Heroic Adventures of Junkers and Vailiant

Against the Black Death

Esteemed reader,

On the subject of luminous Vailiant and Junker's adventures, many a chord had twittered brightly in the telling, and quite a few geese were denuded in the course of writing about them, in those heroic times. However, despite this laudable fact, too little is known of the mysterious circumstances in which our heroes had the misfortune to suffer shameful abduction by unlikeable and pushy aliens, may their seed die out. These frog-like creatures are so execrable and detestable to one of tender artistic disposition that one would, in rage, throw one's ashtray to the floor, were the ashtray only not made of noble Murano glass, and valued at up to fifty Louisdors.

Indeed, sometimes it was known to happen that a peasant or a farmhand would claim they had seen in the sky flying bright things reminiscent of overturned plates, which would most often cause the other villagers to mock them, or else to worry about their spiritual well-being. In another case, it would be supposed that the unfortunate soul had consumed of those red, white-dotted mushrooms growing in the grove next to the Bishop's hunting grounds. Those mushrooms were known to confuse the senses and make the gaze sharp like the brass shields of distant Orient. According to evil tongues' tales, in the village whose name we shall refrain from mentioning for reasons of politeness, the local abbot, otherwise a modest and god-fearing old man, accidentally ate several of those unfortunate mushrooms, and afterwards preached to poor folk that they should drink and make merry, and claimed that all that stuff about the other cheek was rubbish, and that bullies and ne'er-do-wells should be dealt with by clubs or at least well-judged kicks in the behind. After that, he ran out of the church singing obscene songs, and was later noticed giving lascivious commentary on the perky behind and lush white breasts of the young milkmaid Bonnie, known also as Lass. It is said that, later, the girl lost her head to a city slicker and wound up over the ocean. That story, as can be supposed, had nothing to do with the afore-mentioned mushrooms.

Unlike the peasants, when a man of noble birth were to talk about glittery flying objects, the ton would most often comment that a little strangeness had been his since birth, but it was not to be marvelled at as his family often married close, and sometimes closed relatives. Thus, Aldus, Vailiant's noble neighbour and distant relative on his mother's side, often claimed that he'd seen fling saucers, but nobody truly believed him, since the claim would be accompanied by worry that such surprise might make him spill fatally; he was, in fact, convinced that he had somehow become a bottle of oil. This claim seemed somewhat unfounded to the educated company, although a person less given to scholasticism might have noticed that noble Aldus had lately turned somewhat yellowish and transparent. Despite the fact that all of his kin swore Aldus had always been rounded and 15 centimeters tall, it seems that the fact sprung from some family skeleton, most probably using a cupboard instead of a closet.

All those stories, admittedly, seem somewhat ungainly and strange, but what happened to our two knights reaches beyond all our experience, although, if we were to use a somewhat dry poetic imagery, those experiences are far from being the clover launching a thousand thoughtless cows.

Here is what happened:

When the flower of maritime skill, embodied in the magnificent person of Captain Xsavier Cerveja Sagres known as Tinto, and ennobled by the presence of the bright knights Vailiant and Junker's and of a famous Viking conung turned towards their native shores, an unfortunate turn of events led them to what later chroniclers, particularly a certain inn-keeper, called the Bermuda triangle. This fact did not overly concern them, especially because they were completely unaware of it, but they did worry a little that they sailed across waters so covered in seaweed that it seemed they were voyaging over a cabbage patch. One of the sailors even claimed to have seen a bunny rabbit swimming behind the stern, but that was written off to the influence of the sharp sun peculiar to these latitudes. Surprisingly, when Vailiant put some of the weed on his fishing hook and cast the line behind the stern, after a short while a nice hare took the bait, so that evening they enjoyed a hearty stew.