Barbarians travel through a terrifying jungle
The old imperial road known as the Dread Trek, which ran through the Mostly Harmless Forest, was famous for being extremely dangerous. It offered travelers the chance to spot—or even encounter—one of the endangered or nearly extinct monsters, as well as the possibility of running into any of seventeen registered bandit gangs and at least twenty unregistered ones. One of these gangs consisted of twenty-seven nymphomaniac teenagers who had escaped from a temple near the forest. The Merry Girls were mentioned in every tourist guide to the Mostly Harmless Forest and were considered one of its leading attractions.
More experienced travelers, however, would tell you that no one had seen the Merry Girls in years. Some, envious of the enormous fees charged by tourist agencies, even claimed that since more than thirty years had passed since the last sighting, the girls must have disbanded long ago. Or possibly rebranded themselves as the Merry Grannies.
Merchant caravans rarely used the Trek except in cases of extreme urgency, but the road still saw plenty of traffic. Unfortunately, at least from the perspective of honest bandits, it attracted the wrong kind of customers. Adrenaline junkies flocked there, considering it one of the best treks on the continent. Commanders of elite military units called it an excellent training ground, and dim-witted pedophiles often spoke of it as a land of opportunity. Aspiring bandits, just starting out in the trade, sometimes thought it would be a great place to find work or set up a business of their own.
They soon discovered, however, that an honest highwayman could earn enough to survive only through extreme effort and incredible luck. The surviving part, in particular, tended to be tricky. Merry Pason, known to his friends as Cheerful Pigsy, secretary and lawyer to one of the better-known registered gangs, the Hellfired Angels, calculated that the probability of a group of travelers on the Trek being a suitable target for his line of business was just 11.53 percent. Without subsidies from tourist agencies and the abundant game in the forest, most of the bandits would have starved to death or resorted to cannibalism.
There had been several incidents in which the latter had happened, and the newly cannibalistic bandits discovered that they actually liked human flesh. They were quickly eliminated.
The most infamous case involved the Long Pork Tartares, a gang wiped out in an epic battle by an alliance of several headhunters and the FABHDT, the Free Association of Bandit Hordes of the Dread Trek. Some claimed that the FABHDT had actually hired the headhunters, being unable to deal with the Tartares on its own. It should be noted that this was not a case of competition between gangs but a matter of survival and self-defense. The Tartares had quickly discovered that other starving gangs made much easier prey than heavily armed caravans or adrenaline junkies.
The local gangs' favorite reading material consisted of almanacs and specialized magazines for heroes and sports enthusiasts. Bandits needed to recognize the faces—or helmets—of any heroes who might show up on the Trek, and to have at least a passing knowledge of their abilities and wealth. This had led to a curious distinction: compared with their counterparts in other regions, the bandits of the Dread Trek were by far the most literate.
The barbarian Quarter Punch-his-face, son of Headbiter Punch-his-face, son of Heartyanker Punch-his-face, had always considered education and reading useless skills. When his son Ballet told him about the local bandits' reading habits, he began cursing the whole business loudly and eloquently.
“This is bullshit! I wanna be, whatchacallit, mugged! Right now! That's my left! I mean, my right!” he shouted into the jungle, swinging his enormous ax and felling smaller trees with about as much effort as a gooseherd swatting nettles with a stick. He was considerably louder than the average gooseherd, though, unless said gooseherd happened to be a prince in disguise or exile.
Ballet sighed heavily. “Why don't you give it a rest, Dad? We're too famous. None of these gangs will dare attack us. Vickie Chuckie and his gang only tried because they were desperate. He thought his armed gorillas would slow us down and give him and his men a chance…”
“Dem was good fighting! More! More monkeys!”
“No point talking to you today, I guess.”
“I ain't quartered nothin' in two days. And you know I've got this, whatchacallit, addition to quartering. I'm gettin' them tick-tocks.”
“When we were still living with Mom, you'd sometimes go days without quartering anything but firewood, and you were never so… so you.”
The elder barbarian's expression shifted from anger to gloomy despair.
“'Cause she'd break a log over me head. Logs and chickens for dinner, that's all I could quarter. Hey, dinner! Now there's a good idea if I ever had one!”
“You ate a few minutes ago! If you insist on stopping all the time, it'll take us weeks to reach Zweigone.”
“We'll get there when we get there. Stop hurrying so much and live a little, son! Hey, look! Something moved in there! Gonna get you, you asshole!”
Ballet watched his father toss aside his enormous backpack and charge into the jungle with all the enthusiasm of a small child taken to a toy store for his birthday and told he could have anything he wanted. Whatever the old barbarian had heard in the bushes promptly tried to flee in panic.
“And it seemed like such a good idea,” the younger barbarian sighed.
His original plan had been to travel by boat along the Mr. Sippo River, but after checking the map and consulting an agent at a local travel agency, he had decided that the Dread Trek would be more comfortable. It was a little faster, but more importantly, at least according to the travel guides, it promised enough entertainment to keep his father occupied. Lately, the old man had been growing increasingly annoying.
When Ballet imagined his revered, if extremely irritable, father growing bored aboard a small riverboat and picking fights with fellow passengers and giant, peaceful crocodiles, he made a few notes about the dangers and bandits along the Trek. As it turned out, Quarterer had heard of the road before but had never had a chance to explore it, so he happily agreed to the change of plans.
The first day had gone well. They had even been attacked by one of the registered gangs, but after the desperate bandits lost all their trained gorillas and most of their men to death by quartering, the survivors fled into underground tunnels too narrow for Quarterer to follow. He finally gave up after spending several hours trying to widen the tunnels with his ax.
But that first “interesting” encounter had also been the last. Apart from a few careless animals, they hadn't met anything. True, there had been one nearly fifty-foot-long python that fell in love with the handle of Quarterer's ax while the barbarian was hunting for a snack and attempted to mate with it. But after being strangled for a while, the python lost its sexual excitement shortly before losing its life. The old barbarian had grown increasingly irritable. Before setting out on the Trek, he'd spent quite some time painstakingly studying the colorful pictures in the travel guide, and he'd been certain he was going to have a lot of fun. For most barbarians, disappointment quickly led to berserker rage.
Ballet sighed again.
“You can't choose your parents,” he muttered, biting off a piece of jerky.
“Nor can you choose your grandparents,” he added, remembering his last meeting with his grandfather. That brought back a memory of his grandmother, making him shiver involuntarily.
A disgruntled Quarterer emerged from the jungle, holding his ax in one hand and a mesh bag in the other. Ballet had woven the bag the previous evening while bored around the campfire. It was dripping blood and appeared to be full of meat.
“Just some stupid deer,” the frustrated barbarian growled. “Thought it was something else, 'cause it had them huge antlers, big like that orcshit stuff the Dark Conqueror had on his floating fortresses during the war. Thought maybe one of the little ones had crashed down here, but nope. Just a deer with stupid antlers that looked like them rastars…”
“Radars.”
“That's what I said. Radars. Well, no relic of the war, just a deer. I was hoping for a fight, but no, it tried to run away. Still, I took what was left. These bags, gotta admit, ain't bad. Pretty good for meat. Lets the air get at it. But son, this stuff, that's women's work. A real barbarian's supposed to…”
“Dad, stop it. Listen. We should reach a motel tonight…”
“Booze!”
“That too. But you've got to promise me you won't take your bad mood out on the people there. Do you understand what I mean? They'll have post bats for sure, and if you trash the place, at the next motel we visit, there'll be…” Ballet stopped himself just in the nick of time. He'd been about to say that most of the bandit gangs and several local heroes would be waiting for them, united in their hatred of anyone who broke the laws of the Trek. But that wouldn't have been wise, considering his father's barely suppressed anger.
“There'll be no booze. They won't serve us any. No booze.”
“What?!”
“No booze. No beer. Not at any motel or inn on the Trek. Two weeks without alcohol.”
“They'd do that? That's an outrage! Damn those tea-totallers!”
“Teetotalers.”
“Outrage!”
“Yeah.”
“Ah… all right. But I can do that self-defense thing, can't I?”
“Dad,” Ballet said warningly. “Don't go plotting anything. You said yourself that scheming isn't proper for barbarians.”
“Aw, fine. Want a steak? Or steak tartare?”
Ballet remembered the passage about the Tartares who used to terrorize the Trek and shuddered again. This time in disgust, rather than horror, as he had when thinking of his grandmother.
“No, thanks.”
***
The trip to the motel was uneventful, except for one incident when Quarterer charged into the jungle and launched a frenzied attack on an armored figure hiding in the bushes. Unfortunately, the knight had died a long time ago, and his armor contained nothing but crumbling bones. The furious barbarian kept an eye on the shattered armor and bones for a while longer, just in case a necromancer was operating somewhere nearby, but eventually sighed and moved on. For the next several minutes, he complained bitterly about the injustice of it all, swore vengeance on whoever had beaten him to the kill, and cursed the long-dead owner of the armor for not being more careful and waiting for him.
They reached their destination in the early evening. The Seven Anteaters Motel—or rather, its bar—was occupied by a motley assortment of bandits and travelers. Seven anthropoanteaters bustled among them, alternately serving beers and drinking them with their customers. The two barbarians took seats at an empty table.
“Remember, Dad. No funny business.”
“Yeah, yeah. Beer!”
A hunched figure with a long, narrow snout hurried over carrying a tray of beer mugs, gave the new customers a quick, appraising glance, and promptly unloaded all eight beers onto their table.
“Tfelfe,” the waiter hissed. Ballet paid without argument while his father grabbed a mug in each hand and poured both beers down his throat. The brew was apparently made from jungle vines and rainforest herbs.
“Good beer, but there's something weird about that waiter,” Quarterer grumbled, knocking back another mug.
“He's an anteater. An anthropomorphic one, to boot. What did you expect?” Ballet shrugged. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched the bartender behind the counter helping himself to a fresh serving of ants from a narrow bottle.
“Maybe we shouldn't order any food here,” he remarked.
“Eating is cheating, and hunger's just thirst in disguise,” the older, though certainly not wiser, barbarian informed him. Unless, of course, you counted his extensive knowledge of barbarian folk sayings with highly questionable moral lessons. “Besides, that deer filled me up pretty good. It's already starting to honk that it wants out. If you ain't gonna drink that last beer, I'll help you with it.”
“Go ahead. I'll order more.”
***
While Quarterer washed down the deer and several other unfortunate forest creatures, Ballet slowly sipped his beer and studied the other patrons of the forest inn. Darkness had already fallen outside, and the torches produced more smoke than light, but the young barbarian had inherited not only an unusually powerful brain from his mother, at least by barbarian standards, but also excellent eyesight. And unlike his father, he had never developed a taste for dubious homemade spirits, so his eyes still worked properly.
Bandits from at least two different gangs were chatting amiably with a group of sports enthusiasts, placing bets on their scheduled encounter the following day through a small, slimy-looking fellow who apparently represented a travel agency.
Two paladins sitting alone at their own table glared at both groups, clearly displeased at having to share a room with outcasts and criminals. But even they respected the Pax Alcoholica, which declared all taverns, motels, and brothels along the Trek strictly neutral territory, open to anyone. Well, anyone who could afford to pay, of course.
The last group, seated in a corner of the room, caught Ballet's attention. They all sat with their backs to the wall, all were armed, and with the exception of a young man dressed in black, they kept casting suspicious glances around the room as though they'd swallowed a potion of paranoia.
A fat dwarf dressed in gaudy clothes, with an enormous hooked nose, was obviously the boss. Ballet pegged the two armed men as bodyguards, while the dandyish elf in a green doublet and gold hoop earrings was clearly their guide. The three remaining, unremarkable little men practically radiated the servility of professional servants and lackeys.
Only the last member of the party, the young man dressed in black, defied classification. He looked like a janin, a member of the infamous guild of assassins, saboteurs, and thieves. Unlike the others Ballet had encountered—generally very briefly, leaving behind nothing but a few hooded figures carved into one of the older handles of his father's ax—this one appeared mild-mannered, friendly, and perfectly relaxed.
When he noticed Ballet watching him, he smiled, raised a glass containing some colorful concoction in greeting, and took a sip.
A moment's inattention was all it took for Quarterer to move over to the next table.
“So, bandits! Anyone up for some arm wrestling? Or at least a punch in the face?” the barbarian bellowed, finishing his last beer. He snatched another from the tray of a passing anthropoanteater and gave the bandits at the table an expectant look. They seemed mildly terrified.
“Uh. Um, aren't you the famous Quarterer?” one of them finally asked.
“That's me! Cheers! And massacre!” the renowned celebrity declared, knocking back another beer.
“Damn it, at this rate he'll be completely wasted in no time,” Ballet muttered, slowly getting to his feet.
Before Quarterer could put down his empty mug and look around for another, several more appeared in front of him, filled with an assortment of alcoholic beverages.
“Cheers! Have a drink with us!”
“Can I get your autograph?”
“Are you here on your own, or with a travel agency?”
“If we didn't have a performance scheduled for tomorrow, I'd gladly let you break my arm. I'd have something to brag about! But seriously, sorry, can't do it.”
“Did you really chew a mega-orc to death during the war?”
“And is the Apocalypse really coming?”
Ballet sat back down. His father had his faults, but at least he knew better than to beat up his fans. Not too badly, anyway. Ballet ordered another beer and began studying his map while the head of the family proceeded to get spectacularly drunk with his new best friends. Several heroes had joined the table as well, trying to steer the conversation toward the official rankings, this year's voting for Massacre of the Year, and similar topics of interest to heroes and bandits.
“Hope he doesn't get so wasted he can't walk tomorrow,” Ballet muttered, returning his attention to the map.
“Looks like he can hold his liquor,” a pleasant voice replied.
Ballet managed to stop the reflexes he'd inherited from his father just in time to avoid knocking the black-clad young man's head off. He had to be a janin. Nobody else could move that quietly, with the possible exception of invisible demons and his mother whenever she decided to catch her husband up to some mischief. Or, though less frequently, her son or daughter.
“He can,” Ballet finally replied.
“I'm Peesufuru-senpai of the Swipe-ryu,” the janin introduced himself.
“Ballet Punch-his-face.”
“I know. I recognized both you and your father. I have a proposition for you. Or rather, my employer does.”
“Not interested.” Ballet shook his head. He had absolutely no intention of getting mixed up in any janin villainy.
“My employer needs an escort.” The strangely named janin refused to acknowledge Ballet's refusal, displaying more courage than a suicidal orc commando squad high on a last-ditch berserking potion. “I assume you're heading for Zweigone. So is my client. And he's in a rather desperate situation, or at least he thinks he is. Normally, he's probably a damned tightwad, like most dwarves,” Peesufuru added with a faint smile. “But when his neck is on the line, he pays generously.”
“Since when do janins work as escorts for… merchants?”
“Alchemists. Since they finished their final internship with the Hellfired Angels and need to get back to the Swipe-ryu to take their final exams, which are little more than a formality, and collect their diplomas. When the dwarf offered me money to travel with him, I accepted.” The janin shrugged and took a sip from his glass. Ballet blinked in surprise when he caught the scent of strawberry juice, a rather unusual drink for a janin. They generally drank nothing but various teas, often enhanced with all sorts of secret spices that plunged them into monstrous bouts of depression, which they would then temporarily cure by committing some particularly treacherous murder.
“Why is he so desperate for protection? Those two armed guards of his look capable enough to handle most of the unpleasant surprises the Trek has to offer. Not to mention having a janin in the party.”
Peesufuru shrugged again. As far as Ballet knew, he wasn't supposed to earn the title of senpai until he'd passed his final exams.
“He thinks some magical creature is after him. And it's true that ever since we set out, something's been prowling around our camp every night. But whatever it is, it's never dared come any closer.”
“I don't think…” Ballet was about to turn down the unexpected offer when his father returned.
“What the hell's going on here? Drink up, son!”
Ballet obeyed and finished his beer. Judging by the smell, which resembled the fumes from a cracked distillery, Quarterer had managed to consume enough alcohol to knock a level-six or even level-seven alcoholic out of commission.
“And who's this guy supposed to be? A janin? Ain't carved a janin into me ax handle in ages. Last time was…” The tipsy barbarian turned his attention to the young man in black.
“Two years ago, at Boozestein Castle. Seven level-eleven janins were sent to sabotage the distillery, and all seven ended up being quartered,” Peesufuru finished for him. “Since then, you've held a place of honor in the bestiary section of our textbooks, Mr. Punch-his-face.”
“Huh?”
“Along with a note stating that the fee for any mission where you're expected to be on the opposing side must be multiplied by ten. For starters.”
“Huh?”
“He means they're afraid of you,” Ballet translated for his father.
“Oh, yeah! Yeah, that's good. Damn right you are. So what the hell d'you want here anyway?”
Ballet answered with a resigned sigh. “He's offering us a job. Escorting that dwarf over there to Zweigone.”
“Yeah? How much?” Quarterer showed interest instantly. To better express just how interested he was, he let out a tremendous belch, extinguishing several nearby torches.
“Fifty gold pieces.”
“Eh? Hmm.” Quarterer stared at his hands, clenching and unclenching his fists several times. Then he gave his son a questioning look. Ballet nodded, only to remember his father's pathological love of money a moment later. He tried to shake his head instead, but it was already too late.
“All right, then. Gonna be some real trouble along the way, right?”
“It's possible.”
“I'll drink to that!”
***
Ballet bought his father several more beers, spiking each one with orc moonshine, and soon his esteemed parent collapsed onto the table, muttering, “Gotta catch me breath for a bit.” His thunderous snoring put something of a damper on everyone else's fun, but before long, the other drinkers began passing out one by one.
Meanwhile, Ballet tried to squeeze some information out of the dwarven alchemist, Golan Glysserinn, about what exactly was pursuing him. But the dwarf just kept mumbling something about a terrifying hairy monster that was out to get him. At least, that was what Ballet thought he was saying. The dwarf's accent was so atrocious that he was almost impossible to understand.
Eventually, Ballet gave up, grabbed his father by the leg, and dragged him to the room he'd rented from the head anthropoanteater.
Apparently, the few beers he'd drunk had affected him, too, because he wasn't paying attention. When his father snagged on something as they entered the room, Ballet gave him a sharp tug. The snoring Quarterer grumbled, his nose tilted slightly upward, and suddenly, where there had been a knothole in the floorboard, there was no floorboard at all.
Ballet shrugged, hauled his father onto one of the cots, and stretched out on the other.
To hell with the hole, he thought. I'll blame it on the ants.
***
Golan the dwarf wanted to set out at dawn, but the rest of the small caravan talked him out of it. Dawn was the deadline for bandits. Under the laws of the Trek, everyone else had to give them at least a two-hour head start. The extra two hours also did both barbarians a world of good. Quarterer slept through the worst of his hangover, and Ballet didn't have to worry quite so much about his father causing a major disturbance first thing in the morning.
“Blergh,” Quarterer declared thoughtfully when he finally got up. Ballet stopped kicking him in the head—the customary method of waking his esteemed parent after a night of heavy drinking, since nothing else worked as an alarm clock in the morning—and slung his own baggage over his shoulder. He picked up his father's pack and headed for the door.
“Come on, Dad. We should get going.”
“Huh? Who we gonna get?”
“Going on the road, Dad,” Ballet explained patiently. His father's brain generally worked even worse in the morning than it did during the day.
“Who we gonna get on the road?”
“Nobody. We have to go. We're escorting that dwarf, remember?”
“Wha?”
“Never mind. Here, have some hair of the dog.”
After two beers, Quarterer finally came to his senses and staggered out of the motel with all the grace of a drunken tsunami. The sun's rays struggled to penetrate the dense jungle vegetation, providing only the faintest illumination, but the barbarian winced and blinked painfully anyway.
“Why the hell are them birdies screeching so loudly?” he growled.
He staggered to the edge of the forest and, with a tremendous sigh of relief, began draining the remnants of the previous night's alcohol against a large tree covered in vines.
Shortly after the sound of a medium-sized waterfall filled the surrounding area, the parasitic vines began abandoning their host like rats fleeing a sinking ship, scrambling toward neighboring trees. Unfortunately, their speed, as with most plants apart from certain species of carnivorous and magically mutated vegetation, left much to be desired. They failed to evacuate their former home in time.
Most of them died the following day when the tree, its roots eaten away, came crashing down.
From the standpoint of science and alchemy, this was a tremendous loss, since the tree was apparently home to the last surviving specimen of the rare parasitic fungus known as the perennial flatulence mushroom, a key ingredient in several variations of the potion of immortality.
On the other hand, several squirrels can still be seen leaping through the treetops of the Mostly Harmless Forest today, having already lived more than ten times their natural life expectancy. Squirrels, after all, eat mushrooms, among other things.
Golan the dwarf, surrounded by his bodyguards, eyed the older barbarian with concern.
“He's drunker'n a pickled dragon,” he grumbled. “More likely to puke all over everything than kill anything.”
“He'll be fine,” Ballet assured his employer.
“Give 'im a few drops o' this.” Golan pulled a small vial from one of his pouches and handed it to the younger barbarian. “Sobering tonic with anti-hangover serum. That'll fix 'im right up. I knock some back meself now an' then in the mornin'.”
“Thanks.”
The expedition's departure was delayed a little longer, since it took Ballet some time to calm his father down. The sudden onset of sobriety had plunged Quarterer into an exceptionally gloomy and bloodthirsty mood. After a second bottle of orc moonshine, however, he decided to postpone the massacre.
Wisely, Ballet bought several more bottles from the anthropoanteaters and stashed them in his backpack in case of emergency.
***
Many hours and three bottles of moonshine later, the group made camp. Despite all the alcohol he'd consumed, Quarterer was still in a foul mood.
They'd had only one interesting encounter all day, but unfortunately, several bandits from the Third Division of the Hellfired Angels had been at the motel the previous night and were among those who had bought Quarterer drinks. As a result, what was originally supposed to be an ambush had turned into a three-way shouting match.
The Hellfired Angels insisted they were lying in wait for members of the Adrenaline Addicts Club, or AAC, and had already received a hefty advance for ambushing them. Their opponent with the greatest decibel potential, Quarterer, naturally, kept screaming that the whole thing was bullshit and that any proper bandit or highwayman ought to rob or banditize everyone who came along. Ballet and Golan, meanwhile, tried to convince the furious old barbarian not to take it so personally.
The entire dispute was settled with Solomonic wisdom by Merry Pason, whom the chief of the Third Division had summoned for assistance. As compensation, Pason offered Quarterer a fistfight with his amphibious armored personnel carrier, a domesticated female hippopotamus named Five-Tonnera.
At first, she considered the fight excellent entertainment, since her armored hide itched in several places. But after the increasingly enthusiastic Quarterer rammed her several times with his head, each time taking the longest running start the surrounding terrain would allow, she decided to take advantage of her amphibious capabilities and retreated into the river she'd arrived by with Pason.
Quarterer raged for a while, but he wasn't particularly keen on following the hippo into the water. Eventually, he accepted the others' declarations that he'd won, confiscated a small keg of beer from the bandits as his prize, and allowed himself to be persuaded that it was time to get moving.
His foul mood had several causes. First, a fistfight was supposed to end with the opponent getting knocked out or dead out. Second, he'd never quartered a hippo before. And third, after repeatedly trying to ram a several-ton creature with extremely tough skin using his head, that particular part of his anatomy had developed an irritating tingling sensation, which, combined with the orc moonshine, made him feel distinctly uncomfortable. To make matters worse, neither of Golan's personal bodyguards wanted to play with Quarterer, even though he'd promised to be careful. All in all, a rather lousy day.
“When's that monster gonna show up?” he growled at the dwarf as the servants began setting up a simple camp. One of the bodyguards was already roasting a “chicken” over the fire, along with several large chunks of meat. Quarterer had knocked the bird out of the sky with a rock in a fit of irritation. The chicken was actually a jungle condor with a wingspan of several yards, upon which the disgruntled barbarian had decided to exact his revenge against the entire avian species for the morning's “too much damn screeching.”
Golan shuddered in horror.
“Don't even remind me o' that filthy bastard, Quarterer, me lad,” Golan grumbled. “Ever since we got on the Trek, the damn thing's been prowlin' around us. Every night it sneaks right up to camp. It's after me…”
“What's the damn thing look like?” Quarterer asked. “You keep goin' on about some hairy beast, but that's all.”
The dwarf glanced around and lowered his voice to a whisper.
“Ugly as the devil, stinks to high heaven, hairy as that yeti they say goes boozin' in the taverns up in the Himalayas. A great big pile o' fur, damn near as big as you. I keep tellin' ya, lad, all you can see are two nasty eyes glarin' out o' the hair, like the twin assholes of a dragon about to explode from behind, and every now and then a mouth full o' teeth lookin' like a threshin' machine from hell.”
Golan fortified himself with a swig from his bottle and offered it to the barbarian, who promptly helped himself and tossed the empty bottle somewhere into the forest. The dwarf winced painfully, since the liquor was one of the finer and more expensive varieties, but continued his description.
“First showed up the day we got to Hanhou. That very evenin', it tried climbin' through the window o' me room at the inn, mutterin' somethin' about filthy dwarves. I smacked it in the face with a chair, but a little while later it was back again. Marty Flogg over there whacked it with a hammer, and we had peace till mornin'. But ever since we set out on the Trek, the damn thing's been followin' us. Even last night, it was skulkin' around that tavern where you got so plastered. Filthy hairy bastard! What the hell does it want with me? Gotta be some damn magical monstrosity sent by one o' them wizards. Always havin' trouble with those bastards.”
“Can you think of any particular enemy?” Ballet asked, although he'd already asked the same question several times the previous evening.
The dwarf shook his head vehemently.
“Well, when it shows up, I'll quarter it and add it to the handle!” the old barbarian chuckled, casually tossing his ax in the air.
“If it dares,” the young janin said with a shrug, suddenly appearing beside the group. Ballet winced. The assassin's habit of vanishing and reappearing out of nowhere had been driving him crazy throughout the day's march.
“If it don't, it'll wish it had!” Quarterer declared. “I'm feelin' kinda extra-aggressific today…”
“Aggressive, Dad.”
“Yeah, whatever. And I want a new picture on me ax handle! Hey, you hairy bastard! Come and get me!” the barbarian roared at the top of his lungs.
The jungle fell silent for miles around.
After a while, a pained yowl came from somewhere in the distance. A tiger, caught in mid-leap by the sonic assault, had crashed into a boulder instead of the fat deer it had been aiming for. Needless to say, the tiger was not pleased.
Had this magnificent representative of the local predators, subsection feline carnivores, been in the habit of visiting a dentist, the aforementioned dental professional would have been delighted. Two new gold canine teeth would have meant a handsome profit.
In the long run, however, the travel agencies were the ones with the most reason to celebrate. Quarterer's thunderous challenge had created a new menace and tourist attraction: a man-eating tiger phantom known as the Swallower of Heroes.
Deprived of its fangs, and perhaps driven by a desire for revenge, the tiger began hunting unwary heroes along the Trek. At first, it also preyed on bandits, until it eventually befriended them and they reached an agreement on mutual cooperation. This arrangement went down in the history of banditry on the Trek as one of the better-known demonstrations of the legendary eloquence of Merry Pason, aka Cheerful Pigsy.
The story of the glorious rise and tragic fall of Stripy Gaptooth, as the bandits affectionately nicknamed the tiger on account of the gaps in its teeth, however, is a tale for another time.
Without a word, the servants got up off the ground and began pitching the tent again. Marty Flogg rekindled the fire, and Quarterer, who had worked up his appetite by roaring again, devoured the half-raw condor in a few enormous gulps.
“By the way,” the janin said from behind Ballet, “when that…”
“Damn it, stop doing that!” the young barbarian growled so threateningly that his father smacked his lips in approval. Or perhaps he'd simply enjoyed the condor. Hard to say.
“Sorry. Force of habit. Always from behind, you know how it is. Anyway, as I was saying, when that beast shows up, finishing it off for good will be up to you.”
“Meaning?”
“I'll help you find it, maybe immobilize it, mark it, or something like that. But I can't kill it.”
“What? Seriously? Do you people really need a special contract for every corpse?”
The young assassin and saboteur shook his head sadly.
“No, that's not it. It's a long story. The short version, complete with moral lesson, is that I'm forbidden from killing or maiming any intelligent being. Anything that can talk, that is.”
“Huh?” Ballet was surprised, which didn't happen very often.
“Well, let's just say I'm as unusual an assassin as you are a barbarian,” Peesufuru the janin said with a shrug. “It's a long story, and I don't feel like sharing it right now, but it puts some serious restrictions on my professional activities. While my colleagues carry around piles of throwing knives coated with exotic poisons, I have to lug around rubber stun balls and a special assortment of clubs. Just so you know.”
“I see. Interesting.” The young assassin rose a little in Ballet's estimation. He had a soft spot for anyone whose chosen career was severely complicated by circumstances beyond their control. After all, he himself still regretted being unable to pursue a career in dancing, his dream since early childhood.
***
Darkness fell. The flickering fire illuminated the faces of the travelers, who listened grimly to the sounds of the jungle. The dwarf's undisguised paranoia had spread to the others, including both barbarians.
“Where's that damn beast?” Quarterer asked for the hundredth time, taking a sip from his mug. “I really hate this, whatchacallit, dilly-dallatte.”
“It's not a latte!” Peesufuru protested. “It's proper black coffee!”
“Dad means he hates all this dilly-dallying,” Ballet explained. “Sometimes he gets his words confused.”
“I ain't confuzzlin' nothin'!” Quarterer snapped, splitting another log into quarters with his ax. He tossed the wood onto the fire and continued. “I just don't wanna wait. I wanna whack that bastard and be done with it. Never liked all this dilly-dallyin' around. Even during the war with the Dark Concubiner…”
“Conqueror.”
“Yeah, him. Never wanted to wait back then, neither. No dillies, no dallies, just charge right away. Those were the days,” Quarterer said dreamily, remembering the brief but, from his perspective, thoroughly enjoyable war.
“Shhh,” Peesufuru hissed, vanishing into the shadows.
Ballet leaped to his feet and drew his sword. Golan burst out of his tent wielding two small axes he'd been showing off earlier, supposedly inherited from his grandfather.
“It's here! I can smell the bastard!”
Ballet sniffed the air. He really could smell something strange. It reminded him of home, specifically the stench that sometimes drifted from the outhouse behind their house in the morning, when his mother was away and his father had spent the night getting drunk on some alchemically enhanced moonshine.
“Here it is!” Peesufuru shouted from the forest, followed by several dull thuds.
“Ouch!” something exclaimed and began swearing profusely.
“It's running away,” Peesufuru announced, suddenly appearing beside the fire. “This time it came close enough for me to find it, but I couldn't knock it out.” He gazed sadly at the leather club he still held in one hand. In the other was a thick tuft of long, coarse hair.
“There's no point chasing it! It's getting off too fast!” he shouted after Quarterer, who had charged into the jungle with his ax.
“I ain't gonna get it off!” the barbarian roared over his shoulder. “I'm gonna catch the cowardly bastard, rip out all its hair, and then quarter it! Ow! What asshole put that, whatchacallit, tree there?”
“Dad, come back!”
“Not without that pile of hair! Where are ya?! Take that!”
“Dad, that sounded like a tree! Come back!”
The enraged barbarian refused to listen to reason and spent a while longer chasing shadows, trees, and assorted vegetation around the camp. He finally stopped when he got the impression that a squirrel was laughing at him from the top of a tree. Since he didn't feel like climbing after it, he decided to chop down the enormous trunk instead, which kept him occupied for quite some time.
Meanwhile, Ballet examined the handful of hair Peesufuru had collected.
“Looks like human hair, but it reeks of alchemy…” he mused.
That caught Golan's attention. The dwarf had been nervously glancing around the whole time, wincing painfully every time Quarterer's ax slammed into the tree.
“Lemme see that,” he ordered.
He sniffed the handful of hair, and a look of surprise crossed his face.
“Could it be?” he muttered.
“Could it be what?”
“Never mind. Go fetch that crazy bastard of a father o' yours, or he'll tear down the whole damn forest.”
“What kind of creature is it?” Ballet refused to let the matter drop.
“I'd say a dissatisfied customer,” the dwarf mumbled.
“Meaning?”
“Just wait.”
***
Eventually, they managed to lure the sweaty, exhausted barbarian back with the last bottle of orc moonshine. Peesufuru surveyed the damage and remarked appreciatively, “If you ever get tired of being a barbarian, you've got a guaranteed career as a lumberjack.”
“Huff, huff,” Quarterer wheezed. “Don't be so, huff, whatchacallit, smart-assy, and hand over the booze. I'm thirsty, huff, huff, as a giant carp in the desert. Huff. Glug, glug, glug.”
“Quarterer, could ya shout somethin' into the forest for me? Just a bit quieter than last time,” the dwarf asked.
“Huff, huff. Uh-huh.”
“Here, drink some o' this.”
“Brrrr! What the hell is… urgh?”
The dwarf grinned. “Homemade specialty. So, gonna do some shoutin'?”
“What?”
“Yell this at it: IF YA AIN'T GOT A RECEIPT, FUCK OFF! IF YA DO, GET YER ASS OVER HERE!”
“Huh?”
“Want me to repeat meself?”
“No. I ain't, whatchacallit, stupid.”
The barbarian took a deep breath.
“Quieter,” Ballet reminded him.
The old barbarian grimaced and let out a little air. Only then did he bellow the requested message at the top of his lungs.
For a moment, there was silence. Then a voice called out from somewhere in the jungle.
“I got one! I'm coming for you, you miserable little runt! Call off your gorillas!”
“Gorillas?! Where?! Where are they?! Bring 'em on!” Quarterer roared.
“Nowhere, Dad. It was just a turn of phrase.”
“Turnin' our flank? They're comin' from the sides? Where?”
“Nobody's coming. Just shut up, please.”
“Aw, damn.”
***
A large, unbelievably hairy figure slowly emerged from the forest. The dwarf's description had been surprisingly accurate: it really was just a giant pile of hair, vaguely shaped like a creature with two arms and two legs. It held a scrap of dirty paper in front of itself like a magical shield.
“You bastard!” the shaggy heap declared. “You damned little dwarf! You incompetent alchemist!”
“Don't get yer knickers in a twist,” Golan replied. He was suddenly quite calm. “I told ya there might be side effects.”
“You son of a bitch! Just you wait!”
“Quit yer screechin' and come over here.”
“Could someone explain what's going on?” Peesufuru asked. “I have a feeling I'm missing the point of this story.”
“What point?” the hairy creature growled.
Up close, it was clearly humanoid, but every last inch of its skin was covered in thick, long hair, completely concealing whatever clothing it might have been wearing.
“I'm Bill Clover, the famous hunter! That bastard sold me a potion for baldness, and look what happened to me! And when I tried to complain and make a claim under the one-year warranty, he hit me with a chair, ran away from town, and then hired you lot to protect him from the righteous fury of a cheated customer! This kind of treatment is a scandal! I want my money back, plus compensation! And you're gonna get rid of all this hair for free, dwarf, or else!”
***
The argument between the hunter and the alchemist went on for quite some time. Meanwhile, a deeply depressed Quarterer, once again denied the opportunity to quarter anything, drank most of the remaining alcohol and several of the dwarf's potions that smelled as though they might contain some. This left him in such a state that the expedition had no choice but to make camp.
According to the labels on the empty bottles they found, the aging barbarian had consumed digestive drops, a wrinkle remover, and a mild antidepressant. However, the effects he exhibited only partially matched those advertised. He was clearly no longer depressed, his ears were beautifully smooth and wrinkle-free, and his appetite seemed positively enormous. Unfortunately, he also displayed a number of other changes.
Golan insisted that these were merely side effects caused by excessive doses combined with unsuitable additives. But anyone who still retained even a shred of faith in the products of his brewing and distilling—apart from his purely recreational moonshine—lost it for good.
Which led to further complications. With a heavy heart, Golan refunded the money for the anti-baldness potion and, after a lengthy round of haggling, agreed to pay twenty percent of the compensation originally demanded. He also offered to cure the hunter's excessive hairiness free of charge, since his extensive inventory of travel supplies, which included all manner of elixirs, happened to contain a hair remover.
Unfortunately, Bill Clover refused to swallow another dubious concoction made by that “lousy excuse for an alchemist” unless its maker drank some himself. The alchemist argued that he had to maintain proper dwarven decorum, which would be rather difficult if the potion stripped him of his beard. The counterproposal that he could simply use his own anti-baldness potion afterward was rejected just as vehemently, which did nothing to inspire confidence in his products.
No other test subject volunteered. Quarterer might have been willing to give it a try, since most elixirs contained alcohol, but if the potion worked too well, there was a serious risk that the barbarian, who took great pride in his graying hair and equally magnificent salt-and-pepper beard, would quarter everything within reach once he sobered up.
Nobody suggested it anyway. No one wanted to risk yet another bizarre side effect, not to mention the fact that, with the possible exception of the janin, nobody could have gotten anywhere near Quarterer in his current condition.
As a result of his reckless overindulgence, the old barbarian had turned green, multicolored hearts had appeared all over his bare skin, and while chasing an insolent squirrel into the crown of a tall tree, he had decided, laughing maniacally, to stay up there. This was partly because his ears had become tangled in the branches. It took him some time to gnaw his way free, all the while bellowing, “Look at me! I'm a damn beaver! And I bite, dammit!”
While Ballet worked up the nerve to climb after his father using the handholds barbarian fingers had gouged into the trunk, the beaver finished gnawing himself a comfortable nest and announced with a horrifying hoot, “I'm gonna catch me a condor! Need somethin' to go with this wood! Or a lady condor! Yeah, that's an idea! I'm gonna lure one in!”
He then hooked his legs over a branch and hung upside down, crowing loudly and flapping his grotesquely enlarged earlobes so violently that the whole jungle trembled.
Ballet watched him with concern, but he was reasonably certain that his father's barbarian constitution would eventually overcome the alchemical effects.
And if it didn't, he'd somehow have to get his father back to his mother so she could cure him with magic.
Then again, perhaps the effects would disappear on their own after she killed them both and resurrected them.