Gifted Beyond the Ordinary.

Gifted Beyond the Ordinary.
          by Doug (the Sultan) Swing

Gifted beyond the ordinary, Mycroft spent his off hours Wednesday toying with a mechanism that Monday night had restlessly imposed itself on him. Wednesday being Yipper Day, and all Horse Guards free to rest or drink or play at Niccers in the Grand Tent next to the Khan’s, he chose, however, not to go there but instead to set up his smaller tent outside the military compound and work in the relative peace of retreat. Permission requested and granted Tuesday night, he set off early next morning on his steed carrying both his temporary domicile and his tinker’s box, in which he kept his specialized tools: chisels, prods, callipers, twisties, sniplets, wangoes, spindles, nippers, slides, vrass, and durable’s. These would most likely serve him well if the idea he had begun to concretize were to be turned from it’s dross into gold. He sang as he mulled his way toward Garmeddon, as pretty a garden grove as any he’d encountered during any of his Sino-Russian campaigns.
     He had not gone far, nor had he sung that many songs, before his path through a narrow gorge was blocked by a form in the sunlight before him. He shielded his eyes to see better what obstructed him there and, low and behold, a man of extreme proportions and small stature step toward his mule and took it gently by the bridal. This dangerous maneuver startled Mycroft and he hissed a warning.
    “Do not, under pain of death, touch Ritlin’s bridal!” he shouted. His sharp warning spoke not of anger, or condescension but pity for anyone daring so much, since none had heretofore attempted and lived. Ritlin brooked no hand to touch him but his master’s. And that was as should be, trained as it was in the Khan’s time-honoured ways. Now, however, to Mycroft’s astonishment, the danger passed with little more then a shudder in the beast beneath him.
     “ Sir! Who are you?” Mycroft spoke when he regained his breath. The filly neither shied nor whinnied. It stood stock still under the steady hand of the newcomer. Mule of stone or equine of dumb and sudden obsequience Mycroft just now neither knew nor cared, though later on reflection, years later on recollection, he often wondered if some monstrous power of charming had passed first in front of and into the beast before either alien hand or eye had touched or even beheld it from such near distance. Now he spoke again.
     “Sir! Answer me! Or you shall have this to answer to!” He drew from his waistband a similam of great and dreadful structure, pointing it at the figure before him, who simply stood and moved not a mite. That smallish thing, however, stepped from beside the animal and laid his hand on Mycroft’s ankle. And instantly a steadiness of muscle and a slowness of speech and thought raced all through his flesh and bones and made him prisoner, if such a metaphor may successfully describe what was rather all benign and without violence attending whatsoever. The yellow sun beat on them; happy water gurgled somewhere, though not in the ditch to their right; blue sky and gray tree indicated no signs of life or movement; and the world smelled of new mown hay where grass nor verdure flourished in these high, hard climates. The taste of dulcet swishlick soured Mycroft’s tongue a moment and then left it feeling hungry and wanting more. 
     “Heart or soul?” he inquired. The intruder moved not one finger and stood statue in an artless, brazen world. 
     “Swell or broken?” the general asked, but still received no word of introduction. 
     “Then I shall have to take it upon myself to disturb your equilibrium somewhat,” he announced. Thus saying, he leapt from Ritlin’s back and lit with the grace of youth on the ground. In a trice he stood bent over the stranger in his ragged coat who held his long, pointed asper stem still, gripped firmly but without an air of challenge. Mycroft seized the lapels of this worthy, yanked him toward himself without mitigation, put his hand in that man’s thin locks, tore out an amount of it that would have forced painful cries from a corpse, and then sharply raised his knee into the hapless wanderer’s groin with such instant fury that the smallish person finally spoke. 
     “My name, sir, is Bandor,” he wheezed, tears starting from his eyes. “I am a beggar. I can neither hear nor see, and I wished to find if you might spare me a ride to the compound, since my feet are excessive sore from their long and distant journeying. Please advise.” He halted his introduction. Mycroft gave him back his handful of fine hair, lifted him up and stood him straight, then looked at him and sniffed. 
       “Why do you smell so sour?“ he inquired at length, taking a small degree of pain to bend away from the worthy before him. “Are you unaware of how roughly you grate on the nostrils?” Mycroft waited, patient, this his day off, wishing in his heart to get to his special work. Somehow the begger had understood.
     “I smell so because I taste so,” the small man intoned. “I have no water with which to wash. I eat only locusts and cattle dung, since nothing else suggests itself to me as I journey. I am hobo. My name is hobo. Blessed be the one who treats me well.”
     With that he disappeared as if taken instantly into the clouds by a hand above. Mycroft stood sore amazed, and when these things were revealed to him, he journeyed by a roundabout way to Garmeddon and worked there till the moon shone brightly into his tent door. When he had finished, he packed up his equipment and returned to the compound. The man who met him when he called on the Khan to let him know of  his return looked strangely like the hobo from the trail. Yet, this one was dressed in finery of the most exquisite sort, and he sported rings of gold upon his each his ten fingers. He smiled as he invited Mycroft in and stood there with his hand outstretched. 
     “Mimic,” he said and disappeared into the adjoining room. Mycroft waited an hour to no avail for no one appeared. Finally, furtively, and with a fair degree of anxious worry, he left without sight of the Khan. The moon shone wisely above and a beast howled in the mountains over the camp.