The Boy Who Was Wanted Dead Or Alive - Or Both Read online

  To Carol

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Blart was master of all he surveyed.

  On condition he didn’t look very far. Or very wide. But if he concentrated on staring straight in front of him and bent his head downwards, then he was still just about master of all he surveyed – one field, one pig shed, one small barn and two pigs.

  ‘Here, Venerable. Here, Bede.’

  The pigs looked up at him. They saw a gawky looking fifteen-year-old boy whose mouth was hanging open. His face was smeared with dirt, his jumper was torn and his trousers had muddy knees. Fortunately none of this interested the pigs. What interested them were the apples he held out towards them. They snuffled over and began to eat. Blart listened appreciatively to the munching. However bad things are, he thought, the sight of a pig eating an apple raises your spirits.

  Because otherwise things were very bad.

  After saving the world from the evil Zoltab and his foul minions, Blart’s real dream had come true. With the reward money given to him by King Philidor the Happy, monarch of Elysium, Blart had purchased a large farmhouse, two orchards, three barns and ninety-eight pigs, and all the fields he could see from where he stood (without bending down).

  But only a year later, the two apples that the pigs were now munching were the last that he possessed, and as he no longer owned either of the two orchards, he had no way of feeding the pigs once those were gone. And from the noises the pigs were making they were very close to being gone indeed. Faced with the prospect of the loss of his livestock, Blart acted as countless farmers (but not many fifteen-year-old boys) had done before him down the ages – he leant against a fence, stuck a bit of straw in his mouth and wondered where it had all gone wrong.

  And then he remembered where it had all gone wrong – Milkdale.

  Chapter 2

  Milkdale was a friendly village. Ducks quacked by the pond, children ran hither and thither, shouting and laughing, their mothers brought chairs outside their houses and gossiped amiably about which family in the village had the biggest lice infestation, whose husband was a good-for-nothing drunkard and who should be clapped in the stocks and pelted with rotten fruit. But unlike some villages where the gossip was malicious and muttered slyly behind people’s backs, here in Milkdale it was done cheerily in the open – the woman whose husband was a good-for-nothing drunkard changed each week so nobody felt picked on, and the children constantly passed their lice around so nobody was infested long enough to become the village scapegoat. Indeed it was precisely this reputation for friendliness that had appealed to Capablanca the Wizard when he had strongly recommended to Blart that this was the place to buy his pig farm. Capablanca thought that it would take Blart at least a year to offend all the local people.

  Blart’s year was up. Even so, as Blart walked down the main street he was surprised to find that there was nobody his own age to tell about his heroic exploits. He wondered what had happened to the boys and girls of the village recently. They never seemed to be around when he appeared. Still, not one to be put off by this setback, Blart walked on to the one place in Milkdale where he knew you could always find people to tell about your heroic exploits – the local inn. Many youths would have been daunted at the prospect of entering such a place at Blart’s age, but Blart was not like other youths. He pushed open the door of The Happy Hangman and stomped in. But even here the threat of yet another retelling by Blart of the story of how he saved the world had caused most of the customers to swallow their ale in uncomfortably large gulps and rush out of the back door when they saw him coming. The inn was empty except for a thin old man with unkempt whiskers, hunched over a half-filled tankard. For in every inn there is at least one man who so likes his ale that there is nothing that can shift him from the bar.

  Or possibly it was just that he’d never met Blart.

  Blart was about to rectify the situation. He pulled up a bar stool and sat down.

  ‘I’m a hero,’ he announced. ‘I’ve saved the world. You owe everything to me.’

  ‘I haven’t got much,’ pointed out the man.

  ‘You can thank me for it,’ Blart told him.

  The man didn’t answer. Instead he sank his face grudgingly into his beer, muttering about youngsters being seen and not heard.

  Martin the landlord emerged from the cellar. ‘Where have all my customers gone?’ he demanded. ‘It was heaving before I nipped down to change the mead.’

  ‘Maybe it’s him,’ suggested the old man.

  As Martin’s gaze fell upon Blart, a new customer – a tall thin man with sleek black hair, slicked into a neat ponytail – entered the bar and looked around.

  ‘Blart, my friend. How pleasant it is to see you.’

  Chapter 3

  Uther Slywort was rumoured to be the richest man in the shire. He was certainly the most unscrupulous. And he was the only person in Milkdale whom Blart could consider a friend. He listened to Blart’s stories and he had recently taught him how to play cards.

  A secret smile seemed to hover at the end of Uther’s thin lips as he peeled fine leather gloves from his fingers. ‘Fancy a quick hand of Muggins?’ he said when he was sitting down with his flagon of mead in front of him.

  Muggins was the card game Uther had taught Blart. It was, Uther had explained, a regional card game, unknown in other parts of the world. Indeed it was so regional that it was only played in Milkdale. And in Milkdale it was only ever played by Uther Slywort and Blart.

  ‘I don’t want to play Muggins,’ replied Blart.

  Although he knew Uther was just being friendly, there were times when Blart wished that Uther had never troubled himself to teach Blart to play Muggins. Because once Blart had learnt the rules and had some early success at the game, Uther Slywort had suggested that they bet on the outcome of each hand. Luck, it seemed, turned cruelly against Blart as soon as wagers were introduced.

  ‘Nothing ventured, nothing gained,’ persisted Uther. ‘I can feel your luck is changing.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We don’t need to play for stakes,’ said Uther mildly. ‘We can just play for amusement.’

  He reached into a deep poc
ket and pulled out a pack of cards. He shuffled them quickly, cut them, and then dealt. One card appeared under Blart’s nose.

  ‘I’ve got the eight of clubs,’ said Uther, turning over his card. ‘What’s yours?’

  Blart stared at his card.

  Muggins is a very simple card game. The dealer deals one card to the other player and one to himself. Both players turn over their cards. If the cards are different (for example, a nine and an eight, or a three and a queen) then the non-dealer wins. If, however, they are a pair (for example, two nines or two queens) then the dealer wins. Even Blart had grasped (after a little while) that as the non-dealer the odds of winning the game were drastically in his favour, for the chances of the cards not being a pair were far greater than the chances that they would be. Once he had understood this he became determined to play Muggins for money with Uther.

  But to Blart’s horror, as soon as he had begun to play Muggins for money the cards didn’t seem to stop falling as pairs. Pairs of tens, kings, threes, fives – Uther himself professed to be amazed at the number of pairs that were turning up. Never had he known such a run of bad luck for the non-dealer, he informed Blart sympathetically. Every pair that had turned up lost Blart money until he had no more money. Then Uther suggested that they used Blart’s pigs and fields to represent money. Blart had refused. He had lost his money, but he could never gamble with his pigs, he told Uther.

  But there was a little voice in Blart’s head that kept whispering to him that he’d just been unlucky.

  The next evening he had gone to The Happy Hangman and bet his pigs and his fields.

  And he had lost.

  Indeed he might well have lost absolutely everything if Martin the landlord hadn’t said he was closing the inn for the night and thrown them both out.

  That had been a month ago.

  Uther sat back in his seat and waited.

  What harm could it do, Blart wondered to himself, to turn over this one little card? After all it wasn’t like they were even betting on this card. So it would be just to see what it was.

  Uther Slywort continued to neither move a muscle nor twitch a nerve.

  Blart turned over the card.

  The three of spades.

  ‘You would have won,’ observed Uther.

  Quick as a fox, he gathered up the cards and began to shuffle. Blart watched the blur of Uther’s hands as the cards whizzed through them. He fanned them out on the table, gathered them in, shuffled them vigorously, cut them into two piles, riffled them together and dealt one card to each of them once more.

  ‘Should we play for stakes?’ Uther asked.

  ‘No,’ replied Blart. ‘I’m not playing. Well, not really.’

  ‘Just as you like,’ agreed Uther amiably. ‘You’re in charge. Sometimes it’s nice just to play a friendly game.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Blart.

  Uther turned over his card.

  ‘The four of spades.’

  Blart fingered his own and then stopped. Wasn’t there something wrong with doing this? he asked himself. But it was just a friendly game. It didn’t make any difference what he turned over. Nothing would change.

  He flipped the card.

  ‘The nine of hearts,’ observed Uther. ‘You must be hitting a lucky streak.’

  Uther gathered, shuffled and dealt again. Immediately he turned over the seven of clubs. Blart turned over the queen of diamonds.

  ‘Three in a row,’ Uther commented. And then almost as an afterthought he added, ‘You could have won ten pigs, a field and an orchard by now.’

  Blart didn’t say anything.

  ‘I’m so grateful we haven’t been playing for stakes,’ Uther continued jovially. ‘Still, I’ve finished my drink and I must be off.’

  He banged his tankard down cheerily on the table.

  ‘One more game,’ said Blart.

  ‘I’ve got things to do,’ explained Uther, standing up.

  ‘One more game,’ insisted Blart.

  ‘I’d love too oblige you, Blart, but –’

  ‘For stakes.’

  ‘It’s not to do with whether it’s for stakes or not,’ explained Uther. ‘It’s just that I haven’t got the time really. What stakes were you thinking of?’

  ‘Everything.’

  ‘That would be two pigs, one shed, a barn and a field, wouldn’t it? I only ask out of academic interest because, as I say, I haven’t actually got the time.’

  Blart confirmed that two pigs, one shed, a barn and a field would indeed be the stakes.

  ‘What can I say, Blart? Uther Slywort can never let a friend down. You want to play, then I will play.’

  This grand gesture of friendship so overwhelmed Uther that he had to wipe a tear from his eye as he sat down.

  Once the tear was gone, he whipped out the cards from his pocket, shuffled them once more and dealt one each to himself and Blart.

  As soon as it was in front of him Blart turned the card over. A king.

  ‘Any card but another king and you win,’ commented Uther. ‘And with the lucky streak you’re on I can’t believe that … oh …’

  Uther laid his card face upwards.

  Another king.

  Blart stared at it in disbelief. Then he covered his face with his hands. Then he peeked through his fingers to give the card one more chance not to be a king. It remained a king. A king that spelt Blart’s ruin.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Uther, reaching into a pocket inside his coat and swiftly pulling out a piece of parchment he seemed to have prepared earlier. ‘I can hardly believe it myself. Still, rules are rules and we have to play by them even if neither of us wants to. So if you would just make your mark here, then I’ll own the remainder of your farm and we can move on.’

  He pushed the piece of parchment under Blart’s stunned and disbelieving nose. Blart was too shocked to resist. He placed his dirty finger on the parchment and made his mark.

  Uther grabbed the parchment, rolled it up and replaced it in the depths of his great coat, briefly revealing a luxurious lining and many hidden pockets. Blart placed his head on the table and began to moan.

  ‘Now I’ve got nothing.’

  ‘Blart,’ said Uther, ‘I am a good and generous man. I feel terrible about the tricks the fickle fortune of fate has played on you. I will give you a chance to win it all back.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘One final game of Muggins,’ answered Uther. ‘No pair and you get everything back. One pair and I win …’ Uther paused. ‘Oh, there’s a problem. There have got to be stakes on both sides. What could I win if you haven’t got anything?’

  The hopeful flush on Blart’s face became a rash of concern. What if he couldn’t make the bet?

  ‘I know,’ said Uther. ‘Why don’t you bet yourself?’

  ‘Myself?’ repeated Blart doubtfully.

  ‘That’s right,’ confirmed Uther. ‘It isn’t as though you’ve got anything to lose. You have no family and no means of support. As soon as you finish that drink Martin will throw you out of his inn and you will be left to starve on the open road.’

  ‘But I’m a hero,’ countered Blart. ‘I saved the world.’

  ‘Heroism butters very few parsnips in the real world,’ Uther informed him. ‘How I wish it could be different, but we live in hard and cruel times.’

  Blart thought about what Uther had said. It was true, he concluded, that he had nothing to lose and everything to gain. And yet he hesitated. Even a boy as uninformed about personal freedom and liberty as Blart still found himself hesitating before risking it on a hand of cards.

  But then he remembered his farmhouse, his barns and his orchards. And above all he remembered his pigs. In his mind’s eye he saw them snorting and wallowing in their own muck. The beauty of this vision overwhelmed his doubts.

  ‘Let’s play,’ he said.

  Quick as an eel, Uther was back in his seat, dealing a card for Blart and himself.

  Blart, his hand shaking like a salt cellar i
n the grip of a hungry knight who had been served a badly seasoned stew, turned his card over.

  An ace!

  Uther now revealed his own card.

  Another ace!

  ‘No,’ cried Blart dejectedly, as the vision of his pigs snorting and wallowing in mud slowly dissolved in his mind.

  Another parchment was placed before Blart.

  ‘Your mark, please,’ demanded Uther.

  And Blart had lost his freedom for ever.

  Chapter 4

  ‘Most impressive,’ said Uther. ‘And to think you’ve only two hours’ more digging.’ He stood at a distance lest Blart’s spade threw up soil that might mark his overcoat.

  Rain poured down on Blart. He had not dug like this since he was unexpectedly put to work in the Great Tunnel of Despair by Zoltab’s evil minions a year ago. He hadn’t liked it then and he didn’t like it now. The side to Uther’s character he had revealed since Blart had placed his mark on the parchment was not to Blart’s taste at all. There had been no more pleasant chats or sympathetic expressions. Instead there had been fourteen-hour days and an unceasing hard physical grind. All in all, slavery wasn’t working out anywhere near as well as Blart had hoped.

  ‘I’d like to resign,’ said Blart.

  ‘You can’t resign from slavery,’ said Uther. ‘It’s a job for life. Now I’m going inside for a cup of tea. Two hours will fly by in the wink of an eye.’

  And with these depressing words he retired to the farmhouse. As the door opened, Blart caught a brief tantalising glimpse of the bright orange fire dancing in the kitchen grate. With a weary sigh he raised his spade to continue digging. But he was exhausted and simply lifting it drained the last of his strength. He felt his legs buckle and he slumped face forward in the mud.

  ‘Blart!’

  Blart didn’t care how much Uther shouted. He couldn’t dig any more. He buried his face deeper in the mud.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re doing in the mud but I would appreciate an answer.’

  Blart was confused. The voice was familiar but it was not Uther’s.

  ‘Your manners still leave a great deal to be desired.’

  Blart raised his face from the mud.

  ‘Capablanca!’