Silverlock (Prologue Books)
Everybody in the vicinity was running, yelling, and pointing. Probably most of them were entertained rather than outraged; but at the time I was convinced that everyone in sight was a volunteer deputy, and I really legged it. There was, indeed, some yelling for the watch, though nobody followed us for any distance except Mr. R. Turgis, now in a more conciliatory mood.
“The reckoning!” he kept shouting. “Never mind about the donkey; just pay the reckoning.”
By the time I had caught up with my companions there was no longer any reason for running. “He wants his reckoning,” Golias said to Lucius, as we waited for the pleading landlord. “Do you think you could supply it?”
“There — were — three — of you — remember?” the fellow puffed as he joined us. “I — don’t — know where — the third — went, but — ”
He was so out of breath that speech must have been painful. An anaesthetic was at hand. Golias and I had turned to face Turgis, but Jones had only looked around without moving. At the precise moment when the proprietor was neither too far away nor yet too near, Lucius gave a joyful bray and kicked him in the belly.
“We won’t wait for a receipt,” Golias said.
From the outrageous sounds Lucius was making, it was plain that he was as pleased as we with the manner in which the incident had ended. Indeed, for a few minutes he was as unmindful of his disaster as I was of the fact that he had eaten most of my breakfast.
When, in the course of a little more walking, my loss was brought home to me again, I checked our progress. “I’ve got to eat,” I insisted, “and maybe brother Jones here could do with a little more also. But we must be careful.”
“I don’t think anybody will question our title to him from now on,” Golias said, “though it’s a fact someone might try to steal him. Meanwhile Robin Turgis has called it to our attention that we’ve got an asset we hadn’t listed.” He sprang in front of Lucius. “How about some hay?”
Jones let his ears droop.
“Well, how about some breast of guinea hen?”
The ears came up and a long tongue slid across the upper lip.
“That’s better, eh?” Golias pursued. “Then I suppose you’d like some bread to go with it.”
With one hoof Lucius made six marks in the dust of the street.
“Oh, six slices. And some ale to wash it down with?”
Jones brayed approvingly, and Golias waved one hand. “We’ve got a road show, Shandon.”
I could see that he liked the notion. As for me, my principal concern was to get out of a town where nothing much but bad luck had come our way. I was therefore impatient of the by-play between the others.
“Let’s not stand around and wait for our pockets to be picked,” I suggested. “Did you notice there was an inn on the next corner?”
After I had satisfied my needs, and food — in the comparative privacy of a stable — had been smuggled to Lucius, we left Parouart behind. Golias had exercised his skill with the dice in vain as far as our speed was concerned. Coach travel was out of the question. I was afraid that Golias might purchase horses out of his new wealth, but he himself pointed out that it would be more trouble to gear nags down to the pace of a donkey than it would be for us to walk along with one.
Jones didn’t need to be led, but as we didn’t want to attract further public notice, Golias bought a rope to tie around Lucius’ neck. Trailing them down the narrow streets of one of Parouart’s suburbs, I had leisure for compassion. Having been through it myself, I could see the scope of Jones’ tragedy. Not least of it, I was aware, was that he was not simply a man in a donkey’s skin. He was a man whose human brain and spirit were warred upon by the inevitabilities of his new shape. I knew that the power to resist such a siege weakened with time. I knew that this siege was being abetted not only by a fifth column of donkey instincts, but by a more terrible enemy. The steps to degradation are only three: the actuality of the shameful condition, the recognition of the actuality while feeling unable to do anything about it, and then acceptance of it as the normal state of affairs. It gave me the crod to see Lucius balk at being led around a corner. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to go. It was the jackass in him getting the upper hand.
About mid-morning of the next day we were ferried across the surging brown waters of Long River — nearly a mile wide, it must have been — at a point just south of Erech. Although from what we could see of it, the place was considerable of a city, the country on the west shore was sparsely settled. Shortly after we turned off south our road was crowded by timber on both sides.
“That sign back at the crossroads said it was twenty miles to Troynovaunt,” I remarked. “Do you think we can make it by dinner time?”
“Not if we don’t do any better than this,” Golias said. “Shake it up, Lucius, or so help me Shylock, I’ll carve a chunk out of you.”
To my dissatisfaction, although it paralleled the river, the road kept its distance. The country, as was to be expected, was flat. This made for easy but dull progress. Nor was the traffic interesting. We met only one person of note.
She was not alone; but you didn’t watch any of her companions, nor did she intend that you should. She was as impossible to overlook as a full moon. She was as bright as the moon somehow, and as brazen as the moon on a winter night, and as hotly overwhelming as a harvest moon. She was luscious as she lolled in the little shack on her elephant, and she was poisonous. She was cold-hearted and sultry of eye. She was whiter and redder than she should have been, and the jewelry store in her black hair would have looked absurd on anybody else, but she was very beautiful. And not a harlot to be bought, either, but a bird of prey.
“God save all men without chaperones!” I said out of a corner of my mouth, as I stared up at her. She was nearer the river side of the road, so, the better to have a look, we had moved to the left to make room for the procession. “Who’s that?”
“Some potentate making the grand tour.” Golias was gazing at her, too, and couldn’t spare me an eye. “I’ve seen her before somewhere, though — Semiramis! That’s it, Queen Semiramis. We’d better get all the way off the road. Come on, Lucius. You don’t want to get run over.”
That could have happened, for there were camels as well as other elephants filling the highway behind the queen; and I could hear horses neighing. I stood with my hands in my pockets, highly pleased with the parade. Golias took off his hat as Semiramis drew abreast of us, and I was glad I hadn’t when she looked down at him as if she were peering into a spittoon. Glancing to see how he was taking this, I noticed what Jones was up to. He was in the act of falling to his knees. From that position he bowed till his muzzle touched the ground.
That stopped Semiramis, who stopped her elephant, and the dazzling shebang of gaudy riders and gaily harnessed animals piled up behind them. While we gazed back uncertainly, she considered us.
“You have trained the animal?”
“Yes, ma’am.” I had never said ma’am to anybody in my life, but I did to her.
“I think you lie,” she decided. “When your own manners are so bad, how could you impart good ones to your beast?”
I thought it best to make no comment, but one of her followers scooped up the ball. “Assuredly, your highness,” he called out, “it was a spontaneous tribute to your greatness and beauty.”
That should have closed the subject, but Lucius chimed in. Inarticulate as the sound he made was, the inflexion was unmistakable. Then to my disgust he shut out doubt that he was agreeing by nodding his head three times.
For a moment she brooded, then she made up her mind. Stepping forth from her throne, she stood, tall, graceful, and terrible, on her elephant’s head, and spoke to it a second time. An instant later she was on the ground.
I looked at Golias, but he shrugged; so we stood pat while she gathered several handfuls of greenery. Then if ever I wanted to kick a jackass, my foot itched for Lucius. He had risen and was waiting with outstretched neck as she approached. T
he morning before he had scorned honest hay and seen fit to gobble my breakfast instead; yet when she proffered a messy collection of leaves and dusty weeds, he ate it all. Then by way of dessert he licked her hand and forearm.
She liked it, too. Her face couldn’t be said to grow tender, but it glowed less coldly.
“Nice boy,” she purred. “Nice boy. You understand other things; do you understand that?”
In answer to this query Lucius winked, and I found myself growing more disturbed. “We’ve taught him to wink at all women,” I muttered.
I had been amused at the withering way she had looked at Golias, but I didn’t smile when it was my turn. There was force and intelligence mixed with the most intense sexiness I had ever encountered. The compound enabled her to drive home the fact that she considered me lacking in the most fundamental attribute of manhood. After my flush told her that she had put it across, she turned to Jones once more.
“I don’t believe you would wink at just any woman; I think you have too much sense.” When he nodded his head in agreement, she chuckled deeply, caressing the white patch on his shoulder. “This heart here shows you have the gift, and would not waste it on unresponsive ninnies.” While saying this she had commenced running her hand along his flank. “There are so few of us who really appreciate strength, and you are so strong.”
When Lucius gave an ecstatic wriggle, I couldn’t stand it any longer. I hadn’t known that I could be scandalized, but I was.
“You’d better leave him alone,” I warned. “He might kick you.”
She laughed, and Jones hee-hawed in chorus with her. I was blushing, and the knowledge that I was doing so angered me past discretion.
“God damn it, Lucius! Cut it out!” I yelped, catching at his lead rope and trying to drag him away. He balked, so I tried persuasion. “I know you’re as good as anybody else, maybe, and I guess a donkey’s got to take his fun where he finds it, but this won’t do.”
“That is something for Lucius and me to find out,” Semiramis stated.
Her shamelessness infuriated me still further. “Well, you’re not going to!” I roared. “This is our jackass.”
“He’s going to be mine,” she announced. “Would you rather have me buy him or take him?”
“Oh, you can buy it,” Golias told her, “but it’s a high priced animal, and the rope doesn’t go with it.”
“Name your price, and I’ll double it,” she declared, turning to signal, apparently, to whoever had charge of her cash. “And I don’t want the rope. He’ll follow me without it.”
I knew she was right, and I didn’t see what could be done. The bestiality about which I had been so concerned was now unimportant compared with its over-all consequences. Jones was my friend, and he was condemning himself to remain misformed the rest of his life.
Despondently I watched Golias draw his knife. In his eagerness to be free of the halter Lucius had turned towards him, so that he was now facing off the road. Severing the rope, Golias whipped it away, whirled it high, and snapped it down to catch Jones on the rump. With a squeal he sprang forward, and Golias fell in behind him, swinging hard and shouting.
“Hermione!” he yelled. “Run, if you ever want to see Hermione again!”
Perhaps the pain broke the spell of the lust, and if so, it won’t be the first time on record. In any case the import of Golias’ words reached Lucius. He dashed ahead, which is to say toward the river, of his own accord now. I was already following Golias, and we didn’t lack for company. Semiramis shrieked, and, glancing over my shoulder, I saw her being lifted from the ground again. Then elephants, camels, and horses, they were all after us, trumpeting, snuffling, and whinnying as they crashed through the woods.
By then I was running less for Jones’ salvation than my own skin, but I couldn’t gain on the other two. “You can smell better than we. Make for water!” Golias gasped to Jones. So the latter was our guide for the rest of that mad chase through the twisted trees of the bottomlands.
It was hard going for us, but the muddy footing which we soon encountered was worse for our pursuers. The elephants and camels began to bog down, and even the horses, which otherwise would have caught up with us, were sinking halfway to their knees.
By virtue of this handicap we still had a small lead when we reached the river’s edge. Lucius hesitated on the steep bank, and Golias, who had dropped the rope, booted him.
“Go on, damn you! Take to the water!”
Down we slithered through a tangle of vines and shrubbery. “Hug the bank and keep your noses under,” Golias instructed us. “It’s our only chance.
“No!” he contradicted himself, as we plunged through a clump of bushes to the brink. “Look; it’s the raft! Shandon, the painter’s by you. Cast off!”
18
Travel de Luxe
LOOSENING THE ROPE from the root to which it was hitched, I jumped for the raft. As Golias was already shoving off, I landed short of it. Lunging for it, I pulled myself aboard. Shouts told me that our pursuers had gained the bank; but though they could hear us, they couldn’t yet see us. Fortunately they were as loth to use their feet as automobilists and chased around looking for a grade down which they could ride their horses.
“Get Lucius into the wigwam!” Golias panted.
The shelter to which he referred was a tent-shaped structure on one end of the raft. Clinker built of rough timbers, it looked sturdy but hardly big enough to accommodate a sizable jackass. Lucius thought so, too, and laid his ears back.
“He ain’t going to fit,” I objected.
“He’s got to fit. Shandon, I mean it! Are you ready?” He jabbed Jones’ already irritated rump with the point of his knife, then ducked as he drew a heartfelt donkey reaction. In kicking, however, Lucius was momentarily supported by only his two weakest legs. I tackled these, had him unbalanced before his hind legs came down, and Golias hit him aft. By the time he recovered from the shock of the fall we had him by the tail, mane, and ears. As he couldn’t rise and found it unprofitable to kick, we succeeded in cramming him into the wigwam.
“Now if the raft doesn’t swing around to leave us vulnerable,” Golias said, as we squeezed in more or less on top of Jones, “we ought to be all right.”
There was a knot hole in the back which I reached by a little ruthless squirming. Peering through it, I could see that the current was taking us toward midstream. This meant that we were getting farther from our enemies, but it also meant we would be visible to them once more. Just after I fixed my eye to the knot hole, a shout told me that the raft had been seen, and the fierceness of its quality showed we had been identified with it.
Before they could decide what to do, the queen’s elephant appeared, and Semiramis sprang to stand upon its head. “Shoot! Shoot!” she screamed. “Kill them or die yourselves!”
She got action. Some stayed where they were, sending arrows as swiftly as they could draw them from their quivers and nock them. Others surged along the bank to let fly when they were parallel with us. A few who either didn’t know about big rivers, or who thought they were less dangerous than Semiramis, scrambled down and jumped their mounts from the brink. I didn’t worry about them, for no horse could choose its course breasting that current. The arrows made me nervous, though. Those fellows could shoot. After a little it occurred to me that one might score a bull’s-eye on the knot hole, so I ducked my head. For a few minutes arrows were striking so rapidly that it sounded like a woodpecker with a bass drum. A lot bounced off, but plenty of them stuck, and quite a few heads came all the way through the thick boards.
If the raft had ever turned so that the open side of the wigwam faced the west bank, we would have been goners, but, though it swung nerve-wrackingly, we were never quite exposed. Nor was that all the river did for us. The channel, which is as much as to say the main force of the current, was sweeping south and east to a point where it would bite the far bank. In less than ten minutes we were out of effective range.
Se
miramis had so impressed us, however, that it wasn’t until we were past midstream that we emerged. She wasn’t in sight, though a few horsemen were still churning along the bank, looking for a place where they could ascend it. While we watched, one of them disappeared into the foliage, having probably discovered the mouth of a creek. When the last of them followed him, we were free to discuss the completed incident.
“Just so I won’t ever make the mistake of going there,” I said, “what district of the Commonwealth does she rule?”
“Oh, some place south and east a stretch.” Golias looked at me, started to laugh, then lay down, guffawing. “If you could have seen yourself when you were trying to save Lucius from his baser nature.”
I reddened. “Aw, it wasn’t Lucius. Nobody ever had any excuse to compare me to the old lady of Dubuque before, but some things aren’t — ” I stopped, because I realized my argument was based on feelings only, whereas I had always prided myself on leading from reason. “Well, hell,” I went on, “some things just aren’t suitable, especially from a woman.”
“Sure,” he smoothed me down. “Beauty should act in kind, though it doesn’t always get all the help it needs. Let’s look this hooker over.”
Glad to change the subject, I rose to join him in the inspection. I had noticed some stuff stowed in the back of the wigwam, and it was of this that we first took inventory.
“Well,” I said, “the hooks and lines may be useful along the way, but I wouldn’t know what to do with that muzzle loading gun.”
“I can handle one.” Golias was inspecting some sacks of provisions. “Cornmeal, coffee, salt, beans, rice, and — yep, there’s a flitch of bacon wrapped in this oil cloth, and molasses in the jug.”
“We can shake up some sort of lunch,” I commented, “and maybe it’d be a good idea to take a ration or so with us. With the knack Jones has for getting us into trouble, we may be chased off the road again before we find an inn tonight.”