Read A Company of Heroes Book Two: The Fabulist Online
Authors: Ron Miller
A Company of Heroes Book Two: The Fabulist (21 page)
“Yes, please, that sounds very nice. Thank you,” Basseliniden replies as he is handed the slender glass of amethyst liquid.
“Allow me to make a modest toast.”
“Certainly.”
“Mm. To the fine art of well-timed coincidence!”
“Hear, hear!”
They allow the rims of their glasses to touch with a musical
tink
.
“
Very
nice crystal. And you’re right, this
is
excellent.”
“I’m afraid our host over there must take the credit for the wine selection.”
“My compliments, sir,” Basseliniden says to the bound man with a slight bow.
“Pirates! That’s what you are! Pirates!”
“I’m afraid he’s correct,” Basseliniden says to the princess, casting his eyes to the floor modestly. “I admit to being a pirate.”
“Is that true?” she says, her eyes widening. “You’re really a pirate?”
“Yes.”
“That’s wonderful! I’ve always wondered what you did . . . you are so mysterious . . . and you never did let me thank you properly for everything you did for me . . .”
“It is nothing!”
“A pirate! I think that’s the most thrilling thing I’ve ever heard!”
“Oh, it’s not everything it’s made out to be.”
“Don’t tell me that! Ever since I is old enough to read, I think I’ve read every pirate story and book ever written . . .”
“Well, it’s really not very much like the stories . . .”
“Oh, don’t tell me that! You’re probably just too used to it.”
“That’s certainly a possibility.”
“And is that a submarine boat you have out there? Where did that come from? Where’s your ship?”
“If you’ll slow down a little, I’ll tell you everything in one breath.”
“All right.” She turns to the prisoner. “Are you comfortable, Lord Bugarach? Can you hear all right? May I get you anything?”
“You both can go to Hell,” he growls.
“He’s a little testy, isn’t he?” asks Basseliniden.
“He’ll be all right,” replies the princess. “I suppose I would be a touch grouchy myself if I looked as silly as he does.”
In his anger Bugarach had forgotten that he is still nude. At Bronwyn’s remark he turns a brilliant scarlet. He tries to twist himself in some way that provides better coverage but only succeed in making himself more obvious. He is nearly in tears when he says, “You’re shameless! Libertine! Whore!”
“Such language,” comment Basseliniden. “Shall I punish him?”
“Ignore him. I think he’s rather decorative.”
Bugarach has managed to turn himself around so that he is jackknifed into the chair. His curses are now only muffled grumbles since his face is buried in the cushions.
“You have peculiar ideas as a decorator, if I may say so.”
“You are going to tell me about your submarine boat.”
“Oh, yes. Well. I had to be secretive when we first met that winter, since it’d been my experience that many people do not have the liberal and enlightened ideas about piracy that you seem to possess. Nevertheless, my loyalties are to Tamlaght and its royal family, in that order, although I prefer to choose which members I attach that loyalty to. When I discovered that one of the most charming of the Tedeschiiys is in distress, how could I’ve done otherwise than come to her aid? If you’d always wanted to be a pirate, I’d always wanted to rescue a maiden. There is danger to myself in inadvertent exposure, though not much, but I had no choice.”
“It wouldn’t’ve made any difference to me.”
“I know that now, of course. But at the time it seemed best to maintain my professional anonymity. Especially since it seemed as though I could give you assistance without revealing myself.”
“But everyone around Hasselt seemed to know you.”
“True, but certainly not as a pirate. An adventurer, perhaps, something of a philanthropist, an investor, an owner of many local businesses, including the cannery . . . but my true vocation, no.
“Since you experienced my snow-boat I probably don’t have to convince you that I have a fascination with, um, what I suppose you may call, ah, creative technology. Gadgets, machines, devices, strange, speculative inventions are my passion. I subscribe to all of the popular science monthlies. Well, when I happened to run across that submarine boat during its sea trials, how could I resist the opportunity to make it my own?”
“I can’t imagine. It is Londeacan?”
“Yes.”
“How did you get it? The last I saw it, it is being hauled from the bottom of a lake.”
“It is the simplest thing in the world. It must have been on its first sea trials and had just surfaced to replenish its air supply. I signaled in a friendly fashion and steamed right up to it. I allowed its captain to assume that I is a wealthy yachtsman and he gives me an excellent and detailed tour of its interior. It seemed the most practical thing to permit him to do this before I took his boat away. He probably would’ve been reluctant to explain its workings otherwise.”
“Probably.”
“Well, I set the crew ashore, took command of the submarine boat myself, along with a few of my men for its crew, and have been having a wonderful time ever since!”
“And where is your ship now?”
“Oh, cruising about here and there. We rendezvous regularly at prearranged locations. The submarine boat makes an almost ideal pirate vessel, but its small size prevents me from taking prizes that are too large, you saw how small its only gun is, although its mere presence is very intimidating nor is there very much room for booty. It only takes four or five men to operate it. I understand from papers that I found aboard that there are plans to have eventually equipped the boat with more formidable weapons, but I must do the best I can with what I have for the time being.”
“Well, I think you’ve done quite well, in my opinion.”
“Thank you.”
“Thank you.”
“I hate to interrupt this charming tête-à-tête, but are either of you going to untie me?” asks Bugarach.
“No. Tell me what’s brought you to this state, Princess. And may I add that I think you look perfectly charming?”
“You may, thank you. It’s been pretty complicated, but I’ll try to make as succinct a synopsis as I can.
“I’m afraid to tell you that the trip you arranged for me on the
Upsy Daisy
wasn’t entirely successful, though I did finally manage to get to Glibner . . . even if the crew of the
Upsy Daisy
didn’t.”
“Oh?”
“I’ll tell you about that later. Anyway, I made my way back to Blavek, but there is almost nothing I could do about Payne Roelt or my brother by myself. There is a virtual reign of terror in progress and I risked arrest almost anywhere I went. It turned out that Thud and Gyven had managed to escape from the prison they’d been taken to, and all along I had thought they are dead!, and I ran across them entirely by chance. In the meantime I’d realizes that there is only one person in all of Tamlaght who had even a chance of helping me. That is Baron Sluys Milnikov, and he is in prison himself . . .”
“Not
the
Baron Milnikov? I think that I’ve read every single one of his books!”
“Everyone seems to’ve. Well, with Thud’s and Gyven’s help I is able to engineer the baron’s escape from Kaposvar . . .”
“Kaposvar? No! Really?”
“Yes. After giving Payne a warning, I left Blavek on the baron’s yacht, arrived in Londeac and went immediately to my uncle’s palace.”
“King Felix?”
“Yes. He promised to help me, but before he could Payne found out where I was, forced the Church to put pressure on my uncle to extradite me, forcing me to escape from Toth. After, ah. one thing and another, we ended up in Lesser Piotr. Some way, I have no idea how, Payne’s agents discovered where I is again and tried to have me assassinated. That failed, I is kidnapped, by this man here, and is on my way to Spondula when you came by.”
“Spondula, eh?” Basseliniden says, rubbing his chin. “These people really have a morbid grudge against you, don’t they?”
“I’ve given you the expurgated version.”
“Well, I hope you’ll allow me to offer you passage wherever you wish to go. In the meantime, what shall we do with this?” he asks, gesturing toward the inverted prisoner.
“I don’t care. Leave him here, I suppose.”
“You can’t do that!” Bugarach protests.
“All right,” says Basseliniden, answering Bronwyn’s question, not Bugarach’s. “Do you have anything you’d like to take with you?”
“Just some clothes I’d rather not leave.”
“Gather them up and I’ll meet you by the ship’s ladder.”
“I’ll only be a moment,” she says as they both rose and moved toward the door.
“Wait!” squeaks Bugarach. “What about me?”
“What about you?” Bronwyn asks, with genuine curiosity.
“You can’t just leave me like this!”
“Yes, I can,” she replies, exiting with the pirate.
Outside, he says, “Go on and get your things. I’ll see you in a few minutes.”
“I’ll be faster than that.”
She is true to her word, reappearing on the deck almost instantaneously, a bundle of black leather in her arms. Basseliniden’s crew had evidently been busy while he had been talking with her since the yacht’s deck is piled with loot, which they are now transferring to the submersible. Basseliniden hands her bundle to one of his men and helps the princess over the side. She nimbly scrambles down the ladder, where another man helps her make the jump to the curved black hull of the pirate ship.
“Go on below,” calls the pirate captain. “I’ll be with you right away!”
Steps bolted to the side of the squat tower allow her to climb to its flat, drum-like top. In the center she finds an open hatch with a narrow ladder leading into the dark interior. At the bottom is a small room with a low ceiling and curved walls. Its only illumination is the shaft of sunlight beaming through the manhole. There is a distant whine of an electric motor. There is just enough height in the middle of the room for her to stand upright. Of its contents she is only able to get an impression of a crowded maze of pipes and valves before Basseliniden follows her down the ladder. “This way,” he says.
She follows him through an oval hatchway so small she has to bend over almost double to get through while Basseliniden has to fold up like a jackknife. This leads to a short corridor with a single door on either side of the narrow passage. Basseliniden opens the one on the right and gestures for the princess to enter. She finds a small iron cubicle not more than eight feet square and not quite high enough for her stand upright. A cot is folded against the far wall; there is a stool, a built-in sink with a mirror above, a closet or locker and a few shelves with a folding desk below. A small electric light in the ceiling casts a yellowish glare on the black metal. It reminds her a great deal of a private compartment on a train, or, given the riveted iron walls, a prison cell.
“This is my cabin. I’ll bunk with my crew. We’ll rendezvous with my ship tomorrow morning, about dawn. We’ll transfer to it and have you returned to Diamandis by the following day.”
“That sounds perfect. You know, Basseliniden . . .”
“ ‘Captain’ sounds more formal, but it’s a good deal shorter.”
“Is there a short version of Basseliniden?”
“That
is
short. My full name is Rossobasselinidenilindeniden.”
“All right, Captain. Things happened so quickly back there that I haven’t had a chance to thank you yet!”
“You don’t owe me a thing, let alone your thanks. I’m grateful for the opportunity to serve you. A duty and a pleasure.”
“Well, I’m in your debt whether you accept it or not.” She extends her hand, which he takes, presses warmly between his palms, then kisses.
“Please feel free to explore the
Torpedo,”
he says, “though I fear there’s little to see and not much room to see it in. When I have a moment, I’ll explain its operation to you.”
“Thank you.”
“Until then, I must see to my duties. Will you excuse me?”
“Of course! I’ll be fine.”
“By the way,” he adds, turning back at the door, “did you really intend to, ah, have your way with that villain?”
“Musrum, no! I’d rather stick a snake in my eye!”
“Ah! Good.”
With a bow the pirate captain leaves her. She shuts the door to her cabin, lets down the cot and stretches out upon it, her head resting on her crossed forearms. What an amazing turn of events, she thinks.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THUD’S TRIALS
The Princess had only instructed Thud to wait for her outside of Fish-eye Gunther’s hotel; she had not told him how
long
to wait. Hours go by and Thud remains on the boardwalk stoically facing the house. Occasionally he shifts his weight from one foot to the other. Then, an hour or so later, he shifts the weight back again.
The sun rises and noon approached. It does not take long for word to spread through Diamandis Antica that there is a bizarre phenomenon in front of Fish-eye’s place, and a small crowd soon forms around the giant. They aren’t bothering him, so he takes no particular notice of them. To the occasional curious question, such as “Waitin’ for someone, mister?”, he replies with a polite answer, such as “Uh-huh”, “Yuh” or, sometimes, “Yup.”
Fish-eye has taken notice of Thud as well, and having an excellent reason for possessing a guilty conscience, refuses to come out of his hotel. The only sign of him is a milky orb peering through the slightly parted slats of a blind. He has no idea what could have gone awry last night, but this fearsome creature at his doorstep can not be there for any reason that boded well for the continued well-being, or even corporeal existence, of Fish-eye Gunther. But if something has gone wrong, he asks himself, why isn’t the giant already dismembering him? The uncertainty is maddening. Eventually it occurs to Fish-eye that the giant is showing every sign of becoming a permanent fixture and, if that is the case, there is a good chance that he could make a successful exit by means of the same route the girl had taken the night before: the back door. He has no idea who that strange girl might have been, he had accepted a modest honorarium to look the other way, as he has done on countless other occasions, no questions asked, but neither had he known at the time that she had friends like the creature that lurked at his very doorstep.
Thud, meanwhile, with so many unoccupied hours to work with, had developed a Thought:
where is the princess?
Why had she been gone so long? He is getting hungry and thinks that perhaps there would be nothing wrong with going to the door and asking her if it might be all right if he were to go and find something to eat. Having come to this decision, he acts upon it.
Fish-eye sees the giant come suddenly to life, heading for his front door. “Holy Musrum!” he whispers, panicking. He looks frantically around the room, to see if there is anything he immediately needs, just as a series of heavy blows at the door vibrate the entire building. He gathers a fistful of money that had been hidden inside a souvenir vase, stuffs this into his pockets, pulls a gun from the drawer of a desk, and leaps into the front hallway just as Thud opens the door and peers in.
“Princess?” he asks.
Princess
? repeats Fish-eye’s subconscious as his conscious stares in horror at the bulk that looms at his threshold.
“There’s no one here!” Fish-eye squeaks. It is the only thing he could think of to say, even if it made no sense.
“You’re here,” Thud points out perceptively.
“What do you want with me?” begs Fish-eye.
“I don’t think I
do
want you. Who are you?”
“No one! I’m nobody! No one at all!”
“Is the princess here?”
“There’s no princess here!” he squeaks.
“She’s not?”
“No!” he squeaks an octave higher.
Thud thnks about this for a long moment, a moment that seems like an hour to the increasingly paretic Fish-eye.
“I don’t believe you.”
To this Fish-eye has no ready answer other than to try and pull his gun from his waistband, but the weapon slips from his sweating, nervous fingers and crashes to the floor. Thud looks down at the revolver, then back up at Fish-eye. Their eyes meet for a terrible second; then Fish-eye, with a wail, bolts for the rear of the house. Thud listens to the sound of a door slamming. Then the house is silent.
It is all beyond him.
“Princess?” he calls again.
Thud searches the building as systematically as only the truly unimaginative can. The man had been right all along: there is no one else here. So where could the princess have gone?
He returns to where they had left the carriage the night before. It is still there, attached to an annoyed-looking horse. It is clear even to Thud that Bronwyn had not left town.
Then where
is
she?
Thud becomes worried.
He knows there had been considerable danger in what they had been doing the previous evening, though he had only a hazy notion of the nature of the peril, or even of the full nature of their mission other than that they had been trying to find the person who had tried to blow up the princess. He hadn’t told Bronwyn, but he had looked forward to doing something terrible to the villain. The attempt to hurt the princess had made him very angry. He knows that she is very angry about it, too, but he is afraid that she might not approve of the full extent of what he wants to do. He had planned to wait until they found this person; then he was going to ask her if it might be all right to punish him. He is certain that she would let him.
What
is
his villain’s name?
He stops in the middle of the boardwalk and tries to remember. He tries as hard as he can, his face screwing itself into such a complicated knot that a stevedore coming around the corner and suddenly seeing Thud swoons at the sight.
He can’t remember, but the man at the tavern had known. Thud finds the tavern again and goes in. It is virtually empty this early in the day, and the proprietor is taking advantage of the lull to clean. Chairs are propped up on the tabletops while the owner sweeps the floor.
“What do
you
want?” he asks.
“Who are we looking for last night?”
“What?”
“Me and the princess. Who are we looking for last night?”
“What princess?”
“My princess.”
“Where’s this princess now?”
“I don’t know.”
“Wait a minute. You’re looking for the
Princess,
then?”
“Yes! The princess. Have you seen her?”
“I get it. Look here. Go on down to the end of this street . . . got that? Turn right, then go straight on down to the pier. The
Princess
is there. You’ll see her easy.”
“Thank you very much!”
“Yeah. Don’t mention it.”
Thud hurriedly follows the tavern-keeper’s directions and arrives at the end of the pier a few minutes later. Now what? He doesn’t see the princess anywhere.
There is only a big iron ship.
“Hey! You down there !” someone shouts. Thud looks around for the voice; he finally looks up and sees someone waving at him from the bridge of the ship.
“You down there! Looking for something?”
“I’m looking for the princess!” he shouts back.
“You found her! Come on aboard!”
Thud lumbers up the gangway as quickly as he can. The man who had called him is waiting at the other end.
“Looking for work, eh? I could use a man like you! Look like you’d be worth ten others!”
“No, I’m looking for the princess,” Thud replies. He turns his head in every direction, but there is no sign of her.
“—like I said, you found her.”
Thud stares at him, not certain what to say.
“You found her; don’t you understand?”
“No.”
“This is the
Princess.”
Thud stares again.
“This ship,” the man explains patiently. “It’s called the
Princess
. That’s its
name
. Understand?”
Thud stares again and the man begins reexamining his original and apparently hasty opinion of Thud’s worth. Still, the big man
is
built like a two-hundred-horsepower steam winch, which is certainly not something he ought to lightly let get away. With sudden inspiration he asks the big man, “You hungry?”
“Sure!”
“Come on with me, then, and you can explain what you’re talking about over some food.” Thud follows the man to the ship’s mess and while he shovels plate after plate of beans into his enormous mouth, he explains as best he can that he is looking for someone. He is even able to make it apparent that the person he is looking for might have been abducted.
“All right, then,” says the man. “You don’t think this princess of yours could’ve gone back to Diamandis?”
“The carriage is still here.”
“And I take it you are some sort of bodyguard, so she wouldn’t’ve gone without you?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, then, the only other way out of this place is by sea.”
“Sea?”
“Yes! I think the only chance you have of finding this princess of yours is to go to sea yourself.”
“You think so?”
“It makes sense, doesn’t it?”
“I guess so.”
“It’s settled, then. You sign aboard this ship and we’ll look for your princess. Don’t you think that it’s kind of an omen? The name of the ship, I mean? The
Princess
?”
“I guess so.”
“Wonderful! We sail in an hour. You go see the loading boss, tell’im the first mate sent you to help finish with the cargo, then you can go below and relieve the stokers.”
So Thud goes to sea in search of the princess. The first mate of the
Princess
feels more than vindicated by his decision: Thud is indeed worth any ten of his regular crew. He has proved this so well in just the first hour that the mate had felt no compunction in letting ten of his regular men go. There is a good deal of hard feeling about this, which makes no impression whatever upon the mate.
Thud works harder than he had since the day he had left Groontocker and Peen. He shovels tons of coal in the red-hot cavern of the boiler room, stripped to the waist, the white sphere of his torose body glistening with waves of perspiration. He looks and works like the machine the mate had compared him with.
At every port of call, after he has finished almost single-handedly unloading the ship, Thud searches for Bronwyn. Invariably no one knows what he is talking about.
How many weeks, or even months, Thud repeats this routine, he has no idea, nor even much considers the matter. For him, the individual disappointments are discrete, not cumulative. He approaches each succeeding port with as much optimism as he had the first.
The mate never fails to give Thud as much reassurance as possible. This is insurance that the single most valuable crew member he has ever recruited will remain with his ship. With every leg of the Princess’s route, he and the captain are able to pocket the wages that would have been paid to the ten men Thud replaced. Thud himself has apparently forgotten that he is to have been paid and they see no particular reason to remind him.
The extent of their loyalty and their appreciation of Thud’s services is proven when a crate of leather-bound
Musrums
(St. Thacker and St. Earnshaw, trans. and ed.), bound for missionaries in Peigambar, proves too much for the hoist, breaks loose and falls directly onto Thud’s head. A similar accident occurring to a normal human being would have been catastrophically fatal, since nearly half a ton of books is involved. The first mate and the captain look down from the bridge at the spread-eagled body on the dock below, the fluttering pages of the black-bound volumes swirling around it in the breeze like carrion crows. They shrug their shoulders philosophically, find a replacement crew at a nearby grog shop and sail that same morning, leaving Thud for dead.
For a day or two, Thud is something of a minor tourist attraction. People from all over the village come to see the huge body, some even bringing their children, who nervously took turns seeing who dared go closest to the unconscious giant. There is some considerable debate among the local merchants and shop-owners about what to do with the corpse; though it is clearly still breathing, it is just as clearly not in the best of health, either. The question is partly one of simple hygiene and partly one of economics. When the inevitable happened, how should the body be disposed of? Some argued for taxidermy, others for pickling. The former would preserve the natural colors better and make a more attractive display. Since this is undoubtedly true, the pickling advocates would change the subject by turning the debate to the question of ownership. The pier is city property, so there is some substance to the argument that the giant be placed on public display, perhaps in the City Hall, where it would prove to be an attraction that would draw tourists to the town to everyone’s profit. There are then debates concerning just who is going to finance the taxidermist (or pickler), with a few heatedly arguing that whoever paid for the work ought to have the right to display the giant. But no one wanted a fellow merchant to have exclusive rights; such a giant would be worth thousands.
The debate continues long into the night, and while it does a circus arrives in town. As the tent is being erected on a vacant lot on the edge of the village, the owner of the show strolls into town, a fat roll of posters under one arm. It does not take him long to learn of the wonder down on the pier and a kind of professional curiosity causes him to wander that way to see for himself. The circus impresario is a man far more inured to the marvelous than any of the townspeople, for whom the sight of a two-headed calf six years earlier is still a topic that causes hushed expressions of awe, and while he has never seen anything quite like Thud before, neither does he attach a particularly supernatural dread to it, either.
A few of the more enterprising villagers had strung lanterns from cords in a circle around the vast body and those spectators that have remained to view the corpse in the uncanny, flickering light are doubly rewarded by the sight of the showman. It is almost a surfeit of wonders. He is an enormous grizzly bear of a man, not half as large as Thud, of course, but far larger than any normal human being ought to be. He had long ringlets of black hair that bounce over his shoulders, a curly beard like a black lambskin, black eyes that flash like faceted obsidian and bushy black brows that swoop upwards like the wings of a pouncing hawk, an image his huge, hooked nose does nothing to dispel. His chest is as broad as a hogshead and it is covered with a blanket of coarse black hair that bursts from between every button of his shirt like an overstuffed armchair.