by Heide Goody
“You will pay,” sputtered Handzame. “Maybe I’ll hack off some choice cuts of wizard flesh and consume your magic powers.”
“Why does everyone persist in such outlandish beliefs?” sighed Pagnell.
Spirry leaped protectively in front of Pagnell. “Please!”
Handzame’s sword was raised high. “You think I won’t kill a child to get my revenge?”
“Despite the current evidence, I’d like to think the answer is yes,” said Pagnell.
“I have a plan,” said Spirry.
“No,” begged the wizard.
“Move, girl!” cried Handzame. There were tears in her eyes. Handzame had shifted from vengeful fury into tired-and-emotional, long-and-difficult-day, it’s-my-party-and-I’ll-cry-if-I-want-to territory.
Spirry hauled Pagnell to his feet. The balcony rail was at his back.
“Don’t think I won’t do it!” yelled Handzame and swung.
Pagnell opened his mouth to protest. Spirry tried to shove him away from the wildly swung blade. Pagnell’s thighs caught against the rail and he tipped. He certainly didn’t mean to. He threw his hand out to grab something and his shoulder screamed in pain.
And then they were falling. They. Tiny hands gripped his undershirt. They were spinning.
Eight floors from the great audience chamber balcony to the hard ground of the lesser courtyard.
All Pagnell could think of was the sight of two plums striking the ground – what, two nights ago? – and flying messily apart on impact. Eight storeys was a long way. Time enough for one decent thought.
Small hands hugged him tightly.
They fell.
The Bard
Bez tilted his face upward, raised his hand, and felt the warmth of the setting sun on his fingertips. He shifted his position, winced at the sound his feet made on the gritty ledge and glanced down to see if he had been heard. There was movement among the shadows below but what it meant, he couldn’t say.
His plan had been ninety-five percent successful, which should have counted for something if there was any fairness in the world. He had climbed the stairs, crept through the crushing trap, tiptoed across the rickety timbers the grimlocks had laid across the hall of deadly tiles, and then, with barely a wrong turn, found his way back to the grimlock cavern. The cavern had been empty. The only grimlocks present were charred and speared bodies lying among the piles of accumulated rubbish and treasure.
The treasure. Bez had stuffed as much jewellery and coinage inside his clothes as he could. He placed a crown, all spikes and gems, on his head and tucked a gold statuette of Buqit under his arm before climbing the walls towards the chimney-like opening in the cavern ceiling high above.
Ninety-five percent successful. When Merken had told Bez the opening was too narrow for a man to climb through, Bez had measured it with thumb and brush and an artist’s eye and judged it to be fine.Unfortunately, the damned old goat had been right, and that made Bez doubly glad the man was dead. The hole was, at its widest, two feet across, but narrowed sections and jagged stumps of rock made it impassable. Bez was facing the prospect of a night’s squatting on the very cusp of freedom, on a ledge barely wide enough for him to sit on.
He couldn’t climb down. While he’d been ascending, grimlocks had returned. He couldn’t see how many, but he heard them and saw their fires. The smell of their cooking was, at once, repulsive and stomach-rumblingly good. Bez was able to reach his hand up through the hole and pluck some blades of grass from the surface outside. That had been his food. To drink, he licked the trickling moisture from the walls. He lips touched a beetle as he did so, and he recoiled in disgust; bursting into tears when he couldn’t find it again. A beetle would have been delicious just about then.
Before the light faded completely, he took out the velvet bag he had snatched from Merken before killing him. This, he hoped, was going to be the big treasure prize. The way Merken had fondled it at every opportunity, it could only be something of immense value. Either that or dear old Grandma Merken’s ashes.
It had transpired to be neither. If Bez was to guess – and he had plenty of time to guess – he’d say the object inside the box was a mechanical biscuit. He couldn’t be sure why anyone would want a mechanical biscuit, but that was what it looked like.
On the reverse, inscribed in a tiny script which was only legible in the full light of day, were the words:
Cnstnt Frce Tmpce
Manfcterd by H Gregnx, Carius
This offered little help as to the object’s purpose or value.
With his stomach growling and the light of day dying, Bez turned the device over in his hands, the hatred and bitterness inside him growing afresh. The bitterness he was used to: it went hand in hand with his natural cynicism; but anger? It was initially anger at Merken for dragging him on this stupid mission, gradually swelling to include the others – Pagnell, Lorrika and Cope – for not seeing his side of things; for not sharing in his anger. It was compounded by the failure of his plan and this frustratingly mysterious item. How dare Merken die and leave him with something so peculiar, so unhelpfully unique?! Layer and layer of hatred built up, like slimy deposits on a stalactite, until it was just a lump of shapeless hatred. He no longer hated anything in particular; he just hated.
There was a coiled spring in the back of the mechanical biscuit. He poked it, but it didn’t seem to do anything. There were a number of wheels and little arms, but he couldn’t divine their purpose. There was also a little nub of brass which looked a bit like a key. So he turned it. It made the tiniest of clicking sounds as it turned and there was a sense of growing resistance. So he turned it more, winding it round and round a handful of times.
The mechanical biscuit began to tick, like an insect in the grass.
“Right. A ticking biscuit. Of course it is,” he murmured bitterly.
The ticking biscuit began to ring. Invisible bells, concealed artfully in its workings, rang out bright and clear and loud, a carillon which, if Bez hadn’t been thrown into an utter panic, he might have recognised as the Carian civic anthem, We Think So You Don’t Have To. He tried to unwind the key but it did not turn. He tried stuffing his fingers in the workings, only succeeding in cutting himself. He pressed the device to his chest to muffle the sounds. He tried quietly bashing it against a rock to kill it. All he managed was to knock the statuette of Buqit off the ledge. It fell, clattering and banging down into the cavern.
Bez whimpered.
There was a silence and then:
“Figgerik?”
“Leth a taner?”
“Yanera bumfit!”
“Bumfit?”
“Pimpera bumfit!”
They came for him. The grimlocks climbed at speed. Bez stood and clawed at the rocks around the opening. He punched at the edges. He jumped and thrust and squeezed and pushed his head and shoulders painfully through the gap. He could see grasses and reeds and a red sky. A long-legged wading bird flapped by: a majestic silhouette.
And then the grimlocks’ clammy mitts were upon him. They hauled him kicking and screaming and spitting down the wall, passed from claw to claw, down into the darkness until he was lying, weeping and moaning on the cavern floor.
A shape loomed over him. It was stooped and twisted. Half its body was black and blistered. Its lower lip was a ragged and swollen mess. It was Queen Susan.
Beside her, Clive, his shamanistic robes of knitted string mostly burned away, inspected Bez closely.
“Figgadik tan?”
“Indeed, old friend. How’s it going?”
“Sethada?”
“Stealing? No, no.” Bez swallowed uncomfortably. “A misunderstanding. I can see how you might think that. But I was returning these treasures.”
“Taner? Taner yan?”
“Certainly.” He tried an appeasing smile at Queen Susan. “I was conscripted. I had nothing to do with them. I’m an artist. A creative type. We leave the fighting and the politics to other men.”
/> “Dikada covit.”
“No, an artist. Not a bard. So very different. See? No lute for one thing.”
Over to one side, a little grimlock hauled something out of a rubbish pile. Its strings went twoing as it came free.
“Yes. No. Well, flattered though I am, drawing and painting is my metier. I could paint a picture – another picture, a better picture – of her noble majesty, Queen Susan.”
Queen Susan jiggled happily and muttered something through her mangled lips that might have been ‘Figg a tanad’ or ‘Figger taner’ (which was something entirely different).
“Yes. Totally my pleasure. We will send images of you to all the grimlock tribes and they will repost them on their walls and they will bow before your very majesty.”
“Hov bumfada!” cried Clive.
“Yes, indeed. And within that limited context I would be happy – no, delighted! – to be your bard for a while.”
“Ah, lethot yanada,” said Clive sternly.
“What?”
“Lethot tanita,” agreed Susan, nodding vigorously.
“Bard for life?” Bez quailed, tears pricking his eyes again. “Right. Sure.” Bez took the lute proffered him. “And what a life, eh?”
Spirry
Spirry had seen battles before and she’d certainly heard tell of them. While it was certainly not the most dramatic, the battle to retake Ludens from the Amanni horde was undoubtedly interesting to watch.
“Can you have a battle with only one army?” she asked.
Newport Pagnell stretched out in the back of the cart. For a moment, his face became that tight, scrunched up thing it became when she asked him questions. Then he relaxed, laid his head against a sack of goods and thought.
“It’s a bit difficult,” he said. “I think one of the defining qualities of any battle is the fighting.”
Spirry looked at the Ludensian soldiers at the end of the street, going from door to door, searching buildings, poking around alleyways and even looking inside water barrels – just in case there might by an Amanni horde hiding in there.
“They are waving their spears about a lot,” said Spirry. “It’s a bit like fighting.”
Pagnell made a doubtful noise. “Well, other features of a battle include there being a victor, which there clearly is, and, afterwards, some sort of celebration and the giving of medals. And – who knows? – that might happen. Anyway, some of us certainly got beaten.”
The wizard did look like he’d just escaped from a battle. Spirry was certain that, after a suitable rest, he would bore everyone at length about he’d acquired each and every injury. The wounds she could understand; she didn’t understand how he’d come to be so dirty. Humans she decided, particularly northerners, spent their entire lives finding new and inventive ways to get filthy. It was repugnant, really.
“There’s something I don’t get,” said Thedo the carter from his position on the driver’s board.
“Yes?” said Pagnell.
“I don’t get how you escaped from the temple.”
“Ah,” said Pagnell. He offered nothing more.
The cart trundled towards the north gate, where all departing traffic was being stopped and searched.
“Because,” persisted Thedo, “you got to me from off that roof top, didn’t you?”
“We did,” said Pagnell.
“And I heard a bloke on the stall across from where I was say he saw something flying down from the temple wall.”
“Flying?”
“Yeah. With wings.”
“Like a bird?”
“No,” said Thedo. “Like a little flying person.”
A soldier waved for the cart to stop. Two further fearsome members of the Hierophant’s army pointed their weapons, apparently prepared to spear Kestino the donkey if it looked like it was about to start a ruckus.
“Show your faces,” said the soldier. “You. Sit up. This way.”
Pagnell raised himself up with difficulty.
A guard, whose face was a big round bruise, as though someone has smashed the end of a pot into it, looked at the three of them in turn. “No, don’t recognise any of them.”
Another soldier peered suspiciously into the cart. “What are you carrying?”
“Grain, fruit, a bag of salt,” said Thedo. “Got the whole inventory written in my little book.” He passed his badly printed My List of Things To Be Done notebook to the soldier.
The soldier thumbed it without interest. Pagnell gave a little nervous squeak.
“Everything’s in there,” said Thedo. “Because if it’s not written down it won’t happen. Praise Buqit.”
The soldier waved the book at Spirry and Pagnell. “And who are you?”
“I’m a dentist,” said Pagnell.
“A what?”
“A tooth-puller. And this is Spirry, who I think our driver friend was about to accuse of being a fairy or something. You know, with the wings.”
“And the sharp teeth,” said Spirry, grinning.
“I was not,” said Thedo.
The soldier sniffed. “As a dentist, do you get many dissatisfied customers?”
“What? Oh. This?” Pagnell pointed at his battered face. “Actually, there’s a funny story behind this.”
“I just bet there is.” The soldier gave Thedo his notebook back and waved them through.
Beyond the north gate was the featureless plain and the dull straight road to Qir. The sun was a glowing semi-circle over the western horizon.
“You got any food on this cart?” Pagnell asked Thedo. The carter passed him a small sack.
Spirry watched the city to see if the entire Ludensian army had decided to give chase.
“Told you my plan would succeed,” said Pagnell.
“So what have we got?” asked Spirry.
Pagnell pulled a crumpled sheet of parchment from his shirt and held it out to her. She opened it. Pagnell’s penmanship was far from perfect, but it had been good enough for the Quill of Truth and Spirry could read it fine.
“This is it?” she asked.
“It is,” he agreed. “The key to Urstar. And saving the world, of course.”
“Never doubted you for an instant,” she said.
“You so did.”
She held her fist out and he gave her a celebratory fistbump with added finger sparkles.
“You know,” said Pagnell, “no one round here does that.”
“Savages,” said Spirry.
Abruptly, Pagnell gave a little shout. Kestino the donkey brayed in surprise.
“What?” said Spirry.
“This is it!” Pagnell, pointed at the fruit he had just plucked from the sack. “This is it!”
Spirry looked at the light red fruit. “This is what?”
“The colour! I was talking to Merken about it, before he got exploded or something by a floor trap.”
“You were talking about colours?”
“This colour!” Pagnell sat up straight, suddenly energised. “I said we needed a word to describe a light red colour, the one with a bit of yellow in it. I said there’d be a fruit which was that colour and it would revolutionise the way we think about it.”
“Light red?” suggested Spirry.
“No, not anymore. Thedo! What do you call this?”
Thedo looked back. “Ah, they’re new. Very sweet. Um, they’re called kumquats.”
Pagnell smiled broadly. “Kumquat,” he said, savouring the word like it was the name of his beloved.
“What?” said Spirry, sure she’d missed something.
“Kumquat.” He laid back. “Spirry, don’t you think that kumquat sunset looks beautiful?”
“What are you on about?”
“It’ll catch on. Trust me. I once knew a girl with kumquat hair.”
“You’re an idiot,” said Spirry.
“Best wizard in town.”
“We’re not even in town anymore.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
Clovenhoo
f by Heide Goody & Iain Grant
Charged with gross incompetence, Satan is fired from his job as Prince of Hell and exiled to that most terrible of places: English suburbia. Forced to live as a human under the name of Jeremy Clovenhoof, the dark lord not only has to contend with the fact that no one recognises him or gives him the credit he deserves but also has to put up with the bookish wargamer next door and the voracious man-eater upstairs.
Heaven, Hell and the city of Birmingham collide in a story that features murder, heavy metal, cannibalism, armed robbers, devious old ladies, Satanists who live with their mums, gentlemen of limited stature, dead vicars, petty archangels, flamethrowers, sex dolls, a blood-soaked school assembly and way too much alcohol.
Clovenhoof is outrageous and irreverent (and laugh out loud funny!) but it is also filled with huge warmth and humanity. Written by first-time collaborators Heide Goody and Iain Grant, Clovenhoof will have you rooting for the bad guy like never before.
F. Paul Wilson: "Clovenhoof is a delight. A funny, often hilarious romp with a dethroned Satan as he tries to adjust to modern suburbia. The breezy, ironic prose sets a perfect tone. If you need some laughs, here's the remedy."
US: http://www.amazon.com/Clovenhoof-ebook/dp/B008PYLULG/
UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Clovenhoof-ebook/dp/B008PYLULG/
Oddjobs by Heide Goody & Iain Grant
It’s the end of the world as we know it, but someone still needs to do the paperwork.
Incomprehensible horrors from beyond are going to devour our world but that’s no excuse to get all emotional about it. Morag Murray works for the secret government organisation responsible for making sure the apocalypse goes as smoothly and as quietly as possible.
In her first week on the job, Morag has to hunt down a man-eating starfish, solve a supernatural murder and, if she’s got time, prevent her own inevitable death.
The first book in a new comedy series by the creators of ‘Clovenhoof’, Oddjobs is a sideswipe at the world of work and a fantastical adventure featuring amphibian wannabe gangstas, mad old cat ladies, ancient gods, apocalyptic scrabble, fish porn, telepathic curry and, possibly, the end of the world before the weekend.
