The Adventures of Duncan & Mallory: The Beginning

by Robert Asprin

It was starting to get dark, so he broke up some deadfall and threw it into the boiler. In a few minutes the kitchen was heating up.

  “That’s not all just for looks,” Duncan said of the haul. “A lot of it’s fire wood, some of it’s stuff we can eat, and among other things I was planning to make us some beds.”

  “A bed would be great but we might as well put them in the kitchen for now.”

  “Why? We have plenty of rooms. I could have a room. You can have a room.”

  “Ah, but this is the only one with a heater of any kind,” Mallory reminded.

  “Yeah, right.” Duncan was looking at the space and the materials he had, building in his head. He’d have to build smaller beds if they were going to fit in the kitchen.

  Mallory put a pot on to boil, and Duncan saw the bag of oatmeal sitting out and ready. “In the upstairs hall there’s an opening in the wall—to the chimney no doubt, but no wood stove. Unless you can make one out of bamboo and rocks and mud…”

  “We’ll just winter right here.” Duncan went into the other room and started pulling out some of the larger saplings he’d cut. He started cutting them to length, swinging his sword around and using it like an axe.

  He had just cut the last one when he realized all of his light was coming through the kitchen door. At precisely the same moment there was a loud popping noise and the demon appeared, standing in the middle of the bar. Duncan screamed and his sword went point down into the deck where it proceeded to bounce back and fourth for several seconds before just vibrating on a low hum.

  “What the!…” was all Mallory got out. When Duncan turned, Mallory was standing in the door to the kitchen. “Is there some problem?”

  “That…that…get that thing out of here!”

  “Really, Duncan, you have got to stop jumping at shadows,” Mallory said. “Come along, Fred. You can help me in the kitchen. I have a few questions for you about the boat.”

  Fred mumbled something in a gravely, mostly-incoherent voice at Duncan and then popped off to the kitchen to help Mallory. A few minutes later Duncan walked in with his sticks, following the light. He sat down on his stump and tried to ignore the demon, but it was hard because he was wearing a chef’s hat perched between his horns and carrying a little wire whisk.

  “Where does he keep getting stuff from?” Duncan asked, making a face.

  “He lives here. I’m sure he’s carved himself out a dwelling somewhere on board. Most probably in the walls.”

  He didn’t want to think about that creepy thing slinking around in the walls so he just focused on his project. He started lashing the sticks together with the baling wire.

  “I’d feel a whole lot better if we had some more supplies, more blankets. If I had a cloak that fit me,” Duncan said.

  “Did it fit you before you started cutting little pieces off it to do everything from mend your britches to starting fire?” the dragon asked with a smile.

  “Not really.” Duncan laughed. “But it has gotten increasingly smaller.”

  “I wish there was some way of knowing if there was any place close that could fix the thingy, so we could get down river before the real cold. It would suck to sit here all winter and then find out there was a blacksmith shop just a few miles from here.”

  “Maybe we…”

  “What?” Mallory asked.

  “Maybe we should leave the boat, pack up, and just start walking down stream.”

  “Did you see a road today?”

  “No.”

  “Who knows where the next town is? Anthony said all the towns here were inland and low tech. He made it sound like we are in the middle of nowhere. No, worse than that, a cold nowhere. Maybe the next town is far enough away that a dragon and a human would freeze or starve to death before they ever reached it.”

  Duncan nodded and said, “At least maybe we can stay warm and eat here.”

  “Maybe.” Mallory looked thoughtful as he stirred the oatmeal he was no doubt over cooking because he always did. “We need more supplies than we’re going to be able to dig out of the woods. You know that, right?”

  Duncan didn’t want to hear that. He knew it; he just didn’t want to hear it.

  “I think we need to explore the surrounding area. Put a real effort into trying to find a town.”

  “But you heard Anthony. People around these parts would be scared silly of you.”

  “I could stay here, watch for boats, get more wood and all. You could go.”

  “How? I didn’t find any sign of life out there… Except wait…” He jumped up and pointed down at the chunk of wood he’d been sitting on. “I almost forgot I found these and clearly…”

  “They were cut with a saw,” Mallory said, annoyed with himself that he hadn’t noticed before, but more annoyed with the human. “Seriously, Duncan, you’d forget your head if it wasn’t attached. No one cuts firewood far from where they need it. That means someone is close.”

  “I don’t know, Mal, the wood’s been there a long time.”

  “It’s big. It would have to be split. They may have decided it wasn’t worth going back for. Tomorrow you go to where you found the wood and walk till midday straight out from it. Then if you don’t find something, you turn and come back. Then the next day you go in another direction. No sense walking along the river because we know all the towns are inland. I’ll just bet civilization isn’t very far away.”

  Duncan frowned and sat down again. “I’m going to go stomping around in the cold woods all day while you lay around next to the stove watching for boats?”

  “It’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make for both of our sakes. I’m a giver. It’s what I do.”

  “So you keep saying,” Duncan mumbled and kept working on his bed. “All right. I’ll go first thing in the morning. See if I can find anything that looks like it might be linked to a village.”

  “And I’ll sit here by the fire and watch for boats.”

  Duncan heard the demon laugh and he pointed his knife at him. “That’s enough out ah you.”

  “It’s not his fault the people around these parts are so backwards,” Mallory said, clicking his tongue in a disapproving way. “You have anger issues, Dunc, real anger issues.”

  * * * *

  Mallory actually helped Duncan put the bed frame together, but of course there was no time to weave the platform, so he and Mallory wound up stacking some leaves Duncan had brought in earlier up in the corner to make a bed.

  When Duncan woke up in the morning the only cover he had was his poor, abused cloak. The dragon had taken his blanket. He jerked his blanket off Mallory, who didn’t so much as stir. He stood up and wrapped the blanket around him.

  He looked at the bed frame in the light of day. It was sort of lopsided and one leg was shorter than the others. Duncan supposed that’s what he got for trying to build anything by the light of the oil lamp.

  He went to the boiler room, opened the furnace, stirred the coals and added some wood. It was cold, and he didn’t imagine the day was likely to get much warmer. He wasn’t looking forward to spending the day outside, walking around looking for a village that may or may not exist. Still, the sooner he got dressed and got going the sooner he could come back home. And who knew? He just might get lucky and find a town with a forge today.

  * * * *

  Mallory was more worried than he was letting on. The truth was he’d never once in his whole life wintered anywhere it got cold enough to make ice and never outside a city.

  It was true that he could handle more cold than a human but not a lot more.

  Roughing it wasn’t really Mallory’s cup of tea. He preferred a life of luxury. Warm water, soft beds, and meals more like feasts.

  Still, if he was going to be a world-traveling dragon of adventure he supposed his mettle would be tested from time to time. Especially since he wasn’t willing to do anything as drastic as getting a job.

  The mere thought made him shudder, and memories of sitting in his family’s o
ffice building in his little cubicle made his skin crawl. He’d take roughing it over being stuck at a desk any day.

  Besides, it was just a matter of time till he made his fortune.

  He threw some more wood into the boiler then went back into the kitchen and sat down on his stump. He carefully listened for any sign of a boat. He looked at the bed frame and frowned.

  Duncan had unselfishly offered him the first bed, telling him that he deserved it. Mallory had almost instantly started to have this strange feeling that he soon figured out was something like guilt.

  Before he took off, Duncan had said he doubted the five coins they had would buy much in the way of supplies, much less a new part for the boat. He’d said maybe there was no sense trying to find a town. Mallory knew he had to give Duncan some of the money he’d been hording in his cheek pouch.

  “Oh…didn’t I tell you? I found fifteen coins while I was cleaning the ship,” Mallory had said.

  “Cleaning the ship?” Duncan asked, making a face as if that was the most startling part of Mallory’s announcement.

  “Picking up yucky stuff and burning it in the stove is cleaning,” Mallory defended.

  Duncan nodded as if that made perfect sense and then he seemed to hear the rest of what Mallory had said. “You found fifteen coins and it just slipped your mind?”

  There was an accusatory tone to his voice Mallory didn’t like. It was as if the human didn’t believe the perfectly good lie he’d just told him. “You were so excited about the tackle it just slipped my mind.”

  So Mallory had slipped away to “get the coins” which he did—out of his cheek pouch. The human had left with twenty coins, which should be more than enough to get them some supplies and get the part fixed.

  Of course that was only if Duncan was lucky enough to find a town.

  Mallory still had ten coins, but that wasn’t just his insurance, it was Duncan’s as well. At least that was how he rationalized keeping it secret for now.

  Mallory had promised to catch some fish for dinner. Now, most dragons were fantastic fisherman. In warm water they would jump into the river, swim around after fish, catch them and eat them whole, hardly coming up for air.

  That had been a bit too primitive for Mallory’s liking. He preferred his fish in stick form, breaded, fried, and resembling a fish in no way at all, when he could get it that way.

  Still, he’d seen all manners of creatures fish, so he knew there were many ways to accomplish the task, and he was pretty resourceful when he had to be. He found a good strong piece of bamboo, stripped the limbs off of it, and tied a piece of fishing line to it. Then tied on a hook. He took his pole and grabbed the can of worms he’d dug up earlier. He started to go out on the front deck, thinking about how cold it was going to be. Dragons, Mallory decided, were meant for a warmer climate—not the coldest part of the planet.

  He had just convinced himself there was no alternative to standing on the cold deck with a pole when his eyes were drawn to the staircase and he had an idea. Taking his pole and the worms he made his way up the stairs and into the bathroom. He flipped the lid up on the “toilet” and looked down into the water below.

  Deciding it was worth a try, he left his fishing gear and went downstairs again, grabbed Duncan’s blanket with one hand and one of the stumps in the other. He carried them to the bathroom, sat down, threw the cover around his shoulders, and got comfortable.

  He started to put a worm on the hook and stopped remembering what Duncan had said about fish. He wondered if worms had feelings, too. He looked closely at the worm, but he couldn’t even find its face, so he stuck it on the hook.

  His rule was he couldn’t, wouldn’t, eat anything that could smile at him. The worm couldn’t smile, and he’d yet to see a fish smile, so he was morally good to go.

  He took one last look down the rusty chute that led to the water and then he started fishing in the toilet. Mallory shrugged, knowing it might look weird, but after all no one was looking.

  It wasn’t like there was anything foul down there. The chute, like the rest of the ship, hadn’t been used in years. Even if it had been it hadn’t been used here. There was just the water and hopefully some fish at the bottom of the hole.

  He hadn’t been fishing long when he got a bite. He nearly lost the fish in his excitement. After falling all over himself and the bathroom he managed to pull the fish out of the hole. And then he just sort of looked at it, wondering what to do next. Then he took the fish in one hand, grabbed the hook with the other, and pulled the hook out.

  He turned the fish to look at him. Mallory stared at the fish for awhile. He smiled to see if the fish would smile back. He told the fish his best joke. Nothing. If it didn’t want to be eaten it had plenty of time to crack a smile.

  Mallory then wondered just what he was supposed to do with the fish next. He supposed he had to kill it, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He carried the fish down to the kitchen and stuck it in the sink. He stuffed a rag into the drain hole. Mallory steeled himself, walked out into the cold, dipped both pans into the river, brought them in, and poured them on the fish.

  By the time Duncan got home just at dusk Mallory had caught half a dozen fairly decent-sized fish and dug up a bunch of cattail roots for dinner. He was preparing the tubers to cook when Duncan walked in.

  Duncan slung his pack off with disgust, which more or less let Mallory know right away that he hadn’t found anything of value.

  “There was nothing, nada.” The human was obviously hungry because he immediately pulled the fish from the sink. He cut their heads off and started to gut and scale them over a dish pan Mallory had found. “I almost got lost, even marking the trail the way you told me to.” He walked over and washed his hands in the not-so-clean water in the sink.

  “How could you get lost?” Mallory asked. He had told Duncan to make a notch in a tree with his sword every few feet so that he could use the marks to be sure he came back the same way. Also, if he didn’t return, Mallory could go looking for him.

  “Obviously I didn’t get lost. I said I almost got lost. At one point on the way back I got turned around and didn’t know if I was following the marks coming back or going all the way to the end in the other direction again.”

  Mallory tried to figure out what that meant for only about a minute then said, “Maybe you should cut arrows onto the trees.”

  “Which way should they point?”

  “Towards the boat.” Mallory sighed. “Nothing, huh? You saw no sign of civilization at all?”

  “None, not so much as a stray dog or a wisp of smoke. At one point I even tried screaming for help… Of course that was when I thought I was lost. Still, no one heard me.”

  “And you walked straight out from the place where you found the stumps.”

  “Well see, that was another problem, because I wasn’t really sure which way straight out was and…”

  “You know I listened and looked all day. I’m pretty sure Anthony was telling us the truth. A boat’s not coming by till after winter. I’ll go with you in the morning. I have superior hearing and sight. Two heads are better than one and all that good rot. If we find a sign of civilization I’ll hang back and keep low while you go check it out.”

  Duncan looked relieved. He handed the clean fish to Mallory who took them, stuck a wire through all of them at the tail, then opened the oven, hung them in it and closed the door. Duncan looked at him, surprised, and Mallory said, “I’m not just another pretty face you know.”

  He then proceeded to tell Duncan how he’d caught the fish, and Duncan nodded appreciatively. He took the bowl of heads and guts away saying he was going to bait the fishing hole. Whatever that meant.

  Mallory was not looking forward to their hike in the woods, but he knew he could do a better job finding civilization than the human could. After all, Duncan was just a human. When Duncan came back he was making a face.

  “Another run in with Fred?” Mallory asked.

 
“Not yet. Did you notice how the shower works?”

  “I wasn’t aware it does,” Mallory said, surprised.

  “Well it does. There’s a pump and it goes into a small tank just above the shower.”

  “That may be nice in warm weather,” Mallory said, not understanding the disgust in Duncan’s voice.

  “Mal, think about where the shower is in relation to the hole.”

  “Oh yes…but we aren’t using the hole.”

  “But they did.”

  “Yep that’s pretty disgusting any way you cut it,” Mallory agreed. Actually it sort of put him right off the thought of eating even as the aroma of cooking fish started to fill the kitchen.

  “I don’t know, Mallory. I don’t know if we should waste our time looking for a village. We might ought to spend our time bringing in wood and whatever food we can find.”

  He had a point, but Mallory wasn’t sure how much they could rely on catching fish. There was little else to eat that he’d found. Of course he hadn’t put in a lot of effort either. “Let’s try at least once more.”

  * * * *

  The next day he led Mallory to where he’d found the sections of wood he’d brought back to the boat. It took them several minutes to find his old path leading them to both say at the same time, “We aren’t trackers.”

  They laughed and finally found his trail from the day before.

  “All right, let’s think about this for a minute,” Mallory said. He looked around him as if he knew what he was looking at, which Duncan was pretty sure he didn’t. “I wish we had questioned Anthony a bit more about the towns around here.” Duncan could tell Mallory was cold because he kept jumping from one foot to the other trying to get warm.

  He had no idea how warm Mallory’s scales kept him, but the only clothing he had was the vest. Duncan assumed the dragon was at least as cold as he was, and Duncan was so cold he was also jumping from one foot to the other to stay warm.

  “If we think about it too long we’re going to freeze and…” something suddenly dawned on Duncan and he asked in an accusing tone, “Wait a minute! You can breathe fire. How can you be cold?”

  “Do you think there is fire in me?” Mallory asked with an air of disbelief.