Thud eventually gave up on the cards, leaving Mungo and Nibbly to sort out who ended up with the pot. He wandered over and sat down next to Durham with the sound that was his namesake. He fished around in the vest beneath his coat until he produced a hammered steel flask.
“My apologies for the last time we tried having this talk,” he said. “I likes to get to know folk I’m traveling with but got thrown a bit by the whole orphan thing. This line of work breeds caution in some unusual type ways. Ain’t your fault though, even if it does turn out to be a problem.”
“Do you really think that I might be part of some kind of prophecy?” Durham arched an eyebrow.
“Nope. Meaning no offense but I don’t actually hold much with prophecies. Seems to me they’re all a bit vague and then gets twisted about later to fit what happened. Or some bard’s clumsy idea of foreshadowing when he’s telling a story. So maybe you’ll be one after we’re done but you ain’t one yet, if you get me meaning.” He sipped from his flask and made a noise Durham couldn’t quite categorize.
“Now,” Thud said, “'bout your guardin' duties. How long ya been doin' that?”
Durham thought for a moment.
“Three years?”
“And how's that been for ya?”
Durham shrugged. “All right, I guess.”
“What they gotcha guardin'?”
“Usually I guard the postern gate.”
“That's a ponce word for the back door, ain't it?”
“More like a side door, really. At least this one. It's where they bring the livestock in and out.”
“Mmm. See a lot o' action there, do ya?”
“Well...no. Mostly it involves searching flocks of sheep.”
Thud regarded him silently for a moment.
“We made some dramatically different career choices to bring us to the same place,” he said.
“I was never really aware of having made any choices, other than joining the guards in the first place”
“You gotta make the choices exist in the first place to get the ones ya want. If you just grab the ones that wander by ya end up on the postern gate.” He sucked on his cigar contemplatively. “So, wot you're tellin' me is that you maybe ain't used that club a yers all that much.”
“Well...”
“Sheep uprisings maybe? Contraband hidden in the wool?”
Durham gave Thud a narrow look, beginning to suspect that he was being made fun of.
“You gots any other sorta skills what might be useful in a dungeoneering type environment?” Thud asked.
“Like what? Lockpicking? Healing?”
“Nah, like 'sperience with machinery or engineering, mebbe. Architecture, botany, stuff like that. We got a healer and lockpicking ain’t nearly as useful as you might think.”
“Don’t dungeons have locked-up chests full of gold?”
“Naw. They’re deep down in a dungeon, see? What’s the point of lockin’ ‘em? A five-bit lock ain’t gonna stop anyone that crawled through spike traps and goblin dens to get to it. Happens sometimes but they can be sorted out pretty quick with a hammer and a prybar.”
Durham thought for a bit.
“I can pluck a chicken. Sort of. Still learning.”
Thud dug a finger in his ear and thoughtfully inspected the results for a moment, puffing away on his cigar. He took a swallow from his flask and handed it to Durham.
“What got ya into bein’ a guard in the first place?” Thud asked.
Durham took a swallow from the flask and felt the paint peel off of the interior of his entire gastrointestinal tract.
“I liked figuring things out,” Durham said after several minutes of coughing. “I had this idea that in the city guard I’d do things like solve who killed the man in Lancedboil Lane, for example, or who robbed the bakery. That sort of thing. Didn’t work out that way, though. Instead I’m the sheep gate guard.”
“So you actually wanted to be a thieftaker?”
Durham stared at the fire for several seconds then took another swig from the flask. His face made several complicated contortions and one of his legs developed a spastic twitch. Thud took the flask away from him.
“I got caught in an alley once when I was a kid. Street kids—older than me. One had a knife. I didn’t have anything—the orphanage wasn’t big on walking-around money. They decided they were going to settle for my clothes instead. They had me down and were pulling at me, the knife at my throat. Suddenly, behind them, this gleaming giant in blinding silver. Least that was how it looked at the time. Sun on armor. Captain of the city watch. He kicked the kid with the knife so hard it flipped him end over end. The other three were off like cats. That’s what I wanted to be. Captain of the guard.”
“Three years gaurdin’ a sheep gate though?” Thud asked. “Ain’t there no promotion type opportunities in yer city guard?”
“My first day on duty I walked into the patrol house I’d been assigned to. There was a shepherd there, complaining to the lieutenant about sheep thieves.”
Thud rubbed his nose. “Sheep thieves? That a problem of significance?”
“You’d be surprised,” Durham said. “So he sends me to follow the shepherd back to the gate he’s complaining about and take up guard post. My one and only assignment. For the first year at the end of each month when I’d show up for my pay he’d squint at me and say, ‘Who the blazes are you?”
“Private Durham.”
“Durham? Aren’t you the Keeper of the Vaults?”
“No, sir, that’s Chancellor Dorham.”
“What’s your post?”
“Anterior postern side gate, sir.”
“Ah, didn’t know we had a post there. Good to know, good to know. Good idea that. Anything to report?
“No, sir.
“Good, good. Any relation to Chancellor Dorham?
“Not that I’m aware of sir.”
“Excellent! Otherwise I’d have to find someone with less experience to take that gate.”
Durham shrugged. “Then they would hand me my pay and off I went back to counting sheep.”
“An’ ye never requested a new post?” Thud asked.
“A few times around the end of that first year,” Durham said. “He always answered that he’d keep an ear out and let me know if he heard of anything and gave me one of those ‘surprised interest’ expressions like it was the first time the subject had been mentioned. But no, it was my second year when I really sunk my chances.”
“Made a mistake, did ye?”
“No,” Durham said. “I solved a sheep murder.”
Thud blew a smoke ring and took a pull on the flask, mulling that over.
“Thinks ya might needs ta elaborate a bit on that, lad.”
And so Durham told him. He told him of the strange ritualistic circumstances surrounding the discovery of the murdered sheep. He told him of the singular one-legged seamstress, the cryptic cipher tattoo and the secret fishmonger identity of the mysterious rogue, Harengs. He spoke of part of the evidence being eaten and another part being knitted into a lumpy sweater. And at last the reveal, when all of the seemingly disparate parts came together to show that it had been the victim’s sister Bluebell all along. By the time he was done, Mungo, Nibbly and Giblets had joined Thud in his audience.
“The watch captain read my report,” Durham said, as he neared the tale’s end. “Laughed until he had tears running down his face then sentenced Bluebell to execution by way of being the main dish at the City Watch potluck. He at least remembers me now. Every time he sees me he asks if I have any new baaaffling cases and starts laughing again.”
“And so you been stuck there ever since, eh?” Thud asked.
Durham nodded. “I’ve been thinking of a career change.”
“For how long?”
Durham shrugged. “I have a plan all worked out. These sorts of things take time.”
“That they do,” Thud said. “Gots something ya needs ta do, an’ ya figgers out what y
a needs to do to make it happen and then ya has yer plan, eh?”
Durham nodded, looking pleased with himself.
“‘First thing tomorrow morning I’m gonna starts fixing this,” you says to yerself,” Thud went on. “Next thing ya know twenty years o’ tomorrows has gone by and yer still watching the sheep gate.”
Durham stopped nodding, in spite of the fact that Thud’s second comment had been more prescient than the first.
His lower regions informed him that the Dwarven spirits had arrived at their debarkation station and he took the opportunity to excuse himself and step outside. The eye-moon was low in the sky, half-lidded but bright, tinging the ruins with rusty light. People always referred to it as ‘the red moon’ but Durham had always thought it looked more orange. He stepped behind the broken wall of what looked to have been a smithy which, as far as desecrating a ruin went, seemed a relatively safer choice than the back of the temple. He could hear the dwarves’ distant chatter off to his right—they seemed to be telling stories about livestock. Which meant that the noise he’d just heard to his left wasn’t a dwarf.
He slowly turned his head.
Ten yards away was a huge horned skeletal bull, glimmering red in the moonlight. More alarmingly, it was in a full speed charge straight at him, head lowered, horns pointing.
Durham shrieked and ran.
After a few steps it occurred to him that he had not, in fact, bothered to stop peeing before running, nor done up his pants and that both of these factors were about to turn into serious logistics issues.
There is a part of the brain that, ordinarily, doesn’t do too much other than watch and wait. The monkey brain, the bit that exists primarily for those moments when things are suddenly happening too quickly for the conscious brain to deal with; moments when destiny is suddenly approaching at high speed. And then it takes over. Its job is to make decisions and to make them instantly. It does this largely by circumventing the entire thinking process, taking no time to assess the consequences of its decisions or the likelihood of them leading to long-term success, merely choosing what seems the best option for staying alive for another second or two. It was this part of Durham’s brain that had shrieked and started him running. Now, with the new problems presented, it made another rapid decision.
Durham spun around and ran backwards.
It’s understandable how this might have been a decision that could have briefly seemed like a good idea—he was no longer sprinting full speed into his urine stream while still moving away from the thing rushing at him. Spinning around, however, revealed that it was moving toward him at an appreciably faster rate than he was moving away from it and was, in fact, right behind him. Or now, rather, in front of him. That was when his still unbuttoned pants lost their battle with gravity and dropped around his ankles. Running backwards is difficult at the best of times. This was not the best of times.
Durham landed flat on his back and felt his insides abruptly deflate. The thing skidded to a halt over his prostrate prostate, elongated skull face dripping.
The monkey brain again chose shrieking as the best available option on its menu, perhaps because it was the one decision it had made already that hadn’t failed horribly. What actually came out of Durham’s mouth was a noise more like an asthmatic getting punched in the stomach.
The first shriek had actually done its job, however. The great cracking noise of the bull’s skull shattering into pieces was almost simultaneous with the heavy thunk sound of a trio of crossbows. It collapsed on top of Durham, a pile of rattling and clonking bones. He gasped desperately to get air back in his lungs and, mercifully, finally finished peeing. A circle of bearded faces, or faced beards perhaps, looked down on him.
“You alive down there?”
Durham gulped and nodded then went back to wheezing.
Thud gave a great shout of laughter and slapped his hands on his thighs.
“Damndest thing I ever saw,” he said. “Big skelly lugger comes runnin’ at ya and ya turns aboot and pees in its face.”
Gong and Nibbly were doubled over and shaking.
“Aye, ‘eres mud in yer eye, eh?” Gong said.
“Spray and pray!” Nibbly shouted.
“Might wanna tuck them fam’ly jools away ‘fore someone makes cufflinks out of ‘em,” Thud said.
Durham struggled to tug his pants back up while Thud began kicking bones off of him.
“Well, seems you may ‘ave solved the mystery of the haunted ruins,” he said. “That cow musta been wandering around out here for near six hunnerd years now. This’ll make a fine tale for ya in the future to follow up that sheep murder story with.”
“Think ye may have just gotten yer earned name, lad,” Gong said. “Blamed if I can figger what it should be, though.”
“Hmmm”, Thud said. “Incowtinent?”
“No ring to that, is there?” Nibbly said. “Don’t exactly roll off the tongue.”
“Peacock?” Gong offered.
“Too vulgar sounding,” Thud said.
Nibbly’s face broke into a grin. “Calf!”
“Calf?”
“Aye, cuz it’s a ‘wee cow’.”
ᴥᴥᴥ
“I can’t help but notice that all o’ the actual dangers we’ve encountered on this trip ‘ave been livestock,” Nibbly said. They’d moved back in by the fire, most bustling about with their bedrolls.
“I don’t believe moose would fall in the ‘livestock’ category,” Ruby said. The commotion had woken her up and she was sitting cross-legged on her blanket, sipping at a cup of her ruby colored tea. “’Large edible herbivore’ is the closest category they’d have in common.”
“Are you attempting to suggest some sort of synchronicity?” Mungo asked. He’d strung his blanket into a tent using a complicated array of ropes tied to various anchor points throughout the room.
“No, can’t say that I am as I don’t know what that is,” Nibbly said. “But I’m going to be keepin’ an eye on the chickens.”
“Ye gots more important things to look at,” Thud said. “Goin’s the one on chicken-watch. You should express yer concerns to him though. I’m sure he’ll appreciate the tip. Make sure I’m there for that.”
-8-
“Are we sure this is the right place?” Durham asked. It was early the next afternoon. They stood at the rim of the opening in the cliff face. Pillars carved from the living rock were to each side, a tall stone door slab before them. It was inlaid with a swirling pattern of silver, lines whorled around socketed indentations. The wagons were twenty yards behind them, stretched in a line back towards the avenue of temples. They’d started the ascent at dawn but had taken nearly four hours to reach the top and then another two hours to navigate the ruins of the city. Dwarves were bustling up and down the wagon line now with arm-loads of gear. Some donned armor, some were assembling large pieces of equipment, others were shoveling dirt into wooden barrels.
Thud gave a great, bubbly sort of sniff, the sort you feel slide down the back of your throat.
“Well,” Thud said. “Ruby says it’s Alaham’s. Could be true, could be a trap. Gotta start somewhere though.”
“It's his,” Ruby said, squinting at the runes. “That's his sigil up top. There’s some sort of puzzle lock on the door. Looks like the indentations are meant to have something placed in them in order to open it.” She was making a rapid sketch in her notebook of the runes and lock. “Various colors of gems, seems to be, color determined by solving...”
Thud chortled. “Well, that’s why ain’t no adventurers opened it yet. Probably all traipsing across the countryside looking for magic gems.”
“So we need to find the gems?” Durham asked.
Thud snorted.
“Stones to that. Gryngo? Pop the cork!” This last he bellowed out to the dwarves behind them.
Gryngo was a dwarf who seemed to have perpetual wisps of smoke drifting off of him. He wore a thin cotton shirt that left his tattooed arms bare and squi
nted at things with his one good eye while his milky eye stared hauntingly. He gave a single silent nod to Thud, a gold tooth glittering in the slow grin that spread across his face.
Gryngo slung the pack off his shoulder and began pulling out several small wooden casks. Thud led Durham and Ruby back to the wagons then casually leaned against a wheel, eying the preparations. Several dwarves nearby were adding to The Diplomat. A modification that gave the ballista four separate firing bolts, two atop, two more beneath. The bolts had chains running between them. The vanguard had donned their full plate armor and carried tower shields. The six of them lined up behind the ballista, crossbows in hand, maces at their belts. Gong was obvious as he made up the middle and one dwarf to each side on his own but the others were anonymous with their helmets on. The bolts in their crossbows had metal balls on the end instead of arrowheads.
“Oi!” Gryngo yelled from the door after a few minutes.
“Knock first!” Thud called back. He grinned at Durham. “No reason not to be polite, eh?”
Gryngo produced a hammer from his pack and swung it at the doorjamb a few times, the clink of metal on stone echoing through the valley. He then strolled towards them, unspooling a roll of cord as he came.
“Why did we bang on the door?” Durham asked.
“You're a guard. S'pose you had a tomb full o' walkin' bloodthirsty killing machines that you didn't want no one comin' in. Where might you have them things positioned?” Thud answered.
“Guarding the door.”
“Aye. And if you was guarding a door and there was a bangin' on it, what would ye do?”
“Take up position by the door to defend.”
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