The Adventures of Duncan & Mallory: The Beginning

by Robert Asprin

  One day he couldn’t stand to stay in his cubicle crunching numbers even one more day. He’d “borrowed” a bunch of the family firm’s money and gone to a casino.

  Mallory had been rolling high and making a bundle. Then Lady Luck had suddenly spit in his face and he hadn’t known when to walk away.

  “I was in line for a junior partnership with the family firm but I made some unfortunate investments and the firm lost money. They all blamed me even though it wasn’t my fault, so I left,” Mallory said and thought, It’s not my fault the dice kept rolling craps. And I was run out on a rail—that’s the same as “left,” right?

  “I felt it was wisest to strike out on my own. Help myself to…that is helping out those with financial problems.” You gotta pick a pocket or two, boy, ya gotta pick a pocket or two.

  ‘So you’re a financial expert huh?”

  “What is a financial expert except someone who knows how to take a little money and make it into a lot?” Mallory said, spreading his arms wide and almost losing the turnip he’d been eating.

  “But you don’t have any money right now, right? I mean…it doesn’t look like you have anything.”

  “Thanks for noticing.” Mallory frowned. He still had a few coins tucked back but only a few. Too many bad card games with cheaters better than me, Mallory thought but said, “Tarslick was filled with too many other financial wizards. There was no work for me, and I quickly ran through my funds so…as I said, it was time to move on.”

  “I didn’t do much better. I worked the whole time I was there and…” Duncan dumped the contents of his pouch into his hand and Mallory’s eyes lit up. “…this is all I have. Fifteen coins.”

  “It’s enough for a stake.”

  “But after you eat the steak, then what?” the human asked in a philosophical tone.

  Mallory laughed. “Not that kind of steak, my boy. Ah…a financial stake. Tell you what, Duncan my friend, we should pool our resources. With my brains and your capital our fortunes could be made.”

  Duncan seemed to think about it for a minute, wavering and unsure. Mallory sighed. “There’s safety in numbers and I know a bit more about the world than you do. As they say two heads are better than one. Of course I met a fellow with two heads once. They just kept arguing and head butting each other, and you wanted to look him in the eyes when you were talking to him, but I could never figure out which eyes. I tried looking in one eye on one head and one on the other but that gave me a headache”

  Duncan laughed and held out his hand. Mallory looked at it a minute. He knew what the human wanted—a handshake. To a human a handshake meant a deal made, a promise to be kept. Mallory looked at the human’s out-stretched hand and now he was the one thinking about it for a minute. He’d never made a deal with anyone, at least not one he meant to keep. Something told him that if he made a deal with Duncan and backed out, he’d have guilt. On the rare occasions Mallory had felt guilt he didn’t like it. He didn’t like it at all.

  But he was tired of being alone, and for some reason he liked this human, felt a bond with him, a kinship of sorts. Just as it looked like Duncan was about to withdraw his hand Mallory grabbed it and started pumping it up and down. “It’s a deal then. We’re partners.”

  * * * *

  That night Duncan slept with his back against the dragon and he wasn’t worried at all about something sneaking up on him. Let them come if they dared.

  They made a breakfast of turnips, washed down with a tea made of some lemon grass he’d found in the ditch alongside the road the day before. They drank it from the pans he’d made out of his knee cops.

  “These are quite nice,” Mallory said, holding one up to check out the craftsmanship. “And you say you made these out of your armor?”

  “Yep.”

  “And your fire cover?”

  “It’s my chain mail shirt and one of my leggings,” Duncan said, smiling. “My father would give birth to a cow if he saw it. How far is the next town?”

  “No idea,” Mallory said as he chewed on an entire turnip. “I’ve never been this way before. Which is good.”

  “Why?” Duncan asked.

  Mallory laughed nervously then stammered out, “No reason really, I just like to go to new places and see new things.”

  Duncan nodded. A few minutes later as they were packing up he, remembered that the dragon had nothing.

  He wondered why he’d made a deal with Mallory at all. After all he had only the dragon’s word that he was good at anything, and he had nothing in the way of possessions to bring to their partnership.

  It wasn’t till they started down the road that Duncan remembered why he’d shaken the dragon’s hand.

  A simple, black, one-passenger, steam-powered car came popping down the road at their back. Upon seeing them the car swerved, giving them a wide berth, and sped away.

  Duncan smiled. No one was going to mess with him as long as he was traveling with the dragon.

  They hadn’t gone far when there was a sign by the side of the road that read “Casia 10 Miles.”

  “Ten miles.” Mallory sighed. “I’m getting so tired of walking.”

  “Me, too. My feet have never hurt so much in my life. Have you noticed that if you pick something you see in the distance and say, ‘I’m going to walk till I get to that rock,’ every time you look it’s the same distance away…”

  “So you quit looking and then you wind up passing it without stopping,” Mallory finished.

  “Exactly!”

  Mallory shrugged. “Nope, never noticed that.”

  Duncan looked at him in confusion, but shrugged it off as the dragon’s strange sense of humor. Something caught his eye and he turned, only then realizing that the road was now beside the river.

  “Well I don’t like that.”

  “What?” Mallory asked.

  “The river’s right there.”

  “So?”

  “Nothing really except the river almost killed me.” Duncan found himself telling Mallory everything that he’d been through that he hadn’t already told him.

  “I can see why the river makes you a little uneasy. Of course this road sticks pretty close to the river. Since the Sliding River goes all the way around the world—several times actually—it’s the best way to know where you are in relation to where you were.”

  Mallory seemed to think about what he’d just said, then nodded his head and went on. “Most towns and cities are built along the Sliding. The river is still the best way to get around. Unless you have a captain with no sense of humor who throws you off the boat and makes you swim ashore… At least that’s what I heard.”

  Mallory started to weave tales of his own travel. He spoke of everywhere he’d been and all he’d seen and done and it was easy to see that he had more knowledge of their world than Duncan did. Especially since Duncan’s experience was mostly being nearly killed half a dozen times and run off by everything from Centaurs to freakishly strong little people.

  A couple of wagons passed them as did a few of the steam cars Duncan had seen everywhere in Tarslick. All swerved further around them than they had to, and none of them offered to give them a ride.

  Every time the dragon stopped in his story telling to jump around with his thumb out asking for a lift it seemed to make the vehicles that passed them in a haze of dust and fumes go faster. As they zipped past, Mallory would wave his fist in the air and say to the back of the vehicle, “Who needs you any way!”

  By the time the third vehicle had left them in its dust Duncan joined the dragon in his strange ritual.

  “Doesn’t that just beat all!? Doesn’t anyone want to help out their fellow creature anymore?” Mallory added as yet another car whizzed past them. “It’s discrimination I tell ya.” Mallory continued in a nearly inaudible mumble, “You know what the problem is?”

  He didn’t give Duncan a chance to answer.

  “Well I’ll tell ya. It’s that we’ve been misinterpreted in the press. Just
because generations of my kind have sacked villages and eaten their livestock, is that any reason to condemn a whole race? When’s the last time you saw or heard of a dragon sacking a whole village? Or even taking off with a single sheep? Yet they show the same pictures over and over again. Dragons torching huts, taking off with some farm animal or other tucked under each arm.”

  “Look, every race has its problems. Humans are ugly and stupid—nothing personal—yet you don’t see me treating them differently from everyone else. A mark is a mark. I don’t care what race they are; their coin is all the same to me. I never discriminate.”

  “What’s that you said? Humans are ugly and stupid?”

  “They smell funny, too. That’s not the point, the point is… Well I sort of forgot… Oh yeah… Would it kill someone to give us a ride!” He yelled towards the back of a green car as it raced past them.

  Mallory talked a lot and Duncan talked a little and soon they had reached the outskirts of Casia. It was a medium-sized town with every bit as mixed technologies and peoples as Tarslick had. Dirt roads mostly, with some brick buildings, but mostly clapboard houses with tin roofs. It wasn’t very big and there wasn’t a lot of anything.

  “We need a tavern,” Mallory said, straightening to his full height and looking around.

  “Why?”

  “Why not?”

  That made as much sense as anything else, so he shrugged and followed Mallory towards a wooden building with a tin roof and a covered porch across the front. There was a sign that glowed with a pink light. Of course he had no idea what it said since it wasn’t written in his language.

  “Here’s something I don’t get, dragon. Why does everyone speak the same language but write it in so many different ways?”

  “I asked my father that once.”

  “What did he say?”

  “‘I don’t know! Get back to work and quit asking stupid questions. I wish you’d died in your egg!’” Mallory yelled, then calmed down. “Dear old dad.”

  There was a large, pink bird on the sign, so he guessed the name of the place had something to do with the bird. On the door it said plainly in a language he could read, “No one under eighteen years old or thirty-two inches tall.” He didn’t even have to wonder why after his run-in with the little people in the dead forest.

  “All right, partner, here we are. Give me ten of your coins.” Duncan was reluctant to do so. He’d worked hard and suffered a lot of humiliation for that money. “Come on, Duncan. I’m the financial brains in this partnership, remember?”

  Duncan took off his pouch, counted out the coins, and handed them to the dragon.

  As Duncan and Mallory ducked to enter the bar, they could hear the normal noise Duncan had long ago learned to associate with such an establishment, but as soon as they were spotted there was dead silence. Duncan at first wondered why and then laughed to himself because he had quickly forgotten that his traveling companion was a seven-foot-two-inch, blue dragon.

  “I’m a vegetarian,” Mallory announced, and the whole room started talking again. “Discrimination I tell ya,” Mallory mumbled toward Duncan.

  He just nodded silently.

  They walked on into the bar, and Mallory’s gaze immediately fixed on a table towards the back of the bar. Several creatures of different races and species were playing some sort of card game. From the pile of coin in the middle of the table Duncan knew they were gambling.

  He’d seen people play the same sort of game in the tavern in Spurna.

  Mallory rubbed his hands together and whispered. “Now you just go to the bar and get yourself a drink. This shouldn’t take too long.”

  “I don’t know, Mal, I’ve seen men lose an entire month’s pay playing games like that.”

  “Just put your trust in me, Dunc.” Mallory didn’t give him much choice. He just walked away.

  Duncan shrugged, walked over to the bar and sat down. He took a stool close to the end.

  “What will it be?” the bartender, a tall, thin, blue creature wearing only a loin cloth and a tie, asked.

  “A beer, please,” Duncan answered, trying not to stare at the guy whose face was longer than his body. He looked around the bar. Except for the bright lights everywhere and the wooden floor—instead of packed dirt—and the many different species present at the tables, it could have been the tavern in Spurna. It was just as dirty and loud for sure.

  Duncan’s eyes were drawn to the one thing in the room that was decidedly different—a large cage in the corner that contained a small spider monkey. There was a sign on the cage that of course he couldn’t read. When the bartender handed him his beer Duncan asked pointing, “What’s the sign say?”

  “It says pin the monkey and win a hundred coins.”

  Duncan looked at the small monkey. “That monkey?”

  “Yep. No one’s ever done it.”

  “That little monkey?”

  “Yes, that little monkey,” the bartender said with a smile. “It costs you five coins to try. You want to take a chance?”

  That was everything Duncan had left after giving most of his money to Mallory. Since they were partners it seemed like he should ask the dragon before making such an investment.

  He looked at the monkey again. It sat on a shelf half way up the side of the cage with its back to Duncan, eating something it held clutched in its two hands. It looked like a timid creature. How much of a gamble could it be? Surely he could pin the monkey in no time flat and collect all that money and… If it was that easy why hadn’t anyone else been able to do it? Why would the bartender be willing to risk a hundred coins?

  He ordered a sandwich to eat and then another beer. He drank the beer, ate the sandwich, and ordered another beer without a sandwich and then another and then… Well, the more beer he drank the smaller and more timid that monkey looked.

  The real problem being that if he gave the bartender five coins to try and for some strange reason he couldn’t pin the monkey he wouldn’t be able to pay his tab.

  He looked around the room and found the dragon happily playing cards. He was smiling, so he must be winning. They were partners. The dragon was playing with his money. So even if he couldn’t pin the monkey, which suddenly seemed inconceivable, Mallory could cover his bar tab.

  Another beer later it became impossible for Duncan to believe for even a minute that he couldn’t pin the tiny monkey. It looked insignificant, maybe even frightened. He emptied his pouch into his hand and handed the bartender his five coins. “I’m going to pin that monkey,” he announced.

  The bartender smiled. Then he yelled to the customers in the bar, “We have a taker! Someone is going to try their hand at pinning the monkey.”

  There was a small stampede towards the cage as the bartender led Duncan over to it. The closer to the cage they got the smaller that monkey looked.

  “There’s only one rule,” the bartender said. “Whatever you do, don’t punch the monkey in the face.”

  “All right,” Duncan said. That made sense. What sort of brute would punch a tiny monkey in the face?

  As he entered the cage he heard a familiar voice say, “That idiot.”

  The dragon’s statement did not build his confidence, but it was after all just a tiny monkey.

  What happened next happened so fast Duncan would have trouble remembering it in full detail later. That monkey threw down the piece of bread he’d been eating, stood to his full height and screamed at its opponent, shaking its fists at him. All of which he thought was sort of funny till he lurched forward to grab the monkey and pin it and the enraged creature jumped from the perch, popped Duncan in the nose, and landed on the roof of the cage hanging there and screaming at its victim.

  Duncan held his aching nose. He couldn’t see. His nose was bleeding. As his vision began to clear he could see Mallory through the cage bars surrounded by the other bar customers. The dragon frowned and shook his head. Duncan took that as a very bad sign.

  He was going to pin that monk
ey if it was the last thing he did. He jumped up and grabbed one of the monkey’s legs. The monkey let go and as Duncan’s feet touched the floor the monkey grabbed Duncan’s head, jerked its leg free, and kicked him in the gut with both feet. Then the little sucker began jumping from one side of the cage to the other, punching and/or kicking its victim with every pass until not only was Duncan no longer sure he could pin the monkey, but he wasn’t at all sure that he was going to make it out of the cage alive.

  The monkey stuck its tongue out at him. It clung to the side of the cage waiting to attack again. It looked bigger by the second.

  As far as he could see he had only one option. He had to punch that monkey in the face. Since it was the one thing you weren’t supposed to do it must be the only way to win.

  He waited for a moment when his back kept anyone in the room from seeing the monkey or what he was doing and then he took his shot. He hit that monkey square in the face. The monkey shook its head and he prepared to grab and pin the beast. But just as he thought he was about to taste triumph that swirling hairball of death jumped right on his head. Obviously unhurt it started trying to beat its hapless victim to death.

  * * * *

  Mallory had been making a killing playing five card stud. He’d already made five times what he’d come to the table with and was feeling particularly lucky. When he heard the announcement he cringed. Not only were all the other players leaving the table to go watch, but it was his stupid partner who’d entered into the ridiculous bar bet. He wanted to wring the idiot’s neck himself. He picked up his earnings and went to watch with the rest of the bar’s patrons.

  Mallory looked at the sign and the tiny monkey and then he looked at the size of his partner, and just for a second he thought maybe this wasn’t such a bad deal. Then as Duncan entered the cage and the monkey challenged him, Mallory knew it was a really, really bad idea.

  Mallory was just enough taller than the rest of the patrons that he could see every inch of the cage and he saw Duncan try to win by hitting the monkey in the face which… Well since it was the one thing he was told not to do, meant it was the one thing the bartender wanted him to do.