Skep's Place

 

The Squire's Tale


Note that this tale was not finished by the author.

"Hey kid," the Host says to the Squire, "you know as much about love as the rest of us dudes" — the obvious joke being that nobody actually knows anything about the subject. "You may as well tell us a story about it." The Squire, of course, does:

Part 1

In the land of Tartary there is a king named Cambuscan. On the entirely binary scale of "good king" or "tyrant" that you get from the Canterbury Tales, Cambuscan ranks as a good king. His intro specifies that he went to war against Muscovy a while ago, but never says what the outcome was or if it's even relevant. He has two sons; the elder is named Algarsyf, and the younger has the much more reasonable name of Cambal. No word on whether they're relevant either. He also has a daughter named Canacee, who will actually be relevant. The Squire decides he doesn't have the right words to describe how lovely Canacee is, probably because the words have all been used on every other female character in this book already.

Cambuscan, who's been ruling for twenty years now, decides to throw a birthday party, and has a big old feast. While everybody is eating cake, a knight rides his horse right into the hall. I say "horse", but it's clearly made entirely of brass. The knight is also holding a hand mirror, wearing a ring, and carrying a sword openly on his belt.

"I was sent here by the king of India and Arabia."
"Both of them?"
"...There's only one."
"Oh, weird. I don't know why you wouldn't just call your country one thing then."
"Look, it doesn't matter who sent the gifts, or even who I am. I just need you to have these magic items for plot reasons."

Anyway, the knight begins to tell Cambuscan what the gifts do. He says the brass horse can take you anywhere you want to go within 24 hours. And also it can fly. Then he explains that the mirror can reveal if people are secretly foes. In particular, he points out that it will tell you if a guy is going to be a dirtbag before you commit to a long-term relationship with him.

"That seems a lot less thrilling than a flying mechanical horse."
"Well it doesn't matter what you think, because the lame mirror and ring are actually gifts for Canacee, because they're obviously female-coded. You, being the man, get to keep the cool horse and sword."

Then the knight describes the ring, which he says will let Canacee talk with birds. It will also make her proficient in herbology somehow. Lastly, the sword will cut clean through armor, and anybody cut with it will never heal, unless Cambuscan places the flat side of the blade against the wound.

"So the wounds never heal? And it's fine to just wear it on your belt without a scabbard or anything?"

After the knight provides his expository dialogue, the gifts are delivered, minus the horse, which is led out into the courtyard, where the random commoners try to move it but can't. They also spend a couple paragraphs hyping up the gifts and saying how cool they are. In fairness, a cool gift to a peasant is a pair of leather shoes.

Then everybody dances so merrily and wildly that only Lancelot would be able to say for certain what moves everybody was busting out. I don't know how Lancelot became the authority on dance, but all right. The knight gives Cambuscan the instruction manual for the horse, and then everybody goes to bed.

Part 2

Candacee is a proper lady, which means she's a square who doesn't stay up partying. It also means she's the first one awake the next day, so she assembles her entourage and goes out for a walk. While out and about, she runs into a falcon crying out loudly and tearing at itself with its beak. Candacee uses her Speak with Animals passive buff granted by the new ring to chat with the falcon, who explains that she's upset with herself for spending so long in a bad relationship with a boy falcon who didn't love her like she loved him. This should be pretty self-explanatory, but the falcon's story takes up 85% of Part 2. Also it might actually be a hawk; Chaucer goes back and forth on this. Anyway Candacee uses herbology and begins to heal the falconhawk.

Then Chaucer foreshadows some of the upcoming events: Cambuscan conquering a bunch of cities, Algarsyf winning his wife and avoiding danger using the brass horse, and Cambal doing... something.

Part 3

There is no Part 3.

Epilogue

The Franklin says, hey Squire, that was an excellent story. You're actually a pretty good kid. I'm going to go home and yell at my son for not being nearly as good a kid as you.

Here ends the thankfully-unfinished tale told by the Squire, which must have been so long that Chaucer said "fuck it."

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