by Craig Zerf
Then Kashfloh had thrown a shoe and damaged his hoof so, after Cabbie had re-shod him, he was declared unfit to pull the cab for awhile and, since then, their one-horsepower progress had been slow to very slow.
The constant light but bleak rainfall hadn’t helped and, to make matters worse, the surrounding terrain had gone progressively from relatively uninviting to downright forbidding and hostile.
Blasted trees and burnt-out areas of stumpy blackened bushes. Cracked and broken rocks were strewn with haphazard hand across the harsh landscape. And the water, what they could find of it, was brackish, rank and bitter.
(All in all the sort of environment one arrives at after parting with your non-refundable, up-front payment for a four-day mid-week budget break in the new tourist Mecca of some torn-to-shreds middle African country that has been specialising in a post apocalyptic form of slash and burn agriculture and has now decided that tourism is the new strip-mining and have mocked up a bunch of re-tinted Hollywood style holiday brochures and dumped them on the unsuspecting UK package tour market).
But this wasn’t the worst part of the day. No, the worst of it was that they had now been set upon by a group of dwarvish bandits.
The would-be miniature Dick Turpins were, however, making a considerable meal of things. Right from the outset the ambush and supposedly resultant cab-jacking had gone wretchedly awry, starting from the traditional kick off line of ‘stand-and-deliver- your-money-or-your-life’ which was conveyed by the gang leader and resident crossbow owner, an impressively bearded dwarf who answered to the name of Budget.
Budget (Budgie to his friends) had delivered the line with all of the usual aplomb and savoir faire demanded of such a classic verbal offering but, unfortunately, instead of the usual ‘please don’t shoot, grovel, grovel’ reaction that was expected he found himself upside down, disarmed and having his small bony head being bashed against a tree by a large Trogre who had reacted with a speed and violence of such instantaneous that, even in his present compromising position, Budget was hugely impressed.
Cabbie had urged his horse forward and deliberately ridden down the small group of four vertically challenged backup archers that were arrayed behind their glorious leader, standing slightly out of his seat and applying his horse whip generously to any exposed necks and faces that came into view.
Plob whipped out his pouch, extracted an ‘earth, attack’ spell and launched an ice storm at two other mini-miscreants that were hiding in the boughs of a large twisted tree that leaned partly over the track. They fell to the ground squealing in pain at the mass of hail-induced bruises that now covered their bodies.
Master Smegly tidied the whole shambles up by weaving a collection of ‘air, restraint’ spells and using them to drag the company of dwarves, including Biggest’s new bashy toy, into a ragged tightly bound cluster consisting of shovel-shaped beards, funny pointed hats and spectacularly bushy eyebrows.
‘Well, my bantam-sized band of bandits,’ said Master Smegly. ‘Things didn’t pan out quite as expected, did they?’
Budgie shook his luxuriously be-whiskered head. ‘Not quite, good sir. Not quite.’
Smegly lit up another of his supply of richly fragrant cigars. ‘If I release you now I expect you to refrain from doing a runner and, I warn you, if any one of you tries to leg it I guarantee that the first attempted leggee will have all of his appendages forcibly removed by Biggest here who is not only faster off the mark than all of you but also happens to have made an enjoyable hobby out of said limb removals.’
Biggest bowed in acknowledgment and did a little limb removal miming just to push the point home. The clump of dwarves made sounds of general agreement and Master Smegly removed the spellbound bonds.
Budget stood up first, faced the group and bowed deeply. ‘If I may introduce myself and my team of merry dwarves, I am Budget and these other fellows are,’ he pointed as he talked, ‘Bag, Barrel, Basin, Basket, Bin and Box.’ As he mentioned each dwarf they stepped forward, doffed their hats and bowed to the team. ‘And we are the bandit group known as - “The seven dwarves”.’
‘Who and the seven dwarves?’ questioned Horgy.
‘I’m sorry?’ said Budget, raising an eyebrow.
‘You have to be “Someone - and the seven dwarves”.’
‘Why?’ enquired the hirsute one.
‘Dunno,’ admitted Horgy. ‘It just seems that “The seven dwarves” is missing something. It’s too short.’
Budget went snow-white with rage. ‘Are you calling us short?’ he roared. ‘You speciest bastard. I’ll have you know…’
‘Gentlemen,’ interrupted Smegly. ‘Enough. No harm meant and I’m sure none taken. Horgy, apologise and, Budget, calm down. Hang it, I’ve never come across someone with such a short fuse.’ The collective of dwarves turned as one to glare at Smegly. ‘Sorry,’ he corrected himself smartly. ‘I meant not long - someone with such a “not long” fuse.’
Horgy mumbled an apology along the lines of ‘Frrimph…flub…didn’t mean rmmph…whatever,’ and Budget, under strict instructions to do so, calmed down.
After the conflict, Master Smegly introduced the quest members to the dwarves and explained the importance and direction of the quest.
Suitably impressed ‘The seven dwarves’ had led the team to their hideout, a nice dry cave set far back from the trail and supplied by its own spring of fresh running water, an absolute luxury in this area. They pooled their supplies, started a fire and began cooking up a decent sized meal of boiled ham, onion and potatoes. Meanwhile Biggest was distributing industrial quantities of Blutop to the happy-go-lucky dwarves who were blithely quaffing brimful mugs of it in the fashion that only dwarves can do and still stay standing.
After their meal everyone sat around the fire and Smegly gave the dwarves the, much interrupted by other team members, full tale of the quest thus far. There was much oohing and aahing and other sundry vocalisations of an impressed and surprised manner. That is until they got to the part where Istar and Sitar had expressed their theory of their wayward son’s alleged abduction and extraction to the ruined city of Sloth by a viscous gang of dwarven thugs and ne’er do wells.
‘Hah,’ interjected Budget.
‘Hah, what?’ asked Smegly.
‘Hah what no ways,’ said Budget and there was much nodding, hah hahring and miscellaneous snorts of disbelief amongst the other homogenisation of dwarves.
‘Hah what no ways what?’ persisted Smegly.
‘Hah what no ways what who would dare,’ replied Budget. ‘To attempt to take Legles prisoner whilst he’s under arms would be liken unto throwing down the gauntlet to a standing militia of a battalion of dyed-in-the-wool, death-before-dishonour, fight to the last man standing, bowmen of the gods. In short - the boy is a one-elf orgy of destruction. A warmonger of note. Mars, Ares, Odin and Bellona all rolled into one longbow-toting-keen-shooting-holier-than-thou-and-deadlier-than-the-plague son of a bitch. Frankly we’re all terrified of him. Everyone is, well anyone who isn’t brain dead.’ Budget shuddered and took a long, long pull of Blutop. The rest of the dwarves huddled a little closer together.
‘Are you’s saying dat this boy is bad?’ asked Biggest.
There was a collective shaking of Lilliputian craniums. ‘Not bad,’ said Budget. ‘Good. Excruciatingly, brain numbingly good. The most moral, straight talking, upright and honest being one could ever hope not to meet. A veritable saint.’
Smegly afforded Budget a puzzled glance. ‘There seems to be some sort of essential dichotomy here. Bad - problem. Good - no problem. Why’s everyone scared of this chap?’
A nervous dwarvish scuffling ensued. ‘What if you’re not good?’ Asked Budget.
‘Well, what?’ voiced Cabbie.
‘If you’re not good - then he becomes bad,’ whispered Budget as he looked shiftily around the cave.
Cabbie shook his head. ‘Sorry?’
Budget nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘Yes?’
‘Sorry’ repeated Budget. ‘You will be.’
‘Will be what.’
‘Sorry,’ repeated Budget vehemently. ‘If you’re bad you will be sorry.’ He wrung his hands. ‘Let me explain - Legles considers himself to be the elfsonification of virtue, rectitude, purity and chastity. He oozes prudence, undebauchedness and nobility. He sees himself as the font from which all honour springs. Unfortunately what he doesn’t have is patience, tolerance or sympathy. In fact he is an impatient, intolerant, unsympathetic, deaf-minded pain in the proverbial. In short,’ he glanced quickly at the other dwarves, ‘if you’ll pardon the expression, good colleagues, he is an immature spoilt brat with trumped-up ideas of his own nobility and the skill of Mars to back it up, although…’ Budget shrugged, ‘he can be as charming as all hell if he’s getting his own way. Or so I’ve heard.’
‘So what do you think has happened to him then?’ asked Smegly.
The dwarves held a short (sorry - ‘not long’) confab amidst much nodding of heads, gesticulating of arms and voicing of opinions. After they had seemed to reach some sort of agreement in principal as to what had happened Budget turned back to Smegly.
‘There’s only one other gang of any substance this side of Sloth, a group of dwarves that call themselves ‘the band of twenty,’ and we’re all in agreement that, if they inadvertently attempted to rob Legles, the ones left alive will have gladly handed over the burdens of leadership to him. By now they’re probably all back at their hideout in Sloth.’
‘No problem,’ said Smegly. ‘You can show us the way there, we’ll pick him up and be on our way.’
The dwarves laughed as if Master Smegly was making a joke. ‘You can’t just pick up Legles if he doesn’t want to go. He’ll say that you’ve been not good, and then he’ll get bad and that will be the end of it.’
Smegly chuckled. ‘Gentledwarves, a word of advice. Remember - no matter how bad someone is there is always, always someone worse - and usually that someone is me.’
The quest members, remembering the casual way that the master had ordered Biggest to break Munge the farmer’s fingers, nodded briskly in agreement. ‘Right, folks,’ continued Smegly. ‘Let’s all get some shut-eye; we’ve got a long day ahead of us tomorrow.’
Chapter 21
It wasn’t much of a plan. Captain Bravad would have been the first one to admit to that, but given the limited recourses they had available to them, it was the best that they could come up with.
He and Mr. Tipstaff had decided to round up every retired soldier, hopefully still alive, although this was not essential, that had ever served in the king’s army. The old, the lame, the sick and the crippled. If they could bear arms then by gods they would be volunteering, once again, for active duty. And then the captain would cry havoc and let slip…the venerable, grey-crowned, hoary old dogs of war.
And soon Captain Bravad, Mr Tipstaff and the Methuselaen mongrels of menace would be marching to meet Bil’s malcontent minions of madness and massacre most of them. (Maybe?)
Biggest and the seven dwarves jogged on ahead of the cab. At first Budget had deliberately tried to lead them in a contrary direction to the ruined city of Sloth, his nervous disposition regarding Legles still apparently outweighing his fear of Smegly. The master had remedied this by taking Budget aside and looking deeply into his eyes. After only a sho…‘not-long’ pause, he was on his knees begging Smegly to stop looking at him. Subsequently he had informed the dwarven collection that, although Legles was definitely one scary elf, Master Smegly was worse. Far, far, far worse. The rest of the day’s travel was at pace, in the correct direction and devoid of incident.
That night they stopped to pitch camp in a relatively rock-free area next to the twisting track that they had been following. There was no fresh water, little usable firewood and they had come across no edible game during the day’s journeying. They dined on cheese and hard bread, drank a goodly share of Blutop and curled up into their respective sleeping rugs after Plob had erected an ‘earth, protect, shield wall’ around the camp just in case.
The next morning they awoke with the sun, finished off the last of the rations and hit the road. Around midday they came across a small herd of scrawny unpleasant looking rock-goats. The dwarves insisted that they were good eating so Biggest threw a handful of boulders at the herd, stunning three of them which allowed the dwarves to swarm over and use their battleaxes to administer the necessary coup de grace. They skinned and dressed the animals where they had fallen, threw them onto the back of the cab and continued on their trek on the track to the tumbledown town of Sloth.
That night they were all in higher spirits as they sat around the campfire drinking Blutop and watching the rock-goats sizzle and splutter over the flames. Dreenee and two of the dwarves, Bin and Box, had conducted a successful search for wild potatoes and these sat in a pot of boiling salted water that had been placed on three rocks at the side of the fire.
Smegly re-lit his cigar and stared into the flames, lost in contemplation. ‘The quest begins to gain weight,’ he said thoughtfully.
Dreenee immediately twisted around in an attempt to look at her perfect posterior. ‘What do you mean? Do my buttocks look large in this?’ she asked with a look of consternation as she adjusted her skirt.
‘Yeah,’ grinned Cabbie, ‘you’d better take it off.’ There was a chorus of hur hur hurs from the dwarven collective followed quickly by a refrain of sorrys when Dreenee turned and impaled them all to the floor with one of her sharpest glares.
‘I don’t mean weight as in mass,’ explained Smegly. ‘I mean weight as in momentum. Things are beginning to gain inertia and we must take care lest we lose control. We started as two, are now thirteen and I am without doubt that our numbers will soon begin to swell beyond all of our imaginings. All the signs begin to portend in that direction.’
‘I see,’ said Horgy. ‘What signs?’
‘Oh, you know,’ answered Master Smegly. ‘Signs. All signs in general. A bit of this, a little of that. There’s just a feeling of overall portentousness in the air. You get my meaning?’
Horgy looked doubtful. ‘I don’t know. It’s a bit like saying “they say”.’
‘Who says?’ asked Cabbie.
‘They,’ repeated Horgy. ‘They say that drinking too much is bad for you. You know? Them.’
‘Oh,’ acknowledged Cabbie. ‘My Aunty Flem and Uncle Norgam. I didn’t know that you knew them.’
Horgy shook his head. ‘I don’t.’
Well how come you know what they say about drink?’
‘It’s just an expression. You must have heard it before. Here’s another example - They say that sex rots your brain, or they say that…’
‘Yes, yes,’ interrupted Cabbie. ‘I’ve known them for years and years. I know all those things. Personally I think that Aunty Flem and Uncle Norgam are a brace of fruitcakes, I don’t care what they say. I’ve never cared what they say, and I don’t care how famous they are. Up theirs anyway.’ Cabbie got up and walked off in a huff mumbling they say, they say, under his breath.
‘What did I say?’ asked Horgy in a baffled voice.
‘Don’t worry about Cabbie,’ Smegly reassured him. ‘He’ll get over it.’
After a prolonged group effort at emptying Biggest’s magic flask they all crawled into their sleeping rugs at a later than usual hour and, after a short while, a choir of snores and snorts sounded as the newly enlarged team let fall the shadow of their eyes.
The next morning there were more than a few Blutop-induced groans and head-clutchings as they struck camp and started the day’s tramp towards the ruined city of Sloth. After a couple of hours both Biggest and the dwarves had run off the effects of the cane spirit and they decided to stop for a break to brew some tea and take a much-needed rest.
After the brief respite they were back on their feet again and continued their Slothward trot. In the late afternoon of that day they came across the first of the vestiges of the age-old ruined city.
The sprawling collection of ancient broken-down buildings had existed in its wrecked state for as long as any remembered history. Stumps of once-proud structures and vast megaliths of rubble containing peculiar twisted dowels of steel and what appeared to be blocks of grey stone still showed evidence of some terrible orgy of destruction that had once been visited on the past thriving metropolis.
Plob, who had never been to Sloth before, was utterly overawed by the size of the area of devastation. ‘How big is this place?’ he asked the party in general.
‘It carries on for days,’ answered Budget. ‘When you get closer to the centre, some of the buildings are still partially erect.’
There was a smattering of hur hur hurs from the other dwarves that was quickly silenced by a shut up from Dreenee.
‘Some say it was some bizarre form of natural structure, like a mountain, volcano, something like that,’ added Cabbie. ‘Some of the erec…still standing buildings at the centre are simply too large to have been man-made. One can tell by the rubble that some were well over two hundred feet in height.’
‘They’re man-made,’ assured Smegly. ‘People lived in them, thousands upon thousands of families. Then there was a great war, a terrible conflict that grew and fed on itself until finally it claimed the lives of almost every living being in the land. Mankind almost destroyed itself - almost.’ He shivered and pulled his cloak a little closer around him. ‘Come, good people, let us start our search for a likely camp site. Tomorrow we will begin our investigation for Legles and his merry band of alleged captors.’
Captain Bravad was by nature both a patient and a stoical man but even his rock-solid endurance was starting to fray around the edges. The plan, although not perfect, definitely seemed workable. What the captain and Mr Tipstaff hadn’t figured on was the fact that when a soldier retired he usually moved away from the big city, took his pension and purchased a small place on the coast, or in the mountains, or somewhere else. Anywhere else it seemed but where they were now needed.
