Orcs in the Webbe

The following piece of speculative fiction was written by Gavin Syme, head of the World of Valon at Alternative Armies for special use by Orcs in the Webbe in its online Advent Calendar 2009.  He says: 'Craig loves the Children of the Dragon, and I as their custodian in these times am pleased to offer him and all of you this tale with a twist in its own scaly tail.  It is the longest piece of writing yet on the Dracci.  I hope you like it'.

Here Once Were Dragons

Three pearly white teeth stained with bloody spittle fell from the mouth of Lieutenant Jean Ardente as he stumbled and landed heavily on the sun heated bone baked dry grass. The Elf soldier’s charbelle pattern musket lay forgotten where it had dropped from his hand under the stunning impact of the Orc's iron like fists.  Laughing the Orc, his blood encrusted uniform stained with more red with ichor than with its own scarlet fabric, stepped forward and prepared to drive his right fist in a killing blow to Lieutenant Ardente's skull.

“You might ave' though that you was safe from me, wif the rest of your pointy mates off lookings for you in the wrong places.  You is wrong 'dere and no mistaking it, for I ave' followed you ere and now I means to kill you off and take anythings you 'as for meself.”

The Orc paused and then, to better enjoy the moment, carefully removed his tattered black dust crusted shako from his head and placed it down tenderly  next his ground driven point sergeant's halberd. He was careful not to damage either in the process.  No sense in risking his mean and meagre pay by having to pay Scummings that damn quartermaster for another if he lost or destroyed either of his own as allotted by battalion stores.  His moment of almost obsessive care over, the Orc returned to the Elf, his face twisting back into a mask of tusked hatred.  Back to Jean who was now crawling, face down, away from him ever so slowly.

“No, you ain't escaping me Crappo.  I means to av' your lot, now give it me!”

With a single wrenching lunge the Orc hauled up and then flung the Elf soldier over onto his back in a small cloud of soil dust.  Lieutenant Jean Ardente, his head spinning and with blood running freely from his ruined mouth was drifting in an out of consciousness, hardly heard.  He was near death, he knew that much; he was spent.  The foul Orc was bellowing at him again, but the words were meaningless and vicious.  Ardente did not speak Albionite, he spoke Catalucian as well as Armorican Elvish; his education at a well funded school in Brast had also included classical tongues but they were no use here.   The Orc might as well have been a Othari slave tender for all the sense his words made to Jean.

Eyes closed in fear and resignation the Elf made no resistance as he was forcibly turned over.  Laughing the Orc raised his bloody fist, casting a shadow over Ardente.  Ardente waited and then a startled and strangled cry, and a sound like an apple being torn roughly in twain came to his ears.  A moment passed in errie silence then.  A solid thump off to the side, more dust, and then a shadow so much more black came now over the Elf where it settled and stopped.

Jean Ardente felt his neck tip backwards, his head lolling as he was lifted from the baked grass like a child in the arms of its mother.  He turned in the powerful grasp until once more the sun was on his neck and not his smashed and bleeding face.  The expected killing blow did not arrive and with one flickering eye the Elf looked at the ground as it moved beneath him.  Was he already dead?   Before Ardente succumbed to the grip of unconsciousness, he felt he must be dead or dreaming for it seemed he was being held and carried.  Carried by a creature most odd, only three toes on each foot, no shoes; claws at their tips.  And then a smell of faintly sulphur...a dream surely.  A dream that oozed into the screaming emptiness of a mind that then succumbed to the need for a blackness to blot out all else in creation.

***

Water dripped and trickled in a steady flow into the cloth not only of Jean Ardente's uniform but also the dry pores of his exhausted skin beneath.  The cold running liquid began to chill the Elf and that broke the chains of his daze and brought him, dragged him, once more into the living world of pain and hatred that the recent actions around Scallymanky had made his once privileged life.  It was nearly dark, only a small pool of daylight came from above, and the walls around him were of stone.  Roughly hewn and taken forth, for there were remaining ropes rotting climbing these walls, this must be a stone quarry.  A mine of ancient origin, it was not in common use, too much detritus and dirt along with a smell of dank and abandonment.

Lieutenant Ardente could not rise to his feet however, he was too weak, and though he took in these facts of his surroundings they had little meaning for the time in his dazed mind.  Eyes flickering he took in a shadow to his fore, a large sitting shadow, with the outline of an Elf.  No not an Elf, not an Orc either.  It was stocky and powerful like a Dwarf but it was larger than he was.  Ardente did not know who sat before him, but he could hear it breathing, a sound as leaves in a tunnel.  He reeled, his mind playing tricks of a fug to convince him of illusion.  It must be a shadow or a stone outcrop.

This thought fled just as suddenly has it had come, for the shape moved and then Jean Ardente could do nothing but scream.  He howled and then mewed as a suckling babe for its mother would.  Then he wept and shook his head. A moan of terror all the sounds he could make issue forth.  Darkness and fog of unconsciousness came to him again.

***

Time must have passed, but only perhaps minutes or even just seconds, as Ardente once more awoke dazed and scared almost out of his wits.  He had seen something that had passed from the world in the time of the old Empress Morgana and the long gone Crystal Empire of the Elves.  A creature of nightmare, of childish tales told to frighten wayward infants, of a fury and boundless range that had once threatened to engulf the entirety of Valon itself in a torrent of blood.  This foe had a name that was once wrought deep in the bones of all Elves; Dracci.

Children of the Dragons the Dracci had once been the mortal enemies not only of the Elves but also other races that the Emperor now fought against.  Those now enemies had once combined to try to curb the awesome power of the Dragons and they had very nearly failed.  But that had been in Jean Ardentes father’s time now past and gone not to return and the Dracci were gone from Valon; the Emperor had proclaimed as much upon taking the Peacock Throne.

Sitting, with banded muscles beneath scaled red skin, the Dracci did not look like it was a vanished thing at all.  It had seen Ardente awaken and it had seen his terror at its appearance before him.  Now it flexed its back and Jean heard sinews stretch and creak with intensity that drove him to a garbled uttering of a child’s rhyme that he had thought forgotten:

Cynder, Cynder evil starre, how I wonder where you are?
On above the worlde so high, like death come from the sky
When thee blazing ones is gone, when they nothing shines upon,
Then you show your little lights, cynder, cynder all the night.
Then the traveller in the darke, curses you for your terror spark,
He cannot see now which way to go, as you do all cynder so.
The dark blue sky yours to keep, and often through my visor peep,
For you never shut your eyes, 'till the blazing ones is in the sky.
As your bloody and tiny sparke devours the traveller in the darke,
Though I know not what you are - cynder, cynder Dragon afar.

He stopped and heard his own mouth clack shut, his teeth nearly biting into dry tongue.  Jean needed to pull himself together and think fast.  He was weak from his wounds inflicted by that accursed, and now dead, Orc.  This brought a small smile and a degree of clarity.  The Dracci had evidently saved him from the Orc; killing the Albion scum in the process.  Did this mean pity or simply that it perhaps meant to kill him now…or even that it meant to consume him at its leisure!

There was light enough in the damp pit in which he sat for Jean to make out that the Dracci was some ten feet from him, it was sitting, and in its hand was his own pistol.  Jean was puzzled though as the creature was holding the finely made Lyonesse pistol by its barrel and the three claws of its right hand were closed around the wooden butt.  The pistol was loaded but not cocked and it was evident to Jean that it could not be fired at him from that position.  Perhaps he could escape now, if he simply stood and then climbed up the rough edge of the pit back to the surface above.  Perhaps, also with a lack of rational thought, it could be done. Jean stood and stepped slowly and clumsily towards the wall.

The Dracci did not move until he reached the water moistened stone of the nearest wall.  Jean had just placed a bloodied hand on the wall then the creature moved with a speed that dazzled the Elf.  One moment it was sitting, the next it had him by the arm, with a grip that brought fresh tears to his eyes.  With apparently little effort the Dracci lifted Jean from the ground with its left arm while still holding the pistol backwards in its right hand.  Jean tried not to cry out as the creature took him back to the rock mound that he had woken upon and then almost tenderly set him down upon it before returning to its own original sitting position.

So escape was not an option. This creature could kill him in a moment of that Jean was sure. Why had it only, gently it seemed, restrained him when he had made to leave?

Now that it was back sitting the Dracci turned the pistol clumsily with its claws, to all angles, even looking straight down the smooth barrel.  Jean began to realise that the creature knew the pistol was a weapon but equally it had no idea how to make use of it.  This intrigued Jean and further cleared his mind.  A firelock was the most complex of machines that an Elf knew of. The mighty ships of the Ferach Navy were vastly more complex but even a crude peasant from the wilds of Armorica understood to how to load and shoot a firelock within not more than moments of being shown it.  They might not shoot worth rot and they might not be able to manage to load more than once in a minute but they understood the principle easily enough.  Jean watched on in silence for a while as the Dracci managed only to sever the flint from its swan necked hammer.  It fell to the floor with a stone ticking on stone tinkle.

Then like lightening it struck Jean what he was seeing.  The Dragon, the nightmare, the piston of destruction could not fathom the gun at all.  It simply could not understand how to hold it or use it though it surely knew it had power.  For some reason its mind was trapped, the sword, the shield and the spear it understood and was master of.  The secret of Black Powder was not for its knowing, not now and not ever before.  Lieutenant Jean Ardente decided to do something that no Elf had done in many long years; he would try to speak to a child of the Dragons.

‘Can you hear me, do you understand my words fyre lizard?’

The Dracci ceased its seemingly pointless efforts and its black like oil eyes looked directly at him.  Seconds passed and it became apparent that it had heard him but had not understood.  Jean repeated the sentence that he has spoken again in Armoric then in the Catalic tongue of the Dark Elves.  Nothing.  He knew some words of Nepolise and tried them, the Dracci tilted its head, but still did not seem to understand the words.  He then considered that the languages of the now gone Darke Age might work, he had learned several classical tongues in his studies.  He tried old Elvish with no luck, then he tried again this time in Alevian a language now dead and unspoken in all of Urop.

Once the same sentence in Alevian had left his lips Lieutenant Jean Ardente waited and as he was about to try another tongue the Dracci replied to his question.  In a voice like brimstone heated and pounded with hammers it answered.

‘I know these words scale less one.  I know your race of the pale hair and sharp blades.  But I know not your grab and the other tongues you bring forth.  And this blade of yours, small and useless, fit not for a warrior.’

Jean waited for the Dracci to speak again, half in awe of the voice and the words already come.

‘They hail me as Xyill, third to the Warlord Zyhall, fifth of nine eggs once of Sherr.  I have been in his shadowed and deep place longer than I have a mind to tell.  Put here I was by my master on his order.  Wounded and then cast down; that I might survive the ravaging of the worlde by your race.  I have heard nor seen anything of my fellows since and this hole I cannot leave.  Thyngs which crawl and which fall to me I eat and the waters of the stream here are mine alone to have.’

‘I do think that Alevia must have been fought over and conquered many times since I last stood in the sun.  Your people were weak to us in battle and they stood not a hope of victory.  Yet, you appear here now and in triumph I think as you are finely garbed and have the words it seems of many of the lesser races.’

This was the stuff of dry text and legends here.  The Dracci, Xyill, did not know of the Emperor, of the wars and not of Black Powder either.  Jean steeled himself and replied to the now silent red monster.

‘You are of the Dracci.  A child of the once mighty Dragons of legend now gone.’

Xyill snarled but Jean bravely put up his hands and lowered his head in a gesture of submission and continued.

‘I seek to offend you not mighty warrior, I speak the truth of my world now.  I am Armorican but my people used to be of the Empress and the Peacock Throne.  I am an officer in the Emperor Mordred’s Armee in this nation now called Catalucia realm of the decadent Dark Elves, my battalion wars here against the Orcs.  You have my pistol, a weapon of powder and bullet in your hand.  All my people use these weapons now, not spear and bow.’

Jean could not tell what the Dracci was thinking.  Its face was so bizarre to him, all scales and its eyes of the purest black showed no emotion.

‘I hear your words Armorican but I have no ken of these places and I know myself to be in Alevia run of the Elves and Goblins.  But the Magicke is gone, this I feel and you give no aura of it at all.  I will take your words as true, I could rend you asunder if your words are lies to me.’

He did not doubt the Dracci in the slightest, Jean doubted than even his pistol would kill the creature.  Perhaps a shot to the base of the skull but a dozen fine muskets would be more in keeping with the task.  He assured Xyill that he spoke the truth and that his clothes and gun were proof of it.  The Dracci heaved its shoulders and then replied.

‘So it has come to pass.  My masters as no more in the boundless skies.  What of my people, where reside they now?’

Jean decided to tell Xyill what he knew of the Dracci from his schooling, which was better than most.  It was a risk but if he was to leave alive then he needed to befriend this creature with the truth as he knew it.

‘The Dragons are indeed gone from Valon.  Our Ferach Empire has sailed all the seas and none have spoken of nor seen your kind since the time of annulment.  Annulment came once our Emperor had rightly taken the Power Ring from his corrupt mother the Empress and the binds of Magicke were broken by his will.  Our god Buon-Partee then gave the Emperor the secrets of the Flintloque and he ensured that we….removed the threat of your race to us.  All this was when I was young, I saw it not.  Our legend tells of your race as monsters, killers and destroyers without reason or skill in war.  Ruthless and savage…but very strong…you were cast out by the Emperor when he marched against you and your Lizardmen allies.’

Jean stopped and then started abruptly when Xyill roared with laughter and then spoke.

‘Annulment you hail it.  World killer I would.  It’s the Wylde Magicke of Valon of which you so wrongly speak.  I know now of this Emperor of yours.  An upstart hatchling and a coward.  His god and his will are nothing.  The Power Ring held by the Empress was our goal too, but it seems he a betrayer of his own kind got it first.  I know now why my warlord put me here and wounded me also.'

Xyill stood and flexed the roped muscles all over his body.  Jean could only imagine how old this creature was, it must be several score years older than he was but it looked young and full of vigour.  The Dracci were indeed an awesome foe.  The warrior continued.

'I and my kin were here engaged in battle against more than thirty Goblins, cruel and easily dead things they are, the seven of us were matched with them by blade and might.  The upper claw was ours and a victory in sight when I was cast down here.  I saw only a flash of blinding purple light race across the morning sun and then all went still.  It was some time before I heard the odd tongues of the Goblins speak once more.  I assumed my fellows had moved on and left a few scattered and maimed foes.  It seems now that I was wrong in that thought and many since.  Their laughter and singing was not in joy of survival but in victory over us.  My fellows must have perished by the purple light in the sky and only I was spared.'

The Dracci looked at Jean and posed him a question. 

'I have not pulled forth the courage to leave this dark pit, many times I have gotten to the rim of soil and then retreated.  Afraid, aye, I am not afraid to admit that even I Xyill of the fifty skulls feels fear.  I heard your din of your struggle and was only but moments in the light to split that stupid creature and bring you here that I might try to have words with you. Did you see the bones of my fellows up there?  I have to know are they dead!'

Jean swallowed hard and then found the courage to reply.

'I thank you for saving me from the Orc, I was indeed done for but for your aid.  I have not long been in this part of Catalucia and came here only this morning ahead of my patrol.  We were looking for red coats to capture, but I was instead captured.  I did not see any trace of your fellows, flesh nor bones.  But the time of annulment is long past, the winds and dust might have covered any traces.'

Xyill looked to the stone floor of the pit and thought for a moment.  Then it crossed to a small pile of apparently belongings and pushed them all aside.  A half eaten rabbit fell to the stone with a soft thump.  The Dracci went right to the back of the pile and pulled forth a leather girdle and the oddest, he supposed, weapons Jean had ever seen.

The leather girdle was easily large enough to fit around the chests of three Elves, but it fitted Xyill snugly as he slipped the tough straps around himself and then tightened them until the girdle appeared to be part of his body.  From the pile he had taken four eerie looking green stone throwing weapons three of which he fastened to the girdle.  Almost as an after thought Xyill reached down and picked up the pistol that he had dropped and passed it back to Jean.

'Here.  Take it, you will need it more than I.  It hurts my mind to gaze upon it anyway.  I see you looking at my Zalher, the hurling crosses, this is my weapon of choice.  Purest jade, I can kill a foe at a run with these before they know they no longer breathe.'

Lieutenant Ardente could well believe it.  Those hurling crosses looked like if they were thrown with the strength of a Dracci they could fell a Hunvarian Ogre.  He took the outstretched pistol and checking its charge placed it back into his belt.  Xyill roared in laughter, his rows of white teeth bright in the dull light and then placed the razor sharp hurling cross he had remaining in his hand onto his girdle.

'I knew you to be a creature of honour.  I proffered you back your 'piztel' as you hail it and was ready to cut you down if you had wielded it against me in anger.  I sensed you would not.  Now that you have my trust will you aid me in my quest to recover the places of my fellows and to seek out the Dragons once more?'

Jean did not know how to answer this.  How could he.  A creature long thought gone from Valon was asking him, a lowly officer in the Emperors army to journey with it to find creature that surely must be dead.  Did this mean that Xyill was going to let him go and to follow him even out of the pit?  He had to take that chance, he must get out and his mind was screaming at him to run and hide but he knew the only way out was with Xyill's consent if not outright assistance.  It certainly seemed that way.

'Xyill.  I cannot promise you my loyalty for all time, I am an enlisted solider, but I swear that I will take you to my general and speak on your behalf that you are granted the permission to join with us and then perhaps we can seek out your fellows together.'

The Dracci considered this for a while and then, as it grasped the walls and began to climb up, replied.

'I am not sure your 'genrul' will speak with me, he may not speak in a common tongue or have your noble soul. Our races were long enemies and never allies. Let us two part here then as allies in this.  Point me the way to the southern ocean, perhaps I can find reptile traders who will ferry me to the deserts.  There are sure to be Dragons amid the burning dunes, it was the way we came here.  Climb atop my shoulders and I will lift you out and then follow.  You have given me the courage now, I will reside no more in this pit and face any danger that doth come at me.'

Jean hesitated the merest moment and then carefully gripped the Dracci's back and pulled himself up on to its broad scaled shoulders.  He felt Xyill move easily under him as if he weighed nothing and then they began to climb towards the light above.

***

Emerging into the at once dazzling sunlight once more Lieutenant Jean Ardente rolled across the grass blinked and rubbed at his eyes before he spotted the patrol, his supposed rescuers and then he suddenly realised what was about to happen as a sound of claw on stone came on behind him.

Some two score feet distant an Elvish sergeant waved to the blooded and muddied Jean and raised his hand to wave him onward towards and down the slope to the him and the other members of the patrol that had been sent out looking for survivors from the first mission of the day.  The smiles of the Elves at finding one of their own alive, an office no less, was instant and then instant gone too.  Jean saw the look of terror in their eyes before their muscles reacted.  He knew what would, what must happen now.  He had been a fool, a savant of book learning in a world of war.  What was occurring behind Jean he could not see but the eyes of the patrol told him all he needed to know to predict the future.

The sergeant already had his musket in his hands, already had it loaded, already had it cocked even.  From a slack carrying grip in one hand he began to scream as the hand which had begun a wave of greeting to Jean turned to a curled fist to grip the barrel of his upcoming firelock.  Others in the patrol began to raise their own muskets and the click of well greased locks rose like bird song into the air.  Jean raised his own arms and began to shout for them to stop, to listen to him, to see their error.  It was merest moments though and Jean grasped that he could not more stop them firing than he could turn day to night.

As the shots began to come Jean now only threw himself flat to the ground and cursed his own stupidity and the anger that he could not change what had happened a million times before and was doomed now to occur again.  Ages, eons old enmity, its reasons lost to time but its fear and hatred remaining would lead to death for one race or the other.  There could be no peace not now, not ever, no treaty only annihilation.

From his soil bound vantage he watched the inevitable come to him.  Xyill charged, bounding over the prone Jean in less than a step of his thickly muscled legs could propel him.  From his girdle he took a hurling cross in each clawed hand and threw them with a grace that Jean could only silently marvel at.  Two Elf Privates collapsed as the razor sharp heavy jade crosses smashed into their bodies, killing them instantly.  Seemingly in an moment Xyill had his remaining two crosses in his hands and continuing to speed into a run at the Elves.  He threw the crosses, one missed but the other took the head from the shoulders of an Elf busily ramming a shot into his musket.

The Dracci went on at a speed than amazed Jean, closing the distance to the Elvish patrol in heartbeats.  A musket ball hit Xyill in the right arm and the Dracci roared with a power that harked back to a wilder time. Another fast flying ball whipped past missing the blood red warrior by merest inches.

Then Xyill was upon the Elves.

Though he now carried no weapons the Elves were no match for Xyill and Jean was witness to death among the living.  The Dracci grabbed the Elf Sergeant with both hands on either side of his head and interlocked his clawed fingers in a deadly vice grip.  With a sickening crack the Elf’s skull imploded and paired off across his rapidly slumping shoulders.  Another musket ball struck Xyill in the small of the back above his tail and he roared in pain.  Turning the Dracci wrenched the smoking musket from the young private who had fired it.  Xyill then lunged and bit deeply into the young Elf, his razor sharp teeth tearing an arm free and exposing bone to the afternoon sun.  A death rattle on his open lips the young Elf fell to the grass, his arm falling away and the musket thumping down also on its own.  Another ball struck Xyill, this time in the neck, lifting flesh away and bringing black blood to pour from the torn wound.  The Dracci rounded again and drove one first right through the closest Elf’s ribcage where it became snared in a shattered bone embrace.

Xyill roared again with less power now as two more shots struck him.  The weight of the dead Elf on his arm pulled the weakening Dracci down to his knees.  Three more Elves closed in and drove their fixed iron bayonets into the Dracci’s body pinning him in a cage of musket length bars.  With his free arm Xyill grabbed one of the muskets that pinned him and crushed its barrel and woodwork, before shoving it away from him, breaking the arm of the Elf holding it.  In a circle of the dead and dying Xyill was now nearing his own end; another musket ball stuck him in the upper body.  This time it was carefully aimed.  Xyill's head fell forward onto his scaled chest.

It had taken only seconds. Jean got to his feet and shouted for his fellow soldiers to leave the creature alone, it was now no danger to them.  With some hesitation they obeyed the officers order and the bayonets sucked free of their flesh prisons.  Xyill toppled and crashed to the ground laying still amid five dead blue coats and several others fainted from wounds or sheer shock.  Jean ran to the Dracci and threw himself down to put his head to that of Xyill.

‘Can you hear me Xyill?  Do you still live on.’

The Dracci opened one black eye and looked straight at Jean before speaking.

‘Not long now scaleless child.  I go to join the great flyers in the pits of the earth.  No journey to seek the truth will I now take.  But before I can go I need you to do one thing for me, one final act of trust between us.’

Jean with tears in his eyes nodded his assent and swore anything that was about to be asked of him.  Xyill saw this and continued.

‘On my back, near where the scales of my torso join those of my neck you see an old wound, made by my Warlord.  It is where the stone is buried.  I need you to tear it free from me else I cannot go from here.  I have died before by a fall and it took me not.’

Jean recoiled in horror, Xyill was asking him to mutilate his body.  But he had sworn to act when asked and so he picked up a discarded bayonet and located the spot of paler scales.  He pushed the blade in and Xyill grunted.  The iron struck something solid and Jean used the blade and his fingers to pull a small blue stone from the Dracci’s flesh.  It glowed luminous even in the daylight of Catalucia, what was it?

Xyill coughed and then laughed.

‘Thank you Ardente.  You have freed me.  Now the blood war ends at last.’

In front of his eyes Jean watched as Xyill’s body turned from a deep red to a pale grey, a grey that spread out across the Dracci from the wound the Elf had just inflicted.  Once the grey reached Xyills head his breathing stopped and he died.  Once the grey covered the Dracci’s entire body there was a creaking and cracking sound and then a loud retort.  With that retort the corpse shattered into a thousand little shards that began to float on the gentle breeze, into the air and away from the gore belched ground.  Soon nothing was left.

The Elves said nothing for a time each lost in his own mind.  Then Jean stood and spoke.

‘Gather the dead and tend to the wounded.  You pick up those muskets.  I suggest my friends that you do not mention this to anyone, not even each other.  Say those cursed Orcs did this.  Say what you truly saw and prison or the mad house awaits you.’

The stone, a luminous blue, was clutched tightly in his hand as he walked back towards the camp and the jade hurling crosses were in a pack he had taken from a dead private. The world had changed for Jean Ardente and this day was the first of many that he would dedicate to locating more of the secrets of this Darke Age that had once ruled over all of Valon.

Xyill had opened his eyes and now he had the magicke stone as well. Had he been responsible for the death of the Dracci?.  He thought not, he had only been the catalyst for an event that should have occurred before he was even born.

It still angered him though.  There must be a way better than war for Valon.

The stone thrummed silent in his hand and the war went ever on.

***

Webmaster's Notes

"Here Once Were Dragons" was written exclusively for Orcs in the Webbe's 2009 Countdown to Christmas Advent Calendar and was first published on Friday 18th December 2009.