Vug sat bolt upright and stared at him as though he’d sprouted radishes. “You can talk?” she exclaimed. “I mean, you can talk like that? Did I just break some kind of evil enchantment on you? Usually it only takes a kiss. Daddy always did say I was an overachiever.”
Gudge shrugged. “This is the way I speak. It’s not much help in the job market, though. Outside of their house-and-palace domestics, the Lofty Elves only hire servants who speak fluent Bumpkinshire, for some reason. Ooo, arrh, aye,” he added for effect, and tugged his forelock is the approved Rustic Underling manner.
“Then the Lofty Elves are all a bunch of smug, affected, bullying twits,” Vug said grimly. “Just like Beverel. That mean, greedy thing knows that I’m the one who’s supposed to take care of all our prisoners, but did that stop h-”
Gudge stemmed the flow of her complaints against Beverel with a kiss. “My sweet Vug, I’m beginning to realize that your definition of taking care of prisoners is not one to be followed by ‘Mwahaha,’ true?”
Vug smiled and kissed him back. “I should hope not! The only proper way to take care of prisoners is seeing that they’ve got enough to eat and drink, that their cells aren’t too dank or too warm, that all the dungeon rats have had their rabies shots, that their manacles aren’t too tight or too-Wait, let me get that for you.”
She spoke a word of power and Gudge’s irons dropped away from neck and wrists. “That’s better.” She favored him with a smile. “Anyway, that’s how I take care of prisoners. Beverel makes fun of me, but it can’t be helped. There’s no getting around the rules: the evil overlord’s daughter must always be as wicked as she is beautiful, and just look at me! Once I put on a little bit of lipstick and kicked Daddy’s favorite hellhound, but I felt terrible about it afterward.”
Gudge took her in his newly freed arms. “Bother the rules,” he said. “I say you are beautiful, even if you’re nowhere near wicked. Your father’s minions can recapture me, drag me back down into that dungeon, torture me, and I’ll still say so.”
“Oh, you’re not going back to any nasty old dungeon, dearest Gudge,” Vug said, kissing the tip of his nose. “I’m not finished taking care of you yet, and the best way to do that is to make sure that you escape from Castle Bonecrack safely. We don’t want Daddy getting his paws on you. He’s a lamb, once you get to know him, but he’s just not a people person. Or an elf person. Or a troll person. Or a whatever-the-blazes-you-are person. Now just say the word and I’ll fix you up with a spirited horse swifter than the wind, a casket of jewels beyond price, a nice picnic lunch with extra pickles, and a map showing the fastest way out of Daddy’s realm.”
Gudge kissed her again. It was getting to be a very pleasant habit. “Can I make a request about the lunch?” he asked.
“You don’t want pickles?”
“Pack enough for two.”
“You… you want me to come with you?” Vug couldn’t believe her ears. “None of the other prisoners I’ve freed ever-” She blinked away tears. “Beverel always said that was because I was far too ugly for any of them to-”
“Darling Vug, do you think I give a fig for what your spiteful sister says?” Gudge demanded. “My fool of an ex-master’s in the middle of seducing that vile wench as we speak, and I hope he succeeds because those two deserve each other.”
“Sister?” Vug’s brows rose in perplexity. “I don’t have any sisters. Beverel’s my bro-”
The shriek that blasted from the dungeon depths to the topmost pinnacle of Castle Bonecrack interrupted Vug’s revelation. It embodied equal degrees of discovery, shock, incredulity, and despair, together with a string of impressive curses in the tongue of the Lofty Elves. (These were rather specific curses, usually reserved for merchants who sold gilt for gold, nutmegs carved from wood, or beef potpies that had once answered to the name Fido.)
It ended with a different voice cackling “Mwahaha!” just before the final FOOM!
Gudge turned to his beloved. “So… about that horse?”
THE MAN WHO WOULD BE OVERLORD by David Bischoff
The time has come in these memoirs to discuss the nadir of my career. I, Vincemole Whiteviper, have had my ups and downs, my ins and outs, my evenings before and my mornings after. However, say what you will of me, I am intelligent enough still to appreciate the bitter wormwood-flavored irony of the fact that I fell to my deepest under from my biggest over.
Pah! To think! I stood then on a vasty plateau of grandeur, master of men, elf, fairie, and other ilk, up to my earlobes in delightful atrocities and fiendish plots, in my physical prime and indulgent in decadence and debauchery beyond mere pleasure. To think that at such a zenith of my star’s rise I should suffer the lowest blow of a life battered and torn by fate.
Need I tell you, Rotvole, that there was a woman involved in this indignity?
I’m drunk as a vat-worm, so the transcription will be difficult. Why do I hold this different sword from my collection? Why do I swing it around so? This was the weapon with which I have judged in the past. This was the weapon that lopped off the head of a god. I clutch it, and the memories gush forth.
Bring that dictation-gem closer, for my mournful words will sometimes be low and mumbled. Please, and pour yourself a brandy, and avail yourself of these fresh handkerchiefs for weeping. It is time to tell sad stories of the death of… things.
I wish I could say I achieved my high position, my power over so many lands, so many lives, and so many riches through cunning, intelligence, machinations, or even a backstab or three.
Alas I came by my good fortune in the same manner I came into so much in my picaresque career-I blundered into it.
Readers of these memoirs will remember that for the portion of my life that I was not apprentice to a master hooligan or lying low in some godforsaken inn somewhere, drunk, I was a soldier. Call me a mercenary if you like, call me a multiple patriot, but there being many kingdoms in this vast world, I have served many kings-and served them well, I might add.
However, after an unfortunate incident involving a princess, a chastity belt, a file, and the vengeful fury of one of these selfsame kings, I thought it best to retreat to the nether regions of this world, the far, undisciplined reaches to seek something that military service had not yet given me: a vast amount of loot. Yes, I became a soldier of fortune, and it was in the weird and mysterious land of Worpesh that I found myself as far from that aforementioned king’s wrath as geography would allow.
Now as my speedy flight had prevented me from taking much in the way of revenue, I had to pick up what I could along the way, through odd jobs and dark alleys. Not a glorious life, but there’s no place like the streets to pick up skills and sharpen one’s survival mechanisms. Once I’d made it to Worpesh, though, on ship and camel, on coach and steed, I was disappointed to discover that while the pickings were actually less (dark alleys were inhabitated by nothing but the poor and other cutpurses) the dangers were more. Oh, it was a dreadful place!
Yes, supposedly there were lost cities piled with treasure-plenty of farthing maps to them for sure. But you had to traipse through steaming jungles full of quicksand, giant prickle-snakes, and saber-toothed werecats to achieve them. I fully suspected that perhaps it was the snakes and cats who made the maps to lure supper into their jaws, so I was not terribly tempted. Moreover in the humid and foul land, half the populace was leprous or diseased in some fashion, and in truth where it did not stink to high heaven it stank to low hell.
One night, I took my disappointment and depression to a bar, and there drank the sole alcoholic offering: some kind of fermented milk. Nasty, but with enough nutrition that some of the natives lived on it, I think. I was half in my cups, plotting some method of returning to lands of proper dank shivers and warm soothing beers, when a voice called out to me from the depths of a large booth.