The Adventures of Duncan & Mallory: The Beginning

by Robert Asprin

  Mallory nodded. “That is odd.” He shrugged then said, “If there’s any oil for the running lights I didn’t find it, so we best get as close to the bank as we can and lay anchor for the night.”

  Duncan chuckled. “That’s weigh, Mal.”

  “What?”

  “It’s weigh anchor.”

  “I don’t see where that makes any more sense than lay.”

  Duncan nodded, thinking he had a point, and steered as close to the bank as he dared. Then he cut the power to the paddle wheel and dropped anchor for the night.

  “How far do you think we got?” Duncan asked the dragon, who was busy trying to figure out how to use the stove in the galley.

  Mallory shrugged. “No idea. Tomorrow we should look for a town. Go ashore and find out where we are. Maybe get a map of some kind.”

  “It wouldn’t hurt to get a broom and some cleaning supplies. Maybe some cots and bedding and.…”

  Mallory stopped him, raising his hand. “We can’t even buy a map until we find a game and get some more capital.”

  “You mean… You really gave him all our money?” Duncan said, not because he didn’t think the boat was worth it but because he couldn’t believe the dragon would allow himself to be penniless again.

  “I have five coins left. What can I say? He asked for four times what we had which… Well, the fact that he went down to what he did without even arguing means there really is something badly wrong with this boat.”

  “You just keep saying that, but we haven’t found anything yet. I still say maybe he stole the boat and the deed’s no good,” Duncan said.

  Mallory laughed. “Then the joke’s on him because I don’t care about the legalities of the deed. However that would explain why the boat has no name on the hull.” Mallory quit laughing. “It’s not our problem. We didn’t steal it and as they say, possession is nine tenths of the law. We have the boat. We have a deed that looks legal. No, my fear is that it’s nothing that simple, Dunc.”

  “I think today was our lucky day.”

  Just then a huge rat jumped out of one of the cabinets and ran across the floor. Duncan jumped, landing with his arms around Mallory’s neck and his feet on Mallory’s left shoulder. The rat ran all the way across the kitchen and climbed through a hole in the wall. Then looking out the window they could see it run across the deck, jump into the water, and start swimming for the shore.

  “See, now that couldn’t be good,” Mallory said, untangling Duncan from him.

  “The…the stove made it hot in here. He’s cooling off,” Duncan suggested.

  “Yes that’s it. He got too hot in this galley, which is merely warm, and dove into the ice-cold river to cool off,” Mallory said, shaking his head.

  “He was probably afraid of us, that’s all.” Duncan straightened himself in an effort to find the dignity he’d just lost, and then said, “Well I for one am glad he’s gone. I hate rats.”

  “Really? I never would have guessed. I’m not all that fond of them myself but the fact the rat didn’t want to stay on the boat isn’t a very good sign,” Mallory said as he put a pot of water on the stove and added some dried peas to it.

  When they first heard it—a low moaning sound like the wind only not quite—they looked at each other and both decided to ignore it. It was starting to get really dark and the only light was the fire coming through the narrow slits around the cook stove door.

  Duncan remembered how insistent the creature that had sold them the boat had been that they leave before nightfall and now he started to worry. “I saw a couple of oil lamps hanging in one of the bedrooms. I’m going to go get them and see if there is any fuel in them.”

  “Good idea,” Mallory said as he stirred the peas in the pot.

  Duncan found three lights and brought them to the galley. He carefully dumped all of the fuel into one lamp. It was only half full and he had no idea how long the oil would last but he hoped a long time. He glared at the dragon. “Can you see in the dark?”

  “Lots better than you can,” Mallory gloated.

  Just as they lost the last rays of the sun, Duncan got the lamp lit and the wick set so that it didn’t smoke. Outside the night was as black as coal; inside, the little bit of light shining through the holes in the stove and the pathetic light from the one lamp did nothing but cast eerie shadows everywhere.

  They had settled down on the floor to eat when that moaning sound came back. Only this time it was much louder. It didn’t go away, either. Every minute it sounded less and less like wind, and more and more like some dead thing come back from the grave to eat their faces.

  At least that’s what it sounded like to Duncan. “I don’t like the sound of that,” he said.

  “Probably just rigging rubbing with the movement of the boat and such,” Mallory said, but Duncan was pretty that wasn’t all there was to it.

  Then there was a loud, piercing scream and he jumped, dumping half his pea soup down the front of his shirt. He looked at Mallory expectantly.

  Mallory took in a deep breath and then let out a long, exasperated sigh. “See, I knew it. I knew it was too good to be true. Didn’t I say that?”

  “What on Overlap is that?” Duncan asked in a whisper.

  “It sounds like a water demon—nasty, pompous little creatures with just enough magic to make themselves really annoying. They attach themselves to boats or docks, cause nothing but grief, and are impossible to get rid of. If that weren’t bad enough, they’re always tearing stuff up. That’s probably why there is nothing left on the boat. If the previous owner had left anything in here, the demon would have torn it up.”

  “Is it dangerous?”

  “Probably.”

  “Have you…have you seen one before?”

  “No, but I’ve read about them and heard lots of stories. Face it. Most of the life on this planet lives on or near the river. It was just a matter of time till we ran into one. Of course it might have been nice to have had to deal with one on someone else’s boat.”

  Duncan carefully put his pan of soup down, gulped and looked at Mallory. “What should we do?”

  “Hope it lives on rats,” Mallory shrugged.

  “Seriously, Mallory, should we abandon ship?”

  “How? Jump in the ice cold water and swim to the shore? And let us not forget that we just sank every coin we have into this boat.” Mallory looked up then and lowered his voice. “I think the best thing is to just ignore it.” The next shriek was louder than the first, but Mallory just kept eating his soup.

  Duncan couldn’t even think about eating, which showed how terrified he was. “You spent all my money on a boat with a demon living on it!”

  “Our money. We’re partners, remember?”

  “My money, money I worked for. I was beat up by a monkey, I danced mostly naked. I trained creatures that wanted nothing better than to tear my face off…”

  “It’s a perfectly good boat.”

  “With a demon on it! We’re doomed. It’s all over. I was so young!”

  “Quit being so dramatic. I don’t know why you’re making such a fuss. I told you there had to be something seriously wrong with this boat. You’re the one that said, ‘How bad could it be?’ Well it could be this bad.”

  The thing screamed again and this time the hair stood on the back of Duncan’s neck. He found himself scooting closer and closer to Mallory until he was leaning against his right side.

  “When you say little, Mallory…how little?” Duncan asked in a whisper.

  “Oh not more than a couple of feet tall at the most.”

  Duncan started to relax then remembered that he’d been nearly drowned by creatures not much bigger than that and nearly killed by a tiny monkey.

  “What sort of magic?”

  “Mostly popping-up magic,” Mallory said conversationally.

  “Popping-up magic?”

  “Yep. One minute nothing and the next minute poof! There it is. They can start out one place and pop up so
meplace else.”

  Duncan didn’t like the sound of that. “Why aren’t you afraid?”

  “Because there’s something both you and obviously the fellow who sold us this boat don’t know about water demons that I do.”

  “I don’t know anything that you didn’t just tell me.”

  The shrieking had gotten louder so Duncan grabbed his sword and unsheathed it.

  “Careful or you’ll cut yourself. Besides like I told you, he can pop. Even a trained swordsman…”

  “I’m trained,” Duncan said loudly, hoping he might intimidate the demon.

  “All right then, even a good swordsman wouldn’t be able to strike him before he moved.”

  “How do we get rid of it?”

  “We can burn the boat up. That’s about the only way. See, he’s permanently attached to the ship. He can’t leave it and live. Once they attach themselves to something they’re rather like a barnacle. They become part of the boat or dock and it becomes part of them. That’s why they will tear up everything in a boat or on a dock but won’t do anything to damage the boat or dock. In other words he has no problem tearing up stuff but he takes care of his stuff.”

  “Great. So the boat is worth nothing.”

  “Not unless we could find a couple of chumps as eager as we were to buy it from us. Then get rid of them before the demon becomes active at night. You see, water demons are completely nocturnal,” Mallory said with a smile, and he didn’t seem to be upset at all.

  Till that moment Duncan would have thought that the one thing that might upset Mallory would be losing a bunch of money, but he still didn’t seem upset at all.

  “When’s it going to show itself?” Duncan asked in a whisper.

  “When it decides the shrieking isn’t scaring us enough.”

  “Great. If I act really scared will it stay away?”

  “I didn’t know you were acting and probably not.” Mallory shrugged.

  “How will we know where he is going to appear?” Duncan asked, swinging his sword around and making Mallory duck to avoid being hit.

  “Would you put that thing down before you hurt someone, namely me?”

  Duncan admitted he was more likely to hit one of them than the creature, or even to scare it. He set his sword down on the deck but well within arm’s reach. “How will we know where he is?” he asked again.

  “We won’t till he gets here, and then there will be a little popping sound, like pop corn sort of, only louder, and then there he’ll be,” Mallory said.

  Duncan listened as hard as he could, but all he could hear was the strange shrieking that seemed to be coming from the boiler. “It’s in there,” Duncan whispered, pointing at the door to the engine room. “Maybe we should sneak up on it and…”

  “What do you not understand about ‘he pops’? You can’t sneak up on it.”

  That certainly did nothing to put Duncan at ease. Just then he heard a loud pop-corn type noise, and then the creature was standing right in front of him. Duncan screamed, threw his hands over his face, and crawdad-crawled across the floor till his back hit a wall. He didn’t even think to grab his sword and now it was all the way across the room from him. So even if he’d thought so before, he now knew that he was no warrior.

  The creature laughed at him, and Duncan cringed.

  It looked like a little red and orange devil. It was sixteen inches tall with horns like a bull atop its head that were nearly as big as it was, and a long tail like a lion which twitched in the air—not unlike Mallory’s. It had little, beady red eyes, hardly any nose, and a mouth way too big for its face. Its huge mouth was filled with little pointed teeth.

  “What are you doing on my boat?” it growled in a voice so small Duncan got the impression he’d ruined his voice with all his screaming.

  Duncan looked at the water demon through a slit between his fingers. “Now look here, demon. This is our boat. We bought it. Show him the papers, Mal.”

  “You own nothing!” it thundered in a big, deep voice, very unlike the one he’d used only a moment before and more like what Duncan expected from a demon.

  Mallory cleared his throat, reached out a clawed finger, and tapped on the tiny demon’s shoulder. The demon turned and saw the dragon for the first time. Mallory snorted, blew a little puff of smoke in the demon’s face and said a low throaty, “Boo!”

  The tiny creature screamed in a shrill voice, then there was a loud pop and it was gone leaving a steaming pile of green yuk in its wake. Duncan looked at Mallory and the dragon smiled.

  “Come on man. Think about it. Dragon trumps water demon every time. No sword can catch him, but dragon fire is another story. All I’d have to do is fire up the furnace and we’d have fried demon on the deck.”

  He should have known Mallory had something up his sleeve. “Would it have killed you to just tell me that?” he snarled at the dragon.

  “No. But then I would have missed out on seeing you squirm and cry like a child.”

  “I didn’t cry.”

  “If you say so,” Mallory laughed, then yelled, “Foul beast! You get back here this minute and clean up your mess. Or the next time I see you I will cook you and feed you to this human.”

  With a pop the creature was back with a tiny mop and bucket, and it started cleaning up the mess with one watchful eye on the dragon.

  “Why don’t you just kill it and put it out of our misery?” Duncan asked in disbelief. The demon turned quickly, cut him a look, hissed, and Duncan cringed.

  “It has as much right to live as you or I do.”

  “Hello, it’s a demon.”

  “That’s just a name. Probably one of your kind gave it.”

  “Because it looks like it came from hell.”

  “It’s a creature just like you and me, whose ancestors were deposited on Overlap in the same way. Besides,” Mallory turned his attention to the demon, “you aren’t going to cause us any trouble are you? Terrorize us or tear up our stuff?”

  “What stuff?”

  The dragon glared at the demon and let a little puff of smoke curl out of his mouth. “Let me ask again. You aren’t going to be any sort of problem are you, demon?”

  The creature shook his head quickly. “I be good,” it said in its tiny voice.

  “I doubt it knows what that means,” Duncan mumbled. The thing gave him the creeps. It had cleaned up the mess and popped away mop, bucket and all, and there was real quiet for the first time since it got dark. “Come on, Mal,” Duncan said in a whisper, “isn’t this carrying your non-violent thing a bit far?”

  “He’s more afraid of us…excuse me, me, than we’re…excuse me…you’re afraid of him.” He looked troubled then. “It does, of course, mean we can’t get a good price if ever we decide to sell the boat, because we’d have to sell it quick. Of course I’m in no hurry to sell the boat. What about you?”

  “Now it has that thing on board, you bet I want to sell it…” And that’s when it hit him. Mallory couldn’t sell the boat as long as the creature was on board. At least not for any more than they’d paid for it. Mallory wouldn’t want to sell the boat unless he could make a profit. It would go against the very fiber of Mallory’s being.

  In order to sell the boat he’d have to break his own non-violent rule and kill the demon thing. So if Mallory could control the demon this might actually work in Duncan’s favor. “Can you really make it leave me alone? Not tear our stuff up?”

  “Of course,” Mallory said. “Most things can get along if they just open a channel of civil conversation.”

  Mumbling about the sort of financial genius who bought a boat with a demon on board, Duncan moved back to where he’d left his soup and started eating. He kept only half an eye and ear open for the little popping demon.

  “If you think about it, this really is rather good fortune,” Mallory said.

  “How do you figure?” Duncan asked.

  “Normally thugs and thieves come out at night, right?”

  �
�Right.”

  “Who’s going to steal this boat or mess about on it with the water demon on board?”

  Duncan started to agree then glared at the dragon. “Yes, yes, I suppose next you’ll be all about telling me how we should have paid much more money for such a nice boat with such a helpful demon on board.”

  “Precisely,” Mallory said with a laugh.

  Outside the wind started blowing harder, but while he could hear it, he couldn’t feel it except in the gentle swaying of the boat. He knew it was cold outside, but he was warm. Then it started to rain and he wasn’t getting wet. Duncan began to think that, all things considered, sharing their space with the demon was a small price to pay for such comfort. Then there was a loud clap of thunder and the next thing he knew, the demon had popped up mere inches in front of him, and he quickly decided he’d rather be both cold and wet.

  “Afraid of the storm?” Mallory asked the creepy thing, and it nodded. “Then sit down. Mind you, you’d best behave or I’ll have to fry you.”

  It nodded again, and then said in its deep, terrifying voice, “I be good.”

  “Would you like some soup?” Mallory asked.

  “Don’t feed it!” Duncan shrieked.

  “Why, because it will stay?” Mallory asked with a sarcastic grin. “I told you we can’t get rid of it, so we might as well be civil. Who’s to say they don’t act the way they do because no other creature ever treats them with kindness.” Mallory handed the demon what was left of his soup, and it sucked it up greedily.

  “No, we just like to scare things,” the demon said with a shrug.

  “Because they’re creepy,” Duncan muttered, and Mallory ignored him.

  “What’s your name?” he asked the Demon.

  The demon belched as loudly as any full-grown human, and then said in its small voice, “Fred.”

  “Fred!” Duncan said in disbelief. He laughed. “His name is Fred?”

  “That is what he said,” Mallory replied. “It’s a perfectly good name.”

  “Fred is a good name for a demon?”

  “Can you think of a better one?”

  “Beelzebub, Lucifer, what about Brimstone?”