The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy

it nothing that we have escaped from that pernicious place? That we are all three together as we had planned? That we are here at peace on the lee side of a bald hill?’

‘Yet even here one cannot help remembering that beastly grapple. It quite turns me up,’ said Slingshott.

‘Oh my. It was a scrap indeed! Bones, muscles, tendons, organs, ’n all sorts, scattered this way and that, but what does it matter now? The evening is fine; there are two stars. Life is ahead of us … or some of it is. Ha! ha! ha!’

‘Yes, yes, yes. I know all about that Crack-Bell, but I can’t help wondering …’

‘Wondering?’

‘Yes, about that boy. He sticks in my mind,’ said Slingshott.

‘I didn’t see much of him. I was some way down the hill. But from what I saw, and from what I know of life, I should say he was well reared.’

‘Well reared! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! That’s very spicy.’

‘Spicy! You fool! Do you think I’ve spent my life in the Under-River? I was a valet once.’

Slingshott rose to his feet.

‘The dew is rising,’ he said. ‘I must build the fire. As for the young man, I would give much to see him.’

‘Obviously,’ said Crabcalf. ‘He had an air about him. Yet, why should we want to …?’

‘To see him?’ cried Crack-Bell. ‘Why should we? Oh la! He and his crocodile friend. Oh la! What food for conjecture.’

‘Leave that to me,’ said Crabcalf. ‘I have a head like a compass, and a nose like a bloodhound. For you dear Slingshott, the encampments and the care of the volumes … Crack-Bell, for forage and the wringing of hens’ necks. Oh my dear, how neatly and fleetly you move when the moon gloats on farms and the yards are black and silver. How neatly and fleetly you stalk the livestock. If ever we catch up with the boy we will have wine and turkey.’

‘I don’t drink,’ said Slingshott.

‘Hush!’

‘What is it?’

‘Did you not hear the laughter?’

‘Sh … sh …’

SEVENTY-SEVEN

There was a sound; and their heads turned together to the west flank of the bald hill.

Came slithering through the dusk the entrail gobblers: the belly-brained, agog for carrion. The jackals and the foxes. What are they digging for? The scrabbling of their horn-grey nails proceeds. Their eyes start like jellies. Their ears, the twitching spades of playing-cards. Ahoy! scavengers! The moon’s retching.

As Slingshott, Crack-Bell and Crabcalf crouched trembling (for at first it might have been anything, so curiously repellent was the noise) another kind of sound caused them to turn their heads again, and this time it was towards the sky.

Out of the blind space, sunless and terrible, like coloured gnats emerging from the night, a squadron of lime- green needles, peeling at speed, made for the earth.

The jackals lifted their vile muzzles. Slingshott, Crabcalf, and Crack-Bell lifted theirs.

There was no time for fear or understanding. They were gone no sooner than they appeared. But, fast as they travelled, there was something more than speed for its own sake. It seemed they were looking for someone.

The jackals and the foxes returned to their carcase on the other side of the bald hill, and in doing so they were unable to see the helmeted figures, who now stood against the sky like tall carvings, identical in every particular.

They wore a kind of armour, yet were free to move with absolute ease. When one of them took a step forward, the other took a similar step at the same moment. When one of them shielded his huge hollow eyes from the moon, his companion followed suit.

Had they been guiding those soundless aerial darts? It did not seem so, for their heads were bowed a little.

Around their column-like necks were tiny boxes, suspended from metal threads. What were they? Could it be that they were receiving messages from some remote headquarters? But no! Surely not. They were not the sort of mortals to obey. Their silence in itself was hostile and proud.

Only once did they turn their gaze upon the three vagrants, and in that double gaze was such a world of scorn that Crabcalf and his two trembling pards felt an icy blast against their bodies. It was not for them that the helmeted pair were searching.

Then came a growl as the teeth of one of the jackals met in the centre of some dead brute’s intestines, and at that sound the tall pair turned upon their heels, and moved away with a strange and gliding action that was more terrible than any strut or stride.

Now they were gone the jackals followed suit, for nothing was left on the bones of the poor dead beast. Like a canopy the countless flies hung over the skeleton as though to form a veil or shawl of mourning.

The three from the Under-River climbed at last to the crest of the hill, and saw spread out in the moonlight, on every side, a lunar landscape, infinitely brittle. But they were in no mood for pulchritude.

‘No sleep for us tonight,’ said Crabcalf. ‘I don’t like the place one little bit. My thighs are as wet as turbots.’

The other two agreed that it was no place for sleep, though it fell upon Slingshott, as always, to push the wheeled chair up and down the slopes of this horrible terrain, with not only Crabcalf himself on board, but his