Plob

by Craig Zerf

  Plob liked Biggest. It was hard not to like someone whose concept of luxury was not being beaten every day. He helped Dreenee clear up the lunch leftovers, packed up the crockery and they were on their way once again. Biggest stopped his biographical musings when they got going and concentrated on keeping up with the cab.

  ‘I believe that a person’s life as a child is the gods’ ways of paying you back for all sins committed in any past lives,’ said Horgy. ‘Children are put on this earth to be bullied by their peers, humiliated by their parents and totally ignored by all members of the opposite sex. And then you become an adult, and your parents die and life becomes just that little bit more bearable. And if you’re wealthy, and can afford good physicians, then maybe all the kids that bullied you die off too. And then finally the girls.’

  ‘Or you become a knight, huh, Horgy,’ interjected Cabbie. ‘You showed them. I bet those bullies wouldn’t dare now, hey?’

  Horgy stared at Cabbie. ‘Oh, be serious, Cabbie. I can’t even stand up in a suit of armour, let alone swing a two-handed broadsword in battle. I bought my knighthood. I’m a fraud. A phoney.’

  ‘Man,’ rumbled Biggest. ‘You’ve got some serious self-respect issues, my man. You’s got to learn to be comfortable with yourself. Dis self-flagellation is mega unhealthy. In fact it’s starting to make me feel bummed off.’

  ‘Horgy.’ Dreenee lent closer to the ersatz knight. ‘You are the only man that I’ve ever met that looks at my eyes when I speak. You’re both kind and courteous. You never knowingly talk down to people, you never shirk a duty and you’re also the cleverest man that I know. You may not call yourself a knight but I think that you are. You are my knight. Sir Horgy. Sir Horgelbund the courteous.’ She moved over and kissed Sir Horgy on the lips causing his face to light up like a bonfire on the king’s jubilee night and causing the other quest members to think things like ‘there’s none so strange as folk’ etcetera.

  The day continued on event-free, with small talk and the odd pause to water the horses. But as they progressed, Plob began to feel more and more depressed. Every thought that came into his mind seemed to bring the prickle of tears to his eyes and he started wondering why they were all wasting their time in this desolate unhappy place.

  He was feeling too self-absorbed to notice that the other quest members, including the master, were looking similarly disaffected. Dreenee was actually crying quietly to herself and ringing her hands together, not even bothering to wipe away the tears that were running freely down her face.

  They stopped to pitch camp as the light was beginning to fade, Biggest having run on ahead and brought down a small antelope for supper. But no one had bothered to dress the animal and the sight of the carcass lying next to the fire had depressed them all even further.

  Before they went to sleep that night Master Smegly listlessly warded the camp with an ‘air, alarm’ spell. ‘Just a precaution,’ he mumbled as they were now smack bang in the centre of the mountains of Steve.

  Sometime, close to the middle of the night, Plob was shaken awake by Cabbie. Plob woke up and, commendably, didn’t go through the standard ‘what-who-where-am-I’ routine.

  ‘There’s something out there,’ whispered Cabbie.

  ‘Impossible,’ answered Plob. ‘If someone was out there the ward would pick them up and sound the alarm.’

  ‘I didn’t say someone,’ corrected Cabbie. ‘I said something. Look.’

  Plob could make out a sort of murky graveyard glimmer, about the same size as Biggest, swirling around the perimeter of the camp. ‘Wait,’ he said as he formed an ‘air, identify’ spell and let it loose at the incoherent shape. It sounded back through Plob imparting its information. ‘Well that didn’t help much,’ mumbled Plob. ‘Although it has confirmed that it’s bad, very bad.’ He shuddered.

  ‘Hey, I could have told you that without the spell,’ said Cabbie. ‘Come, quickly, we’d better wake the master.’

  They both ran across to Smegly only to find him already awake and contemplating the entity with a puzzled expression on his face.

  ‘What is it?’ whispered Plob. ‘Should we raise an “earth, protect, shield wall”?’

  ‘It wouldn’t do any good,’ answered Smegly. ‘I can’t be one hundred percent certain but I think that it’s the essence of the mountain. The spirit of Steve. Wake the others up and tell them to gather round. I’m not sure how we’re going to handle this but we have to get rid of it. If it attacks and possesses any of us it is quite possible that that person will die of despair and depression .’

  ‘What do you mean? They throw themselves on the own spoon, that sort of thing?’ asked Cabbie.

  Smegly shook his head. ‘No, they would just drown in a torrent of doubt and self-pity.’

  Plob woke up the quest members and they all came and stood around Smegly who was still staring at the misty being and releasing the odd explosive ‘Harrumph.’

  ‘So,’ asked Biggest, ‘has we gots to fight this thing? ’Cause if we does I’m not sure how to do it. It don’t got no substance.’ He left the group and walked a little way towards the spirit of Steve. ‘Yo. Ethereal boy. Your mama, you misty shred of glowing ectoplasm, come here and fight, you bodiless freakazoid.’

  The misty form suddenly glowed brighter and the earth that they were standing on shook violently throwing them all to the ground. Without thinking Plob tore open an Earth spell and launched an ‘Earth, attack, thunderbolt’ straight at the entity The air crackled with power and the group were left feeling slightly breathless as the burning spell leeched the oxygen out of the atmosphere around them. As the thunderbolt struck the entity it was merely absorbed and Steve and got bigger and brighter still.

  ‘Stop,’ shouted Smegly. ‘It’s feeding off of our violence. The more aggression that we show the more powerful it becomes. Everybody calm down. Gather round me, hold hands and try to relax. Banish all thoughts of battle.’

  ‘Yeah, bros,’ rumbled Biggest. ‘Let’s chill out.’

  As they gathered in a circle, Plob noticed that Horgy wasn’t with them. He looked around to see him striding purposefully towards the spirit of Steve. ‘Horgy, no,’ he shouted and started to follow him, but Dreenee laid a restraining hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Leave him,’ she said softly. ‘He knows what he’s doing.’

  The group collectively held its breath as Horgy walked right into the swirling, glowing miasmic form and threw his arms wide. The mist contracted swiftly and Horgy was driven to his knees, a scream of pain tearing from his throat. And then, Plob thought that Horgy was crying, but as they watched and listened, it became obvious that he was laughing. Painfully and breathlessly, but sounds of mirth nonetheless were issuing forth.

  ‘Is that the best you can do,’ he said laughingly. ‘Do you call that despair? Do you call that depression? You pathetic whinger.’

  The mist contracted again but the light didn’t glow as brightly as the time before. Horgy doubled over in agony but still his apparent glee continued. ‘What was that?’ he asked. ‘An insult? You clueless non-entity. You’re meant to be the very essence of despair. You’ve caused whole villages to live in darkness and depression for generations, but you’re nothing compared to one mealtime with my family. You really haven’t a clue, have you? Do you want to hear about failure, depression, fear?’ And with that Horgy proceeded to go on a rant about his childhood starting from when he was born and the physician took one look at him and slapped his mother, to how his parents went on holiday and forgot him at home. Shunned by his peers for being too clever and rejected by his father for not being clever enough. Days spent locked in the under stairs cupboard for only getting ninety-eight percent for his school exams. The ritual humiliation of the bi-yearly school balls, and so on, and so on, and on and on and on.

  Slowly the light drained from the spirit of Steve as, faced with a despair overload, it struggled to maintain its form. Eventually it stopped enveloping Horgy and seemed to sit down next to him, nodding w
hat could have been its head and groaning echoingly in agreement. After half an hour or so Horgy’s aching soliloquy dribbled to an end. The spirit of Steve had grown completely dull, lifeless and wispy. As if bereft of the desire to maintain its form and slowly, ever so slowly, the mist evaporated into the ether and disappeared - never to be seen again.

  Horgy stood up and started back to the group, limping slightly from the after effects of the pain that he had gone through. Spontaneously the group started clapping and cheering wildly as our conquering hero approached.

  Biggest took out his flask of Blutop and proffered it to Horgy. ‘Man,’ he said. ‘You is one seriously depressing mutha. You done good, my bro,’ he finished and pummelled Horgy enthusiastically on the back.

  The rest of the group joined in the congratulations wholeheartedly, laughing and shouting. Not realising until now, how great a pall of despair had been hanging over them until Horgy had defeated the dismal spirit of Steve.

  Although it was still the middle of the night Plob and Cabbie skinned and dressed the antelope that Biggest had hunted down that evening whilst Dreenee built up the fire. They cut up a pile of thick steaks which they laid on the coals and sat around the fire until the wee hours eating, drinking and telling jokes.

  Life was good once more.

  Chapter 11

  Bil was standing on an upended beer barrel, regaling his cohorts that were gathered about him. Wrench held aloft, bedspread billowing dramatically from his shoulders. Every inch the leader, every inch the king – every inch some insane prat with a wrench.

  ‘Who’s bad?’ he screeched at the crowd.

  ‘We’re bad,’ came back the unified response.

  ‘We’re all bad,’ continued Bil, shouting at the top of his voice. ‘Give me a B.’

  ‘B,’ the crowd responded.

  ‘Give me an A.’

  ‘A.’

  ‘Give me a D.’

  ‘D.’

  ‘What does it spell?’

  An embarrassed shuffling of feet and studying of shoes ensued as the cohorts tried desperately to get their minds around advanced spelling. Eventually a huge, moustached man at the back dressed in a leather cloak and carrying a club put up his hand.

  ‘Yes?’ screamed Bil.

  ‘Uh…Duck?’ ventured the large club-endowed one.

  Bil shrieked in rage and swung his wrench around him in a tight circle. It came to rest with a satisfying crunch on the cranium of his now ex-second in command. ‘Bad, bad, bad,’ he squealed.

  ‘Yeah, I know. It’s bad of us, very bad. Sorry, boss,’ replied the moustached one. ‘We’ll try harder next time.’

  Bil threw himself to the ground and flayed about for a while, banging his head on the sod, chewing on the turf and generally putting forward yet more proof of his growing world class insanity.

  Meanwhile, as Bil worked towards putting the finishing touches on his rampant paranoid schizophrenia, a group of fifty or so of his followers were scouring the town for daggers, swords, crossbows, catapults and siege engines. Those weapons of destruction that they came across were duly confiscated and transported to the camp of King Bil to be readied for war.

  Already a large group of troops had been issued with crossbows and were receiving their first training session in the art of loading and firing the said weapon. The self-appointed sergeant-at-arms, a twice jailed poacher of the king’s deer, was explaining the rudiments of the weapon.

  ‘This is a crossbow,’ he yelled, holding it up above his head.

  ‘This is a crossbow,’ reiterated the crowd, enthusiastically doing the same.

  The poacher held a bolt aloft. ‘This is a bolt.’

  ‘This is a bolt,’ responded the vocal crowd of misfits.

  ‘This is the drawstring,’ shouted the poacher, holding same up high.

  ‘This is the drawstring,’ repeated the crowd at full volume.

  The newly self-appointed sergeant looked well chuffed with himself as he surveyed his motley crew.

  ‘What is this?’ he cried as he held his crossbow aloft once again.

  ‘What is this?’ came the thunderous response from the troops.

  The sergeant fell to his knees and wept.

  Master Smegly climbed off the cab and strode up to the door of the humungous sprawling residence. The rest of the group did likewise and straggled behind him.

  As he raised his hand to the knocker, the door opened on its own volition and a disembodied voice asked them politely to enter. This they all did and, as they got inside, the door closed behind them. A small bright green light appeared, floating in the air in front of them. The voice asked them to follow it.

  They meandered down dusty badly lit corridors, up flights of wooden stairs and down long stone ramps that appeared to be cut into the living rock on which the house was built. Eventually they were all so confused and lost that, if their lives depended on it, they could not have found the way out.

  ‘I thought that you had been here before,’ said Cabbie, addressing Master Smegly.

  ‘I have, often.’

  ‘Well how come you don’t know the way?’ asked Cabbie.

  ‘It’s always different. You’ll see. Tomorrow the building won’t be the same as today. Different corridors, different décor, sometimes the whole structure moves a little to the right or left.’

  ‘Or backwards or forwards I suppose,’ added Cabbie.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Smegly. ‘Why on earth would it do that?’ He shook his head in disbelief. ‘Pwah. Some people’s children,’ he muttered.

  Cabbie managed to look even more confused than he actually was.

  Finally, after what seemed an age, the corridor widened, the lighting improved and they were led out into a spacious central courtyard that was roofed in with a moving riotous palette of different stained glasses that fractured the sunlight into a myriad of seemingly ever-changing colours like a schizophrenic rainbow.

  And in the centre of the room, next to a massive indoor waterfall surrounded by exotic plants, crossed legged and floating some six-foot above the floor was the mage that they had all come to see. The mage of mages. The master of masters. The man. He slowly swivelled in the air and wafted, leaf-like, down to the level that normal people perambulated.

  ‘Ah, Wegly-woo, my boy,’ he greeted Smegly. His voice sounded like a chorus of knowledge, voice overlapping voice as if he were speaking with the vocal cords of all the members of the mages circle. This, plus the fact that his eyes were pure white, right put the wind up the questers apart from Smegly and, oddly enough, Plob, who was staring open-mouthed at his master.

  ‘Wegly-woo,’ he said, shaking his head in astonishment. ‘Wegly-woo,’ he repeated. ‘Is that your real name, Master?’ he questioned disbelievingly.

  Smegly harrumphed and told Plob to shut it.

  The master’s masters, magician’s master’s master (Master) faced each quest member in turn. ‘Ah, the magician’s assistant. I bid welcome to a fellow mage.’ Plob nodded his thanks, well chuffed to be included in such esteemed company. ‘The beautiful maid,’ he chorused, looking at Dreenee. ‘And a right stonker you are too, my girl. If I were four hundred years younger,’ he paused. ‘Well then I’d still be about seven hundred and forty-two, but still. Unga-bunga.’ He then addressed Cabbie. ‘Greetings, oh courageous knight.’ He bowed and totally ignored Cabbie’s murmured protestations about him being a humble Cabbie and Horgy being the knight and, and, and. He walked forward, clasping Horgy by the arm. ‘The noble thief,’ he said. ‘Greetings and salutations, oh great pilfering one.’

  Horgy looked aghast. ‘I’m no thief,’ he protested.

  The master’s masters etcetera stared at him for a while. ‘Not yet, my talented friend. Not yet.’

  Finally he strode over to Biggest. ‘Yo, my bro,’ he shouted, throwing Biggest a high five and then crossing his arms in front of his chest. ‘How’s it hanging, you mutha humpin’ jive monkey?’

  A huge grin split Bigge
st’s hairy visage exposing his massive canines to full effect. ‘I’s hanging fine, multiple master man, just fine,’ he answered, hunching his shoulders and bopping from side to side.

  ‘Come with me all,’ invited the master’s master magician’s master’s master as he walked to the far end of the courtyard. ‘Before we discuss the reasons for your welcomed visit, let us first partake of this splendid repast laid before us by my excellent servants.’ He gestured at a huge trestle laden with a veritable mountain of splendid and varied victuals, much out of season and even some hereto unseen and uneaten by mortal man (or Trogre).

  ‘Hot damn,’ exclaimed Cabbie, licking his lips.

  ‘Over there,’ responded the master’s master, pointing at an array of silver tureens.

  ‘What?’ questioned Cabbie in much puzzlement.

  ‘Hot damn,’ answered the masters squared. ‘We have the full range of damn. Hot damn, pickled damn, damn pate and even the rarely seen damn sushi complete with a side of hot-diggerty-damn.’

  Cabbie stared blankly and then helped himself to a wedge of cheese and a flagon of ale as he tried to work out what the damn food was. Biggest picked up a whole suckling pig on a stick, complete with toffee apple in its mouth and a grape in each ear.

  Horgy leant over and tentatively tried a small piece of pickled damn. His eyebrows lifted in surprise and he ladled a goodly helping of it onto a plate. ‘Damn good,’ he muttered.

  ‘Pig good too,’ responded Biggest.

  Cabbie looked at Horgy and raised his tankard. ‘Ale good, cheese good.’

  Horgy stared at both of them. ‘Why are guys talking so funny?’

  ‘Well you started it,’ replied Cabbie, downing his remaining ale.

  After they had all piled their platters high with sundry comestibles they retired to a set of divans that the many mastered one had conjured up for them to sit upon. Biggest lay back on a special extra large recliner with suckling pig in each hand, the others reposed likewise amidst much smacking of chops, rubbing of tummies and voicing of yummy sounds.