by Mike Ashley
“It was a long wait, and as I stood there I noticed that the bus-shelter was built on top of an embankment. I was a sapper in the last war but one, so I know a bit about structural engineering. Well, whoever built that embankment didn’t know his business. It was top-heavy, with substandard revetments. There was a building site near by, and I saw that the builders didn’t know their business either: they had dug a pit directly underneath the embankment, but neglected to shore it up properly. The slightest bit of weight in the wrong place, and the entire street would collapse into a crater. It was an accident waiting to happen.
“Just then a bus came looming out of the darkness, and on its destination board I saw the number 13. The bus was one of those double-decker jobs, of that new design I’ve never really trusted. Top-heavy, and improperly balanced. If the driver should have to stop suddenly, the whole affair could pitch over. As the bus came closer, I caught a whiff of petrol: there was a blockage in the fuel line. A clear violation of London Transport’s safety rules. The slightest disturbance could ignite the petrol tank, and the bus would explode into a raging inferno.
“That wasn’t the only safety violation: the lights were out inside the bus. As it stopped in front of me, I could see that all the seats were occupied, but I couldn’t get a proper look at the passengers: they were only muffled silhouettes within the darkness. There was one empty seat, behind the driver. Then I looked up, and I saw the driver’s face.”
Blenchforth’s voice suddenly went cold. He deftly reached for the sherry, and steadied his nerves with a long drink before he continued: “Where was I? Yes. I saw the bus-driver’s face. It was ghastly. His face looked like a living skull. His limbs were thin, cadaverous. His eyes gazed into mine, and in sudden terror I realized that he was the hearse-driver I’d seen in my nightmare. Just as I thought of this, the driver pointed his long bony hand to the empty seat behind him and, with a voice from beyond the grave, he spoke to me: ‘Just room for one inside, sir!’ ”
Blenchforth fell silent. For a long moment, the only sound in the clubroom was the deep steady ticking of the antique clock. The fading embers in the fireplace sent flickering shadows across the battleaxes, spears and thumbscrews decorating the walls of the clubroom. Finally, Smythe-ffolliott plucked up the courage to speak: “Good heavens, man! What happened next?”
“Oh, nothing much,” said Blenchforth, casually lighting a cigar and guzzling the last of our sherry. “I got on the bus, rode two stops, got out at the club’s entrance, and now here I am. If the bus explodes between here and Stoke Newington, fat lot I care. Hullo! Any kippers left?”
I saw Maltravers draw a Webley-Vickers cavalry pistol from beneath his Norfolk jacket, whilst Chundermutton surreptitiously unlocked the safety of his Purdy twelve-gauge. “But the hearse-driver!” I protested. “The nightmare!”
“Oh, that,” yawned Blenchforth. “I just put that rubbish in to make the story more interesting. Isn’t it high time you chaps stopped believing in ghosts?”
With a bound, I seized the battleaxe on the wall and tore it loose from its bracket, whilst Smythe-ffolliott broke open the nearest display case and selected a Thuggee death-blade. “ ‘Rule Ninety-Three,’ ” the four of us recited in unison, closing in on Blenchforth from all sides. “ ‘Ghost stories told in the clubroom must contain at least one genuine supernatural incident, or else a good deal of bloodshed.’ ”
Blenchforth squealed in terror as we descended upon him. Somehow he broke through our onslaught, and made straight for the lift. Just as he reached it, the lift’s doors wheezed open. The lift-attendant, faithful old Staveacre, was nowhere inside. In his place stood a grotesque stranger, dressed in the club’s livery. His face was like a living skull. His limbs were thin, cadaverous. With one long bony hand he beckoned Blenchforth to enter the elevator, as he spoke in a weird death-like voice: “Just room for one inside, sir!”
Thumbing his nose at us, Blenchforth bounded into the lift. Its doors slid shut before we could reach him. Suddenly there was a hideous screech, as all of the chains supporting the lift’s counterweight snapped simultaneously. Through the glass-paned doors, I caught a glimpse of Blenchforth’s ashen face as he plunged to his doom. Moments later, an explosion at the bottom of the lift shaft reached our ears, and the air was suffused with thick billows of smoke and the odour of brimstone. For an instant, I fancied that I heard distant voices intoning the Black Mass.
Blenchforth was never seen again. Nor was the club’s elevator. The charred walls of the empty lift shaft are the sole remaining evidence of what transpired that night. We found out afterwards that faithful old Staveacre had sold the elevator’s safety mechanism to a scrap-metal dealer, shortly after he absconded with the club’s silverware. As for Blenchforth, his ghastly fate saved us the trouble of striking his name off the club’s membership rolls. Served the blighter right, for telling us a ghost story without any ghosts in it. Not the done thing at all. Really!
A FORTNIGHT OF MIRACLES
Randall Garrett
The following story was the one that made me realize that humorous fantasy works. Back in the early 1960s I was rather traditional about fantasy fiction. It had to be serious. I didn’t like anyone taking the mickey out of the field. And then I read this and was immediately converted. Randall Garrett (1927–87) was an extremely prolific writer – mostly of science fiction – in the 1950s, often working in collaboration with Robert Silverberg. He reduced his output in the 1960s and, not surprisingly, the quality of the work increased. It was at that time that he wrote his best work, the Lord Darcy series, featuring a court detective who operates in an alternate twentieth century where the Reformation never happened and where magic operates as a science. The stories were collected as Murder and Magic (1979) and Lord Darcy Investigates (1981). There is also a novel, Too Many Magicians (1967). Garrett had an excellent sense of humour, although it surfaced all too rarely in his fiction, which makes the following even more special. He did produce an early comic fantasy with Laurence Janifer, Pagan Passions (1959), and some of his clever parodies were collected as Takeoff! (1980) and Takeoff Too (1987). It was a tragic loss when Garrett died of meningitis after several years of memory degeneration. Stories like this one can help keep our memory of him alive.
I
Magus MacCullen patted the neck of his mule, and the gesture made the pouch at his belt jingle pleasantly. “Gold and silver and two good mules,” he said, with a smile that was almost hidden by his moustaches and his huge, fiery red beard. “The Count du Marche is most generous if you tap him at just the right time.”
The hooded figure on the other mule might have been mistaken for a traveling monk except that no Order of the Church wore dark blue robes. In spite of the warmth of the late summer day, the hood of the habit was up, concealing the face in shadow. The voice which came from beneath the hood was not unpleasant, but the low tenor notes seemed to resonate as though the speaker were in a cavern or at the bottom of a well. “We could have stayed another five days or a week, Master Magus. Not that I need the rest, but you have a long way to go, and . . .”
“My dear Frithkin,” Magus MacCullen interrupted, “if we had stayed an extra week we would have saturated the market. Always leave early. That way, they bribe you to come back. The Count and his Lady and his court were entertained for a week by the greatest magician in Christendom. They can hardly wait for us to come back – say in a year. But a fortnight of miracles would satiate even the most ardent of miracle-lovers. As it is, I keep my reputation.”
“A reputation as a phony,” said Frithkin glumly.
“Of course!” said the Magus. “What happens to sorcerers? What happened to Magus Prezhenski? That Baron Whatsis – the one with the unpronounceable name – wanted gold, so he decided to force Prezhenski to make the stuff for him. Laymen are always inclined to think a sorcerer can do anything God can do, I suppose. The Magus failed, of course, and the corbies were well fed for a week.”
“He had it coming to him,”
Frithkin pointed out.
“Sure he did,” the red-bearded man said agreeably. “Only a fool plays around with black magic. But does a layman know the difference? No. So I have a reputation as a clever trickster and nothing else. I’ll live longer that way.” He chuckled deep in his chest. “Remember that time the Earl of Weffolk tried to trap me by getting Father Finn to pull an exorcism while I was present?”
Frithkin’s echoing chuckle joined that of his master. “And all the good Father could do was testify that you weren’t a practitioner of black magic? I remember. If Magus Prezhenski had had—” He stopped and turned his hooded head. “What’s that?”
Magus MacCullen had heard the noise, too. Both of them turned their mules to face whatever was galloping down the road behind them.
“He’s coming from the direction of the Count’s castle, whoever he is,” said the magician. All he could see was a cloud of dust rising in the summer heat, but from it came the sound of hooves moving at a gallop. “A messenger sent by the Count, perhaps?”
“More likely he’s changed his mind and wants his gold back,” said Frithkin. “I suggest we head in the opposite direction.”
“There’s only one of him,” the magician said calmly. “Besides, these mules couldn’t outrun a warhorse – which, as you can plainly see, that is.”
Over the little rise that had blocked their view, the two saw their pursuer charging toward them at full tilt. A knight and his horse, both in full armor, came thundering down from the crest of the rise, the horse in full gallop, the knight in a forward crouch, his lance aimed directly at Magus MacCullen.
The Magus was already in motion. He tossed the reins of his mule to Frithkin, who caught them dexterously with bony fingers. Then he vaulted out of the saddle, his long oaken staff in one hand. While Frithkin galloped the two mules off to one side of the road, Magus MacCullen took his position in the center, his brawny legs braced, his six-foot staff of one-inch-thick oak held firmly at an angle across his body. Then there was nothing to do but wait.
Magus MacCullen made a fine target for the oncoming lance point. He stood six feet two and was broader in proportion than he ought to be. The powerful hands gripping the staff were half again as big as an ordinary man’s, and, like his arms, were corded with heavy muscle. With his light blue, silver-decorated robes and his bright red mane of hair and beard, he stood out against the brown of the road and the dusty green of the surrounding meadow.
The oncoming knight ignored Frithkin. He charged right on down the road toward the unmoving, blue-and-silver-clad figure of the sorcerer. The knight said nothing. There was no war cry, no insult, no warning – only that deadly, straightforward charge. He intended to spit Magus MacCullen on the lance and – perhaps – talk about it afterwards. MacCullen didn’t move. He might have been a statue.
The steel-clad point of the lance was within inches of the Magus’ breast before he moved. Almost too fast for the eye to see, and certainly too fast for the knight to react in time, the magician leaped to his right, holding the quarterstaff out to his left to fend off the lance. The heavy spear slid along the staff, deflected from its target by a full eight inches.
The great charger, unable to alter its course in the few feet it still had to travel, thundered by the Magus in full gallop. With his two hands still braced on the quarterstaff, Magus MacCullen pulled the left hand toward himself and pushed the right hand away. The lower end of the staff swung in a vicious arc and struck the horse just under the jaw.
It was like watching a mountain collapse. The horse, knocked unconscious by the blow, stumbled and fell. The armored figure in the saddle dropped the lance, did a complete somersault in the air, and landed in the road with a clatter and clang of steel armor.
Neither he nor the horse moved.
“Well, now,” said Magus MacCullen. “Let’s take a look at this brave, chivalrous gentleman who runs down unarmed people on the road without so much as a by-your-leave.”
“It looks to me,” said Frithkin from the side of the road, “as if you’ve done him in pretty well. Broke every bone in his body, apparently.”
The fallen knight did, in fact, look as though he had suffered disastrously from his fall. His legs and arms were at angles that indicated terrible damage, and his body was twisted in a way that looked as though it had been wrung like a dishrag.
Magus MacCullen walked over and inspected the wreckage for a moment. Then he knelt down and opened the visor of the helm.
“Ha!” he said. Then he took the helmet completely off.
Frithkin had brought the mules up close and was looking over the sorcerer’s shoulder. When the helmet came off, Frithkin said: “Ho! Nobody home?”
“Nobody home,” said the Magus in agreement. “This suit of armor is as empty as a bride’s nightgown.” He poked his staff inside and rattled it around to indicate the emptiness behind the breastplate.
Frithkin slid off the saddle of his mule. Afoot, he stood a scant four feet high, and his legs were so abnormally short, his arms so abnormally long, that he might have been taken for a chimpanzee. He went to the suit of armor and bent over it; with one hand, he pushed back the cowl that had covered his head. His head was as hairless as his face, and his skin was of a brownish color that reminded one of fresh-turned earth. His eyes were large, much too large to be human, making him look like a pop-eyed owl. His mouth was wide and almost lipless. His nose, like his cat-pupiled eyes, was much too large for his face. It was a magnificent nose, a huge eagle beak of a nose, a nose that jutted out a full three inches from his face. That nose was making audible sniffing sounds as its owner inspected the armor.
“Ho!” said Frithkin after a moment. “There’s black magic here, all right!” He tapped his great beak with a bony finger. “ ‘What a goblin knows, he knows by his nose,’ as the old saying goes.”
“That’s fine doggerel verse,” said the Magus, “but let’s be a little more specific. What kind of black magic? Any specific spell?”
Frithkin sniffed some more. “Well, Master Magus, I would say it’s nothing we need worry about. I should say that the spell has been directed against the unfortunate gentleman who owns this armor. Or once owned it, since he doesn’t seem to be around himself.” More sniffing. “Nothing malignant about it. Not as far as we’re concerned. The spell’s still here, though, which is odd. Seems to be in abeyance, but not broken.”
“Find out what you can,” said Magus MacCullen. “I’m going to take a look at that poor horse. Hate to hit a horse that way, but it’s the only thing to do when some high-born sorehead takes it in his noggin to do a fellow in with a lance.” He strode over to where the great black destrier lay on the road, breathing quietly.
“Hmmm,” murmured the Magus, “doesn’t look like any damage done. Legs not broken, at any rate.” He knelt down and checked the legs one at a time to make sure. Then he went over to the head.
“How’s your jaw, friend? Mmmm. No fracture. Just a lump. You may find it a little difficult to chew your oats and hay for the next day or two, but you’ll be all— oops! Steady, boy! Steady!” He gripped his staff tightly. The warhorse had opened a large brown eye and was looking at him reproachfully. A huge stallion like this could be dangerous with teeth and hooves if he decided that the red-bearded man deserved to be punished for that oaken uppercut.
The Magus hoped it would not be necessary to bat the poor creature over the head with the quarterstaff. He kept talking soothingly to the horse.
“Yike!”
Magus MacCullen turned his head at the sound of Frithkin’s voice.
The suit of armor, sans helm, was climbing to its feet for all the world as though there was a man inside it. Frithkin was backing away rapidly, his own quarterstaff at the ready in his goblin hands.
At the same time, the great stallion rolled to his feet and stood up.
For a moment, Magus MacCullen wondered whether it mightn’t be the smart thing to club the horse again so that both he and Frithkin could gi
ve their full attention to the Empty Knight. If the steel-clad vacancy decided to draw the great sword at his side, he might be a little difficult to take care of.
But the horse stood quietly, and the armored figure did nothing but bend over and pick up the helm from the ground and put it in its proper place.
“There!” boomed a hollow voice from the interior of the armor. “First off, I want to apologize. Terrible mistake and all that. Thought you were someone else, you see. Please accept my heartfelt apologies, Master Magus – for I see you are a magician.”
“Your apology is accepted, Sir Knight,” said the Magus, easing his grip on his quarterstaff a little. “But I think such precipitate behavior requires an explanation, don’t you?”
“Yes, I suppose it does. Here, would you mind fastening this helm back on? It’s difficult to get at, and besides, gauntlets aren’t exactly built for delicate work. Yes, that’s it. Thank you very much.” The Empty Knight grasped the helm in both gauntlets and tested its firmness. “Fine,” he said. “Thank you again, Magus.”
Then he walked over to his horse and examined the jaw. “Painful, but no real injury,” he said gently. “That’s quite a trick you have there, Magus. Last time I’ll try to ride down a man who has a quarterstaff, I’ll tell you.”
“About that explanation, Sir Knight . . .” the Magus prompted.
“Oh, yes. Well, it’s rather a long story – and I must warn you that I can’t tell you all of it, anyway. I’ve got a curse on me, as you may have gathered.”