The Booker Prize shortlist was announced yesterday: you can find out which novels made the cut here. On 9th November, the Kayton Library is hosting our annual 'Predict the Booker' event. Six Pauline readers will be debating the merits of the books on the shortlist, and trying to win the audience vote for their selected nominee: will we agree with the Booker judges? We have a track record of 100% failure so far - but this year could be different!! You can read the report of last year's event here.
Appropriately enough, today's post focusses on creative writing, featuring a short piece of work in progress by Harper Katz, and an extract from Alex Twinch's historical novel, Heresy of Angels, which formed the basis of his EPQ. If you're interested in reading more Pauline creativity, here's a link to the digital version of the most recent edition of Pandemonium, the SPS creative writing magazine.
This issue features the pieces shortlisted for last year's 4th Form Creative Writing prize: an exceptional array of stylish, original and compelling short stories and poetry. The eventual prize winner was Javey Johnson, for his poetry collection 'A Scepter'd Isle', with runners up Vinushan Chandrann ('Saturn)', Ebrahim Gorjestani ('The Weaver of Kashan') and Sehwan Lim ('Four Ekphrastic Poems'), and Lukas Brammer Williams ('The Last Mango Season'), Basti Chesebrough ('The Mimic'), Seven Guo ('The Fruit Bowl') and Olly Zage ('Ode on Time and Sleep') highly commended.
If you're in the fourth form, and you're inspired by this anthology, you can enter this year's prize - contact Mr Gardner for details - and if you're a writer in any year group, you can hone your creative skills at Dr Pryce's Creative Writing class every Monday, in E2, from next week - but Wednesday this week, because of House Choral.
Heresy of Angels
Alexander Twinch
Here's an introduction from the author: 'In my EPQ, I set out to write a historical fantasy novel, heavily influenced by the Order of Assassins in the Third Crusade. I wanted to write a piece of fiction that helped develop and enhance my command of storytelling and engaging with a reader, particularly through spoken narration, and to learn what makes a story a story.
Alex's project involved creating an overall storyline for his novel, with individual vignettes developed in full. Here's the first: A Sun of a Thousand Daggers.
After the death of Hassan II, their immensely powerful prophetic founder, the Order of Assassins has shifted its power from Alamut on the southern shore of the Caspian Sea to an established Assassin stronghold in northwestern Syria called Masyaf. This shift of power means they now border the territory of their religious enemy, the Knights Templar. Tortosa, a major Templar castle, is only 5 miles from another of the Assassin’s fortresses. The Assassins pay the Templars an extortionate sum of 2,000 gold bezants a year to be left in peace. So far, the fragile peace has held.
Rashid ad-Din Sinan is now in charge of the Assassins. He has taken on Hassan II’s mantle, as Old Man of the Mountain, and has become leader of the Nizari Ismaili religious sect, to which the Assassins belong. With the growing power of the Order, the Assassins are beginning to be noticed by the great politicians of the Middle East. Amalric, King of Jerusalem, pesters Rashin ad-Din Sinan to convert to Christianity in the spirit of the Crusades. Sinan tentatively agrees so as to foster good relations, but only if terms can be negotiated. So, he sends an envoy to Jerusalem. Sinan’s main request is to end the tax the Assassins pay to the Templars. Overjoyed at such meagre terms for something so significant King Amalric agrees, and as a gesture of good faith, sends members of his own royal guard to escort Sinan’s envoy back to Masyaf.
A Sun of A Thousand Daggers
A rising cloud of red dust swirled around him as the fateful dagger of the sun sank into the desert horizon. Amalric’s conduct lay shattered, a swarm of bodies broken like the wooden toys of a child. Maces had danced, lances had skewered, swords had sung. Panic and fear shadowed it all, and then the silence came. It was all his failure.
“Forgive me,” Malik spat, residue violence leaving his lips. His steps were laboured and weary as he painfully picked his way over the corpses. Looking around, he found the envoy, Bahram, peering lifelessly at the crimson sky. The point of a Templar sword guided his friend’s gaze as it jutted outwards from his intestines. Malik spotted a torn cloak bearing a bold Red Cross thrown over Bahram’s chest, mocking the treaty he had secured for the survival of his Brotherhood.
Malik stared deeply into the man’s greying eyeballs, searching for something, anything. A hollowness formed deep within him, a perpetual numbness spreading throughout his extremities, and yet he kept on looking, forcibly studying the carnage.
Eventually, the toppled carriage caught his interest, and he rummaged among the remains hoping to find a quilt that Amalric had given as a gift to bring back to Sinan.
He grunted as he lay down, warmth spreading from his side, where a mace had struck him in the battle. Inshallah, the hyenas have eaten well today. Before closing his eyes, he turned to the distance; black spires of Tortosa tattooed the bleeding sun, and a fierceness found its home within him. That night, he slept amongst the dead.
*
The world was chaos and blood. Malik moved with an elegant aggression, the metallic tang of blood lingering in his throat. He licked his teeth as he danced around the knights, severing limbs with each step. The debased heretics were no match for him, folding at his sword’s kisses, their flesh coating the blades. It made him smile. And even upon meeting a half-worthy foe, Malik only had to increase his speed, summon more violence. He was unstoppable.
Bahram’s warnings failed to meet Malik’s ears. His body may have been in hellish reality but his mind was far off, deep in the Garden, where scents of honeysuckle and jungle calmed him. Hassan had taught him well, and the place he had been raised in was his sanctuary amidst the perils of battle. Control yourself, Malik! Hassan had once told him. Fight with your head, not your heart.
A black beast of a warhorse reared before Malik, muscles coiling and rippling as it came crashing down.
He rolled at the last second, springing back to his feet in one fluid motion.
The rider turned to face him, and, once again, Malik was caught out, a cruel mace came down on him.
He swung a sword at the chain, knowing it was too late to dodge.
The black iron grazed his ribs, and pain surged from the wound as he fell to one knee.
“Roll, Malik,” roared Bahram.
The mace recoiled in an upward swing, snatching the sword from Malik’s right hand as he gritted his teeth and rolled through the horse’s legs.
The rider bellowed in laughter. “Pathetic,” Malik managed to discern the word amongst a sentence spat out in a foreign tongue.
He retreated to Bahram’s side, one arm cradling his wound, the other gripping his second sword tightly.
Bahram twisted out of the way of the swinging mace, trying to work his way round to the horse’s back as Malik attacked the front. Among the throngs of fighting men, they were alone.
The steel-clad rider was no longer so confident, frustration seeping into his wild strikes as he batted Malik’s attacks away with a greatshield. The warhorse seemed to share his struggle, its front legs lashing out as Malik continued to dance around.
The assassin could see his companion’s arms beginning to ache with fatigue. His strikes were slow, clumsy at best. Yet the rider was relentless, his mace hurtling toward the nearest of the two.
Come on boys, I’m an old man! Hassan’s words echoed in Malik’s mind, mixing with the rider’s laughs. He could almost see that wrinkled face twinkling with mirth at the sight of two children swiping at him so viciously. It’s almost like fighting off mosquitoes! Those words from so long ago still haunted him to this day, and the image of Rashid twisting in the air, struck down by Hassan. Reckless, little Sinan tutted the older man. Come, Malik, we both know the fight is lost. Pain as his youthful legs were swept from beneath him. Arrogance is a warrior’s bane, child.
He pushed the echoes of the past from his mind. Perseverance is not arrogance. Newfound energy surged into him then as he focused his attention back on the rider, testing him with jabs, slicing not just at the horse but at the man too.
Meanwhile, the knight’s strikes were concentrated solely on Bahram, his spiked ball crunching against the envoy’s ever more fragile blocks.
As Bahram stumbled back from a particularly brutal downward swing, his eyes widened in pained shock. A moment later, a sword burst through his front as he fell to his knees. The mace crunched into his chest sending him sprawling, broken, onto the floor.
“No! Bahram!” words had never left Malik so brutally. The world around him faded to black, a spotlight seeming to shine on his dead companion.
Malik had no time, he charged towards the enemy.
*
Malik bolted upright. The pink glow of dawn bathed the battlefield in a soft light. He moaned in pain as he turned to the horizon, trying to gauge the distance from here to Khawabi. If all had gone well, I would be in a bed in the nicest chamber the castle could offer. Better yet, these kaffir would be out of my sight.
Lights twinkled against mountains that were still in semi-darkness, snapping away his complaints.
Merchants, he thought.
Our second piece of writing today has a very different tone - part J D Salinger, part Demon Copperhead. It's currently untitled - but if you'd like to suggest one, feel free to add it in the comments!
Extract from a work in progress
Harper Katz
Where I live, winter always comes quickly. The grey buildings shore up the slush on the side of the road and the smog dwells low on the pavement. We used to say it was like an orange snail oozing along the road and mucking up everything it touched.
Usually the backstreets that sprout from the busy main road are empty and quiet. This is strange because the main road is loud and usually full with people selling vapes and haggling livestock. Nearby is a dock that used to be important and the ships rattle in the harbour, never pulling up anchor, gathering the green and white of years under protection from the marina. When the rain is indecisive, scintillating between downpour and drizzle, the smog will clear a bit and there will be a certain haze about the place as if the sky has been stretched to fit us and the invisible horizon is tired with our weight. Winter always comes quickly.
Our uncle was a sculptor who worked in plaster and bronze. His studio was his bedroom and he would sleep and live in his work. It was crowded with unfinished pieces, the smelting corner gurgling and throwing soot at the deep black walls, staining the corner ebony. We went to a funfair once and the prizes were arranged in a cluttered array, zip tied to chicken wire by their feet as the man who gave them out shouted “Winner!” to attract attention, even though there were none. That is how I saw my uncle’s studio, the crowd of sculptures seemed stuck in their unfinished state. He was the shouting man who zip tied his work to his bedroom floor. A mouth forming a word it could never say. Eyes that stared without seeing. The plaster would crack and the bronze patina would spread like a disease over the frozen faces.
When I went in (I think he liked me the most) he would laugh a great bellowing laugh and remove his scarred hands from his gloves. I’d get a yellowed sticky sucky sweet from the depths of his overalls as a reward for navigating the sea of limbs and faces. He had a grey stubble that was always one day too long. It was how I remembered him afterwards. He was funny because he would always turn red at the mention of his wife (my aunt, because that’s how families work) even years after their marriage. Well, I say always… Perhaps only once or twice, but even then to a seven year old mind that was always.
When I cast my mind back now to my childhood and my uncle, multiple memories offer themselves to me. Chief amongst them was a time when I was scrubbing the kitchen table of the evening’s meal. The sponge was green and dirty and I had to go get more later that day. Mother was talking about her brother (ie my uncle, the one aforementioned). I found that word recently. A letter I got from the solicitors used it and I thought I’d better look it up. I kinda like it. In the situation aforementioned, my mother said many things and then he was no longer in his room anymore.
The winters flitted by like the moths in the corner of soot. I finished school and read lots. I once found the yellow sticky sucky sweets in the cornershop but was with friends and didn’t buy them because they are for kids. We were adults. I got a coke instead and picked up some more sponges for my mother (henceforth will just be referred to as mum thank you very much). Henceforth. There’s another.
Henceforth whilst writing down these memories… No that doesn’t quite work. As I proceed to write down these memories I want it to be pretty bloody clear that my uncle wasn’t a bad guy. He might have done some bad things but that doesn’t make someone a bad person.
He gave me sweets after all. Yellow sticky sucky ones that tasted of bronze and lemon.
I never really liked lemons. Too sour. Good on fish though.
Many thanks to Alex and Harper for allowing us to publish their writing, and to Mr Gardner for sharing the digital version of Pandemonium. We hope you enjoy reading them!
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