“Is this really the best transportation that you guys could come up with?”
“It is inconspicuous.”
“I’m not disagreeing there. I just think I’d rather walk.”
“All the way to Munchen? Don’t be silly.”
“I’m serious, I would much rather walk than ride this damn thing,” I complained as the damn thing in question tried its damnedest to make a complete ass out of itself. I jerked at the reins to try and keep my mount, his name was Fritz, from trying to munch on a rose bush at the side of the road. “Seriously, I didn’t even know that you had mules in Europe.”
“Of course, we do, we just have not had much use for them until the Resurgence,” replied Kris breezily, she seemed to be having no trouble with her mule. Definitely a far cry from the cosmopolitan city girl I’d known.
“You mean somebody put up with these things even if they didn’t need them?” I asked incredulously. I had finally managed to jerk Fritz’s head out of the rose bush and get him pointed down the road once again but I swear that the mule glared at me and was plotting revenge.
“Oh, they are not so bad,” Kris affectionately patted her mule’s neck. “You just have to let them know who the boss is.”
“I suppose I could try sexually harassing Fritz here, but I doubt that’ll work.”
“Don’t be an ass.”
“Well… I am riding one, it’s probably contagious.”
“Are you going to whine all the way to Bavaria?”
“Are we going to ride mules all the way to Bavaria?” I shot back.
I admit that this wasn’t my proudest moment. In my defense, after only a day of riding that damn mule I felt like my knees were about explode into a cartilage confetti.
“But seriously, we need to go faster than this. We only have certain window where we can meet the sub, plus we don’t want to be out at night.”
It was still midday, but the need to shelter behind strong walls and a thick door after dusk was even more of an imperative in the country than in the city. Many horrors, ancient and terrible, lurked in the picturesque woods and abandoned farms around us. They only awaited the fall of night to emerge from gloom of copse and cave to begin their hunt.
“There is a place we can stay, and I am just teasing you, dumbkopf,” Kris responded. “The mules are just going to get us to the frontier. We have to walk ourselves across the frontier between One Eye and Lady Luck, anything else will be too conspicuous. After that, we will use bikes”
“Is the border still near Hof?” I asked. The borders between one god’s territories and another’s were often ill defined and prone to shifting.
“Yes, even the other gods do not try to overly irritate the Lady,” Kris was being cautious and avoiding Frau Wyrd’s name even we were still outside of her influence. “We will be in her territory once we cross the A93.”
“The gods use an old highway as a boundary?”
“We think so.”
I had a smart comeback to that, something about Germany’s mania for officialdom being infectious but instead I felt the skin on the back of my neck start to crawl. Every combat veteran knows the feeling and I imagine people like cops and lion hunters do as well. The feeling that someone or something is watching you with ill intent. I had not felt that feeling in my life until after the Surge. I first became became very acquainted with it fighting the Chumash gods and their followers. My time on the Mexican Front made the feeling and I fast friends after it saved my life multiple times. I have heard it called the “heeby jeebies” and “someone walking over your grave” but I usually just called it the “creeps”; and I had them.
My eyes scanned the surroundings while my right hand casually drifted down to where I’d hidden the pistol that Vaclav had given me. The curmudgeonly resistance leader had been tighter than a stone when it came to giving up his weapons and I had only been able to talk him out of a single Glock 17 (that probably had belonged to a cop) and a sawed off 12 gauge shot gun (that had probably belonged to a criminal). I had the shotgun stuffed into the bed roll tied to the saddle behind me. The Glock rode uncomfortably in my right pocket. The Resistance had no holsters to give me and it felt weird to be carrying my guns like that. It would have to do.
“Kris.” I spoke casually, quiet but not whispering, I didn’t want whatever it was that was hunting us to know that I was on to it. “Still have that gun that you stuck in my face earlier?”
“I try not to go anywhere without it,” she said, mimicking my even tone.
“Silver bullets?”
“Aber naturalich. Just a few though.”
“Good, we might need them.”
I covertly searched the landscape for the source of my discomfort. Nothing in the abandoned yet bucolic surroundings looked out of place, nothing screamed danger. I nearly wrote off my case of the creeps as simple paranoia but then caught something out of the corner of my eye. A swirling mote of sunshine behaving in ways that light never did. As soon as I focused on it, it vanished.
“Crap,” I muttered, the Agency had taught me to look for the signs, but I had never expected to see one for myself. “On second thought we might need something stronger than silver.”
“What is it?” concern lacing into her voice for the first time.
“Fey,” I replied, breathing the word as softly as I could. It still wasn’t soft enough.
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“You called?” interjected a jubilant voice from directly in front of us. Both mules shied and reared at the sudden appearance of a dapper little man in the middle of the road.
“Crap,” I repeated again once the mules had calmed down and I got a good look at our unexpected visitor. He at first appeared far from threatening. He was small, perhaps four feet tall, wore a green suit with a blue vest and red tie and had a kindly, wrinkle wreathed smile… that did not reach his inky black eyes.
Other signs hinted at his true nature; his hands were too big for his arms, his fingers too long, like a spider’s legs, and his black hair rippled unnaturally as if rats and insects were chasing themselves around underneath it. High Fey tried to look human, but they could never get it quite right.
“Greetings mortals,” exclaimed the little man, in English, with a sweeping bow, “you may call me Till Eulenspiegel and I am, I am, at your service.”
“You have got to be shitting me,” replied Kris, she had already drawn her little revolver and aimed it at Till’s forehead. She looked shaken, her eyes wide and her hand subtly shaking. To be fair to her, a mythological trickster from your country’s children’s stories accosting you on the road didn’t happen every day, even after the Resurgence.
“Now, now. There is no need to be rude. I only want to help.”
“Yeah, just like Rumpelstiltskin,” I replied. “You want our firstborn too?”
“No, no. I am not a degenerate pervert like Rumpelstiltskin,” his face twisted into a scowl. “He is a trickster who steals children for his own sick amusement. I am a philanthropist, a philanthropist.” Eulenspiegel beamed, his disturbingly large hands spread amicably in benediction. “I merely want to help the man that has gotten the God of Wisdom and his bully boys in such a lather.”
“It’ gotten that bad?” I asked with a wince.
“A godless, American spy sneaks into the heart of his realm and kills one of his elven enforcers and then vanishes into the wind? My friend, my friend. How could you expect anything less? It is quite delicious.” The Fey licked the tips of each of his fingers, his forked tongue flicking as fast as lighting.
Folklore depicted the Fey as otherworldly, magical beings who seemed more interested in using their power to trick and harass humans than anything else. These creatures ranged from small things like the fairies and brownies to the great and powerful individuals like Oberon and Titiana. They were a presence in the mythologies the world over just under different names and the stories about them persisted long after the disappeared from the Earth.
Then, like magic itself, they came back.
In the time since the Surge humanity has been forced to recategorize the varied types of Fey into distinct categories in an effort to better understand them. One subset, the most powerful subset, were classified as High Fey. The CIA rated the power of High Fey as being just below that of the Old Gods themselves. However, that power was often bent to inscrutable, and yes, often mischievous ends. The High Fey seemed to have none of the megalomaniacal lust for control that often came with godhood. They were, in short, a complete cypher and there was no predicting how they would act or the extent of their magic or even what they looked like as they could change their appearance at will.
All that we knew for sure was that Fey could not lie (though they were experts as misleading with the truth), hated iron and they liked to appear in the guise of magical characters throughout mythology and folklore; though it was unknown on whether they were influenced by legend or if legend was influenced by them.
In the USA’s war for survival the High Fey were classified as neutral but to be avoided at all costs as it rarely ended well for the unlucky individuals that came to their attention. Individuals like me… Shit!
“Thank you very much for letting me know,” I said politely as I could, I did not want to antagonize the creature. “But we really should get going before the Volk hunt us down.” I put heels to Fritz but the stupid beast stood there as if stupefied, he probably was.
“You cannot go yet, Thomas Winter. For I still wish… wish, to help you.” Eulenspiegel had a wide and ingratiating smile plastered across his face and his disturbing hands spread in a placating gesture. He looked the very image of someone who just wanted to help… and wasn’t going to take no for an answer.
“Help me with what?” I said suspiciously.
“Why to help you on your quest. Your quest, of course.”
“Yeah, and what is my quest, again? I seem to have forgotten.”
“Now, now,” the little man waggled an overlong finger at me. “You cannot know that. It is not yet the time and even Till Eulenspiegel does not stand in the way of a Great Destiny.” I could hear the capitol letters drop into place and groaned. That didn’t sound good.
“If you cannot stand in the way of destiny, then why are you trying to help us?” asked Kris cautiously. She had lowered her gun, against a Fey it was useless anyway, and looked at Eulenspiegel with no small amount of curiosity. Even after the Resurgence, High Fey were not exactly common.
“That would not be standing in the way of Destiny, I would merely be helping, helping, it along.”
“That seems to be parsing things pretty finely,” I replied with a scowl.
“My good man, my good man. That is what I do,” Eulenspiegel said with a beaming smile that might actually have been genuine. “I want to provide you safe passage to Munich, you will then be clear of the lands of Wotan and can avoid the gaze of Frau Wyrd. Surely, surely, such a thing could be of use to one in such dire straits as yourselves.” Apparently the Fey wasn’t concerned about drawing an Old God’s attention by speaking its name. One of the perks of job, I guessed.
“And what do you want for ‘helping’ us like that?” I asked, I knew there was a hook somewhere in the bit of tasty bait that he was dangling in front of my eyes. With Fey there was always a hook. They may not have been as actively combative as the Old Gods but they were far from benevolent.
“Nothing important, nothing important” he said with flicking gestures of his hands as if he were brushing away an annoying bug. “Just a small favor to be called in at the time of my choosing.”
“Ahh, there it is. The catch.”
“You surely cannot, cannot, expect me to provide such a service for free? A being has got to make a living.”
“Yeah, but I never buy anything when I don’t know how much it will cost.”
“And I am not selling anything less than your lives? Truly, truly, that is worth a small favor to be paid in the future?”
“You said that he had a Great Destiny,” interjected Kris. “How could that be true if we die here?”
“Yeah, what she said,” I interjected lamely, I really should have figured that out myself.
“Perhaps,” Eulenspeigel conceded with a scowl at my companion. “You will not die if you do not accept my offer. But I can save you a great deal of time and for you mortals time is life.”
“Not good enough, dude,” I said before realizing that I called a great and terrible High Fey ‘dude’. “Either you lower your asking price or we continue on our merry way.” Shadows darkened across Eulenspeigel’s small form and all pretenses of cheer and beneficence fled from his features. His dark, soulless, eyes seemed to grow in size and I could hear the sound of thunder and lightning though the sky was clear. It was around then that I considered that I might have made a huge mistake.
“Very well,” something had changed in the Fey’s voice and instead of sounding like an agreeable salesman he sound like an executioner about to swing an axe. “If you do not accept my offer now, rest assured, that you will later. But by then the price will be much higher, and you will gladly pay it, gladly pay it.” Eulenspeigel snarled the last three words like a tiger and then disappeared in a small pop of displaced air.
“Well, that was a bit disturbing,” I said into the silence that followed the Fey’s departure, Kris agreed in storm of German curses.
“Come on, we really have to go faster.” I said goading Fritz into an awkward trot that felt like being pushed down a hill in a barrel. “He said that One Eye is looking for us and Fey never lie.”
“They don’t?” shouted Kris as she kicked her mule into motion.
“They can’t, and that’s what worries me. Plus, it’s going to be night soon.” Our mules trotted down the road in a race against the sun as it sank towards the western horizon.
