The Fallable Fiend

by L. Sprague DeCamp

  ###

  After crossing the border, the road to Solymbria City winds through a dense forest, mostly of ancient oaks. This woodland, called the Green Forest, is one of the few truly wild areas left in Novaria, where most of the land has been turned into farm, pasture, and city. In the Green Forest roam deer and boar, leopard and wolf and bear.

  I saw none of these beasts, however. What did befall me was as follows: I was jogging along and thinking how much more sensibly we demons manage things on the Twelfth Plane when two men stepped out of stands of dense forest on either hand, whirling ropes with large nooses on their ends. The one on the left cast his noose at my horse’s head. Seeing the circle of rope whirling towards him, the horse gave a startled leap to the right. Unprepared for such a bound, I lost my hold and flew through the air. I came down on my head on a stone.

  I know not how long I lay unconscious. It seemed but a wink; but, when I strove in a dazed way to get up, more men had swarmed out of the foliage and seized my horse. When I attempted to rise, I found that they had bound my wrists behind my back and had tightened nooses around my arms and neck.

  I made one effort to burst the bonds that bound my wrists, but my captors had done their work too well. Since my senses still swam from the knock I had received, I thought it better to defer attempts to flee until I learnt somewhat of my captors and their purpose. Besides, two of them kept cocked crossbows trained upon me. All were armed and roughly clad.

  “Ho, by Heryx’s iron yard! What’s this we have caught?” said a voice. The speaker, a big man with a curly mop of brown hair and beard turning gray, spoke Novarian, but in an unfamiliar dialect.

  “A Paaluan cannibal!” said one. “Slay him!”

  “You are misinformed, sirs,” I said. “I am no Paaluan; merely a demon in the service of the Irian Syndicate.”

  “A likely story!” said the man who had spoken. “Just the thing one of those ronyons would think up. We’d best slay him in any case. If he be a Paaluan, it serves him right; if he be a demon, he were no loss.”

  “Methinks the pilgarlic’s right,” said another. “Paaluans are said to be human, even if they have inhuman customs.”

  “Oh, shut thy gob, Nikko!” said the first speaker. “You’re always gainsaying—”

  “Like the nine hells I will!” cried Nikko. “When I hear nonsense, I name it as such—”

  “Shut up, both of you!” roared the big, curly-haired man. “Ye, Nikko, and ye, Karmelion! If ye two brabble again, by Astis’ teats, I’ll swinge you both! Now, methinks Nikko’s right; at least, I’ve never heard of Paaluans’ having tails and scales. Come along, O demon.” He started to lead the party off into the forest. “Put another lasso on him; he may be stronger than he looks.”

  “More likely, he’ll vanish back to his own plane and then return invisibly to murther us all,” grumbled Karmelion.

  They led me and my horse along a scarcely visible trail through the forest. The leader turned back to ask: “By the way, demon—”

  “My name is Zdim, if you please, sir.”

  “Very well, then, Zdim, where did ye ever learn to ride?”

  “I taught myself, the past two days.”

  “I might have guessed it, for seldom have I seen a more awkward horseman. I watched you for a bowshot ere my lads snared you. Know ye not that to saw on the reins as ye do will ruin a horse’s mouth?”

  “Nay, good my sir; I have not had the benefit of your advice.”

  “Well, ’tis a marvel that ye manage as well as ye do—without a saddle, too. Ye say ye re on a mission from Ir?”

  “Aye,” I said, and told him of the siege. I added: “And now may I take the liberty of asking who you gentlemen are, and why you detain me?”

  The big man grinned. “Ye might call us social reformers. We do take from the rich and give to the poor. As for me, you may call me Aithor.”

  “I see, Master Aithor,” said I, realizing that I had fallen among robbers. “Taking from the rich I can understand, but on what logic do you give to the poor?”

  Aithor gave a rumbling laugh. “As to that, ’tis simple. We be the poorest folk beknownst to us, so naturally we give ourselves first place in this distribution. By the time our bare necessities are met, there’s never a surplus for wider charity.”

  “You do not surprise me, considering what I have seen of the Prime Plane. And now, what mean you to do with me?”

  “That remains to be seen, good my demon. If Ir weren’t under siege, we’d send a demand for ransom thither.”

  “What if the Syndics refused to pay?”

  He grinned again. “We have ways; we have ways. Forsooth, ye shall soon see one of them.”

  Another hour of winding amidst the ancient oaks brought us nigh to the robbers’ camp. Aithor gave a peculiar whistle, which was answered by sentries in trees. Then we marched on into the camp, which comprised a rough circle of tents and huts around a clearing. Here were two-score more of robbers, together with a number of ragged women and children.

  There was much chatter between those who had captured me and those who had stayed in the camp. Much of it I could not follow by reason of the Solymbrian dialect. I was securely tethered to a tree, to which another man was also tied. This was a stout man in rich clothing, now the worse for wear.

  The man shrank away from me, being unused to one of my looks. I said: “Fear not, good my sir. I am a captive like yourself.”

  “You—you talk?” said the man.

  “You hear me, do you not?” I told him briefly who I was and the purpose of my mission. “To whom have I the pleasure of speaking, sir?”

  “At least, you have good manners for an inhuman monster,” said the stout man. “I am Euryllus, a merchant of Solymbria, kidnapped from an inn in a village not far hence. Said your captors nought of my ransom?”

  “Not that I heard. Should they have?”

  “They set forth to meet the messenger who was to have fetched it from Solymbria, but they seem to have caught you instead. Ah, woe! If the money have not arrived, I fear for myself.”

  “What will they do? If they slay you, they end all chances of getting their booty.”

  “They have a nasty habit of sending the captive home a little piece at a time, to remind his kin and associates of his plight.”

  “Gods of Ning!”

  “Oh, plague!” exclaimed Euryllus. “Here comes Aithor now.”

  The curly-haired one stood before us, massive fists on hips. “Well, sirrah,” he addressed Euryllus, “your man failed to arrive, albeit we gave him two hours’ leeway. Ye know what happens next.”

  Euryllus fell to his knees, crying: “Oh, I beseech you, good, kind captain! Give my kinsmen another day! Do not mutilate me! Do not . . .” On and on he went, weeping and babbling.

  Aithor gave a sign to his men, who roughly hauled Euryllus to his feet, unleashed him, and dragged him across the clearing to a stump. They pulled off his right boot and the sock beneath it and forced his bare foot up on the stump. Then a robber smote off Euryllus’ big toe with a hatchet. Euryllus shrieked.

  Presently he was back at the tree with his foot wrapped in bloody bandages. Ignoring his blubbering, Aithor said: “Your toe shall go post-haste to your home. An we receive no reply in a sennight, some other part shall be forwarded as a reminder. When ye run short of detachable parts, we shall send your head, to show that we mean business.

  “Now then, Master Zdim, ye seem to fall into a special category. Ye shall dine with me this even and tell me more of yourself and your mission.”

  ###

  When the time came, I was unleashed and tethered to another tree, near the hut of withes and bark that served Aithor as home. A guard stood behind me with a crossbow. Two women served us. I understood that Aithor was mate to both women, although most Novarians wed only in pairs, one man to one woman.

  Aithor played the gracious host, plying me with good Solymbrian ale. My tendrils, however, picked up emanations that told me his geniality w
as but a veneer concealing a seething mass of hostile and violent emotions. I was by this time becoming fairly adept at interpreting the emotional radiations of Prime Planers. As the saying goes, appearances are deceptive.

  Seeing no good reason to deceive him, I freely answered Aithor’s questions. At length he shook his head, saying: “I see not how to profit from your presence here. I cannot get word through the siege to your masters. If ye fail in your mission, there will be no Ir to pay ransom; if ye succeed, ye needs must be out of my grasp.”

  “I can promise you to ask the Syndicate to pay you after the war is won—”

  “My dear demon, do I really look as simple as all that?”

  “Well then, sir, what think you of my chances of success, if you release me? The Solymbrians seem to take me for a Paaluan.”

  “There’s a muchel of ignorant wights in any land. About those tawny-haired barbarians beyond the mountains I know nought; but as far as Solymbria is concerned, your failure is as certain as the fact that water runs downhill.”

  “Why so?”

  “Because, at the last election, the gods loaded the dice against Solymbria and gave us a government of clotpates.”

  “How does this election work?”

  Aithor belched and slapped his paunch. “Know, demon, that we Solymbrians be a very pious folk. Centuries ago, the holy fathers determined that, since the gods manage all, the only logical way of choosing our rulers was by lot. The gods, y’see, would determine the outcome and, loving the ancient and holy polis of Solymbria, would make the lot fall to the worthiest.

  “So, every year, there’s a grand festival in honor of Zevatas and to our own special godlet, Immur the Compassionate. The climax is a drawing of lots. The names of an hundred Solymbrians, taken in order from the census list of citizens, are written on slips of reed paper and enclosed in nutshells. The shells are dropped into a sacred bag and shaken up. Then, before all the people, the high priest of Immur draws one nut from the bag, and he whose name is enclosed therein becomes the next year’s Archon. The second name drawn becomes the First Secretary; the third becomes Censor, and so on until all the high offices of state have been filled.

  “I would not be thought guilty of impiety,” said Aithor with a grin, “but I must confess that the gods have sometimes made very odd choices.”

  “But,” I said, “everyone knows that, amongst Prime Planers, some are wise and some fools—”

  “Hush, Master Zdim, if ye’d not be guilty of sacrilege! For ’tis another of our sacred principles that all men are created equal and are therefore equally fitted for statecraft. The great reformer, Psoanes the Just, made this plain when he overthrew the feudal regime. For, as he argued with irrefutable logic, if some were naturally abler and more sapient than others, that were unfair to the stupid and foolish. The gods would be guilty of permitting an unjust and inequitable state of affairs to persist amongst men. But this were unthinkable, since all men know the gods to be all-wise and all-good and to intend the well-being of mankind.”

  “We have some pretty silly gods on my Twelfth Plane,” quoth I, “but perhaps things are different in this world.”

  “No doubt, no doubt. Anyway, the office of Archon fell this time upon one Gavindos of Odrum, a wrestler by trade. Now that he’s been in office for most of a year, the results are evident. Did ye encounter any guards at the border?”

  “Nay, and that puzzled me. I had been told to expect them and had been given documents—those your men took from me—to identify myself.”

  Aithor: “Since none has been paid for months, they have simply deserted their posts rather than stay and starve. The rest of the Archonate is in a similar pass. Of course, such a state of affairs is not without its advantages to my merry men and me, for we need not fear soldiers and constables drawing cordons through the greenwood to entrap us. In fact, we are thinking of seizing some neighboring town and making ourselves rulers thereof. The greenwood is all very fine in summer, but in winter we long for warm hearths and solid roofs against the rain and sleet.”

  “Do no Solymbrians protest this condition?” I asked.

  “Oh, aye, there’s some grumbling. Some say the gods chose Gavindos to punish Solymbria for the sins of its people.”

  “What sins?”

  Aithor shrugged. “To me, they have been no more sinful of late than men are everywhere and everywhen; but that’s what is said in explication. Others say that, even if Gavindos and his helpers be fools, ’tis only fair to give the stupid a chance at the government, lest the clever exploit them without mercy and without end.”

  “I thought you said no Solymbrians believed that some men were stupider than others?”

  “Nay, messire demon, that’s not what I said. Psoanes taught that all men are created equal, but that the differences in their subsequent lives modified them, so that some ended up wiser than others. The cure, then, were to assure everyone an upbringing of the same degree of benignity. But this, none of our rulers have been able to effect. Parents differ at the outset and therefore impose differences upon their offspring.”

  “Meseems the only alternative were to rear all infants in public institutions, then?”

  “One archon tried that, years ago; but the scheme aroused such opposition that the next archon rescinded the plan. In any event, the contingencies of chance perpetually disturb the pattern, raising one and casting down another without regard to his merits.” Aithor scratched, doubtless being plagued by the parasitic insects of this world. “I must own to a certain skepticism about this official theory, since my brother and I, brought up in the same way by the same parents, have turned out as different as fish and fowl. He’s a minor priest of Immur, as correct as a mathematical diagram; whereas I—I am Aithor of the Woods . . .”

  The garrulous chieftain rambled on about anecdotes in his own career to illustrate the points he had made. When I got a chance to speak, I said: “Master Aithor, if your government be of no avail to us of Ir, you have several score of lusty rogues here, who might be made into a formidable force of soldiery.”

  Aithor guffawed. “Be ye proposing to enlist us in your campaign?”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Nay, nay; no governmental employment for us, thank you! Besides, an we put ourselves in the hands of officials, they’d use us to raise your siege and then hang the lot of us when we were no longer useful. I’ve known such things to happen.”

  “You were speaking of seizing a town and making yourself its government.”

  “That’s different. Were I lord of a town and its environs, recognized as such by my peers in government, I might feel differently. But such is not now the case.”

  “If the Paaluans capture Ir, the next place they’ll invade is Solymbria. Its present weakness invites attack, does it not?”

  Aithor: “Well, and so what?”

  “They’d overrun your Green Forest and flush you out.”

  “I think not. We know this greenwood like the palms of our hands. They’re desert folk, from what I hear, and ’twere child’s play to mislead and entrap them amidst our wildwood.”

  “Would you not help to save the rest of your native land from devastation? Meseems that love of one’s country is one of the few emotions that persuades Prime Planers betimes to put the general good ahead of their own advantage.”

  “Why should we? Half of us would perish in the struggle, and—as I’ve reminded you—the rest would be slain afterward on trumped-up charges. No, thank you. Others may risk their hides for their native land, even though she have ground them down and cast them out; but not Aithor of the Woods.”

  “But think! If Solymbria be devastated, what will be left for your band to prey upon?”

  He chuckled. “O most sapient argufier! By Astis’ pretty pink teats, Master Zdim, ye should have been a professor in the Academy of Othomae. Well, I’ll tell you. We have amongst our booty a muchel of fair raiment, more suited to the person of an ambassador than a naked, scaly hide. Since it is of littl
e use to us here, I’ll accouter you properly for your mission and dispatch you on the morrow. How’s that?”

  “Very fine, sir—”

  An outburst of yelling interrupted me. Two robbers—the same Nikko and Karmelion who had quarreled before—were going for each other with knives. Aithor leaped to his feet with a blazing oath and strode across the clearing. The chieftain’s demeanor had changed alarmingly. He roared like a lion, and the veins in his temples stood out in the firelight.

  He seized the two disputants, one with each hand. Nikko he hurled into a cooking fire; Karmelion he slammed into a tree trunk with such force as to stun the man. When Nikko bounded out of the fire, scattering coals and beating at the burning spots on his garments, Aithor felled him with a buffet.

  “By Heryx’s iron yard!” he thundered. “I warned you varlets. Lash them to trees!”

  When this had been done, Aithor took a heavy whip and, roaring and cursing, flogged these men’s bare backs until their flesh hung in bloody shreds. Whenever he fetched a particularly loud shriek from one, he answered it with a bellowing laugh. He ceased only when both men had swooned and even his mighty arm faltered with fatigue.

  When he came back to where I was tethered, he shouted for more ale. I began a question: “Sir, if I may be permitted—”

  But Aithor bellowed: “Get out, lizardman! Count yourself lucky that I visit not the same treatment on you. Get back to your proper tree and pester me not!”

  VII

  GAVINDOS THE ARCHON

  Next morn, Aithor was genial once more. He returned my belongings—all but the money—and gave me a fur-collared robe and a velvet cap to match. The cap they had to fasten on with a strap, since my skull is ill-suited to Prime Plane headgear. Then Aithor led me to a saddled horse and gave me instructions for managing the creature.

  “That is not my horse,” I said.

  “Nay; ’tis an older beast we had here, whose decorous gait were better suited to your horsemanship. Your former steed is too good to let you ruin it by inexpert handling. Besides, ye’ll now have the comfort and security of a saddle.”