A Preview - The Opening

If anyone fancies a hint of what is to come - the opening part of The Disposable can be found below. I hope you like it and apologies if the formatting has done anything weird. ;p

The Disposable by Katherine Vick

Part One

No, hang on, that’s already done with.

Part Two

Nope, that one’s over too.

Ah, here we are.…

Part Three

A piece of paper.

That’s what it was, when all was said and done. A simple, straight­forward piece of paper, the words upon it written in the familiar, authoritative, unnaturally regular lettering that signified instructions from the Taskmaster. It spelled out a sequence of events that had to be ruthlessly prepared for by every living thing in the Realm, and it was to be obeyed without thought and without question. That was merely the way it was, and to disobey would be unthinkable.

Wouldn’t it?

Because there were days, sometimes, when he couldn’t help but wonder if the world would really come to an end if he just chucked the paper away and went back to bed.

Probably not. After all, he was only a Disposable. Who would notice? Who would care? For if there was one word that could be used to describe Fodder of Humble Village, it was ordinary.

His nose was neither hooked nor pointed, neither snub nor aqui­line, neither especially big nor noticeably small. His hair was brown—no fiery reds or midnight blacks for him—and his eyes, also brown, did not glow or flash or compellingly catch the gaze in any way whatsoever. He was neither fat nor particularly thin, no weakling but hardly of god­like physique, no towering giant but not notably on the short side. He was an ordinary man on an ordinary day, dressed in ordinary, rusty, badly fitting armour and waiting on a lonely road.

For what felt like the hundredth time since Preen had thrust the paper into his hand and frogmarched the four Disposables of Humble Village over to the barn to get changed that morning, Fodder lifted his now rather dog-eared instructions and skimmed through them.

Official Taskmaster Summary:
The Ring of Anthiphion:
Part Three

Elder and the band agree to follow the trail of the stolen Ring and Erik finds that for some reason, he can intuit which way it went. As they follow the trail, local guards attempt to apprehend them but are tossed aside.

While crossing a mountain pass late at night, the companions hear screams and ride up to find men in the livery of Sleiss attempting to abduct Princess Islaine, who is riding to Mond for her wedding. With the princess rescued but her guard dead, Sir Rod­erick feels he must see her back to the palace. Since the Ring trail goes in a similar direction and they need to speak to the king about shoring up the borders against the possible return of Craxis, Elder agrees to the detour. The princess and Erik argue incessantly as she tries to push him around, and by the time they reach the palace, they hate each other.

Local guards attempt to apprehend them but are tossed aside.… Fodder sighed.

“Well, isn’t that just the story of my life?” he muttered.

“What was that, mate?”

Fodder glanced up to find Shoulders standing just to his right, shifting his shoulders awkwardly as he adjusted something in front of his neck. Something that looked like it had started life as half a beer tankard. Shoulders’s left hand, as always in this matter detached from the reasoning centres of his brain, rubbed reflexively against the skin beneath his badly cut, scraggly dark blond hair and scruffy attempt at a beard. There was something a tiny bit maniacal about his smile.

Fodder just succeeded in turning his grimace into a grin in time. He was starting to worry about Shoulders.

“Nothing,” he managed, rather proud of the cheery unconcern he managed to instil into that single word. Don’t ask about the tankard. You don’t want to ask. You don’t want to know. It will only hurt your brain. “I was talking to myself. Well, thinking about the fight and talk­ing and…oh, it’s no bloody good. Shoulders, what is half a tankard doing tucked under your chin?”

Shoulders’s smile spread as he rapped his knuckles against it with a hollow clunk. “Good, isn’t it?” he exclaimed with, in Fodder’s opinion, inexplicable enthusiasm. “I nipped into the pub before we left and got it off Flirt. She even cut it in two for me and knocked the bottom out, bless her.”

“That’s nice.” Maintaining the smile was starting to hurt. “Why?”

Shoulders grinned. “Clank-proofing.”

And there it is. I told you that you didn’t want to know.

Fodder’s smile slipped into pity. “You do know it won’t work, don’t you? He’ll get you, mate. He always does.”

But Shoulders was shaking his head, his eyes bright with the fer­vour of desperate hope. “Not this time. Not again. This’ll thwart the bastard, I know it! Bloody Clank and his bloody broadsword, poncing about in his bloody armour on his bloody horse and thinking he can make sport of people’s necks! Well, let’s see what Mr All-Steel-And-No-Brain-Cells makes of this!”

Pieces, Fodder thought to himself, battling a near-overwhelming urge to drop his head into his hands. That’s what.

“It’s not in the Local Guard uniform code, you know,” he offered wearily. “The Narrative might notice. If Preen spots it, you’ll have to take it off.”

Shoulders glanced back down the muddy road to where officious little Preen, in his gold-trimmed purple doublet and prissy, curly-toed shoes, was haranguing the burly Thump and stick-thin Clunny about some aspect or other of their artfully badly arranged armour.

“Preen.” Shoulders snorted. “He’s a little oik. How much time does he spend out there on the front lines, hmm? What does he ever do apart from strut about in the background, pushing people around and giving out bits of paper? One of these days I’m going to tell him where to stick his—”

“Places, everybody! The Narrative is on its way!”

Fodder winced. There was something about the way that Preen clapped his hands. The fingertips tapping delicately against the palm, elbows raised so that his connecting hands were framed by an entirely insincere smile—a smile that told the observant watcher that there were blasted heaths and barren wastelands that would be more appealing to him than this place. It also whispered of the universe’s profound need for someone to give the man a damn good kicking. It would be for the good of humanity; Fodder just knew it.…

But now was not the time for such thoughts. Through the screen of trees marking out the Rambling Woods, he could see the glow of the strange, brilliant, impossibly vivid light that signified the approach of The Narrative, and the dust rising from the track to show the galloping horses of the Merry Band as they wound their way towards another episodic encounter. Adjusting his neck tankard with an odd mixture of determination and resignation and palming his rusty short sword, Shoulders dropped into place beside Fodder. To their left, Thump fin­gered the pet cudgel that, for reasons no one had ever mustered the courage to ask about, he’d named Ronald; and beyond him, Clunny, with his perennial fidget and inexplicable odour of beans, wrapped his fingers around his crossbow and clicked a bolt into place. Behind them, Dunny and Midlin from Fertile Fields and Donk and Tumble of Pro­vincial Town, who’d arrived that morning to Bulk Up their numbers, exchanged glances.

None of them spoke. Since this was Fodder’s territory—and since Preen had dismissively labelled Fodder Lead Guard for this particular encounter—the spare Disposables would stay silent and follow his lead.

Poor blighters. Work was work, but Bulking Up was just plain drudgery. You didn’t even get a description.

“Now, remember!” Preen’s voice, it had to be said, perfectly suited the impression given by the way he clapped. “Follow the lead of the Merry Band and don’t draw it out too much. This is only a time-filling skirmish, gentlemen, so let’s make it quick and easy for them! I’ve got to be going; important things to do and all!”

Preen’s voice was already fading into the distance as Fodder’s lip twisted sardonically. Important things indeed. Every man and his dog in the Realm knew that Preen hated the sight of blood and guts and severed limbs and always found important things to do whenever the men he was supposed to be supervising went into battle.

Although he’d never yet let it stop him from doing his job, Fodder wasn’t that fond of blood and guts and severed limbs himself.

Especially since they were always his own.

Just part of the job. And somebody had to do it. The instructions said so.

Though there was one tiny part of Fodder’s brain that wondered what would happen if the instructions declared and nobody showed up.

The light approached the corner of the trail ahead, spreading rap­idly towards them like a flood of glimmering water.

Grasping his spear, Fodder sighed. “Well, lads,” he said with a simple shrug. “Here we go again.”

Light…

“…following the instincts of a mere boy! This is folly! Surely—”

Zahora’s irritable tirade cut off without warning as they rounded the corner of the quagmire-like wooded trail, and for a moment Erik was nonplussed at her sudden silence. But as he glanced at Elder, he saw the old man rein in his horse, his eyes narrowed. Following his steely-eyed gaze, Erik felt his eyes widen. Eight soldiers dressed in the tattered, ill-cared-for armour of local guardsmen had spread out to block their trail.

“Why, those impudent—!” Halheid reared, bear-like, in his saddle, his huge beard bristling as he reached over his shoulder for his fearsome axe. “What do they mean by this?”

“Hold, my impulsive friend.” Sir Roderick had raised his visor, and though he fingered his broadsword thoughtfully, he did not draw it. “Leap not to violence so rapidly. Perchance they mean nothing by it, and this may yet be resolved without the spilling of blood.”

“That seems unlikely,” Gort retorted. The dwarf scratched his beard thoughtfully. “They look like money-grubbers to me; and I, for one, have no intention of paying up.”

“Perhaps they know of our mission.” Zahora’s sharply drawn fea­tures were fierce. “Perhaps they seek to thwart our quest for the Ring.”

“Them?” Slynder’s voice was rich with silent laughter as he leaned back in his saddle, surreptitiously loosening his throwing knives. “Our enemy has already proven he has better troops to throw in our path than this motley gang. I’ll bet half the money I won off Friend Halheid last night that all they want is enough coinage to fund an oblivious night in an alehouse.”

“Whatever they want, we will not learn it sitting here.” Elder’s rich voice commanded instant silence. “Come, but be wary. Sir Roderick, stay with young Erik. The boy is not much used to combat, but his instincts are valuable. Keep him safe.”

Erik felt a surge of resentment. He was sixteen, not some child to be brushed aside! But the armoured bulk of Sir Roderick had already pulled alongside him, his eyes stern as he lowered his visor; and reluctantly, Erik was forced to drop safely into his shadow.

“Eldrigon commands it, my young friend,” the knight said firmly. “You are not yet skilled enough to mount your own defence.”

“My good fellows!” Elder’s voice hailed the guardsmen as they reined their horses to a halt before the eight dishevelled men. “Why do you block our trail?”

The lead guard tipped his head in a show of mocking respect as he sauntered forwards, holding his spear loosely but with intent. Three of his friends grouped behind him, leaving the other four to fan out across the road.

“This is our trail, my rich friends,” the first man said with a sneer. “My Lord Khactas, baron of this fief, demands payment of all who use the roads that he so carefully maintains. For but a simple payment, you can be about your business and shall be troubled here no more.”

“And if we do not pay?” Slynder retorted. “If we refuse to pay for passage through this mud bath of a track he reputedly maintains with such care?”

“Then we shall have no choice but to escort you good people to tell my lord of your reasons for shirking your debt in person.” The guard leered. “You have already travelled a good league on his road and owe us for every hoofbeat. And my lord is not…kind to debtors.”

Elder sighed wearily. “Fellows, we have no quarrel with you. But we are on a matter of some urgency and cannot afford to be delayed.”

 “Then just pay, why don’t you, and stop with your jabbering!” One of the other guards—a scruffy, unshaven wretch dressed in armour that fitted strangely around his shoulders and neck—darted forwards, wav­ing his sword. “This is our road!”

 Sir Roderick drew himself up. “This is the kingdom of my noble King Cyrus, and I know without question or doubt that he would not permit the accosting of innocent citizens, were it known to him. We are on important business, you wretches, and you will stand aside!”

“No, you will pay!” the smallest of the guards, a weasel-faced little man hefting a crossbow, said threateningly. His companion, a burly thug, hulked menacingly. “Or you will face our lord!”

Slynder laughed. “I think you’ll find we shall do neither!”

The unshaven man gave an indignant screech. “You will pay or you will die!”

“Or both.” The lead guard’s face was avaricious. “For your imperti­nence, we shall have every piece of coin and jewellery from you, my friends. And we shall take them from your corpses! Get them!”

The weasel-faced guard had already hefted his crossbow but stag­gered backwards screaming and clawing at his throat as one of Slynder’s knives buried into it up to the hilt. Halheid had palmed his axe and spurred his horse forwards, slicing away the right arm of the burly guard in one clean motion before wheeling around and felling two of his fellows with the same awesome swing. Gort’s hammer crashed down upon the skull of the flailing one-armed guard, felling him for good, even as Zahora’s bow sang out, her arrows striking one guard through the eye and another in the shoulder. The latter, a giant of a man, still stumbled forwards with sword raised, but Sir Roderick’s broadsword cut him quickly and cleanly in half.

“You swine!” The lead guard was roaring in impotent rage as he leaned back and flung his spear with deadly force at Elder, but the old wizard raised his hand and, with a violent flash, the spear spun back and, with cruel irony, buried itself through the chest of its owner. The guard stared down at it, goggle-eyed and shocked, before slowly keeling over backwards.

Now only one guard remained: the unshaven soldier, who stared about in sudden fear at the bodies of his colleagues before turning on his heels to flee.

“Stop him!” Elder commanded. “He’ll bring others!”

Instantly obedient, Sir Roderick turned and spurred his horse after the unfortunate man, broadsword raised and ready. His first blow sliced his belly open, hurling purple entrails high into the air. The second, with a screech of yielding metal, sliced through his strange makeshift armour and sent his head flying from his shoulders.

Elder shook his head in despair as he stared down at the wreckage of human remains that lay strewn across the road around them.

“Poor fools,” he said in soft regret. “Too foolish and greedy for their own good. Come, let us leave this awful place. Erik, does the trail continue down this road?”

Erik closed his eyes, reaching out with his mind. He felt for the strange, tingling sensation that told him that the Ring had passed this way.

“Yes, Elder,” he replied. “Straight ahead.”

 “Then let us make good time.”

Spurring his horse, Elder led them forward, mud splattering beneath their hooves as they…

…passes…

For a moment, there was only silence, greyness, and that gentle sensation of settling that fell across the land when The Narrative had passed: colours dulling, light fading as everything slipped quietly back to simple, straightforward normality. Leaves rustled in the gentle wind; birds previously unheeded began to sing again; and in the mud of the forest trail, the various components of eight bodies lay scattered and broken and—

“Sod it. Right through me bleeding liver.”

“Could be worse. I think my liver’s somewhere over there.”

“Gagh! Gugai! Gurgh!”

“Clunny, if you want to say something, you’ll have to take the dagger out of your windpipe.”

“Can anyone else hear something gurgling?”

Fodder opened his eyes. A long wooden spear shaft cut a line through his vision towards the grey sky overhead. His chest tingled uncomfortably as he carefully worked his shoulders and arms, the eight inches of steel spear blade imbedded in his heart shifting with a nasty squelch as he moved his muscles. Elbows sliding slightly in the inch-deep mud, he struggled to right himself, pushing first onto his lower arms and then up onto his hands, trying to ignore the unpleasant way that the vibrating spear shaft threw his balance off and sent shudders all through his body. Freeing one hand from the mud, he stilled its shiv­ers quickly and fought back an urge to moan. Bloody spears, bloody pikes, bloody halberds. At least with swords and axes they take the weapons away with them! And even arrows are so light that you can just leave them be and get on with things. But bloody spears, especially ones driven in by magic…

It could have been worse, he told himself sharply. And he’d had the ironic death. It had been Narratively memorable and nothing to be ashamed of. It had been a while since he’d died ironically. He supposed he must have been due.

And it hadn’t been a bad skirmish: fairly standard and run-of-the-mill for a Disposable on duty. Limbs had flown, though luckily not his, since hunting for limbs after a skirmish wasn’t the most interesting way to pass the time. They had impeded the Merry Band briefly but in a lively manner, just as they had been told. He’d gotten to leer and everything. There wasn’t anything to moan about.

So why did he feel so…so Shoulders-y about it all?

Because it was always the same. Every time. A lonely road, a pass, a gatehouse—they’d stand there, make threats for a bit, and then start the fight because it was inconceivable that the Merry Band would spill blood without provocation. And then they’d get chopped to pieces, wait for Squick to show up and fix them, and head off to the pub.

That was his life. It had been his life ever since he’d been old enough to graduate from Village Urchin, and it would be his life until he either achieved Garrulous Old Man status and got to hang out in the pub for the rest of his days or retired to being a simple Background Villager.

He remembered the day that, back when he was an Urchin, he’d asked his father if he could join the Merry Band and ride around on Quests In Narrative when he grew up. And his father had looked him straight in the eye and said no.

Patting his little arm, his father had sat him down and explained once and for all how the world worked and why he’d never be anything but Fodder of Humble Village. Members of the Merry Band came from specific families, specially bred and trained. The many branches of the Royal Family provided all Kings, Queens, more mature Heroes and Heroines, and any spare Princes who happened to be required for the Quest. The even vaster Noble Family offered up Knights required for the Merry Band, as well as the Swooning Ladies, Noble Generals and Significant Nobles, and the occasional injection of breeding stock that prevented the Royal Family from producing eight-toed Princes and Princesses with three-and-a-half noses. The Mage Family dealt with Sorcerers, Sorceresses, Crones, and Boys of Destiny. The latter had two career choices on passing out of adolescence: either to join the Royal Family and wait to mature into a King or to grow a grey beard to the right kind of length to become a Sorcerer. The Dark Family dealt with Dark Lords, Dark Generals, Dark Henchmen, and Evil Enchantresses. There were clans who bred Barbarians, Warrior Women and Noble Mercenaries, Thieves and Courtesans, Gods and Deities, Dwarves and Elves, and Assorted Freakish Creatures. There was a whole Family of Officious Courtiers, Scholars and Priests and Priestesses who, out of Narrative, were responsible for ensuring that the Taskmaster’s every instruction was distributed and obeyed.

And then, there was everyone else. Some families provided Inter­changeables—Minstrels, Assassins, Seadogs, Merchants, Innkeepers and Barmaids, Doomed Relatives, Servants and Maids, Trappers, and other small but regular Narrative Roles. The remaining people were Ordinary; background noise in busy scenes, having maybe one line, a brief description or an exclamation, if they were lucky. And there was always plenty of demand for young men to be guards, ruffians, soldiers, and bandits in the Disposables, provided you didn’t mind picking up your own limbs afterwards. Why, his father had declared proudly, Fodder’s great-grandfather, after whom he’d been named, had been disposed of sixteen times in the Quest in which the current Sorcerer had been the Boy of Destiny.

Since dying had seemed like the most excitement he was going to get, Fodder had applied to join the Disposables as soon as he was old enough. It had seemed like a good idea, at the time. He’d always taken pride in his work. Even Preen respected him in his own pretentious way, making sure that, more often than not, the role of Lead Guard for skirmishes scheduled in the regions of Humble Village and Rambling Woods was handed to him. Fodder had always made sure that the one line of regular writing that made up his lethal instructions was executed with efficiency and interest. The Narrative guided him in the right direction, of course, flowing around him like honey, suggestions for words and actions popping unbidden into his head; but whereas some Disposables grunted their lines and acted as wooden as blocks In Nar­rative, Fodder prided himself on instilling just that little bit of character.

But deep inside, something had always nagged at him. Those brief minutes of character had never quite been enough. The voice of the Urchin he had been, sitting on his father’s knee, still echoed with a single question:

“But why not me?”

And his father’s answer reverberated in reply:

“Because that’s just the way it is.”

And so, here he was, sitting in the mud with a spear in his chest and surrounded by the assorted remains of his comrades while the likes of Thud the Barbarian, Swipe the Thief, Clank the Knight, Harridan the Warrior Woman, Gruffly the Dwarf, Bumpkin the Boy of Destiny, and Magus the Sorcerer rode off merrily unscratched In Narrative.

Fodder allowed himself one brief sigh and then, as practicality set in, he let it go, just as he always did, every time. He was only a Disposa­ble. And as things stood, that was all he’d ever be.

Glancing around, Fodder called out to his friends. “Everyone else all right?”

It was a daft question and they all knew it, but they always felt better somehow for knowing someone had asked. There was a chorus of shouts, mutters, and gargled spitting. To his left, Clunny had wrapped his hands around Swipe’s dagger and was slowly drawing it out of his throat, whilst Thump rubbed the fingers of his remaining arm against the substantial hole in the side of his head. To his right, Dunny was amusing himself by making the arrow sunk deep into his right eye waggle up and down, whilst Midlin and Tumble compared torso slices. Donk was wearily reaching for his legs, which lay alongside his head, and squinting into the mud in search of missing organs. And Shoulders…

Lying in the mud, half a tankard had been split cleanly into quar­ters. One half of its owner lay beyond. And as for the other…

A protracted and indignant gurgling came from the muddy puddle that Fodder knew, with grim certainty, had filled the bottom of the ditch that ran by the road. Well, at least it wasn’t up a tree. It had taken them two hours of poking with their halberds to dislodge him from that branch the last time, and Shoulders had used up so many swearwords that he’d had to start inventing his own.

With a muddy slurp, the headless body of Shoulders lurched unsteadily to its feet. Clumsily reeling in the way that only a body separated from the part of it giving instructions can, it lurched towards the ditch, slipping and sliding but fortunately remaining upright. It reached down and groped uncertainly around for a moment. And then, awkwardly, its hands lifted something out of the puddle and into breathable air.

The hitherto unintelligible gurgling all at once became extremely clear.

“Bloody Clank! Bloody, bloody, bloody Clank!”

Shoulders’s fingers were making some effort to wipe the worst of the mud away from his face, but the inevitable loss of motor control that came from having one’s head cut off resulted in him mostly poking himself in the eye. With an irate huff, Shoulders abandoned that task and instead lifted his head by his bedraggled hair and twisted his hands to wring it out. His dangling face continued its tirade unbroken.

“Every time! Every bloody time! He doesn’t have to hurl it so damned far; he does it on purpose, I swear he does! If he had a sense of humour, I’d think he was trying to be funny!”

Fodder sighed. Generally, he preferred those days when Clank sliced his friend’s head off above the voice-box. Then the moaning was deferred until they were all on their way to the pub.

His hair wrung out, Shoulders lifted his head to a more normal vantage height.

“Six Quests! Six Quests and in every bloody skirmish, he’s cut my head off! Ever since he took over Knight duties from old Gallant…oh, now, he was a gentleman, if he took your head off, he always made sure it landed somewhere soft and dry! But oh no, not Clank, not Mr Heads-Are-My-Signature-Move! This is a vendetta, it’s personal, I know it is!”

“Well, you did go up to him after the third time it happened and call him a pillock,” Thump remarked fairly. “But there’s no point in moaning about Clank. He’s in the Merry Band; he’s not going to change to convenience a Disposable. He’s doing his job, same as the rest of us.”

The raspberry sound that Shoulders retorted with was made doubly unpleasant by the fact it came out of both ends of his throat. “Doing his job? Right. Of course… Because it’s not like he hadn’t already done me in with that belly swipe, was it? No, he had to go for the head as well! Just for the show of it! Utterly unnecessary! He’d already cut me open, and…oh, speaking of which…”

Carefully tilting his wrists, Shoulders angled his head so that his eyes were pointing down the length of his body. His face fell as he sighed with plaintive irritation.

“Perfect,” he muttered mordantly. “Has anyone seen my entrails?”

Donk gestured from his prone position. “There’s some over there.”

“Nah, those are mine.” Tumble scrambled to his feet, grasping his open belly protectively as he hurried over to retrieve them. “They got caught on Thud’s axe.”

“Gup gat gree?” Clutching his damaged throat, Clunny pointed to the branches of a nearby oak where something purple was dangling and swaying slowly in the breeze. “Gook gike gengrails gu gee.”

Shoulders gave a gusty sigh. “They’ll be full of splinters! My guts will be woody for days.” He pulled a muddy face. “Where’s Squick? That bloody pixie should be here by now!”

Grasping the shaft firmly in both hands, Fodder slowly pulled the spear out of his chest, trying to ignore the tingling itchy sensation that he’d come to associate with Narrative damage. Dropping the spear on the muddy ground with a splat, he pulled himself up and wandered over towards his friend.

“Don’t start on Squick or he’ll put your head on backwards again,” Fodder remarked as he leaned down to pick up Thump’s arm, tossing it over to him as he passed. “And we’d better have all our bits and pieces to hand when he gets here or he might decide he can’t be bothered.”

Shoulders was still staring forlornly up at his entrails. “How am I supposed to get those down?” he asked plaintively. “If I yank them, they’ll get torn, and you know that Squick gets sniffy about fixing the damage if it didn’t happen In Narrative!”

Rubbing the tingling, gaping wound in his chest, Fodder halted beside his headless friend. “I think that’s more to do with being a clumsy oaf by falling downstairs and breaking your leg out of Narrative than fishing your entrails out of a tree after a Narrative battle,” he pointed out reasonably. “If it happens in the course of the Quest, I’m sure he won’t mind.”

“If he ever turns up.” Shoulders rolled his eyes. “Grumpy little—”

“You want those entrails back in your belly, laddie, you’d do best not to finish that sentence!”

Fodder’s eyes snapped up. Hovering about a yard above their heads was a little man perhaps a foot tall, his face gnarled and twisted like an excitable fungus beneath his loose green hat, his legs crossed and arms folded as the nearly transparent silvery-purple wings that sprouted from his back worked at impossible speed to keep him hovering in midair. Contrary to what one might expect of someone who was, in point of truth, a pixie, he was wearing a tiny leather jerkin, canvas workman’s trousers, and worn but practical boots. A glittering needle, a spindle of dusty purple thread, and two small pouches hung at his waist.

Fodder smiled in genuine relief. “Hi, Squick. What kept you?”

The potato-like face of the Senior Duty Pixie in charge of Human and Animal Repairs scrunched as his shoulders gave a wild approxi­mation of a shrug that pitched his hovering position about a foot off to the right. “I was at Humble Village, putting the haunches back on Bessie.” He huffed loudly. “I told Stout, I said, that ain’t a job for a Senior Duty Pixie on his way to a skirmish, not when there’re limbs hanging off in the Rambling Woods, but would he have it? He would not! Fix my cow back up, he says; I need another helping of good stewing steak or the veg I’ve cooked will spoil! I ask you!”

“Beef stew tonight, is it?” Thump looked happy as he wandered over, cradling his loose arm. “Great! And Bessie’s haunch is always the best; old Daisy’s getting a bit stringy.”

Fodder grinned to himself. He remembered the time, a couple of Quests ago, when a Princess named Sweetness had stopped the night off Narrative with the Merry Band at the Archetypal Inn and had refused to eat the roast on the grounds it had once been a living thing. He could vividly recall the look on her porcelain face when Stout the Innkeeper had respectfully pointed out, in deference to the fact that the Royal Family clearly had people to deal with butchery for them and obviously had no idea how real life worked, that actually the cow still was a living thing. All the beef in the village came from the same four cows, which were knocked out, butchered, and then fixed up with their bits replaced by the Duty Pixies on a regular basis. In fact, he’d told her, he was pretty certain that the cows had no idea that they were eaten once a week.

“Can we not talk about food?” Donk requested. “It’s really discon­certing to feel your stomach rumble from three feet to your left.”

Squick had apparently forgotten his Bessie-related grump as he surveyed the scene before him with a professional eye. “Quite a skirmish you lads had,” he remarked thoughtfully, jerking the silvery needle out of his belt and deftly threading it. “An arm, a pair of legs, and…hah, of course, a head needing reattachment. A few organs to patch up and put back in place, one skull, one windpipe, an eye and a heart in need of reassembling, and three torsos to close up. Anyone reckon they need any replacements?”

“I think my entrails might have had it,” Shoulders remarked, gesturing to the tree with a kind of doleful hopefulness. “I wouldn’t mind trading them in.”

“Hmmm…” Squick sucked thoughtfully at his teeth. “I think we may be lacking a bit in entrails—we ain’t finished restocking after the Final Battle for The Sword of Grul. Hold up, I’ll check.”

Pulling open the first of his two pouches, Squick shoved his arm inside up to the shoulder and rooted around. “Hmmm,” he said again. “I’ve got some, laddie, but I don’t think they’re your size. Young Offle’s doing his best to whip up some more supplies, but it ain’t quick or easy to conjure up a decent organ out of nowt. I could put an order down for next time, get Thud or Clank to do the honours In Narrative when the new entrails are ready…?”

Shoulders’s sigh could have blown down a small village. “No, it’s fine,” he said wearily. “Just do your best with the ones in the tree.”

Squick gave an earthy chuckle as he opened his second pouch. Purplish pixie dust glittered as he dipped his needle into the pouch and withdrew it shimmering. “Well, if it makes you feel better, my best is better than most. Get your bits together, lads. I’ll have you good as new in no time.”