Heroics for Beginners

by John Moore

  “Yes, sir.” The cavalry officer reflected on this. “Er, Your Lordship, how did you know . . . ?”

  “That they were destroyed at the last second? They each had a timing device that counted down the seconds. Very convenient little gadgets. They let you know just when the last second was coming up.”

  An orderly entered, carrying a pair of polished boots and a pressed uniform. He set the boots beside Logan’s cot and put the uniform away in a chest. A supply officer entered. “Sir, another mounted knight rode up and volunteered to join our force.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Logon looked exasperated. “Unless he brought his own provisions, we can’t take him.”

  “Sir, it’s Prince Bigelow.”

  “And he has his own provisions.” Bigelow stepped in behind the officer. “And his own horses.”

  “Does he have his own feed for his own horses?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do. You can’t keep me out of this one, Jack.”

  Logan shrugged in resignation. “No, I guess not. Okay, Sam, you’re in. That means you’re under my command, so you’ll have to start calling me ‘sir.’”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Pour yourself a brandy.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We’re storming a fortress,” said Logan. “Not breaking a line of infantry. I’ve got no use whatsoever for armored cavalry. But still they keep showing up, all those useless second and third sons of the nobility, desperate for a little bit of military glory, with their gleaming armor and fine chargers and servants that have to be fed. I’ve nothing for them to do, and they get in the way of the regular soldiers, but they’re too well connected to keep out. Happens every campaign.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Bigelow, who knew he fit that description well. He set the decanter back down on a folding wooden sideboard. The general’s tent was sparsely furnished. The bed was just a military-style cot. He had a small desk, at which he also took his meals on a tray. There was the chart table and the sideboard, and several chests of clothing. Logan’s sword hung by the bed. He did not wear armor. Bigelow took a swallow of brandy. “But it’s been a long and fruitless stay in Deserae, and I’ll be going home as a rejected suitor, with nothing to show for my time . . .”

  “I’ll see there’s some sort of campaign ribbon issued to all the knights.”

  “That’s all I ask. My servants can feed themselves, by the way.”

  “Good. There will be plenty of glory to spread around, but provisions are short. We did not get all our supply problems worked out before we had to leave.”

  “I thought Timberline was supposed to be good at that stuff.”

  “Timberline’s not here.”

  Bigelow looked surprised. “No?”

  “He’s still back at the castle. Prince Kevin Timberline of Rassendas,” and here Logan made no attempt to hide the dislike in his voice, “took to his bed at the first sign of danger.”

  “Beg pardon, sir?” Bigelow’s voice was a careful study in neutrality. The other officers, well aware of the competition for the Princess Rebecca, and naturally on the side of their commander, watched Bigelow carefully. “The Prince is ill, then?”

  Logan waved a hand. “Oh, all right, Sam. No disrespect intended to Timberline. I know you like him. I’m sure he really is sick.” Here Logan couldn’t keep the smirk off his face. “Lovesick, perhaps.”

  “Which reminds me to offer my congratulations on the upcoming nuptials, sir.”

  “Thank you, Sam.”

  “So you get the glory and the girl.”

  “One usually follows the other.”

  “And how is the Princess Rebecca taking this? I got the impression she was rather interested in Timberline.”

  “I didn’t get that impression myself.” Logan said, a bit stiffly. “I am assured by her father, though, that she will do her duty.”

  “Oh, I quite agree, sir.” Here Bigelow smiled. “Princess Rebecca certainly gives me the impression that she is a girl who will do her duty as she sees it. May I ask if you have spoken to her about it?”

  “I have not seen her. For security reasons, she and her retinue decided to retire to their summer castle.”

  “Ah. Very sensible.” Here Bigelow swirled his glass, held it to the lamplight, and studied it. “So the Princess is out of town and Timberline is closeted in his rooms.”

  “We’re well rid of Timberline, I think. We don’t need his sort on a campaign. He’s too much the diplomatic type. Too willing to talk, too willing to negotiate, too late to strike.”

  “Oh, yes.” Bigelow looked out, past the open flaps of the tent, out to where the bright sky met the deep green of the mountains, and the file of soldiers marching past kicked up little bits of gravel that went bouncing down the trail. “Too much talk, too little action. That sounds like Timberline all right.”

  Lord Volt meter placed his ring on a blob of sealing wax and put the letter in his out-box. He pushed back from the desk, putting his arms behind his head to stretch the kinks in his back. “Paperwork, Valerie,” he said. He looked ruefully at the pile that still remained in his in-box. “Can’t run an evil empire without it.”

  “No, my lord.” Valerie brought him a glass of wine. He took it from her hand and sipped it.

  “It’s the bane of the successful, Valerie. Now I give the orders instead of obeying them, and there are so many orders to give. When I first started it was just a question of following the rules. The dogs, for example.”

  “Dogs, my lord?” This was new to Valerie.

  “Before your time, my dear. It was an axiom that evil men kicked dogs, and if you wanted to be accepted as truly evil, you had to kick a lot of dogs. It sounds old-fashioned today, I know, but the guilds were quite strict about it. It was no easy feat. Sometimes I’d have to chase a dog for half a league before I could get a good kick in, and often as not I’d collect a bite on the ankle. But I kept at it until I met my quota each month, then exceeded it.”

  “Admirable, my lord.”

  “It wasn’t easy being evil, even as a schoolteacher. A lot of people think it’s just a question of picking out your geekiest students and giving them the highest marks, so the other kids will hate them even more. But it gets more complicated than that. Especially when you start moving up the ladder. There’s so much competition. There was the orphanage, for example. I suppose I’ve told you that story.”

  “Many times, my lord.”

  Voltmeter ignored her. “Even today, no man can be considered truly evil until he’s foreclosed the mortgage on an orphanage. Oh sure, some men have to get by with foreclosing on a family farm or an old widow, but they’ll never make it to the top. I knew that all the really famous Evil Overlords had foreclosed on at least one orphanage, and I was determined that I would join that elite group.”

  “Very noble, sire.”

  “The problem was getting my hands on an orphanage mortgage. The demand was high in the evil community, and speculators were bidding up the prices. I finally bought one at a horrendous price, a four percent premium over the real interest rate, and then what happened?”

  The Great Influenza Epidemic, Valerie said to herself. “What did happen, sire?”

  “The Great Influenza Epidemic. It mostly hits the very young and the very old, you see. I swear it killed off at least a third of the children in Angostura. So of course as soon as the parents got over their bereavement, they were snapping up orphans left and right. There I was, hemorrhaging cash, and the orphanage was making money hand over fist. It was two years before they started missing payments again. I tell you, Valerie, I nearly abandoned evil for good.”

  “Another glass of wine, my lord?”

  “No, thank you.” Voltmeter pulled his chair up to his desk again. “But you know, Valerie, some days I think those were the best times. Sure, I was young, and I was struggling, but I had a goal, a purpose in life. Every day was a new challenge.” He drew a blank sheet of foolscap toward him, dipped his pen, and began
to write. But he stopped almost immediately and continued his monologue. “Now there are so few challenges left. My enemies have been crushed, my plans are almost complete.” He stared at the paper without seeing it. “Just one man, really, stands in my way.”

  He snapped out of his reverie. “What are you holding there, Valerie?”

  “A sword, my lord. We caught another woman in the ventilation shaft today, and she was armed with this.”

  “A soldier?”

  “She claims to be a comic sidekick, my lord.”

  Voltmeter brightened. He turned to face Valerie, who was standing very straight and tall in her high heels, not exactly at attention, but not relaxed either. “A comic sidekick? Lord Logan’s comic sidekick, perhaps?”

  “I don’t think she’s anyone’s comic sidekick, my lord.”

  “Really? And what do you think she is?”

  “A barbarian swordswoman, my lord. She was carrying a barbarian’s sword.” Valerie handed the sword to Voltmeter. “And she’s wearing a barbarian swordswoman outfit underneath her riding dress. And finally, there is no way I will believe this girl is a comic sidekick. She can’t tell a joke to save her life.”

  Voltmeter slid the sword partway out of its scabbard, glanced at it incuriously, and slid it back in. He gave the sword and sheath back to Valerie. “I have no use for a barbarian swordswoman. Kill her at dawn.”

  “Yes, my lord.” Valerie turned to leave. But at the door she turned back. Voltmeter was bent over his desk and writing at high speed. “My lord, do all Evil Overlords have Evil Assistants?”

  “I suppose so, Valerie.” Voltmeter answered a bit absently. “Assistants and minions. Can’t do the job without them.”

  “Is the Evil Assistant always beautiful?”

  “Hmm? Oh, yes. I expect we always try to hire attractive young women. More status, you know. Impresses the other Evil Overlords. Anyway, it’s traditional.” Voltmeter folded the paper, picked up his stick of red sealing wax, and held it to the candle. “Remind me to order some black sealing wax.”

  “There’s never been an Evil Overlord with an older, slightly gray Evil Assistant?”

  “Not that I recall. What are you going on about, Valerie?”

  “Nothing, my Lord.” Valerie left, closing the door behind her.

  Kevin tried not to waste time. He didn’t know what Voltmeter had in store for Becky, or how she was being treated. He pushed his cart of brooms and brushes through the corridors, asking for directions as casually as he could, but it took him a long time to get to the dungeon. It wasn’t hard to find. Everyone knew where it was, and everyone gave the same directions: Go down. It was just that in the Fortress of Doom, with its numerous short staircases and twisty halls, down was a difficult course to steer.

  It was well into the evening before he found it. Outside, the stars were out. In the upper reaches of the Fortress, the lamps had been lit. In the sublevels, where the dungeon was located, the stairwells always had to be lit, with slow-burning candles set into niches in the walls. The door to the dungeon was guarded. Kevin passed by the door without paying attention to it, merely giving a nod to the guard, who nodded back. He went to the end of the corridor, turned the corner, and thought a bit.

  The door was barred. There was one guard. He had a battle-ax, but unlike the guards on the walls, the inside guards did not wear armor. Kevin thought he could take him out. Voltmeter’s men were reputed to be experienced mercenaries, but Kevin had the advantage of surprise. If it had just been a question of spiriting Becky out of the castle, he would have attacked right away.

  But there was still the Ancient Artifact to recover. Mercredi would have it waiting for him tonight. And Kevin didn’t know when the guards changed shifts. When the next shift discovered that Becky was gone, they would raise the alarm, and that pretty much precluded getting the Artifact back.

  He could get the Artifact first, then come back for Becky. But that was too much to risk, especially when he didn’t know how long they kept prisoners here. It would be terrible if he came back for her, only to find she had been taken away to be tortured, or even executed. Merely the thought of this made his throat constrict, and he pushed the idea out of his mind. Now that he was this close to Becky he was certainly not leaving her.

  That left, of course, the tried-and-true ventilation shaft method. They were certainly big enough. Kevin had once asked an architect why so many castles and fortresses were honeycombed with ventilation ducts big enough to crawl through.

  “They’re inside the fortress walls,” said the architect defensively. “It’s not like they’re a security risk. Once your enemy has breached the walls, you’re already in trouble. A little ductwork isn’t going to make a difference.”

  “Sure it will,” said Kevin. “If they breach the walls, you’re going to be fighting room to room. You still have locked and barred doors inside your fortress. What’s the point of barring the door if you’ve got a ventilation duct right into the room?”

  The architect took a deep breath and went into an involved lecture about minimum vent sizes, air velocities, pressure losses, convection currents, natural draft ventilation systems, and the Reynolds number for turbulent flow. Kevin privately thought he was making it all up, but didn’t argue any further.

  At least Voltmeter has the sense to booby-trap his ventilation ducts. If Kevin owned the castle, he would just have put locking grilles over the entrances. But he supposed that those would only slow your opponent down, not stop him. The enemy could still cut through the grilles. Booby traps gave Voltmeter a chance to show he was smarter than his adversaries, which was part of what being an Evil Overlord was all about.

  In any case, it took a long time to get into the dungeon. Kevin started out from one of the storerooms. The sight of it worried him. It was filled with barrels of salt pork, salt beef, and pickles. Other storerooms were loaded with crates of hardtack biscuit, bags of salt, and sacks of dried peas. It was standard fare for an army on the move, and Kevin, with a former supply officer’s experienced eye, knew that Voltmeter could either march a large force of men a considerable distance, or withstand a long siege.

  At least the crates gave easy access to the ceiling vents. But getting into the dungeon, even though it was only a few rooms away, turned out to be complicated. The ventilation ducts were even more devious and twisted than the hallways, and Kevin had to feel his way slowly, checking for possible trip wires and trapdoors as he went along. It was close to midnight by the time he reached the grille in the ceiling of the dungeon room.

  He got his first inkling of trouble when he heard voices coming through the grille. One was low and harsh. The other was high, sweet, and female. Someone was talking to Becky. That was good. It meant she was alive. It was also bad. It meant either the guard had come inside, or there was a guard outside and a second guard inside. Very slowly, with the utmost care, and in total silence, Kevin pulled the grille out of the ceiling and set it down inside the shaft. Very slowly, he lowered his head to the opening and peered out.

  The dungeon was lit by a single torch, made of rags soaked in oil, with an iron handle wrapped with cloth for insulation. It was set in a bronze holder that was bolted firmly to the wall. In the shadows thrown by the torchlight, he could see Becky behind an iron grille. She looked dirty and disheveled, and her blouse was torn, but she seemed otherwise unharmed. Her arms were chained to the wall, with her wrists above her head. A burly guard in a black-and-green uniform was leaning against the bars, talking to her. He had situated himself so he could get an optimum view of her cleavage.

  “No, missy,” he said. “It’s rabbi. Not rabbit. A priest and a rabbi walk into a bar.”

  “I’m sure the book said rabbit.”

  “It must have been a misprint. A priest and a rabbi. It’s an old joke.”

  The door opened, and a second guard came in. “Good evening.”

  “Get lost,” said the first guard. “I’m on duty here.”

  “I thought
I’d give you a break. Let you leave early.” The second guard edged up to the cage and smiled at Becky, showing a mouthful of yellow teeth.

  “I’ll leave when my shift is up, thank you very much.”

  “It’s shift change now.” The second guard was crowding the first guard, trying to get a better view. The first guard shoved him back.

  “The hell it is. Midnight hasn’t struck yet.”

  “Just trying to do you a favor.”

  “You can wait until shift change to do me favors. Outside. Wait outside.”

  “Listen, I hear the clock striking.”

  “You do not!”

  The door opened and a third guard came in. He was carrying a dented metal tray with four chipped enamel mugs. “Tea anyone?”

  “Get lost!” said the other two guards together.

  The third guard was trying to peer between their shoulders. He caught Becky’s eye and smiled. “Tea. You know, I was passing by the canteen, and I thought of you two down here in this damp, dank, dungeon, and I said to myself, ‘Wouldn’t those blokes enjoy a nice hot cup of tea.’”

  “I’m fine without it,” said the first guard.

  “Me too,” said the second. “Why don’t you just go back to the canteen and drink it yourself? Then take the kettle and stick it . . .”

  “Perhaps our prisoner would like a cup of tea?” interrupted the third guard, standing on his toes so he could look over their shoulders.

  “Thanks,” said Becky. “I’d love one.”

  “I’ll give it to her,” said the first guard.

  “But I brought it down here!”

  “Too bad. It’s my shift, and I’m responsible for the prisoner.” The first guard had his key in the lock already. He grabbed a mug off the tray.