The Dark Lord's Handbook (23 page)

“Get fucked,” she smiled.

Morden’s father winced. “She has got a mouth on her.”

Chapter 27 A Dark Lord Rises

The only good publicity is bad publicity.

The Dark Lord’s Handbook

Penbury couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t the faint dawn sunlight that crept around the edges of the thick velvet curtains that kept sleep at bay, it was his mind that was awake and refusing sleep. Some may have been worried with the events that were unfolding in the world but Penbury didn’t do worry. Worry was a short step away from being neurotic. While not every problem had a solution, and on occasions things would not always go as one desired, that was not a reason to worry. That was life. While worry was a stranger to him, thinking was not and it was his mind that was full of thoughts and permutations. He wished he could turn over and get another hour of cotton padded comfort before Chidwick would knock and enter with his cup of tea to start another day of business, but any chance of that was gone.

Instead he threw the blankets back and let the crisp spring air invigorate his body to the wakefulness that his mind enjoyed. He dressed quickly and decided to do something reckless. He needed some thinking time. He would go for a walk. Alone.

For a man such as himself, going anywhere alone was not practical, nor safe. If he had been the worrying type, the sheer number of enemies he had would have kept him imprisoned behind a regiment of guards, too scared to get out of bed. Though he did not live in fear like this, the regiment of guards was still present and under the watchful eye of Chidwick. Getting out would be tricky, but he had a plan.

The house he lived in used to belong to the well known philanderer, the Duke of Firena. This had been his bedroom. His wife did not share his bed outside of their monthly appointment, which was necessary for appearances sake and quite in keeping for the aristocracy of this region. It was widely known that the Duke made other arrangements for the rest of the month and, being a Duke, discretion had been his watchword.

Penbury went to the corner of the room next to the extravagant bay window. What he was looking for was somewhere around here. He pushed at wood panels and tugged at the candle holders. At last a section of veneered wood gave way under his fingers and a lever was revealed. A swift tug and a section of the wall swung back. The young ladies that the Duke had entertained must have had to stoop to use it but there it was, the Duke’s love stair.

Penbury lit his night light and squeezed in. For someone as large as he, it was a tight fit. Beyond the secret door there was more room and he could straighten up. A narrow spiral stair led him down. His candlelight showed names carved into the stone. They were the names of women, and there were a lot of them. The Duke had been a busy man and it looked like his lovers had left their mark as a record. By some of the remarks scratched in with the names, the Duke was more than popular; one sketch suggested he was hung like a horse. Either that or he was an ass.

At the bottom of the stair there was another more obvious lever to tug and a section of the outer wall, which turned out to be wood with a light stone coating, opened onto the flower bed below his window.

No one was in sight. A quick dash and Penbury made the safety of the shrubbery that was across the narrow lawn. Soon after and he had made his way by paths that only he knew down onto the dunes below the estate. The sun was up now and warmed him as he started his walk. For the first mile he pushed the weighty matters that had been on his mind to one side and enjoyed the morning. He bent to examine the wild flowers in the grass dunes that were hard to grow in his gardens; they were both delicate and hardy.

It wasn’t often that he got to spend time like this, completely alone. Although he could see no one, he could not know with certainty that behind that sandy bank, or in that long grass, there weren’t bodyguards recruited, trained and deployed by Chidwick. He thought he had made good his rebellious escape but he could not be sure.

It was no matter, the illusion was for all intents and purposes a reality as he could neither hear nor see anyone and it left him to stroll gently along, taking in his surroundings. He turned his mind to other matters.

While the news from the Snort twins was good – the hero and his sword had been located in an army being raised by Count Vladovitch, and Morden had been tracked to Bostokov – Penbury suspected that his commissioning of them may have been a tactical mistake. Not that he would admit publicly to such a thing.

His conclusion had come from going back and studying the archives, and there seemed to be a pattern to historical events. It was as though they had a life of their own. He had never been one for gods, or fate, or any kind of predetermination, but there seemed to be a trend of inevitability about certain passages of history. If he were to hold fast to his beliefs and suppose that there were no divine beings (the idea they had nothing better to do than have a chuckle at his and humanity’s expense was ludicrous), then he could account for this inevitability in terms of a limited view of the cause and effect.

The world was a complex place, with a myriad of forces at work that most people were oblivious to, and even men of superior intellect, such as himself, could only glimpse part of the whole. The parts he saw happened to be large – mostly economic and social – but what of the others? He could only guess. Now, he surmised, just as there were inevitable consequences to the restriction of supply to price – and most of his enormous fortune was based on the simplest of economic principles such as this – then to an external observer could there not be an inevitable consequence to other things, like a Dark Lord rising?

So far he had been mostly concerned with the consequences of this happening and had ignored completely the reason for it. His hiring of Snort and Snort was a reaction to this. If they were successful then all well and good, but if, as he suspected would be the case, they failed then the problem remained.

What he needed to do was understand why now of all times a Dark Lord was rising and why this inevitably resulted in a hero appearing as a counterbalance. It was clear from the histories that in all likelihood a series of reasonably predictable events was about to unfold, which would involve armies, destruction, stirring speeches, shiny armour, maidens, last ditch defences, volcanoes, attacks at dawn, and dragons.

Why volcanoes figured so frequently was a mystery, and one which Penbury was happy to leave for now, bar making a mental note to look up a map of all currently active volcanoes and to steer well clear.

What was of more interest was the last item: dragons. While there was no doubt that dragons had existed, there had been little evidence of them in the last five hundred years since they had last been seen swooping over Zoon’s great army. It was true that occasionally an addled peasant girl would attest to having been seduced by a dark lover that turned out to be a dragon, but they never lived long and so it was hard to corroborate.

The problem seemed to centre on the fact that dragons had two major things in their favour. The first was that, if the books were to be believed, they were highly magical and actually spent little time in their recognisable form (big wings, breathing fire), and instead appeared human. The second thing they had to their advantage, and this was reflected by the fact that they tried to blend in most of the time, was that they were also highly intelligent. This made sense. Though powerful, they could still be hunted down and killed, and there was plenty of evidence to suggest that there were breeds of dragon that either refused to shape-shift, or could not, that were now extinct. There were records in the archives, dating back a thousand years, of payments to dragon slayers, and given the number of entries, there had been a lot of dragon slaying back then.

The conclusion that Penbury came to in light of this evidence was that any dragons that were still around were both smart and dangerous. This was a matter of concern.

Penbury was so wrapped up in thought that he lost track of where he was wandering. The irate calls of a pair of Suicide Gulls brought his attention to the fact that he may have come a little too close to their nest. The birds were both large and persistent. They swooped and squawked and Penbury had to raise an arm to ward off their hooked bills.

As one came especially close he actually had to duck. As he did so he heard a squeal more than a squawk and a thud. Looking up, the gull lay a few yards away with a crossbow bolt in its chest. It was quite dead.

“A touch over zealous, wouldn’t you say?” said the Chancellor, straightening and casting around to see if he could spot his protector. There was no sign. So much for having slipped his minders.

Penbury walked over to the bird and hefted it up by its legs. It weighed a couple of pounds, which was a lot for a sea bird such as this. It would fill a crust that evening with ease. The dead gull’s mate continued its protests as the Chancellor walked away.

“And don’t you dare shoot that one,” he said loudly to no one in particular while pointing at the remaining bird. He was a firm believer in only killing what you ate, and one gull would be more than enough.

Having settled supper in his mind, he went back to the world and its problems. The real issue, as he saw it, was the upsetting of a status quo which had kept the civilised world in relative peace for a few hundred years. With this peace had come great prosperity, at least for a minority of the population, and decent enough comfort for the rest. This Dark Lord business threatened to upset all of this. He also knew it wasn’t so much an issue of right or wrong, good or evil – he knew himself to be as amoral as the next man – but rather self-interest. The foundation of much of his economic theories relied on the quintessential idea that the majority act in self-interest, whether at the individual or group level. Genuine philanthropy was rare.

Curiously, for one who was more enlightened and self-interested than most, Penbury had often found it ironic that he was most likely by far and away the most philanthropic person in the known world. Personal wealth had long since stopped being a concern; he could have anything he wanted. What had replaced it was a desire for experience and pleasure, and these took many forms. Pleasure could be found in many places and many ways and it had come as some surprise to find that giving aroused a not unpleasant feeling.

The issue at hand, though, was what was to be done? He could raise an army and oppose the Dark Lord but that seemed like something that could only worsen things.

He could back the hero that he had rumour of, but that was little better, and was barely more appealing as a winner than the Dark Lord. At least the Dark Lord was overtly self- interested whereas Penbury’s experience of most self-proclaimed good people was that they were outwardly righteous while hiding their self-interest.

Perhaps it was this self-interest that he could accommodate. If he could find out what it was that both parties really wanted then in all likelihood he was in a position to arrange it. If the Dark Lord wanted a kingdom he was sure he could manage something, maybe even with a volcano.

So that was it. He needed to go and do what he did best, and negotiate a deal. With the vast resources he had to command, he was sure that with a little prudent jiggery pokery, he could settle matters without the need for any battles, or volcanoes exploding, or dragons.

A rumble from his stomach reminded him that he had not yet eaten that morning. He turned around to see that he had come quite a way. He thought it would be another half an hour before he could enjoy breakfast when a smell came to him on the swirling breeze. It was unmistakably bacon. The Chancellor turned to align his nose with the direction of the smell. Topping the next dune the source of the smell became clear; in a sheltered hollow between two dunes a table had been laid, and to one side a chef was preparing a cooked breakfast over an open fire. Chidwick was pouring coffee into a cup at the single seat at the table.

Penbury strolled down to the table and handed Chidwick the gull he was carrying. “I’ll have that in a pie for supper, Chidwick,” he said, taking the seat. “Did I miss anything while I was walking?”

“Just this, sir,” said Chidwick, handing the Chancellor a note.

Penbury read it and it confirmed his worst fears.

Snort had failed and Bostokov was burning. A Dark Lord was indeed rising.

“Chidwick.”

“Sir?”

“When we get back, start packing. After breakfast we’re going on a trip.”

Chapter 28 Enemies

The enemy of my enemy is also my enemy. A Dark Lord has no friends.

The Dark Lord’s Handbook

When Edwin woke he was lying on his back in a cot in a tent. Turning his head to the left and right, he could see other men lying on similar cots. They had blood stained bandages around their heads, arms, legs and torsos. Had he been in a battle? He reached one hand up to his face and ran the other over his body. He had a bandage on his leg and it was sore to his touch. His brow was wet with sweat and he felt thick headed, like he had a fever. He tried to sit up and immediately regretted it. He slumped back onto the hard pillow.

Edwin tried to think. He knew his own name but little else. How had he come to be here? Flashes of memory started to go off in his mind. He remembered being surrounded. He had lost something, something that he had to get back, that he loved. Or was it someone? Yes. He was searching for someone who was in great danger and only he could save them. He remembered a moor, desolate and grey. He remembered cold, hunger and desperation before stumbling off the high ground and into a forest. He had been lost. Where had they taken her? That was it. He had lost her. Then it hit him.