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The Aimless Quest of Bungston Shag
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. Epilogue.Chapter 2
When Bungston returned from the bathroom, there was only one brownie left, and no mutant left at all. Maybe the magically altered food had had some sort of an ill effect on the bipedal St.Bernard and altered him into an unrecognizable form. The wizard looked suspiciously at the solitary remaining brownie, but decided it was probably not the big mutant. Most likely Napoleon had fled in fear upon realizing he had eaten nearly all of the newly transmuted food. Bungston rolled up the Tiger Beat magazine into a loosely cylindrical instrument of vengeance, but then changed his mind and threw it back onto the magazine heap. It wasn't really Napoleon's fault there was no food in the cabana; big dogs ate a lot, and because of his appearance he generally had bad luck with farmers and foodsellers. Bungston grated some nutmeg with his nifty nutmeg grater, then doused his lone brownie with the pungent dust and popped it in his mouth. Something had to be done about the food situation, and Bungston was just the capable, superbly skilled guy to do it.
Coastal weather had been cruel to the vintage railway gun Bungston kept in the woods near the cabana; it was rusty and spotted and all the fuel oil had long since dried into a gooey blob in the tank. The wayward wizard eventually found his pet mutant propped up against an imposing statue about five feet high which had retained part of a long nose or beak. Bungston poked Napoleon with his muscular big toe, and the mutant almost tipped over. "Hey shagboy, you look happy. Brownie filcher."
Napoleon's eyes were rheumy at best due to his St.Bernard heritage, and they were extra bloodshot now. He removed his rawhide chew toy from his mouth and spoke very slowly. "Mmmnn. Plenty tasty brownies. Thanks." He then remembered why he had fled, and became somewhat more alert. "Ah, but your magic must have gone bad somehow. Not bad taste, because the two or three I ate were good. Those two or three were good." The mutant watched Bungston to see if he caught the implication of two or three, then painfully organized the rest of his thoughts. "But all of a sudden the others just... um, disappeared. Turned into air, probably. Except for one." The mutant's chainsaw-like growls reeked of guilt; his canine heritage made him absolutely incapable of telling a convincing lie.
Bungston let it slide, his mind occupied with the intricacies of his food finding mission. "OK Nap, all is forgiven." Napoleon was surprised at the wizard's unusual leniency, and waited for the reason. "How about you push the railway gun into place while I chase the storks out of it? I'm going on a voyage."
The burly canine wiggled deeper into his sandy depression in the shade of the statue's beak. Always lazy, he was well nigh immobile when full of food, and he didn't want to help. He craned his shaggy head to look at the rusty barrel projecting above the treetops behind the cabana. "I don't know, Bung. You should probably just leave it alone. It's pretty old, and it's pretty phallic."
Bungston lifted half of his monobrow. "You're not going to help because you think it's phallic? You're just lazy because you ate those brownies."
Napoleon nodded. "Yeah. I mean no! Just for that I'm not going to help." Relieved of the burden of further speech, he rolled his maroon mass out into the sun and left Bungston to wrestle the cannon into position himself. The storks seemed to have left of their own accord, leaving only an easily discarded nest of twigs in the cannon muzzle. The wary wizard felt a brief tinge of paranoia, wondering if the storks had known something he didn't, but then he put it out of mind.
Bungston had discovered some time ago that being fired from a large gun is one of the fastest and most pleasant ways to travel, so he had salvaged the old cannon and hopped it up to be ultra powerful. The railway gun put tremendous rifling action on any projectile, making the flight smooth and accurate, with none of the nauseating thermals and dips of ordinary flight. The rifling action did tend to make one dizzy, and so Bungston had invented the Human Cannonball Helmet. This ingenious device rotated the head of the human cannonball at a speed exactly equal to the rifling action put on by the cannon, but in the opposite direction. This resulted in a stationary head and no dizziness, although sometimes the side effects might require the services of a good chiropractor to correct. Unfortunately, this particular railway gun had been abandoned by the Nazis for another reason; the projectiles never hit their targets. Actually the projectiles did hit their targets, but just not at the same time the Nazis were around; one monster shell wreaked havoc on a convention of Byzantine wine dealers, but most had just dug huge craters in the woods. The railway gun was an uncontrollable time travel device. This was the reason that Bungston wanted to invent a helicopter; when you flew with the railway gun you never arrived on time. But food was food, and had been for as long as Bungston could remember so wherever he landed he was bound to find some tasty stuff. Getting back might be a problem, but hey, he was a wizard. Bungston smirked at the thought of his wizardness as he applied a little more aerosol Pam where his sweat had slicked it off. His Voyageur pack was always useful for quests, so he fished it out of the cabana and stuffed a few necessary items inside. Then he tucked a rubber mallet in his belt just in case, slipped greasily into his Human Cannonball Helmet, and clambered down into the yawning barrel, displacing several spiders as he went.
With a muffled thump he was off in a cloud of smoke and what it takes. The earth rotated beneath him. Bungston watched the sunlit sea pass by below, confident that he was too small and smooth for Soviet radar to detect if the Soviets had developed radar in whatever time period he was in. Chances were the Soviets themselves hadn't even developed.
The windborne wizard was distracted from his musings by some action ahead, and squinted through the telescopic visor of the Human Cannonball Helmet. It looked like there was a battle happening on the land he was quickly approaching, which was the spit of land between the Black and Mediterranean Seas. Sure enough, it was Achilles kicking the butts of some poor Trojan toads and laughing as javelins ricocheted off of his godly tough hide. Bungston grimaced at the blatant unfairness of it. Even as he watched, the Greek loosed a few more knees, compelling their owners to bite the earth. Bungston would be over them in a few seconds, but he was already groping at his belt for his rubber mallet to deliver justice from above. If there was one thing the wizard could not abide, it was unfairness, and he corrected injustices just such as these wherever he could. The mallet had become a chicken, no doubt because of his rapid temporal shift. Cursing relativity in general, Bungston ducked his head and lost altitude precipitously. He started the chicken swinging as he dove. As Bungston neared the ground, the chicken arced under and caught Achilles beneath the chin with a rubbery slap, transferring a great deal of kinetic energy. All the Trojans and a lot of Greeks cheered, and Bungston just had time for a high five from Aeneas, which also probably packed quite a lot of kinetic energy. Then Bungston raised his head and spun back upwards over the Greek encampment and the Mediterranean.
"Defender of the weak and ungodlike! Protector of the feeble!" Bungston steamed up the visor of his Helmet bellowing the various honorifics that the Trojans would no doubt sing about him around their fires tonight. When he finally overcame his self-satisfaction he realized that not only had he granted unto Achilles a lot of his impetus, but had lost valuable altitude. There was no way he was going to make it across half the Mediterranean to Italy, and Bungston doubted whether he could even manage to stay airborne long enough to reach Greece. He attempted to become more aerodynamic, thus reducing gravity's pull.
Long shadowy creatures moved ominously under the water, too near for Bungston's liking. The wizard's righteous wrath, while satisfying, had eaten so much altitude that Bungston was going to crash into the sea. A squidlike creature followed the human projectile's passage with a lidless eye; Bungston gave it a wink to make it jealous. Maybe he could catch a ride on a beluga whale or some other fellow mammal. Bungston scanned the waves for a belugoid shape, but the shapes below him seemed to generally be of the ichthyoid persuasion. CHLORINE BORING ITS THE THING THAT WRINGS MY EAR! FLIP THAT MOPED ROPING MOOSE AND FED IT GREENS LOST HOPE POURING NOSEDROP HOSE WRAP TOES IN GEAR AND EIGHTEEN THOUSAND POUNDS OF POWER! POWER! POWER! A great decal-plastered form appeared in the air next to him, and Bungston grimaced as gravity accelerated it down and into the waves. The ridiculously overinflated tires prevented it from immediately sinking, and it remained bobbing in the waves as Bungston soared away and left it behind. He hadn't intended to summon a Monster Car Crushing Pickup Truck; it seemed like such a waste to dump it in the ocean, and in the Bronze Age where no-one would be able to drive it if it washed up on the beach in working condition. He had been trying for a sleek Jetski that would bear him over the waves, but big machines were always pretty difficult. The pickup did make a terrifically loud splash which scared the poop out of his submarine spectators, and so it all turned out OK. As the water rose to meet him, Bungston spread his arms and legs wide and skipped along the surface like a dried-up starfish.
Luckily he was no more than a mile away from an island, and the Human Cannonball Helmet turned out to be a decent propeller in a pinch. After arriving, Bungston knelt on the beach and began to make a schematic map to determine where he had landed. His fortuitously-shaped rubber chicken represented Italy, with the eyeball being Rome, Bungston's original destination. He had picked Rome for its long history of civilization and its good food; thus no matter when the railway gun sent him, he could eat well. Actually, pretty much the entire eastern Mediterranean had good food for most of recorded time, so no great harm done. Bungston squinted. Except Turkey. He didn't like Turkish food. A dead jellyfish represented Turkey; he was careful to move it into place with the well insulated rubber chicken in case the stingers were still active. Some scattered pebbles represented all of those little islands east of Greece, and a chipped clam shell was Greece itself. He used a little pink shell for Cyprus. "I'd eat a cyprus", Bungston said to himself. Cyprus sounded juicy, and with any luck he would be there. It was time to put his physics knowledge to work. He drew a line in the sand to show his original trajectory, figured in the torque imparted by the chicken's impact on Achilles, and drew a new line, which intercepted a pebble. He was not on Cyprus, but rather a little Greek pebble island. Relieved for no reason and weak from lack of food, Bungston stuck the Turkish jellyfish in his pocket for later and prepared to sleep by camouflaging himself. Operating on the shake-and-bake theory, Bungston rolled his oily body around in the sand, and when he had a thick coat of it, he flopped down on the beach and went to sleep.
Something tugged at an eyelash. Bungston squinted and snorted in his sleep, but the tug returned. A stealthily opened eye revealed a huge monster moving in for the kill. Bungston rolled frantically away across the beach, with an orange and black crab in hot and futile pursuit. The sun was already up, and the food pilgrim unpacked his costume. It was a shame he hadn't thought to bring any soap; the oil on his skin refused to rinse completely off, and he knew it would get nasty later in the day. The Egyptians greased themselves, thought the wizard in an attempt to console himself. If the first great civilization could get away with all-day artificial greasiness, he could too. Resigned to his slippery skin, Bungston put on his Inconspicuous Garb and walked inland in search of the market.
Fortune smiled upon the adventurous wizard this morning; not only was the market rather large, but the clientele was more varied than would be expected in this age of immobility. There were Greek traders and fishermen, swarthier-looking Turkish types, expatriated Trojans, and a few Scythians, along with smaller numbers of other nationalities. His blond crewcut concealed beneath a unremarkable brown cloth, Bungston moved through the market, scoping out the edibles. There were no canned goods, Bungston's food of choice, but this was doubtless because of the flimsiness of bronze cans. There were however, fruit and fish and other chopped up stuff that looked good. Bungston searched his pockets for something to trade. He had some nutmeg, but he wanted to save that. Then he found a Superball, still bright orange if a little linty; he didn't dress in his Inconspicuous Garb too often. The farmer nearest him was already watching the little colored mote intensely, and so the wily wizard casually strolled over, bouncing the ball against the dirt path as best he could. "Heh-heh-heh! Nifty ball, eh?" Bungston's Ancient Greek was quite good, but most ancient Greeks didn't go "heh-heh-heh". The farmer stared. "I'll give you this ball for... all of your fruit and some of that guy's fish" The fishmonger too was now watching this foreigner with the big nose and rubber ball, and the haggling commenced.
As the three men discussed the relative worth of the cartload of fruit, the fish and the ten-cent Superball, there was a commotion farther down in the market, which had become crowded as the sun rose higher. A man in shining steel armor and a spiked helmet was head and shoulders above the crowd and pushing his way toward Bungston. Shining steel armor was definitely not in vogue, leopard skins and bronze being more fashionable for self-respecting warriors of this era. The steel-clad man caught Bungston's eye and spoke. "Bungston Schagg! I have come for you!", he cried. He spoke in slightly accented English. Bungston bit his tongue in alarm, then hopped around in a tight circle grimacing and waiting for the pain to subside. The approaching warrior looked pissed as hell and was obviously not from the area. His skin was grayish and unhealthy looking, and despite his size he was lean and poorly muscled. A surge of paranoia bit in to the base of the worried wizard's brain. A hit man. Who could possibly know where he was, and want to sent a hit man after him? The man was forging a path through the uncooperative crowd, so Bungston pressed the Superball into the hand of the farmer, quickly filled a sack with fruit, and turned to take off.
He was too late. With one hand on his shortsword, the armored warrior shouldered his way between a pair of passing eunuchs and confronted the fruit-laden Bungston. The metal on his armor looked brand new, but the leather pieces were moldy and decrepit. The warrior drew his eyebrows together fiercely. "Found you!" Bungston saw a small group of coiffed and bejewelled women walking rapidly past and with lightninglike speed, snaked his hand around in front of the gaping fishmonger and latched on to a full handful of bejewelled butt. The owner shrieked indignantly at the same moment as Bungston, with his other hand, whipped a rubber chicken from under his robes and threw it at the spiked helmet of the foreign soldier. As the stale-smelling warrior grappled with the rubber bird impaled on his head, the two eunuchs he had shouldered aside joined another one farther back in the defense of the decorated women, whom, as Bungston had hoped, they were guarding. They saw a large and bizarrely dressed foreigner with a fake chicken on his head, assumed he was the guilty party, and three fat men converged shouting on the confused warrior. Bungston slipped away as the commotion increased and several marketplace enforcer-types began to purposefully approach.
After reaching the forest, Bungston climbed a handy tree and pondered this latest development while munching some grapes. Someone had sent this belligerent guy after him, and somehow they had known right where he was. It reeked of magic. "MAGIC DIPSTICK HAT TRICK CARSICK DATERAPE DUCTTAPE NEOLITHIC GRAPE APE!" The grapes in the bunch he was holding sprouted spindly arms and legs and began to mill around on his branch. Bungston couldn't find the heart to chew up such cute little gnomes, and dug in his sack for another bunch. But it seemed that the grapes in the sack had also been converted into Welchkins, so he freed the whole lot of them and grated some nutmeg with his nifty nutmeg grater for use on a pear. Who would want him badly enough to track him down? Bungston could think of lots of people who might want to track him down. He loved to spoil sad endings, and it seemed there were lots of people who thrived on sadness, so any one of them could be vindictive enough to hire a sorcerer to locate him. He really should find the man in the armor, magically immobilize him somehow, and question him. It would be a snap for a wizard of his caliber. Bungston smiled smugly, pondering his caliber. Now that he thought about it, maybe he had inherited some money and all he had to do was spend one night in a haunted house to get it. Bungston pursed his lips. Napoleon really enjoyed haunted houses, so that would be fun, but it seemed unlikely that the executors of a will would track him to the ancient world. He sighed and hung from the branch, then dropped, accidentally landing on a squealing Welchkin which had climbed down to the ground. "Waste not, want not, I guess" The squashed Welchkin tasted really good, and Bungston surreptitiously glanced around to see if there were any more nearby. Fortunately for them there weren't, so the wizard contented himself with a nutmeg between cheek and gum and went out to the quay to wait.
Nothing could be worse than a slave galley. Bungston lay in the sun toying with a midget lemon and watched a shipload of galley slaves who were also lying in the sun, but seemed more into it. They were a scrawny bunch, covered with welts and sores, undernourished and with dark rings under their eyes despite their excellent tans. Every few minutes their driver would rouse himself and lash out with his whip at some unfortunate, for no apparent reason. Bungston wrinkled his nose in disgust. He didn't know the nationality of the slave driver but guessed Turkish because of his general antipathy for Turks. "Hey, buttface!", he yelled in Turkish. "If you were half a man you'd be nice to those slaves!" It was dubious logic, even to Bungston, whose standards were low. The slave driver looked up snarling, but then grinned obsequiously and laid aside his whip.
Bungston snorted in pride. That had been easy; probably it was the patrician nose that did it. The wizard fingered his patrician nose appreciatively, and was about to begin some more serious nose fingering when he smelled a familiar musty odor; he was already rising to his feet when a bony hand fell on his shoulder. The armored warrior scowled a terrible scowl, displaying the grayest skin Bungston had ever seen on anything not made of stone. Bungston slowly retreated as the man's fingers twitched in a complex pattern over his sword. "Ok dude, what's the deal? How do you know who I am? Who the hell are you? Do you still have my rubber chicken?"
The warrior puffed up his chest. "I am Robigus!" He seemed about to say something else but at that moment an elderly fellow stalked up, shrilly demanding what business the two men had on the dock. The man appeared to be the harbormaster, and there were several more armed men standing on the shore and watching carefully; the warrior who called himself Robigus was facing the sea and could not see these. Before Bungston could placate the old man, Robigus fiercely shoved him and sent him flying off the dock. The galley slaves cheered hoarsely, and Bungston thought it was pretty funny too. "Belabor me no more, squeaky...er, fungus!", bellowed the warrior at the senior citizen thrashing in the water.
Then, bizarrely, Robigus wrapped an arm around Bungston shoulders. "Fresh!" Bungston slapped him for this impromptu display of affection, then turned to dive off the end of the dock as the armed men came swarming up to deal with Robigus.
As Bungston turned there was a tremendous splash out in the water. Humming loudly, a huge golden coil erupted from the depths, slowly pivoted, and flew through the air at the dock. It was about ten feet long and flew as if it were being screwed into the air by some giant invisible corkscrew. The armed Greeks dropped their spears and fled at the sight of the eerie spiral hovering unsupported over the boats. Robigus recaptured Bungston by an ankle as the latter dove off the dock, but misjudged the wizard's weight. He was pulled in himself, losing his helmet en route. The golden coil descended into the water around the two men, enveloping them inside itself. Strangely, no water entered the segments of the coil which were now submerged.
Bungston, unused to being swallowed up by giant sculpture, began to yell above the hum of his prison. "COIL BOIL AND MR. BUBBLE PADDLE HANDLE FOIL THE THROBBING..." Robigus clapped a hand over the wizard's mouth, but not before one of the oars of the slave galley heaved itself up and into the coil, catching Robigus in his armored midriff. A group of slaves yelled and tried to retrieve their oar, but to no avail. Prevented from smooth rotation by the oar, which was stuck on one side in the boat and on the other against Robigus' armor, the coil's humming began to raise in pitch and the coil itself began to shake menacingly, kicking up a fine froth. Struggling in the cramped quarters, Robigus labored to push the end of the great oar out, while Bungston tried to push himself out. Bungston knew from many movies that things that hummed louder and higher and shook menacingly usually blew up after a little while, and here there was no highway patrol to rescue him. Suddenly the oarlock snapped and the oar broke free from the slave galley. The coil lurched into motion again with an excess of stored energy, swinging the paddle up, around, and into the pier with tremendous force, splintering paddle, pier, and probably some of Robigus' ribs from the look on his face. Freed, the coil plunged back into the ocean, bearing the men inside it.
NEXT CHAPTER (3) 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. Epilogue.