by Sean Heslin
When they finally came to land, Rancha had a fantastically wicked idea that made genofixed parts of his brain ache, but he did it anyway. He pitched awkwardly to the ground and raised his left hind leg in such a way that caused Master Yansul's saddle to come loose, causing the man to fall sideways and hang upside down by one foot, dangling from a stirrup.
“Ack!” was the first thing the knight said, then getting steadily more loquacious and profane. Attendants initially rushed from the sides of the courtyard to assist the beleaguered knight, but the abuse spilling forth from his chubby mouth quickly fell silent when they threatened to simply leave him there.
Cargo delivered, Rancha closed his eyes and smiled.
Chapter 3
“Doing a job well is better than doing a job at all.”
- Shodi Wilfsen on his 20th Wedding Anniversary, 2153 C.M.
Terand the drangl bounty hunter was stomping his way on his central single leg through a mostly uninhabited forest. The sun was high in the sky, the birds were singing and the insects were buzzing as they went about probably obscene flower-based activity.
He swatted them aside as he stomped.
A ridiculously beautiful apple tree stood in a green meadow, offering its juicy sweet fruit to anybody who wished to take it.
He was not hungry, so he stomped.
A lithe, young deerlet, its coat shimmering in the bright sunshine, leapt impressively across his path, a glint in its eye, proud head held high.
He had seen one before, so he stomped.
A group of blue skuikkels joined paws in a circle and performed an amazing impromptu dance, bushy tails waving merrily in the air.
He hated dancing animals, so he stomped.
A urbear burst into a clearing, grabbed seven rocks, and skilfully juggled them using all of its extremities.
Terand was forced to admit that was impressive, yet still, he stomped.
Stomp, stomp, stomp.
Seemingly out of sheer desperation a gaggle of hedgepigs waddled into view, stood on each other’s backs in a pyramid, and as one, shouted “Oi!”
Terand was not ceasing in the act of stomping.
With a sense of somebody, somewhere becoming quite irritated, an extremely large, pink cat-like creature crashed through the undergrowth, stood on its hind legs, waved its front paws frantically and said:
“Will you please just stop moving about for at least half a second?”
Terand did not, not even to waste breath on a response.
Ahead of Terand's speeding, thumping trail, starting to rise above the tree line was a stubby grey tower. It was not much to look at. No self-respecting Bastion of Power would associate with something like it. It was barely impressive or imposing enough to stop the local wildlife from scaling its circular outer wall and going down the other side, which they invariably did. Trees and vines happily grew round the edifice, with an occasional bird's nest tucked into its crumbling heights. Or lows in this case.
Somebody was trying very hard to slow him down from reaching this place and was failing miserably. Terand was in two minds about this, whether to succumb to the flattery of somebody actively trying to thwart him properly for a change, or the slightly stronger wish that his quarry would simply surrender to the inevitable and stop making life more difficult than it already was.
Drangls considered themselves to have things pretty rough most of the time. They had never quite shaken the mentality of their tribal ancestry, not to mention the other issues caused by their unipedal anatomy. The favourite gripe of a drangl was the assertion that the sods from the other species were much more mobile than they. Terand was ably smashing that falsehood to pieces by hopping through the tangled web of the forest at a bewildering speed. Drangls rarely let something as obvious as reality impinge on a good gripe.
After encountering a long-necked green something or other that talked in rhymes and a pink and yellow polka-dotted merphant that produced scented bubbles from its trunk, wearing a gaudy sign round its neck requesting that he “PLEASE STOP NOW!”, Terand arrived at the door to the tower. Without any loss of speed, his brown, wrinkly forehead connected firmly with the center of the door, splitting the heavy oaken portal easily as if it was made of aged and rotten timbers. The fragments splintered around him as he plunged headlong into the shadowy depths of the tower, giving a brief half-second to take stock of the interior.
Dappled light filtered in through the many gaps in the stonework, there were several spluttering torches dotted around the walls, and a lovely pinky, greenish-purple colour emanated from some demented apparatus on a bench. By this flickering and jumping light, Terand espied his prey, an exasperated man in a weird hat, wielding a glowing stick with impunity. Terand maintained his momentum. He used powerful slaps against the walls with his single foot, spinning round the room in maniacal but methodical fashion, leaving shattered furniture and shards of glassware in his wake. After a minute of this chaotic flight, Terand flipped through the air and landed cleanly amidst the debris, panting a little for breath. The man with the interesting hat appeared untouched and somewhat miffed.
“What..?” he began, but then appeared to stop and rethink his next sentence, possibly in the light that there was someone present who could split oak with his head. He tried again, with more than a tinge of resignation.
“Why did you do that? I nearly had everything ready as well.”
Terand scratched his wrinkly scalp with a long finger, searching for splinters. “Because I'm a-getting paid about twice the normal rate for this here job. Instructions weren't all that specific. Thought I'd have a bit of fun while I were here.”
The man with the staff absorbed this, nodding to the words as he paced and flicked dust from his oddly flat hat. He trod on some glass, yelped, then whirled to face Terand as if that was exactly what he had intended to do all along.
“I'll double whatever it is they are paying; for you to fix everything and become my assistant until my work reaches the stage it was at before you so kindly ruined it. What do you say?”
Terand shook his head “Nah, that were the only thing in this contract that was definite. I'm not allowed bribes. Besides,” he said, grinning, “there's no way you can possibly afford that much.”
“I'm sure I can pleasantly surprise you on that point Mr…” The behatted figure left the question hanging in the air, in more than a figurative sense; a slight exertion of power had caused his words to coalesce into visible floating letters. Terand regarded the words and the man who was obviously trying to show off his not-inconsiderable power, with an affectation of thought upon his face.
“Hmm, y’ might be able to do all of that, but as I said my contract is quiiiiite specific on that score, so afraid you'll have to deal with this on your own. Oh, I'm supposed to knock you out and take you prisoner before I go, so if you could come over here and kneel it'll save a lot of effort on both our parts, y'know?”
The sorceror drew himself up to his full height, adopted one of the great poses of great power, his gnarled staff starting to glow brighter, complimenting the heady aura of intimidation he was trying to instil.
“Never! You will not! I shall crush you like the insect you are! Neve…ow. How did you do that?”
Then, with a slight thump, eyes rolling back in his head, he fell over onto the glass strewn floor.
Chapter 4
“Old friends are worse than old enemies. They drink all the beer.”
- Morhold Toothcutter, 3903 C.M.
Rancha sniggered.
He supposed it was unfair to take pleasure in the knight's inverted plight, especially being something that he had directly caused himself, but no amount of inbred inferiority complex would stop him enjoying a good pratfall. The increasingly rhythmic pangs of guilt coursing through his body began to make him feel otherwise. He once more inwardly cursed, in a very literal inward sense, at the stupid make-feel-bad glands that some sorcerous geneticist had thought was such a fantastic idea to bestow on his il
k.
Rancha took a deep breath and allowed himself to be distracted from his impending hormone-induced depression by examining his surroundings, giving the unbidden feelings a chance to fade.
It had been a long while since he had visited the palace/castle and the place had changed utterly, but that was only to be expected. The usual faces of the attendants and the occasional scuttling imp were familiar, but someone had redecorated from the ground up. Again.
Today, the décor was tending towards grey stone and imposingly high walls. There were even some unexpected crenellations. Rancha noted that the attendants stood out severely amongst these surroundings as they were wearing flowing, silken clothes more suited to a distant sun-soaked climate. He spotted one poor gentleman lugging a hessian sack, shivering badly from the inclement weather. Everybody looked universally upset, so he inferred that the changes had only occurred recently. Rancha was suitably sympathetic. The entire grounds had massive auto-transubstantiation issues and he too had suffered their wrath for some years before being allowed to travel more often. The material, era and details such as the patterning on the walls and furnishings of the fortress had a tendency to undergo a periodic change in style, so while the layout tended to stay much the same, the sartorial influences altered unpredictably, almost as if the place had its own mind, which many speculated that the grounds probably, in fact, did. One moment the staff could be in log cabins brushing off their fur rugs, the next they would be in a steel and glass metropolis wondering where their cosy leather chairs had gone. It was more likely a side-effect of the mass disguise illusion, but nobody thus far had been able to shift it.
Currently, the prevailing style was of a classic granite bastion, complete with walls of square grey blocks and small rounded cobblestones underfoot. The battlements consisted of overly tall walls with evenly spaced archers slits and the main gateway was a heavily reinforced oak affair with an iron portcullis. It was dreary to the nth degree with grey weather to match.
Rancha was torn from his observations by a strangled cry from behind. Craning his serpentine neck he saw that Master Yansul had finally been disengaged from his saddle, and had inevitably dropped hard, shattering a couple of the cobblestones on the way down. His cheap armour had been severely dented in the process. The joints no longer articulated properly, so giving the knight the aspect of a badly controlled puppet, twitching on the floor.
“Get your hands off me, you useless underlings!” the knight spat. “You and you, lift me by the arms, but so help me if you scuff my breastplate..!”
Despite the contradictory orders, Master Yansul was gradually and awkwardly scooped up and led away through a side door by the attendants whilst he loudly threatened to commit many grievous acts on their persons, each and every time they caused a wince. There was more wincing than one would have thought strictly possible.
Rancha suppressed a further grin, and as one door closed, another opened. This time it was someone he recognised by sight, smell and a few other senses. The newcomer was dressed in similar billowing garb to the attendants, but it was more ornate in design, sporting a golden trim and elegant glittery filigree finish. This was an oldish human of slight build and wrinkled skin and Rancha could easily tell from the tan that he had been taking advantage of the sunshine which had been prevalent before the weather had gone all historic. The man was walking with a lopsided gait as if his very soul was weighing him down. Normally, he would have been striding with confidence and aplomb, but it was a bad day it seemed. His name was Ihjundas the Just, he was Rancha's friend and he was very important. He planted his feet in front of Rancha, threw back his shoulders, took a deep breath and said:
“Ahoy wanderer! Where has your physical form been these past moons?”
Rancha took a long, careful moment before answering, allowing his brain to adjust to this latest personality shift of one of his oldest friends. Ihjundas had been around since Rancha was a newly hatched chick and the ageing fellow was still gripping firmly to life with both hands and a bucket of glue. Like many people who lived and worked in the palace/castle for a prolonged period of time, Ihjundas suffered the indignity of having his outward personality change as often as the local décor. His core mind had always remained intact, thanks in part to several very good psychologists stationed on the premises, so Ihjundas had endured and flourished over the years and the majority of people respected him to the point where, despite basically being second-in-command of the entire massive facility, he still worked in the stables because he rather liked it. Nobody tended to argue.
Rancha chose to pick his words carefully, in deference to the understanding they shared. “I am... well Ihjundas, thank you. I haven't been anywhere. Well, I was somewhere, on my holiday to that little island to the south of Grandag, when I was called to pick him up.” Rancha's head tilted toward the doorway that had facilitated Master Yansul's egress. “I may end up dropping him in the sea if I have to cart him around any... Oh. Oh. You are going to tell me I have to keep carting him around aren't you?”
“Mayhap, maybe, sad to hear, my heavy friend. Be kind to all forms, yeah?” said Ihjundas, the epitome of serenity. “We all have our tasks in life, some high, some low, some, like you, are heavy. Rise up, yeah?”
Rancha paused at the non-sequitur and wondered if the psychologists had finally gone too far. He gave a reptilian shrug and ploughed on.
“If I may speak, to make it clear?”
“Please do.”
“Thank you. I would like to say that, that shnotdwar is pure evil, has the smell of a week dead dungbeast from Uhngrad and more than likely fornicates with swampchucks when he isn’t being spanked by a disturbing uncle. If he had a wife, it would be a pot plant, but he would barely have a girlfriend, possibly because he spends all the time hiding in the cloister leering up nun's skirts. If that man, and I use the term loosely, ever decided to become a functional human being, he would become a...a...”
“Politician?” said Ihjundas, his wit not having deserted him as yet.
“Well, no, not what I was going for. Maybe a tacky garden ornament or one of those guys who lie under glass coffee tables. You know, disgusting.” Rancha subsided. The slight relief he felt stacked up against his more homicidal feelings did have the net result of making him feel better. Ihjundas of course seemed completely unimpressed by the outburst. Impact or forthrightness were not amongst Rancha’s talents.
“Done my large dude?” Ihjundas asked, voice dripping with innocence.
“More or less.” Rancha lowered his head in temporary defeat. “So, what have you been doing with yourself these...uh... moons.?”
A deep philosophical pause while Ihjundas considered the question. Rancha reckoned that Ihjundas was contemplating the full and spiritual meaning of the 'with yourself' part a little too much, so had to cough after a while, to speed up the process.
“Oh! You know. Taking care of the caring of the lives in my care. Yeah. They come, they fly, walk, swim, teleport and transcend and I give of myself so they care for the caring. Yeah.”
There was a longer pause as Rancha worked that one out.
“Ihjundas, don't mean to be personal, but...” He motioned with a wing at the surrounding changeable stonework. “Please tell me it is just all this talking?”
Ihjundas pouted. “Hey, Rancha, thought you were my buddy, my pal, my comrade! Why you being so down on my corporeal shell for?”
Rancha was not down on anything, apart from the ground, which had lost its charm a long time ago. He had the answer he wanted though. The man could still say 'corporeal' without spitting, or bursting into giggles. Rancha bent his front knees lower, into a more respectful posture. “I apologise Ihjundas, I meant no disrespect. I was unsure about your health and wished to express my concerns.”
“Hey, that’s cool Rancha. I’m with that.” Ihjundas said, mollified into having a serene visage once more. “Oh! You must be weary after your long journey. If you seek material comfort, follow me, but it could be bad
for your ambient aura.”
Rancha did not care about his aura. It was a vital part of his anatomy, so took care of itself.
“Rest would be good, I am ridiculously tired after that trip.”
“One should not show off unless one wants to show oneself up.”
Rancha shuffled his front feet. “I was only showing off a little bit. Is there a bed free or not?”
Ihjundas smiled and nodded. He gestured at one of the people on the battlements. Having the gates open from this mere gesture did not have the desired effect, or indeed any effect. Rancha reckoned that Ihjundas was feeling today like giving direct orders was against the rights of man or something, no matter how many he normally doled out.
“Please help guy, we are like, in need here!” Ihjundas had switched to a form of amiable cajoling to catch the guard's attention; a gentle mewling which Rancha politely endured, until, with his eye twitching, kindly repeated the request, at volume, via urglon sized lungs and from the very back of his voluminous throat.
Trying hard to hold his bladder, the guard decided that he now had noticed the request and sprung into action with the large wheel and pulleys, making the massive gates creak open by cunning hidden mechanisms. Ihjundas, who had been stood rather close to the noise, wiggled his little finger in his ear as if trying to dislodge wax, gazing at Rancha in reproach. Rancha hung his head in renewed shame.