Chapter 6

"Well done! I had every faith in you and I couldn't have done a better job myself!"

I had been almost asleep in the now lukewarm bathwater when I heard Lydia's voice right into my right ear. I cracked open an annoyed eyelid to give the good Fairy a bit of a dressing down, but she looked so happy and cheerful that I couldn't find the ambition to be sore at her.

"You were right, of course." I remarked in a sad sort of tone. "Lots of bad and very stupid people that needed to be killed, but not a one of them really worth the cost of a bullet, let alone the life of a good person. How I got through this mess without getting some poor honest guardsman killed or badly hurt, I'll never quite know. Things look pretty rosy now but this really could have been a pretty serious ratfuck."

"One potential ratfuck — one U.S. Marine!" She cheerfully replied. I thought about correcting her quote, that it should have been "One riot — one Texas Ranger", but upon reflection there really wasn't much difference. One man with a gun (and a bad attitude) can make a difference ... sometimes.

"Well now that the shooting is all over, I'd suggest that you flap your wings over to visit the King and Queen. They're doped, poisoned or ensorcelled and could do with a tap of your wand. While you're at it, start thinking about how they're going to keep a long-term sustainable peace with the Centaurs. It's time to do a little bit of nation-building, unless you're planning to hold another pogrom every generation or two, and that would be both messy and wasteful."

"Very." She agreed. "That was very well done with that Alliance. It's exactly what the Kingdom needs and with a little bit of encouragement I think we can add to it a bit with a few other previously neutral tribes and races ... like the Unicorns and Giants, for example." Come to find out, Unicorns are a very proud and haughty race, and even worse sticklers for protocol and affairs d'honor than Centaurs. But once I'd lopped off the top herd stallion's head in the great hall yesterday the rest had gone into paralyzed shock. No human had ever killed a unicorn in single combat before ... it was thought impossible! Nevertheless it had happened and the Unicorn race now was deciding how to handle this new very uncertain future.

The Giants, she told me, were much less stuffy and a rather non-belligerent sort of people at heart, but prone to making poor decisions and taking bad advice. Currently, they had their heads all collectively in the sand, praying that trouble would pass them by. With effort, they could be made to join the forming Alliance and then they'd start getting some good career advice for a change.

"Plans would be made soon!" She insisted, but for now my job was pretty much done. She wanted my token presence at the opening meeting for the Alliance that she was going to host in about a week. Until then, my time was pretty much my own.

No specific mention was of my slave girl, the former Princess, except that I was to keep her close at hand until she was specifically requested. That I could do. She needed lots more experience to become a proper toilet slave, and Amanda and I had a lot of fun with her over the next week giving it to her. By this point, the Lady and I were virtually inseparable and we spent the vast majority of our time alone together in our bedchamber, chastising and training our slave girl and even spending an increasing amount of time together alone.

Evening meals were starting to become a big affair once again as the restored King and Queen began taking over the reins of government once again. Amanda and I were given the seats of honor at the dinner table but we were both becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the honors and praises being heaped upon us. I was officially knighted and named "Hero of the Realm" and given more sacks of gold than I could carry. The former Lady in Waiting Amanda received the lands and titles of the former traitorous Baron, thus now becoming the Baroness Amanda.

Later, in our bedchamber, she assured me that her new lofty rank would have no bearing on her behavior with her Lord and Master, and proved it by fetching her favorite riding crop with her teeth and presenting her nude body to me for my intimate inspection and chastisement. She loved to receive punishment nearly as much as she enjoyed inflicting it upon her own slave, who was well broken in and well-used in every hole by now.

It came as a slight shock one afternoon while we were having some fun in bed to receive a loud knock on our door informing us that the presence of the Princess was required downstairs in the Great Hall at once! Amanda and I threw on some clean clothes and she slapped a leash on her collared slave girl and we walked her nude down to the great hall. The King and Queen were both on their thrones at the end and we forced the Princess to crawl nude on her hands and knees the entire length of the hall with her nose no higher than an inch above the floor. I held her leash while Amanda punished her slave with her riding crop every step that she crawled forward until she was near the dais.

Now was the time for the Judgment. Behind the thrones was the Good Fairy Lydia, whispering last minute advice into the ears of the royal couple. Their faces were stern with no trace of either familial love or acute disappointment. The hall itself was full to capacity and this was apparently a show that no one wanted to miss. Every other prisoner in the dungeon had already received justice, with most receiving conditional pardons and were required to be present today for today's treason trial of their former mistress, the rebellious Princess. I noticed that the new fashion for the pardoned was to wear gloves, to attempt to hide the missing little fingers that I had cut off. Conversely, the longtime staunch supporters were gloveless to better show off the gifted rings of fealty that had been bestowed to them upon the restoration of the King and Queen.

There had been no work for the headsman as yet, but the day was still young. The entire hall held its collective breath as the King and Queen bade the miscreant Princess to rise and receive her punishment ... and it was a harsh one!

Apparently, the Princess was pregnant, according to the Good Fairy Lydia! Well, I had been keeping her rather busy ... and quite well fucked. Lydia gave me quite a wink while giving everyone the news. The 'Princess' was to be stripped of her royal title and placed in the care of a certain very secure Nunnery until her child, the new heir to the throne, was delivered. The child was to be brought to the castle for nurturing while the mother was to remain in isolation in exile.

It was left unsaid, but very clearly insinuated that the former Princess would never be returning again to this castle. Her fate determined, a pair of guards came to take her and all too soon she was gone, and without ever looking once at her parents or uttering a word in either her own defense or final bravado and scorn.

Goodbye and good riddance.

After the sentence was passed, great tables were brought into the hall and shortly thereafter the first great meeting for the establishment of the Alliance was held. The Good Fairy Lydia was the nominal head of this undertaking with the King and Queen following her every lead. There were speeches, more speeches and still more speeches made until dinner. After still another bout of speeches during dinner, I resolved that this would be my final formal attendance at any more meetings and decided to go out with a bang. I stood up after the end of a long rambling half-drunken speech by one of the lead Centaurs and raised my own glass up in toast.

"To the Good Fairy Lydia and the Alliance of the Magic Kingdom!" I shouted, and everyone raised their glasses in toast. "You're all either a part of the problem or you will be a part of the solution! If there are problems ... I'll take care of them ... just like I handled the other previous problems. If this council finds solutions and everlasting peace ... I'll then go find other more interesting things to do with my time." With that, I rescued a couple of fresh wine bottles and grabbed the Baroness by a tit and effortlessly threw her over my shoulder and made my departure from the hall.

Amanda and I stayed in bed for the better part of the next week until I woke up one morning to find that I was in my ratty bed back in Los Angeles apartment once again. Alone.

It was a Monday morning and I had apparently only been gone for two days, instead of the two weeks it had seemed like I had been away. At first I was certain that I had just dreamed the entire experience, except there was a Gryphon skin rug on my living room floor and a mounted Unicorn's head hanging from one wall. Five large sacks under my kitchenette table held enough gold coins to quit work and move to much better digs, and live in style that I would very much like to get accustomed to. My Giant scrotum-skin sack was soon found in my closet and contained my .45 and K-Bar, all of my Magic Kingdom clothing, including my good set of leathers, my awarded heroic medal, and a few other souvenirs from my trip.

My truck, the Little Red Roller Skate was right in my assigned parking spot without a single new scratch or dent on her. It was good to see the old gal, but if I'd had to have made a choice, I'd much rather have had Amanda with me than my old ride.

A message on my answering machine reminded me that I had a meeting with my therapist late this afternoon, and I realized with a start that I had not even thought about a cigarette in two weeks! I had quit without ever realizing it!

I was tempted to go back to bed to dream of Amanda some more, but I decided to exploit the unusual feeling of being both contented and ambitious at the same time by grabbing a handful of the coins and taking them to a respected gold coin dealer in downtown Hollywood. He appraised my coins as being good solid and pure gold of exactly an ounce of weight each, and easily sellable at near the daily spot market value, which was coasting at record highs this morning. The precious metals markets had been skyrocketing lately and there was a lot of demand for gold coins at present ... fortunately I had a very significant amount of supply to feed this demand.

We quickly came to an agreement and I sold him five of the coins and received over $4200 in cash, more than enough to settle my immediate needs. I promised to bring him many more coins in the near future and he promised to buy everything I could bring him, offering even to buy at full spot market price if I could bring him at least twenty-five or more coins. Apparently he had an insatiable market for good grade gold in the current uncertain economy with millionaire buyers of the rich and famous lined up willing to pay up to 10% over current market prices.