Herbie Brennan - The Faeman Quest

The manticore seemed seized by a frenzy. It was crouched over the girl, stabbing at her viciously with its scorpion tail, tearing at her flesh with its hideous fangs. The girl’s clothing was ripped and her body streaming blood. If she had fought the beast when it first attacked, she was not fighting it now. Her body was as limp as a rag doll. Her eyes were closed, her throat bloody and exposed. The girl was Princess Mella, to judge from the remnants of her torn clothing. She was not the one screaming.

For Hairstreak, it felt as if he had been struck by a slo-mo spell. The pace of time dropped to a crawl. The great scorpion sting thudded like a background drumbeat, stabbing the ground in some hideous reflex now the girl was dead. He turned slowly towards the source of the screams and uttered a profound, slow prayer of thanks to the powers of Night: the girl screaming was the Mella clone, standing paralysed several yards from the manticore, her back against a tree. She looked terrified, but physically unharmed.

The manticore dropped the body of the girl and swung its head around to stare at him with glowing, insane eyes. It opened a mouth packed with bloodstained teeth and roared, a sound so vast the trees on either side of him reverberated and rustled their leaves. Then, still with the appalling slowness that characterised the whole encounter, it launched itself forward and began to run towards him. Rippling muscles propelled padded feet in stately haste.

The manticore was huge. This was the first one Hairstreak had seen close up, outside of the laboratory. They were about the size of a medium-sized dog when they were finally released into the wild, but it seemed as if they only started growing at that point. This one was larger than an ox, large as an elephant in height and appreciably longer when it uncurled the scorpion tail. Despite its size, Hairstreak pondered for a moment on the possibility of fighting it. At another time he would never have entertained the thought, but there was something in his new relationship with the Lady Aisling that spurred him towards heroic deeds. And it was a practical thought. His new body was virtually indestructible – or so the salesman claimed.

But there remained a weak point: his natural head was as vulnerable as it ever was. One crunch of those massive teeth and he was dead. He remembered a time when he would have welcomed that outcome, but that time was long gone. He was on the brink of the coup of his entire career, poised to rule the Realm and countries beyond, poised to become the greatest Emperor history had ever known. This gory scene showed beyond all doubt his luck had changed. Princess Mella was dead. Her terrified replacement stood unharmed only yards away. He would have to calm the clone down, of course, persuade her to forget the horror of the last few minutes. But she had always been amenable and he expected no trouble. So perhaps best to waste no time in dangerous heroics. Especially when Aisling was not even here to see them.

Slow time reverted and he was faced with a beast hurtling towards him at breakneck speed. For something so large, it managed to move with the swiftness of a striking snake. The long forelegs ate distance at an alarming rate. It was already more than halfway across the clearing. In seconds he felt a wave of heat from its foetid breath. Strangely, the predominant smell was that of ageing fruit. The creature roared. Hairstreak pressed the control on the whistle around his neck.

The tone was too high-pitched for faerie ears, but the manticore reacted at once. It stopped dead, only yards away from him and stood for a moment, swinging its great head from side to side. Then, in a curiously cat-like gesture, it raised one foreleg to brush against its ear, as if trying to remove a flea. A puzzled expression crept into its eyes and it backed off a few steps. Then, suddenly, it swung away, and bounded across the clearing. Hairstreak had assumed it would simply run, but it took time to swoop and grab the limp corpse of the dead Mella. It turned towards him, her body hanging from its mouth. (The face looked surprisingly serene in death.) Then the manticore blundered away into the depths of the forest.

‘Uncle Hairstreak!’ shrieked the Mella clone. ‘I was so frightened, but I knew you’d come to find me!’

He had been wondering if he might have trouble with his Mella clone since he entered the clearing and realised the two girls must have met. It was difficult to predict the effect of an encounter with one’s clone. It might even have shaken his Mella’s carefully induced determination to become Queen. But her words reassured him. She was still the same old Mella he had nurtured so carefully over the past few years. Hairstreak walked across and put one arm around her shoulders. She was trembling, but she looked up into his face with trusting eyes.

‘Come on,’ he said, ‘I need to get you home.’

‘To your Keep?’ asked Mella.

With a sudden surge of satisfaction, Hairstreak shook his head. ‘To the Purple Palace,’ he told her. ‘I think it’s time you took your rightful place.’

Blue would kill him, Pyrgus thought, if ever she found out. And in truth he might deserve it. However informal the arrangements, the fact remained he was on a diplomatic mission. It was also a fact that he had ignored protocol, skirted sanctioned arrangements, evaded Madame Cardui’s official spy (delicately designated Personal Assistant to the Crown Prince), given his entourage the slip and disappeared to carry out a mission of his own. It was practically treason, but what could he do when the lives of thousands of innocent animals were at stake?

‘You never sent that wine you promised,’ Corin said, grinning, as they shook hands.

Pyrgus smiled bleakly. ‘I’ve been tied up. Bit of an emergency on, actually.’

Corin waved him to a seat and pulled up a second chair beside it. The gesture was typical; and not simply because he and Pyrgus were old friends. Corin was a man who disliked formality and never felt the need to sit behind a large desk in order to impress people. ‘There had to be trouble, otherwise you wouldn’t be back so soon. Is this about your niece?’

‘Not exactly,’ Pyrgus said. ‘She was in Haleklind – still is, we think – but that’s not the problem.’

‘I’m afraid there’s no news of your manticore,’ Corin said. ‘But I’m sure she’s safe. She’ll certainly have joined one of the major herds by now. They’ve spread all over the country.’

‘Actually…’ Pyrgus said uneasily. This was the point of no return. He was about to discuss Realm policy and military plans with a citizen of what might be classified an enemy nation. But he would have trusted Corin with his life. ‘Actually, it’s the manticores I want to talk to you about…’

‘I thought it might be. I assume you’ve heard the rumours?’

‘What rumours?’ Pyrgus asked quickly.

‘There’s been talk that the Table plan to use the manticores for military purposes. Turn them into war-horses or something.’

It occurred to Pyrgus suddenly that with all the talk of manticores as weapons, he’d never thought to wonder exactly how they would be used. ‘Do you imagine that’s true?’ he asked.

Corin shook his head. ‘Absolute nonsense. A soldier would have to do the splits to mount a full-grown manticore. And if he managed that, he’d never control it. These are wild beasts, Pyrgus. Magnificent animals, but you know how difficult they are. Difficult and unpredictable. One minute they’re grazing quietly, the next they’re ripping you to shreds if you aren’t careful.’

‘So you think there’s nothing in the rumours?’

‘I didn’t say that. I just said they couldn’t be used as mounts. They might still be used as weapons.’