Tales From The Vulgar Unicorn

by Edited By Robert Asprin

  “It’s all right!” she said softly. “Listen! Can you get up if I help you? I’ll get you away!”

  Sweat poured into her eyes as she looked towards the far corner. She could see nothing, but if the hunters wore black, they wouldn’t be visible at this distance.

  Benna moaned and then said, “I’m dying, Masha.”

  Masha gritted her teeth. She had hoped that he’d not recognize her voice, not at least until she’d got him to safety. Now, if the hunters found him alive and got her name from him, they’d come after her. They’d think she had the jewel or whatever it was they wanted.

  “Here. Get up,” she said, and struggled to help him. She was small, about five feet tall and weighing eighty-two pounds. But she had the muscles of a cat, and fear was pumping strength into her. She managed to get Benna to his feet. Staggering under his weight, she supported him towards the open doorway of the building on the corner.

  Benna reeked of something strange, an odour of rotting meat but unlike any she’d ever smelled. It rode over the stale sweat and urine of his body and clothes.

  “No use,” Benna mumbled through greatly swollen lips. “I’m dying. The pain is terrible, Masha.”

  “Keep going!” she said fiercely. “We’re almost there!”

  Benna raised his head. His eyes were surrounded with puffed-out flesh. Masha had never seen such edema; the blackness and the swelling looked like those of a corpse five days dead in the heat of summer.

  “No!” he mumbled. “Not old Lahboo’s building!”

  Chapter 3

  UNDER OTHER CIRCUMSTANCES, Masha would have laughed. Here was a dying man or a man who thought he was dying. And he’d be dead soon if his pursuers caught up with him. (Me, too, she thought.) Yet he was afraid to take the only refuge available because of a ghost.

  “You look bad enough to scare even the Tight-Fisted One,” she said. “Keep going or I’ll drop you right now!”

  She got him inside the doorway, though it wasn’t easy what with the boards still attached to the lower half of the entrance. The top planks had fallen inside. It was a tribute to the fear people felt for this place that no one had stolen the wood, an expensive item in the desert town.

  Just after they’d climbed over, Benna almost falling, she heard a man utter something in the raspy tearing language. He was near by, but he must have just arrived. Otherwise, he would have heard the two.

  Masha had thought she’d reached the limits of terror, but she found that she hadn’t. The speaker was a Raggah!

  Though she couldn’t understand the speech—no one in Sanctuary could—she’d heard Raggah a number of times. Every thirty days or so five or six of the cloaked, robed, hooded, and veiled desert men came to the bazaar and the farmers’ market. They could speak only their own language, but they used signs and a plentitude of coins to obtain what they wanted. Then they departed on their horses, their mules loaded down with food, wine, vuksibah (the very expensive malt whisky imported from a far north land), goods of various kinds: clothing, bowls, braziers, ropes, camel and horse hides. Their camels bore huge panniers full of feed for chickens, ducks, camels, horses, and hogs. They also purchased steel tools: shovels, picks, drills, hammers, wedges.

  They were tall, and though they were very dark, most had blue or green eyes. These looked cold and hard and piercing, and few looked directly into them. It was said that they had the gift, or the curse, of the evil eye.

  They were enough, in this dark night, to have made Masha marble with terror. But what was worse, and this galvanized the marble, they were the servants of the purple mage! Masha guessed at once what had happened. Benna had had the guts and the complete stupidity—to sneak into the underground maze of the mage on the river isle of Shugthee and to steal a jewel. It was amazing that he’d had the courage, astounding that he could get undetected into the caves, an absolute wonder that he’d penetrated the treasurehold, and fantastic that he’d managed to get out. What weird tales he could tell if he survived! Masha could think of no similar event, no analogue, to the adventures he must have had.

  “Mofandsf!” she thought. In the thieves’ argot of Sanctuary, “Mind-boggling!”

  At that moment Benna’s knees gave, and it was all she could do to hold him up. Somehow, she got him to the door to the next room and into a closet. If the Raggah came in, they would look here, of course, but she could get him no further.

  Benna’s odour was even more sickening in the hot confines of the closet, though its door was almost completely open. She eased him down. He mumbled, “Spiders … spiders.”

  She put her mouth close to his ear. “Don’t talk loudly, Benna. The Raggah are close by. Benna, what did you say about the spiders?”

  “Bites … bites,” he murmured. “Hurt… the … the emerald … rich…!”

  “How’d you get in?” she said. She put her hand close to his mouth to clamp down on it if he should start to talk loudly.

  “Wha…? Camel’s eye … bu…”

  He stiffened, the heels of his feet striking the bottom of the closet door. Masha pressed her hand down on his mouth. She was afraid that he might cry out in his death agony. If this were it. And it was. He groaned, and then relaxed. Masha took her hand away. A long sigh came from his open mouth.

  She looked around the edge of the closet. Though it was dark outside, it was brighter than the darkness in the house. She should be able to make out anyone standing in the doorway. The noise the heels made could have attracted the hunters. She saw no one, though it was possible that someone had already come in and was against a wall. Listening for more noise.

  She felt Benna’s pulse. He was dead or so close to it that it didn’t matter any more. She rose and slowly pulled her dagger from the scabbard. Then she stepped out, crouching, sure that the thudding of her heart could be heard in this still room.

  So unexpectedly and suddenly that a soft cry was forced from her, a whistle sounded outside. Feet pounded in the room—there was someone here!—and the dim rectangle of the doorway showed a bulk plunging through it. But it was going out, not in. The Raggah had heard the whistle of the garrison soldiers—half the city must have heard it—and he was leaving with his fellows.

  She turned and bent down and searched under Benna’s tunic and in his loincloth. She found nothing except slowly cooling lumpy flesh. Within ten seconds, she was out on the street. Down a block was the advancing light of torches, their holders not yet visible. In the din of shouts and whistles, she fled hoping that she wouldn’t run into any laggard Raggah or another body of soldiers.

  Later, she found out that she’d been saved because the soldiers were looking for a prisoner who’d escaped from the dungeon. His name was Badniss, but that’s another tale.

  Chapter 4

  MASHA’S TWO-ROOM apartment was on the third floor of a large adobe building which, with two others, occupied an entire block. She entered it on the side of the Street of the Dry Well, but first she had to wake up old Shmurt, the caretaker, by beating on the thick oaken door. Grumbling at the late hour, he unshot the bolt and let her in. She gave him a padpool, a tiny copper coin, for his trouble and to shut him up. He handed her her oil lamp, she lit it, and she went up the three flights of stone steps.

  She had to wake up her mother to get in. Wallu, blinking and yawning in the light of an oil lamp in the corner, shot the bolt. Masha entered and at once extinguished her lamp. Oil cost money, and there had been many nights when she had had to do without it.

  Wallu, a tall skinny sagging-breasted woman of fifty, with gaunt deeply-lined features, kissed her daughter on the cheek. Her breath was sour with sleep and goat’s cheese. But Masha appreciated the peck; her life had few expressions of love in it. And yet she was full of it; she was a bottle close to bursting with pressure.

  The light on the rickety table in the corner showed a blank-walled room without rugs. In a far corner the two infants slept on a pile of tattered but clean blankets. Beside them was a small chamberpot of baked clay pa
inted with the black and scarlet rings-within-rings of the Darmek guild.

  In another corner was her false-teeth making equipment, wax, moulds, tiny chisels, saws, and expensive wire, hardwood, iron, a block of ivory. She had only recently repaid the money she’d borrowed to purchase these. In the opposite corner was another pile of cloth, Wallu’s bed, and beside it another thundermug with the same design. An ancient and wobbly spinning-wheel was near it; Wallu made some money with it, though not much. Her hands were gnarled with arthritis, one eye had a cataract, and the other was beginning to lose its sight for some unknown reason.

  Along the adobe wall was a brass charcoal brazier and above it a wooden vent. A bin held charcoal. A big cabinet beside it held grain and some dried meat and plates and knives. Near it was a baked clay vase for water. Next to it was a pile of cloths. Wallu pointed at the curtain in the doorway to the other room. “He came home early. I suppose he couldn’t cadge drinks enough from his friends. But he’s drunk enough to suit a dozen sailors.” Grimacing, Masha strode to the curtain and pulled it aside. “Shewaw!” (A combination of “Whew!”, “Ugh!”, and “Yech!”) The stink was that which greeted her nostrils when she opened the door to the Vulgar Unicorn Tavern. A blend of wine and beer, stale and fresh, sweat, stale and fresh, vomit, urine, frying blood-sausages, krrf, and kleetel.

  Eevroen lay on his back, his mouth open, his arms spread out as if he were being crucified. Once, he had been a tall muscular youth, very broad-shouldered, slim waisted, and long-legged. Now he was fat, fat, fat, double-chinned, huge paunched with rings of sagging fat around his waist. The once bright eyes were red and dark-bagged, and the once-sweet breath was a hellpit of stenches. He’d fallen asleep without changing into nightclothes; his tunic was ripped, dirty, and stained with various things, including puke. He wore cast-off sandals, or perhaps he’d stolen them.

  Masha was long past weeping over him. She kicked him in the ribs, causing him to grunt and to open one eye. But it closed and he was quickly snoring like a pig again. That, at least, was a blessing. How many nights had she spent in screaming at him while he bellowed at her or in fighting him off when he staggered home and insisted she lie with him? She didn’t want to count them.

  Masha would have got rid of him long ago if she had been able to. But the law of the empire was that only the man could divorce unless the woman could prove her spouse was too diseased to have children or was impotent.

  She whirled and walked towards the wash-basin. As she passed her mother, a hand stopped her.

  Wallu, peering at her with one half-good eye, said, “Child! Something has happened to you! What was it?”

  “Tell you in a moment,” Masha said, and she washed her face and hands and armpits. Later, she regretted very much that she hadn’t told Wallu a lie. But how was she to know that Eevroen had come out of his stupor enough to hear what she said? If only she hadn’t been so furious that she’d kicked him … but regrets were a waste of time, though there wasn’t a human alive who didn’t indulge in them.

  She had no sooner finished telling her mother what had happened with Benna when she heard a grunt behind her. She turned to see Eevroen swaying in front of the curtains, a stupid grin on his fat face. The face once so beloved.

  Eevroen reeled towards her, his hands out as if he intended to grab her. He spoke thickly but intelligibly enough.

  “Why din’t you go after the rat? If you caught it, we coulda been rich!”

  “Go back to sleep,” Masha said. “This has nothing to do with you.”

  “Nothin do wi’ me?” Eevroen bellowed. “Wha’ you mean? I’m your husband! Wha’ss yoursh ish mine. I wan’ tha’ jewel!”

  “You damned fool,” Masha said, trying to keep from screaming so that the children wouldn’t wake and the neighbours wouldn’t hear, “I don’t have the jewel. There was no way I could get it—if there ever was any.”

  Eevroen put a finger alongside his nose and winked the left eye. “If there wa’ ever any, heh? Masha, you tryna hoi’ ou’ on me? You go’ the jewel, and you lyin’ to you’ mo … mo … mama.”

  “No, I’m not lying!” she screamed, all reason for caution having deserted her quite unreasonably. “You fat stinking pig! I’ve had a terrible time, I almost got killed, and all you can think about is the jewel! Which probably doesn’t exist! Benna was dying! He didn’t know what he was talking about! I never saw the jewel! And…”

  Eevroen snarled, “You tryna keep i’ from me!” and he charged her.

  She could easily have evaded him, but something swelled up in her and took over, and she seized a baked-clay water jug from a shelf and brought it down hard over his head. The jug didn’t break, but Eevroen did. He fell face forwards. Blood welled from his scalp; he snored.

  By then the children were awake, sitting up, wide-eyed, but silent. Maze children learned at an early age not to cry easily.

  Shaking, Masha got down on her knees and examined the wound. Then she rose and went to the rag rack and returned with some dirty ones, no use wasting clean ones on him, and stanched the wound. She felt his pulse; it was beating steadily enough for a drunkard who’d just been knocked out with a severe blow.

  Wallu said, “Is he dead?”

  She wasn’t concerned about him. She was worrying about herself, the children, and Masha. If her daughter should be executed for killing her husband, however justified she was, then she and the girls would be without support.

  “He’ll have a hell of a headache in the morning,” Masha said. With some difficulty, she rolled Eevroen over so that he would be face down, and she turned his head sideways and then put some rags under the side of his head. Now, if he should vomit during the night, he wouldn’t choke to death. For a moment she was tempted to put him back as he had fallen. But the judge might think that she was responsible for his death.

  “Let him lie there,” she said. “I’m not going to break my back dragging him to our bed. Besides, I wouldn’t be able to sleep, he snores so loudly and he stinks so badly.”

  She should have been frightened of what he’d do in the morning. But, strangely, she felt exuberant. She’d done what she’d wanted to do for several years now, and the deed had discharged much of her anger—for the time being, anyway.

  She went to her room and tossed and turned for a while, thinking of how much better life would be if she could get rid of Eevroen.

  Her last thoughts were of what life could be if she’d got the jewel that Benna had thrown to the rat.

  Chapter 5

  SHE AWOKE AN hour or so past dawn, a very late time for her, and smelled bread baking. After she’d sat on the chamberpot, she rose and pushed the curtain aside. She was curious about the lack of noise in the next room. Eevroen was gone. So were the children. Wallu, hearing the little bells on the curtain, turned.

  “I sent the children out to play,” she said. “Eevroen woke up about dawn. He pretended he didn’t know what had happened, but I could tell that he did. He groaned now and then—his head I suppose. He ate some breakfast, and then he got out fast.”

  Wallu smiled. “I think he’s afraid of you.”

  “Good!” Masha said. “I hope he keeps on being afraid.”

  She sat down while Wallu, hobbling around, served her a half loaf of bread, a hunk of goat cheese, and an orange. Masha wondered if her husband also remembered what she’d said to her mother about Benna and the jewel.

  He had.

  When she went to the bazaar, carrying the folding chair in which she put her dental patients, she was immediately surrounded by hundreds of men and women. All wanted to know about the jewel.

  Masha thought, “The damn fool!”

  Eevroen, it seemed, had procured free drinks with his tale. He’d staggered around everywhere, the taverns, the bazaar, the farmers’ market, the waterfront, and he’d spread the news. Apparently, he didn’t say anything about Masha’s knocking him out. That tale would have earned him only derision, and he still had enough manhood left not to reveal tha
t.

  At first, Masha was going to deny the story. But it seemed to her that most people would think she was lying, and they would be sure that she had kept the jewel. Her life would be miserable from then on. Or ended. There were plenty who wouldn’t hesitate to drag her off to some secluded place and torture her until she told where the jewel was.

  So she described exactly what had happened, omitting how she had tried to brain Eevroen. There was no sense in pushing him too hard. If he was humiliated publicly, he might get desperate enough to try to beat her up.

  She got only one patient that day. As fast as those who’d heard her tale ran off to look for rats, others took their place. And then, inevitably, the governor’s soldiers came. She was surprised they hadn’t appeared sooner. Surely one of their informants had sped to the palace as soon as he had heard her story, and that would have been shortly after she’d come to the bazaar.

  The sergeant of the soldiers questioned her first, and then she was marched to the garrison, where a captain interrogated her. Afterwards, a colonel came in, and she had to repeat her tale. And then, after sitting in a room for at least two hours, she was taken to the governor himself. The handsome youth, surprisingly, didn’t detain her long. He seemed to have checked out her movements, starting with Doctor Nadeesh. He’d worked out a timetable between the moment she left Shoozh’s house and the moment she came home. So, her mother had also been questioned.

  A soldier had seen two of the Raggah running away; their presence was verified.

  “Well, Masha,” the governor said. “You’ve stirred up a rat’s nest,” and he smiled at his own joke while the soldiers and courtiers laughed.