A silly bit of tickling prose from a fantastical land of long ago ...
Dran the Cruel lived up to his name.
For several years he and a small band of cutpurses had terrorized the King's Highway from their nearby encampment in the Mosswood. Early on, the take from the traveling merchants and royal pages along the road was substantial and steady. It looked like they'd all buy titles and land in some neighboring barony in no time at all, happily exchanging their cloaks and blades for an easier life among the gentry. There was just one problem.
It wasn't Dran's results that were at issue, he had a sharp eye for wealth, even when it was hidden by shabby dress. It was his questionable methodology.
It began harmlessly enough, every now and again the wily thief would truss up some waylaid silk trader or hapless messenger and tickle them until they revealed any and all secrets regarding hidden loot or impending shipments they might be hiding. And it wasn't playful or mirthful teasing, the tickle torture was sadistic and frenzied, for Dran had a preternatural knowledge of ticklishness.
Soon however, Dran was ordering every one of his captives be stripped of every shred of clothing, strung up in strange and merciless positions and tickled, for hours sometimes, even when the exhausted quarry had long given up every secret they had (if ever they even had any)!
Reports of the Witch-fingered Menace of the Mosswood quickly spread, helped along by the near daily discoveries of more disrobed victims, bound and gagged on the side of the road in a post-tickling delirium.
When the daughter of a visiting noble was found, with her plump lady-in-waiting, and two luckless footmen, hanging from their feet, cocooned in yards of rope, blindfolded, and with their mouths filled with thick wads of cloth, the group of thieves knew Dran had gone too far. It didn't help that each of the mewling, exhausted victims were covered from head to toes (especially toes) in the tell-tale rakes and welts of a terribly furious tickling, and each one bore the childish inky scrawl "Dran was hyre!" over their bellies, breasts, chests, and buttocks.
Traffic along the King's Highway all but stopped after that. There was much grumbling and scheming in the thieves' camp for many weeks when one of the band happened upon a vellum poster, tacked to a nearby crossroads: "Wanted: Alyve! Dran the Crul, Wytch-fyngerd Devil of the Mosswood. 10,000 gold pieces reward. Earl of Drambeck."
The sizable ransom made the outcome all but certain; still, the villagers of Drambeck were rather surprised when one evening a glossy black horse trotted lazily into the square, with Dran the Cruel on its back, somewhat unorthodoxly mounted:
The bandit king had been divested of every last scrap of clothing and anchored to the horse, backwards, in an exceedingly cruel hogtie! Coils of rope wound 'round his shoulders and chest, arms, waist, legs, and ankles, with his excessively roped feet attached to both his wrists and shoulders by a taut thong of leather. Coarse, spit-soaked linen was wrapped tightly around his lower face and over his eyes, with only his nose pointing out from bandages, snuffling air between grunts of uncomfortable protest. It seemed each of his muscles strained to move, but movement was impossible.
The people of the village cheered and shouted as the horse ambled through the main street, easily drowning out the muffled screams and moans of the hogtied and humiliated thief.
Retrieved from between the bandit's bound feet was a letter from a mysterious band of good avengers, directing the reward be delivered by single messenger to the Mosswood. And the good Earl, being a man of his word, dispatched a messenger with that tidy sum that very evening.
The last time anyone in the village remembers seeing the dethroned Bandit King of the Mosswood was during a lively banquet, put on by the Earl to celebrate the marriage of his son, to that very same visiting noble woman who had run afoul of Dran months earlier.
At the height of the festivities a heavy wooden X frame was wheeled into the hall, upon which was bound the defeated thief, pale and exhausted, an almost pitiable shadow of his former self. In his mouth was a strange and comical gag of sorts, with a long tube and trumpet-like bell protruding from its front. It was quickly revealed that the device converted every gasp, groan, and scream of laughter into a jubilant toot or honk when all in attendance swarmed the helpless villain, raking his underarms and feet in a frenzy of tickling! Accompanied by the Earl's own minstrels, the revelers composed, on the spot, "The Ballad of Dolerous Dran, in several movements" long into the early morning hours, when hoarseness and hysteria had reduced the languishing bandit's trumpeting to exhausted wheezing.
And that was last of Dran the Witch-fingered. It is whispered, in the public houses and inns along the now-slightly-less-dangerous King's Road, that Dran met, deep in the bowels of the Earl's labyrinthine estate, one even more cruel than himself! But that is a different tale.
Dran the Cruel lived up to his name.
For several years he and a small band of cutpurses had terrorized the King's Highway from their nearby encampment in the Mosswood. Early on, the take from the traveling merchants and royal pages along the road was substantial and steady. It looked like they'd all buy titles and land in some neighboring barony in no time at all, happily exchanging their cloaks and blades for an easier life among the gentry. There was just one problem.
It wasn't Dran's results that were at issue, he had a sharp eye for wealth, even when it was hidden by shabby dress. It was his questionable methodology.
It began harmlessly enough, every now and again the wily thief would truss up some waylaid silk trader or hapless messenger and tickle them until they revealed any and all secrets regarding hidden loot or impending shipments they might be hiding. And it wasn't playful or mirthful teasing, the tickle torture was sadistic and frenzied, for Dran had a preternatural knowledge of ticklishness.
Soon however, Dran was ordering every one of his captives be stripped of every shred of clothing, strung up in strange and merciless positions and tickled, for hours sometimes, even when the exhausted quarry had long given up every secret they had (if ever they even had any)!
Reports of the Witch-fingered Menace of the Mosswood quickly spread, helped along by the near daily discoveries of more disrobed victims, bound and gagged on the side of the road in a post-tickling delirium.
When the daughter of a visiting noble was found, with her plump lady-in-waiting, and two luckless footmen, hanging from their feet, cocooned in yards of rope, blindfolded, and with their mouths filled with thick wads of cloth, the group of thieves knew Dran had gone too far. It didn't help that each of the mewling, exhausted victims were covered from head to toes (especially toes) in the tell-tale rakes and welts of a terribly furious tickling, and each one bore the childish inky scrawl "Dran was hyre!" over their bellies, breasts, chests, and buttocks.
Traffic along the King's Highway all but stopped after that. There was much grumbling and scheming in the thieves' camp for many weeks when one of the band happened upon a vellum poster, tacked to a nearby crossroads: "Wanted: Alyve! Dran the Crul, Wytch-fyngerd Devil of the Mosswood. 10,000 gold pieces reward. Earl of Drambeck."
The sizable ransom made the outcome all but certain; still, the villagers of Drambeck were rather surprised when one evening a glossy black horse trotted lazily into the square, with Dran the Cruel on its back, somewhat unorthodoxly mounted:
The bandit king had been divested of every last scrap of clothing and anchored to the horse, backwards, in an exceedingly cruel hogtie! Coils of rope wound 'round his shoulders and chest, arms, waist, legs, and ankles, with his excessively roped feet attached to both his wrists and shoulders by a taut thong of leather. Coarse, spit-soaked linen was wrapped tightly around his lower face and over his eyes, with only his nose pointing out from bandages, snuffling air between grunts of uncomfortable protest. It seemed each of his muscles strained to move, but movement was impossible.
The people of the village cheered and shouted as the horse ambled through the main street, easily drowning out the muffled screams and moans of the hogtied and humiliated thief.
Retrieved from between the bandit's bound feet was a letter from a mysterious band of good avengers, directing the reward be delivered by single messenger to the Mosswood. And the good Earl, being a man of his word, dispatched a messenger with that tidy sum that very evening.
The last time anyone in the village remembers seeing the dethroned Bandit King of the Mosswood was during a lively banquet, put on by the Earl to celebrate the marriage of his son, to that very same visiting noble woman who had run afoul of Dran months earlier.
At the height of the festivities a heavy wooden X frame was wheeled into the hall, upon which was bound the defeated thief, pale and exhausted, an almost pitiable shadow of his former self. In his mouth was a strange and comical gag of sorts, with a long tube and trumpet-like bell protruding from its front. It was quickly revealed that the device converted every gasp, groan, and scream of laughter into a jubilant toot or honk when all in attendance swarmed the helpless villain, raking his underarms and feet in a frenzy of tickling! Accompanied by the Earl's own minstrels, the revelers composed, on the spot, "The Ballad of Dolerous Dran, in several movements" long into the early morning hours, when hoarseness and hysteria had reduced the languishing bandit's trumpeting to exhausted wheezing.
And that was last of Dran the Witch-fingered. It is whispered, in the public houses and inns along the now-slightly-less-dangerous King's Road, that Dran met, deep in the bowels of the Earl's labyrinthine estate, one even more cruel than himself! But that is a different tale.
