The Call. Michael Grant

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СКАЧАТЬ know the rules,” Camaro said to Stefan. “We dominate through fear. A threat to one of us is a threat to us all.”

      Stefan nodded. “Huh,” he said. The word huh was roughly one-third of Stefan’s vocabulary. It could mean many things. But in this case it meant, “Yes, I agree that you have properly invoked a bully emergency, in which all bullies must unite to confront a common threat.”

      “Better round everyone up,” Stefan said. “The usual.”

      Everyone meant all the other bullies. The usual meant the usual place: the Dumpster behind the gym and up against the fence.

      “I am going to mess up your face!” Matthew raged at Mack. He pointed for emphasis with a hand dripping pale yellow paint.

      “Not the face,” Camaro said. “I like his face.”

      Matthew and Camaro went off in pursuit of the others, while Stefan, seeming more weary than highly motivated, stuffed his sweaty shorts into Mack’s mouth and dragged him outside.

      This was the point where Mack should have started begging, pleading, whining and bribing. But the weird thing about Mack was that even though he was afraid of puppets, sharks, the ocean, shots, spiders, dentists, fire, Shetland ponies, hair dryers, asteroids, hot-air balloons, blue cheese, tornadoes, mosquitoes, electrical outlets, bats (the kind that fly and suck your blood), beards, babies, fear itself and especially being buried alive, he was not afraid of real, actual trouble.

      Which, when you think about it, is what tends to get heroes and those around them killed.

      

      A REALLY, REALLY LONG TIME AGO…

      

rimluk was twelve years old. Like most twelve-year-olds he had a job, a child, two wives and a cow.

      No. No, wait, that’s not true. He had one wife and two cows.

      Grimluk’s wife was called Gelidberry. Their baby son’s name was as yet undetermined. Picking names was a very big deal in Grimluk’s village. There wasn’t a lot of entertainment, so when the villagers had something other than eking out a miserable existence to occupy their minds, they didn’t rush it.

      The cows didn’t have names either, at least not that they had shared with Grimluk.

      The five of them – Grimluk, Gelidberry, baby, cow and cow – lived in a small but comfortable home in a village in a clearing surrounded by a forest of very tall trees.

      In the clearing the villagers planted chickpeas. Chickpeas are the main ingredient in hummus, but the discovery of hummus would take another thousand years. For now the chickpea farmers planted, watered and harvested chickpeas. The village diet was 90 per cent chickpeas, 8 per cent milk – supplied by cow and cow – and 2 per cent rat.

      Although, truth be told, not a single one of the villagers could have calculated those percentages. Maths was not a strong suit of the villagers, who, as well as not being maths prodigies, were illiterate.

      Grimluk was one of the few men in the village not involved in the chickpea business. Because he was quick and tireless, he had been chosen as the baron’s horse leader. This was a very big honour and the job paid well (one large basket of chickpeas per week, a plump rat and one pair of sandals each year). Grimluk wasn’t rich, but he earned a living; he was doing all right. He couldn’t complain.

      Until…

      One day Grimluk was leading his master’s horse when he spotted a hurried, harried-looking knave who, judging by the fact that his clothing was coloured by light brown mud rather than good, honest dark brown mud, was not from around these parts.

      “Master!” Grimluk said. “A stranger.”

      The baron – a man with more beard than hair – twisted around as best he could in order to see the stranger in question. It was an awkward thing to do since the baron was facing the horse’s tail as he rode. But he managed it without quite falling off.

      “I don’t know the knave. Ask him his name and business.”

      Grimluk waited until the stranger was in range, loping and wheezing along the narrow forest trail. Then he said, “Knave? My master would know your name and business.”

      “My name is Sporda. And my business is fleeing. I’m a full-time fleer. If you have any sense you’ll join me in that line of work.” He glanced meaningfully back over his shoulder.

      “Ask the knave why he is fleeing and why we should flee,” the baron demanded.

      The stranger had been brought up well enough to pretend he hadn’t heard the baron’s question and waited patiently for Grimluk to repeat it.

      Then the stranger said the words that would haunt Grimluk for the rest of his very, very long life. “I flee the… the… Pale Queen.”

      The baron jerked in astonishment and slid off the horse. “The…” he said.

      “The…” Grimluk repeated.

      “The… Pale…” the baron said.

      “The… Pale…” Grimluk repeated.

      “No… no, it cannot…”

      “No…” Grimluk said, doing his best to replicate the baron’s white-faced horror. “No, it cannot…”

      The baron could say no more. So Grimluk said no more.

      Only Sporda had anything else to say. And what he said then also changed Grimluk’s life. “You know, if your master sat facing the other way on that horse, facing the horse’s head instead of his tail? He wouldn’t need you to guide him.”

      In less time than it took a rooster to summon the morning sun, Grimluk had lost his job as a horse leader and been forced to switch to a far less lucrative career: fleer.

      

      

o, back in the present day, Mack was waiting to get his butt kicked. Stefan kept his iron grip on Mack’s shirt and insisted that Mack keep chewing on Stefan’s unpleasant gym clothes.

      They had reached the usual spot. Big green Dumpster. Chain-link fence. Cinder block back wall of the gym. Asphalt underfoot. No teachers, cops, principals, parents, or superheroes anywhere in sight.

      Mack was going to get a beating. Not his first. But the first since sixth grade. One month into the new school year and he was already in the grip of Stefan Marr.

      “I’m thirsty,” Stefan said.

      “Mmm hngh nggg uhh hmmmhng,” Mack offered.

      “Nah, that’s OK,” Stefan said. СКАЧАТЬ