Page 7 of The Neverfear

‘Ladies, gentlemen, centaurs, dryads, naiads, dragons and creatures: welcome. As you know, I am not a public speaker.’

‘Yeh, I was there the las’ time he made a speech,’ called Vigo Nex from down the table. ‘There were riots. Eight men nearly died.’

‘That’s technically true,’ said Nighthand. Irian was watching him, laughing. ‘So I will be brief. It is tradition to toast those we love at Midsummer. So I wish to ask you to join me in a toast to the most brilliant woman I’ve ever met.’

Irian abruptly stopped laughing.

‘Berserkers do not love – because Berserkers must not fear, and to love is to fear. But I have found it is impossible not to love Irian Guinne. It would be easier not to love the sun. She is good, and funny, and beautiful. She is wise – only last week, she refused to let me headbutt a sea-bull.’ He looked at her, and he glowed. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, will you join me in toasting the woman I love – Irian Guinne.’

Every glass was raised in salute as Irian looked, her eyes bright, at Nighthand, and he knelt in front of her. He reached for the velvet box.

Suddenly there was a scream – then a dozen shrieks and yells, a deep animal roar, and someone pointed down the lawn to the water. A vast shape was emerging from the ocean and stalking up the grass.

At the same moment Anya leaped to her feet.

‘Behemoth!’ she cried.

Behemoth

Christopher jumped up as the behemoth came hulking towards them. It was colossal, and its tusks were yellow and curved. Its skin was a rough hippopotamus grey; its teeth were sharp as meat cleavers.

Several people screamed. Nighthand drew his knife and bellowed, ‘Everyone into the house! It will kill on sight!’

There was instant pandemonium. Men in robes and women in gowns were sprinting up the lawn towards the palace. The al-mirajes and their horns were colliding with running legs, and the borometzes bleated madly on their tendrils.

The screaming seemed to anger the behemoth. It set back its head and roared. There was a stone sundial in its way; with a single toss of its tusks it uprooted it and sent it spinning through the air. It swung its head and made for a crowd of guests – three elderly scholars and a willow-tree dryad – its tusks lowered to kill.

Nighthand was at the far side of the garden, running with his knife in hand.

‘Hey!’ shouted Christopher. The behemoth swung its head about and its small hot eyes met his. They were brown, Christopher saw, and they were panicked.

The flash came over Christopher like a body blow. It struck at his heart and radiated outwards. The heat and light of it was in his skin, his bones, his lips. He felt – so clearly it was almost visible – a quivering green-golden thread surge into life between himself and the creature. It was a thread of thought and eager meaning, energy condensed and lengthened into light.

The behemoth’s feet dug chunks from the lawn as it halted.

‘Stop!’ Christopher cried. ‘Nighthand, don’t hurt it!’ There was a dizzying roar in his ears.

Instinct, not knowledge, pushed him forward. Christopher sought the eyes of the beast. He tried to bend himself, body and intellect, towards it. He felt, for one fleeting second, the behemoth’s mind surging through the green-gold thread. It reached him disjointedly and in chaos: its aggression, curiosity and confusion. Most of all he felt its huge, urgent animal pain. And the pain swept around Christopher, enveloped him. The behemoth did not intend death. It had journeyed for miles in raw terror. It longed to lay down its vast lumpen body in safety.

‘Come here,’ said Christopher to the behemoth.

Nobody breathed as the beast began to cross the lawn towards him.

A pressure was building in Christopher’s body as he held steady the thread of gold, strange as birth or death, between them. A sweep of vertigo took hold of him and his whole body seemed to tilt.

Someone whispered behind him: ‘A miracle. A gift.’

And another: ‘That’s not natural.’

And another: ‘Shut up. Quiet.’

The behemoth took two halting steps towards him. Light swam in front of Christopher’s eyes and he felt the shattering weight of each second – five, six, seven – the effort of holding the connection forcing him almost to his knees. ‘Hold the thread,’ he muttered. ‘Don’t break it.’

The behemoth bent its head towards him. It breathed, soft and warm, on his face.

And then Christopher could hold it no longer. The thread snapped. He dropped to the grass on hands and knees.

The behemoth’s head jerked upright and it roared as if bereft. At the same moment, a rope, lassoed at the end, was thrust into Nighthand’s hands. He whirled the rope over his head and let it fly. The behemoth bellowed in rage as Nighthand pulled the cord around its muzzle. It dragged the Berserker forwards, tossing its tusks.