Mort - Страница 22

Something about all the rest of him suggests to the watchers that causing an inconvenience for this boy might just be as wise as kicking a wasp nest. In short, Mort no longer looks like something the cat brought in and then brought up.

The landlord relaxed his grip on the stout blackthorn peacemaker he kept under the bar and composed his features into something resembling a cheerful welcoming grin, although not very much.

“Evening, your lordship,” he said. “What’s your pleasure this cold and frosty night?”

“What?” said Mort, blinking in the light.

“What he means is, what d’you want to drink?” said a small ferret-faced man sitting by the fire, who was giving Mort the kind of look a butcher gives a field full of lambs.

“Um. I don’t know,” said Mort. “Do you sell stardrip?”

“Never heard of it, lordship.”

Mort looked around at the faces watching him, illuminated by the firelight. They were the sort of people generally called the salt of the earth. In other words, they were hard, square and bad for your health, but Mort was too preoccupied to notice.

“What do people like to drink here, then?”

The landlord looked sideways at his customers, a clever trick given that they were directly in front of him.

“Why, lordship, we drink scumble, for preference.”

“Scumble?” said Mort, failing to notice the muffled sniggers.

“Aye, lordship. Made from apples. Well, mainly apples.”

This seemed healthy enough to Mort. “Oh, right,” he said. “A pint of scumble, then.” He reached into his pocket and withdrew the bag of gold that Death had given him. It was still quite full. In the sudden hush of the inn the faint clink of the coins sounded like the legendary Brass Gongs of Leshp, which can be heard far out to sea on stormy nights as the currents stir them in their drowned towers three hundred fathoms below.

“And please serve these gentlemen with whatever they want,” he added.

He was so overwhelmed by the chorus of thanks that he didn’t take much notice of the fact that his new friends were served their drink in tiny, thimble-sized glasses, while his alone turned up in a large wooden mug.

A lot of stories are told about scumble, and how it is made out on the damp marshes according to ancient recipes handed down rather unsteadily from father to son. It’s not true about the rats, or the snake heads, or the lead shot. The one about the dead sheep is a complete fabrication. We can lay to rest all the variations of the one about the trouser button. But the one about not letting it come into contact with metal is absolutely true, because when the landlord flagrantly shortchanged Mort and plonked the small heap of copper in a puddle of the stuff it immediately began to froth.

Mort sniffed his drink, and then took a sip. It tasted something like apples, something like autumn mornings, and quite a lot like the bottom of a logpile. Not wishing to appear disrespectful, however, he took a swig.

The crowd watched him, counting under its breath.

Mort felt something was being demanded of him.

“Nice,” he said, “very refreshing.” He took another sip. “Bit of an acquired taste,” he added, “but well worth the effort, I’m sure.”

There were one or two mutters of discontent from the back of the crowd.

“He’s been watering the scumble, that’s what ’tis.”

“Nay, thou knowst what happens if you lets a drop of water touch scumble.”

The landlord tried to ignore this. “You like it?” he said to Mort, in pretty much the same tone of voice people used when they said to St George, “You killed a what?”

“It’s quite tangy,” said Mort. “And sort of nutty.”

“Excuse me,” said the landlord, and gently took the mug out of Mort’s hand. He sniffed at it, then wiped his eyes.

“Uuunnyag,” he said. “It’s the right stuff all right.”

He looked at the boy with something verging on admiration. It wasn’t that he’d drunk a third of a pint of scumble in itself, it was that he was still vertical and apparently alive. He handed the pot back again: it was as if Mort was being given a trophy after some incredible contest. When the boy took another mouthful several of the watchers winced. The landlord wondered what Mort’s teeth were made of, and decided it must be the same stuff as his stomach.

“You’re not a wizard by any chance?” he enquired, just in case.

“Sorry, no. Should I be?”

Didn’t think so, thought the landlord, he doesn’t walk like a wizard and anyway he isn’t smoking anything. He looked at the scumble pot again.

There was something wrong about this. There was something wrong about the boy. He didn’t look right. He looked—

— more solid than he should do.

That was ridiculous, of course. The bar was solid, the floor was solid, the customers were as solid as you could wish for. Yet Mort, standing there looking rather embarrassed and casually sipping a liquid you could clean spoons with, seemed to emit a particularly potent sort of solidness, an extra dimension of realness. His hair was more hairy, his clothes more clothy, his boots the epitome of bootness. It made your head ache just to look at him.

However, Mort then demonstrated that he was human after all. The mug dropped from his stricken fingers and clattered on the flagstones, where the dregs of scumble started to eat its way through them. He pointed at the far wall, his mouth opening and shutting wordlessly.

The regulars turned back to their conversations and games of shovel-up, reassured that things were as they should be; Mort was acting perfectly normally now. The landlord, relieved that the brew had been vindicated, reached across the bar top and patted him companionably on the shoulder.

“It’s all right,” he said. “It often takes people like this, you’ll just have a headache for a few weeks, don’t worry about it, a drop of scumble’ll see you all right again.”

It is a fact that the best remedy for a scumble hangover is a hair of the dog, although it should more accurately be called a tooth of the shark or possibly a tread of the bulldozer.

But Mort merely went on pointing and said, in a trembling voice, “Can’t you see it? It’s coming through the wall! It’s coming right through the wall!”

“A lot of things come through the wall after your first drink of scumble. Green hairy things, usually.”

“It’s the mist! Can’t you hear it sizzling?”

“A sizzling mist, is it?” The landlord looked at the wall, which was quite empty and unmysterious except for a few cobwebs. The urgency in Mort’s voice unsettled him. He would have preferred the normal scaly monsters. A man knew where he stood with them.

“It’s coming right across the room! Can’t you feel it?”

The customers looked at one another. Mort was making them uneasy. One or two of them admitted later that they did feel something, rather like an icy tingle, but it could have been indigestion.

Mort backed away, and then gripped the bar. He shivered for a moment.

“Look,” said the landlord, “a joke’s a joke, but—”

“You had a green shirt on before!”

The landlord looked down. There was an edge of terror in his voice.

“Before what?” he quavered. To his astonishment, and before his hand could complete its surreptitious journey towards the blackthorn stick, Mort lunged across the bar and grabbed him by the apron.

“You’ve got a green shirt, haven’t you?” he said. “I saw it, it had little yellow buttons!”

“Well, yes. I’ve got two shirts.” The landlord tried to draw himself up a little. “I’m a man of means,” he added. “I just didn’t wear it today.” He didn’t want to know how Mort knew about the buttons.

Mort let him go and spun round.

“They’re all sitting in different places! Where’s the man who was sitting by the fire? It’s all changed!”

He ran out through the door and there was a muffled cry from outside. He dashed back, wild-eyed, and confronted the horrified crowd.

“Who changed the sign? Someone changed the sign!”

The landlord nervously ran his tongue across his lips.

“After the old king died, you mean?” he said.

Mort’s look chilled him, the boy’s eyes were two black pools of terror.

“It’s the name I mean!”

“We’ve—it’s always been the same name,” said the man, looking desperately at his customers for support. “Isn’t that so, lads? The Duke’s Head.”

There was a murmured chorus of agreement.

Mort stared at everyone, visibly shaking. Then he turned and ran outside again.

The listeners heard hoofbeats in the yard, which grew fainter and then disappeared entirely, just as though a horse had left the face of the earth.

There was no sound inside the inn. Men tried to avoid one another’s gaze. No-one wanted to be the first to admit to seeing what he thought he had just seen.

So it was left to the landlord to walk unsteadily across the room and reach out and run his fingers across the familiar, reassuring wooden surface of the door. It was solid, unbroken, everything a door should be.

Everyone had seen Mort run through it three times. He just hadn’t opened it.

———

Binky fought for height, rising nearly vertically with his hooves thrashing the air and his breath curling away behind him like a vapour trail. Mort hung on with knees and hands and mostly with willpower, his face buried in the horse’s mane. He didn’t look down until the air around him was freezing and thin as workhouse gravy.