2.12 Attack of the Annoying Talking Inanimate Object
Silven could cope no more. The trench he had descended into from the marsh ran thick with the blood of fallen rebels, its railings dinted and buckled from the impact of flying shields and flying heads. The remainder of the rowdy bearded men who had greeted him had fled their posts and scurried to the great mound which housed their cruel commander, who had imprisoned and plotted to take his life for reasons unknown. So far, it was going pretty well. But the sword just wouldn’t shut up.
“Two arms on the floooooooor, one foot up above, I’ve seen that head befoooooooore, which shall we send his loooove?” it squeaked as the final patch of resistance was dispatched. Silven drew the blade from the dismembered remains and rapped it heartily on its pommel. The pommel, he had quickly learned, was most sensitive to his countless reprimands. “Ouch!” the sword wailed.
“Now, listen again,” lectured Silven calmly. “We’ll have none of that. He doesn’t have a love, for one, and I’m glad. I don’t want to be bogged down by personal socioeconomic consequences of my good work. So far as we’ve learned, every rebel army in Oldeburgh has identical armour, identical weapons, and, yes, identical heads. So, to try to distance themselves from anything resembling a united nation, each group has a Thing. Wallace’s Thing just happens to be joviality at the expense of others. I think you’d fit right in. I’ll be sure to settle you in when I depart. Shame all your corpsey friends won’t sing along.”
The sword vibrated in his grip. “Now look who’s making bad jokes about the dead.”
“Shut up,” said Silven, and stuffed the weapon into his jacket to muffle the dread warblings. Going weaponless for a while would almost certainly turn out better for his health.
Around the corner, there was no sign of Silven’s fearful enemies, no panic or alarm, a thick oaken door set into the earthworks and a single brute hunched over a very meagre-looking roast rat. Silven approached confidently and regarded the sentry with fierce eyes. “Wallace rules.”
The man stood and rolled his shoulders. “It’s an old password, and it no longer checks out. But if you think he rules too, go ahead. Bugger protocol. Anarchy, dude!” He pumped his fist and unlocked the door with a rusted old key.
“Errr, thanks,” managed Silven. The guard pushed open the door with one mighty barge to reveal a dimly lit tunnel through the ancient fortifications. The warrior stepped inside and quickly marched off into the darkness.
A few seconds later, the light grew once more. Silven found himself at the side of a larger tunnel running left to right, this one supported by glistening black bricks of alabaster. The first thing he noticed was the immense cardboard arrow pointing right, cheerfully adorned with coloured-in stars and moons spelling out ‘This Way!’ across its surface. The next thing he noticed was the clanking feet of a dozen rebels hurrying his way from said direction. As he turned to depart himself, he found his way blocked by a less than impressive cut-out of a vaguely pink pig stretching across the left branch of the tunnel. The pig was saying, as demonstrated by crudely glittered letters popping out of a sparkly speech bubble, ‘Not This Way!’. It was all tediously dramatic.
He halted and spun wearily to face his pursuers. They hesitated, saw that he was unarmed, and pressed on. Silven put his hands on his hips and jerked his head to the left. “You know, guys, there’s just something about that sign. Something that screams ‘I should really go that way’. No offence to the pig, of course.”
The forerunner of the group shook his head until Silven feared it would join its twins in the trench voluntarily. “No, you really shouldn’t. We’re just being all fun about it.”
Silven folded his arms. “And why would that be?”
A second soldier piped up. “Dark times, isn’t it? Taxes, companies, people telling us what to do. And we live in a pretty miserable place on top of it all. So what’s it gonna be? A bit of yokel-worrying with the boys or sure annihilation?”
Silven took a step back. “Not sure. Maybe I should go that way?” He pointed over his shoulder and winked.
“No,” groaned Rebel Number One. “Terrible danger. You wouldn’t last two seconds.”
Silven pointed forward. “But I thought you were the terrible danger?”
“Yeah, we are.”
“So if that’s the case.... that way’s the safe one?”
Rebel Number Two puffed out his chest. “Gotta be safer than us, man!”
“Cheers.” Silven took a step towards the pig. The bandits followed. He turned back once more. “Still not sure I trust you. Pig says no after all. So why don’t you just wait here and we can have a good laugh at my expense when I turn back up still alive?”
The soldiers paused and looked at each other. “Sure, boss. You’re gonna be so alive.... and then so dead!”
“Yeah, so dead it’s unreal!” grinned Rebel Number Two.
Silven squeezed past the cut-out and waved. “See ya!”
“Byeeee!” cackled the rebels, and waved back.
Beyond the porcine blockade, Silven found himself alone once again. There was a single torch lighting up a dead end, adorned with a bulbous black skull set into a wall. Beneath it, there was a chest. Silven prised back its lid and plucked a shiny horned helmet from within. The sword squeaked excitedly from its swaddling. With a sigh, Silven relented and released. “What?”
“The Helm of Yashurwil, armour of the Gnomeslayer of Yore, giving four tiers of Deflect against-”
“If it helps slay gnomes, it’s good enough for me,” cut in Silven sternly. He held up the helmet thoughtfully and looked around. “Well, the underlings aren’t going to see me here,” he decided, and placed it on his head. He inched back out of the gap and stopped dead before the villains. “If that was there....”he began, and held up a hand. “Hold on a minute. You’re not planning on turning hostile within the next ten seconds, are you?”
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“Nah, we need to be jolly first,” came the reply.
“Kay. Be right back.” He disappeared, and returned an hour later bulging at the seams. He emptied the metal garments onto the dark bricks with the most clamorous of clamours, and set himself joyously down in the middle of it. “So that’s where the sweet loot was!” he chuckled. “All these empty lairs I’ve plodded through. Was I really so stupid to go, you know, the right way all the time?” He looked up into the empty tunnel. “Oh well.”
He fished out the matching spiked armour of Yashurwil and eased his now flabby frame into the brackets. “Ding ding ding! Behold the bell-end!” screamed the sword. “This set has lain scattered for three whole centuries after the Gnomeslayer... you know... earned his name.”
“Fascinating fact,” Silven retorted. “On with the adventure.”
He clunked on past childish tapestries draped over skulls, past skulls dressed in party hats, and even past some skulls. Finally, he heard the cacophony of his most recent friends rebounding down a narrow hallway off the main thoroughfare, just before it opened out into a wider chamber. He briefly considered moving on, then thought of the treasure and clopped away into the offshoot and down a set of slippery steps engraved with skulls. He was starting to see a pattern here.
At the foot of the descent, he rounded a corner and froze as he entered a rather familiar corridor. No, it wasn’t skulls. It was a long, arched stone corridor, lined on each side with grated doors . One was open, and Sylvia – wait, Silven – could just make out a stone slab, and a stone basin, and a rotten wooden crate. This place again.
Silven motioned for his sword to be quiet and edged on. The laughter of the men was suddenly drowned by the screams of women. A deep stabbing pain clutched at his stomach. There was the deep rumble of ripping cloth, whimpers, and then, panicked cries as Silven leapt into the next open cell. It was all over quickly, given that raider armour was somehow three times more welcoming to unexpected blades, and, as the troupe sank first to their knees, then to their backs in perfect harmony, Silven cursed his lack of witness for the Twenty-Ninth Annual Synchronised Death Throe Championship. That one was a beauty.
The half-naked woman looked up pitifully at her hero and begged for help. In response, Silven swept out of the corridor and pounded back upstairs. Even the sword knew to limit its doggerel to a relatively tame rhyme on gormless Gordons, and no more.
Silven stalked down the corridor, shrugging off blows as crude blades and axes rained down onto the steel of Yashurwil. And, though he moved at that half-walk, half-trot swagger that suggests more attention is turned within and less upon the two-score screaming troops jostling along behind, none could strike again. He did waddle at a steady pace, after all.
Finally, he reached a turn-off into a larger, more skull-festooned tunnel, and then on again into a round chamber covered in paper rainbows. Even the skulls wore sunglasses this deep in. The cheer was growing stronger, Silven sensed. The warlord must be near.
He shut the wooden door behind him and left fifty bandits to rub their calves and get out the cards for just another hand. He scanned the room and noted the kegs and the dart boards and the bagatelle tables – it was true that Wallace had tried to cheer the place up. What a pity Silven was feeling like a party pooper.
Tentatively, he tried the first door off the opposite rounded edge. Inside, a giant of a man rose and waved. “Awww, snap!” roared Wallace, and pointed at Silven’s chest. It took him a moment or two to work out what the hairy old lout was cackling at. He looked down and examined details. “But... it can’t be the same....”
The great, shaggy bear of a warrior let out a mighty torrent of laughter. “Course it can. All decent bling needs an iconic backstory, but it doesn’t have to be The One. What fun would that be for every bugger else? I keep a few spares around the place so that my weekly challengers don’t have to choose between my beer tokens and my bonce.” He shook his head and stared deep into Silven’s eyes. “There are so many things you are yet to understand.... my brother.”
“That’s not true!” cried Silven.
Wallace clapped a wobbly thigh with one sausage finger and cheered. “Nah, you’re not really.” He reached out for an enormous tankard on the nearest table and took a gulp. “What a tired old cliché that would be.”
Silven took a step closer. “What I mean is, I was of a rather more feminine persuasion when you last saw me.” He considered the cells for a moment and took a step back again. “Or rather, when you last knew me.”
Wallace twiddled his beard and scowled. “Then you’d be my sister. Eurgh! I’m not gross.”
Silven raised his sword. It promptly began a shanty that was all too inappropriately appropriate and it went away once again. “Sex slavery isn’t a laughing matter, Wallace, even for you. When I arrived here, I thought I was making a sound investment in my trade routes. Now, I know I’m doing justice as well.”
Wallace casually drew a throwing knife and loosed it over to his left. It thwacked into the buttocks of a crudely brushed, yet evidently much-loved, mural of a young lady without the usual number of garments on. “Consider the war around us, lady-turned-warrior-turned-serious-judgey-person. The countryside is in turmoil. If I hadn’t given those lovely little things quarters to rest in, they’d’ve been shipped off to the sea-camps in Vestria and turned into cheeseburgers or summat. Boom,” he boomed, flicking a fist in Silven’s direction. “Flimsy illogical dilemma designed to add weight to your encounter with a big player, in your face!”
Silven banged a fist down on a skull sconce by his side, and winced as a stray canine came out in his finger. “Damn cowboy dentists. Anyway, it’s time to get this over with. The decision to drag my arse out of my cushy office and traipse across this stinking marsh wasn’t made for a tin hat, trust me.”
Wallace nodded solemnly. “I bet it wasn’t.” He raised his tankard again. “But you still need to pull the breeches off thirty five more villagers before the week is up for your first meaty sip of Beardbuzzer. Sorry!” From up on a balcony behind Silven, a raider rattled a pair of mammoth skulls and tapped a dagger to a hanging tusk. The applause of his cronies followed the infuriating bu-dum tish of his taunt. “Hey, maybe I will stay here!” chimed in the sword. Silven slapped a palm to his forehead and moaned aloud.
Slowly, surely, he parted his fingers and eyed Wallace slyly as he took another swig. “Ever have any challenges about sheep-worrying?”
The jeers died out. Wallace smirked up at his audience and looked back at his visitor. “Pah! The night’s we’ve ‘ad here and you go on about sheep. As a matter of fact, we did have a ewe-slaying contest just last month. Boring. No tears from an animal....” He sniggered at some half-remembered joke.
“And?” urged Silven.
Wallace looked up, suddenly perturbed. “What do you mean? Course I was champ. Twenty five sheep in one minute with this beast. Boom!” He hefted his greataxe and winked at his men.
“Thank you,” said Silven calmly. “For making this fight so very boring.” He charged and swept his sword into Wallace’s breastplate with a mighty clank.