Errant to the End

Memoir of a Retired Knight

"The Witch of Harpy Mountain"

Ink on parchment

Draft 1

It started at the Dragon’s Roost Inn—a shitty name for a spot that hasn’t seen a dragon in a hundred years. I don’t blame them, either. No decent dragon would be caught dead near the place. The company lurking about there is not one I would keep if it weren’t the only inn for fifty miles. It's filled with the dregs: wayward wizards, out-of-work goblin merchants who always try to get you to buy into their pyramid scheme, and orcish cutthroats who always piss themselves and break a contract the minute an actual fight starts.

Sure, there are brothels all around, but if you fall asleep there, they charge you by the hour. No, sir, I’ll keep my hard-earned money. Well, at least the money I hadn’t already given them. And stop, I know what you’re thinking: No, I only stopped at five two of them.

Anyway, the beginning. I was resting at the Dragon’s Roost after a long day of hanging out with whores and drinking myself into a stupor fighting chimeras near the coastline. I overheard a gnomish girl talking about a man looking to hire someone to kill a witch. She claimed that she would have done it herself, but she recently gotten her hair done, and the price wasn't worth getting it dirty again. I, in desperate need of some money to visit more brothels continue my journey to the next town, asked her to show me the fellow.

She pointed to a man sitting in the far corner, wearing a dark, violet cloak, making smoke rings from a long pipe. When I approached, he offered me a seat and a mug of ale. I, of course, thirsty from fighting chimeras, needed more a drink, so I took him up on the offer. I see now it was a foolish thing to do. Never take a free drink from strangers in cloaks. Unless it’s a dwarf or a kobold, because those guys love to party with strangers. But other than that, no strangers in dark colored cloaks.

His voice was low and flat, and his cowl fluttered at the weight of his words, “My name is Alambobdora. I need your help, knight.”

The thing about being a knight errant is that we never turn down noble quests. And when we’re plied with free ale, we accept the most dangerous ones with little pay. So, after his free drink, he offered me just that: a measly fifteen gold shillings to kill a single witch. Seemed simple. I’ve killed plenty of them before (including one who turned my wolfhound Cassie into a giant toad, which made boarding her in a kennel very difficult for a while until I found another witch, who turned her into a chicken, and then another witch who turned her into a cat, then finally another witch who turned her back into a dog, but it was a shitty poodle and rather useless, so I gave her to my sister’s dimwitted kid), so this wouldn't be a problem.

Like the drunken fool that I am, I agreed without asking where the witch was. And as a knight errant, my word is my bond, so there was no going back.

“At the peak of Harpy Mountain,” he said, his words somehow darker and more ominous than before.

Fuck, I thought. No one good ever lives in a place called Harpy Mountain. There's never a big-titted sex goddess who gifts you sacks of gold and a magic horse living in a place called Harpy Mountain. It's either filled with actual harpies or, in this case, a witch. “What has this witch done?” I asked.

He leaned in closer, cowl still mysteriously covering his face. “She is the most evil witch ever to walk this earth. You need to be careful with her, as she can shout fire from her mouth. It’s said she can rip a man’s soul apart. She needs to be put down for the good of humanity.”

He produced for me a crudely stenciled map. The path left the Inn, through Gelwynn Forest, and up a mountain that had a name scratched out and written over with red crayon, saying "Harpy Mountain." It was a long, treacherous journey of at least five miles. And Gelwynn is full of those shitty, giant spiders that everyone hates but no one does anything about. I should have asked for more gold, but saving the world from an evil witch was reward enough, I guess. Why did he already have a map from our location to the mountain? The first clue. Or maybe the second, after the fact that he only bought me one drink.

So now, the middle part. The path through Gelwynn was dark, thorny, and full of things I had to kill. The first was a giant toad, who kept barking and licking me with his massive tongue, as if he was begging for food or trying to eat me; I don’t know. The only thing he tasted was my blade. The second was a giant scorpion (it was regular-sized, but I fucking hate scorpions). The third was a troll, who, upon seeing me, begged for money to buy a sandwich back at the inn attempted to rob me, but ran screaming when I stabbed him in the eye and he shouted something about a lawyer.

At last, halfway through the dark path, I came upon a circle of gargantuan spiders. I kept quiet, trying to surprise them. They were gathered in a circle, oddly fixated upon one of those gambling wheels crudely attached to a wooden board. One of them, apparently after killing some poor fellow who carried dice on him, was flicking one of the white cubes around while the others were hissing.

I drew my spear, hoping to run them through in a surprise attack, but one raised a hairy limb and screeched at me before I had the chance to kill it.

“Get out of our forest!” it shouted, launching its webs at me, which I swatted away with my shield before hurling the spear into it.

I drew my sword as the rest skittered towards me.

“Why do humans always try to come and hurt us?” another hissed, right before I cut it in twain.

A third leaped from the trees above, “We only want to raise our children in pea—” He didn’t finish his sentence before I stabbed it in the belly.

The smaller spiders with them, screaming their evil as they ran away from me, were easy to stomp into a gooey mess. At last, travel through the forest was safe. Or at least I thought it was.

The hairs on the back of my neck pricked up more than once as the miles dragged on. I assumed a spider had escaped my sword and sought revenge. The sound of crunching leaves caught my ear several times, though I was unable to see what creatures made it.

Alas, I came to the end of the forest trail without incident. Well, there was the toll collector at the end, which was surprising. An odd fellow, he was in a lopsided wooden shack whose paint was still wet, and it had misspelled "booth", adding three too many Os.

"'Ello. Where ya goin?" he asked. "The toll to Redmond Castle is ten shillings, the toll to Hanford is eight shillings. Ya tryna cross wot wit them sword and shield? That's, uh, extra."

"I need to get to Harpy Mountain."

"Harpy Mountain?" he asked as his left eye dipped into a deep, puzzled squint before snapping back and saying, "Where the fuc—Oooooh, Harpy Mountain. Roight, roight. OK, so that's, uh, seventeen gold, then."

I tossed him his coin and continued, though I still couldn't shake the feeling that I was being stalked.

The path up the mountain was, to my surprise, not steep and easy to navigate. There was a safety wall around the outside, and no loose rocks littered the path. It felt more like a road than a treacherous mountainway.

I stopped more than once when the sound of footsteps caught my attention. I double-backed, hoping to catch whatever foul monster had made its way out of the forest and thought to take its revenge on me, but to no avail. I surmised that it must have killed the toll collector, as most monsters don’t keep gold on them (I do want to make special mention of hobogoblins, which, unlike giant spiders and slime creatures, wear shabby clothes and shoes, and sometimes walk out on the road to clean your horse, even if you ask them not to, but then you feel bad because they don’t have much to eat and likely live in a ditch, so you toss them a coin or two to go away, but I saw no such hobogoblins in Gelwynn).

As the path up the mountain wound closer to the peak, I found it odd that the safety wall was decorated with murals, flower pots, and a sign that read “Welcome.” Witches were known for tricking people in order to kidnap them and turn them into ingredients for their spells, potions, or their self-branded line of personal skincare products.

I steeled myself, expecting one hell of a battle when I reached the top. Instead, I was greeted by a clean, grassy yard with several wooden chairs placed all around a small fire pit, which I assumed was for her cauldron. Each chair had several straight sticks, adorned with half-eaten mallow confections, and at least one half-colored coloring parchment. This one lures children, I thought.

The house itself wasn't what I was expecting from the usual witch's abode. Normal witch huts are crude and hastily put together, and could be torn down with ease if they had to leave after being discovered by a knight or a creditor. But this cottage was something else: layers of cobblestone were aligned and well-masoned, the roof was thick straw, like that of a craftsman, and the door had hinges, and a window with a clean, full kitchen in view. Clearly, this was the most evil and deceptive of witches.

I crept closer, my sword in my right hand, my shield in my left, when the door swung open. I screamed in fear rightous fury when the witch walked out. She didn’t carry the prescribed form of a witch, who would normally float on a cloud of darkness and be garbed in black robes. Instead, she wore a dull, brown-gray, like a peasant.

“Can I help you?” the confused witch asked.

In my haste, I responded, “You’re the witch of Harpy Mountain!” I don’t know why I said that. She knew she was the witch of Harpy Mountain.

She curled her witch-face, furrowed her witch-eyebrows, and asked, “What the hell are you going on about?”

“Your evil ends now!” I replied, raising my sword.

“What?!” she screamed and ran, putting the fire pit between us. “Did Bob put you up to this?”

“Bob?” I asked. “Who’s Bob?”

She turned her body towards the path and pointed, “He’s Bob!”

I kept myself guarded, but turned to see the cloaked man approaching!

“Sir, stay back! The witch of Harpy Mountain is casting her spells!” I cautioned.

The witch shouted, “Witch? Harpy Mountain? Goddammit, Bob!”

I froze as Alambobdora approached and drew his cowl down. His face was ordinary; ordinary features (OK, his nose was a little crooked), ordinary voice. “Kill that witch!”

“I’m not a fucking witch, Bob!” the woman responded.

“You are too!” he exclaimed.

“And it’s not Harpy Mountain! It’s called Bob’s Mountain!” she continued with her lies.

“No, you fucking harpy, it’s called Harpy Mountain because yoooou live here!”

“That’s not how it works, Bob!”

Their voices rattled my head. “You said she shoots fire from her mouth…” I said, lowering my sword.

“Her words are fire, sir knight. Everything she says is fire!” He jabbed a finger in her direction and said, "Careful, or she'll burn you, too!"

“Oh, that’s just great! Of course you bring someone else into this!” she shouted again.

“And you said she ripped men’s souls in half…” I continued; now that I had sobered up, my senses were returning to me, and his dark words were becoming clearer.

“She does! She took half of my stuff and my fucking house! Where are the kids, Lea? Leave them with your mother again?!”

“They love seeing her, unlike you, you fat deadbeat!”

“Deadbeat? Deadbeat! How am I deadbeat? You always give the kids away when you're bored with them. Probably so you can entertain that jester Filbert again!” He tossed up finger quotes around entertain.

“You ran off with that trollop from the next mountain over!”

“She liked my writing!”

“She doesn't like your writing, Bob! Your writing is terrible. She likes that you would buy her those flimsy dresses that show her tits off to the men at the inn! Let me guess, she already left you for someone better?!”

“Maybe you should have shown me some attention, Lea. Maybe I would have never given her gold if you were a better wife! Show me the attention you show everyone else!”

“Attention? I’m cleaning the house and taking care of your kids. Why don't you show our kids some attention every once in a while!? How about your kids from your first baby-mother that you never see?”

"Oh? How could you be cleaning the house when you're constantly at the Scrying Wall, posting about how I'm 'garbage' and that you should have never married me and telling everyone our business!"

Her face was twisted in anger, and she said, "I only posted there because I wanted someone else to see how much of an asshole you are!"

"Why do you need to tell everyone our business, Lea?"

I backed away, sheathed my sword, and placed my shield in its holster on my back. “So you don't want me to...”

Bob reached into his cloak, produced a small leather pouch, and tossed it to me. “I got it from here. I really only needed you to clear the spiders. I owed them money from a game of dice.”

“Oh, you can pay him, but not the spiders? You cheapass, you probably didn’t even cover his toll!”

She was right; he didn’t.

“That’s because you already took all of my money! You and that scummy lawyer you hired! I bet you're screwing him, too!”

“That’s my cousin, you asshole! My cousin. We had him over for dinner last year. You’re. Such. A. Dick!” She left the safety of the firepit to get into his face.

“You’re a bitch!” he said.

She replied, “You’re a cheating asshole!”

Though she didn’t pay me, I drew my sword again. A knight errant doesn’t leave a lady in danger. I'd invoice her later, if need be.

Then, amid the anger, gritting teeth, pointed scowls, screaming, and middle fingers, something wild happened: they embraced. Bob lavished her with sloppy tongue-kisses. Lea tugged at the upper laces of her wool kirtle, exposing the tops of her bosoms.

“I’m so sorry,” Bob said.

“Take me, right here,” Lea said.

“I’m going home,” I said, and turned away, sheathing my sword again.

Gross, I thought, as I sauntered down the path, hearing every heaving grunt, and wishing I had asked for more money. There’s still a fucking toll to pay.

I hope, dear reader, you learn a valuable lesson from this story: Never ever take a job while half-drunk desperate from a man in a mysterious cloak.

As for myself, upon my return to the Dragon’s Roost, I met the most charming young woman, wearing a revealing dress who caught my eye the minute I walked in. She was definitely not a prostitute, I asked. She told me about her love of literature and her fondness for writers, which made me reconsider my entire life. That day, I decided to put all my tales down on parchment, and have not been a knight since.