A Company of Heroes Book Three: The Princess (15 page)

CHAPTER NINE

HERE AND THERE

Thud and his rescuers are several miles outside the city before he is allowed to protrude his head from the bundles and baggage that fill the floor of the little wagon. It reminds Rykkla of a pink egg sitting in its nest. When Thud speaks, it looks as though the egg are cracking and she half expected something to hatch from it.

The trio had not been disturbed while leaving the city. Its officials were more concerned about what was disappearing into and appearing out of the ground than with gypsy wagons trundling from the city. Anything
leaving
the town was fine with them.

The crater that the Kobolds had made in the city’s central square remained undisturbed for more than a year before the townspeople finally accepted it, since nothing further ever emerged from it. It eventually became half filled with stagnant little pools of greenish rainwater and the rubbish that blew or is thrown into it. There is considerable debate over whether it should be filled in and paved over. A small monument is erected at last, by public subscription, to commemorate the event. It is a simple, squat pedestal bearing a somewhat imaginative likeness of Thud. There was hope that the depression might serve to attract tourists to the town, and that might indeed have been the case have not subsequent events in Tamlaght provided irresistible competition. No one, it seemed, wished to travel the necessary hundreds of miles to simply visit an otherwise undistinguished city with a hole in the middle of its central plaza, even if it did boast a mediocre sculpture of a fat man.

“Where are we?” asks Thud. It is the first time since his capture several weeks earlier that it has occurred to him to wonder where he might be. Perhaps the earlier hopelessness that had so depressed his thoughts is passing.

“We just left Fezzoo,” replies Busra, glancing over his shoulder as he flicks the flanks of the pair of little mules that pull the wagon. The animals ignor him.

“Who’s Fezzoo?”

“You can come on out now, I think,” interjects Rykkla.

“Fezzoo,” explains Busra, as Thud struggles to free himself of his friends’ belongings, threatening to overturn the little wagon in the process, “is the capitol of Fezzara.”

“What’s Fezzara?”

“Fezzara is north of Crotoy, and Crotoy, anticipating your next question, is the country that lies between us and Tamlaght.”

“Blavek’s in Tamlaght, isn’t it?”

“It is indeed, my friend.”

“Are we going there?”

“It’s as good a place as any!” Busra replies, though he sees no point in mentioning that Blavek lies more than twelve hundred miles away in a highly idealistic straight line, as well as through some of the most rugged topography in the islands. Nor that traveling there is not part of either his immediate or even future plans.

“Do you think the princess might be there?”

“Your Princess Bronwyn?”

“Uh huh.”

“I wouldn’t know. That’s where she’s from, isn’t it? And isn’t that where she is trying to go?”

“I think so.”

“Then you might as well go as far in that direction with us as you can.”

“All right.”

Thud has made himself comfortable atop the big, canvas-bagged bundles, having moved things with corners and edges to the periphery of the wagon. He resembles not a little another big canvas bag himself, especially since he is still wearing the sackcloth robe he had been given for his fortunately interrupted immolation.

The wagon is not very large and is covered by a dingy canvas cover supported by four iron semihoops. This is now rolled up at the sides so that Thud has a clear view of the landscape as well as a little ventilation. Busra and his niece sit on a plank that serves as the driver’s seat.

Outside of Fezzoo the countryside is rustic to a wild and picturesque degree that would be delightful to tourists if Fezzara had any, but the narrow twisting tracks that wind round the craggy boulders and ford cascading streams cast something of a pall over whatever aesthetic attractions the scenery might have held for Busra as he coaxes his recalcitrant and resentful animals over and through rocks and ruts and water.

Between Fezzoo and Flekke, the capital of Crotoy, the trio easily falls back into their old routine and earns more than enough money with the revived strong-man act to finance a certain degree of comfort: they can afford ferries when they are a convenience (which is a blessing in the fjord- and lake-slashed northern countries), comfortable inns at least once or twice a week, and good food and drink at those same inns and at taverns or good drink and the materials for making their own good food when camping out. There is always every day a little money left over so that an iron box that Busra keeps under the seat of the wagon gradually fills with the accumulating gold and silver.

At every village and hamlet between the two capitals Thud and Rykkla do their act, twice every weekday and three times daily on the weekends, that is the advertised schedule; in truth they perform as often as they can get audiences to pay to watch. Busra himself takes progressively less part in the performances until eventually Rykkla and Thud alone are left to entertain. Instead, Busra devotes his time to what he likes to call “management,” which entails, in fact, far more time and labor than he had already been devoting as a performer. And it is mostly through his efforts at bill-posting (he would hire every child in a town at a poenig apiece and a free pass to distribute handbills, and half a dozen older ones to plaster every available vertical surface with posters); placing advertisements in newspapers, or seeing that reporters and editors receive passes so that some feat or imaginary story about Thud (for whom Busra has invented a history even more fantastic than the already incredible truth) would get a few inches of column space; acting as roustabout, ticket seller and ticket collector, master of ceremonies and bouncer; and he developed a tidily profitable business in the selling of refreshments (Rykkla-concocted lemonade, cookies and popcorn, and store-bought candies for the ladies and children; Busra-enhanced lemonade for the men) and souvenirs (cast-plaster figures of Thud, illustrated booklets purporting to impart the secrets of his great strength, photographs of Rykkla in her costume, which latter are indeed very popular).

As summer approaches the weather becomes clement enough to preclude the erection of a tent, which is just as well since Busra and Rykkla have not yet been able to replace the big one they had lost in the fire. Instead, an encircling screen of canvas panels, painted with verve and imagination, if not accuracy, by Rykkla herself, serves to shield the performers from those who are impecunious, incurious or miserly. As their reputation spreads and proceeds them, these latter became fewer and fewer in number, in indirect proportion to the volume of precious metal in the iron box.

There is always a moment after a show has begun when Busra can lean against one of the supporting poles, arms crossed over his massive chest, and admire the spectacle, which he never tires of watching. At night, the circular wall of spectacularly painted canvas (Rykkla works only in primary colors) ripples behind the heads of the crowded spectactors. Atop each supporting pole a flaring torch burns, and the wagon, which when unfolded acts as a stage, is also surrounded by a dozen torches and lanterns. The fluttering, flickering light imparts a sense of motion to an audience packed too tightly to itself actually move and even the painted figures seem to stir impatiently. Busra would begin the show by standing on the platform and announcing the upcoming performance in terms so gaudy, so purply effusive, so unlikely in their exaggeration that not one member of the audience fails to believe every word he spoke. Any restlessness, conversation or laughter is quickly replaced by a hush of breathless expectancy Busra gives a history of Thud that is more often than not at complete variance with the booklets he is to sell after the show because he enjoys making up a different story every time, even if he were to feel that any particular compulsion to tell the truth, which does not occur to him. Rykkla’s beauty inspires a poesy that, depending upon the sexual majority of the audience, can be either inspiring in its description of an almost angelic purity or leeringly suggestive.

Having done his job of providing fuel for every possible expectancy, leaving his audience silent and agape in its anxiousness, he retires to his overlooking post.

After an almost unbearable half minute of silence there suddenly comes the sound of music, tinny, scratchy and determinedly treble, but music nevertheless. This is a wonder in itself since there are no musicians present, and the marvelous Londeacan mechanical sound reproducer is not only hitherto unseen and unheard in these rural communities but altogether unheard-of. But before the audience can give another thought to the mystery of the music’s invisible source, the torches suddenly flare and in the dazzle of light there appears a slender figure that brings gasps from every man and elder boy, unabashed and audible if single, unsuccessfully repressed if married, and a sigh somewhere between admiration and envy from every woman and girl. Rykkla stands, feet together, arms raised over her head, so motionless that for a brief moment not a few members of the audience would think, with a pang of disappointment, that it is nothing but a statue or painting that has been unveiled. She wears only a glossy, sheer black leotard covered with infinitesimal iridescent scales that shimmer purply and greenly, like the sheen of a grackle’s wings. It exactly matches her sleek obsidian hair. The costume is cut very high on her hips so that her long legs look as though they originate in her armpits. The décolletage plummets in a broad swoop of honeyed skin and her breasts are nearly squeezed from their insubstantial confinement by her raised arms. At that moment, had the show ended there, many in the audience would have felt that they had gotten more than their money’s worth.

The statue is motionless only for that mesmerizing moment; then with a graceful gesture, a swing of the slender arms, Rykkla wordlessly introduces her partner. It is a testament to the girl’s presence that Thud has managed to gain the platform unseen until that moment. However, as soon as her gesture swings every eye toward him, she is immediately, if temporarily, forgotten, which is certainly a testament in turn to Thud. Busra never fails to be amused by the ripple of movement the giant’s appearance invariably causes, as the audience instinctively and unconsciously draws back from the stage.Busra never tires, too, of watching his niece and their adopted friend as they go through their undeviating routine: Rykkla’s almost unearthly grace and beauty, and no little strength of her own, the sexuality she radiates as unabashedly and naturally as a blacksmith’s hearth radiates light and heat, a paradoxical sexuality that is intense because it is so pure and so perfect as to seem untouchable; Thud’s enormous strength, a power that is clearly inhuman, undoubtedly superhuman, and seemingly boundless, yet which never seems frightening, like a powerful machine in the hands of a skilled and benevolent operator. It seems to the uninitiated that the contrast between the girl and the giant would be an insurmountable impediment to success or even verisimilitude, that either the girl’s perfection would make the giant appear hopelessly slow, massive and clumsy, or that the giant would make the girl all but invisible. Yet, inexplicably neither effect occurs. Instead they complement one another as perfectly and naturally as fire and ice, sweet and sour or orange and purple. Certainly, without Rykkla, Thud would have still been impressive, but probably no more interesting to watch for an extended period than a pile driver. Without Thud, Rykkla would have been little more, ultimately, than just one more moderately talented gymnast, trapeze artist or aerialist; and perhaps she may have seemed just a little less beautiful without Thud’s contrast, although that is an ungallant supposition. Thud is neither speedy nor agile, and had the act been left entirely to him it would have been excruciatingly slow, no matter what marvels of strength he might demonstrate; Rykkla added life and action and busyness. She spins and whirls around his solidity like a satellite caught in the gravity of a primal and vasty planet. She coils around his banyan-like trunk like the sinuous boa, like the snake’s caressing tongue. Like a glossy rivulet of molten licorice, she pours down his shoulders and flanks and a quavering sigh of envy issues from the men watching. She allows Thud to juggle her like an Indian club, as effortlessly as a drum major’s baton; she seems to float weightlessly from hand to hand; she climbs to his shoulders and runs to the end of Thud’s outstretched arm, which remains as rigid as an I-beam as she dances and does handstands on the broad forearm; she jokes and sings clever jingles, filling her partner’s silence; she acts as his assistant, handing him the railroad spikes and horseshoes that he ties into knots for sale later as souvenirs; she lures perspiring and bug-eyed yokels from the audience to take part in comically suggestive routines to the immeasurable amusement of his friends and the volunteer’s almost immobilizing embarassment, not so much at the jokes and laughter made at his expense, but at the proximity of darksome Rykkla and the certainty that the rube’s lust is so transparent to the audience that he might as well be standing there pale and naked. For forty-five minutes at least twice every day, more often half a dozen times, the act is repeated. By the time the trio reaches Flekke, Busra feels ready to make a proposition. He broaches the subject as they eat their dinner.

“My dear niece and my great friend,” he begins, “we have been successful beyond our wildest dreams. Rykkla, you and I both think that we might never be able to form another circus, certainly not for a great many years . . .”

“And we have the money now?” she asks anticipatorily.

“Enough for two circuses! This is what I think we ought to do. We ought to stay the summer here in Flekke, order wagons, tents, rigging, and while this is being done I can send out word all over Guesclin and even the Continent that Busra’s great circus is back in business!”

“You mean get all of our old people back again?”