“Five hundred gold estarcees for the head of Steve the Wizard!” Thane Senigal bellowed into the face of his lieutenant. Then, as he shoved the man toward the tent flap, he added, “And another fifty for the severed teats of that she-frog he’s riding!”
Durnik, his chief advisor, opened his mouth to point out that amphibians aren’t milk-bearing. But before he could speak, he glanced down at the bandaged stump where his right foot used to be. It was a still-painful reminder from his liegelord to consider carefully when and how to interject interesting facts about the life sciences into military briefings.
Instead, he kept silent, and followed on his crutch as the thane stepped out of his command tent. From the overlook outside, they could see the entirety of the battlefield:
The lines of his rear guard, now hopelessly broken and scattered by renegade Prince Muir’s Outrunners.
The third division, in full rout and running like frightened children from a silver dragon that had chosen to side against the thane.
Even Senigal’s own vanguard—tasked with assassinating The Outlaw Prince—had been thwarted by a cheeky and enterprising crew of orphan girls from the nearby city of Ephria.
(Reports of the incident were confusing; something to do with a piñata, and a barrel of flaming tar.)
Yet throughout it all, Steve the Wizard wound his way across the field. Mounted on the great frog steed Hurklegrump, crushing foemen under each twenty-yard hop, the purple wizard was the key to the success of Muir’s uprising. He kept the prince’s various factions coordinated, working as one. For who else could speak dragonic, elvish, owlthroat, mantongue, AND deepvoice, let alone do so in a manner that could convince this tenuous alliance to remain united in the face of the continent’s most disciplined military force?
“Horse!” Senigal called to his master of arms, collapsing his scope down. “Armor!” He turned then to Durnik and said, “If the war turns on this man’s life, then by Krytim, I’ll be the one to turn it. With my own bare hands, if need be.”
The thane took one final look down to the wizard and his steed — a brilliant flash of purple robes and green skin amid the gray haze of the melee. Then he drew near to Durnik.
“I want you to prepare for the Ritual of the Nine,” he whispered, cautious there were none of his men nearby to overhear. “When I return, we dine on a wizard’s flesh and entreat our Dark Lady’s favor.”
His lips drew up into an obscene grin at this thought, his eyes burning with malevolent glee. “With Black Helia behind us and the Outlaw’s traitors moldering in the dirt, who on this continent will be able to stand before us?” He pounded a fist roughly against his advisor’s chest. “Eh, old friend? Who?”
Without another word, Thane Senigal strode off to engage Steve the Wizard in single combat. Durnik, clinging to his single crutch, gangrenous leg wound swinging in the air, watched his liege depart.
“Yeah, fuck this,” Durnik muttered under his breath, and hobbled his way to the nearest horse.
For Durnik knew. He knew that the moment Steve the Wizard laid eyes on Senigal, he’d turn the thane’s heart into a hedgehog. Or a badger. Or a giant weevil. And then he’d lean back in his saddle and smoke a weed-pipe as he watched the creature burrow its way out of the screaming villain’s chest.
For Steve the Wizard was a friend to all. And a death to all tyrants.
Durnik discarded his tabard, leaving the violet and gold of Senigal’s heraldry draped over a scrub brush along the road. As he set out for the coast city of Mulderret, he began to muse on which creature would be the most efficient at tunneling out of the thane’s torso. Certainly the badger with its powerful forelimbs would be a strong contender, but the humble weevil, if enlarged hundreds of times beyond its normal dimensions…
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Excerpted from “Exalt! Now, Now, The Time of His Coming!” by E.V. Toombs. Originally published in Weird Fantasias, Summer 1978.
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