Leander, a knight on a quest, does not like muck, but there certainly is a lot of it surrounding him. His armor is thick with slime when he sees the castle he's been searching for. He's not very interested in the castle. However, he is very interested in the woman in the red dress he spots within the curtain walls. Who is she and what is the quest he has been called to perform?
Excerpt:
Leander did not like walking through the Spiknit Woods. It had a gross name like that because it was a gross place. He wore his armor and his helmet and walked with his knight’s shield in front of him because, if he didn’t, it felt like he was in the middle of the bloodiest battle he’d ever seen. Branches came out of nowhere like enemy swords.
Occasionally, he’d step in something squishy. He’d tell himself that whatever he stepped in, it was probably just a little bit of bubbling marsh. He’d look down and no, his first instinct—that he had stepped in a dead body—was correct. It was better than the dead body he would have stepped in on the field of battle because it wasn’t a human corpse, but it was worse because it had been dead for quite some time. Maybe it was a deer. Maybe it was a unicorn. Maybe he should stop looking down when he stepped in something weird.
Then he watched for bear traps more carefully. What maniac had planted so many? He’d set off three and his armor was so fly that it protected him against the trap, but he still couldn’t move until he dropped on his butt and pried the mechanism open with the tip of his sword. It was the weirdest when he sat on a recently deceased grizzly bear to undo the trap. The bear hadn’t died from the trap. Leander didn’t know what the bear had died from.
Leander wouldn’t tramp through Spiknit Woods for his own amusement. The Head Wizard of his order had insisted that he answer the call for help from Castle Travista. It was part of their Lord’s domain and, though the slimy woodland ensured it was not in a part of that domain that anyone cared to visit, the masters of Castle Travista paid their taxes religiously. No one wanted them to stop. Seriously. Tax collection was a big deal and it wasn’t unusual for Leander and the other knights to fight battles over it. No one had heard from Castle Travista in years other than the seasonal money they sent via air balloon. That was, until last winter when they had requested aid. They wanted to borrow a single knight.
Leander was chosen because he met the requirements included in the request.
He was single: check.
He was under twenty-four: check.
He wasn’t missing any limbs or any eyes: check.
There was more written, but Leander didn’t see the rest of the list.
The Wizard took the envelope from the messenger, cracked the seal, read the letter, and looked up at the knights sitting round the table. Then he ripped the bottom of the letter off, rolled it into a tight tube, and shoved it down his throat like he was a sword eater. His Adam’s apple bobbed in exactly the same way. Then he pointed at Leander and said that he had been chosen to go to Castle Travista. It was only then that Leander saw the letter and the requirements.
Something was being hidden from him.
Obviously.
Naturally, he assumed it was the requirement of tramping through Spiknit Woods and the craggy gloom that hung from everything around him.
His armor was a sickly shade of green by the time he reached the clearing that marked the end of the forest. Some of it was slick from slime. When had he touched anything slimy? Only every other minute. Other parts were mossy—almost hairy, but he didn’t know where he’d picked those bits up. He found a whole moss ball in his collar. There was also something weird and drippy hanging from his elbow. Was it a jellyfish? Or a deboned crab? He shook it off and it fell with a weird splurch sound. Then it glooped away.
Leander watched it go for a moment before he realized he was watching a living snot ball reenter the forest, where other snot balls were waiting for it. He thought he heard them cheer.
Stepping away from the reach of the trees and onto very ordinary grass, he finally opened the visor of his helmet. What was ahead of him was beyond his imagination. What was he looking at?
The first thing he saw was a moat. It had no water in it and it was so wide that even if there was a drawbridge, the height of the castle walls meant that it would not stretch over the whole expanse. Stepping closer to the drop-off, Leander saw that the mote was filled with heaps of shrapnel. Though, to be fair, there were cheerful little flowers growing between the blades and serrated edges.
He couldn’t cross it.
He took his helmet off and tossed it on the ground. When it landed, a slug curled up inside it and then slowly made away with it. Leander watched it go like he was hypnotized. He should snatch it back, but his helmet was very slimy before the slug glooped into it, and the slug was taking it away very slowly. If it inched away all day, he doubted it would get more than a few feet away. He let it be.
Back to the castle. He sharpened his focus.
The castle was gray, hewn from beautiful bricks. There was a thick curtain wall built around the keep itself and a grassy lawn was visible. On the sloping lawn, he saw white puff balls. They were adorable. Were they hopping? Were they dancing? Squinting, he realized they were sheep, but he’d never seen sheep that cute before. They were all white with little black faces and they were… being cared for… by the… most beautiful woman… he’d ever seen… in a red dress.
If Leander didn’t have laser vision before, it was a skill he suddenly acquired. When he hadn’t been able to see the sheep clearly, he was suddenly very able to see the woman in the finest detail.
Her hair was golden blonde. It hung in waves of morning sparkle, mirroring that liquid white that reflected back like sunlight on the sea. He saw her eyelashes flicker in the wind and he admired their length and curl. Her dress would have been visible if he had been standing on the moon. Her dress… Well, her dress did something to him.
It was red.
Red like his heart.
Red like his pulse.
Red like the fire that flamed inside him when he leaped into battle.
Red like his dreams when he dreamed a soldier’s dreams. It was a dream of a fight well fought, of blood spilling easily, of victory, of a woman waiting for him when he returned, a color of glory, a color of luck, a color of soft curves, and warmth at night.
He had to have her.
