Humunculus frowned. “I am a patient king,” he lied, “but even my tolerance has its limits. Explain yourself, quickly.”
“Well, you see,” he blustered, “some of us have been here a very long time, and, if we don’t exercise our minds, we fall apart.”
“You go mad?” Humunculus asked, wondering, if that were the case, what the fuss was all about.
Sir Henry shook his head. “Oh no, I mean we literally fall apart. Our minds disperse and we fade away. Countless souls have been captured by the staff, but only a handful remain cognitive. We are that handful, we and a few non-members. Come, sit down and I’ll show you how we achieve stability.” Sir Henry gestured towards a pair of armchairs that had appeared out of the ether. “But before we do, I must introduce you to our other club members.”
“This is His Irreverence Cardinal Ignatius of Hippocrasium,” Sir Henry said, indicating a fat man in shadowy garb that might once have been pink.
Ignatius nodded solemnly.
“Why does he wear a dress?” Humunculus asked. “Or is it that sort of party after all? How delicious!”
Ignatius’s spectral face managed to colour slightly, and he opened his mouth to protest. Sir Henry wagged his finger. “I am so sorry, your irreverence , he’s not from around here, you know.”
“Be careful,” Sir Henry hissed into Humunculus’s ear, “he could send your soul to the uttermost pits of hell.”
Humunculus laughed. “Oh, I wish he would, they sound much more interesting than this dusty place. Although,” he continued, “if, as I suspect, the cardinal here is an emissary of his deity, I find myself wondering why it is that he’s stuck here and not enjoying his eternal reward.”
Ignatius rose flabbily from his chair. “It is not for us, their humble servants, to question the wisdom of our lord gods. Clearly, I have some task yet to perform before I ascend to the bliss of the Garden of Need.”
“If that task involves sitting in a chair doing nothing then you seem ideally suited,” Humunculus said, warming to his taunting.
The cardinal’s mouth opened and closed a couple of times as his eyes swivelled between Humunculus and a mortified Sir Henry, before he sat back down again and hid his face behind a parchment.
“And who are these other fine fellows?” Humunculus asked, waving his arm at the others, all of whom were looking in his direction.
“Ah, well, over there is Arnole, he was a farmer, and next to him is Wynestein, who was a genius alcoholic.” Sir Henry pointed at two figures in chairs, each studiously avoiding Humunculus’s gaze. Arnole was thinner and less substantial than the gently swaying spectre beside him.
“I can speak for myself,” boomed a voice from a dark corner of the room. A pipe poked from beneath a translucent hood, and sharp eyes peered at Humunculus. “My name is Ambler, and this is the Lady Negstimeaboi, a shield maiden from the steppes.”
Humunculus regarded the two of them with suspicion. Both were more substantial than any of the others here as if they held themselves together by sheer force of will. In Ambler, he recognised the spirit of a warrior and in the lady he saw total contempt.
“You are faerie,” she said, her voice almost as deep as a man’s and altogether more disturbing because of it.
Humunculus nodded, “I am.”
“I kill faeries.” Negstimeaboi said.
“You’re a little late,” responded Humunculus, every syllable coated in ice.
Sir Henry pulled on Humunculus’s shoulder. “Come now, no need to fight amongst ourselves. If anyone’s looking for violence, there are plenty of discombobulated denizens out there.”
He guided the Faerie King to the chairs and sat down. “Here, then, is the secret to our success in remaining compos spiritus.”
Sir Henry pulled a sheaf of parchment from his doublet and gave one to Humunculus. It contained a grid of lines that formed a square containing dozens of other squares, some of which were black, whilst others contained tiny numbers.
“What is this?”
With a self-satisfied smile, Sir Henry declared, “Why, it’s a crossword, my good fellow. Perfect exercise for the mind. This particular one is of my own making. It’s fairly simple whilst remaining challenging for those intending to keep their wits sharpened. Here are the clues.”
The sheet held a series of phrases in the sort of anally perfect, symmetrical handwriting that could only be Sir Henry’s.
1 Across, road to disturbed reference [8 letters]
“You see,” Sir Henry continued, pointing at the first clue, “you work out what word fits and then you write it in.”
Humunculus, for the first time in his existence, could think of nothing to say.
Sir Henry chortled, “But look, this is easy. What is another word for ‘road’?”
“Street, thoroughfare, avenue?” ventured Humunculus.
“Well, all fine words, although ‘thoroughfare’ is more than eight letters,” Sir Henry simpered, warming to his task and innocently unaware of the unexploded bomb next to him. “No, may I suggest ‘path’?”
“And?”
Sir Henry pressed on. “Well, my dear fellow, let’s look at the second part. What is another word for a reference? It must be four letters long because we already know that the first part of the word is ‘path’. So, what do you think?”
Humunculus simply stared into the blank, wet, eyes of the former knight.
“Um, I see you’re not used to crosswords,” Sir Henry said in a low, nervous, voice, “in this case, the word is ‘cite’ and ‘disturbed’ means that we must mix up the letters to get the end of the word. May I venture ‘etic’ as a possibility?”
Humunculus continued to gaze balefully.
A man with more sense could have given up at this point but Sir Henry, for all his faults, was not one to end a mission before it was complete.
“So, what do you think the answer might be if we put the two clues together?”
Humunculus’s mouth opened a mere fraction.
“Path,” he spat, “-etic.”
#
Chortley sat on his horse, watching as the remnant of the Faerie King’s army was lined up in the square outside the gaol. Most of them were goblins of various size and shape; utter brutes who’d slay their own comrades as soon as look at them, or so Chortley had been told by their captains.
The two dozen creatures in front of him were, for want of a better idiom, the sacrificial lambs. They would be marched to where, according to Mother Hemlock, another portal existed. The journey was long, dangerous and uncertain, and, how possible, or safe, it would turn out to be for the goblins to return through the portal was also questionable. And so the most pliant of the prisoners had been chosen to accompany a detachment of Crapplecreekers on their journey. If it was successful, the remainder would be herded across dimensions following the path made by these pioneers.
They would be accompanied by a faerie officer by the name of Piskel who was, even now, being chained to a railing on the cart carrying their stores. He, at least, would be dry and out of the wind. The common soldiers would, naturally, march on foot. The most senior member of the faerie army remaining behind was the pathetic figure of General Odius who currently occupied the very lowest level of the dampest dungeon. Odius was alive because Chortley’s father, Count Walter, hadn’t yet finished with him. Chortley almost felt sorry for the scumbag.
Around the goblins stood the men and women of the Crapplecreek garrison, all of whom had been with Chortley in the great battle. Their reward for the heroism to stand their ground and the good luck to avoid disembowelment, was to be “volunteered” to escort the enemy to their final destination.
The garrison included no officers and only two NCOs since the others were currently decomposing on the outer wall of the town. Chortley’s first act, on returning from the battle, had been to round up and despatch the miserable cowards who’d bolted. As a result, Chortley Fitzmichael was now the garrison commander and the former occupant of that t
itle was, even now, providing sustenance to the amphibians and fish at the bottom of the moat.
Sergeant Sandy McGuff was one of the surviving NCOs. As brave as an intoxicated baboon and just as clever, McGuff had continued fighting on foot after his horse had been cut from beneath him.
His new, somewhat nervous, equine companion bore him alongside Chortley. “The men are assembled, sah,” he trilled, popping a smart salute.
“And the supplies?”
“Yessir,” McGuff clipped, “rations for 30 days are stowed on the mess cart, sir. Each man, and woman, has 5 days food on their personage along with a day’s water and their weapons. Sir.”
“Very good. And the ladies, are they comfortable?”
McGuff’s face somehow managed to display fear and delight at the same time. “Yessir, although the old one hasn’t stopped complainin’ since she saw the mess wagon.”
Chortley chuckled. “Did you remind her that she’s welcome to walk?”
“Nosir,” stammered McGuff, “I, err, I didn’t want to be rude.”
“Or incinerated. Mind you, her companion seems to be attracting a good deal of attention from the men.” Chortley pointed to the rear of the cart, where a group had gathered, many of them craning to get a look.
McGuff swung round, his face reddened and he bellowed, “oi, you ‘orrible reprobates, get out of there!”
Reluctantly, the throng dispersed, many of them risking McGuff’s ire by taking a final, furtive, look as they passed.
Chortley watched with a smile. She was a beauty, without doubt, but also dangerous to be near. “Well done, sergeant. Are we ready to leave, then?”
“Yessir,” McGuff responded, “but am I permitted to know our destination, sir?”
Chortley shook his head, “Not at this point, sergeant. We are heading for the Wong Way and going south. Further instructions will be supplied on a need to know basis.”
McGuff slapped another salute in a way that, if possible, might be construed as suggesting that he did, indeed, need to know, but kept his thoughts unspoken.
Good man, thought Chortley, the army needs more like you.
“Fall out,” he bellowed, and watched with satisfaction as McGuff kicked his horse towards the prisoners and their escort, echoing his command and chivying the chaos into some order.
Ten minutes later, they passed through the gates of Crapplecreek, turned onto the road leading to the Wong Way and the nightmare that lay at its end.
Bill and Brianna waved to Blackjack as he stood at the doorway of Vokes’s cottage and then headed south. Rasha trotted along beside Brianna without a backward glance as Blackjack sent him a final sour look before heading back into the ruins.
“He’ll be okay,” Brianna said, “he needs a bit of time to sort himself out and that’s best done alone.”
Bill turned to look back at the cottage and was just in time to see his father also look his way and give a small wave. “I don’t want to leave him. In fact, I don’t want to leave at all. Just when I think I can have some sort of a normal life, shit happens.”
“I’m not exactly delighted either,” Brianna said as they turned a corner and walked along a muddy avenue lined with bare trees, “but what choice do we have? And look at it this way, we get to see Varma!”
Bill would be prepared to admit that he was, at least in part, looking forward to seeing the empire’s capital for the first time. But he wasn’t in the mood for public honesty. “Whoopee.”
“Well, you can thank your grandfather, he seems to have a talent for setting you missions, even from beyond the grave.”
Bill stopped, his breath steaming upwards in the still, damp, air. “You don’t need to remind me, but I can’t help thinking this is the wrong thing to do.”
“What do you mean?” Brianna asked.
“Well, we know more about what the staff is and how dangerous it is,” he said, “and we have to go to the Great Library in Varma to look in some ancient book that Vokes thinks will tell us how to use it properly. But we don’t have the staff, surely we should find it first?”
Brianna put her hands on her hips and adopted the pose. “We’ve talked about that already. There’s no way of tracking it down now, we could be wandering about the wilderness for months getting nowhere. We have the drawing Vokes made of the engravings on the staff and he’d plainly intended to get them deciphered using the books in the library. So, let’s find out what we’re dealing with and we might get a clue on how to find it.”
Bill sighed and starting walking again. “I know enough about it already to be pretty bloody certain we don’t want it wandering the countryside in the hands of a half-goblin.”
There was a shudder from behind as Rasha, unnoticed, let out a small cry.
The world outside the Cognitive Club was, somehow, less well defined, almost as if a mist had softened the edges of whatever reality existed here. It was obvious, to Humunculus, that the activities of the club worked - they somehow held together its inhabitants and their environs but, having spent an hour in their company, he’d concluded that sudoku was too great a price to pay for keeping his wits together.
And besides, he’d found that his frustration and anger had left him feeling more himself than he had done since he’d woken up in this nightmare, so he intended to remain in that state for as long as possible.
To the king’s surprise, Ambler and Negstimeaboi had appeared alongside him as he exploded out of the Cognitive Club and headed into the wilderness.
“An ill fate was on me, the day I joined that club of fools, and all that I have done has gone, er...” Ambler paused, thinking, “...four letters, determiner’s unwed daughter.”
“Amiss,” sniffed Sir Henry, who was standing at the door of the club, dirty white handkerchief in his hand.
Ambler’s shoulders dropped, and he sighed. “Do you see what they have done to me? I will accompany you into the wilds.”
Humunculus nodded graciously before flicking two fingers in the direction of Sir Henry, who sobbed and closed the door.
“What about you?” Humunculus said to the hulking woman beside Ambler. “I thought you liked to kill fairies.”
Negstimeaboi grunted. “I like him,” she said, jerking a thumb at Ambler, “more than I like killing fairies. For now.”
“She is useful to have around,” Ambler said, when Negstimeaboi had moved off. “There are many dangers in the wilderness, but we need fear none of them with her by our side.”
“So, we find wizard now?” Negstimeaboi said, turning back to them.
“What wizard?” asked a puzzled Humunculus.
Ambler rolled his eyes at his companion. “Well, since the member of the genus Felis, 3 letters is out of the place for tea? 5 Dammit!” the lean warrior threw off his hood, and gestured at the sky, “by all the gods, grant me my one wish; that I shall, from this day forth, no longer speak in church tomb with a little frozen water, 7 letters,6 clues”
“Wizard at top of mountain,” Negstimeaboi intoned, “banished from club, knew much.”
“Much about what?” asked Humunculus, and then held up a hand to stop Ambler answering, “I think I’d prefer her monosyllables to your cryptics.”
“Cryptic!” laughed Ambler, “Of course…”
“Wizard knows about here. Sir Henry not like,” said the massive warrior.
Humunculus looked up at her, wondering how long she had been inside the staff. Her breastplate was made of heavily scored leather that was fastened together with brass buckles and he noticed, for the first time, that the spear she carried wasn’t the washed-out grey of steel but contained a barely detectable glint of spectral bronze.
“Are you saying that this mysterious wizard, who no-one else has mentioned, has information about the staff?”
Her eyes glazed over for a moment before clearing. She nodded. “Sir Henry say he know too much.”
It was hard to see how anyone as vacuous as Sir Henry could possibly pass judgement on another. Well, he
had nothing else to do and all the time in the world to do it.
“Let’s be off to see the wizard, then” he said and strode into the pine trees that lined the foot of the mountain.
Chapter 4
Varma, it turned out, was a long way away. Bill’s rational mind had known this from the start, familiar as he was with the geography of the northern part of the great empire. His monkey-brain, on the other hand, had imagined a swift hop and a jump across the hill-tops and they’d be there. Which is why you should never trust your inner ape - he’s a complete idiot.
Bill, Brianna and Rasha sat around a small fire that was burning in the centre of an old farmhouse, long since abandoned. Two weeks had gone by and Bill was convinced his legs must have worn down by several inches during the journey. At least it was a little less cold here but the most obvious change had been the people themselves. In Bill’s little town of Upton Moredit, everyone had pale skin (except Blackjack, whose skin was as black as his name) with the only variation supplied by travelling merchants and dignitaries from the provincial capitals.
As everyone knew, true-blood Varmans tended to have deep brown skin. Legend had it that they were descended from peoples of the far south who had migrated north and carved out an empire. Whether that was true or not, few Varmans actually lived much to the north of the capital itself. After they had demonstrated their superiority in weapons, their conquering generals had handed over administration of the provinces to client tribes, usually brought in from neighbouring lands. This was how the Fitzmichaels had come to rule Bill’s region - nasty, warlike and lacking in personal ambition, the Fitzmichaels and their kin were perfect proxies for the Varmans themselves. Very occasionally, the imposed elite of a client kingdom would get ideas above their station but the Varmans would simply exercise their military superiority and remind not only the rebels but also, by example, every other client kingdom in the empire, exactly who had the bigger weapons and, rumour had it, stronger magic.
Trolls and Tribulations Page 3