‘Lex, you know the reality of the Games. This is what you sign up for.’
That might be what other, less talented players signed up for, but it was not what Lex signed up for. After all, Mr Schmidt had lived through the whole of the last Game with no serious injuries whatsoever, and he’d been a doddering old lawyer. Jesse had been a swarthy cowboy. It just wasn’t fair. And, to make it even worse, Lex couldn’t help feeling that he was at least partially to blame for it. After all, if he hadn’t gone after Jesse and convinced him to play in the Game then he wouldn’t have been there in the first place. Or if he had just told Jeremiah and Tess about the poisonous octopuses then Tess would never have picked one up.
‘He shouldn’t have intervened!’ Lex raged angrily. ‘It was his own stupid fault! He shouldn’t have concerned himself about what Tess East was or wasn’t doing! She was the enemy! It was no concern of ours if she killed herself!’
‘I agree, dear,’ Lady Luck said tearfully. ‘It was a silly thing for him to do. And it’s a dreadful shame. Really, it is.’
She glanced out the window at the sudden sound of cheers and noticed that Jeremiah’s boat was pulling out of the harbour.
‘We’d better set off for Olaree, dear,’ she said. ‘That’s where the second round is to take place. We’ll go up on deck and bury poor Jesse at sea along the way.’
Lex stared at her dumbly. Would she be this fickle when Lex himself finally died? Shed a tear or two, look suitably pained for five minutes and then flit off in search of the next thing to occupy her flighty mind?
‘Look, I can’t just tip him over the edge of the boat-’ he began, but then he broke off suddenly, eyes narrowed suspiciously. ‘Did he.. Did he just move?’
‘Move?’ the Goddess replied blankly. ‘He’s dead, Lex. There are blue rings all over his hand.’
‘I thought I saw him move just then.’
‘Oh, my dear, I know that’s what you want to believe, but I’m afraid that-’ But then she, too, broke off with a startled exclamation.
They had both seen it this time. Jesse’s hand had definitely moved.
‘Perhaps that’s a death twitch,’ Lady Luck said, peering a little closer.
‘Gahhhh!’ croaked Jesse.
‘Perhaps that’s a death rattle,’ the Goddess suggested.
Lex pushed her aside impatiently. ‘No, he’s alive! How is this possible?’
The cowboy was, indeed, alive. As Lex and Lady Luck goggled at him in astonishment, he suddenly propped himself up on his elbows with a great shuddering breath that sounded extremely painful.
‘He’s alive!’ Lady Luck screeched in alarm. ‘What wizardry is this? Don’t get too close, Lex! He might be a zombie!’
But Lex wasn’t listening to her. He was too busy rushing forwards to help Jesse to his feet, shaking his hand vigorously and saying, ‘I’m so glad you’re not dead! Do you feel all right?’
‘Er… yeah,’ the cowboy replied. ‘I think so.’
‘Perhaps you have a special immunity. Did you get bitten by a lot of snakes, or something, back in the West?’
Jesse shrugged. ‘No more than usual.’
‘Perhaps it’s because it was a baby that bit you,’ Lex said, reaching for the book.
Consultation of the book revealed that this was indeed a difference between the adult octopuses and their young. It seemed that the babies did not have enough venom to kill a man, only enough to temporarily paralyse him. In the meantime, they were supposed to squeal for the mother who would quickly come over and bite the prey up into little pieces, small enough for the babies to swallow-
‘That’s quite enough of that, thank you, Lex!’ Lady Luck interrupted, fluttering her hands in distress. ‘I’m sure poor Jesse doesn’t want to hear such horrible things.’
‘Oh, no, ma’am; I think they’re fascinating little blighters.’
‘But doesn’t the thought of being chewed up into bite-size pieces and eaten by all those octopuses distress you?’
‘Nope.’
Lady Luck looked rather impressed by this, so Lex snorted and said, ‘He probably just doesn’t have the imagination to picture it.’
‘I guess I’ve never been the imagining type,’ Jesse replied amiably.
After reading the book, it seemed that no lasting damage would be done by a baby octopus bite except for the fact that the blue rings would eventually turn into white scars. Lex himself would have been upset about this. The rings were unsightly and rather gross, and it was important to Lex to minimise scars? especially right there on his hand where anyone could see them? but Jesse just shrugged when Lady Luck started fussing about it. It seemed that out in the Wild West they were all rather proud of their scars.
‘I’ll even be able to beat Popcorn-Face Billy with this,’ Jesse said, holding up his ringed hand and looking at it with approval.
‘Yes, well, your petty victories aside,’ Lex snapped, ‘we’re now losing the Game because of you! The medallion was right there in your hand! Why didn’t you give it to me before rushing off to play the hero? Why did you have to drop it right next to Tess East, for goodness’ sake? There’s no place for heroics in these Games and you’d better get that into your thick head right n-’ He broke off, then said, ‘Hang on! Can we claim hero points for it? He did save her life, after all!’
But Lady Luck was shaking her head. ‘It won’t work, I’m afraid. Hero points can only be awarded for the heroic acts of players, not their companions.’
‘But that’s totally unfair!’ Lex protested.
‘I can try and get the rules changed for the next Game but it’s too late for this one. Once a Game has started you can’t change any of the rules.’
Lex was furious about the entire business. He and Jesse were the ones who had done all the work. All Jeremiah had done was to blunder in stupidly at the end with his sword. It wasn’t fair that he should have won the round. He hadn’t even been the one to pick up the medallion; it had been Tess. But it seemed that, whilst companions couldn’t earn hero points for the player, they could win for them, and so there was nothing to be done about it. For the first time, Lex had actually lost a round, and it was a bitter pill to swallow.
The ship set sail for Olaree where they were to spend the next week before the second round. Rooms had been booked for all three players and their companions in an extremely grand hotel. Lex had fully intended to stay on the boat but, when Lady Luck brought him the newspaper headlines the next morning, he soon changed his mind.
He had expected to tear the papers up in a rage at the sight of story after story touting Jeremiah’s victory. But, to his pleasant surprise, he found that the focus wasn’t on Jeremiah’s victory at all, but rather on Jesse’s heroic, tragic death. Once they realised the cowboy was perfectly all right, Lady Luck had been all for rushing straight off to inform everyone, but Lex had stopped her.
‘Use your head for once,’ he’d said. ‘There might be some way we can use this to our advantage.’
If nothing else, it might give Lex a slight edge in the second round if all the other players believed he had no companion. What Lex had said seemed to set the Goddess off thinking, for she promptly disappeared, saying that she must edit the Game footage. The Games were not broadcast to the stadiums live anymore, simply because the Gods preferred to pick and choose what people saw. They wanted their own players to come across as daring and heroic and brave. So any unfortunate moment where a player might? for example? break down in tears, was carefully edited out later.
When Lex watched the footage from the round on his Divine Eye he had to give Lady Luck some credit, for she had done a very fine job of it, despite the fact that they had lost. The battle with the little octopuses looked quite horrific, as did the big fight up on deck. There was much emphasis? complete with music and slow-motion playback? on the moment when Lex and Jesse both ran towards Tess East to save her from the octopus. Lex could practically hear the rapturous applause from the stadiums when Jesse grabbed the little monster off her and flung it out to sea. And then, most deliciously of all, Lady Luck had included the moment when Jeremiah punched Jesse, only she had omitted the part where Jeremiah had spoken and so? to the spectators in the stadiums? the reason for his punching the cowboy would have been completely unclear. Add to that the fact that Jesse apparently crumpled up and died right there on the deck shortly afterwards… Well, it was enough to bring tears to the most hardened eye. Indeed, the Lex in the footage even seemed to have manly tears glimmering in his eyes at the end of the round.