Page 58 of The Discount Damsel

The sorcerer apprentice had come to the same conclusion and seized her arm. His blue eyes were crazed with fear and rage. He thrust a finger down at the battle below them. “Your. Fault.”

Millie wrested free of him, tears springing to her eyes, but they didn’t fall. “I don’t see you slinging any spells! Even a poorly incanted fireball could still serve as a distraction.”

Hiking her skirts up to her knees, the princess abandoned the balcony and raced for the kitchen. There, she ripped the lid off the potato bucket, dumped the spuds onto the stone floor, and dashed back into the stairwell with her prize. She took the stairs so fast they began to blur under her feet, and she was forced to stop and cling to the guard rope for a few precious seconds (listening all the while to Ivar bellowing gleefully as he chased Dirk across the sand) to catch her breath. Refreshed, though not as thoroughly as she would have been had she been able in indulge in some iced jasmine tea and a slice of honey cake, she continued her descent to the one room in the tower she never wanted to visit again.

Her breath shook and her fingers trembled as she reached for the door handle. Moments ago, she’d challenged Dirk if his dream was worth pursuing, and now she faced something similarly daunting. Yet she knew, without a doubt, that her desire to become a pirate was unwavering. It was as fixed as the North Star, as true as the change in seasons, as steady and enduring as a dolphin’s friendship with a mermaid.

Bucket at the ready, Mutineer Millie depressed the latch and threw open the door. Hissing and skittering greeted her, and before she could lose her nerve completely, she brandished her bucket and threw herself at the rabbit-sized tarantulas with a scream that was half battle cry, half sob of terror.

The courageous pirate she wanted to be rose within her, overshadowing her fear with purpose, and perhaps a little (or a lot) of berserker crazy, and between one moment and the next, it was the spiders who ran for their lives instead of the princess. Never mind the fact they had inch-long mandibles dripping with hallucinogenic venom and stinging hairs worse than nettles or jellyfish. They instinctively knew from the unhinged, demented look in the princess’s eyes who the real predator was here.

After much flailing and chasing, she caught one of the skittering things in her bucket, trapped it inside with the lid, and high-tailed it out of the room before the spiders could rally and avenge the kidnapping of one of their own.

Millie fled and yanked the door shut behind her, her ragged breathing devolving into sobs and then shrieks as the tarantulas rammed the door. The one trapped in her bucket thrashed, making the lid pop, and the second Millie met the glare of eight shiny eyes, her resolve almost vanished.

The pirate aspirant had not just braved a room full of foes with nothing but a potato bucket to be undone now. She slammed the lid down, kept it pinned hard under her palm even as her arm began to protest, and hustled down to the lowest room of the tower.

Legs wobbling like noodles, lungs sawing for air, she staggered through the standing crowd of a suit-of-armor collection to the window. She was about twenty feet above the sand now and could watch, in cringeworthy, excruciating detail, the dragon getting his ass kicked. Somehow he’d evaded a direct strike from the enchanted warhammer, but he was bruised and battered from the barbarian’s fists and boots.

“Not on my watch,” Millie vowed.

She shook the bucket, got that spider really mad, yanked off the lid, and thrust the bucket against the little window. With only one exit to be had, the venomous little thing hurled itself upon the sand to take its rage out on the first thing it saw—Ivar the Bane.

His focus solely upon the panting, tired dragon, the barbarian had no idea the tarantula was even upon him until it sunk its fangs into his thick neck. Ivar bellowed, dislodging the spider with one wallop of a backhand, and clutched his bleeding neck. The little beast righted itself after a moment of flailing legs and burrowed into the sand, its rage satiated and succumbing to the primal need for a nap post-tantrum.

The barbarian stumbled upon the sand as if drunk, murmuring something about ice flowers, and straightened abruptly when he caught sight of Dirk. “Wifey!”

The magenta dragon reared back his head in alarm. “What?”

“You are a hard-earned prize, but you are finally won.” He blew Dirk a kiss.

“I’m the dragon, you idiot!”

“No, you are my ice flower.” Ivar dropped his warhammer, sloughed off his fur cloak.

Dirk’s illusionary wings flattened against his back as he took one or two retreating steps. “I’m starting to feel very uncomfortable.”

Though his eyes swam in his head and his vision was a swirl of vivid greens and purples, Ivar had no trouble unbuckling his belt and shucking his hide trousers. From the waist down, he was as white as a grub, the tundra of his home far too cold to allow much indulgence sun-bathing. He bounced his pectorals and gave his eyebrows a lusty waggle. “Let us celebrate my victory over the dragon with raucous intercourse!”

Dirk screamed as the butt-naked barbarian charged.

“Over here,” Sir Roger shouted. “Towards the tower.”

“Shut up, manservant! I do not need advice on how to plough my wife.”

The exhausted dragon loped for the tower and shouted, “Now what?”

“Hold there,” Sir Roger said. “Don’t move.”

“Are you insane?” Dirk screeched.

“What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?”

“I never studied physics. I’m just a baby dra— AHHH!”

Ivar charged the dragon with all the detrimental potential of a rhinoceros, his arms outstretched and lips puckered amorously.

A scream rose from the dragon’s throat as he cowered flat against the manilla stones, and just when it rose to a fevered pitch, the hedge knight ordered, “Jump!”