The Golden Queen - Chapter 2
Nov. 2nd, 2022 10:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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i_read_whatSo last chapter we met our main characters: a hunter with a penchant for flashbacks, a serving maid who takes the slap in slap-kiss a little too seriously, two aliens (one of which is a hot lady) and most importantly, Orick the Bear.
Let's see where we go from here!
We immediately jump into the action this chapter in the very first line, which tells us that Gallen and Seamus had no warning before "the attack." Woo.
There's some setting info: usually the streets are quiet. They're nearing the edge of "Coille Sidhe" (as a long time fantasy reader, I know what "sidhe" means and google helpfully informs me that Coille means forest/wood), and Gallen moves quickly past it to avoid contact with the wights that guard the place.
Per Galen, there are nine of them. But to be fair, they don't seem to be terribly impressive:
In the starlight, Gallen could hardly make out the soot-blackened faces of the robbers; one of them had curly red hair. They were big men mostly, down-on-the-luck farmers sporting beards and armed with knives, the kind of aimless rogues you often saw sloughing around alehouses in the past two years. Drought one year and rot the next had thrown many a farmer out of work. Gallen made out the gleam of a longsword. Another young boy held a shield and a grim-looking war club.
Gallen, for all his general bravado, actually does a sensible thing here and urges Seamus to just hand over his money, since there are so many of them. Seamus, however, is really fucking drunk and disagrees.
"I'll not be giving them my money!" Seamus shouted, pulling his dagger, and Gallen's heart sunk. Seamus was the father of seven. He could either let the ruffians have his purse and watch his family suffer, or he could fight and probably die. He was choosing to die. "Now back me, will you! Back me!"
Dutifully, Gallen stood back to back with Seamus as the robbers closed in. That is what Seamus had paid him for. Three shillings, Gallen realized. I'm going to get killed this night for three shillings.
I kind of like the implication that had Seamus not been a father of seven, Gallen might have left his ass there.
Anyway, the lead brigand with the curly red hair demands their money rather politely all things considered. Gallen earmarks him as being a Flaherty from County Obhiann. This means nothing to me, but well observed, dude.
Gallen tries to play it off, claiming poverty and pointing out that Seamus has a wife and seven innocent children. Unfortunately it seems that these brigands had been watching Seamus for a while, and they're aware that he just made forty pounds hawking his wool at the fair. Now, I still have no idea what year this is supposed to be, so I can't exactly google inflation equivalent numbers, but I'll hazard a guess that forty pounds, whenever this is, is a shit load of money.
Gallen wishes Seamus would come to his senses. Seamus does not. So Gallen engages in some of his imaginative thinking:
Gallen half-closed his eyes and wondered, If I were the greatest knife fighter in the world, what would I do?
Interestingly. This seems to work.
In an instant, it was as if a familiar mantle began to fall over him. Gallen's muscles tightened into coils and the world moved into sharper focus. Gallen felt the blood pounding hot in his veins, and his nostrils flared wide, tasting the night air. He sized up the ruffians before him, and though it was dark, subtle shades of light began to reveal details about each man. They were breathing hard, the way men will when they're afraid.
Nine men. Gallen had never fought nine men, but at that moment it didn't matter. He was, after all, the greatest knife fighter in the world.
Gallen tossed his head back so that his hood fell away, letting his golden hair gleam in the starlight. He chuckled softly and said, "I must offer you men fair warning. If you don't back away and give us the road, I'll have to kill you."
One robber gasped, "It's Gallen O'Day! Watch him boys!" The men swarmed around Gallen and Seamus faster, moving warily, but none dared venture in too close. The tallest robber shouted, "Take him, boys!"
a) ...is there magic in this world? Because while I certainly appreciate the power of positive thinking, this seems a bit beyond the ordinary!
b) That said, I think Wolverton did do a pretty good job of showing us that these guys are clearly not professionals. Is it unlikely that a skilled fighter can take down nine men, even untrained? Yes. Is it beyond the realm of possibility? Well, to me, a person with no actual knowledge of real world fight statistics but has watched a shit ton of terrible action movies, this seems like it could be possible.
c) For a second, the combination of gleaming golden hair and "Take him, boys!" made my mind drift into a very different genre.
But of course, the would-be gang bang doesn't go the robbers' way. Apparently I misjudged Seamus. He actually is fairly useful at covering Gallen's back, at least until he gets knocked to the ground. Gallen, for his part, gets some good action moves in:
Gallen had been watching the man who tossed his knife from hand to hand. The knife was in the air, and Gallen leapt up and kicked it away, disarming the robber. He whirled and kicked an attacker off Seamus, slashed another across the throat. The lad with a club raised his shield to protect his face, and Gallen could have dropped beneath the boy's guard and lunged past, run to win his freedom. But Gallen knew he had to keep the highwaymen from slitting Seamus's throat.
So instead of running, Gallen gets behind the young robber and puts his knife to the kids throat. He tells them that he doesn't want to murder this kid, so you know, back off.
Unfortunately, apparently the kid's life isn't worth forty pounds to them. The kid starts crying and tells "Paddy" to tell the others to back off. Paddy, as the robber with the sword, seems like a much more useful hostage, so Gallen goes full on gymnastic action hero here:
Gallen tossed the boy to the ground. The robber who wore the breastplate leaned forward, dagger at the ready. Gallen had already slipped beneath one attacker's guard, and the men held their weapons low, preventing any similar moves. One man lunged at Gallen from behind; Gallen sidestepped, slashed the attacker's knife arm nearly in half, then Gallen leapt at the man in the breastplate. He put his toe at the top of the man's throat and let it slide down till it hit the armor, then stepped up and used his momentum to somersault over the robber's head.
Do I think this is remotely physically possible? Eh, jury's out, but I'm skeptical. Am I entertained? Yes.
"Paddy" does, indeed, throw down his sword when Gallen gets his knife to HIS throat. And the three remaining men (of the others: one is dead, one's out cold, two have serious wounds, and one is the crying boy who isn't apt to lift a hand to join in the fight again) back off.
Actually, here's where things get a little interesting:
"Paddy, you're a lousy bastard!" the boy shouted, still sitting on the ground. "You were going to let him slit my gullet, but you'll save your own? So you think you're worth forty pounds, but I'm not worth a bob?"
The boy got up and held his shield down low like a veteran, and he raised his nasty war club; its metal studs gleamed in the starlight. He advanced slowly, and the other robbers suddenly leered like the greedy thieves they were. As one they reached down and retrieved their weapons. Seamus moaned and began coughing. Gallen saw that he would have to fight these last four. The men quickly circled him.
Gallen actually does end up slitting "Paddy's" throat, but the others DO actually manage to overpower him. Things look bad when suddenly:
"Hold!" a commanding voice shouted nearby, and Gallen's attackers stopped. As one they looked up the hill to gauge this new threat. The wind was still hissing in the trees, and the muddy road was cold against Gallen's back. He tried to roll over, look up to see his rescuer. The newcomer said evenly in a voice hot with warning, "Those who commit murder in Coille Sidhe shall never escape alive."
I'm kind of thinking this is going to be a trick, given that Gallen JUST slit some dude's throat. But maybe it counts as self-defense as Sidhe view things. Gallen himself is pretty out of it, but he thinks he'd never heard any rumors that there were REAL "netherworlders" inhabiting the forest. He thinks about how "it was said" that the Sidhe are lesser demons who serve Satan.
That said...there DOES seem to be something there:
"There's only one of them," a robber said, trying to bolster the courage of his fellows. Gallen rolled to his elbows and looked up: above him at the top of the ridge stood a man in the darkness, the starlit sky at his back. He wore garments of solid black, all darker than the night, and his head was covered with a hood. Even his hands were covered with fine gloves. Starlight reflected dully from a longsword in one hand and a twisted dagger in the other. For a moment, Gallen thought it was just a man standing in the darkness, but his eyes focused on the creature's face: its face shone like pale lavender starlight, as if it were a liquid mirror. Gallen's heart pounded in terror, and the sidhe leaned back and laughed grimly at the highwaymen. In that one horrifying moment, Gallen expected the ground to split open and the devil and his legions to crawl forth.
Swanky.
So the robbers flee and Gallen keels the fuck over. He comes to as the "sidhe" hoists him into the saddle of Seamus's horse. Seamus is slung over the back, wounded and in bad shape. The "sidhe" knows Gallen's name and urges him to save his friend if he can. And then...
The sidhe took Gallen's chin, and Gallen looked into the creature's eyes. The thing looked human in nearly every way-Gallen could make out the fiery yellow hairs of its eyebrows. It was very much a human face, if not for the fact that it glowed like molten metal. "Remember, Gallen," the creature said with great heaviness, "I will hold you accountable for any oaths you make this day."
So Gallen is off, and we shift scenes to ORICK THE BEAR.
Yes! We get viewpoint monologue from ORICK THE BEAR. Let's have a look!!!
The night that Gallen O'Day fought off the nine robbers, Orick had been thinking about leaving Gallen forever. A dozen conflicting urges were moving Orick in ways that he did not wish to go.
His love of mankind and his desire to serve God by ministering to others was leading Orick toward the priesthood. Yet Orick knew that he and Gallen were not of the same heart on such matters. While Orick revered the Tome and its companion book the Bible, hungering for the wisdom of the ancient Christ and his disciples, Gallen's attitude toward the books was disappointing. The young man vacillated between grudging admiration for some of the Bible's teachings and open contempt for the Tome. Obviously, Gallen did not have faith in the holy books. Although Orick genuinely liked Gallen, their sharply divergent views on religion were troubling, and Orick believed that soon he would have to leave Gallen, if only to retain some peace of mind.
Furthermore, Orick found other urges beckoning him. He had been spending a great deal of time in the company of humans lately. But such a state of affairs could not long continue. He needed a female bear's company.
DO WHATEVER YOU WANT. YOU ARE A TALKING BEAR. BE THE BEST TALKING PRIEST BEAR YOU CAN BE.
It's interesting though that Orick apparently will not be bound by vows of chastity. That implies one of a few possibilities:
1) Orick isn't Catholic. I'd think, given that we're clearly in Scotland, with a settlement of Irish folk, he'd be more likely Catholic than not. But maybe he's Anglican?
2) This version of Earth simply never had Catholic priests become celibate. There are talking bears after all. Maybe there are other changes to this world.
3) Bears are exempted from the whole celibacy thing. Which would make some sense. Would YOU want to tell your bear subordinate that he can't get laid?
If you remember, Orick wasn't alone when Gallen found him eating the garbage. There was another bear too. At the time, I'd wondered if said bear could not talk, or simply was the strong silent type.
The young female bear next to him, named Dara, pawed demurely through the garbage. "Have you decided then? Will you be coming to the Salmon Fest next week?"
NOPE. GIRL BEAR.
And, oh god, I need to show you this whole passage. I need to be careful or I'll violate copyright and show you the whole damn section:
Orick imagined the hundreds of bears that would be gathered at the fest, fishing in the day, sitting around campfires and singing all night on the rocky beach on the banks of the cold river. He imagined the smell of wet fur, the pine trees, whole salmon skewered on stakes as they leaned against the fire pits to broil. Though Orick didn't particularly relish the idea of wading in the icy waters of Obhiann Fiain all day trying to catch fish in his teeth, he was nearly four, and certain primal urges were getting hard to ignore. Orick saw that becoming a father would confer upon him a type of immortality, for he would live on through his progeny, and he hungered for that particular blessing.
Yet if he entered the priesthood, he would have to take a vow of chastity, and so he considered that this year he would need to go to the Salmon Fest. At the Salmon Fest many a fair young female bear would be hunting for more than a slimy morsel of fish for dinner, and frankly, as the bears say, "A she-bear in heat is the best kind to meet."
1) Clearly, I spoke too soon. Orick WILL have to take a vow of chastity if he becomes a priest.
2) Orick is almost four years old!
3) AS THE BEARS SAY.
OH GOD. IT GETS BETTER.
Sure, there would be games at the festival—competitions where the males would go at it tooth and claw, tree-climbing races, the log pull, the pig toss. Orick would have to win the right to breed, but he was becoming rather large, and he'd learned a few wrestling tricks by watching Gallen.
So Gallen O'Day taught a bear wrestling tricks, which said bear will use to get laid.
a) Gallen is SUCH a Marty Stu. Holy fuck. I know folks mock Isolder, but at least Isolder never taught a bear wrestling moves that the bear will then use to get laid.
b) That said, congratulations for giving your Marty Stu some excellent bragging rights, Wolverton. I salute you.
Orick could always find a lady bear elsewhere, but he thinks about another saying: "While the common bear shivers in his wet fur, the superior bear builds a fire." And I love that bears apparently spend all their time making up sayings in this universe.
I also love the book for this line:
So, Orick knew that if he really wanted a quality mate, he would need to make the journey to the Salmon Fest, leaving Gallen O'Day behind.
Oh, alas. If only Orick was the OTHER kind of bear. Sadly, not the right genre. (...I would read the gay porn parody of this book though. If there was a such thing as gay porn parodies of fantasy novels.)
Okay, this bit is funny. In a VERY heavy-handed parallel to Gallen and Maggie, Dara is flirting very heavily with Orick, suggesting they go and hunt some deer together. Orick just thinks about how hunting deer is too much work. Dipshit.
To be fair, Orick's thoughts as Dara goes up to deer hunt alone do seem to be aware that Dara is flirting with him. Though he thinks she probably has no idea of how strongly her charms are affecting him. I think probably she knows, dude. But that's the dilemma: follow her, see if he can win the right to mate with her? Or stay with Gallen?
The fact that Gallen is even in the running here proves the man is a glorious Marty Stu. But well done, Wolverton. Being so awesome that your bear friend would rather stick with you than go mate with a hot lady bear is pretty great bragging rights.
But that's when things get tense: it's gotten dark, and Orick smells blood in the air. And then he spots something:
Something was walking up the road. It resembled a human creeping on all fours, but its spindly legs could have been no less than eight feet long, as were its arms, while its torso was very short, perhaps only two feet. It moved jerkily, wary as a mantis, its tiny round head pivoting as it tried to gaze in all directions at once.
It carried something in one hand—the mangled body of a whippet. The creature got to a crossroad and hesitated in the shadows, then dropped the dead dog and bent its elbows so that its forehead nearly touched ground. Orick could hear the creature sniffing. It crept toward Mahoney's stables, keeping its nose to the ground, then suddenly seemed to catch a scent. It swerved back toward the inn.
...yeah, that's not good.
We get more description:
The monster sneaked to the darkened windows of the inn, not twelve feet from Orick. It stopped, sniffed at Orick and regarded him a moment. The monster had large eyes that showed orange in the moonlight, and Orick saw that its marvelously long hands looked very powerful. Orick didn't move, and the creature must have decided that Orick was asleep and therefore didn't matter. Let sleeping bears lie.
Wise creature. Orick notes that it has a human shaped head but moves more like an insect.
So the creature tries to break into the inn. Fortunately, Orick is there to grab it by the leg and rip its sinews. The creature slashes poor Orick in the face, while Orick bites into a surprisingly tough arm. He DOES manage to snap its bones.
Orick gets to killing the thing, not wanting it to escape, and is shocked to hear it cry out in words: "I have found her! Come, fellow vanquishers!"
Everyone comes out of the inn, including two people that Orick doesn't know, but we recognize as Veriasse and Everynne. They know what's happened and they have to leave now, on foot. Veriasse does raise his sword in silent salute at Orick.
Orick accepts the congratulations of the townsfolk, but he has many questions. What is this thing? Who were those people?
Oh, and this is kind of chilling:
Orick knew so little about the creature—only that the beast's flesh was made of tougher stuff than anything he had ever sunk his teeth into. As townspeople brought their lanterns close to look at the beast, Orick smelled its torn flesh. It had an oily scent, not like any land beast, but more like a fish, yet without the putrid fishy flavor.
When he looked at the ropey coils of torn muscle, he saw that each fiber was like a tiny thread of white. Yet when he looked into the creature's face, aside from the heavy jaws and sharp teeth, it looked to be human, a young boy perhaps.
Egads.
The chapter ends with Orick intending to follow and help the strangers, as soon as Gallen returns. He wonders what's taking Gallen so long.
Let's see where we go from here!
We immediately jump into the action this chapter in the very first line, which tells us that Gallen and Seamus had no warning before "the attack." Woo.
There's some setting info: usually the streets are quiet. They're nearing the edge of "Coille Sidhe" (as a long time fantasy reader, I know what "sidhe" means and google helpfully informs me that Coille means forest/wood), and Gallen moves quickly past it to avoid contact with the wights that guard the place.
Per Galen, there are nine of them. But to be fair, they don't seem to be terribly impressive:
In the starlight, Gallen could hardly make out the soot-blackened faces of the robbers; one of them had curly red hair. They were big men mostly, down-on-the-luck farmers sporting beards and armed with knives, the kind of aimless rogues you often saw sloughing around alehouses in the past two years. Drought one year and rot the next had thrown many a farmer out of work. Gallen made out the gleam of a longsword. Another young boy held a shield and a grim-looking war club.
Gallen, for all his general bravado, actually does a sensible thing here and urges Seamus to just hand over his money, since there are so many of them. Seamus, however, is really fucking drunk and disagrees.
"I'll not be giving them my money!" Seamus shouted, pulling his dagger, and Gallen's heart sunk. Seamus was the father of seven. He could either let the ruffians have his purse and watch his family suffer, or he could fight and probably die. He was choosing to die. "Now back me, will you! Back me!"
Dutifully, Gallen stood back to back with Seamus as the robbers closed in. That is what Seamus had paid him for. Three shillings, Gallen realized. I'm going to get killed this night for three shillings.
I kind of like the implication that had Seamus not been a father of seven, Gallen might have left his ass there.
Anyway, the lead brigand with the curly red hair demands their money rather politely all things considered. Gallen earmarks him as being a Flaherty from County Obhiann. This means nothing to me, but well observed, dude.
Gallen tries to play it off, claiming poverty and pointing out that Seamus has a wife and seven innocent children. Unfortunately it seems that these brigands had been watching Seamus for a while, and they're aware that he just made forty pounds hawking his wool at the fair. Now, I still have no idea what year this is supposed to be, so I can't exactly google inflation equivalent numbers, but I'll hazard a guess that forty pounds, whenever this is, is a shit load of money.
Gallen wishes Seamus would come to his senses. Seamus does not. So Gallen engages in some of his imaginative thinking:
Gallen half-closed his eyes and wondered, If I were the greatest knife fighter in the world, what would I do?
Interestingly. This seems to work.
In an instant, it was as if a familiar mantle began to fall over him. Gallen's muscles tightened into coils and the world moved into sharper focus. Gallen felt the blood pounding hot in his veins, and his nostrils flared wide, tasting the night air. He sized up the ruffians before him, and though it was dark, subtle shades of light began to reveal details about each man. They were breathing hard, the way men will when they're afraid.
Nine men. Gallen had never fought nine men, but at that moment it didn't matter. He was, after all, the greatest knife fighter in the world.
Gallen tossed his head back so that his hood fell away, letting his golden hair gleam in the starlight. He chuckled softly and said, "I must offer you men fair warning. If you don't back away and give us the road, I'll have to kill you."
One robber gasped, "It's Gallen O'Day! Watch him boys!" The men swarmed around Gallen and Seamus faster, moving warily, but none dared venture in too close. The tallest robber shouted, "Take him, boys!"
a) ...is there magic in this world? Because while I certainly appreciate the power of positive thinking, this seems a bit beyond the ordinary!
b) That said, I think Wolverton did do a pretty good job of showing us that these guys are clearly not professionals. Is it unlikely that a skilled fighter can take down nine men, even untrained? Yes. Is it beyond the realm of possibility? Well, to me, a person with no actual knowledge of real world fight statistics but has watched a shit ton of terrible action movies, this seems like it could be possible.
c) For a second, the combination of gleaming golden hair and "Take him, boys!" made my mind drift into a very different genre.
But of course, the would-be gang bang doesn't go the robbers' way. Apparently I misjudged Seamus. He actually is fairly useful at covering Gallen's back, at least until he gets knocked to the ground. Gallen, for his part, gets some good action moves in:
Gallen had been watching the man who tossed his knife from hand to hand. The knife was in the air, and Gallen leapt up and kicked it away, disarming the robber. He whirled and kicked an attacker off Seamus, slashed another across the throat. The lad with a club raised his shield to protect his face, and Gallen could have dropped beneath the boy's guard and lunged past, run to win his freedom. But Gallen knew he had to keep the highwaymen from slitting Seamus's throat.
So instead of running, Gallen gets behind the young robber and puts his knife to the kids throat. He tells them that he doesn't want to murder this kid, so you know, back off.
Unfortunately, apparently the kid's life isn't worth forty pounds to them. The kid starts crying and tells "Paddy" to tell the others to back off. Paddy, as the robber with the sword, seems like a much more useful hostage, so Gallen goes full on gymnastic action hero here:
Gallen tossed the boy to the ground. The robber who wore the breastplate leaned forward, dagger at the ready. Gallen had already slipped beneath one attacker's guard, and the men held their weapons low, preventing any similar moves. One man lunged at Gallen from behind; Gallen sidestepped, slashed the attacker's knife arm nearly in half, then Gallen leapt at the man in the breastplate. He put his toe at the top of the man's throat and let it slide down till it hit the armor, then stepped up and used his momentum to somersault over the robber's head.
Do I think this is remotely physically possible? Eh, jury's out, but I'm skeptical. Am I entertained? Yes.
"Paddy" does, indeed, throw down his sword when Gallen gets his knife to HIS throat. And the three remaining men (of the others: one is dead, one's out cold, two have serious wounds, and one is the crying boy who isn't apt to lift a hand to join in the fight again) back off.
Actually, here's where things get a little interesting:
"Paddy, you're a lousy bastard!" the boy shouted, still sitting on the ground. "You were going to let him slit my gullet, but you'll save your own? So you think you're worth forty pounds, but I'm not worth a bob?"
The boy got up and held his shield down low like a veteran, and he raised his nasty war club; its metal studs gleamed in the starlight. He advanced slowly, and the other robbers suddenly leered like the greedy thieves they were. As one they reached down and retrieved their weapons. Seamus moaned and began coughing. Gallen saw that he would have to fight these last four. The men quickly circled him.
Gallen actually does end up slitting "Paddy's" throat, but the others DO actually manage to overpower him. Things look bad when suddenly:
"Hold!" a commanding voice shouted nearby, and Gallen's attackers stopped. As one they looked up the hill to gauge this new threat. The wind was still hissing in the trees, and the muddy road was cold against Gallen's back. He tried to roll over, look up to see his rescuer. The newcomer said evenly in a voice hot with warning, "Those who commit murder in Coille Sidhe shall never escape alive."
I'm kind of thinking this is going to be a trick, given that Gallen JUST slit some dude's throat. But maybe it counts as self-defense as Sidhe view things. Gallen himself is pretty out of it, but he thinks he'd never heard any rumors that there were REAL "netherworlders" inhabiting the forest. He thinks about how "it was said" that the Sidhe are lesser demons who serve Satan.
That said...there DOES seem to be something there:
"There's only one of them," a robber said, trying to bolster the courage of his fellows. Gallen rolled to his elbows and looked up: above him at the top of the ridge stood a man in the darkness, the starlit sky at his back. He wore garments of solid black, all darker than the night, and his head was covered with a hood. Even his hands were covered with fine gloves. Starlight reflected dully from a longsword in one hand and a twisted dagger in the other. For a moment, Gallen thought it was just a man standing in the darkness, but his eyes focused on the creature's face: its face shone like pale lavender starlight, as if it were a liquid mirror. Gallen's heart pounded in terror, and the sidhe leaned back and laughed grimly at the highwaymen. In that one horrifying moment, Gallen expected the ground to split open and the devil and his legions to crawl forth.
Swanky.
So the robbers flee and Gallen keels the fuck over. He comes to as the "sidhe" hoists him into the saddle of Seamus's horse. Seamus is slung over the back, wounded and in bad shape. The "sidhe" knows Gallen's name and urges him to save his friend if he can. And then...
The sidhe took Gallen's chin, and Gallen looked into the creature's eyes. The thing looked human in nearly every way-Gallen could make out the fiery yellow hairs of its eyebrows. It was very much a human face, if not for the fact that it glowed like molten metal. "Remember, Gallen," the creature said with great heaviness, "I will hold you accountable for any oaths you make this day."
So Gallen is off, and we shift scenes to ORICK THE BEAR.
Yes! We get viewpoint monologue from ORICK THE BEAR. Let's have a look!!!
The night that Gallen O'Day fought off the nine robbers, Orick had been thinking about leaving Gallen forever. A dozen conflicting urges were moving Orick in ways that he did not wish to go.
His love of mankind and his desire to serve God by ministering to others was leading Orick toward the priesthood. Yet Orick knew that he and Gallen were not of the same heart on such matters. While Orick revered the Tome and its companion book the Bible, hungering for the wisdom of the ancient Christ and his disciples, Gallen's attitude toward the books was disappointing. The young man vacillated between grudging admiration for some of the Bible's teachings and open contempt for the Tome. Obviously, Gallen did not have faith in the holy books. Although Orick genuinely liked Gallen, their sharply divergent views on religion were troubling, and Orick believed that soon he would have to leave Gallen, if only to retain some peace of mind.
Furthermore, Orick found other urges beckoning him. He had been spending a great deal of time in the company of humans lately. But such a state of affairs could not long continue. He needed a female bear's company.
DO WHATEVER YOU WANT. YOU ARE A TALKING BEAR. BE THE BEST TALKING PRIEST BEAR YOU CAN BE.
It's interesting though that Orick apparently will not be bound by vows of chastity. That implies one of a few possibilities:
1) Orick isn't Catholic. I'd think, given that we're clearly in Scotland, with a settlement of Irish folk, he'd be more likely Catholic than not. But maybe he's Anglican?
2) This version of Earth simply never had Catholic priests become celibate. There are talking bears after all. Maybe there are other changes to this world.
3) Bears are exempted from the whole celibacy thing. Which would make some sense. Would YOU want to tell your bear subordinate that he can't get laid?
If you remember, Orick wasn't alone when Gallen found him eating the garbage. There was another bear too. At the time, I'd wondered if said bear could not talk, or simply was the strong silent type.
The young female bear next to him, named Dara, pawed demurely through the garbage. "Have you decided then? Will you be coming to the Salmon Fest next week?"
NOPE. GIRL BEAR.
And, oh god, I need to show you this whole passage. I need to be careful or I'll violate copyright and show you the whole damn section:
Orick imagined the hundreds of bears that would be gathered at the fest, fishing in the day, sitting around campfires and singing all night on the rocky beach on the banks of the cold river. He imagined the smell of wet fur, the pine trees, whole salmon skewered on stakes as they leaned against the fire pits to broil. Though Orick didn't particularly relish the idea of wading in the icy waters of Obhiann Fiain all day trying to catch fish in his teeth, he was nearly four, and certain primal urges were getting hard to ignore. Orick saw that becoming a father would confer upon him a type of immortality, for he would live on through his progeny, and he hungered for that particular blessing.
Yet if he entered the priesthood, he would have to take a vow of chastity, and so he considered that this year he would need to go to the Salmon Fest. At the Salmon Fest many a fair young female bear would be hunting for more than a slimy morsel of fish for dinner, and frankly, as the bears say, "A she-bear in heat is the best kind to meet."
1) Clearly, I spoke too soon. Orick WILL have to take a vow of chastity if he becomes a priest.
2) Orick is almost four years old!
3) AS THE BEARS SAY.
OH GOD. IT GETS BETTER.
Sure, there would be games at the festival—competitions where the males would go at it tooth and claw, tree-climbing races, the log pull, the pig toss. Orick would have to win the right to breed, but he was becoming rather large, and he'd learned a few wrestling tricks by watching Gallen.
So Gallen O'Day taught a bear wrestling tricks, which said bear will use to get laid.
a) Gallen is SUCH a Marty Stu. Holy fuck. I know folks mock Isolder, but at least Isolder never taught a bear wrestling moves that the bear will then use to get laid.
b) That said, congratulations for giving your Marty Stu some excellent bragging rights, Wolverton. I salute you.
Orick could always find a lady bear elsewhere, but he thinks about another saying: "While the common bear shivers in his wet fur, the superior bear builds a fire." And I love that bears apparently spend all their time making up sayings in this universe.
I also love the book for this line:
So, Orick knew that if he really wanted a quality mate, he would need to make the journey to the Salmon Fest, leaving Gallen O'Day behind.
Oh, alas. If only Orick was the OTHER kind of bear. Sadly, not the right genre. (...I would read the gay porn parody of this book though. If there was a such thing as gay porn parodies of fantasy novels.)
Okay, this bit is funny. In a VERY heavy-handed parallel to Gallen and Maggie, Dara is flirting very heavily with Orick, suggesting they go and hunt some deer together. Orick just thinks about how hunting deer is too much work. Dipshit.
To be fair, Orick's thoughts as Dara goes up to deer hunt alone do seem to be aware that Dara is flirting with him. Though he thinks she probably has no idea of how strongly her charms are affecting him. I think probably she knows, dude. But that's the dilemma: follow her, see if he can win the right to mate with her? Or stay with Gallen?
The fact that Gallen is even in the running here proves the man is a glorious Marty Stu. But well done, Wolverton. Being so awesome that your bear friend would rather stick with you than go mate with a hot lady bear is pretty great bragging rights.
But that's when things get tense: it's gotten dark, and Orick smells blood in the air. And then he spots something:
Something was walking up the road. It resembled a human creeping on all fours, but its spindly legs could have been no less than eight feet long, as were its arms, while its torso was very short, perhaps only two feet. It moved jerkily, wary as a mantis, its tiny round head pivoting as it tried to gaze in all directions at once.
It carried something in one hand—the mangled body of a whippet. The creature got to a crossroad and hesitated in the shadows, then dropped the dead dog and bent its elbows so that its forehead nearly touched ground. Orick could hear the creature sniffing. It crept toward Mahoney's stables, keeping its nose to the ground, then suddenly seemed to catch a scent. It swerved back toward the inn.
...yeah, that's not good.
We get more description:
The monster sneaked to the darkened windows of the inn, not twelve feet from Orick. It stopped, sniffed at Orick and regarded him a moment. The monster had large eyes that showed orange in the moonlight, and Orick saw that its marvelously long hands looked very powerful. Orick didn't move, and the creature must have decided that Orick was asleep and therefore didn't matter. Let sleeping bears lie.
Wise creature. Orick notes that it has a human shaped head but moves more like an insect.
So the creature tries to break into the inn. Fortunately, Orick is there to grab it by the leg and rip its sinews. The creature slashes poor Orick in the face, while Orick bites into a surprisingly tough arm. He DOES manage to snap its bones.
Orick gets to killing the thing, not wanting it to escape, and is shocked to hear it cry out in words: "I have found her! Come, fellow vanquishers!"
Everyone comes out of the inn, including two people that Orick doesn't know, but we recognize as Veriasse and Everynne. They know what's happened and they have to leave now, on foot. Veriasse does raise his sword in silent salute at Orick.
Orick accepts the congratulations of the townsfolk, but he has many questions. What is this thing? Who were those people?
Oh, and this is kind of chilling:
Orick knew so little about the creature—only that the beast's flesh was made of tougher stuff than anything he had ever sunk his teeth into. As townspeople brought their lanterns close to look at the beast, Orick smelled its torn flesh. It had an oily scent, not like any land beast, but more like a fish, yet without the putrid fishy flavor.
When he looked at the ropey coils of torn muscle, he saw that each fiber was like a tiny thread of white. Yet when he looked into the creature's face, aside from the heavy jaws and sharp teeth, it looked to be human, a young boy perhaps.
Egads.
The chapter ends with Orick intending to follow and help the strangers, as soon as Gallen returns. He wonders what's taking Gallen so long.
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Date: 2022-11-03 04:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-11-03 05:12 pm (UTC)And I have no idea, tbh. My memory of the book is very vague. So we'll find out together! :-D