“I knew it was too much of a coincidence that we’d be sharing a cell with an expert in dimensional magic,” said Bill, stomping along beside her, his arm gripped firmly by the second guard.
“Didn’t stop you blabbing, though, did it?” Brianna spat.
Bill turned to her as they walked. “You weren’t exactly silent either,” he said, “if you’d suspected anything, you should have said!”
“And by the way,” came the voice of Marcello from the doorway to the staircase, “don’t think about using your gift to attempt an escape, Bill. We have more than adequate countermeasures and I’m sure you wouldn’t want to risk collateral damage to your girlfriend.”
Bill and Brianna glared at each other. And then the guards were tugging on them and forcing each down the stairs towards the prison courtyard.
“Where are we going?” Bill asked to the darkness beneath his feet.
Marcello’s voice echoed up the stairwell. “We are heading for the office of the Head Librarian. He will decide what your fate is to be.”
Bill and Brianna trudged down the steps in silence, passing landing after landing as the tower became more civilised. The current landing even had windows and Bill could see that they were now approaching ground level.
There was a flash, a bang, and the stairwell filled with a pungent smoke. The guards cried out and Brianna and Bill began to choke but strong arms grabbed them, dragging them down the stairs. Down they went until they were surely below the streets and Bill risked opening his eyes.
Marcello was there, wheezing, and next to him Brianna was leaning against a wall rubbing her eyes. “I am sorry,” said Marcello, “it was necessary for the guards to believe that you had escaped without my help.”
Brianna opened her mouth but Marcello waved her to silence.
“I don’t have time, I must get back upstairs and ‘discover’ you’ve gone before the smoke dissipates,” he said. “Now, this door leads to tunnels under the city. You should be able to find your way back up to the street easily enough. Get out of Varma. Go to Minus’s laboratory and stop the Faerie King for I am as certain as I can be that he is heading there. Be careful but be fast - there is no time to waste. Go!”
Marcello pushed the door open and gestured them inside.
“Thank…” Bill began from the other side of the doorway.
“Go!” Marcello hissed, before shutting the door and plunging them into darkness.
They heard the thuds of his boots on the steps. “Perhaps you’d better light up your hands, I want to see what I’m standing in.”
#
Bently scrambled over the rise and looked at the land beneath him. Yellow and sandy with a hint of dead grass. He missed the Darkworld. Yes, it shared with the desert a certain lack of variety in the colour department but, whereas his world was full of warm, moist, blacks, purples and reds, this landscape was unremittingly dry and dead. And hot and bright. I mean, just how much more objectionable could it be?
It was nearly sunset and Bently scanned around for somewhere to hide up for the night. This was becoming increasingly difficult the further south he travelled but, as luck would have it, there was a small group of dry bushes that should provide enough cover. Although he wasn’t sure what, exactly, he was hiding from as he hadn’t seen a living soul all day.
It was cooler in the shade of the bushes and Bently found himself looking forward to the night breeze blowing across his burnt face. But first, he had a duty to perform. A duty he didn’t look forward to.
He held the staff and closed his eyes. “Master?” he whispered.
There was silence for some time and Bently began to hope that, perhaps, his master was indisposed this evening. But no, it was not to be.
“Bently? Is that you? Has it been two days?”
Bently had become used to his master being a little uncertain about time as it seemed to pass at a different rate in the staff.
“Yes, I am here, master,” Bently thought.
“Are you at the laboratory yet?” asked the mind of Humunculus.
Bently shook his head. “No, master, it is some distance away, yet. Do you not remember that I said it would take another week? That was only two days ago.”
There was a sigh of disappointment in his mind. “Do not let me down, Bently. I feel my mind becoming less and less cohesive every day. I’ve even started solving those wretched sudokus to keep myself whole.”
“Soo-do-queues, master?”
“Yes. It’s a logic-based combinatorial number placement puzzle,” Humunculus thought, before giving a spectral sigh. “Do you see what’s happening to me, Bently, I’m turning into one of them!”
Bently was terrified. In truth, he was always terrified in the presence of his master but this was an unfamiliar Humunculus, a master whose madness was changing from the maliciously evil flavour he was familiar with to the sort of disjointed insanity from which there was no return.
“I will hurry, master,” Bently thought, “I will get there as quickly as I can.”
“Thank you, my faithful servant, I am relying on you.”
Bently dropped the staff and settled back into the dappled shade of the dry bushes. His master sounded like a pathetic shadow of the one he’d grown to admire and fear. You couldn’t love a character like Humunculus, but you could be fiercely loyal to them and Bently had never questioned his devotion. But right now, sitting in this bush, his skin burned, his throat parched and his stomach empty, he wondered. It would be oh so easy to leave the staff here, bury it, perhaps, where no-one would ever find it, and to walk north again. He could find a nice, moist, wood to haunt and live out his days terrorising the country folk.
Bently smiled at the thought of being free and then the dream drifted away. While the staff existed he would not be truly free, even if it were buried deep in the desert sand or cast into the deepest ocean. He would always have that niggling fear that, somehow, it would be found and his master would seek vengeance on him. And who could know what sort of insanity Humunculus might have descended into by then and what sort of revenge he would wreak.
No, on balance, Bently decided that the terrors and hardships of the journey to this fabled laboratory followed by whatever happened once they were inside would be preferable to an eternity spent waiting for an enraged, insane, master to find him. He sighed, his mind made up, and slipped into a haunted dream.
#
They didn’t need to use the glow from Bill’s burning hands to light their way for long. Within a few hundred yards, they entered the inhabited parts of underground Varma. Torches appeared in embrasures, and people sploshed through the watery sewers, hardly paying any attention to the two of them as they ran, looking for a way up.
Without warning, the tunnel they were running along ended in a balcony that looked down on a large, torch-lit, cavern.
Brianna tugged at Bill’s arm as he stopped to look. “Come on, we haven’t got time. We need to get top-side.”
Bill pulled away from her and pointed dumbly down.
“What?” she said. “Oh.”
On the floor of the cavern, some twenty feet beneath them stood a mass of people - both big and little. They could see men, women, children of many races - human, dwarf, gnome and, amongst them, strange goblin-like creatures that neither Bill, nor Brianna, had ever seen before.
They were gathered around a platform of some sort; it might have been natural and it might not. On the stage stood a small figure, and his high voice echoed around the cavern.
“Rasha,” whispered Bill.
“They do not appreciate you,” the goblin’s voice, bouncing around the chamber, seemed to be coming from behind Bill’s head, “they hardly know you is here. Yet, without you, how long would it be before the city of the overlanders would be a river of filth? They only live such fine lives because you takes away what they doesn’t want to know about. And what thanks do you get? What thanks?”
“NONE!” roared the crowd.
Bill watc
hed as Rasha paced back and forth, addressing each part of the crowd in sequence. “I is here to tell you that it does not have to be like this, that you can have what they has, if you is brave. Will you follow me? Will you?”
“YES!”
The crowd erupted in cheering and the goblin ran along the front slapping their hands with his claws and jumping around with excitement. And then the noise died down as they waited for more.
“Rasha!” Bill bellowed.
“Bill!” hissed Brianna.
“Bill?” Rasha’s voice could barely be heard over the sound of necks creaking to look upwards, “Brianna?”
Brianna stepped forward and looked down over the railing. “What the hells are you doing?”
“Oi! You don’t talk to the little master like that!” said a voice from the crowd.
Many of the faces turned up at them were now hostile, especially those of the goblin-folk Rasha had discovered down here.
Hands and claws grabbed Bill and Brianna and pushed them so they were hanging over the railing. There were shouts of “Throw ‘em down here!” and “Let ‘em drop!” and Bill felt his heels leave the ground.
“Stop!”
In the silence, Rasha moved to the nearest point on the platform and looked sadly up at them.
“Release them!” he said. Reluctantly, the hands let go and Bill stepped back onto the balcony.
“Rasha,” Bill said, his voice full of sadness and betrayal.
“Go, both of you, and do not come back. This city is not safe for you anymore, not safe for any overgrounders. Not till they gives us what we deserves.”
Bill shook his head. “And what’s that, Rasha?”
“Everything,” said the goblin, his green eyes gleaming, “everything.”
#
The achievements of the Stupendous Six were a legend known to all, including Chortley Fitzmichael. The Six, a motley group of former prisoners, deserters and tax accountants, had held off a horde of hobgoblins intent on killing and eating the inhabitants of a peaceful town, location unknown, until the king’s army had finally appeared over the horizon to rescue them.
It was, of course, mythological hogwash with about as much veracity as those fables his teachers had placed such faith in. There was as much evidence for the Story of the Six as there was for the Fable of Fabian and the Walrus: which is to say, none.
But, whether there was even a granule of truth lying behind the myth of the Six, whatever shape those heroes had taken, Chortley was certain they bore little resemblance to the half a dozen men, women and indeterminates that McGuff had hand picked to join them in defeating the maze.
“Tell me, sergeant, how exactly did you go about selecting these, er, men?” Chortley said as McGuff stood nervously beside him.
McGuff looked along the parade line. “Well, it was quite a long and involved process, sir.”
“Let me guess,” Chortley said, fixing his sergeant with a murderous glare, “you asked everyone and these were the only ones prepared to volunteer?”
Sweat was forming on McGuff’s brow, and not just because of the desert heat. “Well, I hexpected more to be up for it, sir. I thought I’d have to whittle the candidates down, have a fight-off and interview all the finalists before I announced the winner.”
“You mean, the prospect of fighting our way through an impenetrable maze filled with monsters to find a portal that leads directly to a world containing more monsters wasn’t enough to bring forth a flood of volunteers?”
McGuff’s eyebrows creased as he worked his way through this. “Yessir,” he said, finally.
“Astonishing,” Chortley said, suspecting his irony was lost on his sergeant. “Well, I suppose we must make do. Who do we have here?”
McGuff pulled out a sheaf of notes, handwritten in very big letters. “Firstly, we have Private Enoch Epocyrpha, a senior member of the gaol infrastructure support staff.”
Epocyrpha smiled, revealing fewer teeth than the average hen, “Oh, I am, I am, your worship. And I wield a mean mop, so I do.”
From his filthy cap to his moth-eaten boots, Epocrypha was the very embodiment of scumbag. But he was one sixth of the cracked squad, so Chortley grunted an acknowledgment and moved on.
The next volunteer was either female or a man with too much hair in all the wrong places. “And who are you?”
“Private Angelini Ratbag, sir, previously keeper of the commander’s stool.”
“You mean you emptied the old commander’s potty?” Chortley asked with incredulity.
Ratbag shook her head and wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Oh no sir, I guarded the stool he put his foot on, of an evening,” she said, “gout, you know.”
“So, your military experience amounts to making sure a stool doesn’t get stolen?”
“Oh yes, sir, and I was entirely successful due to the fact that I sat on it.”
Chortley sighed and looked at the next candidate. Another dratted female, this one was short, wore a leather breastplate and carried a small axe.
“Lance corporeal Laxity Minissun. She’s a squad leader on the maintenance team and a dab hand with a clipboard.”
“And she’s a dwarf, I see,” said Chortley, looking down at the face glowering at elbow level.
“Very perceptive,” Laxity responded, “sir.”
Chortley decided that beggars, such as himself, couldn’t be choosers. “Welcome to the team, Lance corporeal.”
“And this is Thun,” announced McGuff, gesturing upwards.
Finally, a real warrior, thought Chortley. Thun was about half as tall again as an average man and built like a stone outhouse. He was dressed in a faded Crapplecreek uniform that was several sizes too small for him with the result that the jacket sat above his belly button and the hem of his trousers barely covered his knees. He carried a massive sword which hung from his belt.
“We have a man of action here, Mcguff,” said Chortley before looking up at Thun.
“Are you looking forward to the mission, Thun, my man?”
The warrior looked down. “Uh?”
“I said, I bet you can’t wait to get stuck into our task?” Chortley said, hope fading.
“Uh?”
McGuff gave a little cough. “Er, you need to speak pretty simple to him, sir,” he said, “like this.”
The sergeant looked up at the big man. “Thun want kill? Thun want beer?”
Thun roared his agreement, then immediately began looking round for opponents to slice up.
“Soon, Thun, soon,” McGuff said, patting the warrior’s arm. “He’s not the brightest star in the sky, sir, but he’ll kill anything you tell ‘im too.”
“I’ve always said that the last thing a regular soldier needs is brains, but I see my theory is about to be tested,” Chortley muttered. “Now, who do we have here?”
There was a sigh from McGuff.
“Pleased to meet you, sir, Jonathan Clegg, at your service,” said the next volunteer, sticking out a hand.
Chortley’s eyes narrowed. “You’re not a soldier at all, are you?”
“Technically I am, sir,” responded the lean, bald man, squinting through the thick glass of his round-rimmed spectacles, “I was adjutant to the former garrison commander.”
“I thought I recognised you,” Chortley said, looking the man up and down, “didn’t you draw up the commander’s death warrant?”
Clegg smiled. “I did, sir. And, if I may say, it was some of my finest work.”
“Perhaps, but calligraphy is hardly a lethal skill, is it?”
“Well, it is when you’re writing out a death warrant, sir.”
Chortley could see not a trace of a smile on Clegg’s face. Interesting. “Why on earth did you volunteer for this mission?”
“Oh, that’s easy, sir, the sergeant-major said that there might be an opening for an adjutant to your good self should I demonstrate the necessary fortitude.”
“Is this true, sergeant?” Chortley asked, turning to the horrifie
d NCO.
McGuff’s face had reddened even further. “Well, I just said you didn’t have no adjutant at present and Clegg here filled in the gaps.”
“That is simply not the case,” Clegg interrupted, “you were quite clear about it.”
Chortley held up his hand to silence them both. “Enough! Now, why are you so keen to be my adjutant? Perhaps you are looking forward to writing out my death warrant.”
Clegg, to his credit, held onto Chortley’s gaze. “Oh, only if it were absolutely necessary sir. And I can assure you, it would be a work of art.”
Chortley grunted and then looked at the last recruit. “A goblin?” he said.
“I is a kobold, sir, nothing like those nasty smelly otherworlders,” he said, pointing in the vague direction of the pen where the prisoners sweltered, “I has worked for the Crapplecreek garrison for many years.”
“In what capacity?” Chortley asked, with a sigh, “cesspit cleaning? Boot polishing?”
The kobold somehow managed to contort its face so that it looked even more revolting than before. Apparently, it was cross. “Now then, mister captain Fitzmichael, you is talking in stereos. Kobolds isn’t only good for shitty jobs, but kobolds do what they is told to do.”
“What is your role, then?” asked Chortley, taken aback.
The kobold puffed out his chest, causing his breastplate (or was it his skin?) to creak. “I is a cook, sir. I is the best garrison cook this side of Varma.”
“I’m sorry, you may be a cook but Maestro Minito is the acknowledged master. His Shepherd’s Pie is to die for. Mind you, I never met him and he’s certainly never been to Crapplecreek.”
The kobold smiled. “He is me. I was sent to Crapplecreek a week before big battle. I cooked boeuf bongolaise for you, remember?”
Chortley’s mind flitted back four months to a time when he was well fed and used to luxury quarters. He’d spent one evening in the commander’s quarters before stealing the staff from his idiot brother. And yes, the food had been delicious.
Trolls and Tribulations Page 9