Читать книгу Beyond The Stars - Sarah Webb - Страница 9

Derek Landy is the author of the number one bestselling Skulduggery Pleasant series. He has won awards. He is not modest. He lives in Dublin.

Alan Clarke is an award-winning illustrator, sculptor and occasional writer. His images conjure worlds that are whimsical, darkly comic, magical, sometimes grotesque, but always beautifully executed. His work has been published and exhibited worldwide. Alan is based in Dublin.

“There may come a day,” roared General Tua, “when the legacy of Man falls! When his shields splinter under Fomorian sword! But it will not be this day!”

A roar sounded among the troops, and Tua’s horse reared back on two legs, before the general kicked in his heels and galloped up the line.

“When they speak of this day, they will speak of loyalty! Of duty! Of …”

The last word was lost to Corporal Fleece as Tua sped further away, but he was relatively sure it was ‘honour’. Tua was big on honour.

Men jostled him from all sides, and despite the cold winter wind, Fleece felt uncomfortably hot. It stank here too. Bathing was not high on the list of requirements for the foot soldiers of the Hibernian Army. Being big, brutish and ugly, however, seemingly were, and as such Fleece reckoned himself to be a soldier lacking. He couldn’t even see the valley where they were going to be fighting – couldn’t even see the Fomorian Army amassed on the other side. Although this was probably a good thing.

General Tua rode back into range.

“Here, on the fields and in the valleys of Drumree, we will send these demons back to the seas where they were spawned! Then they will learn what it means to encroach on the lands of Man! They will …” And off he went again, up the line in the other direction.

Fleece turned his head, got a blast of foul breath and wrinkled his nose. He saw Iron Guts, his best friend in the whole of Hibernia, and tried to squeeze through the throng of men towards him. Failing miserably, he resorted to waving and shouting over the soldiers’ heads.

“Iron Guts! Iron Guts! I missed that last bit! What did he say? What did he say after ‘encroaching on our lands’?”

Iron Guts looked back, and scowled. “Shut,” he said, “up.” Then he paused a moment before adding, “You idiot.”

Fleece smiled weakly, and did as he was told. He didn’t want to antagonise his only friend, the only man in the army who had not yet threatened to kill him. He was sweating beneath his chain mail and his shoulders ached from its weight.

He sighed; he was already exhausted and it wasn’t mid-morning yet – the battle hadn’t even started and he needed a lie-down. This did not bode well for any heroics he might later be required to perform. Not that he was ever required to perform any heroics, unlike the men around him with their glorious names. Ranfield the Raging. Wolftooth the Cruel. Iron Guts the Bloody. If anyone would ever be suitably motivated to come up with a name for Fleece, it would probably be something along the lines of Fleece the Thoroughly Unsuited to Battle, or Fleece the Far Too Pretty to Be Hit, or, the most likely option, Fleece the Where the Hell Has He Run Off to Now?

Bravery was not one of his strong points. It wasn’t even one of his weak points. The fact of the matter was that bravery just wasn’t one of his points. During armed conflict, Fleece liked to pick a little section of the battlefield, somewhere along the edge, and pretend to be dead. He kept some fresh cow’s blood in a pouch inside his tunic, and he’d give himself a healthy splatter when he got comfortable. Then, when all the fuss was over, he would miraculously recover, and hurry back to camp with all the other survivors. It was a tricky business, and once or twice he had come close to actually encountering a living enemy, but his luck had held. So far.

He didn’t like the turn this day was taking, however. He was jammed right in the middle of ten thousand Hibernian soldiers. When Tua gave the order to advance, he’d have to slip sideways to the edge, which wasn’t going to be easy. He looked up, trying to peek over the brutish, ugly, stinking men in front of him, and saw the top of Tua’s head as he rode back towards them.

“For freedom!” Tua roared, and Fleece winced as the troops bellowed, “For Hibernia!” and then, in another bellow, even more animalistic than the first, “For the king!”

Swords were drawn and held aloft and the roaring went on and on. Fleece didn’t know how anyone could have drawn their swords when they were this tightly packed in. Leaving his in the sheath by his leg, he instead waved his little knife and shouted a bit. It was all fairly ridiculous. Getting worked up about freedom and Hibernia was one thing, but the king? The king was a fat slug who’d had his golden throne shipped over just so he could sit back in the camp and eat and drink while his loyal subjects fought and died for him. Naturally, Fleece didn’t count himself among their number.

“Advance!” General Tua roared, and the troops surged ahead violently.

Fleece was thrown forward, his face squashed against the man in front. Trying to regain his balance, his feet were clipped by the man behind so he had to take tiny quick steps. He got an elbow in the face and howled as he reached out to steady himself. His knife nicked someone as he did so and they cursed at him.

“Sorry!” he called. He could feel his face already starting to swell. He tried to slip sideways, to the edge of the throng, but there were no gaps between the hulking, shouting, grunting soldiers.

Suddenly they were moving faster, jogging, but Fleece’s feet were no longer touching the snow-covered ground. He was being carried along with them, held aloft by the huge shoulders squashing in on either side. Now he could see over the heads of the men in front. Now he could see the Fomorians, their green skins covered in armour and leathers and furs, as they sprinted towards them. He started shrieking.

The front line of Hibernian soldiers clashed with the Fomorians and Fleece jerked to a painful halt. He watched as swords cleaved skulls in two. Axes hacked at necks and arms and legs. Spears skewered. Arrows pierced. Knives sliced.

“Let me down!” Fleece screamed, but nobody heard him above the roar of their own insanity.

He struck out in desperation, heaved himself higher. Somehow he managed to clamber over the heads of his comrades-in-arms, terrified, trembling like a leaf on the surface of a fast-flowing and ill-tempered stream. Hands reached up, redirecting him, sending him straight to the front line.

“Wrong way!” he screamed. “Wrong way!”

A spear was pressed into the chest of the man beneath him and Fleece tumbled down. He was kicked and kneed and thrown about by soldiers bizarrely eager to get at the enemy. Through the gaps he could see the Fomorians – one in particular, the biggest he’d ever seen, stood out, his green skin slimy beneath burnished-red armour that was already splattered with human blood. His left foot was missing but that didn’t seem to slow him, and his headpiece was magnificent, a helmet carved into horns, a devil’s face on the head of a demon. Only one Fomorian wore such a headpiece, Fleece knew. This was Cichol Gricenchos, the Fomorian king.

A Hibernian soldier charged. Gricenchos’s sword was a massive thing of shining steel. It knocked the Hibernian’s blade from his hand and separated his head from his body in one lazy swipe, cutting through armour and chain mail like it was nothing. Two more Hibernian soldiers went at Gricenchos, and two more were dispatched with similar ease.

A circle of sorts had formed in the midst of the battle, an arena where the Fomorian king took on all comers. Fleece wondered what it felt like for the other demons to know that their leader was with them at times like these. It was probably inspiring. Not like for him and the other Hibernians with their fat slug of a leader back at camp. The only threat he’d pose to an enemy would be if he rolled over them on his way to the chicken.

A heavy wave rippled through the ranks, knocking Fleece to his knees, and then General Tua charged through the crowd on his horse, heading straight at Gricenchos.

The Fomorians screeched, maybe warning their king, maybe protesting at the unfairness of it all, but Gricenchos didn’t turn and run. Instead he stepped to one side and brought his sword round with both hands. The horse’s head flew, and General Tua was thrown from its saddle, the horse flipping over and landing on top of him. Gricenchos didn’t even do him the honour of killing the general himself. He left Tua to the stabbing of the Fomorians, and turned back to the Hibernian soldiers, awaiting his next challenger.

Fleece was sent stumbling out of the crowd. The Fomorian king looked down at him. Beneath the horned headpiece his nose was long and his mouth was wide, filled with sharp black teeth. He was not, even as far as Fomorians went, particularly handsome. Fleece clasped his hands in front of him.

“Please don’t kill me,” he whimpered.

“Coward!” Iron Guts roared, breaking away from the Hibernian men, swinging his sword for Gricenchos’s head.

The Fomorian king moved faster than Fleece would have thought possible for someone his size. Steel clashed and Gricenchos sent Iron Guts stumbling away. He brought his great sword down but this time it was Iron Guts who moved, deflecting the blade with his shield and shifting sideways, as nimble as a dancer, although Fleece would never have said that aloud. He watched the man and the demon go at it, snarling and spitting at each other, swinging savage cuts, feinting and parrying and doing all the things that Fleece had once been shown by his father, but which he had never paid that much attention to. Pity. Such a skill set would have come in very useful today.

Gricenchos battered the shield on Iron Guts’s arm, driving him to his knees, showing his back to Fleece and letting him, from his low vantage point, look right up between the scales of his attacker’s armour to the green skin beneath.

Something strange and foreign seized Fleece’s heart. Courage? Was that what he was feeling? He highly doubted it, but couldn’t think what else it could be. This was his chance to turn his life round, to do something heroic and brave and noble. Only on the battlefield, he despaired, would plunging your sword into someone’s back be considered noble.

The Fomorian king splintered the shield and Iron Guts, the only friend Fleece had in the whole of Hibernia, fell back. Fleece narrowed his eyes, focused in on the gap in Gricenchos’s armour. His hand went for his sword, and clutched stupidly at air. It wasn’t in his sheath! Why wasn’t it in his sheath? His eyes widened as he remembered. He’d left his sword in his tent.

Gricenchos split Iron Guts’s head wide open, roaring as he did so, and kicked the corpse away from him. He turned back to Fleece, who only had his little knife.

Fleece had had that knife since he was a boy. His father had done his best to teach him how to throw it. His younger brothers had learned well enough, but Fleece himself had grown bored of practice after a few weeks and never returned to it. It was fairly basic, though, from what he remembered: hold the tip of the blade, get the balance right, throw with the arm and flick with the wrist, and the blade embeds in the target with a solid thunk, he thought. Simple. Basic. The only chance he had left.

Fleece flipped the knife so he was holding the tip, and hurled it at the Fomorian king. It spun through the air between them, miraculously on target, catching Gricenchos just inside the curve of his headpiece. What a throw! It would have been a legendary throw, a throw talked about through the ages, sung about in songs, celebrated as the throw that pushed back the demon hordes, if only it had been the blade that had hit Gricenchos between the eyes, and not the handle. As it was, the knife bounced off the demon’s face, dropping into the slush and the mud and the snow, and Gricenchos growled.

Fleece scrambled to his feet as Gricenchos stalked forward, his massive hand closing round Fleece’s slender neck. He lifted Fleece off the ground. Fleece gasped for air, legs kicking and body twisting. It felt like his head was going to pop off and float away into the air. Bright lights were exploding across his vision and the battle raged all around him but all he could see was Gricenchos’s snarling face.

He dug a hand inside his tunic, grabbing the small pouch he kept in there. He pushed out the stopper with his thumb and flung the cow’s blood into the Fomorian king’s face. Gricenchos snarled and snapped, but finally had to drop Fleece in order to wipe the blood from his eyes.

As Fleece tried to crawl away, his own side swarmed the area. Someone kicked him as they ran by and he sprawled on to his back, gazing up at the grey sky with the grey clouds drifting across it, bringing the promise of more snow. Then someone else stepped on his face and he gladly sank into unconsciousness.

When he woke, it was snowing and there were hands on him. He kept his eyes closed. The battle still raged, but it sounded further away. In the distance. The hands rifled through his pockets. The breath was foul. The touch was cold. Demon or human, he couldn’t tell. He cracked open one eye, then immediately closed it. A Fomorian. One of perhaps half a dozen who were combing the area. A small, scrawny thing. Not soldiers, but scavengers, picking through the dead and dying in search of valuables. He’d let them. He never carried anything of value on to a battlefield anyway. He didn’t own anything of value.

The Fomorian whispered curses in that strange language of theirs, and abruptly knelt on Fleece’s groin. Fleece shot up, howling, and the Fomorian leapt off him with a scream. Like frightened birds, the scavengers took off, leaving Fleece alone with the dead.

Soldiers, both human and demon, lay like freshly cut wheat around him, covered in a light frosting of snow. To the north, the fighting continued. Fleece didn’t know who was winning, and found he didn’t much care. Such was the cynicism of the battle-hardened warrior, he supposed. For that was what he was now, and no mistake. No more Fleece the Thoroughly Unsuited to Battle – instead, he would be Fleece the Cowardly, Fleece the Craven, or Fleece the One Who Drops to His Knees and Begs His Enemies Not to Kill Him. A proud name to have, to be sure.

He checked his face to see if he had any scars to showcase his deeds, maybe one along his cheekbone to emphasise how sharp they were. But while there was some swelling and bruising, there didn’t appear to be anything too dramatic. Well, maybe next time.

He was sore, though. All that pushing and jostling had taken its toll. Still, he’d picked a nice place to lie down. He settled back in the mud, arranged his arms in a suitably splayed pose, turned his head to the side and opened his mouth in a silent, frozen scream. The only good thing about battles in winter was the lack of flies on the bodies. When he’d played dead at battles in the summer, those lazy, bloated flies would buzz at his nose and ears and crawl into his mouth and he’d have to lie there and take it. He didn’t miss the flies. He missed the heat, of course. By the gods, it was freezing. If he continued to lie out in the snow like this, he’d catch his death.

He sat up, shivering, and saw a hand raised in the middle of a clump of bodies, its fingers curled. It was a familiar hand. He crawled over to it, grabbed the remains of a Hibernian soldier and grunted as he shoved it away. Beneath, still trapped under the bodies of more of Fleece’s countrymen, was the corpse of the Fomorian king.

Fleece looked around, wondering what the procedure was at a time like this. Surely if a king falls, that side automatically loses? But maybe word simply hadn’t spread. Maybe the demons were still fighting because no one had told them to stop.

Maybe no one knew that Gricenchos was dead.

A name entered Fleece’s mind, and it was not Fleece the Cowardly, or Fleece the Craven, or Fleece the One Who Drops to His Knees and Begs His Enemies Not to Kill Him. It was a new name. It was Fleece the Hero. And then it was Fleece the Demon Killer.

He seized the demon king’s headpiece, hands wrapping round the twin horns, and hissed with the effort of removing it. Finally it came free, and Gricenchos’s head rolled back. He didn’t look so tough now, being dead. Fleece briefly wondered if he should cut off the head, but decided against it. It would take too long, be too much trouble, and be much too disgusting. So he made do with the helmet, dropping it into a sack that had been used to carry arrows, before making his way back to the Hibernian camp. No more skulking around the edges of the battlefield for him, oh no. No more pretending to be dead, stinking of cow’s blood and trying not to snore. Corporal Fleece? Try Captain Fleece. Major Fleece. He grinned. General Fleece.

He kept his grin to himself as he reached the camp. He was ignored by everyone, as they rushed around tending to the multitudes of injured men. Messengers scuttled between tents, leapt on to horses or leapt off them. There was a lot of shouting, a lot of screaming, a lot of crying.

Fleece found the biggest tent, its entrance flanked by Royal Guards.

“What do you want?” one of the guards said, barely looking at him.

“They want me in there,” Fleece said, smiling with confidence.

His weapons had never been swords and spears, after all. His weapons had always been words. He could cut a man down with insults and build him up with flattery. With words, he could block, parry and riposte, reducing each and every opponent to a quivering, shivering wreck.

“I have important information for the high generals and the king. They said I should just walk in.”

Now the guard looked at him, frowning. “Who are you?”

“I’m the Hero of Drumree.”

“We’re in Drumree,” said the guard.

“I know,” said Fleece. “And that’s what they’re going to call me. Stand aside.”

The guard frowned, and did as he was ordered.

Fleece entered the tent. It was a magnificent place, bigger than his own house and infinitely more luxurious. At its centre was a large table, at which crowded the high generals, stabbing their fingers at a map and arguing loudly among themselves.

Fleece took a moment, absorbing the energy, figuring out the best way to approach. With all the sharp words and bluster, with all the blame being hurled back and forth, he realised the only way was his favourite way – using huge amounts of baseless confidence.

He strode to the table, gripped the sack by its underside and emptied the headpiece on to the map. It rolled to a stop, and the voices died down. The high generals stared at it, then at Fleece.

High General Cairbre was the first to speak. “That’s …”

Fleece nodded. “I took it from the Fomorian king’s head myself, after I killed him.”

Another high general slapped his hands flat on the table, like he needed support to keep from falling.

“He’s dead? Gricenchos is dead?”

“Indeed he is, sir.”

“That’s … That’s … Who are you?”

“Corporal Mordha Fleece, of General Tua’s Infantry, at your service.”

“Where is Tua?”

“Sadly cut down. He died a hero, a shining beacon of light to those who served under him. It was thanks to his inspiring leadership that I summoned the courage to do what I did. I’d like to recommend him for a medal of some description.”

“The Fomorian king is dead,” Cairbre muttered, and smiled. “He’s dead. We’ve won!”

“Not yet,” a thin-faced high general said. “The Fomorian Army still fights, and we continue to suffer heavy losses. We need something to inspire the troops.”

“Something …” Cairbre said, nodding. “Or someone.”

He looked directly at Fleece, who felt his smile fading.

“The troops need a leader,” Cairbre continued, “fighting alongside them. Now that Tua’s dead, they need a man to look up to. A man of courage, of fighting spirit. They need a hero.”

All the high generals were looking at Fleece now, and he was feeling quite nauseous.

“I’m no hero,” he croaked.

Cairbre smiled. “They need their king.”

Fleece almost collapsed with relief. “Yes. Yes, I agree. Their king. They need their king fighting alongside them.”

Such was the weight of his relief that it took him a moment to wonder about the feasibility of the fat slug engaging in any kind of physical activity that didn’t involve eating. And then he realised that the golden throne at the back of the tent was empty, and there was something behind it, lying beneath a gigantic sheet.

Cairbre came over, wrapped an arm round Fleece’s shoulders, started to walk him away from the others. “Our brave king died before the battle began,” he said in his ear. “Choked to death on a chicken bone. The royal physician tried to force it from his throat, but he could not reach round his royal girth to do so. The king is without heir. We need a hero, someone of noble virtue, to take his place and begin a new legacy.”

“You want to make me king?”

“Corporal Mordha Fleece, you said your name was? No. How about His Royal Majesty, King Mordha?”

Fleece was turned, and Cairbre placed both hands on his shoulders and pushed him down into the throne. A man in priestly vestments hurried over, mumbling words. He put the crown on Fleece’s head. It was too big, but nobody seemed to care. And then, like something out of a bad dream, it was over, and everyone was bowing down to him.

“Uh,” Fleece said.

Cairbre pulled him from the throne, led him from the tent. There were people fussing all around him, throwing a garb of fresh chain mail over him that was so bright and polished and golden he near blinded everyone he passed. A belt was tied round his waist, and a magnificent sword the length of his leg was hung from it, the tip dragging behind him like an anchor. Cairbre was telling him something about the battle, about tactics, about leading from the front, and the next thing Fleece knew he was stepping on someone’s specially stooped back and swinging his leg over a gigantic white horse, fit for a king.

His royal guard went with him, close in on all sides, making it impossible to break away. Together they thundered away from the camp, into the swirling snow, across the fields, down to the north end of the valley, to where the demons were, and the still-raging battle, and the axes and the swords and the dying.

The guard on his right turned to him as they rode, and shouted, “Orders, Your Majesty?”

Fleece stared at him, eyes wide, mouth hanging open. His vaunted words weren’t doing him much good here. His tongue, no matter how sharp, would scarcely nick the oily hides of the Fomorians they were charging towards. He tried remembering anything that the high general had said, but his mind remained stubbornly empty. Fleece the Hero. Fleece the King. Fleece the Forgotten. Fleece Who?

“Charge!” he finally shouted, even though they were already charging. It was something to say, he supposed.

The other men took out their swords, held them high and roared. Fleece grabbed his own sword, struggled with it, having to shift in his saddle to get it out of the sheath it was so damned long. He tried holding it aloft but by the gods it was heavy, and it dipped and stabbed the side of the horse next to him, making the horse go down and the guard who had spoken to him flip over and disappear from sight.

“Sorry!” Fleece yelled, but he could see the horse wasn’t fatally wounded and at least now there was a gap. He yanked on the reins, veering right. “The rest of you continue on!” he screeched. “I’m going to outflank them!”

He put his head down against the snow and dug in his heels, letting the ridiculous sword fall in order to hold on with both hands. Behind him, the royal guards smashed into the demon horde. He galloped for the trail between the trees.

Fleece the Abdicator. Fleece the Deserter. Sod it. Sod it all. They could call him whatever the hell they liked. He was Fleece the Living, and he was going to stay that way for as long as he bloody well could.