The Terror of the Trdlo - Part I

Thanks to Pixabay.com for the two photos I mashed up

There aren't enough books coming out these days in the vein of Clark Ashton Smith, (I'm thinking Averoigne), Jack Vance (I'm thinking Cugel) and Fritz Leiber (Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser) in my opinion.

So I decided to write something that tries to evoke a similar mood, even if happens in a mash-up of Prague from the Middle Ages to the 1800s National Revival to the 1990s, when I was lucky enough to live there for several years and imbibe (hic!) some of the culture.  My LOST LUSH: RELOADED  adventure was created from similar cloth, so here the inspiration flows in a narrative fiction direction.

I also wanted to expose these pastries called Trdelnik or Trdlo which are apparently all the rage among tourist traps in the center of Prague these days.  They are not "AUTENTIK TRADITIONAL of OLD PRAG" - despite all of their blaring signage to the contrary.

Without further ado - hope you enjoy...
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The Terror of the Trdlo

Zdenka drew another silver-chased dagger from one of many concealed sheathes in her custom-built black leather armor.  She slouched in a shadowy corner of the Convent of St. Vlasta’s beer hall, seated on the farthest extreme of a long wooden bench, her back propped up against the scratched wood of the walls.  The dark skin of her face was drawn taut over her high cheekbones, lined with tiny scars.

The beer hall was on the street level floor of the Convent of St. Vlasta, the tallest building in Vodnikov.  The brewer-saint’s castle-like stone-walled nunnery glowered back at the enormous, even taller Castle of the Duke across the Moldava River.  The embattled Krajan people had always rallied around this most patriotic of saints, whose iconography always depicted her with a beer mug in one hand and a sword in the other.  It was difficult for the convent and its brewery, which the saint had founded in the long-ago heyday of the former Kingdom of Krajansko, to avoid the suspicion of the Schwab oppressors, who had divided and conquered them, and whose stronghold was the Castle.

Over the decades, overt military sorties over the Stone Bridge became less frequent than nocturnal incursions by obnoxious Schwab tourists - slumming swells and rakehells – seeking the “loose” and “fun” atmosphere of the pubs on the Krajanisch side of the river.  Due to arcane legal loopholes, the law of the Schwabenreich, the Schwab Empire, extended its easternmost reach only to the western bank of the Moldava.  On the other side of the river, across the Stone Bridge from the looming Castle, in Vodnikov, former capital of the former Kingdom of Krajansko, Schwab martial law faded away as the conquered Krajan people resigned themselves to a laissez-faire (mostly) apolitical anarchy.

Schwab nobles and thugs would violently lash out against people in Vodnikov only in case of any open sedition, major public disorder, or random sadistic whim.  Otherwise, the right bank of the river held a magnetic attraction to drunks, drug addicts, poets, party-goers, thrill-seekers, mystical anarchists, crossdressing cabaret enthusiasts, artists, heretics, sexual rebels, alchemists, and black magicians.  Krajan people native to Vodnikov had to live and work amidst the squalor and chaos and Schwab traffic through their homeland and headspace as best they could.  

Zdenka had fled her native Vodnikov at a young age, wild-eyed, covered in the blood of some, but not all, of her dangerous enemies.  For a dozen years, she had been wayfaring to every corner of the Schwabenreich, a mercenary guard protecting pilgrims and merchants, among many other things.  She had returned to the neighborhood of her birth for the first time only last month. 
Zdenka slowly twirled the dagger balanced in her left hand.  Without disturbing the unruly droop of dark, wiry curls hanging over her face, Zdenka flicked her dagger through the smoky air to thunk another perfect bullseye in her chosen floorboard knothole.

She shifted in her wood-paneled corner, her leather suit of armor creaking, turned her head to look across the room.  Over a sea of deserted tables and benches, through the haze of a huge roaring hearth, the focal point of the room’s attention and activity sat surrounded by a knot of rapt admirers, all nuns wearing their leather jacket brewery uniforms.

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The next installment of The Terror of the Trdlo:
Zdenka vs. the Green-Eyed Monster (Jealousy, That Is)