A Company of Heroes Book One: The Stonecutter

by Ron Miller

  “In any case,” the king continued, “her version of the story has a great deal to do with what we must tell the princess. We must tell her of our dealings with the surface people and we must ask of her a great favor, though we think we can make the latter more in the nature of an equitable trade in services.”

  “I would be more than happy to be of service to you.” And even happier if it means being safely on my way.

  “We are delighted to hear that. Several generations ago, our generations, of course, the princess understands, one of our ancestors decided that it was incumbent upon our race to purify the bloodline of the surface people. He was a kindly Kobold, and it pained him to see how much the poor creatures suffered. He understood that it is not the surface dwellers’ fault: the terrible life they are forced to endure on the outside, their physical degeneration, all was brought upon them by the actions of a few renegade Kobolds. Why should they continue to suffer for something they had had no hand in? It is neither possible nor desirable for us to interfere with the lives of the surface people directly. But we are in no hurry: thousands of years had already passed; what would a few hundred more matter?

  “The old king’s plan was a simple one: to reintroduce the pure bloodline. And his solution was equally simple: merely substitute Kobold children for those of the surface dwellers. It has not been terribly difficult to do this. There is little that occurs within or upon these mountains that we do not know about. Occasionally, when we learn of an imminent birth, we prepare ourselves. In the first night after the surface baby arrives, we make the substitution. We leave a newborn Kobold child and take the other away.”

  “You don’t...” Bronwyn half cries, rising from her seat.

  “Please do not look so horrified! We do not harm the poor things. We raise them as our own. They cannot help their disabilities; we pity them.”

  She remains on the edge of her seat. The king has misunderstood her shock; she is not concerned with what the Kobolds do with the human children. What does she care about that?

  “What you’re trying to tell me is that Thud is really a Kobold? He’s not human?”

  “Of course he’s human! We would have thought the princess would have realized that by now.”

  “That’s not what I mean. Thud’s one of you? He’s a Kobold? A baby you left with a hu...a surface mother?”

  “Yes! Exactly!”

  Well, what do you know? She has no reason to doubt the king. As he is speaking, she recalls the story Janos had told her about the poor foundling girl whose newborn baby was so mysteriously changed overnight. It explains a lot of things about her big friend, even his choice of occupation, she suddenly realized. She supposes it is one a Kobold would naturally gravitate toward. Thud is a born rock pounder. A movement beside the king attracts her attention. It is the other Thud shifting his weight to a different foot. Oh, my dear Musrum, she thinks, reminded of the presence of the big nude human, that’s the baby Thud was meant to be. That thought doesn’t seem to make as much sense as she would have liked. She tries again. That’s the baby Thud is substituted for. That’s a human being who is kidnaped and raised by the Kobolds, and Thud, my Thud, is a Kobold child, raised by a human mother. Holy Musrum, the poor thing must have known all along what her child really was! She looks again at what she is now thinking of as the New Thud, with even more fascination, with even more disgust. Living and working with his step-people has certainly created a magnificent body, what are light chores for a Kobold would be violent exercise for a human; but living with them has, she is sure, destroyed his mind.

  “We will take the princess to her cousin,” says the king, “if she will agree to take Thud to the Continent.”

  “Pardon? What?”

  “Thud, this Thud, must get to the Continent...”

  “Socotarra?”

  “Yes, Socotarra. The nation of Londeac, specifically. There is a very important mission he must perform. If the princess will help him, we will take her to her cousin.”

  The king had made his proposition far too casually for Bronwyn’s taste. It’s what he’s been leading up to all along. But he surely must want more than this. For the first time since her arrival within the underground kingdom, Bronwyn feels definitely afraid, the fear replacing what has been a general anxiety. She knows she has been drifting through the past three days in a kind of reverie: halfway in a dream. Now she looks at the king and his retinue not as creatures of her imagination somehow brought to life, but as the grey, inhuman troglodytes they really are. The smallest of them would be capable of crushing her within its great hands like a meatball in an hydraulic press. The emotionless faces, with eyes like glittering chips of obsidian, vast lipless mouths, and no noses to speak of, are now as frightening as they ought to have been all along.

  The king all along has been careful to explain that he regards her as something less than human, a degenerate Kobold in fact, physically and morally far lower than an animal. They can destroy her without compunction; indeed, they might consider it an act of mercy; they can keep her within the caverns for the rest of her life, and there has been no indication yet, she belatedly realizes, that the directions to the nearest exit are forthcoming. She would grow to be like the pseudo-Thud: as white as a slug, her body wasting on a diet of lichens, moss and fungus, her eyes atrophying in the darkness, her hair vanishing, her mind slipping from her like a sugar cube dissolving in a cup of hot water. Slagelse’s kingdom is one without art, without literature, without imagination, without change and without time, it exists in a perpetual, eventless, out-of-focus now that stretches endlessly without future or past.

  She would have to escape by any means: the cost of staying is too dear.

  “That won’t do me any good now,” she answers. “It’s far too late. My brother’s coronation begins about ten days from now and I still must be one hundred and fifty or two hundred miles from Piers’ camp...”

  “Yes, about two hundred as the princess reckons them.”

  “Then there’s just no way I can get to him in time for him to be able to do anything about my brother and Payne.”

  “We mean it is two hundred miles as the princess reckons them, but not as we do.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Distances in our world are not the same as they are in the princess’. Even though it exists within hers, our world is much larger than that of the princess. We don’t know if we can explain...”

  “Please don’t try.”

  “What it means is that her cousin’s camp is only a very few hours’ journey from here. Perhaps only half a day.”

  “I don’t understand how that’s possible, but if it’s true, why do you need me to take Thud, the New Thud, to Londeac? If you can travel two hundred miles in just a few hours, Londeac would only be a day or so away. Why do you need me?”

  Slagelse sighs and shifts to a more comfortable position in his throne. He twirls the braided strands of his beard around his stumpy fingers. For the first time a certain reticence enters his voice.

  “Our kingdom does not extend everywhere: the earth is not hollow. Much of the journey would still have to be made overland. We would not know our way on the surface, supposing one of us could survive any length of time on the outside. And even if our kingdom does underlie all of Guesclin, the Strait between this island and the Continent is a barrier we cannot pass. Thud, here, is our answer, or at least part of it. He is a Kobold in all ways except by birth. Our interests are his. And he can travel on the surface with impunity; he can cross the Strait, he can carry out this mission where none of us would succeed. And he is the only one of a very few who are ready...or able. Physically, that is: Thud is as ignorant of the surface as we are. He needs the princess’ help. Will she help him?”

  “All right. If I can. I’ll try, at least,” Bronwyn answers, realizing that all she need do to carry out her part of the bargain would be to take this new Thud to the coast and put him on the first ship to Londeac. Her uncle, Felix, occupies the throne ther
e and would surely help. But there is no need to let the king know how simple this would be. The more obligated he feel toward her, the better.

  “I hope your Highness will understand and forgive my haste, but I’d really like to be on my way as soon as the, uh, two Thuds and I can get ready.”

  “We are afraid the princess is under a slight misapprehension, only one of the Thuds, as she puts it, is going with her.”

  “What do you mean?” she asks warily.

  “The princess’ Thud, the Kobold who accompanied her here that is, will remain with us. Of course. This is, afer all, his home.”

  “He’s staying here?”

  “Certainly. What else does the princess expect?”

  “I don’t know, but I was counting on him going with me. I guess I assumed he would.”

  “No, no. He must stay with us. How soon does the princess think she can be ready to leave?”

  “I don’t know,” she replies, distracted by thoughts of Thud’s perfidy. How can he desert her like this? Has he no sense of loyalty?

  “Would an hour be too soon?”

  “May I ask: what is this mission that is so important?”

  “We are helping the refugee faeries of Londeac to emigrate.”

  Bronwyn found Thud waiting for her when she returns to her chamber. The news that he would not be going on with her has depressed her more than she would have expected. And it has angered her as well: she feel cheated, abandoned and betrayed. Loyalty is something she expects, takes for granted; it is her due. She does not say a word to the big man, but goes directly to the small pile of neatly folded clothing and begins stuffing it into her pack.

  “Where are you going?” asks Thud, but Bronwyn refuses to answer him.

  “Princess? Are we going somewhere?”

  She turns to face him. “No, we’re not! I’m leaving here. You’ve made your decision: now stay here if you want.”

  “I don’t understand; why can’t I go, too?”

  “Because you’d rather stay here, that’s why.”

  “I would?”

  “I don’t want to depend on anyone I can’t trust, and I can’t trust anyone who isn’t with me of their own free will,” she says with more passion than logic. “I’d thought you wee loyal, and my friend, I won’t make that mistake twice.”

  “But why would I rather stay here?”

  “How am I supposed to know? It was your decision, not mine.”

  “But I don’t like it here, Princess.”

  “Well, you should’ve thought of that first.”

  “I did! That’s why I don’t want to stay.”

  “Then why did you decide to stay in the first place?”

  “I didn’t! Why do I have to? I thought you wants me to help you?”

  “Just a minute, Thud. You never told King Slagelse that you wanted to stay behind when I leave?”

  “Why would I tell him something like that?”

  “I guess because you’re a Kobold, like everyone else here.”

  “So?”

  “So, aren’t your real parents here? Your real mother and father?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, haven’t you tried to find out?”

  “No one here knows who their parents are. They just have little Kobolds, and they get bigger, and that’s all there is to it.”

  “Then you do want to go with me?”

  “I never thought I wasn’t.”

  “I think we need to have another talk with the king.”

  King Slagelse, however, is not very pleased.

  “No,” he tells Bronwyn, when she and Thud return to the throne room and tell him of Thud’s intention to leave with her, “that is impossible. Thud must remain here.”

  “Why, if he doesn’t want to?”

  “He is a Kobold. He has come home. The matter is settled.”

  “He’s never lived here in his whole life. He didn’t even know he was a Kobold until a few days ago.”

  “It makes no difference. This is his home. This is where he must stay.”

  “Even if he doesn’t want to?”

  “We find it hard to believe that a Kobold would not prefer to stay here, in the real world! Thud, tell us: what do you want to do? Do you want to stay here with your people?”

  “No.”

  “No?” A perceptible widening of the king’s obsidian eyes denoted intense surprise. “And why not?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know...This is your home, Thud. You belong here.”

  “I’ve never been here before. My home is in Blavek: fifteen-oh-six Nixnixx Road. Room eight, uh, eight seventy-three, I think.”

  “Your Highness,” Bronwyn interrups, “how can you ask any loyalty from Thud? How can you ask him if he thinks this is home? Didn’t you abandon him as a baby?”

  “It is a great mission he was sent on.”

  “A mission? A little baby? He could’ve died or been killed! How can a baby know it’s on a ‘great mission’?”

  “We will not force Thud to stay if he wishes not to. Perhaps it has been a mistake to send Kobolds into the outer world: Thud has been the first to ever return to us, now we can see what has happens to all of the others. Obviously, they have not been able to improve the blood of the outsiders, so that one day those might return to us; instead the outer world has destroys our missionaries. I am saddens at the thought of the many hundreds of Kobold children we have condemned to Thud’s terrible fate. Our only consolation is the thought of the equal number of surface children who have had the glorious advantage of being raised as Kobolds. Yes, you may go with the princess. You no longer belong here.”

  “Thank you,” says Thud.

  “Thank you,” says Bronwyn.

  “It pains us to insist upon this one final matter, however. We can only hope that the princess understands our position. We do not doubt the princess’ good intentions for even one minute, but what guarantee do we have that she will abide by her bargain?”

  “I’ve given you my word!” answers Bronwyn hotly. “Yes, yes! Of course! It is not the princess whom we doubt. It is just that we have not had a great deal of experience with surface people, in the past it has almost always turned out badly for us. We know all too well that the farmers and woodsmen in the mountains above us leave their little offerings only because they fear us and in the hope that they might gain some gift in return. In the early days of our reign, our last guest from the surface abused our hospitality terribly. He is supposed to have kept our existence a secret yet, we are led to understand, he created images that reproduced everything he saw here and showed them to many thousands of his people. We’ve been waiting ever since for the invasion.”

  “Was his name Lach-Szyrma?”

  “We have no idea. It has been a long time.”

  “I don’t think you need worry, I don’t believe that anyone took his pictures very seriously. I mean, everyone thinks he made them up. They think they’re pictures of the Weedking’s kingdom.”

  “Oh, really? Oh, that’s rather amusing. Nevertheless, we still feel we must have some sort of guarantee of the princess’ good faith. It is nothing personal.”

  Bronwyn feels a tug at her sleeve. She glances down and Henda is pressing a folded scrap of paper into her hand. With an apologetic smile at the king, she opens and reads the note. It is brief and when she finishes reading it she favors the boy with another, sharper glance.

  “prinsis [the note read], tel the king that i wil sta as hostij. it dozint mater if yu do wat he wants or not. i want to sta here. pleez.”

  Henda nods to her anxiously, his mouth grinning but his eyes filled with tears, pleading. She is neither so slow nor so sentimental not to realize that this is An Opportunity.

  “Your Highness, I will leave this boy, who is as dear to me as a brother, as hostage against carrying out my half of our bargain. I make this offer though it breaks my heart to do so.”

  “Agreed!” says the king, delightedly.
“The princess is ready to leave, then?”

  “Yes, your Highness, I believe so.”

  “Then our Thud will show the princess the way. Her visit has been a rare treat for us all. May Musrum go with her.”

  At a signal, the human Thud appears. He is dressed as before; only a small satchel has been added, slung beneath one arm. Bronwyn sends her Thud back to their room to fetch her pack and the bag of letters. He returns after a few minutes carrying those items along with his prized coat. Bronwyn looks for Henda, but he has vanished. She has a moment’s pang of betrayal toward the boy, but it quickly passes. It had been his decision, after all.

  There are a few more farewells, and an offer of food that Bronwyn declines as politely, but as forcibly, as she can. Still without having yet spoken a word, Thud II leads Bronwyn and Thud I through a low door at the rear of the throne room. This opens into a broad passageway that slopes gently upwards. The going is easy and the three fall into line, Thud II, Bronwyn, Thud I, and walk silently.

  The princess, left with her thoughts, finds them distracted by the figure ahead. The muscles beneath the white skin of New Thud’s back work as though that broad expanse was being kneaded by invisible fingers. There is no fat to spare on the man’s body and its muscles are revealed as bundles of writhing cords, like a sack of boa constrictors, as sharply defined as though they had been engraved with a rake. His buttocks, nearly at Bronwyn’s eye level as they ascend the slope, are as round and hard as a pair of ball bearings; they roll alternately, as machine-like as a cow chewing her cud. When Bronwyn thinks of the vacant face now turned away from her, she is sickened by the feelings she feels stirring in her.

  The march, made without break, takes nearly three hours. The air, blowing into their faces from ahead, has been steadily growing colder. The tunnel makes two or three sharp bends and then suddenly they are outside. They have stepped from between a pair of giant boulders that lay on a grassless slope. The wind is strong and icy pellets of sleet sting their faces. Below, filling a grey meadow, lay the encampment of Baron Piers Monzon.