"Hey," he said. "Nobody cuts my fucking beard!"
Another sword slashed down, and Franco leapt, and twisted, and the blade cut neatly through the ropes. Franco shook his hands free and lifted his fists as the pirates surrounded him. There were ten; no, twenty; no, thirty. Franco grinned at them all, then looked down at Tarly and gave a big wink.
"Come and get it, lads," he growled, puffing out his chest and cracking his knuckles.
The pirates charged in, and like in a comedy cartoon there were two thwacks, and two pirates were lifted from their feet, heads up, sailing back and down, their feet following. They hit the deck, but
unlike
a comedy cartoon, their teeth broke and rattled across the boards. One sat upcradling his face, where his cheekbone had cut through the flesh.
And Franco was amongst them, straight punches and hooks thundering out, and it was easy, because they were the enemy,
all of them
were the enemy, and his fists pounded into temples and jaws and cheekbones, his fingers poked viciously into eye sockets, his elbows cracked exposed throats and his knees and feet stamped at groins and knees. The pirates's swords hissed around him, but they quickly realised the little ginger midget was dangerous, the little ginger midget was fast, the little ginger midget was
one
amongst many. Several arms and an ear lay flapping on the brine-washed boards before good sense told the dumb pirates to stop hacking at one another with their chunky cutlasses. Franco ducked a wild swing and planted his fist in a pirate's belly, then grabbed his balls within the loose soft clothing, and yanked
down
hard
.
On instinct, he rolled sideways as a club thundered over him, and the weapon connected with the pirate whose testicles he was clutching. There was a
crump.
Franco rose next to the club wielder, grinned at him for a moment, showing his missing tuff, then grabbed his ears and jumped, thus gaining enough height to head-butt the pirate, who groaned once and folded like a punctured sex doll. But Franco was over-confident, Franco was cruising and rolling and thumping and on a long enough time-line, luck always runs out. A club cracked his skull and he staggered. Another club cracked his ribs, and he spun, a right straight breaking the pirate's nose, which fell off, spouting gears and coils. Another blow caught Franco on the shoulder from behind, and pain flared from his collar bone, and then,
and then he felt himself descending, descending into the blood red world which he feared and welcomed, and which had haunted him since childhood, for it was the world of the berserker and he'd carried it like a demon, like a disease, since his very earliest memories...
Franco spun, roaring, fists lashing out, but everything was just awash with a honey blur, and nothing was real anymore, and the fight around him was just a distant dream, held at arm's length like a mangy cat by the scruff. Franco danced, and punched, and kicked, and spun, and leapt, and he watched himself distantly, as if through a telescope filled with oil, but it was always the same, these things never worked out well in the end, for there was no thought, no construction to the fight, and because Franco was lost to himself, lost to his rage, lost to his anarchy, there was a huge injection of
luck
and it could not last for ever...
It first happened when he was at school. Franco had always been an optimistic child, a stocky, happy little boy with his maroon jumper and blue shoulder-pack, toddling along to the playground where his favourite friend Connor waited, so they could run around, jumping and skipping, being silly and playing the heroes from all their favourite filmys. Then there was the boy, and he was a Big Boy, and he was a Bad Boy. He was called Piston, because they said his punch was like being struck by a piston, but little Franco was too innocent for all of that and didn't fight. He didn't know
how
. He didn't understand
why.
Why fight when you could play? What was there to fight about when you were six years old? But Piston had other ideas, because Piston was one of the Bigger Boys and Piston was one of the Badder Boys, he was a bully and proud of it, as bullies often are. So he found Franco skipping happily around the playground, and Franco stopped and stared inquisitively at Piston because that was the sort of happy kid he was.
Piston punched little Franco, straight on the nose, knocking him back to the alloyconcrete.
Franco cried, and did not understand. Why did the Big Boy hit him?
Why?
There was no reason, and it soured Franco's experience, and soured his school, soured his world, soured his life. He looked at people with a new apprehension, for now everything wasn't so innocent and everybody didn't want to play. People wanted to
fight.
But Franco didn't want to fight, because that wasn't his way. He had a peaceful soul, a happy, caring soul, one instilled with love by his Mummy and Daddy.
A few days later, Piston arrived again. Franco took a step back.
"I heard you've been calling me."
Franco shook his head, eyes wide.
"You called me a Pussy." Sniggers, from The Crew, the sort of weak-minded, weak-livered bunch who always followed someone like Piston around. The sort of children who enjoyed The Show, enjoyed The Pantomime, but always at another's expense.
Always
at the expense of the weaker kids. The natural victims. The natural targets. The
easy prey.
Easy meat.
"No," said Franco, taking another step back.
Piston charged at him, and this wasn't going to be a single punch, this was going to be something bigger; Piston was going for a bigger display of his physical prowess, and for a few moments Franco felt himself overwhelmed by the larger boy, engulfed, encompassed, and he was weaker and smaller,
but
there was something inside of him, something which way, way, way back, past his birth and upbringing and loving parents, something that was in his blood, some fire in his soul and it went
click.
Franco grabbed Piston's ears, pulled them sideways with a crunch, poked his finger in Piston's eye and felt himself descend into a blood-red frenzy which he did not understand and could not control, and it was only when the teachers pulled him off Piston, both little fists red with the blood pissing from Piston's broken nose, that Franco wanted to say,
I didn't mean this to happen, I didn't want any of this to happen, I didn't want it this way!
But he was punished all the same, and Franco learned, then; learned that, despite all the learning, despite all the knowledge and history and empathy and supposed superiority, the human species, at its core, was a raw, bestial animal. You could dress it up however you wanted, with your academic progress, with your fucking philosophers and psychologists and superior technology. Humans were animals with a shallow veneer of empathy. Nothing more. Nothing less. And it only took a nudge to send them flailing helplessly and uselessly down that slippery slope back into the chemical soup of violent evolution which had moulded Man into a genetic entity of unbreakable iron. As the saying went:
You can't teach an old dog new tricks.
It saddened Franco. Always would. But it was the way it was. And Franco was the way he was.
And there wasn't a human in existence, given however much breeding and education and social engagement, who could ignore the baggage of those early years of evolution and competition - when the right buttons were pushed.
Not one.
Franco had learned, over the years, to fight the good fight. But every now and again, his ingrained berserker rage got in the way.
Sometimes it worked. Other times, it didn't.
And now, he heard the distant
slap
of wooden timbers on his skull, and his energy was spent, his rage was diluted, his anger was washed away by the rhythmical swills of sea-water splashing up from the Teeth Ocean and swilling the deck of his blood. He lay still, and dreamt he was swimming through a sea of treacle, and it felt pretty nice, actually, felt kind of warm and calm, and slow and oozy, and he looked at the red treacle between his fingers and wondered what all the shouting and cheering was about...
The bucket of water splashed into his face and Franco gagged. Another brought him semi-conscious, wondering whose bed he was in, and if he was going to start scratching again, and a third bucket brought him
round
. He could see wood. Old wood. Stained wood. He could smell salt. And sea-water. And other scents which were distant memories - like greased tarpaulin, and lantern oil, and... and...
What was that noise? That cheering noise?
Franco tried to turn, and realised he was tied to the thick wooden beam in front of him. And a dawning realisation pushed gently into his blurry existence as he looked up, and up, and saw billowing sails above.
A ship? A galleon? A pirate ship?
Aaah, shit. That!
I remember...
Just above him, on a tiny length of wood jutting from the mast, was a bright green parrot. It was staring at Franco, and he stared back, unsure what to make of the green bird, or indeed, his situation, for his head was thumping like an elephant tap-dancing on his skull, and his mouth tasted like the inside of an unhygienic whore's knickers.
"Pretty polly," said the parrot. "Squawk!"
Franco stared at it. "Fuck off," he growled, as if the bird was drawing attention to his covert position, when in reality, his position was about as non-covert as it could possibly get.
"Pretty Polly, pretty Polly, squawk, Franco get a beating, Franco get a beating."
Did I hear that right? Does it know my name? Or am I still in that fabulous Dreamtime Longtime?
"Pretty Polly, Franco get a whipping, whip it up, snap it up, cream it up, pretty Franco, Franco get a whipping."
"So you're called Polly, right?" said Franco, weakly.
"She sure is," said a face that loomed far too close, disgorging a mouthful of bad breath strong enough to make a strong man gorge.
Franco stared into the face. It was the face of a madman. But worse. It was the face of a mad
org
several plates short of a dinner service. Franco analysed the face: broad and round and friendly, with a shock of black hair, some of which was woven into dreadlocks, and some tied with dried strips of old meat - in themselves, worthy of a great stench. The whole creation was bound together with a shock of coloured ribbons. The face was middle-aged, sagging a little with fat, black rings under dark eyes like marbles in treacle and showing nothing of the emotions behind the glassy, dead-eyed stare. The teeth were bad, in the true tradition of the pirate stereotype - some crooked, some missing, some gold - so that when the
Cap'n
smiled it was like looking into a bag of burned voodoo trinkets. The face was finished with unwashed skin and dirty stubble, and a slightly lop-sided look, as if Cap'n Bluetit had been severely smacked across one side of the head with a cricket bat - which, Franco was pretty sure, he thoroughly deserved.
"Aah," said Franco, as the stench of the grave washed over him. "Have you ever heard of a device called a toothbrush?"
"And what be ye meaning by that, me old chum, a-har?"
"I mean your breath stinks like a dead skunk's piss sack. If you're going to play the villain, breathing all over your sorry victim, at least have the decency to have good sweet breath, not something that could be used to kill soldiers in trench warfare. Yeah?"
"A-har-har-har," boomed Cap'n Bluetit, unperturbed by Franco's weak attempt at slander. "You'll be joking on the other side of your bull-whipped torso in a few moments, me lad."
"Pretty Polly, squawk!" squawked Pretty Polly.
Franco groaned.
Why me? Why does this always happen to me? Why does this insane bullshit always happen to me? Why doesn't it happen to Pippa? I bet Pippa's sorted out all her bloody problems and is reclining in a soft bed, sipping Champagne and eating strawberries. The bitch. And Keenan! The lucky bastard. Absorbed into a machine God. Okay, I admit, he might be dead or have no individual soul, or summink, but at least he doesn't have to put up with retarded org pirate kings and their tattered parrots!
"Squawk!"
"Listen," growled Franco, "I know I caused a bit of a kerfuffle, but then, that sort of thing happens when you go and whip a lad like that. I mean, it bloody hurt, it did! I bet it's left a right sorry sore mark down my back. I bet I look like raw steak! Prime steak, I'd be the first to admit, but raw prime steak, if you get my meaning."
Cap'n Bluetit went a little cross-eyed, then backed away, mumbling under his breath and leaving nothing but the tatty parrot in Franco's limited field of vision.
"I suppose it can't get much worse?" muttered Franco optimistically.
"Bets?" said Polly.
Franco heard the
crack
long before he felt the
burn
. But when the burn came, oh, it came bad, and then another
crack
filtered through the wave of red-hot branding agony and more fire torched up over Franco's flesh, and he heard a voice, a sweet female voice that he instantly fell in love with because she sounded like an angel, and he realised, it was Tarly, Tarly Winters, General Tarly Winters, and she said, "Sweet mother of God,
no!"
in a kind of hushed whisper that melted Franco's heart suddenly and without mercy, for she cared about him, cared for him, for his suffering and his pain and then another
crack
tore the air and the whip
sizzled
Franco's flesh.
The pain slammed through him like a juggernaut, like a train-wreck, tearing his innards outwards and filling him with more pain than he'd believed possible. Through waves of red, and a sobbing sound he realised was his own voice, he heard Cap'n Bluetit's voice interject.