by Craig Zerf
Horgy opened the purse and spilled out three gold sovereigns onto the palm of his hand. He looked up incredulously. ‘You turned the three pebbles into golden sovereigns. But I thought you said that you couldn’t.’
‘He hasn’t,’ said Plob. ‘They’re still pebbles. You just think that you can see sovereigns. The master has changed the perception of the stones. From now on all who see them will perceive them as golden sovereigns. Blundelberry’s eternal intensifier.’
Dreenee clapped her appreciation and Cabbie whistled and shouted money, money, money, money, money loudly. Horgy, however, looked shocked. ‘But that’s forgery,’ he said. ‘It’s illegal, in fact it carries a life sentence, or a death sentence, or both. I’d go as far as to call it a life and death issue.’
Smegly shook his head in disagreement. ‘No forgery has taken place. I am not attempting to pass off base metal as gold and I am not counterfeiting the king’s visage in any way. I am merely convincing a few small rocks to look like money, forever.’
With an accountant’s inherent respect for coinage Horgy didn’t look convinced. ‘That’s just legal frippery. What you’re doing amounts to the same thing - it’s immoral. And I’m sure that it will devalue the sovereign if we flood the market with bits of wood and rock that go around telling everyone that they’re now a precious metal.’
Smegly stared at Horgy. ‘Well, maybe you’re right. It may be immoral, why don’t we use your money, I hear that you are a man of means.’
Horgy flinched. ‘That’s immoral.’
‘Yes,’ said Smegly who was starting to get a little irritable. ‘You’ve already said so.’
‘No, not that. Using my money is immoral, I’m very attached to it, you see. I’ll tell you what, let’s go with the clever bits of wood and stone and all agree not to attempt to kidnap Horgy’s own personal wealth that he has, over time, grown very attached to and admits to loving in an almost creepy way that only other accountants would understand.’
‘Done,’ agreed Master Smegly.
‘Nutcase,’ said Cabbie.
‘Shut up,’ said Dreenee.
‘Giddy up,’ said Cabbie, and they continued on their way.
The nameless strip of land nestled in between the chasm of Brad and the Sea of Tantrums provided for pleasant journeying. It was fertile, mild and fairly well populated with both farms and market towns. The region was also well known for its marvellous range of ales and hence was well endowed with inns, pubs and many informal roadside drinking establishments. It was early evening and the team had stopped in at one such establishment and were waiting for a tray of ales that Cabbie had just ordered from a pleasant looking, impossibly buxom young wench of the serving variety.
‘Well, well,’ said Cabbie. ‘What do you think of that hey, Plob,’ he continued, gesturing at the receding waitress. ‘I wouldn’t mind a butchers through that magic lens at that one. Wooah,’ Cabbie held his two hands out in front of his chest in the universal gesture of male appreciation of female well endowment.
‘Oh stop it, Cabbie,’ said Dreenee. ‘It’s not funny.’
‘Yeah, you’re right,’ said Cabbie, sighing. ‘I mustn’t tease the poor girl what with her problematically small feet and all.’
‘Why do you think she’s got problematically small feet?’ asked Plob.
‘She must have, nothing grows in the shade. Hey, hey. Budda-bing budda-boom.’
Dreenee punched Cabbie hard on the shoulder.
‘Ow!’ he rubbed himself ruefully. ‘OK, no more boob jokes. If Dreenee keeps hitting me I’ll be writing cheques that my body can’t cash.’
The serving girl returned with their ales and placed the tray on the table, leaning unnecessarily close to Plob and brushing his ear with her aforementioned assets. Cabbie winked at Plob and licked his lips lasciviously. ‘Ow! Dreenee, stop it. That hurts.’ He rubbed his arm again.
‘So,’ inquired the larger-breasted serving lass (Ow!) ‘You shall be staying the night, shall you?’
‘Yes,’ agreed Smegly. ‘We have informed the bearded gentleman over there who said that he will make our rooms ready and organise for the luggage to be carried up.’
‘Oh good,’ replied the buxom one. ‘I’ll make sure that you are all made to be very comfortable,’ she said, staring boldly at Plob. ‘Now, let me bring you some sustenance of the edible variety. We have an exceptional chef and today he’s done his special chicken dish, Breast Supreme.’ Cabbie choked and then said Ow as Dreenee whacked him again. ‘It’s delicious,’ the forward thinking lass continued. ‘A mountain of large plump breasts, slathered in hot butter and served on a steaming platter with a side order of nice round dumplings and, to finish it all off, a huge helping of my favourite dessert, Spotted Dick.’
Cabbie punched himself in the shoulder to save Dreenee the trouble and then left the table to go and check on the horses.
The meal was every bit as good as promised and after two or four post-dinner ales they all retired to their rooms.
Later on that evening Plob was awoken by a soft knocking at his door. He climbed out of bed and opened it to reveal none other than the Miss Breast Supreme serving wench herself. Before Plob could voice any surprise she pushed her way into the room and locked the door behind her.
Plob did not dream that night. He didn’t need to.
Kashfloh flicked his head to the side whilst Cabbie was hitching him up to the cab and snapped the leather harness causing Cabbie to swear vehemently and cuff the gelding about the ears. ‘Damn,’ he turned to the others. ‘I’ll have to get this stitched by a cobbler. Bugger, come on, Plob let’s go and question the locals as to where we can seek one out.’
Biggest stretched and yawned. ‘I’ll come along too,’ he said. ‘It’ll be boring sitting here and doing nothing and I need to stretch my legs. I feel like I slept on pile of rocks last night.’
The three of them set off on their way straight after getting a handful of post-pebble and woodchip sovereigns from Master Smegly. On the way out the serving wench waved at Plob and blew him a kiss.
‘Hello, big boy,’ she shouted and flicked her skirt at him as she turned to serve a table their bacon, eggs and breakfast ales. Plob grinned and waved back.
Cabbie laughed. ‘That’s enough of that for now, big boy we’ve got work to do.’
Biggest laughed with him, clenched his fist in front of him and made ‘wooaagh’ sounds. Plob had the decency to look a little embarrassed, although he did so in a Cheshire cat fallen into a vat of cream fashion. They proceeded out of the establishment and turned right, walking down the main road towards the centre of the village.
‘So,’ said Cabbie, looking sideways at Plob. ‘Did we, or did we not have fun last night, big boy?’
Plob smiled once again and nodded.
‘Ah yes,’ continued Cabbie. ‘A nice girl our breastful waitress. Full of the milk of human kindness. Still, don’t read too much into, my friend. You’re a young, less than ugly lad with an acceptable body and a prestigious profession. You’ll find that many such offers will pitch up as we travel the byways of life, it wouldn’t be wise to attach oneself to any one girl. No matter how nice you think that she’d be, slathered in butter and served on a warm platter with nice round dumplings and a large spotted dick.’
Biggest laughed hugely. ‘Hey, cab-man you’s have got filthy ways with words.’
Cabbie chuckled in agreement. ‘That I do, my good Trogre, that I do. You get the picture though?’ he continued to Plob.
Plob nodded. ‘There’s no need to worry, Cabbie. She’s a great girl and built like a brick outhouse but I do realise that she’s not one for a lifelong commitment, buttered breasts or not.’
‘Good man, Plob. Still, she’s a nice girl and well worth remembering in your thoughts. Often.’
As they walked Plob remembered vividly for a while.
It was a well-built village, wide streets, freshly painted houses and scrubbed doorsteps. They stopped to ask directions to the loc
al cobbler and were shown down a small side street to a two-storey shop with a large gilded sign outside reading: ‘Cobblers - the Biggest and the best.’
‘This whole bloody town is one huge double entedre,’ complained Cabbie as they entered the shop. ‘It’s just too easy, takes all of the fun out of it, don’t you know.’ He rang a small sliver bell that was lying on the counter and they waited for assistance.
Assistance arrived in the form of a bespectacled man of indeterminate to late middle age, sporting a work apron with the words ‘cobblers do it with leather’ embroidered on it, and he looked like the sort of person that actually found that a remarkably daring thing to display.
Cabbie looked around for a ‘you don’t have to be mad to work here but it does help’ sign. Thankfully there wasn’t one.
The man approached them nervously; eyes flicking from side to side, although Biggest seem to make him particularly shifty. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I know that it’s late but I’ve been having cash flow problems what with the tannery putting their prices up and the new minimum wage laws. I promise that I’ll pay in full by the end of the week, just please don’t hurt me. Please.’
Cabbie took a step towards the man who held his hands up to his face and cringed. ‘Apologies, mate,’ said Cabbie. ‘I’m afraid that we have no idea what you’re talking about. We only came here to get this fixed,’ he finished, holding up the broken halter.
A look of relief washed over the cobbler’s face. ‘Oh. Thank you kindly, good sirs. Here, let me sort that out for you.’ He took the length of leather from Cabbie’s outstretched hand and went through to the workshop at the back.
‘What was all that about?’ asked Plob as the cobbler disappeared.
‘Insurance,’ rumbled Biggest. ‘You pay a monthly premium to a local firm of bully boys or you meet with a personal disfiguring accident. Dis is not an honest way to make money. Far better you approach someone openly and with intent, biff dem onna head and take their cashola. Painful, but over with quickly. Dis insurance racket makes people live in fear all the time, month in and month out.’
The cobbler returned from the back room with the newly stitched halter. ‘Here you go, sirs,’ he said, proffering the item to them. ‘As good as the day it was first bought.’
Cabbie inspected it and declared the cobbler to be correct. ‘What do I owe you, my good man?’ he asked.
‘Two copper pennies, sir,’ replied the craftsman of the cobbling variety as
Cabbie placed an intensified gold sovereign on the counter. ‘I’m terribly sorry, noble sir,’ apologised the cobbler, his eyes bulging at the seldom-seen gold coin on the worktop. ‘I don’t posses sufficient quantities of cash to make change for you.’
‘No problem,’ said Cabbie. ‘You can keep the lot.’ The cobbler’s hand streaked, snake quick, to grab the sovereign but as he clasped it Cabbie snared his wrist in a vice-like grip. ‘For a little information of course,’ continued Cabbie still holding tight. ‘Tell us about this alleged protection racket that seems to be going on here.’
The cobbler’s eyes flicked around the room and his tongue darted nervously from between dry lips. ‘I don’t know anything,’ he croaked, looking wistfully at the golden coin.
‘Oh, I think we can do better than that,’ prompted Cabbie. ‘We’re not going to hurt you. We’re just looking for a little harmless information and then we’ll be on our way.’ He slid another ersatz coin across the counter.
Avarice finally overcame fear and words began to tumble from the cobbler’s mouth, falling over each other in their haste to get out. ‘It’s a racket run by the local magician and his henchmen. There’s about twenty of them they live on the old manor house on the hill and demand bi-monthly payments from everyone in the village and if you can’t pay they bash your face in or hurt your family or burn your place down and he’s a very powerful mage and I wouldn’t double cross him and I didn’t tell you any of this and can I really have the money or are you all going to beat up on me now and I hope that my work has been to your liking please don’t hurt me and…’ the cobbler finally ran out of air.
Cabbie cursed violently under his breath. Plob turned to look and was surprised to see a wave of intense anger cross his face. For a moment Cabbie seemed to have been replaced completely with Tarlek, tall, lean, frightening – and very pissed off. ‘Only the worst sort of filth would run that type of protection racket,’ he shook his head. ‘No, I won’t stand for this. This will be stopped or my name is not…is not…Cabbie,’ he ended lamely. ‘Come on, gentlemen, let’s away.’
They walked out of the shop leaving behind one by extremely puzzled, newly well off, cobbler.
Smegly sat in contemplation, ruminating over the information that Cabbie, Plob and Biggest had just imparted. He produced a cigar from a fold in his cloak, stood up and strode over to the fire at the end of the taproom to light up. He turned to face the team, smoke billowing out of his mouth like a peat-fired charcoal burner. ‘I think it’s pretty obvious that this is one of those not good things that we’re supposed to stamp out.’ Everyone murmured their agreement. ‘The question is – how? Any suggestions?’
Horgy shrugged. ‘Economic sanctions,’ he proposed.
‘No way, man,’ Biggest disagreed. ‘Dis one’s simple. We just finds where dis manor house is, we all go over there and bash their brains out of their heads by means of acute violence. Then we drag their bodies down to the town square, tell everyone that we has saved their sorry asses and we proceed on our way.’
Smegly nodded. ‘Cabbie, Plob, what do you think?’
‘I’m inclined to agree,’ affirmed Cabbie and Plob nodded.
‘Dreenee?’ inquired Master Smegly.
‘Might as well, there’s only twenty or so of them so they should find themselves reasonably outnumbered. I think that we should march up to the house, knock on the door, and then smash up everybody inside.’
‘What about the powerful Mage that’s supposed to be their leader?’ asked Horgy.
Master Smegly laced his fingers together and stretched, cracking his knuckles as he did so. ‘I’ll take care of that,’ he said in a voice dripping with distain. ‘Powerful mage, my buttocks. Plob, load your miniaturising pouch up with all the left over earth spells, there’s no time like the present, let us to battle.’
Chapter 13
Well it was only a matter of time, thought the king’s captain at arms. Even one as obviously mentally challenged as the nutcase out there waving that red sort of bent knobbly thing in the air was certain to eventually work it out.
Bil de Plummer had placed his catapults and siege onagers in a line opposite the gates and out of range of the dreaded longbows that had previously so riddled them with death. The minions of Bil were gathering huge piles of stones and rocks which they were placing next to the siege engines and, at any moment the bombardment was about to ensue. The captain had ordered scores of buckets of water to be placed strategically around the castle, just in case the metal wielding moron outside discovered fire and started lobbing burning pitch-soaked hay bales at them.
There was a cheer from the rabble as the first catapult smacked against its restraints and the first boulder arced through the air and landed in the moat. The next one hit the huge oaken castle gate bang in the middle and, with the range now established, all the engines opened up at once.
Not long now, figured the captain, three, four, five days at most and the door would give. Then time for heroics. He smiled grimly to himself.
‘Hold hard, Plob. Hold hard,’ shouted Master Smegly.
Plob was dripping with sweat as he strained to keep the ‘earth, protect, shield wall’ in place against the barrage of thunderbolts, ice storms and fireballs that were careening up against it. Smegly was busy casting a series of complicated ‘air, seeker’ spells as he attempted to find exactly what they were up against. Plob gasped as a particularly large fireball smashed up against the wall. Dreenee stood behind him, massaging his shoulders and
whispering words of encouragement into his ear. Biggest had his flask out and, every now and then, he tipped a medicinal amount of Blutop into Plob’s mouth.
‘Got it,’ said Smegly in a satisfied voice. ‘There’s four of them. All middle order mages. Three of them are in that tower over there,’ he said, pointing, ‘and the other one is in that room there on the second floor,’ he continued.
‘You’d better do something about dem pretty soon, master man,’ said Biggest. ‘Your boy here’s taking himself a pounding. A man cannot survive by Blutop alone and at the moment I suspects that dat’s de only thing keeping him upright.’
‘He’ll survive,’ reassured Smegly. ‘He has to. And anyway, they’re only a pack of middle-order mages. We wouldn’t be in this predicament if our intelligence reports had been a little more accurate though,’ he finished, looking accusingly at Cabbie.
Cabbie mumbled an apology.
Smegly approached Plob and placed his hands on his shoulders, staring into his eyes. ‘Are you all right, my boy?’ he asked, his face showing more concern than his voice allowed.
Plob groaned an affirmative and nodded jerkily.
‘Right, this is what we’re going to do. I’m going to combine our last three ‘earth, attack, thunderbolt’ spells and use them against the tower.’
Plob shook his head. ‘Too dangerous,’ he grunted. ‘There could be feedback with so much power being released at once.’
‘That’s true,’ confirmed Master Smegly. ‘So that is where you come in. As I cast the combi-spell I want you to throw this protection wall after it and envelop the tower, thus holding the feedback in a contained area. If you can do it, and I know that you can, it should reduce the tower and its contents to a mixture of mage and stone vapour. Are you ready?’