by Philip Reeve
From above them now there came another sound: a deep, reverberating twang that Skarper recognized. Some overeager goblin had filled the bratapult with roof rubble and released it. He glanced up and saw a speck in the sky above him; a speck which swelled swiftly into a huge, falling stone. “Look out!” he screeched, and shoved Carnglaze sideways. The sorcerer, thinking that Skarper was attacking him, cursed loudly and raised his sword, then stopped in surprise as the great slab of masonry smashed down on to the flagstones where he had been standing. Dust rose in clouds; shards and splinters scattered, and before the travellers could gather their wits a flagstone at the wall’s foot was shoved aside and the goblins were upon them.
At first Skarper was not sure whether it was Knobbler’s gang or Mad Manaccan’s that was attacking them. Soon he realized it was both. The goblins from the rival towers had met each other as they scrambled down through the little passageways which ran through and beneath the Inner Wall, and instead of fighting each other as they usually did, they had joined together in their hatred for the softlings. Manaccan was first out of the passage, waving his great three-headed flail and screeching madly, but Knobbler was close behind, standing taller than any man on a shield which four straining goblins carried high above their heads, and swinging Mr Chop-U-Up. Behind the two kings there came pouring a swarm of Slatetop and Blackspike boys, as if the whole Inner Wall was just a bucket full of goblins and Fentongoose’s speech had poked a hole in it.
“But look!” he shouted, waving the little winged head on its cord. “We are the Sable Conclave! The old powers of the earth flow strong in us!”
Some of the goblins seemed impressed, but Knobbler charged forward swinging Mr Chop-U-Up, and Mad Manaccan, never one to be out-berserked, foamed at the mouth as he came snarling at the travellers. Fentongoose turned with a squeal of terror and ran away.
Prawl had already fled. Carnglaze let go of Skarper’s leash and ran after them. Skarper hesitated for just a moment, wondering if he should try to explain himself to Knobbler – Look! I brought you these nice softlings! – before he turned and followed the scampering sorcerers. Knobbler and the other goblins did not look as if they were in any mood for explanations.
The three sorcerers already had a head start on him, but he saw Prawl’s robes disappearing round a corner, and ran after him. There were the sorcerers, stumbling down the steep streets and vaulting fallen pillars, putting on a good turn of speed for such learned men. Prawl had cast his backpack off so that he could run faster. Skarper almost swerved aside to see if there was anything valuable in it, but the screech of hunting goblins echoed through the ruined colonnades behind him, driving him on. No point in trying to hide, he thought, glancing wistfully at the deep tree tangles clogging side alleys. No point doubling back and trying to blend in with the hunt. There must be so much man-smell on me now they’d sniff me out easy. . .
He ran on, and soon he could hear the River Oeth chuckling through its gorge ahead. Footsore and panting, he caught up with the sorcerers as they blundered down the long stair into the green shadows of the gorge, where twilight was already gathering between the trees. They were moving more and slowly after their long sprint from the Inner Wall, and the goblins were swiftly gaining on them. Long before they reached the bridge the smaller ones were keeping pace with them, running along the roofs of roadside ruins and shying slates and slabs of stonework at them. Luckily goblins did not use bows, and had nothing deadlier than slates and stones to throw. Luckily their aim was lousy. But it would take more luck than that, thought Skarper, if he and the stupid sorcerers were to escape.
The bridge was in sight now. Skarper could hear the river swirling under it, and the pop, plop, pop of the bubbles that rose and burst in the pool beneath it.
Bubbles? he thought.
The troll came up out of its lair with a roar and a white gush of water. Its battered head was bandaged with pondweed; it was hungry and headachy and in no mood for nonsense as it vaulted on to the bridge.
The sorcerers, who had just been about to cross, shrieked and stumbled back towards the foot of the steps. Carnglaze threw a stone, which rebounded off the troll’s scaly forehead without leaving a mark. None of them seemed to notice Skarper, or think it strange that he was still with them. They all stood there helplessly, troll on one side, goblins on the other, like the filling in an ugly sandwich.
“I command you in the name of the Sable Conclave. . .” Fentongoose said to the troll, but it didn’t seem interested. His voice died away as it turned its black eyes on him and bared its grimy fangs.
Skarper looked up, wondering if he might leave the softlings to their fate and escape unnoticed up one of the overhanging trees or ivied walls, but goblins had already crept up on to the wall tops and the old roofs all around.
“’Ere, ben’t that Skarper?” he heard one shout.
“Can’t be. He got bratapulted,” sneered another.
“It is!” yelled a third.
“But what’s he doing with them softlings?”
“He’s bein’ a traitor, that’s what,” snarled Knobbler, stomping down the stairs with the main body of the goblin force hopping and scuttling behind him. His yellow eyes lit on Skarper and brightened like blown embers as he recognized the scared speck he had sent hurtling out of the bratapult that morning. He was not sure what angered him more: that Skarper had taken up with these softling trespassers, or just that he had somehow avoided being splattered in the first place. “I’m going to have his skin for a nice scarf,” he bellowed.
He raised Mr Chop-U-Up and started to move forward, but Mad Manaccan shoved him aside, eager for first blood and first share of the loot. Whirling his flail above his head, he flung himself through the air towards Skarper and the sorcerers.
But before he reached them there came a great crashing and tearing from the trees beside the stairs. A shape big enough to be a tree itself strode out of the green shadows; huge hands swung an uprooted oak stump like a bat, and there was a meaty crunch as it hit the hurtling goblin king and sent him flying back over the heads of the other goblins to crash down among the boulders near the top of the stairs: a clatter of armour, the dropped flail jangling, a long slither of metal on stone and then stillness.
The goblins reeled backwards. Some shrieked, “Giant! Giant!” But even as they cowered before that massive figure, even as Knobbler prepared to swing Mr Chop-U-Up at its mighty knees, another terror came upon them from out of the trees. Knobbler heard whisking sounds, and yowls of pain from the lads behind him, and suddenly a rain of little sharp sticks was falling all around.
The goblins were masters of all weapons which hacked and hewed and stabbed, but they had never got the knack of archery. Their paws and claws were much too clumsy to fiddle about with bows. They thought archery was cheating, and one of the few bits of history all goblins knew was how the softlings had defeated the goblin army on Bad Wednesday by firing cheaty storms of arrows at them. They cowered under this terrifying new attack, squealing, “Arrers! Arrers!”
Knobbler caught one of the missiles as it ricocheted off his breastplate. “These en’t arrows,” he shouted, trying to calm the goblins’ panic. “They’re just pointy sticks.”
“Pointy sticks! Pointy sticks!” the goblins wailed, not calmed at all.
Knobbler looked up, and saw twig-things swarming through the trees, hurling the sticks down at his boys. Curse ’em, he thought. He’d heard tell of these woodlings, who’d infested Clovenstone along with the foul trees that bred them. He’d never heard of them attacking goblins openly before. Still, they were flimsy things, just sticks themselves really, and he didn’t see what harm they hoped to do. One or two of the boys, looking up to see who was pelting them, had been hit in the eye and were reeling about howling and cursing, but the willow spears weren’t heavy or hard-thrown enough to pierce through goblin hide, let alone armour. “Ignore ’em, lads!” he shouted. “Get the so
ftlings. . .”
But when he turned towards the bridge again, there were more softlings than before. A young warrior with a long, rusty sword was running at him, yelling something that sounded like, “Adherak!”
Knobbler had just time to wonder where he’d sprung from and think what a nice plume his curly golden hair would make before the sword came crashing against his helmet. There was a flash of sparks, the blade rebounded, Henwyn said, “Yowch!”, and Knobbler tottered backwards and was caught up in a scrambling, panicking mass of goblins, convinced that they were under attack by a whole army of softlings now.
The giant Fraddon brandished his oak-tree club and bellowed at the fleeing goblins to speed them on their way, then turned. Two strides took him to the river’s edge, and a swipe of his club batted the unlucky troll backwards into the river. “Back to your pond, old toad,” he growled.
Skarper and the sorcerers looked on in wonder. At first they had been as frightened of these newcomers as they were of the goblins and the troll. Was there no end to the monstrous shapes that Clovenstone was sending to attack them? But when the troll went tumbling, they finally understood that their luck had changed. The giant looked again towards the goblins on the stairs, but they were scattering northward, dropped shields and cleavers clanging on the flagstones as they fled. Then he turned and noticed Skarper standing near the softlings by the bridge. He bellowed again and swung his club up ready to flatten him, but the young warrior who had appeared out of the trees with him called, “Fraddon, no! That’s no goblin; that is Master Skarper!”
The giant lowered his club and bent his huge grey head to stare at Skarper. “Looks like a goblin,” he rumbled. “Smells like a goblin. . .”
“He is a goblin.” Carnglaze’s hand came down on Skarper’s shoulder and gripped it firmly. “But this goblin saved my life,” he said. “I don’t know what his reasons were, but it would not be right to kill him now.”
The giant pulled off his hat and scratched his thatch of hair. “Softlings vouching for a goblin? I’ve never heard the like of that before.”
“A giant and a man fighting side by side?” said Fentongoose. “That’s new to me.”
The young man bowed. “I am Henwyn of Adherak,” he said. In the dim light and all the excitement he had not recognized the three trembling sorcerers. The sorcerers recognized him, though, and exchanged uneasy glances while he explained, “This is Fraddon: he’s a giant. I came to Clovenstone to slay him, but he turned out not to need slaying, and when we heard those goblin horns parping and realized someone was in trouble we came as fast as our legs could – that is, as fast as Fraddon’s legs could carry us. I thought I might as well slay something, since I’d gone to all the trouble of coming here. . .” He looked regretfully at his dented sword. He felt rather proud of the way he’d gone straight for that big goblin. He’d had no idea its armour would be so thick.
“Goblins,” rumbled Fraddon ominously, and looked northward, as if he were regretting not having flattened King Knobbler and a few of his boys while he had the chance.
“He is quite safe, I take it?” Fentongoose asked Henwyn, looking up nervously at the giant.
“And what about all these twiggy things?” quavered Prawl.
The trees that overhung the river were thick with twiglings. Hundreds of black eyes peered down at them through the twilight.
“There’s no real harm in the twiglings,” said Henwyn. “They don’t like people much, and they sort of captured me earlier, but they hate goblins even more, and Fraddon persuaded them to come with us. While Fraddon’s here they’ll do us no harm – oh, but do not make a light!” he added, for he had seen Fentongoose pulling out flint and kindling, ready to light a torch.
The twiglings rustled ominously. “No fire. Fire bads, bads.”
“Put it away, Fentongoose,” said Carnglaze.
“Fentongoose?” cried Henwyn, and he suddenly understood why these three travellers seemed so oddly familiar. “You! The Sable Conclave!”
“We can explain everything!” the sorcerers said hastily.
“We didn’t mean for the cheese spell to work as it did. . .”
“Indeed, we didn’t know that it would work at all!”
“Then why did you make me pay eight gold pieces for it?”
“Er. . .”
“We needed that money!”
“We had to have supplies and transport for our journey to Clovenstone.”
“Boat fare up the Sethyn as far as Sticklebridge, a guide to lead us across the Oeth Moor. . .”
“Such things aren’t cheap. . .”
“So we mixed up that elixir. . .”
“We’d heard from your neighbours in Adherak that you were a bit of a fool. . .”
“That is, they’d said that you were broad-minded and open to new ideas. . .”
“So we thought you might buy it from us. . .”
“It was supposed to give life and body to your cheese.”
“Well it did that all right!” shouted Henwyn, knowing that he would be well within his rights as a hero to chop off the heads of these treacherous magicians, and wishing they didn’t look quite so much like harmless, dithery old men.
“If you can work magic on cheese,” said Skarper, “why can’t you work it on goblins? Why couldn’t you have turned Knobbler into a bat or a hat or something?”
“To be quite honest,” said Fentongoose awkwardly, “we cannot work magic. Not yet, in spite of all our studies. Except for that one time, with the cheese, and we are none of us sure quite how that happened.”
“We’ll pay you back, Henwyn,” promised Prawl. “Won’t we, Fentongoose?”
“Well, I suppose. . . Yes, yes; as soon as we’re inside the Keep, we’ll pay you back tenfold. We are the Lych Lord’s rightful heirs, you see; look, I bear his token.”
He fished inside his robes for the amulet; frowned; fished deeper. A look of horror came upon his face. “It’s gone! The Lych Lord’s token! The amulet! It’s gone! The string must have snapped when we were running from those beastly goblins. . .” He started bustling towards the steps. “Come on, we must go back and look for it.”
“We shall do no such thing, Fentongoose!” said Prawl, grabbing him firmly by the collar of his robes.
“But without the token, how shall we prove our right to the Stone Throne?”
Carnglaze shook his head. “You don’t really think we’re going to get inside the Keep now, do you? Not after what just happened? It is over, Fentongoose. We shall stop the night at Southerly Gate, but when the morning comes I, for one, shall be starting for home.”
The giant Fraddon, who had been listening to all of this, said in a sudden rumble, “Best not go to Southerly Gate tonight. The goblins could come back and sniff you out. I killed a king of theirs, and that’s apt to make them revengeful. Come to Westerly instead. Ned will tend your wounds, and give you food.”
“Ned?” asked Carnglaze.
“Food?” said Skarper hopefully.
“Excellent plan!” said Prawl. “We can discuss all this at greater length over supper.”
“Eight gold coins and some coppers and a button,” grumbled Henwyn. “Not to mention the price of a new cheesery.”
“I knew that string was wearing thin,” said Fentongoose, still in mourning for his lost treasure. “I knew I should have put an extra knot in it. Oh, what a fool I am!”
They set off in single file along a riverside path which the giant had made for himself, winding between trees and ruins. Darkness was settling over Clovenstone and, as it deepened, so the voice of the river seemed to grow louder and the white water of the rapids and the little waterfalls showed whiter still, and everything else was grey, except for the stars which winked at them sometimes through the treetops. And all around them they could hear the soft pitter-pat of small things falling, so that Skarper won
dered if it was starting to rain. Then, as the moon rose and slipped its pale light down through the branches, he saw that the falling things were tiny, spiky balls which dropped from the boughs of trees where they’d been growing. When one of these balls rolled into a patch of moonlight it would twitch and split open, and two black-bead eyes would squint out from inside for a moment; then twiggy hands would reach out and make the gap wider and a tiny twigling would emerge and go scampering up the trunk of the nearest tree. So the wood makes twiglings just like the earth makes goblins, Skarper thought, and he wondered why, and what it meant.
“We’ll ask Ned,” said Henwyn, when Skarper pointed out the new-hatched twiglings to him. “She’ll know.”
“Who’s Ned?” asked Skarper.
“Ned is a princess.”
“Is he the one you came to rescue?”
“She. And yes, sort of. You’ll see for yourself in a minute. Look; we’re nearly there!”
The river curved in front of them in the dark, narrower here, and laughing softly to itself. A broad slab of moorland granite had been laid across it as a bridge, and beyond the bridge there was a little path leading up through moonlit bushes, and beyond the bushes were some bare bean-rows, and beyond the bean-rows the towers of Westerly Gate rose dark against the sunset. A ship was perched upon the tallest one, and warm yellow light spilled welcomingly from all its portholes.
“When everything was young and new,” said Princess Ned, “long before the first men were born, the world had its own ideas about who should live in it. From the trees of the forests came the twiglings; from the cold hills came the giants; on the floors of the rivers stones stretched their limbs and became trolls; in the vaults of the sky, puffs of water vapour and ice crystal stirred and woke and called themselves cloud maidens.” Under the mountains the lava lake hawked up the first eggstones, and the forefathers of all goblins smashed their way out of them and started squabbling.
“For long, long ages things went on like that, and the old creatures of the world were a wonder and a terror to the first men when they began to settle the Westlands, to farm and mine. But some men learned to feel the magic running in the earth and in the air, and they learned how to harness it just as they harnessed fire and wind and water. Sorcerers, they were called, and it was thanks to them that the softlands were tamed, the deepwoods felled, and the old things of the world’s beginning driven into secret places. Many of them sought refuge in the Bonehills, where the magic had always been strongest. But the sorcerers followed them there, and to show how easily they could control the old powers, they split open the summit of Meneth Eskern and a tower rose from it, and they called it Clovenstone, and made it their stronghold. From here they ruled over all the lands of men, and the kings of men sent tribute to fill their treasure houses, and even the old things bowed down to them, and under their rule there was peace throughout the Westlands.