The Halfshaft Games by Jonathan Pidduck - HTML preview

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“What?”

“Knee me. Harder this time. And then break my neck.”

“Now hang on,” the hunchback called over. “None of that. We need you

for the Games tomorrow.”

“Do it,” the troll urged. “Kill me. I deserve it.”

She stared at him, deciding whether to tear his head from his shoulders for

taking the easy way out. She took a step towards him, so that they were just

inches apart. She touched his face. His bottom lip started to quiver.

“Don’t you dare,” she said. “Trolls don’t cry. Especially not you.”

“He was my son, too,” he shouted at her, suddenly animated. “How can I

live with this without you? Just finish it, will you?”

She hugged him, so tightly that she fractured two of his ribs. He took the

pain without complaint; all that mattered to him was that they were together

again.

She pushed him away. He could see from her face that she had not forgiven

him; that would take time, and they probably didn’t have a great deal of that

left. But she was somehow softer than before, and that was enough for him

for now.

“What if we don’t make it through the Games?” she asked. “What if I don’t

get to go back for him?”

“It’s going to be okay,” he whispered. “I’m going to look after you, I

promise. I’m never going to let anything happen to our family ever again.”

It was then that he felt something whiz past his left ear, striking his mate

square on the forehead. She sank to her knees, fighting to remain conscious.

He turned to see a small rowing boat in the river, with two people in it. One

was a wizard, trying frantically to row back upstream; the other was a human

woman, standing up, a catapult in her hands. She was trying to whistle

inconspicuously, as if she was just a casual bystander on an afternoon punt

along the stream..

He was stupid, but not that stupid. It was her alright, her and the frightened

looking wizard. With a crazed bellow, he charged towards the boat. They

had hurt his mate; maybe even killed her. He would have his revenge, and it

was going to be very painful for them indeed.

#

As the huge ginger troll pounded along the river-bank towards them, it

occurred to Halfshaft that it would have been sensible to turn the boat around

before they started hurling stones ashore. As it was, he was desperately

trying to point the boat back upstream, wasting valuable time as hideous and

painful Death made its heavy-footed way towards them.

“Now would be a good time to row away,” suggested Cherry, remarkably

calmly in the circumstances.

“I’m trying to turn the boat around,” he snapped.

“Don’t bother. Just paddle the same way as before.”

“We’ve got to go back to the circus, though. Crookback said so.”

“Sod Crookback! What we’ve got to do is stay at least one stroke ahead of

the angry troll who wants to shove us up each other’s bottoms.”

Under different circumstances, the thought of being inserted into any of

Cherry’s orifices might have cheered him up considerably, but not now, not

with a fuming ginger troll in hot pursuit.

He took her advice. Abandoning the attempt to turn the boat about, he

rowed for all he was worth, which wasn’t very much.

The troll reached the river, and plunged in after them. He was maybe

twenty yards away. He lunged through the water, his arms raised above his

head, ready to tear them limb from limb when he caught up with them.

“Maybe you should row faster?” Cherry suggested. “Quite a lot faster,

actually.”

“Can trolls swim?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Buggered if I know.”

It was up to its waist now, wading towards them at speed. The distance

between fragile boat and angry troll shrank quickly. Fifteen yards, ten yards,

five.

Halfshaft started screaming. It didn’t help, but it made him a feel better.

“He’s going to get us! He’s going to get us!”

“I heard you the first time,” she laughed.

“Do something!”

“Okay,” she shrugged. She raised the catapult again, took aim, and sent a

stone arrowing towards his head. It smacked him straight between the eyes,

sending him reeling back into the water. He thrashed around for a few

seconds, shook the pain from his head, and then set off in pursuit again, more

furious than ever.

“Nice shot,” congratulated Halfshaft. “A couple more like that, and he’s

done for.”

“Slight problem,” she confessed. “No more stones.”

He screamed again. There didn’t seem to be much else he could do.

The troll was chest deep in the water now, and closing in on them one giant

stride at a time. His fists pounded the water in front of him like steam-

hammers, churning it up into a froth. Halfshaft carried on paddling,

screaming as he did so, desperately trying to stay a stroke or two ahead of

the troll but failing dismally. He would have preferred to run like buggery

than scream, but he was in the middle of the river, he only knew one

swimming stroke, and to doggy-paddle like buggery just didn’t have the

same ring to it.

The troll seized the side of the boat with one hand. Cherry stepped down

hard on his fingers, trying to drive him away, but he held on grimly, deciding

that a little pain was a small price to pay for savage vengeance.

“Make fire!” Cherry called out to Halfshaft. “Burn the bugger!”

“I can’t make much,” Halfshaft replied.

“Just do it.”

He put down his oars, and made his way unsteadily to the side of the boat.

The troll had hold of the vessel with both hands now, and was lifting it into

the air, ready to send it slamming back down into the water.

“When you’re ready,” she prompted. “Any time in the next two seconds

will do.”

He clicked his fingers. A flame the size of a birthday cake candle sprang

from the tip of his thumb. He flushed red, embarrassed at this pathetic

demonstration of his magical “prowess”.

“Is that it?” she asked. She seemed amused, which hardly seemed

appropriate in the circumstances.

“Pretty much,” he confessed. “I can make water as well, but -”

And then they were airborne, falling from the boat as the troll sent it

crashing back in to the water, flailing around in the current in an effort to

reach the “safety” of the bank. The troll shouted in triumph, grabbing each

of them in turn and pulling them down beneath the surface. Halfshaft gulped

in a lungful or two of muddy water, flailing around as he did so in a futile

attempt to break free of the troll’s grasp. The creature lifted him up again,

just long enough for him to spew the contents of his lungs back into the river.

And then he was back beneath the waves again, at first fighting for the

surface, but then drifting and then vacant as his life started ebbing away into

the cold water current around him.

#

There was a light in the distance. What did they say you should do when

you die? Go to the light? Or, whatever you do, don’t go to the light. He

couldn’t quite remember, but thought it might be quite important to get this

right.

Go to the light, he decided. Surely that was right? He looked around him.

Nothing. Just light in front of him, darkness behind him, and void on either

side.

He took a step forward. This was the Afterlife, it just had to be. But he had

been to Hell before, and last time round it had been all three headed dogs,

taciturn ferrymen and punishments involving sweaty over-sized bottoms.

This was completely different. He had cracked it. Something he had done

between then and now had earned him an upgrade to the Paradise Suite. All

he had to do was stroll through the gates, and find himself a harp and a halo.

The gates came into view. Big ornate gates, glowing white, with a marble

pillar either side. They swung open for him. He no longer minded that he

was dead. None of his hard and seedy life mattered any more. He had made

it here, against all expectations. It was time to pull on a white robe and have

a bit of a lie-down.

He caught a figure peering at him from behind one of the pillars. Doon, the

wizard’s apprentice, possibly the most odious man he had ever met. Doon

had sold his soul to a warlock, conspiring with him to help him take control

of the whole world in exchange for a share of the spoils. What would a man

like him be doing here of all places?

Doon ducked back behind the pillar. Halfshaft came to a halt. He could

hear furious whispering on the far side of the gate. Rana appeared, deceased

Queen of the Amazons, the woman who had tried to kill him and his

companions on their very first quest together. She gave him a tense smile,

and beckoned for him to follow her inside.

“Come on in,” she said sweetly. “It’s lovely here.”

He shook his head, and retreated a few steps. He wasn’t keen on the idea.

“Come on in,” she repeated, rather less pleasantly this time. “I’ll make it

worth your while.”

“No, you’re okay. I’ll just hang around out here for a while, if it’s all the

same with you. I need to have a think about this.”

“Come here now!” she screeched, in a most unregal way.

He turned and ran, scurrying as fast as he could back towards the darkness

from whence he came. His legs seemed to sink into the white ground, as if

he was running through quicksand. He made the mistake of looking over his

shoulder; Rana and Doon were haring out of the gates towards him, Rana

slinging her bow as she ran.

“I’m not spending another thousand years here,” she screamed at him. “Get

back here now, little man.”

He was a little puzzled by this; it hadn’t been all that long since he had last

seen her, and technically that was in the future anyway so she shouldn’t have

even been born yet. Maybe time moved differently here. Maybe it moved

backwards, or sideways, or in some other direction that hadn’t even been

invented yet.

His consideration of the matter was hastily shoved on to the back-burner

as he felt an arrow whistling past his ear. Just run, he told himself. Just run.

You’re good at that. Practice makes perfect.

His legs were turning to jelly with the effort of ploughing through the

gelatinous void. He looked back over his shoulder again, knowing that this

was a very poor idea, but deciding to do it anyway.

Doon was just a few steps behind him, reaching out for him, ready to pull

him kicking and screaming into what he had now deduced to be the back

gates of the Underworld. But all of a sudden, the wizard’s apprentice shot

backwards at speed, as if he had been attached to the gates by invisible

elastic, nearly bowling Rana down as he went. He smashed his face against

the right-hand pillar, struggled back to his feet and set off in pursuit again.

He wasn’t going to give up easily.

Rana was closing in on him too. She was slowing down; there was

obviously some force pulling her backwards as well. But she was stronger

than the apprentice; more determined. She fought to keep her footing,

struggling womanfully against whatever it was that was trying to hurl her

back into the fiery pit where she belonged.

She raised her bow again. “Take my place, Wizard, or I’ll shoot you where

you stand, and then we will both be here forever. Take my place, and at least

in a thousand years you will have your own chance to escape, too.”

He hesitated. What to do? No way was he going to swap with her. He would

rather they both get roasted than give her a free ticket out of there. But he

wasn’t too keen on being shot with her arrow. Granted, he was already dead,

but it looked like it would hurt.

He could see Doon racing towards the pair of them, hoping to overtake her,

planning to swap with Halfshaft himself. He wasn’t too keen on that either.

He needed a plan.

“Three steps closer,” he told her, “and I’ll swap.”

“What is this trickery?” she asked.

“Doon’s coming. Better be quick.”

She took a step forwards, her face creased with effort and concentration as

she fought to stay on her feet.

“You’d better be quick. He’s nearly here.”

She took another step towards him. Beads of sweat appeared on her

forehead, her breasts, her stomach; soaking into her furs as it trickled down

her taut body. The effort of standing upright was proving immense.

“That is as far as I am coming,” she announced. “Come to me.”

“Doon’s here!” lied Halfshaft.

She turned to see the apprentice still a dozen or so steps away. And then

she was flying backwards through the void, back towards her anchor point,

thudding heavily against the gate-post from whence she had started. She was

on her feet immediately, and heading back towards him in no time at all.

Doon gave a shout of triumph, and surged forwards. Halfshaft turned and

ran. He could sense the apprentice gaining on him, but was determined not

to turn round again. If there was one thing he had learnt from Rana, it was

that facing the front had a lot to be said for it.

He felt a hand clutch at his robes. He shook it off like a wet terrier drying

itself off, and surged forwards again. It was only a matter of time. If the

apprentice had had the good sense to take his feet off the ground when he

had seized the wizard’s robes, they would both be hurtling towards Hell right

now, and all would be lost.

Surely he couldn’t be far from where he had started, where he had entered

this strange vacuum of a land? He had to take a risk. His legs were shot, so

he wasn’t going to get much further anyway. As Doon shouted out in

triumph behind him, presumably on the verge of seizing his robes one last

time, Halfshaft dived forwards, trusting to Luck and whatever Gods would

have him to send him sprawling to safety.

He hit the ground hard. He felt something pressing against his chest. He

spat out water, what seemed like bucketfuls of it. And then he opened his

eyes. He groaned, and shut them again.

For looming above him, practically blocking out the sun, stood a very

agitated trolless. Maybe Hell was not so bad after all.

#

Halfshaft squealed like a little piggy. He had quite a range of different

squeals, each one suitable for a different type of threatening situation, but

this was probably the shrillest of them all. It was even giving him a headache.

Cherry leaned into his field of vision. “It’s okay. She’s friendly.”

“I’m not friendly,” the trolless contradicted. “There’s nothing I’d like more

than to rip your beardy head off, and suck all the marrow from your spine.”

“There you go,” grinned Cherry. “Trolls don’t get much friendlier than

that.”

She helped him to his feet. He felt awful. He had had many near death

experiences in recent weeks, but drowning had to be one of the least

pleasant. Especially with Hell lurking in the dark waters below.

He looked around. The two hunchbacks stood nearby, one of them looking

extremely embarrassed as the second berated him. “What sort of a stunt was

that?” he was asking. “When they find out about this upstairs, you’ll be off

the show. You’ll be cleaning the toilets, along with all the other hunchback

has-beens.”

“What happened?” Halfshaft asked. “Why aren’t we dead?”

Cherry looked towards the trolless. “Sorry. I don’t know your name?”

“Bastard-mate,” the trolless replied, with pride. “And this is my mate,

Bastard.”

“I can’t think why they called him that,” Halfshaft bitched.

“Yes you can. He was called that, because he’s always been a vicious little

bastard since the moment he was born. Which is why they made him Lord

of the Trolls. There’s no-one that can grind bones like him. You would have

found that out for yourself if I hadn’t have pulled him off you.”

“Why did you? Don’t get me wrong, I’m very grateful that you did. Just a

little puzzled.”

She looked tearful, and a tearful troll is not something you see every day.

“We left our little boy behind,” she said. “He’s delicate. We need to go back

and see what’s happened to him. We need to win the Games. If Bastard

drowned you before they even started, they’d kill us both as punishment,

and our little Buster would be wolf-meat without us.”

“He’ll be alright,” Bastard muttered unconvincingly. “He’s a strong little

bugger, deep down. Very deep down.”

Bastard-mate punched him hard in the testicles. She watched him double

over in excruciating pain, nodding her head in satisfaction. “One more word

from you,” she warned. “Just one more word. And I’ll bite them off.”

“Thank you,” Halfshaft said, changing the subject, as it was making him

wince. “You saved my life.”

Bastard-mate made as if to punch the wizard in the testicles, but thought

better of it as the hunchbacks closed in on her. “Not really,” she told him.

“I’ve just put back your death. You two chucked stones at us. When we see

you at the Games, we’re going to kill you, and eat you. And not necessarily

in that order.”

“See,” Cherry chimed in. “I told you she was friendly.”

#

It was to be the last event of their training. Speed.

The bad news was that it was to all intents a donkey derby. The hunchbacks

had lined up all the candidates for tomorrow’s Games, and had mounted

each of them in turn. Only Selene had refused to allow a hunchback astride

her. She had insisted that hers do all the running. So he stood, humped and

doubled over, scissored between her long legs, ready for the starter’s whistle.

The pair looked like a fur-bikini-clad Esmeralda giving birth to Quasimodo,

which was a very disturbing image indeed.

The good news was that Takina was there too. She had tried to follow

Selene’s lead, but her hunchback wasn’t having any of it, and had refused

point-blank to carry her. She hadn’t had quite enough gravitas to carry it off,

so had eventually consented to him climbing on her back instead. Halfshaft

was four places away from her in the starting line-up, separated by two elves

and a dwarf. He kept grinning over at her, and she kept smiling back. But

there was no opportunity to talk. The race was about to begin.

All of the Candidates were there. Apart from Halfshaft, Cherry, Takina and

Selene, there were the trolls (who were fortunately lined up several places

away, on the far side of the Amazons), a pair of witches, two dwarfs and a

couple of elves. As an incentive to do well in the training task, whoever won

would be given a two minute head-start in the Games the following day.

Which would ordinarily have been just about enough time, the wizard

speculated, to hide himself away in a ditch or rotten tree-trunk, and refuse to

come out until everyone else had killed each other. But that plan had gone

out the window now. He had to look after Takina. And work out how to let

Cherry down as gently as possible.

There was a shrill whistle. They were off. Three laps of the Big Top,

finishing back here by the entrance. And then inside for a show and some

light refreshments.

The trolls were off like a shot, disappearing round the side of the Big Top

before Halfshaft had staggered forward a couple of paces. The elves were

not far behind, the male elf a little in the lead. They were tall and slender,

not unlike the Amazons in build but wearing forest camouflage rather than

the Amazon fashion of as-little-as-possible.

Selene picked up her hunchback, tucked him under her arm like a huge

deformed rugby ball, and set off in pursuit.

Takina hurried after them, surprisingly strong for a woman of her size. She

was not like other Amazons. She was of “normal” height for a start, which

was considered such a defect by her tribe that she had been relegated to

servant’s duties her whole life, when all she had ever wanted to do was hunt

with the tribe. She was a lot like Halfshaft in some ways (though very

different in others!). Both of them wanted to prove themselves to a sceptical

Outside World, he with his limited magical abilities and she with her warrior

prowess. Theoretically, the Games would be the perfect place for the two of

them to prove themselves to a sceptical universe. In practice, however, he

would have done just about anything to avoid taking part in the contest the

following day.

Cherry was close on Takina’s heels, with Halfshaft staggering along behind

her. He was old, he was unfit, and he had a hunchback astride him. He was

never going to make it round the tent, yet alone manage three circuits.

To his surprise, he was not last. He turned to see how the dwarfs and the

witches were doing. The witches had thrown off their hunchbacks, and were

conjuring up some sort of spell between them. They stood opposite one

another, their hands moving in a complicated rhythm in mirror-image to

each other, the air between them crackling with energy. He expected their

hunchback to step in, to forbid them to use magic, but he appeared to be

encouraging them. The wizard put his own hunchback down. If the witches

were up to something, then there did not appear to be much point carrying

on. Things were going to “kick off” big time.

The dwarfs were in difficulty. Each was mounted by a hunchback twice the

size of them. Their stubby knees bent outwards with the effort of bearing

their weight. Each time they attempted to take a step forwards, they tottered

to one side, fought to regain their balance, and staggered back again, only to

repeat the process a few seconds later. They were clearly going nowhere

fast.

The trolls emerged from the far side of the Big Top, one lap done already,

and bounded towards the witches at a gallop. The witches stepped aside to

allow them to pass, their spell not quite ready. The elves passed through soon

afterwards, jostling for position with Selene, who still had her hunchback

tucked beneath her arm. Cherry was not far behind, having overtaken

Takina. She seemed to be enjoying herself.

He took Cherry’s arm as she went to pass him, pulling her towards him.

“Easy, Big Guy,” she said. “There’s only room for one of you on my back

at a time.”

“The witches are up to something,” he cautioned. “I’d stay here if I were

you.”

She shrugged. “You’re the boss. I was just starting to enjoy myself though.

I reckon I could’ve caught the trolls on the next lap.”

Halfshaft waited for Takina, but there was no sign of her. Cherry, in the

meantime, looked over her shoulder at the hunchback who was still firmly

in her “saddle”. “Okay, piggy-back’s over. You can hop off now.”

“Maybe another minute or two?” he enquired hopefully.

She threw him off, laughing as he struggled to his feet. “That’ll teach you,

you dirty little bugger.”

Halfshaft went in search of Takina. With a shock, he saw her racing away

towards the river and the distant hilltops, her hunchback in hot pursuit. She

was escaping! But, very much more to the point, she was escaping without

him!

#

Takina was halfway across the river in no time, swimming for all she was

worth. Her hunchback doggy-paddled after her, commanding her to return

to the race or face the consequences. And Halfshaft closed in on them both