Sure, sure. Everybody else could lounge around, basking in the
splendor of our glorious deed and our even-more-glorious newfound moral stature.
Professional Heroes, Excelsior! Marvelous!
Well . . . To be precise, Greyboar was a Professional Hero, Excelsior. I wasn't. I wasn't even a Professional Hero's manager and agent, to my chagrin. The first thing I discovered upon our return—we'll get to it; hold your horses—is that a Professional Hero can't have a manager and agent. Matter of professional ethics, don't you know? Seems that by the nature of the trade, a Hero must always act out of High Principles, and a manager/agent would tend to bring that principle under what they call a "cloud of disrepute."
Which meant . . .
That I was now officially a Professional Hero, Auxiliary, Sidekick. With the wondrous prospect of eventually advancing—should the sidekick Prove His Mettle In Deeds Of Renown—to the august status of Professional Hero, Auxiliary, Companion.
Marvelous.
All this was explained to me the day after our return from the netherworld. At the crack of dawn, there came a furious pounding on our door. Bleary-eyed, I opened the entrance and beheld three stooped and withered old men, clad in rags, each clutching a bundle of tomes.
They charged into the foyer without so much as a by-your-leave. "Where's the dining room?" demanded one. "We'll need the largest table in the house," quavered another.
The third one didn't say anything. Jenny and Angela had appeared in the foyer, rubbing sleep from their eyes, and the oldster was ogling them. Not that they weren't worth ogling, mind you, dressed as they were in those gauzy nightgowns which they favor (and I normally do except when lechers are in the vicinity). But I still thought it was grotesque. The way the geezer was wheezing, I was half-sure he was about to expire on the spot. Which I wouldn't have minded in the least, except I'd have to deal with the body. From the looks of them, if his two companions tried to carry him out they'd drop dead themselves.
"It's that way," yawned Jenny. She pointed the way to the dining room and started back up the stairs. Angela followed. "Call us if you need anything, Ignace," she mumbled.
All three of the vieillards ogled them until they passed out of sight. Then, they nodded in unison.
"Excellent! Excellent!" exclaimed one. "Flagrant libertinism," proclaimed another. "The Second of the Sure Signs," he added gleefully, cackling and rubbing his hands.
I had no idea what they were talking about. I was just coming awake enough to order them out of the house when they charged down the hallway toward the dining room. By the time I got there, they had all the tomes spread out and open, covering the entire surface.
I was about to toss them out bodily when they spoke the horrid words.
"Ahem. Sirrah Ignace. We are the Rules Committee of the Professional Heroes Guild. Here to welcome you into our ranks and instruct you as to your new responsibilities. I am Pathos. This is Bathos, and the other goes by the name of Cannabis."
"We also double as the Ethics Committee," added Bathos. Apologetically: "I'm afraid we're required to do so by our small numbers and meager purse. We are not, as you are perhaps aware, one of the more populous and prosperous guilds."
The two of them turned to Cannabis, as if waiting for him to speak. But he was just ogling the walls, apparently oblivious. Perhaps he was hoping that more nubile damsels might spring forth from the woodwork. I got the feeling his mind wasn't entirely there.
Pathos cleared his throat. "Well. He's had a bit of a rough time of it for the past few decades. Ever since that unfortunate episode with the dryads."
He heaved a small sigh. "To be honest, Sirrah Ignace, we're the smallest and the poorest of the professional guilds. In fact, the three of us are pretty much it, in the Excelsior class. Except for Hamhead Jones, if he recovers from his injuries. And the Apprentices Rafael and Ethelrede the Younger." Again, he cleared his throat. "Assuming that Rafael comes out of his coma. And Ethelrede the Younger escapes from the rock to which he's currently chained in the netherworld, after carving himself a new wooden leg."
"Oh, no," I croaked.
"So pleased to welcome you into the Guild!" exclaimed Bathos. "I think I speak for all of us when I say we were delighted—"
"Ecstatic!" qualified Pathos. Cannabis flopped his head around, drooling a bit. Agreement, perhaps, but I suspected he was lost in unfortunate memory.
"—to hear the news that Greyboar the Great has eschewed his wicked ways in favor of a Hero's Life."
"Oh, no!" I wailed.
It was all downhill from there. By the end of the day, when they finally left, the Guild All-Committees-In-One had made clear our new professional ethics and standards.
Starvation loomed, assuming we survived that long.
Just to drive home the point, our first job showed up on our doorstep that same afternoon.
"We're the village elders from the small province of Rockandahardplace," pronounced the gap-toothed swineherd at the front. "Terrible it's been, the way the Dragon devours our maidens. Which puir lasses we moost chain up outside the Creature's lair 'pon every full moon."
"Terrible! Terrible!" intoned the other dozen or so peasants. "Been the ruination of all moral standards! 'Tis nary a maiden to be found past the age of twelve! The foul slatterns!"
The swineherd cleared his throat. "Fortunate, as it is, th'Dragon's no really so fussy."
They beamed at me. Then, two of them hauled up a small cart filled with potatoes. A none-too-plump piglet was tied to the cart, looking none too pleased.
"O' course," announced the doughty fellow in charge, "we has brought th'customary Gift To The Hero. As stip'lated in the Rules."
Words failed me.
Alas, they didn't fail Angela and Jenny.
"It'll be great!" squealed Jenny. "We can be the maidens of the month! Tantalizing bait for the Dragon, while you and Greyboar get ready to pounce!"
"You're not maidens," I protested.
Angela stuck her tongue out at me.
"And since when have you complained about that?" demanded Jenny.
"Doesn't matter anyway!" proclaimed Angela. "You heard what the Doughty Villager said. The Dragon's not fussy. No more than you are."
A moment later they were charging about their sewing room, hauling out material for The Costumes. By the next day they were well into the project.
Why they were spending so much time on it was a mystery to me. Given that Jenny and Angela's design for their "sacrificial maiden" costumes seemed to consist mostly of Revealing Rents in the Rags.
I couldn't even find solace in The Trough. By the time I got there, Greyboar and the Cat and Hrundig and Shelyid had already spread the news. My entry was greeted by a thunderous round of applause.
"The Hero's Sidekick!"
"Behold! He comes!"
This ruffian ribaldry was followed by fifteen minutes of lowlife derision, followed by the Unkindest Cut of All. Leuwen plopped a pot of ale in front of me, where I sat glumly hunched over at Eddie Black's.
"On the house, Ignace," he announced. "Just this once, seeing as how you've entered the land of pover-tee." Guffaw, guffaw, guffaw. It was so tiresome.
"But don't despair," he added, his double chin quivering. "Kenny the Beggar says he'll buy you half a pint of bitters if you survive the Dragon."
Guffaw, guffaw, guffaw. It was so tiresome.
Not knowing what else to do, I spent the next few days sharing the library with Zulkeh. At my insistence, the Committee had left all their tomes behind so I could undertake a study of our new professional rules, regulations, guidelines, and code of ethics.
Hour by hour, I slogged my way through the books. It was just as bad as I feared.
Fatality rate: expected to be astronomical.
Casualty rate: all-encompassing, universal; a given.
Recompense: nil, save the voluntary "gift."
Selection of clients: nil, save that preference goes to the poorest, least privileged, and most downtrodden. Those with only a pot to piss in must be serviced first. Do not accept the pot as a "gift."
And so on and so forth.
"We're going to starve," I groaned. "If we live that long."
But then—
But then—
I started noticing something. Didn't think much of it, at first. Until, in book after book, a pattern began to emerge.
I started studying more intently. Then, earnestly. Then, feverishly. By the end of the second day, I had gone through each and every tome.
And found no exceptions! None! The principle was established! The rule as clear as day!
I was quivering with excitement. But I forced myself to think it over carefully, before I made the Fateful Decision.
Oh, for maybe ten seconds.
Screw it. Even if I'd lost everything else on account of Greyboar's philosophical obsessions, I'd gained the one thing that mattered the most to me.
So it was with a light heart and a lift to my steps that I charged into Jenny and Angela's sewing room. They left off their cheerful chattering and their sewing (well—mostly rending what had already been sewn) and looked up at me from their chairs.
Smiling like liquid sunshine.
"Well, and will you look at this?" chuckled Jenny.
"He actually doesn't look like a barrel of pickles," chortled Angela.
"Marry me," I choked.
The smiles vanished from their faces. Jenny and Angela stared at me. Then at each other. Then, back at me.
Tears started to form in Jenny's eyes. "Which one?" whispered Angela. "We thought you loved us both."
I was probably hopping up and down with glee, by then. I don't remember clearly.
"That's it! That's it! Both of you!"
I managed to bring myself under a semblance of control. "Well, not exactly that, since that would be polygamy or something and given the way you two are—well, you know, it's like a three-way thing—so what happens is that I marry Jenny and you marry Angela and she marries me, and maybe we can do it back around again the other way just to make sure everything's on the up and up."
They were back to staring at me. Blank-faced.
Then Angela croaked: "That'd be illegal, Ignace."
"Can't be done," added Jenny, very sadly.
By then I'm sure I was hopping up and down. "Bullshit! Doesn't apply to us! Me and Greyboar are official Heroes! On this stuff—there's no rules! We set our own!"
Jenny and Angela still didn't believe me, so I more or less hauled them by the scruff of the neck into the library, jolted Zulkeh out of his scholarly trance, and put the matter before him.
"Well, of course!" he expostulated, stroking his beard fiercely. " 'Tis as plain as the nose in front of your face. All Heroes, by the nature of the trade, are profligates when it comes to matters of the heart. Cannot be held accountable to society's rules. Nay—fie on it! What sort of wretched Hero would settle for such a timid boundary to his Vaulting Spirit?"
He gave Jenny and Angela a stern look. "As for the other—this trifle concerning sexual orientation—the matter is plainer still. My dear girls! The principle was established by the very founder of the Hero's Trade himself. I refer, of course, to Gilgamesh Sfondrati-Piccolomini and his grotesque liaison with the man-beast Enkidu, in which homoerotica was intermingled with the most perverse aspects of sadomasochism and bondage. And whatever doubts might still have remained were surely dispelled by the great Achilles Laebmauntsforscynneweëld, in his unseemly hither-thither between the captive slave girl and comely Patroclus, in which—"
Chapter and verse, chapter and verse. The one and only time in my life I blessed pedantry!
Zulkeh even offered to speak on our behalf should the Rules and Ethics Committee prove obstreperous. But, in the event, his intercession was quite unnecessary. When I consulted with them, the Committee was every bit as emphatic as the mage.
"Of course!" stated Pathos.
"Practically a necessity, under the code of professional ethics," intoned Bathos.
Cannabis didn't say anything coherent. He just drooled at Angela and Jenny, muttering something about shinnying up a tree. I think.
So that was that. Jenny and Angela and I got married that same evening. Before a standing-room-only crowd at The Trough. I insisted on the venue, and since there Are No Rules For Heroes when it comes to this kind of stuff, who could object?
I even insisted that the Oldsters at the Old Bar preside over the ceremony. Which they did, or tried to, until their argument over precedents and hallowed traditions got so snarled up that Greyboar got disgusted and went ahead and finished the ceremony himself.
Then there was a gigantic celebration, in which Leuwen broke every tradition and footed the entire bill. Almost broke my heart, that, because I wasn't able to participate in more than a round or two before Jenny and Angela hauled me back to the house and upstairs to the Connubial Bed, as it was now renamed.
But my incipient heartbreak was gone before we even got home and after that I didn't give it the least thought. Truth is, I didn't give much of anything what you could properly call thought for quite a few hours.
I woke up early the next morning, before sunup. Our bedroom was still dark. Somehow or other, I'd wound up in the middle, and I could hear Angela murmuring something in her sleep to my left and felt Jenny move in her sleep to my right.
I can always tell them apart, even in the dark. Even though I couldn't have begun to tell you whose leg was which, in that tangle we were in.
So I knew it was Jenny's hand which made that funny little caressing stroke on my ribs that tells you the sleeping person who made it wants you there. And I knew it was Angela's hair I was kissing. And I remembered the way her face had looked when it had been floating somewhere over me earlier and the way Jenny had laughed and she and Angela had each put a hand on my chest and squeezed me really tight and Angela had laughed too and said, "See, Ignace? You don't miss that hole in your heart at all, now that it's gone."
And the funny thing is, I really don't. Even though we're all going to starve to death if we live that long.
Screw it. Bring on that sorry dragon!
Comes down to it, I'll bet Hrundig knows a recipe for cooking the mangy beasts.
I guess I was talking out loud, and woke the girls up. Jenny chuckled, stroked me again, and whispered: "He does. We got it from him before he left."
Angela nuzzled me. "So don't whine about the money we're going to spend on onions and mushrooms," she murmured. "We'll need it for the stuffing."