Cugel and the Tang  (Sample)

Pangwoster, the gang master, strode with ponderous authority along the ragged line of irregulars, his boots thudding against the weathered cobblestones of the Walking Way like the drumbeat of some petty tyrant’s march. His jaundiced gaze, sharp as a hawk’s yet clouded with the sourness of a man long steeped in petty dominion, snagged upon a solitary figure amid the shuffling throng—a lean provocateur whose boots gleamed with an insolent polish, absurdly bright against the drab grime of the road. “Yes, you,” Pangwoster growled, his voice a guttural rasp that cut through the morning chill, jabbing a thick, sausage-like finger toward the offender, “the shifty menial in the flashy boots.”

Cugel, with a shrug that masked a flicker of indignation beneath his customary nonchalance, tilted his chin upward and replied, “I am no shifty menial, good sir. I enlisted as an auxiliary guard—a distinction, I assure you. As for my boots, in the perfumed courts of Urlefan, they would scarce be deemed extravagant; indeed, they’d be thought rather modest by the standards of that glittering city.”


Pangwoster scratched his stubbled chin with a calloused hand, the coarse rasp of skin against bristle audible even over the distant clatter of the wagons. His eyes narrowed to slits as he ambled closer, each step deliberate, exuding the menace of a man who relished the weight of his own petty power. The small band of irregulars—rough-hewn laborers and down-at-heel mercenaries—sensed the brewing storm as keenly as rats detect the first tremors of a sinking ship. They shuffled hastily down the Walking Way, their boots scuffing the stone as they clustered nearer the creaking wagons, leaving Cugel isolated against the lichen-crusted wall. Pangwoster, a name that seemed to carry the stale echo of forgotten barracks and sour alehouses, regarded his quarry with the jaundiced scrutiny of one who saw provocateurs lurking in every shadow.


With a flourish that bordered on theatrical, he thrust a medallion on a heavy chain toward Cugel’s face—too close, Cugel thought, recoiling inwardly as the gang master’s breath assaulted him, a fetid gust redolent of stale spore and the rancid tang of unwashed gums. “What do you see?” Pangwoster barked, his tone a challenge wrapped in menace.


Cugel, ever the master of barbed courtesy, let a hint of sarcasm curl his lips as he replied, “I behold a worn medallion, forged of base and silver metal—crudely wrought, I might add—perhaps a guild seal, though its purpose remains as obscure as the mind of its bearer.”


Pangwoster let the medallion fall with a dull clink against his barrel chest, the sound swallowed by the damp air of the covered passage. Cugel held his ground, not from any noble defiance but because retreat was barred by the cold, unyielding wall at his back. The stone, slick with moss and etched with the faint ghosts of ancient carvings, pressed through his cloak, a tactile reminder of how far he’d fallen from the silken comforts of Urlefan. Pangwoster’s breath washed over him again, hot and sour, wafting through a jagged palisade of yellow-stained teeth—a stench Cugel had come to associate with men whose cunning was matched only by their neglect of soap.


“Authority!” Pangwoster roared, the word reverberating down the vaulted Walking Way like a thunderclap loosed in a cavern. The calumps—shaggy, ox-like beasts yoked to the wagons—yelped in shrill alarm, their hooves scrabbling against the stone as they strained at their harnesses, jerking the wagons forward a few perilous feet. Only the groaning brakes, strained to their limits, staved off a chaotic stampede down the treacherous path. The icy morning air thickened with curses as the half-dozen guards at the column’s head unsheathed their swords in a discordant clamor, the blades catching the feeble light in dull, menacing glints. The irregulars cowered, their shoulders hunched as if to shrink from the gang master’s wrath, while a knot of artisans and craftsmen—delicate souls unaccustomed to such brutish displays—huddled behind the wagons, their faces blanched with dread.


The uproar, mercifully, diverted Pangwoster’s attention from his quarry. He strutted back toward the wagons, barking orders with the puffed-up bluster of a man who mistook volume for command, his heavy tread fading into the din. Cugel exhaled a quiet breath, the tension easing from his frame. It was an inauspicious beginning to his intended journey to Bellwell—a venture already fraught with the promise of misadventure—but at least he had slipped, for the moment, from the gang master’s baleful notice.



Slipping free of Pangwoster and his industrious rabble had cost Cugel several hours of guile and patience, and by the time he extricated himself, the sun hovered grudgingly above the horizon, its light stuttering through the mist like a debtor reluctant to face his creditors. The well-laid cobblestones of the Walking Way soon yielded to a rutted expanse of beaten earth, packed firm underfoot but promising treachery when kissed by rain. The path stretched onward in dreary monotony, broken only by the scattered rubble of collapsed stone arches—crumbling relics of a bygone era when these thoroughfares linked the Karst towns in a grand network of commerce and pomp. Now, those towns perched atop their jagged towers spread across the forest like mushrooms erupting from the rich decay of a Calamp pasture, their once-proud arches reduced to mournful heaps of stone.


Deep wheel tracks carved the earth, undulating left and right in a maddening dance that slowed Cugel’s progress to a snail’s crawl. He paused once more to cast his gaze northward, where the Karsts rose in stark silhouette against the endless canopy, their peaks clawing at the sky like the broken teeth of some ancient beast. The sun, a spoiled red fruit festering in the haze, broke through the mist at last, casting a rust-colored shadow that spilled across the treetops and faded into the vast, untamed distance.


Ah, breakfast time—a ritual Cugel greeted with relish. He harbored only contempt for the doom watchers of the dawn, those superstitious wretches who peered into every sunrise for portents of calamity. The sun rose, as it ever had, and he would savor his meal beneath its feeble glow before pressing on into the day’s uncertainties. Though, he conceded with a flicker of unease, it ascended reluctantly today—reddish-brown and mottled yellow, a sickly orb far from its radiant best. He banished the thought with a shrug; omens were for fools, and Cugel prided himself a man of reason, not whimsy.


He pressed forward at a brisk pace until fortune guided him to a suitable nook for his repast: a flagstone floor, half-reclaimed by tufts of wiry grass, sheltered from the persistent breeze by the remnants of an ancient wall. The structure, cloaked in large-leafed shrubs whose mottled green and yellow foliage rustled in the wind like whispered secrets, exuded an air of forgotten grandeur. Cugel swept off his cloak with a flourish and spread it across the damp grass, settling upon it with a sigh that mingled weariness and satisfaction.