King of the Scepter'd Isle (Song of Earth) (21 page)

“You could get Lady Duck to utter the words, Bison.”

He shot Nyneve a look of disapproval and suddenly roared, “Pong!”

The intrepid one hurried out of the undergrowth. “Yes, Bison?”

“It’s time to dispatch the deceased.”

“Oh, yes.” Well drilled, Pong took the leash and walked the housemouse to the basket. The housemouse, scenting carrion, pricked up his ears. Pong unleashed him and he bounded into the basket. There was a lengthy silence while the gnomes strained their ears.

“Oh, no!” cried Pong.

But it was not the traditional lament of the crier. It was a warning that something was going wrong. The head of the housemouse popped out of the basket. Fierce little eyes scanned the assembly. The gnomes backed off nervously.

Bison, safe under the protection of Nyneve, said, “The mouse seeks fresher meat.”

The mouse made a scuttling run for its master. The Gooligog, with a skill born of a century of practice, delivered an accurate kick. The mouse rolled across the clearing, squealing. Nyneve stepped forward, seized it by the tail, and pushed it back into the basket, sealing it in with a nearby lid, apparently designed for the purpose.

Relieved that his work had been done for him, Pong turned to Bison. “It’s time for your speech,” he said.

“I need a beer.”

“There is no beer. The innkeeper is dead and his inventory destroyed.” Pong, the teetotaler, spoke with some satisfaction.

“By the Sword of Agni!” cried Bison, “gnomedom has come to a pretty pass. Never in gnomish memory has a leader been required to make a speech without beer.”

“Speech!
Speech!” shouted the women unkindly.

Bison glanced around with a hunted expression. “We’re not all here yet!” he shouted back. “Fang should be here. I can’t make a speech without my deputy!”

“Ah, Fang,” said Clubfoot Trimble darkly.

“Find Fang!” roared Bison.

“He’s probably still in bed with that woman of his,” said Elmera.

“Oh, no!” shouted Pong, the words having become engraved on his behavioral patterns. “Not her!” he cried, to reassure himself his vocabulary was still intact.

“I saw Fang in the moonlight,” stated Clubfoot Trimble.

“What about it?” asked Lady Duck.

“I saw Fang in the moonlight,” Clubfoot repeated portentously, because the right question had not been asked. The gnomes had gotten into the habit of deliberately not asking him the right question, and it was beginning to annoy him. Since the death of his wife he had taken to lurking in damp parts of the forest, uttering gloomy prognostications. The gnomes were learning to ignore him.

“Has anyone seen the Miggot lately?” asked Bison, to change the subject.

“I saw him with Fang,” said Clubfoot. “In the moonlight.”

“All right, then,” said Bison, exasperated. “What were they doing?”

Clubfoot paused for effect, then unleashed the words he’d been holding back delightedly for some time. “They were carrying a severed hand.”

“Don’t be disgusting,” exclaimed Lady Duck. “I invoke Hayle!”

Her husband was interested, however. “What was the hand severed
from?
”

“The hand was severed from a giant’s arm.”

“Then it would have been too big to carry!” shouted Lady Duck in triumph.

“Well, a severed finger, then.” Clubfoot backed down a degree.

“You’re
a liar!” cried Lady Duck, outraged by his persistence in this unwholesome topic. “A dirty liar!”

Clubfoot smiled cunningly. “Ask Fang. Ask the Miggot.”

“Where
is
the Miggot?”

“He’s busy,” said Elmera. “And if he’d been wandering about in the moonlight, carrying fingers, I’d have known about it. There’s precious little the Miggot can get away with, believe me.”

Clubfoot subsided, muttering and discredited, his moment past. Bison, his courage restored by the exchanges, climbed onto a scorched stump. “Gnomes!” he shouted.

“Hush,” the gnomes told one another. “Bison is going to make a speech.”

“Gnomes!” roared Bison again, having had time to plan his approach. “This is our darkest hour!” The sun chose this moment to glide from behind a cloud, washing the clearing with brightness so that even the charred oak seemed to gleam with new life. “I mean,” said Bison, “darkest in the sense of saddest. I don’t mean dark as
such,
if you know what I mean. I mean dark in a metaphoric sense. Our darkest hour.”

“Our darkest hour,” came the sepulchral echo from a dozen male throats.

“So far as I’m concerned,” came the clear voice of Elmera, “it’s probably our brightest hour.”

“It depends on the viewpoint,” commented Spector. “Darkest or brightest, according to how you view the situation. The Miggot would agree with me, if he were here. We are fair and just in such matters. We are the gnomes. We are probably divided equally on the issue.”

“I really don’t think that’s quite right, Spector,” said Pong hesitantly. “The Miggot wouldn’t think it was the brightest or the darkest, you know. He’d say it’s an hour like any other hour, or any other minute, for that matter, and a gnome is dead, which is too bad, but then gnomes
do
die from time to time. That’s what the Miggot would say.”

“Thank God the Miggot isn’t here,” said somebody.

“Far better
that he should be carrying severed hands. That’s more his style.”

“The Miggot is
not
carrying severed hands!” snapped Elmera. “He’s attending to the Sharan, if you must know.”

“So he hasn’t even the decency to show up in our darkest hour?”

By now the phrase had begun to grip the imagination of the gnomes, and in the echoing drone of “our darkest hour” there were several female voices.

“The Miggot told me,” shouted Elmera, forced for once into defending her husband, “that his work was of far greater importance to the future of gnomedom than the meaningless ritual surrounding the disposal of fleshy tissue. Those were his exact words, and for once I agree with him.
Anything
must be more important than this charade!”

“Hear, hear!” yelled Lady Duck.

“A revered figure in gnomedom has met his end in the most tragic manner imaginable!” roared Bison, taking on his wife at his peril. “And we who loved him have gathered to pay our last respects. Do you call that a charade?”

“He was stamped on by a bloody horse because he was too drunk to move!” Lady Duck retorted. “Do you call that tragic?”

“It could happen to any one of us!” Pop-eyed with fury, Bison stared around at his audience. “Any one of us. You, Clubfoot. You, Spector. Elmera. Pong. Me. Just one careless step by a giant and it’s the Great Grasshopper for a gnome. Think of that. Think of that!”

It was a new Bison—a commanding, powerful Bison with a glittering eye—and they fell silent before him, even including Lady Duck. They glanced at each other, and they glanced fearfully into the trees. The forest was suddenly alien and threatening. A twig snapped somewhere, and somebody gave a little scream of fear.

“This,” thundered Bison, “is our darkest hour!”

The twig snapped again. The sun went out and a cool breeze swept across the clearing; bringing, it seemed, the stench of Mankind. The leaves rustled, and the gnomes felt a steady thumping through the ground. They huddled together, eyeing the trees with dread.

Then bounding out of the shadows came a gnome dressed all in forest green, riding a rabbit white as snow. Smiling brilliantly, he waved a cheery hand.

“Greetings, gnomes of Mara Zion!” he called in ringing tones.

“We’re saved!” cried Bart o’ Bodmin. “It’s the Gnome from the North!”

It had been hard work,
dragging the severed finger through the forest, and unpleasant too. By the time Fang, the Princess, and the Miggot reached the Sharan’s temporary quarters, it was daylight and they were limp from exhaustion and queasy with disgust. They threw themselves to the ground beside the Sharan. Pan had just finished giving her coat a thorough brushing and she was looking particularly beautiful, but the gnomes were not in the mood to appreciate this.

“I’d give anything for a beer,” the Miggot said with a groan.

Pan, seizing his opportunity to be irritating, assumed a hearty demeanor. “Well, we have visitors, Sharan! This is our lucky day. And on such a fine morning too! And what’s this I see? A severed finger? Tell me all about it, Miggot!”

As often happened, the Miggot’s tiredness was banished by his temper. Struggling to his feet, he looked around for an easy victim, and his gaze lit upon an animal about the size of a fox, with gray, shaggy hair and a doleful expression. It watched him with doggy eyes.

“Who the hell do you think you’re staring at!” shouted the Miggot. “Get out of my sight this minute!”

Shocked by the violence in the Miggot’s tone, Fang said, “That’s not a very nice way to talk to that poor creature, Miggot. It was obviously unhappy, and now you’ve made things worse for it. What was it anyway? I don’t remember seeing it around here before.”

“It’s been around for years. Mostly it keeps out of sight, and no wonder.
It’s called the hangdog.” The dank hindquarters of the miserable creature slunk behind a tree, and the forest glade seemed the better for its leaving.

“Did you create it?”

“Yes,” said the Miggot curtly.

“What’s it for?”

“It fulfills a need.”

“Yes, and I’ll tell you what need,” broke in Pan mischievously. “It’s a sop for the Miggot’s ego. It—”

“Pan, I want you to visualize a scenario for the Sharan,” the Miggot snarled. “That’s what you’re here for, isn’t it? I want her to produce an offspring capable of passing for a giant. It must look like a giant and be as big as a giant but—and mark this carefully, Pan—it must think like a gnome. This is how it will survive. It will be so insufferably kind and good that it will appeal to what passes for decency in giants, so they will not harm it.”

“It will be our representative in the giant’s world,” Fang put in, “and our protector. You see what we’re getting at, Pan?”

“We don’t trust that bugger Arthur,” continued the Miggot. “His intentions may be good, but he’s basically weak, and anyway, he’s going to be so busy in the next few years he won’t have time to look after us.”

“I understand,” said Pan. “You want a creature as big as a gnome but which thinks like a giant. Right?”

“Right,” said the Miggot absently.

“I don’t think that
was
right, Miggot,” said the Princess tentatively. “I think Pan got it mixed up somehow.”

“He’d better not, if he knows what’s good for him.” The Miggot directed his penetrating stare at Pan. “Big as a giant, thinks like a gnome.”

“I’ve got it right,” said Pan huffily. “And now the raw material. I see you’ve brought the giantish element, Miggot. What about the gnomish? A little slice from yourself, perhaps? It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve contributed your genes to the Sharan’s creation. Much more of this and we’ll have a whole
forestful of Miggots. Now there’s a sobering thought.”

“Not this time. I don’t have quite the right qualities, for which I’m truly thankful. We’ve talked it over, and we feel that the Princess is probably the most suitable person. What … er, gender of creature would that result in?”

“What sex is that finger?”

“Male.”

“In that case I can’t tell you. Sex is a funny thing. Let me tell you a few things about sex.”

“No thanks.”

“The time may come when you wish I had.”

“Get on with it,” snapped the Miggot. “Create the scenario while we prepare the ingredients.” He drew his controversial knife with a flourish. “Princess! Come here.”

“I’d rather Fang did it, Miggot.”

“All we’re talking about is a drop of blood.”

“All the same …”

“Oh, all right.” Disappointed, the Miggot handed the knife to Fang.

When Fang took the knife to the Princess’s hand, however, his own hand began to shake so much that Mara Zion was in danger of another amputation. “I’ll do it myself, Fang,” said the Princess, and produced a little drop of blood which she squeezed onto the giant’s finger. Meanwhile Pan had closed his eyes in concentration and the Sharan had assumed a faraway look, trembling a little as she received visions of the dangers for which she must prepare her offspring.

It was not a good time for an interruption, but at that moment there came a pattering along the forest path, and Spector the Thinking Gnome rode into the clearing. “Here you are,” he said.

“We’re busy,” said the Miggot.

“I’m sure you are. Aren’t we all?” Spector’s burning eyes passed from the Miggot to Pan, to the Sharan, to the severed finger. His bushy eyebrows lowered, hooding his eyes as though to cut down visual input while his brain assessed the
implications. “I have important news.” The eyes snapped open again.

“Get on with it, then,” said the Miggot.

Spector, a master of drama, considered spinning out the matter a little longer, but the Princess chose that moment to hand the knife back to the Miggot. The complex mind of the Thinking Gnome was able to read something peculiarly threatening into this act, and he said hastily, “The Gnome from the North has arrived.”

“The Gnome from the North? That’s just a story of Bart o’ Bodmin’s!”

“That’s what I thought too. When the gnome arrived, I thought he was just your average stranger who happened to be riding a rabbit white as snow—I mean,” Spector said, hastily correcting himself, “a white rabbit. Bart shouted that it was the Gnome from the North, but you know what Bart is. If the Gnome from the North didn’t exist, he would have invented him. As a matter of fact,” said Spector thoughtfully, “I thought he
had
invented him. Anyway, when we brought the stranger around, he insisted he
was
the Gnome from the North. And as Bart pointed out, he ought to know best.”

“Brought him around?”

“His rabbit ran into the blasted oak and he hit his head: That’s the trouble with albino rabbits; they have poor eyesight. He’d have been better off riding a rabbit black as night,” mused Spector, “but the symbolism would have been wrong.”

“But what did he say?” asked Fang curiously. “I mean, did he say, ‘I am the Gnome from the North and I have come in your darkest hour to lead you to a land where …’ and all that stuff?”