The Disposable Page 18

  “Break that!” he snapped, irrationally aiming the words towards the sky.

  Erik could barely believe what he was seeing. His companions were already moving, pouring down the tunnel that Slynder had opened, hurling themselves inside to ensure that there would be no escape for these insane, pinned-down soldiers. Only Elder remained, still slashing at the turret with raw, elemental force, desperate to keep them in place until the others were able to reach them. But why did those soldiers not simply surrender themselves? They were trapped, with nowhere to run to and nowhere to hide, and their deaths would be swift the moment Sir Roderick made it to join them. Could they not simply let the princess go?

  But then, Erik’s stomach plunged. What were they doing?

  “We have to jump!” The high-pitched, almost feminine voice of Sleiss’s killer was almost snatched away by the howling wind, but somehow Erik just managed to catch the words. “This side! If they can’t see us, his wind can’t lift us back up!”

  Elder started forwards, his eyes filled with horror, but it was already too late. Grabbing the princess in one hand and the still reeling guard in the other, the executioner of Sleiss hurled himself over to his other fellow’s side and, grabbing hold of him as well, launched himself and his three companions with a cry off the other side of the parapet. Erik jerked himself up in his saddle, desperate to keep them in sight, but it was no use—the curve of the jutting promontory on which the fortress had been built concealed them immediately from…

  …drop

  The Narrative was gone. But that was the least of Fodder’s concerns.

  “Gaaaahhhhh!” he shrieked.

  Wind, entirely unaided by any magical conceits, battered at his plummeting body, twisting him, slapping him, rattling his armour. His stomach had already been left far behind as he blinked through streaming eyes at the rapidly approaching swirl of the Tumbling River below them. He could still feel the hair of the writhing princess gripped in his left hand; the arm of a keening, whimpering, plunging Shoulders in his right; and Flirt’s hands gripping at the back of his belt frantically as they fell together in one big, messy ball of limbs and armour.

  “Keep together!” he screamed. “We have to stay attached!”

  He could feel that Flirt had already locked one of her arms through his sword belt and he saw the second lash out to drag Shoulders into their huddle as well. With very little concession to delicacy, Fodder yanked the now free, thrashing, and, in spite of the muffling effect of the gag, really rather impressively screaming princess into his arms as best he could and prayed she would be washed along with them. They would sink like a stone when they hit the water, but a bit of drowning they could survive as long as they weren’t separated.

  The water rocketed up to meet them.

  Fodder gritted his teeth. This was going to hurt.

  He was right.

  He managed one foggy half-second of damp consciousness as the water closed over him, but then the combined weight of three armoured bodies dragged all four of them downwards. A moment later, darkness engulfed him and dragged him into silence.

  * * *

  “Fodder! Fodder, bloody wake up, will you? Damn, you’re heavy! If we ever get home, you’re laying off the Daisy stew!”

  In Narrative, Fodder knew, an unconscious person often awoke to birdsong, to soft sheets, to an attentive nun tending his wounds in a quiet convent. It was rarer, he suspected, for a poor beleaguered victim to be brought round facedown and half in a puddle as his nose was dragged roughly along on a distinctly sharp bed of pebbles while a Barmaid friend swore like a trooper and yanked indelicately at his mail-clad armpits.

  Typical, really…

  “All right, I’m awake!” He offered a half-hearted swipe, and Flirt retaliated by letting him drop with a crunch onto the rock. His nose screeched in protest, and he obliged it by vocalising.

  “Ow!” he protested. “Bloody hell, Flirt!”

  “You have to get up!” A foot pushed with not inconsiderable force against his shoulder. “We have a problem, Fodder! A big problem!”

  “What else is new?” Groaning in a manner he considered highly appropriate to reflect the achiness of his body and the soreness of his lungs, Fodder pulled himself to his knees and blinked heartily. “Everyone okay?”

  The question had popped out automatically. He glanced up in time to see Flirt grimace.

  “I’m fine, just bruised and a bit drowned. But Shoulders…” Flirt gestured to one side and Fodder followed her gaze to find his fellow Disposable slumped against a nearby rock, groaning with even more fervour than Fodder had. One whole side of his helmetless head was swathed in blood. His bloodshot eyes rose groggily and met Fodder’s.

  “I tried to stop her, mate,” he stammered weakly. “I really did, but I was only half-conscious, and she’d already picked up this great pointy rock.…”

  A very nasty feeling fluttered into Fodder’s chest and lodged itself in place there.

  “What do you mean?” he managed, blinking the last of the water out of his eyes, but he knew, deep down, what Shoulders and Flirt were about to tell him. A moment later, his eyes had scanned the narrow beach onto which they had apparently been washed and solidified his fears. “Where’s the princess gone?”

  Flirt was chewing on her lip. “It looks like she woke up first, Fodder, and since that chain broke, she wasn’t restrained anymore. Shoulders woke up and saw her about to leave and he reached out and caught her leg but…” She sighed. “The princess grabbed a rock and…well. You can see what happened.” She pulled a face. “By the time I came to, she’d already disappeared. I left you two for a minute to see if I could catch up with her but…” She shook her head. “She was out of sight, and I couldn’t go on without you two, could I?”

  Oh bugger. We need the princess. They can fix the plot so easily if they get her back, and all this will have been for nothing.…

  “We have to go after her.” The words came out more resolutely than even Fodder had expected. “We have to get her back. No matter where she’s gone to. No matter who she’s with.”

  “No matter what a sodding pain she is,” Shoulders injected mordantly. “Wonderful.”

  “I know but…” Flirt sighed again, gustily. “But, Fodder, I followed her tracks and it’s not going to be easy. In fact, it’s going to be a nightmare. We’ll be going right into the heart of big trouble.” She met his eyes and her gaze was filled with disquiet. “She’s headed straight for the Magnificent City.”

  Official Taskmaster Summary:

  The Ring of Anthiphion:

  Part Four

  At the palace, they are greeted royally by the King and Queen and then by Prince Tretaptus, who has ridden in from Mond and agrees to have the wedding here. Islaine hates Tretaptus, who is pompous and arrogant, and when the band leave, she hides away in their party. They leave quickly at news that the Northern Wastes are crawling with creatures who claim that Craxis is coming just as the prophecy of Mydrella foresaw and that they will be defeated. As they go, the King, Prince Tretaptus, and Halheid’s cousin, the King of Sverdin, are massing their forces to defend themselves. The trail goes to the wild port of Saltania, where they encounter the thief trying to book passage up the Great Inlet to the Northern Wastes—it’s the High Lord of Sleiss’s brother Vagg! He has evil creatures at his command and his brother has given Sleiss, Sverdin’s neighbour, over to Craxis. He attacks them and Gort the dwarf is killed, taking Vagg’s axe for Erik. Erik, infuriated, takes him on but rather than fight, he flees into the mountains, saying that Craxis will rise and his brother will have Islaine, it has been promised!

  Fodder swore.

  And then he swore again.

  And then, just to be sure he’d done the job properly, he swore for a third time.

  Crouched at his side in the conveniently positioned copse of trees in which they’d taken shelter, Flirt gave a fairly hefty sigh. “That’s not going to help,” she remarked blandly.

  Fodder humphed
loudly. “It makes me feel better,” he retorted irritably. “Not much, but a little bit.”

  It was Shoulders who got straight to the point. “We’re buggered, aren’t we?”

  Flirt pulled a face. “Fairly buggered, yeah.”

  Because, quite simply, they’d been about ten minutes too slow.

  They’d known they had to catch up with the princess. It was as simple as that. In one respect, they had been lucky—with The Narrative snarled up in trying to clear up the mess it had encountered at the Grim Fortress, they’d managed to maintain their head start. And they’d also been fortunate in that the princess, obviously worn down by two whole days of rough living, had immediately headed for the comforts of the luxurious home she could see glistening on the horizon, rather than back up to the Grim Fortress, where The Narrative could have snared her more easily and instantly destroyed everything they’d been fighting to achieve.

  But in spite of their faster pace as they’d hurried across the neat countryside between the edge of the Least Savage Mountains and the valley of the Vast River where the Magnificent City was usually located, they failed to capture her. Desperation had clearly driven Pleasance to greater feats of endurance than Fodder would have ever expected. And so it was that just as darkness had begun to fall, they had reached the small copse often used by the Merry Band to survey the Magnificent City for the first time just in time to see a battered and muddy princess throw herself against the Respectable Gate on the west side of the City and be hurriedly bundled inside.

  That was when Fodder had decided to test the capabilities of his vocabulary. It had seemed appropriate.

  If they could have caught her before she’d entered the City, whisked her off again before anyone knew she had gotten free… But now, word was probably already being passed to the Taskmaster, and she’d be guarded and cared for, and The Narrative was probably already on its way.…

  They didn’t have much time.

  Fodder stole a moment of it to lean back against a convenient tree, breathing hard. It had been a sod of a day all told. Shoulders’s head wound had mostly healed up, but he still had an unfortunate habit of reeling off in the wrong direction if left unattended. Flirt and Shoulders had explained Grim’s betrayal and Cringe’s fence-balancing as they’d rushed along, sore and aching from their rough ride through the river. Fodder could see at once where it had gone wrong: Grim simply hadn’t been able to believe their plan could work. Somewhere inside, he’d wanted to, had liked the idea of all that glory, but in the end his mind was unable to comprehend the idea that a rebellion perpetrated by someone who didn’t look like a rebel could be destined to succeed. And so he’d gone running back to the safety of his preconceptions the moment they’d stupidly left him alone and dropped them in it from a great height in the process.

  Why hadn’t he realised what was going on in Grim’s mind? Why hadn’t he been able to see that even the Dark General’s massive ego wasn’t enough to outweigh a lifetime of the way things were?

  Because he’d hoped. He’d wanted to believe Grim believed it. That someone believed it who wasn’t him.

  But now was not the time for recriminations or pointless musing. It was the time for action.

  Because they had to get into the Magnificent City.

  Fodder had only ever been to the Magnificent City a couple of times in his life. He didn’t often need to. The City was more than well-furnished with Disposables and Ordinary folks of its own—which meant that, unlike in rural areas where Disposables were fewer and further between and often required to travel, the City rarely needed any extra numbers for Bulking Up.

  There had been a notable siege that had drawn in just about every killable man in the land a while before, and he’d Bulked Up a pursuit there that had ended with him milling around and chatting to the Artisans, but Fodder had never spent what could be called quality time within its walls. But it probably wouldn’t have mattered if he had. The Magnificent City, when it came to the specifics, was a very flexible place.

  Although the streets, the layout, the locations and architecture of buildings, and indeed the gradient of the very ground on which it stood were subject to constant change, in general terms, Fodder knew where most important parts of it were kept. He knew that the City was divided by the confluence of three rivers: The Tumbling River from the Least Savage Mountains, the Shining River from the Noble Plains, and the Vast River from the Savage Mountains divided the City into four distinct quarters. He knew the Respectable Quarter the best, where the Interchangeables, Artisans, and respectable Ordinary folks tended to live. It generally hosted the Respectable Inn and the Bustling Marketplace somewhere within it as well as an ever-changing mix of perfectly ordinary streets.

  Across the Tumbling River to the south lay The Seedy Quarter. Although Fodder had never been there, he was aware that it was host to the ambush maze known as the Winding Alleys, not to mention various brothels, the Seedy Inn, and the Malodorous Waterfront. Away from the Narratively utilised parts, however, lay the pleasant homes of the Dark Family and the Thieves and Courtesans. Though the set piece of a stinking, narrow, foul urban area was required by the Taskmaster, it hardly meant that people had to live there.

  It was across the Vast River to the east that the City became magnificent. South of the Shining River lay the Noble Quarter, admired by Fodder only from afar, home to the Mage and Noble families, location of the Knightly Barracks, the Tilt Yard, and the University. And, equally inaccessible to someone so Ordinary, to the north lay the Royal Quarter—steeped in rich magnificence, the sprawl of the Royal Palace and its gardens flanked by the off-duty homes of various current and retired Royal Family members, not to mention the small, neat cluster of buildings belonging to the Royal Servants and the Palace Guard. And though the Palace was rarely the same from one Quest to the next, the Artisans had been quick to insist it was always a sight to behold.

  Even more so than the Grand Temple.

  The Temple was, Fodder had to admit, a strange structure. Although the showy, ever-changing Narrative part of it was on occasion shifted to the mainland, the majority of the time it sat nestled on the island that lingered in the centre of the vast pool where the three great rivers of the land came and met. At the tail end of the island were the irrationally neat and orderly homes of the Officious Courtiers, Priests, and Scholars. But it was the small, grey building tucked to the Temple’s rear that had always intrigued Fodder the most. For when he’d asked what it was for, one of the Artisans had told him that it never moved, never changed, never wandered at all. In a shifting world, it was the only piece of permanence.

  Fodder had asked why. But the Artisan had simply shrugged and said it was hardly their concern.

  Curious though he still was, it wasn’t his concern right now either. His concern was how the heck to take what he knew of the City and use it to get inside and steal a princess again without getting caught.

  “Well,” he heard Shoulders mutter quietly. “Now what?”

  As twilight gathered, Fodder squinted up at the stars that were slowly but surely phasing into view.

  “We still have to get her back,” he replied wearily. “And The Narrative is probably already on its way, so we’ll have to be quick.”

  “We could dump our armour,” Flirt suggested, although the look on her face implied that this was something she only offered out of desperation. “Swim in under the river gate.”

  But Shoulders was already shaking his head. “I’ve had enough of rivers,” he stated emphatically. “More than bloody enough. But we’re armoured up and nobody down there knows us. Why not just dump the Sleiss livery and walk up to the gate? If we tell them we’re Bulking Up, they probably won’t even blink.”

  “No, but they might pin us to the floor and keep us there until Strut arrives,” Flirt pointed out grimly. “I can’t imagine they haven’t thrown around our descriptions.”

  Fodder was only half listening as he stared down into the gathering gloom at the city walls and
the strange dark patch by the edge of the river gate that had caught his eye. Suddenly, he smiled.

  “Or,” he piped up, pointing carefully, “we could go in there.”

  Shoulders’s expression dropped instantly. “No.”

  But Fodder was not to be deterred. He grinned. “Come on, Shoulders,” he said with manic cheer. “You’re the one who keeps saying that life is going down the drain. So why not climb back up the drain again?”

  Shoulders fixed him with a pointed glare. “Because it will be disgusting. You seriously expect us to crawl into the city through the sewers?”

  Flirt, however, was looking thoughtful. “It’s an idea, isn’t it? Most Narrative cities aren’t even supposed to have them, so who goes there? We could get right across the Respectable Quarter, and no one would see us.”

  “If we can find our way,” Shoulders retorted acerbically. “We’ll be underground. How will we even know we’re going in the right direction?”

  “Well, we’re heading for the classier end of the city,” Fodder remarked with an outright grin. “So we look out for a better class of debris.”

  “Debris,” Shoulders echoed sarcastically. “We all know what that’s a polite word for, don’t we?” He looked from Fodder to Flirt grimly but found little mercy in either face. His shoulders dropped wearily.

  “You do realise we are going to regret this, don’t you?” he muttered with profound resignation. “You will remember when we’re knee deep in I-don’t-want-to-think-about-what that I said this was a bad idea.”

  “Of course we will.” Fodder had always found it easier to agree with Shoulders than try to persuade him.