A Bad Night In Bridgetown

Sir Cobb and the Vampire

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Another day, Sir Cobb thought to himself, another dark forest.

The one thing having a blade enchanted to strike viciously at evil had done for Frederick was give him some weight as a real knight. Not that Frederick had ever doubted that he was a real knight. Although he had begun to suspect that the Home Knighthoode Starter Kit had not been of the advertised quality.

Whilst Frederick was able to easily identify black hearted evil, he was a sucker for less obvious forms of scam. When he had responded to the advertisement he had not questioned it. He trusted material printed in the corner of a general proclamation from the Merchant's Guild of Laventine. None of the signs that may have dissuaded the cautious consumer had rung any of Frederick's alarm bells. Not even the 'low low price' of three groats for all the equipment the starter knight would ever need.

To be fair to him Frederick had come a long way since viewing that particular sales promotion. He had slept in cave mouths, meadows, stables and inns. He had paid a field bard to compose a ballad about him, he had seen the mean streets of Vermoniam. In the three weeks since he had left his home Frederick felt that he had really lived.

He had certainly gained more minor injuries at one time than he had ever enjoyed as a cooper's apprentice. This did surprise him because making wooden barrels could be a dangerous business. Particularly sp when you were applying the hoops.

Life on the road was, it turned out, far more complex than being a cooper. The sheer variety of injuries one could sustain was a dizzying notion if you just devoted some thought to the matter.

Right now Frederick had a nailless left big toe, scrapes on both his knees, bruising to his left buttock. Not to mention the remains of a poison ivy rash on his stomach. Also one possible broken rib, defence wounds on his left arm and a cut over his right eye.

The bread and butter of his new career amounted to menial work. One innkeeper had him chasing giant rats out of an inn basement. Another saw him trying his hand, briefly, at featherweight cage fighting. He wondered that he had not entertained second thoughts about his career choice. The remuneration from both activities had earned him about the right amount of money to eat quite poorly. By all reasonable standards he should be fed up and ready for the comforts of home.

Instead of which he was having the time of his life.

After thinking on the matter long and hard he had come to certain conclusions. One was that he had underestimated many things about life. For example, the difficulty of making one's way as a knight-errant. Or, for that matter, the amount of rubbish work your typical knight had to undertake on a daily basis. Thankfully he had also underestimated his own resolve, character and determination.

Frederick had, within the bounds of modest decency, always had a lot of time for himself, generally speaking. To find that he could face poverty, physical abuse and loneliness with a smile on his face had done wonders for his self-image. It had not occurred to him that another view of his current situation was that he was an idiot. Further, an idiot who should go home before he got himself seriously injured.

Because of his growing confidence, Frederick had agreed to take on something a little bigger. . In exchange for a bed at the coaching inn of Kuppsberg and the promise of a modest bag of silver he was to bring back the head of a vampire. The wicked creature had been terrorising the flocks and herds of the town's Fieldworker's Guild. The town mayor had supplied him with a sack for the purposes of head storage. Frederick had the sack looped through his belt for safe keeping.