The Disposable Read online

  “I don’t want to be remembered like this!” The wail was slightly muffled but distinct enough to make out. “Not as a laughingstock! Not as a failure!”

  Fodder shrugged slightly. “At least you’ll be remembered, Your Highness. That’s the difference between you and me. I appear a hundred times In Narrative and get killed and it’s never mentioned again. But if you appear once In Narrative and die, it changes the whole story. And that’s why I’m doing this.” He leaned closer, searching in her pale eyes for some hint of understanding. “Because I don’t see why it should be you and not me.”

  There was a muffled snort. “You want to be a princess? The dress wouldn’t suit you!”

  Fodder ignored the sarcasm. “But why is it always princesses and knights and secret kings who ride off on these Quests? That’s what you need to understand. Why is it never someone Ordinary?”

  This time the snort was joined by a muffled laugh of disdain. “Because Ordinary is boring! Honestly, you stupid Disposable! Who’d want to hear about you?”

  The moment of pity dissolved in her acidic retort. Hefting his axe, Fodder rested it squarely against the narrow neck pressed to the parapet.

  “When I’m done,” he told her, his voice rich with determination, “everyone.”

  Propping the axe briefly against his knees, he reached down to secure the gag once more.

  “No! No, you can’t do this to me! The Narrative won’t let you! The Narrative will protect me! You won’t gegemmphmmph!”

  The gag restored, Fodder rested the axe back against her neck once more, holding the wriggling, chained-up Royal caterpillar in place by planting his foot firmly against her velvet-clad buttocks. But in one respect, he was forced to admit, the blonde brat did have a point.

  For their biggest problem remained The Narrative.

  The trouble was that The Narrative had the whole world at its command. Fodder knew, as they all did, that there had to be some limitation, that the ability to do anything in a character was pretty much shooting any hope of creating an atmosphere of peril and danger in the future in the foot. But how far could The Narrative be stretched in order to bring them back into line? How far would the Taskmaster actually go if it meant a return to the plan?

  And would Fodder still be able to resist it?

  He always assumed that since he’d broken with The Narrative once, he’d have no trouble doing so again. But the planting incident had shaken him badly. The way the Taskmaster had pushed into his head, twisted his thoughts, even out of Narrative… It hadn’t been ready for him that first time. It hadn’t been prepared. Now it was.

  Was he?

  He wasn’t sure. But he was going to try. He had to.

  The vivid light of Narrative was pounding its way towards the ridge top. Any second now and he would be in view.

  He needed to keep the princess out of Narrative for as long as possible. Pleasance was right: It would protect her with all it had, and the longer it had to work out ways to free her from her restraints…

  That meant he’d have to do more In Narrative manoeuvring. But he could do it. He was sure he could.

  Grabbing the princess, he hauled her backwards and dumped her unceremoniously below the line of the crenulations. And then, with scant regard for her dignity, he sat on her.

  The muffled squeal was oddly satisfying.

  Ducking his head carefully to stay below the line of the battlements, Fodder glanced over to the entrance, where sounds of metallic clanking implied the Dark General was adjusting his armour.

  “Grim,” he called out. “Are you ready?”

  There was a clatter of armour from the top of the stairwell. “I suppose so.”

  Fodder shook his head. Why couldn’t he have spoken with a bit more confidence?

  “You remember what you have to do?” he called back one last time.

  “Marry her, pose a bit, order the kill. I’ve got it.”

  Fodder squared his shoulders. Well, at least he had it firmly in mind.…

  I need this to work. It has to work. I can’t let The Narrative beat me. I can’t let the Taskmaster win.

  Please, please, please…

  Any second now and…

  Vivid light washed over the battlements above his head as Fodder pulled himself deeper into the protective lee of the wall, watching as The Narrative engulfed the visible parts of the Grim Fortress in what Fodder was certain was a most evocative description. But after a few moments of descriptive attention, the light paled and waned a little, a cursory-glance kind of light as the Merry Band observed what lay before them. There was no pinpoint of attention, no flat-out assault, but Fodder knew without question that any movement into that light would nonetheless catch a Principal’s attention. Someone’s hawklike eyes would spot him. That was just the way it worked.

  He had to time this perfectly. He had to wait until they were close enough to clearly see what was happening but not give them enough time to sneak inside by a secret passage that someone of their number was bound to find. If they got inside, all bets were off.

  He had to get them to stand before the gates. Somehow.

  And maybe…

  Oh please, let this be the right thing. You can do this, Fodder. You can do it. You can do it.…

  Twisting round, Fodder pushed himself off his Royal cushion and…

  Light…

  “There!” Zahora’s finger snapped out, pinpointing a remote turret as her hawklike eyes fixed upon a shadowy figure that had just appeared, silhouetted against the battlements. “A guard!”

  “Has he seen us?” Slynder slipped back deeper behind the rocks amongst which they had concealed themselves. “That tunnel I know of won’t be much use if they see us coming!”

  “I am not certain.” Sir Roderick was peering round the edge of the rocky outcrop as carefully as he dared as he observed the Sleiss guardsman lingering before them. “He does indeed seem disconcertingly focussed upon our…”

  “We know you’re there!” The voice was a bellow, distant from the faraway tower but magnified by the bouncing echoes that rode from mountain to mountain in the towering gorge before them. “The High Lord of Sleiss would speak with you, bold adventurers! He invites you to ride and stand before his gates! He wishes you to join him as he celebrates his marriage to the Princess Islaine! Come willingly or we shall have to fetch you! Or would you rather we just threw you her head?”

  “Infamy!” Sir Roderick’s voice was a snarl. “The black dog! I shall rend…

  …shade

  The princess gave a muted shriek as Fodder dropped heavily back on top of her once more, pressing his back against the battlements as he breathed rapidly. It’d worked! He’d done it! Oh, he’d felt The Narrative pulling at him, encouraging him to turn away and allow the Merry Band to sneak inside unhindered, but he’d fought it off, said his piece, drawn the lines. Surely they’d have no choice but to do as he’d goaded.…

  He hoped they wouldn’t.

  But for now, until they reached the gates, all he could do was wait.

  * * *

  “I just think we’d be better off waiting downstairs, that’s all! I mean, if the Merry Band does sneak in here with The Narrative, we’ll get butchered anyway, and what’s our only escape route? A thousand-foot leap out of a window that’s probably too narrow for us anyway! But if we went down and waited in that room full of armour, at least we’d stand a chance of making it to one of those secret passages before they clapped us in irons and dragged us off to Grim’s dungeons to sit strapped to a rack for the rest of our days.…”

  Shoulders tailed off, slowing from his frantic circling of Grim’s ornately carved desk and eyeing Flirt with abrupt suspicion. “Are you listening to me?”

  In point of fact, Flirt hadn’t been. Like most of the Humble Villagers, she’d long ago raised tuning out Shoulders’s grumblings to a fine art. But she also had enough common sense not to admit it.

  “You want to be downstairs.” She’d caught that part,
at least. “I heard you, didn’t I?”

  Shoulders folded his arms, regarding her with one eyebrow firmly raised. “You’re thinking about gutting Grim again, aren’t you?”

  “No.” It was a lie, but Flirt wasn’t about to admit it.

  “Fodder told you to forget about it.”

  “Fodder’s not the one he called”—Flirt ground her teeth, refusing to let the hated moniker pass her lips—“that name, is he? I was stood there, dressed in armour, and he still…”

  “Called you a we—”

  “Don’t say it.”

  Much to her irritation, Shoulders chuckled. “You’ve never got this worked up about it before. What is it about Grim popping it out that’s rattled your chain so hard?”

  “It was part of the job before.” Flirt fingered her sword soothingly. I am not a Barmaid anymore. I am a fully armed warrior. I should get some respect. “I had to put up with it; I had no choice, did I? Now I don’t have to.”

  There was something distinctly irksome about the amusement on Shoulders’s face. “So you’re going to gut everyone who uses it? Wouldn’t it at least be fair to warn them first?”

  Flirt indulged herself with a brief grin. “Would you warn Clank?”

  The arms uncrossed in an instant. The left hand flew instinctively to the side of his neck. “Would I bollocks!”

  “Exactly!” Flirt punctuated the exclamation with a jabbing finger. “I know you don’t want to be here, Shoulders, but for me, this is what it’s all about. While the Taskmaster is in charge of everything, I’ve got no choice but to be slapped on the bum and called…that, any more than you can make Clank stop slicing your head off. But if this works…” She smiled beatifically. “I can say no. So can you. We can get some respect at last from all the smug bastards who take advantage of the fact we get no say.” The smile hardened slightly. “And maybe as we go along, we can even get our own back.”

  The smile that slid over Shoulders’s face was remarkably similar to her own. “I like the sound of that.”

  “I thought you might.” Grinning slightly, Flirt glanced at the window, at the vivid light lapping at the glass. Fodder was up there In Narrative. There was so much at stake.…

  It was no good. If she sat here pondering, she’d only worry.

  “Why don’t we check downstairs like you said?” she offered, pulling herself to her feet as she slid out from behind the overgrown desk. “I think you had a point earlier.”

  That she had no idea what that point might have been didn’t matter. Shoulders was at the door in seconds, dragging it open and vanishing down with what Flirt considered to be unseemly haste. Whatever his point had been, he’d clearly been quite anxious about it. Drawing a deep breath, Flirt hurried after him.

  She could hear the jangling of his mail a moment before her own footsteps drowned it out. The spiral steps flashed before her as she gained momentum, but then as she rounded the final turn before the first floor landing, she barrelled round the corner and crashed straight into Shoulders’s immobile back.

  She staggered as he did, both clinging for an instant to the walls to prevent an undignified double tumble. Flirt half-opened her mouth to inquire exactly why in the heck he had chosen such an inauspicious spot to grind to a halt, but to her astonishment, one gauntleted hand flashed out and slapped across her mouth. At her indignant expression, he pulled a face, but the anxiety writ large and vibrant in his features stilled the retorts she had been mustering. With a jerk of his head, he gestured downwards.

  Flirt followed his gaze and gasped. The door to the first floor room was standing slightly ajar.

  And from within came a very familiar voice.

  * * *

  It was time.

  Narrative light had engulfed the top of the turret utterly. Fodder could hear the Merry Band below, calling up their lyrical defiance, demanding they show themselves, demanding answers. The unexpected and glorious triumph of the High Lord of Sleiss was finally nigh.

  As was the death of Princess Islaine.

  He was going to show them. The Narrative would not command him. Whatever it wanted was exactly what he wasn’t going to do. He knew he could just kill her the moment he came into view. But somehow, that wasn’t enough. One small act of defiance was one thing. But if he could show them that he could take their plot and twist it his way, take the Taskmaster’s intentions and make them his own…

  No. He was determined. He wasn’t going to fear The Narrative. He was going to defeat it. And he was going to do it with character. Not the character the Taskmaster had tried to plant either. It would be a character of his choosing.

  And so, with a deep breath, Fodder grasped the bound and gagged form of the princess and thrust himself up into view.

  * * *

  “I was coming to tell you. Honestly! I was on my way to find you when you collared me on the stairs!”

  It was Cringe. And though there was no hint of vivid light from the gap in the door below, he did sound quite alarmingly in character.

  “I can’t believe you could think any differently. You know me, Hauteur. Since when do I want any trouble?”

  Hauteur! Flirt didn’t need Shoulders’s horrified mouthing of the name to feel her stomach drop like a stone. An Officious Courtier, here in the turret!

  “Well, you have trouble.” The low, unfamiliar voice was unmistakably Courtier-ish. No one could insert a sneer into a sentence in quite the way that they could. “Grim has told me everything. Indeed, thanks to his diligence, I was able to overhear your deliberations for myself from this very room and pass them to the Taskmaster. Your little coup is ready to be crushed, Cringe.”

  Flirt’s stomach stopped plummeting in favour of quietly imploding. They know. Oh bloody hell, we’re doomed.…

  “My coup?” Cringe’s voice was rife with indignation. “This has nothing to do with me! I was only trying to help the Taskmaster sort this mess out!”

  Hauteur gave an imperious snort. “And you expect me to believe that? When I met Grim an hour ago and he confessed it all, it wasn’t hard to persuade him his best interests lay in loyalty. He then also imparted to me that you had made some effort on behalf of the transgressors to sway him to their side. Fortunately, he had the wherewithal to inform me immediately of what was afoot and the fortitude to play along with them as I, on behalf of the Taskmaster, required him to. He will be appropriately rewarded with an expanded role—mostly, I imagine, taken from tasks that would have been yours. Whereas your fellow conspirators are doomed. Once they are In Narrative, the matter will be swiftly resolved.”

  Fodder. Shrapnel from the implosion tore violently at her guts. Oh no, he’s up there alone with no idea we’ve been betrayed.…

  “I was testing him out!” Cringe insisted fervently. “He’s forever whining on about how little glory he gets, and I had to make sure he wasn’t likely to blow this for me by developing sympathies!” He gave a gusty sigh. “I’ve been working on this ever since I got my hands on them. I could have left them be, you know, or called the guards and made a big messy scene of it where all those Ordinary folks were watching! But you’d already told me how desperate Strut is to keep this thing under wraps, so I thought, when they fell in my lap, how can I keep this quiet the best? And then it occurred to me. All I had to do was get them to come here!”

  Flirt met Shoulders’s eyes, her expression filled with horrified rage and his with a distinct hint of I-told-you-so. Cringe the Dark Henchman had, it seemed, decided to live up to his weaselly Narrative reputation.

  “And if you had failed?” Hauteur’s tone was icy. “What if we had faced another Quickening incident because of your selfishness?”

  “Another what?” For an instant, Cringe spoke for Flirt.

  “Nothing you need concern yourself with.” Hauteur’s retort was swift and stern, although Flirt did detect a tiny hint of alarm behind his words that she didn’t quite understand. “I asked that you explain yourself. Continue.”

  “I knew
if I could get them to trust me, I could do it.” There was a vaguely boastful tone to Cringe’s voice. “If I could persuade them to come with me to the Grim Fortress, how much trouble would it be to clap them quietly in irons and hustle them down to the dungeons? No fuss, no mess, no outcry, no one asking awkward questions about why they’ve been arrested as you drag them kicking and screaming through the countryside. But I couldn’t blow my cover until I was sure we had them cornered, so I foisted them off on Grim so I’d have time to come and find you, only to find he’d beaten me to it. If Grim told you I tried to persuade him, surely he also told what I said about what we could do if he didn’t want to play.”

  There was a moment of ominous silence, finally broken by a rather grudging Hauteur. “He did mention you suggested they could be quietly locked up if he chose not to participate,” the Officious Courtier conceded. “Very well then. I will admit you did appear to be acting in the interests of the Taskmaster. But don’t think I won’t be watching you from now on.”

  Flirt barely heard Cringe’s release of breath over the thundering of her own heartbeat. “I wouldn’t expect anything less.”

  * * *

  And then, from the top of the silent, brooding tower came a sudden flurry of movement. From beneath the shadow of the parapet, the same Sleiss guard who had hailed them rose abruptly into view, his mail gleaming, his vicious, hook-pointed axe gripped firmly in one hand. Even from their distance and beneath the pall of his heavy helmet, Erik saw his cold smile.

  “My lords and ladies,” he sneered condescendingly, “welcome to this grim fortress.”