The Wordsmiths and the Warguild (5 page)

       
"What have you done
to the door?" demanded the baron.

       
Togura replied, but the
baron, sneezing vigorously because of the sawdust in his nose, failed to hear.

       
"What was
that?" he said.

       
"You heard
me," said Togura.

       
"I suppose you've
wedged the door with a baulk of timber."

       
"That's what I
said."

       
"You're not going
to cry again, are you?" sneered the baron, hearing the distress in his
son's voice.

       
"Go away,"
said Togura.

       
"I will not go
away," said his father. "You will open the door, quit this place and
come home with me. Then, once we've had a little talk together, we'll go back
to the palace. To see Slerma."

       
"No!" howled
Togura. "No, no, not that. I'd rather die."

       
"Stop being
melodramatic," said the baron impatiently. "I can't see what you're
making all this fuss about. When all's said and done, she's a healthy young
girl with a moderately wealthy father."

       
"She's
obscene."

       
"Many men like
their women a little plump. After all, you've got to have something to hold
onto once you get in the saddle."

       
"A little plump!
Paps, that woman's a horse, a cow and a whale all rolled into one. She's -
"

       
"Don't call me
paps," snapped the baron, who hated hearing that kind of tiny-tot talk
from his son. "It's time to grow up, Togura. Be a man. You're not going to
kill yourself, so you'll just have to live with the life you've got."

       
"Yes, I want to
eat. That man-eater would kill me. I - "

       
"Stop that! Togura,
face facts. You're not going to inherit. Cromarty gets the estate. If you
marry, you get the king's title and his property once he dies. He's an old man,
he can't last much longer."

       
"Neither will I if
I - "

       
"Enough! Listen!
Soon, Togura, this wretched town of Keep is going to fall into the ground or
slide into Dead Man's Drop. The king's property will be more valuable than
ever. Anyone wanting to mine the gemstock will have to - "

       
"I won't sell
myself for money," shouted Togura. "I want to marry a woman, not a
walking slime pit."

       
"You don't have
much option," said the baron.

       
"If I have to, I'll
go down to the coast and sell myself to the first slaver passing through. I'd
rather - "

       
"This nonsense has
gone far enough," said the baron, cutting him off. "Open this door
properly and come out. We're going home. Now!"

       
"No."

       
"No?"

       
"No!"

       
"No!!??"

       
"No!!!!"

       
"By the sperm of my
ancestors," raged the baron, using the most fearsome oath he knew.
"You'll come out of there right now or suffer the immediate and unlimited
consequences. No son of mine is going to defy his father like that."

       
"Push off,
paps," said Togura, all defiance.

       
The baron then assaulted
the door vigorously. A chunk of rotten wood fell from the ceiling, and one of
the risers of the stairway split open, but the door itself was solid, and held.
Finally, cursing and muttering, spitting sawdust and swearing ferociously, the
baron retreated downstairs. He took rooms for himself and for Prick, paying the
ground floor premium; they would spend the night there, and deal with Togura in
the morning.

       
Togura, alone and lonely
in his room, barred the door then cried himself to sleep. The bed on which he
slept was a huge and incredibly ancient affair made of stout timbers standing
waist-high off the floor; as he slept, he was a small crumpled island of misery
in an ocean of dirty linen. Bed bugs, oblivious of his emotional agony, feasted
merrily on his helpless flesh.

       
Sleeping, Togura dreamt
that he was in a castle which was under siege. Invaders were attacking the main
gate with a battering ram. The sullen thud and thump of the assault began to
undermine his composure. The ram charged again, hitting the door with a crash
so loud that it woke him up.

       
Togura, starting from
sleep and blinking at darkness, stared in the direction of the door. Something
was demolishing it. With a final crash, the door splintered and gave way. A
faintly aromatic smell of ancient timbers percolated through the room. Outside,
on the stairway, some large animal was breathing heavily with a kind of wet,
gutteral wheezing.

       
"Paps?" said
Togura uncertainly.

       
"Prepare yourself,
little man," said the animal, in a thick slurred voice.

       
"Slerma!"
screamed Togura.

       
The animal outside made
strenuous efforts to enter, but failed. The doorway was too small.

       
"Slerma," said
Togura, in a shaky voice. "I'll do anything you say. Just don't hurt me, that's
all. I love you."

       
He was answered by a
scream of rage.

       
"Love? Love! Little
man, I'll kill you! Guta will kill you. How dare you make love to his
Slerma?"

       
Too late, Togura
realised his fatal mistake.

       
"No, Guta!" cried
Togura. "I didn't mean it. I don't want Slerma. I don't want anything to
do with her."

       
"Liar! You were
seen. The serving girl told me. You were seen. Embraced! Deep in her charms,
her arms enfolding you. She fed you with her own magnificent hand."

       
"Guta, I really
don't want her. She's appalling. She's hideous. She's a mass of flab and
sausage meat. She makes me sick, she - "

       
"You insult my
darling. My true love. My fondest dream. The one and only real woman in the
world. Animal! I'm going to kill you!"

       
The building shook,
timbers groaned, the roof strained, and Guta forced himself into Togura's room.
As darkness crashed toward him, roaring, Togura rolled out of bed and took
cover underneath the bed. Guta, finding the bed in the night, hoisted himself
aboard and began to trample it with his knees. He roared out incomprehensible
obscenities as he sought for his victim.

       
Frustrated at finding
nothing, Guta tore the sheets apart. Then he grabbed hold of the mattress and
ripped it open, spilling mouldy old straw and bracken into the night, together
with bedbugs, lice, dead spiders and a virile colony of the kind of red ants
that bite. Then he began to jump on the bed.

       
Just before the bed
splintered and gave way, Togura rolled out from underneath and sprinted for the
doorway. He tripped, fell, recovered himself, barked his shins against
something, cracked his head against a low-lying beam, then gained safety. At
least for the moment. Where now? Up, down? Togura ascended, pounding up the
stairs, thinking the fearsome young troll behind him would not dare the
increasingly fragile heights of the Murken Hotel.

       
He was wrong.

       
Hauling himself back out
through the doorway, Guta started up the stairs after Togura. He began to gain
on him. Togura strove for extra speed. But Guta was fast and ferocious. He
grabbed hold of Togura's foot. Togura screamed. The stairs collapsed. Guta
roared. Screaming and roaring, the two plunged downward to their doom. Guta landed
first, smashing his head open and breaking his back, which killed him. Togura
landed on top of the corpse of his recently deceased rival. A shower of rotten
wood rained down on the two of them.

       
Togura became aware of
doors opening. There was a muttering of voices in the darkness. Then the
proprietor came on the scene. The hunchbacked dwarf was bearing a candle, an
evil-smelling stump of black wax which burnt with a greenish-blue light,
filling the air with smoke and shadows. The dwarf was doing his best to
restrain a huge rate, which he had on a short leash. It was the size of a
mastiff, had blood-red eyes and razor-sharp teeth, and was slavering as it
strained against the leash, which was attached to a collar ringed with spikes
of sharpened metal.

       
The dwarf surveyed the
damage.

       
Then he kicked Guta in
the head.

       
"Leave," said
the dwarf.

       
The dwarf knew that Guta
was a valuable catch. The city state of Pera Pesh, a fishing town of some one
thousand people down by the coast, had put a price on his head. He was wanted,
dead or alive, for a variety of crimes including grave robbing, necrophilia,
the theft of a small whale and the destruction of a small stone bridge which he
had incautiously walked across. The reward would more than compensate for the
cost of repairs.

       
"I'm going right
now," said Togura, with what fraction of his voice he had so far been able
to recover.

       
"Togura," said
a loud voice from one of the darkened doorways. "You come here this
instant."

       
It was his father, the
formidable baron.

       
Togura got to his feet
and fled.

Chapter 5

       
Togura found refuge in a
fire watcher's hut by a mine shaft. It gave him at least a modicum of shelter
against the cold autumn weather. Exhausted, he slept. He woke, once, to find
something gnawing at his boots. He kicked it away. Hissing and spluttering, it
retreated; after that, he found it hard to get back to sleep again.

       
At dawn, the fire
watcher arrived, a big, gruff man with a red beard and bloodshot eyes, and big
dirty boots, one of which had marked Togura's backside by the time he made his
escape. Outside, a light drizzle was falling. Miners, with pick axes and
shovels slung over their shoulders, were trooping to the climbing shafts.

       
Shivering, Togura
wandered off, wondering what to do now. He had already considered turning to
Day Suet for help, and had rejected the notion; he was too proud to beg, and,
in any case, doubted that her family would welcome him if he came as a beggar.

       
The streets of Keep were
dangerous, as always, for housewives were going through the morning routine of
emptying chamber pots out of the window. Ducking and dodging, Togura escaped
with no more than a few stray licks of splatter. His zigzag course through the
drunken streets brought him to the very brink of Dead Man's Drop.

       
Togura stood on the
Edge, looking out at the dim grey horizon now soured by stormclouds. The ground
dropped away sheer to the pinnacles of the Claws which would receive his body
if he jumped, fell or was pushed. Between the Claws and the enclosing horizon
lay the leagues of the Famines, a regular wasteland of scoured rock and eroding
hillsides speckled with colonies of gorse, clox, snare and barbarian thorn.
Down in the hollows there was the occasional glint of lake or slough.

       
Far below Togura's feet,
some nimble birds darted through the dull-weather sky. They, at least, had
homes to go to, and regular occupations to follow.

       
Overcome by a sudden
access of self-pity, Togura considered throwing himself over, but decided
against it. The pleasures of self-pity were, for the moment, far too sweet.
Besides, he still had some money left. It would be foolish to suicide before
spending all his cash.

       
Turning away from Dead
Man's Drop, Togura walked down the street. He had only just departed when the
piece of stone he had been standing on fell away, almost soundlessly, and
toppled into the gulf. Hearing the fant sound the stone made when it slipped
away, Togura turned. But, seeing nothing, shrugged, and went on his way.

       
Two streets from Dead
Man's Drop, Togura bought some roasted chestnuts from a street vendor, a
crippled hag with a festering rupia despoiling the skin beneath her left eye.
She tried to cheat him. They argued. He swore. She cursed him. They parted,
both convinced that they had got the worst of the bargain; rounding a corner,
he kicked at a cat with ringworm, swore again, then stopped to eat.