‘Do you . . . do you really think that’s what happened?’
‘Of course it is,’ I told him. ‘I didn’t want to be the one to tell you. But you see, Brutus, your master is not the fair and honest creature you’d like to think he is. He’s like the rest of his kind, out for what he can get. And the likes of you and me, we’re just possessions, to be used or discarded as he pleases.’
Brutus sighed.
‘I do hope you’re wrong,’ he said. ‘I’ve often talked to him about my mother . . . speculating on where the rest home might be . . . but he’s never really given me a straight answer.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘he’s hardly likely to tell you he ate her with a nice bowl of gravy, is he? That wouldn’t have been much of an incentive to keep you working at the wheel.’
I know it was a terrible thing to say. But Brutus had to learn the awful truth somehow. Besides, it had occurred to me that tomorrow morning would be make or break time for me. I kept thinking about those heavy stone wheels, turning round and round, and I pictured myself shackled to them, performing the same meaningless task for the rest of my days.
One thing was certain. I knew that I could not let it happen. I’d die first.
Chapter 8
Make or Break
They came for us at cockcrow. The doors were unlatched and Ebenezer strutted in, carrying his whip, with Harold and James walking just behind him. He gave Brutus an unsympathetic look.
‘Well?’ he demanded. ‘How’s the leg?’ ‘Better, I think,’ said Brutus, carefully raising himself up onto his feet.
But I could see the pained expression on his face as he did so. His leg wasn’t healed at all.
‘Then you’re ready to start work again?’ asked Ebenezer.
‘Soon,’ said Brutus, calmly. ‘First, need to speak about mother.’
‘Your mother?’ Ebenezer ’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. ‘What about her?’
Brutus edged a little closer.
‘You recall, Master, when you first take her away, you say you take her to rest home?’
‘Er . . . yes,’ said Ebenezer, warily. ‘What of it?’
‘Master please be good enough to tell Brutus where this place is.’
I noticed that Harold and James had to suppress smiles when Brutus asked this. Ebenezer just shrugged his narrow shoulders.
‘I forget exactly,’ he said. ‘Somewhere off towards . . .’
He waved a hand in dismissal. ‘Come along, we need to get on with the oil. I have important people waiting for this order.’
But Brutus shook his head.
‘No work till you answer question,’ he said.
His voice was still calm but his intent was evident.
‘Oh er . . . it was somewhere near Torin, I believe,’ said Ebenezer. ‘Yes, I forget the exact details; it was years ago.’
‘And . . . she is still alive?’
‘Who cares?’ snarled Ebenezer. ‘Listen, I’ve had about enough of this nonsense. Move your flea-bitten carcass out of there and . . .’
‘My young friend here say she never go to rest home. He say she go into your cooking pot.’
There was a silence, so deep you could have heard a piece of straw turning over. Ebenezer stared at Brutus and the guilt was written all over his face. After a few moments, he found his tongue and tried to protest.
‘What . . . nonsense!’ he cried. ‘The very idea! And why you would listen to a mere calf, is beyond me. Now look, I’m through being polite here.’
He raised the whip threateningly.
‘If you don’t make a move, I swear I’ll beat you until you beg for mercy.’
But Brutus was nodding his great horned head.
‘He was right,’ he said. ‘Brutus has been blind all these years. There is no rest home. You eat my mother and you eat me, if I not get well. I who work for you, year after year, never complain. You would put me on plate to feed family.’
Ebenezer lost his temper then.
‘Yes, of course I would!’ he yelled. ‘Who d’you think you are? You’re just a beast of burden with ideas above your station. I own your miserable hide, I paid good money for it and I’ll use it as I see fit. And if that means an extra meal for my family, so be it! Now shut your stupid mouth and get moving!’
He raised the whip and lashed it across Brutus’s huge back, but the buffalope barely flinched. He put down his head and pawed the ground with his injured front leg. Then he glanced briefly at me.
‘You get away from here, lad,’ he murmured. ‘Don’t make the mistake I did.’
The whip cracked across his back a second time and he lifted his head, to stare at Ebenezer with cold intent. He gave a great rumbling bellow of anger. Then he charged.
It all happened very quickly. One moment Ebenezer was standing there, framed in the open doorway. The next, there was a terrible impact as Brutus’s great horns hit him in the chest and lifted him clean off his feet. Harold and James scattered frantically out of the way as Ebenezer was carried out of the barn, yelling in terror.
I took the opportunity to scramble upright and I made a run for the doorway. James, realising my intention, made a leap for me, trying to throw his arms around my neck, but I swung my head to meet him and my horns caught him in the face with a dull thud. I flung him aside like a sack of rubbish.
Then I was out of the barn and running in Brutus’s wake and I could see that the big buffalope was still carrying Ebenezer towards his house and he wasn’t slowing his pace at all, even though he must have been in agony on his injured leg. As I watched in amazement, Brutus slammed Ebenezer against the door of his house, which flew off its hinges and then they disappeared inside and there was a great crashing sound from within, mingled with the terrified screams of Ebenezer ’s wife and children.
I raced around the side of the house, heading for the plains beyond and, as I ran past the back of the building, I heard another crash and when I looked back over my shoulder, I saw Ebenezer ’s broken and bloodied body flying through the back window amidst a blizzard of broken glass. He hit the ground, rolled over several times and did not move.
I didn’t slow my pace at all but just kept going, bounding up the twisting track that led from the farm and galloping over the ridge beyond. I had only a vague notion of my direction, but I believed that I was heading for the great plains and I wasn’t going to let anything stop me.
I ran and ran until I thought my lungs would burst and, only when I was totally exhausted, did I slow to a canter, a trot, and then a walk. I looked back the way I had come and I could not see anybody following me. I was free once more, but totally alone in the vastness of an unfamiliar landscape.
There was nothing for it but to start walking.
Chapter 9
Wandering
I walked for days and nights, not wanting to stop until I found some familiar territory. But everything here looked strange to me. I had lost my sense of direction and could not seem to find a path.
At last, I crested a ridge and found myself looking down at a comforting flatness that resembled the great plains from which I had been dragged; but where that land would have been rich with lush grass, here it was arid, red soil with just the occasional tuft of scrub poking through the earth.
I told myself that I must be a lot further South than my home ground and that I needed to turn North, if I wanted to get back to it. Except that, mixed up as I was, I was no longer really sure which way was North. I would have to wait for the sunrise and try to work out my position from that. Meanwhile, I descended the ridge and kept moving, telling myself that I was lucky to be away from Ebenezer ’s clutches and the awful fate that he had in store for me.
That night, I huddled down on the ground, jerking rudely awake at every sound that came out of the night, a mixture of hoots and howls and chirruping that set my poor nerves on edge. It’s little wonder that I’ve suffered with my nerves all my life, after the trials I suffered in that remote spot.
At dawn
the next morning, I got myself upright and went on my way again, keeping the sun on my left side and hoping against hope that I was heading in the right direction. I wished that Mama and Papa were here to guide me, but Papa was gone and I seriously doubted that I would ever see Mama again.
It was that afternoon when I realised that I was being followed. I’d chanced to look over my shoulder and I saw several small creatures trailing me at a distance. I snorted and turned to have a proper look, then realised with a jolt of horror that it was a pack of wild mutts, small, grey spindly creatures with hideous spotted backs, ugly black snouts and thick, bushy tails. I did a quick headcount and there were seven of them.
I had seen enough mutts following the great herd to know how these creatures operated. They would follow us for miles and they never gave up, not until they got some poor straggler on his own, and then it took the combined horns of the adult males to drive them away. But here I was, totally alone. Who was going to help me?
I turned and began to run and the mutts barked and howled and took off after me, running easily on their big wide-splayed paws, their tongues lolling. Ahead of me there was nothing but more dry plains, stretching as far as the eye could see. I began to think that I was doomed. Just my luck, I thought, to escape from that rotten Berundian, only to land myself in even deeper trouble. It was enough to make me want to spit.
I ran for mile after mile until my heart felt like it was going to burst, but I could not shake the mutts off my trail. Finally, near to exhaustion, I turned and lowered my horns. The mutts closed around me, staying low on their bellies and circling, as they looked for an opening.
The first of them dashed at my rear hooves and I launched a wild kick that caught her in the chest and sent her spinning. But, immediately, her brothers and sisters were upon me in six different places, snapping at my legs, my flanks, my tail. One of them got his powerful teeth into one of my haunches and I bellowed with pain and swung around, lifting him clear off his feet.
Another made a leap for my throat, but I swung my head hard to the side and one of my horns caught her a crack across the skull. She yelped and went rolling away across the ground.
A desperate struggle followed. I felt pain from every quarter as a succession of teeth locked into my flesh, but I kicked and bucked and stamped and swung my horns and sometimes I felt the snapping of bones beneath my hooves and, I have to tell you, it felt pretty good. But it was a fight I could not hope to win. My strength was near to failing me and I must have been bleeding from a dozen places, yet I would not capitu late and I kept on fighting with every bit of strength left in my body.
Finally, I stood on my failing legs and saw that there were just three of the mutts left standing, their brothers and sisters either dead or crippled. One brute, bigger than his companions, advanced slowly towards me. There was a look of sheer malignance in his yellow eyes and, as he came forward, I could see the saliva dripping from his jaws. I knew that he was about to leap at my throat and that I needed to repel his attack, but I no longer had the strength to swat him away. I lowered my head and waited for the deathblow.
Instead, I heard a sudden yelp of pain. I looked up and saw the three mutts running away in apparent terror. The biggest of them had a plumed stick in his side, the kind of thing that had killed Papa. For an instant, I felt exhilarated. I was alive! But my delight was short-lived as it occurred to me that it must be the Neruvians, come to claim back their property.
I swung giddily around to look behind me. I saw a strange carriage on wheels that was hitched to a single equine. The side of the carriage was gaily decorated with colours and strange squiggly lines. I was too young and inexperienced to recognise these as human words. Beside the carriage stood a man, holding a bow. He was dressed like no other human I had ever seen. His clothes were covered in brightly coloured stripes and he wore a strange kind of hat, a comical looking thing that ended in three prongs, each with a small jingling bell.
I stood there looking at the human through bleary eyes as he walked slowly towards me. My first impulse was to charge at him, to try and escape, but the man was smiling at me and there was a kindness in his eyes that I had seen in no other human.
‘Hello,’ he said. ‘You’re in a terrible state, aren’t you? It’s lucky that I happened along.’
I opened my mouth to ask him who he was and what he wanted, but all that emerged was a long moan of pain.
‘Here, you look ready to drop,’ he said.
He put a hand onto my neck and grabbed a hank of hair.
‘Better get you into my caravan,’ he said. ‘Young as you are, I won’t be able to carry you if you fall down here.’
He led me to the back of the thing he had called a ‘caravan’. There were steps leading up into it, but he pulled out a long flat piece of wood from within and made a ramp up which he pushed and prodded me. I was too weak to resist. I found myself standing in a strange little place full of weird and wonderful-looking objects, the like of which I had never seen before.
Then my legs gave out and I slumped down onto the wooden floor with a long sigh. I was dimly aware of the human pushing the plank of wood in beside me.
‘Get some rest,’ he said. ‘We haven’t far to go.’
After a short silence, the floor beneath me began to rock and shudder, as though we were moving.
I craned my head around trying to get a better look at the wonders around me, but I was tired, so very tired. My heavy eyelids came down and I slept like the dead.
Chapter 10
Alexander
His name was Alexander Darke and, when I met him, he was a young and, it must be said, fairly unsuccessful jester. I didn’t know that straight away, of course. I didn’t even know what a jester was. All that came later, when I had recovered my strength.
To begin with, I was very ill and the memories I have of that time are of lying on a pile of straw in a warm, dry stall, being tended by the man in the strange striped clothing and his young wife, who had the petite stature and pointed ears of the elf-creatures that old Jonah had once described to me.
They washed the blood from me and tended my wounds; they poured water down my throat and spoke gentle words, which were a revelation after everything I had suffered at the hands of other Uprights; they didn’t seem to want anything of me other than my survival.
After a few days of their tender ministrations, I finally felt strong enough to speak.
‘Thank you,’ I said, as the man leaned over me, inspecting the poultice on one of the wounds in my side.
He rocked back a little, his expression one of surprise.
‘You can speak!’ he said.
Bit of an obvious remark, under the circumstances, but I refrained from commenting on it.
‘Sarah, come over here! The buffalope can speak. He just said thank you!’
The elvish woman came over to kneel beside me. She looked at me with interest and I noted how pretty she was, with her dark curling hair and her jet black eyes.
‘Are you sure?’ she asked him. ‘Perhaps it just sounded like hello.’
‘No really, he looked up at me and . . .’
‘He speaks true,’ I told her. ‘I know words of human tongue. My friend Brutus teach me.’
The two of them laughed delightedly.
‘This Brutus has taught you very well,’ said the man. ‘I must say it’s good to see that you’re on the mend. When I first came across you, I wouldn’t have given a croat for your chances. Those mutts had worked you over something terrible.’
‘I is in your debt, sir.’
‘Oh, no need to be so formal! I am Alexander Darke. And this is my lovely wife, Sarah.’
I nodded. ‘And I am called—’
And I said my buffalope name, making the snickering sound at the back of my throat. The two of them looked at each other.
‘I doubt that we’ll be able to pronounce that,’ said Alexander. ‘Would you object if we gave you a human name, something we could say more easily
?’
‘I not mind,’ I assured them.
‘Then we shall call you . . .’
Alexander thought for a moment.
‘Max,’ he said. ‘What d’you think, Sarah? He looks like a Max to me.’
‘I think it suits him. But what does Mr Buffalope think of it?’
‘Max,’ I said.
I rather liked the sound of it. It seemed strong and dependable, qualities that I like to think I have in abundance.
‘I very happy to have this name,’ I said.
‘That’s settled then,’ said Alexander. ‘Now, Max, I’m no doctor, but I’d say the elvish poultices that Sarah made for your wounds are weaving their magic. You’ll be healed in no time.’
He studied me thoughtfully.
‘Where were you going when I found you?’ he asked. ‘You became separated from your herd, perhaps?’
I shook my head and winced at the pain this caused.
‘I left herd days back,’ I said. ‘There was sickness. Then I caught by evil Neruvians who sell me to cruel master. He chain me and want to make me grind drabnat fruit. I was fleeing from him when mutts attack.’
Sarah frowned.
‘I don’t blame you for running away,’ she said. ‘It sounds like an awful life. But you are only a youngster. What of your parents?’
I sighed.
‘Papa dead; shot with feather-sticks by bad men. Mama they take, too. I not know where she be.’
Sarah’s pretty face registered sadness.
‘You poor thing,’ she said.
She reached out a hand to stroke my head. Then she glanced at Alexander Darke, as though asking him an unspoken question, and he nodded, as though he understood perfectly.
‘Well, listen, Max,’ she said, ’you can stay here as long as you wish. Once you are stronger, we have a nice big paddock with plenty of grass. You’ll be good company for Betty.’
‘Bett-ee?’ I murmured.
‘Our equine. She has a friendly disposition, I should think the two of you will get along fine.’
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