The gifts were quickly stowed away in the little boats along with certain other impedimenta needful for a quest, including ropes; tins of Dinty Moore beef stew; a lot of copra; magic cloaks that blended in with any background, either green grass, green trees, green rocks, or green sky; a copy of Jane’s Dragons and Basilisks of the World; a box of dog yummies; and a case of Poland water.
“Farewell,” said Lavalier, as the company crammed themselves into the boats. “A great journey begins with a single step. No man is an island.”
“The early bird gets the worm,” said Cellophane.
The rafts slipped out into the river, and Cellophane and Lavalier boarded a great boat-shaped swan and drifted a short distance beside them, and Lavalier sat in the prow and sang an ancient elvish lament to the heartbreaking timbre of steel drums:
“Dago, Dago, Lassi Lima rintintin
Yanqui unicycle ramar rotoroot
Telstar aloha saarinen cloret
Stassen camaro impala desoto?
Gardol oleo telephon lumumba!
Chappaqua havatampa muriel
U canleada horsta wata, bwana,
Butyu canna makit drinque!
Comsat melba rubaiyat nirvana
Garcia y vega hiawatha aloo.
O mithra, mithra, I fain wud lie doon!
Valdaree valdera, que sera, sirrah,
Honi soit la vache qui rit.
Honi soit la vache qui rit.”
(“Oh, the leaves are falling, the flowers are wilting, and the rivers are all going Republican. O Ramar, Ramar, ride quickly on your golden unicycle and warn the nymphs and drag queens! Ah, who now shall gather lichee nuts and make hoopla under the topiaries? Who will trim my unicorns? See, even now the cows laugh, Alas, alas.” Chorus: “We are the chorus, and we agree. We agree, we agree, we agree.”)
As the tiny boats passed round a bend in the river, Frito looked back in time to see the Lady Lavalier gracefully sticking her finger down her throat in the ancient elvish farewell.
Bromosel looked ahead to where the meandering of the river had brought them face-to-face with the barely risen sun. “The early bird gets hepatitis,” he grunted, and fell asleep.
Such was the enchantment of Lornadoon that although they had spent only a night in that magic land, it seemed like a week, and as they drifted down the river, Frito was filled with a vague fear that time was running out. He remembered Bromosel’s ill-omened dream and noticed for the first time that there was a large blotch of lamb’s blood on the warrior’s forehead, a large chalk X on his back, and a black spot the size of a doubloon on his cheek. A huge and rather menacing vulture was sitting on his left shoulder, picking its teeth and singing an inane song about a grackle.
Not long after midday the river began to become narrow and shallow, and before long the way was completely blocked by an enormous beaver dam from which there emanated the grim slaps of beaver tails and the ominous whine of turbines.
“I had thought the way to the Isles of Langerhans was clear,” said Arrowroot. “Now I see that the servants of Sorhed are at work even here. We can go no farther along the river.” The company paddled to the west bank, and drawing their boats onto the shore, ate a hurried meal of moon and sixpence.
“I fear these brutes may do us ill,” said Bromosel, pointing to the looming concrete mass of the dam.
As he spoke, a bulky figure waddled unsteadily across the stony shore. It was about four feet tall, very dark complexioned, with a tail like a plank steak, a black beret, and wraparound dark glasses.
“Your servant,” lisped the strange creature, bowing low.
Arrowroot eyed the brute thoughtfully. “And who might you be?” he said at last, his hand falling to his sword hilt.
“An innocent traveler like yourselves,” said the brown figure, slapping his tail for emphasis. “My horse threw a shoe or my boat sank, I don’t remember which.”
Arrowroot sighed with relief. “Well, you are welcome,” he said. “I had feared you might be evil.”
The creature laughed indulgently, revealing a pair of front teeth the size of bathroom tiles. “Hardly,” he said, munching absently on a piece of driftwood. Then with a great sneeze, his dark glasses fell to the ground.
Legolam gasped. “A black beaver!” he cried, staggering back.
At that moment there came a great crashing in the nearby woods, and band of howling narcs and grunting beavers descended on the luckless party.
Arrowroot leaped to his feet. “Evinrude,” he cried, and drawing the sword Krona, handed it hilt-first to the nearest narc.
“Joyvah Halvah,” shouted Gimlet, and dropped his adze.
“Unguentine,” said Legolam, putting his hands on his head.
“Ipso facto,” growled Bromosel, and unbuckled his sword belt.
Spam rushed over to Frito in the heat of the surrender and grasped him by the arm. “Time to trot, bwana,” he said, drawing a shawl over his head, and the two boggies slipped down to the boats and out into the river before the charging narcs and their lumbering allies missed them.
The chief narc grabbed Arrowroot by the lapels and shook him fiercely. “Where are boggies?” he screamed.
Arrowroot turned to where Frito and Spam had been standing and then to Moxie and Pepsi, who were hiding next to where Legolam and Gimlet were playing possum.
“You lie, you die,” said the narc, and Arrowroot couldn’t help but notice the tone of malice which had crept into his voice.
He pointed to the boggies, and two narcs jumped forward and swept them up in the thighs they had by way of arms.
“There’s been some mistake,” squealed Moxie. “I haven’t got it.”
“You’ve got the wrong man,” Pepsi shrieked. “It’s him,” he said, pointing to Moxie.
“That’s the one,” cried Moxie, gesturing at Pepsi. “I’d know him anywhere. Three-five, eighty-two, tattoo on left arm of rutting dragon, two counts of aiding and abetting known Ring-bearer.”
The chief narc laughed cruelly. “I give the rest of you ten to run,” he said, twirling a set of giant bolos with a threatening application of english. At that, Bromosel started to sprint, but catching his feet in his sword belt, he tripped and impaled himself on his pointed shoes.
“Ye doom is ycomme true,” he groaned. “Oh, tell the Lacedomecians to man the torpedoes.” Then noisily shaking a large rattle, he expired.
The narc shook his head. “Me, you don’t need,” he said, and led the narc band away into the surrounding forest with Moxie and Pepsi.
• • •
Frito and Spam drifted silently across the river to the eastern bank, and drew their small boat onto the shore, while unseen in the shadow of the dam, a small gray figure on a green-and-yellow-spotted sea horse paddled warily along.
“Out of the bedpan, as the old Fatlip would say,” said Spam, and fishing their overnight bags out of the craft, set out with Frito along the rising gorge that led to the next chapter.
* * *
1 A league is approximately three furlongs or only a knot short of a hectare.
2 The Clayton-Bulwer Treaty of 1850 solved a complicated territory dispute between the United States and Britain that had snowballed out of a dispute over how to spell “colour.”
3 The Piltdown Man was a paleontological hoax in which an orangutan jaw was mixed with a human skeleton to create the appearance of an unknown early human. This landmark case definitively proved that paleontologists are terrible at pranks.
4 The Hawley-Smoot Tariff of 1930 was created to raise import tariffs and give history teachers one more multiple choice question on their 1930s exam.
5 pHisoHex, a popular brand of skin cleanser for acne, came under some scrutiny for being allegedly carcinogenic. The makers maintained that would only help take users’ minds off their acne.
6 King Sano was a brand of cigarettes that focused primarily on health claims to appeal to smokers, teaching dozens of marketing agents what the word irony meant.
7 Harold Stassen is remembered for having unsuccessfully sought the Republican presidential nomination nine times, as well as for his exemplary optimism.
VI
The Riders of Roi-Tan1
For three days Arrowroot, Gimlet, and Legolam hunted the band of narcs, pausing in their relentless chase only for food, drink, sleep, a few hands of pinochle, and a couple of sightseeing detours. Tirelessly, the Ranger, dwarf, and elf pushed on after the captors of Moxie and Pepsi, often making a long march of up to three hundred yards before collapsing with apathy. Many times Stomper lost the scent, which was rather difficult since narcs are fond of collecting their droppings along the way into great, pungent mounds. These they carefully sculpted and molded into fearsome shapes as mute warning to any who might dare challenge their power.
But the narc mounds were growing fewer, indicating either that they had quickened their pace or had run out of roughage. In any case the trail grew fainter and the tall Ranger had to use his every skill to follow the barest traces of the company’s passing, a worn ventilated shoe, a pair of loaded dice, and farther on, a pair of ventilated narcs.
The land was somber and flat, now populated only by scrub brushes and other stunted growths. Occasionally they would pass a deserted village, empty save a stray dog or two, which bolstered the party’s dwindling larder. Slowly they descended into the bleak Plain of Roi-Tan, a hot, dry, and cheerless place.2 To their left were the dim peaks of the Mealey Mountains, and to their right and far away the sluggish Effluvium. To the south were the fabled lands of the Roi-Tanners, sheepmen of no mean skill aboard a fighting bull merino.
In earlier times the sheep-lords had been enemies of Sorhed and had fought bravely against him at Brylopad and Ipswitch. But now there were rumors of renegade bands of mounted sheepmen who ravaged northern Twodor, pillaging, raping, burning, killing, and raping.
Stomper halted in the march and let out a deep sigh of dread and boredom. The narcs were leaving them farther and farther behind. Carefully he unwrapped a square of the elvish magic zwieback and broke it into four equal pieces.
“Eat all, for this is the last we have,” he said, palming the fourth piece for later.
Legolam and Gimlet chewed gravely and silently. All around them they felt the malicious presence of Serutan,3 the evil Wizard of Isinglass. His malignant influence hung heavy in the air, his secret forces impeding their search. Forces that took many forms, but for the present came as the runs.
Gimlet, who, if possible, liked Legolam even less than at Riv’n’dell, gagged on his portion of zwieback.
“A curse on the elves and their punk grub,” he grumbled.
“And on the dwarves,” returned Legolam, “whose taste is in their mouths.”
For the twentieth time the pair drew weapons, lusting for each other’s chitlins, but Stomper intervened lest one be killed. The food was gone anyway.
“Hold and cease, halt, avaunt, put up thy swords, refrain from thy quarrel, and stay thy hands,” he spake, raising a fringed glove.
“Buzz off, Hopalong,” growled the dwarf. “I’ll make casserole of that window dresser!”
But the Ranger drew his peacemaker and the fighting ended as quickly as it began, for even dwarves and elves do not relish a shiv in the back. Then, as the combatants sheathed their blades, Stomper’s voice rang out again.
“Lo!” he cried, pointing to the south. “Many riders approach like the wind!”
“Would that they rode downwind as well,” said Legolam, wrinkling his nose.
“Keen are the nostrils of the elves,” said Stomper.
“And light are their feet,” muttered the dwarf under his breath.
All three squinted at the dust on the distant horizon. That they were sheepmen there was no doubt, for the wind heralded their approach.
“Do you think they’re friendly?” said Legolam, trembling like a leaf.
“That I cannot say,” said Stomper. “If they are, we have no worries; if they are foes, we must escape their wrath through craft.”
“How?” asked Gimlet, seeing no hiding place on the flat plain. “Do we fight or flee?”
“Neither,” said the Ranger, falling limp on the ground. “We’ll all play dead!”
Legolam and Gimlet looked at each other and shook their heads. There were few things on which they both agreed, but Stomper was definitely one of them.
“We may as well take a few with us,” said Gimlet, drawing his cleaver, “for it’s better to go with one’s codpiece buttoned.”
The sheep-lords loomed larger and the fierce war-bleats of their mounts could now be heard. Tall and blond were the Roi-Tanners, wearers of helmets topped with cruel-looking spikes and small toothbrush mustaches. The wanderers saw, too, that they wore long boots and short leathern pants with suspenders and held long pikes that looked like lead-weighted dust mops.
“They are savage of visage,” said Legolam.
“Aye,” said Stomper, peeking through his fingers. “Proud and willful are the men of Roi-Tan, and they value highly land and power. But these lands are often those of their neighbors, and they are hence mickle unpopular. Though ignorant of letters, they are fond of song and dance and premeditated homicide. But warfare is not their only craft, for they run summer camps for their neighbors handsomely fitted out with the most modern oven and shower facilities.”
“Then these rascals cannot be all bad,” said Legolam hopefully. Just then they saw a hundred blades flash from a hundred sheaths.
“Bets?” said Gimlet.
As they watched helplessly, the line of riders bore down upon them. Suddenly the centermost figure, whose spiked helmet also boasted two longhorns, gave a vague hand signal to halt and the men reined to a stop in a display of astoundingly inept sheepmanship. Two of their fallen comrades were maimed in the milling, trampling confusion that followed.
As the screams and curses died down, the pronged leader cantered up to the three astride a bull merino of great stature and whiteness, its tail intricately braided with colored rubber bands.
“The jerk looks like a fork,” whispered Gimlet out of the corner of his thick-lipped mouth. The leader, shorter than the others by a head, looked at them suspiciously through twin monocles and brandished a battlemop. It was then that the company realized that the leader was a woman, a woman whose ample breastplate hinted at a figure of some heft.
“Vere ist you going und vat are you doing here vhen you are not to being here in der first place vhere you ist?” the leader demanded in rather garbled everybody-talk.
Stomper stepped forward and bowed low, falling on one knee and pulling his forelock. Then he kissed the ground at the sheep-lord’s feet. He buffed her boots for good measure.
“Hail and greeting, O Lady,” lisped Stomper, the butter in his mouth freezing solid. “We are wayfarers in your land searching for friends taken by the foul narcs of Sorhed and Serutan. Perhaps you have espied them. They are three feet tall with hairy feet and little tails, probably dressed in elvin cloaks and headed for Fordor to destroy Sorhed’s threat to Lower Middle Earth.”
The captain of the sheepmen stared at the Ranger dumbly, then, turning to her own company, beckoned a rider.
“Medic! Hurry up, I haf vork for you. Und he ist der delirious, also!”
“Nay, beautiful Lady,” said Stomper, “they of whom I speak are boggies, or in the tongue of the elves, hoipolloi. I am their guide, who am called Stomper by some, though I have many names.”
“I bet you do,” agreed the leader, tossing her golden braids. “Medic! Vhere ist you?”
Finally Arrowroot’s explanations were accepted, and introductions were made all around.
“I ist Eorache, daughter of Eorlobe, Captain of der Rubbermark and Thane of Chowder. Dot means you ist nice to me or you ist not nothing to nobody no more,” said the ruddy-faced warrior. Suddenly her face darkened when she espied Gimlet, whom she studied suspiciously.
“Vat your name ist again?”
“Gimlet, son of
Groin, Dwarf-Lord of Geritol and Royal Inspector of Meats,” said the stubby dwarf.
Eorache dismounted and inspected Gimlet at closer range, a tight frown on her lips.
“Dot’s funny,” she said at last, “you don’t look dwarfish!” Then she turned to Stomper. “Und you. Undershirt vas it?”
“Arrowshirt!” said Stomper. “Arrowroot of Arrowshirt!”
In a flash he had drawn gleaming Krona from its holster and flailed it about over his head as he cried, “And this is Krona of he who has many names, he who is called Lumbago, the Lodestone, by the elves, Dunderhead, heir to the throne of Twodor and true son of Arrowhead of Araplane, Conqueror of Dozens and seed of Barbisol, Top of the Heap and King of the Mountain.”
“Vell la-dee-dah,” said Eorache, eyeing the waiting medic. “But I ist believing dot you ist not der schpies of der Serutan. He ist one schtinker, but he ist not der schtupiter also.”
“We have come from afar,” said Legolam, “and were led by Goodgulf Grayteeth, Wizard to Kings and Fairy Godfather, second class.”
The sheepess raised her yellow brows and let both monocles fall from her watery blue eyes. “Schhhhhhh! Dot ist not der name to be dropping around here. Der King, mein vater, lost his favorite mount, Saniflush der Swift, to dot schyster und later finds dot der dice ist queerer than der three-legged troll! Then der poor scheep ist coming back a week later covered with fleas and forgetting dot she ist house-trained all over der King’s new tapestry. Vhen der King catches him, der ist vun dead Vizard!”
“There is a sad wisdom in your words,” said Arrowroot, trying to snatch a peek down her halberd, “for Goodgulf is no more. He met his fate o’er-matched in uneven contest with a ballhog in the Mines of Doria. The creature played not fairly with Goodgulf, mastering him with means foul and deceitful.”
“Der poetic justicer,” said Eorache, “but I vill miss der old crank.”
“And now,” said Arrowroot, “we are in quest of our two companions captured by narcs and borne whither we know not.”
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