Chronicles of the Sword in the Stone (remastered and continued)

Chapter 14: Kay and the Peerless

The old barkeep glared down on his unwanted guest. He had been laying there since dusk last evening, and already the rooster had cried up the sun. He had an empty mug of mead still clenched firmly in his fist, and halfway stuffed into his mouth was a turkey leg. His red hair was matted to his bulbous forehead, and he smelled like a thrice over dead horse that was rotting in the sun. What made it all the more sickening was that to anyone with an empty enough skull that tried to be sociable they were to refer to him as SIR Kay, ranting and raving about how he was a knight and deserved nothing but the undying undulation of the masses. There was little the old barkeep could stand, but this sort of nonsense only served to drive him into a rage.

He marched up behind the man, too drunk and stupefied to notice the oncoming dangerous, and he seized hold of his chair before swiped clean out from under the man. The sudden thunking of his forehead against the table followed by his swift trip to the floor, and a brief gagging session with the turkey leg wedged firmly in his windpipe, had a rather powerful sobering effect. Soon enough, Kay was on his feet, and he wielded the turkey bone like a club as he glared daggers into the barkeep.

"What're you on about?!" he slurred angrily. "You trying to kill me or something?"

"I believe I'd be within my rights if I had of." the keep replied with a snort. "Bad enough you scared off half my customers last night, but here you are making a mess of my living."

"A pox on your living!" Kay spat. "Mead was hot and your food was cold. I've known pigs that ate better swill than this."

"Sure didn't seem to have a problem with it last night." the keep replied coldly. "You all but ate me out of house and home, so you had  better have coffers enough to pay."

"Bah!" Kay cried, hurling the bone at the man but missing by a mile. "I don't owe you nothing! I'm SIR Kay, you hear me! I'm better than all of you and deserve only the best. Now get out of my way."

The knight tried to march past the keep, but in his boozed state he hadn't quite taken in the full scale and size of the man before him. With but  single blow to the stomach, Kay was relieved of anything else he still had left in his stomach from the night before following a return to the floor in a fetal position.

"You knights are all the same." the keep hissed. "Think just cause you got your lofty titles you can trample over us like we were nothing. Well, I got news for you, pal, we've got places for gobs like you!"

He snatched Kay by the neck of his shirt, and he dragged the man across the village street in the most undignified manner imaginable. Soon enough they came upon the constable as he was opening up his prison house. The constable looked up, cracking a grin at the sight of Kay as he was dragged over.

"Got yourself a real catch, aincha Wallace. But even an ugly sod such as yourself can find a woman better than that."

The barkeep, one Wallace by name, sneered at him.

"Shut your yap, Bertram, and do your bloody job for once! This oaf refuses to pay a rather sizable tab he owes my tavern, and that was before he had the audacity to call it worse than pig swill."

"Can't really arrest him for telling the truth." Constable Bertram chuckled. "But to show you how nice I am I'll lock him up. A few days behind bars should be more than enough to make him see the light."

The constable led them inside and was gracious enough to open the cell door so that Wallace could throw Kay inside. The sudden impact against the cobblestone wall was enough to rock Kay's senses back to him, but before he could run out Bertram had already slammed the door and locked it.

"Let me out of here!" Kay demanded. "You can't do this to me! I'm Sir Kay, you hear me! Sir Kay! I was gonna be king of this whole blooming country, I was! Every square inch of it!"