A Handful of Men: The Complete Series

by Dave Duncan

  “What’s wrong?”

  The troll’s mouth was too full for speech. “Wurnk and Vog.”

  Sagorn spasmed with surprise, so he must have been included in the sending.

  “The old fellows?” Rap asked.

  “Yes. They don’t like crowds. Wanna go.”

  “Not surprising! I expect the rest will follow them in a day or two.”

  Abandoning words, Thrugg flashed an excruciating image of a slave being beaten by a gang of imps. Everyone winced, and yelped. The implication was one of strong disapproval, which seemed out of character for the unwarlike troll. Why should he want to keep the army together?

  “Isn’t that the plan?” Sagorn muttered. “To hide out individually until battle is joined?”

  Again Thrugg replied without words, and this time the image was a relative measure of the strength of forty sorcerers and a couple of dozen lesser magic-users. Not only was a larger group inherently more powerful, it was also much less detectable. Sagorn’s mouth fell open.

  “Good point,” Rap admitted. “If we must have an army, then the larger the better.” Sorcery would become possible again, if it was used with caution.

  Thrugg nodded more cheerfully, pulping timber in his monstrous jaws.

  Rap readjusted his thinking yet again. “So we keep the trolls enlisted. We need to hunt down the rest of the fifty you mentioned, though. That means organizing messengers. It means setting up a central headquarters. Two might be better. Would Vog and Wumk do that much?”

  Thrugg shrugged, but even before the gesture was complete, he had located the two old trolls, explained, persuaded, and won agreement. It was all over in a blink, and he nodded.

  Grunth belched and said, “They’d better!” in an ominous voice. The witch had not yet adjusted to the idea of voluntary servitude.

  “And what do the rest of us do?” Rap asked. “If we stay here, we’ll achieve nothing. Where do we go, and how?” He thought of the vast expanse of rain forest surrounding him and mentally shuddered.

  Tik Tok paused in his gnawing. “Downstream. Watercourses felicitate travel in jungles.”

  “Good point. But that takes us to the coast, and there will be imps at the coast.”

  “Mm!” The anthropophagus nodded and licked his lips. Then he flashed pictures of forty or so sorcerers standing on the beach, calling in a ship, compelling the crew to row to shore in their longboat, marooning the sailors, and rowing back out in their boat. The imagery was not as vivid as Thrugg’s, and rather spoiled by an alcoholic unsteadiness, but it obviously represented a feasible plan when there was so much power available. The final scene showed the ship sailing away with its rigging full of sorcerers, all lustily singing sea chanteys. A large, unidentified carcass was being roasted over an improbable bonfire on the deck.

  “I fail to see how carnal self-indulgence will promote the cause,” Sagorn remarked dryly.

  Tik Tok turned to stare at him thoughtfully. “Where I come from, jotnar are regarded as speciously tasty mortals.”

  “I am sure my old meat would be unpleasantly stringy.” The haggard old face had turned a little paler, though. Rap repressed a grin. It took a lot to discomfit the sage.

  “We steal a ship of course,” Grunth said sleepily. “Easy.”

  “And go where?” That was the ultimate question.

  After a moment’s silence, Tik Tok said, “Did you and your fellow compositors not set up a revenue?”

  “No,” Rap said. “It seemed too dangerous.”

  “Not much help!” Sagorn snapped, resuming his disdainful pout. “With so much power available, why not just go on the attack? If you can create a diversion, the Covin will send a party of sorcerers to investigate. You overpower them, break their loyalty spells, and win them to your cause; then skedaddle and pull the same trick somewhere else.”

  Groaning like a constipated bull, Grunth subsided into the depths of her throne and closed her eyes. Sagorn’s pale cheeks flushed pink.

  “It won’t work. Doctor,” Rap said gently. “Sorcerous armies move instantaneously. You can’t run away from them. Remember the trouble Raspnex went to when he rescued us in Hub? It was a miracle, what he achieved that night. It had taken weeks to prepare, probably, and it cost him half a dozen votaries. Guerilla warfare won’t work in the ambience. As soon as we show our hand, Zinixo will cut it off.”

  The old man scowled. He was out of his depth with sorcery, and that discovery would be unwelcome.

  Downstream, the party was waxing even wilder. Half the dancers were airborne, and so were some of the lovers. The games were developing into occult tests of strength. A bear was wrestling a giant squid near a tug of war between a team of trolls and six white stallions—

  “Go and drop in on Lith’rian,” Grunth muttered without opening her eyes.

  “I am inclined to agree with that, I think.” Rap sighed and quaffed some beer; the flavor made him homesick. If there was organized resistance anywhere, it would be among the elves, in Ilrane. He realized he was hungry, and began to contemplate the prospects of a plate of chicken dumplings.

  “Sysanasso?” Tik Tok mumbled, his mouth full of meat.

  “Another good idea. There’s a nasty rumor about fauns being stubborn, though. I don’t know where to start there, or how we can persuade them even to spread the news.”

  Rap knew who was the logical agent to assign to Sysanasso, and he didn’t want the job. He had never thought of himself as indispensable before, but he suspected he was the only glue that might hold this improbable legion together.

  He heard a strange noise he could not recall ever hearing before. Doctor Sagorn was laughing.

  “Doctor?”

  “I was just imagining the elvish customs officials at Vislawn or Mistrin when you dock and they meet your crew.”

  “I am not familial with elves,” Tik Tok remarked. “Singers, not fighters?”

  “Elves are people of exquisite taste!” Sagorn said primly.

  Rap expected Tik Tok to say he was ogrely looking forward to meating them, but he didn’t. Perhaps mere puns were beneath his dignity. He just licked his lips again.

  “Zark has sorcerers,” Grunth said, and yawned like a hungry crocodile.

  “I’m sure it does,” Rap agreed. “It also has a central authority, the caliph. We wrote to him and hopefully he will spread the word. Dragon Reach might make a very good refuge, if we take no metal and use no sorcery. Or the Keriths—sorcerers should be able to resist the merfolk, shouldn’t they?”

  Thrugg leered. “Resist the men.”

  Sagorn snorted. “Your Majesty, I am inclined to think you initiated this counterrevolurion without adequate preparation.”

  “I’m certain of it. We had very little choice at the time.”

  Silence fell in the rocky chamber, broken only by the quiet trickling of water down one slimy green wall. The ambience, on the other hand, was approaching the boil. A couple of the older anthropophagi were trying to calm things down, with little success. Perhaps the shielding would fail, and the whole castle just explode.

  Rap clawed his hair, making a mental note to shorten it in the morning. “Listen, Doctor. Maybe you can help me. Ever since we began this adventure, I’ve had a nagging hunch that I’ve forgotten something, that I’m overlooking something.”

  “I understood that sorcerers had perfect memories.”

  “I’m not much of a sorcerer. But that’s a good point. If I have forgotten something, maybe I’ve been made to forget it!” He glanced around and saw that the others were listening. He hoped he was not about to make too much of a fool of himself. “You’re not a sorcerer. Can you think of anything we saw, or anything that came up in conversation… any plan we discussed and then set aside, perhaps?”

  “A forgetfulness spell specifically directed at the sorcerous?” the old man muttered. “Is that possible?”

  “Probably. Almost anything is possible if there is enough power available. Could Zinixo have blanked my m
ind?” He felt he was really conjuring bubbles now, but having gone so far he might as well wade in until he sank.

  “If he had managed that much,” Thrugg growled, “then he would have been able to call you to him.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “What sort of something?” Sagorn said thoughtfully. “What would be useful? A strategy? A place of refuge? A weapon? A possible ally?” His eyes glinted coldly, like sunlight on a northern sea. “What about that preflecting pool the imperor saw? Nobody ever quite explained that episode!”

  “A pixie!” Rap yelled. “That’s it! You’ve got it! Shandie met a pixie near Hub!”

  Grunth yawned again. “If you’re starting in on bedtime stories, then I think I’ll organize a bale of hay and catch up on my beauty sleep.”

  “Unfortunately pixies are instinct,” Tik Tok said sadly, and yawned, also. “Would have been nice to invite someone diffident for dinner.”

  “Pixies still exist,” Rap said firmly. “My wife met some, many years ago. The imperor met a pixie!”

  Three sorcerers stared at him as if he had taken leave of his senses.

  He was so excited now he could hardly sit still. “Don’t you see? The War of the Five Warlocks? What happened at the end of it? Who won? Grunth?”

  “Don’t recall,” she said uneasily.

  “No one does!” Sagorn was beaming.

  “It was the second millennium!” Rap shouted. “There was more sorcery around then than there ever has been since—until now, the third millennium. Anything would have been possible with that kind of power loose! Now do you understand? There is an aversion spell on Thume! An inattention spell, and it’s directed more at sorcerers than at mundanes, although it obviously affects them too. Shielding blunts it, because the last time I thought of this I was in a shielded house, like this one. When I went outside I forgot again.”

  “You were otherwise engaged,” Sagorn murmured, but he was obviously relishing the mad suggestion and the audience’s reluctance to accept it.

  “I want you to stay close to me in future,” Rap said, “and whisper ‘Thume’ in my ear every half hour.”

  All three sorcerers were cold sober now.

  “That kind of spell wouldn’t last that long,” Thrugg protested, glaring at Rap like a hungry grizzly taking aim.

  “No, it wouldn’t. Of course it wouldn’t! So who is maintaining it?”

  No one answered. What sort of power could maintain a spell over an entire country, let alone establish it there in the first place?

  “Whole armies can vanish in Thume,” Sagorn said gleefully. “Or not, as the case may be. Travelers disappear or return with tales of an empty, deserted land, yet not even the Impire has been able to commandeer that emptiness! And no one wonders why? Ma’am, gentlemen… This does not make sense! Why has it never worried you before?”

  Rap glanced around the group and saw the dawning of belief, the dawning of excitement, even. Could the War of the Five Warlocks have left some secret behind in Thume, a secret still active after a thousand years?

  “I wonder if we could even approach it?” He looked down at his bare arm and wrote Thume on it. No, that would not be enough. “Thrugg, you’re strongest, I think. Fix this tattoo for me so I can’t wipe it off in a fit of absentmindedness. Give it all you’ve got.”

  The result was an explosion in the ambience that almost stunned him. It rocked the castle. The wild melee downstream came to an instant halt, shocked into sobriety. All Rap actually felt, though, was a momentary tingling.

  “Thank you!” he said weakly, still dazed.

  “Couldn’t do it harder or the shielding would have burst,” Thrugg explained apologetically.

  All the other sorcerers and mages in the castle were staring at their leaders in consternation, wondering what had provoked that immense outburst of power. For some reason most seemed to have picked out Rap as the culprit. They should be informed of the new theory, but whom would they believe? Well, there was one person there who would never refuse an audience.

  “Tik Tok, why don’t you explain?”

  Tik Tok beamed his dagger teeth and sprang to his feet in a shower of rosebuds. “Fiends and alloys!” he proclaimed. “I am pleased to denounce that we have made a significant breakdown in understudying!” He paused and glanced at Rap. “Good start?”

  “An inedible performance,” Rap said dryly. “Carry on.”

  Westward look:

  And not by eastern windows only,

  When daylight comes, comes in the light,

  In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,

  But westward, look, the land is bright.

  Clough, Say Not the Struggle Naught Availeth

  SEVEN

  We happy few

  1

  “For the hundredth time, no! I will not marry your daughter! Not tomorrow. Not next year. Never! Not ever! At no time between now and the end of the world!”

  Sir Acopulo spun around in a swirl of black robe to slouch against the railing. His move was too violent—the railing creaked ominously and the balcony itself seemed to sag, as if in sympathy. He backed hastily into the room, seeking safety. The water was a long way down, and none too clean. One of the harbor’s responsibilities was to remove the village sewage, but the tide was in at the moment.

  “But it is your duty to marry my daughter,” Shiuy-Sh wailed.

  He was a scraggy little man, small even by Acopulo’s standards. Years of seawater had shriveled his skin like old brown mud, and his scanty hair was turning silver to match the fish scales that embellished his arms to the elbow. His only garment was a twist of dirty cloth, although like all fauns he always seemed to be wearing furry black stockings. Now he stood in the middle of Acopulo’s living room and wriggled his hairy toes in emotional agony, twisting and torturing the straw hat he held in his hands.

  “It would be blasphemy for me to marry your daughter. Or your nephew. Or your grandmother!” Acopulo wanted to weep. He had been over this argument thousands and thousands of times, and he knew it was useless. He never got anywhere. Arguing with fauns was like trying to eat marble.

  Raw.

  “But my grandmother is already married,” Shiuy-Sh said, seeming puzzled. With the widespread nose and large mouth of his race, he looked none too intelligent at the best of times.

  “I wish she had never been born!” Acopulo wiped sweat from his brow. Ysnoss had a wonderful natural harbor, or so its inhabitants claimed. The price of that harbor was that the village nestled at the bottom of a gorge, a notch cut in high cliffs. Steep rocky walls beetled up on all sides, capturing the noon sun and deflecting the wind. Ysnoss was a gigantic oven. Perhaps “stew pot” was a better description, if one considered the foul steamy stench arising from the harbor itself.

  There was no road out of Ysnoss. Most of the shanties were built on stilts, because the land was so steep. Acopulo had been given one of the finest houses in the whole village, two rooms directly over the water.

  He had been there a month, and expected to remain there until he went utterly insane, in about another ten minutes…

  “Tcch!” Shiuy-Sh exclaimed in annoyance. “Bad dog, Imp! This is the priest’s house! Where is your shovel. Father?”

  Imp was the size of a small pony, filled with the jubilation of youth and totally lacking in manners. Twice already he had stolen the gift of fresh bass Shiuy-Sh had brought, and he had eaten half of it before the faun rescued it the second time.

  Wearily Acopulo pointed to the shingle he retained for such needs. That was another curse of living with fauns—there was livestock everywhere: dogs, cats, pigs, chickens, parrots. No faun ever seemed to go anywhere with less than his own pack of hounds and a couple of tame macaws. Monkeys and geese were the worst pests. Fortunately there was not enough flat ground in Ysnoss to stand a cow or a horse on.

  “My brother has promised a whole pig for the feast,” Shiuy-Sh remarked cheerfully as he scraped the offensive mess through a gap in the floorb
oards. “And his wife is preparing wreaths of purple and white—”

  “I don’t care!” Acopulo screamed, “It is nothing to do with me!”

  He stared miserably out over the water to where the sea shone in the gap between the cliffs. About five weeks ago the Ilranian authorities had finally given him permission to leave. He had taken the first available boat out of Vislawn—Curly Nautilus, a smelly little faun fishing dory blown off course and forced into port for repairs.

  For a fee so reasonable that it should have made him suspicious right away. Nautilus’s crew had promised to deliver him to a port in Sysanasso. There he had expected to catch a more reasonable craft to carry him east to Qoble, or perhaps even all the way to Zark. He would have sailed in a basket to get away from those elves. Fauns, he had soon discovered, were much worse.

  Ysnoss was a port, of course. He had not stipulated the port he was to be taken to—like most imps, he had no clear picture of Sysanassoan geography at all. The fact that nothing but the locals’ own small craft ever stopped in at Ysnoss was not a violation of the contract. Nor had the negotiations considered the fact that Ysnoss had no priest and both its neighboring villages did, although that had turned out to be a very material detail.

  Shiuy-Sh completed his small chore, tossed the shingle back out on the balcony, and wiped his hands on his furry thighs. “If you do not wish to come to my house. Father,” he suggested with the air of a man making a significant compromise, “then my daughter and nephew will be most honored to be married here, in your residence. Unfortunately…”

  “Unfortunately what?” Acopulo demanded, scowling at the little man’s woebegone expression.

  “Unfortunately, this house is one of the oldest in Ysnoss. Even my grandmother cannot recall who built it. The whole village will be coming to the wedding. Do you not feel we shall be tempting the Gods by filling this place with people? Your faith is very ennobling. Father, but you must forgive the rest of us our doubts.”