Benelux selected one of the fifty-two sevens of hearts and tore it into confetti. “Audience over,” he repeated with finality.
• • •
“Foolish dotard,” growled Goodgulf later in their room at an inn. He had been fussing and fuming for over an hour.
“But what can we do if he will not help us?” asked Moxie. “The bird is nutty as an elf-cake.”
Goodgulf snapped his fingers as if an idea had dawned in his sly head. “That’s it!” he chuckled. “The old prune is known to be mental.”
“So are his pals,” observed Pepsi sagely.
“Psychotic, too,” mused the Wizard. “I bet he’s got a lot of suicidal psychoses. Self-destructive. Textbook case.”
“Suicidal?” said Pepsi with surprise. “How do you say that?”
“It’s just a hunch,” Goodgulf replied distantly, “just a hunch.”
• • •
The news of the Old Steward’s suicide that evening stirred the city. The tabloids ran a large photograph of the burning pyre into which he leapt after first ingeniously tying himself up and writing a final farewell to his subjects. Headlines that day screamed “Batty Benelux Burns” and later editions reported “Wizard Last to See Steward: Cites Sorhed as Cause of B.’s Torment.” Since Benelux’s entire staff had mysteriously disappeared, Goodgulf generously took it upon himself to arrange a State Funeral and proclaim a Lunch Hour of National Mourning for the fallen ruler. During the next few days of confusion and political turmoil the persuasive Wizard serenely held numerous press conferences. By the hour he conferred with high officials to explain that it was his old friend’s last wish that he, Goodgulf, hold the reins of government until his surviving son, Farahslax, returned. In unguarded moments he could be found in the palace’s executive washroom trying to scour out a faint smell of garlic and kerosene.
Within a remarkably short time, Goodgulf had galvanized the sleepy capital into a drilling militia. Marshaling Minas Troney’s resources, the Wizard personally drew up ration lists, fortification plans, and lucrative defense contracts which he himself filled. At first there was a clamor of protest against Goodgulf’s extraordinary powers. But then an angry black cloud began growing over the city. This, plus a few unexplained explosions in Opposition newspaper offices, silenced “those damned isolationists,” as Goodgulf dubbed them in a widely publicized interview. Soon after, stragglers from the eastern provinces told of hordes of narcs attacking and overwhelming Twodor’s border outpost at Ohmigoshgolli. Soon, Twodor knew, Sorhed’s dogs would be sniffing at the city’s very pants cuffs.
• • •
Moxie and Pepsi fidgeted impatiently in the waiting room of Goodgulf’s palace offices, their feet dangling a foot or so short of the plush carpet. Although proud of their new uniforms (Goodgulf had commissioned the pair as Twodorian lieutenant colonels), the boggies had seen little of the Wizard, and the rumor of narcs had made them mickle itchy.
“Can’t he see us now?” whined Pepsi.
“We’ve been waiting for hours!” added Moxie.
The shapely elf-receptionist shifted the torques in her clinging blouse indifferently.
“I’m sorry,” she said for the eighth time that morning, “but the Wizard is still in conference.”
The bell on her desk rang, and before she could cover the speaking tube, the boggies heard Goodgulf’s voice.
“Are they gone yet?”
The elf-maiden reddened as the boggies bolted past her and through the door to Goodgulf’s office. There they found the Wizard with a fat cigar between his teeth and a pair of bleached-blond sylphs perched on his bony knees. He looked at Pepsi and Moxie with annoyance.
“Can’t you see I’m busy?” he snapped. “In conference. Very important.” Goodgulf made as if to resume his conference.
“Not so fast,” said Pepsi.
“Yeah, fast,” Moxie emphasized, helping himself to the dish of black caviar on Goodgulf’s desk.
Goodgulf made a deep sigh and bade the languid sylphs withdraw.
“Well, well,” Goodgulf said with strained affability, “what can I do for you?”
“Not as much as you seem to have done for yourself,” said Moxie with a black-smudged grin.
“Can’t complain,” Goodgulf replied. “Fortune has smiled upon me. Help yourself to my lunch.” Moxie had just finished it and was going through Goodgulf’s drawers for more.
“We grow fearful,” said Pepsi as he plunked himself down in an expensive troll-hide chair. “Rumors run through the city of narcs and other foul fiends approaching from the east. A black cloud has appeared over our heads and utilities are down eight and a half.”
Goodgulf blew a fat blue smoke ring.
“These are not matters for small ones,” he said. “Besides, you’re stealing my lines.”
“But the black cloud?” Pepsi asked.
“Just a few smudge pots I planted in the Knockon Wood. Keeps the folk hereabouts on their toes.”
“And the rumors of invaders?” said Moxie.
“Simply that,” said Goodgulf. “Sorhed will not attack Minas Troney for a while yet, and by then the rest of our company will have brought reinforcements to the city.”
“Then there is no danger yet?” sighed Pepsi.
“Trust me,” said Goodgulf as he ushered them out the door. “Wizards know many things.”
• • •
The surprise attack at dawn the next day caught everyone in Minas Troney by surprise. None of the planned fortifications had been completed, and the materials and men that were ordered and paid for through Goodgulf’s office had never appeared. In the night a vast horde had completely surrounded the fair city and their black encampments covered the green plains like a week-old scab. Black flags with the Red Nose of Sorhed fluttered all about the city. Then, as the first rays of the sun touched the band, the black army assailed the walls.
Hundreds of narcs, their minds aflame with cheap muscatel, threw themselves at the gates. Behind them tramped companies of renegade trolls and rogue pandas, slavering with hate. Whole brigades of psychotic banshees and goblins raised their shrill voices in a loathsome war cry. At their rear marched niblicks and vicious mashies who could lay low many a brave Twodorian with a single stroke of their deadly meat tenderizers. From over a rise appeared a bloodthirsty mass of clerk-typists and the entire June Taylor Dancers. A sight most horrible to behold.
This, Goodgulf, Moxie, and Pepsi watched from the walls. The boggies were much afraid.
“They are so many and we are so few!” Pepsi cried, much afraid.
“True heart is the strength of ten,” said Goodgulf.
“We are so few and they are so many!” cried Moxie, afraid much.
“A watched pot never boils; whistle a happy tune,” observed Goodgulf. “Too many cooks spoil the brouhaha.”
Reassured, the boggies donned their greaves, corslets, gauntlets, and shoulder padding and slathered themselves with Bactine. Each was armed with a double-edged putty knife, its blade both keen and true. Goodgulf wore an old deep-sea diver’s suit of stoutest latex. Only the well-trimmed beard was recognizable through the helmet’s little round window. In his hand he carried an ancient and trusty weapon, called by the elves a Browning semiautomatic.
Pepsi glimpsed a shadow above them and screamed. There was a swooping sound and all three ducked just in time. A laughing Nozdrul pulled his killer pelican out of its power dive. The sky was suddenly full of the black birds, each piloted by a begoggled Black Rider. The marauders flapped hither and thither, taking aerial photographs and strafing hospitals, orphanages, and churches with guano. As they wheeled above the terrified city the pelicans opened their fanged maws to disgorge blank propaganda leaflets down upon the illiterate defenders.
But the Twodorians were harassed not only from above. Land forces were now battering the main gate and toppling men from the ramparts with flaming matzoh balls and the collected works of Rod McKuen.3 The very air was alive with the whi
zzing of poisoned boomerangs and high-velocity Dog Yummies. Several of the latter dented Goodgulf’s helmet, giving him a near-fatal migraine.
All at once the front ranks parted before the walls and the boggies cried out with astonishment. A monstrous black peccary galloped to the gate. Its rider was the Lord of the Nozdrul. He was dressed all in black; great tire chains hung from his leather jacket. The huge wraith dismounted his tusker, his engineer boots sinking deep in the hard ground. Moxie caught a glimpse of a grotesque, pimpled face; the fiend’s fangs and greasy sideburns flashed wetly in the noonday sun. The lord leered evilly at the ramparts of Twodorians, then lifted a black pennywhistle to a gaping nostril to sneeze a single, earsplitting blatt.
Immediately a squad of gremlins half-crazed by cough syrup trundled out a huge female dragon on black roller skates. The rider patted its horned snout and climbed on its scaly back, directing the attention of the beast’s single bloodshot eye upon the portal. The huge reptile nodded and rubber-legged on its wheels toward the wooden gate. Horrified, the Twodorians saw the Nozdrul ignite the dragon’s pilot light; he spurred the monster’s flanks and the torrent of fiery propane belched from its open jaws. The wall burst into flame and crumbled into ashes. Narcs eagerly hopped over the licking tongues and poured into the city.
“All is lost!” Moxie sobbed. He prepared to throw himself off the wall.
“Despair not,” Goodgulf commanded through his little window. “Bring me my white robes, and quickly!”
“Ah!” cried Pepsi, “white robes for white magic!”
“No,” said Goodgulf as he stapled the garments to a pool cue, “white robes for white flag.”
Just as the Wizard was waving his robes in frantic semaphore, the sound of a hundred horns was heard in the west, answered by as many in the east. A great wind clove the black cloud and dispersed it, revealing through the parting mists a great shield bearing the words CAUTION: CIGARETTE SMOKING MAY BE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH; the rocks split, and the sky, though cloudless, thundered like a thousand stagehands striking a thousand metal sheets. There was a release of pigeons.
From all points of the compass the joyful Twodorians saw great armies approaching with marching bands, fireworks, and showers of colored streamers. To the north was Gimlet leading a band of a thousand dwarves, to the south the familiar pronged bulk of Eorache in command of three thousand berserk Sheepers; from the east appeared two great armies, one of Farahslax’s seasoned Green Toupées and one of Legolam’s manned by four thousand sharp-nailed interior decorators. Lastly, from the west, rode gray-clad Arrowroot leading a party of four war badgers and a cranky Cub Scout.
In a trice the armies converged on the embattled city and set upon the panicking enemy. The battle raged as the trapped attackers were mowed down with sword and club. Terrified trolls fled the murderous Roi-Tanner hooves only to be hewn to pieces by the dwarves’ picks and shovels. The bodies of narcs and banshees littered the ground and the Lord of the Nozdrul was encircled by piqued elves who scratched out his eyes and pulled his hair until he fell on his own sword in embarrassment. The black pelicans and their Nozdrul pilots were pecked from the air by antiaircraft gulls and the dragon was cornered by the Cub Scout and peppered with rubber-tipped arrows until it suffered a complete nervous breakdown and collapsed with a heavy thud.
Meanwhile, the heartened Twodorians rushed from the walls and flew at the fiends yet inside the city. Moxie and Pepsi drew their putty knives and wielded them deftly. Soon, not a fallen corpse had a nose to call his own. Goodgulf busied himself throttling narcs from behind with his rubber air hose and Arrowroot was very probably doing something or other that was pretty much brave. When later questioned about the battle, however, he usually went rather vague.
At last all the enemy were slain, and the few who managed to break through the deadly ring of soldiers were run down and quickly dispatched with a blow from a Roi-Tanner dust mop. The narcs’ bodies were collected into large mounds. Goodgulf then merrily instructed that they be individually gift-wrapped and mailed to Fordor. COD. The Twodorians began hosing down the stained ramparts and the still-quivering bulk of the dragon was carted off to the Royal Kitchens for that evening’s victory feast.
But all was not well with Twodor. Many good men and true had fallen: the brothers Handlebar and Hersheybar, and Eorache’s uncle, the trusty Eordrum. Dwarves and elves had their losses, and the sad whines of mourning mixed with the cheers of victory.
Though the leaders happily gathered for greeting, not even these were spared grievous hurt. Farahslax, son of Benelux and brother to Bromosel, had lost four toes and suffered a gash across the tummy. The fair Eorache was cut upon her massive biceps and both her monocles had been brutally smashed. Moxie and Pepsi lost a bit of their right earlobes in the fray, and Legolam’s left pinky was severely sprained. Gimlet’s pointed head had been somewhat flattened out by a mashie’s tenderizer, but the flayed skin he now wore as a mackintosh attested to the outcome of that particular duel. Lastly limped Goodgulf, supported by the miraculously unscathed Ranger. The old Wizard’s white bell-bottoms had been viciously frayed and there was a nasty stain on the front of his Nehru jacket; his go-go boots were beyond hope. He also wore his right arm in a matching sling, but when he later tended to switch it from arm to arm this wound was taken rather less seriously.
Tears flowed like water as they greeted each other. Even Gimlet and Legolam managed to limit their enmity to an obscene gesture or two. There was much laughing and embracing, particularly between Arrowroot and Eorache. Arrowroot, however, was not blind to certain glances that were exchanged when the Scheepess was introduced to the husky Farahslax.
“And this hero,” said Goodgulf at last to Arrowroot, “is the brave Farahslax, true heir to the Stewardship of Twodor.”
“Charmed, I’ll warrant,” replied Arrowroot icily as he simultaneously shook the warrior’s hand and stepped on his wounded foot. “I am Arrowroot of Arrowshirt, true son of Araplane and true King of all Twodor. You have already met fair Eorache, my fiancée and Queen!” The emphasis the Ranger put into his formal greeting was lost on no one.
“Greetings and salutations,” returned the Green Toupée. “May your reign and marriage be as long as your life.” He crushed Arrowroot’s hand as he shook it.
The two stared at each other with unabashed hatred.
“Let us all go to the House o’ Healing,” said Arrowroot finally as he inspected his mangled fingers, “for there are many wounds that I would heal.”
• • •
By the time the company had reached the palace much had been said. Goodgulf was roundly congratulated for giving the attack signal with his flag. Many wondered at his wisdom in knowing that help was on its way, but on this matter the Wizard kept strangely silent. The company also was saddened that Birdseye could not share their victory this day, for the green giant and his trusty Vee-Ates had been most foully ambushed on the way back from Isinglass by a black herd of Sorhed’s wraith-rabbits. Of the once-mighty army not even a single stalk remained. Moxie and Pepsi shed bitter tears for the loss of their fecund carrots and danced a little jig of despair.
“And now,” said Arrowroot, beckoning the wounded warriors to a concrete bunker, “let us retire to yon . . . er . . . House o’ Healing, where we may purge our troubles.” He looked pointedly at Farahslax.
“Healing-schmealing, ve ist hokay,” objected Eorache, looking at Farahslax like a dog gloating over a pound of minute steak.
“Heed my words,” Arrowroot commanded, stomping a boot.
The company protested feebly, but obeyed so as not to hurt his feelings. There, Arrowroot donned a white apron and a plastic stethoscope and ran hither and yon seeing after the patients. He put Farahslax in a private room far from the others.
“Nothing but the best for the Steward of Twodor,” he explained.
Soon all were tended to, save the new Steward. Arrowroot allowed that Farahslax had had a relapse in his private room and an operation was immed
iately necessary. He would meet them at the victory feast later.
• • •
The feast in the main cafeteria of Benelux’s palace was a sight to behold. Goodgulf had unearthed great stores of delicacies; the same delicacies, it happened, as those that were earlier placed on the Wizard’s ration lists. Yards of twisted crêpe paper and glowing fold-up lanterns bedazzled the guests’ eyes. Goodgulf himself hired the two-piece all-troll orchestra to serenade the diners from a low dais of old orange crates, and all drank largely from the kegs of rotgut mead. Then the guests, plastered elves, drunk dwarves, reeling men, and a few schnozzled unidentifiables staggered with their brimming trays to the long banquet table and began gobbling as if it were their last meal.
“Not as dumb as they look,” Goodgulf blearily observed to Legolam at his left.
The Wizard, brilliantly attired in fresh bell-bottoms, slumped at the head of the table with the stinkoed boggies, Legolam, Gimlet, and Eorache in the folding chairs of honor. Only the absence of Farahslax and Arrowroot stayed the official proceedings.
“Where d’ya sh’pose they are?” Moxie asked finally above the clatter of trays and plastic flagons.
Moxie’s question was answered, or at least half answered, as the swinging doors of the banquet hall flew open and a bloodstained, disheveled figure appeared.
“Shtomper!” cried Pepsi.
The hundreds of guests paused in their repast. Before them stood Arrowroot, still in his apron, covered mask to boot with gore. One hand was swathed in bandages and he bore a nasty-looking mouse under one eye.
“Vas ist?” said Eorache. “Vhere ist der handsome Farahslaxer?”
“Alas,” the Ranger sighed, “Farahslax is no more. I tried mightily to heal his wounds, but it was in vain. His hurts were many and sore.”
“Vhat vas der matter mit him?” sobbed the Roi-Tanner. “He vas fine vhen ve left.”
“Terminal abrasions and contusions,” said Arrowroot, sighing again, “with complications. His cuticles were completely severed, poor soul. Never had a chance.”
Bored of the Rings Page 15