Chapter 4

I took my victory march around the stadium, for that's what it was, and then went to find Anslee and Sir Jorst. To my surprise, Sir Jorst was carrying an invitation from the King to visit him after the match. I seems that the King, along with most of the kingdom, had watched the fight on the visionbox. I was an immediate celebrity; there was a list of people from the media who wanted to interview me. Some were even willing to pay for an "exclusive." Sir Jorst advised against the exclusive, and I accepted his advice.

Instead, a general press conference was held, and it was broadcast live by most of the stations, both radio and visionbox. I swear, people who are supposed to know their business can sure ask some stupid questions. The press conference lasted for about an hour, and I finally cut it off when the questions became too repetitive. My excuse was that the King had asked to see me. That was an adequate excuse for practically anything, so the grumbles were few and far between.

On the way to the Palace, I found out that the odds had frozen at 427:1, and my investment of 20 gold coins had grown to 854 of the things. Not only that, Sir Jorst presented me with a purse containing 10% of his earnings, which came to 8,540 gold coins, since he had gotten carried away in the excitement of the moment and had indeed wagered 2,000 gold coins on me.

The first thing the King said to me after we had dispensed with the formalities was, "The Queen sends you her thanks because I no longer have an excuse for not fixing up her Tea Garden. I think that you have made a fan for life." He laughed, and, naturally, so did I.

"I could not help but notice that you did not use your gun against Sir Infart. I must admit that was a stroke of genius! You are now acknowledged to be the foremost swordsman in Horurie by most people who follow the blood sport. Do not expect to be challenged very often for at least a year.

"Anyway, I would like to present you with a small token of appreciation for ridding me of an especially noisome pain in the ass. Please take this as something to start building your family fortune." With that, the King presented me with a check for the equivalent of 10,000 gold coins!

I almost fainted when I saw the amount, and so did Anslee and Sir Jorst when I handed it to them to see. My God, I was now the owner of 19,394 gold coins! My fortune was truly made, but I knew that there had to be a catch hidden away down in the depths of such largess. Oh, well, I knew that I would find out soon what that catch was. In the meantime, I was absolutely speechless and had to struggle to thank the King for his gift. He smiled and dismissed us before we choked on our surprise.

Sir Jorst took me to his bank directly from the audience with the King and got an account established for me. The people at the bank had all seen the duel on the visionbox, so they were falling all over themselves to be helpful. In fact, that was the tone of everything that happened to me that day in Horurie City. On top of all that he had done for me, the King sent a detachment of his own bodyguards to make sure that I was not mobbed by my sudden conglomeration of fans. These same troops escorted us home after our business was completed in Horurie City so that we would not be attacked by brigands or some jealous House. Sir Jorst and I thanked the troops for looking after us, and I wound up signing a multitude of autographs for the men of the detachment. Now, I finally understood what it meant to be a celebrity. Dammit, that is a lot of work!

We had a light supper and went to bed. I did find that I was quickly adapting to the longer days of my new home, but I wondered how well I was going to adapt to a year of 438 days. Nevertheless, I was quite tired, and Anslee had to be content with only one orgasm that night, but she was understanding and did not demand the two orgasms that she had become accustomed to. I guess that I should rejoice in that she was becoming a model wife in a very short time, and we were not even officially married yet.

I spent most of my time at the Manor House waiting for the wedding by doing the mundane things that I had to do to become a fully functioning male of Horurie. One of the things that I had to do was to learn to drive the flying machines that were universally used for local transportation. Sir Jorst had several of the machines at the Manor, and he assigned one to me. He also assigned a man to teach me how to operate the device, and I am sure that I scared the poor man within an inch of his life on several occasions.

Eventually, I did become proficient in controlling the machine, and Sir Jorst assigned a different machine to me that had the capability of true flight. It would rise to roughly 10,000 feet, but that was very uncomfortable without dressing for the occasion. At that altitude, the temperature was simply too low for comfort in the g-string that I normally wore. Nevertheless, I did spend many an enjoyable hour in flying around the estate getting to know it as well as one could from a high altitude.

At last, the day of the wedding finally arrived, and I did my best not to embarrass anybody. Apparently, I must have done an adequate job because Anslee was happy with me, and that was all I really cared about. There was the usual wedding banquet, and that was where I was presented with my new g-string in the bright yellow of the King's House.

Unfortunately, no one had warned me that I would have to strip and don the new apparel in front of all of the wedding guests at the banquet. I had no intention of acting on my observation, but I did see several of the women react with considerable interest when my private parts came into view. I noted that Anslee did have that look of "be jealous, you sluts; he's all mine, and you will never get a chance to sample the merchandise."

That was the only point of the evening when I had any occasion to be embarrassed, and the moment was so fleeting that I quickly forgot it. Later on, I did wonder if that had been something cooked up by Anslee and her mother to do a little bragging.

As an interesting facet of Horurie custom, I was now classed as Sir Jorst's son before the law, and I was the direct heir to his entire estate. I had not realized that such was the case until one of the guests commented on the subject to another guest. Neither one had seen me within earshot, so I did not react, but it would have been sufficiently insulting to warrant a duel had I been so inclined.

Anslee was his only child as he had only one wife, and something had happened at Anslee's birth that had made it impossible for her mother to bear any more children. Therefore, her husband was going to inherit when Sir Jorst died, and there had been high hopes among some of the men to be Anslee's lucky husband. Now, the only way she could become available and still be the conduit for all of Sir Jorst's wealth was for me to die before she bore a male child. If you find that too complicated to make a lot of logical sense, welcome to the club.

Many of the Horurie customs dated back into antiquity, and nobody knew the reason for them or even how they had become the norm. I didn't care, and I was happy with Anslee. Furthermore, I was sure that I could take care of myself. I probably was overconfident, but I had never lost a gunfight or a sword fight, so I figured to be nearly immortal. Of course I wasn't, but I did act that way on too many occasions.

I suspect that my complete self assurance was enough to keep me out of trouble on many occasions because my potential opponent must have felt that somebody as confident as I had good reason to be so.

Right after we were married, Anslee wanted us to set upon a quest to make her pregnant as soon as possible. I was agreeable for several good reasons. One of those reasons was that when she gave birth to a son, she would be as protected as much as it was possible to be. As soon as I had a son, he would be my heir, and Anslee would loose all of the problems of being a female heir. More of the complete nonsense of the Horurie culture, but I was hoping to make use of it.