In any case, it wasn’t quite an ordinary forest. It was full of gigantic trees with hard white trunks, which no longer existed elsewhere in the empire—not in the Duchy of Irukan, and definitely not in the Mercantile Republic of Soan, which had long since used up its timber on ships. It was said that there were many such forests beyond the North Red Ridge in the country of the barbarians, but lots of tales were told about the country of the barbarians.
A road had been cut through the forest two centuries ago. It led to the silver mines and by feudal right belonged to the Barons Pampa, descendants of one of the companions of Marshal Totz. This feudal right cost the kings of Arkanar twelve pounds of pure silver per year, and therefore each successive king, after ascending the throne, gathered an army and went to war with Castle Bau, the seat of the barons. The castle walls were strong, the barons were brave, and each campaign cost thirty pounds of silver. After the return of the defeated army, the king of Arkanar would once again confirm the feudal right of the Barons Pampa, along with their other privileges—picking their noses at the royal table, hunting to the west of Arkanar, and calling princes only by their names, without adding titles and ranks.
The Hiccup Forest was full of dark secrets. During the day, wagons of processed ore trundled south along the road, and at night the road was empty, because few men were brave enough to walk it by starlight. It was said that at night, the Sioux bird—a bird that has never been seen and cannot be seen, since it is no ordinary bird—cried out from the Father-Tree. It was said that huge hairy spiders jumped out of the branches onto the necks of horses and instantly gnawed through their veins, drowning in blood. It was said that the ancient beast Pekh roamed the forest—a creature, covered in scales, that sired offspring every twelve years and dragged behind him twelve tails oozing poisonous sweat. And someone had seen the naked boar Y, cursed by the Holy Míca, crossing the road in broad daylight, grumbling plaintively—a ferocious animal, invulnerable to iron but easily pierced by bone.
Here you could also meet a runaway slave with a tar brand between his shoulder blades—silent and ruthless, like the hairy bloodsucking spider. Or a stooped warlock, collecting secret mushrooms for his magic potions, which could be used to become invisible, turn into various animals, or acquire a second shadow. The night sentries of the fearsome Waga the Wheel also walked this road, as did the fugitives from the silver mines with their black hands and white, transparent faces. Medicine men gathered here for their nightly vigils, and Baron Pampa’s rowdy huntsmen would skewer stolen oxen and roast them whole in the scattered clearings.
In the depths of the forest, a mile away from the road, beneath an enormous tree that had dried up of old age, stood a lopsided hut made out of enormous logs, surrounded by a blackened picket fence. It had been here since the beginning of time, its door was always shut, and there were crooked idols carved from whole tree trunks around its rotting porch. This hut was the most dangerous place in the Hiccup Forest. It was said that this was the very place to which the ancient Pekh would come every twelve years to deliver his offspring, after which he would immediately crawl beneath the hut and expire, so the hut’s entire cellar was filled with black poison. And when the poison seeped out—that’s when the end would come. It was said that on stormy nights, the idols dug themselves out of the ground, came out onto the road, and signaled to passersby. And it was also said that sometimes the windows shone with unnatural light, sounds resounded through the forest, and a column of smoke reached up from the chimney to the sky.
Not long ago, Irma Kukish, a sober simpleton from the farmstead of Plenitude (in common parlance, Stinkfield) foolishly wandered by the hut at night and peered into the windows. He came home completely incoherent, and after he recovered a little, said that the hut was full of bright light and that a man with his feet on the bench sat behind a crude table and guzzled from a barrel held in one hand. The man’s face hung all the way down to his waist and was spotted all over. It was obvious that this was the Holy Míca himself, before his conversion to the faith, a polygamist, drunkard, and blasphemer. To look at him was to be afraid. A sickly sweet smell wafted out the window, and shadows moved across the trees. People gathered from all over to hear the idiot’s story. And it all ended when the storm troopers came, bent his elbows to his shoulder blades, and hustled him off to the city of Arkanar. But people still talked about the hut, and it was now called nothing but the Drunken Lair.
Rumata made his way through the thicket of giant ferns, dismounted by the Drunken Lair’s porch, and wound his reins around one of the idols. The hut was fully lit, the door open and hanging by a hinge, and Father Cabani was sitting behind the table in a state of utter dejection. The room was filled with a powerful odor of spirits, and a huge stein towered on the table between the gnawed bones and pieces of boiled turnips.
“Good evening, Father Cabani,” Rumata said, stepping over the threshold.
“Greetings,” Father Cabani answered, in a raspy voice that sounded like a battle horn.
Rumata came up to the table, spurs jingling. He threw his gloves on the bench and took another look at Father Cabani. Father Cabani was motionless, supporting his drooping face with his hand. His shaggy, graying eyebrows hung down over his cheeks like dry grass over a cliff. With every breath, the nostrils of his coarsely pored nose whistled out air saturated with undigested alcohol.
“I invented it myself!” he said suddenly, raising his right eyebrow with effort and turning a puffy eye toward Rumata. “I did it myself! Why did I do it?” He extracted his right hand from underneath his cheek and shook a hairy finger. “But it’s not my fault. I invented it… and it’s not my fault, eh! That’s right—not my fault. Anyway, we don’t invent a thing, that’s all nonsense!”
Rumata unbuckled his belt and pulled his swords off over his head. “Now, now,” he said.
“The box!” barked Father Cabani and stayed silent for a long time, making strange motions with his cheeks.
Rumata, without taking his eyes off him, threw his dusty-booted feet over the bench and sat, putting his swords down nearby.
“The box…” Father Cabani repeated in a deflated voice. “We only say we invent things. Actually, it was all invented a long time ago. A long time ago, someone invented it all, stuck it in a box, made a hole in the lid, and left. Left to go to sleep… then what? Father Cabani comes in, closes his eyes, sh-shoves his hand into the hole.” Father Cabani looked at his hand. “He g-grabs it! Aha! An invention! This thing here is my invention, he says! And if you don’t believe it, you’re a fool. I shove my hand in—th-that’s one! What is it? Barbed wire! What’s it for? Protecting farmyards from the wolves… I shove my hand in—th-that’s two! What is it? The handiest thing—a meat grinder. What’s it for? Tender minced meat… good job! I shove my hand in—that’s three! What is it? F-Flammable water! What’s it for? Kindling damp wood… eh!”
Father Cabani went quiet and began to slump, as if someone had grabbed his neck and was pushing him forward. Rumata picked up the stein, looked inside, then poured a few drops onto the back of his hand. The drops were purple and smelled of fusel oil. Rumata carefully wiped his hand with a lace handkerchief. Oil stains appeared on it. Father Cabani’s shaggy head touched the table and immediately jerked up.
“The man who put it in the box—he knew what it was all for. Barbed wire for the wolves? How silly of me—for the wolves. The mines, the mines should be ringed with this wire… so state criminals can’t escape! But I don’t want that! I’m a state criminal myself! Did they ask me? Sure they did! Barbed wire, they said? Barbed wire. For the wolves, they said? For the wolves. Well done, they said, good job! We’ll use it to ring the mines… Don Reba did it himself. And he took my meat grinder. Good job, he said! What a mind you’ve got, he said! So now the Merry Tower makes tender minced meat… very effective, they say.”