Vol.7, Ch.2, P.6
I’m bound to say, I don’t fancy ever beholding so smug a statue as I did then. Though I suppose the chiselled-out codger had got every right to sport that overripe smirk of his. After all, he’d managed to convince a statue of himself into existence, for heavens’ sake. Must’ve been the very bloke to break ground here, I could only imagine. The founding headmaster or something like that. Right-ho.
Anyway, he’d certainly earned my gratitude, whoever the dickens he was. For you see, this statue of his had been planted in the very juiciest of spots. Hard-by a wall and all, and prettied up at the sides with some twee shrubbery. So juicy it was, in fact, that I’d been able to hide in the shade of his ham for the better part of the hour. A dreadfully long hour, mind you. Things had become beastly out here. Hellish, dare I say. The reason being that ever since the bonfire atop the steeple tower, if you would recall, there’d been pack after pack of beastly pills charging about the whole place, blithering and waving ’round weapons as they bally went.
It’s no use pressing me as regards the when and whence of these blighters’ springing. Spring out myself, and I’m dead meat, was about all I knew. Indeed, these were no chums. None of mine, at any rate. Hadn’t got the requisite bonhomie to their demeanour, if you feel my fuzz. In fact, I suspected they might very well’ve been the ones behind the steeple fireworks. As testimony, I’d even spotted some of my guardsmen chappies making a stand, only to get gnashed to a glutinous pulp by these rabid men. Ghastly! Ghastly! I admit, those chappies and I had hardly been bosom—me scarce knowing the first letter of their names, and vice-versa—but chappies are chappies, if you taste my tea.
Well, nothing for it, anyway. I wasn’t what you’d call “wedded” to them nor this job. But even if I were, André Håkansson isn’t such a preux chevalier as to bung his precious life into peril’s maw, as one would the green and crusty from the nostrils, no, no, not even to help out the matiest of mates. For that, my chappies would just have to forgive me as they float on up.
Besides, no few Salvators were mingled in with these rampaging bloodlusters. Now, now, this is hardly me tendering some silly excuse. Having had a brief stint in the holy ranks myself, I knew a Salvator when I saw one, let me tell you. They sort of glitter in a way, if you sniff my stench. Silvered mail under the frocks and all that. You may recall that they—or we?—had taken quite the sloshing down at Déu Tsellin. Even then, that’d hardly spelt the end of the badgers. A good-ish deal had survived, owing to luck or mettle or whatnot. Sore-lacking in both, my trying to play the hero here would’ve earned me a mace or ten to the Håkansson map, no doubt, before I could so much as squeak out a “What-ho, what-ho! Jolly to see you here!”
All that to say, I forgivably kept curled up in the shadow of the founding headmaster. Yet the premier view of his finely moulded hind-muscles soothed the anxieties little as a certain sound tolled in my bean: the sound of the school gates when they’d crashed to a close some minutes ago. That’s right: once again, André Håkansson was in the soup, and there seemed no swimming out of it.
Gluing my palms together over the next ripe while, I supplicated the Deiva to come scoop me out of this stickiness with some divine spoon of Hers. But when pip and despair had begun to darken my frail little heart, and my sinuses to tingle, and the ducts to engorge with the t, my soul very asudden jarred inside its cage— for a bang! had blowed the air! And not from far off at all, either. In fact, it seemed to have gone off inside the studitōrium right behind me.
Could it be another scuffle breaking out? Well drat, if so! I had to leg it out of here! Shift-ho! Posthaste! Else I’ll have Salvators sniffing after my wetted trousers!
Grumbling a river of minced oaths, I got up. Begrudgingly then, I flicked the eyes to and fro from between the founder’s glimmering ankles, ensuring the coast was clear, before biffing away like a rabbit pursued by every coney-craving bird, beast, and bloke in all the land. But that was before giving the statue one last reluctant look—one that had me reading from the graven front-plate: “…in Honour of the Second Chief Treasurer…”
Well, blow me pink. A treasurer, after all this time. But really, now? An entire statue just for some purse inspector? How had he bally earned it? Suspicion tingled. Though one might suppose he’d been dashed exceptional at the job—acrobatic, even. Counted coins by twirling them all on his tongue, maybe. No, I ought not rib the defunct old chap. He’d saved my life, after all. Or his statue had done, anyway. And for André Håkansson, that earned the statue ten statues of its own.
…No! Never mind about that! Time to push off! And find some other hole to hide in! Cheerio, treasurer! You fine old tonguer, you!
♰
I knew it. The juiciest of rows really had set off back there in the studitōrium. Smoke was puffing, frothing blighters were ascurry; all Hell had broken absolutely loose. I tell you, gratitude for the Motherly Almighty filled me to the gills for keeping me safe like She’d done.
I was now situated a jolly-ish distance away from the bedlam, having endured a lifetime’s exercise bunging myself from hedge to hidey-hedge, fumbling through ginnels and gardens, and generally refusing myself the attention of these violent up-to-no-gooders. Of course, having my work cut out as a decidedly amateur deserter, I hadn’t flown so far as I should’ve liked. But to say I wasn’t glad to get away from the eye of the storm—even all the while keeping myself from screaming in hunted horror, not to mention doing my bally best not to soil myself in misery—would be to lie out the proverbial bum.
As I continued stealing away with the wariness of a rabbit and the agility of a tortoise, however—
“Hwahp!?”
—I squawked, as one choking on a fish that’d sprung alive and dived down the throat thinking it’s the last gangway back to the sea; for yet another bang! had blowed the air.
Jumping in place, I directly clammed the muzzle. Could it be the studitōrium again, I wondered, reaching a new height of havock or some rot? It bally must’ve been; it certainly sounded the part.
“Dash it…” I gurgled behind cupped hands, “…can’t you keep quiet, you chumps…!?”
Words frightfully brave, I confess, as I then monkeyed up a nearby tree. Well, most naturally I did. Eyes must now be shooting about, don’t you know, and eagle-ishly at that, and I certainly wasn’t going to make a rat of myself fresh for the snatching, if you get me. Luckily, all that careful legging had brought me to a hill commanding a fruity view of the studitōrium. And it was from this height, clinging pronely to a branch that was most unaccommodating to the delicate Håkansson cherries, that I peered out. And by Yoná, did the yonder sight astound.
A suspicion of fire smouldered anew there at the studitōrium, and a good-ish deal more smoke was puffing it up. Altogether a second coughing, to be precise, now breaking wind from atop one of the complex’s highest.
I squinted. A beastly, burning hole, I soon discovered, had been sloshed out of that building’s brow. My word. What in the dickens was going on over there? Or everywhere, for that matter? One, two—three blasts, back-to-back? Jolly rum. At any rate, getting away from that soup couldn’t have been a brighter idea. Absolutely.
“…Hallo,” I mumbled out of the blue, “what’s this?”
I squinted again. Another rumminess was amidst a happening. To better describe what it was, picture in your loaf the burning hole atop the building. Next, look down. All the way down, to the very toes of the puffing rectangle itself, which will put your eyes square at the corner of a courtyard, or concourse or whatever you wish to call it, that spanned below; thereabouts, you will discover a riot of sorts in the ensuing: frocked figures, all furious and fighting. But now, the rummy bit: you can’t grasp whom they’re fighting or are generally put out about. And neither can you see. All that’s to be gleaned is a salvo of violence being bunged not towards any person or company in particular, but up to a wall nearby.
That’s right. A dashed wall. Rummy, indeed. What in the welkins had the flatness ever done to those coves of the cloth, one can’t help but wonder. I certainly did. For that was precisely what I saw as I spied things out from atop hill and branch.
Then, squinting again-again, it biffed me. Egad—there looked to be a bloke stuck high on the wall itself! A bat of a man, dangling for dear life! Boggled all the more, I maintained spectatorship.
One of the frocked fellows below, I then found—no doubt a dabbler in the wizardly ways from the look of his staff—was absolutely letting the poor chap have it. I mean to say, it was flash after flash of levin-spells pelted up at the batty bloke.
I mused. Was this some beastly twist on target practice or some rot? In that case, the sorcerer certainly seemed starved for it, as in spite of how much back he was putting into his levin-lobbing, the blighter was missing like a darts-thrower amidst a full-body sneeze.
Nay. Nay, I take that back. For the next spell, you see, proved his redemption. Flaming it now was, and righteous—and most of all, a juicy bullseye. Boof! it went, when it’d risen and wrecked against the wall, and a shine and a noise had blared forth. As for the bat-ish bloke, well, taking that in the neck and overall being bunged from his perch as a result, I daresay roasted bat’s back on the menu.
Or dare I not. I don’t know if you’ve ever had the experience, but once or thrice along a cove’s life, there unfolds afore his eyes something that surpasses all powers of explanation. It was so for me at that moment. This was the plain spread of it: batty bloke, now airborne, gets biffed towards the above-mentioned flaming hole at the highest floor; from said hole falls a… a something, or other, directly into the bloke’s hands. That’s right. Just like a jester’s trick. Planned and practised and all that. Anyway, bloke-and-something, now in union, pirouette about in the air, drawing—unfiguratively, I must emphasise—a circle of shadow, before falling straight down to the slobbering riot below.
“Fall”? Nay, not “fall”. “Dive” seems more the word. Not that I know the dashed difference, but there it is: the bloke dives, inking as he goes a stroke of shadow through the air—which I must add I swore I’d seen someplace else before —and not a blink later, boom! A great confusion of dust and rubbish poofs whence he lands.
My jaw dropped agog. But juicy though it was, I confess the spectacle left my bogglement no less boggled. Still, with bated breath, I awaited its sequel. And when the cloud of dust cleared, and the curtains were lifted at last, I’d got it: the bat-bloke had stuck the landing. Upon a ghastly crater he stood now, and looking none too worse for wear. Miraculous, what? But directly I saw this, the riot of frocks bunged themselves upon the blighter, and a gorgeous row ensued.
I tell you, the next sight had me spellbound. The set-to between said bloke and blighters, you see, appeared rummily like a living painting, if that’s any description. Flowing and all that. And dashed morbid, to boot. Limbs flailing everywhere, blood splashing, weapons flying. The eyes can’t help but goggle.
But as I was glued to the gladiatorial proceedings, another mystery reared its head. Ever as the bloke swashbuckled, if you would kindly envision, the fighting scene ’round him “dimmed” in a way, like clouds passing over on a sunny day. As a matter of fact, that was only too apt, for even as the sun shone down, the scene seemed to resist reflection, with the most defiant being the very sword the bloke wielded. That was it. That was the mystery: the bloke’s bally blade, the “something” that he’d so serendipitously snatched up from the hole above—it was black as a bum’s abyss. Not a glint, not a shimmer. Nothing. Put poetically, a dark and dancing shape. Dancing and butchering. And as for the butcher at the hilt, he was jolly enrobed in black himself. Big he was, tall, bulging at the arms, and… and…
…at that moment, I clutched the branch, and like a duck throttled to a hair of its life, began to shrill in terror. But in the nick of time, I cheesed it with another mouth-muffling. The dammed contents, however, spilled from the pores in a rimey sweat.
That man. That bloke! That blighter! He’s the one! Fear given form! The nightmare at Déu Tsellin! Śāṭān in the flesh!
Directly I jolted, fumbled, and fell from the branch, biffing the Håkansson hind. I say, what? Why here? Why now? The joints rattled. The jaw chattered. But hold there—I remembered asudden. Something about one of the enemy commanders being an ex-Londosian who couldn’t stick his fellow Man for not another minute. Well, now that glued all the pieces together, didn’t it? Of course, he’d be here. Śāṭān had come to treat. Regained his better sense and all, and now longed for a return to the good old days.
…But what about all this butchering, then? What in the deuce transpired at the meeting that’d given him so vicious a pip? It hadn’t gone that thickly, had it? Oh, come on, Śāṭān! Have some humour! It’s not the end of the world if a princess chucks you, cold eyes and shaking lemon and all!
At any rate, upon somehow mastering myself and letting my screamless screaming sputter out, I got on all fours and gave the distant, frightful scene another ogle. Well, now. The frenzy—it’d rather died down, rummily enough. Sudden, what? Half the frocked fellows now lay generally dead, whilst Śāṭān and the rest seemed amidst some sticky converse. But I kicked myself. Spying time’s over! Any longer a peep, and Śāṭān’ll soon be after me! Distance be dashed!
I had to run. Gallop! Fly! Biff off! All the warning bells were tolling in the bean! A dirge for poor old André if he doesn’t get dashing!
And so, in a tangle of limbs, I put the bells behind me, and shot off like a fly with all the frogs of Hell in hot pursuit.
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