The Horrid Tragedy of the Counts Berok: A Comedy Fantasy

by Galen Wolf

  "No, Zventi. I will tell you. Yes, it is as horrible as you imagine. Mavis, she… she… fell whilst watering the plants. You know how she loved those Daliahs. She leaned over too far and slipped. Her high heels caught in a hole in the rockery. There was nothing anyone could do. I heard her shout as she fell and ran to aid her, but before I reached her she had fallen in William's liquid manure and drowned."

  "William!" hissed Zventibold. "The old fool. I told him a thousand times about the power of that liquid manure."

  Turvius put a consoling hand on Zventibold's. "Don't blame William. He is your faithful man."

  But as the news of Mavis' death pierced Zventibold's mind, he looked horror struck. His eyes rolled. His tongue lolled in his mouth. His blood ran dry. His heart went ice. Then he seemed to calm down. He sat heavily on the dissection table, dislodging a feeding rat. He said simply, "I loved her, Turvius."

  "I know lad," replied the old sorcerer. "And so did I. In my own way."

  "I know that Turvius. And for her part she often spoke of you."

  "Fondly?"

  "Sadly not. But you were often on her mind. I want you to remember that in the difficult times that lie ahead."

  Turvius nodded, pretending he gave a shit. With that they went towards each other - to seek comfort in a mutual embrace. It was however in vain as their respective sorcerers' humps would not allow it.

  Zventibold began to weep. "Of everyone in the world, why should such a thing happen to one so sweet, so caring, so loving considerate and understanding?" He asked Turvius who could not have answered that question without laughing. In the end biting back his mirth, Turvius said, "I know Zventi. Try to calm yourself."

  Zventibold exploded. "Calm myself you say? From this time on I shall nevermore be calm. I shall do no good. Let all tenderness forsake me. Tenderness and compassion avail not in this world of cold bestiality and tragic occurrence."

  "Quite so, Zventi, but go easy on the bestiality. I don't think that word means what you think it does. And if it does, then we are all lost because there are lines that even I will not cross." But all the while he stroked his distraught son's hump and the gods looked on wonderingly.

  "Ai ye powers above that forsook my little one in the hour of her greatest need!!!! While she bubbled her last breaths through a sea of vile manure, did ye not look down? I curse ye! May your villainy me meted out to you a thousand fold! Aiiee, her death tears at my heart! The ignominy of William's liquid manure - innocent tool of garden fructification twisted to become a tool of your schemings and plots. I picture its vile brownness enveloping her craftily sculpted features. My darling Mavis! Its hideous wetness drowning her blonde tresses. I curse ye a thousand thousand times. Ye have taken from me all my pleasure, and I shall take pleasure no more."

  Turvius had been listening quietly. He interrupted. "Every cloud has a silver lining," he said quietly.

  "I beg your pardon," queried the lad.

  "It's an ill wind," ventured his father again.

  Zventibold shook with a suppressed rage."This is bordering on being insulting."

  "But think Zventibold, my fruit, what an appropriate subject for your researches into reanimation she would be. To have a fresh whole corpse - nearly whole at any rate. Mavis' corpse! To make her live again! To reanimate her!"

  Suddenly, Zventibold seemed captivated by the idea. For a while his fingers drummed wildly upon the wooden bench then he began, "You're right Turvius. Where is she? We must begin at once!"

  Turvius appeared troubled. "I think William put her in the garden shed, but I'm not sure. It could have been the compost heap."

  "In the garden shed? On the compost heap? Not the golden bier her nobility deserved?" Zventibold was aghast.

  "Well we didn't have a bier at that time, so I am plumping for the shed."

  "Tell William to fetch her posthaste. No, better still - we'll go out to get her."

  "I will go with you on that errand, son," said Turvius, bowing deeply.

  When they had managed to separate Mavis from the compost in which William had placed her, Zventibold noticed that her head was severely beaten. He mentioned this to Turvius. "You said she'd drowned!" He quizzed the sorcerer who looked uneasy and blew his nose. He took a long time to answer but then hesitantly said, "Drowned or slipped, I wasn't quite sure."

  "Surely there's a difference between drowning and slipping? Why is her head so mutilated?"

  "Look, I wasn't even there when it happened. I'm not sure." Turvius Sullius, arch-mage and one time horse doctor was flustered. It seemed that quite soon Zventibold would find out the truth if he pursued this penetrating line of questioning. Turvius's hand began to creep inside his cloak for his hypnotising watch when he was staggered by Zventibold's next question.

  "Was she murdered Turvius?"

  Suddenly a brilliant idea came to Turvius. "Yes, that's right come to think of it. I forgot to say that a large rock did hurtle through the air and strike her on the head. One or two in fact."

  "Why didn't you mention this earlier?"

  "It slipped my mind and anyway I didn't want to upset you. You were distraught enough at the thought of her having an accident. I didn't know what you'd do if you knew she'd been murdered by the Autocrat."

  "Ye gods can this be so?" Zventibold was physically shocked. That was obvious. He yelled to the sky, fists clenched. "Who will revenge me on this fat toad of an Autocrat? He has killed my love." At this he sobbed for a wee while and Turvius chose not to disturb him. Then Zventibold looked at him with grim desperation. "I will be avenged," he said.

  Turvius saw things were going his way and he chipped in. "And he killed your dear step father Zamborg!" At this Zventibold shuddered slightly. He had a vision of blood. Then his head cleared and he said, "Yes, yes. I suppose he did. I will have my revenge for this too!"

  Turvius was smiling broadly now. "And Zventibold, would you believe it - he wants to kill me too!"

  "He wants to kill you too, you say?" yelled the boy. "This is insufferable. We shall reward his arrogance. He will not meddle with two mighty sorcerers such as we and live to tell the tale!"

  "No he shall not!" shouted Turvius, adding his voice to the rising tide of fury." He was secretly jubilant how it was working out. He would have his revenge on his hated childhood adversary, the dreaded Axtos, and he would have it soon. Once again fate had rewarded him for being wholly evil.

  They walked back to the laboratory. "Clean her up and bring her as soon as you can, Willy," shouted Turvius as they left - Zventibold being too preoccupied with thoughts of revenge to recall the plight of his erstwhile love - at least for now.

  William hated being called Willy, but he buckled down to work, all the while wishing his beloved Nora was with him and was not a slave pleasuring the caravan masters of Ost.

  Zventibold paced the ill lit laboratory. His rapier brain was thinking on a plan that would realise his dark dreams of revenge. Soon he had it. He clicked his fingers to draw Turvius' attentions from the torso of a nubile young corpse. Though old, Turvius' desire for love had not completely dried up.

  "We have a number of corpses fully stitched," said Zventibold. "I was intending to show them as a dance team. They're in the downstairs pantry as the lab cold room was full. I have the requirements for nearly a hundred more. If we work at it, and buy some more thread, they should be fully operational in… what would you say?" He turned to Turvius.

  Turvius paused. "That of course depends on the number of individual bits." He used the technical term. "But if we get William to stitch as well, they should be ready in a week or so."

  "Three days!" yelled Zventibold.

  "I said a week."

  "Do you realise how hot the fires of revenge burn in my head?"

  Turvius did not know but he could hazard a guess that they were quite hot.

  "A week is too long," shrieked Zventibold. "I have a plan. If we animate the ones that are whole-ish already, then they can stitch the others while we go and get t
hread. It should make a substantial saving on time. And then in the dead of night we can launch an attack on the Imperial Palace."

  "What of Mabel, Zventibold, what of her?"

  "You mean Mavis?" Zventibold laughed long and loud. There was a fierce pride in his voice - a hot lust - a strange keening. "She! She shall be the first to reanimated. To live again! So that we can love again," his voice broke into soft sobs.

  Even Turvius Sullius, foul sorcerer that he was, seemed slightly dismayed at the idea and said, "No, I think that she would be best employed in the stitching and rebuilding of her fellow corpses. She was so caring in life, it's right that she should care beyond the grave too."

  Zventibold scratched his hump thoughtfully. "So no love?"

  "Not much."

  Zventibold smiled at a personal joke he was thinking of. Then he could contain it no longer. "Yes, she should stitch. You should see the fantastical job she made on my pajamas!" At this they both rocked with laughter. It was an in joke for sorcerers.

  13. The Attack

  Yet Zventibold had a plan; his plan was that the redone corpses would attack the palace. Although the Autocrat's soldiers far outnumbered the corpses, Zventibold counted on stealth, surprise and the sheer horror the living dead would instill in the mortal soldiery to bring about victory. He had sent Turvius with the corpse wagon to reconnoitre the situation.

  It was now very late and the shod hooves of the horse that pulled the corpse wagon clopped and sometimes sparked on the cobbles of the street that led through Piraktesh and finally up to the city square and the gates of Axtos's palace. As he approached the palace walls, Turvius could see darkness blacker than the faintly lit sky. This marked the turrets and crenellated walls standing out against a jeweled rug of stars. There were few lights in the windows - here and there a gleam stood out and above the gate was the flickering lamp that signaled the presence of guards in the watch room. The huge iron bound gate stood massive and silent. On the wall to the left a yellow light from a flaming brand glowed. Who knows if the guard saw Turvius and the death cart. Would he recognise the significance of the slowly turning wheels, the bowed head of its horse or the hunched, cloaked figure that held the reins? Not to mention the occasional limb that fell off it and lay silently on the cobbles - superfluous to its owner's needs now. Would the guard realise the threat that the death cart posed him and the one he guarded?

  Not at this point.

  The death cart had become a familiar sight late at night on the lonely streets of Piraktesh as it wended its way, collecting the luckless and unfortunate victims of tavern brawls. At first it had been Zventibold's order that no living people were to be collected. This much he owed to the humanitarian principles of his late step-father. But later in his quest for fresher corpses for his dance teams and suchlike he had told Turvius to take even living souls to furnish bodies for his hideous laboratory practicals.

  Tonight however there was no need for those caught out on the streets to worry. The poor gibbered in fear as they heard the sound of those hooves they had come to recognise. Little did they realise as they tried to press themselves into the gutters that were their home that Mick the Horse, who pulled the cart hated the smell of corpses as much as they hated the thought of becoming one. There was no malice in Mick.

  Rich merchants who caught sight of the death cart shuddered and turned away from the window, back to the arms of their plump wives, back to the well lit company of their endless parties.

  Turvius surveyed the wall, almost a mile of solid stone and impregnable masonry. The heavy double gate was also untakable without heavy artillery. Assault from this side would surely fail. But there was another way. On the other side of the Palace flowed the polluted and stinking River Szerkia. It was so wide and so poisonous were its waters that attack from that side would be impossible to mortal men. The defences there were correspondingly smaller. The wall was considerably less in size and then all that was between it and the river was the ornamental lawn and gibbets set piece garden as envisaged by the famous landscape designer Tartush the Wily. How well he, Turvius Sullius, sorcerer, fine diner and shoe fetishist, he - son of Srakosi the Indivisible (who had not proved such), remembered it and what had happened here all those years ago when he had been exiled by the boy Axtos. The humiliation he had suffered there under the Wilibongos was engraved on his memory. Soon he would be revenged on the hated Axtos. How easily their army of undead would swim the Szerkia, and how slowly, he, Turvius, would take the Autocrat's life. He had already planned out on parchment the form it would take: a slow lingering death by fork and maggot. The breeze ruffled Turvius' cowl. He was laughing slowly underneath it. "Ha ha ha," his laugh slowly went - chilling the blood of all that heard it.

  Zventibold's anger at Mavis's murder, and his mistaken belief that Axtos' men had committed it, meant that Zventibold would not delay the attack past the time by which all the corpses would be prepared. It would come tomorrow night. Turvius reveled in the thought for his hatred of Axtos knew no bounds. As he drove home, he mused to himself how all his treachery - deceit piled on deceit - had all worked out; he was glad he was evil. It seemed much more fun somehow.

  And the streets about him and Mick the Horse were empty, not a soul stirred as he drove the cart and scratched his hump in time with Mick's hooves striking the cobbles - the rhythm as if a death knell for Axtos. He hoped Zventibold had made his tea.

  When he arrived at the Palace Berok he dismounted from the cart and tickled Mick on the nose. He opened the tall ornate wrought-iron gates. William was not there. It was a good sign. It meant that he was probably cooking. Turvius made his way down to the lab. There in the flickering light was the gruesome sight of at least fifty or so oddly assorted and ill matching corpse stitching others of their kind into existence. The fifty completed corpses were complete only in the sense that they were endowed with the minimum of organs and limbs to make them sturdy fighters. Often ears were left off, and over in the corner a pile of severed genitalia lay. They had no need of those. Turvius thought the lab smelled faintly of musk.

  He could not see Zventibold. By the long table lay a stack of completed but lifeless corpses. Turvius wondered what had caused Zventibold to get so far behind with his work. Then he heard his son's voice raised as if arguing with someone who did not answer. The voice was coming from the laboratory's cold room, where up until final assembly the corpse bits were usually kept. Quietly Turvius opened the door. Two figures stood there. In the dim light it was possible to make out the small hunched figure of Zventibold. Zventibold seemed distressed. He seemed to be declaring undying love for the other figure. Turvius recognised the curvaceous body at once. It was Mavis's body although it appeared that it had been given the blunt and vicious looking head of a common thug. Turvius approached his son.

  "Come boy," he said, "don't be foolish. Mavis is gone and if you want to honour her memory, the only way you can do it is through killing the foul Autocrat, Axtos III. I have found a way we can lead an assault over the River Szerkia and this plan cannot fail."

  For the first time Zventibold spoke. "Fine words Turvius, but my heart has been shattered into a myriad parts. Will killing Axtos bring back my beloved Mavis to me?"

  "'Twould be false to deceive thee Zventibold so I'll have none on it. I'll not say nay. No - it will not bring her back but you cannot let her death go unavenged. Come with me! You must come! I will reanimate the rest of the corpses. You get the assault vehicle prepared. Your mother's old wedding carriage will do for that. Let the ones that won't fit inside hang off the roof." The fact that Turvius thought that one hundred odd corpses would fit into one carriage led Zventibold to doubt the solidity of his assault plan. Without further word however, the hideously deformed youth turned to do his father's bidding. As he walked, his boyishness showed through his acquired veneer of adult speech and manners and he did a little skip.

  Turvius went over to the resuscitating table, put on the safety goggles and began. Within half an hour t
hey were ready. It was three o'clock in the morning. He looked over to Zventibold. "Dang," he said. "I know I said we'd do it tomorrow. But I'm hot for revenge. What you say we attack tonight?"

  Zventibold looked thoughtful. He shrugged. "Time makes no difference to these our servants."

  Outside the cart and the wedding carriage both stood bedecked with corpses. The cadavers' eyes were a phosphorescent white, glowing. No noise came from them - they could not speak language though they could say "urrr". They understood simple orders such as "Kill! Kill! Kill!" and "Get out of the cart," but nothing more complicated. It was when they were getting ready to set off that they discovered their problem. The horses would not pull the carriage. Mick and his horse friend John had gone on strike. They neighed and stamped which in their horse language meant, "Not likely!". Turvius cursed Mick and John and threatened them with horse pie but they misunderstood. They thought he was offering it to them so they politely refused as they were sworn vegetarians. If they realised he had meant he would make them into it, things may have gone differently, but that is not how it was fated to happen. They stomped and rolled their eyes and in the end Turvius turned to the quivering Zventibold who was wrapped around the defaced Mavis in a mocking echo of his love.

  "Zventibold, we'll have to make them walk."

  "Who?" said Zventibold breaking away from caressing Mavis' lank hair, which was not hers at all but in fact that of a murderer. "The horses?"