‘Right,’ said Tiny, ‘get on with it, Phluster.’
‘I shall! Hark well and listen to hear my fair words! This song recounts the penultimate chapter of the Slaying of Draconus—’
‘You mean “ultimate” surely,’ said Apto Canavalian.
‘What?’
‘Please, Brash, forgive my interruption. Do proceed.’
‘The Slaying of Draconus, and so …’
He cleared his throat, assumed that peculiar mask of performance that seemed to afflict most poets, and then fell into that stentorian cadence they presumably all learned from each other and from generations past. Of what stentorian cadence do I speak? Why, the one that seeks to import meaning and significance to every damned word, of course, even when no such resonance obtains. After all, is there really anything more irritating (and somnolent) than a poetry reading?
‘Gods below, Phluster!’ snarled Calap Roud. ‘The original ain’t slave to rhymes, and those ones are awful! Just sing it as Fisher would and spare us all your version!’
‘You’re just jealous! I’m making Fisher’s version accessible to everyone, even children! That’s the whole point!’
‘It’s a tale of betrayal, incest and murder, what on earth are you doing singing it to children?’
‘It’s only the old who get shocked these days, old man!’
‘And it’s no wonder, with idiots like you singing to innocent children!’
‘Got to keep them interested, Calap, something you never did understand, even with a grown-up audience! Now, be quiet and keep your opinions to yourself, I got a song to sing!
‘Hold on, poet,’ said Tiny, ‘I think you missed a verse there.’
‘What? Oh, damn! Wait.’
‘And it better start getting funny, too.’
‘Funny? But it’s not a funny story!’
‘I get his brain,’ said Midge. ‘All that fat.’
‘You get half,’ said Flea.
‘Wait! Here, here, wait—
‘Damn me, poet,’ said Tulgord Vise, ‘the Tomb of Draconus has a closet?’
‘They had to hide somewhere!’
‘From what, a dead man?’
‘He was only sleeping—’
‘Who sleeps in a tomb? Was he ensorcelled? Cursed?’
‘He ate a poisoned egg,’ suggested Nifty Gum, ‘which was secreted into the clutch of eggs he was served for breakfast. There was a wicked witch who haunted the secret passages of the rabbit hole behind the carrot patch behind the castle—’
‘I hate carrots,’ said Flea.
Brash Phluster was tearing at his hair. ‘What castle? It was a tomb I tell you! Even Fisher agrees with me!’
‘A carrot through the eye can kill as easily as a knife,’ observed Midge.
‘I hate witches, too,’ said Flea.
‘I don’t recall any hatchet in Anomandaris,’ said Apto Canavalian. ‘Rake had a sword—’
‘And we been hearing all about it,’ said Relish Chanter, and was too bold in her wink at me, but for my fortune none of her brothers were paying any attention to her.
‘I don’t recall much sex either – and you’re singing your version to children, Brash? Gods, there must be limits.’
‘On art? Never!’ cried Brash Phluster.
‘I want to hear about the poisoned egg and the witch,’ said Sellup.
Nifty Gum smiled. ‘The witch had a terrible husband who spoke the language of the beasts and knew nothing of humankind, and in seeking to teach him the gifts of love the witch failed and was cast aside. Spiteful and bitter, she pronounced a vow to slay every man upon the world, at least, all those who were particularly hairy. Those she could not kill she would seduce only to shave clean their chest and so steal their power, which she stored in the well at the top of the hill. But her husband of old haunted her still, and at night she dreamed of warped mirrors bearing both her face and his and sometimes the two were one in the same.
‘The city was named Tomb. This detail, by the way, is what confused legions of artists, including Fisher himself, who, dare I add, is not so nearly as tall as me. And Draconus was the city’s king, a proud and noble ruler. Indeed he had two daughters, born of no mother, but of his will and magic gifts. Shaped of clay and sharp stones, neither possessed a heart. Their names they took upon themselves the night they became women, when each saw her own soul’s truth and could not look away, could not lie or deceive even unto their own selves.’
Noting at last the host of blank expressions, he said, ‘The significance of this—’
‘Is a form of torture I will not abide,’ said Tiny Chanter.
‘Carrot through the eye,’ said Midge. ‘Anyone got a carrot?’
‘Eye,’ said Flea.
‘Anomander kills Draconus and gets the sword!’ shouted Brash Phluster. ‘You never let me get to the funny bits – you can’t vote, it’s not fair!’
‘Oh be quiet, will you?’ said Tulgord Vise. ‘Plenty of light left this day, and we’ve plenty of cooked meat from yesterday. No, what we need is water. Sardic Thew, what chance the next spring is dry?’
The host stroked his jaw. ‘We’ve no more than trickles for days now, in every watering hole. I admit I am worried mightily, good sir.’
‘Might have to bleed someone,’ said Tiny, showing his tiny teeth again. ‘Who’s flush?’
His brothers laughed.
I spoke then. ‘Vows are as stone, each a menhir raised like a knuckled finger to the sky. The knights who hunted the Nehemoth were not alone in such cold chisel. Another travelled in the group, a strange and silent man who walked like a hunter in forestlands, yet in his face could be seen the ragged scrawl of a soldier’s cruel life, a past of friends dying in his arms, of the guilt of surviving, of teeth bared to fickle chance and a world stripped of all meaning. The gods are as nothing to a soldier, who in prayer only begs for life and righteous purpose, and both are selfish needs indeed. This is not reaching up to touch god. It is pulling the god down as if stealing a golden idol upon a mantelpiece. Begging voiced as a demand, a plea paid out as if owed, such are a soldier’s prayers.
‘Faith fell beneath his marching boots long ago. He knows the curse of reconciliation and knows too its falsity, the emptiness of the ritual. He has abandoned redemption and now lives to excoriate a stain from the world. That stain being the Nehemoth. In this, perhaps, he is the noblest of them all—’
‘Not true!’ hissed Arpo Relent. ‘The Well Knight serves only the Good, the Wellness of the soul and the flesh that is its home! Not a single three-finned fish has ever passed these lips! Not a sip of wretched liquor, not a stream of noxious smoke. Vegetables are the gift of god—’