A Company of Heroes Book Two: The Fabulist

by Ron Miller

  “Are you all right?” she asks.

  “I think so. Where am I? Who are you?”

  “In order as asked: I have no idea. Some fishing village or something in the backwaters of nowhere; they’re all pretty much the same after the first two or three hundred. My name is Rykkla. What’s yours?”

  “Thud.”

  “Sounds about right. My uncle runs this circus, the Sloon-Woxen Combined Grand Shows and Menagerie. He’s the one who found you and brought you here. Whatever happened to you, anyway?”

  “I is looking for someone.”

  “Who?”

  “The princess.”

  “Your dog?”

  “No Princess Bronwyn.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know her. Sorry,” she adds, seeing his face fall. “She the one who beaned you?”

  “Huh? No. Something fell on my head.”

  “You think that you’re feeling well enough to talk to Uncle Busra?”

  “I feel all right.”

  “Fine! Wait right here and I’ll get him.” With a flurry of long legs, flashing like a busy tailor’s shears, she vanishes from the tent. Thud sits up and looks around. His head hurts terribly. He had been lying, is now sitting, on a mound of clean straw in the middle of a small tent whose sides are glowing warmly from the early morning sun. From outside he can hear voices mixed with strange sounds, animal or mechanical or both, he can’t tell. He tries to stand up but feels so dizzy that he thumps back into the straw, head throbbing. It is amazing that so much pain can occur within so small an object.

  After a few minutes, Rykkla returned with her uncle, Busra, the powerful, hirsute man who had rescued Thud the previous night . . . or earlier that morning, to be entirely accurate. He grins at the sight of the conscious Thud, an action that makes him look like a hungry bear. It would not have occurred to Thud, but, except for their coloring, there is little to suggest a familial relationship between the man whose every feature seems a gross exaggeration and the girl beside him who is as sleek and graceful as a steel spring. Perhaps the resemblance lies in that both had animal counterparts: he the badger, she the otter.

  “Well, I’m glad to see you’re feeling better! Hungry?”

  “Yes.”

  “Some food’ll be brought here for you, until you feel steadier on your feet. Rykkla, will you take care of that?”

  “Of course, Uncle,” she replies, vanishing once again.

  “Do you feel like talking?” Busra asks, squatting on his haunches to bring his face level with Thud’s.

  “I guess so.”

  “Well, look here, I have a proposition for you.”

  “Proposition?”

  “Yes. Do you have a job? Are you working anywhere?”

  “I is working on the Princess.”

  “The Princess?”

  “I shoveled coal.”

  “Ah, a ship. And where is this ship?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “There is no ship in the harbor when I found you. I think you are left for dead, my friend, abandoned. Would you like a job? Do you want to work? If you do, I’ve an offer for you. I’ll be frank: I’ve worked in circuses all my life and I’ve never in all that time seen anyone like you. Tell me, are you as strong as you look?”

  “I don’t know. How strong do I look?”

  “Strong enough to tear a horse in half.”

  “I never tried that.”

  “No matter. I’d like to hire you as my new strong man. I’ll pay you . . . well, we’ll talk about that later. You’ll have your own place to sleep and all of your meals provided.”

  “That sounds nice.”

  “Excellent! Wonderful! It’s agreed then. As soon as you’re feeling better, tomorrow, perhaps?, I’ll explain to you what you have to do. All right?”

  “All right.”

  And thus begins Thud’s career as a circus strong man. When the merchants finally reappear to demand the return of their giant, Busra simply demonstrates that he is now employed by the circus. There is little the townsmen can say, confronted as they are by a living, breathing Thud who answers their questions more or less intelligibly; the most cogent, and disappointing, being the “Yes” they receive in answer to the inquiry: “Do you work here?”

  Busra has a costume prepared for his new act, an imitation leopard skin draped over one of Thud’s shoulders, and a new sideshow tent with Thud’s picture painted on it. There is considerable debate whether to change Thud’s name. The most convincing argument for leaving it alone is that Thud might not remember to answer to any other. So the primary-hued, yard-high letters proclaim: “Thud the Invincible, Strongest Man in the Universe.”

  Thud’s duties are simple enough and he enjoys them. He ties knots in one-inch steel reinforcing rods and occasionally makes pretty designs with them at the request of the audience.

  He bends railroad rails into Us, but these are not always easy to come by. He juggles cannonballs and lifts an ox when someone responds to the challenge in the handbills that are passed out in advance of every appearance and brings one with them. He holds a kind of sling in his fist, at arm’s length, and invites any number of people from the audience to sit in it and his arm would budge no more than the bough of an oak. Rykkla climbs onto his shoulders and then walks out to the end of his outstretched arm where she then does a handstand on his open palm.

  Thud rapidly becomes one of Busra’s most popular attractions. As for Thud, he enjoys his sojourn with the circus immensely.

  He particularly enjoys the animals, never in his life having seen anything as exotic as the lions, tigers, bears, seals and, most particularly, the elephants, for whom he has an especial affinity and who take to him like a brother. The other performers and employees take an almost immediate liking to the amiable giant. Not one of them sees anything strange in Thud’s appearance, just as they have never seen anything awry with each other. Within the inverted world of their circus, like troglodytes living within a hollow earth, or Kobolds, for that matter, the circus folk only see normality in uniqueness. The acrobats and tumblers, the high-wire artists and animal trainers and clowns, all of those whose strangeness lay in something inside their heads that made them want to abandon the mundane and see in their mirrors nothing outwardly different from the denizens of the freak tents, the pinheads, the alligator girls, the fishboys, the living skeletons, the bearded women, the fat women, the half men-half women, the human pincushions, the fire-eaters and the geeks . . . to these self-abandoned, self-sufficient creatures, to their eyes each of the others look as they futilely dream themselves to be.

  Thud never for a moment forgets his great mission, and in every town the circus passes through he asks about his lost princess. Of every awed farmhand who is granted permission to visit the giant backstage he inquires about Bronwyn. No one takes him seriously, however, because they are all outsiders who see only the shell Thud had been buried within. All they hear, if they hear him at all, are the inane ramblings of a half-wit giant.

  The circus people listen to him, however, and they believe him, more or less. That final qualifying phrase is necessary since they are almost all wise enough to understand that what someone like Thud believes to be true and what is in fact true might be two entirely different things.

  Thud is far from being a born storyteller, and his attempts to recite the events of the last two years are not even remotely coherent. There had been so much he had accepted without thought, that there is little he truly remembers. So his new friends listen to a disconnected and confused catalog of apparently unrelated events that include lost princesses, flights through the air, trips underground and bad people who had chased him here and had chased him there. His new friends don’t know what to make of it all.

  Thud does not know how long he stayed with the circus, nor does he even bother to think about how many towns and villages he has passed through, or how many people he has puzzled with his mysterious and incomprehensible questions.

  Then on one rain
y night the circus burns. Busra has no idea how it started, only that once it has there is no chance of stopping it. The only thing he has to be thankful for is that it occurred after the evening’s final performance and the show tents are virtually empty. The menagerie, however, and the trained animals are all under canvas and it is imperative that they be gotten to safety before any thought could be given to the tents and equipment. Everyone, from roustabout to aerialist to palmist, work like demons in the scorching heat, steaming like hot coals as they become soaked by the pervasive, heavy mist. Black, smoking silhouettes of all shapes and sizes dance and scurry with a deliberate frenzy against the backdrop of flame. Thud’s feats are prodigious. Though he is never to know it, he creates legends that night that eventually filter through all the world of the circus, carnival and sideshow, becoming, finally, standard tales to tell around the urns in the coffee tents and to wide-eyed novices.

  But in spite of everyone’s efforts, the circus is lost. Only the empty wagons and caravans remain. Busra is forced to sell most of his animals to pay his debts and has to let his performers go on to other shows.

  “Thud,” Busra explains to the giant after the last of his regular performers have taken his or her regretful but necessary farewell, “Thud, there’s no reason that we, you, Rykkla and I, cannot continue the strongman act on its own.”

  Thud sees nothing wrong with this, as he views almost everything, and for some weeks the trio are very successful. They are crowded in the single small wagon left to them, but the weather is still fine, especially after they have descended into the lower country, and Thud has no objection to sleeping out of doors. An awning is stretched from one side of the wagon, which gives Thud a little shelter and also provides a place where they can cook and eat their meals. Busra is able to get some handbills printed cheaply and this increases the numbers of the audiences which in turn, naturally, increases the quantity of coins tossed into the hat that is passed around at the end of each demonstration.

  One morning, as the wagon is coming out of a narrow mountain pass, they come upon a troop of soldiers bivouacked in an open meadow. It is a strange and startling reminder of the real world, one that had seldom intruded upon the monotonous existence of the circus and certainly not its present condensed form. Borders had never particularly bothered them, as they wandered back and forth across them, as chance and pathway took them. They seldom even paid much attention to the languages being spoken around them; Busra is a polyglot and switches so easily from one tongue to another that even he is never really aware of what dialect he is currently speaking. He tells Thud that he no longer even recalls what language he had been born to.

  The troupe is halted and the wagon is searched.

  The soldiers allow Busra and Rykkla to go on their way, taking nothing from them but Thud.

  Thud’s sojourn in the army is a mysterious and unpleasant interlude for him. He not only never understands who he is fighting, or why, he never even knows whose army he is in nor what country it represents. He charges the enemy, he tears down their defenses, he scatters men left and right. He eats when he is given food and he sleeps when he is allowed to. He doesn’t question any of this, he doesn’t rankle or rebel when he is treated like an animal or slave. He does as he is told because, if the truth be known, Thud is getting tired. Something has finally pierced that seemingly invincible armor of flesh and muscle and bone and stolidity. It is not his great heart that it strikes there, nor his brain, nor any other vital organ . . . the weapon is fear, desolation, loneliness, and resignation, and the victim is in every way that matters a child.

  He seldom asks after his princess any longer, though he dreams about her almost every night. He becomes as he was at Groontocker and Peen, before the only whim he ever had in his life had forever changed his existence: little more than a mindless automaton, with neither future nor past, only an endless, empty present.

  One day Thud’s army loses a great battle. Thud has fought as hard and as mechanically as ever, but the army falls anyway. Thud is overwhelmed and immobilized, which turns out not to be difficult for when he sees what is happening he lay down his weapon (the five-foot steel barrel of a cannon he had ripped from its carriage) and meekly allows himself to be taken prisoner. This action seems inconceivable to the victors, who cocoon the giant in heavy chains and padlocks so thoroughly that he has to be hoisted onto a wagon with a block and tackle. Under the watchful and fretful gaze of a dozen guards who never tale their eyes from the prisoner, Thud is taken to the capital.

  He never thinks to ask the name of the city and no one ever bothers to tell him.

  He is rolled into a dungeon cell where he remains for an indeterminate number of days. Food is brought regularly, he is never allowed to feed himself; he is fed one spoonful at a time by an excessively nervous old man whose hand shakes so violently every time it approached Thud’s vast maw that it occasionally misses even that huge target, but Thud doesn’t count the meals. Days or weeks might be passing so far as he could tell.

  Then he is brought to trial. The laborious process of imprisoning him is reversed: he is rolled from his cell and hoisted to the street by means of a heavy winch. From there he is carried in the back of a heavy wagon to the public square where other war criminals are being tried and sentenced.

  He is levered upright and propped into position, facing the tribunal. The men on the high dais are dressed all in black and wear stern and soulless faces that are blacker in their expressions than the robes they wear.

  “Your name?” one asks; it doesn’t matter which.

  “Me?”

  “You heard the question.”

  “What question?”

  “What is your name?”

  “Thud. Thud Mollockle.”

  “Where are you from, Thud Mollockle?”

  “From?”

  “Yes.”

  Thud thinks about this. Normally, he might have answered “Groontocker and Peen,” or perhaps even “Blavek.” But a sudden, stray glimmer of accuracy sparkled wanly, like a single bright star in an otherwise empty universe.

  “I’m from down there.”

  “Where?” asks the judges, their interchangeable faces taking on a keen edacity.

  “Down there.”

  “South?” suggests one judge, hopefully.

  “Or under the ground?” offers another.

  “Under the ground.”

  At this answer the tribunal sits back on its bench like a trio of satisfied carrion crows. Only details remain; as far as they are concerned, the trial is over.

  “Tell us more about yourself,” the tribunal asks.

  “More?” Thud thinks hard. He had been asked similar questions before and had never known exactly what to say. His thoughts always become completely jumbled up, as though all of his memories have been written down on cards and his clumsy fingers have scattered them willy-nilly. Picking up a half-dozen at random, he begins quoting:

  “I remember the little people and the big cat that tried to eat the princess, and I remember the lightning and how it came from my fingers, and I remember flying in the air and the storm, and the flames all around me and the animals . . .”

  “Enough!” cries the tribunal in one voice. “We’ve heard enough. Take this . . . devil . . . away. He is guilty of sorcery and witchcraft and is hereby condemned to death. Guards!”

  “The date of the execution?” asks one of the tribunes of his fellows.

  “Death by fire for witches, warlocks, heretics and such? Am I not correct?”

  “Yes, of course, but look at the calendar!”

  “Dear, dear. I see. Not an opening until St. Grutten’s Eve. Well, this fellow’s obviously a special case . . .”

  “Clearly inhuman!”

  “ . . . therefore I think it would be in order to make a special event of his execution . . . obviously we would have to allow extra time in any case; it’s evident that he would burn for hours.”

  “True, true.”

  “Why not
schedule it for St. Grutten’s Eve? The public would appreciate the spectacle offered by the burning of a genuine demon, especially after one or two hundred commonplace, routine executions. It would give the citizens of Flekke something to look forward to.”

  “What a splendid idea!”

  “St. Grutten’s Eve it is, then?”

  “Yes, I believe that’s unanimous.”

  “Let’s see, that’s six weeks from now?”

  “Not quite, but yes, that’s about right.”

  “Excellent! It’s agreed, then. Splendid, splendid.”

  “Next case.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  PREPARATIONS

  The arrangements for the invasion of Tamlaght proceed at an encouragingly rapid and enthusiastic pace. The disappearance of both Bronwyn and Thud has been interpreted by Duke Mathias, rightly, as it turns out, as something engineered by Payne Roelt and General Praxx. He immediately called upon his small army: in effect every able-bodied man in the duchy. The ranks are swollen to nearly twice their expected size by volunteers of all ages who arrive in Diamandis from every town, village and farm. They arrive on foot, in carts, on horseback and on mules, and they arrive with guns, antique swords and pikes that are souvenirs of nearly forgotten battles, scythes, axes, pitchforks and, if nothing else can be found, clubs and fists.

  The duke had, at the first intimation of Bronwyn’s disappearance, gone to Diamandis Antica himself, along with a half dozen of his most trusted household guards. Halfway to the port they stopped a man on the road who seemed to be in an inordinate hurry. At first sight of the duke and his officers the man’s immediate reaction seemed to be the desire for flight, which, after realizing that the road at that point is bound by a pair of high embankments, transformed into the same sort of frozen hysteria that would grip a deer in the path of an advancing locomotive. He is shaking like a mass of frog’s eggs when the duke drew up to him.