‘In its terrible hunger it has struck now in the longhouse of the king, rolling flat countless warriors as they slept ensorcelled by the child’s magic. Woe, bewails the king! Who can save them? Then came the night—’
‘What knight?’ Tulgord demanded.
‘No, night, as in the sun’s drowning in darkness—’
‘The knight drowned the sun?’
‘No, fair moon’s golden rise—’
‘He’s mooning the sun?’
‘Excuse me, what?’
‘What’s the knight doing, damn you? Cracking that egg in half, I wager!’
‘The sun went down – that kind of night!’
‘Why didn’t you say so?’ Tulgord Vise snorted.
‘And the monster set a deep magic upon the longhouse. Bursting down the stout door—’
‘He ran into the knight!’
‘No, instead, he fell in love with the princess, for as she was ugly on the inside, he was ugly on the outside—’
‘I’d suspect,’ Apto said, ‘he’d be pretty ugly on the inside, too. Dragon spawn, trapped in there. No hole for the tail? He’d be neck deep in shit and piss. Why—’
Brash Phluster, working on his second supper, having lost the first one, pointed a finger bone at Nifty and, with a greasy smirk, said, ‘The Judge is right. You need to explain things like that. The details got to make sense, you know.’
‘Magic answers,’ snapped Nifty with a toss of his locks. ‘The monster walked into the main hall and saw her, the princess, and he fell in love. But knowing how she would view him with horror, he was forced to keep her in an enchanted sleep, through music piped out from the various holes in his shell—’
‘He farted her a magic song?’ Apto asked.
‘He piped her a magic song, which made her rise as would one sleep-walking, and so she followed him out from the hall.’
‘What’s that story got to do with Purse Snippet’s?’ Was that my question? It was.
‘I’m getting to that.’
‘You’re getting to the point where I vote we spit you on the morrow,’ said Tulgord Vise.
Arpo Relent agreed. ‘What a stupid story, Nifty. An egg monster?’
‘There is mythical precedent for—’
‘Make your silence deep, poet,’ warned Steck Marynd. ‘My Lady Snippet, do you wish any of these pathetic excuses for poets to resume their take on your tale?’
Purse Snippet frowned, and then nodded. ‘Flicker’s will suit me, I think. A river, the promise of salvation. Strangers all, and the hidden threat of the hunted – tell me, poet, are they closer to their quarry than any might imagine?’
‘Many are the stratagems of the hunted, My Lady, to confound their pursuers. So, who can say?’
‘Tell us more of this quest, then.’
‘A moment, please,’ said Steck Marynd, his voice grating as if climbing a stone wall with naught but fingernails and teeth. ‘I see that unease has taken hold of Mister Ambertroshin. He gnaws upon the stem and the glow waxes savage again and again.’ He shifted the crossbow, his weight fully on the one leg whose foot had not suffered the indignity of a quarrel through it only a short time earlier. ‘You, sir, what so afflicts you?’
Mister Ambertroshin was long in replying. He withdrew his pipe and examined the chipped clay stem, and then the bowl, whereupon he drew out his leather pouch and pinched out a small amount of stringy rustleaf, which he deftly rolled between two fingers and a thumb before tamping it down into the pipe’s blackened bowl. He drew fiercely a half-dozen times, wreathing his lined face in swirling clouds. And then said, ‘I think I’m going to be sick.’
‘Ordig was something sour, wasn’t he?’ Brash Phluster opined, and then he laughed in the manner of a hyena down a hole, even as he wiped grease from his hands.
Grunting, Steck Marynd limped away, and over one shoulder said, ‘It’s suspicious, that’s all. Suspicious strange, I mean. Diabolical minds and appalling arrogance, aye, that spells them sure. I need to think on this.’ And with that, off into the darkness he went.
Tulgord Vise was frowning. ‘Addled wits. That’s what comes of living in the woods with the moles and pine beetles. Now then, Flicker, you have a burden to bear with your tale, for it must carry this Lady’s charge. Tell us more of the knights.’
‘They number five in all,’ did I respond, ‘though one was counted senior by virtue of skill and experience. Sworn were they to the execution of criminals, and criminality in this case was found in the committal of uncivil behaviour. More specifically, in behaviour that threatened the very foundations of civilization—’
‘Just so!’ said Arpo Relent, fist striking palm, an unfortunate gesture in that he was wearing gauntlets with studded knuckles but only kid leather upon the palms. His eyes widened in pain.
‘Tender pleasures this night for you,’ commented Apto Canavalian.
Of course Arpo would not permit a single utterance of agony to escape him. So he sat, cringing, jaw muscles bulging, water starting in his eyes.
‘As it is known to all,’ I resumed, ‘civilization lies at the very heart of all good things. Wealth for the chosen, privilege for the wealthy, countless choices for the privileged. The promise of food and shelter for all the rest, provided they work hard for it. And so on. To threaten to destroy it is, accordingly, the gravest betrayal of all. For, without civilization there is barbarism, and what is barbarism? Absurd delusions of equality, generous distribution of wealth, and settlements where none can hide in anonymity their most sordid selves. It is, in short, a state sure to be deemed chaotic and terrible by the sentinels of civilization, said sentinels being, by virtue of their position, guardians of property more often than not their own. To display utter disdain for civilization, as surely must be the regard of the two mad sorcerers, can only be seen as an affront and a most insistent source of indignation.
‘Thus fired with zeal we see our brave knights, sworn one and all to destroy those who would threaten the society that has granted them title and privilege, and what could be more selfless than that?’
Purse Snippet, I saw in aside, was smiling, even as both Tulgord and Arpo made solemn their nods, Arpo having recovered to some extent from his foray into the melodramatic. Apto Canavalian was smirking. Brash Phluster was dozing, as were Nifty Gum’s entourage of three, whilst their erstwhile paragon was hair-twirling (one of those habitual gestures that brings to mind the measured unravelling of intelligence or at least the appearance thereof) and, at the same time, seeking to catch the eye of Relish Chanter, the last Chanter still awake this night. There are, it must be said, men of the world who, for all their virility, will at times confuse the gender of their flirtations. For it is in my mind the woman who twirls (for how wonderfully attractive is vacuousness, assuming natural affinities to knee-high morals and such), and bats lashes with coy obviousness, not the man. Nifty Gum, alas, having no doubt witnessed endless displays of said behaviour directed at him, now seemed to believe it was courting’s own language; alas, in giving back what he so commonly received, he did little more than awaken Relish’s sneer, Relish being a goodly woman and not inclined to mothering.
‘I could speak now of the pilgrims,’ said I, ‘but for the ease of narrative, let it be simply said that all who seek to catch the eyes of a god, are as empty vessels believing themselves incomplete unless filled, and that said fulfilment is, for some reason, deemed to be the gift given by some blessed hand not their own.’
‘Is there no more to it, then?’ so asked Mister Ambertroshin, who seemed to have recovered his momentary disquiet.
My gesture was one of submission. ‘Who am I to say, in truth? Even I can see the lure of utter faith, the zest of happy servitude to an unknown but infinitely presumptuous cause.’