Arrowroot sighed with relief. “Well, you are welcome,” he said. “I had feared you might be evil.”
The creature laughed indulgently, revealing a pair of front teeth the size of bathroom tiles. “Hardly,” he said, munching absently on a piece of driftwood. Then with a great sneeze, his dark glasses fell to the ground.
Legolam gasped. “A black beaver!” he cried, staggering back.
At that moment there came a great crashing in the nearby woods, and band of howling narcs and grunting beavers descended on the luckless party.
Arrowroot leaped to his feet. “Evinrude,” he cried, and drawing the sword Krona, handed it hilt-first to the nearest narc.
“Joyvah Halvah,” shouted Gimlet, and dropped his adze.
“Unguentine,” said Legolam, putting his hands on his head.
“Ipso facto,” growled Bromosel, and unbuckled his sword belt.
Spam rushed over to Frito in the heat of the surrender and grasped him by the arm. “Time to trot, bwana,” he said, drawing a shawl over his head, and the two boggies slipped down to the boats and out into the river before the charging narcs and their lumbering allies missed them.
The chief narc grabbed Arrowroot by the lapels and shook him fiercely. “Where are boggies?” he screamed.
Arrowroot turned to where Frito and Spam had been standing and then to Moxie and’ Pepsi, who were hiding next to where Legolam and Gimlet were playing possum.
“You lie, you die,” said the narc, and Arrowroot couldn’t help but notice the tone of malice which had crept into his voice.
He pointed to the boggies, and two narcs jumped forward and swept them up in the thighs they had by way of arms.
“There’s been some mistake,” squealed Moxie. “I haven’t got it.”
“You’ve got the wrong man,” Pepsi shrieked. “It’s him,” he said, pointing to Moxie.
“That’s the one,” cried Moxie, gesturing at Pepsi. “I’d know him anywhere. Three-five, eighty-two, tattoo on left arm of rutting dragon, two counts of aiding and abetting known Ringbearer.”
The chief narc laughed cruelly. “I give the rest of you ten to run,” he said, twirling a set of giant bolos with a threatening application of english. At that, Bromosel started to sprint, but catching his feet in his sword belt, he tripped and impaled himself on his pointed shoes.
“Ye doom is ycomme true,” he groaned. “O, tell the Lace-domecians to man the torpedoes.” Then noisily shaking a large rattle, he expired.
The narc shook his head. “Me, you don’t need,” he said, and led the narc band away into the surrounding forest with Moxie and Pepsi.
Frito and Spam drifted silently across the river to the eastern bank, and drew their small boat onto the shore, while unseen in the shadow of the dam, a small gray figure on a green-andyellow-spotted sea horse paddled warily along.
“Out of the bedpan, as the old Fatlip would say,” said Spam, and fishing their overnight bags out of the craft, set out with Frito along the rising gorge that led to the next chapter.
VI
The Riders of Roi-Tan
For three days Arrowroot, Gimlet, and Legolam hunted the band of narcs, pausing in their relentless chase only for food, drink, sleep, a few hands of pinochle, and a couple of sightseeing detours. Tirelessly, the Ranger, dwarf, and elf pushed on after the captors of Moxie and Pepsi, often making a long march of up to three hundred yards before collapsing with apathy. Many times Stomper lost the scent, which was rather difficult since narcs are fond of collecting their droppings along the way into great, pungent mounds. These they carefully sculpted and molded into fearsome shapes as mute warning to any who might dare challenge their power.
But the narc mounds were growing fewer, indicating either that they had quickened their pace or had run out of roughage. In any case the trail grew fainter and the tall Ranger had to use his every skill to follow the barest traces of the company’s passing, a worn ventilated shoe, a pair of loaded dice, and farther on, a pair of ventilated narcs.
The land was somber and flat, now populated only by scrub brushes and other stunted growths. Occasionally they would pass a deserted village, empty save for a stray dog or two, which bolstered the party’s dwindling larder. Slowly they descended into the bleak Plain of Roi-Tan, a hot, dry, and cheerless place.[6] To their left were the dim peaks of the Mealey Mountains, and to their right and far away the sluggish Effluvium. To the south were the fabled lands of the Roi-Tanners, sheepmen of no mean skill aboard a fighting bull merino.
In earlier times the sheep-lords had been enemies of Sorhed and had fought bravely against him at Brylopad and Ipswitch. But now there were rumors of renegade bands of mounted sheepmen who ravaged northern Twodor, pillaging, raping, burning, killing, and raping.
Stomper halted in the march and let out a deep sigh of dread and boredom. The narcs were leaving them farther and farther behind. Carefully he unwrapped a square of the elvish magic zwieback and broke it into four equal pieces.
“Eat all, for this is the last we have,” he said, palming the fourth piece for later.
Legolam and Gimlet chewed gravely and silently. All around them they felt the malicious presence of Serutan, the evil Wizard of Isinglass. His malignant influence hung heavy in the air, his secret forces impeding their search. Forces that took many forms, but for the present came as the runs.
Gimlet, who, if possible, liked Legolam even less than at Riv’n’dell, gagged on his portion of zwieback.
“A curse on the elves and their punk grub,” he grumbled.
“And on the dwarves,” returned Legolam, “whose taste is in their mouths.”
For the twentieth time the pair drew weapons, lusting for each other’s chitlins, but Stomper intervened lest one be killed. The food was gone anyway.
“Hold and cease, halt, avaunt, put up thy swords, refrain from thy quarrel and stay thy hands,” he spake, raising a fringed glove.
“Buzz off, Hopalong,” growled the dwarf. “I’ll make casserole of that window dresser!”
But the Ranger drew his peacemaker and the fighting ended as quickly as it began, for even dwarves and elves do not relish a shiv in the back. Then, as the combatants sheathed their blades, Stomper’s voice rang out again.
“Lo!” he cried, pointing to the south. “Many riders approach like the wind!”
“Would that they rode downwind as well,” said Legolam, wrinkling his nose.
“Keen are the nostrils of the elves,” said Stomper.
“And light are their feet,” muttered the dwarf under his breath.
All three squinted at the dust on the distant horizon. That they were sheepmen there was no doubt, for the wind heralded their approach.
“Do you think they’re friendly?” said Legolam, trembling like a leaf.
“That I cannot say,” said Stomper. “If they are, we have no worries; if they are foes, we must escape their wrath through craft.”
“How?” asked Gimlet, seeing no hiding place on the flat plain. “Do we fight or flee?”
“Neither,” said the Ranger, falling limp on the ground. “We’ll all play dead!”
Legolam and Gimlet looked at each other and shook their heads. There were few things on which they both agreed, but Stomper was definitely one of them.
“We may as well take a few with us,” said Gimlet, drawing his cleaver, “for it’s better to go with one’s codpiece buttoned.”
The sheep-lords loomed larger and the fierce war-bleats of their mounts could now be heard. Tall and blond were the Roi-Tanners, wearers of helmets topped with cruel-looking spikes and small toothbrush mustaches. The wanderers saw too that they wore long boots and short leathern pants with suspenders and held long pikes that looked like lead-weighted dust-mops.