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

  The magician pounced upon the Captain’s misconception. “These two rogues, Captain, I caught intruding upon my domain. They are law-breachers and miscreants. I was in the process of salvaging my magic set when Boulm and Nolpin discovered these two lurkers skulking about my property. Naturally, I assumed them to be thieves. We implemented our own measures of order—enforcing spiritual requital and justice.”

  Baus’s strangled cry came up from the darkness: “We have no interest in Nuzbek’s property! We were only dragged here against our will. Grant no credence to this man’s forked tongue!”

  “Cease your bluster, Baus,” growled Graves. “I see you skulking behind that crate. Come out. I am a man of facts, not slapstick buffoonery!”

  Baus cried, “I am disinclined to leave my crampy-hole. I am collecting my wits so that I may outline the multiple infractions this madman has imposed on me and Weavil.” He cleared his throat. “It starts with the fact that while Weavil and I were touring the fairgrounds, these two swine, in the form of Nolpin and Boulm, waylaid us, beat us, and dragged us into this wretched tepee in order to inflict maximum damage. Nuzbek himself performed ungracious acts upon Weavil, which are self apparent.”

  Weavil sprang up midget-like to paw at Graves’ thigh. The Captain swatted him away.

  “As you can see—our town poet has been thaumaturgized!”

  Antagonism hung in the air and Graves’ troubled scowl grew to a grimace. “This is a serious affair! Nuzbek, what have you to say for yourself?”

  The magician paced forward, mouthing a retort, “I shall put out a blunt reply, Captain. That as sincere as this liar appears in his rhetoric, he has a talent for distorting reality, to the effect of reducing the situation to bathos.”

  “A fact beside the point,” asserted Graves. “Now be done with your pompous verbiage and transform Weavil back to his regular self. The sight of him is intolerable!”

  A cunning smirk sprang across Nuzbek’s face. “I regret to inform you that a reversal for Weavil is out of the question.”

  “And why is that?”

  “A collision of asteroids is not scheduled for an astrological ibit, not to mention, a similar celestial conjunction in Cygnus X, which is necessary for transformation and is not to occur for another 444 lunar ecliptics—if my mathematics is correct.”

  Graves gave a sour snarl. “How long is a ‘lunar ecliptic’, Nuzbek, and what time period are we talking?”

  Nuzbek scratched at his brow with calculation. “I would guess, in the nature of fifty years.”

  Weavil bounced forth to take a bite out of the magician’s leg.

  The magician raised his foot and booted Weavil aside, like a pesky rat.

  The sounds of cackling and rummaging alerted the officers elsewhere. Baus peered sideways. He saw two crones robbing Nuzbek of the contents of his fullest chest. The Captain jerked his bulk over to shoo the women away. In mid-step, he caught a glimpse of one of the sinister-looking jars propped on the shelves and glared at Nuzbek in cold disfavour. “What is the meaning of those eldritch things?”

  “Oddities only,” explained Nuzbek. “Do not disturb them. It is better to pay those dead things no heed.”

  Tilfgurd, closest to the glass-encased Ulisa, gaped at the finger of movement. He prodded gingerly at the foremost jar and gasped. Nuzbek rasped out a warning. “Take care, Officer. The pursuit is dangerous!” The officer’s hand quickly retracted. The display seemed to excite a thrill in his blood. “How do you know these things are dead, Nuzbek?”

  “They were certainly never alive,” answered Nuzbek laconically.

  Tilfgurd paused. “I thought I witnessed some macabre movement within.”

  Nuzbek hurled a sardonic hoot. “Ordinarily puppets do not move of their own accord, Deputy. Now if one appears to fidget or jerk, then I would treat it as a trick of the eye, or at best, the brine’s movement—possibly a hint to stay away.”

  “That is not what I heard,” Baus chimed. “In fact, Weavil was the next to become victim of a similar fate, courtesy of your diseased jocularity!”

  Graves started. He caught another movement coming from Ulisa’s jar and his eyes fluttered. He saw the robed figure’s lips part, and the hair ripple.

  “Nuzbek,” he growled impatiently, “I am beginning to lose all semblance of patience. Either you explain these weird conjurations or I will personally escort you to the gaolhouse.”

  Weavil gave a rousing cry: “Arrest the mutilator! He has committed indefensible crimes.”

  “Do not forget the humiliations imposed upon my own being!” cried Baus.

  “Order, pips!” cried Graves, cracking down his whip.

  A voice cried out from the sidelines: a whining, familiar bleat.

  Baus peered. He saw an excited face, a squat form jumping out with scornful intent. The oafish Uyu! He now spoke with precise words. “We are members of the tradesmen’s grey guild. Honoured glassblowers and shellamists of Hilgimi.”

  “No need to announce yourself, Guyu,” grumbled Graves. “I remember you. Return to your tent. Police business is in order.”

  “It is not ‘Guyu’,” corrected Uyu icily, “but Uyu. And you may call my colleague ‘Migor’.”

  “Yes, I know him too!” growled Graves impatiently. He stretched a hairy fist to haul Baus up from his hiding spot. “Well, you claim that Baus destroyed your shellames or shellooks. He deserted the booth without furnishing you recompense. Is this correct?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Baus put on a sulky frown. “Guyu speaks from impassioned perspective. In technical terms, yes—but more an issue of incompetent recounting.”

  “Then in probable words, ‘yes’, a crime,” snorted Graves. “The law being what it is, obliges you to reimburse these men’s loss—after which, we deal with the magician and his deranged torturings upon Weavil.”

  Baus plodded forward. “Forget Weavil for a moment! How do you propose that it was not some other miscreant who damaged the glassblowers’ artifacts? Where is the proof against me?”

  Uyu called: “Perhaps these broken shards pulled from my pouch? Or these bystanders, Glysod and Pisp, who claim to recognize your rapscallion features from those earlier committing the deed?”

  Baus threw up his hands. “The outlander drivels on. Can you be duped by his yarns?”

  Graves gave his head a frowning shake. “I’m not sure. Having spoken to the alleged witnesses in question, I have verified their accounts. Unless you procure a settlement, Baus, which is your best option, I am compelled to charge you with a double count of vandalism, and fleeing the scene of a crime.”

  Baus swelled with rage. “This is insufferable!” Hardly ten cils did he have to his name—and here he was terrorized with an obligatory visit to the ‘Yard’.

  How twisted affairs had run! He shook himself with wrath. The hidebound Graves and Tilfgurd demonstrated a mulish insistence. He gave vent to a loud series of complaints and regretted the act for Graves began to snapplewhip him into submission.

  “You are a mean, inebriated disgrace!” roared the Captain. “From what I hear of your conduct, you are in just dessert of a chastening. Your atrocious behaviour is on a par here with Weavil.”

  “Do not mix me in with Baus’s transgressions!” cried Weavil.

  Graves wagged a didactic finger. “Pipe down. Baiting vendors, inciting mobs, promoting violence, incurring vandalism—is it not enough to desert your post and leave the townsfolk prey to a drake?” The Captain shook his head. “You ignored your watch, and thus, ill-protecting children’s feet from razor clams; now you have rendered yourself culpable of a misdemeanour.”

  “If I may kindly point out,” hissed Weavil, “during the time of my leave, such ‘children’ were rollicking at the games tent. Mouths were steadily chomping on candy floss or bobbing for apples in Winslow the Clown’s barrels. Forsooth, rendering my duty moot.”

  Graves shook his head with regret. “The beach monitor knows no down time. If it were my decisi
on, I would have you put in the stocks, in spite of your despicable midgetness.”

  Weavil’s cry morphed into a gurgling expostulation. Unable to master his emotion, he booted Graves in the heel, favouring contact with a special nerve, a blow which caused Graves a spasm. He hopped on one foot. Weavil, for all his midgetness, seemed unable to avoid chuckling.

  Nuzbek snorted laughingly. “You see what a peevish nuisance this weasel is? Perhaps now you are more empathetic, Captain. My frustration has reached no end.”

  Graves gave his head a jerking shake. He mopped furiously at his brow. “Tilfgurd!” he roared. “Take this whole lot over to the yard.”

  “The task is menial,” declared Tilfgurd, rising on his heels. “Why should I? Nuzbek is fey—even a lout, and Weavil, is well, just a pest . . .”

  “I don’t care! Take them all!” Graves yelled. “Do you hear? Nuzbek, Weavil, Baus and all of Nuzbek’s cronies. They are loons! Weavil is no more exempt from crimes than Baus, having committed an act of aggression upon me. On the morrow we shall sort out this business, starting with a rendering of relevant particulars. A day or two in the stocks shall teach all these rogues some manners. No less this starved owl of a magician Nuzbek. I grow to dislike the look of him.”

  Nuzbek took offence to the remark. He struggled to gain access to his tubs of adjuncts but the Captain gripped his arm and twisted it aside. A sallow gleam flickered in his eyes, which caught a surreptitious movement from the edge of vision, involving Boulm and Nolpin attempting a retreat in the midst of the commotion.

  “Where do you think you two’re going?” Graves demanded.

  Boulm gestured toward the foggy air. “A wee walk, Captain. The night air is fresh, and I am sleepy. Too nice to miss.”

  The Captain smiled. Nolpin tendered a similar response. “My foot too is aching with all manner of gout, and all the more needing of a good stretch.”

  Graves extended a jovial laugh. “A couple of comics. Remain in the tent, you gomers, so as to clear up any extraneous mysteries.”

  Nolpin winced. Weavil attempted a sidelong sneaking of his own, but was curtailed by Deputy Tilfgurd who caught him by the scruff of the neck and averted another important law-breaching.

  Graves gazed wonderingly from Weavil to the contents of Nuzbek’s bottles. “I am at a loss to explain this voodoo—or sorcery. It is best yet to determine how to handle your deviancies, Nuzbek. Your careless treatment of human life is abysmally ghoulish.” He fixed a disgruntled glance upon Baus. “And you! I expected more of your lot. Fisher-elder Harky is beside himself with wrath at your skipping of duty and total irreverence for the dignity for the elders of this community.” The Captain snapped his fingers. “Tilfgurd! Fetch Sergeants Madluck and Skarrow. We will collect these rogues and be off.”

  “But sir, who shall watch the offenders? I don’t trust any of these hooligans, least of all the magician. If Nuzbek can wreak such devastation upon Weavil, I shudder to think what he might do to others.”

  Graves muttered a disparaging remark, swatting Tilfgurd on the ear. “The prestidigitator shall do nothing more! Charlatans and hucksters they are. No more threat than a bunch of drowsy bumblebees. But”—he added, gnawing at his upper lip—“let us bind the villain’s wrists, in case he elects to craft some thaumaturgy or escape.”

  Nuzbek choked on the idea. He lifted back a black-draped arm. “As for my capabilities, Captain, you are in grave error. ’Twould be wise to employ some respect.” The saturnine face pinched inward; the amber eyes gleamed with a wickedness that made the gathering sway back with misgiving.

  Graves made a brief inclination of head. He motioned toward the two brawny seamen who had recently elected to poke their heads in. “These are Leaster and Jubben, fine seamen, who I’m sure will keep an eye on your hides—capabilities or not.”

  The two men nodded amiably. “Nuzbek is indeed without his toys, Captain. Entertaining any cunning tricks while we are in charge is not to happen.”

  Graves mustered a gratified grin. “Very good, Jubben. Fetch the others, Tilfgurd.”

  Tilfgurd strode off in a black mood and returned shortly after, conveying three civilians and seven Constables, two of whom held fire lanterns and tallow-torches. By virtue of the white tags on their uniforms, Baus identified them as Officers Mulfax, Madluck, Smiss, Dunkin, Loops, Canjun and Burkothes. They were strapping, steely-muscled individuals with well-built thews and biceps, yet their normally ruddy cheer was gone at being extracted from the pubs.

  Mulfax, a lean wolf with a distrusting face, thrust a blazing torch upon the jars. “What are these sea krakens?” he growled. His eyes bulged like a frog’s.

  Graves spoke with smiling irony, “Oddities only, eh Nuzbek?”

  Nuzbek only grimaced.

  “I suppose we must lug the grotesques back with us,” sighed the Captain. “Gather them up, lads, whatever they are—quick and clean.”

  The jars gleamed in the sepia light and even Baus had to suppress a shiver that ran up his spine. Greenish in hue, the odd, unearthly interiors were populated with four floating distorted countenances, cargoes nothing that any of the officers wished to hoist on their backs, Tilfgurd showed a grimace of distaste. White-haired Skarrow was elected to be first and he hauled one jar out onto the grass. So followed Mulfax, then Madluck, and finally Tilfgurd, though he handled his jar with finicky aversion, which Graves rewarded by boxing his ears with an impatient hand.

  Officers Smiss and Dunkin secured Boulm and Nolpin while Jubben and Leaster helped control Nuzbek. Graves ordered Canjun and Loops to help Burkothes tackle Nuzbek’s wooden trunks which they heaved forcibly onto Nuzbek’s wagon. Graves lumped the bulk of the material into the category of ‘spoils’, though in terms loosely applied, ’twas undoubtedly a broader term for ‘evidence’.

  Nuzbek was appalled at the sight of his treasures being hauled away. “Captain!” he cried. “This procedure is irregular. Why preoccupy your valuable time carting away worthless gewgaws?”

  “The procedure is self-evident,” declared Graves. “To secure contraband, and collect possible case material.”

  Nuzbek rejected such rationale. “We have overstepped your laws, agreed. My aides Nolpin, Boulm remain apologetic for this fact and are penitent. But arrest us for tomfoolery! It is absurd. We shall be on our way and not take the law into our hands. You have our solemn pledge—and you never shall see us again!”

  Graves fixed the magician with a smiling stare. “As desirable as this is, Nuzbek, I cannot comply.” He faced the magician, locking eyes for a sinister second, then turned to his officers, giving a tired bellow, “Canjun, Burkothes! Hump it up! Are you laggards? We wish to be in our sacks before dawn.”

  * * *

  The hour was old; the moon, a blurry wedge in the sky. Clawish clouds obscured the growing moonlight which glowed from the west like a sullen sconce. The troupe, illuminated under the ephemeral light, formed an odd procession. Several stooped figures struggled with their loads in the sticky fog, while Baus, jabbed along by Graves’ baton, muttered and cursed. Weavil was bumped along by Burkothes, and remained in joyless humour. Nuzbek and his aides were herded roughly along by Smiss and Dunkin while the others hoisted the jars on their shoulders and struggled to keep up with Nuzbek’s wagon.

  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 Sk
arrow 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.”