by Heide Goody
She approached and leaned in close.
“No artichokes tomorrow or I will turn you into a newt,” he muttered as his fingertips found the manacle key hidden up her sleeve.
Lorrika nodded and, her job done, left. She heard the idiot priest berating Abington for his manners as she dashed up the stairs.
Any person wandering through the temple grounds might have later found an apron, a skirt and a tablecloth discarded on the ground and pondered why they were there. However, before Lorrika had scaled the lesser courtyard wall, alarm bells were sounding across the city and the folks in and around the temple had far greater things to worry about than incongruous textiles.
2
There was chaos in the streets.
There was, as everyone kept shouting, an Amanni army beyond the wall or, quite probably, inside it. Ludens had been taken entirely by surprise. The Amanni had appeared from the plains almost entirely unseen while the city’s own army was hundreds of miles away. The city and temple guards were torn between either going forth to meet the threat or defending the walled temple grounds and, subsequently, did neither. Likewise, the general populace didn’t know whether to run to the city’s aid, run away or simply bury their valuables and hide.
As people thronged the streets dithering, Lorrika walked entirely unheeded. She fell into step beside Abington as he strode down Mercer Row. He didn’t acknowledge her for several minutes and then simply held out the key to his manacles to her by way of a thank you.
“Aren’t we meeting General Handzame in the temple?” she asked.
“In good time,” said Abington. “I have a wretched thirst upon me and I will see it satisfied.”
And that was that.
By eight bells (although no one was actually ringing them), it was essentially over. The Amanni had flooded into the city, driving all before them with steel, exquisitely fashionable armour, and battle cries. They had swept Luden’s meagre forces inside the temple and then flooded into that. Within two hours of the alarm being sounded, Ludens was taken and a strange quiet had fallen across the city, broken only by the tramping of occasional Amanni patrols going in and out of the temple complex, the furtive noises of the wealthiest citizens trying to find fresh spots in which to bury their remaining valuables, and the sound of Abington loudly demanding another beer.
The tavern on the corner of Mercer Row and Kidgate was doing a brisk trade, mostly to men who were drowning their sorrows, or those who were enjoying an evening on the ale to demonstrate they weren’t intimidated by no upstart foreign invaders (although they might also have been drowning their sorrows too, quiet-like). As Lorrika fetched Abington his fifth cup of beer, Abington sat back to observe the entertainment.
“Pictures” Bez and “Words” Stentor, fresh from a whirlwind tour of the city’s other drinking holes, stood on a pair of fruit crates they had brought with them: otherwise known as the stage. In his hands Bez had a number of picture panels which he had sketched out and painted during the day and now held up in turn as Stentor, wearing his floppy orator’s hat, struck his little gong and announced the doings of the day.
“Tonight in News of the World…” boomed Stentor.
BONG.
“Five thousand Amanni warriors seize Ludens in surprise attack.”
BONG.
“A special report on the bloodthirsty Amanni horde.”
BONG.
“Dragon sighted over Buqit’s temple. Priests ignore portent of doom.”
Lorrika picked up a cup of beer from the bar. As she turned away with it, a hand gripped her upper arm. She looked at the hand and then the owner.
“That’s mine,” he said.
“No, it isn’t,” she said.
“I bought it. I saw you take it, thief.”
“Thief?” she said indignantly, earning a shush from a couple of old duffers who were trying to pay attention to the News. “I am no such thing. You say you bought it. You can only buy something if you plan to keep it. The same goes for stealing. Were you intending to keep this beer?”
“I intend to drink it,” he snarled and reached for the cup which she held away at arm’s length.
“Drinking is not owning. It’s an ephemeral transaction at best. A matter of transmuting one substance to another. You might as well try to buy sunshine.”
“Listen, girl—”
“Here.” Lorrika put the cup down on a table, lifted a full pint pot away from another patron and gave it to the arm holder.
“Oi!” yelled a little man.
“It’s okay,” said Lorrika, took a third man’s drink, gave it to the second, swapped over three drinks between a table of other drinkers, temporarily gifted the original fellow with two further beers (neither of which were his but it forced him to release her arm) and put a final drink before a man who had never had one before.
By the time the drinkers had recovered from their surprise and were contemplating whether they were a drink up or down, Lorrika had wandered off. She put the cup of beer in front of Abington.
“We have money, you know,” said the wizard, dipping into one of the many pouches at his belt and pulling out a pinch of weed.
“I don’t hold with having money,” said Lorrika. “It leads to greed and violence.”
There was the sound of a pot smashing and of a fist connecting with a face and a strangled cry of “But that’s my beer!” from a little man at the bar.
“See?” said Lorrika.
“If I may continue!” said Stentor, waggling his gong-stick threateningly at the rabble at the bar. “And – lo! – as night settled over our fair city like dark treacle – like burnt dark treacle – the Amanni horde launched their vile and cowardly attack.”
Bez held up a picture board featuring a black night sky, the nearly black plains and the mostly black cityscape of Ludens. The audience peered closely to try to make out the details, any details.
“Can’t see them,” muttered a bloke with his beard so neatly and closely trimmed it tested the very definition of beard. “It’s too dark.”
“Wearing their fearsome and fashionably black armour,” said Stentor, “they fought their way into the city. Like doomed but well-armed spinning tops, our outnumbered city guards fought bravely against the well-disciplined and fearless Amanni.”
“Excuse me.” It was the neat beard fellow again. “The Amanni were both fearless and cowardly?”
“Will you please be quiet!”
“Just saying…”
“The individual Amanni are entirely fearless, yes,” said Stentor petulantly, “but the attack itself was cowardly: skulking around on the plains until nightfall before coming out from their hiding places and—”
“What hiding places? The plains are flat. I mean they’re … plains. They’d have nowhere to hide except behind each other.”
“Who knows the arcane ways of the Amanni? They are as cunning and as cowardly as a fox in the grip of a particularly bad dream.”
Lorrika was momentarily taken by the notion of an army which managed to remain concealed by hiding behind itself. Some sort of circular formation…?
“Bravery then,” offered neat beard, “would be attacking in broad daylight? And providing the city with decent forewarning perhaps? A letter for instance?”
“Shut your jabber, fool!” snarled Abington as he lit his pipe.
“Yes. This is not a public discussion,” said Stentor. “We do Questions and Answers on alternate Wednesdays at the White Horse; this is the News.”
Lorrika watched neat beard as Stentor struggled on with his news report. She hadn’t seen him in Ludens in all her weeks here and, in a city like Ludens, you got to see everyone soon enough. And neat beard definitely wasn’t a local. For one, he had the pink-white skin of a northerner and there were few of them in these parts. He also had a young girl with him – six, maybe seven years old, as pale-skinned as him – and they made a rather strange couple. Father and daughter? But who took their child into a tavern? His clothes
were also considerably finer than the girl’s. Master and servant? Slave even?
“But who are the Amanni?” declared Stentor. “What do they want? And why? Descended from the ruthless tribespeople of northern Hayal, forged in the unforgiving ice mountains and, like giant man-wolf-bear hybrids baptised in the blood of war, the Amanni found their true purpose under the mad demagogue Nirage. Nirage led a campaign of conquest which saw the Amanni empire extend from sea to sea. City after city fell to their savagery, hundreds slaughtered in their bloody rituals. Hearts plucked from chests! Brains scooped out with spoons! Nirage proclaimed a republic which would last a thousand years but he was ultimately defeated at the Battle of Oopons by the brave people of the plains. Snikiter Jelly, a Ludens resident who, as a boy, was present at the battle—”
“Tha’s me! Tha’s me!” crowed an old codger from the back of the tavern.
“—told this reporter the Amanni were ‘right frightful devils’ and ‘not right in the head’ and he helped the plainsfolk attain victory with a spot of quick thinking.”
“Tha’s right!” called out the old boy. “I confiscated all the spoons in the camp. Can’t scoop out our brains if they don’t have no spoons!”
“Defeated and contained, the Amanni horror has hidden within its borders for a generation. Until now! Who knows what the Amanni want, now they have taken Ludens?” asked Stentor portentously. “What horrors will be unleashed by these beastly, degraded and uncivilised—”
The tavern door slammed open. A huge figure filled the doorway. Black plate armour bristled with wicked spurs and swam with diabolical decals. A heavy gauntlet rested on the pommel of a sheathed longsword. If dark vengeance had a form, it could do far worse than this.
“—and welcome visitors to our city, home to many historical sites and charming markets,” finished Stentor meekly, giving the intruder his most obsequiously grovelling grin. “It wouldn’t be Ludens without ‘u’.”
The figure stepped inside. There was a weird collective gasp-squeak as the patrons saw this Amanni warrior, despite her short hair and manly armour, was a woman. The gasp-squeak concluded with a curious tone as patrons realised that, despite being a woman and possessing an expression so genially open it would make an village idiot jealous, this woman was still the tallest and burliest individual many had seen in their lives. Lorrika could almost hear the grinding of cogs as some of the men present had to rethink their attitudes towards women. Lorrika knew Cope Threemen from her many errands to General Handzame’s camp, and pitied any man who didn’t get their most fundamental attitudes towards women rethunk. There was a peculiar breed of man who reacted oddly to strong and powerful women, although, in the general vicinity of Cope Threemen, they were generally a dying breed.
The giantess waved a hand at the News team. “Why? What would it be?”
Stentor gurgled and gave Bez a wild-eyed look.
“Continue with your business,” said the warrior as though her presence was nothing out of the ordinary.
Bez shuffled rapidly through his boards to find something non-contentious.
“In other News: a dragon was seen over the temple of Buqit today,” said Stentor, struggling to find his voice. “Gliding over the city like a mountain, a gliding mountain, many saw this as an omen of doom.” He glanced at the Amanni woman. “Or … an omen of good times, peace and new friendships. Yes, um, that’s right. Long has the dragon been a symbol of the basic unity between all peoples…”
As Stentor struggled on, Cope Threemen walked to Abington’s table. The crowd simply melted around her, treading on each others’ toes in a bid to melt the quickest.
Abington drained his cup and looked up. “Aren’t you meant to be in the temple, Cope?” he said.
“I am,” said Cope simply. “And so are you. The general sent me to fetch you.”
“And fetch me you can,” said Abington, suppressing a belch for a second. “After I’ve got a few more of these inside me.”
“Only idiots drink to excess,” said Cope.
“I’ve been on enforced sobriety for over a month and currently operating at a deficit. This is just me bringing myself back into balance.”
“The general sent me,” repeated Cope. From the occasions Lorrika had met Cope, she wasn’t sure if the hulking great woman had a tiny brain with room for only one thought at a time, or if her mind was a big empty cavern in which the same thought echoed again and again before finally fading.
“Hey, I’ll get you both a drink,” said Lorrika. “I’ll even pay with actual money.”
Cope gave her a suspicious look, reached under her armour and extracted a bundle of yellow cards. She sorted through them, until she found one she apparently liked, read it and declared, “Yes. One drink and then we must go.”
Lorrika looked to Abington. “I mean, I’ll need some actual money in order to do so,” she said.
Jamming his pipe in his mouth, Abington located his coin purse and passed it to Lorrika, who weaved her way to the bar.
“One eyewitness to the dragon’s appearance,” Stentor was saying, “was intrepid adventuress and long-standing friend of the News of the World, Chainmail Bikini Woman.” There was a ragged cheer from the audience (although more ragged than usual tonight what with there being an Amanni warrior woman in the audience) and many craned forward to get a better look at Bez’s rendering of the local folk heroine. Bez jiggled the picture board enticingly.
“My cousin Youshan says she came into his shop last week,” one drinker at the bar told his neighbour.
“Lucky bugger,” said the neighbour. “I’ve never seen her.”
“Me neither but, you know, she’s a busy girl.”
“Red haired Chainmail Bikini Woman, who is twenty-three years old and comes from the city of Ludens,” said Stentor to another cheer, “told this reporter she too regards dragons as a definite omen of peace and amity between all people and one day hopes to tame and ride a dragon of her own. Here’s hoping her dream comes true and she will soon have the massive beast between her thighs.”
There was a third and final cheer. Lorrika rolled her eyes and signalled to the barman.
“That was the News of the World,” declared Stentor. “Thank you!” and leapt off the stage to pass his cap around the crowd.
The barman put two beers in front of Lorrika. “She can’t stay here,” he said, nodding towards Cope. “She’ll drive away business.”
“Do you want to tell her?” asked Lorrika.
Bez pushed his way to the bar, took one of Lorrika’s beers and downed it in a single gulp.
“You’re welcome,” said Lorrika and gestured to the barman for a replacement. “That was a good show.”
“I’m not sure we wowed our audience as much as we might have,” said Bez with a doubtful pout. “Look at this stuff.” He held up a board. “I might as well have dipped it in tar.”
She looked at the black-on-black cityscape. “It’s moody and atmospheric.”
“Pff! What self-respecting army invades at night? Is there no consideration for an artisan trying to capture the historic moment?”
He nodded to where Cope and Abington were sitting. The neat bearded northern chap had joined them at the table, his little girl vanished off somewhere. “I might ask them,” said Bez, “if they’d consider restaging it.”
“What?” said Lorrika.
“Invading again. Tomorrow morning, like. Just imagine, that magnificent specimen of womanhood striding through a smashed breach in the city gate, the rising sun appearing over her padded shoulder like a benediction from the gods themselves.”
Lorrika’s mind was stumbling over the phrase “magnificent specimen of womanhood” and took a moment to get to the end of the sentence. “Smashed? They didn’t smash the gate in. They took the city before they could close it.”
Bez shrugged. “We could smash it for them. The whole thing needs sexing up, and I’m just the man to help.”
“They’re not going to invade again.” Lor
rika was adamant.
Bez was crestfallen. “No consideration for the charismatic artist and historian.” He licked his lips. “You think you might be able to put a good word in for me with the warrior maiden?”
“What?”
“You’re clearly on speaking terms.”
“And you want her to … model for you?”
“She wouldn’t regret it. Just some reference pictures, I assure you. For a re-imagining of the spectacle as it should have been.”
“Re-imagining?”
“Truth through the artist’s gaze. Is that my beer?”
She slapped his hand as he made to take another one from her before leading the way back to the table. For some reason, Cope had her gauntleted hand clamped fearfully over her mouth.
“It doesn’t work like that, Cope,” Abington was saying irritably. “This man is no wizard.”
Neat beard tugged at the lapels of his outer coat proudly. “I am the finest wizard you’ll find in a month of searching. I have letters of recommendation from the king of Yarwich and the merchants’ guilds of Aumeria to prove it but—”
“Wizard? You don’t even have a hat,” Abington scoffed.
“But I was actually talking about my primary occupation: oral hygiene and innovative dentistry. For example – Cope, was it? – by looking at just one of your teeth I could tell all manner of things about your diet, your history, your very soul which mere magic could not.”
“Calumnious codswallop!” spat Abington angrily and then saw his pipe had burned low and gone out.
Cope clearly wasn’t going to let this man anywhere near her teeth. The wizard looked up at Lorrika. “Or you, miss,” he said.
“Me? Um—”
Bez coughed lightly behind her.
“—Oh, yes. Cope: this is Bez. He does pictures. He wanted a chat.”
“About what?” said Cope.
Bez bowed low. “A request. A commission, if you will.”
It was probably the fear of having her teeth interfered with rather than interest in Bez’s proposition which got Cope out of her chair, but stand she did. As Bez guided the warrior woman away, beginning to make his pitch, Lorrika sat.
