Chapter III:
Eureka
Careening round trails, the sound of cricket and humming junebugs were silenced by galloping steeds. After an hour, the riders reached a cliffside. It was there, fifty years before, Kurt had seen the false-jaguar, Etzel and the ettins step into Pinethorpe. Jaguar Town was a rigid configuration of black slab structures, aglow with misty green and blue street sign lights making the otherwise hidden place visible to the two overlookers. Walls of blackest pulver stretched a mile long on six sides around the complex. Kurt listened to the chatter within the walls. “I hear ettins. At least five,” said Kurt.
The Bodyguard grunted. “I’ll hurry. In and out.”
“Don’t you still need to present a body to complete the apegift?…my body? How are you going to get inside without breaking down the gates?” asked Kurt. The Bodyguard pulled a narrow crescent curved blade from his pack then pointed it to Kurt’s head.
“I may not be as quick a draw with my arquebus as you but I’ll be damned to the hellfire if I let you take my head now," said Kurt, his hand on his arquebus.
“I don’t need the whole head. Just the top.”
“You ain’t scalping me.”
“I just need a piece of you...and hair counts.”
“I can pull one...”
“No, I’ll need to tonsure you...they still expect a scalp...”
Verity’s Bodyguard pulled a piece of a wet fleshy object from his rucksack.
“Where in the world did you get that?” said Kurt suspiciously.
“There are strange things sold in Jaguar Town...now: your Hair.”
Kurt begrudgingly let the sentry shave him, then, applying an adhesive to the fleshy thing, the impromptu toupee was finished.
“Wait for me here, Eisenforst. If you hear me say ‘Eureka’ I’ll have returned out of the town safe with Verity’s body.”
“Eureka...Sure, I’ll be listening. And if you don’t say it?”
The Bodyguard flashed the Weever’s tooth. “Then you’re not getting this, and the ettins have no chance of being defeated.”
With that word, the sentry rode off towards Jaguar Town.
+++++
Kurt watched the rider disappear into the dark of the hill.
Finally out of sight, Kurt’s pulver ear carried on following, listening to the man and his horse; its hurried trot.
Then: a halt; a clank of metallic pulver: the sound of a gate apparently; further, less hurried hooves.
The Bodyguard was inside the noisy Jaguar Town barracks, his dismounted feet thudding to a dirt floor, Kurt homing in on his location, careful not to break the aural link he had tossed into Jag- Town. A sharp piercing sound of bleeping triplets indicated it was three o’ clock. The sentry spoke to a man in Varglish:
“Yah geher nar dom Generals huus.” “Ai, vel? Dom General varter aup thig?,” replied the other. “Yoh. Min aupgiv ar fullborded.” “Grats.”
Kurt’s Varglish was poor, but he made out enough to know they were talking about the General’s Quarters.
Then, he heard a rapping at steel: a knock at a door.
Another clanking gate opened; it became much noisier.
Kurt struggled to listen intently to the footsteps. What else could he focus on? Ah…Eureka: that little precious piece of ore, Verity’s tooth, jangled with the flimsy necklace chain on the Bodyguard’s neck. He followed the tinny frequency of the Tooth passing shut doors through pulsing discordant muzak popular among ettins and their human poseurs.
The rattling metals quieted; another knock on a pulver door and a voice quickly returned the greeting: “You better have a good reason to be interrupting my play.” The voice was drawling and smug and sounded like a man pretending to be an old woman. There was the sliding sound of metal. “I have the body, General Adatmen. My apegift is finished.”
“Oh, it’s the Bodyguard. What was it that the the Groomslayer mentioned…oh yes. Your apegift was to slay that ape with the weird ear. Well,let’s see it...” There was that slippery sound again.
“Ah ha, you scalped it. Clever. You can claim your prize…after my play...now shoo...........why are you standing here still? Do you like my playthings? Hurry off before I chain you up to the wall along with them!”
Etzel's droning baritone articulated in a more audible voice than usual.
“I need her body. Now, Adatmen!!”
Adatmen whinnied like a frightened mare.
There was a clatter of steely scraping.
Yelping and screaming following a clang against the pulver door.
Kurt lost his audible track of Verity’s bodyguard over the shrill cursing of Adatmen.
He heard chains rattle, footsteps darting wet on the ground.
He listened closely to the vicinity but found nothing but the increasing clamor near Adatmen.
Finally alarms like duck calls sounded throughout the barracks. Adatmen cursed at foot soldiers in Varglish: “Han flukter! Snap im aup! Snap im aup!” There was a stampede of boots across Adatmen’s room. Kurt followed their charging boots, a half mile down a steely space.
Speaking in a local accent one muttered: “What the hellfire did the Bodyguard do? Didn’t he complete his apegift?”
“Don’t know," another said before yelling out: "Oh,there he is…Hey! Hey! Wait! Come out, man. There is no way you’ll reach the exit…the General is throwing a fit, saying you busted him up good…”
“Let me through,” said the Bodyguard.
“Bodyguard, come on, orders is orders. A Subohemian god’s orders!…”
“Move!!!” howled the Bodyguard.
Arquebus rounds popped off. Adatmen’s voice wailed throughout the barracks. Feet fell to stirrups; reins were yanked taut.
The Bodyguard cried out to his steed: "We ride till death, Blueboy!"
Kurt could now see a flurry of fire and smoke enveloping the narrow streets of Jaguar Town.
He could hear Blueboy’s hooves kicking soil, and the screams of superiors to their drunken and half-awake footsoldiers.
Tower Sentries were roused from their boredom, aiming cannons into the town. Kurt saw among the sea of fire the rider galloping with a mad intensity.
Pulver artillery rounds exploded still, the mad rider sprinting through the fire. How? How was this man impervious to that infernal onslaught? Kurt stood in a stound as fires raged and hooves thumped in his ear.
The rounds exploded in the air like the fireworks from the earlier evening festivities.
Why were they aiming so high? These soldiers could not be so utterly incompetent. Then, in a voice like a thunderclap, a voice he swore he could hear even without the superhuman ear, Kurt heard Etzel command: “The Wall! The Wall! Open The Wall!!!”
The hooves raced on; a thousand rounds of artillery exploded in the sky. Nothing in the town below was visible but a haze of red and yellow and black smoke, as if a long dormant volcano had erupted into life.
The hooves halted their racing thump. Etzel’s thunderous cry was swallowed by the exploding fires.
Down,down,down the hill, Kurt raced on Canute. What more could be left to this journey? To their mission? He would either face death then or a day after or ten. Nothing else mattered still if the one beholder of the Tooth of the Weever was dead: a sad but true reality.
He would fight even if it meant his arquebus could only be drawn to point and click at the one taking his life: it was time.
Death had descended upon Jaguar Town, on Temek Hill, on Great Oak County, one hundred years due.
Kurt raced to the wall where Verity’s bodyguard had last cried out. Still, artillery rained upon the wall. Still, pulver rounds exploded into the wall. Kurt drew his arquebus. He was three furlongs from the gate. The artillery fire then went cold. A hoarse voice, one Kurt did not recognize, called out: “Halt! Halt your fire! Else I’ll deploy your asses to the Bloodfirth! Now halt!” There was silence. The wall shook. More artillery. Another tremor; the wall bulged like a kicking babe in the womb. Impossible, thought Kurt. Another bulge. It vanished then: a poof of black dust and sparkling embers like a million blue stars remained where the immovable gate once stood. Bodies bulleted by pulver rounds lay in the thousands throughout Jaguar Town. The rider came forth through the pulver dust, his eyes a glowing green. A few rounds from insubordinate soldiers shot off. Each ricocheted off him as a final warning. More shots. Dead like the others as the fire returned. Quickore…thought Kurt. The anti-pulver pressed to his chest…he’s impervious to it all.
“EUREKA!” cried the Bodyguard. In his arms was the body of a lady in green dress; limp,eyes shut, a deathly pale: Verity!!!
Kurt kicked his spurs to Canute. The two riders fled. A few men loyal to General Adatmen chased after them on wheeled machines into the dark foothills lorded over by Mockwitch.
+++++
Minutes after Verity’s Bodyguard stormed the gate of Jaguar Town, legless and ghost-white, Adatmen screamed, cursing from his watchtower. Governor Orbaulker, his face expressionless at the insults lashed upon him, said nothing before stepping past a scarlet curtain, exiting the command post. “Hell-breeder, Orbaulker, Hell-breeder of troll-pups...I as a General and Prince of Subohemia command you send out more troops! I am Adatmen! The Lord and God of this County!"
Adatmen called out to his servants via a courier with a hornet’s likeness buzzing about the premises.
Of the hundred plus servants who had arrived with him from Subohemia, thirty had fled amidst the chaos their chains broken by that rogue bodyguard. The rest had followed Adatmen's orders to catch the renegade: first one to catch him was promised fifty years to their lifespan as an apegift reward. Adatmen truly cared little about the Bodyguard or the plan of the High Ettins regarding him, an elaborate and long plan more than a century in progress in fact. But for that Ape-Bodyguard to interfere in his manservants’ quarters and his private gallivanting was an affront on his own autonomy as an ettin; it was an affront on the whole of ettinkind. His servants were tasked from the apegift booth to serve him and fulfill his every whim. For an ape to interfere knowingly with Adatmen, the grandson of the first ettin god-man, was already an unforgivable offense; but to cause such grievous injury to his ten-times over apegifted body, a body carefully crafted and tailored over more than a century by Doctor Eugenius Geissler himself was beyond unforgivable. He had already envisioned the Bodyguard's punishment: it would be stripped of its skin to the skeleton then bathed in pulver to crystallize its wretched self before being made into a private latrine for Adatmen and all of his wild beasts and servants----for eternity. So was his judgement there on the waxy floor, screaming to his buzzing couriers.
His servants returned no response. Whether they had been taken by the beasts of the Rural County Zone or sentenced to the Eldermark Pit by Orbaulker, it mattered not. He was without aid and anatomically disabled for the first time.
The ape could wait, he had other priorities: the Booth. He had not been to the Booth in two moons---far too long. He crawled, his long arms outstretched, red claws scraping the pulver floor, pulling himself closer to the red curtain exit. He spoke a password in the High-Ettin tongue before crossing the curtain-barrier. Immediately he dropped through a chute, seamlessly thrust down into a wide subterranean hall, a league below. The hall was dark, vast and hollow, though his perception of it all was obscured but not for the light of burning red ball above a towering black winged machine another mile from the entry point. His red claws splintered against the craggy cavernous floor. Dragging himself, further, further, he arrived at the threshold of the red eyed tower. At its base, a black curtain flung open. He paused, then crawled more, as the curtain shut behind his long heels. He barely fit into the narrow space at first, but upon complete entry, its space seemed to increase. The interior space was candlelit. It was lined with mirrors that exposed Adatmen face down, his eyes bloodshot, drained of pride. Behind the curtain was one he dared not look upon. The master of the booth's spirit rested atop the flames of the candles, a wreath they provided for its incorporeal head. It spoke privately to Adatmen's mind:
“...”
Trembling, Adatmen responded:“Yes...please, an apegift...I need a better body; more years...I’ll be ruined if I don’t..."
“...”
“Lord Azza…this is an urgent matter! It has been two moons since I last entered, and I am in dire need of a new body! I am in need of vengeance! I am in need of…” He quieted himself and said, “As you know, we are set to rid the world of the remaining apes.”
The master of the booth spoke again after an excruciatingly long silence for Adatmen.
“Whatever it takes!”
“...”
“And in whose likeness must I be made into?”
“...”
“But...the Groomslayer is...ugly.”
“...”
“So, I’ll become the third face of the Groomslayer? How he is greater than a thane of Subohemia as myself?”
“...”
“...no, no, Lord Azza! You know how I adore thee...love thee…"
"..."
"Yes, yes,I accept the apegift.”
The candlelight extinguished. Three tall fluorescent ettins emerged from the floor bearing pulver-knives. They worked like a colony of ants covering Adatmen's skin till it was stripped to his skeleton. Then tibia and femur were plucked; humerus and spine and skull shaved and whittled. His parts divine (as the Ettin Lords described their anatomy) were replaced and remolded. Finished, Adatmen was wet like a newborn covered in placenta. He was placed inside a suit of pulver armor and handed an arquebus.
“Go out and slay the Groomslayer. He won’t be able to withstand the blow from this weapon. Your body will become one with his when the apegift is finished,” spoke one of the ettin surgeons.
Adatmen gurgled,his mouth numb, pulver seeping from his throat. "In Azza's name it shall be done."