The Hogman's Homunculi and the Angelwing Massacre: Chapter Ten!
It's like Judge Judy with added didgeridoo-based violence.
As punishment for trying to perform a burglary using his animatronic head, Prince Josep has consigned Darov to cover for the Lower Orders Liaison Officer and hear the weird complaints of the local rural folk. Much stupidness ensues.
Trigger warning for devil’s panpipe.
Chapter Ten: The Prince Wrangler
Darov assumed the things vying for his attention were human but he couldn’t be certain, for their resemblance to the humans he knew was approximate at best. The lumpy, asymmetric faces; ears and noses lost to disease; limbs too long or short, sometimes both at once; the leering mouths of broken yellow crockery; the filth and stench; the ludicrous clobber.
The serfs and freemen were becoming unruly to say the least, most of them drunk on turnip wine, no doubt, and titillated by the presence of their handsome prince. They crowded around the table in the marquee, desperate for Darov to pass judgement and resolve whatever grubby problems affected such urchins. A fight had broken out down the far end; three young women screeched and twirled each other around by the hair while a bunch of fellows cheered them on.
Did the kastal’s Lower Orders Liaison Officer really hold these clinics every single week? Poor bastard, I’ll make sure he gets a raise. Sitting in for the LOLO was just one of the crappy jobs with which Josep was punishing him. He had even refused Darov a proper bodyguard, claiming the entire Queen’s Regiment was busy undoing the carnage wrought by the coup that wasn’t. The High Constable panicked and a few troublemakers were strung up, stabbed, tortured a bit. So what? Denovia was better off without them and it didn’t do the monarchy any harm to flex its muscles now and again.
Saying that, Darov didn’t really care that his physical wellbeing was right now potentially under threat from this unseemly rabble. Ennui had lent him a despairing type of bravery and he just wanted to get the whole thing over with. He snapped his fingers at the two burly stable hands he had rounded up for this venture into Denovian farmlands. “Boys, hit them with sticks until they form an orderly queue, please. Threaten them with hanging if they don’t behave.”
The stable hands set about their work with enthusiasm, and Darov made a mental note to draft letters of commendation. In a gratifyingly short space of time, a semblance of order was achieved; haybales were arranged on the ground to herd the grumbling punters like farm animals waiting to be medicated. A robust woman from a nearby hovel was recruited as a bailiff in exchange for Darov’s artisanal didgeridoo which he had brought along as an emergency weapon. Standing off to one side, she performed a droning honk and glared at the people at the head of the queue.
“Step forward!”
A bald man, a woman and a little boy shuffled forward and stared at Darov in silence for an uncomfortably long time.
“Well?” Darov said.
The man grabbed a fistful of the boy’s hair and shook, drawing a squeal. “Little runt’s no son o’ mine, ‘ighness. Cast yon gaze upon his ugliness, if ye can bear it. You will agree, I trow, that yon goblin resembles me not an iota.” He cast the woman a rancid glare. “The fealty of my good lady wife leaves something to be desired and I’d be shot of ‘em both. I wouldst pursue mine ambition of gathering up the centimes what I has managed to save these years and opening a beachside souvenir shop and café in New Gower.”
The wife rolled her eyes. “Set straight this gibbering idiot, Your Highness, I beseech thee. His devil’s panpipe[1] is nowt to gaze upon yet stubbornly virile, like the dangly bits what grow from neglected taters. The boy is his.”
Darov had been warned that these paternity disputes were common among the rabble, so he had come prepared. “Step forward boy,” he said to the child.
The boy did so and shook before his prince.
“Calm yourself, child. As your prince I assure you that the test I am about to administer will not affect your life chances in the slightest.” From beneath the table, Darov retrieved a springy doorstopper which was attached with twine to the wooden handle of a toilet plunger. Both were new technology to Cartreffi and drew oohs and aahs from the crowd. They were less impressed by the electronic tablet which sat on Darov’s table.
Darov stood, held the rubber plunger against the top of the boy’s head and boinged the spring a few times. It was a satisfying noise. He dismissed the child with a wave and ushered the man forward. “Bend.”
The man presented the top of his head.
Darov jammed the plunger down on the man’s shiny pate, and to his great satisfaction it stuck fast. Stifling a laugh, he boinged the spring a few times and stroked his chin.
It took the strength of both stable hands to remove the thing from the man’s head, such was the power of the vacuum betwixt rubber and skin. Eventually it came away with a loud pop, and the man staggered back with a perfect red circle on his head, as if he had been anointed the high priest of a new-fangled religion.
Darov returned to his seat and made a show of examining the tablet, while sipping from his cup of excellent wine. “Well, this confirms it, I’m afraid,” he told the man. “You are the father.” The crowd gasped and a couple of women whooped.
“You’re sure?” the unhappy father said.
The bailiff swung the didgeridoo, landing a clean blow on the man’s temple. “You would question science?”
Darov sighed. He had found a painting program on the tablet, and he used it now to scrawl the words You are the father on the tablet with a finger. He turned it to the man. “Look. Now be gone with you.”
The following man in the queue was clearly insane but better-spoken and suitably deferential at least. “I seek permission, and perhaps sponsorship, Your Highness, to bring legal action against the sun. The ultraviolet portion of said celestial body’s spectral output has caused irreparable harm to my genome. It’s the short wavelengths you see, sir, they plays havoc with me telomeres so they do.”
“Have you tried wearing a hat?” Darov said.
The lunatic clapped and hopped from foot to foot. “Ooh, good idea, Your Highness. A hat. Oh yes, sir, very good sir. A hat, yes, I shall find me a hat.” Apparently delighted, the man skipped away, receiving kicks and jeers on the way out.
The next fellow was a bedraggled bard of some sort, carrying a sheaf of papers tied together with string. He thrust them in Darov’s face and spoke as he had rehearsed his words in front of a mirror.
“Dear Your Highness, I come before you seeking representation in the literary world for a composition of exciting adventure stories what I has written, set in the utopian past of Old Earth. I believe readers what enjoyed certain better-known adventurous works such as Handrew Weird’s Protect Whale Mary will be most satisfied with my offering. With your connections to the Guild of Publishers and access to the royal printing presses, together we could bring joy to readers young and old. I’m sure the royal purse would appreciate a portion of the profits.”
Darov was intrigued despite himself. “Oh yes? The name of this collection?”
“Adventure Stories Set in the Utopian Past of Old Earth, Your Highness. It is a period of our kind’s history what appeals greatly to me to the point of obsession, I do admit, specifically the years shortly before The Event. Hark back and imagine, if you would indulge me sir, the serene bliss of those times.” The bard turned misty-eyed. “The ready availableness of information rendered all peoples most highly enlightened. Worldwide communication pipes did mean that even trivial utterances would spur rigorous, healthful debate among strangers across the globe. Peoples did give a generous hearing even to views what opposed their own, for by a shared set of underlying values did they understand that all worked toward a common good. Bein’ the only sapient race what was known of at the time, humanity basked in a unity what is sadly lost to us now.”
“I see.”
The man was on a roll. “My favourite tale in the collection, sir, concerns a simple fellow by name of Yankee Doodle Candle. One morning he is going about his usual routine: medicating his little ‘uns with ‘appy pills, strapping on his Glock, and going to work as equerry to the Mighty Zuck, King of Burgers. Little does he know that the evil Mister Kipling—”
Darov sighed. “How many loyal readers do you have currently?”
“Two sir, and I do admit to counting my mother among them. The other is myself, for technically speaking I have read my work.”
Darov waved a dismissive hand. “Come back when you have ten thousand.”
He squawked as the bailiff hauled him away, “Ten thousand sir? I humbly submit that if I had that many readers I would not require representation from your royal personage!”
The next pair sought resolution of a dispute between them. One was a jester, still in uniform, who had performed a routine the previous evening. The other man was farmer or some such and was naked from the waist down. He claimed to have chanced across the jester’s performance and found it so amusing he had shat his trousers, ruining them.
“I would have satisfaction, Highness,” the farmer growled. “The smell and staining did persist most stubborn, like, so in my shame I did cast them down the village well. Yon devious mummer owes me new legwear.”
Darov scratched his chin and studied the blank screen of his tablet. “And the seat and gusset of your trousers took the brunt of the effluvia, I assume?”
“I don’t know about no effloomina sir, but those portions of the garment being nearest my brown-eye bore the brunt of the damage, if that what ye be asking. Twas uncommonly mild yestereve, sir, and I do freely admit to have been in want of undercrackers.”
The jester shook his bells and capered and the crowd laughed and jeered.
“Silence you,” the bailiff cried, and jabbed the jester with the didgeridoo.
Darov pretended to study the tablet a bit more, poking it with his finger. He stroked his chin. “Hmm, the legal precedent is clear but we must establish the facts of the case.”
He stood and came around the table, his cloak billowing magnificently. He urged the crowd back to leave a wide clearing and took the didgeridoo respectfully from the lady bailiff. With it, he drew a large pair of trousers in the dirt. The crowd was agog. “Now, sir. Show me where faecal staining persisted. Use hay if you wish.”
The man grabbed fistfuls of hay and sprinkled it on the crotch area of the trousers, and a trail down one leg. “About like that it be, sir.” The jester peered at the proceedings from the over the top of a pair of spectacles he had found somewhere.
Darov returned to the table. “It is settled. Damage or staining of less than thirty-four percent of the whole should be considered normal wear and tear, rising to forty-three percent in the absence of undergarments, as established by the famous case of Hissaq versus Cruzco, in the Year 4872. I am satisfied there is no case to answer. Dismissed.”
A few more boring issues were dealt with, including a protracted case concerning a plough hog which kept shitting in a neighbour’s garden. It took Darov a while to realise that far from wanting the animal to stop crapping on her property, the plaintiff was arguing with the hog owner about who got to keep the turds. Darov ordered a fifty-fifty split by weight and dismissed them. Everything was about shit and sex for these people.
As hoped, many of the punters got bored, gave up and went home. The novelty of seeing a real life prince had worn off and the marquee was half empty. The stable hands were playing cards and the woman with the didgeridoo was asleep on a haybale, cradling the instrument.
The man who strode up to the desk now was either in disguise or completely mad. Perhaps both. The silver hair and weathered face marked him as older fellow, but over the hair was pulled a wig which, if Darov was not mistaken, was simply a rubber cap with random tufts of animal hair glued to it. He wore a lenseless monocle and a false beard. Darov swore there was something familiar about the man, and there was a spark of cunning in the eyes.
“Thank ye for this gracious audience, sir,” the man said, touching a finger to his brow.
“Yes yes, out with it.”
“Very good, Highness. I have a question of rightful ownership for thee.” Darov smiled tightly to supress a yawn. “Not three days past,” the man continued, “I did purchase an ‘umble property a stone’s throw from this very place, and with it, a barn.”
“How fascinating, do go on.”
“Here is the interesting part, Highness. On the floor of this barn, there be a trapdoor, obscureded by years of dust and the world’s inevitamable slide ruinwards. Imagine my surprise when I did behold beneath this trapdoor a chest.” The voice dropped to a whisper. “A chest full of riches.”
Darov leaned forwards and licked his lips. “Riches, you say?”
“That’s right, sir. Coins, necklamaces, rubies, a crystal circlet as pure as the waters of Mount Bastard. Here the plot coagulates, though sir. I bought the property in good faith, but the previous owner, getting wind somehow of this treasure beneath the soil, doth claim it as rightfully his. So you see, sir. A dispute has arisen, and a sagacious ruling is needed.”
“You’re a sly one, aren’t you. Talk plainly, man. What’s your pitch?”
The man grinned. “Simple, sir. If His Highness were to find in my favour, I would be inclined to show my appreciation with a substantial gift to the royal purse. Perhaps you would like to cast your eye over this treasure, sir? Appraise it for thyself?”
Darov stood and called to the stragglers still waiting to be seen. “That’s your lot, good people. Thank you for coming, and thank you for the taxes and tithes and endless labour and so on. Fugg off home now, all of you.” There was dissatisfied grumbling all around and Darov ducked a butternut squash hurled with surprising vigour by a small girl. “Fugg off, I say!” He turned to the stable hands. “If anyone refuses to leave, set the marquee on fire. I’ll make my own way back to the kastal.”
The mystery man turned and made for the entrance flap. Turning and seeing Darov lagging, he urged him on with a demented smile and wave.
Darov hesitated. Was it really a good idea to follow this lumpy little man on a whim to this supposed treasure? With no guard beside him? Perhaps it was a ransom plot, or some such. Internally, he went through the motions of weighing up the risks and rewards in a cold, sober manner, but he knew really that the decision had been made.
Screw it.
The queen’s favourite hint was “act thee in haste and repent thee in leisure,” but she wasn’t skint, and he needed treasure.
[1] Penis.