The Shady Adventures of Fabian

Chapter 57

Fabian landed in a heap and managed to knock the wind out of himself in the process. He'd twisted his ankle a bit during the fall, but he was pretty sure he hadn't broken anything. He glanced around a bit. He was in a small dirt enclosure with only a few feet of space surrounding him on each side. The opening he had fallen into was about ten feet above him, too high for him to jump up to. There also didn't seem to be anything to grab onto in the walls to help him climb up. There was nothing but dirt that crumbled at his touch.

"Well, this is some horse dung," Fabian muttered to himself. "Maybe if I shout really loud one of the others will wake up and come rescue me." He began to scream at the top of his lungs for several minutes until his voice started to grow hoarse and he flew into a coughing fit. Once it passed, he sat down on the ground and folded his arms across his chest. "Well, nothing to do now but hope they come looking for me in the morning. I suppose I might as well get a little shut eye while I'm waiting."

He was just starting to settle in and close his eyes when he heard some footsteps coming from overhead. "Scrote?" he called out.

"Well, well, what's made its way into me trap tonight?" a voice croaked above.

"Excuse me, sir. I seem to have accidentally fallen into this pit here. I guess it's your trap? If you get me out of here I can take you back to my friends and I'll have the paladin catch you some sort of tasty varmint you can eat."

"Friends, you say?" the voice said. "Yes, yes. Old Chester is going to have himself some good eating tonight."

A rope dropped down from overhead and Fabian immediately grabbed onto it and scaled his way out of the hole.

It was dark, but the man held up a lit candle by which Fabian could see he was an old man with long stringy hair dressed in furs with an oddly misshapen face covered in warts and a patchy beard.

"Whoa, you are one ugly dude," Fabian said. "Thanks for getting me out of that pit though. Like I said if you're hungry I can get this guy in my party to get you some food. It's no problem."

"Yes, yes. Please do take Old Chester to your friends."

"Yeah, I think they're over this way." He stopped short and looked around. "Or maybe they're in that direction. To tell you the truth I've managed to get myself a little lost."

Old Chester sniffed at the air a few times. "Friends are this way. Yes, yes." He began loping off in the complete opposite direction from which Fabian had been heading.

"Well, that seems like a man who knows where he's going," Fabian said. "I guess I'll follow him. You want to slow it down a bit, Old Chester? I'm having trouble keeping up with you." For an elderly guy he was traveling at a very impressive speed. It wasn't long before Fabian had lost sight of him completely.

About ten minutes later Fabian finally arrived back at the campsite completely out of breath only to find his traveling companions were all tied up in ropes and Old Chester was sharpening a pair of long knives and drooling as he stood over the campfire. Their mouths were gagged with rags and they all glared at Fabian as they struggled uselessly against their bindings.

"Yes, yes. Old Chester is going to have himself some good eating tonight. Old Chester will start with you as you appear to be the tastiest." The old man raised his knives and charged straight at Fabian with lightning speed.

Fabian had the presence of mind to spin out of the way and then quickly drew his own dagger. "I knew that Briawny was going to lead us into danger. This is exactly why I should be the one making the decisions on which route we go and where we stop to camp for the night."

Old Chester let out a deafening screech that sounded like an animal getting mangled and charged at Fabian again swinging both knives wildly about him.

"You want some of this, grampa?" Fabian asked. "Obviously you have no idea who you're tangling with. I'm the world famous Fabian and you do not want to get on my bad side."

A knife whizzed by inches from Fabian's ear. He jumped to the side and dropped into a crouch. "That right there was as close as you're going to get to me, old timer, so you'd better enjoy that in the very short time you have left to you."

Old Chester charged up and plunged a knife right into Fabian's left shoulder.

"Oh, bloody hell that hurts," Fabian said as he retreated several paces. "Okay, you got lucky. There aren't many men that can claim they've landed a blow on the mighty Fabian. And the ones that have are all dead now. Congratulations, you're about to join them in whatever hell you're going to spend eternity rotting in." He gripped his dagger in his left hand and then staggered a bit. "That's weird. I'm feeling a bit light-headed here. Say, there's an awful lot of blood trickling out of this wound. I feel a little like I'm going to faint."

Old Chester screeched again and charged at Fabian with his knives spinning around so fast they appeared only as a blur.

Suddenly his screech was overpowered by an even louder cry from Briawny as she ran in between Fabian and the charging old man. She leaped into the air and kicked Old Chester squarely in the chest, sending him tumbling backwards straight into the campfire. The furs he wore went up in flames and a moment later Old Chester let out a death curdling cry that suddenly went silent.

"You didn't have to do that," Fabian said. "I had that guy right where I wanted him. He was just about to be on the receiving end of the old Fabian special."

"You're lucky I was able to wiggle my way out of those ropes, mate. He tore a chunk of flesh out of your damn shoulder. I suppose we'd better get you bandaged up."

"What this? This is nothing. I've received plenty of worse wounds than that in the many, many battles I've been a part of."

"Suit yourself if you want to bleed out," Briawny said with a shrug. "It would suit you right. You were supposed to be keeping watch so something like that didn't happen."

"See that's the thing," Fabian said. "I was keeping watch like a hawk. That guy just totally lied to me. He came up and gave me this sob story about how he was starving to death and, me being the kind and compassionate person that I am, I told him to have a seat by the campfire and I would personally catch him a rabbit to eat. I was gone less than a minute because that's how good I am at hunting and by the time I came back he had you lot all tied up. That, of course, is when I bravely decided to fight him and rescue all of you. You're welcome, by the way."

"Yeah? If that's the way it went down, where's the rabbit you supposedly caught for him?"

"Huh? Oh yeah. What the heck? Where did it go? It was just here a minute ago. It must have escaped in all the hullabaloo. You see it was still alive. I caught it with my bare hands and I was waiting to kill it until just before I cooked it so it would be as fresh as possible because that's just how I roll. Now if you'll excuse me, the moon is right over that hill so I do believe it's your turn to take watch. I'll just be over here passing out from blood loss."