Ten
Kylie and Tarquin ran as fast as they could. Kylie felt her lungs burning as she forced her body to do things it had never been trained for. At least that distracted her from the itch in the centre of her spine. They could hear their pursuers crashing through the undergrowth behind them but dare not look back for fear of tripping over something in front of them. Any moment now either one of them could get an arrow in their back.
In front of her Tarquin was doing his best to make sure she stayed with him. He knew she was tiring, but they had to keep going or they would surely die. He doubted his ability to deal with the patrol behind him without help. Last time he’d had Wayne as company, and that had been a close thing. They had no brooms this time. Kylie had a sword, but he had no idea whether she could use it. They would do well just to keep out of sight, to hide if they could. There was no point in fighting if they could avoid it.
Cedric and Ruby had gone ahead to the tower while he and Kylie had stopped for a rest. The Knob, as they had come to call it, was only a few hours ahead but Kylie was still suffering from the exhaustion, both mental and physical, of caring for Jemima. They’d found a place to rest quietly for an hour and had only just got going again when they’d been seen by a goman patrol. So much for keeping out of sight.
‘Tarquin!’
He looked back and saw that she was lying on the ground struggling to get up. Shit! He turned around and went running back. The gomans were only about fifty metres away, but the lush undergrowth hid them. ‘Kylie, we have to keep going.’
‘It’s too late Tarquin, I’m done.’
He drew his sword and prepared to meet his pursuers. ‘We’re probablygoing to have fight, Kylie, I hope you’re ready. Let’s hide in these ferns and hope they go past. But if they don’t, we’ll not have any choice.’
She forced herself to her feet and drew her sword. ‘Any words of advice?’
‘Just keep your head and don’t panic. And cover my back. I’ll cover yours.’
The gomans came running past, and for one moment Tarquin thought they were going to be safe. Then the leader stopped.
‘We should be able to see them from here.’ He had his back to the two of them. They all did as they stared at the trees trying to see where their prey might have gone.
Tarquin brought his mouth close Kylie’s ear and whispered in hardly audible tones, ‘I’ll take the leader. You take the one on his left. Then we’ve got a sporting chance against the other three. Follow my lead, and don’t hesitate. They will kill you. Understand?’
Kylie nodded.
Tarquin counted to three and then exploded from his hideout, covering the distance to the gomans in a split second with Kylie only a metre behind him. He impaled the leader just as he was turning around, ripping his sword out as the creature fell, before slicing the chest of the next closest goman who was frozen in surprise.
Two down. That almost evened the contest.
But Kylie was also frozen, just as her target turned around with a drawn sword. She watched him start to smile and raise his sword. The blade was almost hypnotising as she watched the sunlight gleam off it on its slow-motion arc upwards.
‘Kylie!’
Tarquin’s voice jolted her out of her paralysis just in time to block the now downward-racing goman sword with her own. She stumbled backwards, but immediately bounced up as the creature strode forward to finish her off, now confident in the lack of ability of its opponent. She parried the next sword thrust and then desperately parried the next. She continued to retreat until she backed up against a tree. The goman grinned. ‘There’s nowhere to go now girl. I’ll get a medal for killing a human, you know. There’s a good bounty on your head.’
He lunged at her, and as she side-stepped, his sword got stuck in the tree.
‘Kill it!’ Tarquin yelled. He had disposed of another one of gomans, but was getting beaten back by the remaining one. ‘Just kill it!’
Kylie looked at the creature trying to get its sword out of the tree. Killing things was not in her nature; she had ethical problems with such actions. Then the goman gave up on its sword and pulled a dagger from its belt and came charging at her. The look in its eyes made her decision for her; there was nothing there resembling compassion or mercy, just hatred and bloodlust. Perhaps this was not the time and place to worry about ethics.
She gripped her sword and waited until the creature was a metre away, and then she swung it for all she was worth, slicing through the goman’s stomach and chest. It fell and then lay writhing on the ground, a gurgling, bubbling sound coming from its mouth. Kylie strode over to it and looked at her handiwork. There was no question it would die, but there was no need for it to suffer. With tears in her eyes she put her word on its chest and drove down with all of her strength. The creature convulsed once, before it sighed its last breath. For a second she stood there trying to comprehend what she had done. The sweet scent of freshly cut mint wafted through the air from a nearby plant that had been in the way of a sword – it mixed in with the sharper aroma of the damp pine needles that littered the ground and provided cushion for the now-dead creature. Then she noticed that the forest had gone quiet.
Tarquin? Where was he?
She heard footsteps and spun around with her heart in her mouth, her bloody sword raised ready to defend herself.
‘Whoa. ‘Tarquin said as he stepped back rapidly. He looked down at the goman, and then at the tears on Kylie’s cheeks. ‘It’s difficult the first time,’ he said as gently as he could. ‘I threw up after I killed my first one.’ He put his hand on her shoulder, but she shrugged it off.
‘I’m okay.’
She did not convince Tarquin, but he decided to let it go for now. They all had to deal with this in their own way. When something was trying to kill you, sometimes the only option you had was to kill it first. ‘Let’s just rest for a few minutes,’ he suggested.
They found a cliff-top overlooking the ocean where they both collapsed to the ground. Kylie watched the swell march in from the ocean and then hurl itself onto the rocks below. It was hypnotic, but she wasn’t seeing it. Instead she kept replaying the fight in her head and watching with horror as her blade pierced the goman’s chest and the light in its eyes had died. The sound of the waves below and the warm sun above lulled her into a fitful doze.
And then Tarquin was shaking her. ‘We’ve got to go, Kylie. It’s only a short walk from here.’
The two of them began walking south towards Offa’s Knob. They could see the headland beyond which it lay. An hour and they would be there. And hopefully Cedric and Ruby would be there too.
The Cabinet was meeting once again to discuss the current Barmian Situation, as they had now begun to call it. The Treasurer was speaking and sounded very doubtful about the whole venture.
‘I’m not sure that we should let the gomans go into Barmia,’ he said. ‘They are a bunch of thugs when they get going. Do we really need to go through with this action?’
‘Getting cold feet, are you?’ Defence sneered back. ‘I was actually thinking that we should mobilise a second wave of gomans to come down from our north. They could go in and finish the job. We’ve already got scouts on the ground right throughout the country.’
The Treasurer looked apprehensive. ‘What do you mean finish the job?’
‘What I mean, and I’m explaining this only for the non-military minded, is that while the first army is dealing with Wanton Dope and the Vice Castle, the second army can sweep through the rest of the country mopping up any points of resistance. If we’re going to do this, we should do it properly.’
‘What do you mean properly? That is still unclear to me,’ said the Treasurer, still with an uneasy note to his voice. In actual fact it was more like a whole symphony of unease. ‘I thought that we’d get control of the resources and then come to an ‘arrangement’ to get some economic advantage. I wasn’t thinking that we were going on a blood and guts rampage through the countryside.’
‘Yes, that was my understanding,’ said the Prime Minister who also appeared to be having a few misgivings about what he had started. ‘Let’s not forget that the reason for this war was nothing more than a distraction from our current political problems, and to give us time to put the expenses scandal to rest. We don’t want to do much more than get a bit of nationalistic pride going and distract the general populace. I don’t think that an ongoing occupation is the way to go. That’ll become a drain on our finances, and you know how tenuous our economy is at the moment. We owe a shitload of money to the Northern Kingdoms. Have you forgotten about our financial situation?’
‘Well, for all the slow learners, like our dear Treasurer and our esteemed Prime Minister,’ said Defence with exaggerated patience, ‘I can assure you that I am the commander-in-chief in charge of the army, so now that we have a war, I am in charge, and I know what I’m doing.’ He then added, ‘We’ll deal with money alter…somehow. And I don’t want to think that there is anybody in this room with un-Phestringian views.’ He let the threat hang in the air.
There was silence.
‘I thought not.’
Arts looked worried. ‘What exactly is an un-Phestringian view?’
‘I would have thought that was obvious,’ said Foreign Affairs.
‘Er…not really,’ said Arts. Education nodded in agreement.
‘Well it stands to reason, doesn’t it?’ said Defence.
‘Can you explain it to us please,’ asked Education. ‘I mean I’m sure that we’d all like to know what to look out for.’
The Prime Minister smiled to himself. Their ignorance could raise some interesting questions at times.
Defence sighed. ‘Right. Being un-Phestringian is whatever I bloody well say it is. And I think that it is definitely un-Phestringian to question the motives and professionalism of our army, and also to question the righteousness behind this war. I believe God is a Phesertingian and that he is on our side.’
‘I thought that you didn’t believe in God,’ said the Treasurer.
This momentarily silenced Defence, but he responded with, ‘Perhaps I don’t, but if he did exist he would definitely be on our side.’
‘You’re sure about that?’ asked the Prime Minister.
‘Very sure. And I would like to add that it would be un-Phestringian to question me on this.’
‘Of course it would,’ said the Prime Minister. Defence was clearing getting some notions of power well above his station, and the little war in Barmia was taking on a life of its own, but it was not yet the right time to do anything.
The Treasurer was getting agitated. ‘What are you saying, Defence?’
‘Just shut up, will you,’ Foreign Affairs told the Treasurer. ‘All you’ve been doing is complaining. You just get on with collecting the War Tax, that’s your job. You sort out the money and let Defence and I deal with the war, that’s our job.’
‘What exactly is your job?’ asked the Treasurer.
‘It’s very simple,’ replied Foreign Affairs, ‘I make sure that other kingdoms and countries understand that our actions in subduing the Barmians are necessary to ensure that chaos and bedlam do not spread from that country and destabilise the surrounding region.’
The Prime Minister noted that Arts, Planning, and Education were ignoring the conversation now, but then again, Planning ignored everything. It had become all too hard for them so they talked among themselves or just pretended it wasn’t happening. Their culpability in Cabinet decisions seemed not to bother them. He, on the other hand, would do his utmost now to distance himself from the war if Defence was going to cut loose. A mass slaughter of Barmians was not on his list of things to achieve, but if it happened it would suck him in. He made another attempt to guide the conversation to a more palatable direction.
‘I don’t know if we can really afford to send in a second army. As I said, the economy is a little fragile and we are carrying a lot of debt. We could get into serious financial trouble if we are not careful.’
The Treasurer nodded in vigorous agreement. ‘Worse trouble that we’re already in, and that’s pretty bad.’
Defence brushed aside this point. ‘I think that you’ll find we’ll be in and out of Barmia very quickly, Prime Minister, so I wouldn’t worry too much. It’s little more than a training exercise for the gomans.’
Foreign Affairs agreed. ‘With all the money that we’ll make out of the Barmian resources there will be plenty of money to pay the soldiers and I am confident that we’ll also be able to pay off large amounts of our debt to the Northern Kingdoms.’
‘You’re assuming rapid success,’ the Prime Minster pointed out. ‘We don’t have a lot of time to repay our debts. Even the interest payments are becoming problematic, isn’t that right, Treasurer?’
‘It sure is. We’re well and truly buggered if we miss another payment.’
‘That sounded a little bit un-Phestringian to me,’ said Defence, giving the Prime Minster a hard look.
‘I am merely suggesting that we should not get ahead of ourselves,’ said the Prime Minister in a mild tone. ‘I would remind you once again that the purpose of this war was to deflect the attention of Phestringians away from our current domestic problems.’
‘But times change, Prime Minister,’ responded Foreign Affairs, ‘and we must adapt and take our opportunities. Would you not agree? After all, you can see how excited Arts and Education are about this little adventure of ours. They’re already planning their archaeological expeditions once we’ve subdued the Barmians.’
‘What are the papers saying about the war,’ asked the Treasurer. Perhaps there would be some help in this area.
‘Banging the nationalistic drum for the most part,’ said Defence. ‘A little criticism in some of them, but I’ll have a word with the editors about the powers of the government when Phestring is in situation where the Emergency Cabinet Powers Act has been activated. They’ll come into line. I’m sure that we’ll have the Press behind us.’
There was some muttering around the table, but no complaints.
‘I need to know that you are all behind us as well’ said Defence. He saw himself as a man of action and prided himself on this. He hadn’t yet told them that he’d ordered the army in Barmia the previous day. It should be close to Wanton Dope by now. While all of these politicians prattled on, he had acted. Some day soon he’d be Prime Minster, and then it would be time for some real changes. Again there was some muttering but no disagreement. The Prime Minister assured Defence and Foreign Affairs that he, like the Press, was one hundred percent right behind them.
The meeting soon broke up, leaving the Prime Minister on his own in the Cabinet Room. Things were definitely getting a little bit out of his control, but this did not worry him overmuch. The warmongers, and he had now decided that he was not one despite his initiation of the war, did not realise that when the Press and Prime Minister were standing behind them, they were in the perfect position to stab them in the back. What they should have asked was whether they were with them, not behind them.
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