The Disposable Page 11

  “I doubt it.” A second voice, weaselly and as common as the other, bit down a yawn as it joined the first. “They’re too busy having their backsides whipped by that sadist Thud. But I’ve been up a whole day and night now and if I don’t get a sit-down and an ale, I’m going to go insane.”

  “Do you reckon Stout will mind?” Footsteps, a pair of them, were getting closer and closer to the still-wide-open stable gate, a position from which only a blind man could fail to see what was going on inside. Oh let this be it, let me be rescued! Please!

  “Thump, mate, he’ll cheer us on. Now come on. I need a serious amount of drink before going out into those woods again.”

  Closer, closer, closer, come on, come on, come on…

  “And after all,” the voice continued, rounding the corner, so close to the gate, see them, come on, see them, save me! “They’ll be long gone by now. The odds of us just blundering across them are—”

  The corner was rounded. The voice faded away. Two figures dressed in unexpectedly shiny armour wandered into view, stared, faltered, and froze. And behind her gag, Pleasance screamed with joy.

  I’m going to be saved! Vengeance is mine!

  But vengeance, it seemed, was slow off the mark. Why was no one moving?

  * * *

  Fodder stared at Thump and Clunny.

  Thump and Clunny stared back.

  And then Clunny’s shoulders dropped wearily. “Oh bloody hell,” he muttered fervently. “You couldn’t have hidden or something?”

  Fodder blinked. “Pardon?”

  “I just wanted a sit-down and a break.” Clunny gritted his teeth as he fingered the short sword he’d been carrying loosely in one hand. “And now I’ve got to arrest my mates instead.” He groaned out loud, his tone irritably plaintive. “I didn’t want to be the one who had to do this.”

  “Well then, don’t.” Shoulders was not one for beating around the bush. “Go and have your pint, and we won’t tell if you don’t!”

  Thump’s expression was resigned as he hefted his axe. “We can’t do that, can we?” he muttered wearily. “They’ll drag us off to the Grim Fortress right along with you.” He shook his head. “Come on, lads…Flirt. Just toss us the princess and come quietly, yeah? We don’t want to get into a fight with you.”

  Flirt moved slowly away from where Fodder had secured the final clinch in the horses’ reins, her eyes fixed warily upon the two new arrivals.

  “Shoulders, get the princess,” she instructed quietly.

  “What?” Fodder could feel a wellspring of alarm threatening to bubble up his throat. Surely Flirt wasn’t giving up so easily. She couldn’t. “But we can’t just…”

  “And put her in the carriage.” Flirt finished the sentence very deliberately. “We’re leaving. And they’re not going to stop us.”

  “Hey, now hold on.” As if by magic, the alarm that had been building in Fodder transferred instantly onto the faces of Clunny and Thump. Thump moved one step away from his friend, his features suddenly nervous as he watched Shoulders hoist the wild-eyed and incredulously infuriated princess and haul her to the waiting carriage door. “You’ve had your moment of madness, but it’s over. If you turn yourselves in, admit you made a mistake, they might even go easy on you.”

  “What mistake?” Fodder decided it was time to get to the point. “We didn’t make a mistake. We made a beginning.”

  Clunny’s narrow face hardened sharply. “This is last night again, isn’t it?” he snapped abruptly. “All that rubbish you were spouting over supper about defying the Taskmaster! Well, fine, Fodder, you’ve proved your stupid little point! You’ve managed to upset everything and everyone, bully for you, aren’t you clever? But enough is enough. It’s time to stop.”

  Over his shoulder, Fodder caught a glimpse of Shoulders peering through the carriage window with the incandescently furious princess at his side. Behind him, he heard rather than saw Flirt climbing into place on the coachman’s seat with a rustle of leather as she grasped the reins.

  “This isn’t about proving a point,” he retorted softly. “I don’t want to make some statement that they’ll brush under the carpet and ignore. I want to make people see from our point of view. I want to be treated with respect and given an equal chance in life.” He cringed over the words he was about to say, but they really were the only ones he could come up with to summarise his hopes. “Don’t you see? I want things to be different. I want to change the world.”

  Clunny snorted. “Don’t want much, do you?” His fellow Disposable had always been a fidgeter but now his limbs were twitching so hard that Fodder wondered if his friend was about to have a seizure. “Change the world? There’s nothing wrong with it!”

  Fodder grimaced. “So you enjoy getting chopped up and left in a ditch then?”

  Clunny’s shrug was a tiny bit too quick. “It’s a better living than some. It’s better than being background.”

  “But what if you had the chance to be foreground?”

  Clunny gritted his teeth. “What chance? We’re Ordinary.”

  “Only because the Taskmaster says so!”

  “And who’ll say so if the Taskmaster doesn’t? Huh?” Clunny’s narrow face thrust forwards angrily, the veins on his neck standing out in an alarming manner. “So we do ignore the Taskmaster, what then? What do we do with ourselves? What’s the point?”

  Fodder found himself slightly at a loss in the face of his friend’s sudden insight. But he ploughed on regardless. “The point’s whatever we want it to be!”

  “You mean whatever you want it to be!” Clunny stabbed his sword viciously into the air as though to emphasise his point. “You want to write the world to your tune, do you? You bang on about the Taskmaster bossing us around, but if you want to make our world over without our say-so, how does that make you any different?”

  Fodder actually found himself floundering. “We just want a choice.…”

  “We have a choice! Like it or lump it!”

  “But if things were different…”

  “What makes you think we want them different? Some of us are quite happy to have the world the way it is! And if it’s a choice between trusting the all-powerful Taskmaster who’s looked after us for generations or relying on you to run the world, I know where my money’s going!”

  Thump was glancing from one Disposable to the other with an expression of outright confusion on his face. It was clear that he wasn’t really following what was being said. But Clunny’s eyes were all too clear.

  Fodder knew at once that this was an argument he wasn’t going to win.

  He tried to ignore the cold, nagging doubt that Clunny’s words had lodged in the back of his mind. But he knew he’d have to face it later.

  There was a hint of bewildered desperation in Thump’s eyes now. “Look, why don’t you give us the princess?” he suggested, his fingers twisting nervously around the axe shaft. It was clear he was longing for Ronald the cudgel—his solid, reassuring weapon of choice, something familiar in a sea of strange confusion. “You can go. We don’t want to arrest our mates. But we need you to hand the princess over.”

  Clunny didn’t look so certain about this compromise, but it seemed he was fairly willing to take any option that would make this no longer his problem. “I’ll go with that. You can wander off and go barmy in private, all three of you. It’s not like you’re going to get anywhere. But you have to give the princess back.”

  It was a genuine option, Fodder had to admit. If they were able to evade capture, they could most likely remain incognito in a new and distant corner of the map.

  No. Events had come too far. That was never going to happen.

  Thump and Clunny were still blocking the entrance to the stable yard as Fodder backed away past the horses, groping for the coachman’s ledge. Flirt’s hand caught his and helped haul him upwards. He gave his friends a thin smile.

  “Sorry, lads,” he said, quite sincerely, knowing the trouble they were likely to get i
nto over this. “But we’re leaving. All four of us.” His eyes met Clunny’s. “Like it or lump it.”

  Thump squared himself off unconvincingly. “You’ll have to get past us first!” he blustered loudly.

  “Through you, actually,” Flirt noted clinically. “I reckon the kind of non-Narrative damage you’ll pick up from being run over by a carriage will take a few days to heal. But you’ll get your rest that way, won’t you?”

  Fodder could see in their eyes doubt waging war with incredulity. Was Flirt bluffing? Was she really as bold as she’d always claimed? Would she really charge straight at them and run down two long-time customers and part-time friends?

  One whip of the reins proved the answer to be yes.

  “This is for every time you two have leered at my fake chest! Yah!”

  It took every ounce of strength Fodder possessed to cling on to the ornately decorated carriage seat as the surge of abrupt motion sent his head ricocheting painfully off the wooden panels behind him. The horses, already spooked and distinctly irritated by the cack-handed attempts to hitch them, took off with considerable gusto, pounding towards the open gate where Clunny and Thump were still standing, with hooves mashing the dirt floor into pulp. In spite of the relative evenness of the surface, the carriage bounced impossibly, wheels jerking and hurling Fodder from side to side like a rag doll as he dug his fingernails into the wood and prayed with all his might.

  He managed not to close his eyes, though it was a close-run thing. It took an astonishingly short amount of time to close down on the wide-eyed, horrified faces of Clunny and Thump. With mere inches between them and a mangled week in bed, both leapt out of their path and dived for cover.

  Flirt yanked sharply on the reins as they plunged through the gate and out onto the road. They took the resulting corner on two wheels.

  Closing his eyes was no longer an option. It was a necessity.

  Over the pounding of the horses’ hooves, the rattle of wheels, and the clatter of wood—not to mention the frantic, insane pounding of his own heartbeat—there was no mistaking Clunny’s voice bellowing into the morning.

  “Over here! They’re over here! In the village! They’ve taken the carriage!”

  In spite of himself, Fodder risked a glance to his right. Over the top of the smear of green that was all he could make out of the Rambling Woods, he saw a patch of too-vivid light wheel and lurch in their direction.

  “The Narrative!” he bellowed though gritted teeth. “It’s coming!”

  He heard the reins whip once more. “Hold on!” Flirt shouted.

  “To what?”

  He could hear voices now, see more streaks of colour surging out of the woods as the searchers converged upon Clunny’s yell as the carriage lurched and careered even more madly up the trail. A cluster of Palace Guards in shiny armour surged out onto the road mere yards ahead—Fodder ducked barely in time as the hurriedly swung axe of one of them embedded itself in the wooden panel where his head had been moments before.

  This time, there was no avoiding a collision. The carriage pounded a shiny figure into the mud with a sickening crunch and a bounce that sent Fodder flying, his precarious grip finally torn free. Ironically, it was the axe that saved him, its protruding haft deflecting his tumble towards the road and providing a last precious handhold. His feet scrabbled for a moment in wild air but his grip held firm. Grasping the seat once more, he pulled himself back on board.

  But for how long?

  He could almost smell The Narrative, stalking them from behind, limited only by the speed of those whose exploits it dictated, a taper of bright light tugging at the rear end of the carriage as it sought to drag it into its hold. Fodder could feel the sick, syrupy feeling of it lapping at them, and he knew that the moment the Merry Band caught a glimpse of them, they would be caught, held, drawn in…

  Further up this trail lay the lower reaches of the Tumbling River, where, Fodder knew, the road divided three ways: left up to the Bandit Pass and the Trapper Station; straight on towards the dusty devastation of the Battle Ground, the Stinking Marsh, and various bastions of darkness; and right to the Magnificent City and the Noble Plains. And the junction was on the edge of the Rambling Woods that had so far protected them from being caught in a Narrative sightline. Their cover was running out.

  He was certain that Flirt was planning to turn left, up into the Least Savage Mountains to seek out the surly Trappers and plead for their support. But she didn’t know The Narrative as he did, for she’d never been under its command in open space before, never seen the way it could reach out and envelop anything within eyeshot—and the hairpin bends of the Bandit Pass were clearly visible from below. The Narrative would have them, and though Fodder was certain that Flirt would have the strength to fight it, he was forced to admit an equal certainty that Shoulders wouldn’t. And Shoulders had the princess right now. One glimpse would be enough.

  But where else could they go? Straight on into the wide open plains that hosted a regular succession of Final Battles? No, they’d be visible for miles that way. And right, over the narrow stone bridge, would only hurry them out into more open country, past the thinning edge of the woods and out towards the Magnificent City, straight into enemy hands.

  Unless…

  All they had to do was stay out of sight. If The Narrative didn’t see them, it couldn’t catch them. If they could reach the bridge before the Merry Band turned the corner, then…

  Touch…

  “I see them!”

  Erik felt a surge of triumphant glee. Elder had been right! It had just been a glimpse in between the trees, a hint of dark wood and a fleeting sight of two figures crouched on the driver’s seat, one wearing the somewhat tattered livery of a Sleiss soldier, but…

  …slips

  Flirt gasped and lurched, clutching at her chest as her grip on the reins faltered. Grabbing them more firmly, her face set into a stubborn mask, she whipped the faltering horses back up to speed. She’d been caught unawares. Fodder was sure she had also felt the powerful, insidious urge to slow down, pull back, allow the Merry Band to catch up.

  Time was running out.

  The trees were thinning. Ahead, Fodder caught a distant glimpse of the old crossroad gallows and the open country beyond. It was closing faster than he’d like.

  “Turn right!” he bellowed. “At the crossroads! We have to turn right!”

  One glance at Flirt’s pale, incredulous face was enough to show that she had yet to follow his reasoning.

  “Towards the city? Are you barking? We need to hide! The mountains—”

  “They’d see us on the pass! We’d have to wade through The Narrative!”

  “But the city—”

  “Not the city! The river!” He was struggling out of his mail coat, a perilous course in such an unstable position. “On the bridge! We have to jump before they see us and hide under the bridge!”

  “What?” The exclamation was dual—Fodder hadn’t even seen that Shoulders had pulled open the sliding hatch between driver and passengers, clinging to the rim by his fingertips until his voice rose up to join Flirt’s.

  There was no more time to explain. “Trust me! Shoulders, you have to bring the princess! Flirt, we have to jump!”

  Neither of his friends’ faces was filled with joy and happiness at this prospect. But there was just enough resignation to tell Fodder that they’d do it.

  Which was just as well, since they hadn’t got any other plan ready and waiting.

  The mail coat was off, along with the livery. Pulling off his helmet, Fodder draped it awkwardly over the protruding axe haft and used his headgear to jam it in place. It wouldn’t hold for long, he was sure, but as long as there were enough glimpses of Sleiss livery to satisfy The Narrative until the horses ran out of puff…

  Here came the junction.…

  At least this time Fodder had the axe to cling to as two wheels left the ground. The edge of the woods dropped away from them as the road arched out
into green fields strewn with distant castles, quiet villages, and the sparkling mass of the Magnificent City out on the horizon…

  Glimpse…

  …flash of the carriage and its Sleiss driver as it plunged around the corner of the junction that had just appeared ahead…

  …lost

  Fodder gasped, the wind knocked half out of him as the carriage righted itself once more. The touch of Narrative had been slight, but it had been enough to tell him that the Merry Band were close, within sight of the junction and closing fast. They wouldn’t have much time to get out of view once they bailed.…

  Ahead, the Tumbling River sparkled as it cut the road in two, though whether the sparkle was with invitation or menace, Fodder couldn’t be sure. The narrow stone bridge arched across it pointedly. Closer, closer, closer…

  “Get ready!” he screamed.

  He heard the door latch release, heard the carriage door slam back as Shoulders braced to leap for it with the muffled-shrieking princess in tow. After one last determined yank intended to aim the horses squarely at the bridge, Flirt abandoned the reins and grabbed hold of the opposite corner of the driver’s seat. Fodder grasped his sword belt and scabbard desperately as he braced himself for the coming impact.

  Blue water rippled as it surged beneath the stone, carrying with it a wooden prow…

  Wait, was that a boat?

  Sod it. Too late now.

  “JUMP!!!!!”

  And then everything was swirling.

  Air buffeted him viciously as he hurled himself outwards with all his strength, flipping over and over as he tumbled, stone, sky, water, stone, sky, water, stone, sky…

  Water.

  The impact hurt far more than it reasonably should have. Water surged around him, filling his nose and mouth as a solid weight bore down on top of him, sending him hurtling ever deeper. It took him a moment to realise that the impact he had felt had not been the water alone, that something heavy and metallic had slammed down on top of him as he’d hit the river surface.