by Peter David
“My brave knights!” the strident voice of King Runcible rang out. Queen Bea stood obediently and proudly next to him. We all turned to attend to the king’s words. “Freedom from tyrants and from conquest is never simply granted us. Freedom must be fought for, constantly. And you have been chosen to fight on behalf of Isteria against the dictator of the Outer Lawless regions. The dreaded Warlord Shank himself has sought to expand his influence, but you … you, my fine and gallant knights, will—”
He was interrupted by the loudest snoring I had ever heard. Sir Umbrage’s head was slumped forward, his torso rising and falling peacefully, his eyes closed, his lips fluttering with the buzzing of his snore.
I wanted to sink into the ground. I wanted to pull out my sword and I couldn’t decide whether I would throw myself upon it, or use it to decapitate the old fool, or go on a murderous rampage and simply annihilate everyone who bore witness to this travesty, including every damned knight, the king, and his lady. Or perhaps some cheerful blend of the assorted options would do.
No one said anything, but laughter rippled through the assemblage. The king, to his credit, did not choose to acknowledge the interruption, but instead pressed on. “You, my gallant knights, will show the enemy what you are made of. You will—”
The snoring grew louder. I couldn’t believe it. It sounded like a stampede. His head snapped around and for a moment I thought he was going to rouse himself, but then it slumped to one side and the noise escalated. The king couldn’t be heard over it, that’s how loud it was. Unable to stand it anymore, I walked quickly over to him, trying not to allow my cheeks to turn bright red as I felt every eye upon me. “Sir!” I hissed. “Sir Umbrage! Awaken! You’re embarrassing us!” Nothing. He didn’t stir. I did the only thing I could: I reached over, grabbed his leg, and shook it.
He reacted instantly. He snapped up, his eyes wide, shouted, “Back, villain, you shall not have me that easily!,” and lunged to grab his sword, which was mounted just to the right of the saddle. The sudden movement completely overbalanced him and before I could do anything to prevent it, Sir Umbrage slipped out of the saddle. He tumbled to the ground with a hellacious clattering.
The roar of laughter from the other knights was promptly extinguished when they saw the scowl darkening Runcible’s face. Umbrage, for his part, lay on the ground looking rather stunned. My impulse was to crawl into a hole somewhere and die. Resisting it, I ran around Titan and went to Umbrage’s side. But when I tried to haul him to his feet, Umbrage let out a most alarming yell and clutched at his right arm. It projected at an odd angle and I could tell immediately that he had dislocated it.
There was dead silence as all waited for the king to speak.
“Bad luck, Sir Umbrage,” he said after a time. ” ‘Twas not meant for you to join your comrades on this excursion. Report to your chambers and a healer will attend to you anon. Fortunately, you are as revered for your mental prowess as well as your physical. Good knights … I say ye, Sir Umbrage!”
“Sir Umbrage!” shouted the knights in unison. And perhaps the king was unable or unwilling to discern the clear contempt that the knights clearly possessed for the pathetic individual to whom I had been attached, but it was more than clear to me.
As I helped Sir Umbrage to leave the courtyard, the puzzled knight looked at me with bewilderment and said, “And you are, again?”
“Apropos, sir.”
“Yes. Yes, you certainly are,” he agreed, and smiled in that vacant manner to which I had become all too accustomed. As we walked, the king continued his parting speech to the troops … a speech that no longer had any relevance to us. Our moment had passed, and no one was interested in giving us the slightest bit of attention anymore. Actually, that was not strictly true. There was one. As we passed Mace Morningstar, standing next to the great white horse that Sir Coreolis was perched upon, Mace never took his gaze from us. He said nothing. He didn’t have to. His smirk said it all.
And so the forces of King Runcible set off to quell the uprising of the dreaded Warlord Shank. At one time, it would have been an endeavor that I would gladly have passed upon. Indeed, I would have sought whatever means I could find to get out of it. But if I had done so, it would have been on my terms. Instead, it was upon the terms of Sir Umbrage. Sir Umbrage, who was peacefully back in his bed and snoring, sleeping through the ministrations of the mediweaver who set the arm, guiding it back into place.
The battle against the dreaded Warlord Shank took weeks, and we received frequent updates as to its progress. Naturally the updates were filled with tales of derring-do and great exploits by the noble legions of King Runcible. Every so often we got word of a knight having fallen, and lo there would be a great uproar and crying and beating of breasts, but invariably when one of ours went down, he took ten, twenty, or thirty of Warlord Shank’s men down with him. I suspected a good deal of inflating of the battle figures. As for me …
… well, until that time, I had been taking myself down to the wine cellar and getting drunk every so often. But I decided that it was time to cut back. And I did: I cut back on the “every so” part, preferring to get blind, stinking drunk as often as possible. Every evening, when I finished with my nonexistent duties in the service of Sir Umbrage—who was well on the mend and actually remembering my name two out of every five attempts—back down I would go to the wine cellar. I still displayed reasonable caution. No one ever spotted me. But truthfully, even if they had, what would the consequence have been? What was the worst they could do to me? Throw me out? I served no useful purpose. Disgrace me? I was already disgraced, associated with a useless knight and living out a useless existence.
By the time word came back that the battle was over, that the dreaded Warlord Shank had been beaten back into his stronghold deep within the Outer Lawless regions, there to lick his wounds and hopefully threaten us no more, I knew that I had had enough. The castle of King Runcible was no place for me. If I felt like having people laugh at me, I could simply limp down the street and there would always be wonderful examples of humanity, ranging from small children to drunken sots, who would be happy to make sport of me with no encouragement. My stay was serving no purpose. I was learning nothing in the ways of war except from what I had been able to observe. I was gaining no rank, title, or riches that might serve me down the line. My mother’s murderer was who-knew-where. Certainly he was beyond my ability to reach him, and since I was garnering no skills or allies where I was, I had no hope of hunting him down or being able to accomplish anything against him once I had. Besides which, I kept coming around to the simple truth that nothing I did to the bastard, providing I did find him, was going to matter one bit to the ashen remains of my mother. The only thing being satisfied was my ego, and that poor tattered object had been so completely beaten down and defiled, so permanently in a state of starvation, that there was no point in even trying to feed it.
I knew it was time to go. But something kept me from doing so, and that something was a deep-seated desire to leave the damned place at least moderately better off than when I’d come in. I had turned down quite a fair bit of change for the questionable privilege of remaining among such great samples of humanity as the king and his knights. I needed something to show for it. For I remained, as always, a great believer in the theory of pass-along aggravation. And if I suffered and knew grief during my tenure at the castle, then by God, someone else was going to experience the same by my hand.
“They come! They come!” one of the lookouts in the great outer wall shouted, with lungs so powerful that his voice carried all the way to the castle. He was quite correct. Like a great, twisting serpent, the line of returning knights stretched back and across the hilltops. They were still several miles off, but people were already lining up, forming a welcoming throng whose cheers could be heard throughout the countryside.
I was among that throng, but unsurprisingly, I cheered not. But neither did I glower. I simply watched with as detached an expression as I cou
ld. More than an hour after they were sighted, the procession finally arrived at the front gate. Truly, they were impressive looking. There were fewer of them than had left, of course, but the strongest, bravest, and most truly obnoxious of the knights remained, and they were more than happy to drink in the crowd’s adoration. At first my hopes swelled, because I didn’t see Mace Morningstar, and could only hope that the square-jawed lout’s head was serving as a table ornament somewhere in Warlord Shank’s main foyer. But no, my hopes were too quick, and just as quickly dashed when I saw Morningstar marching alongside the annoyingly alive Sir Coreolis. More than that, Mace was generating a certain degree of advance wagging of tongues, as word spread of the mighty squire who had wielded a sword to defend his fallen master and had laid waste to half a platoon. I later found out that Morningstar had in fact laid waste to a mere three men, two of whom were reliably reported as being blind drunk, but these things tended to grow upon the retelling. In any event, there was much discussion of the likelihood that Morningstar was headed toward knighthood far sooner than anyone could have expected. I would have been boiling with jealousy had I (a) any interest in being a knight myself and (b) any expectation that I would be around to see such a thing come to pass.
I still had no idea what I was going to do to even the score, but as so often happens in such situations, I found myself thrust into a predicament—of my own making, admittedly—that resulted in my stumbling most unexpectedly into a satisfying means of retribution.
One evening, shortly after the much heralded and applauded return of those annoyingly brave knights, I was making my way across the courtyard toward the castle. I had finished up with my late-evening grooming of Titan. Tending to the horse had developed into the one pleasure that I enjoyed in the whole damned place. I got to the secret entrance to the wine cellar and was preparing to press against the stones that would trip the hidden door when I was halted in my tracks by the irritating baritone of Mace Morningstar, hailing me. I froze in place, fortunately enough. A few seconds later and he would have observed me disappearing through the passageway, and I would have been undone.
Morningstar was not alone, as several of his cronies were at his heel. I had observed that when they were walking singly or in smaller groups, their individual strides were normal. But when they kept company with Mace, they automatically and unconsciously adopted his swagger. So when a group of them would approach me, I often had to check to make certain that the ground was not quaking beneath me, or that there was not a good, stiff wind which was threatening to blow all of us over.
“You smell of horse manure, good squire,” Mace said with his customary false cheerfulness as he drew near. “Why lean you against the castle wall? Are you holding it up for us?” This drew the requisite chuckle from his associates.
“Simply providing reinforcement,” I replied. “I had heard that your ego had swelled to such proportions since your return, Morningstar, that it overtaxed the support structure while you were within. But since you’re out here, I can relieve myself from my post.” With that, I stepped away casually from the wall, giving no hint as to my true intention.
My rejoinder drew a brief titter of amusement from the others which was quickly silenced with a glance from Mace. Then he looked back to me and smiled that square-jawed smile of his. “I imagine you have been preparing good Umbrage’s horse for the tourney two days hence.”
“Tourney.” I was blank on what he was referring to for a moment, but then I recalled. A tournament had been scheduled to welcome the return of the victorious troops. A joust which was to be a celebration of the mighty men-at-arms. All knights were to compete in a contest that was really little more than an organized exercise in mock head splitting. The average joust is fairly on par with the average bar brawl, without the purity of spirit. Nevertheless, Umbrage was expected to participate.
Umbrage had been involved with such contests before. His record on that score was not particularly impressive. To be specific, my lord and master had consistently been unhorsed in his first passes in all jousts going back for the last fifteen, twenty years or so. He was not what one would remotely consider a serious threat to triumph upon the lists.
“Yes, of course … the tourney,” I continued. “Naturally, yes, we are preparing for that.”
“I could see that, yes,” said Mace. “When he fell off his horse just before we rode against the warlord, we knew that was his way of preparing himself for the joust.” This remark drew rather louder guffaws from the squires accompanying him.
I didn’t even bother to respond other than a forced smile, and I turned away.
“What is your hurry in leaving, Apropos?” inquired Mace.
“What is my point in staying, Mace?”
“We’re simply chatting. Trying to be friendly. We are all of us, after all, squires. That is not to say that we shall all remain as such,” he said with a smirk. “Some of us have greater destinies.”
Gods, I hated that word.
I rubbed the bridge of my nose. The desire for alcohol was becoming almost a physical need; I could feel it burning in the base of my throat, and my brain was urging me to bring it to that pleasant place where it could float in numbness. “Mace, is this conversation going somewhere? Because if it is not, then I most definitely am …”
“I just wish to understand, Apropos.”
“Understand what?”
“Understand what it is like … to be such a loser.”
His words should not have stung me, but they did. I should not have cared what he said, but I did. And most of all, I should not have bothered to respond to him, but I did. “You’re trying to bait me, Morningstar. And you’re quite good at it. You are,” and I doffed an imaginary cap, “a master baiter.”
There was dead silence then. The full moon above seemed to shift its light directly upon us, as if having taken an intense interest in our conversation.
Morningstar didn’t lose his temper, didn’t come close. The most that happened was that his permanent smile of confidence thinned ever so slightly. “Perhaps I am,” he said affably. “But better that … than a loser.”
And I slipped into his game, which was regrettable. “I am no loser, Morningstar. Umbrage’s fortunes are not mine.”
“Nonsense, of course they are. When our lords triumph, we bask in their reflected glory. When they are … less triumphant … that likewise reflects upon us. We,” and he gestured to the group with him, “have all known our triumphs, our successes, individually and in association with our lords. You have known nothing like that. I am more than simply a knight-in-training, Apropos. I am also interested in matters scientific. From a scientific point of view, your predicament fascinates me.” His tone dropped, became even more mocking. “Does it rot your spirit slowly and steadily? Or does it plummet by great degrees, then even off, then tumble once more. How does it work, I wonder?”
“You underestimate me, Morningstar. And you underestimate Umbrage as well.” In truth, that was complete nonsense. I had been demoralized to the point of wanting to flee, and Umbrage was useless in all ways.
“Do I? Perhaps you will surprise us, then. Perhaps Umbrage will win the tourney two days hence. I would dearly love to see that. Wouldn’t you, lads?” This generated the loudest laughter of all. It echoed from the castle walls, it sailed to the sky, and in my imaginings, the moonlight itself trembled slightly as the moon shook in silent mirth at the very notion.
And the words sailed from my mouth before I could pull them back. “How much would you love to see that?”
The challenge in my voice was unmistakable. Mace took a step closer, as if not quite able to believe what he had just heard. I understood his incredulity. I could not quite believe I had said it. “Are you suggesting a wager?”
I said nothing, hoping that they would laugh it off and walk away. I should have known better. I had presented a chink in my armor, and naturally Mace shoved a sword in and twisted it with glee. “Ten sovs,” he said immediately,
and then amended, “No. Double that. Twenty sovs.”
“I don’t have that sort of money.”
“Afraid you’ll lose already?”
“It’s not a matter of winning or losing,” I lied. “If I cannot cover the bet in any way, then it would not be honorable to engage in it in the first place.”
“I would be willing to take it out in trade,” he said. “You acting as my servant for a time, taking some of the more onerous duties off my hands. Your time and energies,” and he held out a pouch, “against hard cash. Does that not seem reasonable?”
I’d been outmaneuvered. All I could do was nod.
But that wasn’t bad enough. “Gentlemen,” and he turned to the others with him. “Would you be interested in getting involved in the wager?” Immediately there were choruses of agreement and laughter as they all tossed their own twenty sovs into the wagering. Naturally they could afford to do so. They were all the sons and scions of wealthy men, knighthood being a privilege of the rich and entitled. I, on the other hand, had no resources other than my questionable and occasionally nonexistent wits.
“Well, Apropos?” said Mace challengingly. “Have we a wager?”
So smug. So full of themselves. In a few years, they would be so suffused with arrogance, so insufferable, that they would be the new generation of bastards who went about assaulting barmaids. Teach them a lesson! a voice within me screamed. Find a way! You’re clever, you’re resourceful, you can do it.
“Yes,” I said.
I wasn’t sure exactly how I expected them to respond. Perhaps, for the most fleeting of moments, I thought that they might actually have respect for me for standing up to them. Instead all they did was laugh all the more loudly and saunter away, chuckling among themselves and speaking loudly of all the tasks they would put me to. Then Mace, seemingly struck by an afterthought, turned and walked back toward me. He stopped a few feet away, his massive arms folded across his broad chest, and he said, “And Apropos … when you lose … I hope you won’t be getting any ideas about fleeing. A bet is a bet, and we take such things most seriously. If you attempt to desert our fair grounds, I assure you I will track you down. I mean it.” I could see by the glint of his steely eyes that he did indeed mean it, and I also did not doubt for a moment that he was capable of accomplishing it. “Should that come to pass,” he continued, “I can personally guarantee that your servitude will be far longer than you ever expected and far more brutal … and with large manacles attached to you so that you do not attempt a repeat of such dishonorable behavior. Good evening to you, Apropos,” and he doffed an imaginary cap before turning and strolling away.