Five
The Announcement
THE Great Square of Florin City was filled as never before, awaiting the introduction of Prince Humperdinck's bride-to-be, Princess Buttercup of Hammersmith. The crowd had begun forming some forty hours earlier, but up to twenty-four hours before, there were still fewer than one thousand. But then, as the moment of introduction grew nearer, from across the country the people came. None had ever seen the Princess, but rumors of her beauty were continual and each was less possible than the one before.
At noontime, Prince Humperdinck appeared at the balcony of his father's castle and raised his arms. The crowd, which by now was at the danger size, slowly quieted. There were stories that the King was dying, that he was already dead, that he had been dead long since, that he was fine.
"My people, my beloveds, from whom we draw our strength, today is a day of greeting. As you must have heard, my honored father's health is not what it once was. He is, of course, ninety-seven, so who can ask more. As you also know, Florin needs a male heir."
The crowd began to stir now—it was to be this lady they had heard so much about.
"In three months, our country celebrates its five hundredth anniversary. To celebrate that celebration, I shall, on that sundown, take for my wife the Princess Buttercup of Hammersmith. You do not know her yet. But you will meet her now," and he made a sweeping gesture and the balcony doors swung open and Buttercup moved out beside him on the balcony.
And the crowd, quite literally, gasped.
The twenty-one-year-old Princess far surpassed the eighteen-year-old mourner. Her figure faults were gone, the too bony elbow having fleshed out nicely; the opposite pudgy wrist could not have been trimmer. Her hair, which was once the color of autumn, was still the color of autumn, except that before, she had tended it herself, whereas now she had five full-time hairdressers who managed things for her. (This was long after hairdressers; in truth, ever since there have been women, there have been hairdressers, Adam being the first, though the King James scholars do their very best to muddy this point.) Her skin was still wintry cream, but now, with two handmaidens assigned to each appendage and four for the rest of her, it actually, in certain lights, seemed to provide her with a gentle, continually moving as she moved, glow.
Prince Humperdinck took her hand and held it high and the crowd cheered. "That's enough, mustn't risk overexposure," the Prince said, and he started back in toward the castle.
"They have waited, some of them, so long," Buttercup answered. "I would like to walk among them."
"We do not walk among commoners unless it is unavoidable," the Prince said.
"I have known more than a few commoners in my time," Buttercup told him. "They will not, I think, harm me."
And with that she left the balcony, reappeared a moment later on the great steps of the castle and, quite alone, walked open-armed down into the crowd.
Wherever she went, the people parted. She crossed and recrossed the Great Square and always, ahead of her, the people swept apart to let her pass. Buttercup continued, moving slowly and smiling, alone, like some land messiah.
Most of the people there would never forget that day. None of them, of course, had ever been so close to perfection, and the great majority adored her instantly. There were, to be sure, some who, while admitting she was pleasing enough, were withholding judgment as to her quality as a queen. And, of course, there were some more who were frankly jealous. Very few of them hated her.
And only three of them were planning to murder her.
Buttercup, naturally, knew none of this. She was smiling, and when people wanted to touch her gown, well, let them, and when they wanted to brush their skin against hers, well, let them do that too. She had studied hard to do things royally, and she wanted very much to succeed, so she kept her posture erect and her smile gentle, and that her death was so close would have only made her laugh, if someone had told her.
But—
—in the farthest corner of the Great Square—
—in the highest building in the land—
—deep in the deepest shadow—
—the man in black stood waiting.
His boots were black and leather. His pants were black and his shirt. His mask was black, blacker than raven. But blackest of all were his flashing eyes.
Flashing and cruel and deadly...
BUTTERCUP WAS MORE than a little weary after her triumph. The touching of the crowds had exhausted her, so she rested a bit, and then, toward midafternoon, she changed into her riding clothes and went to fetch Horse. This was the one aspect of her life that had not changed in the years preceding. She still loved to ride, and every afternoon, weather permitting or not, she rode alone for several hours in the wild land beyond the castle.
She did her best thinking then.
Not that her best thinking ever expanded horizons. Still, she told herself, she was not a dummy either, so as long as she kept her thoughts to herself, well, where was the harm?
As she rode through woods and streams and heather, her brain was awhirl. The walk through the crowds had moved her, and in a way most strange. For even though she had done nothing for three years now but train to be a princess and a queen, today was the first day she actually understood that it was all soon to be a reality.
And I just don't like Humperdinck, she thought. It's not that I hate him or anything. I just never see him; he's always off someplace or playing in the Zoo of Death.
To Buttercup's way of thinking, there were two main problems: (1) was it wrong to marry without like, and (2) if it was, was it too late to do anything about it.
The answers, to her way of thinking, as she rode along, were: (1) no and (2) yes.
It wasn't wrong to marry someone you didn't like, it just wasn't right either. If the whole world did it, that wouldn't be so great, what with everybody kind of grunting at everybody else as the years went by. But, of course, not everybody did it; so forget about that. The answer to (2) was even easier: she had given her word she would marry; that would have to be enough. True, he had told her quite honestly that if she said "no" he would have to have her disposed of, in order to keep respect for the Crown at its proper level; still, she could have, had she so chosen, said "no."
Everyone had told her, since she became a princess-in-training, that she was very likely the most beautiful woman in the world. Now she was going to be the richest and most powerful as well.
Don't expect too much from life, Buttercup told herself as she rode along. Learn to be satisfied with what you have.
DUSK WAS CLOSING in when Buttercup crested the hill. She was perhaps half an hour from the castle, and her daily ride was three-quarters done. Suddenly she reined Horse, for standing in the dimness beyond was the strangest trio she had ever seen.
The man in front was dark, Sicilian perhaps, with the gentlest face, almost angelic. He had one leg too short, and the makings of a humpback, but he moved forward toward her with surprising speed and nimbleness. The other two remained rooted. The second, also dark, probably Spanish, was as erect and slender as the blade of steel that was attached to his side. The third man, mustachioed, perhaps a Turk, was easily the biggest human being she had ever seen.
"A word?" the Sicilian said, raising his arms. His smile was more angelic than his face.
Buttercup halted. "Speak."
"We are but poor circus performers," the Sicilian explained. "It is dark and we are lost. We were told there was a village nearby that might enjoy our skills."
"You were misinformed," Buttercup told him. "There is no one, not for many miles."
"Then there will be no one to hear you scream," the Sicilian said, and he jumped with frightening agility toward her face.
That was all that Buttercup remembered. Perhaps she did scream, but if she did it was more from terror than anything else, because certainly there was no pain. His hands expertly touched places on her neck, and unconsciousness came.
She awoke to the lapping of water.
She was wrapped in a blanket and the giant Turk was putting her in the bottom of a boat. For a moment she was about to talk, but then when they began talking, she thought it better to listen. And after she had listened for a moment, it got harder and harder to hear. Because of the terrible pounding of her heart.
"I think you should kill her now," the Turk said.
"The less you think, the happier I'll be," the Sicilian answered.
There was the sound of ripping cloth.
"What is that?" the Spaniard asked.
"The same as I attached to her saddle," the Sicilian replied. "Fabric from the uniform of an officer of Guilder."
"I still think—" the Turk began.
"She must be found dead on the Guilder frontier or we will not be paid the remainder of our fee. Is that clear enough for you?"
"I just feel better when I know what's going on, that's all," the Turk mumbled. "People are always thinking I'm so stupid because I'm big and strong and sometimes drool a little when I get excited."
"The reason people think you're so stupid," the Sicilian said, "is because you are so stupid. It has nothing to do with your drooling."
There came the sound of a flapping of sail. "Watch your heads," the Spaniard cautioned, and then the boat was moving. "The people of Florin will not take her death well, I shouldn't think. She has become beloved."
"There will be war," the Sicilian agreed. "We have been paid to start it. It's a fine line of work to be expert in. If we do this perfectly, there will be a continual demand for our services."
"Well I don't like it all that much," the Spaniard said. "Frankly, I wish you had refused."
"The offer was too high."
"I don't like killing a girl," the Spaniard said.
"God does it all the time; if it doesn't bother Him, don't let it worry you."
Through all this, Buttercup had not moved.
The Spaniard said, "Let's just tell her we're taking her away for ransom."
The Turk agreed. "She's so beautiful and she'd go all crazy if she knew."
"She knows already," the Sicilian said. "She's been awake for every word of this."
Buttercup lay under the blanket, not moving. How could he have known that, she wondered.
"How can you be sure?" the Spaniard asked.
"The Sicilian senses all," the Sicilian said.
Conceited, Buttercup thought.
"Yes, very conceited," the Sicilian said.
He must be a mind reader, Buttercup thought.
"Are you giving it full sail?" the Sicilian said.
"As much as is safe," the Spaniard answered from the tiller.
"We have an hour on them, so no risks yet. It will take her horse perhaps twenty-seven minutes to reach the castle, a few minutes more for them to figure out what happened and, since we left an obvious trail, they should be after us within an hour. We should reach the Cliffs in fifteen minutes more and, with any luck at all, the Guilder frontier at dawn, when she dies. Her body should be quite warm when the Prince reaches her mutilated form. I only wish we could stay for his grief—it should be Homeric."
Why does he let me know his plans, Buttercup wondered.
"You are going back to sleep now, my lady," the Spaniard said, and his fingers suddenly were touching her temple, her shoulder, her neck, and she was unconscious again....
Buttercup did not know how long she was out, but they were still in the boat when she blinked, the blanket shielding her. And this time, without daring to think—the Sicilian would have known it somehow—she threw the blanket aside and dove deep into Florin Channel.
She stayed under for as long as she dared and then surfaced, starting to swim across the moonless water with every ounce of strength remaining to her. Behind her in the darkness there were cries.
"Go in, go in!" from the Sicilian.
"I only dog paddle" from the Turk.
"You're better than I am" from the Spaniard.
Buttercup continued to leave them behind her. Her arms ached from effort but she gave them no rest. Her legs kicked and her heart pounded.
"I can hear her kicking," the Sicilian said. "Veer left."
Buttercup went into her breast stroke, silently swimming away.
"Where is she?" shrieked the Sicilian.
"The sharks will get her, don't worry," cautioned the Spaniard.
Oh dear, I wish you hadn't mentioned that, thought Buttercup.
"Princess," the Sicilian called, "do you know what happens to sharks when they smell blood in the water? They go mad. There is no controlling their wildness. They rip and shred and chew and devour, and I'm in a boat, Princess, and there isn't any blood in the water now, so we're both quite safe, but there is a knife in my hand, my lady, and if you don't come back I'll cut my arms and I'll cut my legs and I'll catch the blood in a cup and I'll fling it as far as I can and sharks can smell blood in the water for miles and you won't be beautiful for long."
Buttercup hesitated, silently treading water. Around her now, although it was surely her imagination, she seemed to be hearing the swish of giant tails.
"Come back and come back now. There will be no other warning."
Buttercup thought, If I come back, they'll kill me anyway, so what's the difference?
"The difference is—"
There he goes doing that again, thought Buttercup. He really is a mind reader.
"—if you come back now," the Sicilian went on, "I give you my word as a gentleman and assassin that you will die totally without pain. I assure you, you will get no such promise from the sharks."
The fish sounds in the night were closer now.
Buttercup began to tremble with fear. She was terribly ashamed of herself but there it was. She only wished she could see for a minute if there really were sharks and if he really would cut himself.
The Sicilian winced out loud.
"He just cut his arm, lady," the Turk called out. "He's catching the blood in a cup now. There must be a half-inch of blood on the bottom."
The Sicilian winced again.
"He cut his leg this time," the Turk went on. "The cup's getting full."
I don't believe them, Buttercup thought. There are no sharks in the water and there is no blood in his cup.
"My arm is back to throw," the Sicilian said. "Call out your location or not, the choice is yours."
I'm not making a peep, Buttercup decided.
"Farewell," from the Sicilian.
There was the splashing sound of liquid landing on liquid.
Then there came a pause.
Then the sharks went mad—
***
"She does not get eaten by the sharks at this time," my father said.
I looked up at him. "What?"
"You looked like you were getting too involved and bothered so I thought I would let you relax."
"Oh, for Pete's sake," I said, "you'd think I was a baby or something. What kind of stuff is that?" I really sounded put out, but I'll tell you the truth: I was getting a little too involved and I was glad he told me. I mean, when you're a kid, you don't think, Well, since the books's called The Princess Bride and since we're barely into it, obviously, the author's not about to make shark kibble of his leading lady. You get hooked on things when you're a youngster; so to any youngsters reading, I'll simply repeat my father's words since they worked to soothe me: 'She does not get eaten by the sharks at this time.'
***
THEN THE SHARKS went mad. All around her, Buttercup could hear them beeping and screaming and thrashing their mighty tails. Nothing can save me, Buttercup realized. I'm a dead cookie.
Fortunately for all concerned save the sharks, it was around this time that the moon came out.
"There she is," shouted the Sicilian, and like lightning the Spaniard turned the boat and as the boat drew close the Turk reached out a giant arm and then she was back in the safety of her murderers while all around them the sharks bumped each other in wild frustration.
"Keep her warm," the Spaniard said from the tiller, tossing his cloak to the Turk.
"Don't catch cold," the Turk said, wrapping Buttercup into the cloak's folds.
"It doesn't seem to matter all that much," she answered, "seeing you're killing me at dawn."
"He'll do the actual work," the Turk said, indicating the Sicilian, who was wrapping cloth around his cuts. "We'll just hold you."
"Hold your stupid tongue," the Sicilian commanded.
The Turk immediately hushed.
"I don't think he's so stupid," Buttercup said. "And I don't think you're so smart either, with all your throwing blood in the water. That's not what I would call grade-A thinking."
"It worked, didn't it? You're back, aren't you?" The Sicilian crossed toward her. "Once women are sufficiently frightened, they scream."
"But I didn't scream; the moon came out," answered Buttercup somewhat triumphantly.
The Sicilian struck her.
"Enough of that," the Turk said then.
The tiny humpback looked dead at the giant. "Do you want to fight me? I don't think you do."
"No, sir," the Turk mumbled. "No. But don't use force. Please. Force is mine. Strike me if you feel the need. I won't care."
The Sicilian returned to the other side of the boat. "She would have screamed," he said. "She was about to cry out. My plan was ideal as all my plans are ideal. It was the moon's ill timing that robbed me of perfection." He scowled unforgivingly at the yellow wedge above them. Then he stared ahead. "There!" The Sicilian pointed. "The Cliffs of Insanity."
And there they were. Rising straight and sheer from the water, a thousand feet into the night. They provided the most direct route between Florin and Guilder, but no one ever used them, sailing instead the long way, many miles around. Not that the Cliffs were impossible to scale; two men were known to have climbed them in the last century alone.
"Sail straight for the steepest part," the Sicilian commanded.
The Spaniard said, "I was."
Buttercup did not understand. Going up the Cliffs could hardly be done, she thought; and no one had ever mentioned secret passages through them. Yet here they were, sailing closer and closer to the mighty rocks, now surely less than a quarter-mile away.
For the first time the Sicilian allowed himself a smile. "All is well. I was afraid your little jaunt in the water was going to cost me too much time. I had allowed an hour of safety. There must still be fifty minutes of it left. We are miles ahead of anybody and safe, safe, safe."
"No one could be following us yet?" the Spaniard asked.
"No one," the Sicilian assured him. "It would be inconceivable."
"Absolutely inconceivable?"
"Absolutely, totally, and, in all other ways, inconceivable," the Sicilian reassured him. "Why do you ask?"
"No reason," the Spaniard replied. "It's only that I just happened to look back and something's there."
They all whirled.
Something was indeed there. Less than a mile behind them across the moonlight was another sailing boat, small, painted what looked like black, with a giant sail that billowed black in the night, and a single man at the tiller. A man in black.
The Spaniard looked at the Sicilian. "It must just be some local fisherman out for a pleasure cruise alone at night through shark-infested waters."
"There is probably a more logical explanation," the Sicilian said. "But since no one in Guilder could know yet what we've done, and no one in Florin could have gotten here so quickly, he is definitely not, however much it may look like it, following us. It is coincidence and nothing more."
"He's gaining on us," the Turk said.
"That is also inconceivable," the Sicilian said. "Before I stole this boat we're in, I made many inquiries as to what was the fastest ship on all of Florin Channel and everyone agreed it was this one."
"You're right," the Turk agreed, staring back. "He isn't gaining on us. He's just getting closer, that's all."
"It is the angle we're looking from and nothing more," said the Sicilian.
Buttercup could not take her eyes from the great black sail. Surely the three men she was with frightened her. But somehow, for reasons she could never begin to explain, the man in black frightened her more.
"All right, look sharp," the Sicilian said then, just a drop of edginess in his voice.
The Cliffs of Insanity were very close now.
The Spaniard maneuvered the craft expertly, which was not easy, and the waves were rolling in toward the rocks now and the spray was blinding. Buttercup shielded her eyes and put her head straight back, staring up into the darkness toward the top, which seemed shrouded and out of reach.
Then the humpback bounded forward, and as the ship reached the cliff face, he jumped up and suddenly there was a rope in his hand.
Buttercup stared in silent astonishment. The rope, thick and strong, seemed to travel all the way up the Cliffs. As she watched, the Sicilian pulled at the rope again and again and it held firm. It was attached to something at the top—a giant rock, a towering tree, something.
"Fast now," the Sicilian ordered. "If he is following us, which of course is not within the realm of human experience, but if he is, we've got to reach the top and cut the rope off before he can climb up after us."
"Climb?" Buttercup said. "I would never be able to—"
"Hush!" the Sicilian ordered her. "Get ready!" he ordered the Spaniard. "Sink it," he ordered the Turk.
And then everyone got busy. The Spaniard took a rope, tied Buttercup's hands and feet. The Turk raised a great leg and stomped down at the center of the boat, which gave way immediately and began to sink. Then the Turk went to the rope and took it in his hands.
"Load me," the Turk said.
The Spaniard lifted Buttercup and draped her body around the Turk's shoulders. Then he tied himself to the Turk's waist. Then the Sicilian hopped, clung to the Turk's neck.
"All aboard," the Sicilian said. (This was before trains, but the expression comes originally from carpenters loading lumber, and this was well after carpenters.)
With that the Turk began to climb. It was at least a thousand feet and he was carrying the three, but he was not worried. When it came to power, nothing worried him. When it came to reading, he got knots in the middle of his stomach, and when it came to writing, he broke out in a cold sweat, and when addition was mentioned or, worse, long division, he always changed the subject right away.
But strength had never been his enemy. He could take the kick of a horse on his chest and not fall backward. He could take a hundred-pound flour sack between his legs and scissor it open without thinking. He had once held an elephant aloft using only the muscles in his back.
But his real might lay in his arms. There had never, not in a thousand years, been arms to match Fezzik's. (For that was his name.) The arms were not only Gargantuan and totally obedient and surprisingly quick, but they were also, and this is why he never worried, tireless. If you gave him an ax and told him to chop down a forest, his legs might give out from having to support so much weight for so long, or the ax might shatter from the punishment of killing so many trees, but Fezzik's arms would be as fresh tomorrow as today.
And so, even with the Sicilian on his neck and the Princess around his shoulders and the Spaniard at his waist, Fezzik did not feel in the least bit put upon. He was actually quite happy, because it was only when he was requested to use his might that he felt he wasn't a bother to everybody.
Up he climbed, arm over arm, arm over arm, two hundred feet now above the water, eight hundred feet now to go.
More than any of them, the Sicilian was afraid of heights. All of his nightmares, and they were never far from him when he slept, dealt with falling. So this terrifying ascension was most difficult for him, perched as he was on the neck of the giant. Or should have been most difficult.
But he would not allow it.
From the beginning, when as a child he realized his humped body would never conquer worlds, he relied on his mind. He trained it, fought it, brought it to heel. So now, three hundred feet in the night and rising higher, while he should have been trembling, he was not.
Instead he was thinking of the man in black.
There was no way anyone could have been quick enough to follow them. And yet from some devil's world that billowing black sail had appeared. How? How? The Sicilian flogged his mind to find an answer, but he found only failure. In wild frustration he took a deep breath and, in spite of his terrible fears, he looked back down toward the dark water.
The man in black was still there, sailing like lightning toward the Cliffs. He could not have been more than a quarter-mile from them now.
"Faster!" the Sicilian commanded.
"I'm sorry," the Turk answered meekly. "I thought I was going faster."
"Lazy, lazy," spurred the Sicilian.
"I'll never improve," the Turk answered, but his arms began to move faster than before. "I cannot see too well because your feet are locked around my face," he went on, "so could you tell me please if we're halfway yet?"
"A little over, I should think," said the Spaniard from his position around the giant's waist. "You're doing wonderfully, Fezzik."
"Thank you," said the giant.
"And he's closing on the Cliffs," added the Spaniard.
No one had to ask who "he" was.
Six hundred feet now. The arms continued to pull, over and over. Six hundred and twenty feet. Six hundred and fifty. Now faster than ever. Seven hundred.
"He's left his boat behind," the Spaniard said. "He's jumped onto our rope. He's starting up after us."
"I can feel him," Fezzik said. "His body weight on the rope."
"He'll never catch up!" the Sicilian cried. "Inconceivable!"
"You keep using that word!" the Spaniard snapped. "I don't think it means what you think it does."
"How fast is he at climbing?" Fezzik said.
"I'm frightened" was the Spaniard's reply.
The Sicilian gathered his courage again and looked down.
The man in black seemed almost to be flying. Already he had cut their lead a hundred feet. Perhaps more.
"I thought you were supposed to be so strong!" the Sicilian shouted. "I thought you were this great mighty thing and yet he gains."
"I'm carrying three people," Fezzik explained. "He has only himself and—"
"Excuses are the refuge of cowards," the Sicilian interrupted. He looked down again. The man in black had gained another hundred feet. He looked up now. The cliff tops were beginning to come into view. Perhaps a hundred and fifty feet more and they were safe.
Tied hand and foot, sick with fear, Buttercup wasn't sure what she wanted to happen. Except this much she knew: she didn't want to go through anything like it again.
"Fly, Fezzik!" the Sicilian screamed. "A hundred feet to go."
Fezzik flew. He cleared his mind of everything but ropes and arms and fingers, and his arms pulled and his fingers gripped and the rope held taut and—
"He's over halfway," the Spaniard said.
"Halfway to doom is where he is," the Sicilian said. "We're fifty feet from safety, and once we're there and I untie the rope..." He allowed himself to laugh.
Forty feet.
Fezzik pulled.
Twenty.
Ten.
It was over. Fezzik had done it. They had reached the top of the Cliffs, and first the Sicilian jumped off and then the Turk removed the Princess, and as the Spaniard untied himself, he looked back over the Cliffs.
The man in black was no more than three hundred feet away.
"It seems a shame," the Turk said, looking down alongside the Spaniard. "Such a climber deserves better than—" He stopped talking then.
The Sicilian had untied the rope from its knots around an oak. The rope seemed almost alive, the greatest of all water serpents heading at last for home. It whipped across the cliff tops, spiraled into the moonlit Channel.
The Sicilian was roaring now, and he kept at it until the Spaniard said, "He did it."
"Did what?" The humpback came scurrying to the cliff edge.
"Released the rope in time," the Spaniard said. "See?" He pointed down.
The man in black was hanging in space, clinging to the sheer rock face, seven hundred feet above the water.
The Sicilian watched, fascinated. "You know," he said, "since I've made a study of death and dying and am a great expert, it might interest you to know that he will be dead long before he hits the water. The fall will do it, not the crash."
The man in black dangled helpless in space, clinging to the Cliffs with both hands.
"Oh, how rude we're being," the Sicilian said then, turning to Buttercup. "I'm sure you'd like to watch." He went to her and brought her, still tied hand and foot, so that she could watch the final pathetic struggle of the man in black three hundred feet below.
Buttercup closed her eyes, turned away.
"Shouldn't we be going?" the Spaniard asked. "I thought you were telling us how important time was."
"It is, it is," the Sicilian nodded. "But I just can't miss a death like this. I could stage one of these every week and sell tickets. I could get out of the assassination business entirely. Look at him—do you think his life is passing before his eyes? That's what the books say."
"He has very strong arms," Fezzik commented. "To hold on so long."
"He can't hold on much longer," the Sicilian said. "He has to fall soon."
It was at that moment that the man in black began to climb. Not quickly, of course. And not without great effort. But still, there was no doubt that he was, in spite of the sheerness of the Cliffs, heading in an upward direction.
"Inconceivable!" the Sicilian cried.
The Spaniard whirled on him. "Stop saying that word. It was inconceivable that anyone could follow us, but when we looked behind, there was the man in black. It was inconceivable that anyone could sail as fast as we could sail, and yet he gained on us. Now this too is inconceivable, but look—look—" and the Spaniard pointed down through the night. "See how he rises."
The man in black was, indeed, rising. Somehow, in some almost miraculous way, his fingers were finding holds in the crevices, and he was now perhaps fifteen feet closer to the top, farther from death.
The Sicilian advanced on the Spaniard now, his wild eyes glittering at the insubordination. "I have the keenest mind that has ever been turned to unlawful pursuits," he began, "so when I tell you something, it is not guesswork; it is fact! And the fact is that the man in black is not following us. A more logical explanation would be that he is simply an ordinary sailor who dabbles in mountain climbing as a hobby who happens to have the same general final destination as we do. That certainly satisfies me and I hope it satisfies you. In any case, we cannot take the risk of his seeing us with the Princess, and therefore one of you must kill him."
"Shall I do it?" the Turk wondered.
The Sicilian shook his head. "No, Fezzik," he said finally. "I need your strength to carry the girl. Pick her up now and let us hurry along." He turned to the Spaniard. "We'll be heading directly for the frontier of Guilder. Catch up as quickly as you can once he's dead."
The Spaniard nodded.
The Sicilian hobbled away.
The Turk hoisted the Princess, began following the humpback. Just before he lost sight of the Spaniard he turned and hollered, "Catch up quickly."
"Don't I always?" The Spaniard waved. "Farewell, Fezzik."
"Farewell, Inigo," the Turk replied. And then he was gone, and the Spaniard was alone.
Inigo moved to the cliff edge and knelt with his customary quick grace. Two hundred and fifty feet below him now, the man in black continued his painful climb. Inigo lay flat, staring down, trying to pierce the moonlight and find the climber's secret. For a long while, Inigo did not move. He was a good learner, but not a particularly fast one, so he had to study. Finally, he realized that somehow, by some mystery, the man in black was making fists and jamming them into the rocks, and using them for support. Then he would reach up with his other hand, until he found a high split in the rock, and make another fist and jam it in. Whenever he could find support for his feet, he would use it, but mostly it was the jammed fists that made the climbing possible.
Inigo marveled. What a truly extraordinary adventurer this man in black must be. He was close enough now for Inigo to realize that the man was masked, a black hood covering all but his features. Another outlaw? Perhaps. Then why should they have to fight and for what? Inigo shook his head. It was a shame that such a fellow must die, but he had his orders, so there it was. Sometimes he did not like the Sicilian's commands, but what could he do? Without the brains of the Sicilian, he, Inigo, would never be able to command jobs of this caliber. The Sicilian was a master planner. Inigo was a creature of the moment. The Sicilian said "kill him," so why waste sympathy on the man in black. Someday someone would kill Inigo, and the world would not stop to mourn.
He stood now, quickly jumping to his feet, his blade-thin body ready. For action. Only, the man in black was still many feet away. There was nothing to do but wait for him. Inigo hated waiting. So to make the time more pleasant, he pulled from the scabbard his great, his only, love:
The six-fingered sword.
How it danced in the moonlight. How glorious and true. Inigo brought it to his lips and with all the fervor in his great Spanish heart kissed the metal....
Inigo
IN THE MOUNTAINS of Central Spain, set high in the hills above Toledo, was the village of Arabella. It was very small and the air was always clear. That was all you could say that was good about Arabella: terrific air—you could see for miles.
But there was no work, the dogs overran the streets and there was never enough food. The air, clear enough, was also too hot in daylight, freezing at night. As to Inigo's personal life, he was always just a trifle hungry, he had no brothers or sisters, and his mother had died in childbirth.
He was fantastically happy.
Because of his father. Domingo Montoya was funny-looking and crotchety and impatient and absent-minded and never smiled.
Inigo loved him. Totally. Don't ask why. There really wasn't anyone reason you could put your finger on. Oh, probably Domingo loved him back, but love is many things, none of them logical.
Domingo Montoya made swords. If you wanted a fabulous sword, did you go to Domingo Montoya? If you wanted a great balanced piece of work, did you go to the mountains behind Toledo? If you wanted a masterpiece, a sword for the ages, was it Arabella that your footsteps led you to?
Nope.
You went to Madrid, because Madrid was where lived the famous Yeste, and if you had the money and he had the time, you got your weapon. Yeste was fat and jovial and one of the richest and most honored men in the city. And he should have been. He made wonderful swords, and noblemen bragged to each other when they owned an original Yeste.
But sometimes—not often, mind you, maybe once a year, maybe less—a request would come in for a weapon that was more than even Yeste could make. When that happened, did Yeste say, "Alas, I am sorry, I cannot do it"?
Nope.
What he said was, "Of course, I'd be delighted, fifty per cent down payment please, the rest before delivery, come back in a year, thank you very much."
The next day he would set out for the hills behind Toledo.
"So, Domingo," Yeste would call out when he reached Inigo's father's hut.
"So, Yeste," Domingo Montoya would return from the hut doorway.
Then the two men would embrace and Inigo would come running up and Yeste would rumple his hair and then Inigo would make tea while the two men talked.
"I need you," Yeste would always begin.
Domingo would grunt.
"This very week I have accepted a commission to make a sword for a member of the Italian nobility. It is to be jewel encrusted at the handle and the jewels are to spell out the name of his present mistress and—"
"No."
That single word and that alone. But it was enough. When Domingo Montoya said "no" it meant nothing else but.
Inigo, busy with the tea, knew what would happen now: Yeste would use his charm.
"No."
Yeste would use his wealth.
"No."
His wit, his wonderful gift for persuasion.
"No."
He would beg, entreat, promise, pledge.
"No."
Insults. Threats.
"No."
Finally, genuine tears.
"No. More tea, Yeste?"
"Perhaps another cup, thank you—" Then, big: "why won't You?"
Inigo hurried to refill their cups so as never to miss a word. He knew they had been brought up together, had known each other sixty years, had never not loved one another deeply, and it thrilled him when he could hear them arguing. That was the strange thing: arguing was all they ever did.
"Why? My fat friend asks me why? He sits there on his world-class ass and has the nerve to ask me why? Yeste. Come to me sometime with a challenge. Once, just once, ride up and say, 'Domingo, I need a sword for an eighty-year-old man to fight a duel,' and I would embrace you and cry 'Yes!' Because to make a sword for an eighty-year-old man to survive a duel, that would be something. Because the sword would have to be strong enough to win, yet light enough not to tire his weary arm. I would have to use my all to perhaps find an unknown metal, strong but very light, or devise a different formula for a known one, mix some bronze with some iron and some air in a way ignored for a thousand years. I would kiss your smelly feet for an opportunity like that, fat Yeste. But to make a stupid sword with stupid jewels in the form of stupid initials so some stupid Italian can thrill his stupid mistress, no. That, I will not do."
"For the last time I ask you. Please."
"For the last time I tell you, I am sorry. No."
"I gave my word the sword would be made," Yeste said. "I cannot make it. In all the world no one can but you, and you say no. Which means I have gone back on a commitment. Which means I have lost my honor. Which means that since honor is the only thing in the world I care about, and since I cannot live without it, I must die. And since you are my dearest friend, I may as well die now, with you, basking in the warmth of your affection." And here Yeste would pull out a knife. It was a magnificent thing, a gift from Domingo on Yeste's wedding day.
"Good-by, little Inigo," Yeste would say then. "God grant you your quota of smiles."
It was forbidden for Inigo to interrupt.
"Good-by, little Domingo," Yeste would say then. "Although I die in your hut, and although it is your own stubborn fault that causes my ceasing, in other words, even though you are killing me, don't think twice about it. I love you as I always have and God forbid your conscience should give you any trouble." He pulled open his coat, brought the knife closer, closer. "The pain is worse than I imagined!" Yeste cried.
"How can it hurt when the point of the weapon is still an inch away from your belly?" Domingo asked.
"I'm anticipating, don't bother me, let me die unpestered." He brought the point to his skin, pushed.
Domingo grabbed the knife away. "Someday I won't stop you," he said. "Inigo, set an extra place for supper."
"I was all set to kill myself, truly."
"Enough dramatics."
"What is on the menu for the evening?"
"The usual gruel."
"Inigo, go check and see if there's anything by chance in my carriage outside."
There was always a feast waiting in the carriage.
And after the food and the stories would come the departure, and always, before the departure, would come the request. "We would be partners," Yeste would say. "In Madrid. My name before yours on the sign, of course, but equal partners in all things."
"No."
"All right. Your name before mine. You are the greatest sword maker, you deserve to come first."
"Have a good trip back."
"WHY WON'T YOU?"
"Because, my friend Yeste, you are very famous and very rich, and so you should be, because you make wonderful weapons. But you must also make them for any fool who happens along. I am poor, and no one knows me in all the world except you and Inigo, but I do not have to suffer fools."
"You are an artist," Yeste said.
"No. Not yet. A craftsman only. But I dream to be an artist. I pray that someday, if I work with enough care, if I am very very lucky, I will make a weapon that is a work of art. Call me an artist then, and I will answer."
Yeste entered his carriage. Domingo approached the window, whispered: "I remind you only of this: when you get this jeweled initialed sword, claim it as your own. Tell no one of my involvement."
"Your secret is safe with me."
Embraces and waves. The carriage would leave. And that was the way of life before the six-fingered sword.
Inigo remembered exactly the moment it began. He was making lunch for them—his father always, from the time he was six, let him do the cooking—when a heavy knocking came on the hut door. "Inside there," a voice boomed. "Be quick about it."
Inigo's father opened the door. "Your servant," he said.
"You are a sword maker," came the booming voice. "Of distinction. I have heard that this is true."
"If only it were," Domingo replied. "But I have no great skills. Mostly I do repair work. Perhaps if you had a dagger blade that was dulling, I might be able to please you. But anything more is beyond me."
Inigo crept up behind his father and peeked out. The booming voice belonged to a powerful man with dark hair and broad shoulders who sat upon an elegant brown horse. A nobleman clearly, but Inigo could not tell the country.
"I desire to have made for me the greatest sword since Excalibur."
"I hope your wishes are granted," Domingo said. "And now, if you please, our lunch is almost ready and—"
"I do not give you permission to move. You stay right exactly where you are or risk my wrath, which, I must tell you in advance, is considerable. My temper is murderous. Now, what were you saying about your lunch?"
"I was saying that it will be hours before it is ready; I have nothing to do and would not dream of budging."
"There are rumors," the nobleman said, "that deep in the hills behind Toledo lives a genius. The greatest sword maker in all the world."
"He visits here sometimes—that must be your mistake. But his name is Yeste and he lives in Madrid."
"I will pay five hundred pieces of gold for my desires," said the big-shouldered noble.
"That is more money than all the men in all this village will earn in all their lives," said Domingo. "Truly, I would love to accept your offer. But I am not the man you seek."
"These rumors lead me to believe that Domingo Montoya would solve my problem."
"What is your problem?"
"I am a great swordsman. But I cannot find a weapon to match my peculiarities, and therefore I am deprived of reaching my highest skills. If I had a weapon to match my peculiarities, there would be no one in all the world to equal me."
"What are these peculiarities you speak of?"
The noble held up his right hand.
Domingo began to grow excited.
The man had six fingers.
"You see?" the noble began.
"Of course," Domingo interrupted, "the balance of the sword is wrong for you because every balance has been conceived of for five. The grip of every handle cramps you, because it has been built for five. For an ordinary swordsman it would not matter, but a great swordsman, a master, would have eventual discomfort. And the greatest swordsman in the world must always be at ease. The grip of his weapon must be as natural as the blink of his eye, and cause him no more thought."
"Clearly, you understand the difficulties—" the nobleman began again.
But Domingo had traveled where others' words could never reach him. Inigo had never seen his father so frenzied. "The measurements ... of course .. . each finger and the circumference of the wrist, and the distance from the sixth nail to the index pad ... so many measurements ... and your preferences ... Do you prefer to slash or cut? If you slash, do you prefer the right-to-left movement or perhaps the parallel? ... When you cut, do you enjoy an upward thrust, and how much power do you wish to come from the shoulder, how much from the wrist? ... and do you wish your point coated so as to enter more easily or do you enjoy seeing the opponent's wince? ... So much to be done, so much to be done ..." and on and on he went until the noble dismounted and had to almost take him by the shoulders to quiet him.
"You are the man of the rumors."
Domingo nodded.
"And you will make me the greatest sword since Excalibur."
"I will beat my body into ruins for you. Perhaps I will fail. But no one will try harder."
"And payment?"
"When you get the sword, then payment. Now let me get to work measuring. Inigo—my instruments."
Inigo scurried into the darkest corner of the hut.
"I insist on leaving something on account."
"It is not necessary; I may fail."
"I insist."
"All right. One goldpiece. Leave that. But do not bother me with money when there is work that needs beginning."
The noble took out one piece of gold.
Domingo put it in a drawer and left it, without even a glance. "Feel your fingers now," he commanded. "Rub your hands hard, shake your fingers—you will be excited when you duel and this handle must match your hand in that excitement; if I measured when you were relaxed, there would be a difference, as much as a thousandth of an inch and that would rob us of perfection. And that is what I seek. Perfection. I will not rest for less."
The nobleman had to smile. "And how long will it take to reach it?"
"Come back in a year," Domingo said, and with that he set to work.
Such a year.
Domingo slept only when he dropped from exhaustion. He ate only when Inigo would force him to. He studied, fretted, complained. He never should have taken the job; it was impossible. The next day he would be flying: he never should have taken the job; it was too simple to be worth his labors. Joy to despair, joy to despair, day to day, hour to hour. Sometimes Inigo would wake to find him weeping: "What is it, Father?" "It is that I cannot do it. I cannot make the sword. I cannot make my hands obey me. I would kill myself except what would you do then?" "Go to sleep, Father." "No, I don't need sleep. Failures don't need sleep. Anyway, I slept yesterday." "Please, Father, a little nap." "All right; a few minutes; to keep you from nagging."
Some nights Inigo would awake to see him dancing. "What is it, Father?" "It is that I have found my mistakes, corrected my mis-judgments." "Then it will be done soon, Father?" "It will be done tomorrow and it will be a miracle." "You are wonderful, Father." "I'm more wonderful than wonderful, how dare you insult me."
But the next night, more tears. "What is it now, Father?" "The sword, the sword, I cannot make the sword." "But last night, Father, you said you had found your mistakes." "I was mistaken; tonight I found new ones, worse ones. I am the most wretched of creatures. Say you wouldn't mind it if I killed myself so I could end this existence." "But I would mind, Father. I love you and I would die if you stopped breathing." "You don't really love me; you're only speaking pity." "Who could pity the greatest sword maker in the history of the world?" "Thank you, Inigo." "You're welcome, Father." "I love you back, Inigo." "Sleep, Father." "Yes. Sleep."
A whole year of that. A year of the handle being right, but the balance being wrong, of the balance being right, but the cutting edge too dull, of the cutting edge sharpened, but that threw the balance off again, of the balance returning, but now the point was fat, of the point regaining sharpness, only now the entire blade was too short and it all had to go, all had to be thrown out, all had to be done again. Again. Again. Domingo's health began to leave him. He was fevered always now, but he forced his frail shell on, because this had to be the finest since Excalibur. Domingo was battling legend, and it was destroying him.
Such a year.
One night Inigo woke to find his father seated. Staring. Calm. Inigo followed the stare.
The six-fingered sword was done.
Even in the hut's darkness, it glistened.
"At last," Domingo whispered. He could not take his eyes from the glory of the sword. "After a lifetime. Inigo. Inigo. I am an artist."
The big-shouldered nobleman did not agree. When he returned to purchase the sword, he merely looked at it a moment. "Not worth waiting for," he said.
Inigo stood in the corner of the hut, watching, holding his breath.
"You are disappointed?" Domingo could scarcely get the words spoken.
"I'm not saying it's trash, you understand," the nobleman went on. "But it's certainly not worth five hundred pieces of gold. I'll give you ten; it's probably worth that."
"Wrong!" Domingo cried. "It is not worth ten. It is not worth even one. Here." And he threw open the drawer where the one goldpiece had lain untouched the year. "The gold is yours. All of it. You have lost nothing." He took back the sword and turned away.
"I'll take the sword," the nobleman said. "I didn't say I wouldn't take it. I only said I would pay what it was worth."
Domingo whirled back, eyes bright. "You quibbled. You haggled. Art was involved and you saw only money. Beauty was here for the taking and you saw only your fat purse. You have lost nothing; there is no more reason for your remaining here. Please go."
"The sword," the noble said.
"The sword belongs to my son," Domingo said. "I give it to him now. It is forever his. Good-by."
"You're a peasant and a fool and I want my sword."
"You're an enemy of art and I pity your ignorance," Domingo said.
They were the last words he ever uttered.
The noble killed him then, with no warning; a flash of the nobleman's sword and Domingo's heart was torn to pieces.
Inigo screamed. He could not believe it; it had not happened. He screamed again. His father was fine; soon they would have tea. He could not stop screaming.
The village heard. Twenty men were at the door. The nobleman pushed his way through them. "That man attacked me. See? He holds a sword. He attacked me and I defended myself. Now move from my way."
It was lies, of course, and everyone knew it. But he was a noble so what was there to do? They parted, and the nobleman mounted his horse.
"Coward!"
The nobleman whirled.
"Pig!"
Again the crowd parted.
Inigo stood there, holding the six-fingered sword, repeating his words: "Coward. Pig. Killer."
"Someone tend the babe before he oversteps himself," the noble said to the crowd.
Inigo ran forward then, standing in front of the nobleman's horse, blocking the nobleman's path. He raised the six-fingered sword with both his hands and cried, "I, Inigo Montoya, do challenge you, coward, pig, killer, ass, fool, to battle."
"Get him out of my way. Move the infant."
"The infant is ten and he stays," Inigo said.
"Enough of your family is dead for one day; be content," said the noble.
"When you beg me for your breath, then I shall be contented. Now dismount! "
The nobleman dismounted.
"Draw your sword."
The nobleman unsheathed his killing weapon.
"I dedicate your death to my father," Inigo said. "Begin."
They began.
It was no match, of course. Inigo was disarmed in less than a minute. But for the first fifteen seconds or so, the noble was uneasy. During those fifteen seconds, strange thoughts crossed his mind. For even at the age of ten, Inigo's genius was there.
Disarmed, Inigo stood very straight. He said not a word, begged nothing.
"I'm not going to kill you," the nobleman said. "Because you have talent and you're brave. But you're also lacking in manners, and that's going to get you in trouble if you're not careful. So I shall help you as you go through life, by leaving you with a reminder that bad manners are to be avoided." And with that his blade flashed. Two times.
And Inigo's face began to bleed. Two rivers of blood poured from his forehead to his chin, one crossing each cheek. Everyone watching knew it then: the boy was scarred for life.
Inigo would not fall. The world went white behind his eyes but he would not go to ground. The blood continued to pour. The nobleman replaced his sword, remounted, rode on.
It was only then that Inigo allowed the darkness to claim him.
He awoke to Yeste's face.
"I was beaten," Inigo whispered. "I failed him."
Yeste could only say, "Sleep."
Inigo slept. The bleeding stopped after a day and the pain stopped after a week. They buried Domingo, and for the first and last time Inigo left Arabella. His face bandaged, he rode in Yeste's carriage to Madrid, where he lived in Yeste's house, obeyed Yeste's commands. After a month, the bandages were removed, but the scars were still deep red. Eventually, they softened some, but they always remained the chief features of Inigo's face: the giant parallel scars running one on each side, from temple to chin. For two years, Yeste cared for him.
Then one morning, Inigo was gone. In his place were three words: "I must learn" on a note pinned to his pillow.
Learn? Learn what? What existed beyond Madrid that the child had to commit to memory? Yeste shrugged and sighed. It was beyond him. There was no understanding children anymore. Everything was changing too fast and the young were different. Beyond him, beyond him, life was beyond him, the world was beyond him, you name it, it was beyond him. He was a fat man who made swords. That much he knew.
So he made more swords and he grew fatter and the years went by. As his figure spread, so did his fame. From all across the world they came, begging him for weapons, so he doubled his prices because he didn't want to work too hard anymore, he was getting old, but when he doubled his prices, when the news spread from duke to prince to king, they only wanted him the more desperately. Now the wait was two years for a sword and the line-up of royalty was unending and Yeste was growing tired, so he doubled his prices again, and when that didn't stop them, he decided to triple his already doubled and redoubled prices and besides that, all work had to be paid for in jewels in advance and the wait was up to three years, but nothing would stop them. They had to have swords by Yeste or nothing, and even though the work on the finest was nowhere what it once was (Domingo, after all, no longer could save him) the silly rich men didn't notice. All they wanted was his weapons and they fell over each other with jewels for him.
Yeste grew very rich.
And very heavy.
Every part of his body sagged. He had the only fat thumbs in Madrid. Dressing took an hour, breakfast the same, everything went slowly.
But he could still make swords. And people still craved them. "I'm sorry," he said to the young Spaniard who entered his shop one particular morning. "The wait is up to four years and even I am embarrassed to mention the price. Have your weapon made by another."
"I have my weapon," the Spaniard said.
And he threw the six-fingered sword across Yeste's workbench.
Such embraces.
"Never leave again," Yeste said. "I eat too much when I'm lonely."
"I cannot stay," Inigo told him. "I'm only here to ask you one question. As you know, I have spent the last ten years learning. Now I have come for you to tell me if I'm ready."
"Ready? For what? What in the world have you been learning?"
"The sword."
"Madness," said Yeste. "You have spent ten entire years just learning to fence?"
"No, not just learning to fence," Inigo answered. "I did many other things as well."
"Tell me."
"Well," Inigo began, "ten years is what? About thirty-six hundred days. And that's about—I figured this out once, so I remember pretty well—about eighty-six thousand hours. Well, I always made it a point to get four hours sleep per night. That's fourteen thousand hours right there, leaving me perhaps seventy-two thousand hours to account for."
"You slept. I'm with you. What else?"
"Well, I squeezed rocks."
"I'm sorry, my hearing sometimes fails me; it sounded like you said you squeezed rocks."
"To make my wrists strong. So I could control the sword. Rocks like apples. That size. I would squeeze them in each hand for perhaps two hours a day. And I would spend another two hours a day in skipping and dodging and moving quickly, so that my feet would be able to get me into position to deliver properly the thrust of the sword. That's another fourteen thousand hours. I'm down to fifty-eight thousand now. Well, I always sprinted two hours each day as fast as I could, so my legs, as well as being quick, would also be strong. And that gets me down to about fifty thousand hours."
Yeste examined the young man before him. Blade thin, six feet in height, straight as a sapling, bright eyed, taut; even motionless he seemed whippet quick. "And these last fifty thousand hours? These have been spent studying the sword?"
Inigo nodded.
"Where?"
"Wherever I could find a master. Venice, Bruges, Budapest."
"I could have taught you here?"
"True. But you care for me. You would not have been ruthless. You would have said, 'Excellent parry, Inigo, now that's enough for one day; let's have supper.'"
"That does sound like me," Yeste admitted. "But why was it so important? Why was it worth so much of your life?"
"Because I could not fail him again."
"Fail who?"
"My father. I have spent all these years preparing to find the six-fingered man and kill him in a duel. But he is a master, Yeste. He said as much and I saw the way his sword flew at Domingo. I must not lose that duel when I find him, so now I have come to you. You know swords and swordsmen. You must not lie. Am I ready? If you say I am, I will seek him through the world. If you say no, I will spend another ten years and another ten after that, if that is needed."
So they went to Yeste's courtyard. It was late morning. Hot. Yeste put his body in a chair and the chair in the shade. Inigo stood waiting in the sunshine. "We need not test desire and we know you have sufficient motive to deliver the death blow," Yeste said. "Therefore we need only probe your knowledge and speed and stamina. We need no enemy for this. The enemy is always in the mind. Visualize him."
Inigo drew his sword.
"The six-fingered man taunts you," Yeste called. "Do what you can."
Inigo began to leap around the courtyard, the great blade flashing.
"He uses the Agrippa defense," Yeste shouted.
Immediately, Inigo shifted position, increased the speed of his sword.
"Now he surprises you with Bonetti's attack."
But Inigo was not surprised for long. Again his feet shifted; he moved his body a different way. Perspiration was pouring down his thin frame now and the great blade was blinding. Yeste continued to shout. Inigo continued to shift. The blade never stopped.
At three in the afternoon, Yeste said, "Enough. I am exhausted from the watching."
Inigo sheathed the six-fingered sword and waited.
"You wish to know if I feel you are ready to duel to the death a man ruthless enough to kill your father, rich enough to buy protection, older and more experienced, an acknowledged master."
Inigo nodded.
"I'll tell you the truth, and it's up to you to live with it. First, there has never been a master as young as you. Thirty years at least before that rank has yet been reached, and you are barely twenty-two. Well, the truth is you are an impetuous boy driven by madness and you are not now and you will never be a master."
"Thank you for your honesty," Inigo said. "I must tell you I had hoped for better news. I find it very hard to speak just now, so if you'll please excuse me, I'll be on my—"
"I had not finished," Yeste said.
"What else is there to say?"
"I loved your father very dearly, that you know, but this you did not know: when we were very young, not yet twenty, we saw, with our own eyes, an exhibition by the Corsican Wizard, Bastia."
"I know of no wizards."
"It is the rank beyond master in swordsmanship," Yeste said. "Bastia was the last man so designated. Long before your birth, he died at sea. There have been no wizards since, and you would never in this world have beaten him. But I tell you this: he would never in this world have beaten you."
Inigo stood silent for a long time. "I am ready then."
"I would not enjoy being the six-fingered man" was all Yeste replied.
The next morning, Inigo began the track-down. He had it all carefully prepared in his mind. He would find the six-fingered man. He would go up to him. He would say simply, "Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die," and then, oh then, the duel.
It was a lovely plan really. Simple, direct. No frills. In the beginning, Inigo had all kinds of wild vengeance notions, but gradually, simplicity had seemed the better way. Originally, he had all kinds of little plays worked out in his mind—the enemy would weep and beg, the enemy would cringe and cry, the enemy would bribe and slobber and act in every way unmanly. But eventually, these too gave way in his mind to simplicity: the enemy would simply say, "Oh, yes, I remember killing him; I'll be only too delighted to kill you too."
Inigo had only one problem: he could not find the enemy.
It never occurred to him there would be the least difficulty. After all, how many noblemen were there with six fingers on their right hands? Surely, it would be the talk of whatever his vicinity happened to be. A few questions: "Pardon, I'm not crazy, but have you seen any six-fingered noblemen lately?" and surely sooner or later, there would be an answering "yes."
But it didn't come sooner.
And later wasn't the kind of thing you wanted to hold your breath for either.
The first month wasn't all that discouraging. Inigo crisscrossed Spain and Portugal. The second month he moved to France and spent the rest of the year there. The year following that was his Italian year, and then came Germany and the whole of Switzerland.
It was only after five solid years of failure that he began to worry. By then he had seen all of the Balkans and most of Scandinavia and had visited the Florinese and the natives of Guilder and into Mother Russia and down step by step around the entire Mediterranean.
By then he knew what had happened: ten years learning was ten years too long; too much had been allowed to happen. The six-fingered man was probably crusading in Asia. Or getting rich in America. Or a hermit in the East Indies. Or ... or...
Dead?
Inigo, at the age of twenty-seven, began having a few extra glasses of wine at night, to help him get to sleep. At twenty-eight, he was having a few extra glasses to help him digest his lunch. At twenty-nine, the wine was essential to wake him in the morning. His world was collapsing around him. Not only was he living in daily failure, something almost as dreadful was beginning to happen:
Fencing was beginning to bore him.
He was simply too good. He would make his living during his travels by finding the local champion wherever he happened to be, and they would duel, and Inigo would disarm him and accept whatever they happened to bet. And with his winnings he would pay for his food and his lodging and his wine.
But the local champions were nothing. Even in the big cities, the local experts were nothing. Even in the capital cities, the local masters were nothing. There was no competition, nothing to help him keep an edge. His life began to seem pointless, his quest pointless, everything, everything, without reason.
At thirty he gave up the ghost. He stopped his search, forgot to eat, slept only on occasion. He had his wine for company and that was enough.
He was a shell. The greatest fencing machine since the Cor-sican Wizard was barely even practicing the sword.
He was in that condition when the Sicilian found him.
At first the little hunchback only supplied him with stronger wine. But then, through a combination of praise and nudging, the Sicilian began to get him off the bottle. Because the Sicilian had a dream: with his guile plus the Turk's strength plus the Spaniard's sword, they might become the most effective criminal organization in the civilized world.
Which is precisely what they became.
In dark places, their names whipped sharper than fear; everyone had needs that were hard to fulfill. The Sicilian Crowd (two was company, three a crowd, even then) became more and more famous and more and more rich. Nothing was beyond or beneath them. Inigo's blade was flashing again, more than ever like lightning. The Turk's strength grew more prodigious with the months.
But the hunchback was the leader. There was never doubt. Without him, Inigo knew where he would be: on his back begging wine in some alley entrance. The Sicilian's word was not just law, it was gospel.
So when he said, "Kill the man in black," all other possibilities ceased to exist. The man in black had to die....
INIGO PACED THE cliff edge, fingers snapping. Fifty feet below him now, the man in black still climbed. Inigo's impatience was beginning to bubble beyond control. He stared down at the slow progress. Find a crevice, jam in the hand, find another crevice, jam in the other hand; forty-eight feet to go. Inigo slapped his sword handle, and his finger snapping began to go faster. He examined the hooded climber, half hoping he would be six-fingered, but no; this one had the proper accompaniment of digits.
Forty-seven feet to go now.
Now forty-six.
"Hello there," Inigo hollered when he could wait no more.
The man in black glanced up and grunted.
"I've been watching you."
The man in black nodded.
"Slow going," Inigo said.
"Look, I don't mean to be rude," the man in black said finally, "but I'm rather busy just now, so try not to distract me."
"I'm sorry," Inigo said.
The man in black grunted again.
"I don't suppose you could speed things up," Inigo said.
"If you want to speed things up so much," the man in black said, clearly quite angry now, "you could lower a rope or a tree branch or find some other helpful thing to do."
"I could do that," Inigo agreed. "But I don't think you would accept my help, since I'm only waiting up here so that I can kill you."
"That does put a damper on our relationship," the man in black said then. "I'm afraid you'll just have to wait."
Forty-three feet left.
Forty-one.
"I could give you my word as a Spaniard," Inigo said.
"No good," the man in black replied. "I've known too many Spaniards."
"I'm going crazy up here," Inigo said.
"Anytime you want to change places, I'd be too happy to accept."
Thirty-nine feet.
And resting.
The man in black just hung in space, feet dangling, the entire weight of his body supported by the strength of his hand jammed into the crevice.
"Come along now," Inigo pleaded.
"It's been a bit of a climb," the man in black explained, "and I'm weary. I'll be fine in a quarter-hour or so."
Another quarter-hour! Inconceivable. "Look, we've got a piece of extra rope up here we didn't need when we made our original climb, I'll just drop it down to you and you grab hold and I'll pull and—"
"No good," the man in black repeated. "You might pull, but then again, you also just might let go, which, since you're in a hurry to kill me, would certainly do the job quickly."
"But you wouldn't have ever known I was going to kill you if I hadn't been the one to tell you. Doesn't that let you know I can be trusted?"
"Frankly, and I hope you won't be insulted, no."
"There's no way you'll trust me?"
"Nothing comes to mind."
Suddenly Inigo raised his right hand high—"I swear on the soul of Domingo Montoya you will reach the top alive!"
The man in black was silent for a long time. Then he looked up. "I do not know this Domingo of yours, but something in your tone says I must believe you. Throw me the rope."
Inigo quickly tied it around a rock, dropped it over. The man in black grabbed hold, hung suspended alone in space. Inigo pulled. In a moment, the man in black was beside him.
"Thank you," the man in black said, and he sank down on the rock.
Inigo sat alongside him. "We'll wait until you're ready," he said.
The man in black breathed deeply. "Again, thank you."
"Why have you followed us?"
"You carry baggage of much value."
"We have no intention of selling," Inigo said.
"That is your business."
"And yours?"
The man in black made no reply.
Inigo stood and walked away, surveying the terrain over which they would battle. It was a splendid plateau, really, filled with trees for dodging around and roots for tripping over and small rocks for losing your balance on and boulders for leaping off if you could climb on them fast enough, and bathing everything, the entire spot, moonlight. One could not ask for a more suitable testing ground for a duel, Inigo decided. It had everything, including the marvelous Cliffs at one end, beyond which was the wonderful thousand-foot drop, always something to bear in mind when one was planning tactics. It was perfect. The place was perfect.
Provided the man in black could fence.
Really fence.
Inigo did then what he always did before a duel: he took the great sword from its scabbard and touched the side of the blade to his face two times, once along one scar, once along the other.
Then he examined the man in black. A fine sailor, yes; a mighty climber, no question; courageous, without a doubt.
But could he fence?
Really fence?
Please, Inigo thought. It has been so long since I have been tested, let this man test me. Let him be a glorious swordsman. Let him be both quick and fast, smart and strong. Give him a matchless mind for tactics, a background the equal of mine. Please, please, it's been so long: let—him—be—a—master!
"I have my breath back now," the man in black said from the rock. "Thank you for allowing me my rest."
"We'd best get on with it then," Inigo replied.
The man in black stood.
"You seem a decent fellow," Inigo said. "I hate to kill you."
"You seem a decent fellow," answered the man in black. "I hate to die."
"But one of us must," Inigo said. "Begin."
And so saying he took the six-fingered sword.
And put it into his left hand.
He had begun all his duels left-handed lately. It was good practice for him, and although he was the only living wizard in the world with his regular hand, the right, still, he was more than worthy with his left. Perhaps thirty men alive were his equal when he used his left. Perhaps as many as fifty; perhaps as few as ten.
The man in black was also left-handed and that warmed Inigo; it made things fairer. His weakness against the other man's strength. All to the good.
They touched swords, and the man in black immediately began the Agrippa defense, which Inigo felt was sound, considering the rocky terrain, for the Agrippa kept the feet stationary at first, and made the chances of slipping minimal. Naturally, he countered with Capo Ferro which surprised the man in black, but he defended well, quickly shifting out of Agrippa and taking the attack himself, using the principles of Thibault.
Inigo had to smile. No one had taken the attack against him in so long and it was thrilling! He let the man in black advance, let him build up courage, retreating gracefully between some trees, letting his Bonetti defense keep him safe from harm.
Then his legs flicked and he was behind the nearest tree, and the man in black had not expected it and was slow reacting. Inigo flashed immediately out from the tree, attacking himself now, and the man in black retreated, stumbled, got his balance, continued moving away.
Inigo was impressed with the quickness of the balance return. Most men the size of the man in black would have gone down or, at the least, fallen to one hand. The man in black did neither; he simply quick-stepped, wrenched his body erect, continued fighting.
They were moving parallel to the Cliffs now, and the trees were behind them, mostly. The man in black was slowly being forced toward a group of large boulders, for Inigo was anxious to see how well he moved when quarters were close, when you could not thrust or parry with total freedom. He continued to force, and then the boulders were surrounding them. Inigo suddenly threw his body against a nearby rock, rebounded off it with stunning force, lunging with incredible speed.
First blood was his.
He had pinked the man in black, grazed him only, along the left wrist. A scratch was all. But it was bleeding.
Immediately the man in black hurried his retreat, getting his position away from the boulders, getting out into the open of the plateau. Inigo followed, not bothering to try to check the other man's flight; there would always be time for that later.
Then the man in black launched his greatest assault. It came with no warning and the speed and strength of it were terrifying. His blade flashed in the light again and again, and at first, Inigo was only too delighted to retreat. He was not entirely familiar with the style of the attack; it was mostly McBone, but there were snatches of Capo Ferro thrown in, and he continued moving backward while he concentrated on the enemy, figuring the best way to stop the assault.
The man in black kept advancing, and Inigo was aware that behind him now he was coming closer and closer to the edge of the Cliffs, but that could not have concerned him less. The important thing was to outthink the enemy, find his weakness, let him have his moment of exultation.
Suddenly, as the Cliffs came ever nearer, Inigo realized the fault in the attack that was flashing at him; a simple Thibault maneuver would destroy it entirely, but he didn't want to give it away so soon. Let the other man have the triumph a moment longer; life allowed so few.
The Cliffs were very close behind him now.
Inigo continued to retreat; the man in black continued advancing.
Then Inigo countered with the Thibault.
And the man in black blocked it.
He blocked it!
Inigo repeated the Thibault move and again it didn't work. He switched to Capo Ferro, he tried Bonetti, he went to Fabris; in desperation he began a move used only twice, by Sainct.
Nothing worked!
The man in black kept attacking.
And the Cliffs were almost there.
Inigo never panicked—never came close. But he decided some things very quickly, because there was no time for long consultations, and what he decided was that although the man in black was slow in reacting to moves behind trees, and not much good at all amidst boulders, when movement was restricted, yet out in the open, where there was space, he was a terror. A left-handed black-masked terror. "You are most excellent," he said. His rear foot was at the cliff edge. He could retreat no more.
"Thank you," the man in black replied. "I have worked very hard to become so."
"You are better than I am," Inigo admitted.
"So it seems. But if that is true, then why are you smiling?"
"Because," Inigo answered, "I know something you don't know."
"And what is that?" asked the man in black.
"I'm not left-handed," Inigo replied, and with those words, he all but threw the six-fingered sword into his right hand, and the tide of battle turned.
The man in black retreated before the slashing of the great sword. He tried to sidestep, tried to parry, tried to somehow escape the doom that was now inevitable. But there was no way. He could block fifty thrusts; the fifty-first flicked through, and now his left arm was bleeding. He could thwart thirty ripostes, but not the thirty-first, and now his shoulder bled.
The wounds were not yet grave, but they kept on coming as they dodged across the stones, and then the man in black found himself amidst the trees and that was bad for him, so he all but fled before Inigo's onslaught, and then he was in the open again, but Inigo kept coming, nothing could stop him, and then the man in black was back among the boulders, and that was even worse for him than the trees and he shouted out in frustration and practically ran to where there was open space again.
But there was no dealing with the wizard, and slowly, again, the deadly Cliffs became a factor in the fight, only now it was the man in black who was being forced to doom. He was brave, and he was strong, and the cuts did not make him beg for mercy, and he showed no fear behind his black mask. "You are amazing," he cried, as Inigo increased the already blinding speed of the blade.
"Thank you. It has not come without effort."
The death moment was at hand now. Again and again Inigo thrust forward, and again and again the man in black managed to ward off the attacks, but each time it was harder, and the strength in Inigo's wrists was endless and he only thrust the more fiercely and soon the man in black grew weak. "You cannot tell it," he said then, "because I wear a cape and mask. But I am smiling now."
"Why?"
"Because I'm not left-handed either," said the man in black.
And he too switched hands, and now the battle was finally joined.
And Inigo began to retreat.
"Who are you?" he screamed.
"No one of import. Another lover of the blade."
"I must know!"
"Get used to disappointment."
They flashed along the open plateau now, and the blades were both invisible, but oh, the earth trembled, and ohhhh, the skies shook, and Inigo was losing. He tried to make for the trees, but the man in black would have none of it. He tried retreating to the boulders, but that was denied him too.
And in the open, unthinkable as it was, the man in black was superior. Not much. But in a multitude of tiny ways, he was of a slightly higher quality. A hair quicker, a fraction stronger, a speck faster. Not really much at all.
But it was enough.
They met in center plateau for the final assault. Neither man conceded anything. The sound of metal clashing metal rose. A final burst of energy flew through Inigo's veins and he made every attempt, tried every trick, used every hour of every day of his years of experience. But he was blocked. By the man in black. He was shackled. By the man in black. He was baffled, thwarted, muzzled.
Beaten.
By the man in black.
A final flick and the great six-fingered sword went flying from his hand. Inigo stood there, helpless. Then he dropped to his knees, bowed his head, closed his eyes. "Do it quickly," he said.
"May my hands fall from my wrists before I kill an artist like yourself," said the man in black. "I would as soon destroy da Vinci. However"—and here he clubbed Inigo's head with the butt of his sword—"since I can't have you following me either, please understand that I hold you in the highest respect." He struck one more time and the Spaniard fell unconscious. The man in black quickly tied Inigo's hands around a tree and left him there, for the moment, sleeping and helpless.
Then he sheathed his sword, picked up the Sicilian's trail, and raced into the night....
"HE HAS BEATEN Inigo!" the Turk said, not quite sure he wanted to believe it, but positive that the news was sad; he liked Inigo. Inigo was the only one who wouldn't laugh when Fezzik asked him to play rhymes.
They were hurrying along a mountainous path on the way to the Guilder frontier. The path was narrow and strewn with rocks like cannonballs, so the Sicilian had a terrible time keeping up. Fezzik carried Buttercup lightly on his shoulders; she was still tied hand and foot.
"I didn't hear you, say it again," the Sicilian called out, so Fezzik waited for the hunchback to catch up to him.
"See?" Fezzik pointed then. Far down, at the very bottom of the mountain path, the man in black could be seen running. "Inigo is beaten."
"Inconceivable!" exploded the Sicilian.
Fezzik never dared disagree with the hunchback. "I'm so stupid," Fezzik nodded. "Inigo has not lost to the man in black, he has defeated him. And to prove it he has put on all the man in black's clothes and masks and hoods and boots and gained eighty pounds."
The Sicilian squinted down toward the running figure. "Fool," he hurled at the Turk. "After all these years can't you tell Inigo when you see him? That isn't Inigo."
"I'll never learn," the Turk agreed. "If there's ever a question about anything, you can always count on me to get it wrong."
"Inigo must have slipped or been tricked or otherwise unfairly beaten. That's the only conceivable explanation."
Conceivable believable, the giant thought. Only he didn't dare say it out loud. Not to the Sicilian. He might have whispered it to Inigo late at night, but that was before Inigo was dead. He also might have whispered heavable thievable weavable but that was as far as he got before the Sicilian started talking again, and that always meant he had to pay very strict attention. Nothing angered the hunchback as quickly as catching Fezzik thinking. Since he barely imagined someone like Fezzik capable of thought, he never asked what was on his mind, because he couldn't have cared less. If he had found out Fezzik was making rhymes, he would have laughed and then found new ways to make Fezzik suffer.
"Untie her feet," the Sicilian commanded.
Fezzik put the Princess down and ripped the ropes apart that bound her legs. Then he rubbed her ankles so she could walk.
The Sicilian grabbed her immediately and yanked her away. "Catch up with us quickly," the Sicilian said.
"Instructions?" Fezzik called out, almost panicked. He hated being left on his own like this.
"Finish him, finish him." The Sicilian was getting peeved. "Succeed, since Inigo failed us."
"But I can't fence, I don't know how to fence—"
"Your way." The Sicilian could barely control himself now.
"Oh yes, good, my way, thank you, Vizzini," Fezzik said to the hunchback. Then, summoning all his courage: "I need a hint."
"You're always saying how you understand force, how force belongs to you. Use it, I don't care how. Wait for him behind there"—he pointed to a sharp bend in the mountain path—"and crush his head like an eggshell." He pointed to the cannonball-sized rocks.
"I could do that, yes," Fezzik nodded. He was marvelous at throwing heavy things. "It just seems not very sportsmanlike, doesn't it?"
The Sicilian lost control. It was terrifying when he did it. With most people, they scream and holler and jump around. With Vizzini, it was different: he got very very quiet, and his voice sounded like it came from a dead throat. And his eyes turned to fire. "I tell you this and I tell it once: stop the man in black. Stop him for good and all. If you fail, there will be no excuses; I will find another giant."
"Please don't desert me," Fezzik said.
"Then do as you are told." He grabbed hold of Buttercup again and hobbled up the mountain path and out of sight.
Fezzik glanced down toward the figure racing up the path toward him. Still a good distance away. Time enough to practice. Fezzik picked up a rock the size of a cannonball and aimed at a crack in the mountain thirty yards away.
Swoosh.
Dead center.
He picked up a bigger rock and threw it at a shadow line twice as distant.
Not quite swoosh.
Two inches to the right.
Fezzik was reasonably satisfied. Two inches off would still crush a head if you aimed for the center. He groped around, found a perfect rock for throwing; it just fit his hand. Then he moved to the sharp turn in the path, backed off into deepest shadow. Unseen, silent, he waited patiently with his killing rock, counting the seconds until the man in black would die....
Fezzik
TURKISH WOMEN ARE famous for the size of their babies. The only happy newborn ever to weigh over twenty-four pounds upon entrance was the product of a southern Turkish union. Turkish hospital records list a total of eleven children who weighed over twenty pounds at birth. And ninety-five more who weighed between fifteen and twenty. Now all of these 106 cherubs did what babies usually do at birth: they lost three or four ounces and it took them the better part of a week before they got it totally back. More accurately, 105 of them lost weight just after they were born.
Not Fezzik.
His first afternoon he gained a pound. (Since he weighed but fifteen and since his mother gave birth two weeks early, the doctors weren't unduly concerned. "It's because you came two weeks too soon," they explained to Fezzik's mother. "That explains it." Actually, of course, it didn't explain anything, but whenever doctors are confused about something, which is really more frequently than any of us would do well to think about, they always snatch at something in the vicinity of the case and add, "That explains it." If Fezzik's mother had come late, they would have said, "Well, you came late, that explains it." Or "Well, it was raining during delivery, this added weight is simply moisture, that explains it.")
A healthy baby doubles his birth weight in about six months and triples it in a year. When Fezzik was a year old, he weighed eighty-five pounds. He wasn't fat, understand. He looked like a perfectly normal strong eighty-five-pound kid. Not all that normal, actually. He was pretty hairy for a one-year-old.
By the time he reached kindergarten, he was ready to shave. He was the size of a normal man by this time, and all the other children made his life miserable. At first, naturally, they were scared to death (even then, Fezzik looked fierce) but once they found out he was chicken, well, they weren't about to let an opportunity like that get away.
"Bully, bully," they taunted Fezzik during morning yogurt break.
"I'm not," Fezzik would say out loud. (To himself he would go "Woolly, woolly." He would never dare to consider himself a poet, because he wasn't anything like that; he just loved rhymes. Anything you said out loud, he rhymed it inside. Sometimes the rhymes made sense, sometimes they didn't. Fezzik never cared much about sense; all that ever mattered was the sound.)
"Coward."
Towered. "I'm not."
"Then fight," one of them would say, and would swing all he had and hit Fezzik in the stomach, confident that all Fezzik would do was go "oof" and stand there, because he never hit back no matter what you did to him.
"Oof."
Another swing. Another. A good stiff punch to the kidneys maybe. Maybe a kick in the knee. It would go on like that until Fezzik would burst into tears and run away.
One day at home, Fezzik's father called, "Come here."
Fezzik, as always, obeyed.
"Dry your tears," his mother said.
Two children had beaten him very badly just before. He did what he could to stop crying.
"Fezzik, this can't go on," his mother said. "They must stop picking on you."
Kicking on you. "I don't mind so much," Fezzik said.
"Well you should mind," his father said. He was a carpenter, with big hands. "Come on outside. I'm going to teach you how to fight."
"Please, I don't want—"
"Obey your father."
They trooped out to the back yard.
"Make a fist," his father said.
Fezzik did his best.
His father looked at his mother, then at the heavens. "He can't even make a fist," his father said.
"He's trying, he's only six; don't be so hard on him."
Fezzik's father cared for his son greatly and he tried to keep his voice soft, so Fezzik wouldn't burst out crying. But it wasn't easy. "Honey," Fezzik's father said, "look: when you make a fist, you don't put your thumb inside your fingers, you keep your thumb outside your fingers, because if you keep your thumb inside your fingers and you hit somebody, what will happen is you'll break your thumb, and that isn't good, because the whole object when you hit somebody is to hurt the other guy, not yourself."
Blurt. "I don't want to hurt anybody, Daddy."
"I don't want you to hurt anybody, Fezzik. But if you know how to take care of yourself, and they know you know, they won't bother you anymore."
Father. "I don't mind so much."
"Well we do," his mother said. "They shouldn't pick on you, Fezzik, just because you need a shave."
"Back to the fist," his father said. "Have we learned how?"
Fezzik made a fist again, this time with the thumb outside.
"He's a natural learner," his mother said. She cared for him as greatly as his father did.
"Now hit me," Fezzik's father said.
"No, I don't want to do that."
"Hit your father, Fezzik."
"Maybe he doesn't know how to hit," Fezzik's father said.
"Maybe not." Fezzik's mother shook her head sadly.
"Watch, honey," Fezzik's father said. "See? Simple. You just make a fist like you already know and then pull back your arm a little and aim for where you want to land and let go."
"Show your father what a natural learner you are," Fezzik's mother said. "Make a punch. Hit him a good one."
Fezzik made a punch toward his father's arm.
Fezzik's father stared at the heavens again in frustration.
"He came close to your arm," Fezzik's mother said quickly, before her son's face could cloud. "That was very good for a start, Fezzik; tell him what a good start he made," she said to her husband.
"It was in the right general direction," Fezzik's father managed. "If only I'd been standing one yard farther west, it would have been perfect."
"I'm very tired," Fezzik said. "When you learn so much so fast, you get so tired. I do anyway. Please may I be excused?"
"Not yet," Fezzik's mother said.
"Honey, please hit me, really hit me, try. You're a smart boy; hit me a good one," Fezzik's father begged.
"Tomorrow, Daddy; I promise." Tears began to form.
"Crying's not going to work, Fezzik," his father exploded. "It's not gonna work on me and it's not gonna work on your mother, you're gonna do what I say and what I say is you're gonna hit me and if it takes all night we're gonna stand right here and if it takes all week we're gonna stand right here and if it—"
S
P
L
A
T
!!!!
(This was before emergency wards, and that was too bad, at least for Fezzik's father, because there was no place to take him after Fezzik's punch landed, except to his own bed, where he remained with his eyes shut for a day and a half, except for when the milkman came to fix his broken jaw—this was not before doctors, but in Turkey they hadn't gotten around to claiming the bone business yet; milkmen still were in charge of bones, the logic being that since milk was so good for bones, who would know more about broken bones than a milkman?)
When Fezzik's father was able to open his eyes as much as he wanted, they had a family talk, the three of them.
"You're very strong, Fezzik," his father said. (Actually, that is not strictly true. What his father meant was, "You're very strong, Fezzik." What came out was more like this: "Zzz'zz zzzz zzzzzz, Zzzzzz." Ever since the milkman had wired his jaws together, all he could manage was the letter z. But he had a very expressive face, and his wife understood him perfectly.)
"He says, 'You're very strong, Fezzik.'"
"I thought I was," Fezzik answered. "Last year I hit a tree once when I was very mad. I knocked it down. It was a small tree, but still, I figured that had to mean something."
"Z's zzzzzz zz zzzzz z zzzzzzzzz, Zzzzzz."
"He says he's giving up being a carpenter, Fezzik."
"Oh, no," Fezzik said. "You'll be all well soon, Daddy; the milkman practically promised me."
"Z zzzz zz zzzz zz zzzzz z zzzzzzzzz, Zzzzzz."
"He wants to give up being a carpenter, Fezzik."
"But what will he do?"
Fezzik's mother answered this one herself; she and her husband had been up half the night agreeing on the decision. "He's going to be your manager, Fezzik. Fighting is the national sport of Turkey. We're all going to be rich and famous."
"But Mommy, Daddy, I don't like fighting."
Fezzik's father reached out and gently patted his son's knee. "Zz'z zzzzz zz zz zzzzzzzzz," he said.
"It's going to be wonderful" his mother translated.
Fezzik only burst into tears.
They had his first professional match in the village of San-diki, on a steaming-hot Sunday. Fezzik's parents had a terrible time getting him into the ring. They were absolutely confident of victory, because they had worked very hard. They had taught Fezzik for three solid years before they mutually agreed that he was ready. Fezzik's father handled tactics and ring strategy, while his mother was more in charge of diet and training, and they had never been happier.
Fezzik had never been more miserable. He was scared and frightened and terrified, all rolled into one. No matter how they reassured him, he refused to enter the arena. Because he knew something: even though outside he looked twenty, and his mustache was already coming along nicely, inside he was still this nine-year-old who liked rhyming things.
"No," he said. "I won't, I won't, and you can't make me."
"After all we've slaved for these three years," his father said. (His jaw was almost as good as new now.)
"He'll hurt me!" Fezzik said.
"Life is pain," his mother said. "Anybody that says different is selling something."
"Please. I'm not ready. I forget the holds. I'm not graceful and I fall down a lot. It's true."
It was. Their only real fear was, were they rushing him? "When the going gets tough, the tough get going," Fezzik's mother said.
"Get going, Fezzik," his father said.
Fezzik stood his ground.
"Listen, we're not going to threaten you," Fezzik's parents said, more or less together. "We all care for each other too much to pull any of that stuff. If you don't want to fight, nobody's going to force you. We'll just leave you alone forever." (Fezzik's picture of hell was being alone forever. He had told them that when he was five.)
They marched into the arena then to face the champion of Sandiki.
Who had been champion for eleven years, since he was twenty-four. He was very graceful and wide and stood six feet in height, only half a foot less than Fezzik.
Fezzik didn't stand a chance.
He was too clumsy; he kept falling down or getting his holds on backward so they weren't holds at all. The champion of Sandiki toyed with him. Fezzik kept getting thrown down or falling down or tumbling down or stumbling down. He always got up and tried again, but the champion of Sandiki was much too fast for him, and too clever, and much, much too experienced. The crowd laughed and ate baklava and enjoyed the whole spectacle.
Until Fezzik got his arms around the champion of Sandiki.
The crowd grew very quiet then.
Fezzik lifted him up.
No noise.
Fezzik squeezed.
And squeezed.
"That's enough now," Fezzik's father said.
Fezzik laid the other man down. "Thank you," he said. "You are a wonderful fighter and I was lucky."
The ex-champion of Sandiki kind of grunted.
"Raise your hands, you're the winner," his mother reminded.
Fezzik stood there in the middle of the ring with his hands raised.
"Booooo," said the crowd.
"Animal."
"Ape!"
"Go-rilla!"
"BOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"
They did not linger long in Sandiki. As a matter of fact, it wasn't very safe from then on to linger long anywhere. They fought the champion of Ispir. "BOOOOOOOOOOO!!!" The champion of Simal. "BOOOOOOOOOOO!!!" They fought in Bolu. They fought in Zile.
"BOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"
"I don't care what anybody says," Fezzik's mother told him one winter afternoon. "You're my son and you're wonderful." It was gray and dark and they were hotfooting it out of Constantinople just as fast as they could because Fezzik had just demolished their champion before most of the crowd was even seated.
"I'm not wonderful," Fezzik said. "They're right to insult me. I'm too big. Whenever I fight, it looks like I'm picking on somebody."
"Maybe," Fezzik's father began a little hesitantly; "maybe, Fezzik, if you'd just possibly kind of sort of lose a few fights, they might not yell at us so much."
The wife whirled on the husband. "The boy is eleven and already you want him to throw fights?"
"Nothing like that, no, don't get all excited, but maybe if he'd even look like he was suffering a little, they'd let up on us."
"I'm suffering," Fezzik said. (He was, he was.)
"Let it show a little more."
"I'll try, Daddy."
"That's a good boy."
"I can't help being strong; it's not my fault. I don't even exercise."
"I think it's time to head for Greece," Fezzik's father said then. "We've beaten everyone in Turkey who'll fight us and athletics began in Greece. No one appreciates talent like the Greeks."
"I just hate it when they go 'BOOOOOOOOOOO!!!'" Fezzik said. (He did. Now his private picture of hell was being left alone with everybody going "BOOOOOOOOOOO" at him forever.)
"They'll love you in Greece," Fezzik's mother said.
They fought in Greece.
"AARRRGGGGH!!!" (AARRRGGGGH!!! was Greek for BOOOOOO-OOOOO!!!)
Bulgaria.
Yugoslavia.
Czechoslovakia. Romania.
"BOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"
They tried the Orient. The jujitsu champion of Korea. The karate champion of Siam. The kung fu champion of all India.
"SSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!" (See note on AARRRGGGGH!!!)
In Mongolia his parents died. "We've done everything we can for you, Fezzik, good luck," they said, and they were gone. It was a terrible thing, a plague that swept everything before it. Fezzik would have died too, only naturally he never got sick. Alone, he continued on, across the Gobi Desert, hitching rides sometimes with passing caravans. And it was there that he learned how to make them stop BOOOOOOOOOOO!!!ing.
Fight groups.
It all began in a caravan on the Gobi when the caravan head said, "I'll bet my camel drivers can take you." There were only three of them, so Fezzik said. "Fine," he'd try, and he did, and he won, naturally.
And everybody seemed happy.
Fezzik was thrilled. He never fought just one person again if it was possible. For a while he traveled from place to place battling gangs for local charities, but his business head was never much and, besides, doing things alone was even less appealing to him now that he was into his late teens than it had been before.
He joined a traveling circus. All the other performers grumbled at him because, they said, he was eating more than his share of the food. So he stayed pretty much to himself except when it came to his work.
But then, one night, when Fezzik had just turned twenty, he got the shock of his life: the BOOOOOOOOOOO!!!ing was back again. He could not believe it. He had just squeezed half a dozen men into submission, cracked the heads of half a dozen more. What did they want from him?
The truth was simply this: he had gotten too strong. He would never measure himself, but everybody whispered he must be over seven feet tall, and he would never step on a scale, but people claimed he weighed four hundred. And not only that, he was quick now. All the years of experience had made him almost inhuman. He knew all the tricks, could counter all the holds.
"Animal."
"Ape!"
"Go-rilla!"
"BOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"
That night, alone in his tent, Fezzik wept. He was a freak. (Speak—he still loved rhymes.) A two-eyed Cyclops. (Eye drops—like the tears that were dropping now, dropping from his half-closed eyes.) By the next morning, he had gotten control of himself: at least he still had his circus friends around him.
That week the circus fired him. The crowds were BOOOOOOOOOOO!!!ing them now too, and the fat lady threatened to walk out and the midgets were fuming and that was it for Fezzik.
This was in the middle of Greenland, and, as everybody knows, Greenland then as now was the loneliest place on the earth. In Greenland, there is one person for every twenty square miles of real estate. Probably the circus was pretty stupid taking a booking there, but that wasn't the point.
The point was that Fezzik was alone.
In the loneliest place in the world.
Just sitting there on a rock watching the circus pull away.
He was still sitting there the next day when Vizzini the Sicilian found him. Vizzini flattered him, promised to keep the BOOOOOOOOOOOS away. Vizzini needed Fezzik. But not half as much as Fezzik needed Vizzini. As long as Vizzini was around, you couldn't be alone. Whatever Vizzini said, Fezzik did. And if that meant crushing the head of the man in black...
So be it.
BUT NOT BY ambush. Not the coward's way. Nothing unsportsmanlike. His parents had always taught him to go by the rules. Fezzik stood in shadow, the great rock tight in his great hand. He could hear the footsteps of the man in black coming nearer. Nearer.
Fezzik leaped from hiding and threw the rock with incredible power and perfect accuracy. It smashed into a boulder a foot away from the face of the man in black. "I did that on purpose," Fezzik said then, picking up another rock, holding it ready. "I didn't have to miss."
"I believe you," the man in black said.
They stood facing each other on the narrow mountain path.
"Now what happens?" asked the man in black.
"We face each other as God intended," Fezzik said. "No tricks, no weapons, skill against skill alone."
"You mean you'll put down your rock and I'll put down my sword and we'll try to kill each other like civilized people, is that it?"
"If you'd rather, I can kill you now," Fezzik said gently, and he raised the rock to throw. "I'm giving you a chance."
"So you are and I accept it," said the man in black, and he began to take off his sword and scabbard. "Although, frankly, I think the odds are slightly in your favor at hand fighting."
"I tell you what I tell everybody," Fezzik explained. "I cannot help being the biggest and strongest; it's not my fault."
"I'm not blaming you," said the man in black.
"Let's get to it then," Fezzik said, and he dropped his rock and got into fighting position, watching as the man in black slowly moved toward him. For a moment, Fezzik felt almost wistful. This was clearly a good fellow, even if he had killed Inigo. He didn't complain or try and beg or bribe. He just accepted his fate. No complaining, nothing like that. Obviously a criminal of character. (Was he a criminal, though, Fezzik wondered. Surely the mask would indicate that. Or was it worse than that: was he disfigured? His face burned away by acid perhaps? Or perhaps born hideous?)
"Why do you wear a mask and hood?" Fezzik asked.
"I think everybody will in the near future" was the man in black's reply. "They're terribly comfortable."
They faced each other on the mountain path. There was a moment's pause. Then they engaged. Fezzik let the man in black fiddle around for a bit, tested the man's strength, which was considerable for someone who wasn't a giant. He let the man in black feint and dodge and try a hold here, a hold there. Then, when he was quite sure the man in black would not go to his maker embarrassed, Fezzik locked his arms tight around.
Fezzik lifted.
And squeezed.
And squeezed.
Then he took the remains of the man in black, snapped him one way, snapped him the other, cracked him with one hand in the neck, with the other at the spine base, locked his legs up, rolled his limp arms around them, and tossed the entire bundle of what had once been human into a nearby crevice.
That was the theory, anyway.
In fact, what happened was this:
Fezzik lifted.
And squeezed.
And the man in black slipped free.
Hmmm, thought Fezzik, that certainly was a surprise. I thought for sure I had him. "You're very quick," Fezzik complimented.
"And a good thing too," said the man in black.
Then they engaged again. This time Fezzik did not give the man in black a chance to fiddle. He just grabbed him, swung him around his head once, twice, smashed his skull against the nearest boulder, pounded him, pummeled him, gave him a final squeeze for good measure and tossed the remains of what once had been alive into a nearby crevice.
Those were his intentions, anyway.
In actuality, he never even got through the grabbing part with much success. Because no sooner had Fezzik's great hands reached out than the man in black dropped and spun and twisted and was loose and free and still quite alive.
I don't understand a thing that's happening, Fezzik thought. Could I be losing my strength? Could there be a mountain disease that takes your strength? There was a desert disease that took my parents' strength. That must be it, I must have caught a plague, but if that is it, why isn't he weak? No, I must still be strong, it has to be something else, now what could it be?
Suddenly he knew. He had not fought against one man in so long he had all but forgotten how. He had been fighting groups and gangs and bunches for so many years that the idea of having but a single opponent was slow in making itself known to him. Because you fought them entirely differently. When there were twelve against you, you made certain moves, tried certain holds, acted in certain ways. When there was but one, you had to completely readjust yourself. Quickly now, Fezzik went back through time. How had he fought the champion of Sandiki? He flashed through that fight in his mind, then reminded himself of all the other victories against other champions, the men from Ispir and Simal and Bolu and Zile. He remembered fleeing Constantinople because he had beaten their champion so quickly. So easily. Yes, Fezzik thought. Of course. And suddenly he readjusted his style to what it once had been.
But by that time the man in black had him by the throat!
The man in black was riding him, and his arms were locked across Fezzik's windpipe, one in front, one behind. Fezzik reached back but the man in black was hard to grasp. Fezzik could not get his arms around to his back and dislodge the enemy. Fezzik ran at a boulder and, at the last moment, spun around so that the man in black received the main force of the charge. It was a terrible jolt; Fezzik knew it was.
But the grip on his windpipe grew ever tighter.
Fezzik charged the boulder again, again spun, and again he knew the power of the blow the man in black had taken. But still the grip remained. Fezzik clawed at the man in black's arms. He pounded his giant fists against them.
By now he had no air.
Fezzik continued to struggle. He could feel a hollowness in his legs now; he could see the world beginning to pale. But he did not give up. He was the mighty Fezzik, lover of rhymes, and you did not give up, no matter what. Now the hollowness was in his arms and the world was snowing.
Fezzik went to his knees.
He pounded still, but feebly. He fought still, but his blows would not have harmed a child. No air. There was no more air. There was no more anything, not for Fezzik, not in this world. I am beaten, I am going to die, he thought just before he fell onto the mountain path.
He was only half wrong.
There is an instant between unconsciousness and death, and as the giant pitched onto the rocky path, that instant happened, and just before it happened, the man in black let go. He staggered to his feet and leaned against a boulder until he could walk. Fezzik lay sprawled, faintly breathing. The man in black looked around for a rope to secure the giant, gave up the search almost as soon as he'd begun. What good were ropes against strength like this. He would simply snap them. The man in black made his way back to where he'd dropped his sword. He put it back on.
Two down and (the hardest) one to go...
VIZZINI WAS WAITING for him.
Indeed, he had set out a little picnic spread. From the knapsack that he always carried, he had taken a small handkerchief and on it he had placed two wine goblets. In the center was a small leather wine holder and, beside it, some cheese and some apples. The spot could not have been lovelier: a high point of the mountain path with a splendid view all the way back to Florin Channel. Buttercup lay helpless beside the picnic, gagged and tied and blindfolded. Vizzini held his long knife against her white throat.
"Welcome," Vizzini called when the man in black was almost upon them.
The man in black stopped and surveyed the situation.
"You've beaten my Turk," Vizzini said.
"It would seem so."
"And now it is down to you. And it is down to me."
"So that would seem too," the man in black said, edging just a half-step closer to the hunchback's long knife.
With a smile the hunchback pushed the knife harder against Buttercup's throat. It was about to bring blood. "If you wish her dead, by all means keep moving," Vizzini said.
The man in black froze.
"Better," Vizzini nodded.
No sound now beneath the moonlight.
"I understand completely what you are trying to do," the Sicilian said finally, "and I want it quite clear that I resent your behavior. You are trying to kidnap what I have rightfully stolen, and I think it quite ungentlemanly."
"Let me explain—" the man in black began, starting to edge forward.
"You're killing her!" the Sicilian screamed, shoving harder with the knife. A drop of blood appeared now at Buttercup's throat, red against white.
The man in black retreated. "Let me explain," he said again, but from a distance.
Again the hunchback interrupted. "There is nothing you can tell me I do not already know. I have not had the schooling equal to some, but for knowledge outside of books, there is no one in the world close to me. People say I read minds, but that is not, in all honesty, true. I merely predict the truth using logic and wisdom, and I say you are a kidnapper, admit it."
"I will admit that, as a ransom item, she has value; nothing more."
"I have been instructed to do certain things to her. It is very important that I follow my instructions. If I do this properly, I will be in demand for life. And my instructions do not include ransom, they include death. So your explanations are meaningless; we cannot do business together. You wish to keep her alive for ransom, whereas it is terribly important to me that she stop breathing in the very near future."
"Has it occurred to you that I have gone to great effort and expense, as well as personal sacrifice, to reach this point," the man in black replied. "And that if I fail now, I might get very angry. And if she stops breathing in the very near future, it is entirely possible that you will catch the same fatal illness?"
"I have no doubt you could kill me. Any man who can get by Inigo and Fezzik would have no trouble disposing of me. However, has it occurred to you that if you did that, then neither of us would get what we want—you having lost your ransom item, me my life."
"We are at an impasse then," said the man in black.
"I fear so," said the Sicilian. "I cannot compete with you physically, and you are no match for my brains."
"You are that smart?"
"There are no words to contain all my wisdom. I am so cunning, crafty and clever, so filled with deceit, guile and chicanery, such a knave, so shrewd, cagey as well as calculating, as diabolical as I am vulpine, as tricky as I am untrustworthy ... well, I told you there were not words invented yet to explain how great my brain is, but let me put it this way: the world is several million years old and several billion people have at one time or another trod upon it, but I, Vizzini the Sicilian, am, speaking with pure candor and modesty, the slickest, sleekest, sliest and wiliest fellow who has yet come down the pike."
"In that case," said the man in black, "I challenge you to a battle of wits."
Vizzini had to smile. "For the Princess?"
"You read my mind."
"It just seems that way, I told you. It's merely logic and wisdom. To the death?"
"Correct again."
"I accept," cried Vizzini. "Begin the battle!"
"Pour the wine," said the man in black.
Vizzini filled the two goblets with deep-red liquid.
The man in black pulled from his dark clothing a small packet and handed it to the hunchback. "Open it and inhale, but be careful not to touch."
Vizzini took the packet and followed instructions. "I smell nothing."
The man in black took the packet again. "What you do not smell is called iocane powder. It is odorless, tasteless and dissolves immediately in any kind of liquid. It also happens to be the deadliest poison known to man."
Vizzini was beginning to get excited.
"I don't suppose you'd hand me the goblets," said the man in black.
Vizzini shook his head. "Take them yourself. My long knife does not leave her throat."
The man in black reached down for the goblets. He took them and turned away.
Vizzini cackled aloud in anticipation.
The man in black busied himself a long moment. Then he turned again with a goblet in each hand. Very carefully, he put the goblet in his right hand in front of Vizzini and put the goblet in his left hand across the kerchief from the hunchback. He sat down in front of the left-hand goblet, and dropped the empty iocane packet by the cheese.
"Your guess," he said. "Where is the poison?"
"Guess?" Vizzini cried. "I don't guess. I think. I ponder. I deduce. Then I decide. But I never guess."
"The battle of wits has begun," said the man in black. "It ends when you decide and we drink the wine and find out who is right and who is dead. We both drink, need I add, and swallow, naturally, at precisely the same time."
"It's all so simple," said the hunchback. "All I have to do is deduce, from what I know of you, the way your mind works. Are you the kind of man who would put the poison into his own glass, or into the glass of his enemy?"
"You're stalling," said the man in black.
"I'm relishing is what I'm doing," answered the Sicilian. "No one has challenged my mind in years and I love it. ... By the way, may I smell both goblets?"
"Be my guest. Just be sure you put them down the same way you found them."
The Sicilian sniffed his own glass; then he reached across the kerchief for the goblet of the man in black and sniffed that. "As you said, odorless."
"As I also said, you're stalling."
The Sicilian smiled and stared at the wine goblets. "Now a great fool," he began, "would place the poison in his own goblet, because he would know that only another great fool would reach first for what he was given. I am clearly not a great fool, so I will clearly not reach for your wine."
"That's your final choice?"
"No. Because you knew I was not a great fool, so you would know that I would never fall for such a trick. You would count on it. So I will clearly not reach for mine either."
"Keep going," said the man in black.
"I intend to." The Sicilian reflected a moment. "We have now decided the poisoned cup is most likely in front of you. But the poison is powder made from iocane and iocane comes only from Australia and Australia, as everyone knows, is peopled with criminals and criminals are used to having people not trust them, as I don't trust you, which means I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you."
The man in black was starting to get nervous.
"But, again, you must have suspected I knew the origins of iocane, so you would have known I knew about the criminals and criminal behavior, and therefore I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me."
"Truly you have a dizzying intellect," whispered the man in black.
"You have beaten my Turk, which means you are exceptionally strong, and exceptionally strong men are convinced that they are too powerful ever to die, too powerful even for iocane poison, so you could have put it in your cup, trusting on your strength to save you; thus I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you."
The man in black was very nervous now.
"But you also bested my Spaniard, which means you must have studied, because he studied many years for his excellence, and if you can study, you are clearly more than simply strong; you are aware of how mortal we all are, and you do not wish to die, so you would have kept the poison as far from yourself as possible; therefore I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me."
"You're just trying to make me give something away with all this chatter," said the man in black angrily. "Well it won't work. You'll learn nothing from me, that I promise you."
"I have already learned everything from you," said the Sicilian. "I know where the poison is."
"Only a genius could have deduced as much."
"How fortunate for me that I happen to be one," said the hunchback, growing more and more amused now.
"You cannot frighten me," said the man in black, but there was fear all through his voice.
"Shall we drink then?"
"Pick, choose, quit dragging it out, you don't know, you couldn't know."
The Sicilian only smiled at the outburst. Then a strange look crossed his features and he pointed off behind the man in black. "What in the world can that be?" he asked.
The man in black turned around and looked. "I don't see anything."
"Oh, well, I could have sworn I saw something, no matter." The Sicilian began to laugh.
"I don't understand what's so funny," said the man in black.
"Tell you in a minute," said the hunchback. "But first let's drink."
And he picked up his own wine goblet.
The man in black picked up the one in front of him.
They drank.
"You guessed wrong," said the man in black.
"You only think I guessed wrong," said the Sicilian, his laughter ringing louder. "That's what's so funny. I switched glasses when your back was turned."
There was nothing for the man in black to say.
"Fool!" cried the hunchback. "You fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous is 'Never get involved in a land war in Asia,' but only slightly less well known is this: 'Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.'"
He was quite cheery until the iocane powder took effect.
The man in black stepped quickly over the corpse, then roughly ripped the blindfold from the Princess's eyes.
"I heard everything that happ—" Buttercup began, and then she said "Oh" because she had never been next to a dead man before. "You killed him," she whispered finally.
"I let him die laughing," said the man in black. "Pray I do as much for you." He lifted her, slashed her bonds away, put her on her feet, started to pull her along.
"Please," Buttercup said. "Give me a moment to gather myself." The man in black released his grip.
Buttercup rubbed her wrists, stopped, massaged her ankles. She took a final look at the Sicilian. "To think," she murmured, "all that time it was your cup that was poisoned."
"They were both poisoned," said the man in black. "I've spent the past two years building up immunity to iocane powder."
Buttercup looked up at him. He was terrifying to her, masked and hooded and dangerous; his voice was strained, rough. "Who are you?" she asked.
"I am no one to be trifled with," replied the man in black. "That is all you ever need to know." And with that he yanked her upright. "You've had your moment." Again he pulled her after him, and this time she could do nothing but follow.
They moved along the mountain path. The moonlight was very bright, and there were rocks everywhere, and to Buttercup it all looked dead and yellow, like the moon. She had just spent several hours with three men who were openly planning to kill her. So why, she wondered, was she more frightened now than then? Who was the horrid hooded figure to strike fear in her so? What could be worse than dying? "I will pay you a great deal of money to release me," she managed to say.
The man in black glanced at her. "You are rich, then?"
"I will be," Buttercup said. "Whatever you want for ransom, I promise I'll get it for you if you'll let me go."
The man in black just laughed.
"I was not speaking in jest."
"You promise? You? I should release you on your promise? What is that worth? The vow of a woman? Oh, that is very funny, Highness. Spoken in jest or not." They proceeded along the mountain path to an open space. The man in black stopped then. There were a million stars fighting for prominence and for a moment he seemed to be intent on nothing less than studying them all, as Buttercup watched his eyes flick from constellation to constellation behind his mask.
Then, with no warning, he spun off the path, heading into wild terrain, pulling her behind him.
She stumbled; he pulled her to her feet; again she fell; again he righted her.
"I cannot move this quickly."
"You can! And you will! Or you will suffer greatly. Do you think I could make you suffer greatly?"
Buttercup nodded.
"Then run!" cried the man in black, and he broke into a run himself, flying across rocks in the moonlight, pulling the Princess behind him.
She did her best to keep up. She was frightened as to what he would do to her, so she dared not fall again.
After five minutes, the man in black stopped dead. "Catch your breath," he commanded.
Buttercup nodded, gasped in air, tried to quiet her heart. But then they were off again, with no warning, dashing across the mountainous terrain, heading...
"Where ... do you take me?" Buttercup gasped, when he again gave her a chance to rest.
"Surely even someone as arrogant as you cannot expect me to give an answer."
"It does not matter if you tell or not. He will find you."
" 'He,' Highness?"
"Prince Humperdinck. There is no greater hunter. He can track a falcon on a cloudy day; he can find you."
"You have confidence that your dearest love will save you, do you?"
"I never said he was my dearest love, and yes, he will save me; that I know."
"You admit you do not love your husband-to-be? Fancy. An honest woman. You're a rare specimen, Highness."
"The Prince and I have never from the beginning lied to each other. He knows I do not love him."
"Are not capable of love is what you mean."
"I'm very capable of love," Buttercup said.
"Hold your tongue, I think."
"I have loved more deeply than a killer like you can possibly imagine."
He slapped her.
"That is the penalty for lying, Highness. Where I come from, when a woman lies, she is reprimanded."
"But I spoke the truth, I did, I—" Buttercup saw his hand rise a second time, so she stopped quickly, fell dead silent.
Then they began to run again.
They did not speak for hours. They just ran, and then, as if he could guess when she was spent, he would stop, release her hand. She would try to catch her breath for the next dash she was sure would come. Without a sound, he would grab her and off they would go.
It was close to dawn when they first saw the Armada.
They were running along the edge of a towering ravine. They seemed almost to be at the top of the world. When they stopped, Buttercup sank down to rest. The man in black stood silently over her. "Your love comes, not alone," he said then.
Buttercup did not understand.
The man in black pointed back the way they had come.
Buttercup stared, and as she did, the waters of Florin Channel seemed as filled with light as the sky was filled with stars.
"He must have ordered every ship in Florin after you," the man in black said. "Such a sight I have never seen." He stared at all the lanterns on all the ships as they moved.
"You can never escape him," Buttercup said. "If you release me, I promise that you will come to no harm."
"You are much too generous; I could never accept such an offer."
"I offered you your life, that was generous enough."
"Highness!" said the man in black, and his hands were suddenly at her throat. "If there is talk of life to be done, let me do it."
"You would not kill me. You did not steal me from murderers to murder me yourself."
"Wise as well as loving," said the man in black. He jerked her to her feet, and they ran along the edge of the great ravine. It was hundreds of feet deep, and filled with rocks and trees and lifting shadows. Abruptly, the man in black stopped, stared back at the Armada. "To be honest," he said, "I had not expected quite so many."
"You can never predict my Prince; that is why he is the greatest hunter."
"I wonder," said the man in black, "will he stay in one group or will he divide, some to search the coastline, some to follow your path on land? What do you think?"
"I only know he will find me. And if you have not given me my freedom first, he will not treat you gently."
"Surely he must have discussed things with you? The thrill of the hunt. What has he done in the past with many ships?"
"We do not discuss hunting, that I can assure you."
"Not hunting, not love, what do you talk about?"
"We do not see all that much of each other."
"Tender couple."
Buttercup could feel the upset coming. "We are always very honest with each other. Not everyone can say as much."
"May I please tell you something, Highness? You're very cold—"
"I'm not—"
"—very cold and very young, and if you live, I think you'll turn to hoarfrost—"
"Why do you pick at me? I have come to terms with my life, and that is my affair—I am not cold, I swear, but I have decided certain things, it is best for me to ignore emotion; I have not been happy dealing with it—" Her heart was a secret garden and the walls were very high. "I loved once," Buttercup said after a moment. "It worked out badly."
"Another rich man? Yes, and he left you for a richer woman."
"No. Poor. Poor and it killed him."
"Were you sorry? Did you feel pain? Admit that you felt nothing—"
"Do not mock my grief! I died that day."
The Armada began to fire signal cannons. The explosions echoed through the mountains. The man in black stared as the ships began to change formation.
And while he was watching the ships, Buttercup shoved him with all her strength remaining.
For a moment, the man in black teetered at the ravine edge. His arms spun like windmills fighting for balance. They swung and gripped the air and then he began his slide.
Down went the man in black.
Stumbling and torn and reaching out to stop his descent, but the ravine was too steep, and nothing could be done.
Down, down.
Rolling over rocks, spinning, out of all control.
Buttercup stared at what she had done.
Finally he rested far below her, silent and without motion. "You can die too for all I care," she said, and then she turned away.
Words followed her. Whispered from far, weak and warm and familiar. "As ... you ... wish..."
Dawn in the mountains. Buttercup turned back to the source of the sound and stared down as, in first light, the man in black struggled to remove his mask.
"Oh, my sweet Westley," Buttercup said. "What have I done to you now?"
From the bottom of the ravine, there came only silence.
Buttercup hesitated not a moment. Down she went after him, keeping her feet as best she could, and as she began, she thought she heard him crying out to her over and over, but she could not make sense of his words, because inside her now there was the thunder of walls crumbling, and that was noise enough.
Besides, her balance quickly was gone and the ravine had her. She fell fast and she fell hard, but what did that matter, since she would have gladly dropped a thousand feet onto a bed of nails if Westley had been waiting at the bottom.
Down, down.
Tossed and spinning, crashing, torn, out of all control, she rolled and twisted and plunged, cartwheeling toward what was left of her beloved....
FROM HIS POSITION at the point of the Armada, Prince Humperdinck stared up at the Cliffs of Insanity. This was just like any other hunt. He made himself think away the quarry. It did not matter if you were after an antelope or a bride-to-be; the procedures held. You gathered evidence. Then you acted. You studied, then you performed. If you studied too little, the chances were strong that your actions would also be too late. You had to take time. And so, frozen in thought, he continued to stare up the sheer face of the Cliffs.
Obviously, someone had recently climbed them. There were foot scratchings all the way up a straight line, which meant, most certainly, a rope, an arm-over-arm climb up a thousand-foot rope with occasional foot kicks for balance. To make such a climb required both strength and planning, so the Prince made those marks in his brain: my enemy is strong; my enemy is not impulsive.
Now his eyes reached a point perhaps three hundred feet from the top. Here it began to get interesting. Now the foot scratchings were deeper, more frequent, and they followed no direct ascending line. Either someone left the rope three hundred feet from the top intentionally, which made no sense, or the rope was cut while that someone was still three hundred feet from safety. For clearly, this last part of the climb was made up the rock face itself. But who had such talent? And why had he been called to exercise it at such a deadly time, seven hundred feet above disaster?
"I must examine the tops of the Cliffs of Insanity," the Prince said, without bothering to turn.
From behind him, Count Rugen only said, "Done," and awaited further instructions.
"Send half the Armada south along the coastline, the other north. They should meet by twilight near the Fire Swamp. Our ship will sail to the first landing possibility, and you will follow me with your soldiers. Ready the whites."
Count Rugen signaled the cannoneer, and the Prince's instructions boomed along the Cliffs. Within minutes, the Armada had begun to split, with only the Prince's giant ship sailing alone closest to the coastline, looking for a landing possibility.
"There!" the Prince ordered, some time later, and his ship began maneuvering into the cove for a safe place to anchor. That took time, but not much, because the Captain was skilled and, more than that, the Prince was quick to lose patience and no one dared risk that.
Humperdinck jumped from ship to shore, a plank was lowered, and the whites were led to ground. Of all his accomplishments, none pleased the Prince as did these horses. Someday he would have an army of them, but getting the bloodlines perfect was a slow business. He now had four whites and they were identical. Snowy, tireless giants. Twenty hands high. On flatland, nothing could catch them, and even on hills and rocky terrain, there was nothing short of Araby close to their equal. The Prince, when rushed, rode all four, bareback, the only way he ever rode, riding one, leading three, changing beasts in mid-stride, so that no single animal had to bear his bulk to the tiring point.
Now he mounted and was gone.
It took him considerably less than an hour to reach the edge of the Cliffs of Insanity. He dismounted, went to his knees, commenced his study of the terrain. There had been a rope tied around a giant oak. The bark at the base was broken and scraped, so probably whoever first reached the top untied the rope and whoever was on the rope at that moment was three hundred feet from the peak and somehow survived the climb.
A great jumble of footprints caused him trouble. It was hard to ascertain what had gone on. Perhaps a conference, because two sets of footprints seemed to lead off while one remained pacing the cliff edge. Then there were two on the cliff edge. Humperdinck examined the prints until he was certain of two things: (1) a fencing match had taken place, (2) the combatants were both masters. The stride length, the quickness of the foot feints, all clearly revealed to his unfailing eye, made him reassess his second conclusion. They were at least masters. Probably better.
Then he closed his eyes and concentrated on smelling out the blood. Surely, in a match of such ferocity, blood must have been spilled. Now it was a matter of giving his entire body over to his sense of smell. The Prince had worked at this for many years, ever since a wounded tigress had surprised him from a tree limb while he was tracking her. He had let his eyes follow the blood hunt then, and it had almost killed him. Now he trusted only his olfactories. If there was blood within a hundred yards, he would find it.
He opened his eyes, moved without hesitation toward a group of large boulders until he found the blood drops. There were few of them, and they were dry. But less than three hours old. Humperdinck smiled. When you had the whites under you, three hours was a finger snap.
He retraced the duel then, for it confused him. It seemed to range from cliff edge and back, then return to the cliff edge. And sometimes the left foot seemed to be leading, sometimes the right, which made no logical sense at all. Clearly swordsmen were changing hands, but why would a master do that unless his good arm was wounded to the point of uselessness, and that clearly had not happened, because a wound of that depth would have left blood spoors and there was simply not enough blood in the area to indicate that.
Strange, strange. Humperdinck continued his wanderings. Stranger still, the battle could not have ended in death. He knelt by the outline of a body. Clearly, a man had lain unconscious here. But again, no blood.
"There was a mighty duel," Prince Humperdinck said, directing his comment toward Count Rugen, who had finally caught up, together with a contingent of a hundred mounted men-at-arms. "My guess would be..." And for a moment the Prince paused, following footsteps. "Would be that whoever fell here, ran off there," and he pointed one way, "and that whoever was the victor ran off along the mountain path in almost precisely the opposite direction. It is also my opinion that the victor was following the path taken by the Princess."
"Shall we follow them both?" the Count asked.
"I think not," Prince Humperdinck replied. "Whoever is gone is of minimal importance, since whoever has the Princess is the whoever we're after. And because we don't know the nature of the trap we might be being led into, we need all the arms we have in one band. Clearly, this has been planned by countrymen of Guilder, and nothing must ever be put past them."
"You think this is a trap, then?" the Count asked.
"I always think everything is a trap until proven otherwise," the Prince answered. "Which is why I'm still alive."
And with that, he was back aboard a white and galloping.
When he reached the mountain path where the hand fight happened, the Prince did not even bother dismounting. Everything that could be seen was quite visible from horseback.
"Someone has beaten a giant," he said, when the Count was close enough. "The giant has run away, do you see?"
The Count, of course, saw nothing but rock and mountain path. "I would not think to doubt you."
"And look there!" cried the Prince, because now he saw, for the first time, in the rubble of the mountain path, the footsteps of a woman. "The Princess is alive!"
And again the whites were thundering across the mountain.
When the Count caught up with him again, the Prince was kneeling over the still body of a hunchback. The Count dismounted. "Smell this," the Prince said, and he handed up a goblet.
"Nothing," the Count said. "No odor at all."
"Iocane," the Prince replied. "I would bet my life on it. I know of nothing else that kills so silently." He stood up then. "The Princess was still alive; her footprints follow the path." He shouted at the hundred mounted men: "There will be great suffering in Guilder if she dies!" On foot now, he ran along the mountain path, following the footsteps that he alone could see. And when those footsteps left the path for wilder terrain, he followed still. Strung out behind him, the Count and all the soldiers did their best to keep up. Men stumbled, horses fell, even the Count tripped from time to time. Prince Humperdinck never even broke stride. He ran steadily, mechanically, his barrel legs pumping like a metronome.
It was two hours after dawn when he reached the steep ravine.
"Odd," he said to the Count, who was tiring badly.
The Count continued only to breathe deeply.
"Two bodies fell to the bottom, and they did not come back up."
"That is odd," the Count managed.
"No, that isn't what's odd," the Prince corrected. "Clearly, the kidnapper did not come back up because the climb was too steep, and our cannons must have let him know that they were closely pursued. His decision, which I applaud, was to make better time running along the ravine floor."
The Count waited for the Prince to continue.
"It's just odd that a man who is a master fencer, a defeater of giants, an expert in the use of iocane powder, would not know what this ravine opens into."
"And what is that?" asked the Count.
"The Fire Swamp," said Prince Humperdinck.
"Then we have him," said the Count.
"Precisely so." It was a well-documented trait of his to smile only just before the kill; his smile was very much in evidence now....
WESTLEY, INDEED, HAD not the least idea that he was racing dead into the Fire Swamp. He knew only, once Buttercup was down at the ravine bottom beside him, that to climb out would take, as Prince Humperdinck had assumed, too much time. Westley noted only that the ravine bottom was flat rock and heading in the general direction he wanted to follow. So he and Buttercup fled along, both of them very much aware that gigantic forces were following them, and, undoubtedly, cutting into their lead.
The ravine grew increasingly sheer as they went along, and Westley soon realized that whereas once he probably could have helped her through the climb, now there was simply no way of doing so. He had made his choice and there was no changing possible: wherever the ravine led was their destination, and that, quite simply, was that.
(At this point in the story, my wife wants it known that she feels violently cheated, not being allowed the scene of reconciliation on the ravine floor between the lovers. My reply to her—
***
This is me, and I'm not trying to be confusing, but the above paragraph that I'm cutting into now is verbatim Morgenstern; he was continually referring to his wife in the unabridged book, saying that she loved the next section or she thought that, all in all, the book was extraordinarily brilliant. Mrs. Morgenstern was rarely anything but supportive to her husband, unlike some wives I could mention (sorry about that, Helen), but here's the thing: I got rid of almost all the intrusions when he told us what she thought. I didn't think the device added a whole lot, and, besides, he was always complimenting himself through her and today we know that hyping something too much does more harm than good, as any defeated political candidate will tell you when he pays his television bills. The thing of it is, I left this particular reference in because, for once, I totally happen to agree with Mrs. Morgenstern. I think it was unfair not to show the reunion. So I wrote one of my own, what I felt Buttercup and Westley might have said, but Hiram, my editor, felt that made me just as unfair as Morgenstern here. If you're going to abridge a book in the author's own words, you can't go around sticking your own in. That was Hiram's point, and we really went round and round, arguing over, I guess, a period of a month, in person, through letters, on the phone. Finally we compromised to this extent: this, what you're reading in the regular type, is strict Morgenstern. Verbatim. Cut, yes; changed, no. But I got Hiram to agree that Harcourt would at least print up my scene—Ballantine has agreed to do the same, and now that this is back with Harcourt they've taken it up again, too—it's all of three pages; big deal—and if any of you want to see what it came out like, drop a note or a postcard to Jelenka Harvey at Harcourt Trade Publishers, 15 East 26th Street, New York City, and just mention you'd like the reunion scene. Don't forget to include your return address; you'd be stunned at how many people send in for things and don't put their return address down. The publishers agreed to spring for the postage costs, so your total expense is the note or card or whatever. It would really upset me if I turned out to be the only modern American writer who gave the impression that he was with a generous publishing house (they all stink—sorry about that, Mr. Jovanovich), so let me just add here that the reason they are so generous in paying this giant postage bill is because they fully expect nobody to write in. So please, if you have the least interest at all or even if you don't, write in for my reunion scene. You don't have to read it—I'm not asking that—but I would love to cost those publishing geniuses a few dollars, because, let's face it, they're not spending much on advertising my books. Let me just repeat the address for you, ZIP code and all:
Jelenka Harvey
Harcourt Trade Publishers
15 East 26th Street
New York, NY 10010
and just ask for your copy of the reunion scene. This has gone longer than I planned, so I'm going to repeat the Morgenstern paragraph I interrupted; it'll read better. Over and out.
***
(AT THIS POINT in the story, my wife wants it known that she feels violently cheated, not being allowed the scene of reconciliation on the ravine floor between the lovers. My reply to her is simply this: (a) each of God's beings, from the lowliest on up, is entitled to at least a few moments of genuine privacy. (b) What actually was spoken, while moving enough to those involved at the actual time, flattens like toothpaste when transferred to paper for later reading: "my dove," "my only," "bliss, bliss," et cetera. (c) Nothing of importance in an expository way was related, because every time Buttercup began "Tell me about yourself," Westley quickly cut her off with "Later, beloved; now is not the time." However, it should be noted, in fairness to all, that (1) he did weep; (2) her eyes did not remain precisely dry; (3) there was more than one embrace; and (4) both parties admitted that, without any qualifications whatsoever, they were more than a little glad to see each other. Besides, (5) within a quarter of an hour, they were arguing. It began quite innocently, the two of them kneeling, facing each other, Westley holding her perfect face in his quick hands. "When I left you," he whispered, "you were already more beautiful than anything I dared to dream. In our years apart, my imaginings did their best to improve on your perfection. At night, your face was forever behind my eyes. And now I see that that vision who kept me company in my loneliness was a hag compared to the beauty now before me."
"Enough about my beauty," Buttercup said. "Everybody always talks about how beautiful I am. I've got a mind, Westley. Talk about that."
"Throughout eternity I shall do that very thing," he told her. "But now we haven't time." He made it to his feet. The ravine fall had shaken and battered him, but all his bones survived the trip uncracked. He helped her to her feet.
"Westley?" Buttercup said then. "Just before I started down after you, while I was still up there, I could hear you saying something but the words were indistinct."
"I've forgotten whatever it was."
"Terrible liar."
He smiled at her and kissed her cheek. "It's not important, believe me; the past has a way of being past."
"We must not begin with secrets from each other." She meant it.
He could tell that. "Trust me," he tried.
"I do. So tell me your words or I shall be given reason not to."
Westley sighed. "What I was trying to get through to you, beloved sweet; what I was, as a matter of accurate fact, shouting with everything I had left, was: 'Whatever you do, stay up there! Don't come down here! Please!'"
"You didn't want to see me."
"Of course I wanted to see you. I just didn't want to see you down here. "
"Why ever not?"
"Because now, my precious, we're more or less kind of trapped. I can't climb out of here and bring you with me without it taking all day. I can get out myself, most likely, without it taking all day, but with the addition of your lovely bulk, it's not about to happen."
"Nonsense; you climbed the Cliffs of Insanity, and this isn't nearly that steep."
"And it took a little out of me too, let me tell you. And after that little effort, I tangled with a fella who knew a little something about fencing. And after that, I spent a few happy moments grappling with a giant. And after that, I had to outfake a Sicilian to death when any mistake meant it was a knife in the throat for you. And after that I've run my lungs out a couple of hours. And after that I was pushed two hundred feet down a rock ravine. I'm tired, Buttercup; do you understand tired? I've put in a night, is what I'm trying to get through to you."
"I'm not stupid, you know."
"Quit bragging."
"Stop being rude."
"When was the last time you read a book? The truth now. And picture books don't count—I mean something with print in it."
Buttercup walked away from him. "There're other things to read than print," she said, "and the Princess of Hammersmith is displeased with you and is thinking seriously of going home." With no more words, she whirled into his arms then, saying, "Oh, Westley, I didn't mean that, I didn't, I didn't, not a single syllabub of it."
Now Westley knew that she meant to say "not a single syllable of it," because a syllabub was something you ate, with cream and wine mixed in together to form the base. But he also knew an apology when he heard one. So he held her very close, and shut his loving eyes, and only whispered, "I knew it was false, believe me, every single syllabub."
And that out of the way, they started running as fast as they could along the flat-rock floor of the ravine.)
WESTLEY, NATURALLY ENOUGH, was considerably ahead of Buttercup with the realization that they were heading into the Fire Swamp. Whether it was a touch of sulphur riding a breeze or a flick of yellow flame far ahead in the daylight, he could not say for sure. But once he realized what was about to happen, he began as casually as possible to find a way to avoid it. A quick glance up the sheer ravine sides ruled out any possibility of his getting Buttercup past the climb. He dropped to the ground, as he had been doing every few minutes, to test the speed of their trackers. Now, he guessed them to be less than half an hour behind and gaining.
He rose and ran with her, faster, neither of them spending breath in conversation. It was only a matter of time before she understood what they were about to be into, so he decided to beat back her panic in any way possible. "I think we can slow down a bit now," he told her, slowing down a bit. "They're still well behind."
Buttercup took a deep breath of relief.
Westley made a show of checking their surroundings. Then he gave her his best smile. "With any luck at all," he said, "we should soon be safely in the Fire Swamp."
Buttercup heard his speech, of course. But she did not, she did not, take it well....
A FEW WORDS now on two related subjects: (1) fire swamps in general and (2) the Florin/Guilder Fire Swamp in particular.
(1) Fire swamps are, of course, entirely misnamed. As to why this has happened, no one knows, though probably the colorful quality of the two words together is enough. Simply, there are swamps which contain a large percentage of sulphur and other gas bubbles that burst continually into flame. They are covered with lush giant trees that shadow the ground, making the flame bursts seem particularly dramatic. Because they are dark, they are almost always quite moist, thereby attracting the standard insect and alligator community that prefers a moist climate. In other words, a fire swamp is just a swamp, period; the rest is embroidery.
(2) The Florin/Guilder Fire Swamp did and does have some particular odd characteristics: (a) the existence of Snow Sand and (b) the presence of the R.O.U.S., about which, a bit more later. Snow Sand is usually, again incorrectly, identified with lightning sand. Nothing could be less accurate. Lightning sand is moist and basically destroys by drowning. Snow Sand is as powdery as anything short of talcum, and destroys by suffocation.
Most particularly though, the Florin/Guilder Fire Swamp was used to frighten children. There was not a child in either country that at one time or another was not, when misbehaving very badly, threatened with abandonment in the Fire Swamp. "Do that one more time, you're going to the Fire Swamp" is as common as "Clean your plate; people are starving in China." And so, as children grew, so did the danger of the Fire Swamp in their enlarging imaginations. No one, of course, ever actually went into the Fire Swamp, although, every year or so, a diseased R.O.U.S. might wander out to die, and its discovery would only add to the myth and the horror. The largest known fire swamp is, of course, within a day's drive of Perth. It is impenetrable and over twenty-five miles square. The one between Florin and Guilder was barely a third that size. No one had been able to discover if it was impenetrable or not.
Buttercup stared at the Fire Swamp. As a child, she had once spent an entire nightmared year convinced that she was going to die there. Now she could not move another step. The giant trees blackened the ground ahead of her. From every part came the sudden flames. "You cannot ask it of me," she said.
"I must."
"I once dreamed I would die here."
"So did I, so did we all. Were you eight that year? I was."
"Eight. Six. I can't remember."
Westley took her hand.
She could not move. "Must we?"
Westley nodded.
"Why?"
"Now is not the time." He pulled her gently.
She still could not move.
Westley took her in his arms. "Child; sweet child. I have a knife. I have my sword. I did not come across the world to lose you now."
Buttercup was searching somewhere for a sufficiency of courage. Evidently, she found it in his eyes.
At any rate, hand in hand, they moved into the shadows of the Fire Swamp.
PRINCE HUMPERDINCK JUST stared. He sat astride a white, studying the footsteps down on the floor of the ravine. There was simply no other conclusion: the kidnapper had dragged his Princess into it.
Count Rugen sat alongside. "Did they actually go in?"
The Prince nodded.
Praying the answer would be "no," the Count asked, "Do you think we should follow them?"
The Prince shook his head. "They'll either live or die in there. If they die, I have no wish to join them. If they live, I'll greet them on the other side."
"It's too far around," the Count said.
"Not for my whites."
"We'll follow as best we can," the Count said. He stared again at the Fire Swamp. "He must be very desperate, or very frightened, or very stupid, or very brave."
"Very all four I should think," the Prince replied....
WESTLEY LED THE way. Buttercup stayed just behind, and they made, from the outset, very good time. The main thing, she realized, was to forget your childhood dreams, for the Fire Swamp was bad, but it wasn't that bad. The odor of the escaping gases, which at first seemed almost totally punishing, soon diminished through familiarity. The sudden bursts of flame were easily avoided because, just before they struck, there was a deep kind of popping sound clearly coming from the vicinity where the flames would then appear.
Westley carried his sword in his right hand, his long knife in his left, waiting for the first R.O.U.S., but none appeared. He had cut a very long piece of strong vine and coiled it over one shoulder and was busy working on it as they moved. "What we'll do once I've got this properly done is," he told her, moving steadily on beneath the giant trees, "we'll attach ourselves to each other, so that way, no matter what the darkness, we'll be close. Actually, I think that's more precaution than necessary, because, to tell you the truth, I'm almost disappointed; this place is bad, all right, but it's not that bad. Don't you agree?"
Buttercup wanted to, totally, and she would have too; only by then, the Snow Sand had her.
Westley turned only in time to see her disappear.
Buttercup had simply let her attention wander for a moment, the ground seemed solid enough, and she had no idea what Snow Sand looked like anyway; but once her front foot began to sink in, she could not pull back, and even before she could scream, she was gone. It was like falling through a cloud. The sand was the finest in the world, and there was no bulk to it whatsoever, and, at first, no unpleasantness. She was just falling, gently, through this soft powdery mass, falling farther and farther from anything resembling life, but she could not allow herself to panic. Westley had instructed her on how to behave if this happened, and she followed his words now: she spread her arms and spread her fingers and forced herself into the position resembling that of a dead-man's float in swimming, all this because Westley had told her to because the more she could spread herself, the slower she would sink. And the slower she sank, the quicker he could dive down after her and catch her. Buttercup's ears were now caked with Snow Sand all the way in, and her nose was filled with Snow Sand, both nostrils, and she knew if she opened her eyes a million tiny fine bits of Snow Sand would seep behind her eyelids, and now she was beginning to panic badly. How long had she been falling? Hours, it seemed, and she was having pain in holding her breath. "You must hold it till I find you," he had said; "you must go into a dead-man's float and you must close your eyes and hold your breath and I'll come get you and we'll both have a wonderful story for our grandchildren." Buttercup continued to sink. The weight of the sand began to brutalize her shoulders. The small of her back began to ache. It was agony keeping her arms outstretched and her fingers spread when it was all so useless. The Snow Sand was heavier and heavier on her now as she sank always down. And was it bottomless, as they thought when they were children? Did you just sink forever until the sand ate away at you and then did your poor bones continue the trip forever down? No, surely there had to somewhere be a resting place. A resting place, Buttercup thought. What a wonderful thing. I'm so tired, so tired, and I want to rest, and, "Westley, come save me!" she screamed. Or started to. Because in order to scream you had to open your mouth, so all she really got out was the first sound of the first word: "Wuh." After that the Snow Sand was down into her throat and she was done.
Westley had made a terrific start. Before she had even entirely disappeared, he had dropped his sword and long knife and had gotten the vine coil from his shoulder. It took him next to no time to knot one end around a giant tree, and, holding tight to the free end, he simply dove headlong into the Snow Sand, kicking his feet as he sank, for greater speed. There was no question in his mind of failure. He knew he would find her and he knew she would be upset and hysterical and possibly even brain tumbled. But alive. And that was, in the end, the only fact of lasting import. The Snow Sand had his ears and nose blocked, and he hoped she had not panicked, had remembered to spread-eagle her body, so that he could catch her quickly with his headlong dive. If she remembered, it wouldn't be that hard—the same, really, as rescuing a drowning swimmer in murky water. They floated slowly down, you dove straight down, you kicked, you pulled with your free arm, you gained on them, you grabbed them, you brought them to the surface, and the only real problem then would be convincing your grandchildren that such a thing had actually happened and was not just another family fable. He was still concerning his mind with the infants yet unborn when something happened he had not counted on: the vine was not long enough. He hung suspended for a moment, holding to the end of it as it stretched straight up through the Snow Sand to the security of the giant tree. To release the vine was truly madness. There was no possibility of forcing your body all the way back up to the surface. A few feet of ascension was possible if you kicked wildly, but no more. So if he let go of the vine and did not find her within a finger snap, it was all up for both of them. Westley let go of the vine without a qualm, because he had come too far to fail now; failure was not even a problem to be considered. Down he sank then and within a finger snap he had his hand around her wrist. Westley screamed then himself, in horror and surprise, and the Snow Sand gouged at his throat, for what he had grabbed was a skeleton wrist, bone only, no flesh left at all. That happened in Snow Sand. Once the skeleton was picked clean, it would begin, often, to float, like seaweed in a quiet tide, shifting this way and that, sometimes surfacing, more often just journeying through the Snow Sand for eternity. Westley threw the wrist away and reached out blindly with both hands now, scrabbling wildly to touch some part of her, because failure was not a problem; failure is not a problem, he told himself; it is not a problem to be considered, so forget failure; just keep busy and find her, and he found her. Her foot, more precisely, and pulled it to him and then his arm was around her perfect waist and he began to kick, kick with any strength left, needing now to rise the few yards to the end of the vine. The idea that it might be difficult finding a single vine strand in a small sea of Snow Sand never bothered him. Failure was not a problem; he would simply have to kick and when he had kicked hard enough he would rise and when he had risen enough he would reach out for the vine and when he reached out it would be there and when it was there he would tie her to it and with his last breath he would pull them both up to life.
Which is exactly what happened.
She remained unconscious for a very long time. Westley busied himself as best he could, cleansing the Snow Sand from ears and nose and mouth and, most delicate of all, from beneath the lids of her eyes. The length of her quietness disturbed him vaguely; it was almost as if she knew she had died and was afraid to find out for a fact that it was true. He held her in his arms, rocked her slowly. Eventually she was blinking.
For a time she looked around and around. "We lived, then?" she managed finally.
"We're a hardy breed."
"What a wonderful surprise."
"No need—" He was going to say "No need for worry," but her panic struck too quickly. It was a normal enough reaction, and he did not try to block it but, rather, held her firmly and let the hysteria run its course. She shuddered for a time as if she fully intended to fly apart. But that was the worst. From there, it was but a few minutes to quiet sobbing. Then she was Buttercup again.
Westley stood, buckled on his sword, replaced his long knife. "Come," he said. "We have far to go."
"Not until you tell me," she replied. "Why must we endure this?"
"Now is not the time." Westley held out his hand.
"It is the time." She stayed where she was, on the ground.
Westley sighed. She meant it. "All right," he said finally. "I'll explain. But we must keep moving."
Buttercup waited.
"We must get through the Fire Swamp," Westley began, "for one good and simple reason." Once he had started talking, Buttercup stood, following close behind him as he went on. "I had always intended getting to the far side; I had not, I must admit, expected to go through. Around, was my intention, but the ravine forced me to change."
"The good and simple reason," Buttercup prompted.
"On the far end of the Fire Swamp is the mouth of Giant Eel Bay. And anchored far out in the deepest waters of that bay is the great ship Revenge. The Revenge is the sole property of the Dread Pirate Roberts."
"The man who killed you?" Buttercup said. "That man? The one who broke my heart? The Dread Pirate Roberts took your life, that was the story I was told."
"Quite correct," Westley said. "And that ship is our destination."
"You know the Dread Pirate Roberts? You are friendly with such a man?"
"It's a little more than that," Westley said. "I don't expect you to quite grasp this all at once; just believe it's true. You see, I am the Dread Pirate Roberts."
"I fail to see how that is possible, since he has been marauding for twenty years and you only left me three years ago."
"I myself am often surprised at life's little quirks," Westley admitted.
"Did he, in fact, capture you when you were sailing for the Carolinas?"
"He did. His ship Revenge captured the ship I was on, The Queens Pride, and we were all to be put to death."
"But Roberts did not kill you."
"Clearly."
"Why?"
"I cannot say for sure, but I think it is because I asked him please not to. The 'please,' I suspect, aroused his interest. I didn't beg or offer bribery, as the others were doing. At any rate, he held off with his sword long enough to ask, 'Why should I make an exception of you?' and I explained my mission, how I had to get to America to get money to reunite me with the most beautiful woman ever reared by man, namely you. 'I doubt that she is as beautiful as you imagine,' he said, and he raised his sword again. 'Hair the color of autumn,' I said, 'and skin like wintry cream.' 'Wintry cream, eh?' he said. He was interested now, at least a bit, so I went on describing the rest of you, and at the end, I knew I had him convinced of the truth of my affection for you. 'I'll tell you, Westley,' he said then, 'I feel genuinely sorry about this, but if I make an exception in your case, news will get out that the Dread Pirate Roberts has gone soft and that will mark the beginning of my downfall, for once they stop fearing you, piracy becomes nothing but work, work, work all the time, and I am far too old for such a life.' 'I swear I will never tell, not even my beloved,' I said; 'and if you will let me live, I will be your personal valet and slave for five full years, and if I ever once complain or cause you anger, you may chop my head off then and there and I will die with praise for your fairness on my lips.' I knew I had him thinking. 'Go below,' he said. 'I'll most likely kill you tomorrow.'" Westley stopped talking for a moment, and pretended to clear his throat, because he had spotted the first R.O.U.S. following behind them. There seemed no need yet to alert her, so he just continued to clear his throat and hurry along between the flame bursts.
"What happened tomorrow?" Buttercup urged. "Go on."
"Well, you know what an industrious fellow I am; you remember how I liked to learn and how I'd already trained myself to work twenty hours a day. I decided to learn what I could about piracy in the time left allotted me, since it would at least keep my mind off my coming slaughter. So I helped the cook and I cleaned the hold and, in general, did whatever was asked of me, hoping that my energies might be favorably noted by the Dread Pirate Roberts himself. 'Well, I've come to kill you,' he said the next morning, and I said, 'Thank you for the extra time; it's been most fascinating; I've learned such a great deal,' and he said, 'Overnight? What could you learn in that time?' and I said, 'That no one had ever explained to your cook the difference between table salt and cayenne pepper.' 'Things have been a bit fiery this trip,' he admitted. 'Go on, what else?' and I explained that there would have been more room in the hold if boxes had been stacked differently, and then he noticed that I had completely reorganized things down there and, fortunately for me, there was more room, and finally he said, 'Very well, you can be my valet for a day. I've never had a valet before; probably I won't like it, so I'll kill you in the morning.' Every night for the next year he always said something like that to me: 'Thank you for everything, Westley, good night now, I'll probably kill you in the morning.'
"By the end of that year, of course, we were more than valet and master. He was a pudgy little man, not at all fierce, as you would expect the Dread Pirate Roberts to be, and I like to think he was as fond of me as I of him. By then, I had learned really quite a great deal about sailing and hand fighting and fencing and throwing the long knife and had never been in as excellent physical condition. At the end of one year, my captain said to me, 'Enough of this valet business, Westley, from now on you are my second-in-command,' and I said, 'Thank you, sir, but I could never be a pirate,' and he said, 'You want to get back to that autumn-haired creature of yours, don't you?' and I didn't even have to bother answering that. 'A good year or two of piracy and you'll be rich and back you go,' and I said, 'Your men have been with you for years and they aren't rich,' and he said, 'That's because they are not the captain. I am going to retire soon, Westley, and the Revenge will be yours.' I must admit, beloved, I weakened a bit there, but we reached no final decision. Instead, he agreed to let me assist him in the next few captures and see how I liked it. Which I did." There was now another R.O.U.S. following them. Flanking them as they moved.
Buttercup saw them now. "Westley—"
"Shhh. It's all right. I'm watching them. Shall I finish? Will it take your mind off them?"
"You helped him with the next few captures," Buttercup said. "To see if you liked it."
Westley dodged a sudden burst of flame, shielded Buttercup from the heat. "Not only did I like it, but it turned out I was talented, as well. So talented that Roberts said to me one April morning, 'Westley, the next ship is yours; let's see how you do.' That afternoon we spotted a fat Spanish beauty, loaded for Madrid. I sailed up close. They were in a panic. 'Who is it?' their captain cried. 'Westley,' I told him. 'Never heard of you,' he answered, and with that they opened fire.
"Disaster. They had no fear of me at all. I was so flustered I did everything wrong, and soon they got away. I was, do I have to add, disheartened. Roberts called me to his cabin. I slunk in like a whipped boy. 'Buck up,' he told me, and then he closed the door and we were quite alone. 'What I am about to tell you I have never said before and you must guard it closely.' I of course said I would. 'I am not the Dread Pirate Roberts,' he said, 'my name is Ryan. I inherited this ship from the previous Dread Pirate Roberts just as you will inherit it from me. The man I inherited from was not the real Dread Pirate Roberts either; his name was Cummberbund. The real original Dread Pirate Roberts has been retired fifteen years and has been living like a king in Patagonia.' I confessed my confusion. 'It's really very simple,' Ryan explained. 'After several years, the original Roberts was so rich he wanted to retire. Clooney was his friend and first mate, so he gave the ship to Clooney, who had an identical experience to yours: the first ship he attempted to board nearly blew him out of the water. So Roberts, realizing the name was the thing that inspired the necessary fear, sailed the Revenge to port, changed crews entirely, and Clooney told everyone he was the Dread Pirate Roberts, and who was to know he was not? When Clooney retired rich, he passed the name to Cummberbund, Cummberbund to me, and I, Felix Raymond Ryan, of Boodle, outside Liverpool, now dub thee, Westley, the Dread Pirate Roberts. All we need is to land, take on some new young pirates. I will sail along for a few days as Ryan, your first mate, and will tell everyone about my years with you, the Dread Pirate Roberts. Then you will let me off when they are all believers, and the waters of the world are yours.'" Westley smiled at Buttercup. "So now you know. And you should also realize why it is foolish to be afraid."
"But I am afraid."
"It will all be happy at the end. Consider: a little over three years ago, you were a milkmaid and I was a farm boy. Now you are almost a queen and I rule uncontested on the water. Surely, such individuals were never intended to die in a Fire Swamp."
"How can you be sure?"
"Well, because we're together, hand in hand, in love."
"Oh yes," Buttercup said. "I keep forgetting that."
Both her words and her tone were a trifle standoffish, something Westley surely would have noticed had not a R.O.U.S. attacked him from the tree branch, sinking its giant teeth into his unprotected shoulder, forcing him to earth in a very unexpected spurt of blood. The other two that had been following launched their attack then too, ignoring Buttercup, driving forward with all their hungry strength to Westley's bleeding shoulder.
(Any discussion of the R.O.U.S.—Rodents of Unusual Size—must begin with the South American capybara, which has been known to reach a weight of 150 pounds. They are nothing but water hogs, however, and present very little danger. The largest pure rat is probably the Tasmanian, which has actually been weighed at one hundred pounds. But they have little agility, tending to sloth when they reach full growth, and most Tasmanian herdsmen have learned with ease to avoid them. The Fire Swamp R.O.U.S. were a pure rat strain, weighed usually eighty pounds, and had the speed of wolfhounds. They were also carnivorous, and capable of frenzy.)
The rats struggled with each other to reach Westley's wound. Their enormous front teeth tore at the unprotected flesh of his left shoulder, and he had no idea if Buttercup was already half devoured; he only knew that if he didn't do something desperate right then and right there she soon would be.
So he intentionally rolled his body into a spurt of flame.
His clothes began to burn—that he expected—but, more important, the rats shied away from the heat and the flames for just an instant, but that was enough for him to reach and throw his long knife into the heart of the nearest beast.
The other two turned instantly on their own kind and began eating it while it was still screaming.
Westley had his sword by then, and with two quick thrusts, the trio of rats was disposed of. "Hurry!" he shouted to Buttercup, who stood frozen where she had been when the first rat landed. "Bandages, bandages," Westley cried. "Make me some bandages or we die," and, with that, he rolled onto the ground, tore off his burning clothes and set to work caking mud onto the deep wound in his shoulder. "They're like sharks, blood creatures; it's blood they thrive on." He smeared more and more mud into his wound. "We must stop my bleeding and we must cover the wound so they do not smell it. If they don't smell the blood, we'll survive. If they do, we're for it, so help me, please." Buttercup ripped her clothes into patches and ties, and they worked at the wound, caking the blood with mud from the floor of the Fire Swamp, then bandaging and rebandaging over it.
"We'll know soon enough," Westley said, because two more rats were watching them. Westley stood, sword in hand. "If they charge, they smell it," he whispered.
The giant rats stood watching.
"Come," Westley whispered.
Two more giant rats joined the first pair.
Without warning, Westley's sword flashed, and the nearest rat was bleeding. The other three contented themselves with that for a while.
Westley took Buttercup's hand and again they started to move.
"How bad are you?" she said.
"I am in something close to agony but we can talk about that later. Hurry now." They hurried. They had been in the Fire Swamp for one hour, and it turned out to be the easiest one they had of the six it took to cross it. But they crossed it. Alive and together. Hand very much in hand.
It was nearly dusk when they at last saw the great ship Revenge far out in the deepest part of the bay. Westley, still within the confines of the Fire Swamp, sank, beaten, to his knees.
For between him and his ship were more than a few inconveniences. From the north sailed in half the great Armada. From the south now, the other half. A hundred mounted horsemen, armored and armed. In front of them the Count. And out alone in front of all, the four whites with the Prince astride the leader. Westley stood. "We took too long in crossing. The fault is mine."
"I accept your surrender," the Prince said.
Westley held Buttercup's hand. "No one is surrendering," he said.
"You're acting silly now," the Prince replied. "I credit you with bravery. Don't make yourself a fool."
"What is so foolish about winning?" Westley wanted to know. "It's my opinion that in order to capture us, you will have to come into the Fire Swamp. We have spent many hours here now; we know where the Snow Sand waits. I doubt that you or your men will be any too anxious to follow us in here. And by morning we will have slipped away."
"I doubt that somehow," said the Prince, and he gestured out to sea. Half the Armada had begun to give chase to the great ship Revenge. And the Revenge, alone, was sailing, as it had to do, away. "Surrender," the Prince said.
"It will not happen."
"SURRENDER!" the Prince shouted.
"DEATH FIRST!" Westley roared.
"...will you promise not to hurt him...?" Buttercup whispered.
"What was that?" the Prince said. "What was that?" Westley said.
Buttercup took a step forward and said, "If we surrender, freely and without struggle, if life returns to what it was one dusk ago, will you swear not to hurt this man?"
Prince Humperdinck raised his right hand: "I swear on the grave of my soon-to-be-dead father and the soul of my already-dead mother that I shall not hurt this man, and if I do, may I never hunt again though I live a thousand years."
Buttercup turned to Westley. "There," she said. "You can't ask for more than that, and that is the truth."
"The truth," said Westley, "is that you would rather live with your Prince than die with your love."
"I would rather live than die, I admit it."
"We were talking of love, madam." There was a long pause. Then Buttercup said it:
"I can live without love."
And with that she left Westley alone.
Prince Humperdinck watched her as she began the long cross to him. "When we are out of sight," he said to Count Rugen, "take that man in black and put him in the fifth level of the Zoo of Death."
The Count nodded. "For a moment, I believed you when you swore."
"I spoke truth; I never lie," the Prince replied. "I said Iwould not hurt him. But I never for a moment said he would not suffer pain. You will do the actual tormenting; I will only spectate." He opened his arms then for his Princess.
"He belongs to the ship Revenge," Buttercup said. "He is—" she began, about to tell Westley's story, but that was not for her to repeat—"a simple sailor and I have known him since I was a child. Will you arrange that?"
"Must I swear again?"
"No need," Buttercup said, because she knew, as did everyone, that the Prince was more forthright than any Florinese.
"Come along, my Princess." He took her hand.
Buttercup went away with him.
Westley watched it all. He stood silently at the edge of the Fire Swamp. It was darker now, but the flame spurts behind him outlined his face. He was glazed with fatigue. He had been bitten, cut, gone without rest, had assaulted the Cliffs of Insanity, had saved and taken lives. He had risked his world, and now it was walking away from him, hand in hand with a ruffian prince.
Then Buttercup was gone, out of sight.
Westley took a breath. He was aware of the score of soldiers starting to surround him, and probably he could have made a few of them perspire for their victory.
But for what point?
Westley sagged.
"Come, sir." Count Rugen approached. "We must get you safely to your ship."
"We are both men of action," Westley replied. "Lies do not become us."
"Well spoken," said the Count, and with one sudden swing, he clubbed Westley into insensitivity.
Westley fell like a beaten stone, his last conscious thought being of the Count's right hand; it was six-fingered, and Westley could never quite remember having encountered that deformity before....
