by Craig Zerf
Hugo gave the offer a little thought and then agreed. ‘OK.’
‘Sorry,’ added Terry.
‘Me too,’ admitted Hugo as they left the building together.
The next to useless guards at the castle gate didn’t even bother to check the contents of the donkey drawn cart that was driven rumbling across the moat bridge by two old men. But, even if they had had the wherewithal to do their guardly duties they would not have stopped the cart as it carried nothing that they wouldn’t have welcomed into the castle, in fact, quite to the contrary.
The tough looking old men directed the hugely laden cart to the centre of the courtyard, clambered stiffly off the wagon, and pulled back the tarp to reveal…every gourmand’s dream, enough for a gathering of gourmands, a group, a pack. A veritable herd. The cart was fully, and more than fully loaded, with hams, cheeses, breads, pickles, sweetmeats and, most importantly of all, gallons and gallons of Wegren Bumbles special medicinal cherry brandy. A drink so potent, so heady and intoxicating as to make Biggest’s Blutop and mead blend as milk of a mother to her child. In short - brain fryingly, eyeball boilingly, synapse short circuitly, mind blowingly strong.
Berm ‘Brick-wall’ Odger and Pactrus ‘Pace man’ Petracis calmly walked out of the castle, pointed out the overflowing wagon to the guards, and left. On their way back to their prescribed meeting point they met up with Spectal Petreson, Wogler Manger, Partlee Nobee and Pups, all of whom had been spreading the news to the two hundred and fifty or so of Bil’s minions camped outside the castle walls that the king had supplied free grub and booze to his worthy followers and they were to report immediately to the keep in order to partake in the revelry. Before the group of iron-hard ancients had got more than fifty yards the initial shouts of rowdy appreciation could already be heard stridently ringing out from the castle.
The old warriors walked into the makeshift camp in the woods that they had constructed but a few days previously and made their way straight to the captain’s bivouac.
‘First stage successfully completed, sir,’ bawled out Brick-wall as he came to a halt in front of Bravad.
‘Excellent, men,’ complimented the captain. ‘Well done. Now all take a well-deserved rest for a couple of hours and then, when those foul denizens are all thoroughly hiccius-doccius and all sheets to the wind, we will proceed with the plan part two.’
The men all retired to their respective bivouacs and within moments, in the manner that only the experienced soldier can, they were asleep.
Chapter 24
The rotten-egg smell of the swamps drifted around indolently in the sluggish bog breeze that seemed to be there merely to transport the putrid miasma from one olfactory organ to the next. Initially Dreenee had bound a perfumed handkerchief about her nose but, after endless masked-bandit type jokes from Cabbie, had decided that the smell was preferable to the driver’s eternal maddening attempts at humour.
They had entered the swamps the day before and had yet to see any living thing besides the dense clouds of water midges and the nocturnal swarms of mosquitoes that seemed to be as big as wine bottles. The dwarves who had been in swamps before, although not in the badlands, had built big fires at night and then had stacked piles of the leafy green branches of the horsepiss bush, aptly named after the smell it emitted whilst being burnt, on top of the flames. The smoke and the odour were atrocious but at least it did keep the man-eating vampyre mozzies at bay. Plob was convinced that if any of them did get bitten they would wake up in the morning looking like a bloodless human-shaped prune.
They stopped in the early afternoon and snatched a quick lunch of cheese and ham which Plob had to force down as the constant stench of the marsh gas seemed to permeate the taste of all of the foodstuffs and leave one with a slightly bitter taste in the back of the throat.
Later that afternoon they saw a few smudges of smoke off in the distance and so, that night when they pitched camp, not only did Smegly request an ‘air, alarm’ spell from Plob but also insisted that they draw up a roster to keep a physical watch with at least three bodies on each shift.
Fortunately the night passed without incident and the next morning, as they struck camp, Plob began to postulate that there were no inhabitants of Grumble at all apart from the palpable constant stench and the teeming quantities of predatory insects. He didn’t know it but, that very evening, he was to be proved conclusively and terrifyingly wrong.
Raven-black, sombrous and besmirched. The fuliginous avatar of Evil perched on his throne of birch and leather and stared into the fresh new blood that filled his bone-wrought scrying vessel. He had seen all and was impressed. As far as being evil goes he was definitely the number one diabolist, but then he was none other than ‘Typhon the Dark’ servant of ‘the Father of all lies’ and he had been perfecting and honing his odiousness over many centuries and even had the evil cackle down pat. Not that simple to get right the old evil cackle, it can so easily come across like a bit-part actor in a second-rate play, hackneyed and overdone. Not so with Typhon. When the dark one did the cackle you could feel it, fear coursed through your body and overrode all your senses, stomachs cramped, sweat glands overproduced and saliva glands shut down completely.
When it came to bad then Typhon the dark was the real deal. But this Bil de Plummer wasn’t all bad (or good) either. He showed real promise, mused Typhon. A new kid on the block, but look at the death and destruction he had already caused. Definitely one to keep an eye on. In fact, thought Typhon, one might even go as far as to lend old Bil a bit of a hand, perhaps get rid of these tiresome bloody questarians who were undeniably putting a spoke in the wagon wheel of evil and who had conveniently placed themselves smack bang in the middle of Typhon’s very own realm, the swamps of Grumble.
Decision made, the dark one picked up the bone vessel, drank the gory contents therein in one long gooey protein-imbibing gulp and howled for his werewolf at arms.
The captain and his grizzly detachment jogged creakily through the night towards the castle of King Bil, their various paraphernalia of war bouncing and jangling on their backs and belts. Apart from the usual axes, swords, longbows and daggers of their chosen profession, each of the men carried also a length of pitch-soaked hempen rope and two extra quivers of arrows. As they approached the castle it was apparent that hardly any of Bil’s twisted followers were still in their encampment outside of the keep and, as they jogged through the all but empty campground Mr Tipstaff took Spectal Petreson and Wogler Manger and broke away from the group to do a quick search of the area in order to flush out any bad hats that might still be malingering.
As it happens they found only a couple of camp followers, one with a child in tow, whom they told to vacate the area as there would be no chance of any future business due to the fact that their clientele was about to drop off rather seriously, owing to a sudden outbreak of being dead.
After the area had been thoroughly scoured, the detachment deposited the bulk of the weapons into a vacated tent and, carrying only their pitch-soaked ropes and a selection of daggers for just in case, made their way stealthily down to the moat and slid into the water.
They swam slowly through the midnight wet until they were under the bridge and then , carefully, extracted the ropes from their canvas waterproof bags and each man selected a pylon around which he tightly wound his rope. The captain, who had a longer one (hur hur hur) than the others, linked his hemp from one pitch-roped wooden pile to the other, effectively joining them all together. Satisfied with their work, they swam from under the wooden bridge, clambered out of the dark water and made their dripping way back to the tent, being guarded by Pups that held their weapons.
After they had suited up again, Mr Tipstaff took a small tinderbox out of the waxed pouch on his belt and, on the second attempt, put light to a yard-long fire arrow that the captain was holding. As the arrow burst into flame the captain notched it, drew back, took careful aim and loosed it at the bridge.
The arrow flew true to form a
nd thudded into one of the pitch-wrapped wooden pylons. Nothing seemed to happen for what seemed like hours but in realty was seconds and then, the pile broke into a smoky orange flame.
The fire spread quickly, via the connecting rope that the captain had strung up, from one pylon to the next and, within minutes, the entire bridge had become a fiery midnight conflagration. The drunken revellers in the castle were by now so far in their cups that they didn’t, not a one of them, notice a thing.
After perhaps ten more minutes the bridge collapsed, unhurriedly and with great aplomb, into the moat. Bil and his minions were now rather effectively sealed up in the king’s own castle. The detachment quickly split up, bows at the ready and extra quivers at hand, to cover the sally ports and any other possible points of exit for, as the captain had told them, none of the followers of the insane one must leave the castle alive.
Wraiths. Doppelgangers. Co-walkers. Call them what you may (no - actually don’t call them ‘what-you-may’ because that sounds really stupid. Call them wraiths, doppelgangers or co-walkers then, if you have to, and you do because that’s what they’re actually called). A person’s double usually only seen just prior to or just after their death. Creepy as all hell. And there were hundreds of them. Dead counterfeits of every member of the team. Crowds of cadaverous Cabbies. Droves of dead Dreenees. Lashings of lifeless Legles’ and species of Stygian Smeglys. Misty, ethereal and, above all, dead, and in various stages of advanced decay.
Typhon the dark had instructed Lycan, his werewolfian sergeant at arms to gather all but the most pathetic of spectres to him and, with more than a little help from his pandemonic master, the King of Evil, he had made them flesh and then transformed all into the ranks of rotting wraiths that stood arrayed before him. With the promise of everlasting life if they succeeded in their ghoulish endeavour he cried havoc and let slip the demonic doubles of war.
Bil was well pleased. It’s not every king that gets cartloads of epicurean goodies from secret admirers. Oh yes, he was a good king. Strict but fair. And obviously well loved by the general populous judging from the size of the gift. He was a little worried though as, although gifts were good, they could perhaps be hinting at the fact that he was perhaps being a smidgeon to not strict enough. Spare the rod and spoil the child. No, Bil would not want to be thought of as a pushover, a dupe, a mooch, a gull, a sap, an easy mark. No, this simply wouldn’t do. How dare they. Him, King Bil, a pigeon. A sitting duck. He would show them. Never again would the populous of this execrable little town take him for a patsy or a Simple Simon.
The king started gnawing on his already bleeding and pre-gnawed knuckles, eyes flicking around the room in a little paranoid ocular jig. They were all out to get him. But he knew. And they didn’t know that he knew. And he wouldn’t let on to them that he knew that they didn’t know that he knew. And what made it really funny, what made Bil cackle out loud (unfortunately it did come across like a bit-part actor in a second-rate play, hackneyed and overdone, but then Bil had only been at this evil thing lark for an infinitesimally small amount of time when compared to Typhon the Dark so he could probably be indulged the odd bit of hammy overacting). Anyway - what made it really hilarious was the fact that they didn’t know that…they knew that he…they hadn’t…They were out to get him. All of them. Out - To - Get - Him. Blood from the gnawed knuckle leaked out of the side of King Bil’s mouth and dripped unheeded onto the knee of his blue boiler suit forming a dark star-shaped stain, and Bil continued his insane musings and started to plan his revenge on them. All of them.
They came at them from out of the dark, slobbering and suppurating and screeching out their deep hatred of the dead for the living. And Plob was terrified. Proper short of breath, whimpering quietly and coldly sweating and horrified fear.
There is something hugely unmanning about fighting against a rotting dead replica of yourself and, to make matters infinitely worse, the doppelgangers were almost impossible to kill. If you hacked off a leg they continued crawling after you. Lop off a head and the decaying body would carry on stumbling around groping for a victim. Luckily they appeared to be incapable of coherent thought and it had not occurred to them to all attack at once. If they did it would be a bloodbath of titanic proportions.
At first Plob had surrounded the team with an ‘earth, protect, shield wall’ spell but, as they all sat and waited behind the protective magical veil, more and more of the obscenely rotting wraiths had arrived so, eventually, Master Smegly had told them all to prepare for battle, asked Plob to drop the wall, and they launched themselves at them. Plob was unable to use any of his attack spells as the combatants were too intermingled and he was afraid of damaging his quest companions.
Legles had given up using his bow and reverted to his broadsword after he had shot one wraith, a doppelganger of Cabbie’s, so full of arrows that it looked like a quiver and still it had continued lurching towards him.
The dwarves, with their widebladed battleaxes were achieving the most success. Although they couldn’t kill the already dead they were reducing them to small enough pieces to ignore or at least easily kick away if they got too close. Cabbie was also achieving a modicum of triumph as he hacked and slashed away at a group of his own doppelgangers. Slashing off arms and legs and shouting things like ‘so that’s what I’d look like if I lost weight’ and ‘oh look. I’m completely legless.’
But, try as they might, they were losing. Even Cabbie’s irritating witticisms had dried up and they were being forced closer and closer together as they continued fighting, now almost back to back.
Master Smegly stood unarmed in the centre of the circle of questarians attempting various different air spells to repel the packs of lunging ghouls and, as Plob stepped forward to decapitate yet another putrescent parody of himself, the master cast an ‘air, freeze’ spell at the stumbling doppelganger. The wraith froze instantly and Plob’s massive overhand strike landed milliseconds after, smashing into the decaying co-walker’s head and shattering the deep frozen denizen of darkness into a thousand harmless little crystals.
‘Yes!’ Smegly pumped his fist into the air and did a little victory dance. ‘Come on, Plob,’ he shouted. ‘Quickly, to me. Let’s “air, freeze” these bygone bastards into oblivion.’
Plob and Smegly stood back to back casting ‘air, freeze’ spells for all their worth and the dwarves leapt forward, ancient battle cries on their lips, to deliver blow upon savage blow to the iced-up evils.
It wasn’t long before the area looked like an explosion in a meat packing plant. Tiny pieces of frozen and defrosting decomposing flesh covered the ground all about them but still the wraiths came.
The initial burst of passion with which Plob and Smegly had whipped their ‘air, freeze’ spells around was fast fading as their reserves of energy began to wane and some of the spells merely caused wafts of frigid ventilation as opposed to blasts of immobilising iciness.
Smegly suddenly started patting himself down as he frantically searched through his voluminous robes causing himself to look like an escapee from lice and flea farm as he dug and pulled at his clothing.
‘Aha!’ he shouted as he withdrew the small glittering cube-shaped spell enhancer that the masters master’s bloody hell etc. had given him during the brief sojourn at his strange ever changing abode. Once again he cast another ‘air, freeze’ spell but this time, as the enchantment was released, he tossed the enhancement cube high into the air above the team…
…and once, in a time long ago when beasts ruled the earth and man was still but an aspiration to a small, thin-skinned, clawless beast that ran on two legs but did have opposable thumbs, there came a cold. Aloof and unfeelingly did it march across the land destroying all that did suffer its arctic embrace. And the wheel of time turned with aching slowness and the small upright mammal that had since become man did survive. And, yea, he had invented fire and all and he was well chuffed with himself for he did not know that it was all pretty much downhill from there…
Chapter 25
‘And just who the hell is this?’ Enquired Terry in his usual touchy and obnoxious manner.
‘It’s the next obvious step in our ongoing, and thus far totally ineffectual, murder investigation,’ Hugo enlightened his partner. ‘May I introduce Madame Zelga – The psychic.’
‘No you may bloody well not,’ said Terry. ‘We’re police detectives, Hugo. Detectives. Not a couple of bleeding ghost-busters. Tell her to get on her bike. We’ve got work to do.’ He picked up a sheaf of loose papers and frantically banged them on the desk in a futile attempt to look suitably harassed and busy.
‘Come on, old chap. What have we got to lose? We’ve drawn a complete blank with the wrenchy thingy. All of the other leads have dried up. Frankly, as far as the case is concerned, we’re on the proverbial bones of our bums.’
Terry desperately tried to think of a reason to say no but, as Hugo had said, they were at the end of the road, investigation wise. ‘OK. Sit down, Mrs Zelga. Now what can we do to help you to help us?’
The first stages of the captain’s plan had worked exceedingly well. He had his small team of warriors, the minions of Bil were well trapped inside the castle and his detachment was of sufficient size to keep them there but, and this was a big but, he was now at a stalemate.
He estimated that the enemy had water and provisions enough for eight to ten weeks, he doubted whether he could keep his detachment tied to sentry duty for that long as they were basically on duty twenty-four-seven due to their small number. The next part of his plan had involved him and Mr Tipstaff getting together a civilian guard of some sort to help starve the minions out and, if sufficient could be convinced to join, perhaps even precipitate a full scale attack on the castle and drive Bil and his followers from this fair land.
