Lore of the Underlings: Episode 8 ~ The Trial, Page 3
John Klobucher
get…”
“You’ll live.”
“Have it your way. Watch me starve.”
Then the Finder mumbled to himself, “That’s two days running of grub denied. I’ll take it from somebody’s hide, I swear…”
“The leaver’s tale — let’s have it.”
“Of course!”
Bylo laughed like a sly hyena and snapped his sticky fingers twice. Somehow his crew knew what he was thinking.
One of them brought forth a tall shepherd’s crook pike and planted it deep in the hallowed soil. Another then hoisted the kid by his collar, leaving him hanging from its hook.
“That’s more like it,” the seeker smirked. “Now to your storytime dear, dear Fyryx…”
He wiped the mucus from his lips.
“Early this very morn it was, on the first full day downhill from Mid Summer’s peak, and just hours after the strangers’ arrival. Our snoop dogs were quick to pick up the scent of something loose in the Westie Woods. They sniffed and barked and licked their chops. They howled like wolves at the setting moon. My own sweet sweat hogs smelled it too — the unmistakable odor of folk blood fouling the night air of No Folks Land. Some fool was afoot at the Keep’s outer limits, aiming to enter the twilight zone…”
Fyryx fidgeted as he listened. He started to pace around the court.
“And so I dispatched a score of my savagest plainsmen to track the culprit down. They tore out straight as the eastern wind, riding low on a line of chevets crossbred of chevox and vell for the hunt, fixing to take their prey by surprise. Yet this leaver proved elusive… not your old-school sort of deserter. No, this one was slippery. Wily. A foxy snake of a little weasel.
“The chase went on from starfall to dawn and westbound, each step into wilder terrain. Down through the Dim Dale, over the Mole Hills, crossing the haunted Fallow Fields. Then into the dammed Mallow Marshes he led them, right to the edge of the Siren’s Mire — Syland’s cesspool and mother of swamps. That’s where they cornered him in the muck. A dead duck stuck in it up to the neck.”
“Odd duck to have flown alone,” mocked Fyryx turning on the witness. “Yet… you claim your men saw no sign of a flock?”
Bylo’s hairy nostrils flared. “Think that I’m a quack? A liar?! How quick to forget our dirty work — the legions of leavers we’ve delivered, no questions asked, for ten long years…”
“Even so Finder,” Fyryx shrugged, “I do not believe in your ‘lone leaver’ theory. Never have and never will. But don’t take my word. Let history judge. There are always accomplices, comrade.”
Bylo struggled to hold back a growl. “Whatever you say your honorrr, sirrr… But you can chew on my deposition — I arrived on scene in time to fish for this pretty young swamp thing myself, our creature from the black lagoon. And he was the only show around. No sign of a double or triple feature.”
“Where’s your evidence? Show me the muddy…”
“Urrrrrrp!” The reaper interrupted with a belch to wake the dead, a language his henchmen understood. They brought Bylo a couple of objects.
First came a sack on a citizen’s cane. Second, a single moccasin.
But Ho-man intercepted them, book tucked into the back of his pants. “I’ll take those exhibits, plainsmen. Due process you know. Court etiquette. Thanks.”
The riding hoods eyed him hard but complied.
The clerk took hold of Exhibit A, the cane, and stuck it in the floor, not far from where Treygyn was hung out to dry. A droopy sack was attached at the top. He poked it. He peered inside.
“It’s empty.”
Bylo was beside himself. “Impossible!” the big boor blubbered. “My men found that bag by the quagmire, on the fen way to Blue Bayou. Hidden in the reeds and milkweed. It was full of sandwiches — tree nut butter and syberries.”
“Ah, but the syberries,” Freebird teased, with a razz from his crow’s nest on Ho-man’s head. “Awk! It tastes like mutiny to me.”
The Finder wheeled to confront his crew.
“Sorry Bylo.”
“We was hungry.”
“And them sammies was delishes.”
All their excuses fell on deaf ears, in fact steam rose from both of Bylo’s.
But judge Fyryx had heard enough. “You can conduct your court martial later. Exhibit B is what interests me…”
Ho-man threw him the moccasin, a brown shoe of pigskin with touches of down. Fyryx fielded the footwear in stride. He studied its stitches, its art and sole.
“I recognize the handiwork. This bootie is surely of our Keep.”
He turned it lengthwise, sizing it up. “The only question is… the foot.
“Finder — where did you get this and when?”
Bylo was still in a bad mood but answered.
“A boy scouting party recovered it after, a full hour east of the leaver’s arrest in sight of Desperation Pass.”
“Oh?” noted Fyryx, perking up. “And how was he shod when your foot soldiers caught him?”
“Barefoot and empty-handed, justice, just as the tar heel hangs here now. The clammy tadpole. The slimy eel. Despite being snagged in our dragnet did this fishy one squirm to get away. Reckon that that’s when the other shoe dropped — but into the quicksand and presumed lost.”
Treygyn rattled his manacles. He wanted to say something. None paid attention.
“That’s all I needed to know,” muttered Fyryx. “Hamyx! Your plainsmen are dismissed.”
Bylo looked lost himself, perplexed. He stuck a hangnail in each ear and plucked out gobs of thick, sticky wax. He flicked them at Treygyn.
“Come again?”
“You heard me the first time. Get them gone.”
Bylo pulled something brown from his backside, a long bill scrawled on a rawhide scrap. “Not before we’re paid in full. Kegs, sticks, livestock. You know the contract.”
“Oh, you’ll get your just desserts,” hissed Fyryx, “but not until justice is said and done.”
He raised his shoeless hand. “Pikesmen! The Finder may stay. The rest, move along.”
The Guard stood up in unison, seething, even the unarmed Syar-ull. “Judge and Treasuror! Sir my sir!”
The plainsmen were ready but Bylo knew better. He turned to his crew. “Stand down. Head out.”
He spat twelve spits on the floor as each one marched through the door where they’d come in.
“Well played, brother of Ayryx, you win…” The Finder slouched toward the sidelines. “This time.” He lurched like a wounded beast. A hunchback.
Something sounding like a snicker stopped him as he reached the seats. He spun and set his sights on Fyryx.
“Mark my words, son of Hurx. Hear this vow. Someday shall I have what is rightfully mine, all that I’ve been denied — the spoils of lore. Bounty, booty, sandwiches… everything!”
Fyryx just stared at him. “Sit down Bylo.”
Gulp!
The mockatoo swallowed something.
Ho-man noticed a flameworm gone. “Freebird!” he scolded in a whisper.
“Awk! That beats a cracker, boys!”
John Cap, a few feet away, sniffed the air. “Ooo that smell… Is something burning?”
“Can you smell that smell?” asked the clerk.
Freebird coughed up a bright red fireball.
“That’s a spicy nematode. Awwwk!”
“Better lay off the earworms, birdbrain,” Ho-man gently chided him. “I’ve heard they can be addictive.”
“Now you tell me — rrrawk!” he hawked.
Fyryx tossed the shoe back to Ho-man. “Try this on the defendant, clerk.”
Ho-man knelt at the crooked pike and reached for a dangling leg — the left one — muddy, bloody, and smelly as hell. He took ahold of Treygyn’s foot.
“You’ve really stepped in it, young Mr. Yin.”
“I’m starting to get that sense, Mr. Havvum.”
Ho-man slipped the moccasin on him. It was too big and fell right off.
Ma
dam Pum held up her eagle eye glasses and unicorn ear horn. She leaned in closer. Elderman Myne at her side looked concerned.
Ho-man tried it on the right. That was no tighter. It hit the floor.
“Show him something in a sneaker!” heckled the stout Guard Oodor-ull. “Running shoes might be more fitting. Or slippers.”
Fyryx cleared his throat. “Ahem… This is no joke, honored Guard,” he grinned, “but just the clue I’ve been looking for. Good as fingerprints at the crime scene. Footprints fresh from the getaway.”
The afternoon sun had enlightened his dark-age eyes. Or so it seemed. He beamed.
“If the shoe doesn’t fit, there’s more than one culprit…”
He paused, standing taller, straight as a rod, and cast his gaze across the courtyard.
“No one escapes this magistrate. By hook or by crook I’ll catch each one. It’s time for a fishing expedition.”
Ho-man reeled in the shoddy exhibit and stood up. He took it and stepped aside.
Treygyn looked on, craning his neck, to see what this sole searching was about. “Holy mackerel!” he gawked. It was large as a barge, an oafish loafer, and more of a toe boat than moccasin. Worn weathered leather. Frayed broken laces. Nothing that he’d be caught dead in. He eyed it like a foreign object.
Then he did a double take. “Slymie…” He cussed something under his breath.
Fyryx charged him like a lone shark. The predator brother smelled blood in the water.
“What was that, small fry?”
The shrimp clammed up.
Leader and leaver were eye to eye now and face to face facing each other down. Yet silence seethed like a sea between them till the angry angler spoke.
“I’m not sure that you appreciate, boy, the dire straits you’re in.”
“Oh!” said an innocent-looking Treygyn. “No, mister lord judge Treasuror sir
“You’ll live.”
“Have it your way. Watch me starve.”
Then the Finder mumbled to himself, “That’s two days running of grub denied. I’ll take it from somebody’s hide, I swear…”
“The leaver’s tale — let’s have it.”
“Of course!”
Bylo laughed like a sly hyena and snapped his sticky fingers twice. Somehow his crew knew what he was thinking.
One of them brought forth a tall shepherd’s crook pike and planted it deep in the hallowed soil. Another then hoisted the kid by his collar, leaving him hanging from its hook.
“That’s more like it,” the seeker smirked. “Now to your storytime dear, dear Fyryx…”
He wiped the mucus from his lips.
“Early this very morn it was, on the first full day downhill from Mid Summer’s peak, and just hours after the strangers’ arrival. Our snoop dogs were quick to pick up the scent of something loose in the Westie Woods. They sniffed and barked and licked their chops. They howled like wolves at the setting moon. My own sweet sweat hogs smelled it too — the unmistakable odor of folk blood fouling the night air of No Folks Land. Some fool was afoot at the Keep’s outer limits, aiming to enter the twilight zone…”
Fyryx fidgeted as he listened. He started to pace around the court.
“And so I dispatched a score of my savagest plainsmen to track the culprit down. They tore out straight as the eastern wind, riding low on a line of chevets crossbred of chevox and vell for the hunt, fixing to take their prey by surprise. Yet this leaver proved elusive… not your old-school sort of deserter. No, this one was slippery. Wily. A foxy snake of a little weasel.
“The chase went on from starfall to dawn and westbound, each step into wilder terrain. Down through the Dim Dale, over the Mole Hills, crossing the haunted Fallow Fields. Then into the dammed Mallow Marshes he led them, right to the edge of the Siren’s Mire — Syland’s cesspool and mother of swamps. That’s where they cornered him in the muck. A dead duck stuck in it up to the neck.”
“Odd duck to have flown alone,” mocked Fyryx turning on the witness. “Yet… you claim your men saw no sign of a flock?”
Bylo’s hairy nostrils flared. “Think that I’m a quack? A liar?! How quick to forget our dirty work — the legions of leavers we’ve delivered, no questions asked, for ten long years…”
“Even so Finder,” Fyryx shrugged, “I do not believe in your ‘lone leaver’ theory. Never have and never will. But don’t take my word. Let history judge. There are always accomplices, comrade.”
Bylo struggled to hold back a growl. “Whatever you say your honorrr, sirrr… But you can chew on my deposition — I arrived on scene in time to fish for this pretty young swamp thing myself, our creature from the black lagoon. And he was the only show around. No sign of a double or triple feature.”
“Where’s your evidence? Show me the muddy…”
“Urrrrrrp!” The reaper interrupted with a belch to wake the dead, a language his henchmen understood. They brought Bylo a couple of objects.
First came a sack on a citizen’s cane. Second, a single moccasin.
But Ho-man intercepted them, book tucked into the back of his pants. “I’ll take those exhibits, plainsmen. Due process you know. Court etiquette. Thanks.”
The riding hoods eyed him hard but complied.
The clerk took hold of Exhibit A, the cane, and stuck it in the floor, not far from where Treygyn was hung out to dry. A droopy sack was attached at the top. He poked it. He peered inside.
“It’s empty.”
Bylo was beside himself. “Impossible!” the big boor blubbered. “My men found that bag by the quagmire, on the fen way to Blue Bayou. Hidden in the reeds and milkweed. It was full of sandwiches — tree nut butter and syberries.”
“Ah, but the syberries,” Freebird teased, with a razz from his crow’s nest on Ho-man’s head. “Awk! It tastes like mutiny to me.”
The Finder wheeled to confront his crew.
“Sorry Bylo.”
“We was hungry.”
“And them sammies was delishes.”
All their excuses fell on deaf ears, in fact steam rose from both of Bylo’s.
But judge Fyryx had heard enough. “You can conduct your court martial later. Exhibit B is what interests me…”
Ho-man threw him the moccasin, a brown shoe of pigskin with touches of down. Fyryx fielded the footwear in stride. He studied its stitches, its art and sole.
“I recognize the handiwork. This bootie is surely of our Keep.”
He turned it lengthwise, sizing it up. “The only question is… the foot.
“Finder — where did you get this and when?”
Bylo was still in a bad mood but answered.
“A boy scouting party recovered it after, a full hour east of the leaver’s arrest in sight of Desperation Pass.”
“Oh?” noted Fyryx, perking up. “And how was he shod when your foot soldiers caught him?”
“Barefoot and empty-handed, justice, just as the tar heel hangs here now. The clammy tadpole. The slimy eel. Despite being snagged in our dragnet did this fishy one squirm to get away. Reckon that that’s when the other shoe dropped — but into the quicksand and presumed lost.”
Treygyn rattled his manacles. He wanted to say something. None paid attention.
“That’s all I needed to know,” muttered Fyryx. “Hamyx! Your plainsmen are dismissed.”
Bylo looked lost himself, perplexed. He stuck a hangnail in each ear and plucked out gobs of thick, sticky wax. He flicked them at Treygyn.
“Come again?”
“You heard me the first time. Get them gone.”
Bylo pulled something brown from his backside, a long bill scrawled on a rawhide scrap. “Not before we’re paid in full. Kegs, sticks, livestock. You know the contract.”
“Oh, you’ll get your just desserts,” hissed Fyryx, “but not until justice is said and done.”
He raised his shoeless hand. “Pikesmen! The Finder may stay. The rest, move along.”
The Guard stood up in unison, seething, even the unarmed Syar-ull. “Judge and Treasuror! Sir my sir!”
The plainsmen were ready but Bylo knew better. He turned to his crew. “Stand down. Head out.”
He spat twelve spits on the floor as each one marched through the door where they’d come in.
“Well played, brother of Ayryx, you win…” The Finder slouched toward the sidelines. “This time.” He lurched like a wounded beast. A hunchback.
Something sounding like a snicker stopped him as he reached the seats. He spun and set his sights on Fyryx.
“Mark my words, son of Hurx. Hear this vow. Someday shall I have what is rightfully mine, all that I’ve been denied — the spoils of lore. Bounty, booty, sandwiches… everything!”
Fyryx just stared at him. “Sit down Bylo.”
Gulp!
The mockatoo swallowed something.
Ho-man noticed a flameworm gone. “Freebird!” he scolded in a whisper.
“Awk! That beats a cracker, boys!”
John Cap, a few feet away, sniffed the air. “Ooo that smell… Is something burning?”
“Can you smell that smell?” asked the clerk.
Freebird coughed up a bright red fireball.
“That’s a spicy nematode. Awwwk!”
“Better lay off the earworms, birdbrain,” Ho-man gently chided him. “I’ve heard they can be addictive.”
“Now you tell me — rrrawk!” he hawked.
Fyryx tossed the shoe back to Ho-man. “Try this on the defendant, clerk.”
Ho-man knelt at the crooked pike and reached for a dangling leg — the left one — muddy, bloody, and smelly as hell. He took ahold of Treygyn’s foot.
“You’ve really stepped in it, young Mr. Yin.”
“I’m starting to get that sense, Mr. Havvum.”
Ho-man slipped the moccasin on him. It was too big and fell right off.
Ma
dam Pum held up her eagle eye glasses and unicorn ear horn. She leaned in closer. Elderman Myne at her side looked concerned.
Ho-man tried it on the right. That was no tighter. It hit the floor.
“Show him something in a sneaker!” heckled the stout Guard Oodor-ull. “Running shoes might be more fitting. Or slippers.”
Fyryx cleared his throat. “Ahem… This is no joke, honored Guard,” he grinned, “but just the clue I’ve been looking for. Good as fingerprints at the crime scene. Footprints fresh from the getaway.”
The afternoon sun had enlightened his dark-age eyes. Or so it seemed. He beamed.
“If the shoe doesn’t fit, there’s more than one culprit…”
He paused, standing taller, straight as a rod, and cast his gaze across the courtyard.
“No one escapes this magistrate. By hook or by crook I’ll catch each one. It’s time for a fishing expedition.”
Ho-man reeled in the shoddy exhibit and stood up. He took it and stepped aside.
Treygyn looked on, craning his neck, to see what this sole searching was about. “Holy mackerel!” he gawked. It was large as a barge, an oafish loafer, and more of a toe boat than moccasin. Worn weathered leather. Frayed broken laces. Nothing that he’d be caught dead in. He eyed it like a foreign object.
Then he did a double take. “Slymie…” He cussed something under his breath.
Fyryx charged him like a lone shark. The predator brother smelled blood in the water.
“What was that, small fry?”
The shrimp clammed up.
Leader and leaver were eye to eye now and face to face facing each other down. Yet silence seethed like a sea between them till the angry angler spoke.
“I’m not sure that you appreciate, boy, the dire straits you’re in.”
“Oh!” said an innocent-looking Treygyn. “No, mister lord judge Treasuror sir
