The Adventures of Duncan & Mallory: The Beginning

by Robert Asprin

  “That’s your problem, Duncan. You always want to type-cast everyone,” Mallory said to him. Then to the water demon, “Fred’s a fine name.”

  “Thanks. I was named after my father.” Again with the deep voice, and Duncan realized that the creature’s voice changed with each sentence out of his mouth which was more than disconcerting.

  “That’s nice,” Mallory said.

  “Not really. He was a jerk,” Fred said.

  “My name is Mallory and my friend’s name is Duncan.”

  Duncan grumbled, nodded in the demon’s general direction, then stood up and grabbed his blanket from the pile where Mallory had dumped all his stuff. He picked a place close to the stove, spread his blanket on the floor, lay down and rolled himself up in it. He tried to get comfortable and realized that the only thing harder than the ground was a wooden floor.

  He wanted to tell Mallory and his new “friend” to shut up so he could get some sleep. Since he was glad the demon wasn’t screaming any more, he just slung his arms up to cover his ears and tried to get comfortable.

  They had just started talking about the evils of prejudice and people’s misguided preconceptions when Duncan was finally able to block their voices. He was warm and dry, and outside it was raining and cold. It wasn’t too surprising that he fell asleep thinking more about the great boat he owned than the water demon he had to share it with.

  Chapter Six

  Sadie and Bilgewater sat at a back table where they had been playing for peanuts with some of the locals for several days. They still hadn’t made enough money to pay the bar tab and hotel bill they had racked up during their stay.

  Bilgewater was wearing his black slacks, a white shirt with puffy sleeves, and a silver and black brocade vest. His sleeves were held up with black and red garters and the jacket that matched the vest was hanging on the back of the chair he sat in. Sadie was also dressed in her showy best, a brown and gold calico dress with long sleeves ending in tight cuffs, a high collar, tight waist, and pearl buttons that ended just below the waist. Around her neck she wore a beautiful pink and cream colored cameo that she told people her grandmother had given her on her deathbed. In point of fact, she’d won it in a card game. If things didn’t get better soon Sadie had said she would have to part with grandma’s cameo just to pay their bills.

  Bilgewater admitted that if people knew them well it would have been their worst tell. The more desperate for cash they were the flashier they dressed in an effort to create an illusion of success.

  Fortunately no one really knew Bilgewater or Sadie well.

  They were in a bit of a pickle. They weren’t making any money where they were and they couldn’t afford to move on. It was nearly winter and they were looking at the very real prospect of finding themselves out in the cold. Or worse yet, having to find actual jobs.

  They’d have to move on down the road even to do that. There was nothing for them where they were.

  It was a farming community, and there weren’t many jobs once winter came. Usually the town was a good mark this time of year. Harvest time was over. The locals’ pockets were usually full. It was getting cold out and there was little to do, so the farmers were bored and inclined to gamble and drink. The more they drank, the more they were sure they were going to win a big pot, and the more they were sure they were about to clean up, the easier it was to win their money.

  Bilgewater and his partner felt obliged to help the farmers part with their flexible income. But this year some blight had cut the farmers’ profits in half and the inhabitants of this village had very little extra cash. They were, in fact, mostly playing cards with men who were risking what little they had for the chance of making enough coin to get them through the rest of the winter.

  It took all of the fun out of it.

  They had talked about sneaking away in the night without paying either their bar or lodging bill. But the tighter money, was the less likely business men were to let you get away without paying them.

  Besides, it really went against… Well not so much his but Sadie’s nature. Of course so did getting poor farmers to gamble away their last dollar, which was why they weren’t doing so well.

  The other thing was, when you lived the way they did. it was a bad idea to leave bridges burning in your wake. After all, you could never be sure where you might end up again.

  He was about ready to fold for the night when the door opened and a short, orange, square-looking creature walked in grinning from… Well, arm to arm. Bilgewater had seen a lot of these beings in his time in the town. They seemed to match the plant life and animal species here, so he was pretty sure that they were the original inhabitants of this piece of Overlap.

  Bilgewater still had no idea at all where they kept their ears.

  There was something about the way he carried himself. Something about his very nature that let Bilgewater know the creature had just come into some serious coin.

  He leaned over to catch Sadie’s ear and said, “Let’s get out of this game.” He pointed with his head towards the stranger who had just walked in. Sadie nodded, so she must have seen the gleam in the man’s eyes as well.

  He and Sadie claimed the game had gotten too rich for them and folded. They moved to a table close to where the creature was perched and ordered a couple of drinks and a meal.

  “I ain’t seen you smile like this in years, Growler,” the bartender, who was the same sort of creature as the man he spoke to, said.

  “Ain’t had me a reason to. Ever since that grifter stuck me with that haunted boat my life’s been a living hell. That demon has tormented me every night on the boat or off it.” He turned to Bilgewater as if he were an old friend and said, “Water demons are tied to a boat, but that doesn’t keep them from popping up on the deck and screaming all night long. Worse than a cat in season. ”

  He turned back to the bartender. “That boat and that demon aren’t my problem no more. I sold it to a couple of yokels for three times what I thought I’d get. I feel sorry for them, but let the buyer beware, right?”

  “Cha-ching!” Sadie whispered in Bilgewater’s ear.

  “Cha-ching indeed.” Bilgewater smiled back. He got up and moved to the bar to sit beside the “lucky” fellow. “My good man, it sounds like you have had quite a stroke of luck. I’d like to buy you a drink to celebrate your good fortune.”

  “Thank you kindly, sir, but I insist… Let me buy you a drink. After all, I have plenty of money,” the talking rectangle said.

  “You are a gentleman, there is no doubt. Let me introduce myself. The name’s Bilgewater, and this is my friend, Sadie. And you are?”

  “Growler, just Growler. Drink for the little lady, too, Bruster,” he said, turning back to the bartender. Bilgewater noticed Sadie’s lip twitch just a little at the “little lady” line, but she just grinned and bore it.

  She was a pro. There was no doubt. Knowing Sadie, she’d take her vengeance at the card table. Of course it was up to Bilgewater to get Growler to the card table.

  * * * *

  Bilgewater didn’t have to dust off many tricks. It really wasn’t all that hard. A few drinks and Growler was easily talked into a friendly game of poker. It was even easier to talk two of the fellows they’d been playing with earlier into the game when Bilgewater informed them of Growler’s good fortune.

  It was possible—and often much smarter—to make sure that everyone but the real mark made some money at the table. Spread the wealth and people were less likely to run you out of town with pitchforks and torches or let others do so.

  Growler wasn’t in much worse a mood after he’d lost a couple of hands than he had been before and he turned out to be a super-chatty guy. “So how long you two been married?” he asked.

  Sadie and Bilgewater exchanged a look that said they couldn’t think of a much more disgusting prospect. Then they said with one voice, “We aren’t married.”

  “I’m sorry. I just assumed. Same species, different sex…”


  “We’re just friends,” Bilgewater said.

  “Sometimes not even that,” Sadie said with a sly smile.

  Bilgewater laughed. “Yes, like when you take my money like you just did.” Of course, he and Sadie were partners. At the end of the night they always split whatever they made. That wasn’t something the other players needed to know.

  Bilgewater suddenly wondered exactly why he and Sadie had never been more than friends. She was attractive enough for sure, long brown hair, bright green eyes, a rocking body and delicate features. She never failed to turn heads.

  Then he knew why. Bilgewater was a ladies’ man. He knew how to use his dark, brooding brown eyes, his curly black hair, the stubborn cut of his rugged jaw, his swarthy complexion. He was an elegant man—at least when it came to dress and his way with the ladies. Bilgewater knew how to charm women and they loved him, there was no doubt.

  Unfortunately any time he’d had a romantic relationship with a woman it had ended badly. Usually with some woman he’d nearly loved screaming that she never wanted to see him again and wished he were dead. He’d never tried to get romantically involved with Sadie because he knew it would just be a matter of time till she was screaming that she hated him and wished he was dead.

  Sadie was a good partner and his only true friend. She was the only person he trusted and he was pretty sure she was the only person with any sense that had ever trusted him—which might be more important.

  Sadie, for her part, insisted they leave wherever they were any time any man started talking in terms of more than a day. Bilgewater had once thought he was going to lose his partner to love but instead she had come to him in the middle of the night and insisted they leave immediately.

  “Why?” Bilgewater had asked. “I thought…”

  “I have no desire to be anyone’s wife or mother. I don’t want to have to count on anyone else or have them count on me. Now let’s go.” Then she grinned and held up a pouch full of coins. “I took all his money and I’m sure he’s going to be ticked when he wakes up.”

  “Why’d you rob him?”

  “I didn’t rob him. He said I could have all that was his.”

  “Sadie, you know that’s not what he meant.”

  “Look at it this way, he offered me more than I took,” Sadie said, but there was a tear in her eye, and he knew what she wasn’t saying. She took money from him so that he wouldn’t be heart broken, just mad.

  Someone, sometime, had broken her heart. She’d told him as much but never said who, how or why. The details didn’t matter. Such things made people who they were.

  What life had made Bilgewater and Sadie into allowed them to be friends and partners, to enjoy a lifestyle few people understood.

  Bilgewater wanted to change the subject so he did. “So just who were the geniuses you sold your demon-haunted boat to?”

  “A couple of greenies from out of town. Way out, if you know what I mean.”

  “I’m not sure I do,” Sadie said.

  “A great blue dragon and a big dark-headed guy with a bad hair cut. Fellow looked like a Romancer by the way he dressed and the sword he carried. Mind you don’t see many of them this far down river.”

  Sadie took in a breath but said nothing as she and Bilgewater exchanged a curious look. Growler went on. “Anyway, they were excited to have the boat. Had a pocketful of money and just handed it right over. I made them take off way before dark, so now they’re out on the river somewhere listening to that awful thing screaming and tearing up their stuff. I have all their money and I’m finally rid of my curse.” He laughed loudly and happily.

  By morning Growler was out of money but he still didn’t have a demon filled boat. So as Sadie took the last of the money Duncan and Mallory had paid him, he was still surprisingly cheerful. Bilgewater and Sadie both agreed that wouldn’t likely be the case when the creature slept off his liquor.

  The gamblers paid their debts, saddled up, and hit the road before the talking rectangle could wake from his booze-induced comma.

  “Where to?” Sadie asked Bilgewater as they hit the end of the town and there was a fork in the road.

  “For now, let’s follow the river. Who knows? We may run into the dragon and his friend again. At the very least we’ll find a better town to winter in.”

  Sadie nodded in agreement. “I can’t believe Mallory let himself get grifted like that. I think you could sell that dim wit Duncan magic beans, but Mallory?”

  “I don’t know who grifted whom. Less than two hundred coins between what the other guys and we won, and we cleaned him out, I’m sure of it. So Duncan and Mallory bought themselves a steam-powered river boat for less than two-hundred coins. That’s quite a deal.”

  “But there’s a demon on board.”

  “Think about it my dear. If you’re a seven-foot tall dragon and a huge guy with a sword are you going to be afraid of a small water demon?”

  Sadie laughed, “No, I suppose not.”

  * * * *

  Mallory stretched and woke up with a kink in his tail. He wondered briefly what they should do next. He noticed Duncan had already gotten the fire going and thought about what they might eat for breakfast.

  The human walked into the kitchen—where they had both spent the night—carrying two fish already cleaned and ready to be cooked. Duncan stopped, looking at the stove, and Mallory could almost read his mind. “I’ll figure out a way to cook them if I can have one.”

  “Wait a minute! I thought you were a vegetarian.”

  “I am, but I eat fish…”

  “Fish isn’t a vegetable,” Duncan said in a taunting tone.

  “True.” Mallory thought about it for a minute. How did he justify eating fish? He smiled. “But when fish look at you, they don’t know what you are. They don’t look at you and think, ‘Why are you doing this to me?’”

  “You don’t know that! Maybe that’s exactly what they think when you pull them out of the water,” the human said.

  Mallory didn’t like thinking about that at all. He’d rationalized in his own mind why it was all right to eat fish and he didn’t want Duncan to ruin it for him. “You gonna share your fish or not?”

  The human smiled and handed the fish to Mallory. “I’ll share.”

  Mallory opened the oven door and stuck them on the rack inside. They cooked quickly if not so completely.

  Duncan sat down on the floor to eat his fish. Mallory simply took the whole fish and put it in his mouth. Then he started chewing it up—bones and all. He delighted in the crunching sound the bones made and watched with mild amusement the look of disgust mixed with a thread of terror that crossed the human’s face.

  He swallowed then smiled at his friend and said, “Now aren’t you glad I don’t eat meat?”

  “I should think so! Absolutely.”

  The rest of the day they floated down the river with Mallory steering as Duncan tried to figure out why the engine wasn’t working. At one point Mallory heard pinging and then cussing. He didn’t know whether that meant things were getting fixed or more broken. He wasn’t worried. The river flowed at a good pace and the boat was easy to steer.

  He again wondered why he didn’t see any other boats. This far down river, the traffic should be pretty heavy. Also he hadn’t seen a single town and that made even less sense. It was puzzling and a little disconcerting to him, though he couldn’t say exactly why it made him so uncomfortable.

  The boat hit a good current and started going pretty fast. Mallory felt really good about that until he realized that in order to slow the boat down you had to be able to put the paddle wheel in reverse. Which they couldn’t do if the engine wasn’t working.

  Duncan came bounding up the stairs and took the wheel from Mallory. “We have to steer the boat out of the current, closer to shore,” the human said, fighting with the wheel. The boat didn’t want to turn, no doubt because it was enjoying the current so much. Mallory moved to help Duncan, taking hold of the wheel and putting all
his shoulder in to it.

  They succeeded in turning the boat. It lurched hard to starboard, followed by a crunching sound and a thump. They went flying into the back wall of the wheelhouse where they landed with a thud on their butts.

  When they climbed to their feet Mallory still wasn’t sure what had happened. He figured out pretty quickly that they’d run aground because land was looking awful close and personal. And they were sitting on about a thirty-five degree angle.

  “Well that sucked pond scum,” Duncan said.

  “At least that,” Mallory mumbled.

  They climbed down the stairs and out onto the deck where they could see the front of the boat pushing against a small tree. The tree had bent almost double when the boat hit the shore.

  “I guess we should see if there was any damage to the hull,” Duncan suggested.

  “How?” Mallory asked.

  “I suppose we get in and swim around, looking and feeling around for a hole.” The human shrugged as if to say, I’ve never run a boat aground before, I’m just guessing. You got any better ideas? Mallory didn’t, so he shucked his vest as Duncan took off his tunic.

  He looked at Duncan expectantly.

  “You take that side and I’ll take this side,” Duncan said, and jumped into the water. Mallory knew the water was going to be cold, so he steeled himself and slid in.

  He swam around his side, feeling around, diving under, and checking till he was sure he’d freeze to death. He and Duncan both got back on the boat at the same time. They ran to stand by the kitchen stove, learning in the process that they couldn’t both get through the door at once.

  Duncan looked at Mallory and chuckled through chattering teeth, “You must be cold. You’re blue.”

  “Ha, ha. Did you find any damage?” Mallory asked.

  “No, did you?”

  “No.”

  “We were lucky,” Duncan said, his lips nearly as blue as Mallory. “I say if we get the boat off dry land we head for someplace warmer. I don’t think I’ve ever been in water that cold in my life.”

  Mallory nodded in agreement. “If we go far enough we might even hit a part of the world where it’s still summer.”