Wolf's-head, Rogues of Bindar Book I Read online

  Weavil gave a sour, helpless sigh. “This is no achievement, Nuzbek!” he yelled. “ It is the work of a tyro!” He began squeezing himself back through the gathering before pausing to thumb his nose at the magician.

  Baus was nowhere to be seen; Weavil scratched at his brow. The comic frown overshadowing his features suggested wonderment as to where his clam-happy fellow had fled. A new observation gripped the poet. Odd that the two foreigners who had bowled him over were tumbling their way through the crowd, attending a fleeing figure much resembling Baus . . .

  Several persons had developed a lingering dissatisfaction for the integrity of Nuzbek’s spectacle: a result of Weavil’s more pointed remarks and began to saunter off, grumbling over the implausibility of the act.

  Piqued dissatisfaction swept across Nuzbek’s face. With pompous outrage the magician ordered all members of his audience to return. “Sceptics! What of my volunteer’s return? Have you no curiosity in my work? The ‘Resurrection’ has not been completed—which involves an approved pervolution, of the third order!”

  Weavil cupped hands in contempt and hurled a denouncement: “Enough bombast, Nuzbek! There are no demons or nesispheres—only a fakir with a gulling tongue, lacking a wide degree of subtlety. The woman cached beneath the stage is testament to my accusation—that much is sure.”

  Nuzbek’s face flushed a dangerous crimson. “Careful with your imputations! This is an impudent assumption!”

  “It is?” hooted Weavil. “Lift the trap and we shall see.”

  “Impossible!” cried Nuzbek. “The beobar holds the platform secure, as tight as a carrack’s deck—there is no means of lifting it.”

  “Ha! I find the notion absurd!” Pushing his way through the crowd, the poet squirmed his way onstage. He hopped over to a section of what he thought to be a suspicious panel and the magician, gaping slack-jawed, gave an inarticulate croak. Weavil scuffed his feet along the platform right before the mirror. Immediately, a tiny, perceptible lever presented itself. Now it was Weavil’s turn to guffaw.

  “So! The trap of which I speak runs so and so. When the smoke engulfs the subject, it merely suffices to trip this valve, which triggers the door and renders the volunteer sliding helplessly down a hole. I stand vindicated.” Nodding triumph, Weavil addressed the crowd. “This is the way a noble man snatches your coin and harps on about idiotic things like ‘nesispheres’. Dark dorlords? Nuzbek, couldn’t you have come up with something better?”

  Nuzbek’s lips quivered. A malice like none ever seemed to burn in his crepuscular eyes. He shouted a sinister challenge: “An outlandish fantasy! You are deranged, Weavil. Even in your diseased imagination. I hereby denounce you as a clod and a simpleton. Nolpin! Apprehend this louse before I loose my toad-turning magic on him.”

  Weavil ignored the threat. “I hear a familiar voice. Hark! Can it be Conikraul?” He tipped an ear, knelt on the planks and implored the audience to silence. “Look, I spring the trap and what do I find? A chubby arm, a podgy shin, a milk-white face.”

  “’Tis an illusion only!” shrilled Nuzbek. “I see only a varnished crossboard, and a joist, in faint reminiscence perhaps of a human limb, owing to this afternoon sunlight, I suppose. I brand you a blackguard and a lunatic, Weavil—not to mention an overweening pip!”

  A angry shout rose from the audience. A rustling of flustered patrons and demonstrators rounded on the stage. “Here, you spider-tongued mountebank! It is Conikraul we see. Move aside so we can inspect this platform of yours.”

  “Yes, you hoaxing grifter—the thickness of the smoke we saw earlier brings us to doubt. Let us climb your stage and have a look at your trap, the one that Weavil has exposed.”

  The magician tottered from foot to foot. “The requests are impossible! How can I permit many hecklers to mount my stage? I prohibit plebeians of any sort to ascend!”

  “An outrage!” shrieked a high-born woman dressed in a flowing green gown. “Weavil ascends the stage. Why not us?”

  “Indeed!” stormed another patron. “Are you implying that we are plebeians and not Weavil?”

  A group of men who were better cargo lifters than logicians accredited the declaration as an insult. They leapt to scramble onstage. The crowd was flung into pandemonium. A trio of indignant sailors gained the stage brandishing fists and offering aggressive action. Nuzbek, Nolpin and Boulm, managed to pitch the instigators into the crowd, but several of the defenders regrouped and ploughed onstage, along with five rugged dockworkers. They slapped Nuzbek’s attendants aside and seized the magician and began administering an incisive punishment.

  Nuzbek’s buxom helpers fled in panic. Conikraul was hauled up from the crawlspace and was handed to safety. Nuzbek, horror-stricken, was ripped off the stage like a scarecrow. He watched in frozen disbelief as a dozen members of the audience began pillaging his storehouse concealed underneath the slats. Uttering moans of distress, he watched through sunken eyes as items of value were flung onto the lawn: fire-sticks, gyros, crystal runestones, ghost globes, bird cages, costumes, costly robes, polished horns, magic boots, gilded urns, imploding, smog-ridden balloons, an ornate fume thrower engraved with the gyrfalcons of Karsh. With the assistance of the seamen, they tore the awning down, dismantled the timbers and flung the segments about in disorderly ruin. Nolpin was forced to surrender his monies that had been accepted for the show.

  Persons old and young, rich and poor clambered amidst the wreckage to grab what they could, snatching at more than what they had paid for.

  Weavil regarded the proceedings with sagacious irony. He clicked his tongue in wonderment, pondering the cost of duplicity.

  IV

  In the meanwhile it was an enervated Baus who trudged up the mudflats. He had succeeded in evading the two bungling pursuers, but only with cunning and a degree of subterfuge. In silence he stalked up the beach, avoiding the viscous mud that made for foot-heavy toil. He contemplated his misfortunes with rancour. Because of the unspeakable boorishness of a few oafs, he had suffered abrasions and indignities and had failed to partake of the free victual at Heagram’s fair. ‘Twas an insufferable turn!

  Slogging his way past a tidal pool, Baus bent his mind on extracting a revenge. The enterprise was not straightforward. Several plans idled in his mind but wilted in hazy billows. All plans hinged on the fact that he must sneak up on the vendors unawares, and surprise them with a nasty twist, an unlikely event.

  Limbs creaking, Baus arrived at the seaweed tract where his fair-going had begun. The wind had picked up and grey ominous clouds had marched to plague Heagram’s coastline. Nillard was nowhere to be seen: only a pile of ropy fishing nets, tangled with seaweed.

  Baus frowned with disapproval. Where was Harky? The shoremaster was usually nosing his way around, skulking, barking rebukes and complaints at everyone around him.

  Baus stumped away to a steeper, sandier portion of the beach. Here he was well out of range of the galling stench and there he set himself down to a proper snooze.

  An hour later he was woken by a rude kick in the ribs that sent him tumbling down the shore . . .

  * * *

  It was a tetchy Baus who was guzzling grog at the Portman’s pub alongside the Heagram docks in the early hours of evening. He had changed into warmer wear—a pair of cotton-grey breeches, a russet woollen overcoat. With brooding displeasure, he flung down his perogi and applied himself to sombre thought. Harky and he had shared bitter words and blows—ones costing him his post. Ah, what of it? The world was a wide place for all who applied themselves . . . at least, so he tried to convince himself over his tepid brew.

  Weavil had arrived, helping Baus deal with his gloom. The two traded stories over mugs of ale. Baus eventually loosed a chuckle when his friend told him how he had second-bested the magician.

  “I wish I’d been there to see the look on that glibster’s face,” growled Baus. “Instead, I was dodging those two lummoxes from Hilgimi. What a farce!”

  “I rather doubt we’ll be
hearing much of Nuzbek too soon, or his pontificating.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “He is in no condition to lift a magic finger at all—at least the last time I looked.” He gave Baus a sly glance. “What of your new friends, Iyuk and Gigor—those bumbling vendors?”

  Baus flicked a glance out the window. “I shall deal with them on the morrow.”

  “Let us drink to that.”

  Baus lifted his cup, feeling the worse for wear. He explained, slurring his words, “I am melancholy, true, but a toast—yes! . . . to who, or what? We have exhausted our supply of subjects.”

  Weavil chided his friend. “There is always a cause.”

  “You would know. Let us drink to that—to days and better health.”

  “To continuous flows of grog!”

  The two clinked glasses.

  * * *

  Closer to midnight, the two cronies found themselves doddering about the fairgrounds like a pair of clucking hens. They had imbibed more ale than perhaps was prudent. The air was dank and smells of sea chill and rockgobbler drifted to their nostrils. The absence of comforting light was not reassuring, for a fog hugged their heels like a hound’s wet muzzle. The restless energy of the night flitted in and around them like waves from across the harbour. The forlorn croak of the odd pelican drifted to their ears eerily, with the creaking of masts and the flapping of furled sails.

  Baus peered at Weavil through his stupor. From either direction came the sounds of distant laughter, raucous shouts of convivial folk from the lighted pubs along the boardwalk. A grinning half moon cast a solemn glow over the trampled lawn where many tents still stood alone amongst the glistening aisles. Festoons of cloud scudded overhead.. In the moon-washed alleys, dogs foraged for scraps of oil cake, leftover eel, and whatever else could be had from careless fairgoers. The odd vendor roamed the grounds on stiff legs with lantern clutched in hand, either packing up his wares or staying on guard to protect themselves from thieves. Some, having sealed their tents with tarps, lay down to rest inside for the morrow’s trials: the pervasive thrill of festivity yet to come . . .

  Absorbed in their mood of negligence, Baus and Weavil remained ignorant of any dangers. Arm in arm, they skipped about like a pair of schoolgirls, down the lawn, singing a reel that Weavil had composed in his leisure at the pub, a chorus that went something like:

  “Around the posy went the little red mosy,

  A duck was in his hat, a feather was in his ear,

  Hi, hi, ho and a bottle of rum!

  Here we dance and here we strum,

  On our zither and ziare, with minds very much numb!”

  “Ha, ha!” cried Baus. The two capered into tents, amongst the lanes, clapping hands and clinging to each other like jesters. Sleepy-headed vendors tripped out of their canopies to exhort them to silence. Baus egged Weavil on to shout more reels and more antics. A mettlesome weaver stormed out of his tent with a curse on his lips and a cane in his hand. He dealt Weavil a cuff on the ear: “Begone you beggar. ’Tis quiet hours.”

  “Our rhymes are important, garment-monger! Get yourself gone. Do you disparage our odes for pure mischief? We are not forcing you to listen to our refrains, so away—they are too sublime for your provincial ears.”

  “Shut your yap! Sublime, you say? I call it doggerel.”

  “Your opinions are irrelevant!” cried Weavil. “If you decide to endorse our prose, fine, else skedaddle. We have no need for low-caste critics.”

  And so it went. Baus nodded wisely, patted Weavil on the shoulder. “A poignant utterance, Weavil—if I don’t say myself, which if Nascar our artist were present, he would have expressed an endorsement. For the nonce I suggest we repair to a safe locale and essay a stanza or two of Hulcimer’s lullaby, if only to appease the gentleman weaver’s complaint.”

  “By no means!” objected Weavil. “I am content with singing my unsurpassable rhyme all night and day, if I must. I have titled it, ‘A Seafarer’s Symphonium’.”

  Baus blinked. “Very astute! A profound designation—but to bypass the euphoria of chanting the Hymn of the Philandering Mariner? A trifle silly, wouldn’t you think?”

  Weavil harrumphed. “Says who?” Baus gave him a sobering look. Weavil brightened. “In mutual spirit, let us consider this then our next project!”

  “An upstanding suggestion!” cried Baus. “To dual dactyl ‘Philandering Mariner’ it is.”

  Arms joined, the two comrades embarked on the long ribald ode . . .

  * * *

  It was perhaps more blind fortune than kismet that had the two drifting near the late-night salvaging of Nuzbek and his crew on an expensive rig. The magician paced miserably about his wreckage. His mood was dour, his black hat stained with mud, squashed like a tomato. He was more whipped than beaten, candle clutched in hand, while snatching here and there with the other at certain pieces of equipment. His face was bruised and snarly. Irate words dribbled from his mouth while bony fingers trembled at the touch of torn bits of props. Neither of his henchmen, Nolpin nor Boulm, appeared in any better state. The walked about like marionettes. As for the women of Nuzbek’s troupe, there was not a sign.

  Catching sight of the drunkards, Nuzbek rose to the occasion and gave a cry of delight. “Well, well! If it’s not our old chums—Baus and Weavil. What a fancy discovery! A couple of birds come to roost for the night.” His bloodshot eyes gleamed with pleasure.

  Weavil squinted up at the magician with a wry languor. “The coincidence is somewhat exceptional, Nuzbek—I would indeed prefer a larger distancing from you and your troupe—like Tavilnook or Britobur, for instance.”

  “How refreshing to hear your jests. Nevertheless, ample time has passed between our little interlude to merit reparations.”

  “Perhaps, and I hope you have considered your misdeeds, Nuzbek. Secretly, if I might make a bald observance—that the experience has proven somewhat soul-improving for you.”

  The magician gave an urbane laugh. “I have gained, so to say, a valuable understanding of caprice at the hands of plebeians, as well as other poignant discoveries.” He paused as if in afterthought, finger to chin. “My ruminations have led me to certain ambitions, including indemnification from injustice and revenge. From our last meeting, conditions seem to flow to better stead, wouldn’t you agree?”

  The poet’s lips pursed. “I think not”. Nuzbek trilled out an ululating call. Immediately his two lackeys blundered forth from the shadows. The twain forwarded approving grunts. “These two stalwarts, Nolpin and Boulm, are what I call ‘hired muscle’. ‘Indispensable adjuncts’, so to say. Then! Who shall engage first in sport-whipping our intoxicated scamps? Nolpin?” Nuzbek prodded a thin finger into Boulm’s chest, pinching playfully at his belly. “No, you are a niggler, Boulm! You first.”

  “A fine program, Nuzbek, indeed,” Boulm chortled.

  Nolpin emitted a rankled cry: “What? And give Boulmy here all the pleasure? Let it be me who has some play with these weasels.”

  Nuzbek laughed fondly.

  Baus swallowed the clotting phlegm in his throat. “We have no quarrel with you or your dandies, Nuzbek. So let it be! Move out of the way. Let us continue with our lyrics as your presence intrudes upon our conviviality.”

  Nuzbek indulged himself in another dry chuckle. “An eloquent remark for one so vulgarly inebriated. Please bypass your plans for more appropriate developments.” A casual sign to Nolpin had the attendant pouncing on Baus like a bison. Baus parried double fists and landed a clean chop on the fleshy side of Nolpin’s head. Weavil backpedalled and sidestepped Boulm’s charge and flung out a foot, causing the oaf a nasty tumble and a hurtful grinding into some chipboard.

  Weavil gave a husky laugh. Nuzbek’s cronies lay dazed. In a grim huddle they stared at their charges with animosity. Lurching to his feet, Boulm made a feint. Nolpin prepared to retaliate with force. Wiser now, the two snatched up pieces of broken yew and hurled them at the Heagramers without compunction.

  W
eavil and Baus ducked. Pirouetting and prancing, they dogged left and right, eluding potential injuries with a grace belying their common state of inebriation. It seemed, besieged by the macabre persistence of Nuzbek and his cronies, the two sobered up in quick time.

  Nonetheless, blows had their toll; the twain, while putting up a sturdy fight, were heavily outnumbered in brawn and were forced to succumb to unceremonious defeat.

  Sprawled nose deep in dirt, Baus and Weavil looked sorry wrecks. Nolpin and Boulm sat ceremoniously on their backs. Perhaps a trouncing would not have been so bad had circumstances been different . . .

  In a triumphant attitude, Nuzbek now acknowledged the victory with philosophic deliberation. “It appears that a couple of comics have been denied their magic show. Tut! I had promised you an exhibition, and I shall deliver it!”

  Nolpin uttered a plaintive cry: “The ingrates did not even come to witness your final act to its completion!”

  “This is well true, Nolpin—something which still rankles. Yet life moves on . . .” The magician stroked his angular chin. His expression showed an aspect of reflection. “Despite Baus and Weavil’s imprudent acts, it would seem smacking of impropriety for me to renege on my part of the bargain. Nolpin—you and Boulm convey our guests to our tent. We shall have a proper chat and embark upon a program of restitution!” Nuzbek held up a finger high. “No objections. But wait . . .” He stooped to search the two’s pockets. “What have we here?—a couple of invitations to Grolsner’s Circus? How grand! I always wanted to attend the spectacle.” He put a hand to his chin. “You shouldn’t have! Donations of this sort are considered tokens of supererogatory nature. Yet—I shall consider them important endorsements of amity along our long road together!”