by Max Anthony
Having performed a circuit of the camp and having identified the location of the two grandest tents, Skulks plopped himself down on a stool at a less grand tent which was nevertheless close enough for him to observe these larger pavilions.
“Ooh, what a palaver,” he said apropos of nothing to the two men nearby, whom he was convinced were soldiers. Now speaking with a near-perfect Casks accent, he’d picked his target audience carefully: men whose mien suggested to a keen-eyed observer that they didn’t question orders and were known to Do As They Were Told. Men who lacked the capacity for free thought.
The correct response should have been “Who are you and why are you sitting outside our tent?” but, assuming by his presence that Skulks had every right to be there, one of the men asked: “What palaver?”
Skulks waved his hands around in an animated fashion. “This!” he said. “This palaver around here,” as if it was glaringly apparent to which palaver it was that he averred. Seeing their faces dumbly looking at him in puzzlement, Skulks sighed as if taking pity on them.
“Lord Lunder’s been fiddling for months now and here we are still sitting in a forest, scratching our behinds.”
There are many words or phrases which can elicit a physical response when heard. ‘Yawn’ is one, while words such as ‘pickle’ or ‘vinegar’ can often stimulate the salivary glands of the audience. ‘Scratch’ is another example, immediately bringing the listener’s attention to a hitherto unnoticed itch. So it was as Skulks spoke that both men subconsciously reached for their behinds to seek out itches they hadn’t realised were there until that very moment.
“Another month till Meugh’s ready, I hear,” said the first man, revealing a soldier’s ability to find out the most secretive plans of his commanders within seconds of said plans being made.
“Yeah, we’ll get these catapults made, haul them up to Hardened and before you know it, we’ll be walking along the Street of Chonks with a Hardened belle on each arm and more Scroats than you can shake a stick at!” Skulks knew that the Scroat was the currency local to the Kingdom of Meugh.
“Yeah, think of them Hardened belles. And I’m going to get me a new moustache as well. TEN moustaches with all them Scroats I’ll have.”
Having started to realise that his Cow’s Skirt was an object of ridicule, rather than one likely to garner admiration, Skulks changed the subject quickly before they could start asking him about it.
“I’m behind our king as much as anyone, but I just don’t see how we’re going to take a city of a million people with a few catapults and the number of men we’ve got. As much as I’d like to go home with a Scroats swagger.” This latter phase denoted a man with so many Scroats in his pocket that he was forced into a rolling gait by the burden of so much metal in his pocket. The phase could also apply to a woman, but in the Kingdom of Meugh, the women generally wore long and practical skirts. A woman known to have a reasonable amount of wealth might be colloquially be referred to as a ‘nice piece of scrirt’, wittily combining the name of the local currency and the garment she was wearing.
One of the soldiers snorumphed, a sound which is a cross between a snort and a harrumph. This sound is often made by the sort of person who thinks their opinion is always right and that the snorumph alone can dismiss any objections.
“If you think we need a big army to take Hardened, you’ve not got the brains you were born with. They’ve only got a few hundred soldiers on call and a Casks man is worth any twenty of them,” said he, slipping into soldierly bravado.
“Yeah,” said the other man. “When the rest of us get here, we’ve got more than enough to take the city. And enough on the inside to finish the job. In a month, they’ll be so pissed off with all these strikes and whatnot that they won’t lift a finger when Lord Lunder’s men storm the Chamber Building.”
So there it was. A king’s plans laid bare by a couple of foot soldiers in a camp in Million Trees Forest. Truly, the modern-day soldier was a master at sniffing out even the most whispered rumour and distilling it into fact. As he was mulling things over, Skulks noticed Tiopan Lunder, accompanied by Ufflot Rumple, leave one of the two grand tents and make his way into the second tent. Skulks made his excuses to the soldiers and took a meandering path through the tents with The Gaze firmly back on his face.
The command tents were centrally placed in the camp, as one might expect them to be. Two guards were stationed in front of each one, staring alertly ahead now that Tiopan Lunder was present in the camp. Circumventing them, Skulks saw that one side of the first tent wasn’t especially overlooked. There were a couple of tents nearby, but whoever slept in them wasn’t in evidence. Crouching down casually out of sight, Skulks forced himself to become unseen, though he wasn’t sure how long he could maintain it in full daylight if many eyes bore down on his location. He listened carefully; he could hear very faint rustlings that suggested there might be someone inside, but definitely not a squad of heavily-armed soldiers. Pulling out a dagger-sword, he opened a long slit near ground level, the keen blade slicing the thick cloth silently and easily. Pushing his head through he saw that he’d made an opening into an inner room of the tent, so quickly rolled through and inside, hoping that his ground-level entrance wasn’t too obvious to anyone passing.
Casting his eyes about, Skulks saw he was in what must have been one of the sleeping areas within the tent. The privilege of rank meant there was a permanent bed in here, with a decent-looking mattress, all of which looked rather more comfortable than an itchy woollen blanket rolled out on the ground. There was even a small bedside cabinet. Recognizing the smell of Primp and at the same time marvelling that its smell persisted even now, Skulks knew that Heathen Spout had slept here. Still maintaining his unseen state, he carefully lifted up a corner of one inner flap that separated this room from the other areas of the tent. And there she was – Spout was sitting at a table, looking glum as she pushed something around her plate with a fork.
Not wanting to make too much noise by calling to her, Skulks squeezed out into this central area of the tent. The main entrance from the outside was here, so he crouched low and kept the table between himself and the way in before revealing himself to Spout. She jumped as he appeared.
“Tan,” she said, looking more upset at his appearance than he had hoped. “It’s a trap. You have to get away!”
With that, Skulks noticed Heathen Spout’s body had been woven with intricately-detailed and beautifully hidden wizard markings. In his eagerness to free her, he’d been careless in checking for traps, though in this case the trap was on Spout herself rather than on a doorway or the floor. Even as he told himself that you learn something new every day, orange and blue lights, triggered by his proximity, jumped from her body, wrapping themselves about him in a net much stronger than the one Y’Prout had cast upon him a few days earlier. As he toppled to the ground, he saw Tiopan Lunder come into the tent with Ufflot Rumple.
“Aha!” the wizard exclaimed. “I see we’ve caught a Wielder!”
Skulks tried to unravel the trap’s bindings, but they renewed themselves quicker than he could pick them free. The last things he noticed before he slipped into unconsciousness was that Lunder was holding a small golden compass, the twin of that which Skulks had stolen from his house earlier and secondly he saw Rumple’s boot swinging into his ribs. A casual act of violence from a man to whom violence was a perk of his job.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Although Skulks didn’t know it, he’d been snared by a superior Wizard’s Amazing Maze of Amazement. Wizards were not known for their sense of humour. Usually they were considered the dour, short-tempered type, all too ready to turn someone into a slug for a minor transgression such as looking at them the wrong way or accidentally standing on their robes. Woe betide the playful youngster who dared to knock a wizard’s hat off with stone or stick! Such childlike playfulness was likely to be rewarded with a spell to turn the poor child’s nose into a permanent snout, or a hex to ensure that
any cakes the child ate would always taste like dark green vegetables.
In spite of this, wizards did have a certain sense of humour, just not one that most people would readily laugh at. When that angry neighbourhood mage tells one that he’s about to cast a Warming Globe of Dancing Happiness, he’s not going to heat one’s house in the depths of a chill winter. Rather, he’s going to cast a large and incredibly hot fireball that will burn one’s house down and anyone who remains within it.
Neither is there any consistency amongst their spell names. If, having survived the Warming Globe of Dancing Happiness, a second angry mage were to suggest he’d like to cast a Ruddy-Cheeked Cherub in the same direction, the poor recipient may in fact find another rolling ball of flame heading into the already burned-out ruins of their home. In fact, the yearly Wizards’ Convention, gave an award for the most amusingly-titled spell, with the winner receiving an engraved staff. The winner of the stave in the previous year had wowed the audience with his Inglebert’s Incomparable Restation of Triangulation, which was surprisingly benign in nature for it conjured into being a chair automatically as the caster began a sitting motion. The wizard in question gained extra points for not being called Inglebert.
None of these jolly wizardly japes were of much consolation to Skulks, who was now tied back-to-back to Heathen Spout in the tent. While his mind wandered the featureless, blank walls of a vast and unsolvable maze, the spell continued to channel from Spout’s body, keeping him in a state of unconsciousness.
From a position on the floor, Heathen Spout watched Tiopan Lunder. He wasn’t looking back at her, but had an unmistakable air of satisfaction about him.
“What do you hope to achieve with all of this, Lunder?” asked Spout. Unlike his soldiers, who gossiped constantly, Tiopan Lunder wasn’t in the habit of giving the game away. Spout was not stupid and had pieced together quite a number of his plans, but had mistakenly concluded that whomever Lunder was working for was interested in extracting money from Hardened, rather than planning to conquer it and install a distinctly unbenevolent despot in place of the Chamber Council.
Feigning obtuseness, Lunder looked down at her. “Achieve with what?” he asked, familiar with Spout’s attempts to draw him out.
“Hardened won’t pay ransoms, you know. The Chamber Council forbids it.”
“Aah, I see,” he teased. “Edict ninety-five million and twelve or some such, is it?”
“Jokes do not become you, Tiopan Lunder,” she warned. “Let me go and this man with me. Then go back to Rhult where you belong.”
Lunder almost snorumphed, but stopped himself just in time. He dismissed Spout with a wave of his hand and made to leave the tent.
“Put these two back on the barge. We’re going to High Domes. I’m damned if I’m going to spend the next four weeks in a tent! And make absolutely certain that they remain tied together! Do you understand?” Ufflot Rumple, the target of these orders nodded. With Lunder gone, the assassin shouted instructions to someone unseen outside, telling them to find six men and a hammock.
Six men were readily available, but a hammock to carry two incapacitated people was not. Nevertheless, it took fewer than ten minutes for them to procure two long, strong poles and sling a thick sheet between them, into which Spout and a drooling Skulks were bundled. With three men to each pole, the bound pair were lifted off the ground and taken steadily back down the path whence Skulks had so recently come, hammock swaying slightly with the steps of the soldiers.
They made two stops before reaching the barge. One for the men to rest and the second at Spout’s insistence, for Skulk’s elbow was sticking into her shoulder, jarring her most uncomfortably at every bounce of the hammock. Though Lunder hadn’t exactly paraded Heathen Spout around the camp, a few of the soldiers had spoken to her, specifically those who had been given the unenviable duty of punting them upriver from Hardened, a task which waving a sword did not prepare them for. Those who had met her were already secretly fond of her, thinking her to be the smartly-dressed and sophisticated aunty they wished they’d had.
At the barge, Heathen Spout and Tan Skulks were lowered gently over the side, with Rumple on hand to repeat the instruction that the two of them were not to be separated even for a moment and for any reason. The crew was made up of eight soldiers, dressed in the nondescript clothing that was prevalent in the camp. None of them looked particularly overjoyed at the thought of punting the craft upriver. Whilst Spout, along with the snoring beast called Tan Skulks, was being brought into the cabin area and made as comfortable as possible on a single bed, she heard Tiopan Lunder’s voice from outside as he arrived at the barge and jumped aboard. She didn’t hear Ufflot Rumple, a vile man, but wasn’t sure if he’d come aboard or not.
The day was getting on and Lunder’s eagerness to continue to High Domes had pushed him into the tactical blunder of setting off when there were only a few hours of daylight remaining. He realised he should have stayed back at the camp, but was too stubborn to countermand his own orders to make ready. The beds in the tent made him stiff and there were always insects running up his legs. He despised insects and determined that once he was installed as King Meugh’s commander in Hardened he’d start work on a spell to kill any that came near him. Lunder’s Smoting of Clouting, he thought to himself, smiling. His smile faded as he remembered just how uncomfortable the beds on the barge were. Lunder liked to stretch out when he slept and these beds were six inches too short for him. Still, it was only a few days to High Domes, where he maintained a beautiful house, with an exceptionally comfortable bed. He’d spend two or three weeks there, he told himself, before he’d head back to oversee the final preparations.
Though the soldiers would have wished it otherwise, Lunder did not delay in ordering them to cast off. Groaning with the effort, six of them pushed their wooden poles into the water, forcing the barge diagonally across the river until they were fifty feet or so from the shore, whereupon the man at the tiller aimed it directly upriver.
In the long cabin, Spout was trying her best to wake Skulks up.
“Tan!” she whispered and followed this by shaking him. There was no response beyond a slight snuffling sound. Skulks was otherwise floppy and lifeless.
“I’ll bet if I had a pastry, he’d sharp be awake sniffing for it,” she told herself. She continued her efforts to rouse him, using elbows and a gentle reverse head-butting to try and awaken him from his slumber. Her efforts did little more than elicit further grunts and snuffles from the comatose Skulks. In spite of the situation, Spout found herself imagining that this was what Skulks would be like on most mornings after a trip to the local tavern and chuckled to herself at the thought.
With her efforts at awakening Skulks unsuccessful, Spout turned her attention to her bindings, giving them a few experimental wiggles to see if there was any hope of freeing herself from them. Rumple’s work seemed fairly thorough for she was not able to loosen them at all. However, she did have some slight freedom of movement with her arms and began the process of patting down Skulks as best she could to see if he was carrying any tricks about his person that she could make use of. After a bit of twisting, she managed to get side-on to her fellow prisoner, feeling the embrace a little too close for comfort for an upstanding woman such as herself. On the plus side, she was able to steal six of his Slivers, using her fingertips to pick them out of a hidden inner pocket and with a bit of effort, hide them in the top pocket of her robes. Even from her position of disadvantage the day just kept on getting better, she thought. In the same pocket was a golden compass, which caused a slight tugging at her memory but which she didn’t want to concern herself with just now. She prodded the compass back into Skulks’ pocket in case it was precious to him.
With her filching complete, she dug further into Skulks’ clothing. A slight bulge under his armpit indicated she’d found something, though it evaded her fingertips at first. Stretching at her full extremes, she was able to get a tenuous grip on it, though it caused h
is Cow’s Skirt to come into contact with her flesh. Drawing away with a shudder, she managed to pull the object with her. Evidently Ufflot Rumple had been so confident in the magics of Lunder, that he’d neglected to search Skulks sufficiently well to locate the diamond-encrusted letter opener which the latter had stolen from Lunder’s very own home. Not one to leave his valuables stashed behind a tree trunk when he could avoid it, Skulks had brought the golden compass and the letter opener with him into Lunder’s camp.
Spout’s joy was interrupted by the sounds of footsteps entering the cabin. With her twisting and turning she was now unable to see who it was coming towards her. To her relief it wasn’t Lunder or Rumple.
“Ma’am?” said a voice. It was one of the soldiers.
“Yes?” she asked, trying to sound as innocent as she could.
“I was just wondering if you were hungry or, you know, had any other matters to attend to. Matters of a personal nature?” He was trying to be kind.
“No. No thank you very much. I’m neither hungry, nor do I need to attend to myself, but your consideration is appreciated.” The footsteps retreated and she heard them walk along the deck, back towards the tiller.
There was a single small porthole at this end of the cabin and if she craned her neck, Spout could see that it was starting to get dark, the light also dimming inside. They would probably stop for the night soon, she thought. With that in mind, she managed to free the letter opener from Skulks’ shirt and get herself into a position where it looked like she was trying to get some sleep, but was in fact sawing furiously at her ropes.
Letter openers are almost by definition blunt. One is not normally in a hurry to open letters from the tax authorities, nor to find the date for one’s appointment to see the dentist for a double root canal treatment. It is for this reason that letter openers are known to be blunt objects, made to open envelopes slowly, rather than slice birthday cakes, stab charging elephants or cut binding ropes when one finds oneself tied to a not-quite-human Wielder in the cabin of a possibly mad wizard’s escape barge.