Day One Hundred-Nine: Long nose? Get lost, please

Today was a DISASTER, diary, an utter disaster. For me AND for Grylock. Cripes!

I got a visit from The Baron in the morning. He'd overheard Grylock saying he wouldn't do this anymore, and DEMANDED, in his polite way, that I get the goblin out for the third day of prep. The king insisted. And when the king insists, well… he's the king. Royal prerogative, or something? Kings are bosses, long story short, and you don't disagree with the boss.

So I went to Grylock's quarters. Knocked on the door. No reply. Knocked again. Still, nothing. Knocked a third time, and a few seconds later I felt something warm seeping into my boots. Looked down, and gods help me, he was peeing on my feet! Under the door! Sick little bastard, that goblin.

"Ambassador," I said, trying to keep an even tone and stepping out of the firing zone, "this day's important. Real important. It's not like yesterday, promise."

Lemme tell you now, diary, that I had NO IDEA what was planned for today. So that promise was, uh, yeah, biggest lie yet. If I'd known, I probably woulda joined Grylock in hiding. But I didn't, so things happened the way they did.

"Bullshit!" he yelled, along with a few more imaginative curses in his mother tongue. Scary language, that. "You're all just picking on the foreigner! Well, you sons of whores, you won't get me! No sir!"

I was in a pickle. I had no choice but to lie. Again. So I said the first thing I could think up: "But, ambassador, today's… uh… today we're… having a picnic with the king?"

Quiet. All I could hear was the trickle of urine, and, after a second, the zip of pants.

"Ambassador?"

"Think I'll get to ask any questions?"

"Oh!" I hadn't expected him to say anything. "Yeah, yeah! Of course! Look, you just get ready, and I'll come get you in twenty minutes, okay?"

Grunt. That was good enough for me. I heard him shuffling away from the door, and I retreated, too, mainly to change my shoes. I'm used to my own pee fouling my clothes, not someone's else's.

Before I got back to my room, though, The Baron was waiting for me with one of his men. "Deft lying, Dragomir. Terrible lie, but good enough."

I apologized profusely. "Can you, uh, get that arranged? What IS supposed to happen today, milord?"

He smiled. I didn't like it, 'cause it looked way too apologetic. "You'll see, Dragomir. King's orders. Go, get some fresh stockings, then come back and escort the ambassador to the front of the castle. Royal guards will be waiting."

So I did. And we went. And, sure enough, there were royal guards, and they took us out of the castle, through a secret back entrance I'd never known was there, through the offices of the castle's scribes and tax collectors. (I managed to filch a couple of fresh quills. That was the one bright spot of the day. Gotta keep writing, diary.)

At the rear the royal guards ushered us over the frozen moat and through a thicket of trees, into the snowfields near the Great Chasm. And when we got to the other side I'd expected a bunch more guards, and a blanket, and food, and the king, 'cause by then I'd forgotten that this was all a LIE.

Then I remembered the lie when we saw none of those things, but instead, a herd of grazing woolly mammoths, kicking up the snow to get at the grass underneath.

"Get rid of them," the royal guards said, and they fled into the thicket. And once they did, Grylock swore at me with the foulest tongue I've ever heard and ran after them. Me, too, after I recovered from my shock and realized that a big male was charging at me.

Trees flew. The herd came rampaging after us, the both of us screaming our guts out, and before we could get to the secret door at the rear of the castle the bloody royal guards had locked it shut! Those assholes! I was pounding on the door, crying for somebody to let us in, and Grylock was beating on my leg with his tiny fists, 'cause, really, I deserved all the blame.

We turned, after fighting for a few moments, and realized that the entire damned herd was staring us down. The male was in the lead, and boy howdy, he did not look happy. I dunno why mammoths are so vicious - I guess 'cause they're related to elephants? - but he was clearly ready to charge across the moat and rip us to pieces.

And he did.

Charge across the moat, anyway.

But the ice broke. Of course it broke, he's a freaking mammoth. The bastard smashed through the entire layer of ice encasing the moat, and when he did all of the evil critters kept IN the moat jumped to life and started biting him to death. Ever seen a crocodile latched onto a mammoth's rear end while a dozen angry piranhas nibble his eyes? It's not pretty.

The rest of the herd joined the fray, and more and more ice kept smashing, releasing more and more moat monsters. By the end pretty much everything was dead 'cept us, 'cause we'd edged around the wall, faaaaaar away from the fight, and back to the Neck. Came in the front doors.

The Baron, waiting for us, congratulated us for so thoroughly amusing the king as well as dealing with the threat of the mammoth herd, which had apparently been lingering behind the castle for several weeks.

Grylock left without a word. So did I.

Expecting a certain goblin to stab me to death in the night,

Dragomir the King Hater