Shadewell Shenanigans (8 page)

“Hurry up, Bronny! I don’t want to land on top of you.”

“No, ma’am. Of course, ma’am.”

Bronwyn took a second gulp of air and managed to summon enough courage to slide another few feet.

“That’s my girl! Keep going!”

“Right, ma’am.”

“When we get down from here, we’re going to get some horses, and then—”

“Aaaaahh!”

“Bronny?”

“Ahhhhhhhhhhh!”

“Bronny! Are you okay?”

There was a strangled half scream from a (conveniently placed) haystack at the foot of the keep.

Susti swung round on her section of the line, almost tipping herself upside down.

“Are you alive, Bronny?” she called. “Say something!”

“Mmmfffff.”

“Aha! The gods must be with us! Did you land in the haystack?”

“Mmmffff.”

“Anything broken?”

“Mmmffff.”

“Excellent! I’ll be down in a jiffy …”

Far below, the side of the haystack exploded, and Bronwyn came out fighting. Thanks to the prevailing wind, Susti couldn’t hear the servant’s stream of expletives, and she only just missed the swift and sneaky hand gesture that followed.

“Don’t bother waving, Bronny!” the princess yelled. “Just grab the backpacks and find a stable; I’ll follow you!”

When Susti eventually reached the ground, her servant was a vague shape, albeit a wobbling one, in the distance. She smiled at the retreating figure, then turned her attention back to the matter at hand.

Fact: she’d managed to get to ground level. Fact: she’d never get out of the city unless she could create some sort of temporary diversion. Fact: the guards were all extremely wimpy and insufferably stupid.

Susti drew in a deep breath and thought for a moment. Then she lit a match and set fire to the bedsheet rope, crouched behind a nearby barrel, and waited. Sure enough, within fifteen minutes, every guard in the keep was either fussing madly over the flames or making every effort to remain invisible until the crisis was over.

Seizing her opportunity, Susti made a mad, frantic dash for the main gate. When she arrived there, Bronwyn had already managed to purchase two fine-looking horses and a not-so-fine-looking horseman called Ned. Susti disposed of Ned with the textbook “look over there—a badger with a broadsword” and a swift chop across the back of the neck.

The duty guard, a weaselly-looking fellow in an oversized chain mail coat, bowed low when he saw the princess approaching.

“Good evening, Your Highness,” he droned. “Does His Majesty—”

“Know I’m out and about? Of course he does; do you think the king stupid?”

“No, Highness! Of course not!”

“Good. Now listen up: did you see which way the mercenaries went?”

The guard hesitated, scratching his grubby bristles with an equally grubby forefinger.

“Your suitors, Highness?”

Susti muttered something under her breath, then with a wry smile, added, “Yes, that’s right.”

“Indeed, Your Highness; I observed their passage with the marvelous and intricate telescopic device your father was kind enough to provi—”

“Yes, yes! Which way did they go?”

The guard licked his soggy lips. “Um … I don’t know who you mean, Your Highness,” he said.

“The mercenaries!”

“W-w-which ones, Your Highness?”

Susti grimaced. “Don’t play games with me, you insolent fool! My father will have you”—she paused, trying to think of the worst punishment she’d ever heard her father’s chief torturer refer to—“castrapitricollapulated.”

The guard’s eyes practically bulged out of his head, and he began to talk very fast.

“They were heading for Rintintetly, Highness. You’ll never catch them, though. Once you get into those hills, Highness, there’s any one of a hundred ways you could go to get across the Washin.”

“Hmm … Rintintetly, eh?”

“Yes, Highness. But please don’t go—you’ll die! They
eat
women like you in the dead city; eat ’em alive! I don’t know anything else, Highness. Please don’t castrapitricollapulate me!”

The man promptly folded up and sank onto his knees, but Susti wasn’t paying attention to his whines. Instead, she was staring at Bronwyn with a look of sheer horror on her face.

“Everything all right, ma’am?” asked the servant, approaching her mistress with the horses trailing behind her.

“We need to move fast, Bronny!” Susti exclaimed, snatching one of the reins and thrusting herself up into the saddle. “They must be quite a way ahead.”

She watched impatiently as the servant tried and failed to get into the saddle. However, the girl’s fifth attempt proved successful.

“Good. Let’s go.”

Bronwyn gave an impassive shrug. “I don’t rightly know that we should, ma’am,” she said. “The king would be terribly worried about you.”

“Well, he should have thought about that before using me as an instrument of—of—of destruction!”

Susti waved her hand, and the two girls urged their horses into a healthy gallop.

“You know something really strange …” Gordo muttered, as the innkeeper’s geriatric nag pulled their cart along the dusty track.

“Yeah,” rumbled his companion. “Moffs dunt die.”

Gordo shook his head. “No, I—what did you just say?”

Groan shrugged. “Moffs, they don’ die.”

“Moths? What, as in ugly butt’flies?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t talk rubbish.”

“I’m not; bloke in the pub tol’ me.”

“And you believed him?”

“Yeah.”

“You silly sod.”

“No, I ain’t. He dun proved it an’ all; he jumped off a cliff wearin’ a jacket made o’ moff skins, and you know what ’appened?”

“Surprise me.”

“He bounced.”

Gordo rolled his eyes. “Is this the same bloke who told you that mohair comes from a tiny creature called a ‘moe’?”

“That was TRUE! He was fightin’ ’gainst all them teddy bear makers what steals the fur off ’em. That’s why you see loads o’ bald moes when you’re out ’untin’ bear fur.”

Gordo smiled at his friend. “Groan, there is no such thing as a bloody ‘moe’. Mohair comes from goats.”

“Does it ’ell.”

“Look, I’m not getting drawn into a debate over it. If you want to pay five crowns for a moth-skin coat, then that’s your own lookout—”

“How did you know ’bout that?”

“I guessed.”

They rode in silence for a while, then Gordo glanced over his shoulder. Gape was fast sleep in the back of the cart, and their prisoner was roped up and running along behind it.

Gordo sighed. “I can’t believe we’ve ended up capturing Mad Count Craven’s nephew,” he said. “I mean, what are the odds?”

“Yeah.”

The dwarf sighed again. “Come to that, I can’t believe anyone can run while they’re asleep,” he said. “Amazing, isn’t it?”

“Maybe he’s dreamin’ o’ runnin’,” said Groan.

Gordo admired the simplicity of this, and nodded. “You could be right, there. Still, brings me back to what I was going to tell you earlier …”

“Yeah? What wazzat?”

“Well,” the dwarf began, passing the reins to Groan, “when I checked that he was breathing, a while back, I opened his eyelids … and he’s got one white eye and one black eye.”

“Yeah,” Groan rumbled, “an’ he’ll ’ave two black eyes if he—”

“No,
seriously,
” Gordo protested. “One white eye and one black eye. That’s a mark of something; I just can’t remember what …”

Groan sniffed. “Who cares?”

“We might,” said Gordo. “If only I could think why …”

Loogie Lambontroff woke up
running.

He managed to glance around at the landscape as it rose and fell in a swirl of eerie circles, then he lapsed into half consciousness while his mind came to terms with a few irrefutable facts. The thought process went something like:

I’m half asleep …

That’s because we were knocked out.

I’ve been captured …

Yes, we’re prisoners.

I’m running.

We shouldn’t be.

I know I shouldn’t be, but … Hang on a minute … Who’s this
we
I keep thinking about? There is only me.

You’ll remember soon. For now, why don’t we find out why we’re running? I mean, are we running to something or away from something?

Loogie forced open an eyelid, and promptly shut it again. His mind raced:

We’re, I mean
I
am running
behind
something. I think it’s a cart. What should we, I, do? And who are you, anyway? … Hello? Is there somebody else in here?

What?

I think there’s somebody else in here.

What, besides us?

Who is this? And why did you go quiet just then?

I didn’t want to upset you.

Upset me? What’re you doing in here?

I’m waiting.

Waiting for what?

For you … to get annoyed. We both know what you’re like when you get annoyed … People die.

Both? There’s two of you in here?

No, I meant you and I, the two of US. You are a twinling, Loogie, remember? And I am your wrath; I am the bad side of you that always surfaces when you are at your most enraged. I am your dark brother …

Oh, it’s YOU. I haven’t seen you for ages.

Yes, Loogie, it’s been a while. My, my, you haven’t been this angry for a long time
—
must be all that medication they’ve got you on. Still, you seem enraged enough now, so when you’re quite ready …

“Yeeeaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”

The scream echoed through the mountains. It was so abrupt and so monstrously loud that the half-knackered horse immediately bolted forward, wrenching the reins from Groan’s tight-fisted grip. The huge barbarian dived forward to snatch hold of them, which turned out to be a big mistake.

Gordo looked on in amazement as his friend was dragged, like a child’s dolly, behind the bolting horse, and disappeared in the nearby woods. Then the cart fell to pieces where it stood, and Gape rolled out, his face a mixture of sleep and bewilderment.

Gordo snatched up his axe and clambered out of the woodpile, screaming all kinds of abuse about innkeepers and their wives, before focusing his attention on the source of the scream. He spun around, battle-axe at the ready, and began: “Okay, my lad, now you’re in for—”

Gordo Goldeaxe froze.

“GROAAAAAANNNNN!” he boomed, taking a few steps back and raising his axe threateningly. “You better get back here, quicksmart! This bloke’s a TWINLING!”

I
LLMOOR WAS RIFE WITH
magical creatures. A lot depended on how willing you were to see them, but a really astute hunter, in the right place at a good hour, could see sprites, demons, werewolves, vampires, pixies, imps, and even the odd gnome. Twinlings, on the other hand, were rare. On the few occasions that they
were
encountered, any hunter worth their salt would know enough to leave well alone. Twinlings were bad news. In fact, twinlings were bad-news
headlines.

Named and shamed by the High Priests of Legrash, twinlings were those who had, at some point in their lives, been possessed by dark spirits. Upon extraction, these spirits occasionally manifested themselves physically, erupting from the souls of their hosts to wreak demonic havoc on anyone or anything unfortunate enough to get in their way. The host, meanwhile, was left in a dream state, entirely zombified until such times as the spirit’s thirst for anger had been satiated, or until it had been slain. The best way to defeat a twinling, it was rumored, was to douse its demonic form in salt and promptly set fire to it, or else deliver a fatal blow to its sensitive spinal column. However, Gordo Goldeaxe didn’t know this, so he dealt with it the same way he dealt with all hostile creatures; he ran at it with a bloody great axe and hoped for the best. Unfortunately, he chose the wrong twin.

The zombie half of Loogie Lambontroff staggered mindlessly toward Gordo, hardly batting an eyelash when the dwarf took its left arm off with one swift arc of the blade. Instead, it flailed madly with its right.

Gordo dived under the appendage, managed three somersaults without injuring himself—quite a feat for a dwarf with a two-foot axe—and swung around for another strike. He didn’t make it.

The gangster’s evil twinling, who’d been watching the proceedings with careful amusement, suddenly pounced, securing Gordo in a viselike headlock. The dwarf dropped his axe.

“Ah, look here, the little fellow doesn’t like pain, does he, Loogie?”

Gordo scrambled to free himself from the hold, but the twinling had its fingers firmly locked.

“Struggle if you will, little fellow. I can feel the breath leaving your body.”

Gordo tried to swivel himself around so that he could roll his way out of the headlock, but the twinling predicted his movement and promptly stamped on his shin.

“Ahhhh! You’ll die for that,” the dwarf managed, digging his fingernails into the twinling’s hairy arm. “Groan! Gape! Grrrrrraahhhh!”

“Loogie,” commanded the twin. “Get over here and fetch me this axe. We’re going to slice up the little fellow with his own weapon. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

The original half of Loogie Lambontroff was staggering around the road in a daze. Almost unconscious through blood loss, he’d managed to pick up his severed limb and was trying (with little success) to fit it back into its socket.

“Loogie,” the twinling persisted, tightening its grip on Gordo’s neck. “Are you listening to m—”

The sentence was abruptly cut off, along with the creature’s head, which thumped onto the ground and rolled a few feet away.

Groan Teethgrit wiped the blood off his sword, and sighed. “I’ve los’ the ’orse.”

“Never mind,” said Gordo, massaging his throat. “I think we’ve got more important things to worry about.”

He indicated the felled twinling, which suddenly burst into flames and vanished. Curiously, its grinning head remained.

“Will you look at that,” muttered Gordo. “Thank the gods on high.”

“Fank me,” Groan reminded him. He turned to Loogie the First, who was lying facedown on the floor, completely motionless. “I reckon he’s dead.”

“Doubt it.”