“Gorboduc khosla!” snapped the larger narc, who returned his attention to the frightened boggies. Smiling fiendishly, he drew his curved grasswhip and laughed. “Bet youse guys would give an arm an’ a leg t’ get outta here.” He raised his weapon above his neckless head with mock savagery and reveled in the boggies’ cringing and protestation.
“I, Goulash, shall have th’ pleasure of takin’ youse groundhogs t’ th’ great Serutan hisself, master of the fighting Ohmahah, Nastiest of the Nasty and Bearer of the Sacred White Rock, soon t’ be th’ boss of alla Lower Middle Earth!”
Suddenly a hamfisted blow from behind sent the narc spinning like a lathe.
“I’ll give you boss of alla Lower Middle Earth!” spat a louder, deeper voice.
Moxie and Pepsi looked up to see a gigantic bull narc, well over seven feet and four hundred pounds if a gram. Towering over the sprawled narc, the monster pointed arrogantly to the red nose emblazoned on his own chest. It was Karsh of the fighting Otto-wah, leader of Sorhed’s contingent, who had laid Goulash low.
“I’ll boss of alla Lower Middle Earth you!” he reiterated. Goulash sprang to heavily shod feet and made an obscene gesture at Karsh.
“Slushfund tietack kierkegaard!” he screamed, stamping in anger before the larger narc.
“Ersatz!” bellowed Karsh as he angrily drew his four-foot snickersnee and deftly trimmed Goulash’s fingernails to the elbow. The smaller narc scampered off to retrieve his arm, cursing a blue streak, which was already lapping at the ooze.
“Now,” said Karsh, turning back to the boggies, “them bleaters is gonna jump us at dawn, so’s I want the lowdown on this Magic Ring right now!” Reaching into a large leather bag, the narc withdrew an armful of shiny instruments and arrayed them on the ground in front of Pepsi and Moxie. There before them were a large bullwhip, a thumbscrew, a cat-o’nine-tails, a rubber hose, two blackjacks, an assortment of surgical knives, and a portable hibachi with two red-glowing branding irons.
“I got ways t’ make ya sing like canaries,” he chuckled, stirring the hot coals with his long index finger. “Youse each can have one from column A and two from column B. Har har har!”
“Har har har,” said Pepsi.
“Mercy!” yupped Moxie.
“Aw, come on, youse guys,” said Karsh, selecting an iron with the triple-bar “S” of Sorhed, “let me have a little fun before y’ talk.”
“No, please!” said Moxie.
“Who wants it first?” laughed the cruel narc.
“Him!” chorused the boggies, indicating each other.
“Ho ho!” chortled the narc as he stood over Moxie like some housewife sizing up a kielbasa. He raised the flaming iron and Moxie screeched at the sound of a blow. But when he opened his eyes again, his torturer was still standing above him, looking oddly different in expression. It was then that the boggie noticed that his head was missing. The body collapsed like a punctured whoopee cushion, and over it, triumphant, was the leering figure of Goulash. He held a blade in his good hand of the type usually employed on troublesome hamhocks.
“Last taps! Gotcha last!” he cried, hopping from one foot to the other with glee. “And now,” he hissed in the boggies’ faces, “my Master Serutan desires the whereabouts of th’ Ring!” He drop-kicked Karsh’s noggin a good twenty yards for emphasis.
“Ring, ring?” said Pepsi. “You know anything about a ring, Moxie?”
“Not unless you mean my vaccination scar,” said Moxie.
“Come on, come on!” Goulash urged, slightly singeing the hair on Pepsi’s right big toe.
“Okay, okay,” sobbed Pepsi. “Untie me and I’ll draw you a map.”
Goulash agreed to this in his greedy haste and loosened the bonds around Pepsi’s arms and legs.
“Now bring the torch nearer so we can see,” said the boggie.
“Gnash lubdub!” exclaimed the excited narc in his own foul tongue as he clumsily juggled the blade and the torch in his one remaining hand.
“Here, better let me hold the sword for you,” offered Pepsi.
“Knish snark!” gibbered the fiend, waving the torch in anticipation.
“Now these are the Mealey Mountains, and this is the Effluvium,” said Pepsi, scratching the ground with the sharp point of the shiny blade.
“Krishna rimsky-korsikov!”
“...and this is the Great Turnpath...”
“Grackle borgward!”
“...and this is your gall bladder, right above your chitlins!”
“Gork!” objected the narc as he fell to earth, opened from end to end like a pillow case. As his internal organs noisily shut down, Pepsi freed Moxie and they began threading their way through the narc battle lines, hoping not to be seen as the warriors prepared for the battle that would surely come with the first rays of the sun. Tiptoeing around a party of narcs busily honing their cruel knives, the boggies heard the low, gurgling song that they half sung, half belched in time with a spastic rhythm provided by one who repeatedly bashed his head against his iron helmet. The words were strange and harsh to their ears as they passed by in the dark:
“Shhhh,” whispered Pepsi as they crawled over open ground, “don’t make any noise.”
“Okay,” whispered Moxie.
“What’s all that whisperin’?” growled a voice in the dark, and Pepsi felt a long-nailed hand grab at his lapel. Without thinking, Pepsi lashed out with his toenails and ran past, leaving the guard writhing on the ground holding the one area neither protected by his armor nor by his group insurance policy.
The boggies took off like a shot past the surprised narcs.
“The forest! The forest!” cried Pepsi, just ducking an arrow that neatly parted his hair to the bone. Shouts and confused alarums rang out on every side as they ran to the safety of the wood, for as luck would have it, the fierce blaat of the Roi-Tanners’ war horns sounded the beginning of their attack. Diving for cover, the boggies watched with frightened eyes as the bloodthirsty sheep-lords advanced on the narcs, a hundred warbleats echoing as one in the dawn light. The escaped prisoners forgotten, the narcs stood their ground as wave upon wave of woolly death crashed down upon them, battlemops thudding with a dreadful report against foot-thick skulls. Distant screams and blows reached the boggies’ ears and they watched openmouthed the carnage that followed. The outnumbered narcs gave way, and the slavering merinos charged this way and that, butting and kicking, fighting as mean and as dirty as their berserk riders. A handful of narcs could be seen with their cleavers thrown down and waving a white flag. The victors smiled broadly, surrounded them, and began hacking and hewing, tossing heads about like soccer balls. Laughing like loons, the merry band mirthfully relieved the corpses of their wallets and fillings. Pepsi and Moxie averted their faces from the slaughter, fighting their nausea unsuccessfully.
“Ho ho ho! The sheepers do not play at their craft.”
Moxie and Pepsi looked up with a start toward the green trees. They knew that they had heard a low, rumbling voice, but they saw no one.
“Hulloo?” they said uncertainly.
“Not ‘hulloo,’ ho ho ho!” returned the voice.
The brothers searched the woods for the source of the laugh, but not until a huge, green eye winked did they see the huge giant standing against the tall forest right in front of them. Their jaws dropped at the sight of an immense figure, fully eleven feet tall, standing before them with his hands coyly at his sides. He was bright green from head to foot (size fifty-six, triple-Z). A broad, pastel-green smile broke upon its face, and the monster laughed again. As the boggies retrieved their jaws, they noticed that the giant was naked save for a parsley G-string and a few cabbage leaves in his feather-cut locks. In each great hand was a package of frozen stringbeans, and across his chest a green banner proclaimed, TODAY’S SPECIAL, FIVE CENTS OFF ALL CREAMED CORN.