"What? Trog runty?" Bother yelled. "Art daft in sooth, Sir Knight! He's a very clothes-pole of a man clad always in scented silks and satin, a dandified degenerate of the worst stripe!"
"Maybe he's grown since I saw him," Lafayette hazarded.
"Bah!" the duke barked. "But what of the upstart? Art his minion?"
"Not me." Lafayette reassured the armored duke. "I'm nobody's minion. I'm on my own."
"Indeed? Then t'were well you cast your lot with the forces of good, against evil and chaos. And eftsoons, methinks." The duke paused both in his speech and his stride to lower the vizor of his great helm, revealing a battered and scarred visage which glowered at O'Leary, and past him at Marv.
"Red Bull!" Lafayette gasped. "Am I glad to see you! I'm so lost I thought I'd never see a familiar face again! Let's get busy and figure out how to get off this mud-flat and back to Artesia!"
The duke thus addressed took a step back and drew his well-honed sword halfway from its mud-coated sheath.
"Avaunt thee, sirrah!" he barked. "It mislikes me not to hold converse with one who is manifestly afflicted of Oompah; still, I'll not outrage the proprieties by beheading thee if thou'll but cease thy frenzies!
"Thinks't me a gentleman cow, eh? Aroint thee!"
"Don't be silly, Red Bull," O'Leary replied calmly. "You know very well I can lick you. Remember that time in the alley under the city walls, just before I went out into the desert? That time Princess Adoranne was missing—this time it's Daphne. She's lost somewhere back in Aphasia, unless Aphasia's already dissolved back into nonrealization. Come on! We always had good luck as a team—except maybe the time I turned into Zorro, and that wasn't your fault!"
"You pretend, fellow, to be my boon companion?" the duke bellowed. "You rave! No doubt thy keeper waits thee even now, among the huts yonder. But be calm: I'll not reveal thy secrets! But in sooth t'were well to make oblique approach, the beadles to avoid."
"What difference will it make what route we take?" O'Leary countered. "We have to come in across open mud no matter which way we go."
"True, but under cover of darkness, we can creep close ere we're discovered to the watch."
"Hey, Al," Marv called, crossing the last few feet to rejoin the party. "Innerdooce me to this here feller, OK?" he proposed, eyeing the duke's six-foot-plus stature, impressive even in its coating of mud, which was beginning to dry now and to flake off in large chunks, revealing the polished steel beneath.
"Certainly, Marv," O'Leary acceded. "Your Grace," he addressed the duke, "permit me to introduce my fellow refugee, Marv: We've been through thick and thin together. Marv, His Grace, Duke Bother-Be-Damned."
"Hi, Grace," Marv responded dubiously.
"Not my real name," the duke muttered, "merely an eke-name given me by the common herd. But you may call me 'Bother', and you will." He extended his un-mailed hand, which Marv took hesitantly.
"OK, pal, whatever you say," the latter said quickly. He gave the hand a quick grip and dropped it, then took up a position half behind O'Leary.
"Say, Al," he muttered. "If this guy is some kinda dook, he must be the big shot around here, right? So maybe we oughta get in solid with him, and maybe stay of fa the gallows, like."
"Good thinking, Marv," O'Leary agreed. "I've already cemented relations, and we're on our way into town, if that's what it is, to straighten things out. Funny thing, Marv: Your old friend Trog, or someone else with the same name, seems to be at the bottom of the problem here."
Staying a pace behind O'Leary as he forged on in the wake of the Duke, Marv shook his head. "Don't figure, Al. No one guy coulda caused a mess like this." He waved a hand at the sweep of soggy clay. "Especially old Trog. He's what you call a congenital psychopathic inferior. No more brains'n a grasshopper. Sits around and gives dumb orders, is all he can do. Like sending me and Omar off to the dungeon, and all."
"Still, it's interesting that he's here," O'Leary pointed out. "So, we must not be as far from Aphasia as it seemed. Another thing, the duke is an alterego of an old pal of mine known as the Red Bull—which independently suggests we're not far from Artesia."
"Beats me," Marv muttered. "All they told me was stay close, and report when I get a chanst."
"How do you report?" O'Leary wanted to know.
"There's this contact," Marv replied. "He's spose to get in touch."
"Listen carefully, Marv," Lafayette said. "Does 'raf trassspoit' mean anything to you?"
"You're dang right," Marv said. "That's what His Lordship useta yell whenever anything din't go right."
"You mean Trog?" Lafayette pressed the point.
"Old Troggie is right," Marv confirmed. "And now you say he's got a finger in this here mess, eh? We better have a talk with that little runt before it's too late."
"Sure," O'Leary agreed. "We'll go see him and try to find out what's at the bottom of all this crazy business. He's the duke's worst enemy, but he'll probably be glad to send us on a secret mission."
Ahead, a small crowd of ill-assorted survivors of whatever had happened to the countryside had gathered to watch the advance of the three refugees across the glistening mud-flat. Spears, pitchforks, and clubs were among the articles with which they were prepared to welcome the newcomers. The sun was low now, staining the sky a bilious yellow which reflected from the wet surface like puddles of molten gold. The duke halted and spoke over his mailed shoulder:
"Withal, we'd best delay here until the light has gone." He paused to knock crusts of mud from his sword-hilt. "Once among the rabble," he went on in a conspiratorial tone, "you'll stand mute whilst I conduct negotiations." He growled, eyeing the group standing by the clapboard huts. In the glow of early evening, men and shacks alike were no more than black silhouettes against the lowering sky.
"It passeth all propriety that I, a royal duke, should skulk here, awaiting the pleasure of these churls!"
"Play it cool, Your Grace," Lafayette suggested. "There are too many of them for one to stand strictly on ceremony."
"Bah! Let not base caution wait upon rny knightly valor!" Bother yelled and without furthur words, charged, sword brandished aloft. The squatters began hesitantly to close ranks, then abruptly scattered, retreating among the huts, where Bother made a desultory search accompanied by yells and whacks of his blade which brought a number of the ramshackle structures down in ruin. While the duke was thus occupied, O'Leary, with a quick word to Marv, moved off to one side and began a wide, curving approach which would bring him up at the rear of the settlement.
"Hey, Al," Marv called in a tone of distress, "wait up!" O'Leary turned to see his companion-in-distress struggling to his feet, coated with black muck except for the pale blob of his unshaven face, dim in the fading light.
"Smear a little mud on your face, Marv," Lafayette called softly, "and you'll be invisible." Marv complied. Even at a distance of two feet, he was but a dark bulk against darkness. At that moment, the duke's voice bellowed across the night.
"Very well, Sir Lafayette, you may emerge now. Sir Lafayette? Damme, where's the fellow got to? Come out at once, I say!"
"I'm right here," O'Leary called.
"Say, Al," Marv commented, "you're pretty well daubed your ownself. Prolly he can't see you. So now's our chanct."
"Chance," O'Leary corrected. "No t. Chance for what?"
"Art a warlock?" Bother demanded of the now near total darkness. "Hast the cloak of Darkness? Remember how I befriended you when you were a nameless vagabond. Come along, now, Sir Lafayette, we'll broach a keg to our comradeship."
"All of a sudden he wants to be pals," Marv commented. "Our chance to sneak in behind him and grab the best quarters in the local hostel," he went on as if there had been no interruption. "OK, Sir Al? Sir Al! Whereat are ya? Oh. I gotcha," he concluded as his wildly groping arms encountered O'Leary's shoulder.