The Light Fantastic
Page 23

He held up his latest work in a pair of tweezers.
'The strangest thing I have ever made,' he said, 'but practical, I can see that. What did you say they were called again?'
'Din-chewersh,' said Cohen. He looked at the horseshoe shapes nestling in the wrinkled palm of his hand, then opened his mouth and made a series of painful grunting noises.
The door burst open. The men strode in and took up positions around the walls. They were sweating and uncertain, but their leader pushed Cohen aside disdainfully and picked up the dwarf by his shirt.
'We tole you yesterday, small stuff,' he said. 'You go ut feet down or feet up, we don't mind. So now we gonna get really —.'
Cohen tapped him on the shoulder. The man looked around irritably.
'What do you want, grandad?' he snarled.
Cohen paused until he had the man's full attention, and then he smiled. It was a slow, lazy smile, unveiling about 300 carats of mouth jewellery that seemed to light up the room.
'I will count to three,' he said, in a friendly tone of voice. 'One. Two.' His bony knee came up and buried itself in the man's groin with a satisfyingly meaty noise, and he half-turned to bring the full force of an elbow into the kidneys as the leader collapsed around his private universe of pain.
'Three,' he told the ball of agony on the floor. Cohen had heard of fighting fair, and had long ago decided he wanted no part of it.
He looked up at the other men, and flashed his incredible srnile.
They ought to have rushed him. Instead one of them, secure in the knowledge that he had a broadsword and Cohen didn't, sidled crabwise towards him.
'Oh, no,' said Cohen, waving his hands. 'Oh, come on, lad, not like that.'
The man looked sideways at him.
'Not like what?' he asked suspiciously.
'You never held a sword before?'
The man half-turned to his colleagues for reassurance.
'Not a lot, no,' he said. 'Not often.' He waved his sword menacingly.
Cohen shrugged. 'I may be going to die, but I should hope I could be killed by a man who could hold his sword like a warrior,' he said.
The man looked at his hands. 'Looks all right,' he said, doubtfully.
'Look, lad, I know a little about these things. I mean, come here a minute and – do you mind? – right, your eft hand goes here, around the pommel, and your right hand goes – that's right, just here — and the blade goes right into your leg.'
As the man screamed and clutched at his foot Cohen kicked his remaining leg away and turned to the room at large.
'This is getting fiddly,' he said. Why don't you rush me?'
'That's right,' said a voice by his waist. The jeweller had produced a very large and dirty axe, guaranteed to add tetanus to all the other terrors of warfare.
The four men gave these odds some consideration, and backed towards the door.
'And wipe those silly stars off,' said Cohen. 'You can tell everyone that Cohen the Barbarian will be very angry if he sees stars like that again, right?'
The door slammed shut. A moment later the axe thumped into it, bounced off, and took a sliver of leather off the toe of Cohen's sandal.
'Sorry,' said the dwarf. 'It belonged to my grandad. I only use it for splitting firewood.'
Cohen felt his jaw experimentally. The dine chewers seemed to be settling in quite well.
'If I was you, I'd be getting out of here anyway,' he said. But the dwarf was already scuttling around the room, tipping trays of precious metal and gems into a leather sack. A roll of tools went into one pocket, a packet of finished jewellery went into another, and with a grunt the dwarf stuck his arms through handles on either side of his little forge and heaved it bodily onto his back.
'Right,' he said. I'm ready.'
'You're coming with me?'
'As far as the city gates, if you don't mind,' he said. 'You can't blame me, can you?'
'No. But leave the axe behind.'
They stepped out into the afternoon sun and a deserted street. When Cohen opened his mouth little pinpoints of bright light illuminated all the shadows.
'I've got some friends around here to pick up,' he said, nd added, 'I hope they're all right. What's your name?'
'Lackjaw.'
'Is there anywhere around here where I can—' Cohen paused lovingly, savouring the words – 'where I can get a steak?'
The star people have closed all the inns. They said it's wrong to be eating and drinking when —'
'I know, I know,' said Cohen. 'I think I'm beginning to get the hang of it. Don't they approve of anything?'
Lackjaw was lost in thought for a moment. 'Setting fire to things,' he said at last. 'They're quite good at that. Books and stuff. They have these great big bonfires.'
Cohen was shocked.
'Bonfires of books?'
'Yes. Horrible, isn't it?'
'Right,' said Cohen. He thought it was appalling. Someone who spent his life living rough under the sky knew the value of a good thick book, which ought to outlast at least a season of cooking fires if you were careful how you tore the pages out. Many a life had been saved on a snowy night by a handful of sodden kindling and a really dry book. If you felt like a smoke and couldn't find a pipe, a book was your man every time.
Cohen realised people wrote things in books. It had always seemed to him to be a frivolous waste of paper.
I'm afraid if your friends met them they might be in trouble,' said Lackjaw sadly as they walked up the street.
They turned the corner and saw the bonfire. It was in the middle of the street. A couple of star people were feeding it with books from a nearby house, which had its door smashed in and had been daubed with stars.
News of Cohen hadn't spread too far yet. The book burners took no notice as he wandered up and leaned against the wall. Curly flakes of burnt paper bounced in the hot air and floated away over the rooftops.
'What are you doing?' he said.
One of the star people, a woman, pushed her hair out of her eyes with a soot-blackened hand, gazed intently t Cohen's left ear, and said, 'Ridding the disc of wickedness.'
Two men came out of the building and glared at Cohen, or at least at his ear.
Cohen reached out and took the heavy book the woman was carrying. Its cover was crusted with strange red and black stones that spelled out what Cohen was sure was a word. He showed it to Lackjaw.
'The Necrotelecomnicon,' said the dwarf. 'Wizards use it. It's how to contact the dead, I think.'
'That's wizards for you,' said Cohen. He felt a page between finger and thumb; it was thin, and quite soft. The rather unpleasant organic-looking writing didn't worry him at all. Yes, a book like this could be a real friend to a man —
'Yes? You want something?' he said to one of the star men, who had gripped his arm.
'All books of magic must be burned,' said the man, but a little uncertainly, because something about Cohen's teeth was giving him a nasty feeling of sanity.
'Why?' said Cohen.
'It has been revealed to us.' Now Cohen's smile was as wide as all outdoors, and rather more dangerous.
'I think we ought to be getting along,' said Lackjaw nervously. A party of star people had turned into the street behind them.
'I think I would like to kill someone,' said Cohen, still smiling.
'The star directs that the Disc must be cleansed,' said the man, backing away.
'Stars can't talk,' said Cohen, drawing his sword.
'If you kill me a thousand will take my place,' said the man, who was now backed against the wall.
'Yes,' said Cohen, in a reasonable tone of voice, 'but that isn't the point, is it? The point is, you'll be dead.'
The man's adam's apple began to bob like a yoyo. He squinted down at Cohen's sword.
'There is that, yes,' he conceded. 'Tell you what – how bout if we put the fire out?' 'Good idea,' said Cohen.
Lackjaw tugged at his belt. The other star people were running towards them. There were a lot of them, many of them were armed, and it began to look as though things would become a little more serious.
Cohen waved his sword at them defiantly, and turned and ran. Even Lackjaw had difficulty in keeping up.
'Funny,' he gasped, as they plunged down another alley, 'I thought – for a minute – you'd want to stand – and fight them.'
'Blow that – for a – lark.'
As they came out into the light at the other end of the alley Cohen flung himself against the wall, drew his sword, stood with his head on one side as he judged the approaching footsteps, and then brought the blade around in a dead flat sweep at stomach height. There was an unpleasant noise and several screams, but by then Cohen was well away up the street, moving in the unusual shambling run that spared his bunions.
With Lackjaw pounding along grimly beside him he turned off into an inn painted with red stars, jumped onto a table with only a faint whimper of pain, ran along it – while, with almost perfect choreography, Lackjaw ran straight underneath without ducking – jumped down at the other end, kicked his way through the kitchens, and came out into another alley.
They scurried around a few more turnings and piled into a doorway. Cohen clung to the wall and wheezed until the little blue and purple lights went away.
'Well,' he panted, 'what did you get?'
'Um, the cruet,' said Lackjaw.
'Just that?'
'Well, I had to go under the table, didn't I? You didn't do so well yourself.'
Cohen looked disdainfully at the small melon he had managed to skewer in his flight.
'This must be pretty tough here,' he said, biting through 159 the rind.
'Want some salt on it?' said the dwarf.
Cohen said nothing. He just stood holding the melon, with his mouth open.
Lackjaw looked around. The cul de sac they were in was empty, except for an old box someone had left against a wall.
Cohen was staring at it. He handed the melon to the dwarf without looking at him and walked out into the sunlight. Lackjaw watched him creep stealthily around the box, or as stealthily as is possible with joints that creaked like a ship under full sail, and prod it once or twice with his sword, but very gingerly, as if he half-expected it to explode.
'It's just a box,' the dwarf called out. 'What's so special about a box?'
Cohen said nothing. He squatted down painfully and peered closely at the lock on the lid.
'What's in it?' said Lackjaw.
'You wouldn't want to know,' said Cohen. 'Help me up, will you?'
'Yes, but this box —'
'This box,' said Cohen, 'this box is—'he waved his arms vaguely.
'Oblong?'
'Eldritch,' said Cohen mysteriously.
'Eldritch?'
'Yup.'
'Oh,' said the dwarf. They stood looking at the box for a moment.
'Cohen?'
'Yes?'
'What does eldritch mean?'
'Well, eldritch is—' Cohen paused and looked down irritably. 'Give it a kick and you'll see.'
Lockjaw's steel-capped dwarfboot whammed into the side of the box. Cohen flinched. Nothing else happened.
'I see,' said the dwarf. 'Eldritch means wooden?'
'No,' said Cohen. 'It – it oughtn't to have done that.'
'I see,' said Lackjaw, who didn't, and was beginning to wish Cohen hadn't gone out into all this hot sunlight. 'It ought to have run away, you think?'
'Yes. Or bitten your leg off.'
'Ah,' said the dwarf. He took Cohen gently by the arm. 'It's nice and shady over here,' he said. 'Why don't you just have a little —'
Cohen shook him off.
'It's watching that wall,' he said. 'Look, that's why it's not taking any notice of us. It's staring at the wall.'
'Yes, that's right,' said Lackjaw soothingly. 'Of course it's watching that wall with its little eyes —'