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  "Oh, ho, ho, my powerful wizard, you jest with the lady," Sir Hanson cried in haste, slapping Bardric on the back. Grinning stiffly at Bezique he added: "This is Malagendron, just as we told that likely little goblin out there who parked my horse Bess— Barbelindo."

  "I see." The enchantress laid a finger to her soft lips. "And who are you, apart from being the third-handsomest Knight I've ever seen?"

  "I am called Sir Hanson the Hawk-eyed," he replied.

  "Sir Hanson—" Bezique looked pensive. "There's something about you that reminds me of— No matter: You didn't come here to chat with me, much as I'd like that. The games await, and I'm certain that Lady Luck perches on your shoulder, eager to show you that you're her special darling. What would you prefer to play, good sir?"

  "Er, what do you offer?" Sir Hanson hedged.

  "Wouldn't you like to know?" The lady's throaty laugh made the ruby necklace resting on her bosoms bounce, which sent poor Bardric rocketing into puberty on the spot.

  Shortly thereafter, her hands resting on her guests' shoulders, Bezique guided the newcomers on a grand tour of the gingerbread cottage's many attractions.

  "Now over there you have the card tables—your choice of Dragon's Grandma, Sixty-two Ogres, Over-Under-Up-Me-Jerkin, and of course everyone's favorite, The Dwarf's Drawers. And there we have the dicing tables, if you fancy a game of Fewmets instead. You'll notice that our older customers prefer the one-armed brigands, over by the far wall—"

  "Oooh! I wanna try that!" Bardric tugged on Bezique's arm and pointed to where many men were gathered around a long table with a large wheel in the center. "It looks like fun!"

  As the boy spoke, the ogre in charge of the game gave the wheel a forceful spin, then reached into the cage at his elbow, plucked out a hamster, and tossed it onto the reeling wheel. The little creature's cry was midway between terror and delight as it went whirling and bouncing around and around before falling into one of the many numbered hollows on the wheel's perimeter.

  "My apologies, great Malagendron," Bezique said smoothly. "The Great Wheel is off-limits to wizards. All of our equipment is proof against any magical attempts at cheating, but the hamsters themselves are susceptible to sorcerous influence." She steered them away, toward a different part of the hall.

  The heady reek of ale and stronger waters made Sir Hanson's head spin as Bezique conducted him and Bardric up to the bar. The tapster, a troll of dour aspect, leaned one warty elbow on the sleek mahogany counter top and rumbled, "What'll it be?"

  "Give these men whatever they like, Thrombo," Bezique said.

  "Oh no, I couldn't possibly—" Sir Hanson began.

  "Shurrup'n drink!" the troll roared, slamming down a monstrously huge tankard. "The first one's always free."

  With the cool assurance of one who knows nothing of alcohol, but has heard it being ordered just so, time after time, by the grownups in his life, young Bardric rapped out: "I'll have a Wyvern's Revenge, straight up, with a twist, and don't bruise the gin."

  "You'll do no such thing!"

  A big-bellied, broad-shouldered man came charging up to the bar, grabbed Bardric by the back of his tunic, and hoisted him off his feet. "What are you doing here when I told you to stay there? And who told you that you could drink, scamp?" he bawled in the boy's face while Bardric kicked wildly and impotently. "At your age? Your mother would have my skin if she found out that— Argh!"

  The man's tirade was brought to an unexpected halt by Sir Hanson's brawny hand closing on the back of his tunic and jerking him backwards so hard that he dropped Bardric. "And what part of your pathetic anatomy do you think that good woman would have if she found out you deserted the lad there, in the middle of the Dark Woods?" The knight gave his captive a brusque shake to emphasize his point, then let him go.

  The man staggered a few steps off, turned, and assumed an air of wounded dignity. "How dare you, sirrah!" he huffed. "Do you know who I am?"

  "Apart from a bad father?" Sir Hanson replied. "You're Wulfram the goldsmith, and a 'special' friend of Good King Donald's, unless I miss my guess."

  "That's Master Wulfram to you, O Sir Paltry of Penniless," the goldsmith thundered. "And how do you know of the favor our beloved king has given me?"

  "Because, Master Wulfram," Sir Hanson said coldly, "I am the one whom our beloved king saddled with the quest of finding out what became of you and a dozen or so more of His Majesty's most generous 'friends'." He cast a look over the varied delights of the enchanted cottage, recognizing more than a few of the missing merchants at the bar and the gaming tables. "Now I know."

  "By my broomstick!" Bezique exclaimed, staring at Sir Hanson. "And now I know where I've seen such a prissy, self-righteous face before! You've a father named Hansel, perchance? And an Aunt Gretel, too?"

  Sir Hanson gave the enchantress a somewhat baffled look. "Even so, m'lady. How did you—?" It came to him. "You're that witch?" He gave her a closer look. "I must say, you've aged well, for a dead crone."

  Bezique slapped his face with dispassionate competence. "So hale, so handsome, so hearty, and yet— so hamheaded. Pity. Did you ever stop to think that I might have had a mother? Or that I'd consult my crystal to conjure up a vision of her doom?"

  "Very resourceful of you, m'lady," Sir Hanson said. "And much as I apologize for my father and aunt having killed your mother—" (Here he drew his sword.) "—I'd appreciate it if you didn't force me to do the same to you."

  He did not hold the sword like a man who means business, for he acted most reluctantly. Though he found Bezique both charming and attractive, he had his knightly duty to perform.

  "I am sent here to return these men to the bosoms of their loving families," he declared. "Clearly your spells are both the vile lure and the unsavory bond keeping them tethered here. On peril of your life, release them from your toils, O sorceress!"

  Bezique, the troll barkeep, Master Wulfram, and every other merchant and employee in the general vicinity stared at Sir Hanson for about three heartbeats. Then they all burst out laughing.

  Only little Bardric refrained from shaming his rescuer with such raucous mockery. The boy gazed up at the knight, gently touched his sword arm, and said: "There's no spells to break, Sir Hanson. They come here 'cause they want to."

  "Have you fallen under some enchantment while I wasn't looking?" Sir Hanson demanded of the lad. "What power on earth would compel sensible, prosperous men to dare the heart of the Dark Woods, abandoning carts, kine, and kids en route? What power if not the blackest magic?"

  "Well, I don't know about anyone else here," Master Wulfram spoke up. "But I had to come back and try to break even. If the wife finds out I lost all my gold and trade-goods again, plus another pair of oxen, she'll kill me."

  Sir Hanson's mouth hung open like a dropped drawbridge. "You all came here because you wanted to?"

  "Who wouldn't?" one of the other merchants spoke up. "There's gold to be won by easier means than our daily toil."

  "The one-armed brigand I played this morning just spewed out five hundred silver pieces!" another man announced, to loud cheers. Neither he nor his audience considered the fact that he'd fed the machine over five thousand of those same bits of silver.

  "The hamsters love me!" a third merchant shouted from his place beside the Great Wheel.

  Bezique laid her graceful hands upon Sir Hanson's arm and gently coaxed him to re-sheath his sword, then steered the stunned knight to a small table in the most intimate corner of the bar. A buxom wood-sprite clad in a pair of maple-seed pasties and a whisper of ivy-trimmed panties set two glasses and a pitcher of something green between them before flying off again.

  "You see, after Mother died—" Bezique began.

  "I can't beg your forgiveness for that enough, m'lady," Sir Hanson broke in. "I vow upon my honor as a knight, I will make full restitution for every coin my father and aunt stole from her!"

  Bezique waved away his impassioned offer. "Water under the troll-infested bridge," she said. "Mo
ther knew the risks of the profession. It was her own fault for letting her gambling addiction get the better of her." She absent-mindedly dug two huge chunks of spicy cake out of the wall beside her and passed him one. "Here. On the house."

  Between bites of gingerbread, she continued: "Some years after Mother died, I took over this location. The other woodland witches were very helpful when it came to reconstructing the old place. Did you know that with gingerbread cottages you need permits from the Building Inspector and a reputable baker? But alas, soon after that, your dear King Donald built that blasted Dark Woods Bypass."

  "I understand your feelings, m'lady, but understand ours," Sir Hanson said. "The Dark Woods teems with anthropophagous perils. A worthy king must look to the welfare of his subjects."

  Bezique sipped her drink languidly. "And building a road that charges ruinous tolls that go straight into the Royal Treasury is so magnanimous," she drawled.

  As little as he personally cared for Good King Donald, Sir Hanson felt impelled by his oath of knighthood to defend his sovereign. "All good citizens of this realm must stand ready to make sacrifices in the name of security," he intoned. "If the king had not built the Dark Woods Bypass, toll road or no, the child-devouring witches would have already won."

  Bezique laughed. "Do you believe everything you're told? Eat children? Gah! Do you have any idea how hard they are to clean? To say nothing of the calories, or choosing the proper wine. And don't you dare mention Chianti!"

  "You can't mean to say you exist on gingerbread," Sir Hanson protested.

  "We almost existed on nothing, thanks to your precious king," Bezique shot back. "Do you know how badly his stupid toll-road impacted the local economy? When you call something a bypass, simple folk presume it's shielding them from something they should pass by! No more moony swains and lasses came to see us for love potions, no more harried husbands sought cures for their wives' peevish fits, nor peeved wives sought something to make their less-than-lusty mates a bit more manly, if you follow me."

  Sir Hanson wore the look of one who has awakened from a bad dream into a substandard reality. "Is that all you did?" he asked. "Sell potions to the peasants?"

  "Peasants?" Bezique showed her teeth in a feral grin. "Just ask Good Queen Ivana why it took her ten years to produce the crown prince, and then only after she made a trip into the Dark Woods."

  Sir Hanson slumped back in his chair. "I'm dead," he announced.

  Bezique stood up, leaned across the table in a most scenic manner, took his face in both her hands, and gave him a long, deep kiss. He responded eagerly, and when at last she broke their embrace she observed, "You don't kiss like a corpse. Why claim kinship?"

  "Because my mission hither was to bring back the errant merchants. It doesn't look like they'll come willingly, and I can't force all of them. Good King Donald has little use for knights who fail him."

  "Bother Good King Donald. Stay here, sir knight, and serve us."

  "'Us'?"

  The enchantress spread her arms wide, indicating the flash and glitter of the vast gambling den. "Does this look like a one-witch operation? We woodland sorceresses formed a corporation, once we realized what Good King Donald had done to us. We reasoned that if the public no longer had any need to enter the Dark Woods, perhaps we should make them want to do so."

  Sir Hanson shook his head sadly. "Fair lady, I'd gladly stay here and turn my sword to your service, but if I return a failure, King Donald will imprison me for a false knight, and force my father to ruin himself with my ransom. And if I don't return at all, Good King Donald will declare me a traitor and confiscate my father's property to the last crumb."

  "We could fake your death," Bezique suggested. "I'd really like to take you on as my new chief of security. In fact, I'd really just like to take you on." She licked her lips.

  Sir Hanson shook his head. "As I would like to serve you, in all ways possible, and in one or two that might not be possible but that it would be a lot of fun to try anyway. However, if I'm reported dead, it would break my parents' hearts, and then there's Good King Donald's death-tax to be paid, and— and— and—" He sighed. "And even if I could evade all those consequences, I wouldn't have long to enjoy my new life here. Mark me, the king will order knight after knight into the Dark Woods until he finally learns about the riches gathered here, and then he'll send an army here to take 'em from you. That man loves gold like a pig loves slop, and there's only so much that witchery can do to ward off cold steel."

  "Do you sense a unifying theme to the woes confronting you and me and all this kingdom?" the enchantress asked grimly. "Have you never thought how. . . pleasant things might be, were we rid of such rapacious royalty?"

  "Kill him?" Sir Hanson was aghast. No matter his personal feelings about Good King Donald, he was still an honorable knight. As such, he could not countenance the summary snuffing of his liege lord, and he said so. "Besides, the regal wretch has always got at least fifty guards protecting his miserable royal hide at all times," he concluded.

  Bezique leaned across the table and traced titillating patterns on Sir Hanson's dampening palms. "Oh, I wasn't going to suggest that we kill him," she said.

  "A TRAIL OF CRUMBS, is it?" Good King Donald lowered his voice until it was barely audible and darted his eyes to left and right, vigilant against prying eyes. He and Sir Hanson were barricaded together in a secret chamber in the topmost turret of the castle, but the king wasn't taking any chances. He'd commanded his guards to leave him alone with the man (following the ceremonial weapons-removal-and-strip-search, of course). The news this knight had brought back from his quest more than made up for the fact that he'd failed to fetch the missing merchants.

  "Aye, crumbs," said Sir Hanson, reaching into the little pouch at his belt. "Like these I first showed you." He sprinkled a pinch of gold bits across the tabletop.

  The king's eyes lit up like bonfires into which he flung all caution. "You left a whole trail of them behind you?"

  Sir Hanson nodded solemnly. "Not all the way to the castle, nor even all the way to the edge of the Dark Woods, lest uninvited eyes catch sight of them and deprive you, my king, of a treasure trove that's yours by right. No birds will gobble crumbs like these; the route back to the dragon's cavern will remain well-blazed. There was such plentiful store of gold in that cave that I could safely squander as much as I needed to mark the path."

  "And you say that the dragon in whose cavern you found this fortune is—?"

  "The cave is filled with dragon bones, Sire," Sir Hanson replied. "And so much gold that even if you were to take your fifty stout guardsmen with you, there'd be more than enough for all of them to have a share."

  "Share. . ." The king repeated the word as though it were coined in some foreign tongue. He pursed his lips in thought, then asked: "Is gold very heavy, good Sir Hanson the Hawk-eyed?"

  "Heavy enough, but not so heavy that one man, alone and unassisted, couldn't carry off a fortune in his bare hands. And if he took an ox-cart with him, the beasts could bear away enough to purchase an empire or two. So if you bring your guards, they would be able to carry—"

  "Never mind about my guards," said the king. "Go get me some oxen, good Duke Hanson the Silent."

  "HE'S THE ONE who jumped to conclusions," said the newly-made duke to his sorcerous sweetheart. They were closeted together in her bedchamber, just off the casino floor, whither she'd dragged him the instant he returned to inform her of the success of his errand. "It wasn't as if I lied."

  "Of course you didn't," Bezique replied dreamily, doing magical things with her hands.

  "The trail was well-blazed. He could have followed it out again easily enough."

  "Mmmm."

  "And the cavern did hold just as much gold as I told him. I saw the same vision in your crystal that you did."

  "Such a clever boy. Hold still. Stupid armor. Where's my monkey wrench?"

  But conscience would not allow Duke Hanson to enjoy Bezique's attentions. He sat up an
d exclaimed: "And the cave was filled with dragon bones, just as I said! Is it my fault that there was still a living dragon wrapped around them?"

  "Found it!" cried Bezique, brandishing the wrench.

  Some time later, a loud whoop rang through the raisin-studded rafters of the gaming hall. At the joyful sound, Master Wulfram looked up glumly from his losing hand of Sixty-Two Ogres.

  "'Bout time someone got lucky in here," he grumbled.

  "Shut up and play cards, Pa," said Bardric, raking in the pot.

  This story originally appeared in the Fantasy Gone Wrong anthology, DAW, 2006.

  Nebula Award winner Esther Friesner is the author of over 40 novels and almost 200 short stories. She is also a poet, a playwright, and the editor of several anthologies. The best known of these is the Chicks in Chainmail series that she created and edits for Baen Books. The sixth book, Chicks and Balances, appeared in July 2015. Deception's Pawn, the latest title in her popular Princesses of Myth series of Young Adult novels from Random House, was published in April 2015.

  Esther is married, a mother of two, grandmother of one, harbors cats, and lives in Connecticut. She has a fondness for bittersweet chocolate, graphic novels, manga, travel, and jewelry. There is no truth to the rumor that her family motto is "Oooooh, SHINY!"

  Her super-power is the ability to winnow her bookshelves without whining about it. Much.

  Fellow Traveler

  Donald J. Bingle

  CORBIN HAD ALWAYS said that he would rather walk barefoot over broken pottery shards behind a donkey with diarrhea while wearing his scratchy winter great coat on the fiercest, breezeless mid-summer afternoon with a squabbling, squirming, and overweight six-year old under each arm, than travel with barbarians. And he had always gotten a laugh when he said it.

  So what had he done?

  He had decided to travel with barbarians.