The Old Gray Mare
It was a few years back, when the sign of the Gray Mare still hung over the door. Someone spilled The Ox’s beer. Wasn’t even good beer, mind. Grassy as green leaves. Nothing like what I’ve poured for you today. No, sir. A failed experiment with dry hops is what that stuff was, and I’ll be the first to admit it. Always been straight and level; ask anyone.
But The Ox, he loved that grassy beer, probably on account of his being half cow. Or bull, if you take my meaning. So the first thing he does, aside from stomping his hooves and bawling like a babe ripped off his mother’s teat, is look around for someone to gore.
Now, the one as did the actual spilling no one saw at the time. But if you ask anyone in town, they’ll tell you it were the witch, Arilya. An elf maid, she was. Funny lass. You know the type, I’ll wager. Spider webs in her hair and silver wire wound round her fingers. Drank nothing but carrot wine and perry. Talked to cats and the wind. Kept to herself, mostly.
But the one thing we all knew about her was that she hated to be touched. So much as brush her in passing, and she’d scream. “Keep your hands off me, or I’ll kick your pelvis clean out of your body.” Well, none of us liked the sound of that so we left her alone.
The Ox would have done well to do the same, but when he gets to seeing red, as it were, there’s no reasoning with him. And on that day, when he turned around and saw her there, holding her cup of wine, he didn’t even give her a breath to explain herself or apologize. He gave her a slap that sent her spinning across the room like a child’s toy—and straight into a table of caravan merchants.
Well, as soon as she can shake herself loose and get to her feet, she stretches out her hands like talons and then lights up like a torch. With flames running down her arms all the way to her fingertips, she hurls a ball of eldritch fire at The Ox.
And misses.
The fireball hits a dwarf full in the face, and as you might imagine, he was not best pleased. Don’t recall his name, but he’d been drinking all evening with a whole clan of gnomes. Stout for him, and plum brandy for them. Drank it in thimbles, but they’d had plenty. Enough so that when they saw sparks in the dwarf’s beard, they tried to put out the fire with their brandy.
It was quite a scene. Between the flaming dwarf, the bellowing Ox, and the screaming witch, the whole place was in chaos. Most everyone was trying to get out, but that only led to a trampling mob near the door.
Where was I in all this, you might ask? Despite rumors to the contrary, I neither bolted nor cowered. Like a ship’s captain at the tiller in a terrible squall, I stayed resolutely at the bar. Well, behind it at any rate.
And using my own body as a shield, I offered what meager protection I could to the little ones I had gathered up in my arms—poor, delicate things that they are. Call me a liar if you will, but I preserved every one intact, including this fiery little beauty up here. Ha ha! My little joke. Shall I fetch her down and pour you a dram? No? Just as well to save her. Her kiss gets sweeter every year, and more potent.
Where was I? Oh, yes. So the dwarf charges The Ox, beard still aflame, and with a whole pack of gnomes on his back, riding him like a war elephant. Everyone always wants to know why he attacked the seven-foot bull-man instead of the dainty elf maid. Well, I’ll tell you.
I don’t know.
The best I can reckon is that he simply went for the closest target, but I suppose we’ll never know the truth.
In any event, the dwarf ducks under The Ox’s swing and gives him a savage head-butt to the groin. Now, as you might imagine, I have a great deal of experience with both head-butts and groin attacks, so believe me when I tell you that this one was absolutely world-class.
While the great beast is staggered with pain, the gnomes all clamber up his arms and legs. In an instant, he’s covered in a carpet of tiny assailants, all of them scratching and biting for all they’re worth. He swats off every one he can reach, and they fly like ballista bolts. (In case you didn’t know, those pointy hats the gnomes wear are steel-reinforced, so if you happen to catch the business end—believe me, you’ll know it.)
Worse, everywhere one of those drunken little monsters landed, they erupted into miniature orgies of indiscriminate violence. Like rabid shrews they were. So much nose-biting. And ear-stabbing. One woman swears she saw one of the wee devils pluck out a man’s eye and eat it like a pickled egg.
It was more or less at this point that the melee became, shall we say, general. Any as hadn’t managed to flee the premises were part of the brouhaha. And speaking of brew, I for one find it more than a little ironical to note that many a fine ale was spilled in all this—despite the fact that the original casus belli, if you will, was in point of fact a spilled drink. A tragic waste is what it was.
The same could be said of The Ox himself, who was finally felled by a combination of witch fire, gnome bites, and chair-leg blows to the delicates. If you ask me, that’s a sad commentary on the shortsightedness and futility of conflict in all its forms, but I’ll leave you to find your own lesson.
The long and short of it was that the only ones left standing were the elf witch and the dwarf. Plenty of bad blood there, as I said. He seemed to have finally figured out that she was the one as set him afire, more or less. He reaches for her, and … I don’t know what he meant to do, but he never got the chance.
She’d always threatened to do it, and we’d always thought it rubbish. But as I stand before you today, she did it. Limbs alight with dancing fairy flames, she kicked that man’s pelvis clean out of his body.
Well, not clean. Carried with it a considerable pile of innards. And that whole mess of steaming raw haggis flew through the room. No lie. Went straight out the door and smacked into the sign you see hanging there—the one you were pointing to when you asked your question.
It was quite a splatter, I’ll tell you, when that bundle of oozing guts hit. Colored the old gray mare red (and few other, less savory colors). One particular stray entrail slapped a long red mark trailing off the head of the old nag. To all of us at the time, it looked rather like a horn. So we’ve been the Red Unicorn since that very day.
And in my humble opinion, a more distinctive sign you’ll not see anywhere in town, nor indeed in the whole district. Catches the eye, it does. Paint it red at least once a year, with fresh blood—which is never in short supply in these parts. And that’s a fact, as I’m an honest man.
O O O
“Yes,” said the traveler, tapping his fingers somewhat impatiently on the bar. “A very … thorough recounting. But what I actually asked was if there was a story behind the mane. On your man there.”
The traveler turned to point at the thick-muscled young man standing directly below the painted sign that hung outside the entrance to the tavern. The hulking youth had a thick ruff of hair that completely surrounded his face from forehead to chin.
“Oh, that,” said the bartender. “No story there. Sired by a were-lion is all. The blackhearted tom ran off and abandoned both mother and boy. Left him with nothing but that shaggy pompadour, a wicked set of claws, and a tail, poor devil.”
“A tail? Truly?” the traveler asked, craning his neck.
“Aye,” the bartender said. “And speaking of tails, there’s quite a tale I could tell you about this wild lambic.” He thumped a nearby keg. “Just got it in this morning. Sit down, sit down. I’ll pour you a draft and give you the whole story.”
About the Author
John D. Payne grew up on the prairie, watching the lightning flash outside his window, imagining himself as everything from a leaf in the wind to the god of thunder. Today, he lives with his wife and family near Houston, where he imagines that the clouds of mosquitoes have achieved not just sentience but malicious intent.
His debut novel, The Crown and the Dragon, was published in 2013 by WordFire Press. His most recently published stories can be found in Black Denim Lit, The Leading Edge, Tides of Impossibility: A Fantasy Anthology from the Houston Writers Guild, and One Horn to Rule Them All: A Purple Unicorn Anthology.