Some days it's no fun being the leader of a band of slightly merry men, and a few very merry maidens. Oh and of course there are the odd few who really can't decide. Getting good tights is nearly impossible too, they either ladder when climbing trees or they get caught on my sword or my quiver full of arrows. But there are times when life has its good points.
Take last week for instance. Big John, he's the dwarf, was trying to teach Lusty Dangler, the jester, how to fire a bow and arrow without almost killing himself in the process. It was long, slow work, mainly because Lusty kept forgetting to take the safety off his bow.
It was such a laugh watching him trying to remember that the pointy end of the arrow went at the front, and the feathery bit went at the back. I decided that the safest place to stand was right in front of him. This became obvious after Stan, who was standing behind them got shot in the ass.
I worry about Stan. He has this habit of wearing a maiden's silken slip and keeps insisting that he's the devil incarnate. I don't know how much credence to give his claims, but the cloven hooves, the horns and the pointy tail are causing quite a commotion. I'm not sure what breed his dogs are but I'm sure the red eyes aren't all that common.
We're never stuck for entertainment round the fire in our secret camp. I hope I'm safe in saying it's just on the outskirts of Littingham. The town itself is ok but some of the inhabitants are just downright weird. More of them later, though. Our resident minstrel is a strange little person who goes by the name of Maid Moron. The lads and I wonder whether she really is a maiden or not under her raiment, and we can't understand what the hell she's done to her shoes.
As you can imagine, when you live in the forest like we do the ground is a little messy underfoot and we can't decide if she can't afford shoes as regularly as the rest of us because she has made the heels tower over the ground with spiky things at least 15 inches high. She totters about like someone possessed, and it doesn't help that she is never seen without a flagon of mead that she sips. Oh, no quaffing for that one. Proper stuck up she is. But I suppose the heels keep her feet away from the ever-present danger that is Stan's dogs' crap. It sits on the ground, steaming and if you look closely at it you'd swear you could see fire in it. I don't know what Stan feeds them but it can't be healthy.
And her nails. Every time you see her she's doing something to them. Either picking dirt out of them with one of the dozens of weapons she keeps hidden in her garments, or applying some sort of coloured mud to them with a stick. We think she uses the dogs' crap mixed with woad and the blood of the animals we kill for food. Weird.
We had a really good haul the other day. Lillian Rose, she's the clever one in the gang. Always scribbling on some bit of parchment or other. No idea what she writes but they appear to be stories. All I know is its bloody entertaining when she tells us tales. Well she heard that a royal coach would be coming through Surewould Forest the following day, loaded down with gold and precious gems and stuff. Now that's not something we hear on a regular basis so we decided to check it out.
Lusty and Big John took up positions in a couple of trees by the side of the trail, Maid Moron didn't want to get involved as she was worried about chipping a nail or some such excuse. We figured the voices in her head told her not to go. Said it was the voice of Billy Magnet or Business Manager or something like that, we didn't hear her properly through her drunken ramblings.
Stan was just by the side of the trail with one of his dogs. Bloody great black thing with teeth like a tiger, spittle dripping from its' mouth, setting fire to the grass as it hit the ground. Its' little red beady eyes looking full of harm and hatred for the world in general. It wears a leather collar with 2 inch metal studs on it, with a little metal disc, on which Stan has scratched the word, 'Tinkerbell'. We had a good laugh at that and said he should call it Fluffy instead.
There were a few more of the lads scattered about behind various bushes and trees. Dale Tufare, (we think he's French) was nearly peeing his pants he was so scared, and Lillian kept jumping from behind a bush and tickling him to try and speed up the process so we could all have a good laugh when the inevitable happened.
We waited most of the morning, figuring the tip-off we got was wrong when Lusty spotted the coach from his perch in the tree and gave a bird call to warn the rest of us. He said it was the noise a penguin made but it sounded more like a cat trying to go to the toilet through a sewn up bum. Anyway, sure enough the coach came round the last corner before our ambush and we all jumped out from hiding.
As Stan held the coach at a standstill with the help of Tinkerbell we all had a bloody good laugh at Dale. Yup, he peed himself. We knew he would as he always does. So we had stopped it. Cool. Now all we had to do was see if it actually did contain the riches we were promised it would. It had the crest of the Sheriff of Littingham on each door, just above the go-faster stripe.
