Plob

by Craig Zerf

  Smegly lit up a cigar. ‘Right, my girl. What’s the real story? Why are you actually here and what do you really want us to do?’

  Prado asked Cabbie to pour her a glass of wine and, after he had obliged, she faced the group. ‘Your Mister Horgy is right,’ she confirmed. ‘My father’s empire is literally on the bones of its buttocks. We’ve had a few bad seasons, there are massive labour problems and cash flow has become an absolute nightmare. We somehow limp from day to day with borrowings and early payments but I’m not sure how much longer we can continue. Last month, however, a land baron by the name of Gordo started showing a lot of interest in the local property and began to buy up a lot of peasants’ smallholdings for bargain basement prices. My father and I figured that, if we could persuade you to stop him buying from the peasants then they would be forced to look for work. Then the property prices would become artificially inflated and we could unload a large portion of our holdings to Gordo thus sorting out both our labour and cash flow problems at the same time. I had no idea that you’d see through me so quickly, to tell the truth, from what I’d heard you just sounded like a group of uncouth roughnecks and conjurers spoiling for a fight. I’m sorry. It appears that I was desperately wrong.’

  Smegly nodded his acceptance of her apology. ‘It sounds as if you’re in trouble. Now this would not normally be the sort of thing that we’d get involved in but, I have the glimmerings of a plan that may be advantageous to all of us. Gentlemen we need to caucus. Prado, thank you for an entertaining evening, I’m sure that you know your way out. Meet us back here tomorrow after breakfast and then I think that you should take us all to see your father.’

  They stayed up late into the night as Master Smegly explained his idea and both he and Horgy hammered out the details.

  The next morning Plob wandered into the dining hall to be greeted by Cabbie in full complaint.

  ‘No, come on now. That’s not breakfast,’ he said, pointing at a huge spread of foods laid out before them. ‘It’s just bread and jams and fruit and cheese and cold meats and stuff.’

  ‘It’s supposed to be fancy,’ assured Smegly. ‘That’s how it’s done this side of the valley. It’s called a Northern-ental breakfast.’

  Cabbie shook his head. ‘It’s not breakfast. I mean look, it’s basically just bread. See, look,’ he continued poking at various rolls, croissants, breads, ryes, pumpernickels, ashcakes and baps with an accusing digit. ‘How’s a man supposed to face the day with only a gut full of bread in him?’ as he grabbed the horrified looking waiter by the collar. ‘Listen, friend, I demand fried eggs and fried bacon and fried sausage and fried tomatoes and fried mushrooms. And here,’ Cabbie thrust a piece of bread at him, ‘get the chef to fry this up as well, and just for luck tell him to put an extra portion of deep fried lard on a side plate. And beans, baked in tomato sauce, better fry them as well just to be on the safe side. Move it; chop, chop.’ Cabbie shuddered. ‘Bread and fruit for breakfast. Gods, what ever will they think of next?’

  After they had all eaten and Cabbie had gobbled up his deep-fried cholesterol frenzy, with an ale just to settle the stomach, Prado arrived in a large gilt encrusted carriage drawn by four horses. They all got in and were transported to her father’s offices where Master Smegly and Horgy put forward their plan to him.

  Chapter 15

  The captain offered up appreciation to his deities once again. Thank the gods for moronic enemies. It was seven days since Bil’s bombardment had started and still the gates held. This was partly to do with the huge mound of stone that the captain had piled against the door, courtesy of the king’s ex-stables that had been torn down to provide building material, and partly due to the complete and utter ineptitude of Bil and his followers.

  Bil ranted around his camp countermanding previous orders and replacing them with new conflicting ones only to reissue them in another format minutes later. His wobbly leadership structure was also constantly changing as second in commands became third in commands and third in commands became latrine diggers, latrine diggers were promoted to generals and vice versa.

  Every now and then drunken fights broke out amongst the rabble, although Bil put these down swiftly and severely with a quick swing of his wrench.

  All in all there was nothing for the captain and his men to do except wait, and this they did. Their strained nervous boredom was relieved every so often when one of the minions strayed into bow shot and was summarily dispatched by one of the king’s archers, although even this would soon have to stop as they were running low on arrows.

  Sit and wait, and then the hand-to-hand combat. Well at least that should relieve the boredom, the captain thought as he sighed and settled back against the wall. Not long now.

  ‘Are you insane?’ Munge stood up and banged the table with both fists, his gross stomach wobbling unpleasantly with emotion as his eyes protruded from his head in disbelief.

  Biggest leaned over, placed a huge paw on the merchant’s head and slammed him back into his chair. ‘Watch your tone of voice, mutha, show some respect to my main man Master Smegly here or you is going to meet with some grievous bodily harm.’

  Smegly leaned back in his chair and, ostentatiously, lit his cigar with a bright green flame that he had conjured out of thin air. ‘Perhaps I didn’t explain things adequately,’ he conceded. ‘Horgy is actually the financial wiz so mayhap he will make more sense.’

  Horgy cleared his throat and assumed centre stage. ‘It’s quite simple really. As we all know Munge vegetable industries is experiencing two major worries: a lack of willing labour and a growing cash flow problem. What we propose is solving both problems with what is essentially the same solution. You encourage all of the surrounding peasants to sell off their property to the land baron Gordo, perhaps by forming a consortium of some sort in order to drive the prices up, and then you offer to sell fifty percent of your company to the newly formed peasant consortium for an agreed price which will be sufficient to cover your cash shortfalls. In return they become contractually obligated to work for Munge vegetable industries and, due to the fact that they are now equal partners, you are sure to have a highly-motivated, hassle free labour force at your constant disposal. Not only that, it’ll allow the peasants to start living an acceptable calibre of life as opposed to the atrocious way you’ve treated them thus far. It’s a win-win situation. I’m only surprised that you didn’t think of it before. My father, may he never rise from the grave, had been doing similar deals for many years and in the process managed to accumulate more money than the gods.’

  Smegly pursed his lips and blew a huge smoke ring which wafted around the room lazily. ‘Any road,’ the master added. ‘It’s basically irrelevant whether you like the idea or not as you’ve got Hobson’s choice.’

  ‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ stated Munge as he assumed a fatly superior expression. ‘All I need to do is hire myself a group of mercenaries, ride roughshod over the peasants forcing them to work for me, make sure that anyone who sells to Gordo meets with a terminal farming accident and then, when Gordo is a little more desperate, sell off a few acres of my land at inflated prices.’ Munge clasped his hands together over his more than adequate belly and looked smugly at Master Smegly.

  The master shook his head sadly. ‘Biggest,’ he called the Trogre over.

  ‘Yes, boss?’ enquired Biggest.

  Smegly pointed at Munge. ‘Break two of the fingers on his right hand.’

  ‘Yes, boss,’ Biggest’s arm whipped out with astonishing speed and even Munge’s scream couldn’t cover the three staccato pops his fingers made as Biggest bent them back beyond the point of no return. Biggest turned to look sheepishly at Smegly. ‘Sorry, boss, in my boundless enthusiasm I seem to have busted three. I’ll try harder to be more precise next time.’

  Munge had fallen off his chair and was cradling his new look bendy fingers to his chest whilst squealing and sobbing like a banshee in the mating season.

  Smegly gestured to the Trogr
e once more. ‘Biggest, be a good chap and if the vegetable farmer here doesn’t shut up within two seconds break both of his thumbs.’

  The ensuing immediate silence was deafening.

  Smegly wove an ‘air, lift’ spell and used it to drag Munge off the floor into a standing position. He strode up to him (in a higher mortal way) and held his face close to the merchant farmer. ‘Listen to me, you flabby ungrateful horrible overweight broken-fingered vegetable farmer. We are not here to negotiate deals. We are on a mission of such importance that your paltry little problems are as nought to us in the scheme of things. However, by forming this alliance with the peasants you will be helping to right at least some past injustices and that will constitute as a good deed. Now I don’t expect you to understand any of this as you are a socially reprehensible obese maggot but you will do as we have told you. We will spend two days with you to get things in motion, Horgy here will be in charge and I hope that any future bone breaking and other unpleasantness can be avoided. Horgy, take over,’ he commanded and then he turned on his heel and left the room.

  A stunned silence followed as the quest members adjusted their thinking to encompass this newly revealed vicious side of their normally mellow master.

  ‘Well,’ said Horgy. ‘Let’s get started.’

  Chapter 16

  With a vast tearing and splintering the castle doors collapsed inwards to open the way for the screaming minions of Bil de Plummer, the evil one.

  The captain’s small force stood in a line in the courtyard, longbows drawn, ready to make their last few arrows count. As the horde came spilling over the rubble that still partially blocked the entrance, the captain gave the order.

  The men fired once, twice, thrice and then the enemy were upon them. Swords were pulled from scabbards, war axes hefted, shields held to hand and, as each of the King’s men voiced their own personal battle cry, the last stand commenced.

  It was the stuff of legends, and clichés, the battle would be impossible to explain without a good helping of all of the hackneyed old expressions such as fortitude and valour and windrows of fallen dead and cutting down like so much wheat and into the valley of death’s etcetera and so on and so forth and yahdee yahdee.

  But really, it was an absolute cracker of a battle, the captain and his highly trained troops stood firm showing great fortitude and valour, shields overlapped and weapons swinging freely. The windrows of fallen dead piled up at their feet as they cut them down like so much wheat and, finally, Bil’s minions retreated as they no longer had the courage to continue into that personal valley of death and so on and so forth and yahdee yahdee.

  The captain and his now slightly smaller group let free a yell and rushed forward to hurry the unorganised rout on its way.

  But they were experienced troops, and they knew that soon, very soon, the enemy would be back.

  Horgy stood up in front of the gathering. ‘Good people, I give to you, Munge and Peasants vegetable industries.’

  A polite smattering of applause greeted this announcement (except from Munge whose newly strapped fingers were still of the non-clap variety).

  And then a large bearded man in the front stood up. ‘You can’t call it that. We’re not peasants any more, we’re a consortium of newly indoctrinated middle-class socio-economically empowered, previously disadvantaged, co-owning, capitalist farming merchants.’

  Horgy shook his head. ‘It doesn’t work, I mean really, chaps – Munge and a consortium of newly indoctrinated, middle-class, socio-economically empowered, previously disadvantaged co-owning, capitalist farming merchants vegetable industries – it sounds stupid.’

  The bearded member of the consortium of newly indoctrinated middle class socio-economically empowered previously disadvantaged co-owning capitalist farming merchants didn’t look convinced. ‘We could shorten it, you know? Like use initials or something.’

  ‘What, like Munge and the ONIMICSOECOEMPREDCOCAPFAME’s? Still sounds bloody stupid.’

  Prado put her hand up. ‘What about Munge and Partners vegetable industries?’

  The bearded ONIMICSOECOEMPREDCOCAPFAME scratched his head and said ‘Ooooh,’ in an I’m so impressed way.

  ‘I still prefer peasant,’ said Munge.

  ‘Up your peasant, capitalist pig dog,’ shouted someone in the middle of the crowd. ‘Don’t ever say that word again.’ There was a general murmur of agreement.

  ‘I like ONIMICSOECOEMPREDCOCAPFAME’ said a small, dungy smelling man at the back. ‘It’s got a nice ring to it.’

  ‘Your bum,’ said a woman next to him.

  ‘Yeah,’ shouted a fat man in a checked shirt. ‘That’s a good one. Munge and the your bum ONIMICSOECOEMPREDCOCAPFAME’s’

  ‘No, you idiot,’ shouted the woman. ‘I meant his bum,’ she continued pointing at the manure redolent, small man.

  ‘I have got a name,’ complained poo smell.

  ‘Well we’ve never met,’ argued the women. ‘How am I supposed to know it?’

  ‘Well you could have asked,’ dungy replied sulkily. ‘Anyway, it’s Manderball.’

  ‘Oh shut up,’ shouted the women.

  ‘You started it,’ accused dungy and the fat man as one.

  ‘Morons.’

  ‘Bitch.’

  ‘Dung pile.’

  ‘Fatty.’

  ‘Peasant.’

  There was a stunned silence as the conglomerate of ex-dirt farmers paused to seek out who had uttered the ‘P’ word.

  ‘It wasn’t me,’ shouted the bearded man. ‘I didn’t say peasant. And anyway, I said it by mistake.’

  Plob didn’t see who threw the first punch but it wasn’t long before a mighty brawl had ensued. Later that night they all partied hard and there was much hugging, patting of backs, crying and swearing of allegiance and everlasting friendships.

  By midmorning of the next day the team were once more on their questing way. They took a little longer than expected to get out of town, as on the way out they came across an old lady dithering next to the road. Biggest, determined to do another good deed, had grabbed the octogenarian and half dragged, half carried her across the street, clapped her on the back and wished her a happy day.

  A group of passing wagon drivers had misunderstood Biggest’s intentions and decided to sternly reprimand him. Two of them escorted the old lady back to the other side of the road and the other five attempted to brutalise the Trogre. After Biggest had politely pointed out their mistake he went back across the road, dispatched the other two drivers and carried the old lady back, kicking the prostrate drivers’ twitching bodies out of the way as he did so. They resumed their travels with Biggest beaming hugely as he jogged next to the cab.

  Plob looked back and noticed the ancient women slowly shuffle her way slowly back across the street, take out a set of keys and let herself into her house. He didn’t say anything to Biggest so as not to ruin the massively chuffed look that the Trogre had stretched across his furry face.

  ‘Well,’ said Biggest. ‘Once again we has done folks a power of good. We is a bunch of fuggin Samaritans. Hoo-eee. All together now - Hooooo-eeeeee.’ He punched the air with a humungous clenched fist. The team responded shouting and punching the air together.

  And there were grins aplenty all round, and they felt good.

  The captain didn’t feel quite as good. He’d torn a strip off his tunic to staunch his head wound and his second in command had strapped the captain’s marred and split shield to his badly cut and bruised left arm so he could continue to hold it up by himself. There were only seven of them left and, although they had exacted a monumental toll on the enemy, they were tired beyond belief. They slammed and barred the door to the prison tower that they had been forced to retreat into and the captain took stock.

  Weapons, including crossbows and bolts, weren’t a problem as they had their pick from the heaps of fallen enemy. Amazingly, morale was still high although no one was bereft enough to believe that this could end in any other way b
eside total heroic annihilation. He ordered the men to pile everything that they could find against the tower door and then proceed upstairs so that they could start shooting at the rabble from above.

  It had been twelve days since the first attack. Twelve glorious battle-filled days. The captain grinned to himself - yep, this is why he joined up. He held his sword above his head. ‘Hoo-eeee.’ The captain turned to his men. ‘Altogether now - Hooooo-eeeee.’ His men responded shouting and thrusting their weapons into the air together. And outside, Bil’s minions felt the hair on the back of their necks rise, and they marvelled at the courage of the doomed detachment.

  And there were grins aplenty all round, and the doomed detachment felt good.

  The captain and his men had thus far achieved the impossible. And I mean it, seriously, it is a physical impossibility for so few men to fight off so many with so little. But the impossible had come to pass for, like the mega mastered one had predicted, as the questers did more good and the balance between good and evil slowly righted itself in good’s favour, so too did heroic acts such as those performed by the doomed detachment, become more and more possible.

  For good shall conquer, in the end, eventually, ultimately, probably.

  I hope.

  Terry Block held the bright red, dropped-forged steel plumber’s wrench above his head as he strode into the office that he shared with Hugo Prendergast. ‘Look, Prendy my mukka.’

  Hugo looked, and was duly puzzled. ‘What in God’s name is that?’

  ‘What’s it look like, my toffy friend?’

  ‘Looks like a bright red thing with a knobble and a squiggly bit.’

  ‘A squiggly twisty spiral bit?’ asked Terry in a smug voice as he held the wrench up against the photograph of the girl’s smashed-in skull, displaying that it was an almost perfect match.