The Garden of Unearthly Delights (21 page)

‘Why,
you—’ Rushmear launched himself forwards. He swept the branch from Maxwell’s
hand and fell upon him, pressing down with all his weight.

Maxwell’s
ribs began to buckle. Rushmear’s face leered into his.

Maxwell
craned his neck and bit the end off Rushmear’s nose.

Rushmear
toppled over. He writhed about, legs thrashing the air, clutching his face and
moaning with pain. Maxwell crawled to the branch, dragged himself erect and
raised it high, preparing to administer the
coup de grâce.

He spat
the tip of Rushmear’s nose onto the moaner beneath.

This
had all got completely out of control. It was pure Tobe Hooper stuff. Maxwell
would finish it now. He gripped the branch tightly. ‘You’re dead, you fu—’

‘No,
stop.’ Rushmear covered his face. ‘Stop. Listen.’

‘To
what? Your pleas for mercy?’

‘Sssh. Listen.
Can’t you hear?’

‘Forget
it,’ said Maxwell. ‘It’s too late for tricks.’

‘Horses,’
said Rushmear. ‘Many horses.’

And now
Maxwell could hear them too. A dull rumble of hoofbeats, rising in volume.
Becoming a regular thundering.

‘Get
down, hide yourself.’

Maxwell
hesitated. It would be far better to smash Rushmear’s head in while he had the
chance and take once more to his heels.

‘Get
down, fool, they’re coming this way. And I know these horses.’

‘You
do?’ Maxwell cast aside his branch and threw himself to the ground.

‘Into
the cover of those bushes.’

‘Lead
the way,’ whispered Maxwell.

‘After
you.’

‘Bollocks!’

‘All
right, after me.’ Oozing blood from his maimed hooter, Rushmear scuttled into
the bushes, Maxwell close behind.

And
then the riders were in view.

Maxwell
stared out at them and he was lost for words.

Knights
they were..

Knights
in golden armour. The sunlight dazzled about them. Dancing in bright coronas on
their polished morions and bucklers. They were romantic. Arthurian. Heroic.

Maxwell
whistled softly between his teeth. ‘Would you look at those flashy bastards?’
he said, not lost for words for too long.

‘Keep
your mouth shut, fool.’

The
knights steered their horses between the trees. ‘Any sign?’ called one.

‘No,’
called another. ‘But he’ll be close. He entered through the grid a mile south
of here.’

‘They’re
searching for
us,’
whispered Maxwell.

‘You,’
whispered Rushmear. ‘Only
you.’

Maxwell
chewed upon his bottom lip. ‘Then luck is ever with us. This is my plan. First
you—’

‘No!’
Rushmear clamped a ham-hock hand across the mouth of Maxwell. ‘Horses I know,’
he muttered. ‘Wait until the last one passes, then do as I tell you.
Understand?’

Maxwell
nodded without enthusiasm. Rushmear withdrew his hand.

They
watched the riders passing by, fanning out to the left and right. A sword blade
swept suddenly through the bush, clearing Maxwell’s head by inches. Rushmear
dragged him down by the scruff of the neck. Maxwell peeped out.

A
knight had dismounted. He stood before the bush. As Maxwell looked on, the
knight unbuckled his golden codpiece.

Maxwell
chewed upon a knuckle. It was quite clear what the knight meant to do.

And he
did it.

Inside
the bush Maxwell fumed.

And now
steamed also at the shoulders.

Micturition
accomplished, the knight rebuckled himself into decency and strode back to his
horse. As he mounted, Rushmear thrust his face out of the bush, put his fingers
to his lips and blew a most curious whistle.

The
knight, expecting his horse to rear, held fast to the reins and dug in his
spurs. But the horse dropped its head instead and threw up its hind legs. The
knight sailed forward and crashed to the ground.

‘Make
sure he’s unconscious,’ Rushmear sprang from the bush. ‘I’ll deal with the
horse.’

‘The
pleasure’s all mine.’ Maxwell emerged, a sorry sodden sight. He took off his
jacket and flung it to the ground then stalked over to the fallen knight and
prepared to put the boot in.

But the
knight wasn’t moving. His helmet was twisted around the wrong way. His neck was
broken.

Though
the red fug of fury raged in his head, Maxwell drew the line at kicking a
corpse. He turned towards Rushmear. ‘He’s done for,’ he said. ‘Hang about …
What?’

The big
man with the gory face sat high upon the horse. He twitched the reins in a
professional manner and the beast plodded forward. ‘So,’ said Rushmear. ‘Events
adjust themselves.’

‘Help
me up,’ said Maxwell, affecting a chummy grin.

‘I
think not. We part company here. I ride alone to the city of
Rameer
.’

‘Oh
come now,’ Maxwell stepped in front of the horse.

‘Stand
aside, or I order the mare to use its teeth. Have you ever been bit by a
horse?’

‘No,
I—’

‘Stand
aside then.’

Maxwell
stood aside. ‘Now, listen,’ said he. ‘No,
you
listen.’ Rushmear put a
hand to his ear.

‘The
riders are returning, so I must be away. Perhaps you can keep up, if you run
very fast. I somehow doubt it, though.’ He wheeled the horse about, dug in his
heels and flicked the reins.

Then he
galloped away at the double. Leaving Maxwell alone with a corpse.

15

When the riders did
return, which was half an hour later, Maxwell was nowhere to be seen.

The
knights dismounted, examined the tracks made by the galloping horse and
gathered about its fallen rider.

Happily
this fellow wasn’t dead at all. Although his helmet was twisted around and his
visor jammed shut, he was only a bit dazed and spoke in a voice of muffled rage
concerning the giant with the gory face who had leapt from a bush and startled
his horse.

The
knights were glad that their comrade had come to no real harm. But being
professional soldiers, they recognized the subtle distinction between a gallant
hero who is knocked from his charging steed in the thick of bloody battle by
fearsome adversary, and a careless oaf who is tipped from his strolling horse,
in the still of a country glade, by a loon with a bloody nose.

A good
deal of ribaldry then ensued and the poor Sir Knight found himself the butt of
much gallant humour which called into question not only his bravery and prowess
as a horseman.

‘Me
thinks me Lord Percy hath a swidgen for a billydock,’ quoth one hearty fellow.

‘Perhaps
next time he swankles, he should dab a moult of grimbah on his trump,’ quoth
another.

‘Surely
I discern a swattle in the air,’ quoth yet a third, ‘which lends me to suppose
some dabbing of the strubbart has occurred.’

And
further such and so forth.

And to
those unschooled in the arcane terms employed by these Knights of New, it
might well have been thought that here was something other than the usual crap
innuendo and barrack-room smut you get from dickheads in uniform.

But
such, of course, wasn’t the case and the jibes levelled at the now horseless
Lord Percy, were, for the most part, directed towards the manner of his conception
and the dimensions of his willy.

The
unseated knight took it like the man he was. Possibly because he knew that if
you cry when other knights are taking the piss out of you, it is considered a
sign of weakness. But more likely (as those astute enough to reason things out
will already have guessed) because the man now wearing Lord Percy’s armour was
not Lord Percy at all.

Maxwell
peeped out through the ‘jammed’ visor of the late lord’s helmet and said
nothing as he was unceremoniously hauled from the ground and dumped upon the
back of another knight’s horse.

‘Hold
tight to me, Perce,’ called the gallant chap up front. ‘I’d be fair saddened
should you slip from my steed and blabber your thubs upon a rock.’

‘Lord
Percy’s thubs might do better for a wistering of thark,’ quoth the hearty
fellow who had got a laugh earlier with the gag about Lord Percy having a swidgen
for a billydock.

‘Prettily
put, Lord Archer,’ quoth the chap who’d done the one about the swattle in the
air that presupposed a degree of strubbart dabbing. ‘A double wistering and
heavy on the mingewort.’

‘Get a
move on, you twerps,’ whispered Maxwell, as the knights chortled with mirth.
‘Follow Rushmear’s tracks and let’s get to the city.’

The
horsemen moved off with a glitter of gold, a chinking of chainmail, a
haughtiness of hauberks, a proudery of pickelhaubes and no doubt a veritable defustication
of dortwonglers also.

Maxwell
clung to the fellow at the reins. He had a right sweat on and was in considerable
discomfort, the armour, although extremely light, chaffed beneath  the armpits
and the codpiece played havoc with his tender goolies
[3]
.

They
galloped over hill and dale the way that knights will do, but they soon lost
Rushmear’s trail, which came as a great disappointment, what with the knights
considering themselves to be expert trackers and on home territory and
everything.

Maxwell
sighed as they circled hopelessly around, and paid a grudging homage to the
equestrian talents of the resourceful Rushmear, who had no doubt ordered his
horse to walk backwards on its hind legs or trip daintily along the tops of the
drystone walls.

‘The
varlet said he was going to slay the Sultan,’ Maxwell shouted gruffly, when he
could stand no more of the dithering.

‘What?’
cried the knights. ‘What? What? What?’

‘Going
to slay the Sultan,’ Maxwell said once more. ‘No not that bit,’ said the fellow
who’d done the dabbing-a-moult-of-grimbah joke, ‘the first bit.’

‘Eh?’
said Maxwell.

‘Varlet?’
asked Lord Archer. ‘What does varlet mean?’

‘Well,
it’s the same as blackguard, or rapscallion, isn’t it?’

‘Come
again?’

 ‘Oh
you know, scallywag, spalpeen, scapegrace. Caitiff, there’s a good’n. Whelp,
roughneck. Tergiversator, although that’s more like a quisling really.’
Maxwell stared out at the knights, who were now staring somewhat intently at
him.
[4]

‘Does
he mean
bullygarve?’
someone asked.

‘No,’
said Lord Archer. ‘He didn’t mean
bullygarve.
Did you, Lord Percy?’

‘I
might have,’ mumbled Maxwell. ‘Do you think it matters?’

‘Matters?’
Lord Archer drew himself erect in his saddle.
‘Matters?
Did we spend
five years at the University studying the subtle nuances of the chivalrous
vernacular for nothing? Toiling into the long evenings sorting the irregular
inflection from the modifying noun?’

‘Those
were the days,’ said Maxwell.

‘Ha!’
Lord Archer gave Maxwell a hearty slap on the back that rattled Maxwell’s
teeth. ‘Those
were
the days. Where do the good times go?’

‘Search
me.’

‘Come
again once more?’

‘Oh
let’s get going,’ growled Maxwell. ‘This, er, person, means to assassinate the
Sultan.’

‘Ha!’
Lord Archer laughed again. And the other knights laughed with him.

Maxwell
shook his helmet. This bunch of golden  clowns went in for more jollity and
thigh-slapping than the cast of a
Robin Hood
remake.

‘Ha!’
Lord Archer gave Maxwell another hearty tooth-rattler. ‘If the scrumian rides
to his doom, let’s not waste our time in pursuit.’

‘Scrumian,’
said Maxwell, ‘that’s the word I was looking for. But, no, hold on, not waste
our time? We must get after him. Er, get my horse back. Warn the Sultan.’

‘Ha!’
Lord Archer took another swing at Maxwell’s back. But this time Maxwell ducked
aside. Lord Archer lost balance and fell from his horse.

‘Ooooh!’
went the other knights, reining back their mounts. ‘That’s torn it.’

As is
often the case when you fall in the country, Lord Archer now sat in a cowpat.
He looked up at Maxwell, and no hint of jocularity remained upon his face. ‘By
crumble,’ he roared, ‘thou hast unseated thy superior, Percy. Know what thou must
do?’

‘Write
a formal letter of apology?’ Maxwell suggested. ‘Penned in knightish patois and
expressing great remorse?’

‘Engage
in mortal combat,’ quoth Lord Archer (as no-one had ‘quoth’ for a while).