The Boy Who Was Wanted Dead Or Alive - Or Both

by Dominic Barker

  ‘Rescued,’ sneered Beo as he dispatched yet another of the Baron’s men with a mighty blow. ‘We’re not going to be rescued.’

  Pig the Horse’s great wings brought him level with the height of the turret.

  ‘Well, I’m going to be rescued,’ said Blart. ‘You can come if you want. But if you want to stay and die that’s up to you.’

  And so saying Blart climbed on to the battlements, took a deep breath and jumped.

  Blart landed on Pig’s back.

  ‘Hey!’ shouted Uther, turning round. ‘The boy is getting away.’

  He climbed on to the battlements and jumped on to Pig the Horse.

  ‘Cowards,’ cried Beo, who was now thoroughly committed to dying in a hopeless cause against overwhelming odds, which he felt was most chivalric. ‘Beowulf the Warrior runs from no man.’

  Capablanca was not as convinced by the necessity of immediate death.

  ‘We must run now so that we can fight a greater battle later,’ he shouted to Beo.

  ‘I cannot retreat,’ shouted back Beo.

  ‘You must come and protect Princess Lois,’ ordered Capablanca.

  ‘I don’t need protecting,’ shouted Princess Lois and she emphasised the point by sliding her dagger into the stomach of one of the Baron’s men who was about to deliver a ferocious blow to Beowulf’s head.

  ‘You could pretend,’ said Capablanca testily.

  Any moment the Baron’s men would swarm up.

  ‘You’ll never make it to being a knight now,’ Blart mocked Beo from the safety of Pig the Horse.

  Where all Capablanca’s sensible persuasion had failed, a vicious taunt succeeded. Beo turned to Capablanca.

  ‘I will not die until I’m a knight,’ he declared. ‘Let us retreat with honour.’

  ‘One, two, three, flee!’ shouted Capablanca.

  At exactly the same moment Capablanca, Beo and Princess Lois turned and ran across the turret. The Baron’s men were so shocked by this that for one brief moment they paused before pursuing them. But one brief moment was all they needed.

  Grabbing the tree imp’s cage as she ran, Princess Lois, followed by Capablanca and Beo, clambered the battlements and vaulted on to Pig the Horse.

  ‘Fly,’ shouted Blart. ‘Fly, fly, fly!’

  Pig the Horse beat his wings and the great horse rose higher and higher into the sky. Beneath them the turret filled with the angry cries of the Baron’s men. The questors watched them become smaller and smaller and smaller until they were nothing but distant squeaks of indignation.

  ‘I’ve saved you all again, haven’t I?’ said Blart.

  Chapter 40

  Sorel was sitting exactly where they’d left him.

  ‘We would like to introduce you to Marjoram,’ said Capablanca, indicating the cage.

  ‘I can’t see a tree imp,’ said Sorel. This was unfortunately true. As soon as they had reached the outskirts of the forest, Princess Lois, concerned that Marjoram was deprived of her natural habitat, had crammed her cage with twigs and leaves to make her feel at home. Marjoram was now entirely invisible.

  ‘Get these leaves off me,’ said a shrill voice. ‘What are you trying to do, suffocate me? For five years I hardly see a leaf and then all of a sudden I’ve got a whole wood on top of me.’

  ‘I was only trying to make you feel more comfortable,’ protested Princess Lois, nevertheless removing the offending foliage.

  ‘I can’t imagine how bad it would be if you’d wanted me to feel less comfortable,’ grumbled Marjoram.

  ‘That sounds like a tree imp,’ said Sorel excitedly. ‘And from what I can see it looks like a tree imp. Though not a very attractive one.’

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ replied Marjoram indignantly. ‘You look all gnarled and knotty.’

  ‘How dare you?’ rejoined Sorel. ‘At least I wasn’t stupid enough to get trapped in captivity.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ remarked the Princess to Capablanca. ‘We bring together two tree imps after years of solitude and all they can do is be nasty to each other.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Capablanca reassured her authoritatively. ‘Conversation between tree imps generally features the hurling of abuse. This is one of the reasons they are verging on extinction.’

  ‘So,’ said Uther to Sorel, ‘we have kept our part of the bargain, now you must keep yours. Take us to the horse shouter.’

  Sorel tried to look grumpy about this but it was obvious to the questors below that he was too excited about insulting a fellow tree imp face to face to brook any delay.

  ‘Follow me,’ said Sorel. ‘I will move through the branches above and show you the way.’

  And with that the tree imp set off.

  Through the pathless forest went the questors. They passed great strong trees whose trunks were thicker than a fortress wall and withered trees that were dying and rotting. They clambered over fallen branches and tripped on gnarled roots that rose up out of the ground like the coils of a sea monster. They forded flooded streams, clambered over rocks and up muddy hills, all the time keeping their eyes on the tree imp above them.

  ‘Hurry up,’ Sorel urged them whenever they paused to find a gap big enough for Pig to squeeze through.

  ‘I thought the imp said he knew the way,’ grumbled Blart. He attempted to jump over another stream, didn’t put enough effort in and so landed with a disappointing splosh in the water. ‘This is taking ages and I’m getting wet.’

  ‘It’s your own fault, mole-face,’ snapped Princess Lois, easily jumping over. ‘Don’t you dare blame the tree imp.’

  ‘I’ll blame –’ began Blart but he was interrupted by a cry from above.

  ‘Look! The dwelling of Agnes the Horse Shouter.’

  Dwelling was a flattering name for what they saw. In a small clearing, branches and leaves had been heaped to create the most primitive shelter Blart had ever seen.

  Sorel had descended to a low branch.

  ‘I kept my promise,’ he said. ‘Now you must release Marjoram.’

  Princess Lois didn’t need to be asked twice.

  ‘No,’ shouted Uther, too late. The cage was open, Marjoram was out and the two tree imps disappeared into the forest, arguing furiously.

  ‘What did you do that for?’ demanded Uther. ‘That tree imp was worth money.’

  Princess Lois regarded the merchant with scorn.

  ‘I will never regret freeing a wild creature,’ she answered, ‘no matter how much money it is worth.’

  ‘It was priceless,’ answered Uther. ‘Now that Marjoram has gone, so has Sorel, and without him we have no way of finding our way out of the forest.’

  ‘I thought you were dropping stones behind you to help us find our way out,’ said the Princess.

  ‘I stopped because I thought we weren’t going to let the tree imp go until we’d been led to the edge of the forest,’ answered Uther.

  ‘You didn’t tell me,’ snapped Princess Lois.

  ‘You didn’t tell me you were going to let them go,’ snapped back Uther.

  ‘Calm down,’ said Capablanca. ‘There has been a slight breakdown in communication but nobody was really at fault.’

  ‘I think they were both at fault,’ said Blart.

  Pig whinnied. The dark forest with its dense vegetation was nothing like the vast open expanses of the land of Nevod where he had grown up, and he didn’t like it.

  The horse’s distress had an effect on the questors that nothing else could have produced. A little ashamed of themselves they pulled back from their argument. For Pig the Horse was the only questor that all the others liked. Well, almost all the others.

  ‘Nobody ever tells the horse to shut up,’ said Blart bitterly.

  All the questors were about to tell Blart that Pig was a much more pleasant creature than he was but they were interrupted by a very loud snore.

  ‘That’s even louder than Beo,’ said Blart.

  Another snore erupted from Agnes’s dwelling place. Bir
ds perching in nearby trees flew off, screeching their disapproval.

  ‘Let’s wake her up,’ said Beo, who was eager to move the conversation away from a discussion of his own sleeping habits. He strode purposefully across the clearing to Agnes’s dwelling place. He paused. Agnes’s dwelling place posed a problem for the visitor as it lacked an obvious door to knock on. Beo was not to be put off easily. He pummelled his fist firmly against the structure.

  It swiftly emerged that whatever talents Agnes had, building was not one of them. Three powerful blows from Beo’s fists left the structure shaking, wobbling and finally crashing down entirely to reveal the lumpy figure of Agnes, lying on her back on a bed of moss.

  ‘What?’ said Agnes, waking up as the branches collapsed on to her head.

  ‘Tush and pish,’ said Beo. ‘I barely touched it.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ said Agnes, still befuddled by sleep.

  ‘Your house has fallen down,’ said Blart helpfully.

  ‘There was a sudden wind,’ said Capablanca, deciding that it was probably better not to inform Agnes of the real cause of her sudden homelessness. ‘It rushed through the forest and knocked over your house.’

  Agnes stood up. She was wearing a threadbare plaid shawl over a ragged green blouse with a hessian skirt.

  ‘You snore really loudly,’ Blart told her.

  ‘I don’t normally snore,’ insisted Agnes. ‘But at the moment I have a cold.’

  She scrutinised the remnants of her shelter suspiciously.

  ‘A wind, you say?’

  ‘A freak wind,’ nodded Capablanca. ‘It came out of nowhere.’

  ‘Don’t winds normally come from nowhere?’ asked Blart unhelpfully.

  The wizard ignored him and focused on Agnes. But Agnes was no longer looking at Capablanca. Nor was she considering the remains of her house.

  ‘What’s that?’

  The questors turned round anxiously. All they saw was Pig the Horse. The questors looked at each other. This was not a good sign.

  Chapter 41

  ‘It’s a horse,’ said Capablanca.

  ‘Called Pig,’ added Blart.

  ‘We thought you might like to talk to him,’ coaxed Princess Lois.

  ‘Talk to him?’ shouted Agnes. ‘Of course I don’t want to talk him. Get him out of my clearing.’

  The questors looked at each other in despair.

  ‘But, madam,’ said Uther soothingly, ‘is it not the case that you are the legendary Agnes? Your reputation has stretched far and wide.’

  Agnes stared at him balefully. Uther reached deeper into his larder of compliments.

  ‘And so we have travelled in a spirit of great humbleness and humility to find Agnes, Agnes the Great, I should say, to see if she considers us worthy to marvel at her gifts and witness her speak to a horse.’

  Agnes’s stare had become a little less baleful with each honey-covered word that had slipped from Uther’s mouth.

  ‘It’s not just horses, you know,’ Agnes told Uther. ‘I can talk to all the animals.’

  ‘All the animals?’ said Uther.

  ‘Even pigs?’ said Blart.

  Agnes nodded wearily as though the memory brought her no joy whatsoever.

  ‘Then we have underestimated you,’ said Uther smoothly, ‘for which we humbly apologise. We realise now that you should not be known as simply Agnes the Great, but as Agnes the …’

  Uther paused. His larder of compliments seemed to need restocking.

  ‘Very Great?’ suggested the Princess.

  ‘Extra Great?’ suggested Capablanca.

  ‘Great and a bit more?’ suggested Beo.

  Agnes began to look a little dubious as the disappointing epithets rolled in.

  ‘Agnes the Superb,’ concluded Uther.

  Agnes cheered up.

  ‘Agnes the Superb,’ she repeated. ‘I like the sound of that.’

  ‘And it sounds right because it is true,’ agreed Uther. ‘If I were to say, for example, “Blart the Superb”, then it would sound wrong, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Not to me,’ said Blart.

  Agnes and the other questors agreed it would sound wrong.

  ‘We must tell everyone that Agnes the Great should no longer be called Agnes the Great but should instead be called Agnes the Superb,’ said Uther. ‘And we should do it straight away.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Agnes the Newly Superb, blinded by the blizzard of compliments.

  ‘For that reason we ask you to speak briefly to Pig the Horse so that we can be numbered among those who really have seen you talk to the animals.’

  Agnes the Newly Superb stood up to do as she was bid. And then she remembered something. Her face darkened and she sat down again.

  ‘What is the matter?’ asked Uther soothingly.

  ‘I swore I would never do it again,’ said Agnes. ‘I would never speak to another animal as long as I lived.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Capablanca. ‘Surely when one has an almost magical power like yours one should be prepared to use it.’

  ‘That is what I thought once,’ said Agnes, ‘but something changed my mind.’

  ‘What?’ asked Princess Lois.

  ‘Dung.’

  ‘Don’t use language like that in front of a maiden,’ cautioned Beo. ‘It is unchivalrous.’

  ‘I don’t need protecting from dung, you oaf,’ snapped Princess Lois. ‘My pet dragons were always making big piles of dung.’

  ‘Not like the piles of dung I’ve seen,’ said Agnes darkly, and as she spoke it felt as though she was summoning up an awful memory.

  ‘What’s wrong with dung?’ said Blart. ‘My pigs were always leaving piles of it in their sty. I never minded.’

  ‘In their sty,’ cried Agnes. ‘If the dung had stayed in sties and coops then I wouldn’t have minded.’

  ‘You mean your dung came out of its sty?’ said Blart. Mobile dung was not a thing anybody wanted to come across.

  ‘No, no, no,’ said Agnes. ‘The dung didn’t move. The people did.’

  None of the questors had any idea what Agnes was talking about any more. But Agnes was now deep into her traumatic memory and was not concerned whether people understood her or not.

  ‘At first it wasn’t a problem. I lived in a house outside a pretty village. The villagers knew of my gift and they used to come by every now and then to ask me why their dog was barking so much or why their cat wasn’t eating, and I used to talk to the animal and find out and tell the owner and everything was fine.’

  ‘There you are,’ said Uther. ‘That’s almost what we’d like you to do with –’

  ‘But then word spread,’ said Agnes, cutting off Uther in mid-flow. ‘People began to come from far and wide with their animals. “Why won’t my cow give milk?”, “Why won’t my hen lay?”, “Is my toad happy?”. I tried to help. I tried to talk to all their animals. But each day when I woke in the morning there were more people outside my door, waiting with their animals. And no matter how fast I talked to each one, the queue of people and animals would grow longer. Soon it stretched around my house and into the village. A big queue of animals waiting. And then there was the dung from all the waiting animals. It piled up outside my house. It piled up in the village. The smell was terrible. The villagers, who used to be my friends, blamed me for all this though it was not my fault. One night they came to my house armed with torches and sticks. They stood outside, shouting about me ruining their neighbourhood. They called me names and said I had brought disease to their streets. In vain, did I shout through the window, telling them that I had never wanted all this dung, that I disliked it more than them. But they wouldn’t listen. One by one they threw their burning torches at my house. The thatch caught fire. I had no time to gather even my most precious possessions before I had to run from my own home.’

  Blart nodded sympathetically.

  ‘I’ve been chased out of villages too,’ he said.

  Agnes seemed not to notice this interrupti
on, so deep was she in the recollection of her own misfortune.

  ‘But I survived. And realising that my gift had brought nothing but trouble and misery –’

  ‘And dung,’ added Blart.

  ‘– I resolved to hide myself in the middle of the deepest forest and never to use my gift again.’

  Agnes finished her story with a shudder.

  The questors, recognising that Agnes had found recounting the incident difficult, maintained a respectful silence.

  That is, most of the questors.

  ‘I bet pigs were the best animals to talk to,’ said Blart.

  ‘Your experiences sound terrible,’ said Uther to Agnes with such sincerity that he could only be lying. ‘We all sympathise with your predicament and respect completely your decision not to use your gift again.’

  Uther paused. The other questors looked confused. Surely if they respected Agnes’s decision then they would fail in their quest, Illyria would be invaded, Zoltab would be freed and the world would be destroyed.

  ‘But,’ said Uther, ‘we would ask you to use your gift just once more.’

  ‘Never,’ answered Agnes firmly. ‘Did you not hear me say I swore a solemn oath?’

  ‘But –’ began Uther.

  ‘Never, never, never,’ interrupted Agnes.

  Capablanca decided that Uther’s insincere compliments had reached the summit of their usefulness and that it was now time for him to take over.

  ‘Agnes,’ said the wizard. ‘I understand you swore an oath but you must know that this is no ordinary matter. If you do not help us there will be war. Evil forces will rise up and the world will be destroyed.’

  ‘Never, never, never,’ repeated Agnes.

  Capablanca was dumbfounded. Princess Lois felt that Capablanca’s method was flawed. What would Agnes care about the wider world, she thought, living as she was in a rude shelter in the middle of a forest? She felt that a more personal approach was called for.

  ‘Agnes,’ she said, adopting a kindly tone. ‘We know that you love animals and would like to talk to them. But you have a fear. A fear that if you start talking to our horse then we would tell others and they would come to see you too and before you knew it there would be dung everywhere.’