by Max Anthony
It was a good job that Viddo didn’t suffer from claustrophobia, though any thief who did was destined to have a very brief career. Using a mixture of his feet and an undulation of his body, Viddo inched his way along. He felt wetness soak through his clothing and the smell of the wizard’s urine was sharp in his nostrils.
“Gods, what has the man been drinking to make his piss smell like this?” he asked himself, then realised that five-thousand-year-old alcohol was likely something of a challenge for the human liver to cope with.
The waste pipe followed a fairly predictable slope – not too steep, but not so gentle that it was hard to make progress. Viddo was relieved that it didn’t tighten, since that would have made his task harder than it already was. He’d gone about twenty yards when his face encountered the first of the hard lumps. His excellent night sight had spotted it already, but he hadn’t been able to make out what it was and he was forced to nudge it ahead of him, since it would have been too painful to inch his way over. By the time he was nuzzling three such lumps with his face and forehead, he was forced to admit to himself what they were. Turds he thought. I’m pushing thousand-year-old turds with my face.
In the books and the stories, adventuring was always portrayed in a heroic light. The brave men and women would set out with high hopes, slay a few monsters, drink a couple of healing potions to close their wounds and finally, they’d find a smattering of magic items and a few silver coins to divide amongst themselves. The next time they set out, they’d find more powerful magical items and gold coins.
The reality was somewhat different and often involved slipping on spilled entrails, getting covered in blood or even having filthy claws pushed into your guts. And, as Viddo Furtive now discovered, it occasionally necessitated a head-first shimmy down a long-forgotten sewer pipe, pushing the shit of an ancient creature ahead of you with your face. With little better to do, Viddo found the time to think about how this particular incident ranked in his personal top five of unusual encounters. It probably wasn’t the most unusual, but he thought that it floated somewhere around number four or five. The thief’s career was very long and had been extremely varied.
The pipe was longer than Viddo would have liked and when it ended, he was pushing seven of the withered logs in front of him. To his dismay, the exit hole was eight feet up the wall of a high chamber and it took all of his skills and acrobatics to land feet first instead of face first. Manage it he did, though he almost dislocated his shoulder in the process and spent a few seconds flexing it to ease the pain while he looked around.
This chamber was ten feet across and ten feet high. Numerous drainage holes entered it and there was a single, wide drainage hole in the centre of the concave floor. It was a surprisingly civilised system for the disposal of waste, though it seemed that some of the waste was prone to stalling on its journey. Viddo peered into the central hole – it dropped vertically into the darkness without giving away any indication of its depth. The thief swept one of the old turds into it with his boot. It rattled for some time until the sound faded – wherever the hole went, it was deep and Viddo had little desire to explore it, nor to find out what might lie at the bottom.
One of the pipes entering this room was noticeably larger than the others at three feet around, and positioned near to the floor. Viddo entered it without hesitation, shuffling along rapidly on all fours.
Where better to hide than in a sewer system? he asked himself, as he travelled in silence. He didn’t know very much about vampires other than their rumoured abilities to resist almost every effort to permanently destroy them. He’d heard that in the colder parts of the world, far to the south, there were many vampires, some of which held vast areas of land in their thrall. Here in the north, they were almost unheard of. Certainly, Viddo didn’t want to stumble upon this one too late to vanquish it before it regenerated its body.
The large pipe disgorged him into another modest-sized chamber, which also had many smaller pipes leading in or out. In the middle of this chamber was a coffin, made of beautifully-carved and fashioned wood and polished to a smooth sheen. The coffin was perched on several square, stone blocks, as if the owner had been wary in case the sewer system began to see increased usage. Viddo crossed rapidly over to it. There was no sign of a lid, so he peered within. Inside, the coffin was lined with more of the rich velvet, but Viddo could see that it had begun to decay, telling him that the coffin had been down here for some time. There was also a withered husk of a body within, naked and pale. To Viddo’s eyes, it looked as though it had died a thousand years ago, but been preserved through magic to prevent it from decaying completely into dust. There was a faint crackling sound coming from the body, as though it were a paper balloon being slowly inflated.
“Damn, I’ve forgotten to bring a wooden stake with me,” said Viddo, chiding himself for his foolishness. He considered whether or not he should go back to the sewer hole and shout for Rasmus to come down with a stake. He turned the idea around in his head once or twice, before concluding that there was no way on earth that the wizard, brave as he was, would ever contemplate trying to squeeze his way along a narrow sewer pipe to deliver a wooden stake.
“I’d better get on with business,” Viddo muttered, shrugging to himself. He reached into the coffin and pulled at one of the vampire’s scrawny arms until he managed to position it on its side. The body was surprisingly light and the flesh unpleasantly dry to touch. Then, he pushed it so that it rolled completely onto its face. Viddo was a thief and if he was going to stab something somewhere, he was going to do it in the back. He pulled out his favoured of the two daggers – the one which felt slightly lighter in his hand – and thrust it firmly and without hesitation between the vampire’s prominent shoulder blades. There was no dramatic reaction. The creature did not twist and jerk, nor did it utter a spine-tingling scream. There was a low sigh from somewhere and the body started to shrivel and deflate. As Viddo watched, the years which the creature’s dark magic had defied claimed its flesh, and it was soon reduced to dust.
Feeling slightly disappointed, but also relieved, Viddo swept up a handful of the dust and took it with him to the first room he’d entered. He sprinkled the dust down the central drainage hole and watched as it fell into the darkness. He had no idea if this would have any effect on the creature’s ability to return to life, or even if it were necessary, but it hadn’t cost him anything to give it a go.
“Rasmus?” he shouted up the toilet hole. His voice echoed around and he heard several reflections of the wizard’s name as the shape of the sewer pipes carried it away. Realising that he might have alerted other creatures to his presence, he said nothing further.
A faint response came to him. “What?” it asked.
Viddo had only been meaning to tell the wizard to hold off from having another piss until he’d returned to the vampire’s bathroom, and didn’t think the message important enough to risk their lives by shouting again. With a gravity-defying leap, he jumped up to the pipe above him and wormed his way inside, sparing the time to sigh at what he was about to endure. Going up the pipe was moderately harder than going down it, but after a few minutes, he emerged into the room where he’d started.
“How did it go?” asked Rasmus at once.
“It was down there,” replied Viddo. “I stabbed it and it crumbled to dust. I’m fairly certain that it won’t be coming back.”
“Vampires are immune to many things,” said Rasmus. “I think your flame sword wasn’t enough to do it a permanent injury, but it sounds like the enchantment on your dagger was sufficient. Let us hope we do not encounter another.”
“And I, for one, am especially keen to avoid any more head-first journeys into piss-filled sewers. Anyway, I seem to recall that this particular vampire had a chest underneath its bed. Let us investigate how much wealth the creature had managed to accumulate before we stole its undeath from it.”
Once they’d returned to what they assumed was the vampire’s bedroom, Viddo
carefully slid out the wide, low chest from beneath the huge bed. He checked it for traps and once he’d ascertained that there were none, he used his thief’s tools to pick the lock. With hardly a pause to build up the anticipation, he swung back the lid.
“What do we have here?” he asked.
The vampire had indeed built up a certain quantity of wealth over the years and there were coins, as well as other items. Viddo lifted out a sturdy mace with a round metal head. It had little in the way of showy ornamentation, but there was something about it that suggested it was much more than it appeared. Over the years, the thief had developed the ability to pick out the magical from the mundane, but it was inexact and couldn’t tell him what properties an item held.
“Hold on a moment. I’ll cast an identification spell to tell us what it is,” said Rasmus, struggling to hold back his excitement. He mumbled once or twice, and then uttered an expletive.
“Well, it’s a good one,” he said. “It’s just a shame that neither of us can use it.”
“Eh? Why not?” asked Viddo.
“Oddly enough, it’s a mace that has been specially designed to smite undead. A very powerful weapon, as it happens. Unfortunately, it’ll only work if you’re a priest.”
“I never did like maces anyway. What about this one?” said the thief, this time pulling a tabard out. He stared it for a moment, and then threw it carelessly into one corner. It had no magical properties. Beneath the tabard was a carefully-folded chain-mail vest, which Viddo knew was definitely magical. In fact, it felt quite strongly magical.
“This isn’t going well, is it?” he asked, dropping the chain vest onto the bed with a grunt. Neither he, nor the wizard could wear chain mail. The metal made it hard for the thief to perform his acrobatics and it interfered with a wizard’s spellcasting.
“Anything else in there?”
“These two potions might be holy water,” said Viddo. “They don’t feel magical. Aha, here’s a ring, and it’s definitely magical. Gold, too, if I’m not much mistaken.”
“Let me have a look at it,” said Rasmus. He cast another spell to identify the item. “At least we can use this one,” he said. “Whoever wears it will be a bit harder to hit with weapons.”
“You’d better put it on,” said Viddo at once, as he ran his fingers around the inner edge of the chest, searching for anything his eyes might have missed. “Nothing else but the coins now,” he told Rasmus, and started to pick them out for counting.
Rasmus stood by patiently while Viddo counted their spoils. Eventually, the thief announced the total of what they’d found.
“Seventy-five gold, eighty-three silver and a load of copper which I didn’t bother to count.”
“I think the mace is probably worth a few hundred gold at least,” said Rasmus. “Do you think we should take it? And what about the silver?”
Viddo chewed his lip for a while, reluctant to leave valuables behind. “Let’s take the holy water and the gold coins, shall we? I don’t fancy running around here with a mace bashing off my leg every time I try to dodge an incoming sword. And that chain mail armour will be a bastard to carry.”
Rasmus agreed with this proposition. “Do you think any of those robes will fit me?” he asked, turning his attention to the remaining contents of the wardrobe.
“There’s sure to be something,” said Viddo. “Are you wearing magical robes at the moment?”
“No. I really should have done something about that long ago. But, you know how it is. You get comfortable in something and you can’t be bothered to change it.”
“I hear there are some magical robes that have amazing powers. I’m shocked that you don’t have any.”
“I’ve always relied on my spells,” Rasmus responded as he riffled through a few items hanging from a rail. What he didn’t say was that he’d had many opportunities to obtain magical garments, but had always considered them a weakness, since he thought that real wizards just wore the basics. He was just beginning to realise that perhaps he was mistaken.
“Try and find a set of stench-repellent clothing next time,” Viddo advised. Rasmus didn’t grace this with a response, but tugged down a set of drab blue robes which he swiftly changed into. They weren’t a perfect fit, but they’d do.
With that, the two of them turned to leave the vampire’s lair. “Typical, isn’t it?” Rasmus asked. “We come all this way and the only loot we find is something we can’t use!”
Thirteen
“We passed another two branches off the main corridor along here,” said Viddo once they’d exited the vampire’s lair through the same door by which they’d entered. “The sewers looked like they might lead somewhere, but I assume you don’t want to try exploring them.”
Rasmus grunted in response.
“Not that I blame you,” continued Viddo. “Sewers are hardly the most pleasant of environments in which to adventure.” The urine on his clothing had almost dried now, though the odour of it lingered and continued to annoy him. He admitted to himself that he couldn’t really blame Rasmus for using the toilet for the purposes it was intended for, and didn’t bring the matter up.
“This place is vast,” said Rasmus. “It looks like that vampire found it and made its home here. I wonder what else there might be. The presence of that creature also tells me that there are more ways in and out than that hole we fell through, which is heartening, for I would not wish to be stuck here until I die.”
They located the other corridors they’d passed and Viddo turned left into one, ignoring the right-hand possibility.
“You do realise that if we’d been coming from the other direction that your left-hand turn would have been the right-hand turn you’ve just ignored, don’t you?” asked Rasmus. “It kind of makes a nonsense of your methods.”
“Who is to say that if we’d been coming the other way and turned into the other corridor that we wouldn’t end up in the same place as we’ll end up now? We don’t know what lies ahead of us. Perhaps our future is being drawn out by the hand of a mysterious and powerful being even as we proceed.”
Rasmus opened his mouth to respond, but had no idea what to say to such nonsense. However, it was the sort of nonsense against which it was almost impossible to argue, since he had no way to disprove Viddo’s theory.
“That idea does not sit well with me,” the wizard said finally. “I prefer to think that I have control over my destiny, rather than being at the whim of something infinitely more powerful than I. To think that such a being exists would belittle my own efforts to attain the skills that I now possess.”
“I did not say that I agreed with the idea myself,” said Viddo. “I merely offered up a possibility for your consideration. You are seeking to find a greater meaning to my left-right-left method than actually exists. It could be that I have a minor superstition about directions. I have known men who swore that their favourite undergarments were lucky. I once spoke to a woman who claimed she could divine the future by staring into the yolk of an egg. Is my preference to turn left such an unusual behaviour in the face of the variety of unusual behaviours exhibited by other people?”
“I suppose you might have a point,” conceded Rasmus. In reality, Viddo’s left-turning inclination didn’t offend the wizard at all, but he had indeed thought there might be something more to it than the thief now suggested there was. Rasmus liked to think there was a reason for everything, but as he got older he’d begun to think that things were not necessarily as easily pigeon-holed as he wanted to believe.
Sensing the wizard’s uncertainty, Viddo clapped him on the shoulder. “You’ve got to learn to go with the flow a bit more,” he told him. “If you stop to ponder the whys and wherefores of everything, you’ll die or go mad long before you realise that the answer does not exist. And more importantly, your pondering might cause you to fall into a pit, or walk onto a sword in your distraction. It might be for the best if we save further discussion on the subject until we’re enjoying a cold ale in a war
m tavern, paid for with these gold coins we’ve found.”
“My friend, I look forward to the time,” said Rasmus. “Let us give our utmost attention to the perils that face us in the here and now.”
By this point, they’d travelled some way along the left-hand corridor. It was regular in dimensions and had more of the smaller rooms off to the left and right, which they peered into as they went by.
“Either living quarters or an administrative section,” said Rasmus.
“Administrative, I’d say,” responded Viddo. “The entrance to the high priest’s secret booze cellar was only a little way back there. Why would he conceal his stash near to where people lived?”
They had no way at all of confirming that the room where they’d found the ancient alcohol had belonged to the high priest and indeed it was only speculation that there had ever been a high priest down here. Still, the idea that they’d somehow duped an ancient man and stolen his alcohol pleased them both, so they did not think to question their own hypothesis.
“If the high priest really is a lich, he’s not going to be too happy that we plundered his cellar.”
“How’s he going to find out? Anyway, I thought we were going to kill this lich,” said Viddo.
“I think we might be badly prepared for such a battle,” said Rasmus. “They’re amongst the most powerful of the undead and are unlikely to topple over on the first backstab.”
“If we find it, we find it,” said Viddo philosophically. “If we find a way out first, and are overburdened with our appropriations, then we can consider our options in the future. I for one would be happy to return here with a pack full of food and some more resources to allow us an extended time to explore.”
