The Narrative Must Be Obeyed.
Everyone in the Taskmaster’s Realm knows how the story goes: the boy of destiny goes on a quest, defeats the dark lord, and gets the swooning princess. It’s a great story, if you happen to be a knight or a wizard or a hero. But it’s pretty odious if you’re Ordinary: a barmaid who has to inflate her bosom and have her backside pinched, a homely prince who can’t buckle his swash because his face doesn’t fit, or a soldier who gets killed over and over and over again just to progress the plot.
Fodder of Humble Village is one of those soldiers, and, frankly, he’s sick and tired of getting speared, decapitated, and disembowelled twice a day so the good guys can look glorious. In fact, he’s not going to take it anymore.
No matter what The Narrative tries to make him do.
Targeted Age Group:: 16-100
What Inspired You to Write Your Book?
The Disposable came from my own experiences as a reader and a writer. As a writer, I’m sure every other writer out there has come across a character who simply refuses to conform to their plans for them; a minor bit-part who scene-steals so violently that they end up a major character, a lead who refuses to act as the plot demands they should because they don’t agree with it or two characters that spark up a knockout chemistry that you’d had no intention of pairing up. Characters have a mind of their own and the idea of seeing those minds at work and having a group of characters stage an overt takeover of a story was very appealing. And as a reader, my problem is that I’m a terrible cynic – well, not that’s not entirely accurate as I’m actually a very good cynic, but you know what I mean – in that while I love the fantasy genre, I’m also very aware of its flaws and clichés. It was when I realised the fun I could have by playing off these fundamentals of fantasy with a group of world-weary characters who viewed them as the facts of life that it all came together.
How Did You Come up With Your Characters?
I'm never entirely sure if I came up with my characters or if they came up with me. I often feel they were already there waiting for me to get around to them, which is both appropriate to the novel and slightly disconcerting! I feel in many ways that my characters embody parts of me – Flirt, for example, represents my practical, organisational side, the part of me that likes to get on with things and sort stuff out. Shoulders, as anyone who knows me will testify, represents my anxiety and persistent, if unintentional, tendency to seek out the downside in every up and the problem in every solution and to worry about them incessantly. Dullard stands for my intellectual, curious streak, the bit of me that wants to understand the world and how it works and, when he remembers, my diffidence. Pleasance is definitely my temper, but also, in her own special way, my insecurity and self doubt (believe it or not!). And Fodder? He is the embodiment of my sense of fairness and justice and how important I feel those things are and should be in life.
Book Sample
Part One
No, hang on, that’s already done with.
Part Two
Nope, that one’s over too.
Ah, here we are.…
Part Three
A piece of paper.
That’s what it was, when all was said and done. A simple, straight-forward piece of paper, the words upon it written in the familiar, authoritative, unnaturally regular lettering that signified instructions from the Taskmaster. It spelled out a sequence of events that had to be ruthlessly prepared for by every living thing in the Realm, and it was to be obeyed without thought and without question. That was merely the way it was, and to disobey would be unthinkable.
Wouldn’t it?
Because there were days, sometimes, when he couldn’t help but wonder if the world would really come to an end if he just chucked the paper away and went back to bed.
Probably not. After all, he was only a Disposable. Who would notice? Who would care? For if there was one word that could be used to describe Fodder of Humble Village, it was ordinary.
His nose was neither hooked nor pointed, neither snub nor aquiline, neither especially big nor noticeably small. His hair was brown—no fiery reds or midnight blacks for him—and his eyes, also brown, did not glow or flash or compellingly catch the gaze in any way whatsoever. He was neither fat nor particularly thin, no weakling but hardly of godlike physique, no towering giant but not notably on the short side. He was an ordinary man on an ordinary day, dressed in ordinary, rusty, badly fitting armour and waiting on a lonely road.
For what felt like the hundredth time since Preen had thrust the paper into his hand and frogmarched the four Disposables of Humble Village over to the barn to get changed that morning, Fodder lifted his now rather dog-eared instructions and skimmed through them.
Official Taskmaster Summary:
The Ring of Anthiphion:
Part Three
Elder and the band agree to follow the trail of the stolen Ring and Erik finds that for some reason, he can intuit which way it went. As they follow the trail, local guards attempt to apprehend them but are tossed aside.
While crossing a mountain pass late at night, the companions hear screams and ride up to find men in the livery of Sleiss attempting to abduct Princess Islaine, who is riding to Mond for her wedding. With the princess rescued but her guard dead, Sir Roderick feels he must see her back to the palace. Since the Ring trail goes in a similar direction and they need to speak to the king about shoring up the borders against the possible return of Craxis, Elder agrees to the detour. The princess and Erik argue incessantly as she tries to push him around, and by the time they reach the palace, they hate each other.
Local guards attempt to apprehend them but are tossed aside.… Fodder sighed.
“Well, isn’t that just the story of my life?” he muttered.
“What was that, mate?”
Fodder glanced up to find Shoulders standing just to his right, shifting his shoulders awkwardly as he adjusted something in front of his neck. Something that looked like it had started life as half a beer tankard. Shoulders’s left hand, as always in this matter detached from the reasoning centres of his brain, rubbed reflexively against the skin beneath his badly cut, scraggly dark blond hair and scruffy attempt at a beard. There was something a tiny bit maniacal about his smile.
Fodder just succeeded in turning his grimace into a grin in time. He was starting to worry about Shoulders.
“Nothing,” he managed, rather proud of the cheery unconcern he managed to instil into that single word. Don’t ask about the tankard. You don’t want to ask. You don’t want to know. It will only hurt your brain. “I was talking to myself. Well, thinking about the fight and talking and…oh, it’s no bloody good. Shoulders, what is half a tankard doing tucked under your chin?”
Shoulders’s smile spread as he rapped his knuckles against it with a hollow clunk. “Good, isn’t it?” he exclaimed with, in Fodder’s opinion, inexplicable enthusiasm. “I nipped into the pub before we left and got it off Flirt. She even cut it in two for me and knocked the bottom out, bless her.”
“That’s nice.” Maintaining the smile was starting to hurt. “Why?”
Shoulders grinned. “Clank-proofing.”
And there it is. I told you that you didn’t want to know.
Fodder’s smile slipped into pity. “You do know it won’t work, don’t you? He’ll get you, mate. He always does.”
But Shoulders was shaking his head, his eyes bright with the fervour of desperate hope. “Not this time. Not again. This’ll thwart the bastard, I know it! Bloody Clank and his bloody broadsword, poncing about in his bloody armour on his bloody horse and thinking he can make sport of people’s necks! Well, let’s see what Mr All-Steel-And-No-Brain-Cells makes of this!”
Pieces, Fodder thought to himself, battling a near-overwhelming urge to drop his head into his hands. That’s what.
“It’s not in the Local Guard uniform code, you know,” he offered wearily. “The Narrative might notice. If Preen spots it, you’ll have to take it off.”
Shoulders glanced back down the muddy road to where officious little Preen, in his gold-trimmed purple doublet and prissy, curly-toed shoes, was haranguing the burly Thump and stick-thin Clunny about some aspect or other of their artfully badly arranged armour.
“Preen.” Shoulders snorted. “He’s a little oik. How much time does he spend out there on the front lines, hmm? What does he ever do apart from strut about in the background, pushing people around and giving out bits of paper? One of these days I’m going to tell him where to stick his—”
“Places, everybody! The Narrative is on its way!”
Fodder winced. There was something about the way that Preen clapped his hands. The fingertips tapping delicately against the palm, elbows raised so that his connecting hands were framed by an entirely insincere smile—a smile that told the observant watcher that there were blasted heaths and barren wastelands that would be more appealing to him than this place. It also whispered of the universe’s profound need for someone to give the man a damn good kicking. It would be for the good of humanity; Fodder just knew it.…
But now was not the time for such thoughts. Through the screen of trees marking out the Rambling Woods, he could see the glow of the strange, brilliant, impossibly vivid light that signified the approach of The Narrative, and the dust rising from the track to show the galloping horses of the Merry Band as they wound their way towards another episodic encounter. Adjusting his neck tankard with an odd mixture of determination and resignation and palming his rusty short sword, Shoulders dropped into place beside Fodder. To their left, Thump fingered the pet cudgel that, for reasons no one had ever mustered the courage to ask about, he’d named Ronald; and beyond him, Clunny, with his perennial fidget and inexplicable odour of beans, wrapped his fingers around his crossbow and clicked a bolt into place. Behind them, Dunny and Midlin from Fertile Fields and Donk and Tumble of Provincial Town, who’d arrived that morning to Bulk Up their numbers, exchanged glances.
None of them spoke. Since this was Fodder’s territory—and since Preen had dismissively labelled Fodder Lead Guard for this particular encounter—the spare Disposables would stay silent and follow his lead.
Poor blighters. Work was work, but Bulking Up was just plain drudgery. You didn’t even get a description.
“Now, remember!” Preen’s voice, it had to be said, perfectly suited the impression given by the way he clapped. “Follow the lead of the Merry Band and don’t draw it out too much. This is only a time-filling skirmish, gentlemen, so let’s make it quick and easy for them! I’ve got to be going; important things to do and all!”
Preen’s voice was already fading into the distance as Fodder’s lip twisted sardonically. Important things indeed. Every man and his dog in the Realm knew that Preen hated the sight of blood and guts and severed limbs and always found important things to do whenever the men he was supposed to be supervising went into battle.
Although he’d never yet let it stop him from doing his job, Fodder wasn’t that fond of blood and guts and severed limbs himself.
Especially since they were always his own.
Just part of the job. And somebody had to do it. The instructions said so.
Though there was one tiny part of Fodder’s brain that wondered what would happen if the instructions declared and nobody showed up.
The light approached the corner of the trail ahead, spreading rapidly towards them like a flood of glimmering water.
Grasping his spear, Fodder sighed. “Well, lads,” he said with a simple shrug. “Here we go again.”
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Author Bio:
Katherine Vick was born in the middle bit of England longer ago than she’d care to admit (1979, if you must know. Aren’t you nosy?). She studied Geography at University of Wales, Aberystwyth, writing her dissertation on the Role of Landscape and Culture in Fantasy Novels. She then moved onto a Master’s degree in Literary Studies and Creative Writing at University of Central England, where she wrote the dissertation that inspired the creation of Fodder, so she hopes you’ll feel she put her education to good use. She flirted briefly with fast food and retail work before settling down as a college administrator. She spends occasional weekends on historic battlefields in her capacity as a rather clumsy late medieval re-enactor. She (mis)spent a part of her youth writing stories based around other people’s literary and media creations. She likes to read and watch fantasy, history and science fiction – frankly anything that gets her away from the real world, which is far too much trouble. Occasionally she even gets around to writing stuff.
