Tales of the Zodiac - The Goat's Tale Read Online Free PDF Page A

lies on the fringes of Dref Libran, a coastal town situated about half way along the north coast. Here, the sea is not only to the north but also to the east, courtesy of a huge inlet that ventures across almost half the island.
    We are to race eastward, and this means that the first quarter of the race takes us through the wildest part of the island, the part known as ‘the green’. These are the trampling grounds of my father’s flock, awkward hills and hillocks covered by nothing but gorse, bare earth fed by nothing but salt spray and relentless wind. Where there is track, it is wide enough for one person only, and it is some consolation to me that I will not catch anyone up to overtake until I am through this portion. Thorns and nettles litter the path, destined to rip my exposed feet to shreds. Even in the summer, with spindly white clouds floating in wonderful blue, this place is exposed and hostile. In the winter, it will kill you. There is also another, smaller inlet to contend with here. A detour of at least a kilometre to circumvent a gap that could be jumped by a particularly athletic sixteen-year-old boy. The prince will not dare.
    Then there is the possibility of cutting out the entire north-eastern corner of the island altogether. The claw of Lawrenny is an exposed, scrub-covered headland connected to the island only by its scraggy neck. The temptation to run straight across this neck will be reined in only by the presence of a schoolmaster.
    After this, it will be a run through the fishing villages that dot the southern coastline. These stinking, rickety villages will be lined with stinking, rickety fisherfolk all ready to hurl insults at the boys that run past. The people of these villages are renowned for their mean spirits. I, for one, don’t blame them; to spend one’s life rising at dawn, smelling of fish, frozen by the sea, catching fish, returning home to eat fish, sleeping beside a woman who looks and smells like a fish, is a life that would justifiably make any man miserable.
    The fishing villages increase in density as they approach Arberth, one of the two major settlements on the island. Arberth, for the inhabitants of this wild isle, is the gateway to the mainland: a stone behemoth rising from the mud and grass. We will not run inside the town but around its stone walls and the headland it encloses. A town for guards, fishermen and drunks, where people perpetually behave as though it is night time, Arberth is not a place that the young boys of the Prince Libran School should see.
    Leaving Arberth, we shall be about halfway around the southern coast, probably less than two kilometres south of where we started on this island, which, on a map, would look long and flat. The next sixteen kilometres will be more of the same undulating track, taking us down through gorse bushes, shale-covered beaches and back up to exposed cliff tops. There will be some fishing huts, but not so many, and, for long portions, there will be nothing but the wind and its monstrous seagulls to worry us.
    The finishing straight will take us into the royal city of Tallakarn. The cobbled streets of the capital will be where the parents of the boys, the teachers and most of the rest of the school will be waiting. My father, of course, will not be there. Those goats will not tend themselves.
    I float through the race with scarce a conscious thought. My naked feet pass through pain into numbness and, one by one, I overtake almost every other boy in the race. Although I am the subject of much scorn amongst my colleagues, there is not another one of them who would dare try to stop me winning. As with most bullies, they are physical and emotional cowards and must sate themselves with only hurting the weak. Unfortunately for them, a lifetime of living wild on the hillsides has made me anything but weak and, as such, they are restricted to simple name-calling and ostracism.
    I count each boy I pass and, as I move past Dafydd into third