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Bowmen of Winston

Founded November 2014 by John (Master) and Eiann (Bastard)

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Other Adventures:

The Cuillin Perverse

The Cuillin Perverse Again

 

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Mount Doom and other adventures.

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Thursday 26th March 2015

The Assault on Mount Doom
(which is a place just south of the teeny village of Carlton, which itself lies on any bearing we choose from our virtual clubhouse.)

 

Master said to me the other day: 'C'mon, Cogsworth. We're going for a walk.'

Excited at the prospect of being let out, I ran around master's legs until I became dizzy, then I dashed off to get my special lead. What a treat, I thought; what an adventure!

It was then that Master reminded me that I had not yet earned the lofty status of dog.

At Master's instruction, I was to arrive at his house early for an -how did he put it?- 'Oh, five hundred start.' That seemed like a lot to me, so I arrived at four O'Clock in the morning, just to be sure. I was to bring flasks of tea, water, portable comestibles, and appropriate clothing.

When I arrived at the mansion, it was raining. It had been raining for many hours: cold, icy rain. Master was still in his night-shift. I began to doubt my understanding of the meaning of the word appropriate.

So, once I had been schooled in my duties, we set off at the appointed hour, leaving behind the flasks of lovely warm tea, the extra layers of lovely warm clothing I had brought, and a small amount of Master's hope; but that was all right because I had lots of it to spare!

'C'mon, Cogsworth!' said Master, rain dripping from his nose (at least, I think it was rain).

'Coming, Master.' I said, gleefully. 'Can I have a biscuit?'

'No.'

 

Earlier, when Master had said we were to go for a walk, I have to admit, I was a little suspicious. On previous such outings I have found myself entertaining discomforture, and no small degree of peril. However, it was just a walk; how difficult could it be?

 

We walked and skipped along the lanes, and all was well. I sang to master in words he could not hear so that he would not be offended. Master rebuked me for trifling things, and renamed me Pervert for a while; such is his way.

 

We were happy even though the sun did not shine.

Master promised sun. It never came. Only rain and ice and wind to cut the flesh and dampen the spirit.

'Can I have a biscuit?'

'No.'

Master educated me in the ways of trees and things, and once we did see the sun, but Master put it away again. He is all powerful and knowing. I skipped along behind while Master ruminated and pondered life's important puzzles.

'Bastard...' he said.

'Yes Master?' I answered.

It seems that Master likes to call my name when deep in thought. There was nothing more. That warmed me...and since the sun wasn't going to show...well, you take what you can get.

 

Some leagues into our journey, I began to feel discomfort. The lanes were cursed with tiring slopes and twisty bends. They pulled at my legs and pinched my toes. At first, just twinges, aches, and so on, but there was always a rubbing in my foot, gradually worsening. I had a bad feeling about that. Master said:'Without pain, you are not alive.' I remembered what he said. Master's step was springy and light and full of purpose. Suddenly, I felt burdensome to him, but I did not wish to trouble him with my problems, so I asked:

'Can I have a biscuit?'

'No.'

 

We travelled o'er hill and dale, around bend and wend, twixt tree and hedge. The discomfort worsened, but I never cried out nor grumbled my plight. Limp, I did, though; there was no hiding that.

(But, what fortune is this? While Master is in full stride, my ten paces alag serve to conceal my difficulty...and my shame.)

Nigh on three parts of four into our adventure, Master promised a biscuit! He can be nice like that.

'When, Master.'

'Soon.'

Hours later, our objective was in sight. We were to conquer the Mountain of Doom, known to local folk as Carlton Bank. A thin stony path lay before us, offering a way through the forest of leafless trees and tangled thorn that conspired at every step to prevent our progress. Master was undeterred. We forged on. On and Up. Ever up towards the vast mountain, which was grey with cloaks of mist and veiled like a Byzantian whore. Its snow-packed summit remained but an unseen image in my mind, for I had never ventured this far east. To Master, of course, this was his 'mistress'. He had proudly confided to me, in gentler times, that he had often mounted her. I smelled only the reek of fear and felt only pain.

'Soon.' Master said. 'Soon.'

We forged on.

Master forged; I sort of hopped and hobbled, and whimpered, some forty paces alag. I am sure Master heard, but he did not say. I had become a creature of two halves. The top half functioned much as I expected, but the bottom half was a tangle of knotted gristle and splintered bone, lubricated with the juice of blisters burst, all crunching and grinding at severed nerve-endings; each step a scream, each scream a step closer to death. It would all be over soon. Suddenly, I felt hands pulling at me. I was pushed, and lifted and there was peace. We slipped under the veils and the skirts of the Byzantian, and it was a kind of heaven. I could hear Master's footfall, now heavier because he carried a burden; I could hear his breath.

Life with master has not been all beatings and humiliation. Frequently I glimpse a tenderness not found in other masters. He calls me turd, and bestows great wisdoms upon me, pointing out, for example that the tiny metal ferrule binding the tip of a shoelace is called an aglet. Master has a way of making you feel special.

'C'mon, Cogsworth.' he said. 'You great steaming turd.'

That was my last happy memory before Master dumped me at the top of Mount Doom. The bags of skin that were my legs crumpled beneath me along with their contents on to the hard ice and rock at Master's feet. The good half of me had slumped on the pin-like cushion of the broken half of me. Those nerve-endings that still functioned, yelled and squealed 'AAARRGH!' at my brain. Tears stung my eyes. I cried like a baby.

'Biscuit?' Master said.

 

Broken men

Master seems happy...

...is that a grimace...or a glint of triumphant satisfaction?

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Mount Doom Revisited.

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Wednesday 20th January 2016

On any other day, I would have been gazing from my kennel, watching the steady growth of grass beyond the radius of my fetters, but on this day, having taken a break from my routine to pay much needed attention to an ingrowing toe-nail (which I had found in my supper the night before) Master summoned me in his usual way. The stone bounced and struck my skull but briefly before settling on the new-grown grass beyond.

'C'mon, Cogsworth. We're going for a walk.' Master said to me.

I like going for walks with Master.

 

We set off from his palace at a steady pace and sauntered through Master's wood. The day was bright and cool, and the ground was a little bit sticky, partly from Master's peculiar habits and partly from the many weeks of rain most recently fallen. My lead kept getting snagged on twigs and ground things, so Master decided I should be free of it and just crawl along behind him. Master is a very considerate person.

 

Time slipped by with a nonchalant ease as I listened with comfort to Master's advice about not stepping on those sausage-like stones which so often lay on the path before us; and to his lessons on how the world might be a better place if it were not for the presence of people. I offered that if the world were devoid of people, I should be Masterless. And thus I stooped, corrected by my guardian's voice again: reminded that he was not a person, in the general sense of the word, but a being of elevated status, and that I would do well to remember it. So, naturally, I did.

I was to remain within calling distance as we entered the deepening wood of naked trees. Soon, we encountered a stricken tree, so disabled as to need the support of its neighbour. The poor thing was leaning so perilously that some of its bottom was sticking up in the air.

I hid behind the leg of an oak while Master tended the tree. Now Master's skills are known across the world, but I had never before seen him walk up a tree. Master is a tree-walker! I couldn't help myself: I rushed out from behind the oaken leg and ran up the unfortunate tree to praise him. Tragically, I am not as able as Master. I slipped, bumped my head on a thick branch and broke it (the branch), descended topsy-turvy in a twist, and landed on one of those peculiar sausages that Master had warned me about.

 

I needed a good clean when we got back. And so it was that I was still dizzy from the last spin-cycle when Master received his especial visitor. In Master's world, there are others of lofty status --- though none so lofty as Master. One such is Little Master. I like him because he gives me biscuits. It turns out that we were all to embark on another of Master's expeditions. Little Master had provided transport: a gleaming white Ford Focussed. I have seen such things on the roads of the world, and on many occasion have almost come into contact with one whilst scraping supper from the tarmac.

My protestations about never being seen dead in one of those things were immediately challenged by Master who firmly believed that it would be an irrelevance that the state of my vitality should make any difference to my visibility, whether inside or outside the vehicle. He was about to test his hypothesis when, upon seeing my distress, Little Master suggested that I be strapped outside the vehicle by its rearmost fastenings where I would be of no further annoyance to anyone. ...Happiness can be found in the most unlikely of places, I find.

 

And I may have forgotten to mention that it is winter.

view from mount doom

See...A Wintry view from the Mountain

It was so cold during the journey (which was made lengthy by Little Master's desire to educate me by driving the one hundred mile detour to show me a remembering hospital named after a famous chef I have never before heard of), that Bastard's fingers and nose and many of his toes fell off as we sped along the roads. If we had had to go any further, Bastard would have had nothing left to hang on with. As it was, Master, impressed that I had made no fuss, agreed to re-grow my nose. And Little Master was able to gather enough of my phalanges to afix them in such a way as to stop me falling over, and that was that, I was 'as good as new', the Masters said.

 

But what's this? I declared to myself, as I surveyed my surroundings.

I have been here before!

I cried, silently, in horror.

This...this place..is...is...Mount DOOOOM!

In the height of my distress, a familiar and comfortably warm feeling spread outward from a central place and down the length of one of my legs. And yet, in spite of my terror which had been furthered by the news that we were once again to attempt the summit, I felt I must not avail the Masters of my plight.

Instead, I asked:

'Can I have a biscuit, Master?'

'Not now, you turdy Bastard. We've got walking to do. C'mon Cogsworth.' he said.

And so we set off.

 

Along the way, the Masters, for sport, periodically pounded me with balls of ice, instructing me to 'Stand still, Cogsworth!' or to 'Bend over!' as their arms began to tire. That, too, made me cry a little bit, inside.

We had not gone more than twenty miles, when Little Master espied a frozen lake through a gap in the trees. The Masters tested the fragility of the ice by pushing me out on to it with long sticks. When the ice did not break, they loaded me with heavy boulders and pushed me out again. And, when all was deemed safe, the Masters could play.

 

little master

Little Master, gleeful...I think.

Little Master bared his bottom to the world and sloped off into the wood. I am not sure what happened after that, but I heard Master (Big Master) offer the use of his Bastard as a wipe. It seems that Little Master had been unprepared for what Master termed 'a call of nature', but I didn't hear anything. To my relief, Little Master declared that he would manage somehow. Soon after, the Masters got bored with tossing Bastard on to the ice to see which would break first. And speaking of that, I wondered if I could have a biscuit; so I asked.

No.

In fact, it was Little Master that needed feeding. We trudged farther up the mount through drifts of snow and across part-frozen swamps and glacial outcrops until, finally, we arrived at the summit. Master informed me that, at this altitude, there was very little oxygen and that I would have to do without.

tricksy master

Tricksy Master at the summit of Mount Doom

He is so clever, and not a bit immodest.

Giddy with their triumph, the Masters celebrated by making me dance on a perilsome-tall and pointed rock before pushing me down a glacier, the action of which, as it happened, inspired them to great thought and invention. They fashioned me into a sledge, and thereafter used me to descend the mountain.

 

At base camp, the Masters allowed me to feed at, nay, under, their table. Master ordered fried pig in a bun, Little Master received a bowl of soup with a leak in it. And I gathered all the crumbs I could find, and pressed them into the shape of a biscuit -- which was nice to look at, but somewhat gritty in the mouth. Master, upon noticing my discomfort, pointed out that he had not yet released any crumbs below the table, and that the only grittiness he could imagine lay in the residue deposited by his shoes.

When Little Master had finished feeding, and Master had stopped playing with his willy, we abandoned Base Camp to return home. But the Masters had some important belching and scratching to do before we could leave properly.

The Journey Back:

Little Master's belly was too full for him to drive; and Master, unaccustomed to driving since he normally had people to do that for him, felt it was imcumbent, therefore, upon his bastard to attempt to bring the vehicle and its occupants home. Now here's a queer thing, and somewhat alarming that neither Little nor Big Master had thought enough to ask Bastard if he was able in this regard, given that he is generally unable in most others.

Bastard was beshat with worry. He was so very much treading in waters so deep his toe-less feet couldn't touch the bottom...let alone the pedals...

Still, if that is what the Masters want...

 

Little Master slept in the back (but only for a very short time), while Master sat along side me to give instruction, and to guide me in the ways of 'automobile control and navigation', words I had hitherto been ignorant of. Master reminded me of his principal rule: that without pain, there is only death. And with that he jabbed me in the eye. One of my feet, the one with the most toes afixed to it, twitched in reaction to Master's contact (one might call it a foot-jerk reaction) which caused said foot to be jabbed hard upon the Go! pedal. We hurtled forth along narrow and slippery lanes at such velocity that I am certain I saw a beam of light bend slightly as we passed a railway station, upon the platform of which was a man with a torch who had inadvertently distorted the medium of time.

The Masters, now fully alert, flayed me and urged me to greater caution. They urged me and pushed me, and they twisted my ears, until, suddenly, I found skills I never knew I had. It was as the dawning of a new life for me. Long dormant hopes bouyed in a tempestuous sea of liberty. For the first time in my life I found I could play the guitar, fly an aeroplane, and balance a Guillemot's egg on my head __ all at the same time. 'Stop messing about;' commanded Master, 'You could break the egg. Such things can occur when you distort time.' Master said, most wisely, and he counselled me further on the benefits of self control.

 

Under guidance from the Masters, and with severe threats to withdraw biscuit privileges, I began to learn that the circular device before me could be used as a tiller, and thus were were able to navigate bends. My feet were all adance with activity, for it turns out that there are in fact three pedals down there. In addition to Go!, there is Stop!, and Wait! ...instructions with which I am most familiar; a revelation I shared with Little Master in the back.

'We loves this!' I says to him.

'This car has two hundred and fifty horsepower. Be careful with it.' Little Master says to me.

I did not understand how so many horses could fit into such a small space. It seemed a bit cruel to my way of thinking. In the old days, horses were kept outside of vehicles.

We had galloped along at a fair old pace, and for such a long time, that everything went a bit blurry. I was pushed back into my seat until my remaining fingers could not hang on to the tiller any longer. That's when I turned again to Little Master. He was nowhere to be seen. My mouth opened to speak, and if it did speak, nobody heard.

It was then that Master told me to stop looking for Little Master, whose face, incidentally, suddenly appeared as a twisted gleeful expression faceted only with the furrows of fear, and to concentrate more on the road ahead. Wise words indeed since where there was once road there was now only bus!

Panic striken hands flapped in front of me; they were my own, desperately trying to reach for the tiller again. Somehow, like both time and light, we bent our separate ways, the bus and I, to pass with nought but graze....There but for the graze of bus thought I. Then, no sooner had it passed, we found ourselves hurtling once again. A very narrow avenue of trees funnelled us into a vortex faster than master could pocket a biscuit. I thought it would be the last time I closed my eyes, for every tree leaned in to squash us, and in my brain a persistent howling cried 'No more!'. So this is death, I thought. Master was right. I just closed my eyes and dreamed of biscuits.

 

When I awoke, I was lying in Master's arms. It was but a short lived fantasy. When he saw that I was awake, he tossed me aside.

''No.' he replied, curtly, to my unasked question.

So I limped across to Little Master. But Little Master was full of chagrin, declaring that I had spoiled the shinyness of his car, and that I had crossed some kind of line, which to this day I have not seen and do not remember crossing.

The Masters, sniggering amongst themselves, bade me leave at once and tether the horses.

 

I cried like a baby.

 

What I haven't told the Masters, and I think it is best kept as a secret never to be told (what other kinds are there?), is that there was a little button hidden, that when pressed converts the car to automatic. And Automatic, in any bastard's book, means it must drive itself ----since I now know about such things --- much like the auto-pilot of an aeroplane .. So, button accidentally pressed, I found that all I had to do was wiggle my feet a bit and turn the circular thing in a pretence of driving.

 

The Masters must never know.