A Game of Groans: A Sonnet of Slush and Soot (26 page)

After a bit, Sasha answered, “Like, my mommy and daddy.”

“Right, of course, but loving your mother or father in that special way would be weird. On the other hand, loving your one or all brothers in that special way, well, that would be magical.”

Frowning, Sasha asked, “When you love someone in that special way, you have to get, like, naked with them, and I totally don’t want to get naked with Bobb. He’s gross.”

“What about Allbran?”

“Like, yuck. He farts.”

“What about Dickoff?”

“Like, double yuck. He’s a baby. Plus he’s, like, not even a fully formed character.”

“Well, how about the jerkoff?”

“Juan?
Triple
yuck. He’s a jerkoff.”

Cerevix removed her arm from Sasha’s shoulders, took the girl’s face in her hands, and leaned forward so their noses were practically touching. “Listen, here’s the deal, missy,” she hissed. “If you’re going to be Queen, there are certain sacrifices that have to be made, and one of them is banging your brothers, so next time you see Bobb, or Allbran, or any of those other snot-noses you share DNA with, you tear off your clothes, and you lie down, and you spread your legs as wide as they’ll go, and you tell them to stick their throbbing member in there, or, by the order of Queen Cerevix Barfonme, their throbbing member will be guillotined off. If you and your brothers don’t make the beast with two backs, you will never, ever,
ever
marry my son. Got it?”

Sasha threw up in her mouth a little bit. As a single tear rolled down her cheek, she stuttered, “G-g-g-g-got it.”

Before the girl exploded in tears, Cerevix said, “But if you don’t want to screw your brothers, there’s something else you can do for me.”

“Like,
anything,
” Sasha moaned.

She took a parchment from her cleavage, which she then unfurled and placed on the floor, after which she reached farther down her cleavage and pulled out a quill, which she then handed to Sasha. “If you put your John Hancock on this thing, you can be Goof’s wife.”

“Like, John who-cock?”

Ignoring her, Cerevix pointed at an empty line on the top of the document and ordered, “Don’t read it. Just sign here.” Sasha obeyed. Cerevix’s finger moved down the document: “And here.” Sasha obeyed. “And here.” Sasha obeyed. “And here.” Sasha obeyed. Thirty-seven “and heres” later, Cerevix rolled up the parchment, took back her pen, and smiled. “Thank you, Sasha. I’ll put in a good word with Goof for you.”

As the Queen stood up, Sasha asked, “Like, what did I just sign?”

Queen Cerevix explained, “Nothing too important. Just a declaration that you have proof your father is trying to usurp the throne from its rightful owner, and if he continues with his rabblerousing, he is to be executed. Toodles.”

After Cerevix was out of sight, Sasha scratched her head and asked herself, “Like, what’s
usurp
?”

As the sun ducked beneath the horizon, Juan Nieve and Snackwell Fartly stared at their smoldering campfire. After fifty-three minutes of silent contemplation—and their contemplation was silent because the only actual action in the chapter was the Wall melting some more—a raven dive-bombed their campsite, staggered around for a bit, then cawed, “Head might be dead! Head might be dead! Head might be dead!”

Snack screwed up his face and wondered aloud, “I didn’t know ravens could talk.”

“Me neither,
jefe,
”
⁴⁸
Juan intoned. “Me neither.”

After he read the ravengram, Bobb Barker’s face turned red, and he made an odd gurgling sound in the back of his throat. Eventually, he whispered to himself, “Well, now. How about that.”

“What is it, Bobb?” Allbran asked, struggling fruitlessly against the straps his brother had used to secure him to his bed.

Bobb explained, “Apparently Father is temporarily indisposed—or maybe permanently indisposed; it wasn’t really clear—and I’m to head up an attack on the Sinisters, who are wandering around somewhere between here and Vailcolorado.”

“Gosh, Bobb, I’m really happy for you,” Allbran lied. “You probably have a lot to do. So maybe you could go ahead and do it, you know,
now
.”

“I’m supposed to watch over you. But now that I’m in charge, I could get somebody else to watch over you. Or I could leave you on your own.” Clearly eager to be on his way, Bobb asked, “You’ll be okay by yourself?”

“Yes, Bobb.”

“Great! If you need anything, feel free to…” Bobb then hustled out the door so quickly that Allbran could not hear the rest of the sentence.

Once he was certain that Bobb was out of earshot, Allbran closed his eyes, took a deep breath, clenched his buttocks, and emitted a high-pitched fart that was not audible to the human ear. However, it was right in the direpanda auditory range, so mere seconds after gas whiffed from his hindquarters, Hinky was at his bedside. An empathetic and intelligent animal, Hinky immediately discerned that his master wished to be released from his shackles, so after one slick paw swipe, Allbran was free.

Allbran tiptoed from his bedroom to the top of the stairs, but three steps down, he heard Bobb droning to somebody: “… and I’ve been drawing up this plan for a while. I’ve honed it, and honed it, and I tried to show it to Father, but he laughed and told me to go back to the drawing board, but I knew it was perfect—I just knew it—and now I finally get to show everybody what I can do because
I’m in charge
!”

“Very good, m’Lord.” It was Maester Blaester. “Hand over your plans and I shall deliver them to the proper officers.”

“Oh, no no no no no, Blaester. I will deliver these, and see that they are executed to perfection, because it’s my plan, and nobody will be able to explain it better than I.”

Blaester drily offered, “It’s good to see that your newfound power hasn’t gone to your head, m’Lord.”

“Just keeping my eye on the prize. If you don’t pay attention, you get killed, and since I’m in charge, nobody wants me to get killed, plus I’m a key player in the sequel, and everybody knows that the sequel is where the big bucks are.”

Allbran shook his head sadly, then he stalked down the stairs and out of the castle, in search of somebody who could tell him where the hell his mother had been for the last fifty or so pages.

A dirty, filthy, grimy, unclean, grubby, sullied Lady Gateway Barker trudged toward the Barker castle, bone-tired from her second journey of the book. Not yet ready to face whatever weirdness was awaiting her at home, she plunked down under a tree and pulled the last bit of Godsweede from her cleavage, then lit up, took a deep toke, closed her eyes, and, for the first time since before her first journey of the book, smiled.

Just as Gateway was on the precipice of the best nap in Easterrabbit history, she felt and heard a rumbling. She opened her eyes and looked over her left shoulder. Seeing nothing, she stood up, turned to her right, and was almost run over by a cavalry led by her son Bobb.

Bobb’s horse came to a screeching, neighing halt directly in front of her; the horse immediately behind Bobb crashed into his horse, then the horse behind that horse crashed into that horse, then the horse behind
that
horse crashed into
that
horse, and so on, until Bobb’s steed was the only animal left standing. Unfazed by the pile of fallen animals and Knights to his rear, Bobb exclaimed, “Mom! You’re home just in time to see me lead men into battle!”

She smiled and said, “That’s wonderful, Bobb. What’s your battle plan?”

“I left it with Blaester,” Bobb explained. “Figured I’d wing it.” Cocking his thumb over his shoulder, he said, “I’ve got the best of the best on board, so we’ll be fine.”

Looking at the pile of horses and Knights trying to extricate themselves from the gummy mud, Gateway thought,
I wouldn’t go that far,
then she asked, “Anything I can do to help?”

With a condescending smile, Bobb said, “I’m in charge.”

Nodding, Gateway agreed, “Of course you are. But some sort of plan might be useful.”

Bobb gave her a dismissive wave. “We’ve got it. Go home and take a bath.”

Ignoring him, Gateway quickly spat out, “It would be best to attack decisively from the rear with a heavily concentrated strike. Focus on destroying their small pockets of resistance, and then when your reinforcements arrive—and I’m assuming there
will
be reinforcements, because without a proper second wave, the first wave is all but pointless—you can retreat and simultaneously tend to your wounded—and no matter how strong your attack-slash-defense is, there
will
be wounded, make no mistake about it—and form a perimeter, enabling your second wave to triangulate their primary targets. Once a goodly number of their men are felled—somewhere between thirty and fifty percent is acceptable—close the perimeter, destroy or detain their remaining soldiers, commandeer their weapons, then take the hell over. In terms of an exit strategy, plan to leave one fifth of your unit there for thirty to sixty days to protect against any uprisings.” She took a huge toke of her Godsweede, then asked, “You get all that?”

Bobb gawked at his mother for a bit, then turned to his mostly fallen unit and said, “To battle, men! Glory awaits!” And then he rode off by himself.

Gateway glumly watched her son gallop off to certain death, then turned to the writhing heap of men and beasts, held out her roach, and asked, “This won’t end well, on either the page or the small screen. Anybody want a hit?”

Tritone Sinister and Sur Crayola Burntsienna stood at the top of a low peak, staring down upon what appeared to be a bustling town; the odd thing was that it was bustling in the middle of nowhere.

As the stars twinkled in the sky, Tritone opined, “Looks like a dump.”

“A pit,” Burntsienna added.

“A hole.”

“A pigsty.”

Tritone pointed out, “Maybe they have some food.”

“Good call. All of a sudden, it looks lovely.”

“Gorgeous.”

“Sumptuous.”

“Breathtaking.”

The duo tiptoed into the itinerant camp, Tritone’s lips buttoned shut for a change. The vast majority of the group was curled up in the mud, snoring happily, befouling the area with their onion breath. On the far end of the field, a fire sparked and popped; Burntsienna gestured to the flame and proposed, “We should head over there, because if there’s food, it’ll be by the fire.”

Tritone said, “You’re a regular Einstein, Crayola.”

“A regular
what
-stein?”

“Forget it.”

Burntsienna claimed, “If you don’t tell me what a mine-stein is, I’m totally stabbing you.”

Heading toward the fire, Tritone offered, “Temper, temper, temper. Looks like somebody didn’t get enough hugs when they were growing up.”

There was a single individual seated beside the flame; their back was turned to Tritone and Burntsienna, thus Tritone quietly cleared his throat so as not to scare the person. The stranger said, “Whoever that is, you smell so bad that you make onions cry.
Zzzzzzing.
”

Tritone whispered, “Father?”

The man turned around and smirked, “That’s my name, don’t wear it out.” He offered his hand to Burntsienna, then said, “How’s it going, Henny? Tutone Sinister, owner of Sinister Mortuary. You stab ’em, we slab ’em!
Yowzah, yowzah, yowzah!
”

Burntsienna turned to Tritone and said, “I didn’t know you had a father.”

“What, you thought I was a jerkoff?”

“Kind of.”

“Where’d you get the idea I was a bastard?” Tritone asked.

“Oh, no,” Burntsienna answered. “I thought you were just a jerkoff in the truest sense of the word.”

“Thanks a lot, Shecky.”

Burntsienna said, “It’s just you’d think with all this stuff we all know about you, Cerevix, and Jagweed—not to mention the incessant tales of your family’s issues with the different Houses—it would be logical that somebody somewhere would’ve mentioned your father.”

“Yeah,” Tritone drawled, “but logic doesn’t always rule the day in the story of Easterrabbit, now does it? Little logic, and lots of dead spots. Why anybody buys this crap, I have no clue.”

Tutone—who was as fat as Tritone was tall—said, “Boys, this is fascinating stuff, but I have to go back to staring at the fire.” And then he went back to staring at the fire.

After a beat of silence, Tritone grunted, “Hey, Pops?”

Without turning around, Tutone grunted, “Hey, son?”

“Anybody ever tell you that you’re so stupid that you couldn’t even pour mud out of your boots if the instructions were written on the heel?”

“How dare you…”

“Did you study to be that ugly, or did it come naturally?”

“Wait a sec…”

“You’re so fat that your shadow weighs fifty pounds.”

“Hey, that one was pretty good.”

Tritone paused, then asked, “Did you just say something nice about me?”

Looking around as if to make certain nobody heard him, he offered, “It’ll probably be the last time, because you’re so dumb that you think a riverbank is where fishes keep their money.
Hi-yo!
”

Tritone chuckled. “Classic material, Dad, just classic.”

“Tell me something I don’t know, Henny.”

In an impressive bit of subject changing, Tritone gestured at the dozens of sleeping bodies and asked, “What’s going on here?”

“We’re taking down House Barker.”

“Why?” Tritone asked.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t read
Why All the Houses Hate Each Other So Godsdamn Much
by that Flaysh guy.”

“Okay, I won’t tell you I didn’t read
Why All the Houses Hate Each Other So Godsdamn Much
by that Flaysh guy even though I didn’t read
Why All the Houses Hate Each Other So Godsdamn Much
by that Flaysh guy. Give me the gist.”

Tutone admitted, “I didn’t read it either, but if there’s a book about the Houses hating each other, then all the Houses hate each other, and who am I to buck tradition? So how about you help us kill Headcase Barker and that Godsweedehead wife of his?”