Sword Cursed II: The Dwarves of Umbleburg

WARNING: This story contains spoilers from the totally awesome “Wheel of Time” Series, written by the equally amazing Robert Jordan blessed be his name in the Light

Several months after I accidentally stabbed myself in the leg, and having recalled my treasure hunting experience from years previous, I finally came to the realization that swords and I mixed about as well as teratogens and pregnant women. To that end, until I was done with high school, I kept my weapon high on a shelf, well out of reach. Upon graduating, understanding that I shouldn’t allow myself to own such a dangerous object, I passed my $500 official “Heron-Marked Blade” onto a girl I knew named Robin who was moving to California. After I convinced her that my renunciation of swords was not a sign of impending suicide, I kindly asked her to carry the weapon as far away from me as possible. At night, I hoped and prayed that I would never see it again and that several hundred miles of distance would keep me safe.

Somehow, knowing that the object that had inflicted so much pain on my leg was separated from me by two states, I began to gently shirk off the notions of being sword-cursed. I soon fell into the daily grind of working my summer job in the local saw-mill. All thoughts of my curse and impending doom vanished like desert fog. That was why, when Barry Jenkins, a millwright I assisted in machine repair, broached the subject of my favorite series of books, I took up the conversation without a hitch.

There are exactly two subjects which can entice me to come out of my socially awkward shell. One is the subject of Universal Cosmology. The other is Robert Jordan’s “The Wheel of Time.” Barry was under the idiotic impression that after Moraine had thrown her through the doorway ter’angreal in Cairhien, Lanfear had asked the Eelfinn to grant her temporary reprieve from the Tower of Ghenjei in order that she could exact vengeance on the Forsaken Asmodean…. As I said, an idiotic notion.

As offended as a Star Wars aficionado explaining that Luke Skywalker has nothing to do with Star Trek, I exploded in pure nerd-fury. “There’s no god damn way, Barry. Unless Lanfear used her three wishes in the Tower of Ghenjei to gain a temporary reprieve before her soul was transmigrated into Cyndane, the only people who could have killed Asmodean, are Slayer and Graendael. Quite frankly, unless you’re proposing that Moraine somehow counteracted her even stronger desire to kill Rand by using her wishes, your whole scheme fails to make any sense whatsoever.” Satisfied that I had gotten my point across, I dropped a hundred pound hydraulic coil onto a log transfer deck and waited for retaliation. Barry, a man of even more gigantic proportions than myself, looked at me like I had gone mad.

“I guess I just hadn’t thought about it that much.” Barry knelt down by his tools, rolled his eyes, and began to examine the coil we had to replace.

Perturbed that I had been denied suitable opposition, I continued testily, “If you think about it, Slayer seems to be working solely at the behest of the Dark One and reports directly to him. As the Dark One does not seem to know of Asmodean’s fate as of his appearance in the ‘Lord of Chaos’ I take it as a given that Graendael is the only acceptable candidate.”

Setting down a pipe wrench, and exhaling incredulously through a gap in his front teeth, Barry balked, “Seriously, have you ever touched a boob? Ever? For real, don’t lie to me.”

“Yeah!” I exclaimed with such offense as to imply “not even close.” Barry chuckled to himself, while dropping into a crouch by the coil. Taking advantage of his turned back, I quickly blushed, buried my face into my hands, and cleared my throat.

Grunting, while trying to wrench a bolt loose, Barry continued with his speculation. “I thought so. You’ve got that whole uptight thing going on.”

Embarrassed I tried to crawl face first into the hollow made by my hands. “Jesus… do I look like that big a nerd?”

“Nah!” Barry offered in condolence, before muttering under his breath, “more like a serial killer….” My gasp was cut short when Barry asked, “hey, can you run the hose for the rattle gun?” At that time in my life my mother generally made sure to drop subtle insults that I reminded her of a serial killer on a semi-weekly basis. That the idea had been independently confirmed left me feeling dizzy. “Stop standing there like a retard. Get the goddamn hose!”

During the ten minutes it took to take out the old cylinder and put in a new one, Barry spoke of several subjects. My debilitating “uptightness,” Barry proposed, was no doubt caused by my inability to sometimes “just say fuck it, ya know?” Barry further suggested several courses of action. While it was obvious that I had to “just beat the fucking living shit out of some guy” it was also of vital importance that I “get some fucking good pussy, and just hit that shit till it’s gone.” I nodded and made several mental notes… most of which had to do with keeping secrets about my personal life secret. As Barry finished the installation, he set both of his cotton gloves on the deck, took one contemplative look at the sky and found a solution that would solve both of my problems.

“Now obviously you just can’t fucking run around and beat the shit out of someone. We’re civilized and all that shit, ain’t we?” When I realized Barry was waiting for my approval, I nodded vigorously. Barry nodded to, and scratched his balls in a manner that suggested a hallelujah. “The best you can do is simulate beating the shit out of someone. Now from the look of ya, you probably have simulated sex twice a day, so you’ve had enough of that shit. There’s nothing else to do. You have to come to my next S.C.A. meeting with me.” Barry nodded approval for me, threw the old coil over his shoulder, and walked off the transfer deck in long strides. I followed like a short-legged poodle tugged along on a tight leash.

Trying to make myself visible over the coil on Barry’s shoulder, I scampered to either side, trying to gain attention in his periphery. “Uh… Barry? What’s the S.C.A.?”

The “Society for Creative Anachronism,” Barry explained, was a group for people from every corner of the world to get together, dress up as knights, and “just fucking club the fucking living shit out of each other with fucking sticks.”

Confused, I said “Okay… that sounds cool… but how is that supposed to help me get laid?”

Regarding me coolly over the tops of his safety glasses, Barry confided that “Dude, you’ve never seen a fucking slut till you’ve come to an S.C.A. meeting.”

After a brief five minute exchange in the lunch room, during which I found my wishes to the contrary summarily over-ruled without so much as an after-thought, it was decided I was going to attend the S.C.A. meeting taking place that very night. I found myself, after work, tired and beleaguered, in the parking lot of the local grocery store waiting for Barry to meet me. He would have taken me up directly after work, but he had to take a side trip out to his house to pick up what he referred to as “The Barony’s Loaner Armor.” I was not only going to go to a meeting for the societal outcasts who dressed up as warriors… I was going to go in the cheapest fashion possible.

I’m not sure what I was expecting when Barry finally showed up, but it certainly wasn’t what I got. A brief inspection of the “swords” in the trunk of his car revealed them to be nothing more than two inch wooden dowels with a nickel thin layer of padding over the surface. The armor was made of crudely cut leather shapes, with an occasional piece of foam stuck in random places. The weapons too closely resembled baseball bats, and the armor too closely resembled the shirt I was wearing for comfort. Barry brushed all of these concerns aside, to get to the most important matter at hand. “Just so we’re clear, you can’t call me Barry at the meeting.”

“What the hell do I call you then?”

Barry made a series of noises with an overwhelming frequency of g, l, and ae sounds. “It means Wolf Son of Courage in Gaelic.”

I looked at Barry. My eyes took in all six and a half feet of him, the musculature of his arms, the unkemptness of his hair. Nothing in the clothes nearly rotting off of his body would have proclaimed the level of Geekdom he had just professed. “No fucking way,” I said in a level voice.

Completely oblivious to my shock, Wolf Son of Courage affirmed, “Yeah it is, I had some guy look it up for me.”

I stood on the black to with the posture of a bobble-head doll, my body rigidly straight, my head wobbling in wonder, and my eyes opened wide and transfixed on Barry. “Wow,” I said.

“Not really. He had some kind of English/Gaelic Dictionary.”

I laughed deliriously, all of the sudden. Barry thought that this was what I needed to “chill out.” “Okay Wolf, I’ve gotcha. You just go ahead and call me Lews Therin Telamon while we’re there.” Barry’s face became grim.

“Dude, don’t even fucking joke like that. This isn’t a club for fantasy fags. It’s the Society for Creative Anachronism. You can’t just make up any fucking name you want to, unless you can find some example of it in history.”

I rolled my eyes. “Jesus Barry, I’m sorry I didn’t see it that way at first. You wouldn’t want all kinds of losers showing up at this thing.” Barry snorted in disgust, and told me to get in the car. While on the way up, I signed a waiver that said, should I decide to participate in a “duel” and get fatally injured the S.C.A. was in no way responsible. Deciding that I needed to spice up my day, I happily signed the dotted line.

A long one hour drive, during which my manhood was questioned multiple times, we finally arrived at the meeting. I had expected some kind of fairground with as many as fifty people dressed up as warriors. I had even envisioned a tent, and perhaps someone dressed in a leather hood hawking authentic medieval wares. What I got was seven out of shape, middle-aged men in a high school parking lot ignoring jeers from passing teenagers. Even though I had not yet stepped out of the car, I put my face into my hands, blushed the color of a Kryptonian sun, and sighed. “This is just fantastic.” Attending such upper-crust, respectable social events, how could I fail to finally over-come my emotional ineptitude and finally snag myself a girlfriend?

Parking the car, and kicking the door open, Barry agreed. “I know. It’s how I vent all my frustrations every week.” I let my forehead fall against the window glass, and groaned in spiritual agony.

Exiting the car, I took a closer look at the group of people at the tourney. There were more pussies in a dog pound than in the emptied parking lot of that high school. In fact, just by the general atmosphere of the group I could tell that a woman was about as likely to enter the parking lot and stay there as a Al Sharpton was to hug the Grand Wizard of the KKK. “You goddamn liar!” I moaned at Barry. “How the fuck am I supposed to get laid here? You couldn’t find this much sausage in a German slaughterhouse.”

“Just chill out, Wood-Smoker. Wait until some babe comes by and sees you fighting one of us. You’ll have to turn that stick to fighting off all the chicks that come flying at you.” Watching a man in tight sweat pants, get hit in the stomach with a stick the size of baseball bat and tear up, I somehow doubted that.

“I’m not fighting with a bunch of middle-aged dudes, Barry. Fuck that music.”

“Firstly my name is,” Barry repeated his non-sensical Gaelic name, “and if you’re gonna be a little pussy, you can just wait by the water cooler until I’m done.” As he spoke, Barry stripped down to the waist, and began donning his armor. Tucking in his red velvet jerkin, he flipped me off and walked off to join his fellow “warriors.”

“Fine by me,” I muttered, and walked to the water cooler.

It was by the water cooler that I made the fateful acquaintance of Ted.

Ted was a five foot tall man of dwarfish stature, who had found that his one chance in life of gaining acceptance in a social group was to attend medieval events where his small build could be used as a gimmick to pass himself off as an unusually tall dwarf. However, because the Society for Creative Anachronism did not recognize dwarfs as having actually existed at any time in the history of the planet, Ted was denied his true passion in life. Though he would spar under the name of a seventeenth century French nobleman, what he wanted more than anything else, was to fly into battle under his true name: King Rajorax Thundercloud, Dwarf of Umbleburg. Apparently, while there were groups other than that S.C.A. that allowed for fantasy characters to compete in duels they were too far away for Ted to do anything but fight as someone other than who he truly was. I listened to Ted with growing wonder. For the first time in a long time, I had met someone who made me feel completely normal.

Seeing an opportunity for a joke, I pounced. “Calm down, Ted. You’re making it out, like you’re some gay kid who grows up having to pretend he’s not gay, just so he can fit in.” Ted did not find this particularly amusing. All of the sudden I felt bad for this five-foot dwarf.

“Jesus man, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to belittle your problems.” Ted’s eyes were as distant as a Vietnam vet with PTSD. His throat seemed to contract in half sobs.

“It’s cool,” Ted grunted, swallowing all of the water in his Dixie cup in one shot before crumpling it in one short-fingered fist and throwing it to the ground. He looked to be on the verge of tears. Like a goth kid who bemoans at the horror of being a vampire trapped in an adolescents body, Ted bemoaned the horror… of being a dwarf trapped inside of an unusually short thirty-five year old’s body. I had my hand half reached out to lay a consoling pat on his shoulder, when we were interrupted.

“Well, well… what do we have here? A dwarf and a giant! How funny. What are you cowardly sluts doing by the water cooler? Too chicken to fight like a real man?” The man speaking to us was all of 5’8’ and one-hundred pounds. His armor gleamed like polished silver… and his mustache glistened like a greasy hamburger wrapper. Every group has its own asshole. In this particular club, that asshole was Ron… or as he liked to be called Baron Vladimir Von Alte. I had just met him.

“Nice to see you again, Ted. I would have found you sooner, but I forgot to look down that far.” Ron laughed so hard at his own joke, he slapped one gauntleted fist against one sheet metal covered thigh. He looked from his left to right, as if expecting his friends to chime in, before remembering that he was a forty year old at a fantasy warrior meeting and that he had no friends. This seemed to infuriate him even more. “Why don’t you come on out and fight a duel with me, or do dwarves fear the touch of a human blade?” The tiny muscles in Ted’s body made as if to pounce. Ron raised his glorified baseball bat high over his head. I put a restraining arm between Rajorax and Vladimir, to prevent the dwarf from rushing headfirst into a head thumping.

I turned to Ron incredulously. “What the fuck is your problem, buddy? Buzz off and mind your own business.”

“So the giant speaks!” when I sneered dismissively and rolled my eyes at him, Ron revealed yet another bizarre aspect of S.C.A. culture. The angrier you make someone who pretends to be a knight the stronger their attempts will be to speak Shakespearian English. “Do you wish a dance ‘twixt our blades, giant? I have a sudden hunger for the blood of a demon!” Behind him, a group of high-schoolers drove by and flipped off the group collectively. We all chose to ignore them.

Squeezing my hands into fists, I made as if to step toward Ron. Despite all of my aversion to sports, I had a right hook that could dent quarter inch steel plate. I knew without a doubt I could dent Ron’s fancy tuna can. When I had raised on fist to eye-leve, I realized that I was about to get into a fist-fight with a guy who liked to pretend he was a medieval warrior I unclenched my hands and then I just felt embarrassed. Lowering my hand back down to my side, I said “Go away, Ron. I’m not in the mood.”

“So, the giant is as fearful as the dwarf then? Come now, demon! Cast aside the orifice of the ogre and face me man to man.”

I looked to the ground and sighed. Just as every group has their own asshole, every group occasionally needs someone to beat the shit out of that asshole. Looking at Ron’s scrawny arms, and gleaming chrome-like armor, I quickly nominated myself for that job. For some reason, I just had to know one thing. “Ted, what does Ron do for a living?”

“He works at a video store.” I nodded, not particularly surprised.

“Manager?” I had to know.

“Sales clerk.” Made sense.

Ron gripped his sword angrily, more offended by the three questions than anything I had said before. I nodded to the sky, accepting the fate God had chosen for me. It was mostly my fault for letting myself get thrown once more into a world of swords and sorcery. “Yup, it can’t get much worse than this. Come on, Ted. Help me put on the loaner armor.”

If there is anything more pathetic than being a middle-aged man who dresses up as a knight for fun, it is being a nineteen year old socially-conscious young man dressed up as a knight in ill fitting armor. The gauntlets provided to me barely covered the bear-sized paws of my hands, and when I was given a loaner sword, I could barely hold onto it let alone swing it. The greaves, restricted the blood flow to my size thirteen feet, and the breastplate did nothing but stop me from breathing. When I tried on the helm, we realized that my cranial circumference was about five inches greater than anyone else at the meeting. To that end we had to remove almost all of the padding to get it to finally slide down the sides of my head, and guillotine my ears off. “How do you feel?” Ted asked.

“Like I look.” Ted nodded gravely, trying to give me a whole list of tips on how to defend myself against devilish blade of Vladimir Von Alte. “Just show me where the asshole is. I’ll figure everything else out for myself.”

As I took position a good five feet from my shiny foe, a sudden quiet fell over the meeting. All other duels ended as a small crowd gathered around me and the group’s asshole. Ron dropped into a graceful pose, similar to a preying mantis. I gripped my sword like a bat, and prepared myself to swing a home run on the ball of Ron’s greasy face. Ted took position in the middle of us holding up a ketchup-stained handkerchief. My sweating hands gripped the down tighter. All I would need was one swing and my superior strength would decide the match.

The ketchup stained handkerchief fell to the ground.

I took one step forward. Two steps. I swung with all my might.

The blow glanced off of Ron’s shoulder. Then… my enemy began to dance.

It would seem that while I was busy succeeding at life, and trying to get ahead, Ron was doing just one thing. While he skipped math class, after business class, after economics class, Ron was studying the one subject he truly cared for. While others were applying for jobs that paid above minimum wage, Ron had chosen a career that would allow him to devote all of his time to his true passion. And while still others were getting married and having children, Ron’s only woman was the wooden sword in his hand. To say that he hit me with a stick multiple times would be an understatement. It was more like I had been shot through a forest and bounced off every tree like a pinball machine.

The first blow hit me in on the back of my thigh, just above the knee, taking me to the ground. The second hit me in the head, ringing my pad-less helm like a gong. The second and third took out my arms and landed me on the ground belly first. I felt like my bones were breaking, as Ron continued to hack at me with his baseball bat like a mountain man chopping fire wood. Someone… somewhere blew a whistle. I looked like a can of soup that had been rejected at the factory due to excessive dents. Ron danced above me in roaring victory.

I did my best to get to my knees. I threw my helm to the ground and discovered that all I could hear other than the whistle was a low pitched ringing. I worked my jaw open and blinked, trying to breath. When my lungs were fully expanded by chest plate popped off like a pipe busting under pressure.

“Jesus…” I moaned, my cheek laying in a nearby patch of wet grass I had managed to crawl to, “… Christ,” I finished. Several men hovered above me, like ugly angels, pulling bits of metal off of my body, and throwing them into a pile my side.

Barry finally appeared by my side, a few seconds after I had recovered enough to hear what was going on around me. I grabbed him by the jerkin, and pulled his ear close to my mouth. My words came haltingly and weak, as I forced my lungs to work. “I… fucking… hate… you!” After Barry announced that I was delirious, two men picked me up under each arm and put me back into his car like a retail store mannequin.

It was a week before I could walk without a limp.