“No, no,” moaned Pepsi, “it... it couldn’t be!”
“Ho ho ho, but it is,” guffawed the immense figure, half man, half broccoli. “I am called Birdseye, Lord of the VeeAtes, oft called the jol—”
“Don’t say it!” cried Moxie, holding his furry ears with horror.
“Be not afraid,” grinned the affable vegetable. “I want to make peas with you.”
“No, no!” moaned Pepsi, nibbling his tie clip in frenzy.
“Come come,” said the giant, “lettuce go and meet my subjects who live in the forest. They cannot be beet. Ho ho ho!” The green apparition doubled over at his own bon mot.
“Please, please,” pleaded Pepsi, “we can’t take it. Not after all we’ve been through.”
“I must insist, my friends,” said the giant, “the people of my realm are off to war on the evil Serutan, eater of cellulose and friend of the black weeds who every day strangle us more and more. We know you to be his enemy too, and you must come with us, and help defeat the cabbage-murderer.”
“Well, all right,” sighed Pepsi, “if we gotta—”
“—we gotta,” sighed Moxie.
“Sigh not,” reassured the giant as he slung the two boggies over his kelly green shoulder blades, “being Lord of the VeeAtes is not easy either, particularly on my celery. Ho!”
The boggies kicked and screamed, attempting a final escape from the towering bore.
“Struggle not,” he said soothingly, “I know a couple of peaches that will be just right for you meat-things. You will love them, they are—”
“—quite a pear,” muttered Pepsi.
“Hey,” burbled the giant, “that is a good one. Wish I had said that!”
“You will,” sobbed Moxie, “you will.”
Arrowroot, Legolam, and Gimlet massaged their aching muscles under a shaded coppice as the Roi-Tanners watered their slobbering mounts and looked over the weaker of them for the evening meal. Three long days had they ridden hither and thither over rocky ground and smooth toward the dreaded fortress of Serutan the Gauche, and relations among the company had deteriorated somewhat. Legolam and Gimlet never tired of baiting each other, and when the elf laughed at the dwarf as he fell from his mount and was dragged raw the first day out, Gimlet retaliated by slipping Legolam’s steed a strong laxative on the sly. The second day thus found the elf being borne in panicky circles and zigzags by his ailing mount and that night he revenged himself by shortening the right rear leg of Gimlet’s merino, causing its rider many long hours of violent seasickness on the following day’s ride. It had not been a tranquil journey.
In addition, it appeared to both Gimlet and Legolam that something odd had come over Arrowroot since they had met the Roi-Tanners, for he sat listlessly in the saddle and crooned to himself, always glancing covertly toward the leader of the sheep-lords, who spurned his advances. The last night of the ride Legolam awoke to find the Ranger absent from his pup tent and a huge commotion in the bushes nearby. Before the elf could remove his hairnet and buckle on his weapon, Arrowroot returned more melancholy than ever, nursing a sprained wrist and two heavily purpled eyes.
“Ran into a tree,” was his only explanation.
But Isinglass and the fortress of Serutan were now near, and the hard riding could be put by for an evening of rest.
“Ook!” yelped Gimlet painfully as he hunkered down upon a mossy knoll, “that damned four-legged pot roast busted my coccyx for sure.”
“Then ride on your head,” said Legolam in a snide tone of voice, “it is much the softer and less valuable.”
“Fetch off, hairdresser.”
“Toad.”
“Poop.”
“Creep.”
Jingling spurs and the thwapping of a riding crop interrupted the discussion. The three companions watched as Eörache trundled her bulk up the knoll to meet them. She slapped the dust and lanolin from her metal-studded jackboots and shook her horns dubiously.
“You two schtill machen mit der nasty names?” She contemptuously avoided the round, ardent eyes of Arrowroot and laughed aloud. “In der vaterland ye haf no argumenters,” she reprimanded, drawing several dirks for emphasis.
“The lads are but weary after their long ride,” cloyed the smitten Ranger, nibbling her heels playfully, “but eager to do battle, as I am to prove my worthiness in your azure eyes.”
Eörache gagged audibly and spat a large, brown quid against the wind. She stomped away in disgust.
“Wrong number,” said Gimlet.
“Worry not,” sympathized Legolam, throwing a more-thancompanionable arm around Arrowroot, “them dames are all alike, poison, every last one of them.”
Arrowroot broke free, sobbing inconsolably.
“Der goes vun sick booby,” said the dwarf, pointing to his head.
Darkness was falling and the campfires of the Roi-Tanners began flickering. Over the next hill lay the valley of Isinglass, now renamed Serutanland by the scheming Wizard. Dejected, the Ranger shuffled among the resting warriors, hardly hearing their proud song, roared above the clinking of foamy stems:
Men frolicked about the fires, laughing and joking. Two bloodslathered contestants hacked at each other with sabers to the gloating cheers of flaxen-haired spectators, and farther on a gathering of warriors bellowed with mirth as they did something unattractive to a dog.
But the scene cheered him not. Heartsick, he walked on into the darkness, saying, “Eörache, my Eörache,” softly over and over to himself. Tomorrow he would display such acts of valor that she would have to pay attention to him. He leaned against the tree and sighed.
“Really got it, huh?”
Stomper jumped back with a cry, but it was the familiar pointed head of Gimlet that poked through the leaves.
“I did not see thee approach,” said Arrowroot, sheathing his sword.
“Just trying to lose that jerk,” said the dwarf.
“Who’s a jerk, sirrah?” snapped Legolam, who had been molesting a chipmunk behind the tree.
“Speak o’ the devil,” groaned Gimlet.
The three sat under the broad branches and thought upon the hard travels they had made, seemingly to no purpose. What good would the defeat of Serutan be if Sorhed claimed Frito’s Ring for his own? Who could resist his power then? For a long while they brooded.
“Isn’t it about time for a deus ex machina?” said Legolam wearily.
Suddenly there was a loud pop and a bright burst of light that momentarily blinded the shocked three. The acrid odor of cheap flash-powder filled the air, and the companions heard a distinct thump followed by a louder oof! Then through the swirling confetti, they saw a shining figure dressed all in white, brushing the twigs and dirt from his spotless bell-bottoms and gleaming a-go-go boots. Above the white Nehru jacket and cheesy medallion was a neatly trimmed gray beard set off by oversized wraparound shades. The whole ensemble was topped off by a large white panama with a matching ostrich plume.