Shadewell Shenanigans (13 page)

“What does age have to do with it?”

“I’m just saying that I probably know more about people than you do, milady.”

Susti chuckled. “That’s the biggest load of nonsense I’ve ever heard in my life. You’re a manservant to a man who has probably, in his lifetime, been responsible for more chaos than any other single man in the history of the continent. You do realize that, don’t you?”

Pegrand quickly shook his head. “I’m afraid you’re wrong. Duke Modeset
is
a good person, he just
needs
to be in charge of a city. If he’s not, he gets … touchy.”

“Touchy?” Susti exclaimed. “Touchy? He’s imprisoned my father and taken control of the city guard!”

“Look, I don’t want to argue with you, milady. Apart from anything else, you’re a princess, and it’s not my place.”

The manservant headed for the door, and was halfway through it when Susti called him back.

“Yes, milady?”

“You seem like a decent fellow, Pegrand,” she said. “And if you ever see sense long enough to dump Duke Modeset, I’m sure there would be a job for you in Phlegm.”

Pegrand considered this, but politely declined. “I already have a job in Phlegm, milady,” he said. “I work for the duke.”

S
TUMP WAS PROGRESSING THROUGH
the Washin via a series of dives and breathers, turning over and over as he struggled against the flow of the river.

Every now and then, a bolt would explode far behind him; a grim reminder that certain death (or at least, inescapable injury) waited for him above the waters. With this in mind, he dived deeper, letting more and more time pass before he came up for air.

At length, he began to drift into a swoon, and the water took him. He washed up, some two hours later, on the eastern bank of the Washin; a sodden, bedraggled mess, but cleaner than he had been for years.

Far behind him, the Phlegmian guards had remounted their horses and were attempting to wade their way out to the coach. However, it soon became clear that the water was too high for this procedure, and they had to turn back, tether up the horses, and swim to the coach instead.

The first man to reach it clambered atop the vehicle roof, which was now almost totally submerged beneath the waters. There was no sign of their target.

“He’s not here!” the guard called back to his partner, who nodded and dived underwater in order to search the sunken coach. After about thirty seconds, he reappeared.

“Nothing!” he shouted. “Maybe he drowned?”

The first guard produced a miniature telescope from his belt and attempted to study the far shore.

“See anything?”

“Nah, it’s too dark.”

“Maybe we should camp here; look again in the morning …”

“Ha! Are you serious? Let’s just tell the general he drowned and have done with it.”

The first guard looked doubtful. “General said to bring him in dead or alive,” he said. “Besides, I reckon he’ll make us come back for the coach.”

The second guard shrugged. “Crikey’s only been a general since yesterday, and besides, if he’s
that
keen on the coach, he can send a squad out for it.”

“Yeah, right.”

They made one final search of the waters around the coach’s periphery, and began to head back to the shore.

When they got there, an elderly man was waiting for them, his face creased with smiles.

“You two aren’t up to much, are ya?” he cackled.

The guards, soaking wet and in no mood for banter, ignored him and marched on past.

“Oi! Come back here! He got away, you know!”

They stopped, and one turned around.

“Say that again, old-timer?”

The old man pointed out at the river. “Your boy in the coach,” he confirmed. “Swam for it, sure as I was sitting here watching.”

The guards glanced at each other.

“Is there anyone else around here?” one inquired.

“No, not a soul. I’m only here because I work for the Riverboat Association. At least, I did until a gang of bloody barbarians took my boa—”

A crossbow bolt fired at point-blank range cut short the old man’s words, and he collapsed to the ground.

“I dunno,” said the first guard. “It’s nothing but work, work, work, isn’t it?”

His partner sniggered, and the two of them mounted their horses and rode away.

As Groan, Gordo, and Gape were led deeper into the woods by Count Craven’s zombie horde, the city of Wemeru came into view. It wasn’t a pretty sight, even in the fading light.

An avenue of hulking temples swept away from the entrance, and various smaller, pyramidal dwellings were visible in between them. Everything that wasn’t covered in hanging vines was smothered in mud. The entire place reeked of death and decrepitude.

“No place like home,” Loogie muttered from the dwarf’s belt. Gordo wondered if he was serious.

The zombies were leading them toward an enormous, central pyramid that rose about a hundred feet above the temples surrounding it. A rough wooden sign dug into the dirt proclaimed it to be:

H’eylr

The Great House of Wemeru

Gordo took a deep breath: if the air in the streets smelled like this, he had absolutely no desire to see inside
this
pyramid. Gape was experiencing a similar sense of disgust, and couldn’t quite believe his ears when his brother sauntered past, whistling.

Count Elias Craven got up twice a year.

There were many reasons for this; most of them having to do with the fact that the ruler of Wemeru existed on very little blood, could barely stand up most of the time, and was about as far past death as any animate creature was ever likely to get. He was also a necromancer, and many people said that the main reason he remained so fast asleep was that no bugger in their right mind would ever dare to wake him.

Well, someone was waking him now. He could hear the giant coffin lid being hefted off.

Torchlight streamed in: burning, blinding torchlight. Still, it could’ve been worse—they could’ve woken him during the day.

Count Craven opened an eye, but there were cobwebs in his socket, and he realized he’d opened the wrong one. He soon corrected that, and a blood-red pupil considered the trembling figure of his zombie captain.

“Well?”

“Intruders, master.”

“I find that very difficult to believe.”

“I’m serious, master; we’ve caught some intruders.”

“I thought I told you to stop hunting on the Washin. The corpse pit is chockablock!”

“We didn’t hunt these, master. They were heading
into
the wood.”

“Don’t be stupid. No one in their right mind would enter Rintintetly from this side of the wood.”

“Nevertheless, master,
these
did.”

Count Craven rolled his good eye, raised himself up, and clambered out of the coffin.

“How many?” he snapped.

“Three, master: two large warriors and a dwarf.”

“Bring the men to me.”

“And the dwarf, master?”

“Drown him.”

“Yes, master.”

As the zombie captain juddered away, Count Craven pulled himself together: literally.

Then he staggered out of the family crypt and began the long haul to the throne room (when every breath’s an effort, twelve feet can be an awfully long way away).

The entire surviving citizenry of Wemeru—which amounted to approximately twenty zombies—awaited him there, tottering around on their fractured legs like a group of oversized penguins. There was a succession of low, brainless muttering, and the Teethgrits were shoved to the front. A small space cleared around them as Count Craven slumped onto his wicker throne.

“What do you want in Wemeru?” he began, each word sounding as though it had been scoured with sandpaper.

“We’ve come for Lady Khan’s ring,” Gape announced pompously.

“Yeah,” Groan added. “An’ we’re not goin’ wivout it!”

Count Craven gave this a moment’s consideration; it took three quarters of an hour.

“Lady Khan,” he said, as though the two men that stood before him were stark-raving mad, “is a chicken. And no one leaves Wemeru alive.”

“It’s funny you should say that,” Gape said, beginning to untie the makeshift knot around his wrists. “Because, unless you hand over the ring, we’re not going to leave anyone
in
Wemeru alive.”

“Interesting,” muttered Craven, biting at what was left of his lower lip. “I’ve never been threatened before—”

“—and you’ll never be threatened again,” Gape finished, breaking the knot but keeping both hands behind his back. “I guarantee it.”

“Ha! That’s not a threat.”

“It is when you mean it to mean what I mean it to mean.”

“Meaning?”

“You’re boaf talkin’ junk,” Groan rumbled, wrenching free from his bonds with one almighty flex. “Eever give us the ring or die.”

Count Craven smiled, and motioned for his guards to shuffle back. “There is no ring,” he said calmly. “And we’re already dead.” He rose from his throne and swept an indicating hand over the assembly. “By all means, try to fight us; you will fail. We have no blood to shed and all the time in the world in which to overcome you. Now, are you going to go quietly, or do we have to—”

“Master!”

The zombie captain entered the throne room from a side door and limped its way through the throng.

Count Craven turned a tired eye toward him. “Well?”

“Um … sorry to trouble you again, master, but what should we do with the dwarf’s head?”

“You what?” Groan boomed, looking around the room and noticing, for the first time, that Gordo wasn’t present. “What’ve you dun ta GORDO?”

“I thought I told you to drown him,” Craven said.

The guard nodded. “You did, master.”

“And you beheaded him instead?”

“No, master, we’re getting ready to drown him. I just wanted to know what you wanted us to do with his head.”

Craven’s face was a terrible mask of confusion. “I don’t understand,” he said. “Isn’t it on his shoulders?”

“One is, master,” the captain confided. “The other’s around his waist.”

Craven raised one desiccated brow and turned his attention back to the warriors.

“You have a two-headed dwarf?” he inquired, with something approaching admiration.

“Not a two-headed dwarf,” came a voice from outside, followed by a commotion. Gordo Goldeaxe appeared in the doorway, shouldered the last remaining zombies away from him, and held his head up high. “But a dwarf holding the head of your own nephew, Loogie Lambontroff!”

“Hello again, Uncle!” the head exclaimed.

There was a communal gasp, a series of shouts, and then the room erupted with violence.

“Kill them!” Craven screamed, retrieving a black staff from beside his throne and holding it aloft. “Kill them all!”

Groan bowled into the zombie carrying his sword, Gape wolf-whistled for his own two blades, and Gordo Goldeaxe did the first thing that came into his head. He threw it.

The zombie horde dived left and right as the screaming skull of Loogie Lambontroff somersaulted across the room. Not for the first time that day, it was beginning to get very angry indeed …

I
T WAS MIDNIGHT IN
Phlegm, and the keep was shrouded in darkness. Somewhere on the first floor, a wire carefully worked its way into a lock and forced a resounding click from the mechanism.

The door to Susti’s bedchamber creaked open, and the princess stepped outside. The sentries on duty were fast asleep.

“Are you sure about this, ma’am?” Bronwyn panted. She’d had enough excitement for one day. For one lifetime, come to that.

“Shhh!” Susti warned. “Just get back inside and stay quiet. If you want to help, you can stuff my bed full of cushions.”

She turned and tiptoed off along the corridor, clutching a candle dish in one hand and a mace in the other.

At the first T-junction, she slipped up behind the duty guard and clubbed him into unconsciousness. She decided not to bother dragging him into a nook; time was of the essence, and besides, he looked far too heavy for that.

Susti crept to the top of the outer dungeon stairwell and began to descend. On the ground floor, she had to stay low in order to avoid the corridor patrol, and came dangerously close to killing the keep’s cat when it clawed at her as she crouched in the shadows.

Eventually, the patrol came and went, and the cat received its just deserts in the shape of some very hot wax.

Susti unhooked the latch of the dungeon door and stepped down into the glowing darkness.

Down.

Down.

Down.

Torchlight flared on the walls, and various nocturnally inclined prisoners began their midnight moaning sessions. Susti guessed that her father would be in the dankest, dirtiest cell in the dungeon, and headed toward it.

She was wrong.

Three half-naked ogres, a moon troll, two muggers, and a woman of the night later, she finally found the king in a cell not entirely unlike his own bedchamber. There were no guards on duty, and the key dangled from a convenient hook beside the door.

“F-father? Are you okay?” Susti called, reaching for the key. “Can you speak? Have they hurt you?”

King Phew rose from his prison bed. “No, my dear, I’m fine. Really, I am. What are you doing here?”

“I’ve come to get you out! I’ve come to rescue you!

She turned the key in the lock and flung open the door, stepping back to indicate the empty corridor.

“C’mon, we’re going to steal a cart or something …”

The king sighed. “And where would we go? You heard Modeset; there isn’t a kingdom in Illmoor that’d help me take my throne back from him!”

Susti nodded. “I agree with you, Father, but I
do
know some people who might—”

“Oh, really?” said a voice. Duke Modeset appeared at the doorway, flanked by General Crikey and an embarrassed-looking Pegrand. “Do tell.”

Susti squinted to see into the shadows behind the general. There didn’t seem to be any more guards outside in the corridor.

“I’m not telling you anything,” she said, readying her mace. “And you haven’t the brains to guess!”

Modeset rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I haven’t the brains to guess what?” he said. “That you’re planning to flee the city and warn Groan Teethgrit and his rowdy mob about my plan, in a pathetic attempt to gain their allegiance?” He sighed and shook his head. “Two things,
Your Highness
: first, I doubt very much whether you’d make it past the more than fifty guards I’ve posted on the main gate, and second, according to a report from two of Phlegm’s finest, the Teethgrits and Goldeaxe have already crossed the Washin, and will, by now, be having their insides removed by the zombie lord of Rintintetly. In fact, I have already sent a message to my fellow lords confirming it! Ha-ha-ha-ha!”