Death and Taxes

It was in the city where the oracle sees all, and knows all by the alignment of the stars, that Wor Nerto sat not at the Inn of Delight, but down the street at the seedy dark little establishment known as the Three Fingers.

Those around him had moved cautiously away. The shadows from the sooty fire danced on his great countenance making it a pallid death mask. But those around him did not pull away because of his awesome and terrible demeanor, or his bulging muscles, or the ghastly and near fatal cuts that gushed blood down his springy limbs. For while all of these things were true enough, he did have a terrible demeanor, and bulging muscles, and suffered from grievous wounds, and the rumor of vast treasure newly won surely whetted curiosity, it was the pungent putrid odor that wafted about him that drove the inn's regular irregulars away.

Wor Nerto had spent the last three days slogging, spelunking, and crab-crawling his way through the always partially full sewer tunnels below the majestic and teeming, squalid, massive city of the oracle. And it was worth it too, for he had tracked down that foul, (yes foul is perhaps too short a word), the foul dwelling of the treasure-hoarding sewer spivel, whose monkey fingers had spirited away so many gaudy and bejeweled anklets which were so very popular among the affluent ladies of the city being the current couture fad.

Yes, the spivel had indeed hoarded a great, great pile of these things, and other trinkets of various value, but truly it was nothing more than a common pest in a city of this size, at least until the fateful day that a particularly favored anklet of the wife of the Consul disappeared. Then the spivel became legend. Then the stories of glorious reward for bravery brought the following to many a great hero's lips, "Where doth the spivel live?" and "What killeth such as a spivel?" and "I have slain many a spivel indeed."

But the moment the city's engineer, small, wiry, yet brilliant, cracked the lid on the great cloacae, bravery waned, bravery wilted, bravery dissipated before the foul wind that rose up from the fetid depths.

Until Wor Nerto, that is. Not one of great nose, no, he hardly noticed his own stink most days. He was brave for greed's sake. And he was well muscled, and vicious, and while he had not killed a spivel, many another beast he had. With his sword, he lowered himself into the lukewarm stream beneath the city and started to track the spivel.

Now Wor sat, sullen, wanting nothing but the drink and food he had ordered, the heavy leather bag, full of his hard earned treasure, pulling at his hip.

But even as the barkeep set the steaming bowl of gruel before him, and Wor's evil bloodshot eye glared at the barkeep condemning the gruel's particularly thin consistency, Gother the tax collector appeared as if by foul sorcery.

Wor stared blankly at Gother's brown fez festooned with the brocade of the exchequer's office. The porcine Gother's face was frozen in a frown, his calculating eyes peering out past a patchy beard covering fatty jowls. Suddenly Wor realized dimly in some seldom used corner of his brain, that this man wanted something from him.

Clearing phlegm from his throat while unrolling a scroll, Gother began: "If thou art named Wor Nerto, and henceforth named slayer of the dread spivel, and claimant of the spivel's pelf, knowest that it is my office to assess the municipal tax which is to be levied against any commerce not excluding goods and lucre appropriated following the slaying of creatures hell-spawned or otherwise within the city's walls."

Wor stared without response, a bit of gruel running down his chin.

"Still further as such lucre must be weighed and value assessed to ascertain the appropriate taxation, said lucre will be expropriated in its entirety to the lower office of the exchequer in the name of his lordship, the Consul."

Wor's spoon splattered into the gruel. The lower lid of his left eye began to twitch. He ground his teeth. The cords in his neck began to coil and tighten. He leaned forward to meet Gother's stare and his fetid breath rolled across the table. His right eye, laced with broken vessels, nearly popped out of his head.

"I've killed the spivel. Beware boothaler; I'll gut you the same."

Leaning forward Gother smirked with a newfound surety. "Ah, thou art a predictable breed. A detachment of city guards stands outside this inn at the ready. When I walk out of here empty handed, they'll be coming in."

With that the obese man rolled the scroll, wiped a fleck of gruel from his face, and exited from the now empty inn. Immediately, neat trim men-at-arms began to pour in. Swords were drawn and they strategically began to spread toward Wor like a stream of fire ants.

With a mad glint in his eye and a snarl that curled his lip into a cruel smile, Wor Nerto backed into the post in the center of the inn. If the mythic spivel could not claim his life, these catchpoles wouldn't either. He forced his back into the post with all his might as the guards charged simultaneously. And as they thrust home, his great mass wrenched the beam and with a mighty crack the room came down.

As night fell, a bloated Gother stood with whip in hand directing a ramshackle crew. Slowly they upturned stone and splintered beams until at last they marched out with the mighty, massive, broken body of Wor Nerto. Face down, his long bedraggled hair hung low to the ground as did the bag that Gother now deftly cut from his belt knowing in his gloating heart that this fateful day the Consul's wife would at last reclaim her precious bauble while this brutish oaf met life's two great certainties, death and taxes.

Find more by J. Davidson Hero in the Author Index.

Comment on this story in the Aphelion Forum

Return to Aphelion's Index page.