by A. J. Ponder
A foolish few had tried other conversational preambles, for example, nice short words like scum, or murderer, before turning and running like hell. This practice seems to have ceased due to a natural physical law called inertia, which didn’t seem to affect Dirk, while conveniently trapping his opponents. It may also have declined due to a lack of people that stupid. Think of it as natural selection, for anyone foolish enough to think that his particularly large and vicious-looking sword might get in his way and slow him down. It didn’t and it doesn’t. If you think about it for one tiny fraction of the smallest particle[4] of time, a thoughtful scholar will realise that that wickedly sharp, if overlarge sword, (the one that cleaved oxygen molecules as Dirk whistled by) was a really good reason for not wanting to taunt the man.
Moreover, you should know that Dirk, despite never actually competing in a race, is generally believed to be the fastest human on two legs. He’s never failed to catch up with a victim yet, even if they’re a little young to chastise properly, and it’s just to tell them that their life is forfeit if he sees them after their fifteenth birthday.
§
Anyway, Dirk managed to halt the sword throw that would have cleaved Sylvalla’s head from her shoulders as she breezed by.
Now, having successfully recognised her, he found himself in a strange predicament, caught between duty and fame. As a paid employee of the king, he should inform His Majesty of the whereabouts of the princess.
On the other hand, and upon a moment’s reflection, Dirk realised that if he brought this bad news to the king, he would probably lose his own head. Graciously, Dirk decided he’d allow someone else that privilege. Having made up his mind, he sprinted after the princess with every intention of heroically returning her to her doting parents.
So now, unfortunately, we are left with the disconcerting vision of the backside of a semi-naked skeletal figure, with a sword almost as large as himself slung over his shoulder. The entire apparition is sprinting into the dawn, kicking up a cloud of dust around his ankles. At last, he turns a corner in the road, and we are left with nothing but dust and obscuring scrub, which is a mercy.
Upon Forked Tongue
Oh, by the seven gods of sin, thought Dothie as the storm clouds skidded closer. It was hard to think with Toots digging sharp claws into the tender flesh of his shoulder, enormous waves crashing toward them.
A half-remembered spell died on Dothie’s lips as he leant over the rails and threw up more breakfast than he could remember eating. He looked about at the angry sailors.
They scowled back. One raised a fist and muttered, “I’m gunna throw that slimy wizard overboard.”
Gritting his teeth, Dothie turned, planted his feet toward the railing and looked out to the distance. He was just to the right-hand side of the bow. That’s the starboard side of the boat if you care about such things. Dothie didn’t, not at the best of times, and certainly not now, when his stagecraft would be of much more value than the sailing knowledge he didn’t have. What he focused on was getting his pose right. Long hair streaming behind him, his tattered cloak flying as if buffeted in the wind—and yet held magically in precise formations.
When he was sure he looked the part, and his illusions were finally holding, Dothie started muttering. Softly at first, just enough to let snatches of sound carry over the wind. It was gibberish, of course, but the crew wasn’t to know that. Only volume and tone mattered. Dothie let his voice rise imperceptibly, gathering conviction. The trick was to increase the decibels, without, he hoped, gathering an equal measure of desperation.
Feeling the eyes of the entire crew drilling into his back, Dothie wondered for a brief, but incredibly hopeful moment, whether it would be possible to turn all the crew into fruit flies at the same time. No, that would be impossible, and, besides, who would sail the ship?
His shoulders itching with apprehension, Dothie decided that his spell needed a large increase in volume. His voice rose fiercely above the gale. As it reached a natural crescendo, Dothie allowed his hands to shake, but he didn’t turn around. His impulse to acknowledge the applause, and see the audience’s reaction, was strong. But as he was still alive, he felt confident the captain had swallowed his little deception.
Just the finale now, he thought smugly.
“What does this ship carry that someone would want to sabotage it? No matter, I will be able to protect us from the worst of the storm’s ravages.”
Now, at last, he turned—to find nobody there. The crew were too busy pulling down sails and battening down the hatches to watch. The illusion of thunderous applause, nothing more than the cracking of spars, and the wind battering tattered sailcloth.
Dothie’s reception at this, one of his greatest performances, were the baleful eyes of the ship’s cat looking malevolently up at him from under a tarpaulin. And, of course, his familiar, Toots, whose long claws persisted on embedding themselves in his freshly scabbed shoulder.
With a final roar of surging water, the boat disintegrated into the sea.
§
Half a day later, a very wet and miserable young magician, holding grimly to a section of railing, bobbed up and down near the continent of Angleterre.
Fortunately, the wash took him toward the shore, albeit in a slow and indirect manner. Unfortunately, before his feet were even out of the water, a sailor unkindly offered to slit his throat.
The Drosophila[5] spell certainly came in handy then. Damned rude—and after everything he’d pretended to do for them!
Penniless, miserable and dripping wet, Dothie fled up the sandy beach and hid in the jagged rocks around the cliff face. Once there, he looked around for an escape to the pastureland above, but he couldn’t find a path, and his feet were rapidly sliced to ribbons on the rocky cliffs.
The search for a path to safety was soon put on hold as the other refugees rallied and began an all-out offensive. After the initial barrage of rotting sea wrack and salted fish, hurled with extreme prejudice, Dothie responded by throwing his Drosophila spell at anyone who got too close.
The situation calmed to an uneasy truce, with Dothie hiding behind a large boulder, while his attackers threw things with less and less enthusiasm from a spur further up the beach.
The attacks slowed and stopped altogether, but Dothie remained cowering behind his rock. It wasn’t until the next morning that he plucked up the courage to leave his hiding place and find his own way off the now deserted beach.
After wasting most of the day trying to climb the sheer cliff face, by pure chance, Dothie managed to find the track the sailors had discovered the day before. He scrambled up the slope and stumbled right in front of a horse pulling a riotously coloured blue, red and yellow wagon.
“Help!” Dothie called, his voice rough from salted fish and too much yelling. He waved at the driver of the vehicle, a trader by the look of him, given his leather tunic and broad-brimmed hat.
The wagon slowed.
The trader leaned out, tipped his hat, and in a poor attempt at a provincial accent, said, “Arrr yee off ta yorrrnda villarrrge?”
A second glance at Dothie, and the trader suddenly remembered the outrageous story he’d heard that morning. A tale about a dangerous and self-centred wizard who’d destroyed a ship in a fit of pique. “You’re not that—” he blurted without thinking.
In the blink of an eye, the trader became yet another one of Dothie’s Drosophila victims.
This man, unlike many of the others, managed to survive until midnight. Fortunate indeed, as midnight is the turning point for this particular spell. Suffice to say, when the trader finally returns to human form, you will recognise him as Jonathan Goodfellow. But more of him later.
In the meantime, Dothie started to make himself respectable by borrowing his host’s clothes. This actually took some time, not only because there were a good many to choose from, but because Dothie found himself getting distracted by the numerous storage compartments all over the garishly painted wagon. There were al
l sorts of odds and ends inside.
That done, Dothie took stock of all his newly-acquired possessions and organised a sumptuous picnic from the contents of a red and white handkerchief that had been ever so conveniently left on the passenger seat.
In the hope of trading along the way, Dothie decided to keep the wagon. He trundled through three villages, but at each one he was disappointed to see sailors from The Trusty Maiden. Discretion being the better part of valour, he did not stop, just in case. After all, they were sailors, and sailors were the masters of outlandish stories, so who knew what lies they’d been telling about his esteemed personage?
It was quite late when he stopped at the fourth village—this time, determined to stay. Encouraged by an old wooden sign of a beer mug, its peeling paint accentuated in the setting sun, Dothie parked his wagon at the local pub.
Two sailors walked right past without even noticing Toots, who was tucked out of sight under a scarf.
Encouraged, he unhitched the horse and let it drink from the watering trough. Then he tied the exhausted creature to a fence with a nosebag of oats. The horse eyed Dothie up, contemplating giving the man a jolly good kick, before burying its nose in the bag.
Inside, the pub was smoky with smoke. It smelt strongly of burning leaves and wet straw and body odour. It was, on reflection, exactly what Dothie was looking for. And better still, he didn’t recognise a single sailor amongst the crowd. Trusting his luck would hold, he took the opportunity to relax and have a drink or five with the locals before breaking out the goods from his new wagon, half of which were nothing but a bag of glass beads he’d magically enhanced.
As he sat, mug of beer in hand, he couldn’t help but notice the pub was abuzz with talk of a crazy magician who ate children for breakfast, sank boats for the fun of it, and destroyed whole villages, leaving nothing but charred remains. Dothie laughed heartily and said such were stories to scare small children. “I’m not afraid of any wizard,” he proclaimed loudly, crashing his beer mug onto the table and demanding another.
The stories, far from being the irritating pack of lies Dothie had feared, were brave and fearless lies, and they made the evening all the merrier. He thoroughly enjoyed himself, trading and gambling and trying to enhance his own notoriety by fabricating bigger and bolder stories for his wizard alter ego.
Soon they were all listening intently as he spun a yarn about a wizard besting not only ships, but whole armies. Then he laughed, slammed down his mug on the table, and proclaimed that everyone at the table was an honest man, and what use was magic against honest men?
They lapped it up, so that by the end of the night his pockets bulged with coins, his wagon bulged with provisions, and his mind bulged with plans. For a start, why should he honour all his pledges? And for that matter, it wouldn’t be long before his ill-gotten wares reverted to nothing but glass beads and other worthless baubles. Such things by themselves wouldn’t have caused him to miss his breakfast, except that his gambling losses had become prodigious. With a sudden stroke of genius, it occurred to him that rather than give up any of his profit, it might be better to offer to swap the cash debt for the horse and carriage.
The men peeked outside, agreed this was acceptable, shook hands and continued gambling.
Dothie excused himself, making a big show of hiring a room for the night. He then climbed out the window, hamstrung all three of the local horses (by turning them into flies), and set off on the gaudy wagon whistling a merry tune—quietly—so as not to exacerbate his headache.
Blood Oath
Sylvalla wasn’t the kind of runaway to start contracting any sort of homesickness. And she definitely wasn’t about to complain about adventures being horrible and dangerous, or whine that sleeping out under the stars, a campfire at your feet and a sword cradled to your chest, was unpleasant. Granted, it wasn’t particularly comfortable, so she enumerated the good points—the weather was warm, her food was hot, and she wasn’t being told off every five seconds. Besides, she’d run away to become a hero—comfort wasn’t in the job description.
The soft scraping of approaching footsteps disturbed her resolute happiness.
Sylvalla swore silently. The idiot trying to sneak up on her was going to ruin her evening. And possibly her life. Murderer, kidnapper, or mere footpad—whoever it was—must also believe she was deaf.
Refusing to panic—despite her heart beating slightly harder than normal—Sylvalla rose calmly to her feet. Sword gravitating to her hand, almost of its own volition, she turned to meet this new threat.
Dirk smiled. She could handle a sword. He’d heard the Avondale king’s daughter wasn’t bad for a girl. Now he knew just how arrogant that understatement had been. He admired the way she rose to her feet in a single move. It wasn’t quite feline grace, she didn’t have the killer’s instinct, but her balance and guard were admirable, if a little high and maybe a little tense. Most soldiers wouldn’t notice. But Dirk did.
“Ah, Dirk,” Sylvalla said, twisting her lips into a smile. Inside she was cursing. Why couldn’t it have been your average run-of-the-mill murderer? Why did it have to be the best murderer in five kingdoms? But then, Dirk would not have made such a noisy approach accidentally, so maybe she’d live a while longer. To give herself time to think, Sylvalla paused and looked him up and down. No doubt he had some fanciful notion about bundling her back home like some idiot princess who needed rescuing.
He stepped forward an inch.
She stepped back an inch. “Surely, this is a new role for you? I wonder what the exact title is—Nanny? Kidnapper? Do you really think it worth your trouble to stoop so low?”
Not naturally good with words, Dirk opened and shut his mouth like a stranded fish.
Sylvalla breathed deeply, trying to hold her own tongue, which was extremely good with words—mostly the sorts of words that got her into trouble.
Dirk frowned. “Gracious lady, sword-mast—um—mistress, glorious um—fighter. What role could I possibly play other than myself? A man who is faithful and honest and highly skilled. I could not, would not, pretend to be anything else.”
Sylvalla paused again, as if to give full consideration to his answer. As if this wasn’t the trite answer she’d hoped for. Both skill and honesty … good, she would demand both. “That is well,” she stated firmly. All the while, trying to think ahead, and realising the skills she’d learnt in Diplomacy might not be quite as useless as she’d believed.[6]
Dirk, having previously relied on his sword for all his negotiations, was remarkably inexperienced. He bit, and he bit hard. “Princess, my assistance could be invaluable.” He had great hopes for that sentence, thinking it so beautifully vague, and yet he’d fallen right into Sylvalla’s trap.
“Maybe, as you say, a man such as yourself would be of some use,” she said as if she might be naïve enough to fall for such a bland reassurance. “But who would be accountable for your actions, if anything untoward were to happen to me?”
Dirk almost choked. He’d heard how accountability worked in Avondale.
Sylvalla didn’t give him the chance to interject. “I think an oath would set my mind at rest. A simple oath to follow and obey. But it would have to be binding.” She smiled vacantly.
Feeling things were getting out of control, Dirk held on doggedly to this one thought, yeah, let’s see how well I follow and obey the little minx when she’s trussed up like a pig and gagged. I’ll be right behind her then, all right, and no mistake.
Dirk heaved a sigh and nodded. She was a princess, and the daughter of his current benefactor. The forms should be followed, had to be followed—he was trapped in the role of hero, and she, damsel in distress. It was a pity she was failing to live up to her part. She didn’t even seem upset.
Quite the opposite. Sylvalla was amused at her own audacity. A Blood Oath was binding. Nobody crossed the Realm of Death, unless they wanted to reside there permanently … in perpetual agony. By custom, however, it was also the oath of servitude to
royalty. To follow and obey. Dirk would be her guardsman, not her father’s. Even if he does try to take me back to Father, which is no doubt his intention.
Dirk hesitated.
Sylvalla tried her best to act the empty-headed princess, tossing the remnants of her golden hair and stretching her blue eyes wide. “I ask such a small thing. A tiny pledge, for you to follow and obey. The official pledge to royalty. I think you know how it goes.”
Dirk knew it was no simple oath, but seeing that the princess was determined to have her way, he wondered if maybe saying the blood oath would be for the best. Hopefully, it would lull her into a false sense of security. The oath itself was binding, but the fealty could be transferred. If she released him. If? Dirk promised himself he’d make sure of it.
Dirk swore.
After a while, he got around to the oath. “Sylvalla, daughter of Rufus, King of Avondale, by my blood I serve you, by my blood I will follow and obey your every command.”
“Good,” Sylvalla said as light-heartedly as she could. Her perky princess façade was wearing thin, but it was crucial he didn’t catch on. Not yet. “Now that’s done, all I need is a little promise to keep me from harm, and then I can go to sleep.”
Dirk sighed. “I promise.” He could hardly refuse. Although he wished he had when Sylvalla’s girlish innocence dropped like a stone, or possibly, several stones.
She smirked. “Father said he’d beat me if I ever ran away again.[7] You can’t make me go home—he really would, you know. Besides, I’ve ordered you not to, so you can’t, anyway. And while I’m at it, I order you to take me on an adventure. A proper adventure. You are a hero, aren’t you?”
Wondering where he went wrong, and how he could have prevented the situation, Dirk sat in a wooden daze. But not for long. Ever the optimist, he yawned, stretched and settled down for the night, smiling to himself. Not all was lost. He was already planning the circuitous route by which he would take this little minx back to her father. Beat her indeed! Didn’t princesses have whipping boys? Princes did. Maybe they had whipping girls instead. He wasn’t exactly sure, but he was pretty sure the girl was lying. Which shower of rain did she think he came down in?