The head dropped like a hawk, landing true where Arthur’s blade lay on the neck-stump. But neither earth nor blade inconvenienced it at all. Arthur watched in horror as the flesh spread up from the body’s part of the neck, and down from the head’s share, meeting in the middle.
Feverfew reached up and pulled Arthur’s sword free of his almost totally healed neck. The point of the blade came out with a pop as the boy staggered back.
‘My turn, I think,’ said Feverfew with a smile that was as horrible in both his true and illusory forms.
Arthur had failed.
Twenty–eight
‘JUST KNEEL DOWN where you are,’ said Feverfew. He ran his thumb down the black blade of his cutlass, and flicked away a single drop of blood that was so tainted with Nothing it sizzled as it hit the earth. ‘I’m hoping you haven’t the trick of reattachment. Many centuries it took me to learn the way of it. And twice as many to do it with complications. Young Leaf tells me you’ve had no such time. Kneel, I said!’
Arthur found himself kneeling, his body moving independently of his mind, which was furiously trying to think of some way out of his predicament.
We agreed to exchange blows … exchange blows … I went first …
‘You won’t feel a thing,’ said Feverfew. ‘Which is a pity. I shall enjoy sinking your companions in the Hot Lake.’
I only agreed to exchange blows … I didn’t say I wouldn’t dodge or duck … I didn’t even say I’d be still …
Arthur tried to move, but found his muscles would not obey him. The yellow wind was winding round his wrists and ankles, holding him in place. He turned his head, and saw Feverfew raising the black cutlass.
Carp! Carp! Help me move! Help me!
Have faith in yourself.
Blinding anger filled Arthur. He couldn’t believe the Carp couldn’t do anything except carry on about faith!
Fury coursed through his blood and muscle, and the yellow wind flinched before it. Arthur sprang back, just as the black cutlass swept down — into the dirt.
‘What!’ roared Feverfew. He twisted around, his cutlass sweeping at Arthur’s knees.
Arthur sprang over the black blade, cutting back with his own two-handed stroke, his sword once again severing the pirate’s neck. This time, as the pirate’s head bounced on the ground, Arthur tried to kick Feverfew in the chest, only to find his foot suddenly wrapped in paper and deflected towards a tree.
Arthur hit the tree and staggered back, badly off balance made worse because his crab armour was trying to keep his leg straight.
The boy teetered backwards as Feverfew’s head shrieked into the air and then plummeted once again towards the stump of his neck.
It never got there. Suzy suddenly leapt across and smashed Feverfew’s head to the ground with a broken branch. As it started to rise again, Leaf darted out of the ranks of pirates and, in true soccer striker-style, kicked the head as hard as she could out towards the bubbling, Nothing-laden waters of the Hot Lake.
Everyone, including the pirates, watched as Feverfew’s head splashed down. Ripples spread around its impact point, but still everyone kept watching to see if it would rise again.
Arthur was staring too, when he was suddenly gripped from behind by two paper-shrouded, slithery hands that began to tighten around his neck. He just managed to get three of his fingers under those grasping hands, but he couldn’t get them off, or stop them from slowly strangling him to death.
To make things even worse, Feverfew’s head rose back out of the boiling mud. All the flesh, illusory and real, had been stripped from it, and it was now just a yellow-tinged skull, its teeth chattering, a sorcerous tongue of blue smoke flickering as Feverfew shouted his last words before tumbling back down into the muddy depths, to be totally destroyed by Nothing.
‘Let Nothing remain!’
The hands around Arthur’s neck suddenly fell away. The boy staggered forward, his crab-armoured leg failing to bend at the knee, and was caught by Jebenezer, who twirled him into a sudden and unwelcome dance.
‘You did it! You slew Feverfew! And I saw it happen!’
‘Stop! The pirates!’
Jebenezer paused in mid-twirl, sending Arthur cannoning into Suzy and Leaf, who were shaking hands. They caught Arthur and turned him so that he could see Feverfew’s pirates running into the trees, throwing away their weapons as they ran.
‘You don’t have to worry about the pirates,’ said Leaf. ‘They’re a gutless bunch. Feverfew could make them brave, but without him, they’re hopeless.’
‘I just about had heart failure when I saw you with them,’ said Arthur. ‘What were you doing?’