"Look, shrimp," snarled Ignace, "just shut your nasty little mouth! I warned you already! Who're you, anyway, to question the great Greyboar? A ridiculous dwarf! Ugly as sin, and hairier than a miniature musk ox! You need to learn some manners!"
And so saying, Ignace placed his hand on Shelyid's face and with a shove sent the dwarf sprawling onto the floor. Not satisfied with this indignity, the peppery little agent scurried across the room and stood over Shelyid. He drew a knife and made a great show of testing its edge on his thumb.
"Ignace!" came Greyboar's voice.
"I'll take care of this, big guy!" exclaimed Ignace, waving away the strangler, who was not, as it happens, moving to his assistance.
"See this knife, runt?" demanded Ignace. "Sharp as a razor! Any more crap out of you, and I'll cut off your tongue!"
"I say!" spoke Zulkeh. "I must protest, most vigorously, this uncouth threat to the person of my apprentice! Desist, sirrah! I insist! I admit that Shelyid has behaved badly here, but there is no—"
He spoke no further, for 'twas at this very moment that an extraordinary event came to pass. So extraordinary, in fact, that the entire Alfredae clan rushed as one louse to observe the scene. And so it was that the Alfredae, who were more knowledgeable upon the subject of Shelyid than any intelligences on earth (were we not, after all, blood of his blood?) observed, from divers perches and vantage points upon his brow, his scalp, his ears, and whatnot, what was—all were agreed on this point—the most unexpected and astonishing behavior ever exhibited by the misbegotten gnome.
For the first time in his life, Shelyid lost his temper.
Lost it, moreover, not as one carelessly misplaces a glove, easily found after a moment's thought. Lost it, not as one forgets a familiar name, and suffers a few minutes of minor embarrassment. Lost it, not as one loses one's way in an unfamiliar city, and spends an unpleasant hour retracing one's steps. Lost it, not as the shepherd loses the stray sheep, and spends an arduous day clambering about the hillside until the lamb is recovered. Lost it—well, I could go on in this pleasant literary vein for some time, but let me just conclude by saying that the gnome Shelyid lost his temper much as Dispater, Archduke of Hell, lost the keys to Paradise and the hope of eternal salvation.
He sprang to his feet before the astonished Ignace, who stepped back a pace. Then, garbling incoherently, the dwarf drew from some fold of his tunic the small poignard given him by Rascogne de Sevigneois. No sooner drawn than utilized! For the apprentice immediately attempted many maniacal gashings of the agent's throat, stomach, chest, indeed, whatever portion of the rapidly receding Ignace's body was closest at hand.
"Shelyid!" cried the wizard. "Desist! Desist, I say! Desist at once!"
But the dwarf evidenced no inclination to obey his master. Such, at least, seemed the only reasonable interpretation of his replies, of which "I'll drink his blood!" was the least profane.
Truth to tell, the agent's predicament soon became extreme. Early in the contretemps, Ignace waved his own blade cunningly, demonstrating both by stance and surefooted poise his expertise in the skill of knifery. But to no avail! For the dwarf, responding at first with a clumsy attempt to exercise the lessons imparted by Rascogne—the which succeeded only in causing him to trip over his own feet—eschewed then and thereafter all subtlety and maneuver. Pitiful and wretched gnome, inept in this as in all things! Instead did he rely thenceforth entirely on the uncouth force of his fury, a wild and witless hacking, stabbing, chopping, hewing and suchlike incompetencies, the which rapidly succeeded in disarming (I should say, disblading, for Ignace's quick reflexes prevented the actual loss of his arm at the same moment as his knife went flying) the now-less-than-cocksure agent.
Then, piling error upon error, the crazed dwarf advanced in utter confusion, while, for his part, Ignace retreated in a most clever and adept manner, interposing 'twixt his body and Shelyid's blade all manner of chairs and footstools, the which adroitness, however, availed him but little, for the now-howling-like-a-banshee apprentice did rapidly transform these shields into so much firewood, mostly suitable only for kindling.
Backed into a corner, the now-less-belligerent agent escaped by slithering like an eel between Shelyid's legs. Abandoning all thought of armor and shields, Ignace now drew upon that deep reservoir of tactical subtlety which derives from a lifetime of experience in tavern set-tos and alehouse disputes, and essayed the time-honored tactic of fleeing like an antelope.
Alas, it soon became clear that here as well the agent's well-honed experience was moot, for the now-baying-like-Baalzebub's-hellhound apprentice tracked down Ignace and flushed him from every hiding hole with the same single-minded determination shown by the wolf in pursuit of the hare, not excepting the disgraceful exhibition of the gaping jaws and the lolling tongue.
Yet the tricky little agent retained his capacity to think and plan, demonstrating yet again the qualitative difference between the experienced combatant and the emotion-ridden and easily-maddened amateur brawler, even in those rare instances where the professional finds himself at a momentary disadvantage. For the now-clearly-irresolute Ignace drew upon that selfsame cool professionalism and put to use his one remaining edge over Shelyid, I speak, of course, of his moderate advantage in height.
The agent leapt into the rafters above. There, he perched beyond reach of the dwarf's blade, the which flashed back and forth below like the futile claws of the lion at the monkey.
Grievous to relate, even this latest demonstration of his haplessness at the hands of a veteran did not dissuade the foolhardy Shelyid from continuing the one-sided struggle. For the witless gnome now flung himself upon the great stanchion which upheld the rafter, hacking and hewing like a miniature lumberjack, apparently intending by this primitive method to bring Ignace within reach of his now-like-the-shark-in-its-feeding-frenzy murderous resolve. Such, at least, seemed the only possible interpretation of the various stuttered declamations and doggerel verses which issued from his foam-flecked lips, of which the phrases "the higher they are, the harder they fall!" and "hey ho! hey ho! it's off to work we go!" were the least incoherent.
But it was even here, when the rapidly mounting pile of woodchips and sawdust seemed fair to result in the early demise of the now-wailing-like-a-lost-soul agent, that the sagacity of the experienced Ignace finally worked its way, much like the chessmaster coolly checkmates the novice who, in his amateurish enthusiasm, mistakes his trove of captured pieces for the harbinger of victory. For, of course, the dwarf's assault upon the foundations of Magrit's house necessarily brought the intervention of powerful external forces.
And where, I can hear the gentle reader asking, has Magrit been all this time? And Greyboar? And Zulkeh?
As for the wizard, he had been nursing his wounds. For the outraged Zulkeh had, on several occasions during the brawl, majestically interposed himself between the dwarf and his prey, commanding the apprentice to cease and desist from his unseemly conduct. Grievous to relate, the maddened gnome had paid no more attention to his lawful master's clear and explicit instructions than a ravenous weasel obeys the admonitions of the farmboy to respect the person of the chicken in the yard. Thrice had the wizard been bowled over like tenpins by the dwarf in pursuit of the agent, until, reflecting upon his bruises, he made his way to comparative safety along the wall. From that vantage point, Zulkeh contributed no further to a resolution of the conflict. Instead, he devoted his prodigious intellect to the development and exposition of a lengthy peroration upon the subject of his apprentice which was, it must be admitted, sullen in the extreme.
But at least it can be said of Zulkeh that he made an attempt to bring the light of reason to shine upon this dark and disgraceful episode. Not so Magrit and the strangler! The conduct of these twain was rather like that of arsonists heaving torches on the conflagration. For the two did roll about the floor throughout the fracas, howling with laughter and cackling like geese!
Worst of all was the contribution of the horrid sa
lamander! The evil little creature summoned forth all the mice from their holes, offering bets on the outcome of the melee. These wagers the rodents declined, even after the despicable amphibian offered ten to one odds on the apprentice.
(Let me say here, by way of a narrator's aside, that from this very episode stemmed that streak of misbehavior on the part of our lousely youth which, in the time to come, was to prove such a burden to the honored elders of the Alfredae. For not only did the disease of gambling henceforth raise its ugly head amongst the youth, but 'twas from this episode that there developed that noxious habit among the more ruffianly adolescents of chanting in unison: "Shelyid's our host! Hoo, hoo, hoo! Shelyid, that's who!" Not to mention the thence-common appearance on the forelimbs of outright juvenile delinquents of such obscene tattoos as Born To Raise Hell and Shelyid's Slaves.)
But now, at long last, did Magrit and Greyboar retrieve at least a small fragment of responsible behavior.
"Oh shit," Magrit cackled, "the little barbarian-horde-in-one's gonna bring the whole house down!" And this pathetic jest caused her and the strangler to howl anew, slapping each other's backs with abandon.
"Yeah," sputtered Greyboar, "but at least we finally know what really happened to the Great Wall of Grotum—it pulled a knife on a dwarf!" And this ridiculous quip caused him and the witch to howl yet again, rolling about the floor like lunatics in an asylum.
But at length they recovered, and Magrit, holding her ribs, managed to gasp: "You'd better stop him, Greyboar. I can't afford to rebuild the place, and besides, I don't want to have to mop up what'd be left of Ignace if the dwarf gets to him."
And so it was, still laughing shamelessly, that the strangler staggered to his feet and seized Shelyid by the neck. Suspended in midair, the gnome turned his furious knifework upon Greyboar, but the huge chokester disarmed Shelyid—rather gently, oddly enough—and tucked the apprentice under his left arm. Then, reaching up into the rafters with his right hand, he hauled down the agent and deposited him with a thump on the floor. He then said to Ignace: "Next time, dummy, pick on someone your own size."
And at this latest uncouth bon mot, he and Magrit again fell to hollering and backslapping. It appeared that Ignace did not share the humor, for after a moment the agent jumped to his feet and said to the strangler, in a tone of voice brooking no argument: "Greyboar! Strangle that dwarf!"
Greyboar gazed at his agent, tears of laughter still rolling down his cheeks.
"Why would I do that?" he asked.
"He insulted us, that's why!" came the shrill reply.
"Us?" demanded Greyboar. "What's with this 'us'?" He didn't insult me. Oh, and sure, I supposed you might feel insulted, being chased around like a cat by the Mouse From Hell"—again, he and the witch hooped and hollered disgracefully—"but that's your problem."
"What do you mean he didn't insult you?" shrilled Ignace. "That's how the whole thing started! I was just defending your honor! Didn't he call you a common killer? The outrage! The disrespect to your person! To your professional standing!" Then, with the air of one playing a trump card: "To your philosophy of life!"
The strangler snorted derisively. "What a load of bullshit," he said. "You—of all people—lecturing me on philosophy! Ha!" He glared at his agent. "But I'll get back to that in a moment. First I've got to calm down Midget the Terrible here." Another round of ridiculous gaiety.
Greyboar held up Shelyid before him and shook him like a terrier shaking a rat. More accurately, like a dragon shaking a mouse. This treatment finally snapped the dwarf out of his madness.
"That hurts!" complained Shelyid.
"That's the idea," commented Greyboar placidly. "Now look, midget—sorry—Shelyid, you've made your point, and made it quite thoroughly, but enough's enough. I'm going to let you down now, but I want no more chasing after Ignace, you hear? He's been my agent for a long time, and he's the best in the business. Besides, I like the little hothead, even if sometimes he is a complete asshole." Greyboar ignored Ignace's squeal of outrage. "Is it a deal? If you still want to fight, well, that's all right, too. But this time you'll have to fight me, and I don't suggest it. In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, I wouldn't even think about it."
The light of reason now having returned, Shelyid carefully examined the figure of the chokester, and nodded his head.
"S'a deal."
"Good." Greyboar set him on the floor, then turned to Ignace.
"Now, let's get back to you," he growled. "Philosophy—ha! From you—ha! First of all, my fair-weather little logician, the kid never insulted me once. Oh, and sure, he indicated reservations concerning the ethics of my trade. So what? Plenty of people have! My own sister Gwendolyn's said more than once—right in front of you, too!—that I wasn't nothing better than a thug and that I ought to mend my evil ways and go back to my honest job in the packinghouse. I didn't see you rise to my defense then, push her in the face and knock her down, stand over her waving a knife and threaten to cut out her tongue. How come? Speak up!"
Ignace coughed. "Well, she's your sister and all. Got to make allowances for family, you know, and besides—"
"What a load of bullshit!" interrupted Greyboar. A great sneer crossed his face. "Naturally, it doesn't have nary to do with the fact that she's almost as strong as I am and used to gut steers at her job in the slaughterhouse—each one with a single stroke of the knife, if you call that great cleaver of hers a 'knife.' "
"Well," muttered Ignace. "Well."
"Well, nothing! Ye olde sorcerer over there"—a massive thumb indicated Zulkeh—"can wax as eloquent as he pleases on the hoary traditions of my 'most honorable and prestigious profession,' but you know as well as I do that the plebes we hang out with don't think choking's anything more than a fancy name for the same stuff what gets them pitched in the hoosegow at the drop of a hat. I get away with it for two reasons." He held up a pair of fingers like cucumbers. "First, I only do it for money. That makes it a respectable profit-making enterprise, rather than a hideous crime of vulgar passion. Second, and more important, I only choke rich people at the request of other rich people, which makes it classy and haut cuisine."
"That's not true!" denied Ignace. "You've burked lots of lowlifes!"
"Most of 'em loan sharks or pimps. Or their bullies."
"Well. Well, even so!"
"Loan sharks and pimps don't count. Or their bullies. Makes even the porkers yawn."
"I don't care!" shrilled Ignace. The dyspeptic little agent began hopping up and down in fury. "Forget the philosophy, then! That miserable dwarf pisses me off! Choke him, I say, choke him! Throttle the little runt—as a personal favor to your old friend and faithful agent."
"Not a chance," replied Greyboar. "Three reasons." He held up three fingers like a stack of logs. "First, right now the favor I owe's to the kid, on account of how he just got through providing me with more entertainment than I've had in years." Another sorry round of merriment ensued. "Second, I don't choke people as personal favors to anyone, you included. Professional ethics, you know. And finally, I don't choke shrimps."
"I don't care!" shrilled Ignace. "You—"
"Although," mused Greyboar, stooping over Ignace, "there's always a first time."
Silence fell over the agent. Ignace peered up past Greyboar's great hook of a nose, his beady black eyes visible at a distance. So does the mouse examine the eagle's beak just before lunch.
"You'd be without an agent," he squeaked. "Business'd suffer. You'd go hungry—starve—have to go back to work in the—"
"Nonsense!" cried Greyboar. "Soon as word got out I was throttling obnoxious little loudmouths there'd be a line outside my door. A long, long line. Wouldn't need an agent! Just need to hire a few bouncers to keep the line orderly. Big, beefy lads, phlegmatic types, you know, the kind won't start fights for no reason."
Pondering this line of logic, Ignace soon came to the conclusion that there was some truth in Greyboar's argument. He was perhaps helped along in drawing
this conclusion by the learned debate which promptly erupted between Magrit and Zulkeh over the precise length of the line of customers which would form to seek the asphyxiations of offensive twerps. Here the wizard leaned toward the conservative side, opting for a line no more than two miles long, while the witch—exhibiting a more sanguine temperament—firmly placed twelve miles as the lowest conceivable limit.
The argument waxed hot and heavy. Zulkeh, in a rare lapse into empiricism, cited for authority his long experience with the aggravations caused him by his diminutive apprentice. For her part, Magrit ridiculed this selfsame hard-won expertise, advancing the—to your narrator's mind—dubious premise that the dwarf Shelyid was "rather a fine and sprightly little chap." She went on to depict the sorcerer Zulkeh as a narrow-minded pedant whose cloistered existence had given him no concept of the true essence of the obnoxious little loudmouth, so well-known and despised by the common run of mankind, the which would eagerly scrape together their few coins to see the world rid of this plague.
In the event, the question was settled by the grotesque little salamander. For once again, it rounded up the multitude of mice and put the question to them, asking the rodents what they would offer for the privilege of ringside seats at the apparently-soon-to-be-forthcoming throttling of Ignace at the hands of his client. This question—though obviously framed in a weighted and unscientific manner—soon resolved the dispute, not to mention Ignace's mind. For 'twas but a moment later that the mice, having disappeared into their holes, came pouring forth in a great horde, chittering with glee, dressed in holiday finery, bearing in their tiny paws various crumbs, treasured trinkets, and bits of succulent cheese. One enthusiast went so far as to offer, in a squeaking little voice, "the pelt off my back."
Of course, the rodents were doomed to disappointment, for Ignace promptly announced himself satisfied and went to sit sullenly in his chair, pouting and sulking. A great uproar ensued, with much chittering and squeaking of indignant mice. The salamander was forced to flee onto a nearby table. Magrit, for her part, finally managed to quell the agitated mob of rodents with many pounds of cheese offered by way of a refund.