The Adventures of Duncan & Mallory: The Beginning

by Robert Asprin

  “Things?” Sam asked.

  “And stuff,” Earl added.

  “Things and stuff?” Sam said in disbelief.

  “Yes, there is a lot of things and stuff you need for a town like ours and.…”

  “Crook!” everyone said at once.

  “There was lots of money left over from buying stuff and things. The boys must have taken the rest of the tax money when they rode out of here. You should round up a posse and go after them,” Earl suggested.

  “Sam, open the store right now,” Felix said.

  “Why?” Sam asked.

  “Cause I need to buy some rope for a neck tie for Earl.” And it was clear the rest of the town agreed with Felix.

  Duncan cleared his throat. “Before you hang this man I’d like to have the two hundred coins he owes me.”

  “I don’t have it on me,” Earl said.

  “Then go get it,” Sam ordered. Earl seemed only too glad to do so. Sam added, “Sean and Christopher, go with him and make sure he doesn’t lose his way.” The two men who’d hauled Earl in followed him.

  The whole time they were gone not one word was said about the dragon. No, the whole time they were all just wondering what to do about Earl. And it looked like most of them wanted him hung.

  “He’s our only blacksmith,” Sam reminded, being the voice of reason. “I say he has to work off the tax money…. No, I’ve got a better idea. We’ll let him off the hook for the tax money, but he tears up all his IOUs. From now on he’ll charge a fair amount for his work, or we’ll string him up and go find ourselves another blacksmith.”

  There was a moment when looking around him at this nice town filled with nice people that Duncan almost told them he’d be their blacksmith. That they could go ahead and hang Earl and that he would just stay right there. But then two things jumped to mind.

  First, how was he going to cover all the lies he’d already told? Where was his family? Why didn’t he have to keep moving to keep the dragons from exacting their revenge on him?

  The second reason was a little more puzzling to Duncan because a few months ago he would have thought he’d be happy to settle down and be a smith. Now the real reason he didn’t want to stay was that he liked the life he lived with Mallory. He liked living by his…well, most of the time Mallory’s, wits. He’d had the same old thing day in and day out all winter, and he was ready to…well do the sort of thing he and Mallory did.

  Earl was red but silent when the men returned with him.

  Duncan held out his hand, and reluctantly Earl handed him two heavy cotton bags.

  “We counted and made sure it was all there,” Sean said. “But except for fifty extra coins that was all the money we could find. Seems his boys didn’t just take all the town’s money, they took most of his, too.”

  Sam glared at Earl. “We’ve decided not to string you up, Earl, but you’ll be tearing up all your IOUs, and there will be no more price gouging.”

  “You can’t do this, Sam, it isn’t….”

  “Fair?” Sam laughed then, not a particularly pleasant sound, and said, “It is way past time for you to reap what you have sown.”

  “Now see here…” Earl started.

  “Let me at him, I’ll tear him limb from limb!” Mort hollered. Felix held the little man in place.

  “Why you wizened-up old fart….”

  “You better watch it, Earl,” Felix hissed, “or I’ll let him go.”

  Duncan suppressed a laugh. Earl was silent. Maybe he realized that the town would help the old man beat him up.

  “Well thank you kindly,” Duncan said to the town’s people holding up the money. “As much as I would like to stay I think it’s best I go away before the dragons come to find me. Winter’s over and soon they’ll be on the move. I’ve been here way too long as it is.”

  Sam stepped forward, took his hand and shook it. “Our town will forever be in your debt. We will make a statue of you and put it in the town square.”

  “A statue,” Duncan said in a far away voice. A statue—and he wasn’t even dead. Take that, Dad.

  “I will name my new son Duncan!” a pregnant woman screamed out.

  “We will all name our sons Duncan!” another woman hollered.

  Duncan once again had the urge to stay. His head was growing bigger by the minute. He could definitely get into this worshiping him thing. He waved, said his good byes, and started up the road at a quick pace, leaving the happy villagers behind him with only a small thought to what they were going to do to Earl.

  It was certainly a completely different experience than leaving Spurna had been.

  He felt like a hero. They had conned the whole town. They’d also put on a good show, and no one was the wiser. The only person who got hurt was Earl—who’d been abusing the whole town for years, so he had it coming.

  Yes, Duncan felt ten feet tall and bullet proof. Of course considering that it had all been a big show, the town probably shouldn’t be considering making a statue of him or naming their babies after him. He started to feel a little bad again, but then he felt the weight of the two hundred coins at the end of his arm and felt instantly better.

  * * * *

  Mallory was bored and way tired of waiting for Duncan to return—hopefully with their two hundred coins. If he admitted it, he was more worried than bored. A lot of things could still go wrong with their con, especially since it hinged on the human’s performance.

  He stood in the boiler room looking from the part in his hand to where it went and wondering if he could put it on himself. It seemed simple enough, put it in place and screw the bolts that held it back in place. He wasn’t quite sure which end went where. They looked the same but there was a very slight difference, and he was pretty sure that they were different for a reason.

  He finally put the part down, deciding it could wait till Duncan got back. They’d been here for months. Another day wasn’t going to make that big a difference.

  He decided to pass the time by catching some fish for dinner. He supposed he could go out and fish off the deck, but he was supposed to be dead. On the off chance that someone from the town happened to come their way he didn’t want to get caught on deck, obviously not dead at all. Besides, he was all set up in the bathroom, and the fish were still biting like crazy there.

  Silly plants.

  He had just put the fish he’d caught into the sink when he looked out the window and saw it was starting to get dark.

  Mallory was now more than a little worried about his partner and the money. He started to wonder if the human might take the money and run. He quickly dismissed that idea, though. He might do something like that but not Duncan.

  He filled and lit one of the running lights so that the human could more easily find the boat. He didn’t like any of the scenarios that were suddenly running rampant through his head. They all started the same way. Duncan said something stupid, and the villagers figured them out.

  It was almost dark when Duncan came stomping across the gangplank.

  “What took you so long?” Mallory demanded, worry immediately becoming anger.

  “Excuse me. I had to kill a dragon,” Duncan said.

  “I know. I was the dragon,” Mallory answered.

  Duncan laughed. “Wow! Guess I really did get into character. There were a lot of villagers wanting to show their deep admiration for me. It was hard to walk away from that.”

  Mallory was already tired of this exchange. “Did you get the money?”

  “Yes.”

  “Show me the money,” Mallory demanded.

  Duncan handed Mallory both bags of coins. They wound up sitting at the bar in the front room, one on either side, counting the money and making little stacks then counting it again and making new stacks.

  “That was the easiest two-hundred coins I’ve ever made in my life,” Mallory laughed out.

  “Lots easier than fighting a monkey, I’ll tell you that right now,” Duncan said. “And you know what? I fe
el like we did that town a lot of good….”

  “Yeah, yeah. We’re regular priests, taking from the rich, giving to the poor, and all that. Look, this is too good a con. I say we go down the Sliding West just far enough to get away from Hellsbut’s hearing and then do it again.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I go in all dreaded-dragon-like and make a mess, scare the bejesus out of people. Then you go in and save the day and get paid,” Mallory said. “It’s just too easy.”

  “I don’t know, Mallory. I don’t know that it would work again. This town already had a bully and….”

  “Don’t get soft on me now, Dunc. I’m telling you this is a great con. Here’s what we do next time…” And Mallory told him his plan to make their con work in any town that was afraid of dragons.

  Chapter Ten

  Winter was over and it was time for Bilgewater and Sadie to move to happier hunting grounds. You could gamble and win just so long in a town before people started to catch on and you made more enemies than friends.

  They’d managed to steer clear of Humphrey. If he’d come looking for them he either hadn’t found them or he’d been a lot stealthier than Bilgewater gave him credit for.

  They had come to a little town just on the border of Winterhurst. In a rustic bar they were dealt into a poker game with several big, rather stupid young men who seemed to think they were quite good at poker. Talking to them, it was clear that they had, at least temporarily, taken up residence in the bar.

  Things had been tight the last few weeks, and Bilgewater and his partner were happy to take some of the money these boys were spreading around.

  Even when the locals lost a huge pot to him or his partner they didn’t play any smarter or get irritated. Bilgewater knew they were playing with money they hadn’t worked for way before the youngest of the three, named Little Earl, said, “Daddy must be crappin’ bricks about now.” The other two laughed.

  “So you three are brothers, then,” Sadie said, using all the feminine wiles she could dredge up. The idea was to make sure they paid more attention to her than they did to the cards.

  She looked briefly at Bilgewater, who nodded. He’d come to the same conclusion. People who had worked hard for their money weren’t in any hurry to push a big pile of it to the middle of the table on the chance a pair of twos would win a hand.

  “Yes ma’am,” Little Earl said.

  The middle one, Seth, seemed down in the mouth, and the oldest brother, Joe Bob, hit him in the shoulder hard enough to rock him in his seat and said, “Now don’t you go feeling bad. Ain’t like most of it were his money in the first place.”

  “He was always using us to do some dirty deed or other,” Little Earl added. “We weren’t sons—we were servants. It’s about time we got paid for what we done for him.”

  The way they were talking it was clear they were too dumb to hide that they were playing with stolen money. Of course, Bilgewater could not care less where they “found” the money as long as they hadn’t stolen it from him.

  “Then he’s got us propped up on spears out in the cold. Expecting us ta protect the town from a dragon. He risked our lives jus’ ta save him a couple a hundred coins. That’s how much he cared—he gave us pointy sticks and told us ta go kill a dragon. How crazy is that?” Joe Bob reminded Seth, who nodded and they all went back to playing cards.

  None of them noticed at all how Sadie and Bilgewater’s ears perked up at the mention of the dragon.

  “So you fought a dragon?” Bilgewater asked.

  “Are you crazy?! Cause we ain’t. That thing came after us and we turned tail and ran. Ain’t no glory in being dead. We may be big, but we aren’t stupid, no matter what the old man might think,” Joe Bob said. “The thing was massive and it had a million teeth.”

  “And it breathed fire,” Seth added.

  “What color was this dragon?” Sadie asked, a smile curling her lips. Bilgewater kicked her under the table. As she yelped he gave her a look like he couldn’t imagine why she would cry out like that.

  “Why does that matter?” Little Earl asked curiously.

  “Oh some dragons are much worse than others. A lot depends on what color they are,” Bilgewater supplied.

  “This one was blue,” Seth said.

  “Those are the worst kind,” Bilgewater said, as if he had all the knowledge in the world about dragons. “So…did you kill it?”

  “I told you, we ran. I don’t know what happened after we left. The town wanted to hire some stranger, a dragon slayer, to kill the beast, but our old man, he didn’t want to cough up the coins,” Joe Bob said. Bilgewater realized that Joe Bob was a bit in his cups. “That’s what we were worth to our father, brothers. Two hundred coins. That’s all we were worth.”

  “Do you know the name of this dragon slayer?” Bilgewater asked.

  “No,” Joe Bob said. “Why is that important?”

  “No reason, really. Just curious. We’ve run into a few dragon slayers in our travels. Just wanted to know if it was anyone we knew.”

  “I didn’t hear his name,” Joe Bob said with a shrug.

  “It started with a B,” Seth said.

  “No, no, it didn’t,” Little Earl said. “His name started with a D. It was Du something.”

  “Duncan?” Bilgewater supplied.

  “Yeah, that’s it,” Little Earl said. “Big guy, bigger than any of us. Had a burned circle right in the middle of his chain mail. Said he killed a hundred dragons.”

  “You know him?” Seth asked.

  “Sure do, he’s a…” Bilgewater didn’t know what Sadie was about to say but he kicked her under the table again and shot her another look. Sadie glared at him and said, “He’s the bravest dragon fighter I’ve ever known.”

  The conversation wound down as they returned to their cards. By the end of the night the three brothers were so drunk they could hardly see, and Sadie and Bilgewater had most of their money.

  As they left the bar and headed for their hotel Sadie asked, “Just what are you up to now, Bilgewater?”

  “Sounds like our friends Duncan and Mallory have found themselves a sweet little con. Too sweet for them to just do it once,” Bilgewater said.

  Sadie nodded. “Oh, now I get it. And there are only so many places they could run that particular con. Most of Overlap knows dragons don’t normally run around sacking villages, so they have to be around here close.”

  “We know they wintered near the water around Hellsbut, in Winterhurst sector,” Bilgewater said thoughtfully. “I suggest we start looking for them. We can make a substantial amount of money off those fellows. If we do it right they won’t even know we’re there. We had best leave bright and early. I don’t want to be in town when those three bully boys wake up hung over and find that we’ve cleaned their plow.”

  * * * *

  Mallory was holding the lantern while Duncan worked on putting the piece back into place. He didn’t want to tell Mallory, but he wasn’t really sure which end went where. He was about to just do his usual see if it fits this way thing when Fred popped onto a beam not six inches from Duncan’s face and screamed in a voice so loud and shrill that it sounded like someone had loosed all the demons in hell.

  “Stack of rocks! Stack of rocks!”

  Duncan shrieked and jumped back into Mallory stepping on his foot. Mallory almost dropped the lantern, and Duncan hit himself right between the eyes with the part.

  “Why you little….” He swung the part, Fred popped away, and Mallory grabbed Duncan’s arm.

  “You’ll break the part.” Mallory leaned against the wall, picked up his foot and looked at it. He held the lantern so he could better see. “You chipped one of my claws.”

  “Me? That thing….”

  “How smart was it to tell a demon to do his evil best?” Mallory reminded.

  “You told him to do that. How else would he know about the rock thing?”

  “You were late. I was bored.” The dragon shrugged
and laughed.

  “I don’t care what you say, that pile of rocks was not there when I went to sleep, and what about all those stick men?”

  The demon popped up on the steam pipe and said in his tiny voice. “Scary stick people… Oooh. Piles of rock.” He started laughing so hard he was almost hysterical.

  “Great,” Duncan spit out and rubbed at his head. “I was a hero in that little town.”

  “A hero,” the demon boomed. He was still laughing so hard what he said next was barely audible. “Afraid of a pile of rocks.”

  The dragon started laughing, too, and Duncan was starting to regret not staying in Hellsbut.

  “Come on, Dunc, where’s your sense of humor?”

  “Clearly, I left it back in town with my pride,” Duncan mumbled. Then to the still-laughing demon. “Don’t scare me again.”

  “No promises,” it growled out and left.

  “You tell it to stop, Mallory. You told him to start it up again, now tell him to stop.”

  “Chill out, will ya?”

  “I was a hero, dragon. They are going to build a statue of me in the town hall. A statue and I’m not even dead. Women are going to name their babies after me.”

  “And what about me?”

  “Huh?”

  “I had to play the villain. I was forced to let a town full of people think that I’m a mindless beast, that a scrawny human such as you could kill me. There can’t be a hero without a villain. No one is going to build a statue of me or name their babies after me.”

  The dragon had a point. “Oh,” Duncan said. Then he looked at the part in his hand and where it went. He finally went ahead and tried it the way he was holding it. It wouldn’t fit that way which meant it would only fit one way so he turned it over and it easily slid into place. He started to put the nuts back on and Fred popped up with a wrench.

  Duncan took the offered wrench. “Me sorry,” Fred said in his big demon voice.

  “It’s all right.” After all, now that he wasn’t in the haunted cave it did seem absurd to be afraid of stick people and piles of rock.

  The demon nodded and Duncan used the wrench to secure the nuts.