Hair of the Dog - Part One,

Author's note: this is patently not a short story - it is adapted from my novel of the same name, but the circumstances fit the prompt so precisely it was difficult not to publish. It may be continued if circumstances allow.

Rumbold Crucible, Sorcerer (third class), woke up feeling that someone had been using his head as a bell clapper. He groaned and reached out a scrawny foot to lever himself out of bed. It was only when the bed tipped alarmingly and he fell out that he realised something was wrong. In glazed disbelief he just had time to witness the floor hurtling towards him before his body struck, turning the dull thumping that had awakened him into a full bodied kettledrum overture. Moaning, he lay there with his rump presented to the world like a cyclopean carcass on a butcher's slab until, slowly, the stark bollock-nakedness of his scrawny body seeped its icy way into his consciousness. "Grundle!" he roared, and then wished he hadn't.

He dragged himself erect, nursing a head in which, apparently, a squad of Palace Guards were now dancing a hob-nailed gavotte and collapsed into a chair, kicking over an empty bottle, which caromed into another, then another, setting up a delicate, tinkling counterpoint to the tympani thumping in his head. He pulled the drape from the adjoining table around his body and risked another yell. "Grundle!" 

There was a rustle of straw in the corner, illumined by a shaft of diffident sunlight that looked as though it had got up far too early, and a tousled head poked out, squinting bleary eyes. "Wha...? Unnh?"

Crucible pointed animatedly to the bed, gently oscillating ten feet above the floor. "Did you do that?" he rasped. The magician's scruffy manservant crawled the rest of the way out of his nest, slowly shaking his head to clear it. "Do you know what time it is?" he complained, looking up.

Crucible winced. “For pity’s sake, don't shout!" he whimpered. "How many times have I told you not to go browsing in the Spell Book without asking?” 

Grundle struggled to his knees and looked at the suspended bed in amazement. "It weren't me!" he denied, strenuously. "Why would I hang a bed on the ceiling? It's me who has to make it up of a morning!"

The shaft of sunlight withdrew hastily, as if deciding it was much too early in the day to go poking about in other people's business, and the corners of the chamber were once more plunged into anonymity.

Crucible shivered and licked his lips with a tongue that felt like a large, hairy, caterpillar and tasted as if the Guardsmen's boots had just trampled it to death. His expression spoke volumes, for the servant scowled at his master. "Stewbother Swamp Water," he announced, scathingly, glancing at the empty bottles.  

Crucible stared at the collection of bottles rolling around as the manservant brushed past to light a fire. He ran a hand gingerly through his lank, greying hair. "Six bottles! Even I can't drink six bottles of Stewbother!"

Grundle grunted, his voice echoing up the chimney. "Well it must be the mice then. That lot weren't there when I went to bed. And you came back through the window again, didn't you? No wonder it's perishing in here!" He moved over to the open casement, jettisoned the contents of the night-soil jar outside, and slammed the window shut, peering down into the murky depths of the street below just showing the first, reluctant, stirrings of another day in Ramshot, capital of Ransidd Province and the Mecca for Mages from all over Ramidor. And seeing that most of them lived there, they didn’t have that far to go.

Reinforced by a hardier band of brothers, the sunbeam burst back into the room as the molten globe of Ratarse, Ramidor's third sun, thrust above the Palace walls glimpsed across a vista of pantiled roofs.Crucible yelped and covered his eyes. Grundle eyed his master with distaste. "What do you look like?" he asked. "And where's your nightshirt? You never go to bed without your nightshirt. Not," he added fairly "that your bed has ever been on the ceiling before. It's warmer up there, is it?"

Crucible groped for his robe and drew it over his head. "Well, if it wasn't you, who was it?" he groaned. "If I was as drunk as these bottles say I was, I couldn't have cast any sort of spell."

Grundle sniffed. "Well you must have had a good fairy with you, that's all I can say. Do you want any breakfast?" Crucible retched and Grundle sniffed. "No, I didn't think so."

Just then there was a clattering of nail-shod feet in the street that roused Crucible's own little clog-dancers and he clapped his hands to his head again. Grundle crossed to the window. "Turning out the Guard early this morning," he remarked. "Looks like Fred Shovell and his thick mate, Brunt. And they've got that old crone Doris the Diviner with them. Those rods of hers are going around nineteen to the dozen. Somebody's been up to no good."

At mention of Doris’s name, Crucible blanched and sat up. "Grundle," he whispered urgently. "Where did I go last night?"

"Tcchha! Am I my master's keeper?" said Grundle, spreading his arms. "The day you tell me where you're going is the day Ratarse only sets once!"

Crucible ignored him, looking anxious. "Who else do you know who drinks Stewbother?"

"What, and still alive?" Three. And one of those barely compos mentis. That leaves you and Calparthia, the Emperor's Sorcerer ... and everybody says he's mad.

Crucible looked worried. "If he wasn't, he is now."

"And what would you know?” Grundle scoffed. “Are we moving in elevated circles now?"

Crucible looked icily at him. "As a matter of fact, yes - I've just remembered where I was. And I’ll thank you to remember who pays whose wages around here."

Grundle started to grin in derision, but the grin died on his face as he saw his master's expression. He had seen the same sort of look on the face of a thief who had just been drawn and quartered before being properly hung, and hadn't particularly wanted to see it again.

Crucible turned to the bed and clicked his fingers. It came crashing down from the ceiling, splintering the floorboards and making Grundle leap in alarm. The magician pointed a wavering finger at the dishevelled bedclothes. "Look!"

Grundle looked, then moved closer and looked again. "A stick," he said, and shrugged. "Granted, almost a club. So, you slept with a stick last night. Each to their own." His face assumed a dreamy expression. "I once knew a girl who slept with a live snake - and it made it a difficult act to follow I can tell you ..." He checked himself ”... but a stick's all right. If you like that sort of thing. What is it, knot fetish or do we just poke ...?"

"Don't be so disgusting!" Crucible exclaimed, incensed, "Sorcerers don’t waste energy on such base matters." He approached the bed with trepidation. "That isn't just an ordinary stick," he said with awe. "That is Supreme Magister Calparthia's own, personal, wand. I won it," Crucible said simply, biting his fingernails. “I remember everything! Calparthia and his cronies were slumming it in the ‘Boar and Strumpet’, and I challenged him to a drinking competition, sorcerer to sorcerer. I won and left them sleeping it off under the table. The wand was the wager!” He dived to the cupboard and began throwing things into a trunk. "Get packed!" he shouted.

"Won't help," came a tiny voice.

Crucible threw things into the trunk even faster.

"Who said that?" Grundle asked, nervously.

“You might get away for a little while ... but he'll find you," the little voice piped in a self-satisfied manner.

Grundle followed the sound and then leapt backwards, for the stick had grown tiny limbs and was leaning back on the pillow with its legs crossed, holding its little knobbly head on crooked hands. He grabbed at his master's sleeve, mouth working soundlessly.

"I know, I know!" Crucible snapped irritably. “If you can't do anything better than flap your mouth, go and look out for Doris and her cronies."

Grundle regained his composure. " … but it's talking!" he exclaimed, indignantly.

"But it's talking," mimicked the little voice, "You'd have something to say, too, if you'd been kidnapped!"

Grundle turned to his frenzied employer. "What's it mean, kidnapped?" he said. "I thought you said you'd won it."

"I did," Crucible replied, chewing worriedly on his lower lip. "It's just a bad loser, that's all. Like its master."

“Can’t you just give it back?” Grundle asked, backing away from the stick which was just clambering down from the bed. 

"Sorry. Doesn't work like that. He won me fair and square. I'm his until my Master claims me back. I'm honour bound to stay, through thick and thin, fair and foul, grief and pleasure, disaster and ..."

"Yes! Yes! I get the picture," Crucible interjected, snarling.

“... although I don't know why I should. It's like putting a lighted torch in a baby's hands. Every inch of this knotty little body is packed so full of energy you should really wear gloves just to pick me up. Don't forget I'm a Supreme Magister's Magic Wand."

"Am I likely to?" Crucible moaned.

"Not if you're wise," cautioned the stick.

Grundle backed further away from the wand, finishing up against the wall just as a loud, imperious hammering came from the street door.

Crucible jumped in consternation and crossed to the window, flattening himself along the wall to squint through the dirt-grimed panes. "Too late!" he moaned. "It's the Guard. And that old crone Doris, looking as smug as a cat in a dairy."

"Told you so." The wand waddled over to the window and hauled itself up Crucible’s legs to peer through the glass. "Hey ..." it began, raising its stubby little hand to rap at the pane, but Crucible, in panic, clapped his hand over its mouth until it bit him and he dropped it with a muttered curse. It clattered onto the floor and lay there, looking up balefully. "You shouldn't have done that," it said, "I can get very nasty when I want to. I hope that turns septic."

Crucible sucked at his hand with an air of distraction verging on hysteria at the sound of bolts being shot back from below as the landlord unbarred the door.

"Do something!" Grundle screamed, the vision of twenty years' hard labour in the Imperial prison dragging chains before his eyes.

Crucible raised his hands to his head and screamed back. "What?"

"I don't know. You're the magician. Do some magicking," Grundle shrieked, hopping up and down in agitation.

Raised voices and the heavy clumping of boot-shod feet negotiating bare stairs racketed up from the ground floor and stopped outside the Chamber door. There was a heavy hammering, accompanied by a cackle from Doris, and the door suddenly splintered under the assault and flew in, depositing Private Brunt on the floor.

As the door flew off its hinges, Crucible shrieked. Then he grabbed the wand, which gave a strangled squawk and, catching hold of Grundle by the scruff of the neck, brandished the struggling stick and muttered a hasty incantation. The last thing anyone heard was the sudden popping of air filling the space previously occupied by two anxious bodies and a struggling stick.

-oOo-

The next thing Grundle knew, a bustling, early-morning market-place had replaced the dingy bedchamber. Crucible dived down a dark alley, dragging Grundle after him, and ducked behind a pile of crates and garbage. Grundle squatted beside him, spluttering. “Where the hell are we?"

"Who cares?" Crucible replied. "Out of reach of Calparthia, that's all that matters."

"Oh, that's all right then!" Grundle snorted. "Never mind we've got no luggage, no money, and we're totally lost. Fine."

"Oh, shut up! I've enough to contend with. Would you rather split rocks in the Imperial chain gang? I got us away, didn't I?"

A muffled voice from behind Crucible piped up "And I suppose I had nothing to do with that, then?" The wand pushed its way out from behind Crucible. "Since when has a third-class sorcerer been able to cast the 'erehwesle' spell?" 

Crucible sighed and stood up. “Come on. Let’s find out where we are. It won’t be long before Calparthia picks up the trail.”

They came to a fork in the alley-way and were debating which way to go when the door in a tavern at the intersection burst open and a huge man ran into them. Crucible skipped out of the way, knocking the stick out of his belt as he did so. It struck the ground on its head and bounced between the pistoning legs of the fugitive, bringing him down. Grundle tried to get out of the way, but he and the man both fell in a threshing of arms, legs and money purses accompanied by fearful curses, not least of which emanated from the wand at its rude awakening.

"You hulking great scumbucket!" it swore, as it disentangled itself from the big man’s ankles.

The scumbucket roared and clubbed a fist above Grundle's head, thinking it was he who had spoken. Grundle shrieked and tried to draw his head into his shoulders, but Crucible, recovering from his surprise, automatically snatched up the cursing wand and brought it down with all his might on the scumbucket's head. There was a solid ‘clunk’ and both he - and the wand - lost consciousness.

The door burst open again and fell off its hinges as an even larger individual ran out wielding a pole-axe in hands that made it look like an ice-pick, followed by a hand-wringing money-lender, severed purse strings flapping. The giant stopped short at the pile of bodies, but the usurer fell with a cry of pleasure on his money pouches, scooping them up and stuffing them into his robe, gabbling the insane catechism of the once-more criminally wealthy.

Crucible stood transfixed, looking with horror at the rigid stick and wondering what on earth had possessed him to mete out such summary punishment with a Supreme Magister's Magic Wand, then turned to help Grundle, who was struggling from beneath the thief's limp body. However, the giant pre-empted him by the simple expedient of hauling the prostrate felon off the ground by his hair and then dropping him when Grundle had scrambled clear. 

Grundle hopped out of the way as the wizened little usurer scrabbled around, picking up the loose change and completely ignoring him. Grundle pointedly said to the moneylender’s back. "Don’t mention it! If anything deserves a reward, felling a thief does!”

Immediately, the man stiffened as if someone had just rammed a pole up his unprotected rear and clutched his pouches to his chest. "Reward?” he looked fearfully over his shoulder. "There's enough thieves willing to steal it, never mind giving it away. If you hadn't got in the way Haarn would have caught up with him. I didn't get where I am by throwing money around, friend." He scrambled to the side of the giant who was still looking bemused, as if something unintelligible had just got in the way of him hitting someone very hard. 

"Haarn hit!" he rumbled, raising a fist that made Grundle's eyes water just to look at it.

.

"Yes!" urged the moneylender. "Small man want take away money. Haarn hit!"

A cloud passed over Haarn's face as he struggled with the information. "Why Haarn hit?" he faltered, "Midget no steal. Midget stop thief."

"Never mind the niceties!" shrieked the moneylender. "Haarn hit like Master pay for, otherwise Master no have money to pay Haarn."

The complexity of the sentence was too much for the big man and he ran a hand down his face. "But midget not bad man. Haarn only hit bad men," he explained, patiently. A dawning comprehension lifted the cloud over his face. "If Haarn no hit man on ground, Midget stop man run away. If midget stop man run away, midget good man! Haarn no hit." The giant delivered himself of this speech with the air of one who has solved a great truth, and plucked Grundle off the ground with one enormous hand, planting a huge kiss on both cheeks. He deposited him back on the ground, face to face with his Master. "Midget friend. Master friend. Midget stop thief. Master pay friend. Is only fair." He folded his arms in evident satisfaction and beamed an alarming grin that tipped his helmet rakishly over one eye.

Haarn's master took a step back and clutched his money bags tighter. “Are you mad, you heathen half-wit? If you'd been quicker he wouldn't have got out of the door.”

"Ah, but he wasn't quick, was he?" Grundle chipped in. "If it wasn't for us, sleeping beauty would've been long gone, and your money with him. It's only common decency after all.”

"Piss off!" snarled the moneylender, backing towards the door. It was a mistake, because the door was lying on the ground behind him. With a yell he tripped backwards landing on it with his feet in the air and his money pouches once more scattering in all directions. Haarn hooked a booted toe casually under the door and flicked it up, catapulting the usurer back into the tavern where he could be heard roundly cursing and scampering about after his coinage.

Haarn snorted, and picked up a loose money pouch tossing it to Grundle who caught it, surprised. "Haarn finish with Master. Master bad man. Haarn not clever, but Haarn know right from wrong. Midget deserve money."

Grundle peered inside the bag and whistled. "There's close on 50 gold pieces here!"

Haarn shrugged. "Master got plenty."

Grundle needed no second bidding and tucked the pouch securely under his jerkin. He motioned urgently to Crucible to make themselves scarce. Fifty yards further on he stopped and turned back to see Haarn standing forlornly at the crossroads and, exasperated, waved the giant to join them. "We’re probably going to need him,” he said to Crucible, "something tells me you've landed us in an adventure none of us really wanted!"

To be continued