Of Staves and Sigmas by Geoffrey Verdegast

Author:Geoffrey Verdegast
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: adventure, british, philosophy, epic fantasy, mythology, mysticism, gladiator, medieval, transworld
Publisher: Geoffrey Verdegast

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Let us, then, be up and doing,

With a heart for any fate.

—HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

By his internal clock, Wagner would have guessed it to be late afternoon, long past any civilised tea time, yet still a trice too early for the pre-dinner aperitif. The sun no longer beaming her slivered graciousness through the trapdoor seams, a few more hours would see her departing altogether, leaving him downcast and alone in his private, Stygian domain—a bargain-basement Lucifer whose only subjects were the slinking, slithering, parasitical ilk that neither feared, nor swore fealty to, this newly fallen lord.

Sitting weary in his thoughts, he couldn’t actually recall ever having sipped an aperitif, not officially anyway, certainly nothing so elegant or cultured as that which earthly bluebloods—at least those who were true to their stereotype—reportedly partook on a daily basis. Never had he savoured a snifter with any kind of genteelism, nor once imbibed same in prudently measured tipples; and he certainly never had a faithful Jeeves or Giles poised solicitously in the background, empty salver balanced atop white-gloved fingers, waiting calmly on the remanent crystal. If one counted the occasional shooter of Jägermeister that he’d knocked back while slapping a sloppy spatula around the Filthy Lucre’s griddle, then certainly he’d had aperitifs a-plenty in his time. But none had ever been downed with the quaint intent to stimulate the appetite—only to smooth the roughs of what, at the time, had been a cyclical existence of psychological crashes, burns, and rebuilds.

Beyond their apprehension earlier that morning, Wagner and Balgor had been given the works in retributive long version—first, by their capturers, and then, by every halberd-carrying grunt and junior officer into whose commission they’d fallen on the long way back to immurement. From the initial seizure on, they’d been the cynosures for NuRac boasting, with every next soldier and bureaucrat soon hitching his wagon to the recognition train, seeking to steal even the most miniscule piece of credit for their arrest. All this, too, before it was even confirmed that they were prison escapees and not outside spies. It was only when the casemate sentry’s peers finally happened upon him, gagged and suspended like a piñata ten metres down the cesspit well, that the authorities were presented with attestation enough to have them suddenly seeking confirmation from the camp. Disorganisation being the order of the day, the fugitives were shuttled about from vrohda-drawn paddy wagon to local incarceration to yet another detention facility one district removed—back, forth, ad infinitum, until it was finally determined under whose jurisdiction they would be processed, and by which means, dispatched back to the camp’s dungeon block. Several grumpy and crag-faced justices had been mustered from their beds (from their graves by the looks of a few), each to render his two-cents worth of legal learnedness, while word was messengered up and down and laterally across the military hierarchy until inevitably plopping down at Commander AuwNiir’s front stoop.

AuwNiir, no mere profiteer, was a man long reputed for his sophistry, and therefore quite exceptionally practised in the sister arts of manipulation and diplomacy.

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