Chapter Twelve

 

            They lay on a long shingle not of sand but of finely granulated particles of the harder substances of which the streets and buildings of the city had been constituted. Before them stretched the breeze-ruffled surface of a broad lake; behind, an expanse gf grayish-black mud from which the steel framework of a former building thrust up, debris clotted on it. A late-model Auburn roadster lay on its side nearby, partially buried under a jackdaw's nest of broken lumber. No people were in sight, but in the far distance a few lights glowed, and somewhat closer a wisp of smoke rose almost vertically into the tranquil evening sky. Overhead, the bloated moon showed a tracery of red lines across its mottled face.

 

            Lafayette was the first to sit up, his mind filled with the confused recollection of the gray room and Daphne, so close—then an interminable struggle in churning water, fighting upward toward dim light. He looked closely at Mickey Jo, lying unconscious beside him, her electric-blue dress sodden and clinging. Beyond, Marv raised himself on an elbow.

 

            "Why'd ya hafta go and do that, Al?" he inquired in an aggrieved tone.

 

            "I didn't do anything," Lafayette replied. "I was just about to try that crabmeat salad. It looked awful good."

 

            "I et mine," Marv commented. "It was plenty OK, onney I wisht I'd of had time to try a bite of that steak, too."

 

            "There's smoke over there," Lafayette said, pointing. "Let's go over. There must be some food left somewhere in the ruins."

 

            "I dunno," Marv countered. "What if they got guns?"

 

            "I didn't propose to attack them," Lafayette said.

 

            "Marv," Mickey Jo spoke up feebly. "Why don't you go? We'll wait here. No use in all of us getting kilt."

 

            "Well, if you ain't a square-deal little ..." Marv's voice faded to a mumble. He got to his feet, slapping at the mud adhering to his soaked garments. He looked at O'Leary, who was looking at the girl, who was holding a small automatic pistol aimed steadily at Marv's head.

 

            "Go on," she said harshly. "Git!"

 

            "Now, wait just a minute," O'Leary objected. "There's no need for anything like that, Mickey Jo. I don't mind going with him."

 

            "You're staying right here, O'Leary," she grated past clenched teeth. "You're both covered."

 

-

 

            "You know my name!" O'Leary gasped. "Look here, Mickey Jo, it's about time for you to tell me what your game is. Who are you, really?"

 

            "I got no game, O'Leary, I just do like the man says. I'm a Group III agent in the PSS. Play it nice, now, and you won't get hurt, as far as I know. They just want to reason with you."

 

            "Who's 'they'?" Lafayette demanded, sidling to the left. The gun at once shifted aim by a few degrees to remain aimed between the two men.

 

            "They're the Emergency Research Committee," the girl said. She was sitting up now, her wet hair strung across her face, from which the paint was gone, leaving her a remarkably wholesome-looking young woman.

 

            "Sure. Now explain the explanation," Lafayette suggested. "And don't throw in a lot of weird names and places I never heard of."

 

            "Some things just ain't simple," Mickey Jo answered. "But I'll try. After the disruption bomb on Nuke City, they slapped on Full Class One Security; then the Prime Vault blew, and we knew we were in deep trouble. That was in October. Before the TRAN meters blew out, they registered a force-seven anomaly. Got it so far?"

 

            "No," Lafayette said. "But go on. Where does Belarius IV fit into the picture?"

 

            "Nowhere. He was in the metering vault when it blew. But what do you know about the big shot?"

 

            "He survived," Lafayette said. "He and another sharpy named Frumpkin. But that's enough double-talk. Let's get down to detail. How do you know my name? Even Marv here only knows me as Allegorus, a crazy idea he got just because he met me in the Dread Tower, as his bunch call it." Lafayette glanced at Marv, now fifty feet away and moving off slowly.

 

            "You know what an entropic disjunction is, Mr. O'Leary?" Mickey Jo inquired coldly.

 

            "Sort of," Lafayette admitted, "to the extent that the term is self-explanatory. But the idea is a paradox. So, it doesn't mean anything."

 

            "When the entire mass of galaxy is expelled from its natural entropic lamina," Mickey Jo said in a tone of exhausted patience, "all kinds of anomalies are generated. The last time it happened, fifteen billion years ago, matter came into existence spontaneously at the tertiary level, where it had no business being at all. That's what's known as the Big Bang."

 

            "What's that got to do with anything?" Lafayette demanded hotly.

 

            "Everything," Mickey Jo returned firmly. "All this is the direct result of that unique event."

 

            "But, if it ever happened, it was fifteen or twenty billion years ago," Lafayette protested. "I've only been around for thirty-three."

 

            "And no matter how far back or forward we travel along the temporal axis," the girl said, "the Bang's always twenty gigayears off. That's the temporal diameter of this manifold. The entire cosmos naturally had to readjust to accommodate the new mass. All else follows."

 

            "But what's all that got to do with me?" Lafayette yelled. "I was just sitting quietly in the garden ..."

 

-

 

            "Figure, Laugh," Mickey Jo put in. "Everything shifts one parameter, right? Now, you figure the spatial distance of the Event, plug in one hundred eighty-six thousand miles is equal to a second, and a couple finagle factors like the cosmological constant, and whata ya got? Three hundred years displacement is what. So, of course some compensation is required."

 

            "What kind of compensation could that be?" Lafayette wondered aloud. "All that, if it ever happened, was still maybe twenty billion years ago. What can anyone do now to influence that?"

 

            "Time is a convenient fiction," Mickey Jo said flatly. "A billion years or a billionth of a second: What's the difference, really? They're both just ideas, existing only in the mind."

 

            "Maybe," Lafayette replied. "The question still stands."

 

            "There are two choices," Mickey Jo said crisply. "It can be all at once, or distributed over the whole reality manifold."

 

            "And ...?" Lafayette prompted.

 

            "And somebody is busy redistributing it," Mickey Jo finished. "We thought it was you," she added. "But I guess that idea was just grabbing at a straw."

 

            "Who's 'they'?" Lafayette demanded. "I'm getting very weary of the impersonal 'they', and calling them a committee doesn't help. And who are you, and what were you doing in the beer joint?"

 

            "I'm just who I said I am," Mickey Jo retorted. "I work part-time out of Supreme HQ, and I was at Special Ed's dump to meet you."

 

            "What's the survey?" O'Leary asked. "And don't tell me it's the executive wing of the Council or something. Just skip ahead. I don't need all the intermediate obfuscations."

 

            "Somebody has to keep an eye on things," Mickey Jo said in tones of exasperated patience. "After all, if every little entropic vortex generated over a low probability area were allowed to gather energy until it became a full-scale probability storm, the entire cosmos would remain in a state of chaos."

 

            "So this Supreme HQ has appointed itself Boss of All," Lafayette deduced without approval. "But they've gotten too big for their swivel chairs when they start bouncing a law-abiding Artesian nobleman around like a mouse in a washing machine."

 

            "That's purely incidental, O'Leary," Mickey Jo said, waving the idea aside with a shooing motion of her hand. "In fact when your presence was discovered I was dispatched here to enlist your cooperation in a scheme devised by the Technical Council to try to divert the main thrust of the entropic surge off into a manifold of unevolved continua. Will you help?"

 

            "Why me?" Lafayette demanded. "What can I do?"

 

            "Hey, Al," Marv's distant voice echoed across the mud-flat. "Come on, I can see sumpin'."

 

            "Ignore him," Mickey Jo rapped. "As for what you can do, it seems somehow you are the focal point of certain gigantic forces, over which in some curious fashion you are able to exercise some influence. We want you to employ that ability in the interest of restoring order to the Manifold."

 

            "How would I do that?" Lafayette inquired. Marv was on his way back now, waving his arms and shouting:

 

            "Hunherts of 'em! Got some heavy equipment. Camped out around that old building yonder! Better try a sneak-up after dark." He arrived, panting. "Don't think they seen me. We needa get outa sight, find some cover."

 

            "Why?" Lafayette demanded. "Why assume they're hostile?"

 

            "Got a whole bunch o' guys hung up by the neck," Marv explained.

 

            "Maybe they've just got a hanging judge," O'Leary suggested. "We could use some Law and Order." He looked around at the seemingly endless mud-flat which surrounded the lake and stretched to the horizon on all sides, interrupted only by a low knoll beyond the ruined building. The sun was low in a sky heavy with clouds the color of used dishwater. The gusty breeze was cool, and his wet clothes were clammy.

 

            "We need to find some shelter, whether we're hiding or not," he commented. "Come on, Mickey Jo, let's take a walk." He offered the girl a hand, which she ignored.

 

            "And you'd better give me the gun," he added. She fished it out from her sodden décolletage and handed it over silently. As he dropped it in his pocket, Lafayette noticed it was not a common slug-throwing pistol. He leaned to grasp Mickey Jo's arm and hauled her to her feet. Marv fell in on her other side, and they set off across the mud, their feet squelching at each step. Lafayette looked back: their footprints filled with water as soon as they were made.

 

            "An inch of rain and we'll be swimming," he commented.

 

            "Ain't seen no rain in years," Marv commented.

 

            "Nonsense," Lafayette replied. "It was raining cats and dogs the evening we met. That's why Daph and I had to run for it."

 

            "No rain outa clouds like them," Mickey Jo remarked. "Gotta have vertical structure to squeeze the rain out."

 

-

 

            "Oh, Al?" Marv called, pausing and falling a pace behind. "Talk to ya a minute?" Lafayette glanced at him. He was mouthing words with grotesque facial distortions.

 

            " 'Gotta get ridda the dame'," Lafayette interpreted. "Go ahead, Mickey Jo," he told the girl. "I'll catch up."

 

            "Ever occur to you I might hafta take a leak too?" she demanded in an irascible tone, but she went on ahead.

 

            "Don't trust that little broad," Marv said hoarsely. "We gotta ditch her, Al; she's some kinda fink. We can lose her easy, come dark."

 

            "You seem to stick to me like a burr to tweed," Lafayette said. "Why? It isn't sheer affection, I feel sure."

 

            Marv looked at Lafayette blankly for a moment; then, as if at a decision, his expression firmed to a look of shrewd determination.

 

            "I'll level with you, milord," he grated. "You seem like a right guy, and you stuck up for me when you didn't hafta. So I'll lay it all out. I'm a agent of Prime. My assignment is to stay with you. That's taken some doing, too, I can-tell you, pal."

 

            "Why?" Lafayette inquired casually.

 

            " 'Cause that's my orders," Marv replied.

 

            "Sure, but why the orders?" Lafayette persisted.

 

            "Look, Al, I'm just a plain guy, see? I got the job because I happena pick a big shot's kid outa the way of a runaway rail-wagon. I don't unnerstan half I know about entropic disjunctions and Schrodinger Functions, and-"

 

            "Collapsed ones," Lafayette put in. "Somebody said that," he added vaguely. "Go on."

 

            "What we got here is a classic worst-case analysis," Marv stated. "Course, I dunno what that is, but it don't sound good. And we're into what ya call 'nondeterministic polynomial complete' problems, too. Tie that, will ya?"

 

            "According to Ramsey," O'Leary said dully, "total disorder is impossible."

 

            "Maybe: I don't hear about this Ramsey," Marv said. "But we're close, I can tell you that. And we're tryna hold it short of the edge. We don't want to let any more temporal anomalies sneak in, and that's where you come in, Al."

 

            "I had nothing to do with it, I tell you!" Lafayette snapped. "I'm as much a victim as you are—maybe more; at least you've got some kind of official status. Mickey Jo, too."

 

            "I don't trust that broad," Marv said. "Like I said, Al; she's working some kind of a angle."

 

            "She's a duly accredited agent of Supreme HQ," O'Leary said. "She's got you outranked."

 

            "Maybe, maybe not," Marv grunted. "That's a point for the philosophers. Meanwhile, let's you and me kinda do a fast fade, and leave her go on into town alone."

 

            "Fade where?" Lafayette inquired. "The landscape is as flat as a pool table in all directions."

 

            "In the wrecked car," Marv suggested, nudging Lafayette in the direction of the overturned roadster half-buried in mud and sand. When they were close enough for Lafayette to see the chrome-plated cranks on the cherry-red dash for opening the headlight covers, a sound from the hulk brought them to an abrupt halt.

 

            "Somebody in there," Marv said.

 

            "Or hiding behind it," Lafayette suggested.

 

            A blurry voice contradicted him. "Never hid from no wight in my life, by my halidom!" Then a bulky, menacing figure rose from behind the long hood of the formerly elegant vehicle.

 

            "Just catching a little rest is all," the deep voice went on. "Spot of bother, damned tidal wave washed me right off the king's highroad. But bother be damned! I'll find the scamps responsible for broaching the dam and see them hanged on the windy tree for nights full nine!"

 

            Lafayette took a hesitant step forward. "Uh, sir," he began, at which the mud-coated, bulletlike head of the stranger turned as if noticing him for the first time.

 

            "Are you Duke Bother-Be-Damned, by any chance?" Lafayette blurted.

 

            "By no chance, sirrah, but by proof of single combat!" His Grace roared, groping for the hilt of an oversized sword. "But bide thee until I get this damned muck out of me eyes," he added more calmly, "and I'll prove it on your person."

 

            "That won't be necessary, Your Grace," Lafayette said. Then to Marv, "We're back on the track; this is the chap I was setting out to find when everything got confusing."

 

            "I be no 'chap', the duke bellowed. "You sought me, did you? You'll rue the day you found me, wittol!" The mud-coated nobleman took a step back and at once toppled sideways with a splash that sent a sheet of mud across the scarlet lacquer of the fender, spattering both Lafayette and Marv. The latter slapped at the mud globules sliding down his soaked trench coat, and turned away.

 

            "Come on, Al," he urged. "I guess we'll just hafta go in right in plain sight and take our chances."

 

            "Wait," Lafayette countered. He squelched around past the crushed radiator shell of the Auburn and stooped to lend a hand to the fallen duke, who lay on his back, his arms and legs moving aimlessly like an overturned beetle. Lafayette caught one hand: the duke's grip, though slippery, was powerful. Lafayette winced even as he heaved backward, and was rewarded with a sudden lessening of the load as the duke sat up with a loud sucking sound.

 

            "Again!" the nobleman commanded, as he strove without success to raise his seat from the grip of the mud.

 

            "Get your feet under you," Lafayette suggested. The big man complied and in a moment was standing, towering over Lafayette's two meters by at least half a foot.

 

            "You have our thanks, Sir Knight," the featureless head said, brushing a forearm across the muddy brow with a metallic clank.

 

            "You're wearing armor," Lafayette guessed aloud. "No wonder you're so heavy."

 

            "Aye," the armored duke agreed. "In these parlous times you pretty near gotta. Woods are full of brigands which they'd assault the very bitch that bore them, onney the woods is gone now." He waved a hand. "Useta be fine country for the chase of hart and boar," he commented sadly. "Then the big flood come and ain't never went down." He eyed O'Leary doubtfully. "Who're you?" he demanded abruptly. "Never seen you before, nor your squire yonder neither." The duke's hand had wandered to the muddy hilt of the six-foot broadsword slung at his side. "If you be the warlock that brought the doom on all Aphasia," he rumbled, "dire shall be thy fate."

 

            "Not me, Duke," Lafayette said briskly. "Actually I was caught in the flood myself. Did you say 'Aphasia'?"

 

            "Art a warlock, then?" Duke Bother-Be-Damned growled. "The waters rose these three hundred winters since. No living Christian man could have seen that day. Speak! Dost claim mastery of the black art?"

 

            "Only a few card tricks," Lafayette explained apologetically.

 

            "Card magic, eh? Meseems I've a pack of pasteboards back at my ducal seat; necromancy is illegal, of course, but in a good cause I'd wink my eye and reward you of my largesse as well. Come along, fellow. I'll send a troop of menials along for the car." He turned and set off without awaiting O'Leary's assent, then halted suddenly and turned ponderously.

 

            "If ye be a creature of the infamous Trog," he barked, "be assured I'll lay the rascal by the heels ere he knows of your treachery."

 

            "You know Trog?" Lafayette gasped. "That's wonderful; it means I really am back in Aphasia—not the same locus where I lost Daphne, of course—that disappeared several days ago by now, I suppose, if Belarius wasn't lying."

 

            "See here, fellow," the Duke said heartily. "Though thy wits be scrambled somewhat, tis manifest, still thou had'st the wit to rally to my side, rather than having at me in cowardly fashion when I lay entrapped in the muck yonder. So I graciously extend my hand in friendship, be ye ever so base of birth."

 

            "I'm Sir Lafayette O'Leary," Lafayette said stiffly, accepting the duke's muddy hand. "And once rightful king of Artesia, withal."

 

            "Oh. OK, no offence," the duke replied. "Leary, huh? Whereat is it? Never heard of the demesne."

 

            "Not 'whereat', Lafayette corrected automatically. "Where is it? In the course of a lifetime you waste enough breath to deliver a three-hour speech, just putting in that redundant 'at'."

 

            "Don't ast me whereat it is," Bother-Be-Damned returned defiantly. "It was .you brung it up. Me, I never hearn tell on it. Must be small potatoes." The matter thus disposed of, the duke turned away and resumed his march, not precisely toward the distant smoke, Lafayette noted as he followed. A hundred yards off to the left, Marv was standing, undecided, shading his eyes to watch Lafayette's progress. Then he shook his head, appeared to speak briefly into his clenched fist, and set off on an intercept course. Mickey Jo was nowhere in sight.

 

            "By the way, Your Grace," Lafayette addressed his new acquaintance, "I'm looking for a gray room, very large, dim-lit, with a carpet and a bunch of big soft chairs. Do you happen to know of such a room?"

 

            "Avaunt thee," Bother replied in a tone of dismissal. "I've rich chambers in plenty in my ducal seat, or anyways I did have before the tidal wave. Looks like it musta knocked it flat. Too bad."

 

            "It would take a very large building to have a room of that size in it," Lafayette added hopefully.

 

            "My castle is the largest in the province," the duke assured O'Leary. "Or was, since meseems tis gone, now."

 

            "I have to find it," O'Leary went on. "You see, that's where this skunk named Frumpkin hangs out—and he's got Daphne."

 

            "Unlucky in love, eh, lad?" Bother commented cheerfully. "Well, it's happened to doughtier fighters than you, Sir Lafayette; best to forget the baggage and find another."

 

            "But she's my wife," Lafayette protested. "And I love her. I don't want some other baggage—and besides, she's not happy; I can tell, even though she said he treats her OK."

 

            "Pity and all that," the duke said. "This Frumpkin, now, what sort of wight is he? Stout of arm and back, with a goodly company of men-at-arms about him?"

 

            "Nothing like that," O'Leary corrected. "He's an ordinary-looking creep, and he's always alone, except when he's with Daphne—he calls her Dame Edith."

 

            "Then trounce the rascal soundly, whip the wench for her impertinence, and proceed to matters of importance," Bother advised.

 

            Slogging along at the heels of the duke, O'Leary half-listened as the nobleman recounted the multifarious deeds of infamy with which he, a humane and sensitive fellow, had been beset, most of which atrocities he laid at the doorstep of one Trog. "... or 'Lord Trog', as the upstart styles himself," Bother sneered.

 

            "I've met him," O'Leary put in; "a runty little fellow, all whiskers and fleas, surrounded by cutthroats thirsting for an innocent victim to turn over to the PPS."

 

            "What? Trog runty?" Bother yelled. "Art daft in sooth, Sir Knight! He's a very clothes-pole of a man clad always in scented silks and satin, a dandified degenerate of the worst stripe!"

 

            "Maybe he's grown since I saw him," Lafayette hazarded.

 

            "Bah!" the duke barked. "But what of the upstart? Art his minion?"

 

            "Not me." Lafayette reassured the armored duke. "I'm nobody's minion. I'm on my own."

 

            "Indeed? Then t'were well you cast your lot with the forces of good, against evil and chaos. And eftsoons, methinks." The duke paused both in his speech and his stride to lower the vizor of his great helm, revealing a battered and scarred visage which glowered at O'Leary, and past him at Marv.

 

            "Red Bull!" Lafayette gasped. "Am I glad to see you! I'm so lost I thought I'd never see a familiar face again! Let's get busy and figure out how to get off this mud-flat and back to Artesia!"

 

            The duke thus addressed took a step back and drew his well-honed sword halfway from its mud-coated sheath.

 

            "Avaunt thee, sirrah!" he barked. "It mislikes me not to hold converse with one who is manifestly afflicted of Oompah; still, I'll not outrage the proprieties by beheading thee if thou'll but cease thy frenzies!

 

            "Thinks't me a gentleman cow, eh? Aroint thee!"

 

            "Don't be silly, Red Bull," O'Leary replied calmly. "You know very well I can lick you. Remember that time in the alley under the city walls, just before I went out into the desert? That time Princess Adoranne was missing—this time it's Daphne. She's lost somewhere back in Aphasia, unless Aphasia's already dissolved back into nonrealization. Come on! We always had good luck as a team—except maybe the time I turned into Zorro, and that wasn't your fault!"

 

            "You pretend, fellow, to be my boon companion?" the duke bellowed. "You rave! No doubt thy keeper waits thee even now, among the huts yonder. But be calm: I'll not reveal thy secrets! But in sooth t'were well to make oblique approach, the beadles to avoid."

 

            "What difference will it make what route we take?" O'Leary countered. "We have to come in across open mud no matter which way we go."

 

            "True, but under cover of darkness, we can creep close ere we're discovered to the watch."

 

            "Hey, Al," Marv called, crossing the last few feet to rejoin the party. "Innerdooce me to this here feller, OK?" he proposed, eyeing the duke's six-foot-plus stature, impressive even in its coating of mud, which was beginning to dry now and to flake off in large chunks, revealing the polished steel beneath.

 

            "Certainly, Marv," O'Leary acceded. "Your Grace," he addressed the duke, "permit me to introduce my fellow refugee, Marv: We've been through thick and thin together. Marv, His Grace, Duke Bother-Be-Damned."

 

            "Hi, Grace," Marv responded dubiously.

 

            "Not my real name," the duke muttered, "merely an eke-name given me by the common herd. But you may call me 'Bother', and you will." He extended his un-mailed hand, which Marv took hesitantly.

 

            "OK, pal, whatever you say," the latter said quickly. He gave the hand a quick grip and dropped it, then took up a position half behind O'Leary.

 

            "Say, Al," he muttered. "If this guy is some kinda dook, he must be the big shot around here, right? So maybe we oughta get in solid with him, and maybe stay of fa the gallows, like."

 

            "Good thinking, Marv," O'Leary agreed. "I've already cemented relations, and we're on our way into town, if that's what it is, to straighten things out. Funny thing, Marv: Your old friend Trog, or someone else with the same name, seems to be at the bottom of the problem here."

 

            Staying a pace behind O'Leary as he forged on in the wake of the Duke, Marv shook his head. "Don't figure, Al. No one guy coulda caused a mess like this." He waved a hand at the sweep of soggy clay. "Especially old Trog. He's what you call a congenital psychopathic inferior. No more brains'n a grasshopper. Sits around and gives dumb orders, is all he can do. Like sending me and Omar off to the dungeon, and all."

 

            "Still, it's interesting that he's here," O'Leary pointed out. "So, we must not be as far from Aphasia as it seemed. Another thing, the duke is an alterego of an old pal of mine known as the Red Bull—which independently suggests we're not far from Artesia."

 

            "Beats me," Marv muttered. "All they told me was stay close, and report when I get a chanst."

 

            "How do you report?" O'Leary wanted to know.

 

            "There's this contact," Marv replied. "He's spose to get in touch."

 

            "Listen carefully, Marv," Lafayette said. "Does 'raf trassspoit' mean anything to you?"

 

            "You're dang right," Marv said. "That's what His Lordship useta yell whenever anything din't go right."

 

            "You mean Trog?" Lafayette pressed the point.

 

            "Old Troggie is right," Marv confirmed. "And now you say he's got a finger in this here mess, eh? We better have a talk with that little runt before it's too late."

 

            "Sure," O'Leary agreed. "We'll go see him and try to find out what's at the bottom of all this crazy business. He's the duke's worst enemy, but he'll probably be glad to send us on a secret mission."

 

            Ahead, a small crowd of ill-assorted survivors of whatever had happened to the countryside had gathered to watch the advance of the three refugees across the glistening mud-flat. Spears, pitchforks, and clubs were among the articles with which they were prepared to welcome the newcomers. The sun was low now, staining the sky a bilious yellow which reflected from the wet surface like puddles of molten gold. The duke halted and spoke over his mailed shoulder:

 

            "Withal, we'd best delay here until the light has gone." He paused to knock crusts of mud from his sword-hilt. "Once among the rabble," he went on in a conspiratorial tone, "you'll stand mute whilst I conduct negotiations." He growled, eyeing the group standing by the clapboard huts. In the glow of early evening, men and shacks alike were no more than black silhouettes against the lowering sky.

 

            "It passeth all propriety that I, a royal duke, should skulk here, awaiting the pleasure of these churls!"

 

            "Play it cool, Your Grace," Lafayette suggested. "There are too many of them for one to stand strictly on ceremony."

 

            "Bah! Let not base caution wait upon rny knightly valor!" Bother yelled and without furthur words, charged, sword brandished aloft. The squatters began hesitantly to close ranks, then abruptly scattered, retreating among the huts, where Bother made a desultory search accompanied by yells and whacks of his blade which brought a number of the ramshackle structures down in ruin. While the duke was thus occupied, O'Leary, with a quick word to Marv, moved off to one side and began a wide, curving approach which would bring him up at the rear of the settlement.

 

            "Hey, Al," Marv called in a tone of distress, "wait up!" O'Leary turned to see his companion-in-distress struggling to his feet, coated with black muck except for the pale blob of his unshaven face, dim in the fading light.

 

            "Smear a little mud on your face, Marv," Lafayette called softly, "and you'll be invisible." Marv complied. Even at a distance of two feet, he was but a dark bulk against darkness. At that moment, the duke's voice bellowed across the night.

 

            "Very well, Sir Lafayette, you may emerge now. Sir Lafayette? Damme, where's the fellow got to? Come out at once, I say!"

 

            "I'm right here," O'Leary called.

 

            "Say, Al," Marv commented, "you're pretty well daubed your ownself. Prolly he can't see you. So now's our chanct."

 

            "Chance," O'Leary corrected. "No t. Chance for what?"

 

            "Art a warlock?" Bother demanded of the now near total darkness. "Hast the cloak of Darkness? Remember how I befriended you when you were a nameless vagabond. Come along, now, Sir Lafayette, we'll broach a keg to our comradeship."

 

            "All of a sudden he wants to be pals," Marv commented. "Our chance to sneak in behind him and grab the best quarters in the local hostel," he went on as if there had been no interruption. "OK, Sir Al? Sir Al! Whereat are ya? Oh. I gotcha," he concluded as his wildly groping arms encountered O'Leary's shoulder.

 

            "We may as well," Lafayette replied. "We haven't finished our dinner. Maybe we can get a nice haunch of venison and a stoup of ale and a bath and a bed. Let's go."