"Of the land!"
"I tell you it's of the skies!"
"Land!"
Herr Bleimpf cleared his throat politely. Neither wizard paid him any attention. Nor had they, since beginning their clash in his office.
"It has wings! It is quite clearly an emblem of the skies!"
"It's got the heart of a beast, the mind of a beast and the temper of a wild bloody beast! If you think it's anything but a beast, you're an even greater clod than you look!"
"Clod? Might I remind you I was here first, you fuddled savage?"
"Savage? I'll show you savage, you idiot stargazer..."
"Gentlemen!" Bleimpf shouted, stepping between them. If he could just defuse the situation somehow, perhaps he'd stop them destroying his workplace. He cringed automatically as he did it, partly to defuse any potential hurt feelings on the parts of his customers, but also because he half suspected they were about to fry the whole block with some variety of arcane energy.
Instead, the two wizards merely bristled over his head, beards and staffs shuddering with barely-mastered potencies.
"Could I suggest a way of resolving this dispute, my lord wizards?" he offered, tentatively.
"This stablehand is no more a lord than I am the King of Bretonnia," declaimed Pieter Gucker, Master Celestial Wizard and Observator Most High to the Principality of Reikland. His staff had a tiny telescope balanced at the top end, and he wore a different sized monacle over each eye.
"You stuck up ass," snarled Victor von Esel, who was apparently some kind of grand Amber Wizard, although he smelt like the inside of a barn, appeared more beard than man and had a weasel peering out of one of his thick fur boots. "I'm going to rip you a new one!"
"Try it, scarecrow," snapped Gucker.
"Outside," Gucker replied.
The two wizards stepped out of the shop. Bleimpf's assistant emerged nervously from the back room, where the heraldric records were kept.
"What in Sigmar's name was that about?" he asked.
"They arrived at the same time. They both want a modified Griffon on their coat of arms to show their dedication to the Imperial cause," Bleimpf said, mopping his brow. "Neither one of them would let the other one go first, and it turned into some bloody collegiate pride thing."
"Well done for getting them outside," the assistant said.
"I didn't, they went out anyway. I was going to show them some alternative designs with cockatrices and manticores and things."
The front door banged open - Bleimpf's stablehand, an excitable young man called Norbert.
"Come quick!" he shouted. "They're going at it in the square! The guard are stepping in to try and separate them!"
A rumble of gathering thunder rolled round the room, and the horses tethered outside whinnied and stamped angrily. Bleimpf and his assistant exchanged glances, then both ran for the safety of the back room.
No comments:
Post a Comment