Jack and the Raven King

I swear this used to be easier.

I've hauled ass out of more towns than I can remember -- and only rarely on a rail. But the ogre chasing me was as familiar with these fields as I am with the better part of valor, and he was catching up to me.

Ok, he wasn't actually an ogre. But that sounds better, so I'm going with that. Were you there to contradict me?

I couldn't see the big farmer - we'll split the difference at 'questionably ogrish ancestry' - in the twilight but I could hear him tromping behind me. I should confess at this time to being somewhat inebriated. Roots leaped up to tangle my bare feet as I dove ass-over-teakettle into the center of a tiny, long-fallow field.

Boots make admirable missile weapons, but I had used up my supply. I imagine the brute was as angry about the two new shiners as he was about - what was it again? Hell, it wouldn't matter long. I'd only wandered into Bumfuck-upon-Nowhere approximately two days ago, just in time to watch the local noble landlord parading his just-turned-sixteen year old twin brats around for all the yokels to gawk at. Fair of skin, blossom of youth, blah, blah, blah. We don't always choose our opportunities, and I had never gotten a chance to make anything useful out of the situation.

Nowhere to hide, and the ground just wouldn't stop churning. Thorns crisscrossed the deer path that looked like my only other way out. The light of the full harvest moon, somehow bigger than the setting sun, wasn't doing me any favors, either. I tried to gather my only remaining and most trustworthy weapon, my breath. I slumped against the pole of a scarecrow in a ragged, old-man jacket. He bore a staff tied to his wrist with wires, but it was a single sad shoot of flimsy tallcane, brittle and blackened with soot. No weapon there. Only a few scraggly clumps of cotton remained on his gourd-head. "Thanks for nothing, you grinning bastard," I wheezed. "The least you could do is help me here."

And then the underbrush exploded as a pruning hook spotted with rust danced expertly through the space I crawled through to get here.

"You! Whoreson! Meat!" The big guy had a way with words, eh?

"Is this about your daughter?"

His bruised eyes bulged in renewed fury. Uh, oh.

The bill hook dove down like a kingfisher to take my foot apart, and I remembered how to stand.

"Your son?"

That did it. Any words the big guy had left boiled over in a bellow the likes of which I haven't heard since that Black Lake toadie figured out . . . Oh, but let me finish this tale first.

He slashed a button off of my stylish, young-man's coat as I backpedalled. I always carry a pocketful of extra buttons, for this happens to me surprisingly often. But as the sun sank that night, I was out of buttons, metaphorically speaking.

"And what manner of boon, pray is my intervention worth?"

Huh? I didn't say that. Way too many syllables for the murderous yardape, too. We stared at each other for a long, mugging mummer's-play moment, and then we swiveled over to look at the only other figure in the little field. This would have been a perfect opportunity to run, you see, save for the rough-knuckled paw holding my shirt collar. When did that happen?

And there he was. I mean, he was the same scarecrow, he didn't cast off a ragged disguise or swap places with the stuffy-guy in a plume of smoke, he was just there, the whole time. An impossibly tall man in elegant black finery cocked his head curiously at us - no, me - and in that moment we neither of us could break the moment apart.

Ah, but now I was in my element. Take advantage of the confusion and slip away. I cleared my throat.

"No, trickster. I am here at my whim but I count my time closely. It pleases me to champion you, for a favor." His outline was misty and insubstantial against the moon.

"Huh?" the farmer grunted, snapping out of his reverie, or his nosepicking, or whatever. "I saw him first!" Despite his bravado, he brought the little back-blade of the billhook up under my jaw hesitantly. How was he doing that with one hand?

"OK!" I croaked. Sheesh. Whatever floats your boat, man, I'm all for a nice game of let's-you-and-him-fight. If it could buy me time, I'd tell the spooky guy in the black cloak whatever he wanted to hear. You can dig yourself out of bad fortune but not a grave.

And that was that. The wicked looking black staff was just - there - and the farm tool was parried away from me, flecking little drops of blood into the thirsty soil.

The farmer dropped me and I bravely crawled away.

The big guy wasn't so tough now. "What do you want?"

"Simplicity itself, I charge myself as champion of this man, and he shall owe me. If you would claim what I call mine, you must brave the thorns."

The farmer finally dropped the damned pruning hook. "Forget it! You can have him!" He spit on the ground in feigned defiance as he backed out of the clearing. "And eat his soul for breakfast, for all I fucking care!"

"Well met," the crow-man said, resting the heel of his staff back on the ground. His words were so formal and serious. Yet he was smiling, very slightly.

"That's it?" I screamed. I jumped to my feet. I poked a finger into the mystery-man's chest. "Get over there and kick his ass!"

"He yielded. I have won."

"That's not fair! You didn't DO anything!" I have a way with words, too, sometimes.

"And yet, you owe me a boon. Jack."

All right, I could handle this. But he was gone. Nobody here but that stupid looking scarecrow and a crow, or raven, or something, I don't know, sitting on his shoulder. Beady little bastard was watching me.

Dammit.