“I lied. Now get up and take what’s coming to y—”
Two giant shadows fell across the floor of the inn, creating a sudden absence of light, which, in effect, cut off Loogie’s words.
Gordo Goldeaxe squeezed between Groan’s and Gape’s tree-trunk legs and waddled through the devastated doorway.
“Sorry to interrupt your little party,” he began, staring distractedly around the inn. “But we need to take the next available coach. What time does it leave?”
Loogie gritted his teeth and, briefly taking his hand off the crossbow support, waved them both away.
“Scram,” he said simply. “Can’t you see they’re not open for business?”
Gordo appeared to notice the innkeeper and his wife for the first time. “What’s going on—” he began, but Loogie interrupted.
“Get lost, short-arse, or you and your boyfriends are next.”
It was very nearly the last thing Loogie Lambontroff ever said.
“It’s wrong, Bronwyn,” Susti whispered, opening the door to her bedchamber and peering into the room to make certain that no one was lurking there. “I mean, not that long ago we were at war with Dullitch, and now my father’s taking orders from them!”
“But, milady, you said—”
“Yes, yes, I know it’s not just them … but Duke Modeset’s in charge of the Assembly, and he was on the throne when their soldiers attacked our merchant caravans!”
“Of course, milady, but you know what they say—”
“Mmm? What?”
“Well, you know—forgive and forget. Perhaps your father just wants peace …”
“And I’m fine with that, Bronwyn, but I don’t see why we should bow down to the likes of Dullitch and Spittle merely because they’re having problems with Groan Teethgrit. I say we should let them sort it out themselves!”
Bronwyn gave a meek nod of agreement. “I’m sure you’re right, milady.”
“I mean, how dare they order us around!” Susti blazed on. “I was a little girl when Dullitch laid siege to the keep, and I remember the whole episode very well. Do you know who came to our rescue? Not Spittle, that’s for sure … and I don’t recall a great deal of help from Sneeze or Legrash, either. On the contrary: it was mercenaries who came to our rescue, a big tribe from the Mountains of Mavokhan.”
“I remember, milady. One of the female barbarians gave me an ornamental dagger; they were very kind.”
Susti nodded. “You see what I mean? It’s crazy. I’ve a good mind to warn them.”
“Oh, no, milady,” Bronwyn protested. “You mustn’t do that!”
The princess reflected for a moment, then shook her head.
“No, no, you’re absolutely right, Bronwyn. If I warned them, my father would get the blame for everything. The Assembly would probably throw him out.”
“Exactly, Majesty.”
“In fact, I’ve got a much better idea.”
“Milady?”
Bronwyn studied her mistress’s suddenly possessed expression, and began to feel quite faint.
“Well, I could help them!”
“Yes, milady, but—”
“Quiet, Bronwyn! It’s a great idea; I’ve studied geography all of my life—I could tell them the best routes to follow!” Susti clapped her hands together and raced over to a heavy, claw-legged chest, which stood against the east wall. After fumbling frantically with the ornate clasp, she threw open the lid of the chest and began to drag out various items. “We’ll need some rope, a tinderbox, swords, a grappling iron, a lantern, a road map, and some money. Hmm … and we need to write a farewell note to Father.”
Bronwyn folded her arms carefully. “We, Majesty?”
“Oh, don’t start all that again, Bron. I’m a bloody princess—I’m hardly likely to go hiking all over Illmoor on my own, am I?”
Everything happened in a blur.
Gordo was the first to move, hurling his battle-axe at Loogie Lambontroff before the gangster had a chance to turn and fire his crossbow. Missing by a gnat’s wing, the axe smashed into the bar behind Loogie, taking out a month’s supply of spirits in the process. Gape had drawn both swords, but his brother was in the way.
Lambontroff, who’d ducked down to avoid the spinning weapon, reacted quickly, firing off a bolt from his bow and watching, in frank astonishment, as Groan snatched it out of the air and crushed it into splinters.
In the frenetic excitement that followed, the innkeeper took initiative, snatched up his wife’s frying pan, and belted Loogie across the back of the head, grinning with relief as the gangster collapsed.
“Thanks for that, fellas,” he breathed, helping his wife to her feet. “We’re proper grateful.”
“A pleasure,” Gordo muttered, crunching over the remains of the inn’s door frame. “Nasty piece of work, by the looks of it. Er … about that coach?”
The innkeeper sighed despondently. “I’m afraid they’re not running at the moment,” he said. “Business has been pretty dead recently, and most of the trade routes are closed.”
Gape let out a long sigh, and wandered outside for some fresh air.
Gordo cracked his knuckles. “A pity,” he said. “We really do need to get to Sneeze.”
The innkeeper gave a sympathetic shrug, but his wife had a thoughtful look on her face.
“There’s always Barnaby’s old coach,” she said.
“Nah,” muttered the innkeeper. “Nobody in their right mind would try riding that on the steeps.” He looked Groan up and down, then added: “Mind you … it does go some, when it’s not rattling to pieces.”
“Sounds perfect,” said Gordo quickly. “How much d’you want for it?”
The innkeeper pursed his lips and whistled. “Now you’re asking me. Er … fifty crowns?”
“Does it come with a horse?” Gordo asked, irritably scratching an eyebrow.
“Does it heck as like! For fifty crowns, you’d be lucky if it comes with wheels!”
“Yeah,” Groan thundered, indicating Loogie. “An’ you’re lucky we came in ’ere when we did, ’siderin’ that bloke was ready to reckon’ you up.”
“Twenty crowns,” the innkeeper’s wife said decisively, “and forty for the horse.”
“You what?” Gordo exclaimed. “That’s sixty! You only wanted fifty in the first place!”
“That was without the horse,” the innkeeper protested. “He’s a good horse, is old Barnaby: a champion in his day.”
“Is sixty more ’an fifty?” said Groan, who was getting confused.
“Of course it is!” Gordo snapped, and turning back to the innkeeper’s wife, added, “Forty-five for the both, and that’s my final offer.”
“Fifty, and I’ll throw in some luggage ropes for the side hooks.”
Gordo looked amazed. “You mean it hasn’t even got a roof rack?” he exclaimed.
The innkeeper’s wife rolled her eyes. “Of course it doesn’t have a roof rack,” she said. “It hasn’t got a roof!”
“Ha! Then it’s not a coach, is it? It’s a bloody cart; and in that case, I’ll have it for thirty-five and not a single penny more.”
“Forty-five.”
“Done.”
Gordo extended his hand, but the innkeeper pulled back his wife’s arm and whispered anxiously into her ear. There followed a brief (and largely wordless) argument, after which the innkeeper’s wife turned back to the mercenaries and announced, “You can have the coach and the horse and the luggage ropes for twenty crowns, if you agree to take him with you.”
Groan glanced down at Loogie and shrugged, but Gordo looked none to happy about the proposal.
“Who is he?” he asked, eyeing the innkeeper carefully.
The innkeeper pursed his lips, then motioned for Gordo to step to one side.
“His name’s Loogie Lambontroff, and he’s the nephew of a noble,” he whispered, crouching to bring his mouth level with Gordo’s ear. “But he ran away from home three years ago, after his uncle stole his
pet chicken; made big news in these parts. The family put a huge bounty on his head—wanted him back at all costs—but nobody would go near him.”
“Why not?”
“Maybe it’s because nobody wants to take him back to where he came from. Who knows? All I know is what I hear, and I hear he was very well educated in Dullitch before he went to the bad. Nowadays, he works for a bunch of local gangsters who …”
The innkeeper proceeded to tell of his own troubles, but Gordo wasn’t really listening.
“I’ve never heard of a noble called Lambontroff,” he said suddenly, cutting the man off. “Where’s he from?”
The innkeeper shuddered. “A city called Wemeru, in the jungles of Rintintetly: a terrible place by all accounts, and Lambontroff isn’t actually the family name …”
“Hang about,” Gordo muttered, taking a step back and regarding the prone man. “His uncle wouldn’t be Mad Count Craven, would it?”
Seven
BRONWYN GULPED, TRYING DESPERATELY not to look down as she descended the outer wall of Phlegm Keep on a rope fashioned from knotted bedsheets.
“Are you sure about this, ma’am?” she called up at Susti, who was leaning from the arched window of her bedchamber, while at the same time wrestling with the end of the makeshift rope in a valiant attempt to get it hooked up to a wall brazier.
“Hold on, Bronny; I’m almost there!”
The line juddered, and Bronwyn’s stomach felt as if it were going to leap into her throat. Then Susti climbed out of the window and began to lower herself down.
“Hurry up, Bronny! I don’t want to land on top of you.”
“No, ma’am. Of course, ma’am.”
Bronwyn took a second gulp of air and managed to summon enough courage to slide another few feet.
“That’s my girl! Keep going!”
“Right, ma’am.”
“When we get down from here, we’re going to get some horses, and then—”
“Aaaaahh!”
“Bronny?”
“Ahhhhhhhhhhh!”
“Bronny! Are you okay?”
There was a strangled half scream from a (conveniently placed) haystack at the foot of the keep.
Susti swung round on her section of the line, almost tipping herself upside down.
“Are you alive, Bronny?” she called. “Say something!”
“Mmmfffff.”
“Aha! The gods must be with us! Did you land in the haystack?”
“Mmmffff.”
“Anything broken?”
“Mmmffff.”
“Excellent! I’ll be down in a jiffy …”
Far below, the side of the haystack exploded, and Bronwyn came out fighting. Thanks to the prevailing wind, Susti couldn’t hear the servant’s stream of expletives, and she only just missed the swift and sneaky hand gesture that followed.
“Don’t bother waving, Bronny!” the princess yelled. “Just grab the backpacks and find a stable; I’ll follow you!”
When Susti eventually reached the ground, her servant was a vague shape, albeit a wobbling one, in the distance. She smiled at the retreating figure, then turned her attention back to the matter at hand.
Fact: she’d managed to get to ground level. Fact: she’d never get out of the city unless she could create some sort of temporary diversion. Fact: the guards were all extremely wimpy and insufferably stupid.
Susti drew in a deep breath and thought for a moment. Then she lit a match and set fire to the bedsheet rope, crouched behind a nearby barrel, and waited. Sure enough, within fifteen minutes, every guard in the keep was either fussing madly over the flames or making every effort to remain invisible until the crisis was over.
Seizing her opportunity, Susti made a mad, frantic dash for the main gate. When she arrived there, Bronwyn had already managed to purchase two fine-looking horses and a not-so-fine-looking horseman called Ned. Susti disposed of Ned with the textbook “look over there—a badger with a broadsword” and a swift chop across the back of the neck.
The duty guard, a weaselly-looking fellow in an oversized chain mail coat, bowed low when he saw the princess approaching.
“Good evening, Your Highness,” he droned. “Does His Majesty—”
“Know I’m out and about? Of course he does; do you think the king stupid?”
“No, Highness! Of course not!”
“Good. Now listen up: did you see which way the mercenaries went?”
The guard hesitated, scratching his grubby bristles with an equally grubby forefinger.
“Your suitors, Highness?”
Susti muttered something under her breath, then with a wry smile, added, “Yes, that’s right.”
“Indeed, Your Highness; I observed their passage with the marvelous and intricate telescopic device your father was kind enough to provi—”
“Yes, yes! Which way did they go?”
The guard licked his soggy lips. “Um … I don’t know who you mean, Your Highness,” he said.
“The mercenaries!”
“W-w-which ones, Your Highness?”
Susti grimaced. “Don’t play games with me, you insolent fool! My father will have you”—she paused, trying to think of the worst punishment she’d ever heard her father’s chief torturer refer to—“castrapitricollapulated.”
The guard’s eyes practically bulged out of his head, and he began to talk very fast.
“They were heading for Rintintetly, Highness. You’ll never catch them, though. Once you get into those hills, Highness, there’s any one of a hundred ways you could go to get across the Washin.”
“Hmm … Rintintetly, eh?”
“Yes, Highness. But please don’t go—you’ll die! They eat women like you in the dead city; eat ’em alive! I don’t know anything else, Highness. Please don’t castrapitricollapulate me!”
The man promptly folded up and sank onto his knees, but Susti wasn’t paying attention to his whines. Instead, she was staring at Bronwyn with a look of sheer horror on her face.
“Everything all right, ma’am?” asked the servant, approaching her mistress with the horses trailing behind her.
“We need to move fast, Bronny!” Susti exclaimed, snatching one of the reins and thrusting herself up into the saddle. “They must be quite a way ahead.”
She watched impatiently as the servant tried and failed to get into the saddle. However, the girl’s fifth attempt proved successful.
“Good. Let’s go.”
Bronwyn gave an impassive shrug. “I don’t rightly know that we should, ma’am,” she said. “The king would be terribly worried about you.”
“Well, he should have thought about that before using me as an instrument of—of—of destruction!”
Susti waved her hand, and the two girls urged their horses into a healthy gallop.
“You know something really strange …” Gordo muttered, as the innkeeper’s geriatric nag pulled their cart along the dusty track.
“Yeah,” rumbled his companion. “Moffs dunt die.”
Gordo shook his head. “No, I—what did you just say?”
Groan shrugged. “Moffs, they don’ die.”
“Moths? What, as in ugly butt’flies?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t talk rubbish.”
“I’m not; bloke in the pub tol’ me.”
“And you believed him?”
“Yeah.”
“You silly sod.”
“No, I ain’t. He dun proved it an’ all; he jumped off a cliff wearin’ a jacket made o’ moff skins, and you know what ’appened?”
“Surprise me.”
“He bounced.”
Gordo rolled his eyes. “Is this the same bloke who told you that mohair comes from a tiny creature called a ‘moe’?”
“That was TRUE! He was fightin’ ’gainst all them teddy bear makers what steals the fur off ’em. That’s why you see loads o’ bald moes when you’re out ’untin’ bear fur.”
Gordo smiled at his friend.
“Groan, there is no such thing as a bloody ‘moe’. Mohair comes from goats.”
“Does it ’ell.”
“Look, I’m not getting drawn into a debate over it. If you want to pay five crowns for a moth-skin coat, then that’s your own lookout—”
“How did you know ’bout that?”
“I guessed.”
They rode in silence for a while, then Gordo glanced over his shoulder. Gape was fast sleep in the back of the cart, and their prisoner was roped up and running along behind it.
Gordo sighed. “I can’t believe we’ve ended up capturing Mad Count Craven’s nephew,” he said. “I mean, what are the odds?”
“Yeah.”
The dwarf sighed again. “Come to that, I can’t believe anyone can run while they’re asleep,” he said. “Amazing, isn’t it?”
“Maybe he’s dreamin’ o’ runnin’,” said Groan.
Gordo admired the simplicity of this, and nodded. “You could be right, there. Still, brings me back to what I was going to tell you earlier …”
“Yeah? What wazzat?”
“Well,” the dwarf began, passing the reins to Groan, “when I checked that he was breathing, a while back, I opened his eyelids … and he’s got one white eye and one black eye.”
“Yeah,” Groan rumbled, “an’ he’ll ’ave two black eyes if he—”
“No, seriously,” Gordo protested. “One white eye and one black eye. That’s a mark of something; I just can’t remember what …”
Groan sniffed. “Who cares?”
“We might,” said Gordo. “If only I could think why …”
Loogie Lambontroff woke up running.
He managed to glance around at the landscape as it rose and fell in a swirl of eerie circles, then he lapsed into half consciousness while his mind came to terms with a few irrefutable facts. The thought process went something like:
I’m half asleep …
That’s because we were knocked out.
I’ve been captured …
Yes, we’re prisoners.
I’m running.
We shouldn’t be.
I know I shouldn’t be, but … Hang on a minute … Who’s this we I keep thinking about? There is only me.
You’ll remember soon. For now, why don’t we find out why we’re running? I mean, are we running to something or away from something?
Shadewell Shenanigans Page 6