by Chris Turner
Weavil griped a sullen snarl. “What of the snauzzerhounds?”
“Ignore the snauzzerhounds,” Baus advised. “They sleep docilely at the southern entrance.”
“The plan seems slipshod.”
“Better slipshod than none. Do not fear, the scheme is solid! You have only to creep over the parapet. Do what I tell you!”
Weavil gave his jaw a snap. “A certain inadequate margin of outcome concerns me. Chances are that I’ll crack my skull falling senseless on these rocks below.”
“The risk exists, but every move is a gamble. Now Weavil, hurry—as I see it, you have succumbed to sheer timorousness from your obsessive fatalism. I have imparted my counsel and bid you reconsider the fact that my freedom is at stake too!”
Sensing no scope for argument, Weavil scrambled up on Baus’s back. Awkwardly, the midget let himself joggle into the crevice, lying flat on his stomach. Then he thrust his feet through the hole, but discovered that his head was too large to fit through the hole.
Baus, exasperated, had foreseen this, and hastily stuffed clam guts from a nearby pile around Weavil’s neck and ears for added lubrication. Ignoring Weavil’s cries and tumult, he gave a sharp hiss when a final push had the midget worming his way through the wall and sliding down to the turf on the other side.
X
Baus’s elation was short-lived—the moments fled by. The window of opportunity quickly closed. The wind gusted in fits and starts, the drizzle began to die and it was too easy to be heard by the guards!
He shivered, knowing that Weavil and he would be tasked to navigate the wilds beyond the yard without light and map—if they managed to get beyond the walls.
To confirm the qualm, a plaintive coyote wailed from the beobar forest.
Edging his way along the ground, Baus avoided clumps of blister brush and frog-hopped to a place where he thought Weavil might emerge. Fog wisps clung in ghoulish trailers; damp, chill nonsensical shapes formed and dissolved like will-o’-the-wisps, tightening Baus’s nerves. He craned his neck. In the inky spaces, he could see no sign of Weavil’s progress.
The beobar was almost bare of leaves and the snaky twigs were glazed with a maroon patina from the cloud-wreathed half-moon.
Peering back toward the compound’s heart, Baus saw the watchtower and the veranda where Skarrow stood stiff and immobile. In minutes he would become mobile again!
Baus wracked his brains. Should he slink back and re-freeze the guard now?
No. Surely he would miss Weavil’s appearance!
But where was the pest? He should be on high now, dangling over the north wall, throwing down a limb. It seemed unlikely that the midget had succeeded.
Mouthing curses, Baus paced his way to calmness. But then he caught a glimpse of a small quivering shape struggling perhaps eighteen feet above him. The hovering shadow was only a few feet above the glass-spiked parapet. From the lower leafy tangle he discerned Weavil dangling like a possum.
Baus dashed under the shadow. He cupped his hands round his mouth, calling up in a hoarse whisper.
“Curb your haste!” came the crass voice shafting down. “Can you not see that I am in jeopardy?”
Baus winced. Certainly Weavil’s temperament was becoming onerous. The plan hinged on his ability to sustain himself. If the long bough bent too much, they would be lost. As it stood, it had not bent enough. Even if six Weavils jumped on the bough, there would still remain six empty feet of air and Baus loosed a sigh of rage.
He was about to voice Weavil a sharp command when he heard muffled shouts. He pressed himself low to the ground and strained his eyes in the gloom. He heard a strange whooshing, as of air being blown against a sail. Baus grimaced, fearing what that sound meant. In the dampness, he could just make out Nolpin and Boulm huddled not fifty paces distant with Nuzbek floating several feet above four jars, which had obviously been dug up.
Boulm handled the first jar, lifting it up to Nuzbek. The magician tucked it under his arm while essaying to control the bizarre parachute that ballooned a foot over his head, a version of the jerry-rigged canvas from before. The ropes of the chute were like ailerons. He used them to angle his weight alongside the wall with a strange wind-like murmur. The craft lofted him effortlessly higher in the air, over the parapet and into the trees where he passed between a gap and descended on the other side.
Baus hissed between his teeth. How could the trickster perform such miraculous feats? It was as if the gods were against him. And what could he possibly want so desperately with those wretched jars?
Suppressing his displeasure, Baus felt a bursting urge to run over and brain him.
He quelled the impulse. Such a foray would be foolhardy.
Nuzbek returned to his high position, floating down over the wall. His face was riddled with a pompous grin. Nuzbek tucked the ropes in at his waist to control his speed. When his feet reached the ground, he motioned for Nolpin to take hold of one of the guy-lines.
The magician beckoned his minion and all of the fantastic company, including Nuzbek, Nolpin and the second last jar, floated easily over the wall. It descended gently down the other side with Boulm watching wonderingly on the ground. The last two vessels lay exposed at his feet.
Deep in the shadows Baus wormed his way closer. Despite his miserable thoughts he crawled on. The answer to one of his questions was at least apparent. Nuzbek and company were about to rescue their own skins and secure the jars. The individuals in the jars meant more to him than he could imagine, but how this could disturb his own plans of escape still remained unknown.
These questions knitting Baus’s stomach were testament that no good was to come of the evening’s doings.
He attempted to alert Weavil of the new circumstances but he was unable. Weavil could not see him or easily grasp the meaning of his jiggery sign language. It would be easy for Nuzbek to float over and deal the two of them a blight with his glow pyramid or other wretched magic before Baus could gain the branch.
Nothing to be done. Nuzbek was just returning on a final pass to transport Boulm when he ordered his lackey to straddle his legs. The two floated up awkwardly, into the wreaths of mist, but just as they were gaining the parapet, a strange event took place.
Boulm’s jar, clutched so fervently, seemed to shiver. The contents suddenly exploded and the lid, shooting off like a cork, geysered up a spray of brine splashing into Boulm’s eyes. The convict squeezed his eyes shut and gave a hoarse call. He thrashed about with one arm wrapped around his body. He was blind. In the process, he almost dropped his jar.
Trimestrius rocketed out from the canister. The prince dripped with unguent. A greenish froth oozed from around his mouth and cheeks and chin. His eyes were pools of vehemence.
Nuzbek tried to navigate the parachute sideways, cursing at the misfortune, but having no free arms, he could do nothing to unseat the midget while Boulm clumsily strove to headbutt the troublemaker away from him.
The initiative failed. Trimestrius gnawed Boulm’s nose. The convict lost grip completely of Nuzbek’s legs and the jar slipped from his grasp, thudding in the sandy turf.
Trimestrius sprang away savagely, attacking Boulm just as he grabbed Nuzbek’s ankles at the last instant. Straddling his shoulders, Trimestrius began to chew the lackey’s neck.
Boulm wrenched his frame free. He wretchedly tried to stop the homunculus’s champing, but cramped and contorted as he was, Boulm made no headway. In a reckless rush of anger, Nuzbek swatted madly at the dwarf, but the craft began to teeter sideways, careening toward a tree trunk. The conveyance lashed wildly to the left, lurching in midair, then knocking itself against prickly branches.
Boulm’s left leg was pinned. He was slashed hard across a gleaming shard of parapet glass and he howled in agony. He could not restrain the impulse to clutch at his bleeding leg.
The urge was foolish . . . He toppled, pinwheeling in the air, loosing a horrid shriek that filled the sky.
Nuzbek pulled up fiercely on the
guy-lines. In an instant with the loss of weight, the buoyancy gained him several feet. An unfortunate turn. Boulm’s shouts passed unheeded; the lackey’s last outcry died in his throat as Nuzbek stared in stony perplexity at his comrade who lay unmoving in the fog wisps below. There was a sick twist to his neck, with a knee bent backward.
Nuzbek uttered a groan of exasperation; he twisted his face in fury and inspected his new lithe enemy who was clinging monkeylike on the upper stays. The illogic stunned the magician. Perhaps he believed his spells infallible; but here was a counterexample: surely it was an event of unnatural order how the traitor could have freed himself from the jar—the lid was tamper-proof!
A chance arrived and Trimestrius finally thrust a lethal strike at Nuzbek’s throat.
The magician blocked the attack—barely. The deflection momentarily unbalanced him and the midget plunged five feet, sliding precariously onto a sprawling beobar. Twisting, turning, clawing his way back up, he only slid farther. The dwarf snatched quickly at the last branch.
It held his weight and saved him from a twenty foot fall.
The conveyance started to buckle. Nuzbek, witnessing a new catastrophe, sought to recalibrate. Boulm had landed on the last remaining jar, shattering it and now the contents had gushed out on the sand, including the figure within: a sandy-haired, purple-robed beauty rising woozily to her feet. She was amazingly gorgeous, but no taller than knee-high. Stepping away from Boulm’s corpse, she drew herself to her full height, regal as a sorceress, with a gaze rising upwards to scan Nuzbek, and with that, a cold wrath fixed icily on her face.
“Ulisa!” the magician growled, a little overwhelmed. “How can this be happening?”
For a freakish instant it appeared that Nuzbek was to about to lose his nerve, but he kicked himself away from the tree, gaining some air space.
The manoeuvre was timely—the parachute would have been ravaged by long, spiny branches if he hadn’t pushed himself precariously away from the parapet, kicking himself off from the ledge, avoiding the sharp glass that had been Boulm’s downfall.
Shouts now arose from the barracks. The prisoners were awakening—as too the guards. Baus turned in time to spy a comic Skarrow bounding across the sward like an ogre. Graves was on his heels. Farther afield, the prison’s great portcullis rattled up. Oppet’s hounds were now leaping out panther-like, straining on their leashes as if they would snap them and maul the offenders. The hounds dug at the turf, jousted the air with their horned snouts and snorted evil symphonies of barks and snarls.
Oppet loosed the chains on the dogs. Like a mad horde the hounds sprang out as one. Oppet rang the gong in quick succession—a signal which Baus knew was the call for a town emergency.
Baus shouted up at Weavil. “Time is at an absolute minimum, Weavil! We must depart! Unfurl your branch!”
Cognizing crisis, Weavil struggled to propel himself along the prickly foliage.
He was unsuccessful. Thrust upside down and with his face smothered in leaves, the escapee could barely manoeuvre let alone perceive what was happening below. But he understood the need for speed, and leapt out like a chimpanzee, earning himself an extra two feet.
The branch sagged. Six inches. Not enough! Weavil slid down the remaining length, but he lost his grip; he began sliding down the bough at an alarming rate.
The bough curved over like a great bow. Weavil rode the tip like a water drop.
The branch was within Baus’s reach now. With an urgency born of life and death he mustered an audacious leap. Fingers snagged at leaves. For an interminable instant Baus floated in air then clutched at something substantial.
It allowed him time to capture a segment that supported his weight. Up, up he scrambled, tugging, grunting, grasping with all his force.
He gained six inches . . . a foot . . . A new nest of horror emerged—what would happen if the snauzzerhounds jumped and tore at his ankles?
A strange shift in weight suddenly propelled him precariously upward. He clung two feet below eye level to the wall’s summit. He wrenched himself about in clumsy fashion, watching in horror as Weavil slid past him, down the clumps of leaves into a heap on the ground.
Baus cried out. What could stop Weavil from being gored by the hounds? The branch was too far way for him to grab. If he should leap down, he would also be gored.
The dilemma was too real: two persons in the maws of the snauzzerhounds, or one?
The choice made Baus ashen and he watched in dismay as Nuzbek came floating down to a standstill, alighting nearby where Boulm lay dead.
The magician snatched up Trimestrius’s jar and seized its lid with a rare rage before he gained the conveyance again.
Baus shook his head in confusion. What was the blackguard up to? Did he not realize that the claws of the snauzzerhounds were almost on him?
The answer was clear enough.
He aimed straight for the dwarfed woman who stood with her hands tucked in her robe.
Baus yelled down at her in desperation: “Flee! Flee to the east wall!”
His cries seemed lost in the mist. But no, the sorceress turned. He pointed wildly to the wall. “To the far end of the compound! A breach in the wall exists. Hurry! An escape route wide enough for you to crawl through.” He shouted at Weavil. “Run, you little wifter, run!—or you’re mincemeat too!”
Rviving himself from the shock of his fall, Weavil hot-tailed it to the opening.
The shrunken sorceress did not waste any precious instants either. Having grasped the essence of what the strange man had cried, she fled, with her robe a billowing whirling Tyrian purple behind her.
Nuzbek dropped in from behind, floating with a murderous speed. He gripped the pyramid in his free hand, unleashing a ray.
The brownish deluge stung the air. It seemed corrupted with a sickly thaumaturgy. As if guided by some inner premonition, the small figure of the woman ground to a halt, ducking.
The shaft careened wide, only inches away from her path, blasting a spongebush to a crisp. The dwarf clamped her resolve, raised both arms over her head. A mysterious aureole seemed to envelop her figure like a shroud: emerald and golden-red tinged.
Nuzbek ululated a series of tempestuous vocables. From the glow pyramid burst another ray, this one twice as wide as the last, wracking maleficent colours through the air. The beam zigzagged, striking Ulisa, but miraculously it reflected harmlessly off her expanded nimbus, causing Nuzbek to squawk in surprise. He swung his parachute about.
He dropped in closer, floating in, snatching carelessly at her robe. He lurched back in pain. He was struck with a forceful beam of her own wielded by her aura and he tumbled from the chute, striking the earth with authority. He lay there face first for a time, moaning. Ulisa opened her eyes, ran fleet-footed to the wall where Baus had pointed. Such was Nuzbek’s plight—he could not see her scrambling up. Through the hole she slid before it was possible to steel himself for action.
Weavil had just taken hold of his senses. He fled in a terrible direction, the same as Ulisa, despite the slavering tumult of the snauzzerhounds two dozen yards behind him.
He was almost there but was too late. Nuzbek had shaken off his pain and had caught up with the midget on foot. He grabbed him by the collar and hefted him off the ground, his little legs spinning.
“So, my little rat!” he rasped in irony. “Notice that we are at last face to face—on terms less jubilant!”
Into the empty canister he shoved the midget and clamped the defective lid shut. “That shall curtail your stink, you little meddler! Curse the rising moon! Two of my long time foes have escaped, but no matter! For the nonce, you shall serve as some collateral.” He sprinted back to where he had left his chute and re-ignited the magic. Up into the air he climbed, clutching his trophy, with a fiendish intent carved on his lips. The snauzzerhounds came snapping and yipping at him seconds too late.
Baus watched in helpless wonder. What could be done? Weavil had been kidnapped and Nuzbek had fled off into th
e beobar on his bewitched conveyance.
Baus’s resolve teetered on the brink of breakdown. Defeat loomed dark on his horizon, smothering his sense of initiative.
The snauzzerhounds had forgotten their flying quarry and loped over to where Boulm lay mangled on the turf. After a brief sniff or two, they came charging away to the edge of the wall where Baus crouched on the parapet. If they harboured wings, they would fly and rend him ear to ear, snapping and snarling with mad, opal eyes. Of Ulisa Baus knew naught, but if she gained the murk on the other side of the wall, it would be all the better for her.
With no guard to contain the prisoners, the convicts scattered from the barracks. Baus saw them under the fog-shrouded lantern, a horde of hooting desperados ploughing their way toward the open portcullis. The yard was a mass of thick, grasping bodies—Dighcan, Yullen, Zestes, Paltuik, Valere, Lopze, Jorkoff—all kicking and pressing each other with one obsessive motion.
There was a clank of weapons. The runaways had gained the portal and with no great decorum, bowled each other over and trampled Oppet and Mulfax who were no match for their blood-maddened lust.
All were rogues, true, but Baus wished them safe passage—at least for such time as to supply him with a suitable diversion.
Two figures came bolting out the gloom. They stared up at Baus with disgusted rancour. Graves shook a grey fist at him; Skarrow flung a scathing oath.
Baus shrugged gamely.
Baus felt it time to depart. He leapt down from the parapet onto the gnarled beobar trunk and slid down in a heap of tired bones. A wet dampness of the forest struck him: of rich moss and decaying leaves.
Meanwhile the husky Captain issued a brusque order at Skarrow. The two raced back toward the gate while the snauzzerhounds, seething and shaking, on their heels.
It took Baus only a moment to shake the cobwebs from his skull. He launched himself into the fog-haunted distance like a haunted man. It would not be prudent to linger, for in time the Constables would be circling the wall, setting themselves out to organize a search party . . .
