Mindswap

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Mindswap Page 12

by Robert Sheckley


  Black Denis came back on to guard, looking upon his opponent with more than a suggestion of respect. Then he roared with berserker rage, and drove forward into the attack, forcing Marvin back across the smoky room.

  'A double Napoleon on the big fellow!' cried the perfumed dandy.

  'Done!' cried the hunchback. 'That slender lad has the footwork, mark it well.'

  'Footwork ne'er stopped swinging steel e'er now,' the dandy lisped. 'Wilt back thy judgement with thy purse?'

  'Aye! I'll add five Louis d'Or!' said the hunchback, fumbling for his purse.

  And now others in the crowd had caught the gaming fever. 'Ten rupees on the Denis!' shouted the long-nosed fellow. 'Nay, I'll offer odds of three to one!'

  'Make it four to one!' cried the ever-cautious landlord, 'and seven to five on first blood!' And so saying, he swept out a bag of gold sovereigns.

  'Done!' screamed the piebald-eyed fellow, putting up three silver talents and a gold half-denarius. 'And by the Black Mother, I'll even offer eight to six on a chest-cut!'

  'I'll take the bet!' shrieked the barmaid, taking a bag of Maria Theresa thalers out of her bosom. 'And I'll give you six-five pick 'em on first amputation!'

  'I'll take that!' the perfumed dandy shrilled. 'And by my wattles, I'll even offer nine to four that the slender lad runs out of here like a scorched greyhound before third blood!'

  'I'll take that bet,' Marvin Flynn said, with an amused smile. Evading Denis' clumsy rush he plucked a bag of florins out of his sash and threw it to the dandy. Then he settled down seriously to fight.

  Even in these few brief moves, Marvin's skill at fence could clearly be seen. Yet he was faced with a powerful and determined opponent, who wielded a sword many times larger than Marvin's inadequate weapon, and who seemed determined to the point of madness.

  The attack came, and all in the crowd except for the hunchback held their breaths as Black Denis rushed down like an incarnation of Juggernaut. Before that impetuous rush, Marvin was forced to give ground. He backed away, vaulted over a table, found himself wedged into a corner, leaped high and caught the chandelier, swung across the room and dropped lightly to his feet.

  Bewildered, and perhaps feeling a shade unsure of himself, Black Denis resorted to a trick. As they came together again, Denis' long arm swept a chair into Marvin's path; and as Marvin dodged, Denis grasped a collard of black Ignean pepper from a table and flung it into Marvin's face …

  But Marvin's face was no longer there. Pivoting and driving off his left foot, Marvin evaded the treacherous tactic. He feinted low with his knife, double-feinted with his eyes, and executed a perfect stepback crossover.

  Black Denis blinked stupidly and looked down to see the handle of Marvin's knife jutting from his chest. His eyes opened wide in astonishment, and his sword hand came swinging up to the riposte.

  Marvin turned serenely on his heel and walked slowly away, leaving his unprotected back exposed to the glint-edged cutlass!

  Black Denis began his downward swing; but already a thin grey film had formed over his eyes. Marvin had judged the severity of the wound with exquisite precision, for Black Denis' sword clattered to the floor, to be joined a moment later by the great body of the brawler.

  Without looking back, Marvin crossed the room and regained his chair. He opened his fan; then, frowning, he slipped a lace handkerchief out of his pocket and dabbled at his forhead. Two or three drops of perspiration marred its marble perfection. Flynn wiped the drops away, then threw away the handkerchief.

  The room was in absolute silence. Even the piebald-eyed man had stopped his stertorous breathing.

  It was perhaps the most amazing exhibition of swordsmanship that the inhabitants had ever seen. Brawlers one and all, and calling no man master, still they were impressed.

  A moment later, pandemonium broke loose. All crowded around Marvin, cheering and exclaiming, and marvelling at the skill he had shown with pointed steel. The two rope wrestlers (brothers, born deaf-mutes) made squealing noises and turned somersaults; the hunchback grinned and counted his winnings with foam-flecked lips; the barmaid looked at Marvin with an embarrassing excess of ardour; the proprietor gruffly served drinks on the house; the piebald-eyed man snuffled through his long nose and talked about luck; even the perfumed dandy was moved to offer perfunctory congratulations.

  Slowly the room returned to normal. Two bull-necked servitors dragged out Black Denis' body, and the fickle crowd pelted the corpse with orange peels. The roast was set again to turning on the spit, and the rattle of dice and swish of cards could be heard over the playing of the blind, one-legged fiddler.

  The dandy strolled over to Marvin's table and looked down upon him, hand on hip and feathered hat akimbo. ' 'Pon my honour, sir,' the dandy said, 'you do indeed have some qualifications at fence; and it seems to me that your skills could be rewarded in the service of the Cardinal Macchurchi, who is always on the lookout for apt and agile fellows.'

  'I am not for hire,' Marvin said quietly.

  'I am glad to hear it,' the dandy said. And now, looking at the man more closely, Marvin perceived a white rosebud in his buttonhole, and a copy of the Diario de Celsus (4-star edition) in his hand.

  The dandy's eyes flashed a warning. In his most effete voice, he said, 'Well then, sir, my congratulations again; and perhaps, if you would care for a bit of sport, you will join me in my chambers on the Avenue of Martyrs. We could discuss the finer points of swordplay, and drink a rather adequate little wine which has lain in my family's vaults for 103 years, and perhaps even hazard another topic or two of mutual interest.'

  Now Marvin was able to recognize, beneath his disguise, the man who had pressed a note into his hand earlier.

  'Sir,' Marvin said, 'your invitation does me honour.'

  'Not at all, sir. Your acknowledgement of my invitation does me honour.'

  'Nay, sir,' Marvin insisted, and would have examined the honour question further had not the man cut short the punctilio and whispered, 'We'll leave at once, then. Black Denis was but a harbinger – a straw to show us which way the wind blows. And I greatly fear, lest we get ourselves promptly hence, it may well blow us a hurricane.'

  'That would be most unfortunate,' Marvin said, grinning very slightly.

  'Landlord! Set this upon my account!'

  'Aye, Sir Gules,' the landlord replied, bowing low.

  And so they went out together into the fog-bound night.

  Chapter 26

  Through the tortuous lanes of the central city they went, past the grim iron-grey walls of the Terc Fortress, past the infamous Spodney Asylum, wherein the screams of abused madmen mingled strangely with the squeak of the great waterwheel at Battlegrave Landing; past the howling of prisoners in the squat and ominous Donjon of the Moon, and then past the malodorous High Battlement with its grisly row of spiked torsos.

  Being men of their time and age, neither Marvin nor Sir Gules gave notice to these sounds and sights. Quite unmoved they walked past the Garbage Pond wherein the former regent had gratified his mad nocturnal fancies; and without a glance they went by Lion's Gambit, where petty debtors and child malefactors were buried headfirst in quick-setting cement as an example to others.

  It was a hard age, and some might consider it a cruel age. Manners were refined, but passions ran unchecked. The most exquisite punctilio was observed; but death by torture was the common lot of most. It was an age in which six out of seven women died in childbirth; in which infant mortality was a shocking 87 per cent: in which the average life-expectancy was no more than 12.3 years; in which the Plague yearly ravaged the central city, carrying away an estimated two-thirds of the population; in which continual religious warfare halved the able-bodied male population every year – to the point where some regiments were forced to use blind men as gunnery officers.

  And yet, it could not be considered an unhappy age. Despite difficulties, the population soared to new heights every year, and men aspired to fresh extremes of audacity. If lif
e was uncertain, it was at least interesting. Machinery had not bred individual initiative out of the race as yet. And though there were shocking class differences and feudal privilege reigned supreme, checked only by the dubious power of the king and the baleful presence of the clergy, still it could fairly be called a democratic age and a time of individual opportunity.

  But neither Marvin nor Sir Gules were thinking of these things as they approached a narrow old house with drawn shutters and a brace of horses posted near the door. They were not contemplating individual enterprise, though indeed they were engaged in it; nor did they consider death, though it surrounded them constantly. Theirs was not a self-conscious age.

  'Well then,' Sir Gules said, leading his guest down the carpeted floor past the silent manservants to a high wainscotted room in which a cheery fire snapped and crackled in the great onyx fireplace.

  Marvin did not answer. His eye was taking in the details of the room. The carven armoire was surely tenth century, and the portrait on the west wall, half-hidden by its gilt frame, was a genuine Moussault.

  'Come, sit, I pray thee,' said Sir Gules, sinking gracefully to a David Ogilvy half-couch decorated in the Afghan brocade so popular that year.

  'Thank you,' Marvin said, sitting upon an eight-legged John IV with rosewood handles and a backing of heart-o'-palm.

  'A little wine?' Sir Gules said, handling with casual reverence the bronze decanter with gold chasings engraved by Dagobert of Hoyys.

  'Not just at the moment, give thee thanks,' Marvin replied, brushing a fleck of dust from his stuff-coloured outercoat of green baptiste with lisle froggings, made to his measure by Geoffrey of Palping Lane.

  'Then mayhap a touch of snuff?' Sir Gules inquired, profferring his small platinum snuffbox made by Durr of Snedum, upon which was portrayed in steel-point a hunting scene from the Orange Forest of Lesh.

  'Perhaps later,' Marvin said, squinting down at the double-furled silver thread laces on his dancing pumps,

  'My purpose in bringing you here,' his host said abruptly, 'was to inquire as to the availability of your aid to a cause both good and righteous, and with which you are not, I believe, entirely unacquainted. I refer to the Sieur Lamprey Height d'Augustin, better known as The Enlightened.'

  'D'Augustin!' Marvin exclaimed. 'Why, I knew him when I was little more than a lad, in '02 or '03, the year of the Speckled Plague! Why, he used to visit at our chalet! I can still remember the marzipan apples he used to bring me!'

  'I thought you would remember him,' Gules said quietly. 'All of us do.'

  'And how is that great and good gentleman?'

  'Well enough – we hope.'

  Marvin was instantjy alert. 'Your meaning, sir?'

  'Last year, d'Augustin was working on his country estate at Duvannemor, which is just beyond Moueur d'Alencon in the foothills of the Sangrela.'

  'I know the place,' Marvin said.

  'He was finishing his masterwork, The Ethics of Indecision, with which he has travailled himself these past twenty years. When suddenly, a host of armed men burst into the Rune Study where he was working, having overpowered his servants and bribed his personal bodyguard. No one else was present save his daughter, who was helpless to interfere. These nameless men seized and bound d'Augustin, burned all extant copies of his book, and took him away.'

  'Infamous!' cried Marvin.

  'His daughter, witnessing so horrid a sight, swooned away into a lassitude so complete that it resembled death; and thus, through an inadvertent counterfeit, she was spared from death itself.'

  'Shocking!' muttered Marvin. 'But who would let slip violence upon a harmless scribbler whom many call the outstanding philosopher of our day and age?'

  'Harmless, say thee?' Sir Gules inquired, his lips quirking into a painful grimace. 'Are you then acquainted with d'Augustin's work that you say so?'

  'I have had not the privilege of acquaintance,' Marvin said. 'My life, in truth, has availed me little opportunity for such matters, since I have been travelling continually for some such time now. But I thought that the writings of so gentle and esteemed a man would surely-'

  'I beg to differ,' Sir Gules said. 'This fine and upright old man whom we are discussing has been led, by an irreversible process of Logical Inductiveness, to put forth certain doctrines which, if they were popularly known, might well cause bloody revolution.'

  'That scarce seems a goodly matter,' Marvin replied coldy. 'Wouldst teach me damnable sedition?'

  'Nay, softly, softly! These doctrines which d'Augustin proclaims are not so shocking in themselves, but rather, in their consequences. That is to say, they take on the timbre of Moral Facticity, and are no more truly seditious than is the monthly wax and wane of th' moon.'

  'Well … give me an example,' Marvin said.

  'D'Augustin proclaims that men are born free,' Gules said softly.

  Marvin thought about that. 'A new-fangled notion,' he declared at last, 'but not without its suasion. Tell me more.'

  'He declares that upright conduct is meritorious and pleasing in the eyes of God.'

  'A strange way of looking at things,' Marvin decided. 'And yet – hmmm.'

  'He also holds that unexamined life is not worth living.'

  'Quite a radical point of view,' Marvin said. 'And it is, of course, obvious what would happen were these statements to fall into the hands of the populace at large. The authority of king and church would inevitably be undermined … and yet – and yet-'

  'Yes?' Gules prompted softly.

  'And yet,' Marvin said, gazing dreamily at the terracotta ceiling with its inscriblature of interlocked palladiums, 'and yet might not a new order arise out of the chaos which would unerringly ensue? Might not a new world be born in which the overweening humours of the nobility would be checked and ameliorated by the concept of personal worth, and in which the thundering threats of a church gone base and political would be countered by a new relationship between a man and his God unmediated by fat priest or larcenous friar?'

  'Do you really think that is possible?' Gules asked, in a voice like silk sliding over velvet.

  'Yes,' Marvin said. 'Yes, by the hangnails of God, I so do believe! And I will aid you in rescuing d'Augustin and in disseminating this strange and revolutionary new doctrine!'

  'Thank you,' Gules said simply. And he made a gesture with his hand,

  A figure glided out from behind Marvin's chair. It was the hunchback. Marvin caught the deadly wink of steel as the creature sheathed his knife.

  'No insult intended,' Gules said earnestly. 'We were sure of you, of course. But had you found our plan repugnant, it would have been incumbent upon us to hide our poor judgement in an unmarked grave.'

  'The precaution lends point to your story,' Marvin said dryly. 'But me likes it not such keen appreciation.'

  'Such confabulation is our common lot in life,' the hunchback quoth. 'And indeed, did not the Greeks consider it better to die in the hands of friends than to languish in the claws of enemies? Our roles are chosen for us in this world by the stern dictates of an unrelenting Fate; and many a man who thought to play the emperor on Life's stage found himself cast for a corpse instead.'

  'Sir,' said Marvin, 'you sound to me a man who has experienced some casting problems himself.'

  'One well might say so,' the hunchback replied dryly. 'I would not of myself have selected this lowly part, had not exigencies beyond prediction forced me to it.'

  So saying, the hunchback reached down and unstrapped his legs, which had been bound to his thighs, and thereby rose to his full height of six feet one. He unfastened the hump from his back, wiped greasepaint and drool from his face, combed his hair, detached his beard and his club foot, then turned to Marvin with a wry smile upon his face.

  Marvin stared at this man transformed; then bowed low and exclaimed. 'Milord Inglenook bar na Idrisi-san, first lord of the Admiralty, Familiar to the Prime Minister, Adviser Extraordinary to the King, Bludgeon of the Church Rampant and Invocateur of the G
rand Council!'

  'I am that person,' Inglenook responded. 'And I play the hunchback for reasons most politic; for were my presence even suspected here by my rival, Lord Blackamoor de Mordevund, all of us would be dead men ere the frogs in the Pond Royal had chance to croak at first ray of Phoebus!'

  'This ivy of conspiracy doth grow on high towers,' Marvin commented. 'I surely will serve you and God give me strength, unless some tavern brawler lets light into my belly with a yard of steel.'

  'If you refer to the incident of Black Denis,' Sir Gules said, 'I can assure you that the matter was staged for the eyes of whatever spies Sir Blackamoor might have set upon us. In actuality, Black Denis was one of us.'

  'Wonder upon wonders!' Marvin declared. 'This octopus, it seems, has many tentacles. But gentlemen, it wonders me why, of all puissant gentlemen in this our kingdom, you sought out one who boasts no special privilege nor high position nor monetary wealth nor nothing save the title of gentleman under God and lord of his own honour and bearer of a thousand-year-old name.'

  'You are reckless in your modesty!' Lord Inglenook laughed. 'For it is known among all that your skill in the fenceyard is unsurpassed, except perhaps for the wily swordplay of the detestable Blackamoor.'

  'I am but a student of the steely art,' Marvin replied carelessly. 'Yet still, if my poor gift will serve you, sobeit. And now, gentlemen, what would you of me?'

  'Our plan,' Inglenook said slowly, 'has the virtue of great daring, and the defect of immense danger. A single cast of the dice wins all, or loses us the wager of our lives. A grave gamble! And yet, methinks you would not like not this hazard.'

  Marvin smiled while construing the sentence, then said, 'A quick game is ever a lively one.'

  'Excellent!' breathed Gules, rising to his feet. 'We must take ourselves now to Castelgatt in the valley of the Romaine. And during the ride there, we shall acquaint you with the details of our scheme.'

  And so it was that, muffled in their greatcloaks, the three departed the high narrow house by the dormer stairwell, walking past the chain locker to the postern gate by the old west wall. Here, posted and waiting, was a coach and four, with two armed guards mounted on the slackrails.

 

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