by Tom Holt
Just the thought of it made him shiver; and that said it all, really. That thing, whatever it was, that nest of concentric circles, that brown-pupilled eye, that doughnut–well, if that wasn’t the evillest thing he’d ever come across in all his life… so really, no contest, if he wanted a logo for Evil, what could be better? He opened his eyes again and there it was, scowling up at him from the parchment. It took a special effort of will to stop looking at it. There you go, he thought. Better than a stupid old oak tree any day of the week.
The dreams, though; he wasn’t sure he was entirely comfortable with them. It would help, of course, if he didn’t forget most of them a few seconds after he woke up, because he had a nasty feeling that the stuff that happened in them was somehow important. Impossible to know for sure because he couldn’t remember, but he had an impression, at the very least, that in those dreams there was a voice, a particularly irritating voice that told him to do things, and sooner or later (he had no idea what they were) he was going to have to do them, if only to make the voice shut up. That wasn’t right. Nobody tells the Dark Lord what to do. It’s one of the painfully few perks of an otherwise unrewarding job. In the dreams, of course, he wasn’t a Dark Lord. He was just–well, a person, a small, insignificant individual with no power or personality and a voice in his ear saying, Why haven’t you done it yet, you promised faithfully you would, I ask you to do one simple thing, it’s not rocket science, for crying out loud, while in the background the great shining circle-in-a-circle glowed and throbbed, and the void peeked out at him, and just occasionally winked. It was all very trying, and he hadn’t had to put up with it when he was a disembodied force of pure energy. Nor, when he didn’t have a head, was he quite so prone to splitting headaches.
Even so. He yawned, settled back in his chair, stretched his arms and folded them behind his head. In a minute, he promised himself, he’d send down to the kitchens for some biscuits and a glass of warm milk. Food was definitely an advantage of being corporeal, although it was a nuisance that this body’s digestion was pretty well shot, and anything fried or topped with a sauce made him feel as though he’d swallowed a volcano. Biscuits and warm milk were all right, though, in moderation. Plain biscuits, anyhow.
His eyelids were feeling heavy, and he closed them just for a moment or so. Warm milk, he thought; well, maybe not exactly what he’d had in mind when he condemned himself to a lifetime of confinement in this Elvish bucket of guts, but his researchers were working on it, and his next body would be much better, a top-of-the-range goblin or maybe a GM troll, or possibly it was time to raise two fingers to the bipedal anthropomorphs and go for something really exciting and different, such as a dragon. Now that would be something. Huge great wings to take you anywhere you wanted, and heartburn would be a positive advantage.
His breathing grew slow and regular, as his consciousness slipped away and floated helplessly, like thistledown, through vast empty space, until in the distance he saw what he knew he’d subconsciously been searching for; a great brown hoop floating in mid-air, glistening with cooking-oil, sparkling with white crystals, and far away a voice that said, Oh there you are at last, I do wish you wouldn’t keep drifting off like that, not when there’s so much I want you to do for me. Now listen carefully or you’ll get it all wrong, what you have to do is this—
Hum, went the spinning-wheel, and round the red glow of the campfire, fat grey moths clustered, like commodities brokers round a famine. The little man groaned gently, because his leg was tired from pumping the treadle. All for the sake of making a little money.
“Hello?”
By now the little man could picture what they looked like just from the sound of their voices. This one, he figured, would be tall, broad-shouldered and slim, with shoulder-length golden hair and clear blue eyes. Not too difficult. They were all like that.
“This way, Your Majesty,” he sang out. “Mind your sleeves on the brambles.”
And guess what, he’d been right. Another day, another prince, another shedload of straw. The prince edged into the circle of firelight, sucking a pricked thumb. “Excuse me,” he said, “but are you him?”
“That depends,” said the little man. “Who are you looking for?”
“The straw-into-gold chappie,” replied the prince, peering at the little man through the woodsmoke. “Is that you?”
“Yes.”
“Mister Rum–I mean, the dwarf with no name?”
“That’s me.”
“Fantastic. Delighted to meet you. Everybody’s talking about you, you know.”
“Fancy,” the little man said. “Right, then, to business. How much, and where is it?”
The prince blinked. “Excuse me?”
“The straw,” said the little man. “The straw you want me to spin into—”
“Ah.” A tragic look spread quickly across the prince’s face. “That’s the problem, actually, now you mention it. There isn’t any.”
“Say again?”
“No straw,” the prince said with a sigh. “Not a single solitary bloody stalk.”
The little man frowned. “No straw?”
“Nope.”
“My God. What happened? Thunderstorms? Mice?”
The shadow of a frown flickered across the prince’s handsome face. “Actually, it’s all your fault. I don’t mean that in a nasty way,” he added quickly, “I’m sure you didn’t do it on purpose or anything, you were just doing your job, you know, obeying orders, all that stuff. Only, the thing of it is, ever since you started on this straw-into-gold business, the price of straw–well, it’s gone mad.”
“Ah.”
“Crazy.” The prince shook his head in recollected disbelief. “Never known anything like it in all my life.”
The little man nodded slowly. “Let me guess,” he said. “The price of gold—”
“That’s the other thing,” the prince said mournfully. “Gone right down. Was nine hundred and seventy silver florins an ounce, now it’s around four-twenty. It’s making a lot of problems for people, I can tell you. The soldiers have started saying they want paying in silver.”
The little man smiled sadly. “So, of course,” he said, “all your fellow princes have been buying more straw to bring to me to make into more gold, to make up the shortfall.”
“That’s right,” the prince said. “Who told you?”
“Amazingly, I guessed. And the more straw the princes buy, the more the price goes up, presumably.”
“Yes, that’s right,” the prince said. “It’s just getting silly. I tried to get a couple of dozen bales for the stables, and the chappie wanted four hundred and fifty florins an ounce. For straw.”
The little man’s eyebrow quivered just a little. Four hundred and fifty florins an ounce for straw, when the gold he’d soon be spinning that straw into was changing hands at four hundred and twenty. No doubt about it. These people had taken to free market economics with a vengeance. “I can see your problem,” he said.
“Quite.”
“And no fun for the horses, either.”
“Oh, they’re all right, we’re bedding them down on dried bracken. But that’s not the point. The simple fact is, I haven’t got a stalk to bless myself with, and with all my neighbours raising these stonking great big armies, it seems to me I’d better get a stonking great big army too, or else things might start getting a bit unpleasant. Only–no straw.”
“Indeed,” the little man said gravely.
“So I was wondering,” the prince said, turning on the charm-tap, “does it actually have to be straw? I mean, what about hay? We’ve got stacks and stacks of hay. Or nettles, possibly. Do you think you could do anything with nettles?”
“A nourishing if rather bland soup,” the little man said. “Otherwise, no.”
“Hay?”
The little man shook his head. “Sorry,” he said, “it’s got to be straw. This is a dedicated straw-matrix processing unit. If I tried to weave hay, the best you could hope fo
r would be a very lumpy mat.”
“Oh hell,” the prince said, and he turned away for a moment to hide the expression on his face. “That really is confoundedly awkward. Only, you see, I’ve already sent out the draft notices, and there’s going to be twenty thousand chaps turning up at my place in a day or so to be my army, and I imagine they’re going to want paying. And with no straw—”
The little man sucked in air through his teeth. “You’ve got a problem, I can see that,” he said. “Well, I’m very sorry for you, but I don’t see what I can do.”
“Oh.” The prince looked very sad. “That’s a nuisance. Only, I think when the chaps turn up and there’s no army and no pay, and with all the neighbouring kingdoms threatening to invade on top of that, I might just be in a spot of bother. Harsh words, and all that. Not that it’s your fault really,” he added. “And I don’t mean to burden you with all my difficulties. It’s just–oh well.”
The little man pursed his lips. “Of course,” he said, “I could lend you some straw.”
“Could you?”
“Oh yes.” The little man nodded. “It just so happens that before the price started to rise, I bought up two hundred and ninety thousand tons of the stuff. To practise on, you know. It’s in that barn over there.”
“Two hundred and ninety thousand—”
“And I might be willing to lend you a bit of it,” the little man went on. “Just to tide you over, you understand, until the harvest comes in.”
“The harvest.”
“The wheat harvest,” the little man clarified. “You know, farmers and stuff.”
“Oh, yes, right. We’ve got lots of farmers down our way.”
“I’ll bet.”
The prince nodded. “Splendid chaps. Make excellent soldiers. That’s why I’ve enlisted them all for my new army.”
“Ah.”
The prince frowned. A thought seemed to have struck him. “Which is a bit of a bugger, really,” he said. “Because if they’re off fighting wars and things—”
“They can’t be back home sowing wheat for next year’s straw harvest, quite.” The little man rubbed his nose. “And no harvest, no straw. Also, for what it’s worth, no corn, so no bread. But that’s just a side-issue, of course. Still, it’s rather inconvenient.”
“I should cocoa,” said the prince. “Bloody shame, if you ask me. They should be back on the land, ploughing away like mad, instead of wasting their time eating their heads off in barracks. You know what? There’s thousands of acres up in the foothills country that’s just right for growing wheat, only the dukes and earls will insist on pasturing their racehorses there. We could plough all that up and be absolutely rolling in straw.”
“Quite,” said the little man. “But instead, all your ploughmen are going to be square-bashing in a barracks yard somewhere. Rather a waste, if you ask me.”
“Too right,” said the prince, with feeling. “But since everybody else is raising these armies, what can we do?”
The little man was quiet for a while. “You know what,” he said, “it’s just possible that this stuff we’ve just been talking about might have occurred to your neighbours as well.”
“Oh. You think so?”
The little man smiled, recalling many recent conversations. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised,” he said. “In which case, they’re going to be sending their soldiers back home to get the ploughing done and the crops sown, and nobody’s going to be invading anybody, at least until the beginning of October.”
“Really? Why October?”
“Think about it. Of course,” he went on, “after the harvest’s in and the grain’s been threshed and the straw’s all safely baled, then you can recruit your army all you like.”
“That’s true.”
The little man nodded. “It’ll only take you–what, a month, six weeks at the most, to get them through basic training and then you’ll be ready to march.”
“Absolutely.” The prince’s eyes lit up. “And then we can invade all our neighbours. That’ll teach ’em to plan to invade us.”
“Quite,” the little man said. “Except that by then, it’ll be mid-November, which is when you get the first heavy snowfalls around here, as I understand it, which means all the mountain passes will be blocked, and nobody’s going to be able to invade anybody until March at the very earliest, probably well into April if we’re going to be realistic about it.”
The prince shrugged. “Ah well,” he said. “Come April, we’ll show the bastards—”
“At which point,” the little man went on, “you will of course need every available man for the spring ploughing.” He spread his hands in a vaguely consoling gesture. “But what the heck,” he said. “There’s always next year.”
The prince, who’d been frowning, suddenly smiled. “Absolutely,” he said. “Next year, we’ll kick those Eastern bastards’ arses out through their ears, they won’t know what’s hit ’em. Meanwhile—”
“Ah yes.” The little man smiled. “You wanted to borrow some straw.”
“Yes please, if that’s all right.”
“Fifty thousand tons do you?”
“Absolutely. If you could possibly manage a bit more—”
The little man pursed his lips. “We’ll see how we go,” he said. “Of course, I will have to charge you a teeny bit of interest on that.”
“What? Oh, right. Yes. Yes, that’s fine.” Pause. “When you say teeny—”
“I was thinking,” the little man said, “of two hundred per cent.”
“Um. Is that a lot?”
“It’s the going rate,” the little man said. “Same for everybody, you know, no favouritism.”
“Oh, of course not, absolutely.” In the prince’s face the little man could plainly see the agony of mental arithmetic. “Two hundred per cent, so that’d be—”
The little man smiled. “I lend you fifty thousand tons,” he said. “You give me back a hundred and fifty thousand. Perfectly simple,” he added. “Nice round numbers.”
“Oh, quite,” said the prince. “Couldn’t be rounder. Yes,” he added decisively, “that’ll be fine, I’m sure. Yes. As well as all the racehorse pastures, we can plough up the royal parks and all that land out on the plain we’d earmarked for the soldiers to do training manoeuvres on. Yes, that’ll be just fine.”
“That’s a deal, then,” said the little man, producing a sheet of parchment out of apparently nowhere. “So if you’d just care to sign here, and here and here and here and here, and here, oh yes, and here, please, just where my thumb is. No need to read it first,” he added kindly, guessing that literacy wasn’t one of the prince’s greatest strengths. “Splendid,” he added, folding the parchment up very small and sticking it down the front of his jerkin. “So, that’s fifty thousand tons of prime straw, yours to do what you like with.”
“Um,” the prince said. “I think I’d like it spun into gold, please.”
“I can do that for you,” the little man said cheerfully. “If you’re sure.”
“Quite sure.”
“You don’t want any for the royal stables, anything like that?”
“No, just gold, if that’s all right.”
“Perfectly all right.”
“You couldn’t make that sixty thousand tons, could you? Only then we could probably afford to drain the swamps out by the Green River and plough that lot up, too.”
The little man smiled. “Oh, go on, then,” he said. “Since it’s you.”
“I say, thanks awfully.” He smiled–he had a very nice smile–and turned to go. “You’ve been frightfully decent about all this, you know.”
The little man shrugged. “I do my best.”
“Shame about the nettles, though.”
“Ah well.” The little man sighed. “It really does have to be straw,” he said. “For one thing, it’s canonically correct.”
“Did you ever try nettles?”
“Not as such,” the little man said. “Whe
re I come from, they did once try turning paper into gold, or at least substituting paper for gold, which is much the same thing.”
“Ah. Did it work?”
The little man shook his head. “Total distaster,” he said. “Absolute washout. No, you’re much better off sticking with straw. You know where you are with straw. Also, it has useful by-products. This time next week suit you?”
“Sorry?”
“For the gold. Should be ready by then. Remember to bring some carts.”
The prince smiled. “Will do,” he said. “Lots and lots of carts.” He looked round at the bramble-bushes. “In fact, if it wouldn’t put you out too much, we might just build a road for them to go on. Take all the hassle out of getting stuff to and fro.”
“Good idea.”
“And we could probably do with a bridge over the river, come to think of it.”
“Why not?”
The young man nodded briskly. “Save all that mucking about trying to swim the carthorses across the ford,” he said. “Make life much easier for everybody, that would. In fact, I can’t understand why nobody’s ever thought of it before.”
The little man grinned at him. “Clearly they weren’t as smart as you are.” He scratched the lobe of his ear. “It’ll be something for the twenty thousand men to do, now that they’re not going to be soldiers. Should keep them occupied right up to the start of ploughing season.”