Forward the Mage

by Eric Flint

  And I'll admit his ventriloquism was as good as his catatonia. I couldn't see a trace of his lips moving, even as he continued to babble on.

  "I knew it! I knew it! The wonderful touch with the scalps! The unmistakable style! And the bon mots!" He bubbled with mad laughter—a strange sound and sight, let me tell you, coming from unmoving lips! Grotesque, really.

  "I was there, you know," he continued, "at the Criticism of the Critics. I was actually there in person!"

  I was stunned. "You were there? You saw it?"

  The smug voice: "Every moment. From the preface, to the disclaimer, to the rebuttal, to the conclusion. One of my fondest memories."

  It was before my time, of course, but it was a legend in the clan. Over the years, I'll admit to growing a bit skeptical. But as we made our slow way down the boulevard, Gwendolyn stolidly hauling the cart through the fetid crowd, Wolfgang hissed a full description of the great event.

  "Amazing arrogance, when I look back on it," he whispered. "But then, what can you expect from a lot of critics? A vile, contumacious breed. And quite unstable mentally. An incredible percentage of megalomaniacs were critics in early life, you know? Still, it's astonishing. Had I been a critic invited to express my criticism of a young Sfondrati-Piccolomini before his assembled condottiere brothers and cousins, I believe I should have declined. And I'm a madman! But damned if they didn't show up—a hundred of the parasites, at the least. Gabbling away as soon as they took their seats. The condottiere listened politely for an hour or so, while the critics dissected every error of the young artist—Alessandro, wasn't it?—"

  "Domenico," I corrected.

  "Ah, yes! Anyway, on and on they went, explaining how the lad had done everything wrong—the colors, the strokes, the perspective—even the quality of the canvas and the grain of the wood on the frame. But they reserved their fiercest criticism for the actual content of the painting. On this the critics were united—unusual circumstance!—that the depiction of five soldiers of fortune sitting about a table quaffing their wine was a most unsuitable subject for a portrait entitled Gods At Their Pleasure."

  "The critics never grew up in the Sfondrati-Piccolomini clan," I remarked, "where respect for one's elders is not to be taken lightly. As it happens, my uncles were the models for the portrait."

  "You don't say! Odd, really. I myself didn't see any resemblance at all between the divine, serene, and radiant features in the portrait and the—you will take no offense?—scarred, raffish and altogether wicked-looked visages of your uncles. The more so once they began their own criticism of the critics! Such a scene! It was marvelous! I don't imagine half of the critics managed to escape the auditorium alive."

  "Not many critics left in Ozar to this day, that's a fact," I commented.

  "Just think of it! Such a civilized place, the Ozarine! Rapacious, grasping lot of imperialists, of course. But civilized. Here in Grotum, your critics are a positive plague, a scandal, a threat to public health! Ask any sullen, malcontented little boy or girl who can't tie their shoelaces what they want to be when they grow up and they'll not hesitate for an instant—want to be a critic! Even find a few in the mental asylums. Not many—criticism is in the main a disease of sane people. And they don't last long, of course. It's not conducive to long life, being a critic locked up with a bunch of psychopaths."

  Wolfgang continued on in this vein for a minute or so longer, but then he discontinued his discourse. We were now almost at the Dreary Gate. We were about to discover if Wolfgang's plan would work.

  But just as we drew up before the gate, an interruption occurred. A pack of cavalry horses were drawn up before a saloon located right next to the gate—if the noble term "cavalry horses" can be applied to as sorry and broken-down a lot of nags as I ever laid eyes on. Just as our dray pulled even with the saloon, a disordered mob of soldiery poured out of its swinging doors, most still clutching their jugs. In their middle, hoisted on their shoulders, was a portly captain.

  "Make way! Make way!" bellowed this wight. "Clear the gate for the Royal Goimr Commandos!"

  The soldiers manning the Dreary Gate shooed all civilians to one side and opened the portal. In the event, their bustling energy was wasted, for it took the Commandos a full ten minutes to saddle up and ride off. A good bit of this time was consumed by the actual difficulty of attaining their seats on the high perches of the saddles, being, as they were, utterly drunken. But most of the delay was caused by the captain's command to "blacken their faces." This act, the blacking of commandos' faces to ensure stealth in the night, seemed somewhat inappropriate for horsemen in broad daylight. But the commandos clearly prized this cherished privilege of their status, and they set about blacking their faces with a vigor. The martial effect, however, was ruined by their childish levity in smearing each other with the greasepaint.

  "Goimr is not, I am beginning to deduce, one of the military behemoths of Grotum," was my whispered comment to Wolfgang.

  He even managed a ventriloquist snort.

  Eventually, the Commandos assembled into a ragged file, their horses looking gloomier by the minute. The captain whipped his plumed hat off his head (the bright ostrich feather clashed, I thought, with the logic of the blackened face) and waved it about.

  "Citizens of Goimr!" he cried, addressing the small crowd which was gazing upon the Commandos. "Your noble Commandos are off to capture the renegade Zulkeh—the sorcerer satanic!—the—" Here he fell off his horse. When he clambered back on, he made to resume his speech, but his now-surly horse would have none of it, and charged through the gate. The rest of the Commandos lunged off in pursuit.

  The guards at the gate drew their swords in a ragged salute.

  "Hail the noble Royal Commandos!" cried the sergeant.

  "Hail the nobleroilcomdos," muttered the guards in response.

  "Death to the satanic sorcerer Zulkeh!" cried the sergeant.

  "Death to the s'tancsorcerZully," muttered the guards apathetically.

  These duties performed, the sergeant and the guards resumed their inspection of the papers of those seeking passage through the gate. My hopes of success in deceiving these vigilant men of war, let me say, were now quite high.

  Soon enough, it was our turn. My papers were examined cursorily. The sergeant essayed a squaring of the shoulders in respect of Gerard's signature, failed miserably, resumed his slouch, and waved us through.

  Since he seemed harmless enough, I decided to satisfy my curiosity.

  "Who is this sorcerer the Commandos are pursuing?" I asked.

  I got back in reply a garbled and not very coherent account of the misdeeds of the wizard Zulkeh, in which the kernel of driving the King mad was intermingling with a bouillabaisse of other crimes. I particularly enjoyed the charge of "public urination."

  Then, we were delayed by the soldiers gawking at Wolfgang.

  "Ay, an' is he the great icon, or what, lads?" demanded one of the guards. His fellows indicated, with none-too-convincing expressions of piety, their agreement with his awed opinion.

  "St. Athelbert, idn't he?" asked the devout guard.

  I frowned fiercely. "Ignorant dolt! 'Tis the spitting image of St. Abblerede—patron saint of lunatics and criminals!"

  The fellow looked properly abashed, and with no further ado I cracked the whip and ordered Gwendolyn to move smartly, d'ye hear? I suspected, from the hunch of her shoulders and the tightening of her jaws, that I would pay for it later.

  Once we were beyond earshot of the gate, now on a dirt road leading into the countryside, Wolfgang spoke in a more normal tone of voice.

  "There is no patron saint of lunatics," he cackled. "Plenty for criminals, of course, but we raving types have been read out of the state of Holy Grace. Quite absurd, really, when you consider that almost all saints were obviously demented. How they get sanctified, you know? Going off and irritating all sorts of aborigines who boil them in oil or shoot them full of arrows or whatnot. I ask you, who but a madman would do such things
?"

  I interrupted what, with my growing experience, I could detect as a new round of witless babble.

  "I should think the Commandos will capture the wizard soon enough," I remarked.

  That set off a new round of cackling from the icon. Gwendolyn's shoulders were quivering—with humor, I realized, considerably relieved.

  "And why not? Sure, they're as sorry a lot of soldiery as I've ever seen, but they're still soldiers on horseback pursuing a coach. I grant you, the coach left two days ago, but they should still be able to catch up easily, even allowing for drunken binges along the way."

  "No doubt, if they could simply follow the coach. But the coach took the direct route, through the Grimwald, whereas the soldiers will have to take the roundabout road, through the marsh and the mountains."

  "Why don't they just follow the coach?"

  More cackling.

  "My boy, you are such an innocent! Clear enough, you're a stranger to Grotum. The Grimwald, lad, is Grotum's oldest and greatest forest."

  "So?"

  "So! Are you that ignorant? Snarls, boy, snarls! They abound in the Grimwald—and forest snarls, to boot! Goes without saying, of course—what other kind of snarls would you find in a forest but forest snarls?"

  I pondered his words, trying to decide if I was the butt of a joke. It's a crude but common form of humor—to mock a newcomer by telling him tall tales of the local surroundings. I had heard of snarls, of course. What Ozarine was not enthralled, as a child, by the endless tales of those monsters of the Groutch wilds? But as I grew older, I wrote the tales off as fiction for children—in a class with Good Saint Nick and the Tooth Fairy.

  I decided Wolfgang was too weird for crude mockery.

  "So the snarls actually exist?"

  "Of course they exist! You can find them in all the wild parts of Grotum! Forest snarls, mountain snarls, swamp snarls, rock snarls, prairie snarls—the list is well nigh endless. Rather rare creatures, mostly, except in some places. Joe's Favorite Woods swarms with them, of course. And they're very abundant in the Grimwald."

  "I still don't understand why the soldiers can't traverse the forest. I mean, if a coach can get through, then I should think a body of armed men would have no difficulty whatsoever."

  "My boy, my boy, it's not like that at all. The coach will get through because the snarls will probably leave it alone. Snarls generally don't pester simple travelers. But soldiers! Oh, no, it simply won't do. Take great offense at soldiery, snarls do. Gobble them up with a ferocity. Police too."

  "You mean neither soldiers nor police can enter the Grimwald?"

  "Not sane ones. Insane ones could, it goes without saying. Snarls are rather fond of lunatics. But what madman would be so crazy as to enlist in the army? Not to mention the police!"

  "The Grimwald must be a haven for poachers, then."

  This last remark of mine not only set off a new round of cackling but caused Gwendolyn's shoulders to positively heave with humor.

  "Such an innocent!" giggled Wolfgang. "Such an ignoramus! Lad, one does not poach in a snarl forest. Believe me, one doesn't. Not, at least, unless one is seeking a quick and messy form of suicide."

  I fell silent, disgruntled, if the truth be told, by this unseemly mirth at my expense. The day wore on, our cart making slow but steady progress. Gwendolyn showed no signs of tiring, even hauling our great heavy load. I now realized that she was not only extraordinarily large, but incredibly strong. At first, I would have said, incredibly strong for a woman. By the end of the day, when we finally decided to stop for the night by the roadside, and I observed her lowering the cart without so much as a drop of sweat on her brow, it finally dawned on me that she was easily the strongest human I had ever known. In the years to come, I was only forced to qualify that assessment once, when I met her brother.

  That realization only made the ensuing situation the more uncomfortable!

  For, after the few minutes required to make our camp for the night—some few yards from the roadside, in a small grove—I realized that Gwendolyn and Wolfgang were gazing at me with a strange intensity. Wolfgang's expression positively radiated amusement. Gwendolyn's was much harder to read. Repressed anger, an odd, cold kind of humor. I was not certain.

  "What's this about?" I queried.

  Gwendolyn said nothing, her face now like a mask. Wolfgang giggled.

  "Well," he said, "it's actually the immemorial and time-honored custom in Grotum, at the end of a day's haul, for the draywoman to provide sexual service for the draymaster."

  My face must have flushed red. Partly from embarrassment, partly—I cannot deny it—because the image his words brought to my mind caused a sudden rush of passion to fall over me.

  "Barbarous!" I cried. "Barbarous!" I broke into a fit of coughing. Once recovered, I looked at Gwendolyn and said: "I assure you, Gwendolyn, I have no intention of respecting such an infamous custom."

  Contrary woman!

  Far from bringing praise for my couth gentility, my words brought down on my unoffending head a veritable torrent of abuse! The gist of which was:

  And who was I, the slimy Ozarine, to give myself great airs and sneer at the barbarous backwardness of Grotum, when that barbarous state was maintained with Ozarine influence and money?

  This was but the prelude to an impassioned speech on the nefarious imperial plots of Ozarae, its vampiric grasp on Grotum, its suborning of all official Groutch institutions (not, to hear her speak, that she was filled with any great admiration for these institutions to begin with!), and so on, and so on, and so on. I was lost after a few minutes—not so much because I disagreed with her logic but because I simply couldn't follow it. Politics, statesmanship, all that, were of no interest to me whatsoever. I was an artist, not a diplomat! Ironic, actually, in light of subsequent events.

  Finally, she wound down. Wolfgang cackled.

  "I do believe you've left the poor confused lad out at sea without a compass," he giggled.

  "But surely," I protested to Gwendolyn, "you have no liking for this hallowed Groutch draymaster's custom?"

  "Of course not!" she snarled. "Of course it's barbarous! Women are treated like beasts of burden in Grotum, for the most part. And most of the sexual customs belong in a cesspool. I've met few enough draymasters I wouldn't cheerfully butcher. Will butcher some of them, come the revolution. Reactionary dogs! Not much better than slavers!"

  She growled, then burst into a sudden grin.

  "I will admit you handle that whip well. The hardest part of the whole day, that was, trying to keep from laughing at the sight of the draymasters howling and scurrying for cover. And I thoroughly enjoyed trampling the two of them."

  She eyed me speculatively. "You might want to get rid of those scalps, by the way. They're drawing flies."

  I had forgotten them. I yanked them out of my belt and flung them into the woods. When I turned back, alas, the fierce scowl was back on her face.

  "I just don't want to hear it from an Ozarine. I think it's what angers me the most. If the Ozarines were honest about their imperialism, it'd be bad enough. But to have to listen to the vultures chide we crude and uncouth Groutch for our uncivilized ways—while they plunder us like pirates!" She took a deep breath. "Damn all hypocrites!"

  I made an unwise attempt to mollify her.

  "Actually, Gwendolyn, there's quite a great admiration and fascination for Grotum among many Ozarines. Myself included! Why, as a—"

  "Oh, spare me!" She snorted. "Think I don't know every Ozarine bratling isn't brought up on tales of mysterious and romantic Grotum? Hah! I've even read a few of those romantic adventure novels which are so popular in Ozar. One of them even had the hero magically incarnated as a Groutch himself. A knight, naturally, gallivanting about the countryside with noble Groutch companions, rescuing fair maidens. Typical Ozarine horseshit! Why doesn't somebody write a true novel? You know, where the hero's magically incarnated as a Groutch peasant—better yet, the wife of a Groutch peasant! It'd be
such a jolly romantic book! Half her children—and she'll drop 'em once a year till she dries up or dies—dead of disease or hunger before they're five years of age. Plowing the fields day after day, toil from the time she's old enough to walk to the time she can't move from her deathbed. A despairing, beaten down husband, drunk half the time—and why not?—except all his rage will fall on her and the children."

  She fell silent for a moment, breathing heavily. Wolfgang interjected, saying mildly: "Actually, the boy's not really responsible for all that, Gwendolyn. At least, in the short time we've made his acquaintance, I haven't noticed him charging about spreading mass disease and misery."

  Gwendolyn glared at him, then sighed.

  "I know, I know. It's unfair of me to throw it on to Benvenuti's head. I shouldn't personalize these things. But still, it infuriates me, the way the Ozarines create a world that perpetuates—makes worse!—every injustice in it, and then cluck their tongues at the barbarity of it all."

  It was the first time in my life that I didn't just walk away from a political argument. I think it was the fierce flame in her, that drew me like a moth—and didn't I know, even then, that it usually turns out badly for the moth! Then, too, there was this—which, I admit, cut a little close to Gwendolyn's point, so I always kept it to myself—that she made every Ozarine lass I'd known seem like a pale shadow. Fact is, the damned woman was a romanticist's dream! And what artist isn't a romantic? Not any Sfondrati-Piccomolinis. At least, not from my—admittedly somewhat disreputable—branch of the clan. My branch of the clan, truth to tell, has always produced a lot more adventurers than scholars.

  I did not, of course, attempt to argue the politics of her persuasion. For one thing, I would have been completely over my head. Even at that young age, I had enough sense not to dispute doctrine with a hardened Groutch revolutionist! For another, I wasn't at all sure I didn't agree with her, insofar as I'd ever given any thought to political questions. My uncles had certainly never instilled in me any great feeling of pride in "the grandeur of Ozar."