Plob

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  PLOB GOES SOUTH - PROLOGUE

  Craig Zerf

  Plob/Plob goes South/Plob fights back

  © 2013, Author

  Small Dog Publishing Limited

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher.

  Prologue

  The sandy-haired toddler stomped solidly across the slate floor and sat in front of the fire that stuttered away in the large hearth. The damp logs hissed and popped, giving off more smoke than warmth as the toddler blew on them in an attempt to encourage flame. He coughed and then giggled as the wood smoke wafted out and enveloped him in a sharp smelling cloak of blue-white mist.

  Still laughing he fumbled in the front pocket of his simple smock and took out a small wooden soldier, perhaps four inches high. He set it down in front of him and mumbled the magic words that his beloved granddad had taught him. As he finished the simple incantation, the soldier started slashing at the remaining wisps of smoke that hung in the air around the little boy who clapped his hands together in delight.

  A handsome blonde woman, her pale face pinched with anxiety, turned from the window and snapped at him, ‘Move away from the fire - all that smoke isn’t good for you.’

  The toddler moved back from the hearth and the women started to chew once again at her fingernails as she returned to her vigil. She wondered how the battle was going and prayed fervently that her husband and her father, the boy’s dad and granddad, were still alive.

  In the background the toddler laughed and clapped his hands again as the wooden soldier moved magically across the floor.

  The thunderbolt rent the air, crackling and sizzling as it struck the foremost row of goblins. A flight of arrows followed, whistling through the sky and falling onto the evil host like a rain of steel. The captain of the guard called out for the magician, the little boy’s grandfather, to hit the enemy with another bolt - but he was nowhere to be seen. He had disappeared. In their time of greatest need and peril he had forsaken them - so the captain called him coward and cursed his name. Then he sounded his horn and the men of Maudlin gave a loud shout and ran at the enemy, the tips of their upheld swords and spears glowing like fired torches in the fast setting sun. They knew that, without the help of their magician, it was to be the last charge. They knew that the enemy was too numerous to defeat - they knew all of these things but, because they were men, and this is what men do - they charged anyway.

  And then, without warning, the hobgoblins turned as one and melted from the field of battle.

  The enemy never came to Maudlin again.

  And, back at the house with the fire and the slate floor, the blonde woman tried unsuccessfully to console the toddler as he cried and cried and cried. ‘My g’andad gone - my g’andad gone - my g’andad gone.’

  Chapter 1

  Plob.

  Reetworthy Plob.

  Reetworthy Plob the third.

  Not much of a name. Especially for a knight at arms. A keeper of the sword of the nation and a general all round protagonist of the hugely heroic variety. This was fortunate indeed as Plob - Reetworthy Plob - Reetworthy Plob the third - was none of the aforementioned. In fact Plob was a lofty, sturdily built, earnest, marginally attractive, sandy-haired pubescent teenager with all of the corresponding adolescent faults and foibles thereof.

  Also he was a magician’s assistant.

  Nay. Let us elaborate. He was, in all verity, the magician’s assistant. The magician being, of course, Smegly the Magnificent. Master magician and first advisor to King Mange the Particularly Inept, son of King Plaug the Completely Inept who in turn was sired by King Spot the Utterly Useless. So, as far as kings go, things were definitely on the up.

  And who knew? If the present king could ever find a significant other, the offspring might even mature to be dubbed Mangol the Not Completely Foolish.

  All said and done, this was not particularly likely as the king was a solid holder of the second ugliest man in the kingdom title. The ugliest, of course, being Mister Struben the night soil collector, who lived over on the other side of the river, in the small run-down house with the wobbly chimney. Next to the widow Tomb’s cottage (Ah, now you’ve got it), and he was the official mascot of the PBP (Police Brutality Party), the motto thereof being ‘Beat them, Bash them, Till they look like Struben.’ As well as this, the king had severely ruinous breath, a staggeringly serious lisp and a large root-vegetable-like growth protruding from the centre of his forehead that he insists everyone refers to as his twin brother, Mucous.

  Plob. Reetworthy Plob. Reetworthy Plob the Third.

  It wasn’t that it was an awful name. It merely wasn’t right for a magician. Plob the Magnificent. It didn’t work. Even Plob the Awfully Good seemed wrong.

  Blurg. Now there was a name. If only he’d been called Blurg.

  Blurg the Brilliant. Blurg the Superb. The name sent shivers down Plob’s spine and puckered up his adolescent skin into hundreds of little goose bumps momentarily swinging the scales from marginally attractive to marginally unattractive. He grinned to himself. Well there’s no harm in imagining, he thought.

  The thing is Plob hadn’t actually been destined to be a magician; in fact it would be safe to say that the last thing that his parents wanted Plob to be was a magician. Not because they had any sort of irrational dislike of magicians as such, it was simply because Plob’s grandfather, Slodong the third, had been a magician. A good magician. One of the best and, as such, his unexpected, and mainly unsubstantiated, fall into immorality and cowardice had been all the more shocking.

  It had allegedly happened many years ago during the last, and final, winter war against the Far Eastern Hobgoblins who came swarming over the mountains almost every winter to attack the city of Maudlin without warning. The king’s guards had rallied the townsfolk and, with the help of Slodong and his thunderbolt and fireball earth-magiks, valiantly repelled the first wave of Goblin forces and then…disaster. Without either notification or forewarning the magician cravenly disappeared to leave the outnumbered townsfolk to a death worse, possibly, even than fate. Not as in gone-out-for-lunch or having-a-quick-lie-down disappear but a proper puff-of-smoke-and-now-for-my-next-magical-trick disappearance. The only thing that saved the town from definite and total destruction was the fortunately immediate, simultaneous and completely incomprehensible change of heart by the leader and General in chief of the Hobgoblin hordes who, without much further ado, ceased his attack and ordered the withdrawal of his minions from the area of Maudlin never to be seen again. And so Maudlin was mysteriously and inexplicably saved, although through no help from the allegedly timoro
us and fearful magician, Slodong the third, whose name was, from that day forth, vilified and despised as the moniker of a coward.

  Plob, however, who still remembered his grandfather with a childlike hero worship and a great fondness was convinced that he had sacrificed himself, via some arcane device, in order to save the Maudlinians by somehow causing the Hobgoblin leader’s change of heart. When still but a toddler he had determined to become a magician himself in order to discover what his grandfather had done and how he had done it. Thus he would cleanse his name and honour forever after, and have it remembered in the roles of heroes as Plob thought right.

  Anyway, it did no good to complain as people quipped, ‘if the name was good enough for your father and your father’s father before him then it’s good enough for you.’ Which is true, or would be, if it was. But it isn’t. So it’s not. The fact is that his father was not Reetworthy Plob the second and his father before him was not Reetworthy Plob the first. So - Reetworthy Plob the third was actually Reetworthy Plob the third the first. Which was all very confusing until one realized that Reetworthy Plob the third’s father was Plobeeble Scone the third and his mother was Margelin Rutty the third and thereby one could deduce that Plob’s family name was the third, as in Mr and Mrs the third and their son Plob.

  Anyway, it was such a long explanation that when faced with the ‘it was good enough for your father etc.’ quip he simply smiled in his marginally attractive pleasant enough pubescent way and nodded. Long explanations aside though, Plob was not the sort of boy who would disagree as he wouldn’t have wanted to be, well, disagreeable. In short Plob was a nice boy. It wasn’t his fault he was a teenager, and anyway, he was sure to grow out of it. Cured from puberty by an onrush of age as it were.

  And it was better than living in the village of B’uknighum across the valley where, due to a misunderstood royal decree by King Spot the Utterly Useless, everyone had to be named Xbltqwb Buttney.

  This had, in turn, made it impossible to trace ones family lineage and had resulted in such serious interbreeding that now all of the residents of B’ukninghum looked and acted the same. They were buck toothed and chinless, big on ending all sentences with the words ‘rather’ or ‘what’ and, on the whole, totally harmless. Everyone tended to ignore them and left them alone to their ‘rah rahs,’ ‘beastlys’ and ‘the peasants need a damn good thrashings’.

  Still, though, sometimes he thought that it simply wasn’t fair.

  It simply wasn’t fair, thought Bill. That’s all. It wasn’t bloody fair.He swore softly under his breath. Bill had never wanted to be a plumber, it had just sort of happened. He’d got home from his local London comprehensive one afternoon, after failing his final school exams, and his father had thrown the Islington Times down in front of him. Heavily circled in blood-red ink were two positions vacant ads. Pet shop assistant and trainee plumber. ‘Choose,’ his father had bellowed.

  His father shouted at everyone; he’d been deaf as a post ever since he’d stopped being able to hear and, as a result, conducted all his conversations at the same volume as a teenager wearing a iPod.

  Bill stared at the two circles, his mind racing. ‘W-W-Well,’ he stuttered. Bill stuttered a lot. Coincidently his stutter had started around the same time as his father’s shouting. They made a right pair, his mum had said, his father screaming ‘speak up’ whilst Billy stammered away like a motorboat ‘B-B-B-B-B-B.’

  One morning his mum had got up early, gone downstairs to the kitchen and gassed herself. She left a note to his father. ‘M-m-make your own t-t-tea, you stupid deaf b-b-bastard.’ That was the first inkling that Bill had that his parents were less than happy together.

  ‘I-I-I love animals. I think that I’ll g-g-g-go for the p-p-pet shop ass-ass-ass-assistant.’

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ his father bellowed, punching Bill in the mouth, ‘I circled that one as a joke.’

  So Bill became a plumber. Christ, a plumber. A bleeding, buggery, bollocksy, bastard, bum-hole plumber. And not a very good one at that. It’s a pity I hate it so much, he thought. ’Cause I’ve got a good name for a plumber. Bill. It went well with plumber it did. Bill the plumber

  Bill the plumber.

  ‘Bil de Plummer - Harrumph,’ quoth Smegly. (Master magicians harrumph a lot. They maintain that it impresses the hell out of the general populace).

  ‘When in doubt, Plob you can always fall back on a good Harrumph,’ quoth Master Smegly when giving lessons. Master magicians also tend to ‘quoth’ a lot. Lesser mortals have to make do with ‘saying.’ It’s merely one of those higher mortal lesser mortal words like smote and rend. Lesser mortals hit and tear, higher mortals (such as master magicians) smite with great force and rend asunder.

  Any road, Master Smegly was harrumphing, which generally meant that he was in doubt. He turned and strode across the room to the bookcase (Strode is another one. Lessers walk, greaters stride. Actually it’s amazing that they achieve anything, what with all that striding, smiting and rending that has to be done).

  ‘Now, let me see, harrumph, epiphany, epoch, evangelist, evil. Yes, that’s it, evil.’

  He drew the huge tome from the bookcase and laid it down on his workbench with a vast calumph and, consequently, raising a cloud of magically charged dust motes that danced prettily in the sunlight before briefly achieving a semblance of higher consciousness, starting a fledgling civilization, discovering free love and, finally, collapsing in a small sated heap of moist muddy muck . The entire process took place in micro-seconds and passed by un-applauded and unnoticed by all excepting for a somnolent blue-bottle who had seen it all before more times than he could care to remember. In fact, by now, he was so thoroughly depressed by the whole repetitive process of birth, death and rebirth and death once more he had decided to bat himself repeatedly against the closed window pane in an creepy-crawly attempt to cleanse his mind of the whole distressing pageant. On the blue-bottle’s third attempt Master Smegly leant over and, with a large nicotine-stained thumb, irritably smeared the fly’s essence out onto the glass. Which just goes to show - or does it?

  Smegly turned to the distressed young women who had arrived at the door a mere few moments ago with her heart and hands aflutter and the rumour of dire warnings on her youthful red lips. ‘This guide, my dear,’ he said. ‘Has in it a description of every known source of evil - past, present and future. As we can see monsters, politicians, poltergeists, goblins, ghosts and ghouls. Harrumph. Now let us look under B… harrumph, harrumph.’

  The wise Master Smegly was obviously hugely perturbed, thought Plob, judging from the quantity of harrumphs coming from his study. He sidled up to the door in order to listen more closely to the happenings.

  ‘No nothing under B. Let’s try D…’

  Master Smegly flipped over a number of pages and ran his finger down a column.

  ‘No. Nothing here either. Are you sure that you got the names right?’

  ‘Absolutely, master magician. My visions are always crystal clear and I have never been wrong. It came to me only moments before my morning repast. I was thrown into an involuntary trance; the world around grew chill and dark. My sight grew dim and a voice called to me from a great distance. “Ultimate evil is set to enfold your world” it quoth. And yea, I heard screams of agony and saw the flames of hell and I begged, “Forsooth, tell me, I beg of you, does this evil have a name? If you could tell me I would be verily chuffed,” and the flames expanded and the screams became an excruciating cacophony of agony and the voice thundered out over all, “Evil has been given a name, and that name is Bil de Plummer.” And that was all, Master Smegly. I told my mother and she bade me rush straight over and inform the magician, and this I have done.’

  Plob was gobsmacked. Bil. What evil twisted entity would go under such a name?

  Bil. The very thought of it caused Plob’s usually unflappable mind to flutter on the edges of panic. But no, he must contain this irrational fear. He was, after all, Plob - The master magician’s ass
istant - chosen from over two hundred aspiring applicants coached in from across the country for ‘the choosing’ that took place only once every ten years.

  He heard the clattering of a chair being pushed back as the young miss stood up, followed closely by a rapid-fire string of harrumphs and Plob knew that the interview was over. He quickly scurried off down the corridor, picked up his feather duster and started pretend dusting frantically.

  He glanced up momentarily to see the girl clip-clop past, dressed in leather riding boots and tight jodhpurs, swishing her crop from side to side. (Of course she was wearing other items of clothing as well, it’s simply that Plob was a teenage boy so he didn’t notice them).

  Master Smegly came chugging up behind her. ‘Come along, Plob. Enough pretend dusting for one day. You heard the conversation and must know that serious things are afoot. I want you to go down to the dungeons and fire up the ovens; we have magiks to perform and auguries to inspect.’

  Chapter 2

  Inspector Terry Block ran his hand over his No. 2 haircut, savouring the feel of the tennis-ball-like fuzz as it rasped against his palm. His hand shook slightly, despite his uncaring expression and he tried desperately to think of something full of hard East-End wit and good rhyming cockney slang to say about the gruesome scene laid out before him. Unfortunately, as always his solid middle class upbringing belied his Bow-Bells name and Jack-the-lad hairstyle and the best that he could come out with was a muttered profanity.

  Block’s partner, Hugo Prendergast, rose up from the genuflectory position he had assumed next to the battered, dyed blonde, female corpse and straightened the already rectilinear creases on his dark grey Saville Row trousers. ‘At least he left us a body this time,’ he drawled in his two-hundred-thousand-pound silk and steel Etonian accent. ‘Should make identification a little easier than most of the others. Thank God for His small mercies.’