The Giant's Almanac Andrew Zurcher (books to read fiction TXT) 📖

struck dead through its eye, Fitz had already split and gutted the first. He passed the knife to Dolly while he gathered into his fist as much of the fish’s stomach, guts and blood as he could. The stench was almost overpowering.

‘That’s disgusting,’ said Fingal.

‘Shut up, Fingal,’ cautioned Padge. He was scraping at his leg with the shaft of one of Dolly’s arrows, peeling off thick, wet slabs of tar.

Fitz had turned to the roof above them. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and lifted the fish’s innards over his head. With all his might, he hurled them at the king of the albatrosses.

His aim was good. The sticky pile of blood and guts landed close enough to the bird to catch its interest. With slow dignity, it inclined its head, then hopped along the slate ridge until it could reach the meat. Once it had sensed the nature of the offering, it lost no time in devouring it.

An electric current, passed through the roof, couldn’t have startled the birds any more. They hopped and rustled their wings, raised their squat beaks against the moon, and began to dip their heads, as if to take off.

‘Fitz.’ It was Navy. She was pointing across the court. Dina was halfway down the side of the building, clinging precariously to the drainpipe with one hand, still holding the three unlit brands beneath her other arm, and fishing in her pocket for that match.

‘Really quite extraordinary,’ said Payne, who was studying her. For a moment Dina seemed to lose her grip on the drainpipe, and slid two or three feet before she caught herself with one of her legs, kicking it against the stone so stiffly that the drum of it echoed around the courtyard.

‘That really must have hurt,’ Payne commented. Dina was still barefoot. ‘And yet, serene.’

Fitz wasn’t watching. As the albatrosses leaped into the air behind him, he took the knife from Dolly and with three graceful slices sheared a slab of bloody meat from the first fish – as long and regular a steak as he could manage – then ripped it from the spine. Dipping the back of the knife in the tarry sludge that Padge had left for him on the balustrade, Fitz smeared it as thoroughly as he could across the fish, first one side, then the other. He passed the knife back to Dolly, who copied him precisely.

Fitz looked at the moon where it hung in the sky directly above the courtyard.

If that much rock can hang in the sky and never fall down, then so can I.

He planted his hands on the balustrade. He vaulted up to it. Heeding neither the cautions nor the cries of the other Prents, who stood back, he turned to the courtyard below, the slab of tarred fish in his hand, and sighted the fountain. This was a harder cast than his last: thirty or thirty-five feet away, it stood almost four storeys below, and Fitz didn’t know if he could judge the height in the dark. Without taking his eye from the fountain, and with his forward foot firmly – rigidly – planted on the outer edge of the balustrade, he heaved the fish into the air.

It landed short by five feet, on a pile of twisting snakes. One of the albatrosses, seeing it, arced through the night and snatched it from the ground with breathtaking agility, then rose almost without exertion through the shadows, to disappear over the Jackery.

Fitz leaned down and took a second piece of fish meat from Dolly. As she turned back to the knife and tar, he took a deep breath and set his feet again. Ahead of him, Dina’s first torch suddenly flared into a bright orange flame. She held it at the length of her arm and leaned down towards the ground, fanning the snakes with the heat and spark of it. Heads rose, hissing.

There’s no time.

Fitz hardly looked. He hurled the fish as hard as the strained socket of his shoulder would let him. With agonizing slowness, circled by hunting birds, it dropped through the night against Dina’s bright blaze. It hit the fountain’s edge with a sickening slap, then slid into the heap of diamonds.

‘Bullseye!’ shouted Navy.

But it wasn’t. As one of the albatrosses swooped and carried off the hunk of meat, it was obvious that only a few of the smallest diamonds had adhered to the sticky pitch coating the fish’s skin. The bird rose on the wing, directly above them, and settled on the gable, tearing at the thick flesh. Diamonds – in which it took no interest – began to skitter down the steep roof towards the children.

‘Genius,’ whispered Fingal. With his hands outstretched, he caught at the little jewels as they skipped off the roof and on to the balcony.

But Fitz was already taking from Dolly the last of the fish. There was more meat – at least two or three more chunky slabs – but the pitch had run out. She had only been able to coat one side of this piece, and the stuff though sticky was thin, full of Padge’s hair and even bits of skin. Fitz looked at it carefully, and tried to judge the weight, lifting it up and down. He would have to change his technique. He would have to be lucky.

Dina, surrounded by the reared heads of a score of enraged snakes, set fire to another of her torches, then a third. She was hanging from the drainpipe by her feet, nearly upside down, waving the fires at the enraged serpents – to no avail.

‘Dina’s in trouble,’ Padge said.

It was essential that the piece of fish, once he had thrown it, not turn over in its flight: it had to hit the fountain square, with the tarred side down. He loosened his stance, leaned back, and tried to shove the sticky meat through the air, nearly throwing himself off the balcony with it.

Padge and Navy caught his legs