He was a tall, slim young man, dressed in fine silks now soiled from having been worn for days on end. Also of silk was the cloth over his eyes, for he was blind. "Good sir," he said, extending his hand in Condom's general direction, "I congratulate you, though I know you not. Any warrior stout enough to vanquish the Boring Beast must be a hero indeed. Know, sir hero, that you have saved Elagabalus, prince of Hypodermia and the intended husband of Zamorazamaria's fairest princess." He paused, waiting for his rescuer to introduce himself.
Condom's care for such social graces, however, was minimal. "Come on!" he shouted, grabbing the blind prince's arm with such sudden force that Elagabalus all but fell. Elagabalus perforce followed the Trojan as he began stumbling down the stairs toward freedom.
In another part of the Tower of the Bat, Gulp sidled into Sloth-Amok's private quarters, to find the dreaded wizard snoring into his split peas. "Wake up, your maleficence!" he exclaimed.
"Wuzzat?" Sloth-Amok's head rose from the scrying-cauldron. He flicked his face nearly clean with a few quick strokes of his batrachian tongue. As full consciousness returned, he peered into the vat of soup, confidently expecting to find Condom as inert as he himself had been a moment before.
Instead he saw the barbarian and Elagabalus dashing down the Thirteen Steps. "To the palace!" Elagabalus cried, the taste of liberty lighting his aristocratic features.
Sloth-Amok cursed Condom so vilely that Gulp's toenails curled. Froggy eyes bulging, the wizard plowed through his library for a spell hideous enough to wreak proper vengeance on the Trojan.
The sentries at the palace gate stared at the mismatched pair blundering toward them. "Mithrandir!" their captain swore, not sure whose fantasy he was in. He hefted his spear threateningly.
Elagabalus's quick ear, though, recognized the officer's voice. "Do you not know me, Faex?" he said. "It is I, Elagabalus, saved for Zamaria from the foul clutches of Sloth-Amok."
Faex looked the blind prince over. "Well, damn me if you're not," he said. "This is great news." He turned to one of his troopers. "Clunes, move your buns; fetch the princess here at once. Tell her past all hope her fianc? is rescued!"
Sloth-Amok found the volume he was seeking, the great Treasury of s'tegoR. He riffled through its baleful pages, at last coming to the section he needed. Raising the book above his head, he cried out, "1014.7!" in a voice like thunder.
A horde of demons, fiends, devils, satans, devas [Zoroastrian], shedus [Biblical], gyres [Scot.], bad or evil spirits, unclean spirits, hellions [colloq.]; cacodemons, incubi, succubi; jinnis or jinnees, genies, genii, jinniyehs [fem.]; evil genii; afreets, barghests (even Sloth-Amok was unclear about what barghests were, O Prince, but he had summoned them, and they came), flibbertigibbets, trolls; ogres, ogresses; ghouls, lamiai, and Harpies vomited from the bowels of the Tower of the Bat. The Tower groaned, suffering from a bad case of mixed metaphor; the horde, yeeping, gibbering, roaring, and making whatever noise barghests make, stormed through the streets of Zamorazamaria after Condom. The townsfolk who saw them disappeared, for the most part permanently.
Horns blared inside the palace, trumpeting a royal fanfare. Peering into the entrance hall, Condom saw the princess's serving-maid hurrying toward him, amazed delight on her face. His heart, among other things, leaped. He opened his arms and lumbered forward. "Hey, sweets, look, I done it, see? I done it!"
She sidestepped with a dancer's adroitness, went gracefully to one knee before Elagabalus. "Welcome, your highness, in the name of my mistress, Princess Zamaria." She glanced behind her. "She comes to greet you even as I speak."
The guardsmen bowed low, eyes on the polished marble floor. Condom, untroubled by effete civilized notions like politeness, gaped at the mountain of flesh wallowing toward him. Zamaria waddled, she wobbled, she wheezed; her vast rolls of fat shook like the gelatin that dances round a cold ham. And like a five-pound sausage stuffed into a three-pound skin, her huge bulk was shoehorned into a cloth-of-gold gown that clung mercilessly to every curve.
"My darling!" she cried to her fianc?, her voice harsh as a raven's caw.
Condom spoke with the rude frankness that marks the barbarian. "By Crumb, buddy, it's a good thing you're blind," he told Elagabalus. "If you could see, you'd run miles, and I ain't kidding."
All heads snapped his way, then, as if drawn by some irresistible fascination, swung toward the Princess Zamaria. Her finger stabbed at the Trojan. "Kill him!" she screeched. "Kill him, kill him, kill him!"
"Shit!" said Condom, and Faex leaped at him with a vicious spearthrust. But the Trojan, with no thoughts to slow his reflexes, sprang to one side and brought down both hands, club-fashion, on the back of the captain's neck. Faex smashed to the ground, pike flying from nerveless fingers. And Condom, still acting on instinct, seized Zamaria's maidservant, slung her over his shoulder, and dashed down the street, a hundred guardsmen pouring after him.
If they had carried bows, he would have been pincushioned, but they had swords and pikes, and had to close with him to finish him off. Breath sobbing in his throat and the serving-wench in his ear, he reeled round a corner, the guards just a few strides behind. Then the Trojan, with a grunt of fright, whirled and dashed back the way he had come, straight toward the startled palace guards. But they had no chance to hack him down, for hard on his heels was the slavering spawn of Sloth-Amok's conjuration.
Both sides forgot Condom, their common quarry, as they smashed together. "Demons, fiends, devils, satans!" a soldier shrieked. He would have gone through the whole catalog, but a deva killed him. Another guardsman, quicker-witted, exorcised a whole squadron of jinnees with a bottle of vermouth. Three flibbertigibbets danced maniacally up one side of a trooper and down the other. They were not much use as far as fighting went, but spread chaos far and wide.
A cursing guardsman slashed at the monster in front of him. "What is that thing?" panted one of his squadmates, who had just unstrung a Harpy.
"A barghest," the soldier said?someone, at least, knew one when he saw one.
"Well, buy it a drink, then!" the other shouted. A lamia tore out his throat a moment later, and there was nobody to say he did not deserve it.
Caught in the center of the maelstrom, Condom kicked and pounded his way toward the edge. In the struggle for survival, none of the combatants paid him any special heed. He had almost won free when an ogre loomed before him. Zamaria's serving-maid swooned as it extended a misshapen, gore-dripping paw toward the Trojan. It roared, "Say, you look like a cousin of mine. You from Darfurdadarbeda?"
"Nah, my folks ain't from that far out in the Styx," Condom said.
"Oh. Sorry, bud. You still look like her, though." With a berserk bellow of rage, the ogre returned to the fray.
Condom sprang onto a stallion that was tied nearby to help the plot along, dug his heels into its side, and galloped for the city gates. A few angry shouts rose behind him, but guardsmen and creatures were still locked in fatal embrace (save, perhaps, for those troopers clutching succubi). The sounds of fighting faded in the distance.
The gate guards did not hinder the Trojan's flight. Burly barbarians with gorgeous, half-clad wenches draped over their saddlebows were two a copper in those days, if the tales that come down from them are to be believed.
The maidservant was awake and squirming when Condom reined the blowing stallion to a halt. The city was far away. The road ran through a glade of quiet, almost unearthly beauty. Tall, slim pines stood silhouetted against the flaming sky of sunset; thrush and warbler sang day's last sleepy songs. And to one side stretched a broad expanse of soft emerald grass.