The walls around the castle were high and thick, the moat deep and foul-smelling even at this distance. The drawbridge was up, the portcullis down, and frankly, the place looked impregnable.
George considered breaking the seal on the scenario’s Hint Booklet. Back at the Population Storage Facility, the robots might impregnate Diana any time now; if George was too slow in winning her love, all would be lost. On the other hand, would Diana love him when she saw he’d looked at the hints? (George was certain she’d check.) No, she would view him as a cheater and a cad, and their baby would probably grow up to be a lawyer.
George clanked up against a tree to think. If this was a movie, what would the hero do?
“Halloo, the castle!”
A mercenary’s head looked down on George from one of those little slots castles have instead of real windows. George was once again wearing his red Handee Hardware blazer, and Hawkins had acquired a Handee Hardware saddle blanket. “What do you want?” the mercenary asked.
“I’m just a poor peasant merchant and I have a delivery for the Lord von Schmutzig.”
“What kind of delivery?”
“Nails,” said George. “Three-quarter-inch finishing nails for the final assembly of the horde of disease-bearing zombies.”
“Nobody told me anything about nails,” the mercenary said. “Last night at cocktails, the lord said he had everything he needed to complete his evil zombie horde.”
“Some fool delivered one-inch finishing nails instead of three-quarter-inch ones,” George said, improvising. “Building zombies is a precision business. You use nails a quarter inch too long and they’ll stick out all over the zombie’s body. They’ll keep catching on things.”
“Ugh,” said the mercenary and let George in.
George left his horse Hawkins to take care of the dragon. Hawkins knew the dragon personally from other scenarios—it was the astral persona of a woman named Magda who enjoyed being vanquished on a regular basis. Hawkins was sure Magda would agree to feign sleep while Hawkins drove a few nails through her wings with his hooves. She would gladly thrash and moan, spiked helplessly to the dirt, until George found time to plunge his cruel broadsword into the vulnerable soft spot of her abdomen.
George moved on to the tower where Diana was imprisoned. His red blazer was perfect camouflage; the mercenaries scarcely glanced his way as he passed. “Some hardware-hawking peasant,” he heard one mutter in disgust.
At the top of the tower steps, George resumed his knightly persona. The armor made it impossible to walk silently and he knew there might be more danger ahead; however, Diana would be expecting him in heroic guise. With broadsword in one hand and shield in the other, he clanked forward to a closed door.
He could hear nothing from the other side of the door. Considering the thickness of his helmet, George was not surprised. He tried the latch and found the door unlocked. It would be nice to kick the door open the way people did in movies, but concentrating on his astral foot as hard as he could, he barely managed to move the door at all. When it was open enough to squeeze through, he sidestepped his way into the room.
Diana sat in a chair, bound by coils of thick white cord and gagged with a purple silk scarf. Though she wore the persona of a kidnapped princess—low-cut gown of green velvet, straight brown hair that reached the floor, eyes red from weeping—she still carried vestiges of the goddess of the hunt. The cobras on her belt had already gnawed through the cords around her waist and were snapping at the bindings on her wrists.
George hurried forward to untie her, but she shook her head violently and nodded toward the far corner of the room. “Mmmph mmph mmph,” she explained.
At first when George looked in the direction she indicated, he saw only a rumpled four-poster bed surrounded by confusing watercolor prints of elves. George found it disturbing that Diana was so eager to draw his attention to the bed while she was still bound and gagged. In fact, finding himself unexpectedly alone with her in an elaborate bedroom stirred nervous flutters in his stomach. He hadn’t pictured this moment coming so suddenly. The part of his mind that normally said, “This is what you should do,” was completely silent; the part that said, “This is what might happen,” had hiccups. It was a huge relief when a lean figure stepped from the shadows behind the bed-curtains and said, “So. Some fool believes he can foil my schemes.”
George recognized the man as another clip-art persona: Seductive Yet Dangerous Scoundrel with Pencil Mustache, #2. He wore a white puff-sleeved swashbuckler shirt, tight black chinos, and knee-high boots of black leather. He would have intimidated George even if he hadn’t been carrying a saber with a dripping crimson blade.
“Wilhelm von Schmutzig, I presume,” George said in a voice he wanted to sound brave.
“At your service,” said the villain, giving a courtier’s bow. “Shall we duel to the death or would you prefer to impale yourself on my blade immediately?”
“I will not rest until I have cleansed the Earth of your foul presence, von Schmutzig.” George was rather pleased with that speech—Hawkins had suggested he should have some appropriate soliloquy for the final confrontation with the villain, and George had practiced till he could say the line without fumbling.
George was still congratulating himself when von Schmutzig attacked. With lightning-swift strikes, the villain rained blows upon George’s armor. The saber itself had no effect, but the clanging noise ringing against his helmet gave George a throbbing headache. He did his best to fight back, but was far too slow and clumsy to come close to his opponent. Occasionally he managed a parry, but never a successful thrust.
“Are you the best the forces of virtue could muster?” von Schmutzig sneered as he played on George like a steel drum. “I expected a hero.”
“Just because you’re evil doesn’t mean you should be rude,” George replied. “You’ll get yourself in trouble someday.” But it was clearly George who was in trouble as he clattered back and forth around the room. At last he was driven back against a post of the bed and his weapon was flicked out of his hand by a fencing maneuver something like the little twist of the wrist you need when you’re using an Allen wrench to loosen the bit in an electric drill. George hurried to pick the sword up, but found his feet tangled in sheets lying on the floor. He fell back heavily onto the mattress and von Schmutzig was on him immediately, the tip of his saber blade pointing through the helmet’s visor at George’s right eye.
“Now, Sir Knight,” said von Schmutzig, “you will die.”
“Don’t hurt me,” George whispered. “If I don’t win, Diana will never love me and our child will usher forth from a joyless womb.”
“What care I of children?” Von Schmutzig laughed. “I am a villain… and I get defeated in so many scenarios, I don’t mess around when I finally win one. I’m minutes away from finishing my zombie horde, and I’m really looking forward to decimating the duchy.”
“But my baby!” George shouted.
“I was an unhappy child,” von Schmutzig said. “I don’t see why I should give a break to anyone else.”
“Urk,” he added as the tip of an ivory spear burst out of his chest, like a one-inch nail driven through a three-quarter-inch board.
Resplendent in her goddess persona, Diana carried von Schmutzig to the window on the end of her spear. “Thus end all who give my mate a rough time,” she said as she tossed him out. Von Schmutzig’s screams turned into the screeches of an eagle as he fell. A large bird flew squawking past the window and off into the sunset. Like all good villains, von Schmutzig was escaping so there could be a sequel.
“Are you okay?” Diana asked as George stumbled to his feet. Her face was filled with concern. She put her arm around his shoulders, sat him down on the edge of the bed, and tried to look at him through his visor.