The Dotard

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The Dotard Page 1

by Greg Curtis




  The Dotard

  Greg Curtis

  The Dotard

  Greg Curtis

  December 2017

  Ebook Edition

  Cover Design:

  The cover art is by Dimitri Elevit at SelfPubBookCovers:

  https://www.selfpubbookcovers.com/DimitriElevit

  Acknowledgements:

  As always this book is dedicated to my family for their love and support over the years. I could never have written a single word without them.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One 5

  Chapter Two 20

  Chapter Three 25

  Chapter Four 40

  Chapter Five 47

  Chapter Six 55

  Chapter Seven 63

  Chapter Eight 67

  Chapter Nine 73

  Chapter Ten 78

  Chapter Eleven 82

  Chapter Twelve 89

  Chapter Thirteen 96

  Chapter Fourteen 101

  Chapter Fifteen 106

  Chapter Sixteen 113

  Chapter Seventeen 119

  Chapter Eighteen 122

  Chapter Nineteen 129

  Chapter Twenty 135

  Chapter Twenty-One 141

  Chapter Twenty-Two 148

  Chapter Twenty-Three 154

  Chapter Twenty-Four 163

  Chapter Twenty-Five 170

  Chapter Twenty-Six 174

  Chapter Twenty-Seven 179

  Chapter Twenty-Eight 185

  Chapter Twenty-Nine 193

  Chapter Thirty 199

  Chapter Thirty-One 209

  Chapter Thirty-Two 211

  Chapter One

  The beams were heavy and lifting them on to the back of the steam wagon was hard work. So hard in fact that Edrick thought he could feel his back giving way at one point. Still, with some heavy hide gloves for grip, a good technique and a lot of swearing, he was able to get them on to the flat bed one by one.

  The mill owner's workers weren't helping. Or rather, none of them were save one – the new boy who could barely have stood five feet tall and weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet. The rest were just standing around, watching and laughing at his efforts. Occasionally they would call out some useless advice. Things like “lift with your knees” and “don't slip”. Edrick wasn't sure whether they were laughing at him or the boy – but he didn't appreciate it either way.

  “You know Vard, I paid you good silver for this load. The least you could do is get these wastrels to help me load it up!”

  Sadly, he knew even before the big man answered him, that he wasn't going to help. He was too busy laughing, his great belly heaving like waves on the ocean. It turned out he was right.

  “I am! I've got my best man on the job!”

  Edrick grunted a few choice curses at the mill owner, while the “best man” broke into a smile for a few happy seconds – until he realised he was being mocked. But he was only a kid. It took him a few seconds to catch on. Still the boy gamely struggled on, lifting the end of each twenty-four foot beam up with Edrick until it was sitting just on the edge of the loading bed, and then rushing around to the other end to lift it and push it the rest of the way on to the bed. Slowly, beam by beam, they were getting it done.

  Edrick wished he could have used his magic to help them. But that would have revealed too much about himself to the people around him. A man with his own personal steam wagon was odd enough. But it was an old machine, cut down from a full train, so it didn't mark him as coming from a noble or rich family, something he was keen to hide. Besides, he had the excuse that as a miner he had to move tons of rocks from where he quarried them. People understood that. But add magic in to the mix, and people might start asking questions about him. There weren't many people in the realm with both magic and their own personal steam wagons.

  The stories might get back to his father, something Edrick really didn’t want as it would quickly lead to an unwanted marriage between him and Gerta Banner, a woman of immense stature and age – and that was being polite. Really, although arranged marriages were normal, marrying him off to a woman thirty-two years his senior and more than twice his girth to cement a trade alliance was asking a bit much! He didn't want to be married at all. He was only twenty eight. And he especially didn't want to be married to a sixty year old woman who was grossly overweight. Though actually she'd been fifty when he'd run away – and he'd been eighteen with his whole life ahead of him. Now she'd be sixty. And he was still only twenty eight! That was not happening! Damn the family alliances!

  And yet it occurred to him as he struggled with the next beam, that as a noble born brat, even as far down the family tree as he was, there had been some advantages to his status. For a start he'd never have had to lift heavy beams on to the back of a steam wagon. In fact, Vard and his people would have busted their own backs loading the wagon for him as fast as they could while he could have sat and watched. Sometimes he missed that.

  “You know, next time I'm going to Derrin!” Edrick threatened Vard. Though actually Derrin was no better. The owner of Coldwater Cuts was the spitting image of Vard – except that he might have actually been a little fatter. They were so alike they could have been brothers. They also both had the same poor sense of humour.

  “His wood’s wet,” Vard replied casually, the pipe hanging out of his mouth and almost threatening to fall to the ground. He wasn't worried. Not about Edrick's threat and not about his pipe finally falling either. But then he had little reason to worry. His only competition in the town produced timber that wasn't nearly as good – and he knew it. And if his pipe fell out he'd just pick it up and stick it back in his mouth. A little dirt didn't bother him.

  A long time ago when Edrick been just another noble born brat he would have dealt with the man harshly for his insolence. He would have simply called the guards and had him taken away. A night in the cells would have quickly set Vard right. Some of his friends would have gone further, perhaps even accusing him of theft, thus ensuring the big man was flogged. It wouldn't have mattered whether he'd done something or not. The word of a noble was law. Most days Edrick didn't mind having given up his past life. And he would never have had a man flogged for no reason. Still, he sometimes daydreamed about how much easier his life had been. And it would have been good to tell the man who he really was and then watch Vard jump to do his bidding!

  “Wood dries! And customer service gets remembered!” Unfortunately, Edrick knew the big man was right as he struggled with the next beam. Wet wood bowed when it dried. It was also even heavier to lift.

  “Balls!”

  “What?!” For a moment Edrick thought Vard was mocking him for his threat. But then he realised that the man's eyes weren't on him. They were focussed on a point further down the street behind him.

  Edrick turned around to see what had caught his eye. “Oh crap!” Suddenly it was Edrick's turn to curse.

  A little girl was walking down the street toward them. She didn’t look like one of the locals, and her dress suggested that she wasn't from around these parts. For starters, the white cotton dress she wore had been festooned with flowers – something that simply wasn't done in Coldwater. She was barefoot too on a street made of cold cobbles and covered in dirt. Her mother would have been beside herself at the sight. But that wasn't what made him curse. Nor was he shocked that her long golden hair fell freely in cascades of curls all the way to her knees rather than being neatly tied back as was customary. He'd never seen a child with hair that long before, but it wasn't enough to shock him.

  He also thought there was something slightly odd about her face. Quite what it was he couldn’t say – the shape of her eyes perhaps – but she looked different from the townsfolk. But that wouldn't have torn a curse from
his mouth either.

  It was the wings that made him swear. Big, white feathery wings that were actually larger than she was.

  As he stared at her, Edrick's thoughts kept spinning around in circles. Who was she? What was she? Where had she come from? Because the one thing he knew was that while this world had many different peoples, none of them sported wings. And why in all the hells was she walking down the street towards them?! Nothing about her made any sense.

  But eventually an answer came. Or rather, a name.

  “Wilberton!” Edrick groaned as his thoughts suddenly clicked and he realised what must have happened. “What in all the hells has that fool done now?!”

  “What?” Vard asked.

  “It's bloody Wilberton!” And Edrick knew he was right. If a strange girl with wings was walking down the street, it had to be his doing.

  Wilberforce Wilberton, or the “Master Wizard” as he called himself. Member of the Guild of the Arcane. Master of the Occult. And a walking magical disaster as far as Edrick and most of the townsfolk were concerned. It was a shame. Once he had been a great wizard. One of the most knowledgeable and powerful around. Bards had made up songs about him. Stories had been told. But that had been many years before. Age had caught up with him, and the man was in his dotage. That would be sad in anyone else's case. But in a man with magic as powerful as his at his fingertips, it was a disaster.

  “How do you know?”

  “Of course it's him! It's always him!” Edrick raised his voice a little. “Have you forgotten the frogs?!” Of course the man hadn't. No one was going to forget the frogs in a hurry.

  “No!” Vard shuddered at the mention of the little beasts.

  Edrick wasn’t surprised by his reaction. The little accidents like accidentally dropping cows on houses and leaving a few people unexpectedly bald, could be pushed aside and forgotten. Even laughed at. But the plague of the little green hopping monsters had driven the entire town to the edge of their wits. They'd been everywhere. And they'd kept coming. They'd got into peoples' places of work and their houses. They'd been on the roofs and in the wells. And they'd been right through the fields and the gardens. In the end you couldn't take a single step without standing on one. And the endless croaking had meant that no one had slept for weeks.

  “Well,” Vard said slowly, trying to look at the positive, “at least there's only one of her.”

  “Are you sure about that?” Edrick responded caustically. Because he knew Wilberton too well by now to imagine that only one winged girl had been brought here. When the wizard made mistakes, they tended to be of a certain scale and he doubted that this winged girl was the only one now walking the streets of Coldwater.

  “And there was only one green too!” Edrick reminded him. That had been another of the wizard's little misfires. Turning the town green. Well, actually he hadn't turned the town green; he'd turned the air green instead. From the moment you entered the town, all you could see was green. Green buildings, green streets, green mud, green water in green taps and of course a green sun in a green sky. At least that had been a short-lived disaster. A couple of days.

  “And don't forget the ducks!” one of the workers called out.

  “Oh, Gods no!” Edrick shuddered at the mention of the ducks – or the “Quacks of Doom” as they'd been called. Everyone did. They'd all been desperately trying to forget the ducks since the previous summer when the wizard had miscast his latest spell. But that he suspected wasn't going to happen any time soon. The little beasts had robbed everyone of most of their reason. Because for some reason every time they'd opened their beaks and let out a quack, the sound had left everyone on the ground, covering their ears and writhing in terror. The sound had been truly blood curdling. People had fled the town. Those who couldn't had locked themselves in their homes and prayed. It had been like that for an entire week.

  The moment the mill worker mentioned the damned ducks, everyone looked at the winged girl with new eyes. And then they started backing away as she came closer. They were big, strong men, but Wilberton's misfiring spells had a way of destroying even the strongest.

  Edrick wanted to do the same, but somehow managed to control his fear. She looked so harmless. And she was just a girl! But then so had the ducks – until they'd opened their beaks. Even now he knew a moment of dread whenever he saw one, and it had been over a year since that spell had been miscast.

  By the time he was able to tear his eyes off the winged girl and turned around, it was to find that he was standing in the street on his own as Vard and his men had made for cover. Even Vard’s “best man” had found somewhere to hide. Apparently the boy wasn't that slow after all. Nor it seemed were the rest of the people of Coldwater. He suddenly noticed that doors up and down the street had been closed, and there were faces staring out of windows. Worried faces.

  “Dung!” He cursed once more as he realised he'd been too slow. But then, he didn't live in town and he didn't have a door to hide behind. And while he could have followed Vard’s men in their bid for cover, something in him rebelled at the thought of running from a child.

  Having said that, he still felt completely vulnerable. So instead he whispered a quick prayer to Sirtis and waited. And he told himself, she was just a little girl. She couldn't be that dangerous. But even if were to lose his nerve now he couldn’t leave. His legs seemed to have suddenly frozen, no doubt because all he could think about as the girl approached were the damned ducks. And so it was that he was the only one left to greet the girl as she approached.

  “Hello?” The greeting came out of his throat as more of a squeak than an actual word.

  “Sesh waarn?” She stared at him with worried eyes.

  Edrick flinched, and thought for a heartbeat about diving underneath the steam wagon. He only kept himself from doing it when he realised nothing terrible had happened. No fireballs were heading his way. No cows were about to land on him. Then, after carefully looking around and checking that nothing else was advancing on him, he straightened up and tried to look a little more in control of himself. Like a man instead of a frightened mouse. The winged girl meanwhile stared at him in confusion, no doubt wondering why he looked so worried. But at least she hadn't quacked at him! Or turned the world green! Or done any of the other nightmarish things that Wilberton's other misfiring spells had done. That helped.

  “Ah, do you speak Common? Or Rivernian?” Once he'd recovered the wit to speak he tried once again to communicate. The only response he got however was more of the strange tongue. He guessed that that was his answer. But then why would he have expected anything else? This was Riverlandia. There were no winged people here. Not a single one of the hundred million or so who called it home, had wings. Nor in the realms that bordered it. There were none in the entire world as far as he knew.

  “So, I guess that answers that then.” Edrick spoke more to himself than to the girl who clearly couldn’t understand what he was saying. “And I guess you also don't know where you are, where you came from or where your mother or father are?” He sighed quietly, realising that she was lost. Why else would she come up to a stranger? Or for that matter be wandering alone in a strange town? That left him with one option. He needed to bring her to the one man who might be able to fix this. Personally though, he thought the chances of Wilberton doing so were small. He doubted the man had any idea of just how he’d made this latest mistake. The man was a dotard!

  “Shite! Why me?!” Edrick cursed himself under his breath. But he knew he had no choice. So, he took off his heavy leather gloves, dropped them on the bed of the steam wagon, and reached out a hand for her. She was just a little girl, he told himself. Surely she couldn't be that dangerous? Even so a tiny part of him still worried as she walked the last few steps to him smiling shyly, and then took his hand.

  It felt like a normal hand. Small, soft and most important of all, harmless. Nothing terrible had happened when she'd touched him. That fact helped him calm his nerves. Enough that he could find
his voice – even if it was a little squeaky – and talk to her.

  “Alright … um … I don't even know your name. I'm going to take you to see the wizard. And with a little luck, he'll be able to find your mother and father.”

  “I'm Edrick by the way.” He tapped his chest. “Edrick.” Then he pointed at her.

  He didn't get a name back from her though. At least he didn't think what he got was a name. It sounded more like a lost little girl wanting to be with her family.

  “Alright, I'll call you Sparrow.” He tapped his chest again. “Edrick.” And then he pointed at her. “Sparrow.” He repeated it a couple of times until he got something from her that might have been understanding. He wasn’t sure though as he realised she could be no more than five or six years old. Far too young to find herself out on these streets alone.

  “Vard?” He raised his voice a little and called back to the mill owner, whose head he spotted just peeking over a pile of lumber.

  “Yeah?”

  “I'm going to take her to the doddering old fool. Someone should go and see the Mayor and tell him what's happening.”

  Not that Mayor Flint would be that much use Edrick thought. Not when Wilberton was involved. Then again, he wasn’t that much use at any other time. The man was a bit of a short wind. But he was still the Mayor. “And since you owe me for this, I expect that when I get back that you’ll have my wagon loaded. If it's not loaded when I get back then I'm going to drop a coin or two in the shrine to Andal and ask that he blesses you with a tail! Understood?”

 

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