Wolf's-head, Rogues of Bindar Book I (18 page)

“Curb these
tiresome mewlings!” shrieked Nuzbek. “Can a man not expect a little
justice when he is—”

Dighcan
thumped him soundly on the crown.

Graves
interrupted the crass exhibition. “Very good, Dighcan. Bu you too
are awarded ten demerits.”

“What?—this is
a gross overkill—”

“I agree!”
Graves shrugged, waved an incriminating finger at Dighcan. “Save
your energy for the beehive—with Nuzbek.”

“Impossible!”
cried Dighcan. “I’ll not endure gropings and molestation in close
quarters.” He leaned forward and jumped on the balls of his feet
like an obstinate schoolboy. “The idea is deplorable! In the yard I
have Zestes to watch my back, who keeps an eye out for dandies like
Nuzbek and Leamoine.”

Zestes shoved
his hatchet face into Dighcan’s and gave a soothing belch of
acknowledgment.

Dighcan roiled
away with disgust.

Graves
justified his decision by adding additional mollifying communal
qualms. “Nuzbek recognizes the penalties for various abasements,
such as touchy-feelies and opportunistic groping and he shall have
other tasks to absorb himself with while confined in the hive—such
is my statement.”

Paltuik rocked
back with merriment. His round face showed a gratified grin as
Skarrow and Mulfax hauled Dighcan and Nuzbek to the shade of the
spindlefax overhanging the south wall. All eyes turned to the
solitary confinement, aka the ‘flap-trap’, as the company watched
in amazement. Baus noticed that the hive supported a small wooden
door, a thick portal, a foot in diameter, fortified with iron
straps. The construction was six feet high, a yellow mortared dome,
like some giant beehive, set about mid way along the southern wall
of the compound’s wildest side. The interior was black, quiet as
night. The guards thrust Dighcan and Nuzbek inside then drew back
the bolts and left the two incarcerated until such time as their
sentence was up.

The prisoners
who had followed the two watched in morbid curiosity. Baus
marvelled that a curious wegmor statue stood cryptically poised in
the dome’s shadow. It was fashioned of wood, painted in casque
silver. Neither able to move nor rock, the saddle was a black brace
of beobar, seating three men. Three men could sit with weights
strapped to their legs—each seated for lengthy periods, learning
humility with pain. Nuzbek, it seemed, was plunging very close to a
saddling on the instrument, what with all the heavy yelling and
blind cursing streaming through the door.

Satisfied with
the outcome, Baus gave a dignified nod and turned back to the
refectory. Congratulating Weavil on the success of his exploits, he
discovered his comrade quick to accept the praise.

At the lunch
table, the two joined in merry song. A general enthusiasm infused
the company. Weavil, enlivened for the first time in many days,
went so far as to compose a small ode—of how a magician named
‘Kosbag’ caught with his hand in the honey pot, was sentenced to a
tarring and feathering by king Gravioli, followed by an exile.
Lopze took up the refrain with cheery singing. He was so taken with
the verse that he stood up on his chair, exhorting people to join
in. Graves ordered the antic arrested—complaining that a sudden
slippage on Lopze’s part might entail one less spare hand to aid on
the work program . . .

* * *

With the
absence of Dighcan and Nuzbek from the gang, the yardwork resumed
in full rigor and at a slightly more ponderous rate. Zestes and
Boulm continued to haul drays to and from the compound without
Nuzbek’s assistance; Tustok and Leamoine fish-slitted and hacked
without Dighcan, while Baus and Weavil sifted squirming fish with
lighter hearts.

For the
remainder of the day, Baus invested his faculties on a daring plan.
Favourable opportunities existed in the cosmos as a result of
Nuzbek’s absence, particularly on his ability to recover his baton.
There remained the displaced stone on the wall. The rock was an
entity of stubbornness that would not budge despite his most
aggressive thrusts. To pry such a rock from the wall would require
a tool.

The hour of
Flanks was approaching and Baus held no bander. He must win Zestes’
belt buckle in order to dislodge the stone! The affair involved a
circular logic that posed frustrating conundrums. He flung his
fistful of golgonfish to the ground, leaving a rancorous taint in
the air.

During the
interlude, Weavil had happened to probe the depths of his
pantaloons for a hankie and felt something warm to touch: a vial of
Xalee’s ‘Zizzazz’—also known as ‘Herb of Best Desire’, a kind of
love potion. He chuckled and muttered smug surprise. When Baus
learned of the vial, he demanded from Weavil the item
immediately.

Weavil
obdurately clamped the tiny vial to his chest. “Never! Find your
own bander. Once I leave this filthy precinct, I plan to sequester
myself with a comely woman to relax my jangled nerves. The maid
must be given to considerable affection, and upon whom I can visit
my affections without handicap, snags or wrinkles. It follows that
I will require an elixir of strength to bridge this gap of reduced
stature.”

Baus nodded
sympathetically. “I commend the logic; however, the scheme is inept
in all its phases. You are tediously whimsical! For all we know, we
may be stuck here forever! What good is that?”

Weavil’s fury
became overshadowed by Baus’s ceremonial sweep of arm. “In the
meantime, do you wish to look the fool, truckling to Leamoine’s
ministrations, should he accidentally acquire the potion? He has no
small imagination. An incidental point: the elixir was given to me,
not you.”

“The
observation is taken out of context,” observed Weavil curtly.
“Recall that you rescinded ownership of the essence at the fair and
under no circumstance shall I part with it as long as I remain
lucid. Now, the answer to your demand is ‘no’ and I need not repeat
how you forfeited my uncle’s timepiece without my permission.”

Baus made a
gesture of impatience. “That was an isolated occurrence, governed
by misguidance on my part.”

“And so? What
of the other losses you’ve incurred?”

“Ignore those.
I have alternate plans for us—which include, escape—and revenge.
Now please, Weavil . . . pass me the elixir!”

Weavil
tottered back in mulish hauteur, at which point Baus began
grappling him in an awkward tussle. Zestes abandoned his barrow and
pitched an irate yell. “Listen, you wiftbags! Sift slime or cut
snogmald! Why should I toil while you jape about like Mug and
Moe?”

Baus gave a
conciliatory wave. Leamoine and Tustok lifted both their heads from
their clam-gutting and voiced similar opinions of scorn. Baus and
Weavil huddled guiltily around the fish pile while Tustok gave a
flippant condemnation, “We’ve a job to do before six, or there’ll
be no dinner. Graves gets rubbernecked when his fish aren’t
cleaned!”

Weavil
remained uncompliant; Baus tore the vial from Weavil’s fingers.
“You see what you’ve caused, pest? Patience, Tustok! I was in the
midst of repairing Weavil’s button on his soiled vest. I have been
hard-pressed to keep him properly attired in all this
kerfuffle!”

Weavil choked
on the declaration. Baus congratulated himself. He sang a stanza of
‘
How the Seaside shimmers when the new Year brings balm
’
while Weavil fumed. The afternoon passed; Baus did not relinquish
his hold on the item.

Skarrow
prowled the yard a Flank’s thrust away. Ever vigilant after the
theft of the jars, he surveyed the prisoners’ lethargic
slime-sifting with suspicion. Twenty drays later of snogmald and
eelfish, he came back merrily to collect the knives.

Dinner came;
Flanks was up next. With Dighcan omitted from play, there was a
certain lack of flamboyance to the game, there being no referee, no
formal rules of the play. The unconstrained atmosphere turned to a
rampant crass carnival. Baus took advantage of the mood,
precipitating Zestes into losing his belt.

Baus took
possession of the belt but Zestes contested Baus’s throw. He put
forth appeals. Witnesses vouched for the legitimacy of the throw
and Baus was allowed to keep his prize despite Zestes’ continued
complaints that the toss had been ‘illegally lodged’. Baus buckled
on Zestes’ belt and he sat out placidly for the next three rounds.
The behaviour caused a stir, but when the browbeating and
upbraiding had faded, all were happy that Nuzbek’s sabbatical was
long enough to reduce their losses.

VII

That night, so
keen was Baus on acquiring Nuzbek’s wand that he almost gave
himself away. At half past midnight, he stood grinning like a goat
before Lopze and Zestes’ dozing forms. The twain seemed to have
absorbed Nuzbek’s vacated space like hungry snogmald.

Finger to lip,
he hitched himself closer. Groping carefully between the bedmates
he obtained the talisman, finding it exactly where Nuzbek left it.
Baus’s lips parted in triumph: the baton slipped smooth as glass
from Nuzbek’s flea-infested pillow.

Exhaling
softly, Baus stepped away from the slats, creeping back to his bed.
Examining his prize, he found it ornately wrought, black as jet,
comprised of a stiff shaft of wegmor horn tiled with inlays of
silver near the tip, slightly tapered.

Valere and
Weavil drowsed to either side of him. The seaman’s mouth hung half
open while Weavil grimaced on each breath. Baus debated whether to
wake the poet, but decided not to—a better idea struck him.

He touched the
tip of the wand to Weavil’s nose and awaited results. Abruptly the
large head lay frozen, while the chest neither heaved nor the mouth
suspired. Weavil’s lips looked like two cold strips of elastic,
dull as spoons. The restless tossing had ceased, as if the poet
were dead.

Baus gave a
contented grunt, convinced now of the cogency of the baton. It
seemed laughable that a fleeting fear had nagged him or that he
would not be able to wield the curio.

At the other
side of the room, Baus saw the prisoners dozing in synchrony. A
fugitive thought crossed his mind: should he acquire Nuzbek’s cape
which lay underneath Zestes’ hip?

The impulse
faded. Of what use was a dysfunctional scrap of canvas without
magic?

Baus peered
carefully out of the barred window. Dighcan snored like a babe
under the sill. Mulfax stood facing the door, grasping at his pike,
ever on the alert.

Baus pulled
himself back carefully from the window and reviewed his options.
The barracks’ lock had remained ever unrepaired since Nuzbek had
jimmied it; perhaps that fact alone caused Mulfax consternation,
and his suspicion.

A sturdy bolt
had been drawn edgewise across the jamb, a situation which posed
significant dilemmas to Baus’s program. How could he exit? For a
long while he crouched pensively in the gloom, waiting for an
answer to come.

Suddenly as if
by mischance, a figure emerged from the darkness—Vibellhanz,
stumbling his way from bed to latrine. He was ambling toward the
far side of the chamber. Baus became alert of the hazard of the
situation, nor was he ignorant of the prospect of a lummox fouling
his scheme. Four feet away, the convict passed obliviously, like a
dazed sleepwalker. If the haggard convict had seen him crouching by
the door, he did not show it.

Mulfax finally
grew fatigued and plopped himself down on the veranda steps. The
bolt was closest to Paltuik’s cot. It could not be reached by
Dighcan’s smelly body.

Cautiously
Baus crept onto the edges of Paltuik’s bed. He balanced on his
knees to poise on the window sill. He was pleased to note the fact
that Mulfax’s back was trained to the door. Reaching through the
window, he could just grasp the iron bolt without disturbing the
volatile Paltuik who lay comatose face down on his pallet.

With greatest
care Baus lifted the bar from its hinge. A tiny scrape. He pulled
himself back into the dark chamber and crept crab-like to the door,
tugging it inward like a thief. Any louder sound would be a dead
giveaway. He slipped through the gap like a wraith, creeping up
behind Mulfax who remained unaware of his presence. A small,
well-placed jab and the idiot would be standing immobile . . .

Baus gave him
a light tap on the elbow. Oddly, the guard only swatted at his arm
is if bitten by a mosquito.

Baus shrank
back. Why was Mulfax still moving?

Baus became
rigid. Moments ago, he had frozen Weavil with the merest tap—

He pitched his
mouth into a grimace. Of course! The rod must apply itself to an
exposed area of flesh. It could not work otherwise, namely through
clothing.

Baus nipped
forth, aiming the rod to the back of Mulfax’s head.

The
sentryman’s flesh became one with stone—the totality of paralysis
was complete, reduced him to a lifeless mannequin.

Baus resisted
the urge to prod Mulfax. That mistake had already been committed by
less thoughtful peers. A test could only prove unproductive, as
only too vividly exemplified by Germakk who had awoken his fellow
guardsman by pokes of surprise.

Baus stepped
down from the veranda, pleased at his progress. The silver moon
shone with force to detail withered shrubs, parched gorse, ghostly
sand. He calculated that twenty minutes remained before a return
visit was necessary to secure Mulfax—enough time to remove the
dislocated stone from the east wall. Perhaps a foolish
endeavour—only Weavil could squeeze through the orifice and escape.
Yet was it worth a try? Still, a wandering guard might spy the
loosened masonry and expose his plan.

No—escape by
the eastern wall was an all or nothing affair.

Then how was
he to escape?

Baus cursed
himself for his vacillation. He had not meditated enough on this
important fact. Where could he go? Reconnoitre the south wall?
Scale the portcullis? Chancy! He daren’t sidle too close to the
watchtower for fear of Oppet’s indomitable hounds or Skarrow’s
detection.