Page 30 of The Dungeon Book

“Ain’t no eggs.”

“Well, I shall make do for today, but see that there are eggs tomorrow.”

“Ain’t no bacon.”

“ ‘My lord. There is no bacon, my lord.’ Try again.”

The servant’s face twisted. “Ain’t no bacon, my lord.”

“See that there is bacon tomorrow.”

There was no bacon the next day, nor any eggs – nor tea for that matter. Nevertheless, Sir Rudyard repeated his commands that day, and the next, and the next – and his unyielding polite insistence worked like alchemy. Guards were reassigned from keeping watch on the empty hills to hunt wild pigs in the woods, and lo! there was bacon. More folk from the north settled in the hitherto abandoned lands around the keep, and where there are people there are chickens, and where there are chickens, eggs. Obviously, these changes cannot be attributed wholly to Sir Rudyard, but he did give the impression that the sun rose each morning only because the appointed time was set down in his almanac.

So: eggs. Bacon. Black bread. Tea.

Not once in the last ten years had he allowed the vicissitudes of the world to disrupt his expectations. Not even the infamous night seven years prior when the sentries had seen dragonfire on the mountain, and word had come of the attack on Castle Uthgard, and terror had struck the hearts of everyone in the keep. It was not that Sir Rudyard was unafraid of the prospect of a dragon crawling from its lair in the underworld to lay waste to the lands of men; it was just that, given the choice, he would prefer to face such a horror well fortified with −

Eggs. Bacon. Black bread. Tea.

Even on that precipice of that calamity, he had held true to his breakfast course, and, again, order had been restored. The dragon had not attacked. This was, of course, due to the eye-gouging inflicted on Nithscalpa by Queen Aldebeth, not any virtue of boiled eggs, but Rudyard went with the information available to him.

Eggs. Bacon. Black bread. Tea. Ramparts of order.

Thus, when the messenger arrived, he was obliged to wait. Eggs were cracked with two neat taps like an opening volley, the bacon dissected into six pieces with military precision, the bread employed to soak up the survivors, stodgy calvary routing the remnants of a defeated host.

No martial metaphor was available for the tea, but Harald still had to wait until Sir Rudyard had slurped it all down and wiped his moustache with a napkin like a shroud being draped over the body of a fallen hero. Then Sir Rudyard pushed the gory battlefield – the first skirmish of the day’s war on chaos victoriously concluded – aside and turned to the messenger.

Sir Rudyard listened intently to what had become a rather confused story. There was a monster in the woods – who might be a demon or a changeling – and had given a gold coin – or many gold coins, or a whole treasure hoard, or a blood-red ruby the size of a wild apple – to one of the village children, who was now bewitched, or cursed, or eaten. There might also be more monsters, trolls or goblins or hagworms, as big as trees (but definitely not trees).

Having heard the tale, Sir Rudyard took immediate, decisive action.

“Tell the riders to prepare for a hunt. Ready the dogs, prepare the horses. And get this man some breakfast.”

Events continued to accelerate.

Tongues of flame burned around the village. Some bobbed through the dark in the hands of unseen sentries. Others had been tied to the wooden palisade that surrounded the village. Bait stared at the dancing flames with interest and alarm. Fire was a rarity in the dungeon; Denizens could see in the dark, and there was nowhere for the acrid smoke to go. A burning torch below was like hammering on a huge gong. Torches were for special occasions, for Levellings and feasts – or for times of war. Torches had burned in the corridors of the Arcade when they’d fought the kobolds. But she didn’t know the surface customs, and could not tell if this commotion was celebration or conflict.

She had not seen Neb in three days, not since she’d given him the coins. Worry wormed up from her belly to catch in her throat.

She crept closer, leaving the shelter of the forest, nothing between her and the night sky. The village was surrounded by fields; she hid in the hedgerows and undergrowth, fearful of being seen. In her hand she clutched her precious silver coin.

Tell them who you are, the minotaur had said. Tell them Sir Peledon sent you. Tell them to bring you home.

She should just walk in, she told herself. Do as the minotaur had said. She practised the words over and over, trying to make the human words fit in her mouth as easily as the Dungeon Tongue. I’m the daughter of King Arus. I was lost, but now here I am.

But I haven’t been lost, she’d objected. I knew where I was the whole time. And Sir Peledon had groaned and shaken his head, and the thought that she’d caused the minotaur distress was like a knife in her stomach. Bait did not know King Arus, but it was important to Sir Peledon, and he’d saved her time and time again. For his sake, she would go home.

On she went, scurrying, crawling on hands and knees, darting from one deeper patch of shadow to the next until she reached the wooden palisade. She peered through gaps between the stakes, examining the strange houses of the villagers. Sir Peledon had told her that she’d live in a palace when she went home, which to Bait sounded like a dungeon with more windows, a great pile of stone with an appropriate number of labyrinthine corridors and vasty halls.

More torches bobbed to and fro in the dark, but other than those patrolling sentries she could see no one in the village. Everyone must be hiding indoors, huddled together, fearful of foes. Bait glanced around, looking for the great danger that threatened the village, not realising that she was the cause of their terror. All the sentries looked alike to Bait, to whom the range of human faces seemed terribly limited, endless Neb-like variations. In the Dungeon, anything could be someone’s face.

She wondered which of the houses sheltered Neb and his family. He had a father and a mother – not abstractions, but actual people, warm skin and strong sheltering arms. That thought sat awkwardly in Bait’s head. All her life, she’d been the human girl, always different, always entirely herself. She’d lived with the goblins, with Gloop, with a talking skull, but she wasn’t a goblin or a slime or a wizard’s skull. Then again, in times of peril or sorrow, she’d huddled in the goblin tunnels, or dipped her toes into Gloop’s cooling acidic gel, or stayed up in whispered conversation with the skull while outside Sir Peledon drove the danger away. What was kinship or family?

In the dark, she ran her fingers over the fading features of her father on the coin, then closed her fist around it. Gathering her courage, she approached the sentries at the gate.

“I—”

That was as far as she got.