Sir Hanson slumped back in his chair. “I’m dead,” he announced.
Bezique stood up, leaned across the table in a most scenic manner, took his face in both her hands, and gave him a long, deep kiss. He responded eagerly, and when at last she broke their embrace she observed, “You don’t kiss like a corpse. Why claim kinship?”
“Because my mission hither was to bring back the errant merchants. It doesn’t look like they’ll come willingly, and I can’t force all of them. Good King Donald has little use for knights who fail him.”
“Bother Good King Donald. Stay here, sir knight, and serve us.”
“ ‘Us?’ ”
The enchantress spread her arms wide, indicating the flash and glitter of the vast gambling den. “Does this look like a one-witch operation? We woodland sorceresses formed a corporation, once we realized what Good King Donald had done to us. We reasoned that if the public no longer had any need to enter the Dark Woods, perhaps we should make them want to do so.”
Sir Hanson shook his head sadly. “Fair lady, I’d gladly stay here and turn my sword to your service, but if I return a failure, King Donald will imprison me for a false knight, and force my father to ruin himself with my ransom. And if I don’t return at all, Good King Donald will declare me a traitor and confiscate my father’s property to the last crumb.”
“We could fake your death,” Bezique suggested. “I’d really like to take you on as my new chief of security. In fact, I’d really just like to take you on.” She licked her lips.
Sir Hanson shook his head. “As I would like to serve you, in all ways possible, and in one or two that might not be possible but that it would be a lot of fun to try anyway. However, if I’m reported dead, it would break my parents’ hearts, and then there’s Good King Donald’s death-tax to be paid, and—and—and—” He sighed. “And even if I could evade all those consequences, I wouldn’t have long to enjoy my new life here. Mark me, the king will order knight after knight into the Dark Woods until he finally learns about the riches gathered here, and then he’ll send an army here to take ’em from you. That man loves gold like a pig loves slop, and there’s only so much that witchery can do to ward off cold steel.”
“Do you sense a unifying theme to the woes confronting you and me and all this kingdom?” the enchantress asked grimly. “Have you never thought how . . . pleasant things might be, were we rid of such rapacious royalty?”
“Kill him?” Sir Hanson was aghast. No matter his personal feelings about Good King Donald, he was still an honorable knight. As such, he could not countenance the summary snuffing of his liege lord, and he said so. “Besides, the regal wretch has always got at least fifty guards protecting his miserable royal hide at all times,” he concluded.
Bezique leaned across the table and traced titillating patterns on Sir Hanson’s dampening palms. “Oh, I wasn’t going to suggest that we kill him,” she said.
“A trail of crumbs, is it?” Good King Donald lowered his voice until it was barely audible and darted his eyes to left and right, vigilant against prying eyes. He and Sir Hanson were barricaded together in a secret chamber in the topmost turret of the castle, but the king wasn’t taking any chances. He’d commanded his guards to leave him alone with the man, (following the ceremonial weapons-removal-and-strip-search, of course). The news this knight had brought back from his quest more than made up for the fact that he’d failed to fetch the missing merchants.
“Aye, crumbs,” said Sir Hanson, reaching into the little pouch at his belt. “Like these I first showed you.” He sprinkled a pinch of gold bits across the tabletop.
The king’s eyes lit up like bonfires into which he flung all caution. “You left a whole trail of them behind you?”
Sir Hanson nodded solemnly. “Not all the way to the castle, nor even all the way to the edge of the Dark Woods, lest uninvited eyes catch sight of them and deprive you, my king, of a treasure trove that’s yours by right. No birds will gobble crumbs like these; the route back to the dragon’s cavern will remain well-blazed. There was such plentiful store of gold in that cave that I could safely squander as much as I needed to mark the path.”
“And you say that the dragon in whose cavern you found this fortune is—?”
“The cave is filled with dragon bones, Sire,” Sir Hanson replied. “And so much gold that even if you were to take your fifty stout guardsmen with you, there’d be more than enough for all of them to have a share.”
“Share . . .” The king repeated the word as though it were coined in some foreign tongue. He pursed his lips in thought, then asked: “Is gold very heavy, good Sir Hanson the Hawk-eyed?”
“Heavy enough, but not so heavy that one man, alone and unassisted, couldn’t carry off a fortune in his bare hands. And if he took an ox cart with him, the beasts could bear away enough to purchase an empire or two. So if you bring your guards, they would be able to carry—”
“Never mind about my guards,” said the king. “Go get me some oxen, good Duke Hanson the Silent.”
“He’s the one who jumped to conclusions,” said the newly made duke to his sorcerous sweetheart. They were closeted together in her bedchamber, just off the casino floor, whither she’d dragged him the instant he returned to inform her of the success of his errand. “It wasn’t as if I lied.”
“Of course you didn’t,” Bezique replied dreamily, doing magical things with her hands.
“The trail was well-blazed. He could have followed it out again easily enough.”
“Mmmm.”
“And the cavern did hold just as much gold as I told him. I saw the same vision in your crystal that you did.”
“Such a clever boy. Hold still. Stupid armor. Where’s my monkey wrench?”
But conscience would not allow Duke Hanson to enjoy Bezique’s attentions. He sat up and exclaimed: “And the cave was filled with dragon bones, just as I said! Is it my fault that there was still a living dragon wrapped around them?”
“Found it!” cried Bezique, brandishing the wrench.
Some time later, a loud whoop rang through the raisin-studded rafters of the gaming hall. At the joyful sound, Master Wulfram looked up glumly from his losing hand of Sixty-two Ogres.
“ ’Bout time someone got lucky in here,” he grumbled.
“Shut up and play cards, Pa,” said Bardric, raking in the pot.
FELLOW TRAVELER
Donald J. Bingle
Donald J. Bingle is probably best known as the world’s top-ranked player of classic role-playing games for more than fifteen years, but he is also a frequent contributor to short story anthologies in the science fiction, fantasy, horror, and comedy genres, including the DAW anthologies Civil War Fantastic, Historical Hauntings, Sol’s Children, Renaissance Faire, All Hell Breaking Loose, Slipstreams, and Time Twisters. He is also the author of Forced Conversion, a science fiction novel set in the near future, when everyone can have heaven, any heaven they want, but some people don’t want to go. His latest novel, Greensword, is a darkly comedic eco-thriller about a group of misfit environmentalists who are about to save the world from global warming, but don’t want to get caught doing it. He and his fantastic wife, Linda, also a top-ranked gamer, live in Illinois with three dogs: Smoosh, Makai, and Mauka. Don can be reached at www.orphyte.com/donaldjbingle.
CORBIN HAD ALWAYS SAID that he would rather walk bare-foot over broken pottery shards behind a donkey with diarrhea while wearing his scratchy winter greatcoat on the fiercest, most breezeless midsummer afternoon with a squabbling, squirming, and overweight six-year-old under each arm, than travel with barbarians. And he had always gotten a laugh when he said it.
So what had he done?
He had decided to travel with barbarians.
It had seemed like a good idea at the time. He wanted to go from here to there, but there were rumors of brigands and boogens and marauding disobeyers of civil authority and . . . and he had little to no ability to defend himself or, frankly, anything or anyone else.
After all, back when he was known as Corey the Comedian, working bars with a traveling troupe of performers, he had never needed fighting skills and he had never feared the open road. The troupe’s manager always hired itinerant warriors to protect the players and their wagons full of costumes, props, and magic items. Consequently, neither he nor any of the various actors, comedians, or attractive and comely dancers and singers had any worries of ambush or other unseemly encounters. Indeed, one of the ways he had convinced his mom to let him go on the open road as a teenager years ago was that he promised always to use protection.
“No worries of ickiness,” he had intoned. He’d always had a way with words.
Unfortunately, even though he was well protected in his travels by moonlighting city guards and heroes for hire, he was not quite so well protected from the vagaries and vicissitudes of life. In short, his career had not flourished. He was, he had been forced to admit after constant and rude reminders from his dwindling audiences, a not-particularly-funny comedian. The manager of the troupe had not only noticed this vocational flaw, he had joined in the heckling. Corey could live with that, but when the manager “forgot” to mention once that the troupe was leaving town early the next morning, Corey had taken it as a possible indicator that he was not indispensable to the troupe’s performances.
Corey had, of course, wished to stay with the troupe and did his best to help in other ways, but he did not have a good enough memory to transform himself into a teller of epic tales and was insufficiently coordinated to become a juggler. He had tried to sing a time or two, but really wasn’t fond enough of vegetables to continue that particular career path. He was useless, even behind the scenes. He couldn’t remember what props went where, and nobody liked his cooking, including him.
When you came right down to it, Corey was only part of an itinerant troupe of players because he liked staying up late and hanging around bars. In the end, he was reduced to playing the part of any corpse that was needed in the group’s various dramatic performances. Even this was problematic, as he had an unfortunate tendency to squirm uncontrollably when he lay on his back too long. It was in an attempt to improve his corpse portrayals that he discovered his new calling.
He convinced a mage who was riding the same circuit of miserable hamlets and villages as his troupe to teach him a magical spell that allowed him to feign death. Magicians, of course, don’t like to give out their secrets, but feigning death is not really one of those “wow” spells that everyone clamored to know. Corey was sufficiently adept or appreciative or, perhaps, annoying that the magician, Magnifico the Magnificent Mage, went on to teach him a few more of the lesser spells.
His change in profession was just in the small, bleeding gash of time, as Corey was fired just a fortnight later . . . or, at least, the troupe moved out to another, undisclosed town under the cover of darkness, without him being informed.
That’s how he came to be traveling alone to the west while the troupe and its mercenary guards traveled east . . . or north . . . or south . . . or southeast . . . or north-northeast . . . or some other direction, for all he knew. No one was talking. Even the street urchins and panhandlers had apparently been paid off.
Having been spurned by the troupe, Corey decided to take his magic act on a solo tour of the smallest and least sophisticated hamlets and hovels he could find. His new moniker was Corbinico the Comedic Conjurer. Of course, in a fortnight he had not learned much magic. And in a decade he had not learned much comedy. But he believed that he had learned just enough spells and just the right spells to punctuate his otherwise uneven comedic monologue and amuse an audience of simple folk with simple minds and not enough wealth to waste vegetables as projectiles.
He could make someone hear a whisper. He could make someone sneeze or make them itch in an embarrassing spot. He could give someone a bit of a zap—causing pain, but not really much damage. He could untie simple knots, no matter how tight, without using his hands. And he could feign death.
Not really much of a routine, but he would work that out as he walked. All he had to do was get to the farm country, where the roads were safe and the inhabitants guileless. The immediate problem was that his magical abilities did not provide much in the way of offensive or defensive fighting power and the road west to the farm-lands was risky.
That’s why he needed protection.
That’s why he decided to travel with the barbarians. He didn’t have the money to hire professional, or even semiprofessional, guards. But he figured if he just traveled along with the barbarians, he would be safe. They were known as fierce fighters, especially when attacked from downwind. They were skilled with the various blood-encrusted bladed weapons they carried with them, they were too stupid to retreat, and they generally carried no treasure worth stealing.
That made them the perfect companions for a lone traveler seeking protection, except, of course, for the stench, the lack of intelligent conversation, the inedible trail food, and the lack of any rest stops along the way. (Horses peed while they walked; why should barbarians do any different?)
Oh, and the fact that barbarians hate magic and will kill a magician without a moment’s thought should they run across one.
Corey wasn’t stupid, just unemployable, so he omitted mentioning that he was a magician when he conversed with his would-be companions about their upcoming travels. It was pretty easy to avoid the topic. The conversation went something like this:
“We go toward setting sun. Go far,” said Torg, the largest and smelliest of the breed. Torg had one bright blue eye and one green eye that was clouded over and oozing pus.
“Me go with you,” said Corey, stifling a gag. “Be friends. Share food. Be strong,”
Torg looked him over and said something rude to Barack and Kindo, his two lackeys and partners in slime. “You little. No strong. We eat food yours. We be strong. We go toward setting sun.”
“Yeah, whatever,” said Corey, smiling broadly and nodding like an idiot.
It all might have worked out all right, traveling west together, with the brute barbarian beasts not knowing of Corey’s magical proclivities, if Corey’s troupe hadn’t also traveled west . . . and left a squad of professional mercenaries behind to make sure that Corey didn’t follow. That might have made for considerable excitement and gratuitous bloodshed, except for the fact that barbarians are so fierce, they don’t think they need to set a watch for the night.
Instead, as the dawn rose in the east, Corey, Torg, Barack, and Kindo woke up . . . well, gained consciousness . . . each with a large lump on his head. Each was tied firmly to his own tree trunk, his face turned toward the burning rays of the sun. After the appropriate amount of confusion, swearing, straining ineffectively at their bonds, and finger-pointing (without actually being able to use fingers), a sullen silence set in. The foursome actually might have stayed in such position for some time, but the barbarians let loose with their morning pee and Corey was downwind. Something snapped and he did something incredibly useful and stupid.
He muttered a few magical phrases and the ropes tying them to the trees began to untie themselves.
Each of the constituent members of the barbarian horde (any group of two or more barbarians technically qualifies as a horde, entomologically speaking, though there is some dispute as to whether the term horde actually is an abbreviation for the word horrid) looked at the ropes, then looked at Corey, then looked at one another, then looked at their weapons piled next to where the campfire had been, then looked at Corey, then smiled (not in a friendly “thanks for the help, good buddy” way, but in a drooling, toothy “I get his intestines” kind of way), then tried to engage in what appeared to be a barbarian variant of rock-paper-scissors, except that they couldn’t see each other’s hands, so Torg just growled and the others looked down (as if to agree that he not only got the intestines, but the brain as well).
Things didn’t look good. The pee-soaked, battle-lusting barbarians certainly didn’t look good. An
d Corey, what with being knocked out and tied to a tree and not having had an opportunity to take care of his morning biological functions, and being so concerned about being sliced in half that he was about to imitate the barbarian peeing-on-oneself practice, he didn’t look so good, either. Here he was, about to be killed for being a magician and he was barely even a magician apprentice wannabe, who had cast less than a half-dozen miserable, puny little spells in his entire adult life. It wasn’t as if he were a threat to the barbarian horde, or all barbarian hordes, or their women, or, more importantly, their goats. It’s not like he was the most powerful mage in all the world. Of course, they didn’t know that.
Of course! They didn’t know that.
Corey extricated himself from his loosening bonds and leaped between the group of three barbarians, still in the midst of stepping out of their now-untied bonds, and their trusty, crusty weapons. He took up an exaggerated fighting /casting stance that he had seen one of the more flamboyant actors use in a performance of The Veiled Threat of Seven Parts and, in the deepest voice he could muster, shouted: “I am the greatest magician in all the world. I am Corbin the Conqueror. I have the power of Life and Death in my hands.”
Well, that started a lot of barbarian yammering and various slit-eyed looks as the horde either discussed his claim or tried to figure out what the hell he was saying. Finally, Torg pushed Barack forward. The barbarian underling began to edge toward Corbin the Conqueror and the stash of weapons behind him.
“Death will come to you,” shouted Corbin, looking sternly at the more tremulously trepidatious than intrepid tribesman before uttering a few arcane phrases. The words “Death, death, death will come to you,” whispered in Barack’s ear. The barbarian lackey backed off, twisting about like a dog chasing its tail to see who or what had whispered in his ear until he got dizzy and fell down.
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