Wolf's-head, Rogues of Bindar Book I (9 page)

An expected
ragtag of gawkers tailed the troupe, pitching righteous remarks and
lurid stares. Amongst them were Uyu and Migor. Gysod and Pisp
trotted behind: the Hilgimite vendors appeared well pleased with
the result, framing nods in the course of reparations being
imposed.

The parade
continued. The troupe traversed the lower fairgrounds. They reached
the gate at Angler’s Row and no sooner had they gained Heagram’s
boulevard when Mulfax stopped dead in his tracks. He let down his
jar with a thud. “The brown-robed bibelot! It moved.”

Skarrow thrust
his nose in and extended Mulfax a critical look. “You must be
infirm, Mulfy. Tends to happen to one guzzling hemp-grog like a
fish at Leegrum’s ale-house.”

Mulfax gave
Skarrow an angry swat. “Curb your jibes! Look. The cock-eyed thing
moved—an arm—to scratch its ear. Saw it with my own eyes. The
thing’s trying to tell us something.”

Tilfgurd
framed an icy leer which was no kinder than a reed-snake’s. “You
heard what Nuzbek said, Mulfy. The water moves, providing
opportunity for a displacement of limb or digit.”

Mulfax
remained doubtful. He lowered his ear to where Woisper seemed to
stare back at him through the syrupy liquid and was even more
astounded.

Nuzbek clucked
out an advisory note: “Old Woisper can hear your fear, Mulfy, so I
would disadvise that. He can whisper certain phrases to ear—ones
that turn a person’s brain to pulp. In your case, this would be
easier than most.”

Mulfax missed
the joke and withdrew in panic, brushing off his ear that had
touched the glass. “If the little corncrake is that evil, why don’t
you just dig a hole and drop him in?”

Nuzbek uttered
an angry croak. “A cack-brained idea! Have you no idea who the
contents of this jar are? They are neomancers! Like me—I mean—” he
coughed “—like methinks, Dark Neovungles—soul-stretchers, things of
similar nature, partisans of omen.” He spok hurriedly, hoping the
slip wasn’t noticed. “If some innocent were to stumble upon
Woisper’s burial ground, what would happen then?”

“I don’t know?
You tell me?”

Baus offered a
stiff insight into the mystery. “Wasn’t it earlier that you were
describing the figure within, as ‘Woisper the Wilful’, ‘an absolute
prodigal in his hey-day’, Nuzbek?”

Nuzbek shot
Baus a withering glance. “Where do you come up with these
fantasies? Heed my advice, Officers. Throw your bibelots down. They
are all poison! And be off! Else to your ultimate misfortune.”

Such was the
impassioned malignance of Nuzbek’s remarks that the officers indeed
pitched their jars to the ground and griped amongst each other.

Graves,
disgusted with such fickleness, denounced his troop. “Are you a
bunch of lily-livered sissies then? Nuzbek, I warn you to cease
your provocations. You are a reckless obstruction to this
investigation. If you do not—I will administer incendiary charges.
I’m beginning to believe Baus was not far off in his
allegations.”

“‘Forked
tongue’ is actually an epithet that comes to mind,” emphasized
Baus.

Skarrow,
Madluck, and Mulfax took up their jars once again. But they were
not half way down the boulevard before Tilfgurd abandoned his load,
frightened out of his wits at Salmeister’s sallow-cheeked grimace
that peeked back at him. Smiss and Tilfgurd argued amongst
themselves. Who was to carry their loads? Smiss suddenly refused to
exchange jars with Tilfgurd.

Graves, weary
of the charade, grabbed Tilfgurd by the ear and dragged him along
the street, while the Captain turned his attention to a chuckling
Nuzbek who glanced smugly back.

“This reminds
me—where are those females attendants of yours?”

Nuzbek
snorted, “They could be half-way to Owlen for all I know. They are
capable women.”

Loops put in:
“I spied the tall brunette playing up to old Calestum at the
Fisherman’s Pump earlier this evening.”

“Eh?” grunted
Graves. “Which one?”

“The one with
the vampish smile—and vivacious swagger . . . Nadir, or something
like that.”

“That hardly
narrows it down. All Nuzbek’s dames look like that.”

“Captain, you
remember the spunky, raven-haired filly with whom we experienced
the most funk . . . ? We were trying to control the mob turned on
Nuzbek’s crew when—”

“Yes, I
remember.”

“Come to think
of it, the other lady cronies were striving to net Retrar and
Douyou, and not making a bad go of it. They were all tucking it up,
slogging four pots of ale when I left the Fisherman’s pub—that was
at half past nine.”

Graves gave
his knee a slap. “Well Nuzbek, your dames seem to know their
business. How be it that you, Smiss, and Dunkin, leave our magician
and his two thunderbrains to their ruminations and go gather them
up. I’m considering everybody accomplices in this charade.
Human-shrinking and bottle-caching! What degeneracy!—” he gave a
thoughtful murmur “—unless, of course the attendants can cajole
their way out of a charge.” He left the idea hanging while slipping
a meaningful wink at his mates.

The front line
of officers laughed.

Nuzbek
bristled with outrage. “What kind of an operation are you running
here, Graves?”

“A profitable
one.”

The officers
cooed agreement, with the exception of Tilfgurd who was still
peeved at having his ear pulled.

Nuzbek clamped
his arms about his chest and sank into a dismal crouch. Baus could
almost feel the hatred exuding from his pores.

Nuzbek was
bunted into action. Smiss and Dunkin departed. They went to fetch
Nuzbek’s aides. Three other civilians wearing grog-filled
expressions stepped in to take charge of the magician and his two
cronies.

Baus squinted
in the gloom and saw indistinct glimmers caught at the edges of the
ragged fog. The lighted alleys shimmered in a floating haze and
back to Baus’s right, fingers of mist crawled their way between the
black spaces, dragging over dismantled awnings and drawn-down
canopies.

A vagrant gust
ruffled a tent at the fairground’s edge and Baus heard the restless
flap of canvas over the wet moaning of the wind. He thought he
could be in one of those tents away from this misery, just an
ordinary vendor. What to do? He was not bound or tethered; no one
roped him, outside of Graves’ hard paw, herding him along like a
wegmor.

Should he
run?

Baus’s eyes
watered. Conceivably he could squeeze between the foggy tent-aisles
and lose himself in the folds of darkness. He was in no condition
to make a last scrambling sprint—grog-fogged as he was. Too many
officers were in proximity; not even to say, thinking of the ploy,
seemed to hurt his head. Matters could end up in darker waters than
they already were.

Bleak anguish
struck Baus and he rejected the plan. He snuck a dark look back at
the Captain’s face and was not pleased with what he saw. Weavil was
plodding behind him, a miserable shrunken doll with a head like
Dombhu the Clown. Nuzbek marched on with pig-headed obstinacy, a
brooding figure with sagging back, drooping lips, eyes limpid
fires, trained especially upon Weavil, who seemed in some ludicrous
way to have gained a vicarious revenge. However, Baus was not aware
that the magician was not as witless as he seemed. Before the
officers had seized him, he had slid a finger onto a trunk,
surreptitiously snatched at some very small articles positioned
near the top—objects that the officers had failed to recognize as
items of potency.

A particular
shape looked very much mismatched—a polished stick—a midnight-black
shaft around nine inches long. The same rod that Nuzbek had grabbed
and had rendered the volunteer Conikraul so limp during Nuzbek’s
exhibition. The other, a pinkish-golden pyramid, was no larger than
an oversize marble, an item which wrought discomfit to the eye when
it was seen from the side, vibrating and pulsing like a loathsome
lantern. Pellucid coruscations gleamed deep in its interior.
Nuzbek’s face had been an emotionless mask during the pilfering; so
artful had been his sleight of hand that none, save Nolpin, had
taken notice of the transfer to a pouch within his robe.

Uyu and Migor
hounded the company’s heels with an irritating smugness. Graves’
crassly-disposed humour suggested that the vendors return in no
less than a year to receive their final reimbursement, an act which
provoked groans from the two.

Through the
still-animated streets of Heagram the procession wound its way to
attract gogglers whose faces, swarming in and out of the filigreed
windows of inns, gaped in merriment. Lanterns swung high from the
iron-traced lampposts. Muted custard-yellow glows penetrated the
mist, revealing the glinting projections and cornices of the
domiciles and pubs.

Baus’s neck
burned with shame. The disgrace of being marched like a common
criminal was overwhelming, but he staggered on, and a vagabondish
fierceness swelled in his heart. He winced to think of what Weavil
must be feeling at this instant.

The group
threaded their way past the last line of pubs—the
Snogmald
Tavern
and
Rockgobbler Inn
whose fish caught by Baus,
they served. They moved out to Maritimer’s Square, past the town
hall and on through the narrow gaps of the path through Grumboar
forest. The root-riven pathway was one of general unpleasantness,
surely a disreputable corridor to gain the prison yard if there was
one, but tread it they did, breasting the forsaken place of ‘the
Whispering Trees’ know as ‘Watchwarth’—aka the walled fort leaning
on the western edge of hazel trees people nicknamed ‘The Yard’.

The seaside
fog hung in the air and atop the cliffs, the sallow flame of
Melgrum’s lighthouse winked with a bloody undertone to barely
illuminate the fog-rich gloom. Baus’s spirits degenerated.

What seemed to
have been an impulsive gambit, had ended in a pervasive
nightmare.

“
While the
criminal mind is a world unto itself, who is to say that a
punishment is just for such a mind?—in the end, can any particular
crime be given its ‘due dessert’?

“
Perhaps
the superior criminal intellect is completely alien to our means of
examination, imbued with a multi-layering of an incomprehensible
depravity, not the least of which founds itself upon the basic
pillar of artistic cunning . . .
”

—From
Alphonzo’s Almanac for Aesthetes, a controversial discussion by
‘Jargoon the Philosophist’.

I

Inauguration
into prison life had descended swiftly for the five new arrivals.
Nuzbek’s peevish airs had earned him varied debasements amongst the
inmates—as a result of three robust thugs, Zestes, Dighcan and
Paltuik, who guarded proclivity for brutishness and coercion.
Zestes had duck-like feet and apish arms and a long black bandanna
wrapped round his balding scalp, and loathed pompousness for which
Nuzbek was infamous. Dighcan, who was owner of the copper tangle of
curls, deceptively calm face and flattened bovine nose, moved about
on a pair of log-like legs. Paltuik, peculiar for his minatory lip
curl and foul temper, had greased back his black lank hair with wax
and boasted of his indomitable prowess in brawling. All three of
these ruffians were from birth committed to a course of criminality
in matters of head-bashing, wealth-seizing and general
hooliganism.

Such was the
way at Heagram prison.

The criminals
who attended the compound were held on charges of larceny,
banditry, rowdiness, piracy, extortion, kidnapping and
murder—amongst other offences, including bone-cracking and indecent
exposure. Before Baus’s first sunrise, he and Weavil had been
rough-housed, thrown into the latrines, chafed, bruised and
subjected to unnameable indignities. Nuzbek’s troupe had been
spared no less brutal handling. Dighcan had personally attended to
pulling Nuzbek’s top hat over his ears and twirling him round like
a top in the privy. Zestes spent a goodly time soaking him with
cups of his urine and hoofing him in the ribs with hobnailed boots.
There was a great deal of guffawing and knuckle-fluffing to follow.
All pranks were in good fun, naturally, affirmed the inmates . .
.

As was the
uncanny way with the black-robed Nuzbek, circumstances had a way of
achieving equipoise. On the following morning, as the first grainy
rays of dawn spilled over the yard, watchguards Ausse and Germakk
found Dighcan hanging upside down from his heels from a branch of
sprawling hazelwood that stood in the center of the compound. His
nose glowed a sullen fuchsia, weirdly, while Dighcan mustered no
recollection of how he had arrived in that position. He pleaded
ignorance of the affair, spouting a garbled tale of being bound,
gagged and transported through shadows and mist.

By midmorning,
Zestes was still missing and the constabulary began to grow
concerned, but Ausse discovered the convict a half hour later
squatting dazed behind the ‘hive’, the solitary confinement, with
his head gripped in his hands. It was adjacent to the south wall of
the compound where he had shared a similar experience to his
muddled comrade, Dighcan. Instead of fuchsia, his nose glowed a
sallow yellow. Altered humbly by the experience, Dighcan had gained
a tolerable respect for Nuzbek—as had the rascals, Zestes and
Paltuik, responsible for much of his mistreatment. When Graves
witnessed the sorry state of Zestes and Dighcan, he pulled at his
nose and wondered about the likes of Nuzbek and his shadow-doused
magic. He looked narrowly at the leering magician who tottered with
a waft of arrogance alongside the prisoners’ barracks. The Captain
ordered a search made upon his person, which revealed nothing—no
weapon, thaumaturgical device or industrious item—barring a handful
of trinkets not worth their weight in sand. Graves, scowling, had
returned to the Warden’s office to re-examine the disquieting
mysteries tucked away in his cobwebbed storage closet. The warden
studied the hollow and hopeless faces peering back at him with a
revulsion. Their glazed expressions gaping through the glass could
only evince in him an emotion of disdain. Twice he had resisted the
urge to break open a jar and learn more about the freakish occupant
cloistered within, but caution had prevailed; practiced wisdom was
the best watchword.