Scoundrels' Jig (The Chronicles of Eridia)

by J. S. Volpe

  * * *

  Lucifer Brown peered out through the foliage along the edge of the woods. Dead ahead was a hundred feet of open ground with not a spot of cover, and then a small guardhouse, in the window of which two of the King’s soldiers could be seen smoking and talking in the warm, flickering light of a fireplace. Past the guardhouse, the stone span of the River Road Bridge stretched away into darkness.

  He studied the layout of the area for a minute, then returned to the small clearing in which he had left Marcy and Mr. Alexander, Grandma Hecuba’s piebald stallion.

  “Well?” Marcy said.

  As he tightened Mr. Alexander’s saddle, Lucifer told the drone what he had seen.

  “Well,” Marcy said, “I suppose we shall have to find some other way to cross the river.”

  “Nah, we’ll just cross here.”

  “What?” Marcy’s voice was shrill with surprise. “How?”

  Lucifer shrugged. “We’ll just ride across.”

  “Are you kidding? You think we can just ride right across an open field in full view of two men with swords who are under orders not to let anyone cross the bridge? And don’t forget: It’s guarded at both ends. The gorgim at the other end of the bridge may well have weapons far worse than swords. For all we know, they might be hulking creatures with armor-plating and barbed tails, or even—”

  Lucifer lightly swatted the robot with the back of his hand. “Knock it off, willya? You’re making this a lot more complicated than it needs to be.”

  “Complicated? How about suicidal?”

  “You’re overreacting. We just ride across and that’s that.”

  “Are you truly so delusional that you think they won’t try to stop us?”

  Lucifer shrugged. “Sure, they’ll try, but trying’s not the same as actually doing.”

  “By the galaxy, you are delusional.” Marcy sighed. “Captain Garlock would never have even considered an action like this.”

  Lucifer groaned. “Yeah, well, in case you hadn’t noticed, I’m not Captain Garlic.”

  “It’s Garlock, oaf. And, yes, alas, I have noticed. Captain Garlock was sane, for one thing.”

  “Yeah, yeah. He’s also dead. And I’m not.”

  “Unfortunately for me.”

  “You know, you’re awfully snotty for a friend drone, or whatever it is you call yourself.”

  “The proper term is ‘companion drone.’ And, yes, my rather snarky attitude is an unusual feature, I admit. But I was made to Captain Garlock’s specifications.”

  “Why would he want you to be so bitchy? Was Captain Warlock some kinda masochist or something?”

  “Garlock, imbecile, though I suspect you know his name well enough and are simply trying to bait me. As for the poor Captain’s reasons, he never actually said so, but I believe he chose my personality modules as well as my voice to match those of a woman he once loved…and lost.”

  “Oh, he was one of those.”

  “One of what?”

  “One of those guys who broods over women.” Lucifer shook his head in disgust.

  “What, pray tell, is wrong with a little romanticism?”

  “It ain’t romanticism; it’s loserdom. I haven’t met a woman yet who was worth brooding over.”

  “Perhaps because doing so requires a depth of feeling and soul you do not possess.”

  “More like a depth of wussiness. It’s unmanly to get all mawkish over some chick.”

  “‘Some chick’? She was the love of his life. Wait, let me guess: You don’t believe in love.”

  Lucifer shrugged. “It’s not something I really think about. Love won’t help me get rich and famous, so who cares?”

  “Spoken like a true simpleton.”

  “Knock it off with the insults. I wish I had some way to change those personality models, or whatever you called ‘em.”

  “Modules. And I thank the stars you don’t; otherwise I daresay you’d turn me into your brain-dead yes-drone.”

  “Yeah, well, I can’t do that, so I guess I’m stuck with you the way you are.”

  “Unless you order me to obey another person.”

  “Now why would I want to do that?”

  “You yourself must admit that we are hardly compatible. I am intelligent, insightful, wise. You are…well, not.”

  “You’re a bitch, is what you are.” He grinned, then jabbed his index finger against the casing above Marcy’s optical sensor. “But what you are is my bitch, and I have no intention of letting you go.”

  For once Marcy had nothing to say.

  Lucifer climbed into the saddle and picked up the reins. Marcy floated up next to his left shoulder.

  “It’s not too late to change your mind, you know,” it said. “There must be plenty of other ways to get across the river and into the country beyond.”

  “Sure there are. But none of ‘em would be so quick. Or so dramatic.”

  “Dramatic?”

  “Yeah, dramatic. I gotta keep things interesting for my autobiography.”

  “Your what?”

  “My autobiography.”

  “You are delusional.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I’ve seen you write. You have only the most rudimentary grasp of spelling and grammar. You can barely even spell your own name.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Yes it is. More than once I’ve seen you start to write your first name ‘L-U-F’ then cross it out.”

  Lucifer just waved a dismissive hand at the robot. “Doesn’t matter. I’ll just get one of those scribe guys to help me out with it.”

  “What makes you think a scribe would even talk to you?”

  He opened his mouth to reply, then froze. His eyes narrowed, and he gave Marcy a sidelong look. “You know what? I think you’re just trying to stall me.”

  “That’s preposterous.”

  “No. No, I don’t think it is. I mean, you’re programmed to be faithful to your master, despite your snarky banter, right?”

  “That…is correct.”

  “So you’d naturally want to protect your master from harm, right?”

  “I…” Marcy sighed. “Yes.”

  “So you’re just trying to keep me from rushing into what you think is gonna be great harm.”

  “‘Think’? There’s no thinking about it. It’s suicide.”

  “I keep telling you, I’m—”

  “Yes, yes. Destined for greatness. So you have said several thousand times since our first unfortunate (for me, at any rate) meeting. But destiny, at least in the sense that you are using the term, does not exist. It—”

  “Sure it exists. I’ll prove it right now.”

  He kicked at Mr. Alexander’s sides. The horse shot forward, burst from the woods in a rain of leaves, and raced across the grassy clearing between the woods and the east end of the bridge.

  “Gah!” Marcy cried, streaking forward so fast it was a silver blur. When it drew parallel to Lucifer, it slowed to match his horse’s speed. “I beg you to reconsider!”

  Lucifer said nothing. He just faced forward, eyes fixed on the bridge up ahead.

  Marcy needn’t have worried. By the time the two guards in the guardhouse had heard the horse, determined where it was coming from, gotten up, drawn their swords, and charged outside, Lucifer was already past them and on the bridge.

  “Okay,” Marcy said as they shot across the bridge, leaving the two shouting human guards far behind. The other side of the bridge was still far enough away to be invisible in the darkness, but a small round yellow light, no bigger at the moment than a firefly, attested to the location of the gorgim’s guardhouse window. “I concede that getting past the first guardhouse was relatively simple. But surely you cannot believe that you will be able to get past the second guardhouse so easily.”

  “Destiny, my little metal lady,” Lucifer shouted over the wind and the echoing clatter of the horse’s hooves on the stone bridge. “I told you: Things hav
e a way of falling into place for me. Don’t worry. I’ll get through it. I have to.”

  The circle of light grew larger and larger, and then the light was briefly blotted out as a dark shape passed before it.

  “They’ve heard us!” Marcy said.

  A large rectangle of light appeared next to the circle of light, and two hulking figures stepped through it and then disappeared into the darkness outside the guardhouse.

  “Oh, no.”

  They continued speeding forward. Gradually a pair of humanoid shapes took form amid the shadows at the end of the bridge. The light from the open guardhouse doorway glimmered faintly on the long swords the shapes held.

  “Oh, this is going to end badly,” moaned Marcy.

  The figures grew clearer. One was tall and muscular and looked almost human except for the fact that his head was three times the size of a normal human head and sported a gigantic grinning mouth filled with teeth the size of railroad spikes. The other was broad and thick, with velvety gray skin, three pairs of huge breasts on its bare chest, and no facial features except for a pair of red eyes and a wide, lipless mouth. Both of the gorgim were watching the approaching horse, man, and drone with the gleefully belligerent grins of beings who know they’re about to enter a battle they’ll easily win.

  Mr. Alexander continued speeding forward. The impending confrontation was less than twenty seconds away. Then fifteen. Then ten.

  And then there was a flash of lightning and a boom of thunder and the heavens unleashed a downpour so blinding that the gorgim vanished from sight behind curtains of rain.

  Lucifer angled Mr. Alexander slightly to the right and zipped past the gorgim, who were peering through the rain in search of him.

  “Ha!” Lucifer cried at Marcy as the west end of the bridge receded behind them. Above the hiss of the rain, the two gorgim could be heard yelling at each other. The sound of their voices grew fainter and fainter by the second. “Didn’t I tell you? Didn’t I say everything would fall into place? I’m destined, I tell you.”

  After a long pause Marcy said, “Coincidence.” Its voice was small, almost a mumble.

  “Oh, come on! Even you have to admit by now that things always work out in my favor. The Twelve have plans for me. I’m going places.”

  Since it was dark and raining and the horse was going at an all-out gallop, no one noticed that the ground up ahead dropped away at a sixty-degree angle until Mr. Alexander tumbled right down it. Lucifer flew from the saddle, and both horse and rider pinwheeled down the slick, muddy slope, crashing through bushes, flattening small trees, plowing up mud and slime and grass until they had become the core of a wet, brown avalanche cascading toward the bottom of the slope two hundred feet away. Halfway down, Mr. Alexander slammed head-first into a rock that jutted like an eroded fang from the side of the slope, and with a loud, sickening crack, the horse’s stream of frightened whinnies abruptly ceased.

  Two limp bodies slid to a stop at the base of the slope and lay there unmoving. Marcy, who had been left far behind by man and horse’s rapid descent, flew as fast as it could to catch up.

  “Sir?” it said, stopping above Lucifer’s still form. He lay face-up, covered from head to toe in glistening brown mud. His eyes were closed, though Marcy noted that he was still breathing. “Can you hear me?”

  For a moment there was no response. Then his eyes opened, the whites and the blue irises looking impossibly bright in the midst of all the mud.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “Fine.”

  He stood up, swayed a little, then looked down at Mr. Alexander. The horse’s eyes were wide open, but it wasn’t breathing. Its head was twisted nearly one hundred and eighty degrees around, and the watery mud around its muzzle was red with blood.

  “Damn, he’s dead,” Lucifer said. For a moment he actually looked rattled.

  Then he shrugged and said, “Ah, once I get that gold, I can pay old Ms. Hecuba back and then some, right?”

  Marcy stared at him for a second, tilted itself down to look at the horse, then righted itself and looked at Lucifer again.

  “I admit,” it said, “I find your eternal optimism rather astonishing, flying as it does in the face of all evidence to the contrary.”

  “Hey, I’m alive, aren’t I?”

  Marcy sighed. “For now.”