The Fallable Fiend Read Online Free PDF

these wagons. The clatter and shouting could have been heard leagues away.
    As my cage-wagon drew to a halt, Bagardo leapt down from his perch. “Ye idiots! Loafers! Idle witlings!” he yelled. “We should have been ready to roll by now! Can you do nought without me to command you? How shall we ever reach Evrodium by tomorrow night? Ungah, cease your insolent grinning, you bare-arsed ape! Get down and get to work! Let Zdim out; we need every hand.”
    The apeman obediently descended and opened my door. As I issued from the cage, some of the others looked at me askance. They were, however, used to exotic creatures and soon returned to their tasks.
    Ungah busied himself with lashing a sheet of canvas around a bundle of stakes. He handed me one end of the rope and said: “Hold this. When I say pull, pull!”
    On signal, I pulled. The rope broke, so that I fell backward and got my tail muddy. Ungah looked at the broken ends of the rope with a puzzled frown.
    “This rope seems sound,” he said. “Must be you’re stronger than I thought.”
    He tied the broken ends together and resumed his task, warning me not to exert my full force. By the time we had the bundle lashed and stowed, the main tent had come down and the workmen were cleaning up the last pieces of equipment. I could not but marvel how, despite the frightful confusion that had obtained before, everything was packed up at last. Bagardo, now mounted on his horse and wearing a trumpet on a cord around his neck, waved a wide-brimmed hat to emphasize his commands:
    “Yare with that harness! Siglar, run your cat wagon up to the gate; I’m putting you at the head. Ungah, put Zdim back into his wagon and pull into line . . .”
    “Back you go,” said Ungah to me. When I was in the cage, he untied the lashings of a pair of canvas rolls on the sides of the roof, so that the canvas fell down on both sides of the wagon. Since the ends of the cage were solid, I was cut off from the outside.
    “Ho!” I cried. “Why are you shutting me in?”
    “Orders,” said Ungah, tying down the lower edges of the curtains. “Boss would not give Chemnites a free show.”
    “But I am fain to see the countryside!”
    “Be at ease, Master Zdim. When we get into open country, I’ll pull up a corner of your sheets.”
    Bagardo blew a shrill tucket. With a vast noise of cracking whips, neighing horses, clattering hooves, jingling harness, creaking axles, shouts, curses, warnings, jests, and snatches of song, the wagons lurched into motion. I could see nought, so for the first hour I settled into a digestive torpor, lolling and swaying on the wooden chest.
    At length, I called out to remind Ungah of his promise. At a halt to breathe the horses, he untied the forward lower corner of one curtain and tied it up, affording me a three-sided window. I saw little but farmers’ fields, with now and then a patch of forest or a glimpse of the Kyamos. The road was lined by a dense belt of spring wildflowers, in clusters of crimson, azure, purple, white, and gold.
    When a bend in the road permitted, I saw the rest of the train before and behind. I counted seventeen wagons including my own. Bagardo cantered from one end of the line to the other, making sure that all went well.
    We followed the road by which I had come to Chemnis. We climbed to the plateau whereon the temple stands, since the vale of the Kyamos here narrows to a gorge. The horses plodded slowly up the grade, while the workmen got out to push.
    When we reached the plateau and passed the jointure with the path to the temple of Psaan, the road leveled and we went faster. We did not continue towards Ir but turned off on another road, which bypassed the capital to the south. As Ungah explained, we had milked Ir lately and her udder had not had time to refill.
    We had covered less than half the distance to Evrodium when night descended upon us. The wagon train pulled off the road on an unplowed stretch of flatland, and the seventeen