The Boy Who Didn't Want to Save the World

by Dominic Barker

  ‘It is a great quest,’ snapped Capablanca. ‘Know ye that we ride against Zoltab.’

  ‘ZOLTAB!’ shouted Beo in his excitement.

  ‘Sssshhh,’ hissed Capablanca.

  ‘Your pie and ale, sir,’ said the landlord, who had managed to make his way to their table without either of them noticing, so engrossed were they in their own conversation.

  ‘Yes, very good weather we’re having,’ said Capablanca, trying to change the topic of conversation.

  ‘But I thought Zoltab was –’ began Beo.

  ‘An old lord best forgotten,’ interrupted Capablanca, making frantic eye movements towards the landlord to indicate to Beowulf that he should be quiet.

  ‘Will sir require any sauces?’ asked the landlord.

  ‘No,’ said Capablanca in his haste to get rid of the landlord. ‘He won’t.’

  The landlord departed.

  ‘I wanted sauces,’ said Beo indignantly.

  ‘I thought you wanted a quest,’ Capablanca reminded him.

  ‘Isn’t it a terrible thing when a man can’t have a quest and sauces?’ muttered Beo, but he complained no further. Whilst he ate his pie, the wizard told him in hushed tones where they were bound.

  Blart, who was still sitting on the floor, noticed that the landlord had slunk over to a dark corner where a group of men dressed in black sat close together around a table muttering amongst themselves. The landlord spoke to them, and whatever he said caused the men to sneak a number of dark looks at the warrior and the wizard, who were too deep in conversation to notice. Blart pulled himself up from the floor as it was apparent that nobody was going to give him any sympathy. He sat down next to Capablanca. As he did so there was a loud guffaw of laughter from the table in the corner. It was laughter with an edge to it. Cruel laughter that you might hear from a bully who knows that his victim is lying helpless in front of him.

  Capablanca had finished explaining the quest to Beowulf. The warrior raised two objections to it. They were both to do with Blart. The first was that he would now be unable to kill Blart, even after he’d learnt a prayer, as the wizard had made it perfectly plain that Blart was essential to the success of the whole campaign. Reluctantly Beowulf accepted Capablanca’s decision. The second objection was that he, Beowulf, was an experienced man of action and, whilst he had respect for Capablanca who had powers that he could never hope to possess, when he looked at Blart he just saw a useless lump.

  ‘What use can this ugly poltroon be against Zoltab?’ he asked.

  This seemed a good question to Blart. It also seemed a good question to Capablanca.

  ‘That’s a good question,’ he replied. And then he stopped.

  ‘And …?’ prompted Beo, who felt sure that there was something missing from this answer.

  Capablanca’s brow furrowed deeply. His mouth opened and then closed without any words emerging. He took a deep breath. He closed his eyes. He summoned up his energy and then suddenly out popped the three words that Capablanca found most difficult to say in the whole world.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What?’ said Blart and Beo together.

  ‘He’s the first-born son of a first-born son of a first-born son dating all the way back to the beginning of time and is therefore the only person able to defeat Zoltab. But I’m not completely clear how it will happen,’ muttered Capablanca shiftily.

  ‘But …’ said Blart, his voice rising in shock. ‘If you don’t know and I don’t know who’s going to tell us?’

  ‘There are times on a great quest when we must trust to fate,’ replied Capablanca.

  ‘That’s true,’ nodded Beo. ‘Sure it wouldn’t be a proper quest if we knew everything. We must trust to our destiny to provide us with the answers.’

  Both Capablanca and Beo looked serious and philosophical.

  ‘What happens if it doesn’t?’ said Blart, who was much less convinced by this whole trusting to fate approach.

  ‘Then the world is doomed,’ said Capablanca matter-of-factly, happier now that he had a question that he could answer.

  ‘A hopeless quest is even more noble,’ added Beo cheerily. ‘Count me in. Shall we drink on it?’

  ‘No,’ answered Capablanca. ‘Blart and I must go to bed. We have walked far today and we will travel further tomorrow.’

  ‘Goodnight to you, then,’ said Beo. ‘I’ll have one more myself for luck and then I’ll follow you. Landlord. Another flagon of mead, please.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said the landlord, making them all jump as he appeared from behind a nearby pillar.

  ‘Cancel that order,’ instructed Capablanca. ‘We must depart early tomorrow and we must all retire immediately.’

  ‘But a warrior needs his ale,’ protested Beo. ‘It gives him strength and courage.’

  ‘And makes it very difficult to get him up in the morning,’ said Capablanca. ‘You must choose, Beowulf the Warrior. Is it to be a quest or a flagon of ale?’

  The warrior looked into Capablanca’s face and realised the wizard was serious. With an ill grace he threw his tankard to the floor.

  ‘Have it your way, Capablanca,’ he said grudgingly. ‘But this quest had better be good.’

  The landlord showed them upstairs. On the way up Capablanca arranged to move into a room with three beds for he feared that given the chance the warrior would run straight back down to the bar.

  The room that they were shown into was far from hospitable. The curtains were covered in mildew, the sheets were smelly and damp and the candle didn’t have much wick left. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling and invisible creatures made rustling noises.

  ‘Be out by ten,’ said the landlord.

  ‘We’ll have the plague by ten,’ replied Capablanca. ‘You should be ashamed of yourself.’

  The landlord shrugged.

  ‘Take it or leave it.’

  They took it. They had no other choice. And though Capablanca complained and Beo grumbled and Blart muttered they were still all asleep within five minutes.

  Chapter 6

  ‘Death to the enemies of Zoltab!’

  Blart’s eyes shot open. A shadowy figure stood over him. Something glinted in the moonlight. A knife.

  ‘Aaaarrrggghh.’ Blart threw himself out of bed. He heard the thud as the knife embedded itself in his pillow.

  ‘Fight to the death, men,’ he heard Beowulf cry.

  ‘Then die in the name of Zoltab,’ came the bloodcurdling reply.

  ‘Help,’ cried Capablanca.

  ‘Die, old man,’ growled another voice.

  Blart weighed up his options. He sensed that there were a large number of men in the room. He felt sure that their intentions were not friendly. His two comrades were obviously in trouble. Blart resolved to act immediately. He crawled under the bed, hoping that nobody noticed.

  It is difficult to work out what is going on in a fight in a dark room when you are hiding under a bed. Blart heard a lot of bumps and bangs, a number of oaths and quite a few howls of pain. As his eyes became accustomed to the dark, he was able to watch what was happening too. However, he had what can only be described as a restricted view. It mainly consisted of feet and lower legs and it was difficult to get an accurate picture of who was winning from just this evidence.

  ‘Aaaarrrggghhh.’

  ‘Ooooohhhhhh.’

  ‘Uuuggghhhhh.’

  ‘Ouch, that hurt.’

  ‘I’m on your side.’

  The yells and screams echoed through the inn. No doubt the landlord would have to give a substantial discount to the other guests in the morning.

  Thunk.

  A dagger had fallen from someone’s hand and landed by the bed. Blart recognised that in the present situation a dagger might come in handy. He reached out and grabbed it.

  Thwack! Bang! Crash! Thwack (again)!

  ‘Uuuurrrgghhh.’

  ‘Ooooowwww.’

  ‘Aaaaarrrrggghh.’

  ‘I’ve told you, I’m on your
side.’

  The fight showed no sign of being decided. Blart continued to watch the movement of feet and lower legs in the hope of working out what was going on and who was going to win and therefore whose side he should pretend to be on. Loyalty, like honour, was a concept to which Blart had not yet been introduced.

  But slowly, ever so slowly, Blart’s brain was beginning to work. The man who’d tried to kill him had said, ‘Death to the enemies of Zoltab!’ He, Blart, was the only person who could defeat Zoltab. Therefore, however nice he promised to be to Zoltab, people weren’t going to believe him. Once Beowulf and Capablanca were out of the way they were going to search the room, find him and kill him, and unless they were all really terrible at hide and seek then nothing was going to stop them.

  ‘Get off.’

  ‘Ouch.’

  ‘Die.’

  Suddenly Blart realised what he had to do – his best chance of survival was to fight on Capablanca and Beowulf’s side now before anything happened to them. And so he rolled from under the bed with a blood-curdling scream, cried death or glory and threw himself upon the intruders. Well, no, actually he didn’t. What he did was to try to work out a way for him to participate in the fight without risking his own safety. Amazingly, Blart thought of a way. And the way was …

  Feet.

  If he could stab the feet of the intruders then he could undermine the attack from below whilst keeping himself relatively safe. Blart was so pleased with his plan that he lay admiring it for a few seconds.

  ‘Help, Capablanca.’

  ‘Save me, Beo.’

  Shaken out of this brief period of self-congratulation by the cries of his comrades, Blart picked up his knife and prepared to plunge it into the feet of the attackers. He could almost hear the howls of pain.

  And then suddenly he stopped.

  There was a problem. He didn’t know whose feet were whose. To be fair to Blart, it would be wrong to criticise him for not having made a detailed study of his comrades’ feet. Let’s face it. Few of us would have considered it necessary as a prelude to military action. It was here that Blart had a stroke of luck.

  Bareness.

  Of the twelve feet that had at various times passed in front of his eyes only four were bare. These bare feet had to belong to Capablanca and Beowulf. Nobody sleeps in anything but bare feet because covered feet will overheat in the night and swell up, making it difficult to get your boots on in the morning. The surprise attack had left them no chance to put any kind of footwear on and so those with covered feet must be the enemy. Blart was making large leaps when it came to logical thought. He studied the enemy footwear. They had on soft slipper-like shoes chosen to make as little noise as possible in order to maintain the element of surprise in their attack. These soft shoes contained their Achilles’ heel.

  Blart raised his dagger and stabbed.

  ‘Aaaaarrrrgggaaaaawwwwhhhooo,’ was the stunning noise that emerged from the man who owned the foot.

  Quickly, Blart crawled to the other end of the bed and sank his dagger into the nearest slippered foot. There was slightly more of the ‘wwwwwwhhhhhooo’ and slightly less of the ‘aaarrggaa’ this time but to those who weren’t listening carefully the noise was essentially the same.

  By the time Blart’s third stab had found its way through an enemy instep, doubts were beginning to enter their collective mind.

  ‘Devils,’ cried one. ‘There’s devils coming through the floorboards.’

  ‘We are not fighting ordinary mortals,’ bewailed another.

  ‘I’ll never play football again,’ lamented a third.

  The fourth stab from Blart was decisive.

  ‘More devils,’ cried another attacker, who had acquired a ventilation passage in the centre of his foot. ‘Run, men.’

  Run, in all honesty, would not be a good description of what the attackers did at this point. However, they did limp fast. But one figure did not limp fast enough. By the time Blart emerged from under the bed, the slowest attacker lay on the floor with Beowulf the Warrior sitting on his chest, his mighty sword held aloft and poised to dispatch the intruder to another world.

  ‘Stop!’ ordered Capablanca. ‘Do not kill him. We need some answers.’

  ‘Ah, go on,’ cajoled Beo.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Sure, this is no fun,’ lamented Beo. ‘The least you expect after a battle is to be able to massacre the defenceless prisoners in cold blood.’

  ‘Maybe later,’ said Capablanca in an attempt to mollify the grumpy warrior. ‘But first we need some answers.’

  They both noticed Blart for the first time.

  ‘Can I kill him then?’ asked Beo, indicating Blart.

  ‘Why?’ demanded Blart. ‘I just saved your lives.’

  ‘Did you hear something?’ asked Beo.

  ‘No,’ replied Capablanca. ‘Did you?’

  ‘No,’ replied Beo.

  ‘Honest,’ persisted Blart. ‘I behaved really well. I’m a hero.’

  It is often the case when two extreme positions are taken up that the truth lies somewhere between them. Blart had exhibited considerable cowardice by hiding under the bed but then he had redeemed himself by attacking from below. Whilst it was pushing his luck to describe himself as a hero, he didn’t deserve to be completely ignored.

  ‘So, who’ve we got here?’ said Capablanca, returning his attention to the captured prisoner.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Beo. ‘Let’s be having a proper look at him.’

  And with that Beo dragged the prisoner across the room to the window where the moonlight would reveal his face more clearly.

  ‘Mind my foot!’ shrieked the prisoner in a voice which sounded familiar.

  ‘I did that,’ Blart reminded them, but to no avail. His two companions showed no sign of having heard.

  Blart refused to be abashed by the treatment and pushed forward to see what the moonlight revealed. A simultaneous gasp escaped all three of them. It was the landlord.

  Chapter 7

  ‘What kind of a host are you,’ demanded Beo, ‘to be attacking your guests in their beds? Sure, that’s no way to get a good reputation. You’ll attract no repeat customers that way, let me tell you.’

  The landlord responded with a horrible leer to the criticisms of the warrior even though they were perfectly justified from a business point of view. Below the window the sound of galloping hooves suggested that the other attackers were fleeing.

  ‘Who are you and why did you attack us?’ demanded Capablanca.

  ‘You’ll get nothing out of me,’ spat back the landlord. ‘I will answer to a higher power.’

  ‘Great,’ said Beo gleefully. ‘Do I get to torture him now?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Capablanca. ‘For I have an idea which may save us the trouble of torturing this rogue.’

  ‘No trouble,’ said Beo lightly. ‘Really no trouble at all.’

  The wizard reached out and turned up the lobe of the landlord’s ear. The moonshine caught the underside of the ear and shone clearly on an ‘m’ which was tattooed there.

  ‘The mark of Zoltab,’ said Capablanca dramatically. ‘I did not think to find it so far west. Things are worse than I thought.’

  ‘An “m”,’ said Blart, who was puzzled. ‘Why isn’t the mark of Zoltab a “z”?’

  This was such a good question that the wizard forgot that he was ignoring Blart and answered it.

  ‘Know ye that Zoltab’s followers are branded according to their rank. A small “m” indicates a minion of Zoltab whilst a capital “M” indicates a Minister. This is a minion of Zoltab.’

  ‘Now can I kill him?’ begged Beo, who sensed that he might just get the idea past the wizard if he threw it in quickly.

  ‘No,’ said Capablanca. ‘He will be able to tell us many things that could help us.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Beo, looking crestfallen.

  ‘What have you done with Cheery?’ demanded Capablanca. ‘You took this inn from him by foul means
, did you not?’

  The landlord turned his head away to indicate that he would not speak.

  A smile broke out on Beowulf’s face. He stamped heavily on the bleeding foot of the landlord, who roared in pain. Beowulf’s smile grew broader. He really isn’t showing himself in a particularly good light.

  ‘He’s tied up in the cellar,’ said the landlord quickly.

  Beowulf looked slightly disappointed.

  ‘Ask him another,’ he said to Capablanca. ‘A really hard one he doesn’t know the answer to.’

  ‘In a minute,’ said Capablanca. ‘First we must free Cheery. Keep a close eye on the minion when we go down to the cellar, Beowulf.’

  They lit a candle from the embers of their fire and rushed down to the cellar. There they found Cheery tied, gagged and frowning. Capablanca undid the knots and removed the gag.

  ‘Thank’ee, kind sirs,’ said Cheery. ‘I’ve been hoping someone would come and rescue me.’

  ‘And here we are,’ said Beo.

  ‘Let us have a drink to celebrate my release,’ said Cheery.

  They went upstairs to the bar and lit some candles. Cheery filled three tankards with ale. Beo placed the minion of Zoltab on a nearby chair and stared at him ferociously.

  ‘No ale for the boy,’ ordered Capablanca.

  ‘He’s a coward,’ added Beo. ‘You’d still be down there if it was up to the likes of him.’

  ‘I was the one who won it for us,’ blurted out Blart in indignation. ‘I stabbed their –’

  ‘He’s a liar too,’ said Beo.

  ‘All boys are liars,’ agreed Cheery, giving Blart a hard look before taking his beer away.

  ‘Now,’ said Capablanca, leaning forward towards their prisoner. ‘We want some answers, minion. Who sent you here and why? How long will it be before the Great Tunnel of Despair is long enough to reach Zoltab and how well is the entrance to it guarded?’

  ‘Ugh.’ Cheery spat out the ale he had just swigged from Blart’s tankard. ‘That’s disgusting. To think that I would see the day when a vinegary ale was served in The Jolly Murderers.’