My Hero Read online

  ‘Oh shit!’

  That, by the way, isn’t the horrible, inevitable, artistically necessary thing that happens to Skinner.That comes later. Soon, but later.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘Of all the woods,’ said Skinner, ‘in all the plays in all the world, we have to end up in this one. Thanks a heap.’

  ‘Not my fault,’ Regalian snapped, lashing out at the brambles with a heavy stick. ‘I didn’t say open the bloody thing. I didn’t say start reading. If you had as much common sense as a bloody lemming, you’d have known better than to open the . . .’

  Not far away, they could hear strange, disturbing sounds, half-animal, half-human. Possibly it was just lemurs, but somehow Skinner doubted it. He had a horrible feeling he knew exactly what was making that noise.

  ‘There may,’ Regalian went on, between grunts of effort, ‘be an advantage to be had here, if we use our brains. Fantasy setting. Could be any time, anywhere. If only we could find some jumping-off point, we should be able to go anywhere from here.’

  ‘We should live so long,’ Skinner snarled back. ‘Listen to the noisy sons of bitches. They’re following us, you realise.’

  ‘You’re paranoid.’

  ‘No I’m not. Why are you trying to make out I’m paranoid all of a sudden?’

  Regalian glanced up at what was visible of the sky though the branches of the trees. ‘I reckon it’s about four-thirty in the afternoon, so assuming it stays light till say ten . . .’

  ‘What are you drivelling on about?’

  ‘Midsummer Day,’ Regalian replied. ‘The one thing we can be sure of is which day of the year it is.’

  Skinner stopped in his tracks. ‘Hang on,’ he said. ‘Midsummer Day.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Regalian replied, gently bending a low branch out of his way. ‘It’s still day. Which means the play hasn’t started yet. Which means we’re probably safe until dark. So if we get a move on and find our way out of this bloody wood, we can get to Athens and find a library, and then—’

  ‘Safe? Are you sure?’

  Regalian scowled. ‘Well, I’m not about to swear any affidavits, but it could be worse. One thing I do know about fairies is, they don’t come out during the day.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘I work in fantasy, remember? I know fairies from nothing, and they’re strictly nocturnal, trust me. Which means that apart from bears and wolves and outlaws and quick-sands and the like, I think we’re fairly—’

  He vanished. Skinner froze in his tracks, which was probably what saved him. He looked round.

  ‘Hello?’ he said.

  ‘Up here.’

  Skinner looked up. Regalian was hanging upside down about fifteen feet up in the air. A rope, attached to his ankle, connected him to the top of a thick, tall green sapling.

  ‘I think,’ he said, ‘I stepped in some sort of trap.’

  ‘Looks that way,’ Skinner agreed.

  ‘Fine. Look, do you think you could see your way clear to getting me down? Or do you want to wait until autumn and see if I come down with the apples?’

  ‘Sorry.’ Skinner looked round. ‘What we need,’ he said, trying to keep his head, ‘is something like an axe or a saw.’

  ‘Left them in my other jacket,’ Regalian snapped. ‘Can you hurry it up, please? I think my brain’s trying to get out of my ears.’

  ‘You could shoot through the rope,’ suggested the Scholfield helpfully. ‘At this range, if you rested on something, with a bit of luck—’

  ‘I’ve warned you already.’

  ‘I’m just trying to be positive,’ the gun replied, hurt. ‘Nobody else has come up with anything, have they?’

  ‘Be quiet.’

  ‘I—’

  ‘I said be quiet.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘QUIET!’

  It was then that Skinner registered the feel of a very sharp pricking at the back of his neck. Very slowly, he turned his eyes hard right, and caught sight of something luminous directly behind him, at the absolute limit of his vision.

  ‘I was just trying to tell you,’ said the Scholfield smugly, ‘that there was this guy with a knife creeping up behind you. But you appear to have found that out for yourself.’

  ‘Okay,’ said the fairy. ‘Which one of you scumbags is the weaver?’

  ‘Look, fellas,’ protested Skinner, some time later, ‘don’t get me wrong, I sympathise with what you’re trying to achieve here and I’ll be delighted to do anything I can to help. I don’t have a problem with any of it, I promise. But are the ears absolutely necessary?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you sure you’re not just erring ever so slightly on the over-literal side here? I mean, we’re into some pretty deep symbolism here, the donkey motif and all that, I mean, it’s a common element in Western European literature right through from Apuleius, so couldn’t we just take it as read and let the metaphor kind of do its thing without hammering it into the ground and having actual physical donkey’s ears?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I really don’t want to seem in any way obstructive here, but the words “hopelessly jejune” are sort of hovering about over our heads, and you’ve got such a wonderful situation going here, I’d hate for you to spoil it by—’

  ‘Co-operate,’ growled the fairy, ‘or I cut your nose off. Okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  Bloody marvellous, Skinner thought as they stumbled their way through the wood in unhappy convoy. The one time when a bit of initiative from that poxy gun might come in handy, and it just sits there in the holster, rusting. Now if only . . .

  ‘And if you’re expecting your friend to help you,’ said the fairy, ‘forget it.’

  ‘Friend?’

  ‘The metal guy with the long nose,’ the fairy replied. ‘The one you carry around with you. We’ve put a hex on him so strong it’s taking him all his time not to turn into a bunch of daffodils.’

  Skinner shrugged. ‘Oh well,’ he said, ‘dark cloud, silver lining. In fact, if you could just jot the spell down on a scrap of paper sometime, I have a feeling it could well come in very useful in the future.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘Okay.’

  They had reached a clearing; well, more than a clearing. One tries to avoid the expression whenever possible, but there are times one has to call a glade a glade.

  ‘Right,’ said the fairy. ‘Puck.’

  ‘Stub your toe, did you?’

  ‘Puck,’ continued the fairy, ‘you hide in that tree there. I’ll just hunker down behind this bush.You lot, make with the music.’

  The fairies vanished, leaving Skinner standing in the middle of the glade with his hands in his pockets, feeling extremely conspicuous. Well, he consoled himself, at least they were only joshing when they said about the donkey’s . . .

  He felt a curious sensation, which reminded him of the time when he was a boy and had voluntarily swallowed a live worm in order to join Lumpy Flannagan’s gang. If the worm had been made of burning mercury and coated in sugar, there would have been a striking resemblance.

  And suddenly he could hear. Not just hear, but really hear. For example, half a mile away a rabbit sneezed. The shock nearly knocked Skinner over.

  Unwillingly, he put a tentative hand to the side of his head, and felt fur.

  ‘You ba—’ he started to say; and then the pile of leaves in front of him quivered slightly, and turned somehow into a tall, slim, scantily dressed young woman with silver skin.

  ‘What angel,’ she said, rubbing her eyes, ‘wakes me from my flowery bed?’ She rolled on to her side and squinted. ‘Just a minute,’ she went on, ‘you’re not the usual chap.’

  Skinner realised that he was staring. Either she was extremely absent-minded and had forgotten to put on the rest of her clothes, or she didn’t feel the cold at all. He looked away and made a sheep-clearing-its-throat noise.

  ‘Um,’ he said. It came out different to the way it had sounded i
n his head; more a sort of guttural honk. Of course, he realised, completely different bone structure on a donkey, larynx in a different place. He smiled feebly. He felt like Cyrano de Bergerac in the distorting mirrors booth at the fair, and his ears itched like buggery.

  The girl was staring too, and it suddenly occurred to Skinner that whoever usually did this job must look really ghastly, because it was the sort of stare that has a hidden agenda of pink hearts and gypsy violins. A fly landed on his nose and began to buzz.

  ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘My name’s Skinner, and I’m not really stopping, we don’t really have to go through with this, so . . .’

  ‘Hi,’ replied the girl, in a voice you could have iced a cake with. ‘I’m Titania, but my friends call me—’

  ‘Quite. As I was saying, I’m sure you’re only too aware by now that you’re being made the victim of a cruel practical joke, and since I have no wish to participate in this degrading exhibition, perhaps you’d—’

  ‘Take the weight off your hooves, why don’t you?’ She giggled. ‘You’ve got the cutest mane I’ve seen in a long, long time.’

  ‘Please,’ said Skinner, ‘madam. I’m old enough to be your father.’

  ‘Really?’ Titania raised an immaculate eyebrow. ‘Funny, you don’t look ten thousand and thirty-eight years old.’

  ‘No, but I feel it sometimes.’

  ‘I can probably do something about that,’ Titania replied, with a smile that would have grown roses on the dark side of the moon. ‘Come here and try me.’

  Before he could formulate a reply, Skinner felt his legs collapse, as completely as if he’d been robbed by an international gang of high-class tibia thieves, and he found himself sitting on the leaves, with his head resting on an expanse of disconcertingly-contoured silver flesh. Christ, he speculated, what the hell could the other guy possibly have looked like?

  ‘Relax,’ Titania said. ‘Now, then.’

  Hamlet slept.

  He was having a dream (one of his usual repertoire, in which he was standing on the stage in front of twenty thousand people, and he was being played by Kenneth Branagh, and he’d forgotten to put his trousers on) and snoring mildly through what was left of his nose, producing the sort of noise a New Orleans trombonist achieves by putting his bowler hat over the bell of the trombone. It had been a long day.

  The window opened.

  Hamlet grunted, turned over on his side and brayed softly. A shadow, a semitone or so darker than the ambient darkness, flitted through under the window sill. There was a soft bump, as of skull against timber, and a muffled oath.

  The shadow advanced. It was whistling, very softly and tunelessly, under its breath. Probably it didn’t even know it was doing it.

  From the pillow a mild grunting noise, followed by a few lines from the rogue-and-peasant-slave speech. Hamlet was one of the few people in history who soliloquised in his sleep.

  A stray moonbeam flashed on the hair-thin needle of a hypodermic, which the shadow was holding up and preparing for use. A dewdrop of colourless liquid slid down the needle as the shadow expelled the surplus air from the chamber before stooping over the bed. As the syringe went home, Hamlet may have stirred slightly, but nothing more. The shadow withdrew the needle, stood back and waited for perhaps two minutes, until the breathing sounds became slower, flatter and more regular.

  Satisfied, the shadow packed the syringe away in the small toolbox strapped to his waist, and turned to the bed. And stopped.

  There is, of course, no soundtrack to this scene, and both participants were mere silhouettes in the darkness. The shadow, however, had extremely expressive body language, and he communicated his next emotion with perfect clarity. If he’d been an actor in the days of silent movies, he’d have been banned for life for swearing on screen.

  Yes, his gestures said, fine. We worked out how to get in here and how to administer the tranquilliser drug. Only thing we didn’t consider was getting the tranquillised body out through the window. Pity, that.

  Having apparently formulated his plan of campaign, the shadow began stripping sheets off the bed and tearing them into strips. There followed an interval of undignified heaving, shoving and dropping of sleeping bodies, which resulted in Hamlet being lowered out of the window on a cat’s cradle of improvised ropes. Then the shadow left by the way it had come. A dull thump from the ground below suggested that the makeshift harness had almost lasted out, but not quite.

  Darkness seeped back, like penetrating oil in a rusty hinge.

  Hamlet woke up, opened his eyes, and screamed.

  He was strapped hand and foot to what appeared to be an operating table. Shining directly in his eyes was a very big, bright light, of the sort you get in up-market dentists’ surgeries. Somewhere in the background a piece of machinery hummed ominously.

  ‘Here!’ Hamlet yelled. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing? And what the devil have you done with my left foot?’

  ‘Now, now,’ said a voice, coming from somewhere just outside his line of vision, ‘there’s no need to get excited, so just pull yourself together, will you?’

  ‘Easier said than done,’ Hamlet replied savagely. ‘Look, who are you, and what’s going on?’

  ‘Now,’ the voice went on, ‘this isn’t going to hurt you one little bit, so please keep perfectly still.’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘If it’s your foot you’re worried about,’ the voice continued, ‘I’ve got it perfectly safe, packed in some ice. I’ll put that back on for you in just two ticks, after I’ve finished this.’

  ‘This? What’s this?’

  ‘Absolutely still, please. Igor, the forceps.’

  ‘Actually, Doctor Rossfleisch, my name’s Tracy.’

  ‘What a pretty name. Thank you, now the soldering iron, please.’

  A pair of gloved hands materialised in the far periphery of Hamlet’s vision. A moment later, frantic signals of pain scurried up and down the two cocoa tins and bit of string he called a nervous system.

  ‘Sorry,’ said the voice, ‘I should have warned you that that might smart just a little bit. The electric drill, please, Tanya.’

  ‘Tracy.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Oh spiffing, Hamlet thought. Not only is this lunatic the mad scientist, he’s the absent-minded professor as well. Pausing only to wish he was safely back in Elsinore with the ghosts and the poisoned swords, he passed out.

  When he came round, he was still strapped to the table; but the light had gone away, and there was something strange about his body. It was a bit like turning the ignition key in the lock of your clapped-out old Triumph Dolomite to find that during the night some practical joker had fitted it with the latest model of Cosworth racing engine. The whole outfit seemed to growl with vitality. He clenched his fists, and the thick webbing straps around his wrists snapped like wet paper-chains.

  ‘Yeah!’ he breathed.

  He sat upright, breathed in deeply, and was hit on the back of the head with a three-pound lump hammer.

  The bounty hunter reached the edge of the glade, stopped and peered round a tree trunk.

  It takes something pretty far out of the ordinary to disconcert a trained, experienced bounty hunter. It’s a line of work that attracts the cool, level-headed type, and people who worry about having left the gas on when they go on holiday generally tend to leave the profession at a fairly early stage; frequently on a stretcher.

  There are, however, limits; and the sight of his target lounging on a sea of cushions wearing a donkey’s head, surrounded by flickering blue lights and heavily entangled with a gorgeous, silver-skinned woman was enough to make him pause, just for a moment, and cast his mind back over the last few days to see if he could recall receiving any sharp blows to the back of the head.

  Even Butch Cassidy, he reasoned, never went this far.

  Having given the matter some thought, he stepped back into the undergrowth. This one, he reckoned, would probably keep for the time being.
The sensible thing to do would be to round up the other one and then come back and take another look.

  At that particular juncture, the other one was sitting under a lime tree, chewing hard and reflecting on the fact that the rope in these parts tasted damned odd.

  You get to chew a lot of rope if you’re a hero, because people are always tying you up. True, you always manage to free yourself, beat the pudding out of the inoffensive little nerk they’ve left behind to guard you, and find your way to the secret hideout/sacrificial altar/grand vizier’s palace where you’re due to effect the timely rescue; but that’s only because it’s aesthetically right. The powers that be appreciate these things, and they aren’t particularly cruel or vindictive. The ropes in heroic fiction, therefore, tend to be either toffee or sherbert flavoured, and generally saliva-soluble.

  This rope, on the other hand, was thick, tough and tasted of hemp and fairy’s armpit; all of which taken together gave Regalian the feeling that something wasn’t quite right about any of this. Maybe it wasn’t aesthetically right that he should get out of this one; in which case, he was in deep trouble.

  Maybe chewing through the rope wasn’t the answer, at that. Looking round, he noticed Skinner’s gunbelt lying about a foot from his big toe. Perhaps this was one of the cases where the hero gets hold of the gun, holds up the guard, is untied and then escapes and gets on with the job. Regalian shrugged. Only one way to find out.

  ‘Pssst!’

  If the gun had heard him, it showed no sign. Fair enough, he reasoned; they have to make these things difficult, because heroes thrive on difficulty. If any fool could do it, it wouldn’t be heroic; and wandering minstrels whose repertoire consisted of such works as ‘The Chores of Hercules’ or ‘The Saga of Sigurd the Doer of Ironing’ would probably end up doing more wandering than minstrelsy. He wiggled his foot towards the gunbelt and finally managed to get his heel on to the buckle.