Wish You Were Here (16 page)

‘Yes, but it's my—'

‘Get another one from the Stores,' snapped Talks To Squirrels. ‘Great Spirit, have you got nothing better to worry about than a goddamn stone axe?'

‘No.'

Talks To Squirrels pulled a sad face. ‘To be honest with you, neither have I. Probably explains why I'm depressed. Come on, let's go shoot some motorists. Mr Paliachiewski's due along any minute now with the bread van. Two squirrels' tails for the man who can shoot out his tyres in five shots.'

He set off up the hill. Behind him, the war band exchanged glances.

‘Might as well,' Four Calling Birds admitted. ‘It's not as if we're snowed under with more exciting things to do.'

‘'S'pose not. Hey, Birds, you got any idea where he gets the squirrel tails from? Being a ghost and all?'

‘Mail order,' Four Calling Birds replied. ‘And they're synthetic fur fabric, made in Indonesia.'

‘Hey, that's amazing,' said Two Turtledoves, impressed. ‘Where's Indonesia?'

Four Calling Birds furrowed his brow, until his eyebrows collided like furry trucks. ‘Somewhere south-west of Chicago, I think. Out that way somewhere.'

‘Oh. I thought that was Indiana.'

‘No, he's the guy who swings in and out of old ruins on a rope, wearing a hat. They call him that because he comes from Indonesia.'

‘Ah,' said Two Turtledoves. ‘I see.'

‘Knowledge is power, Doves.'

‘You bet, Birds. Last one up the hill gets an Iroquois haircut.'

 

‘Well?' Wesley demanded.

‘Sorry about this,' replied the bison, tight-lipped. ‘Slight technical hitch, by the looks of it. Honestly, you can't leave anything these days except it's nailed down.'

Wesley raised one eyebrow, Mister Spock fashion. ‘Excuse me,' he said, enjoying himself, ‘but are you trying to tell me someone's
stolen
the adventure?'

‘Not the adventure itself,' the bison replied, turning over a rock with its snout. ‘Just one of the props, is all. Unfortunately, it just so happens it's one of the important ones. Goddamnit,' it added.

A thin, soft wind flicked over them, mussing up Wesley's hair and ruffling the fur on the bison's shoulders backwards, against the pile. Tiny ripples moved on the surface of the lake, frosting the glass of the mirror. The bison snuffed at the ground with its broad nostrils, then pawed dolefully with its front left hoof.

‘Bugger,' it said.

Wesley got up from the bison skull he'd been sitting on. ‘Fair enough,' he said, ‘I suppose that means we'll have to miss out this adventure. Never mind, eh?'

‘Oh no you don't,' grunted the bison. ‘You'll have this adventure, and like it. And if you don't have it now, it'll be put in front of you every day until you do, so be told.'

‘You sound just like my . . .'

‘Ah,' said the bison, ‘here we are. Now, I want you to imagine that sticking in this rock here, there's a sword.'

‘
Imagine . . . !
'

‘Yes, damnit,' replied the bison, annoyed. ‘Come on, for God's sake, you're the one who lives in a world of fantasy and imagination, peopled by strange gods and the weird offspring of the subconscious. Imagining a sword ought to be a piece of cake.'

‘That's not the point. Sure, I
can
imagine swords. I just can't see why I should have to. Like, I can sleep on the beach under a black dustbin liner, but that doesn't mean I'm satisfied when I get off the plane and find they haven't built the hotel yet.'

‘Imagine,' repeated the bison, ‘there's a sword in this here stone. Big shiny job, OK?'

‘With a bejewelled hilt?'

‘Naturally.'

‘Runes?'

The bison considered for a moment. ‘Probably not,' it replied. ‘Wrong tradition. Make it sigils instead.'

‘OK, I've got the sigils. Are the quillons straight or curved?'

‘The whats?'

‘Quillons. The arms of the crossguard, which I think ought to curve inwards, like a coathanger.'

The bison shrugged; no small undertaking, for a creature whose shoulders are higher than its head. ‘Whatever's right,' it said. ‘Far be it from me—'

‘And the pommel,'Wesley went on, looking into space. ‘Is the pommel disc-shaped, in the French style, or more of a semicircle with the flat edge facing the quillons, owing more to the Scandinavian—?'

‘I think you're getting the hang of this,' said the bison, breaking out the emergency supplies of self-restraint. ‘Now then, this sword—'

‘Hang on, we haven't discussed the ricasso profile yet.'

‘Take hold of the hilt,' growled the bison ominously, ‘in your left hand. Above it, place your right. You there yet?'

‘I think so. It'd help if you'd specified it was a two-hander. I'm having to do some pretty substantial revisions as I go along here. For example, the fifteenth-century Swiss zweyhander . . .'

‘Both hands on the hilt,' snarled the bison. ‘Ready? Now pull.'

‘I can't.'

The bison looked up. ‘You what?'

‘I can't,' Wesley repeated. ‘It's stuck in this rock.'

‘Oh for fuck's—Imagine it isn't.'

‘But it is. Rusted in solid. These finely tempered Solingen steels, they rust as soon as look at them. You'd need a gallon of WD-40 and a jackhammer to get the ruddy thing out.'

A bemused expression flitted over the bison's face, as if it had been God saying
Let there be light
and having the Void reply
Only if you've got fifty pence for the meter
. ‘All right,' it said, slowly and patiently, ‘imagine a gallon of WD-40 and a jackhammer.'

‘WD-40. Jackhammer. OK.'

There was silence for a moment, disturbed only by the bison breathing loudly through its nose and Wesley making bda-bda-bda noises under his breath. When the bison felt it couldn't really take much more of the sound effects, it lifted its head and said, ‘How's it coming along?'

‘Not good, I'm afraid,' Wesley replied. ‘You see, the rust's really taken hold here. We've got to be a bit careful if we don't want the bloody point to snap off.'

‘I see.'

‘Of course,' Wesley continued, rubbing his chin, ‘we could try heating the rock with a propane torch until it's really hot and then splashing water on it.That'd crack the rock, and then maybe we could sort of ease the sword free.'

‘Good idea,' sighed the bison. ‘Why don't you try that, then?'

‘Ah,' Wesley replied, ‘but then you'd run the risk of taking all the temper off the sword itself and ruining it. You've got to be a bit careful with heat around best-quality steel, you know.'

The bison shut its eyes tightly, until the muscles of its eyelids hurt. ‘Look,' it said. ‘If you can get this sword, this
entirely imaginary
sword, out of that rock, that'll make you rightful king of all Albion. Doesn't matter if you snap off the tip or spoil the frigging temper, when you're king you can have the royal swordsmiths make you a new one. All you have to do . . .'

‘But that's silly,' Wesley retorted. ‘If it's an imaginary sword, how will anybody know I've actually done it?'

The bison made a small noise, in which bewilderment and rage were mixed in the same proportions as gin and vermouth in a dry martini. ‘Look,' it whimpered furiously, ‘they'll trust you, OK? You'll be their goddamn king, it wouldn't even occur to them you might be lying. I thought you were dead keen on royalty where you come from.'

‘We are,' Wesley replied. ‘At least, some of us are. My mum is. But where I come from, there's a bit more to being royal than pulling imaginary swords out of chunks of masonry. If it was as easy as all that, the whole system'd fall to the ground.'

‘All right,' said the bison wearily. ‘You wait there. Don't move. Don't even breathe. I'll be right back.'

‘Where are you going?' Wesley cried.

‘To get you a real sword, of course. Because you're so damn literal-minded you won't do the adventure unless there's an actual sword. Which means I've got to go traipsing all the way down to the Stores, fill in a pink requisition slip, a blue confirmation slip, a green—'

‘Hang on,' Wesley shouted. ‘I've nearly got this one free now. I felt it move just now.'

‘—Authorisation docket, a mauve receipt, a blue confirmation slip for the mauve receipt, an orange cashier's voucher, a—'

‘That's got it, here we - Oh my God!' Wesley stood for a moment, a huge double-handed sword with curved quillons and a disc pommel wobbling in his hand; then he remembered that swords of this style weighed anything up to twenty pounds, and dropped it with a clang.

‘Told you it was a piece of cake,' said the bison smugly. ‘Hey, you forgot the sigils.'

‘Um.' Wesley stared at the sword as if it was a cat he'd just run over. ‘Hey, does this mean I'm rightful king of Albion?'

‘Yup.'

‘Wow.'

‘All hail,' said the bison, in a bored monotone. ‘Long live the king. May the king reign for ever. You realise you've spoilt this whole adventure for me now.'

‘Hey, I'm sorry. I was just . . .'

‘Gallon of WD-40 and a jackhammer,' the bison went on. ‘Never heard the like in all my born days.'

Wesley cupped his hands to his cheeks. ‘Hey,' he whispered, ‘you realise what I just did? I
materialised
that sword, just by imagining it. One moment there was just this rock, the next . . .'

‘Missed a trick though, didn't you? I mean, any sensible person would have imagined a sword he was actually capable of lifting; but not you, oh no.You had to go and dream up something that weighs half a ton. All I can say is, look out Albion.'

‘Yes, but . . .'

‘Well then,' the bison muttered, as it started to walk away. ‘If I were you, I'd get straight on with imagining a block and tackle and a fork-lift truck. I'd get a wiggle on as well, before the goblins show up.'

‘Goblins?'

‘You bet.You don't suppose you were issued with that thing just so as you could open sixteen-gauge steel envelopes, do you?'

‘You never said anything about goblins.'

‘Didn't want to alarm you. Not then, at any rate. Right now, I'd just love to see a little pool of yellow liquid form at the bottom of your trouser leg.You see, I belong to the school of thought that holds that blind gibbering terror brings out the best in people.'

‘You—!' Wesley wobbled, as fear melted the bones in his legs. ‘Get me out of here, for Christ's sake.'

‘But I thought you wanted excitement, adventure and a chance to do heroic deeds.'

‘Eeekl!' There was a scuffling noise just inside the wood, like feet scrabbling on loose stones, or whatever. Wesley swung round, desperately looking for the best direction to run in. While doing so, he noticed the other goblins.

‘They have you surrounded,' said the bison placidly. ‘Just to make sure you don't pass up this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of doing heroic deeds. Actually, the phrase
once in a lifetime
may be a trifle unfortunate in this context, so let's say
unique opportunity
. Don't want to strike the wrong note, after all.'

Goblins was what they unmistakably were; no risk of confusing them with fluffy kittens or social workers. Each of them was about four feet high and the same wide, with shoulders like American footballers and wicked pointy teeth sticking out of the corners of their green-lipped mouths. The knuckles of the hands they weren't holding their scimitars in trailed on the ground. They all had big noses and little round, red eyes.

‘Wesley, goblins,' said the bison. ‘Goblins, Wesley.'

The goblins advanced, moving as fast and as erratically as spiders. As Wesley stooped to where the sword was lying, a particularly chunky and red-eyed specimen darted towards him, brandishing a scimitar -

- Which he dropped, as he backed away screaming, his hands over his eyes. Wesley squirted another long jet of WD-40 at him, just to make sure, and spun round on his heel to confront the goblins who were sneaking up behind him. They shrieked out the first few notes of their blood-curdling war-cry, but got no further than ‘Eeeeee!' before the sound was drowned out by a staccato pounding, thudding noise that made the ground shake. Four goblins went down like sacks of potatoes; the others ran away, very fast.

‘My,' murmured the bison, as Wesley peered round over the sights of the Uzi in his hands, ‘you've really taken to this conjuring-stuff-up-out-of-thin-air business like the proverbial duck to water. Do you mind not pointing that thing at me, by the way?'

‘Sorry,' Wesley mumbled, staring at the slaughtered goblins. ‘Fuck it, bison, I
killed
them. Oh God . . .'

‘Wouldn't worry about it if I were you,' the bison replied, nibbling at a thistle. ‘They'll be right as rain in an hour or so. Hungry, of course, but that's their look-out. I guess having to miss the occasional meal is something you learn to live with if your staple diet is people.'

Wesley shuddered from his toenails to his scalp. At some stage, the Uzi had vanished again, although the shiny golden spent cases still glittered on the ground at his feet. The WD-40 and the jackhammer had gone, too, but the sword was still there. ‘You bastard,' Wesley said, with feeling. ‘You—'

‘Whether or not that counts as a glorious deed,' the bison continued serenely, ‘is rather a moot point. I think I'll have to look it up and get back to you on that one. I must say, though, it shows initiative, not to mention a pragmatic streak I must confess I hadn't expected of you. You've gone up in my estimation a bit, young Wesley. You'd best change your trousers, though.'