The Cutlers Of The Howling Hills

by Michael Summers

  Bulkington started to mutter. "Bleak, depressing and with a profound..."

  "Yes, alright," said Indole. "Whine all you like. But look at the bones."

  "They're just bones."

  "Look carefully."

  Bulkington looked. He shrugged.

  "You see?" said Indole. "You see how they're running?"

  Bulkington looked again. He was about to mutter something unprintable about Indole but then something caught his eye. He squinted. "I sort of see what you mean."

  There was definitely something in what Indole was saying. Each series of skeletons seemed to be laid out in a sequence, from a small, eel-type creature to a tetrapod frozen in mid stride.

  "Bet you've never seen bones run before," said Indole. "Now do you believe in magic?"

  "I believe in nature," said Bulkington.

  "Then you definitely believe in magic," said Indole.

  Bulkington shook his head.

  "Well, think about it," said Indole. "You trace those bones back, right back past those eel type things. One day one of them was just a rock on the bottom of an ocean. One day a rock got up and swam."

  "I don't think it happened like that," said Bulkington.

  "More or less," said Indole. "Maybe not a rock, but something."

  Bulkington smirked. "You know what, Indole? You would look at a mountain and say it's magic."

  Indole shrugged and smiled. "I would if one day it stood up and looked back at me."

  Chapter 5 - The Veins of The Earth

  "Don't worry," said Indole, the next day. They had been walking since sun-up several hours ago and now they were greeted by driving rain that stung their cheeks and ran dripping down their necks. "There's a shortcut that keeps us out of the rain."

  "A shortcut?"

  "The Howling Hills are hollow," said Indole.

  "Dwarfish mines?" enquired Bulkington.

  "No. Elven Fracking."

  "Oh, right," said Bulkington. "That'd explain it."

  They walked on for half a mile, until they came to a deep hole in the ground. Indole pulled a rope out of his bag and tied one end round a moribund tree. "Perfectly safe," he said and gave the rope a yank. With a pathetic creak the tree fell over.

  "Perhaps I'll try a rock," said Indole. He looped the rope round a sturdy looking outcrop and tested it.

  "Wouldn't it be easier just to keep walking on top of the ground?" asked Bulkington.

  "And get eaten by wolves?"

  "Maybe not, then. I suppose there's nothing dangerous down there?"

  "Of course there is," said Indole. "You just can't see 'em."

  "You can't see them?"

  "Apart from the ones that breathe fire," said Indole. He started to abseil down the rope, which involved him scrabbling frantically at the rocky walls of the hole with his feet and lowering himself erratically downwards hand over hand with the rope. "You coming or what?"

  Indole disappeared into the darkness with a sound like an avalanche. Reluctantly Bulkington followed him. A few feet down the meagre sunlight turned to dull black, but Bulkington could hear Indole half falling over the rocks below and so they kept going. At last Bulkington felt solid ground beneath his feet.

  "Can't see anything, eh?" said Indole.

  "No," said Bulkington.

  "Let your eyes adjust for a moment. Then tell me what you see."

  Bulkington squinted in the darkness for a while. Slowly, a faint light could be seen running in veins along the wall of the tunnel.

  "I'm not liking this," said Bulkington.

  Indole laughed. "The veins of the Earth."

  "I'm going back," said Bulkington.

  "Why?"

  "I tend to draw the line at the walls having a pulse."

  "Just a bit of magic," said Indole. "Don't sweat it."

  "Well done," said Bulkington, "you've won the argument. I'm off."

  He started climbing the rope, but didn't get very far.

  "Okay, hold up," said Indole. "If you must know, it's just plant roots. They link with fungi underground. The fungi glow in the dark. Therefore the root-type-things glow as well. Completely natural and boring."

  Bulkington slithered down onto solid ground once more. "And the things that breathe fire?"

  "Oh they're magical alright. But don't worry - I'll fend them off with a spell of protection." Indole advanced, waving his hands meaningfully. "Back, fire breathing things, back!"

  Bulkington closed his eyes for a second, hoping that somehow he would be somewhere else when he opened them. He was disappointed. "At least we're out the rain," he muttered.

  They trudged along through the tunnel, which twisted and branched until it was quite impossible to judge which direction was which.

  "I take it you know the route," said Bulkington pointedly.

  "Route?" said Indole. "Oh, yes. Of course."

  "This is meant to be a shortcut after all," said Bulkington.

  "Trust me," said Indole. "Now I'm sure we've already been past that mineral deposit that looks remarkably like a skull but isn't before. So that means that we just need to take the opposite fork than we did last time and we'll get somewhere different. And possibly in the right direction."

  Bulkington felt an emotion that was a peculiar mixture of panic and depression. "We could always leave a trail of spoons," he said.

  "I'm not wasting my spoons like that," said Indole.

  "That's probably what that mineral deposit that looks remarkably like a skull said," remarked Bulkington.

  "Look, just shut up and keep walking," said Indole. "Mineral deposits don't say anything. And that one definitely is a mineral deposit. And not a skull. Oh dear. Did you bring a compass?"

  "No," said Bulkington.

  They walked on in silent panic for another hour, before up ahead there was visible a dim glow.

  "Move towards the light!" exclaimed Indole.

  "You're a bit premature there," said Bulkington. "I think that bit comes after the hideous fire breathing dragon has frazzled you. I think that what we should be doing right now is moving very quickly away from the light."

  "Nonsense," said Indole. "It doesn't look like a dragon at all. It looks remarkably like a knight carrying a lantern."

  "Oh yes. In shining armour? One of the ones that believes in chivalry and saving people from becoming mineral deposits?"

  "Sort of."

  "What do you mean sort of?"

  "Well, the armour would be shining if it wasn't..."

  "Black? As in one of those knights that goes round chopping peoples heads off just for the hell of it?"

  "No," said Indole, "that would be an unfair generalisation based merely on armour colour."

  "Oh," said Bulkington.

  "Actually," said Indole, "The knight's armour is pink. The only thing more terrifying than getting your head lopped off by a black knight is getting your head lopped off by a knight wearing a light shade of salmon. Although, don't worry; by tradition the Pink Knight must ask you some kind of incredibly unfair riddle beforehand."

  "Halt!" said the knight, holding up the torch. "Who goes there?"

  "Two itinerant cutlers," replied Indole.

  "One itinerant cutler and someone who just happens to be here," said Bulkington, "but probably not for much longer."

  "You shall not pass unless you answer me riddles three!"

  Bulkington groaned. Indole looked oddly enthralled. "Good stuff," he said. "We will answer y' riddles three."

  "Riddle the first!" shouted the knight unnervingly loudly.

  "A man whose command can conjure up 'el,

  This man draws black water from out of his well

  Of six and twenty soldiers he takes his command,

  With twenty six soldiers he conquers the land!"

  "Who is he?" asked the knight.

  Indole thought for a second. "He's a printer," he said calmly.

  "Correct!" said the knight.

  "Well, that was easy," said Indole. "Looks like
mineralisation might not be on the cards after all."

  "Riddle the second!" roared the knight.

  "No sportsman here, but rows and rows;

  runners and races and shooting it knows

  On this earth the riddle is nought but a sieve

  It lies in the sunlight so others may live!"

  "What is it?" asked the knight.

  "No problem," said Indole, yawning. "It's a garden."

  "Correct!" said the knight. A malicious look was just visible under his visor. "Riddle the third!"

  "What is the angular momentum of Basingstoke?"

  "What?" said Indole.

  "You heard," said the knight.

  "That's not fair," said Indole. "It doesn't even rhyme!"

  The knight drew his sword. "All right," he said.

  "Tell me the angular momentum of Basingstoke,

  Or I'll cut yer head off in one single stroke!"

  "Erm," said Indole quickly, "thirty six point nine."

  "Ah, but what units?" asked the knight, advancing.

  Indole looked flustered. "Arc seconds?"

  "Wrong!" shouted the knight gleefully. "This is when I chop you into pieces I think."

  Indole shrugged. "Okay," he said, "but first I've got a riddle for you."

  The knight hesitated. "Oh good. I've been using the last three for the past decade now. Nobody ever gets the Basingstoke one. To be honest it's a little unfair. What's your riddle?"

  "Riddle the last!" shouted Indole.

  "It makes one double, though you won't want two,

  The tip for this riddle is the tip of the shoe

  If you sing baritone it will raise your key,

  not one octave higher, no sir, but three!"

  "What is it?" asked Indole.

  "That's easy!" bellowed the knight. "A kick in the groin."

  "Right you are," said Indole and put his foot in. "This way!" he shouted to Bulkington, before adding, "Possibly!"

  Bulkington needed no second telling. He fled after Indole into the darkness, leaving the salmon-coloured knight writhing on the floor.

  Chapter 6 - Someone's Rockery

  It was still raining when Indole and Bulkington surfaced again and they appeared to be only a few hundred yards from where they had started.

  "Good shortcut," said Bulkington.

  "Well, it was certainly very short," said Indole. "In terms of the distance covered, that is. Not the actual time it took us."

  "Do you even know which direction we were heading before?"

  "Of course," said Indole. "Forwards."

  He started pacing on through the scrub. Bulkington traipsed after him and slowly morning turned into afternoon. When the sun was low and Bulkington was starting to think that sitting down to a nice steaming bowl of gruel was actually not such a bad thing, Indole pointed to a shape on the horizon.

  "The Wizard's Tor," he said. "We can get a good sight of the nearest town from there."

  "Good," said Bulkington.

  "If we don't get vaporised by the wizard, that is," added Indole.

  "Does a lot of vaporising does he?" asked Bulkington in a strained voice.

  "Moderate amounts, yes," said Indole.

  "Could we not just sort of wander about a bit more?"

  Indole fixed Bulkington with a withering look. "It's either vaporisation or wolves, son, and vaporisation's a lot quicker."

  As if on cue there was a sound in the distance. Suddenly it occurred to Bulkington that maybe the Howling Hills didn't get their name just from the wind. The two of them hurried on.

  The tower was built of a dull, crumbling rock, which was covered in lichen and whatever moss had the tenacity to survive in the icy wind and scarce sunlight. There were no windows; only where the bricks had disintegrated was there any hint of the interior, and this was a faint outline of a spiral staircase half lost in shadow. The whole building looked completely deserted.

  Bulkington rolled his eyes. "Doesn't look very wizardly to me. Or very weatherproof."

  "The wizard's obviously out somewhere, probably vaporising something," said Indole. "We're lucky."

  They entered through what used to be a doorway and Indole lit a match. He took a stub of a candle out of his pocket.

  "You kept that one quiet when we were underground," said Bulkington as Indole lit the candle.

  "Candles don't grow on trees, you know," said Indole.

  "Nothing grows on trees on the Howling Hills," said Bulkington bitterly. "In fact trees don't grow full stop."

  "You have a very pessimistic outlook," said Indole. "Let's get a birds-eye view and then see what you think."

  They climbed the staircase in the pitch black, Indole occasionally cursing as he slipped on a long-since disintegrated step. At last they made the top floor, the roof and walls of which had caved in. All around were hilltops and in the distance the sun was setting.

  "There it is," said Indole, pointing to a town in the distance. "Avaciggy. Named in an ancient tongue after a rest stop for wayfarers."

  "What's that next town further on?"

  "Splutter. And look, you can just about see the green lakes of Borczowia in the distance."

  "What's beyond the horizon?" asked Bulkington.

  "Oh, just the rest of the world; I wouldn't think too much about that. Generally it keeps to itself. Possibly because of the large expanses of algae-laden swamp between us and it. Apparently somebody tried to invade us once and found it so disappointing that they gave up half way. The Moaning Mounds are in the opposite direction, but the people there are too miserable to invade properly."

  "Why do you think anyone lives in the Howling Hills?"

  "You saw the Valley of Bones?" said Indole.

  "Yes," said Bulkington.

  "Well, the bones always run away from places that are comfortable. The trouble is, you see, that when they get comfortable, other things with larger mandibular bones - that's jaw bones to you and me - get comfortable too."

  "What made you come to the Howling Hills?"

  Indole smiled. "The horizon caught up with me."

  "That's a good way of not answering the question," said Bulkington.

  Indole raised an eyebrow. "You want to know?"

  Bulkington nodded.

  Indole shook his head, but he carried on talking. "It was a long time ago..."

  Beyond the horizon the rain was lashing down as it always did. In fact, the only thing that differentiated the Howling Hills from Indole's home country, the Moaning Mounds, was a large palisade made from sharpened pieces of timber with what looked like mineral deposits on top.

  Indole lived a few miles from the border. It was the customary pastime of people either side of the border to see who could hurl the largest boulders over the palisade and hopefully make someone else either very unhappy or very dead. This wasn't a custom born out of any particular animosity, it was just what they did. It started with pebbles. Then stones. Then bricks. Then people started building catapults and trebuchets. In the end boulders the size of small hills were regularly exchanged with the effect that the terrain for several miles of the border was reduced to rubble.

  Indole spent a lot of time forlornly regarding the scene of devastation that lay just a few metres away from his town. He had heard that when people fought wars they usually had God on their side; evidently God had wanted a rockery. He watched the latest mass of stone land with a carrrump onto another mass of stone and shatter into little pieces. The young Indole walked along the main street of his town, past the trebuchet builders, the catapult manufacturers, the boulderers. He stopped when he saw two people arguing in the street.

  "No, you've calculated the angular momentum all wrong," said Brickbat. "You'll never get your boulder off the ground. You want to take the square route of pi and..."

  "Square route of pi? You don't know what you're talking about," laughed Slinger. "You take the fourth power of pi and divide it by nought point three, then..."

  Indole coughed.
r />   "What do you want?" asked Brickbat.

  "Does it really matter what index of pi you use? I mean, when it comes down to it all you end up doing is hurling a bloody big rock a few hundred feet through the air."

  Brickbat looked stunned. "What? A few hundred feet? A kilometer more like. You, sir, have insulted me."

  "Good," said Indole.

  Brickbat clenched his jaw and fixed Indole with a look that fizzed. "You woudn't be able to cube pi for all the readily extractible oil shale in the Moaning Mounds."

  "You know, I don't think that sentence has been used before in the history of the universe. Congratulations."

  "Don't rile him," put in Slinger quickly. "He's got a short fuse."

  "Poor chap," said Indole.

  "Right, that's it," said Brickbat. "I challenge you, sir, to a duel."

  Indole sighed. "What with, catapults?"

  "Pistols," said Brickbat.

  "Right you are," said Indole. "Pistols at dawn it is."

  And so it was. Early the next morning Indole and Brickbat stood on a particularly bleak hillside with Slinger as Brickbat's second. The pistols were loaded and Indole and Brickbat stood back to back.

  "Twenty paces," said Slinger. "And may the best man win."

  They took the paces. From where Indole was standing he could see a vulture circling ominously.

  "Turn to face your opponent," said Slinger.

  They turned.

  "Take aim."

  They took aim. There was an electric pause.

  "Fire!"

  Time seemed to turn to treacle and then a terrific bang rang out across the hillside. Indole blinked. When he opened his eyes he saw smoke rising from the breach of his gun. He looked across to the smiling Brickbat.

  "You didn't fire," said Indole.

  "Correct," said Brickbat, holstering his pistol with a flourish, "and you missed."

  "Then why did you challenge me to a duel?"

  "Because," said Brickbat, "I knew that you were a hopeless shot. I can now safely say that you demanded satisfaction over a matter of honour, but that I, as a gentleman, allowed you to fire upon me without so much as flinching, whilst you fired in a most dastardly manner. I, therefore, am the victor. I bid you good day."

  "But you were the one who challenged me in the first place!" shouted Indole.

  Slinger patted Brickbat on the back, completely ignoring Indole, and they wandered off in the direction of the pub. Indole looked mournfully at them as they walked away. "Smug bloody bastards," he said.