Dramocles: An Intergalactic Soap Opera (10 page)

“You really mean that?”

“Yes, I really do.”

“I hesitate to call you cowardly, because you are my guest. But you must admit that your stance is hardly heroic.”

“I don’t care,” Vitello said. “I’m supposed to be doing a comic role.”

Haldemar considered for a while. “Perhaps we could find something less taxing. You could go through the magical gate into the underworld and rescue Hulga.”

“That’s out, too. Forget the danger bit, Haldemar. I appreciate your wanting to do things in style, but you’re thinking too small. This isn’t one of your local folklore scenes. This concerns all the planets of our system. I’m giving you a chance at the big time, the main event of civilization, universal history! It’s not an offer that comes along every day. So let’s get on with it, King, or let me depart in peace.”

“Oh, very well,” Haldemar said. “I was just trying to please my constituents before sending off thousands of them to be killed senselessly on alien planets. May I borrow your pen?”

Before Haldemar could sign, there was a flaring of trumpets and a sudden bright shimmering in the air. A figure could be seen within it.

“Hulga!” Haldemar cried.

The light faded, leaving behind a large, plain, freckled girl with a broad, pleasant face framed in short blond pigtails.

“Oh, Daddy!” Hulga cried, rushing to Haldemar’s arms. “It’s been so long! And I’ve missed Snicker, too.”

“Who?” Vitello asked.

“Snicker is her pet wolf,” Haldemar told him. “There’s a rather curious story about that–”

“Some other time, Daddy,” Hulga said. “The Demon Dwarf wants to speak to you.”

The Demon Dwarf stepped out of a smaller shimmer. He was slightly overweight, reddish-brown in color, and had two small black horns growing out of his forehead.

“O Haldemar!” the Demon Dwarf said formally. “I have monitored your conversation with Vitello, and he’s right, this is a chance for us all to get out of this backwater and into universal history. I have returned Hulga on two conditions, the first being that she marry Vitello, thus ensuring me at least a footnote in the annals of history. It’s not much, but it’s a beginning.”

“He’s always hated the fact that he’s only known locally,” Hulga said.

“What’s the second condition?” Vitello asked.

“That you take me along with you. Nothing’s going on underground these days, and I really feel I’m ready for the main action.”

Haldemar said, “What say you, Vitello? Will you marry the girl?”

Vitello looked at Hulga. A complete lack of expression crossed his face. This was followed by a sly look as he said, “Would that put me in the line of succession for kingship of Vanir if Your Excellency met with an untimely accident?”

“No, Vitello, only a man of our own race can rule us. But your son by Hulga, if you had one, could rule.”

“So I could be father to the next king of Vanir. … Well, it’s not what I would have planned for myself.”

“But it’s a good position,” Haldemar pointed out. “A pension goes with it, and you’d still have plenty of time for a second career.”

“True enough,” said Vitello. “Hulga, what do you say?”

“I’ll marry you, Vitello, but you must promise to take me to a rock concert when we have reached civilization.”

“And what about me?” Fufnir asked.

“All right, you can come along,” Vitello said.

The ceremony was held that afternoon.

Immediately after it, Vitello asked to inspect the levy of Vanir. Only then did Haldemar reveal a difficulty concerning his troops.

23

Four hundred and thirty years ago, the Vanir had come under attack by a people even more barbaric than themselves. The terrible Monogoths had swept out of Galactic Center in uncountable numbers, their squat, bat-winged spaceships darkening the skies. They were ferocious copper-skinned warriors armed with flint-headed light-spears, vibrator maces, and electronic longbows, and clad in the poorly cured skins of panther and bear. This race of heavyset, mustached men fell upon Vanir like an avalanche.

Outnumbered, the Vanir armies fell back, abandoning their seaports and settlements and reassembling in the vast forest of Illsweep. Many hand-to-hand combats took place in the deeply shadowed woods, and the Monogoths were cut down in great numbers. Yet more and more of them came, and it seemed only a matter of time before they wiped out the Vanir.

Harald Hogback, high king at this time, had to face the loss not only of the war, but perhaps also of the Vanir race. He decided upon a desperate stratagem. The core of his army, the redoubtable Skullsmasher Brigade, was still mostly intact, though fearfully battered. These fifty thousand men, berserkers all, were facing a Monogoth army of about a quarter of a million men. Hogback decided it was vital to preserve his troops for the future of the Vanir race.

After casting the rune stones, Harald Hogback ordered the Vanir women to set up the great copper cauldrons and prepare a feast. This done, he detached the Skullsmashers from the defense line and led them deep into Illsweep forest.

The Monogoths pursued hotly, but their way led through the Vanir camp, and they smelled the boiled beef simmering deliciously in the copper cauldrons, and sniffed the mounds of boiled potatoes with creamy horse-radish and parsley. It was too much for them, raised as they all were on an exclusive diet of hot dogs fried in lard. The Monogoths gave a single great cry and rushed at the viands. By the time their sergeants had restored order, the Vanir had made good their retreat into the depths of Illsweep.

Hogback led his troops into a vast limestone cavern hidden in the woods beneath a cedarn cover. He commanded his men to lie down and make themselves comfortable. Then Harald intoned words over them, using the last of his store of Old Magick to cause the entire host to fall asleep. With this accomplished, Harald ordered the entrance sealed. And so the berserkers slept, and continued to sleep, right up to the present day.

This was the story that Haldemar told Vitello as they rode into the forest of Illsweep. And Vitello wondered at it greatly, and asked what had happened in the war between the Monogoths and the Vanir. Haldemar told him that those superlative warriors, despite their seeming indestructibility, had been prone to the illnesses of civilization. The Monogoths were wiped out by an epidemic of hoof-and-mouth disease, and the Vanir soon repopulated their own planet.

“And the Skullsmasher Brigade?”

“They still lie in sleep,” Haldemar said. “These are the troops that we need.”

24

The forest was astir with muffled and secretive movements. Pale sunshine filtered down through the tangled canopy of branches. Vitello could hear the piercing cry of the moviola bird, that shy resident of the upper treetops, with its plaintive cry of “Ida Lupino, Ida Lupino.” Haldemar rode beside him, and several members of the household guards followed close behind. Soon enough they came to a glade in the woods, and standing in the glade was a tall man clad in forest green, and this was Ole Grossfoot, guardian of the sleeping host.

“They’re over this way,” Grossfoot said, pushing back the mop of reddish brown hair from his glittering eyes.

The brigade’s original home in the vast limestone cavern had to be abandoned when Grossfoot discovered leaks in the rocky wall, bathing his charges in limewater and threatening to encase their extremities in stone. Moving them had been difficult. There were no moving companies on the planet Vanir. Grossfoot had turned to Fufnir, the Demon Dwarf, and his people. The dwarves had managed to carry the sleeping soldiers onto the forest floor without mishap, except for Edgar Bluekiller, whom they accidentally dropped over a cliff.

Grossfoot then sent a petition to Hjrod Dugelnose, the master builder, requesting that he construct wooden shelters inscribed with rune lines of great power. Dugelnose agreed, but was killed while robbing a tavern in Snaak, though some claim Sniick. His son, Bijohn Longsmasher, the assistant master builder, had gone south for unspecified purposes and not returned. And so Grossfoot had to leave his warriors sleeping on the loamy forest floor. To protect them from the forest rats, Grossfoot used a pack of trained terriers. Two blasts on the silver whistle that depended from his neck by an earthenware lanyard of curious design sent the dogs to work; another blast, and they went to a recreation area for their naps. Three more blasts produced a swarm of chi-chi worms. They spread out and devoured all the doggie-do that the terriers had deposited. And so a balance was struck and all remained neat and sanitary.

When the day’s work was done, Grossfoot liked to make up little songs–for such is the way of the Vanir people. One of his favorites went like this:

My name is Grossfoot.

I kill people.

I love women with big tits.

My tooth hurts.

My name is Grossfoot.

In order for the Vanir to be useful in battle, they first had to be awakened from their long sleep. There was a magical word that was supposed to bring this about, a word of great antiquity, passed down from chief bard to chief bard, and not to be repeated here since, even weakened by mispronunciations, it can still shatter a TV tube at thirty feet.

The chief bard came forward and intoned the word, but it bore no result. There was not so much as a quiver or a twitch among the sleeping warriors.

King Haldemar was in despair over this turn of events. He called for his drinking horn, preparatory to tying on a monumental drunk. But Vitello begged him to wait, and went over and inspected several of the sleeping figures.

Straightening up, he said, “Haldemar, all is not lost.”

“How not?” quoth Haldemar. “For these were the troops I had counted on to give overbearing Dramocles a turn.”

“And so they shall be,” Vitello said. “It is a mere trifling defect that keeps these men in sleep’s thralldom. Notice, O King, how their ears, from long propinquity with the forest floor, are quite stuffed with moss, small pebbles, twigs, pinecones, and the like. Due to this, these men are unable to hear the command to awaken.”

“Why, so it is,” Haldemar said, stooping to inspect. “This shall be rectified at once. We’ll issue small trowels to the assembled company, though maybe soup spoons would do as well. And then we’ll dig passageways to their understanding.”

“I would not advise it,” Vitello said. “Overforceful application of these crude instruments could result in damage to the inner ear, perhaps to the brain itself. What you need is a good sonic cleaner.”

“We have none such,” Haldemar said.

“I can arrange to rent you some,” Vitello said, “and at a trifling price when you consider the replacement cost of a good warrior capable of berserking on cue.”

Sonic cleaners and other equipment were rushed in from Hoover XII, a nearby planet devoted to the cleansing arts, and the berserkers were stripped of many layers of hardened mud, dead twigs, rich black compost, and small flowering plants. Multiple fumigations removed all trace of Dutch elm disease and boll weevil eggs. So there was no failure when the magic word was spoken again. Rank upon rank, the deadliest warriors of ancient times blinked open their eyes, scratched their matted hair, looked around in wonderment, and called, each to his fellows, “Hey, how about this, huh?”

25

Count John, ruler of Crimsole, had a court that was done entirely in shades of red. Count John was actually a king, just like his brother Dramocles. But John had asked everyone to call him the Count of the Crimson Court because Irving J. Bedizened, his public relations man, had sold him on the title as a sure way of generating interest in him. At the time, John had considered it a really good idea, and he had loved getting letters addressed to the Count of the Crimson Court. Now the whole thing bored him, nobody was interested or even amused, and Bedizened was always in conference when John called.

As soon as he returned from Glorm, John learned that his wife, Anne, was inspecting the military installations on Whey, one of Crimsole’s five moons. He decided there was no time to waste. Calling in his commanders, John outlined the situation briskly. Dramocles must be checked, and friendly Lekk protected. His commanders agreed with him entirely.

John acted without hesitation. He ordered his best tactician, Colonel Dirkenfast, to take thirty thousand converted robot troops and go to the immediate relief of the hard-pressed citizenry of Lekk. Dirkenfast activated his troops, loaded them into carriers, and was off. These troops had been Delta Null agricultural workers before their conversion at the Soldier Factory on Antigone. Short and stocky, with built-in harrowing and winnowing equipment that could cause great damage at close quarters, the Delta Null robots were good fighters despite their habit of picking up vegetables wherever they found them and converting them into quick-frozen V-8 juice.

Dirkenfast set his troops down near the south entrance of Sour Face Pass, concealing them behind a dense growth of aspen and larch that he had brought along for this purpose. Not even waiting to set up his fuel depots, Dirkenfast pushed out patrols to the north and northwest, advancing onto the plain of Unglaze toward Rivington’s Cairn, where Rux’s base of supply was located. The Delta Nulls got through Rux’s picket line undetected, and met no resistance until they reached the scrubby hills southwest of Ubbermann Falls. They overran several guard posts, and Dirkenfast followed quickly with his main force. So complete was the surprise that it looked as if Rux’s position would be overrun despite its defensive strength, nestled as it was behind Lekk’s only sand dune. It took time to program the Mark IV’s to defensive mode, and time was what Rux no longer had.