The man I had persuaded to give me his clothing had been strangely eager, but I took it as the natural obsequiousness of the lowborn. It was nice to get a little respect. I was also pleased to find that wearing the exact clothing of my target (helped along by some liberally applied handfuls of mud) had produced an even better disguise. I was still coming to terms with the insights it gave me.
Being a mudman was interesting. Being a mudman in mud was fascinating. Before now I would have described mud quite simply: wet earth. I now saw the limitations of this simple understanding. It call came down to earth: what is it? Well, I now understood it to be a composite structure comprised of variable ratios of minerals, organic matter, water, and air (and that was even before you got into the emergent effects of mineral composition or water saturation levels, but that was getting pretty deep into hydrosoil-dynamic theory), further differentiated by textural complexities as determined by ratios of silt, loam, and sand. A glance across a field and I could see a smooth transition from sophisticated sandy clay into dignified pure clay, and then (I got a bit excited at this) a playful twist into clay loam.
And all this knowledge mattered. Hugh beside me was struggling to move through the simplest layer of 72-18-10-silt loam with 45% hydraulic penetration. I knew intuitively that stepping just so would let him glide through like myself. But he couldn't see it. How fumbling these outsiders must seem to the mudmen, like squirrels claiming to rule the ocean. How foolish, sitting on their driftwood log and calling the vast expanse of water conquered. I wondered how they'd ever managed to claim it.
The deluge of muddata threatened to swamp me, and only the driving focus of my mission kept me on task. The mudman disguise I'd taken had come with knowledge of the location of a 'rebel leader', and based on the flurry of activity taking place at the gates of Stonetown, I needed to move fast. I flattened my—I just noticed—webbed feet, and led Hugh ever deeper into Mudtown.
----------------------------------------
The quintessential properties of mud generally make it a poor building material, but the people of Mudtown clearly hadn’t been informed of this. While there was a smattering of surface shacks and dilapidated cottages, Mudtown proper was in the mud. Now that my eyes had been opened I could spot them everywhere: irregularities in the mudstrata—holes. And I could see the one I'd been looking for: a patch of rust coloured 80-10-10 clay, with a bedraggled tree just to the left. I shuffled over and reached beneath the surface mud. Sure enough, a few inches down I encountered a flat stone. I levered my flat fingers underneath it's edges and lifted: a sucking sound glooshed from the hole as I uncovered it. And there it was, a narrow tunnel comprised of oddly pale leather, mud dripping over the sides of the entrance and plishing somewhere below.
"Yes? What is it?" a voice called from below.
"Jus' thought you'd like to know the reenactment is starting soon," I improvised.
"Oh! They're crackin' early this time 'round. 'Ave they raised the gibbets?"
I glanced over my shoulder and squinted at the anthill preparations taking place in the distance and, sure enough, a crudely constructed wooden structure with hanging cages was being erected.
"Aye, they're in the works," I called back down the hole.
“Ask them if they have any food, I’m starved,” another voice chimed in a what might resemble a whisper only insofar as talking loudly at a higher pitch could be considered a whisper.
The sound of a frenzied conversation, indecipherable except for raised expletives, drifted from the whole.
Finally the original voice called, "You got grub?"
"Aye." I'd had the foresight to pack a simple fare of cheese, bread, and dried meats.
Another flurry of ineffectually hushed exchanges before, finally, they seemed to come to an agreement.
"Best come on down then, hurry on, make sure you're not spotted now."
I looked back at Hugh.
Hugh was looking at the hole.
Some people's faces are open. They never learn how to school their features, communicating only what they want others to know about their thoughts. They are an open book to any who see them, unable to keep a distance between their innermost self and the world.
Hugh was one of those people. His face, insofar as a silent thing can do so, was screaming a certain phrase.
That phrase was 'I do not want to go down that hole.'
I was not one of those people, but when the time calls for it my face is capable of conversational fluency, and in that language of expressions Hugh's face and my own began a dialogue.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
"We're going down the hole," said my face.
"I don't want to go down the hole, " replied Hugh's.
"Going down the hole is non-negotiable."
"Not only do I not want to go down the hole, I think I will do everything in my power to not go down the hole."
"I don't think you're fully appreciating the exact dynamics of our relationship. When I say go down the hole, there isn't a choice. It isn't an invitation to a negotiation. There is one inevitability, and that is you going down the hole."
"No hole. No hole. No hole. Nohole. Nohole. nohole noholeholehonoehonhone—"
"Hugh. Hugh. Hugh.... You do know what I'm going to say, don't you?"
"...No thoughts."
Without a word Hugh jumped into the hole, and I followed.
I landed in a cushioning puddle of muck—Hugh had already moved up a shallow retaining wall that contained the mud landing zone. A gentle glow emanated from deeper within the nicely widening structure, the walls were supported with a tangle of enmeshed roots and that same pale hide stretched between them. I wondered where they got the cattle for the leather, this territory didn’t seem incredibly amenable to grazers. The sound of movement came from deeper in. I advanced without hesitation, and Hugh followed with a double helping.
We swiftly encountered our hosts, a pair of dubious looking mudmen. The first was tall, looked to be made of only the most crooked twigs, and grinned at me with vacant expectancy. If the first was all stick angles, the second was a man of rock curves. Low built, with stocky limbs and a great barrel chest, his rugged face nevertheless possessed a low and flagrant cunning. He also bore the red painted 'X' across his front that marked him as a rebel leader.
"Grub?" inquired the twig-man.
I tossed the oilcloth containing my foodstuffs over.
The rock-man noticed Hugh coming up behind me and immediately glared at me suspiciously before shifting his entire posture toward that of a simpering toady.
"A keepman comes into our wretched hole! Who are we—who are we to receive such a blessing, such a visitation from on high," he moved in a kind of shuffling bow towards a frozen Hugh, "my lord, you are too good to us, too good."
Hugh gave me a desperate look, which I happily ignored.
"To think, in our desperate lives, we would be visited by such as you." The man pawed pathetically at Hugh's front, somehow managing to soil it even more.
Meanwhile, the twig-man struggled with the simple knot of the oilcloth: pulling it about in manner that would only tighten it; he paused only to stare uncomprehending at his nemesis—the twine.
"What ben-if-ess-ence, to come to such poor ones as us, who is truly the sorriest lot in all the world." the rock-man was warming to his subject, “our lives are an endless track of toil and ‘ardship, with naught but the light of yer presence, and the fear o’ death to drive us on.”
“That’s right, don’t get outta bed for naught but the fear o’ death!” the twig-man chimed in while continuing to puzzle over a simple knot, but then carried on, “’Ceptin the muck of course. Jus’ the other day you was saying to me ‘look now ‘Arry, that there muck is some of the finest I’s ever seen’ and you made me wait so’s you could clench it between yer toe—”
The twig-man yelped, as while he’d rambled the rock-man had rumbled over to him with fervent energy, slowing not at all before ramming an elbow hard into the twig-man’s gut.
“You’ll have to excuse him sirs, he’s daft on accounts of winning a mud-breathing competition some years prior, under the muck sixteen minutes he was, never the same. As to the occasion he is referring, I was o’ course being ironical. We nat-ur-lee have nooo fondness for muck or mud, hates it we do.”
The twig-man, or Harry as I learned, gasped for breath, but managed to get out just the same, “Seventeen minutes, it were seventeen minutes I was under that muck—the trick is to hit yerself on the head with a great big stone afore yous jump in—but if it’s all the same afore the fallen gods I won’t stir the mud. ‘Owever, I do’s think I object to yer blow to me belly.”
“That were ironical as well.”
“It were?”
“Aye, most ironical.”
“Well Bart, that might mean something indeed to somebody else, but nots me.”
“I’ll tells yous ‘Arry, so’s it’ll mean something to yous also: ironical is when’s you says or does somethings you don’t actually means.”
“Oh’s. So yous been being ironical a lot then lately.”
“...Aye.” The rock-man, Bart, now observed Harry with a certain nervousness of manner.
“So’s were you also being ironical when you said to me, ‘there’s nuthin’ I like more after a long day of toil than coming home to find my wife has made her worm and grub mash, thats I could eats every day of my life without regrets’”, Harry took a breath from his impersonation, but then noticed Bart’s reaction, “oh, did yous taste something sour just now Bart?”
Bart looked like he’d bitten into something very sour indeed.
“No, no, s’just my... face. And...aye... I was being ironical then as well.”
“Oh... I just think she’ll be very sorry to hear that, that you don’t love her mash,” Harry looked contemplative, “y’know Bart, seeing as you don’t love her mash, but I, me-self, am quite fond of it, perhaps I’ll just ask her for yours shall I?”
Even as he spoke, the random fumbling of his hands finally stumbled into opening the oilcloth, and out rolled my selection of fine cheeses, fresh bread, and cured meats.
Harry looked at me mournfully, “there’s no grubs in here at all,” he said with supreme disappointment, “he musta been being ironical too,” he whispered to himself.
A number of thoughts suddenly clicked into alignment. The mudmen weren't mudmen because they were oppressed by the conquering Baron's ancestors—they were mudmen because they loved being mudmen.
Critical Insight! +1 Advancement Point Awarded!
And I realized that I’d made a huge mistake.