by B. Y. Yan
“None, sir. You are to have a meeting with Lord Cudgmore today. You may bring up the matter with his wife with him then if you so desire.”
“I am headed across the border?” cried the baron in surprise. “This is the first I’ve heard of it. Why, I’m not even packed!”
“And you would hardly need to,” his valet assured him. “Lord Cudgmore is coming here. In fact, he has been here for the last two days, having arrived in his private railway car on the twenty-first.”
“For what, pray?”
“He attended a diplomatic summit in Pegging last month, and he is making his return trip by our lines. His stopover here is intended to be a vacation after negotiating the finer points of an alliance treaty between our two countries.”
“And me?”
“As the regional head-of-state it is only right that a meeting between the two of you will take place. You are to host him, if not at your home, then in your city. In fact, we are due to appear in front of the Old Courthouse before noon for official picture-taking. It is a War Rally to celebrate this new alliance between our nations. You are to shake his hand and smile for the newspapers, who will undoubtedly make a thing of the matter. But then again you are perhaps the most hated man up and down the Coal Coast, and I hardly think anything they will write in the company of that villain can devalue you further in the eyes of your subjects.”
“Ah! Scowls to the lot of them!” Hungary leaned forward in his chair until the two of them were almost nose-to-nose. “It’s her I’m interested in. Will she be coming with him?” Without waiting for an answer he cast his eyes downwards, mumbling, “I suppose not, hey. It would raise a furor, and these diplomatic types are all cowards at heart.”
“On the contrary, my lord—” began Yamcey.
At once the baron raised his head, all enchanted amazement.
“You mean—!” Taking in a deep breath he positively shuddered all over. “You can’t mean—!”
A nod from his man. “She will be there, my lord. It is an open display of power if there ever was one. His mastery over the idol of the nation, as you have put it, gives him a significant advantage in his negotiations. And the man is nothing if not vain, who delights most of all in flaunting his possessions—his revolver with the ivory handle, his railway car that is said to be the fastest on the continent, and his much abused wife, the most beautiful woman in the civilized world.”
In reply the baron slapped a closed fist into his hand.
“Well! What are we waiting for?”
As the baron’s great black carriage rumbled up to the curb before Summers’ Scales Place, deep inside the financial heart of the city, that seemed indeed to be the question of the hour. It was heard here mumbled on the disgruntled lips of the courthouse administrators, and there shouted openly by the picketers who have set up their lines just beyond the premises. In fact, most of the great stone tiled square was at present occupied, with the space between the white pillars at each corner—three whole to one broken, if you must know—completely filled. When the baron’s ride drew up beneath the broken pillar and the waiting pages opened the door, he was greeted by a scattered shower of boos much less than it was usual, much to his chagrin. All eyes were firmly directed elsewhere, waiting on the appearance of the much loathed foreign diplomat.
“So they have a new fancy nancy, eh?” the baron remarked to his valet as they were making their way towards the wide flight of stairs leading upwards to the Old Courthouse. “What am I then, for them to cast away so carelessly? They aren’t even looking in my direction anymore, and none of the signs they are waving concern me in any way.”
“I would think, my lord, that you would be glad to see for once it is not your effigy being tarred and feathered, nor your caricature being struck through by a bold red line,” his man remarked plainly.
“It is the lack of attention which gets to me,” the baron admitted. “If there is one thing worse than being hated, it is being so utterly and completely ignored. I can stomach abhorrence, but apathy strikes far deeper into a man’s heart.”
“It will blow over, sir,” the butler comforted him. “He is this new thing in their lives, who has come as if expressly to absorb their stock of hatred. Once he’s gone you will swiftly regain the anger of the people.”
“We can only hope,” the baron sighed.
Before the flight of stairs there were gathered some policemen brandishing the stocks of their rifles towards the protesters milling up and down the wide street. On the baron’s coming a number of them detached themselves from their peers, and acting as an escort followed Hungary Mandalin up the wide steps. At the top there was a long retaining wall with a massive gate at the center, which was at the moment already opened. There the Lord Viceroy found some of his lackeys waiting.
They saw him coming and hurried forward. Before him they all of them dipped into half-kneels while dusted off their sleeves with practiced grace. It was the custom of the land for liege-lords to be greeted in this manner by his administrators, and he swiftly raised them all by a nod.
At that moment a clerk appeared hurrying forth from inside the gates. And reaching the outermost fringes of the gathered administrators he tugged urgently on the first sleeve he saw, whispering something into the ear which was bent towards him. That man, in turn, went very white in the face, and repeated the gesture to his nearest comrade. In this way word was passed down the line until it reached the baron’s man, who then speeded it towards his master. Hungary Mandalin was still exchanging greetings with his cabinet, having singled out a particular fellow with whom he was gaily reminiscing about terrorist plots and a brave young woman who offered herself up in order to prevent a bombing of the courthouse pillars. He was still deep into this jolly memory when his man drew up, speaking quickly with him in whispers.
The baron, once he had heard, whirled about at once, fixating his man with a stifling glare of astonishment.
“What?”
His cousin, for his part, only shrugged, nudging his chin towards the gates. Below them a sudden swell of jeers erupted from the crowd waiting outside, lofted in their general direction.
If you have ever attended the performance of a professional strongman in that day and age, you will have a good idea of the impression made by this erstwhile thief of the hearts as he made his entrance. Here he was, a tall man of broad shoulders and rugged complexion, appearing quite suddenly with his considerable retinue from inside the tall walls encircling the Old Courthouse. He came through the gates armed with a swagger that was at once both heartlessly arrogant and delicately mincing, as a man knowing plainly what he was about. His disdain for all present—his hosts and the turnout of loathing locals alike—however, does not negate his relishing in the attention that he was being showered with. In fact, as he strode forward he raised his arms outwards to his sides in a great, dramatic show of benediction, purposefully drinking in the hostile voices barking here and there up in his direction. If there had been a way for him to arrange for fireworks going off in the sky over him when he made his appearance, it is a certainly that he would have done it without a second thought. You would be forgiven then for thinking him a master showman with his audience gripped firmly in his palm as he continued to goad them on in this terrible manner.
The baron, for his part, fumed beside this grand display as a commonplace onlooker, having been cast aside by his own people for this new menace. His rival, in his domain, did not acknowledge or greet him in any way. He could, as you might imagine, only stomach a few minutes of this treatment before brusquely pushing forward to wring the arm of the diplomat roughly.
“Lord Cudgmore,” he said in a stately, regal fashion to the man with a pompous dip of his chin. Turning around he flashed a great beaming smile to his people, which grew only wider as some of them began to holler profanities up in his direction.
The foreigner, however, was not quite so ready to give up his spotlight. He shook the baron’s hand most cordially.
“I’m sorry, sir
, but I do not believe I have had the pleasure. Who are you, now?”
As the baron was dressed from head-to-toe in his official attire, with its preposterous four cornered hat sitting like an inverted tower over his brows and his flowing mantle adorned by a hundred symbols and signs of his office in glittering golden threads, this innocent comment could not have been taken for anything less than the intentional slight that it was. Hungary, however, only laughed the matter off.
“Oh, you cad!” he cried, slapping the other man’s shoulders and back with far more power than it was necessary. “It’s me, Hunry! Surely you must have heard something of the tyrant to end all tyrants, the despot to lord over all other despots! We have never before today been properly introduced, but all the same it is a terrible jest to play on like you don’t know who I am. Now, my dear Cudgel, c’mere a moment—”
With plain disregard for the rules of hospitality the baron wrung his guest around so that they were facing the ire of the assembled crowd together. Wearing a broad smile on his lips, showing all his teeth, he pumped Cudgmore’s hand up and down seemingly against the other man’s will. But with the baron’s massive hand wrapped over his in a grip of iron, there was little for Cudgmore to do but to feign nonchalance, and to return that fierce grip as best he could.
This was the beginning of their little contest which will have a lasting effect throughout this entry of the Lynchman’s Owl journals. Their first meeting ended without a definite victor, for the baron would naturally be assumed to have won the handshaking contest, but Cudgmore would rightly claim to have earned more of the crowd’s displeasure. Once they had agreed on a tie, however, things progressed much more cordially. But, as you will soon see, it would still end badly before the day comes to an end.
Against the gathering ire of the onlookers the two parties now merged together, exchanging greetings and introductions all around. It was a necessity of social engagements such as this one, made all the more unbearable by an abundance of pretended politeness and false laughter. In this case, however, I am happy to report that these mundane proceedings were somewhat broken up by the baron’s behavior, for he alone showed very openly his lack of interest in any of his guests—not Lord Cudgmore himself, who was said to headed for even greater things following his successes in Pegging, nor his brute of a valet who dwarfed even the baron in his massive size. There was only one person whom he asked after at every turn.
“So where is she, Cudgel?” he asked the diplomat very eagerly. “I’m led to believe you never leave home without her, especially on trips hereabouts. You see it’s for her I’ve come all this way, or else I should not have troubled to meet with you at all. You can have any hotel you wish. Just send me the bill afterwards and we will be spared each other’s company, you and I. But before you leave, I would not mind a glimpse of our beauty.” He craned his neck looking around, searching out every face.
“Why, Lord Hunry,” said the other man slyly, “I never would have supposed you are also one of my old rivals for her affections, for you have not made much of it back in the day. But I suppose once I’ve convinced her to throw off your own king you would be wise to keep silent on the matter, for what good could a lackey, even a favorite of His Royal Majesty’s such as yourself, accomplish going after those same goals? In any case she is right here, sir, and I will be happy to introduce you.”
Those very words were the beginning of what would become a great international affair. In Pegging, following the negotiations, there was a chance for lasting peace. In front of the Old Courthouse everything nearly came to pieces on the actions of two people who came to blows over a woman.
There was a small, dainty figure attached to the rear of Cudgmore’s company who had been up until now neglected by the official exchange of pleasantries. That frail form, however, seemed not to mind. Indeed, if anything, it could be said that the cacophony of noises rising and falling in front of the building was to her abhorrent, as were the lively and often hateful opinions shouted towards the top of the staircase from the square. She was clad from head-to-toe in a bleak, grey cloak reaching past her heels with her face obscured completely by a veil, resembling nothing so much as a beekeeper who has inadvertently found herself in a place she did not belong. Shuffling uncomfortably from foot to foot as if she was unsure where she might stand so that she was beyond the notice of all present, nonetheless what little privacy was afforded to her was not to last, despite her obvious desire to remain out of the way. With a springing step Cudgmore was suddenly beside her. And taking hold of her arm roughly through the tarp—for I cannot think of anything else which might be a more fitting description—in which she was made to conceal herself from the world, he drew her roughly forward against her will and flung her before the baron.
The sight of so lovely a creature, once filled with the hopes of a nation, being thrown before the eyes of all present with the same callous disregard your or I might give towards an unwanted bone after a hearty meal immediately drew every pair of eyes around. A hush fell at once over the staircase, which swiftly rolled downwards until the cries of the protesters, one-by-one, fell suddenly silent.
Really, it could not have been anyone else. Her small frame shuddered from barely without emotions as her hands wrung tightly together inside the thick folds of the cloak. Her head swiveled from side-to-side trying to take everything before which she had been made into a public display. She was by turns struggling to hold up her head in the face of this open scrutiny from all present, before cringing backwards as if the attention was too much to bear. That way, sadly, was blocked by her husband, who looked upon the baron and stuck out his chin haughtily.
It should come as little surprise that Hungary Mandalin, a man to whom discretion and subtlety were utterly alien concepts, stepped forward then and took a swing at him.
The Lord of the Coal Coast was a peerless athlete in his time. Twice regional boxing champion in his weight class and silver cup winner of both the decathlon and freestyle wrestling at Faulkien and Garlton; he has never been negligent in taking care of his body, and these abilities have only been further honed since taking up the mantle of the Lynchman’s Owl twenty-years after the avenger first disappeared. So one would not be amazed to see his rival Cudgmore laid out on the stairs by a single shot to the chin. No, the true surprise in this case was to be that for the baron’s great hulking size, for all his accomplishments as a sportsman, he had for once met his match.
It would not be Cudgmore, naturally (for on his best of days he was never much of a brawler), but rather his own behemoth of a valet. Whereas the baron measured nearer to seven foot than six, this brutish fellow still had him by a head. It was not often that Hungary was called upon to look upwards into somebody’s eyes, but now he found himself in that unenviable position even as the valet’s hands swiftly wrapped around his throat.
All at once the scene atop the staircase devolved into one of utter chaos, for everywhere limbs mingled heatedly together as the two parties clashed like warring armies over a battlefield. At every turn of the head one beheld bodies jostling for space, buoyed by their own furious voices as well as the great rising clamor of the onlookers below. In the thick of things, the baron struggled fiercely with his mighty foe, trying to pry his fingers away from his neck even as he did not completely give up on Cudgmore, aiming a few errant kicks in the diplomat’s direction whenever he could spare the effort. Between them was sandwiched his own man, struggling despite his thin, lanky frame to separate the two giants. “My lords!” Yamcey was heard crying desperately, “My lords! This is unbecoming for a war rally! I beg of you, please separate at once!” But whether through accident or intent his crutch, upon which he was precariously balanced, stood directly atop the back of Cudgmore’s left foot. And with every ringing stomp of its point in time to its owner’s cries for calm, a horrid cry of pain was torn from the throat of the fallen diplomat while nearby at hand, forlorn and forgotten in the scuffle, the woman whose mistreatment was the source of this
hubbub stood looking on, clearly at a loss as to what to do.
It took the discharge of a pistol to separate the armies. As one they paused, brought to heel by the sudden boom echoing over them as loud as a crack of thunder during the day. As one they parted like the tides, leaving in the center the prone form of Cudgmore waving his smoking revolver about in very open terms.
His eyes were smoldering with rage, his voice drawn to a high, angry pitch. But alas, he was still much too absorbed in his own maltreatment to properly articulate his thoughts, and little could be made out of what he was trying to say. It ended with him struggling to his feet on his valet’s arm, with the barrel of his gun pointed towards the opposite side of the steps where the baron was gathered with his supporters. It was the servant, Yamcey, who ended in his sights.
“You—!” he barely managed to bite out as a fierce, hateful accusation before the baron.
For his part Hungary did not reply. Pushing aside his own handlers, he strode forward and proudly stuck out his chest until the mouth of Cudgmore’s gun was laid over his heart, digging lightly into the flesh. The diplomat looked up into his cool grey eyes. He found there only a steely resolve, and a flicker of half-madness as if daring him to fire.
“You think I won’t?” cried Cudgmore in a hateful screech. He drew back the hammer on his pistol, and placed his finger over the trigger.
All at once shouts erupted beneath them, and even the baron was taken suddenly aback by the words lofted here and there towards the top of the staircase on an errant breeze.
“Leave him alone, you louse!”
“He is our lord, and you are not to touch him!”
“Scowls, man! If you fire, I’ll bite off your face!”
This was swiftly followed by a swelling cry bursting forth from the assembled crowd, with a single name on every lip being made into a rallying shout.
Hungary! Hungary! Mandalin, king!