“Shuddup!” cried Ignace. “Just shuddup! You don’t get it, dummy! I ain’t worried about ‘bodily harm’—ha! Look at the great bruiser! Does he look ‘bodily harmed’ to you?” And, indeed, it did not appear that any actual physical harm had befallen the strangler.
“It’s his reputation, that’s the problem,” shrilled Ignace. “He’s never been knocked down before, it’s part of the mystique. Customers pay through the nose for that, don’t you know.”
“Not actually true,” said Greyboar, now rising to his feet. “The Chevalier d’Escroc knocked me down.”
“Not in the record book!” shrilled Ignace. “He only put you down on one knee and you right off used the position to tear off his leg and you snatched him falling off the other side of the horse and had him throttled before he even hit the ground—and with his helmet still on! The Records Committee ruled the kneedrop was a maneuver!”
Greyboar grunted. “Yeah, I know, you talked a good line to ’em—but I was there, I know it was a knockdown.” He flexed his shoulder at the memory. “Good man with a morning star, the Chevalier.”
“Who cares?” demanded Ignace hotly. “D’Escroc’s the only one who could argue the point, and he’s pushing up daisies. Record says you’ve never been knocked down!”
“Not any more,” commented Greyboar, quite calmly. “Not even you can argue this one. Or what kind of ‘maneuver’ you want to call me landing plunk on my ass?”
Ignace shook his head in despair. Then, a thought come to him, he turned to Zulkeh.
“Listen, professor, maybe there’s no real reason you gotta go public with this. I mean, who knows? Maybe Greyboar and Shelyid were just clowning around, you know, just friendly-like, and maybe Greyboar just pretended to fall down, you know, maybe just—”
“Calm yourself!” spoke Zulkeh. “I have no intention of broadcasting the recent event to the world at large—quite the contrary! I simply wish to retain the services of my stupid but loyal apprentice, who will be of little assistance to me if Greyboar takes umbrage at his recent offense and throttles the wretched little—” He turned to Shelyid, shaking his finger. “I denounce you again, miserable—”
But his admonition was cut short. The wizard was speechless, jaw agape.
The cause of this unwonted silence was plain to see. For even at that moment did the snarl, which had whiled away the preceding minute sniffing at Shelyid’s person, seize the dwarf in both paws and begin a vigorous licking of the apprentice’s face. Shelyid giggled in protest, trying to fend off the great purple tongue.
“I’ll be damned,” whispered Greyboar.
“‘Tis true, then,” mused the mage, stroking his beard, “the dwarf is, in actual fact and not his fancy, a snarl-friend.”
“What’s that mean?” queried Ignace.
“It is difficult to answer the question,” spoke the wizard. “The essence of ‘snarl-friendness’ remains a complete mystery to all scholars and sages. Though, ’tis true that in his memoirs the world-famed snarl-friend Tarzan Laebmauntsforscynneweëld claims—well, perhaps not at the moment! And, in any event, his thesis is vigorously disputed by no less an authority than Mowgli Sfondrati-Piccolomini, who for his part advances the argument—well, perhaps at a later time! Suffice it to say, sirrah Ignace, that snarls are known to take a strange liking for certain individuals—not many! no more than a handful in each historical epoch—for reasons which are quite unknown. Based on what records exist, only two factors seem to demonstrate a frequency beyond the limits of statistical accident: hirsuteness, especially among males, and great size.”
The wizard paused, stroking his beard vigorously. “Of these factors, Shelyid certainly exhibits the first—perhaps to such an extreme as to outweigh his utter lack of the other. For, as all can plainly see, the dwarf does not possess great size. To the contrary! The dwarf is actually—well, actually, he’s a dwarf.”
More vigorous beard-stroking. “Yet there seems no question that he is a snarl-friend.”
Indeed, ‘twould be hard to question, for even as the wizard spoke were the dwarf and the snarl engaged in that childish pleasure in play which so typifies the savage beast and the dimwit. The twain romped about, the apprentice shrieking with glee as he slapped the snarl’s snout, the latter, for its part, gaily seizing the dwarf in its great maw and swinging the gnome about like a cat shaking a mouse.