“What is it, Tanne d’Arc? Aren’t you getting along with our new bond-brother?”
“What happened, Shooter?”
“Look! Here! That man…that savage obsessed with nudity…he…he touched my horn with his bare hand…”
“He did? You self-absorbed little snot! How dare you propose to my sister already? What do you take her for, huh?”
I had no idea what I took her for, except for pretty dang rude. But now Tanne d’Arc was shrieking so loudly that bull-kin and village leadership alike were streaming over from other tents to peer into ours.
And, oh no—what if Cassandra saw all of this and…whatever it was? I quickly scanned the room. I spotted her standing with Nishka, peeking into the tent. I gave Nishka a pained, begging sort of look. Help? Somehow?
“What did you do to her, Shooter?” Alexandricia hissed.
“I didn’t do anything!” I hurried to explain. “Mostly!”
“Excuse me, but my sister claims this warrior of yours has asked to marry her. In our clan, the only man allowed to touch a woman’s horns is her future husband. You must have some kind of death wish, pulling that in front of me!”
The village chief nodded. “I see. So you’ve made up your mind, Shooter? Then I congratulate you. Now that you have two wives, we’ll build you a new house as a reward. I had been considering it anyway, but we ought to hurry it along now.”
But she—but I—! Oh, the village chief knew exactly what was going on, I could see it on her face! But here she was, just standing there and using everyone else’s confusion as cover! And, what? My reward was a new house? After all the build-up she laid down! Brilliant. Monstrous.
My inner monologue went on and on, but I didn’t voice any of it. I didn’t have time. Because the moment Cassandra looked at me, deflated, I just fell speechless.
“You should have told me sooner if you were planning to do that, Shooter. It’s going to impact our living expenses, after all.” Those were the first words my wife spoke, almost before I noticed her and Nishka drawing near.
More than half of the bull-kin had chased after Tanne d’Arc once she stormed from the tent. I was the last one still hanging there.
“Hold on a second. This is a complete misunderstanding.”
“There’s no misunderstanding,” Cassandra huffed, “I promise you. It’s just that we’re poor, and now we’ll have to make our home bigger. We already have Basil and Elpaco, after all,” Cassandra began to count each point off on her fingers. Finally, she turned her trademark look of discontent on me. “The village chief or adult relatives decide who marries whom. You know I understand that.”
“R-right.” I shrank under her gaze.
“But I am angry. I have the right to be angry here, don’t you think? I’m hurt. I thought we belonged to each other, nobody else.” Cassandra abruptly turned away and rose to her feet, then walked out of the tent.
As a fellow man, I hoped that Gimul might help me out, but he was too drunk. He was totally trashed, crumpled to one side like the leaning tower of Pisa and starting to doze.
I guess at a time like this, you couldn’t rely on anyone but yourself.
Once, a long time ago, I had a real easy job. All I had to do was brainstorm plan proposals for a company. The company gathered people from all kinds of different part-time jobs in one conference room and had us wrack our brains from dawn ’til dusk. Our manager hounded us endlessly and squeezed ideas out of us while making tons of crazy demands. “We don’t have a budget this time,” he’d say. “Is there any way we can still get this product out there?”
If anyone told him “Of course not!” he would tell them they weren’t fit for the job and then he’d just push the rest of us even harder. Coming up with new ideas while being hounded by our manager was tough, but there was also a sense of satisfaction when we got the job done.
So in the spirit of chasing that sense of satisfaction, I had to figure a way out of this current crisis.
My wife was angry. It was my fault. She said she wanted to keep me to herself, and now she couldn’t. I loved my wife, but we both knew our Alexandricia’s word was law. I was in precarious circumstances, and I had to figure out how to fix it on my own. Somehow.
“Hey, Shooter. You seriously gonna marry that oxgirl with the rockin’ udders?” Nishka asked.
“I don’t know, but it looks like the village chief wants me to.”
“Oh, boo hoo. You want her to tuck you in, too? Sounds like this is your problem to solve, not hers.”
“I didn’t even mean to! I just kinda…accidentally proposed to the girl with some kind of bull-kin custom. If they’re really that mad, I’m sure the village chief will find someone else to marry her, but I think she intended me to be the candidate since the very beginning.”
“Oh, yeah? Then I guess that’s destiny for ya. No use tryin’ to get out of it.”
“But where I come from, the law says you can only be married to one person at a time.”
“Does this look like where you’re from?”
“No, but…” I sighed. With nothing but the sound of Gimul’s snoring in the background, I guzzled down the terrible wine. “I know how this is gonna pan out, and I know I can’t do anything to change it. All I can do is talk it over with Cassandra and figure out what kind of relationship we can have with Tanne d’Arc. But Cassandra is the wife I had first. I need to respect that.”
“Look at you, figuring it alllll out in a flash. Good on you, dude.” Nishka took a pull straight from the wine bottle. “Whew, that’s tasty!”
That was so like her. Damn it, this world could be so cruel, and so quickly.
I’d been acting like a spoiled child and I suppose the gods of this world had wanted to exact their vengeance on me.
When Alexandricia and Tan-Claude Van Damme returned to the tent, they strode right up to me with, for some reason, Cassandra and Tanne d’Arc trailing in behind them. Tanne d’Arc was fidgeting, clearly embarrassed, and I couldn’t fathom why Cassandra was comforting her. I mean, they were barely gone for a second!
“We’ve discussed the issue, and Tan-Claude’s sister has said that if you prove that you’re really the strongest warrior in the village, then she will submit to marrying you.”
“But how do I prove whether I’m the strongest?” My face was a mask of confusion. This situation was just too much to swallow.
The bull-kin chieftain flashed a grin at me. His teeth were perfect, all of them straight and pearl-white, damn him. “Easy. You and I will compete in a bullfight to show who the real man is. No big deal, right? Not for a warrior who’s always showing off his manliness.”
“Say what?”
“Good luck, Shooter,” said Cassandra with a nod. “We’ll be cheering for you!” Her words didn’t quite match her expression; she still looked furious that I hadn’t resolved this earlier.
“Since I’m to wed you based on your skill as a warrior,” added Tanne d’Arc, “I want you to prove that you’re worthy.”
“Ah yes, it’s like this, Shooter. In a formal bullfight, our custom is to wear a single pair of underwear so that neither fighter can grab onto clothing for a throw. And since your tribe honors nudity, that’s perfect for you!”
I bit back my protests. It absolutely isn’t perfect for me and I do not want to spend any more time buck-ass naked than I have to aauuuuughhh oh my God!
“So be it,” Alexandricia nodded. “I’m looking forward to this, so you’d better win.”
“What if I lose?” I asked bitterly.
“I don’t think you will. But if you do trip over yourself and fail here, it’s been decided that we’ll hand you over to the minotaurs as their slave.”
Her cold words floored me. What a ludicrous world. No matter what, I had to do everything in my power to avoid falling under the tyranny of the bull-kin chieftain.
In this world, “bullfighting” was actually minotaur-style strip wrestling.
This weird little martial art had arisen as a way to honor the gods, like with sumo on Earth, as well as to allow different tribes to compete. I’m no expert on the minotaurs, but for whatever reason they had become isolated from the day-to-day world of humans, and for the most part their culture wasn’t especially genteel.
Granted, some other clans living on the far end of the frontier were equally as sophisticated as Tan-Claude Van Damme’s. Some were likely even more advanced. For all of that, though, these civilized guys were still making me do minotaur-style pantsing. Though I guess, speaking from personal experience, nothing says “civilized” like a decent pair of pants!
When I raised a question about this had come to be, Tanne d’Arc shrugged me off. “We have excellent weaponry, so opponents might easily injure each other if they used them during practice.”
“Why not just make some practice weapons to use instead?”
“Our armor is just too sturdy. We’d be hitting one another for hours without understanding the impact.”
“Wow, what a, ah, conundrum. It’s almost unbelievable, y’know?”
The lovely Tanne d’Arc could have spent hours telling me all about her people’s martial prowess, now that I stood before her in nothing but my g-string. Strongest weapons, strongest shields, strongest deodorants, you name it and she had a boast for it. She probably only wanted to demonstrate how superior her culture was, but a fat lot of impact that was gonna have in this pantsless wrestling match. I just smiled ruefully.
Seeing my grim smile, Tanne d’Arc seemed to think I was acknowledging the inferiority of my hornless brethren. Her smile got smugger, somehow. It was impressive. “My brother is quite good with weapons, too, of course, but he’s never lost in bare-handed combat. In any case, he’s the most skilled of anyone in any of the neighboring clans.”
Up to that point, Cassandra had been wrapping tape around my palms in silence, but all of a sudden she stood up and snapped back at Tanne d’Arc. “W-well, I’ll have you know that Shooter is the best warrior in our village. He defeated a savage wyvern. He even bested Gimul with nothing but a staff!”
Gimul was looking on in silence, his thick arms crossed over his chest, but now he looked quite displeased. Cassandra caught sight of him and panicked, trailing off weakly.
Gimul coughed loudly and then, his face flushing slightly, he said, “Shut up.”
“I’m…going to shut up now.”
“You know, I’ve thought about what I could have done differently that day myself.”