The Merchant Adventurer

by Patrick E. McLean

  “Thank–” Relan began.

  Rattick pressed a finger to his lips and silenced him. “Shh. Don’t ruin it. I’m going to enjoy this,” said Rattick.

  The Troll lowered his head and made two whuffing grunts. This expulsion of air freed his tusks from the ponderous folds of his cheeks and filled the enclosed space with the foul stench of Troll breath. He stepped forward to begin his charge.

  “Here,” said Boltac, “Try this.” From within his sack of holding, Boltac produced a glittering silver mace. The head was encrusted with jewels that glittered in the uncertain light of the dungeon. The whole thing was so large that it was more decorative club than mace proper. He held it out to the Troll and said, “Just try it, see how you like the heft.”

  The Troll, not being smart enough to fear a shrewd Merchant’s smile–and well-accustomed to not understanding what was going on–took the relatively tiny mace in his absolutely gigantic hand.

  “There,” said Boltac, and he released the mace. No sooner did let go of the bejeweled head of the weapon than the Troll was pressed to the rough stone floor as if he had been smashed there by the hand of an angry god.

  22

  Pinned to the floor, the Troll seemed much less fierce. His eyes were wide, and shifted fearfully as he whimpered a little. His foul claw remained tightly wrapped around the ornate mace.

  “What is that?” asked Rattick.

  “That is a very cursed Mace of Encumbrance,” said Boltac as he removed his mittens.

  “Magic,” whispered Relan.

  “Yeah, kid, that’s Magic for you, there’s always a catch.”

  “Like dealing with you,” Rattick said to Boltac with newfound respect.

  “Hey, I didn’t force him to do anything. ‘Here you go Mr. Troll. Here’s a free mace.’ He took it.”

  “But the Troll didn’t know…” said Relan.

  “That’s there’s no such thing as a free mace? Everyone knows this. That’s how they get you. And that’s especially how they get you with Magic.”

  “But what about Wizards? They use Magic,” countered Rattick.

  “They always end up doing themselves in. Just ‘cause you get away with something for a while doesn’t make it safe.”

  Rattick said, “Awed as I am by your cunning, good Merchant, one question remains: How did you learn about the mace?”

  “A guy brought it in a carrying case and refused to take it out. I thought maybe I could get the jewels off, but the enchantment was too powerful. My last apprentice was pinned to the floor of my shop for a week before we figured out how to get him out from under that thing.”

  “How did you manage it?” asked Rattick

  “Ahhhh,” said Boltac, holding the thick wool mittens up in the air. “Woolen Gauntlets of Magic Negation. Very rare, very powerful, and very handy.”

  “They look more like mittens,” said Relan.

  “Yeah, basically. But Gauntlets have a better ring. Merchandising. You tellin’ me you’re gonna pay top dollar for Magic mittens? So, let that be a lesson to both of you. Stay outta my bag. No telling what you’ll find in there.”

  “No problem,” said Relan.

  Problem, thought Rattick. He didn’t know what could possibly be in Boltac’s Magic bag, but now he knew for certain that it was Magic. There was no way a bag that size could contain such a big, heavy mace. It had to be Magic. Why, the bag itself, never mind the contents, had to be worth more than even he could imagine. And that was saying something. Rattick had quite an imagination where riches were concerned.

  “C’mon, I don’t want to be all day getting my lady friend back,” said Boltac as he headed into the darkness. “How deep do you think this goes anyway?”

  All the way to the bottom, thought Rattick.

  23

  The faint light from torches and braziers flickered throughout the round room as if it were afraid of being caught there. The space had been carved from the living rock, but, in a concession to the occupant, mortar lines had been chiseled into the stone to create the illusion that this room had been constructed by masons. If one ignored the lack of windows, one might well imagine that this was a room in a tower, keep, or castle, instead of hundreds of feet below ground.

  The room had a high, arching ceiling, with a hole in the top. The smoke from the burning coal and torches sent streams of greasy smoke into this upper darkness. Below, thick rugs, the fine work of Southron craftsmen, divided the room into several areas.

  In the very center of the room was a round hole, six feet across, capped by a wooden cover. On the left was a collection of shelves filled with scrolls, codexes, potions, and ingredients under glass.

  On the far side of the room was a raised dais with a kind of altar. On the altar was a large glass jar, perhaps half the height of a man. In the jar, a flame danced, but it seemed to be just out of focus. Its weak light threw strange shadows and shapes on the wall behind it, but its light did not penetrate any farther into the chamber.

  And on the right, at a desk covered with papers and oddments, sat the Wizard Dimsbury, slumped in frustration. The heels of his hands pressed into his forehead, he scowled from beneath his troubled brow at the mountain of paperwork before him.

  The Wizard had prided himself on his ability to create and control monsters. But in his quest for power and understanding, Alston Dimsbury had inadvertently created a monster so powerful and unruly even he couldn’t control it. This savage beast was known as an Organization. And a hungry beast it was, demanding a never-ending flow of supplies, inventories, requisitions, orders–attention of every kind. Some 2,000 Orcs and wolves required feeding and clothing and organizing. It was all so tedious. He had needed an army, so he created the Orcs. Now what he needed was an army of smarter Orcs to keep things running. But smarter Orcs were a problem.

  Intelligence is a dangerous thing to breed into a creature. You could never know which way it would go. Too much intelligence, too much initiative, and your creations would be rebellious and impossible to command. Too little intelligence and they would be useless, sometimes dying because they forgot to breathe. It was a lesson Dimsbury had learned the hard way.

  In all his experiments with the various strains and cultivars of the species “Orc” (his own name, and he was quite proud of it) Dimsbury had had many, many failures. But he could only count one unqualified success in his quest to create the perfect mix between intelligence and servility. He was so pleased with this Orc he had given it a human name: Samga.

  Once Dimsbury saw how useful Samga could be, he made it the overseer of all the other Orcs. In a short time, Samga had become his right-hand almost-man.

  Samga approached the desk with a covered tray. Dimsbury looked up and said, “Ah, lunch.” At last, a reprieve from paperwork. Samga smiled, or as close to it an Orc could manage, and set the tray down.

  When the Wizard lifted the cover, he found a gory, unappetizing mess. He struggled to read what was on the plate before him. It looked like two slices of bread, some lettuce, two slices of tomato, and a lot of bloody meat. The Wizard gently asked, “What is this?”

  “It’s an M.L.T.,” grunted Samga with all the manners and polite inflection he could muster. “Man, Lettuce and Tomato samwich.”

  “And what is that?” asked Dimsbury, pointing at one of the more disgusting bits.

  “Well, it’s either Man, Lettuce, or Tomato.” Seeing the foul look on the Wizard’s already foul-looking face, Samga quickly changed tack, “O’ course, the finest sliced leg of man.”

  “Raw leg of man, I assume?”

  “Oh, of course, my Master. Only the best for you.”

  The Wizard replaced the cover on the vile lunch-like creation that sat before him. “And the leg of man is, I am to understand, uncooked?”

  “Oh, of course, my–oh, I see what you’re getting at. It’s just that Orcs don’t, you know, cook meat, so the cooks don’t, uh…” Samga seemed genuinely hurt and flustered. “Really more butchers, then, aren’t they
?”

  “There, there Samga. Your kind was not bred for cuisine. I understand. Simply take it away and bring me the female prisoner.”

  “You want us to cook her?”

  “No, Samga. I have other uses for her. Bring her to me unharmed.”

  “Oh, all right,” Samga said with obvious disappointment. He hunched over the tray and shuffled towards the door, tusks hanging low.

  “Here, Samga, what’s wrong now?”

  “Nothing, my Lord. It’s just, she looks delicious.”

  “Yes, Samga, she certainly does.”

  24

  After the Wizard had flown off with her, Asarah had managed to scream for all of twenty seconds before she passed out. When she awoke, she found herself unharmed in a cell of damp grey rock. There was no window and no furniture.

  Next to the pile of straw where she lay was a candle burning in defiance of the oppressive dark of the cell. By its feeble light, she could see that the only way in or out of the room was a heavy wooden door with a small opening.

  Through the opening, she could see that the hallway beyond seemed to be carved out of the same rock as the cell. She listened carefully but heard nothing. When she moved the candle away from the window, she thought she could see the merest hint of a flickering light from the other end of the passage.

  “Hey!” she yelled. There was no response.

  “You out there! I know you’re out there. You can’t have a jail without a jailer!” She heard the scraping of a chair against the stone floor. “Come here! I need to see you. I demand to see you!”

  The unknown jailer made a shuffling, snuffling noise as he drew nearer. She could hear him but couldn’t see him. What manner of man didn’t use a light? She held the candle out of the opening to get a better look.

  A face of grey-green, leathery skin, punctuated by tusks and beady black eyes, came at her from out of the darkness. It snarled, and Asarah jumped backwards and dropped her candle. It sputtered and went out before she could pick it up again.

  There, in the terrible darkness, she heard herself sob and realized how afraid she truly was. She could hear the thing breathing on the other side of the door. She prayed she wouldn’t hear the sound of the door opening.

  Eventually the thing grunted and walked back down the hallway. Asarah did not cry out again.

  She felt her way back to the straw and curled up in a ball. This was awful. This was worse than anything she had ever imagined. To be in a cell was one thing. But to be trapped in a cell because you were afraid to attempt escape…

  After what felt like an eternity of terror in the darkness, she heard steps approaching again. And this time light came with them. In spite of herself, her hopes rose. Perhaps this would be a person–a human being–rather than that awful thing she had just been subjected to. She looked to the faint glimmer of light that came through the doorway, but she did not rush to the opening.

  Another of those strange, monstrous faces thrust itself forward, but instead of grunting or snarling, this one spoke a soft, strangely accented English.

  “Pardon, my lady, but The Master would like to see you now.”

  “The Master?” asked Asarah, reassured by the creature’s kindly demeanor. “Who is The Master? For that matter, who are you? And what manner of hospitality is this?”

  “I am Samga, my lady. And The Master is, well, The Master, maker of us all. And he has asked for you, the woman in his power.” Ah, yes. Now it made sense to Asarah. The man who took her into the air had abducted her for a reason, the oldest reason of all. Men, thought Asarah: no matter how rich or powerful they might be, they were all the same.

  “And what are you, Samga?” Asarah asked as she rose to her feet.

  “I am an Orc.”

  “An Orc. And what is that?”

  “I know not. None of us do. We are made, not born, in the bowels of the earth to serve The Master.”

  Gah, what an existence, though Asarah. And she simply hated the word ‘bowels.’ The door to the cell creaked open, and Samga entered. As she saw him in the full light of the lantern, he was less terrifying than she thought. It helped that he wasn’t riding a wolf or sacking the town in which she lived. “So what does your Master want with me?” Asarah asked with a false pout.

  “It’s not wise for me to ask, my lady. We must go.”

  “Wait,” said Asarah, “I must look a fright. Your Master will be unhappy if I do not have time to compose myself.”

  “The Master is usually unhappy,” Samga said with a sad look that seemed out of place on a monster.

  Asarah knew what the flying man wanted with her. She wasn’t about to let him get the upper hand without a fight. And there were many ways to fight. Where a man had desire, a woman had the opportunity to torture. She took stock of her appearance as best she could without a mirror. Her hair, unruly at the best of times, was now an utterly out-of-control mess. That was okay. Some men preferred her that way. Unless she missed her mark, this Wizard was one of them. But her dress? Ugh. It simply wouldn’t do. She smiled an evil smile and started ripping.

  After her first few tears, her left sleeve and blouse were in tatters, revealing the hollow of her clavicle, most of her left breast and all of her left arm. Then she grabbed hold of the skirt below the knees. A few sharp jerks and she was showing a lot more leg. Then she rolled her lips inward and bit down on them hard to bring a bright redness to them.

  There, she thought, that ought to put him in a twist. Not all men are Wizards, but all Wizards are men. Asarah, girl, we’re going to see how much we can lead this one around.

  Then she turned and tried it out on the creature. A toss of the hair, a full smile, a subtle roll of her hips. It should have hit him pretty hard, but she got no reaction from him. She asked, “What manner of man are you?”

  “Samga is an Orc! Now come. The Master is waiting.”

  Hunh, she thought. Orcs must be gay.

  25

  Rattick led Boltac and Relan deeper into the dungeon. Sometimes they moved through natural caverns with stalactites and stalagmites. Sometimes they walked through abandoned mine works. But as they descended deeper and deeper, the quality of the workmanship changed. When they plunged into the bedrock, the tunnels seemed more organic. More gnawed than carved. It was in one of these strange, unsettling passages that they came to a fork in the passage. Rattick stopped and said nothing.

  “Which way do we go?” asked Boltac.

  Relan put his hand on his sword hilt. “I say we go right, stout Companions.”

  “Left,” hissed Rattick in an immediate and automatic contradiction.

  Boltac rolled his eyes.

  “We should go right,” Relan said, nodding to himself as if he was just figuring this out for the first time, “because the Right and Good is the… “

  From a distance came the sounds of scraping footfalls and hissing grunts. These noises echoed wildly in the strange passages, so it was impossible to know if they were coming from ahead of them or behind. As they listened, the noises became louder.

  Relan’s eyes grew wide and he crouched down with a hand on his sword hilt. His gaze shifted quickly from passageway to passageway to passageway, but he could not look at all three directions at once. Boltac shook his head and looked to Rattick.

  Rattick said, “Orcs, my Merchant friend. They infest the depths. And they hunger for the fatty flesh of shopkeepers, no doubt.”

  Boltac said, “Enh-henh. Let’s keep moving. Quietly.” Then he turned to Relan, “And if it’s possible, don’t do anything too stupid.” He slapped his kid’s hand away from his sword.

  “To the right then, because we are for Good,” said Relan, nodding as if the matter were settled.

  “For Good?” snorted Rattick. “We are sneaking into a powerful Wizard’s dungeon to steal from him, what’s Good about that? You’ll be no kind of thief at all if you try to be polite about it,” Rattick said.

  As the young lad’s face grew red with anger, Boltac stepped
between the two of them and asked, “Why do you want to go left?”

  Rattick smiled, “I just like the left.”

  More guttural utterances echoed through the system of tunnels.

  “We can’t stay here,” hissed Rattick, “too dangerous.” Boltac made his decision by shoving through both of them and walking into the left tunnel.

  Relan rushed after the Merchant, “But you can’t trust him.”

  “I don’t,” said Boltac, “This tunnel leads down, and we needed to make a decision.”

  “He is not a Man of Honor,” protested Relan.

  “Kid, you don’t know this yet, but Men of Honor aren’t really all that useful. In particular, they make especially bad thieves.”

  “He means to lead us into a trap and steal the contents of your precious bag,” Relan said.

  “The bag is more precious than the contents… hey, wait a minute. Where is that weasely son-of-a-bitch?” Before they could turn back, they heard the sounds of a scuffle behind them.

  “Ah, Gah, ah-Hah!” they heard Rattick say from around the corner. On the wall, they saw grotesque shadows, cast by torchlight, grab at the cowled shadow of Rattick. Boltac and Relan froze at the spectacle before them. There were hisses and grunts, muffled curses and the sound of thudding blows. Rattick cried, “Save yourselves! I will hold them as long as I can!”

  “We should help him,” said Relan.

  “En-henh. You think he would help you?” Boltac said, already turning to run. Relan gripped his sword. For a moment, he was trapped there. Torn between the desire to do the right thing, and his certain knowledge that Rattick was an evil man. He watched the shadows tear at each other. Then he turned and ran.

  When he caught up with the wheezing, slow-moving Boltac, the Merchant was already struggling under the weight of his brown sack. Boltac looked at Relan and struggled to say, “If you feel raw about it kid, you can try and rescue him later.”

  Relan ran ahead, thinking that he was being drawn into danger as the moth is drawn to the candle flame. Yes, maybe this was it. Maybe this was his chance to be Heroic.