The Adventures of Duncan & Mallory: The Beginning

by Robert Asprin

  “Delirious!” Humphrey stomped forward. “You’re delirious to think that even these dunder-headed imbeciles would believe that half-baked story you and that giant lizard came up with.”

  Bilgewater smiled and so did Sadie. Humphrey had just made a grand blunder. You didn’t call people you wanted to be your allies dunder-headed imbeciles. “Come on. Let’s get while the getting’s good,” Bilgewater whispered. Sadie nodded in agreement and started to follow him.

  “Sir, I must protest. This man is a hero. He no doubt saved your life,” the mayor said.

  “Saved my life!” Humphrey laughed. “Saved my life! I’m telling you it’s all a trick, a gag. He and that dragon are friends. Listen to me. He was never in any danger. You were never in any danger. Any fool could see that this man is no dragon slayer.”

  Bilgewater shook his head. Humphrey was digging himself a bigger and bigger hole.

  “How dare you, sir! Why you went up against the dragon yourself, and it looks like he tied you up to eat you later. What seems clear to everyone is that you, sir, can’t claim the reward money, so you don’t want Duncan to have it, either,” called out the woman who had cashed in on Duncan’s success.

  The mayor at that very moment put the bag of coins into Duncan’s hand.

  “Oh, come on, people,” Humphrey said. Then his eyes caught and held Bilgewater’s and he smiled. “You two tell them. You know it’s all a trick. Tell them.”

  Bilgewater took his time turning around to face the crowd, collecting his thoughts at the same time. “Sir…” He stopped there, finding that for possibly only the third or fourth time in his life he couldn’t think of anything to say. On the verge of panic he was saved by Sadie.

  “My partner can not find the words, because what this man did earlier was so despicable,” Sadie said.

  “What did he do, miss?” the mayor asked. Bilgewater very much wanted to know himself.

  “He came to us and said that he had tricked Duncan into believing he’d been eaten by the dragon because he had no intention of fighting the dragon himself. He had this idea that he would let Duncan kill the dragon, then show up and say he killed the dragon himself. But to make the lie believable, he needed us to back up his story. Then we could all split the money—he said that we’d make much more money if he, and not Duncan, killed the dragon. We were outraged and naturally refused. Clearly, this is a case of sour grapes because he can cheat no one.”

  “There is no end to the lies some people will tell to make a coin,” Bilgewater said, getting back in the game. “But I never thought I’d ever in my life see someone who would stoop so low as to go out of their way to besmirch the name of such a fine, upstanding hero.”

  “The man is the worst sort of cad!” the woman who had won the money said.

  The mayor turned to Duncan. “Didn’t you say he was a tinkerer?”

  “Yes, sir, but surely….”

  “String him up!” some man yelled.

  “We’re not going to string a man up over a lie, but I think a good tar and feathering is in order, people,” the mayor said.

  Before you could say ‘grab him,’ half the town had fallen on Humphrey. While they were busy carting him away Bilgewater and Sadie made a break for it.

  * * * *

  Duncan stepped off the porch and started walking away, feeling forgotten. Then suddenly someone was hanging from his neck and kissing his cheek.

  “Thank you, Duncan, thank you so much!”

  Duncan smiled. “It was my pleasure, Lucinda.”

  “Are you sure…are you very sure you can’t stay?”

  “I can’t. I wish I could.”

  “Maybe someday you could come back this way. When dragons stop chasing you and I have my own shop.”

  “Bet on it,” Duncan said. “Good luck, Lucinda, with everything.”

  “Good luck to you, dragon slayer.”

  * * * *

  Mallory had a good bit of trouble getting to the small clearing where he was supposed to meet Christina and Duncan without being seen. Even with his nifty cloak.

  It was now more important than ever that he not be seen by anyone since he was supposed to be dead, and it would have been in bad form to get caught walking around.

  Christina was sitting on a rock in the sun playing with a flower, spinning it around and around and counting. Mallory couldn’t even guess at what she was counting. She didn’t look happy. Her lips were turned down in a frown.

  When she saw Mallory she smiled big and ran over to give him a big hug. She stuck the flower behind one of his ears as he picked her up.

  “Now what were you so sad about?” Mallory asked.

  “I’m not going to see you again, am I, Mallory?”

  “No, I have to leave,” Mallory said, feeling some sad himself now. “Did you make the bet?”

  “The man wouldn’t let me,” Christina said with a shrug. “He said he couldn’t let a little girl make such a big bet.”

  “Oh that crooked s.o….”

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” Mallory said. “Oh well, give me the money back. I tried.”

  Someone walked up behind him. Whoever it was must have thought he didn’t hear them, but of course he did. He grabbed them with his tail, the person let out a yelp, and he put the little girl down. He let go of whoever was caught up in his tail and turned quickly around. There was a woman standing there.

  “I told you to tell no one, Christina.”

  “That ain’t no one, silly.” Christina laughed. “That’s my mommy.” She skipped up beside him and took hold of one of his clawed fingers.

  Her mother looked plenty scared, too, but she held the sack of coins out towards Mallory just as Duncan came stomping into the clearing saying, “What? Did you just tell the whole town?”

  “It’s just my mommy,” Christina said, looking up at Duncan.

  “I didn’t know where she was getting the money,” the woman started with a bit of a stutter. “We needed it so badly, but I didn’t want her stealing. And the story she told…. Well it was ridiculous, but I could tell she wasn’t lying and I…I just wanted to thank you. That little bit of money may not seem like much to you, but it means we’ll eat for the next week.”

  Mallory bowed his head humbly. “It was my pleasure. Well, Christina, I’ll miss you but we have to be going….”

  “Of course I don’t know what we’ll do after that,” the mother continued. “My husband’s an idiot really. Not a bad man, just a lazy dunderhead and a bit of a dreamer. Of course I guess we’ll find a way. We always do.”

  “I’m sure you will….”

  “Besides Christina we have twin babies, so no way that I can work. My mother-in-law lives with us, but she lost an eye playing darts at the pub last year and she’s always running into something these days. Then there is my sister-in-law. Did I tell you she has five kids?”

  “No, we really must be….”

  “She does—and only one leg. My brother, well he has her other leg, but it doesn’t work so good. My sister and her baby live with us, too, and the baby… Well I think it’s coming down with something and my sister keeps losing her glass eye…those are expensive you know… I wish my mother-in-law would give up darts. Every time it rains my sister’s baby get’s a cold. It might be allergies, but frankly I think it’s because her crib is under a drip. There’s just no place else to put it….”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “I can’t believe you gave them all our money!” Duncan groaned.

  “Me? You’re the one who gave them all our reward money,” Mallory said, sweeping his claws through the air in dramatic gestures. “I didn’t give away any more money than you did. Besides, I don’t think we ever would have gotten out of there if we hadn’t given them the money.”

  Duncan laughed in spite of himself. “Well it did seem they needed it more than we did. So do we have anything left from the last two jobs?”

  “I have a little hidden away but not much,” Mal
lory said truthfully.

  “Are you ever going to tell me where you hide it?”

  “I told you, if I told you I’d have to kill you.” Mallory smiled back.

  “Bilgewater and Sadie snuck away without giving us the fifty coins they promised us,” Duncan reminded him.

  “We got the full one hundred, so I imagine they decided they didn’t owe it to us. They did save us more than once back there.” He smiled. “I have the feeling it’s only a matter of time till we run into them again, and when we do don’t think for a minute I won’t remind them they owe us fifty coins.”

  “So…. We did all this work and we have nothing to show for it, yet I don’t really feel bad,” Duncan said.

  “I wouldn’t say we have nothing to show for it. There are a few things we have learned, and the next time we do this….”

  “Oh no!” Duncan shook his head and started walking faster down the road. “We’re going home, and then we’re putting some distance between this place and us before someone besides that numbskull Humphrey figures out what we did. We’re going to go to a big city and dock our boat. You’ll play cards, and I’ll watch your back.”

  “Hah! You spend more time drinking and chasing skirts than you spend watching my back,” Mallory said.

  “That’s my cover. It’s how I keep people from knowing I’m covering your back.” Duncan laughed.

  “Yeah, yeah but someday when we come back this way we’ll dust off this con and….”

  “Nope. I’m done being a dragon slayer,” Duncan said.

  “But why? I thought you liked being a dragon slayer…the love and admiration of the people…”

  “That I lie to over and over and over again. Then there’s the constant fear of getting caught in one of those lies. We did all of that, and at the end of it we don’t have any more money than we started with because we gave it all away.”

  “But wasn’t it fun?” Mallory asked.

  “What?” Duncan didn’t understand.

  “Come on. We aren’t completely broke. It was exciting, and we actually helped some people.”

  “We mostly did it to help ourselves. Parts of it were fun, but parts were terrifying and again…we’re mostly broke.”

  “Mostly only counts in fire breathing.”

  * * * *

  Two days later they walked into the harbor where their boat was docked.

  “My feet are killing me,” Duncan complained. “I can’t wait to get home, sit down in my new chair, and take a nap.”

  Suddenly Mallory stopped dead in his tracks. He backed up a step, looked down a street, and then started walking double time, taking hold of Duncan’s arm. “Come on, man. Let’s get going.”

  “What on Overlap! I’m not in this big a hurry to get home. Did you not hear me say my feet hurt?” Duncan said.

  “I just saw Humphrey. He looks madder than a wet setting hen… Well, exactly like a setting hen, actually, since he’s still mostly covered with feathers.”

  “So? I’m not afraid of Humphrey. The two of us can take him.”

  “First, must I remind you that I prefer to avoid violence? Second, you can’t fight your way out of a paper bag. And third, he was talking to the city police. Now I don’t know if what we did back in Wart Haven could get us in trouble here, or if they’d take a stranger’s word for it, but I’d rather not find out.”

  “How do you even know he’s seen us or that he was talking about us at all?”

  “I don’t know that he’s not.”

  “Point taken,” Duncan said. Mallory didn’t have to say more than that. Duncan sped up, and by the time they reached Demon Home they were both practically running. The outside looked fine, and when they boarded, except for a little dust, it was just as they’d left it, so the demon had obviously done a good job protecting the boat.

  That Fred hadn’t decided to trash their new stuff in their absence was a happy surprise for Duncan. If there had been time he probably would have hugged the comfy chairs they bought for the main room just before they left.

  “I’ll get the boiler going. You cast us off.” Mallory smiled suddenly. “I hear there’s a city not far down stream called Purn, where the card tables are hot and they make the best vegetarian shish-kabob in three sectors. I think it’s time for us to move on. What say you, partner?”

  “I couldn’t agree more, Mal.”

  Mallory ran to start the furnace as Duncan lifted the gangplank and started casting the boat off from the dock.

  He was getting ready to throw off the last line when a familiar voice yelled out, “Hold up a minute! Wait for us!”

  When Duncan looked up he could see Bilgewater and Sadie booking it down the dock.

  “You guys owe us money,” Duncan said, watching them through slitted eyes.

  “Ah, that’s what we’re here for, to give you your money,” Bilgewater said, and then he and Sadie jumped from the dock onto the deck of the boat.

  “Don’t try to con a con man, Bilgewater. We both know you’re here for the same reason we’re suddenly in such a big hurry to leave. You saw Humphrey talking to a cop,” Duncan said.

  Sadie sighed with relief then and said to Bilgewater, “And I thought we were running because that guy we ‘got’ our horses from said he was going to kill us.”

  Bilgewater cut Sadie a look, and she cringed a little. “Oops.”

  Duncan laughed and shook his head. “Sounds like you guys are in some deep horse crap there.”

  Bilgewater cut him a pleading look. “Come on, Duncan old man, you know how it is with issues of ownership. The lines can blur.”

  “Not really.”

  Bilgewater smiled appealingly. “Look, we had your back in Wart Haven. It’s not like we hurt the horses. We just used them for a while. It’s actually good for horses to be ridden….”

  “Now you sound just like Mallory.” Duncan laughed.

  “We’ll gladly pay you what we owe you, and of course we’ll pay for passage on your boat to some place downstream…. Or up. It doesn’t really matter where we go at this point. Away from here fast would be great.”

  “Demon Home isn’t just a name, the ship is haunted by a demon,” Duncan warned.

  “We’ve lived with worse, right, Sadie?” Bilgewater said quickly.

  “Well I’ve lived with you—that’s pretty bad,” Sadie said with a half grin.

  “What are you waiting for?” Mallory walked out on deck and glared at Duncan. “Come on, let’s get out of here before every cop and their dog is….” He saw Bilgewater and Sadie then, and as if he fully expected to find them there said quite calmly, “You two owe us money.”

  Bilgewater draped an arm over Mallory’s shoulders and led him back in the boat saying, “And as I was telling your partner we’re here to pay our debt to you and to pay you for the privilege of a trip in your fine boat.”

  Mallory cut Duncan a look and Duncan smiled and said, “They’re horse thieves.”

  “Horse borrowers,” Bilgewater said. “We returned them.”

  “I hear it’s good for them to be ridden,” the dragon said.

  “And seriously can anyone really own a living thing?” Bilgewater added.

  “Like peas in a pod,” Duncan said.

  “Rotten peas in a twisted pod.” Sadie laughed.

  He smiled at her, nodded in agreement and started for the bridge.

  He heard screaming, turned to see Humphrey and a couple of cops running down the dock, and he doubled his pace up the stairs. “Start the boat!”

  “Yes! By all means, start the boat,” Mallory said in near panic.

  “No, Mal, I wasn’t asking! I mean you turn on the steam to the motor, and I’ll go to the bridge and get us going.”

  “Gotcha,” Mallory said, and ran for the boiler room as Duncan ran the rest of the way to the bridge.

  * * * *

  Mallory flipped the switch that sent steam to the engine and hoped they had enough pressure…. Which they did, just barely. He hit the bo
iler with a blast of fire to hurry the process, careful not to set the boat on fire.

  The boat moved out of the slip slowly at first, then started to speed up.

  Mallory hurried to the main room and looked out the door. He got there just in time to see Humphrey dive off the dock and start swimming after them. For a second it looked like he might catch them, too.

  Suddenly Humphrey’s arms started flailing in the air as if he were grasping at something that just wasn’t there. Clearly his clothing and all those feathers had absorbed enough water that they were weighing him down.

  He went under and came roaring back to the surface yelling for help. Just as they hit their head of steam and started rolling down the river in earnest, Humphrey went down for the third time.

  The police, looking more annoyed than anything else, grabbed some boat hooks and pulled the struggling man from the water.

  “I’m going to get you, dragon! If it’s the last thing I do!” Humphrey screamed, waving his fists in the air and making it hard for his rescuers to fish him from the water. “You haven’t seen the end of me by a long shot!”

  “Jerk,” Mallory said. He closed the door to the deck so that he couldn’t hear Humphrey screaming and turned his attention to their “passengers.”

  “We will have to figure out a fair price for your passage.”

  “Of course,” Bilgewater said.

  “Accommodations are sparse, which is, of course, a pleasant way of saying that there are no beds in your rooms. There will be evening entertainment, which is a nice way of telling you that a small but very aggressive boat demon will be terrorizing you after dusk. Meals will be served at irregular hours, which means that, for a fee, I will cook whatever fish you can catch out of our toilet. Thank you for choosing Demon Home for your transportation needs.”

  As Mallory started up the stairs he could hear them laughing. Of course they had yet to meet Fred.

  He walked up to the bridge to get a better look at the dock. He checked to see if the police were going to send boats after them, or if they really had made a more or less clean get away.