No, we’ll call him Mr. Plot Device, because that’s obviously what the writers put him in here for.”

  “Ohh, I like it. It has a really nice ring to it.”

  The monkey beamed in agreement.

  “So, then, who took it?” Wolf said.

  Jalev put his hand on his chin. “I did notice a man with a red mustache talking to Fox before you clashed with her, and as you’ll recall, that matches the description of the lurker we’ve had in our fine circus. Plus, he kept saying ‘lurk, lurk, lurk,’ so it’s safe to say that’s your guy.”

  Cat dusted himself off. “I did feel a mustache brush against me when that guy got in my way of taking out that dastardly invisible man. I also remember thinking about how red the mustache felt.”

  “How exactly can a mustache feel red?” Jackal asked.

  “When you run around naked as much as I have, you get more sensitive to these things. Try it and you’ll see. Red will never be the same after you’ve felt it on a mustache or a horseshoe.”

  Jackal edged around behind me. “I’ll take your word for it.”

  “So, we know who took it,” Wolf said, “but where did he go?”

  Mr. Plot Device, true to his name, pointed off into the nearby forest.

  “Do you have to tinkle, little guy?” Cat said.

  “No, Cat,” Jackal said. “He means the bandit ran off that way.”

  “Let me show you the evidence I found, first,” Cat said.

  Jackal began walking toward the forest. “I am not falling for that.”

  A Fight Involving Me and No Tickling?

  Jalev sent runners to gather our things and gave us some food and other supplies as an apology for losing the package. He couldn’t afford to spare any horses, as the Toothy Three had let most of them go as part of their initial attack. The trail those mercenaries had left went off in the opposite direction from our thief, so finishing them off would have to wait for another day.

  In under fifteen minutes, we were ready to go. We headed off to the “Forest of the Thumb”—so called because during decades past, most of the Tickling Bandit attacks had occurred nearby. When I asked why “of the Thumb” when most people don’t tickle with their thumbs, I was told that “of the Index Finger” didn’t have quite the same ring.

  “Who is the Tickling Bandit?” Cat asked. “I’ve never heard of him before.”

  “That’s right, “Wolf said. “You didn’t grow up in the north. He would attack any group who passed by the area carrying anything valuable. It didn’t matter how secret the item was, how many guards there were, or how big it was; he would always take it.”

  “All of the accounts I’ve heard vary greatly with regard to anything substantive about him, beside the fact that his tickles can effortlessly incapacitate or kill. Some think the Tickling Bandit is more than one person.”

  “He might not even be a he,” Jackal said.

  Cat laughed. “Like a girl could do all that damage.”

  Mr. Plot Device shook his head as Jackal pushed Cat into a tree.

  The trees in the forest were entirely evergreens; of what type, I’m not sure. The fresh scent made me think of my cabin, where I would much rather be. The ground was sprinkled with crinkling pine needles, reminding me of my walks with my grandfather in my youth. The constant crunching made it very difficult for anyone to sneak up on us, but also made it unlikely that we would be able to do the same. The needles also made it fairl
y easy for even a novice tracker such as myself to follow our prey.

  Eventually, our trail led us back out of the woods to a modest farm with three cows, a few chickens, and an old barn. A clean-shaven man with salt and pepper hair waved from the porch. He didn’t get up to greet us, so we walked to him instead. As we got closer, it became apparent why, as his right leg was in a splint.

  “He looks just like the Tickling Bandit,” Cat said. “I told you he had a red mustache.”

  “Is Cat color blind?” Jackal asked.

  “He sees what he wants to see,” Wolf said.

  Mr. Plot Device made a gesture with his hands that I’m not going to describe. Let’s just say I hate monkeys and leave it at that.

  “Hullo there, strangers. What brings you here?” The farmer pointed a crutch at me. “Ain’t you the boy who let Axin and Weel do all of them unspeakable things to him?”

  “No, that guy still has a speck of self-esteem left,” I said. This was really getting old. As if this show wasn’t bad enough. I didn’t need that rumor floating around.

  “My mistake. You do fit the description, though.”

  “We’re looking for any other travelers who might have come this way,” Jackal said. “Something of ours was stolen recently.”

  The concern on the farmer’s brow vanished. “Ahh, no, sorry. Only travelers in these parts are locals. Most were heading to that circus. You might wanna try there. Maybe they can help ya.”

  “No, that’s where the theft occurred. It was the Tickling Bandit. He knocked out the seven-foot-tall cyclops and took it.”