Ronan the Barbarian

by Bibby, James

  Suddenly there was a loud "click" and all the room lights went off. An eerie red glow began to emanate from a large glass ball about twice the size of a human head that was sitting on a small table beside the whirring box and was connected to it by a thick yellow cable.

  "OK," said Anthrax. "Let's seen what this chappie Nekros is up to at the moment." Ronan and Tarl crept warily forward and stared into the depths of the glass ball in wonder.

  Nekros was getting a little pissed off with this sword salesman. Normally he had very little to do with sales executives of any description, as actually buying items was not a thing he did very often. If, for example, his Tribe needed a hundred horses to mount a raid, the last thing he would have thought of doing would have been to go down to Big Mal's Used Horse Mart and pay through the nose for them. He found it easier, cheaper, and much more satisfying to drift in there unexpectedly one night with a few of his best men, give Big Mal a short back and insides with his sword, then stroll off with whatever horses he felt like.

  However, he'd thought a sword salesman might be quite interesting, especially one who was Sales Executive (South Frundor Region) for the Orcbane Sword Corporation, as Orcbane made some spectacularly brutal weapons. He was now beginning to realise that Interesting Sales Executives were up there with the White Dragon of Behan or the Lost Dwarfish Pub of Legend... they might exist, but nobody had actually ever found them. He was going to have no regrets whatsoever about following his Backers' instructions.

  Belladon, as with salesmen the world over, had no idea of what a bad effect he was having on his potential client. He had gone through his repertoire by the book. Treat the client like a long-lost friend, smile a lot, get in a couple of good (but smutty) gags, have a bit of a chat about horses (and impress him with how many miles-per-bale his was currently doing), pass on a useful tip about a short-cut across the Setel Downs that he'd found, and have a bit of a man-to-man about girls. Now, when the client would be thinking what a regular guy he was, would be the time to strike.

  "But listen," he said, "I mustn't waste any more of your valuable time. Look, here's our latest catalogue. Keep it, leaf through it when you get a minute. If you've any questions, get in touch any time! But I'd just like you to have a look at this!" He grinned inwardly as he opened his case and took out a very short sword in a two-foot scabbard. This was the absolute latest in sword technology and it had never yet failed to captivate a warrior.

  Nekros, who had been about to sneer openly at such a puny little weapon, stared in disbelief as Belladon took the sword from its scabbard and pressed an opal set into the pommel. With an audible hiss the blade smoothly extended itself into a six-foot broadsword. Wordlessly, he reached out, took the weapon from Belladon, and hefted it in his hand. Beautiful! Light as a feather, perfectly balanced, yet deadly! And looks-wise, it was the most perfectly evil thing he had ever seen! Jet-black, with just a hint of silver tracery on the blade, and with rubies and garnets set into the pommel like pools of blood.

  "It's the all-new Orcbane Retractable," Belladon said, proudly. "Otherwise known as the Traveller's Terminator. A really smooth piece of work!" And he was just starting to mention the sort of discount that might be possible on orders of fifty or more when Nekros sighed, leant forward, and gently but firmly slid the sword up to the hilt into Belladon's abdomen. The salesman's patter stopped abruptly and he stared down in horror at the blood that welled out round the hilt of the sword.

  "See what I mean?" he gasped. "It went in like a dream!" And then Nekros slid the sword out, the blood gushed, and Belladon fell to the floor. Nekros stared down at him and shook his head.

  "No jury in the land would convict me," he muttered to himself. Then he stooped and wiped the sword clean on Belladon's clothing, and marched to the door, shouting for his second-in-command.

  Within seconds, Angnail had come sprinting up the stairs. "Yes, Lord?" he said.

  "Have this body removed," ordered Nekros, gesturing to the corpse. "And pass the word to the Tribe. The East must wait. Our presence is vital if our forces in Port Raid are to succeed with their insurrection. We ride to join them in two days."

  Angnail turned and fled, and Nekros sat down and began to examine his new sword.

  The image in the glass ball faded and the red light died. Tarl and Ronan looked at each other.

  "Well, he's a bundle of laughs," said Tarl.

  "So there's your first prediction," said Anthrax, who was again scanning the computer printout. "In maybe six days, Nekros will have reached the lands of the West."

  "So should I seek him in Port Raid?" asked Ronan. Anthrax looked him in the eyes and smiled.

  "You will know where to find him," he said. "You are involved in a cycle of vengeance. Just remember that a cycle is circular. Now, the second prediction. Your father's rhyme mentioned a Dwarfish Chart. The largest collection of charts and maps in the whole of Midworld is in the Chart Room of Albran's castle. That's all you need to know."

  "Albran?" asked Tarl.

  "The King of the Wood Elves," answered the wizard, crossing to the second of the metal boxes. It was about six foot high and stood against the wall. "Now for the potion. Erm, let's see." He checked the printout that he was holding, then started to press some of the buttons that stretched down the front of the box. "Essence of bat-wing... toe of frog... lizard spleen... wiggat hair... anti-oxidants... flavour enhancer... preservatives... stabilisers... permitted colouring..." He turned to Ronan, with his finger poised over a button. "Sugar?" he asked.

  "Er, yes please."

  "Sugar." The wizard's finger pressed home, and he stood back and waited. The box hummed into life and made various churning noises then stopped abruptly, and an aluminium can with a ring-pull top thudded into an alcove at the bottom of the box.

  "Voila!" said Anthrax. "One magic potion. To be taken just before you come into contact with Nekros."

  Tarl picked the can out of the tray and studied the label suspiciously. "Here," he said. "I wouldn't go drinking this, it's full of ingredients!" He pointed to a tiny patch of writing. "Listen to this lot! Monosodium glutamate, vitamins B2, B6, D, ascorbic acid, calcium propionate..."

  As he spoke, the lights in the room dimmed slightly. His voice seemed to be taking on a deeper, more sonorous tone.

  "Hydrogenated vegetable oils," he continued. "Sodium polyphosphates, tartrazine, beta carotene..."

  It was darker now. There was a distant roll of thunder. The air seemed to crackle and Tarl's voice swelled to fill the room.

  “...emulsifier E 471, E472(e), E475, and dextrose!"

  There was a violent crash of lightning that seemed to lift the roof off the house, and for a moment everything went pitch-black. And then the lights came on again, the room was back to normal, and Tarl was standing by the vending machine with the can in his hand, panting as though he had just run another two-and-a-half miles. Anthrax took the can from him and handed it to Ronan, who shoved it into the pocket of his jerkin.

  "Well, well!" he said to Tarl, smiling. "You have the Power! Who would have thought it?"

  "The what?" asked Tarl.

  "The Power. It's latent, of course."

  "Here, who are you calling latent?"

  "It turns up in the most surprising places! Heaven help us all if you ever discover how to use it. There is just the merest hint of the party animal about you. I have a feeling the wizard's convention would never be the same again. That is, if they let you in. Somehow, I can't imagine you in a tie."

  "What are you wittering on about?" asked the baffled Tarl.

  "Oh, come now! You have definite magical ability and you know it. It's bound to have manifested itself in the past."

  Tarl thought back to some of the more frightening moments of his life. It had manifested itself then, too right it had. Whenever he was frightened out of his wits, Things Happened, and he seemed to have no control whatsoever over them.

  "I haven't any Power," he muttered. "Things just... happen."

  "
Of course they do! You haven't had any training. If I stuck you in the kitchen with a load of flour and butter and eggs and told you to make a cake, then unless someone had shown you how to do it, or given you a recipe book, you would just end up with a sticky mess."

  Tarl thought of the guy back in Orcville who had tried to mug him and had somehow got turned inside out. He'd been a sticky mess all right. He shook his head tiredly and poured himself another glass of wine.

  "Forget it," he mumbled. "Just forget it."

  "You mentioned a Word of Power," Ronan reminded the wizard.

  "Yes, of course." Anthrax said, and then warned him, "Don't use it until you need it. Don't repeat it, or whisper it. Don't even think it. Just commit it to memory. There. Now, you've got all that you need to defeat Nekros. That will be, ooh, let's say, forty tablons, please."

  Ronan looked at him suspiciously. Forty tablons was the exact amount of money he had in his purse. As he handed it over, Tarl, who had been staring into the glass ball, spoke up.

  "Here," he said. "Those are the guys who were chasing us. In fact, they still are chasing us! Look!"

  Ronan stood beside him and peered once again into the depths of the glass ball. They could see the men on horseback chasing two little figures and a donkey into the edge of the forest. As they watched, arrows shot silently towards the quarry, who staggered between the trees and suddenly vanished into thin air. Their pursuers, however, seemed unsurprised, but rode their horses slowly into the edge of the woods.

  "Ah," said Anthrax from behind them. "Nekros's men, just in time to collect you."

  As the import of these words struck home, Ronan and Tarl turned as one and stared at the wizard with horrified eyes.

  "What?" gasped Tarl. "But you've just told us how we're going to kill Nekros!"

  "Oh, no.... I'm sorry. I told you how you could kill him. That's what you asked me to do. Indeed, you might well have killed him, had I not already been paid by Nekros to find and hold you for him. Ah, no, I wouldn't try that, if I was you..."

  At the realisation of the wizard's duplicity, Ronan had instinctively grabbed his sword. Anthrax muttered something and gave a casual wave of the hand, and suddenly both Ronan and Tarl found themselves unable to move, or even speak.

  "Master!" boomed the adenoidal tones of the front door. "Visitors!"

  "Ah," said Anthrax. "That will be Nekros's men now."

  Long, long ago, Anthrax had been an idealistic young magician full of the joys of spring. And then he met Naomi. She was a princess - but one who was under a rather unfortunate enchantment at the time. Only someone with The Power could have recognised her for what she truly was. But when the teenage wizard first stumbled across the frog with the long dark eyelashes sitting on a rock in the forest and crying to itself, he knew instantly that here was someone in dire need of a good magician. The Spell of Transubstantiation was a difficult one, but he had confidence in himself, and carried it out almost perfectly. Unfortunately, he made just one ever-so-slight mistake.

  When the dust from the spell cleared and Anthrax saw the beautiful princess with the long golden hair standing in front of him, he fell madly and passionately in love. To his surprise, she fell for him, as well. They married, and at first were blissfully happy, but unlike most such cases, it was not to be for ever after. His mistake saw to that.

  He could never work out quite what it was that he had done wrong, but for some reason, at times of high emotion or stress, Naomi would turn back into a frog. Not for long, just until she had calmed down a bit. And there was a slight frogginess that kept creeping into her personality as well. One time, they had gone to a very up-market restaurant for a meal. While he was studying the menu, Naomi went to the washroom. After twenty minutes, she still hadn't come back. Eventually, the worried Anthrax found her standing in the bin area outside the back door, watching the flies with a predatory gleam in her eye. Another worrying thing was her habit of trying to drag him off to the nearest muddy pond whenever she felt randy, although after a while he'd grown to quite like this one.

  However, the biggest problem had been her personality. Frogs and princesses don't have many things in common, but one thing they do frequently share is a complete lack of altruism. You don't get many frogs offering to carry your bags for you. Or many princesses. So Naomi wasn't exactly the most selfless person in the whole world. In fact, after a couple of years, she had turned self-interest into an art form.

  At first, Anthrax hadn't really noticed. One of the great advantages of being a wizard is that you can get virtually anything you want at any time, and he'd rather enjoyed doing all these little things for his woman. But eventually, as she grew more and more demanding, and more and more short-tempered, the fun began to disappear. After a while, nothing he did seemed to please her any more. She didn't appear to love him, but unfortunately, he still loved her, and despite all his magical powers, there was nothing he could do to change things. His life was totally miserable.

  Then one day, he came home to find the house empty. He searched from room to room, but there was no sign of her. Then, as he was standing by the back door, wondering what had happened to her, he heard a familiar croaking. And there she was, in the pond in the back garden. Doing it with three male frogs. And not enchanted princes, either. Just common-or-garden plain simple frogs. Naomi had started slumming it.

  After that there was no going back. Anthrax had started divorce proceedings. He hadn't argued with any of her demands, hadn't quibbled. There was no point, as it was all simple enough for a wizard to provide. He hadn't even argued over the maintenance order for several thousand tadpoles - which would have bankrupted a normal man - although he had a feeling that only a few hundred were his.

  When the divorce was finalised, he had moved his whole house to a forest a long way away. And he had sworn that never again would he let his emotions sway him, never again would he give for the sake of giving. There would be no more Mister Nice-Guy.

  Since then, he prided himself on giving a plain, straightforward, unemotional service. People paid him, and he did what they asked. Not necessarily what they wanted, just what they asked. For example, a man came to him with leprosy in both feet. He was quite a humble man and he begged Anthrax to help him. He said that if Anthrax couldn't completely cure him, he would understand, but that a fifty percent improvement would be better than nothing. So Anthrax turned him into a mussel. When he complained, the wizard pointed out that he'd come to him with leprosy in both feet. Now he only had leprosy in one foot. That was a fifty percent improvement, so what was his problem?

  Whilst ostensibly providing a very effective service, Anthrax was taking his revenge on the world. It was cold, clinical, and totally amoral.

  As Anthrax moved towards the front door, the donkey, which had been standing forgotten by the table, suddenly raised its head.

  "Before you let those blokes in," it said, "can I ask you something?"

  "By all means," answered the wizard.

  "Why did you get Ronan to come here?"

  "You know why. Nekros is paying me to capture him."

  "Bollocks!" snorted the donkey. "You're probably the best wizard in Midworld. You could have handed Ronan over to him anywhere, anyhow, any time. So why did it have to be here?"

  Anthrax looked levelly at the donkey. "I suppose I was curious."

  "You were tempted to let him get on with it, weren't you? You wouldn't mind at all if he finished Nekros off. You don't like the guy, do you? Under this cold man-of-the-world exterior, you're not at all happy about working for someone who pulls the legs off babies just to relieve the boredom."

  The wizard was finding it a little unsettling being psychoanalyzed by a small brown donkey, particularly when it was spot on in its analysis. He realised with some surprise that he was twiddling his thumbs, and frowned.

  "Alright, alright, I admit I've been rather peeved with the way he keeps throwing his orders around. Do this, do that... he really is very uncouth. It would be rather p
leasant to put him firmly in his place!"

  "So why don't you?"

  "If you can see through me so clearly, then you'll know that I always keep my word. Even with a lout like Nekros."

  "What did you tell him you'd do?" asked the donkey, after a small pause.

  "Erm... find Ronan, and hold him until Nekros's men got here."

  "Well, there you are then!" said the donkey. "You've found him, and you've held him. Nekros's men have got here, so you've done what you promised. Now you can let him loose and then just sit back and enjoy watch Nekros get what he deserves."

  Ronan and Tarl had been listening to this conversation at first with despair, but then with rising hope. As Anthrax paused and thought, both hardly dared to breath.

  "Do you know," smiled the wizard, after a moment, "your logic is faultless!" And then he clapped his hands twice, there was another blinding flash, and Ronan and Tarl found themselves standing in a bright, misty, and rather eerie forest, surrounded by very surprised rabbits.

  As the evening light was beginning to fade, an exhausted and very worried Tyson rode her horse into the edge of the wood. Although it was semi-dark, the wizard's house still seemed to be bathed in sunlight. Tyson dismounted and stared at the scene before her. Scattered around in front of the house were twenty life-size stone statues of heavily-armed men on horseback. Stepping warily between them, she came to the garden path, and stopped. Basking in the sunshine on the doorstep was a small, oatmeal-coloured donkey, who was tucking in to a Four-Meats Pizza with obvious relish.

  "Puss?" asked Tyson, doubtfully.

  "You took your time getting here," replied the donkey.

  Tyson's jaw dropped open with surprise. "You can talk!" she stammered.

  "I don't see why everyone finds it so surprising," muttered the donkey. "Personally, I find it more difficult to understand how a creature with a brain as minuscule as Tarl ever manages to string together a coherent sentence." It chewed on another mouthful and then added, "I'd offer you some pizza, but it will all be gone in a minute."