Plob

by Craig Zerf

  Dreenee’s hands flew to her mouth as she exclaimed out loud, Plob dropped the log he was carrying to the fire onto his foot and didn’t even notice and Horgy all but passed out in amazement. Smegly stood quietly with a slightly amused smile on his face.

  ‘Hey, no wonder yous guys is so good,’ rumbled the big Trogre who had just come to. ‘You gots yourselves a Tarlek. He’s one mean mutha. Hey wake up, you uselessneses,’ he shouted at the other Trogres ‘look whom we’s got here. It’s that Tarlek guy. Da one dat killed that dragon over in the mountain of Bert where our cousins live.’

  Another Trogre woke up and looked at Cabbie. ‘Hey Tarlek how yous doing, brudda. Respect.’

  ‘Do you know these…er…people?’ Plob asked Cabbie.

  ‘No,’ replied Cabbie. ‘They know of me, that’s all. I’ve fought lots of them before so they know of me.’

  ‘Everybody knows you,’ said Dreenee accusingly. ‘I can’t believe that I didn’t recognise you.’

  ‘No one recognises me anymore. That’s the whole point of being a cabbie, I don’t want to be recognised.’

  All of the Trogres were awake now and seemed to be very exited that they had been bested by the skill of both a well-known master magician and Tarlek Honourusson, sword of the nation etcetera.

  ‘Hey, Tarlek,’ rumbled the ex-goblin blaster owner. ‘Dis is a real honour, man. I wants to shake you by the hand.’ He stood up and walked over to Cabbie, his hand outstretched, the ropes that had bound him parted like cotton candy. There was a moment of consternation until they all realised that he meant them no harm and genuinely just wanted to shake Cabbie’s hand. The other Trogres followed suit, forming a queue like they were at a royal line up. Cabbie had a short chat to each of them and told them to sit down.

  And there they sat. A master magician, an ex-accountant become knight, a waitress, a knight become Cabbie, a teenage assistant and seven monstrous Trogres.

  The Trogres introduced themselves. The large one went by the moniker of Biggest and the others, in true Trogre fashion, continued along in the same vein. Huge, Large, Great, Massive, Broad and Jock. Mother had apparently run out of variations on the theme with the youngest.

  They listened carefully as Smegly told them the tale of the quest.

  ‘Well dis plummer dude, he sounds like one sick puppy. Dis is not right, if anyones gonna be evil it is us,’ said Biggest. The others agreed, nodding their heads and making loud ‘Oogoorah’ sounds. ‘Yep,’ continued Biggest. ‘We’s one bad group of muthas.’

  ‘Brothers,’ corrected Plob.

  ‘What you want, Plob my man?’ acknowledged Biggest.

  ‘You’re brothers, not mothers.’

  There was a pause as the quest members collectively held their breath and Plob, having realised his potentially terminal social gaffe, desperately tried to think of a suitable apology.

  Biggest laughed out loud. ‘Right on, you is correct. We is one bad group of muthas, brothers.’

  The Trogres growled their agreement and they all raised their clenched fists in the air and shouted in unison, ‘Brothers.’ Then they all gathered around in a huddle and had a hurried conflab following which they broke up sporting extremely pleased looks on their vast hairy visages.

  ‘Yo, Master Smegly,’ continued Biggest. ‘My brothers and I have decided that I will accompany you on your quest in order to provide you with some extra muscle as well as a bit of well-needed cool.’

  Smegly nodded and graciously accepted.

  Horgy looked a little worried as he whispered to Cabbie, ‘He won’t fit in the cab.’

  ‘No worries,’ said Cabbie. ‘He’ll run beside us.’

  Horgy looked impressed. ‘They can do that?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure,’ confirmed Biggest, who had overheard. ‘We’s can run for days, no problem. Us Trogres is a very athletic bunch of muthas, brothers.’

  When Plob awoke the next morning the sun was fairly high in the sky as most of them had overslept, what with the battle fatigue and then talking late into the night with the Trogres. To his surprise Plob found that he liked Biggest and his brothers. They were straightforward and uncomplicated on one level, but obtuse and complex on another. They hid a lot of their intellect behind their hammy otherwise way of talking, but they didn’t miss much. Also they all had incredibly infectious laughs, notwithstanding the fact that if one didn’t laugh with them Biggest would lean across, grab you by the arm and rumble ‘laugh, you mutha, it’s funny.’

  The group of brothers decided that they would accompany the cab to the edge of the valley and then would say their farewells, leaving Biggest to continue as the newest member of the quest.

  The rest of that day was uneventful and they made very good time as the seven Trogres ran in front of the cab, kicking any loose boulders or rocks out of the way and flattening the path so that the horses could run along at a fair clip.

  They camped that night in a small depression off to the side of the trail, protected from the wind and with some good grazing for the horses. Two of the Trogres had run on ahead of the group, done a little hunting and set up camp. So when the rest of the group got to the camp site a huge fire was going and two whole stags were sizzling on spits suspended over the flames. They ate their full and drank a little of the Trogres’ fiery cane spirit or ‘blutop’ that all of the brothers carried with them.

  The next day, at around noon, they reached the end of the valley of Strange. The Trogres took their leave amidst much high-fives, mean muthas, brothers and yo’s.

  Chapter 10

  The boiling water ploy hadn’t worked very well, in fact all it had done was doused the burning battering ram that Bil’s intelligence deficient followers had erroneously set fire to. Bil was now trying to urge his followers to pick up the tree and run at the castle gates with it. Now, this is easier said than done.

  It’s one thing for thirty, totally inept, people to pick up a twenty-eight-foot, one-and-a-half-ton tree trunk still complete with branches and leaves. It’s another completely different thing to get them to run in a coordinated fashion, at high speed, across a narrow bridge and into a huge oaken gate whilst maintaining enough aggression, under fire, to actually knock the gate down. This sort of exercise takes training - and lots of it.

  The tree made its erratic way forward, zigging and zagging, partly due to the fact that some of the rammers were facing the wrong way and partly because the rest of them couldn’t see through the thick foliage that Bil had neglected to tell them to trim from the trunk. Some carriers had pulled off small branches in error and were running around with their own little miniature battering rams. After almost ten minutes of this farcical progress they finally made it the moat, and fell in. At least the log floated well so only two or three of them drowned.

  Bravad, the chief of the guard, stared down at the rabble doggy paddling around in the moat, shook his head almost sadly, raised his arm up and then brought it slashing down. On his signal, his small group of soldiers picked four metal tubs up off the large fire over which they were heating and upended their contents of red-hot rocks over the battlements. They fell hissing indiscriminately into the moat, striking the water, the tree and various heads with equal vigour. The cries of pain and outrage could be heard across the city.

  ‘Unfair, unfair,’ shouted Bill. ‘You bloody buggeries.’ He then sounded the retreat by screaming ‘run away, run away’ at the top of his voice. It was time for his cohorts to regroup and rethink, or at least start to think.

  The chief of the guard propped his shield up against the wall and leant back on it. This wasn’t right, he thought. Defending the castle against a rag-tag bunch of halfwits wasn’t exactly what he’d been trained for. When he’d joined up he wanted to fight proper battles filled with brave acts and feats of honour against well-armed and vicious evil troops. He sighed, although he needn’t have, for Bravad r Us, chief of the royal bodyguard and keenly aspiring hero, was about to get his wish. Which just goes to prove the old adage ‘
be careful what you wish for, it just might come to pass.’

  ‘What’s that? Over there.’ Terry pointed at the top corner of the large, close-up full-colour photograph of the caved-in side of the dyed-blonde girl’s cranium.

  Hugo leaned forward and squinted. ‘Bits of skin? Bone?’

  ‘No. Not that,’ he pointed again. ‘That. It looks like some sort of squiggly bit.’

  ‘Yes. You’re right,’ Hugo agreed. ‘A spiral.’

  ‘OK. What’s painted red, heavy, made out of metal and has a twisty squiggly spiral thingy on it?’

  ‘I give up,’ conceded Hugo. ‘What?’

  ‘That, my dear upper-class twit, is the million-quid question,’ answered Terry as they both returned to studying the unpleasant photo.

  It was a sort of no-man’s-land between the valley of Strange and the mountains of Steve. This is not to say that no one lived there, they did. In fact there were a few small villages complete with the ubiquitous church, dry goods store and inn with a suitably grandiose sounding name.

  Plob had always wondered why that was so.

  It always seemed that the smaller the town the bigger the church and the grander the name of the solitary inn. In the capital city of Maudlin, where Plob and Smegly lived and worked, there were perhaps fifty or sixty inns, most of them with pretty unique names but, as far as Plob could remember, no Royals or Imperials. Unlike the shabby, three-bedroom run-down building at the centre of this tiny hamlet, which went by the unlikely name of ‘The Grand Royal Imperial Inn, Eatery and Stables.’

  It appeared to Plob that all the residents of the little villages that they had been travelling through seemed dull and lacklustre. Their movements slow and energy less, their expressions slack and their general demeanour to be one of unhappiness. He commented on this to Master Smegly.

  ‘Yes, Plob. It has been thus for many years in all of the areas surrounding the mountains of Steve. There is a great evil that lurks in the heart of the range and it leaches the spirit out of all who live within sight of its peaks.’

  ‘Why don’t they leave? Go somewhere else, start up again.’

  ‘They can’t be bothered,’ replied Smegly. ‘The lassitude has become too great for them. They know that life could, and should, be better but they no longer have the energy or inclination to change. So they just live out their dull, grey existence in these small hamlets within sight of Steve.’

  Smegly faced the rest of the group. ‘I’m glad Plob brought this up,’ he continued. ‘This lassitude that I’ve been talking about is contagious. We must all guard against negative thoughts. We must be strong and keep the quest uppermost in our minds lest we too fall into depression and listlessness. And remember, the closer we get to the mountains the harder it will become to resist.’

  With that Cabbie flicked his whip and drove the horses forward through the hamlet and onwards to the mountains of Steve.

  As the day drew on, a squally biting wind picked up, carrying with it a smattering of unpleasant cold rain. They made camp that night at the foothills of Steve on a bare patch of ground with little or no protection from the elements. To top it all, only a limited amount of wood was available and what there was proved to be either damp or rotten resulting in a tiny fire that provided more smoke than heat.

  Biggest was sharing his large flask of Blutop and, as they passed it around, each member could feel the spirit-induced warmth spread through their bodies like a slow fire. Biggest spat a mouthful of spirit onto the struggling fire. There was a ‘woomph’ as a small fireball rose heavenward and the fire started to crackle merrily.

  Biggest chuckled. ‘Dat’s one good drink dat. You can use it to start fires, polish metal, sterilise wounds, cure colic, and it’s also great poured over fruit. Yep, life wouldn’t be the da same without Blutop. Probably da best cane spirit in da world.’ He looked fondly at his flask and then passed it on.

  Horgy took some into his mouth and tried to do the same as Biggest, spraying a mouthful at the fire. The flame leapt up the stream of highly flammable fluid like a bolt from a crossbow, burning Horgy’s lips and causing his three-day growth of facial hair to burst into flames. Dreenee responded by stripping her skirt off and wrapping it around Horgy’s face to smother the flames.

  Biggest rose to his feet and applauded. ‘Good reactions, girlfriend,’ he shouted. Then he paused to look Dreenee up and down. His eyebrows both raised skywards like a pair of shaggy black sails. ‘Damn,’ he said staring at Dreenee’s half naked form. ‘You is built like a brick house, women. Whooee.’

  ‘Well thank you kindly, my good Trogre. Now will you please look the other way before I tear your raggedy-ass pointy ears off.’ Bigger laughed hugely, loving the fact that he had been insulted in the vernacular, although he did have the sense to look away.

  Plob, however, couldn’t move. It was proving a physical impossibility to tear his eyes away from the exposed, milky white, lower half of his quest member’s perfect body. To be fair he was trying, it was just that his body would not react to the commands his brain was frantically issuing. In short, he was suffering from a total visual sensory overload. Dreenee unwound her skirt from Horgy’s now flame-free face and stepped into it, flapping it back into shape. Plob’s body finally caught up with his brain and he quickly turned to look the other way.

  ‘A little late don’t you think, Plob?’ remarked Dreenee as she inspected Horgy’s face.

  Plob mumbled an apology under his breath.

  ‘I don’t actually mind,’ said Dreenee. ‘You’re a nice boy and I can see that it was hard for you. I thought your eyes were going to fall out but you were trying really hard to look away. Next time try a little harder, OK?’

  Plob nodded jerkily and wished that Dreenee would stop saying hard over and over like that. As it was he had had to sit down next to the fire and knew it would be a while before he could stand up, as it were, without causing some embarrassment. Biggest passed him the Blutop with a knowing grin. Plob thanked him and slugged back a solid mouthful. The alcohol sprinted through his nervous system and brought some semblance of normality back to his extremities.

  With the fun over they retired to their blankets and fell quickly asleep. All except for Plob who was driven oft awake by teenage dreams of perfectly proportioned porcelain white thighs, in various positions, flashing through his mind.

  The next morning they awoke with a feeling of despair lying thickly on all of them. All except for Master Smegly who was his usual intractable self. Plob was irritable from lack of sleep and the rest of the quest members looked both restless and despondent. Cabbie knocked the kettle into the fire when he was making the tea and Dreenee sniped at him for being an idiot, so he got the sulks and went and sat in the cab by himself whilst the others struck camp.

  Biggest looked wistfully at his huge half-empty flask of Blutop and then accused Horgy of taking some during the night when they had all slept. Horgy denied this saying that it was typical of a Trogre to think that everyone was as light-fingered as they were. Biggest stood up threateningly and, at that point, Smegly decided to put a stop to it all.

  ‘Listen to yourselves,’ he said. ‘Didn’t I warn you of this only yesterday? And we’re only in the foothills of Steve. Do you honestly think that we can make it through the whole range if you’ve already begun to forget both your bonds of friendship and the needs of the quest?’ He stared at them each individually, a stern look on his face. ‘What I see disgusts me. Now snap out of it or go home. You’re acting like a bunch of spoilt gnomes.’

  The quest members looked sheepishly at each other and then there was much apologising, hugging, slapping of backs and shaking of hands although Dreenee did put a stop to the hugging when Cabbie came around for the fifth time.

  After a while on the road, the trail took a number of complicated turns and forks but Smegly appeared to know the way so they continued to make good time. They stopped next to the track for a quick bite of lunch and Biggest amused them by telling them some stories
about his childhood.

  ‘I’s da eldest of a big family,’ he told them. ‘My mammy had herself nine kids, all boys, but only seven of us survived cause Mammy ate the twins at birth. Oh yeh, dose were the days. Before society got all pinko-liberal and decided dat twins should be allowed to live. It’s unnatural and I’m just not for it.’

  Smegly nodded in agreement but the rest of the group were shocked.

  Biggest saw their expressions and carried on. ‘You see, a female Trogre is only capable of feeding one offspring at a time. She don’t produce enough milk for two so, if she tries, then normally both kids die. So one of the kids has gots to be put down. Well the council of elders decided that it was too heavy a burden to make a mammy choose a child so they solved it by saying dat dey both gots to go. Problem solved.’ He chuckled unrepentantly.

  ‘But all in all I hads me a good childhood. We was poor, but what we lacked for in money we made up for in aggression. As my daddy always said, “it’s not whether you win or lose, it’s just beating up on the other guys that’s important.” Our favourite game was military chairs, every night my mammy used to set six places at the table and then we’d all wallop on each other until one brother couldn’t get up, so that night he didn’t eat. I’m proud to say dat I never missed myself a meal in my life. Our pappy used to wop on us every morning to punish us for all the wrong doings that we was going to get up to that day, so just to make sure that we weren’t punished for nuthin we used to commit at least two felonious acts a day. I still remember when I came of age and turned twelve, I came down stairs and joined the line for the morning whipping and when it gots to be my turn my pappy turned me away saying that I was a man now and no longer needed a daily whippin’. I was so happy that day that my daddy stopped beating me. Of course he kicked me out of the den that afternoon and tole me I hads to go make my own life now. Still, them was happy carefree days.’