PART TEN: Reappearance of the Gadfly. His hasty Disappearance. Last Encore of the Dragonfly.
The Gadfly realised he had made a mistake. Although, he began to think, it was more of a kind of miscalculation really. He paused, poking his head out from the thick brown bulrush crown into which, in an entirely uncharacteristic moment of terror, he had burrowed, and cautiously peered about him. There seemed to be nothing alarming about. Perhaps, when he thought about it with a cool, calm and collected mind, it had been rather a clever thing to do. It dawned on him now that he had brilliantly rediscovered the art of trench warfare. The manoeuvre, he recalled, from the Warrior’s Self-Help Manual, was known as a strategic retreat. That was the term. That is what his heroic ancestors would have done: a pre-planned calmly-considered strategic withdrawal at speed. They would have made sure that they lived to fight another day. It warmed his heart to think that he was the living proof that they had. Discretion is the better part of valour is a very sound rule, he thought, for aficionados of self-preservation such as gadflies, of which I am the perfect embodiment.
Well, there was no denying that he had been discrete. He had been unnoticeable for some considerable time, so genteel was his discretion. He had been, if the truth were to be told, utterly self-effacing and quite invisible, almost to the point of tactlessness. He might just as well have been somewhere else entirely. Which, it occurred to him, recalling the grinding horror of the Dragonfly’s jaws, would have been a good place for him to have been from the start.
Perhaps, after all, it was not a blunder, but a brilliantly executed textbook victory. He began to swell with pride. History, he thought, would judge him. There would probably be statues. And medals struck in his honour. Maybe even an annual parade.
Confronted with insurmountable odds he had done the only sensible thing, and emerged a victor.
Circling the trunk of the bulrush in which he had taken refuge, he stepped out, adjusted his medals, brushed off his breastplate, flapped out his cloak and inhaled.
There was a strange sweetness in the air, rather unpleasant really, he thought, for a warrior whose preference was for blood. Looking all ways at once, a survival technique of his race, he was stopped short suddenly by the realisation that a most horrible apparition was raising itself in slow-motion from the centre of the Spider’s web no small distance from his nose.
It was white, glutinous, horribly jellified like a rotten fungus, palpitating and heaving and it glared at him with a pulsating maraschino tinged eye that, mounted in a face that could only be described as toad like, and it turned his blood to water.
The Gadfly would have well been able to describe it in other richly hyperbolic terms which are far too numerous and disgusting to mention here, but which without doubt would have turned the blood of any of the greatest warriors in history to water had their eyes been set at that moment in the Gadfly’s skull, and had they been able to view the source of his terror and disgust. Discombobulating, supra-normal, demonic, vile, terrifying, the living embodiment of a gangrenous suppurating warble dripping and drooling like the Great Wen of Constantinople, a noisy screaming pus-ridden open sore with bells on it spring to mind, and might have crossed his were it not for the unfortunate circumstance that he was struck dumb with terror. There was indeed no time for idle descriptive dilly-dallying.
With a shriek more like that of a stuck pig than that of the noble and articulate scion of an aristocratic clan of escutcheoned tormentors, the Gadfly fled.
It is said that he was last seen unbuckling his armour behind the modestly concealing trunk of a bulrush and flinging his medals into the pool.
But there may be more to come on that story.
The Gadfly realised he had made a mistake. Although, he began to think, it was more of a kind of miscalculation really. He paused, poking his head out from the thick brown bulrush crown into which, in an entirely uncharacteristic moment of terror, he had burrowed, and cautiously peered about him. There seemed to be nothing alarming about. Perhaps, when he thought about it with a cool, calm and collected mind, it had been rather a clever thing to do. It dawned on him now that he had brilliantly rediscovered the art of trench warfare. The manoeuvre, he recalled, from the Warrior’s Self-Help Manual, was known as a strategic retreat. That was the term. That is what his heroic ancestors would have done: a pre-planned calmly-considered strategic withdrawal at speed. They would have made sure that they lived to fight another day. It warmed his heart to think that he was the living proof that they had. Discretion is the better part of valour is a very sound rule, he thought, for aficionados of self-preservation such as gadflies, of which I am the perfect embodiment.
Well, there was no denying that he had been discrete. He had been unnoticeable for some considerable time, so genteel was his discretion. He had been, if the truth were to be told, utterly self-effacing and quite invisible, almost to the point of tactlessness. He might just as well have been somewhere else entirely. Which, it occurred to him, recalling the grinding horror of the Dragonfly’s jaws, would have been a good place for him to have been from the start.
Perhaps, after all, it was not a blunder, but a brilliantly executed textbook victory. He began to swell with pride. History, he thought, would judge him. There would probably be statues. And medals struck in his honour. Maybe even an annual parade.
Confronted with insurmountable odds he had done the only sensible thing, and emerged a victor.
Circling the trunk of the bulrush in which he had taken refuge, he stepped out, adjusted his medals, brushed off his breastplate, flapped out his cloak and inhaled.
There was a strange sweetness in the air, rather unpleasant really, he thought, for a warrior whose preference was for blood. Looking all ways at once, a survival technique of his race, he was stopped short suddenly by the realisation that a most horrible apparition was raising itself in slow-motion from the centre of the Spider’s web no small distance from his nose.
It was white, glutinous, horribly jellified like a rotten fungus, palpitating and heaving and it glared at him with a pulsating maraschino tinged eye that, mounted in a face that could only be described as toad like, and it turned his blood to water.
The Gadfly would have well been able to describe it in other richly hyperbolic terms which are far too numerous and disgusting to mention here, but which without doubt would have turned the blood of any of the greatest warriors in history to water had their eyes been set at that moment in the Gadfly’s skull, and had they been able to view the source of his terror and disgust. Discombobulating, supra-normal, demonic, vile, terrifying, the living embodiment of a gangrenous suppurating warble dripping and drooling like the Great Wen of Constantinople, a noisy screaming pus-ridden open sore with bells on it spring to mind, and might have crossed his were it not for the unfortunate circumstance that he was struck dumb with terror. There was indeed no time for idle descriptive dilly-dallying.
With a shriek more like that of a stuck pig than that of the noble and articulate scion of an aristocratic clan of escutcheoned tormentors, the Gadfly fled.
It is said that he was last seen unbuckling his armour behind the modestly concealing trunk of a bulrush and flinging his medals into the pool.
But there may be more to come on that story.
No comments:
Post a Comment