by Larry Mark
Chapter 2
Castle Thurgo is one of those tall, thin Victorian houses where the ceilings of the bedrooms on the third story are the roof and slope up to a point, and the coal cellar nestles under the living room on the ground floor. Other tall, thin Victorian houses stand shoulder to shoulder, packed in close to make a long terrace. Castle Thurgo may look unremarkable, but one day the world will tremble beneath the thunderous advance of Lord Thurgo's armies, marching forth to all four corners of the Earth! Muhahahaha. That's my evil villain's laugh. I'm not really allowed to do it, as a minion and all, but I can think it. Muhahahaha!
We shuffle out along the short path to the front gate. Oooof knocks over all the empty milk bottles, like he does most nights, Jabber and me catch them before they make too much of a din. Jabber’s got quick hands. Can catch a fly out of the air, Jabber can. And does when he gets hungry.
“Where’s Sir Terror-Knight?” Gobber asks - minion #700 to give him his proper title. We call him Gobber because he’s very good at spitting. A filthy habit in which he has passed several exams and once placed third in the national trials for both distance and accuracy.
“Yeah,” says Odo. “Where’s Sir Terror-Knight?”
“Special duty,” Captain Bort says. We all know what that means and crane our necks to look up at the highest window. No light burns there but we know Lord Thurgo will be watching us from the darkness, Sir Terror-Knight with him to guard against under bed attacks. Not that any monster-under-the-bed would be foolish enough to try anything on Lord Thurgo, but an evil overlord can’t be too careful, and under-bed monsters are known to never emerge if there are witnesses. That’s why nobody has ever seen one.
“Let’s go.” And Captain Bort is off, scanning the pavement ahead with his hopeful eye whilst watching with his mistrustful eye to see if we follow.
“Ooof,” says Oooof, walking into the gatepost.
The whisper among the troops is that we’re off to number 12 to settle the account with Prince Stupid and his army of crazy robots, but nobody really knows except Captain Bort, and perhaps not even him.
Prince Stupid, or Malcolm Brown as he is sometimes known, commands a vast robotic horde and like all good evil dictators he wants to take over the world, no doubt to build sky-scraping statues of himself on every street corner and make going to school a criminal offence.
Our mighty goblin army tussled with the robots on Tuesday – the living room carpet lay scattered with body parts and the few survivors groaned in exhausted heaps waiting for the final push. Unfortunately even warfare has to give way before certain forces of nature, like earthquakes, hurricanes, and teatime, so Prince Stupid scooped up his stupid robots and scuttled off up the street to number 12, and Lord Thurgo had beans on toast.
We keep to the base of the garden walls, careful not to step in anything ickier than we are. There’s a full moon, frosty above the rooftops opposite, but the orange glow of the streetlights washes away its light. A big fat rat scuttles past us, its scaly tail snaking by my legs.
“Oi!” I tell it.
The rat doesn’t so much as twitch at my shout. Ignoring me it runs on and vanishes into the next garden. Rats are like that, full of their own business. They’ll nibble you once to see if you’re made of food and then they’re off without a hint of goodbye.
“We’re here!” Captain Bort holds up his fist. Gobber and me stop. Oooof knocks us both over.
“Number 12! I knew it,” I say, getting up and wiping my hands on Gobber.
“Number 20.” says Jabber.
“Really?” I squint at the numbers as if that will help. Truth is that I can’t read numbers or count above three. I blame it on all the beating with hammers I had in place of going to school.
“Nah,” says Jabber. “Just messing with you. It’s 12.”
As if to confirm Jabber’s opinion a dark shape moves from among the darker shapes lining the path toward the front door and comes to face us.
“Frank,” I say, keeping my voice cool.
“Kevin.” His eyes glimmer beneath the gleaming bulge of his forehead.
Prince Stupid’s minions get letters and numbers, like they’re so la-de-dah special. Frank is R2D3PO. As if anyone can remember that! I certainly don’t. He’s a Mark III killer-driller-droid with auto-boosters. Pretty good at football too.
“Sorry about the thing with the orange juice,” I say. In the Battle of Tuesday I may have pulled Frank’s head off a little... and used it as a drinking cup.
“Hmmm.” Frank’s eyes glow red. He touches his neck. It still looks a bit sticky. The thing with robots though is that their heads will come off if you pull hard enough. That’s the thing with most things actually. Don’t try it at home. Unless a killer-driller-droid is trying to drill his way through your chest. Then do.
“You, robot, go tell Prince Stupid we’re here.” Sergeant Yellow-Fang looms over my shoulder. He’s very good at looming.
“That’s Prince Stupendous to you, toothy.” Frank does that thing where he just starts walking away without turning around, and slowly, slowly his head swivels to point in the direction he’s walking, shooting one last glowing red look at us before it’s too late.
He knocks on the door three times with his shiny plastic fist and somewhere inside the house a yappy dog goes berserk.
“Shut. Up!” someone yells, possibly Prince Stupid, though the voice sounds deeper and more annoyed than Prince Stupid’s.
In any case it’s all for show, the robots can’t open their front door, and Prince Stupid doesn’t sully his hands with night battles any more than Lord Thurgo does. Fortunately a fair portion of the horde are stationed downstairs and will be exiting the house by the cat-flap then making the long trip around to the front via Dog Poo Alley, a short and ill-smelling passageway between number 26 and 28 that seems to have a magical laxative effect on any dog passing through.
“So,” I say. “Nice weather.”
Frank sets his eyes to simmer and rubs his neck.
“French fries tonight.” Alphonso smacks his lips.
“Coal.” Gobber spits. “It’s always coal, why torture yourself, Alf?”
“Ahem.” Sergeant Yellow-Fang, still looming.
“Yus?” Oooof blinks up at him.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Sarge asks.
“Ummm...” I like ‘um’ its a good word for drawing out until somebody else answers a question for you. “mmmmmmm....mmmmmm” I run out of air and start to black out.
“The enemy.” Captain Bort comes up and points at Frank with his pointing stick. I don’t think Frank likes it any more than I did.
“Shouldn’t we wait for the horde?” I ask. “It hardly seems sporting to...” The captain is staring at me very hard. “Oh,” I say. “Right. Evil! Got you!”
And so, without much enthusiasm we all jump on Frank and pull his head off.
In the end the other robots never show up. Perhaps the cat-flap has been locked. We hang around for a good half hour, have a game of football, and everyone enjoys themselves. Except Frank of course. But without Frank’s head we wouldn’t have had a ball.
Tired and with slightly sticky toes we set off for home.
“Ooof!” says Oooof, bumping into the wheel of a parked car.
“French fries,” says Alphonso.
“Um...” I pause as the others plod on. The wheel belongs to a black SUV that dwarfs the collection of tired hatchbacks lining the street, and menaces the family-friendly people carriers around it. Even Lord Thurgo’s wagon of destruction looks rather Volvo-ish next to the stranger. I call it a stranger because, like a nose on a robot, there’s something plain wrong about this car.
“Tell the ugly little one to hurry up,” Captain Bort mutters.
“Get a move on, Kevin!” Sergeant Yellow-Fang shouts.
“But,” I say.
“247! You more your horrid green behind this way sharpish or you’ll wish you never got out of the box!” The Sergeant roars it loud enough to mak
e cats get up, turn around twice and lie back down.
I hurry on up the street. Before I go though I catch a glimpse through the dark and tinted windows of the SUV. There are men in there. Black suited men. Watching.
We reach the front door of Number 6, slip in and start the complicated procedure of ‘locking up’ which involves Grandpa’s walking stick, some duct tape, a bag of marbles and a plastic chicken. Halfway through the process I drop the bag of marbles...
“Minions!” I say.
“No, marbles.” Alfonso starts picking them up, trying to take a sly bite from the first one.
“Minions!!” I say it again, with two exclamation marks this time. I don’t know much, but I know minions. And that’s what those men in the car were. Minions. It spells trouble. I know it! And I can’t even spell.
Overheard by a goblin (abandoned with the shoes in the hall):
