"Oh, lot's of 'em. Goes by Sir Al, Slim, Sir Lafayette, Allegorus, and a couple other aliases. A tricky one, milord."
"Wouldst waste time in gossip with a menial while high adventure waits us yonder?" Bother's bass tones recalled Lafayette to the mission at hand. His horse started forward with a leap as the duke jerked at its bridle. Lafayette caught the reins, settled himself in the saddle, and spurred to overtake the duke, who had set off at full gallop, sending up sheets of mud which Lafayette tried with little success to duck. Coming up alongside the duke, he called:
"What's the hurry?"
"Legend has it the witch-woman will disappear one day, in a trice, as mysteriously as she appeared on that long-gone day," Bother yelled over his shoulder. "We must not be late."
"What long-gone day?" O'Leary persisted.
"The same fell day when the great mud-flow engulfed my dukedom. She, poor creature, had clung for life to a floating pig-sty, and thus her devoir demands she honor my suit."
"Does she really live in a hill?" Lafayette cried over the thunder and splash of hooves. "Is she really three hundred years old?"
"As near as may be in these parlous times," Bother called back. "A great heap of rubble it be, caught round the ruin of a proud tower, a perch whence Henriette can oversee a vast sweep of territory. As for her age, I but recount the legend known to all." Having slowed to deliver this explanation, the duke spurred ahead again, and Lafayette held his mount neck-and-neck.
Chapter Sixteen
Perhaps an hour later, in full darkness, Lafayette and the duke dismounted within hailing distance of a cluster of lights which Bother assured O'Leary was the Place of the Hill. They went forward on foot, leading their mounts. Bother pointed to a dim, greenish glow emanating from a point perhaps seventy-five feet above the rest of the yellowish lights at ground level.
"Even there towers the Hill," he explained. "As well we leave the steeds here." He patted the neck of his big animal. "Poor brutes, tis but cruel to abandon them here without their expected grooming and fodder to wait in the dark until the locals find and butcher them. But there's naught else for it." He dropped his reins in the mud. The horse stood as if tethered. Lafayette followed suit, and the two set off in the intense darkness, locating obstacles by the simple expedient of falling over them, after which they assisted each other to rise with much puffing and many colorful oaths from the duke. They avoided the dim glow of glassless windows and soon reached the accumulation of litter which marked the tower's base. The drift slanted upward at a shallow angle to the more substantive heaped trash of the Hill proper, which rose nearly vertically into the night to where the pale green glow seemed to float disembodied.
"Damme!" the duke exclaimed, halting abruptly.
"There be a great beast here, the witch's guardian monster, I doubt not!" Even as he spoke, Lafayette heard a whorffling, slurpy sound and sensed the bulk of something large and low-built moving heavily to a position athwart their route, where it settled down with a muddy squelch and again whoffled.
"Faugh!" Bother snarled. "The beast reeks of the infernal regions!"
"Or of a pigsty," Lafayette suggested. "You said the witch arrived on one. There was one behind the palace, back in dear old Artesia, where the royal swine, Jemimah and George, used to produce vast numbers of piglets for the palace kitchens." As Lafayette spoke, the unseen beast made ploffy noises.
"The beast soundeth eager for his next meal," Bother said. "Stand back, my lad, and I'll try conclusions with it." Lafayette saw a faint glint of starlight on the blade of the ducal longsword as it cleared its sheath with an ominous whoosh.
"Wait!" O'Leary blurted, moving forward past the armed duke.
"George?" he called tentatively into the darkness, and was at once rewarded with renewed plobby, whoffl-ing sounds. Lafayette advanced cautiously, sniffing the air.
"It is George!" he cried. "I'd know his brand of BO anywhere." A moment later, his outstretched hand encountered bristly hide, a large ear, then the moist snout of the great boar.
"He's tame," Lafayette assured Bother who, after briefly waving Lafayette back, had come up beside him. Lafayette patted the big head and scratched behind the gristly ears.
"I don't understand this, Duke," he said in a low tone. "This is George, no doubt about it. So we must not be as far from Artesia as it seemed."
"Thinkst thou we can safely pass by this monstrous beast?" Bother asked after he had felt his way all the way back to the pig's hindquarter. "In sooth, it hath the form of a great swine," he said doubtfully. "But an imp of hell can assume any form it listeth."
"George won't bother us," Lafayette reassured his companion. "Come on." He forged ahead, encountering a steep rise which, by the feel of it, was composed of stumps, planks, mud, grasses, and assorted artifacts, all impacted into an impenetrable heap. He sought foot-and hand-holds, and started up. After a moment, Bother followed. George whoffled contentedly. A male voice hallooed not far away, and a moment later flaming torches were converging on the base of the mound, their orange light revealing the wild-eyed faces and tangled hair of those who bore them. Yells broke out.
"Stand whur ye be," a coarse voice commanded. "Sergeant-at-Arms," it went on in a lower tone, "ready yer arbalest to let fly when I give the word!"
Abruptly, George whoffled, a note of anger audible in his snorts. There were noises of sloppy movement below, and more yells, followed by sounds of hasty retreat. The torches, tossed aside, lay sputtering in the black mud, but afforded enough light to assist Lafayette in picking his way upward.
"Well done, George," Bother called down. "Me-thinks a knighthood is in store for the noble beast," he added, his pale unshaven face turned up to O'Leary who was a few feet in advance. "Press on, lad, there's naught to stay us now, and Sir George guardeth our flank right doughtily. They say there be a ledge near the top, whence we'll gain the door which leadeth into the bowels of the pile."
Lafayette, after a moment's rest, went on, soon gaining the ledge to which the duke had alerted him. It was barely a foot wide and unevenly surfaced with an improvisation of flattened tin cans. Bother clambered up beside him, puffing.
"Mayhap twere best I'd left my armor of proof below," he gasped. "I'm nigh undone, lad. Let us rest and take council here a moment."
"If the settlement back there is actually on the site of Colby Corners," O'Leary said, "this place is just about where Lod's castle was back in Artesia, and this pile must be the analog of the castle, which is actually the Las Vegas Hilton, which Lod had managed to shift onto Plane V-87."
"I wot nothing of these mysteries, sir knight," Bother protested. "Work witchery if you must, but leave me retain my purity, OK?"
"Don't worry, Inspector," Lafayette reassured his ally. "I'm not up to witchery just now, only trying to dope out what we're up against."
"I be up against a plank which formerly performed a useful function in an outhouse," Bother grumped, "judging by the aroma. I say let's up and seek the portal reputed to be here, ere I perish from these evil vapors."
"Might as well," Lafayette agreed, and set off on hands and knees, the duke clanking behind him.
"You go in the other direction," Lafayette said over his shoulder. "That way we can cover it in half the time, assuming the ledge goes all the way around." Bother complied without comment. Feeling his way, Lafayette soon encountered a barrier of surprisingly regular iron bars. Investigating, he found that it was a thirty-inch-high railing, over which he climbed to find himself on a somewhat wider balcony.
Just then, the duke's hoarse voice spoke near at hand, and approaching. "No good, lad; this parlous ledge doth end abrupt but a few spans yonder. Twere a near thing, but by the help of the saints I retained my place, and—" His account ended with a dull clunk as his helm collided with the railing.