Hercufleas by Sam Gayton Page A

with a single bite and you cannot. The answer, I tell you, is this: you do not have the weapon that they carried.’
    She paused. The only sounds were the tinderfly’s buzzing and her needles clack-clacking together.
    â€˜This weapon was not a sword, or an axe, or a Bazuka, or a bow,’ she continued. ‘It was a plague. The deadliest disease of all. And its name was the Black Death.’
    Greta breathed in sharply. Beside her, Hercufleas felt her prickle of fear.

    â€˜The Black Death,’ repeated Miss Witz, shivering. ‘Carrying this weapon inside them, your tiny ancestors killed millions upon millions of people.’ She smiled grimly. ‘Fleas killing humans… Tell me, Hercufleas, what is that, if not giant-slaying?’
    â€˜But the Black Death is gone,’ Greta blurted out. ‘It doesn’t exist any more.’
    â€˜Ah,’ said Miss Witz. ‘For the answer to that, I must finish my story. The Black Death was a dreadful weapon, yes, but it had one weakness: feeding on death and destruction, it had to constantly kill to survive. Eventually it became too deadly. Killing too quickly, before it had a chance to spread. And so the plague destroyed itself and humanity survived. And yet…
    â€˜Even after all that suffering and loss, some saw the terrible power of the Black Death, and wanted that power for themselves. Evil men, who loved to conquer and kill – warlords, emperors, generals. One of them was the old king of Petrossia.’
    â€˜The Czar,’ Greta breathed, and Hercufleas remembered the portrait on the stamp above the stairs back in the house-hat. The man with the smouldering eyes.
    â€˜The Czar.’ Miss Witz nodded. ‘The most fearsome, bloodthirsty king Petrossia has ever known, and he did not see the danger of the Black Death; only its power. Sacrificing whole armies, he managed to take a single drop of the Black Death and contain it within a phial. Then he sealed the phial in a lead box, placed the lead box in a stone chest and put the stone chest in the heart of his great fortress in the northern Waste. And then he told his enemies exactly where it was.’
    â€˜Why would he do that?’ said Hercufleas.
    â€˜To terrify them,’ said Miss Witz. ‘To let them know he had the most dreadful weapon in all the world, and that he could unleash it at any time. Knowing this, who would be mad enough to attack him? Now, of course, the Czar has been dead for many years, murdered in mysterious circumstances. His fortress has fallen to ruin… yet there the Black Death remains.’
    â€˜No one can take it,’ said Greta. ‘Because anyone who opens that phial…’
    â€˜â€¦ will die from the Black Death themselves.’ Miss Witz nodded again.
    â€˜Except for me,’ said Hercufleas.
    Greta looked down at him. At last Miss Witz stopped knitting. Curled up in her lap was a finished green scarf.
    â€˜Except for you,’ she said. ‘Like all fleas, you are immune. You can carry the Black Death without being harmed by it yourself. Go to the Czar’s old fortress, Hercufleas. Find the chest. Open the lead box. Break the phial. Drink the drop inside. Then we will have our weapon – the only weapon that can defeat Yuk.’
    â€˜Miss Witz!’ Greta hugged her teacher. ‘You’re a genius! He really
is
a giant-slayer!’
    But Hercufleas didn’t feel like one. Something nasty coiled inside him, like a drop of cobra blood. ‘You don’t just want me to defeat Yuk,’ he said to Miss Witz. ‘You want me destroy him.
Kill
him.’
    â€˜Yuk kills,’ Greta said, whirling round, ‘and he’ll keep on killing. If you don’t do this, it will be
your
fault when he guzzles everyone in Tumber.’
    Miss Witz leaned down, joints cracking like snapped pencils, until her chin was resting on the windowsill. ‘Greta is right,’ she said. ‘I wish