Cugel's Saga (aka Cugel - the Skybreak Spatterlight) by Jack Vance

Author:Jack Vance [Vance, Jack]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy
ISBN: 9781466821965
Publisher: Orb Books; Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 1983-01-01T16:00:00+00:00

The night passed. Stars moved across the sky. From the waste came the melancholy call of the visp: once, twice, then silence.

Cugel awoke to the rising of the sun, and for an appreciable interval could not define his whereabouts. He started to throw a leg over the side of the bed, then pulled it back with a startled jerk.

A shadow fluttered across the sun; a heavy black object swooped down to alight at the foot of Cugel’s bed: a pelgrane of middle years, to judge by the silky gray hair of its globular abdomen. Its head, two feet long, was carved of black horn, like that of a stag-beetle and white fangs curled up past its snout. Perching on the bedstead it regarded Cugel with both avidity and amusement.

“Today I shall breakfast in bed,” said the pelgrane. “Not often do I so indulge myself.”

It reached out and seized Cugel’s ankle, but Cugel jerked back. He groped for his sword but could not draw it from the scabbard. In his frantic effort he caught his hat with the tip of his scabbard; the pelgrane, attracted by the red glint, reached for the hat. Cugel thrust ‘Spatterlight’ into its face.

The wide brim and Cugel’s own terror confused the flow of events. The bed bounded as if relieved of weight; the pelgrane was gone.

Cugel looked to all sides in puzzlement.

The pelgrane had disappeared.

Cugel looked at ‘Spatterlight’, which seemed to shine with perhaps a somewhat more vivacious glow.

With great caution Cugel arranged the hat upon his head. He looked over the side and noticed approaching in the road a small two-wheeled cart pushed by a fat boy of twelve or thirteen years.

Cugel threw down his rope to fix upon a stump and drew himself to the surface. When the boy rolled the push-cart past, Cugel sprang out upon the road. “Hold up! What have we here?”

The boy jumped back in fright. “It is a new wheel for the wain and breakfast for my brothers: a pot of good stew, a round of bread and a jug of wine. If you are a robber there is nothing here for you.”

“I will be the judge of that,” said Cugel. He kicked the wheel to render it weightless, and heaved it spinning away through the sky while the boy watched in open-mouthed wonder. Cugel then took the pot of stew, the bread and the wine from the cart. “You now may proceed,” he told the boy. “If your brothers inquire for the wheel and the breakfast, you may mention the name ‘Cugel’ and the sum ‘five terces’.”

The boy trundled the cart away at a run. Cugel took the pot, bread and wine to his bed and, loosing the rope, drifted high into the air.

Along the road at a run came the three farmers, followed by the boy. They halted and shouted: “Cugel! Where are you? We want a word or two with you.” And one added ingenuously: “We wish to return your five terces!”

Cugel deigned no response.

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