The Disposable Read online

  Thump forced a grin. “I’ve always thought if I hadn’t been born human, it might have been fun to be an AFC, with all that leaping and wailing and tooth-gnashing they get to do. Minions of Darkness get all the fun. It’d make a nice change from standing around in rusty armour getting slaughtered just to break up The Narrative a bit.”

  “…and Erik felt a fury well within him as he faced the killers of his uncle, a power deep inside that he’d never truly touched before, never known that he was capable of…”

  Fodder wasn’t entirely sure why he couldn’t fight the strange urge to stir up a subject his friends clearly did not find comfortable, but something was itching at his soul and nothing but speaking out could scratch it. “A nice change. Yeah.” He took a deep breath, wondering if he really had the nerve to say the words out loud, to articulate these secret, private thoughts. “But don’t you lads ever wonder…why?”

  “…as we move into The Ring of Anthiphion Part Two! Approaching the mountains…”

  Thump pulled a face at him as he wiped an ale-foam beard from his chin. “Why what?”

  Fodder frowned. Go on. Just say it. Just do it. “Why we have to do this? Getting chopped up and left in bits in ditches? Why does it have to be us?”

  “…told Sir Roderick that he must return to Nyolesse, for the wedding of Princess Islaine to Prince Tretaptus of Mond was fast approaching, and with the threats made against the princess by her rejected, embittered ex-suitor, the evil High Lord of Sleiss…”

  Dunny shrugged, shaking loose various pieces of half-adhered beef stew that had until then clung tentatively to the front of his tunic. “We volunteered, didn’t we? Better than being a Background Villager or a Farmhand.”

  Why was it so hard to say? Why was it so hard to explain? “But why is that the only choice we’ve got?”

  His friends were glancing at each other—and the looks they exchanged seemed to be of one solid opinion.

  It was Tumble who cleared his throat gruffly and voiced it. “Mate,” he said quietly. “How many tankards have you had?”

  “…barren wastes where legend had it that an evil warlord had reigned supreme thousands of years before, and where the ancient prophecy proclaimed great evil would rise again…”

  “We’re Ordinary.” Donk’s gentle voice rumbled out. “That’s what being Ordinary is.”

  Fodder found himself grimacing. They were right. Everything he had been taught, every part of the world in which he lived was telling him not to be so stupid, to sit back, enjoy his ale, and let this foolishness drop into nothing. But that truculent corner of his mind, the one that was tired of waking up in the mud in several different pieces—the part of him that couldn’t help but feel that Shoulders had a point about his constant humiliating decapitations—the part of him that whispered that however hard he tried, however much character he tried to instil, his contributions to The Narrative would never actually amount to anything worth remembering…that part refused to let him back down.

  “But don’t you ever feel that what we do is just a bit…pointless?” he asked softly.

  “…arrived at the Temple of Athiphnion, which had been carved out of a mountain in honour of a great king who united the Six Kingdoms against a vicious enemy from across the seas by using a magical ring fashioned for him by the great and ancient sorcerer Eldrigon and tied to his blood and his alone…”

  Once again, his friends exchanged a flurry of glances. These ones implied opinions had shifted from assuming the damning influence of alcohol into wondering if good old Fodder, the reliable Disposable, was actually quite right in the head.

  Tumble was the first to venture into the murky waters of this new turn of conversation. “We play our part In Narrative. Just as the instructions tell us. We do what has to be done. And that’s important.”

  “But why is it important?”

  Clunny stepped in. “Because the Taskmaster says so.”

  “But why does the Taskmaster say so?”

  Clunny blinked in disbelief. “Because it’s the Taskmaster! The one who runs The Narrative? Honestly, mate, what kind of question is that?”

  “The kind we ought to be asking?” Fodder had no idea where that had come from, and the looks of shock that rippled over his friends’ faces implied that not right in the head was venturing in the direction of in need of medical help. “I mean it, though. We do everything we do because the Taskmaster says so, but we’ve got no idea why.” It was like someone had lit a fire inside of him—the effort to speak of moments before tossed away, words tumbling out, before he’d even had time to think them through. “Yes, it’s life, it’s the way it’s meant to be. But why is it life and why is it meant to be this way? Why does the Taskmaster decide that some of us get to ride around on horseback and have a great Quest while others get chopped up and left in the mud? Why do the instructions give all the character to those from the families that supply the Merry Band and never to anyone who’s really Ordinary? Why them? Why not us?”

  Until that moment, Flirt had remained silent, simply listening to the debate with her familiar eyebrow raised. But abruptly, she inserted a thunderbolt phrase:

  “Why do we have to obey the Taskmaster at all?”

  “…elder son Craxis was consumed by jealousy and smote his brother Avikhelion in an attempt to steal their father’s Ring…”

  Slowly, almost absently, Fodder found his eyes drifting around the table, drinking in the faces of his companions as they absorbed this brazen statement: Shoulders, his expression incredulous as his left hand continued its reflexive journey along his neck; Dunny, with his fork frozen halfway to his lips and dripping gravy down his front, stared at Flirt in openmouthed astonishment; Tumble, his solid, good-natured features locked in shocked horror; Midlin, his bland face closed, shut down, withdrawing from words he could not stand to hear. Clunny’s thin face was riddled with disconcertion, Thump’s with outright discomfort, and Donk was staring at her with the quiet but undeniable stare of someone who has decided a good friend has gone stark staring mad.

  And, leaning back against the edge of the fireplace, was Flirt, one eyebrow raised, her eyes almost surprised at her own nerve. But…there was something, just something, glittering there. A kind of awakening. A kind of…hope?

  “…Craxis had discovered evil, life-prolonging magicks and, hidden in the Northern Wastes, he vowed revenge on Eldrigon and his daughter Myhessia…”

  It was the final step. The final step along this impossible, runaway train of thought. Why do we have to obey the Taskmaster at all? Fodder wasn’t sure if he would have taken it.

  But Flirt had. She’d thrown it out into the world like a net, and Fodder found himself thoroughly caught.

  “She’s right.” He was barely aware he had spoken aloud until he felt the incredulous eyes of his friends swinging as one in his direction. “Why do we?”

  Clunny swallowed hard. “You’ve both gone bonkers. Stark staring bloody bonkers!”

  “It’s the Taskmaster.” Thump stressed the latter as if he was addressing an imbecile. “The one who runs The Narrative? You can’t ignore it! It’s…it’s life!”

  “Why not?” Fodder was feeling vaguely as though he were In Narrative himself, as though some other force had hijacked his lips and taken him over completely. But a thousand days on lonely roads being chopped to pieces and pulled back together rode up inside him and screamed with frustration.

  “Why not?!” Clunny’s admonishment was sharp enough that Bard faltered slightly in his description of the stone temple where Myhessia the sorceress had guarded the Ring of Power. “Because it’s the bloody Taskmaster! It’s the reason we’re here!”

  “…they parted company, Myhessia to protect the Ring and Eldrigon to watch over the descendants of Craxis’s murdered brother, whom they knew they must now protect, for their blood was the only other that could wield the great Ring and one of that line, so it was prophesied, would defeat Craxis and reunite the Six Kingdoms under one benevolent r
ule…”

  “But why is the Taskmaster the one who gets to decide? Why is this the way we live?” Fodder could see from the horrified looks that accompanied this heresy that he wasn’t making many allies with this re-emphasised line of thought, but he struggled to articulate the nagging in his soul all the same. “We go out, we get chopped up, we get fixed, we go to the pub, while people born to the right families get to ride around with swords and magic, having adventures, having character. Whereas us—it’s so…futile.”

  Midlin’s voice, when it came, was low but profoundly audible. “It’s not futile. It’s life. Just life. And it isn’t going to change.”

  “But having character.” Yet again, Flirt stepped in, her eyes suddenly bright. “A description and a voice! Imagine it, will you? We only get a glimpse, right, but isn’t that glimpse wonderful? All Urk ever has to change about me is the colour of my hair and the size of my chest, because what else about a Barmaid does The Narrative need to know? I giggle on some sod’s lap and get my arse slapped as I walk by. That’s not me, is it? I can’t contribute anything to that! And you boys—you never have to change a thing, do you, because you’re there to die, so how you look doesn’t even matter. Wouldn’t it be nice to have more than one scene and a couple of lines? Wouldn’t it be nice to have a say?”

  “…Erik learned that it was the Ring that had been stolen and was astonished when the sorceress Myhessia addressed his old friend Elder as father, for he was indeed the Eldrigon of legend!”

  “Not getting my head chopped off.” Shoulders’s voice was so quiet that for a moment Fodder almost didn’t recognise it. His friend’s left hand dug into his neck almost violently. “I’d like a say in that.”

  Fodder stared at Shoulders for a long moment. In the quiet of his own mind, he had admitted a worry about his friend’s growing obsession with Clank and his repeated decapitations but, given Shoulders’s tendency towards high-decibel grouching, it had always been a bit of a joke, a laugh that could sweep away any real concerns. But for a moment, that look in his eye…

  “And, of course”—the slightest curl of a manic smile tugged at the corners of Shoulders’s lips—“if I had a say, I could line him up in a fair fight and cut his bloody head off! The vindictive, steel-clad—”

  “See?” Clunny intervened abruptly. “Nice one! Now you’ve set Shoulders off again!”

  Fodder sighed. “I was just trying—”

  “Well, just try something else!” Clunny’s snapped riposte cut away the rest of his sentence. “You’re talking nonsense, both of you. I’m tired, mate, and we’re likely to be up until late. I just want a quiet drink.”

  “I just want to be described as something other than a hair colour and a bust!” Flirt retorted abruptly. “I just want to not be slapped on the arse and called darling by sweaty Barbarians and wench by stupid Minstrels! We don’t always get what we want, Clunny. And that’s the point. We ought to have a choice.”

  Donk’s soft tone restored a rather strained element of calm. “Whether we ought to have one or not,” he said quietly, “we aren’t going to get one.”

  “Because there isn’t one,” Dunny inserted with a glare. “Because the Taskmaster says so!”

  Donk continued in the same calm voice, as though Dunny had not spoken. “And more to the point, if Preen comes in and hears us talking like this, we’ll be bumped down to Background Villagers before we can blink.”

  “…Zahora was chief of the Temple guards and Gort one of the dwarf stonemasons who maintained it. Slynder stole the Ring once for a challenge, although he returned it afterwards. Halheid was in charge of patrolling the Northern Wastes and watching for any sign that Craxis was rising…”

  “Preen!” Flirt snorted in a distinctly unladylike fashion. “That putrid weasel! Why should we have to listen to him?”

  “Because he’s the one with the instructions from the Taskmaster,” Clunny retorted. He raised one finger as Fodder and Flirt both opened their mouths. “No, not a word! Either of you! If this doesn’t stop right now, you can both bugger off somewhere else! Understand?”

  “…that Myhessia was Sir Roderick’s forlorn love, though they were torn from each other’s arms by their duties to the world. And now, as we move into Part Three, the noble questors have begun to follow the trail of the Ring, guided by Erik, who can mysteriously intuit its passing…”

  They don’t understand. The words played through Fodder’s mind unbidden. I don’t think they can.

  I’m not even sure if I understand.

  But I think I’d like to.

  Slowly, almost tentatively, he met Flirt’s gaze. And that same lingering thought was mirrored in her eyes.

  “…And after a brief skirmish with some brutish local soldiers, they rode towards a mountain pass, unaware of the danger and excitement that awaited them there! And that, dear gentles all, is the story so far!”

  As the patter of half-hearted, vaguely sarcastic applause smattered its way across the common room, Fodder couldn’t help but note, with no small lashing of irony, that in Bard’s great, pompous recitation, Fodder’s part had been dismissed in seven words at the very end.

  It isn’t fair. It really isn’t.

  But there’s nothing we can do about it.

  “Bravo! Bravo! Excellent!”

  In the final flourish of Bard’s recital, Fodder had missed the sound of the door opening once more, but there was no mistaking the sound of Preen’s voice as he pretentiously applauded his friend.

  “There, you see?” he heard the Officious Courtier declare. “I told you he was talented!”

  Oh no. And there, I thought things couldn’t get any worse.

  “If you say so. Though, of course, he has nothing on the professional storyteller at the Palace.” The reply was spoken by a voice to be reckoned with. A voice that had condescension engrained deeply into every syllable. A voice that carried echoing overtones of a large nose and a distinctively chinless profile. A voice that had superiority written in neat calligraphy into every rolling phrase.

  It was a voice that would have said: “Sod the throne, the Nobles, and the Merry Band; I’m the one who really runs things down here.” That was, if it had a single grain within it that could possibly be persuaded to be so uncouth.

  It was the voice of the ultimate in Officious Courtiers. The voice of a Taskmaster’s taskmaster. It was the voice of Strut.

  Strut did the same job for the Merry Band that Preen, reluctantly, fulfilled for the Disposables—he made sure that they were in the right place at the right time in the right clothes and with the right equipment for when The Narrative passed by. It was no secret that, like most of his family, Strut considered himself a cut above what his fairly minimal Narrative time would usually define as his social position. It was even less of a secret that his cousin Preen coveted his job and the circles it enabled him to move in with an almost insatiable passion. While Preen was picking his way down muddy roads to remote guard posts and bandit ambushes or rounding up his charges in a humble inn, Strut was sat in state in castles and palaces, attending balls and parties, eating carefully stuffed delicacies, and holding his wine glass just so. He lorded it over his fellow Courtiers with shameless superiority, and it was always just a little bit amusing to see the strained mixture of fawning and loathing that danced a jig on Preen’s face whenever his cousin dropped by to patronise him.

  “Are these your…men?” Lost in his moment of introspection, Fodder had missed the fact that Strut’s stiff-necked gaze had shifted in the direction of their suddenly quietened table. “For the ambush?”

  “Yes, that’s right.” Preen’s voice curled anxiously around the words. “They’ll be Bulking Up, though. The ambush will be run by the Disposables we met earlier.”

  “Ah. Yes.” Fodder wasn’t entirely sure how Strut’s voice could so effectively drip so much disdain into two simple words. “That funny little fellow with the uneven face—what was his name?”

  “His name is Lurk. He�
�s been Lead Bandit of Bandit Pass for eleven Quests now, a very reliable—”

  “Yes. Lurk.” Strut sniffed as though the very odour of the name offended him. “He will be in charge of the ambush? And these men will assist him?”

  Preen’s face was distorted as he waged a private internal war between the urge to fawn to a superior and his jealous resentment of him. “That’s right, yes.”

  Strut’s eyes roamed over the eight Disposables as though he had found something particularly unappetising on his shoe. “I’ve assigned the Disposables from the Palace to provide the guard for the princess, of course, given the vital importance of this incident to The Narrative. I was considering handing the task of the attack over to Primp and his Minions of Darkness, just to be certain of a suitable outcome. But given the uncouth nature of the men of Sleiss, I suppose these men will be… adequate.” He turned to his cousin, one immaculate eyebrow pointedly raised. “You’ll find their livery in the cart outside. See to it.”

  “Yes, absolutely! I know how busy you are. Let me show you to the door.…”

  Fodder watched, strangely detached, as Preen scurried along, trying to keep up with the tall, rake-thin Strut’s long, ramrod-straight strides.

  Adequate.

  He’d been a Disposable for so many Quests now, taking part in countless skirmishes and battles throughout numerous Narrative tales. They all had. They had done every fight and confrontation that The Narrative had asked of them to the very best of their abilities. They spilled their guts into the foliage on a near-daily basis in the name of the Quest. He had earned, if not the respect, then the acknowledgement of Preen that he was someone capable of seeing that a skirmish went ahead with a little bit of character behind it. But all that effort, all that work—what did it amount to in the end?