Knights of the Kitchen Table Read Online Free

direction.
    Everyone still standing followed Bleob (not too closely) around the castle, just in time to see Smaug the Dragon gliding in for a landing. He was truly a terrible sight—big, ugly green head trailing wisps of smoke, shimmering metal scales, huge leather wings, coiling snake body, and iron claws.
    Fred gasped, “They are for real.”
    Just as Smaug touched down, Bleob smashed into him.
    “Sissy?” he belched. And then he clamped his long yellow teeth right on the dragon’s snout.
    Smaug dug his iron claws into Bleob’s leg and thrashed his spiked tail. The two of them twisted up such a cloud of broken trees and flying earth that we couldn’t see a thing.

    We did hear how it happened, though.
    Bleob belched. Smaug flamed. And when giant gas met dragon flame, an explosion bigger than four Fourth of Julys knocked us off our feet and rocked the entire kingdom.
    “Huzzah!” cried King Arthur and his sitting knights.
    “What did they say?” asked Sam with a smile.
    “That’s hooray, Sir Sam. Nice magic work.”
    We ducked under a castle arch to dodge the pieces of fried giant and dragon meat raining down.
    “Thou has saved Camelot and the honor of the Round Table,” said King Arthur. “Ask anything in my power, and it is yours.”
    A giant toenail fell nearby with a thud.
    “How about getting us back home?” said Sam.
    The last few small pieces splattered down outside in a gentle rain.
    Fred and I nodded, wondering if we would ever see Home, Sweet normal, peaceful Home again.

EIGHT
    Keep your eye on the ball,” yelled Fred. ”Choke up a little. Follow through. Meet the ball. Don’t try to kill it. Just meet the ball. Ready?”
    The stableboy looked completely confused. But he nodded yes, and gripped Fred’s oak stick in a pretty good imitation of a batting stance.
    Fred stood on a mound at the bottom of a tall, dark, stone tower connected to the castle wall.
    “Okay, here’s the pitch.” Fred lobbed our homemade baseball gently toward home plate. The stableboy swung as hard as he could ... and missed by a mile.
    I caught the ball and Sam yelled, “Strike three! Yer out!” All of the boys cheered and began racing around the bases and yelling.
    “One home run.”
    “Babe Ruth.”
    “Detroit Tigers.”
    “Bo knows.”
    Fred walked off the mound and met us at home plate. “Do you think I didn’t explain enough?”
    “Methinks maybe you explained too much, Sir Fred,” said Sam.
    The guys kept circling the bases, jumping and yelling as they crossed home plate.
    “Full count.”
    “Infield fly.”
    “Suicide squeeze.”
    “Oh, man,” said Fred. “This is never going to work. We have got to get out of here. This is like the Stone Age. Those guys at the banquet last night hadn’t even heard of TV.”
    “Gosh, what a surprise,” I said. “Considering that TV won’t be invented for another thousand years or so.”
    “A thousand years?! I can’t live without TV for a thousand years,” said Fred.
    “And did you get a whiff of those people at the banquet?” asked Sam. “I don’t think the shower has been invented yet, either.”

    “I don’t know,” I said. “I think the smell might have been coming from the food.”
    The stableboys slowed down and sat on the grass around us.
    “Ninth inning?”
    “Ball four?”
    “Kill the ump?”
    “That’s it, guys. Game over,” said Fred.
    Sam looked at the castle walls around us. “No TV. No cheeseburgers. We are three 20th century guys time-warped into the Middle Ages. Score: Squires of the Round Table, 28; Time Warp Trio, 0.”
    “Hey, nice name,” I said. “Remind me to remember it if we ever get out of here alive.”
    “Speaking of which,” said Fred. “How do we get out of here?”
    I tossed our leather ball up and down. “If somebody had let me read my magic book, I might know.”
    “Oh, magic book, shmagic book,” said Fred. “I barely touched your stupid book. And don’t tell me we got here by magic. That only