by Heide Goody
Speaking of stupid…
The last of the grimlocks, with a veritable crown of feathers in its head and a pair of shell axes in it hands, charged. Its weapons whirling like windmills.
“Pethita lethera!” it screamed hoarsely. Even if there had been anyone else there to hear it (or translate it), they were hardly the most inspiring of final words.
Tudu wheeled on the grimlock, cutting off its death scream and more besides with a vicious nip of its beak.
Cope used the distraction to get to her feet. She ran to join Lorrika, but the blindfolded bird heard, turned and came after them. The two women were already sprinting. Lorrika veered to the far exit, saw it was pointless and angled towards one of the huge stone urns instead. She jumped, scrambled up the curved side and vaulted inside. Cope was a second behind her. She was far less nimble but grabbed the lip and hauled herself up and into the pot head first. Following the clatters and scrapes was no challenge for a visually impaired bird. Tudu was soon on top of them, jabbing and pecking at the urn. Its beak was too broad to get inside but only just. Bez couldn’t see them, but he could picture them: cowering in the base of the huge pot, utterly cornered.
The grimlocks were all dead. There was no movement apart from the eagle’s relentless efforts to get into the stone urn. Bez edged towards the entrance, eyes fixed on Tudu. Its blindfold might slip. It might just possibly hear him crawling. He prepared to play dead at any moment.
“Bez!” Lorrika’s shout was muffled but carried. “Bez! Distract it!”
Bez smiled wryly. If by distract it she meant let it eat him then, sorry, he was going to have to pass. And really, what else could he do? Bez picked himself up with geriatric slowness and crept the last few yards to the door. Lorrika’s shouting was only compelling the beast to even more frantic attacks on the urn. There were jagged scrape marks on the rim, but Tudu would have to work at it long and hard to crack it open.
“Bez! Help us!”
“Sorry, sweetheart,” he murmured, and left. He actually meant it: he was sorry, in a deep and profound way that would stay with him forever, inspire him to great works of art, and which would give him an air of moody introspection when chatting up girls in taverns.
As he jogged up the dark steps, he visualised the way back out of the tomb. It was up the stairs, through the permanently broken Vice of the Infidels, across the grimlocks’ makeshift bridge over the room of traps, then back through the grimlock cavern, collecting various treasures on the way and up through the chimney crack in the ceiling to fresh air and freedom. Easy, yeah?
He wondered what would happen to Cope and Lorrika in the end. Maybe they would simply wait it out until hunger and thirst got them. Maybe Tudu would eventually chip, bash and rip its way inside. Maybe they would attempt a bold last stand: a desperate bid for freedom. The giant warrior and the thief girl, side by side, fighting like heroes of old against impossible odds and dangers—
A shrill and agonised scream echoed up the stairs behind him. Lorrika.
“Gods! No! No! Don’t!”
The scream went on a lot longer before abruptly, thankfully, it was over.
Bez shook his head ruefully and pressed on. When he retold the tale, he would give Lorrika a better and nobler death than that, and she would be reborn as Ripped Leather Bikini Woman, celebrated heroine of the Nightly News. That would be a fitting tribute. She would appreciate it, he was sure. Would have. Would have appreciated it.
Newport Pagnell
1
The road from Qir to Ludens was well-tended, straight as a carpenter’s rule, flat as a plate and as featureless as a hermit’s diary. It was one of the fastest and safest roads this side of the sea, and made for mind-numbingly dull travel. There were no mighty rivers to ford, no wild creatures to fight off, and they had encountered no robbers on the road. There was almost nothing for robbers to hide behind, and the sheer tedium of the landscape was enough to make the average brigand give up on thievery and seek out a more interesting job.
Pagnell spotted Ludens when they were forty miles distant. It appeared as a brown pointy blemish on the equally brown horizon. The pointy bit was the temple of Buqit. If one was of a fanciful bent, one might imagine the peak of it glittered; that one could make out the bronzed statue which stood at the ziggurat’s peak.
He leaned up against the driver’s seat to get a better look.
“Another day and a half before we get there, sir,” said Thedo the carter cheerfully.
Another day and half of sitting on the hard board in the back of Thedo’s cart, having one’s buttocks and spine hammered into jelly by the deceptively fine vibrations of the wheels on the road. Spirry was in the rear of the cart, sitting cross-legged on a grain sack in a little hidey-hole of crates and barrels she had created for herself. Her blonde hair was golden bright in the sunlight. With skin so pale, Spirry should have burned and peeled in this hot climate, but she seemed to thrive: a spring flower which craved only more and more sunshine. As Pagnell mopped his brow with the last of his clean handkerchiefs, and tried to shift himself so he could sit on a section of buttock which still had feeling left in it, he watched Spirry playing with a handful of grains of corn that had spilt from the sack.
“A day and a half,” he said to her.
“I heard,” said Spirry. “I have sharp ears and sharp teeth and—”
“A sharp tongue,” said Pagnell.
Spirry stuck her tongue out to show Pagnell just how sharp it was. “Why did Buqit tell her people to build her city all the way out here?” she wondered.
“Who are we to question the will of the gods, little miss?” said Thedo.
“I’m sure if we do it very quietly so they can’t hear, no one will mind,” said Pagnell.
Spirry sniffed. “I’m all for asking questions, but there’s no guarantee we’ll get any answers. I ask myself things all the time. Like, why is Kestino the donkey pulling the cart and I’m the one riding it? Or, when people yawn, do deaf people think they’re screaming? Or, why is it that to get to sleep you have to pretend to be asleep? You can ask these questions, but there aren’t any answers.”
“Competition,” said Pagnell.
“What’s that?” frowned Thedo.
“It’s the same reason I chose a career in the fascinating world of oral hygiene and innovative dentistry.”
“You said it was because there’s enough suffering in the world already and it would be nice if someone could redress the balance,” said Spirry.
“Yes, that, but also—”
“And that it’s a better career than being a surgeon because, when dentists get it wrong, they get paid even more to try again; whereas surgeons are just left with the funeral bill.”
“I think you’re missing the keenly insightful point I was about to make, which—”
“And that there are hardly any other dentists in the world so you can charge what you like.”
“Yes! That! Exactly that. I’m not saying the gods are into extorting money out of people for shining their general beneficence on us. Only a fool who wants to be struck down by divine fires would say it. Besides, spiritual extortion, that’s what priests are for. Nonetheless, a temple to Buqit in a city of a dozen temples is only going to get one twelfth of the prayers but, in a city with just one temple…”
“I always stop by any shrines to Buqit, whatever the town,” said Thedo. “Look.” He reached into his grubby tunic and pulled out a pendant on a loop of string. Pagnell inspected it. A polished circle of wood with a pokerwork image of winged Buqit on one side and the words Greetings from Qir on the other.
“And how much did the priest charge you for this delightful piece?” asked Pagnell.
“He told me the Hierophant had bought one just like it the day before.”
“How much?”
“It’s not about price. Any self-respecting trader should make devotional offerings to the goddess of getting things done. See?”
Thedo passed Pagnell a notepad. It wa
s composed of a dozen pieces of rough paper, tied together with string, with a stamped legend on the front: wonky, badly inked and already half-faded. My List of Things To Be Done it read, with a cheap representation of the eagle Tudu underneath.
“And you bought this too?” said Pagnell.
“The priest only charged me half price because I’d already bought the pendant. He threw in a quill and ink for free.”
“We should stop paying you if this is what you’re spending it on.”
“It’s an investment,” insisted Thedo. “Anything I write in there is guaranteed to come true. And if it’s not written down, it won’t happen.”
Pagnell opened the notepad. The first page was filled with bullet-pointed notes. It started with Take NP and SH to Ludens and ended with Marry my True Love. In the middle, squashed between Stock Up on goods to sell and Return to Qir was the item Collect NP and the Quill of Truth in the Cornmarket.
“We might have to play that by ear,” said Pagnell. “You will pick me up somewhere, Thedo. There may be a lot of shouting and running by that point. Is the donkey going to be up to it?”
“Oh, you’d be surprised at Kestino’s turn of speed when he’s properly motivated.”
“I’m sure I would.”
The donkey tossed its head and brayed. Thedo tapped it with his long switch.
Spirry stirred the grains in her hand with a fingertip, flicking away the ones which did not please her. “When will the Amanni army arrive in Ludens?” she asked without looking up.
“In three days’ time,” said Pagnell, “if that sorcerer in Oopons was telling the truth. And it’s not an army. General Handzame does not have enough men to call it an army.”
Spirry flicked more grains. “How many men do you need to call them an army?”
“Lots.”
“That’s not a precise number. A hundred?”
“I suppose,” said Pagnell. “Yes. You could have an army of one hundred.”
“Ninety-nine?”
“I guess.”
“Ninety-eight?”
Pagnell smiled tightly and bit down on a pithy response. Spirry was a fine travelling companion. She was small for one thing, and smallness was an often underrated quality in companions. She was certainly no idiot, and she definitely offered mental stimulation, but she would deconstruct every damnable thing she saw or heard. In Oopons, she had spent two hours arguing with a merchant, almost convincing him money was an imaginary concept.
“You can have an army of ninety-eight,” said Pagnell. “You can’t have an army of three. You can’t have an army of twenty. Everything in between is up for debate.”
“How many has General Handzame got?”
“Maybe twenty,” said Pagnell. “She has her family name, enough gold for twenty men, the wizard Abington, and Rantallion Merken. It’s those last two we need to worry about if anything. They may be old men, but they’re dangerous.”
Spirry laughed at that. “What do you lot know about old?”
“Fine. They’re old for humans and they’re clever.”
Spirry whittled down her handful of grains to a final, perfect seed. “Cleverer than you?”
Pagnell twisted his mouth uncomfortably. “It’s not enough to be clever. It’s what you do with it. You know what Abington did during the plague in Dalarra, yes?”
Spirry nodded.
“Rantallion Merken is no better. Some years ago, he was paid to bring the bandit king, Lothwar, to heel. He had his lair up in the highlands where no one lived apart from the hill tribes to whom the Yarwish gave the rather disparaging nickname mud hogs. Merken bribed, cajoled and bullied the mud hog tribes into leading the charge against Lothwar’s position. He didn’t tell them Lothwar had laid concealed traps all around the area. Merken never intended the hill tribes to fight. He just needed them to spring the traps before his own men did.”
“That was clever,” said Spirry. “Horrible, but clever.”
“And the lords who paid him were very pleased.”
Spirry put a fingertip to the grain of corn and it unfurled into a green shoot, stretching like a man rising from his bed, growing and expanding until became a narrow stalk with a feathery head—
“Spiriva! Stop it!” whispered Pagnell harshly. He looked around to see if Thedo had noticed.
Spirry shrugged indifferently, and let the dry wind take the stalk up and away.
“If people knew who you are, what you are, life might suddenly get very difficult,” murmured the wizard with nervous irritation.
Spirry smiled. “The sorcerer said Handzame was going to invade Ludens to get to the temple.” It was as if the last ten seconds had never happened.
“That’s the trick Merken is going to pull. They’re going to use Vanilli’s Stoppered Voice.”
“What’s that?”
“Let me show you.” He searched through his bags until he found a glass bottle with a cork stopper. “This is—” He pulled at the cork, grunting when it wouldn’t come. He bit down on the cork and yanked, only succeeding in hurting his teeth.
“Is this the trick?” said Spirry.
Pagnell cursed silently and cast Cowell’s Frictionless Unguent over the bottle. A clear and oily ooze appeared around the bottle neck. Pagnell gave the cork a twist and pulled it free. A blob of unguent clung to his fingertip and, without thinking, he licked it off. The unguent was shockingly bitter – the spell certainly needed some refinement – and he shuddered and spat.
“Okay,” he said. “This is an empty bottle.”
“It is,” agreed Spirry.
Pagnell cast Vanilli’s Stoppered Voice on it and passed it to Spirry.
“Now what?” she asked.
“Shout into it.”
“Shout?”
“Into it. Yes. Anything.”
Spirry took a deep breath and yelled. Her lips moved but no sound came out. She frowned and shouted some more. She produced nothing but silence.
Pagnell took the bottle back and pushed the cork into it.
“I don’t see how that’s going to help them invade a city with just twenty men,” said Spirry.
Pagnell gave her a superior smile and smashed the bottle against the side of the cart.
“NEWPORT PAGNELL SMELLS OF SOUR YOGHURT!”
The donkey bucked in alarm at the sudden shout. “Gods’ teeth!” said Thedo, equally alarmed.
“You see?” said Pagnell. “Now imagine that—”
“AND HE HAS QUESTIONABLE TASTE IN WOMEN!”
“Well, that’s just not true,” pouted the wizard.
Spirry snickered.
“Just imagine that – but with pots containing the war cries of a hundred men; a thousand. That’s what the sorcerer sold to Merken.”
“The sound of an army?”
“Throw in some fireworks – Sathean fire powder for preference: smoulders for an instant and the green smoke it produces is highly flammable – add an attack under cover of darkness and a city might think it’s being invaded by an Amanni horde.”
Spirry pulled an intrigued face. “That’s impressive.”
“Isn’t it just?” said Pagnell. He lifted his coat and sniffed at his clothes. “And I don’t smell of sour yoghurt. Thedo, I don’t smell of yoghurt, do I?”
The cart driver tilted his head thoughtfully. “Ah, they do say northerners all smell of yoghurt, but I can’t say I agree.”
“Thank you, Thedo.”
“I’ve always thought of it as a cheesy smell.”
Spirry giggled, nodding.
“Yes, thank you, Thedo,” said Pagnell curtly.
“You know, like it’s been left out in the sun and it’s gone all sweaty. Like a pair of old shoes, you know…”
“Yes. Thank you, Thedo!”
2
The rooms Pagnell had hired for Spirry and himself in a corner house on Cisterngate were more than adequate. They were spacious, clean, with few other occupants to pay the two travellers much attention. The only downside wa
s the constant smell of jaffled cakes rising from the stall below their window. The smell was mouth-watering, but the cakes, which they had tried the day they arrived, weren’t to Pagnell’s liking. Spirry had declared a perverse fondness for them and insisted he buy her some every day.
“They’re too dry,” he complained, coming up the stairs with a full bag. “And not sweet enough.”
“I like them,” said Spirry.
“And proper jaffled cakes should be made with more butter. My grandmother used to make them with pig fat.”
“Your people cook everything in fat.”
“It’s good for you,” he said, mildly offended. “It’s not a proper jaffled cake unless it’s made with butter or pig fat. The Yarwish practically invented jaffling, so we should know.”
“Will the Amanni invade tonight?” asked Spirry.
“Maybe. We’ll go to the tavern and wait again.”
Pagnell had asked around the city. Before his arrest, the wizard Abington frequented a number of alehouses and taverns, but returned to the one on Kidgate time and again. It had become a favourite. If he was going to make an appearance, it would be there.
“Do you think your plan is going to succeed?” said Spirry, which was Spirry-talk for, “Your plan isn’t going to succeed.”
Pagnell produced a tiny bulging pouch. “Dried box moss. Smoke or ingest an ounce of this and you’ll fall into a state of torpor which will last three to four days. Unbreakable. Abington is fond of carrying his pipe weed, flash powders, reagents and such on his belt. All I have to do is engage him in conversation—” he passed the bag of jaffled cakes to Spirry “—distract him – Oh, my! What’s that? – and with a spot of my amazing sleight of hand he’s stuffing box moss into his pipe.”
Spirry made a doubtful noise. “And you think that will make them invite you to join their tomb expedition?”