The Girl and the Guardian

by Peter Harris

  Quickblade was in the hills below Moonbird Hollow overlooking the enemy lines stretching from Lake Avalon across Applegate Vale to the Enyása of the Guardian World. It was the third day after he had met the Trader and given him the letter. He felt uneasy, as if there was something more he should have said or done. But the girl was so stubborn. He had not forgotten how angry she made him.

  ‘So, what do you say? Should I go after her and beg her to come?’ he asked his faithful man-at-arms, Willhard, known to all as Willy.

  ‘I dunno,’ replied Willy, casually flicking a piece of apple from his knife into his mouth. ‘But you be careful, Quicky, or you’ll be going up you-know-what mountain and getting yourself growed up. Then who’d lead us to glorious victory?’

  ‘You would, I suppose you think, you great lug. But Zarks! Who said I even liked the girl?’

  ‘I saw the way you looked at her. You can’t fool old Willy.’ Willhard was one of the oldest Boy Raiders, and had shown no tendencies to fall in love.

  ‘Lies! Well, not a word to the others, anyway! We can’t have them gossiping and saying, “The Captain’s going soft, he’ll be off to make babies any day now,” just when we need them united to hit the enemy back, hard.’ He smacked his fist into his hand.

  ‘But we’ve only just got here!’ groaned Willhard. ‘You can’t be thinking of making us ride back to that ’orrible gate after what happened last night, can you? We’ve lost Arren’s mind, wiped off the slate, phhwit, just like that, clean gone! We can’t beat ’em like this! We need that girl – if Rilke’s right about her walking in Faery. Right under the Birdmen’s noses, he said!’

  ‘Arren let his helmet slip! He’s – he was – an idiot. Maybe he’ll be smarter when he’s been retaught.’

  ‘You don’t wanna go and get her in case the boys think you’re on the way to la-la land, do you?’ Will cradled his arms and rocked them as if he was holding a baby, and made cooing noises at it.

  ‘You watch it!’ said Quickblade, and launched himself at Willy, wrestling him to the ground and pinioning him quick as thought, before Willy had stopped cooing. ‘Ouch! Look what you made me do! That thorn’s still in there somewhere.’ Quickblade’s arm was bleeding.

  ‘Here, I’ll dig it out for ya,’ offered Willy, eagerly, all mockery forgotten. But Quickblade whipped out his long dagger and brandished it.

  ‘Keep away,’ he growled, nursing the wound with his free hand. Then he sat down, braced himself and dug into his arm with the dagger, and flicked out a large thorn-tip, like a razor-sharp baby shark’s tooth. He clapped his hand over the hole and hummed a war chant through gritted teeth as the pain gradually ebbed.

  ‘Bring me Rilke,’ he said when it was better.

  Rilke, a little furry wurrier face peering out over his tunic, came into the tent where Quickblade sat brooding. ‘What is your command, sire?’ he asked bravely. ‘Do you want me to lead a raiding party behind enemy lines?’

  ‘No, cheeky boy! Tell me about this Shelley Arkle. What is she like? Is she a… you know… a Jilter type? ’

  ‘Oh no, sir, I don’t think so. She’d never join the Jilters! The Evergirls, maybe…’

  ‘They’re the same thing, you… you ninny!’

  ‘Sorry, sire. I won’t mention them again, Evergirl – I mean Ever.’

  Then Rilke told Quickblade all about their adventures, about the escape from Thorngate – ‘That’s what Lord Korman named the Wickergate, sire’ – and about the battle of the Bottomless Canyon and her cunning parachute jump into the Zagonamara lake, and about Baldrock and their brave escape through Faery to the Guardian enclosure where Rilke had been made to stay and Shelley had gone on with ‘mean old Korman.’

  ‘Send me, sire, if you want to get her! I know a bit about that country, where the Ürxura are. My dad told me stories about it – including the Evergirls. He’s seen them once. I think – ’

  ‘You think wrong. You’re too young – you won’t let go of that wurrier, you won’t eat rabbit, and you still can’t keep on the top side of a horse. And stop talking about the zarking Jilters!’

  ‘But sire –’

  ‘And stop calling me sire! No, I’ll send Willy, and Rark, and Wardog. They can ride like the wind, and Wardog’s a good tracker.’

  ‘What? You’re sending me where?’ said Willhard, who had gone back to cutting up apples and throwing the pieces into his mouth. ‘With Rark? He’s crazy, and he’s a girl!’ (The explanation of that odd statement is this: The Boy Raiders have a charter, written up and added to over the years, which they call the Code. In the Code there is a rule which says

  All shall be called boys. Any girl who joins shall be accounted a boy.

  So Willhard was breaking the rules in revealing the sex of Rark.)

  ‘I have spoken,’ said Quickblade.

  ‘I know you have, but I’m not going. I appeal to the Code:

  No boy shall be ordered around if he really doesn’t want to be.’

  And Quickblade respected the Code, and let Willy do as he would. ‘You and the Shelley are too alike anyway, stubborn as that old Trader’s donkey. I don’t want you getting any ideas from her,’ he growled. So he picked a strong boy named Trench, who was good with a spade (as he for some reason pointed out when he volunteered). ‘Also,’ he boasted, ‘I can ride like the wind, and strike like the Snake… or the blade of a shovel,’ he added with a significant nod.

  When the three messengers had ridden off, Quickblade tried to forget all about them until they returned, but he found himself looking south constantly, and more boys were getting mindbolted by the enemy. Soon he made up his mind: he would go after Shelley himself, cutting across country directly south, skirting the Tor Enyása, fearlessly climbing the haunted, fissured slopes under the high thorn fortresses, the hills the Boy Raiders called the Mountains of Terror, because of the precipices and even more because of the ravines in which lived the Rog-tanax, the dangerous kind of Dragonsnake. Then he would descend into the unicorn lands from the north, braving the northern outposts of the terrible Fire Hills.

  ‘I go to seek the Shelley, She Who Walks in Faery, to bring her to our aid. I leave Willhard the Stubborn in charge,’ he cried to the assembly of tired Boy Raiders that night. ‘If he can’t break the enemy, no one can.’ But the boys groaned aloud. Willhard had a reputation as a stubborn and difficult man, whereas everyone loved and admired Quickblade. He made them feel ten feet tall when he led a charge.

  ‘Except the Shelley, She Who Walks in Faery, she can break ’em,’ called Rilke. ‘She’ll walk right through them! Find her for us, Sire!’

  ‘Yes! Yes! Find the Shelley! Find the Shelley!’ chanted the boys. ‘But watch out for the Roggas in the mountains!’ one of them called out. (This was the Boy Raider slang for the Rog-tannax.)

  ‘And watch out for the Jilters!’ another added.

  ‘Here’s an amber-bat to send word back when you find her,’ piped a little boy with big ears and mousy hair, holding out a tiny package – a bat in a carrying-bag. He was the Bat-boy, in charge of the mobile hive of amber-bats, tiny homing bats that would also fly to a piece of glowing amber and circle it, catching the insects that came to its golden glow.

  Quickblade was greatly reassured: they had no idea that he might be ‘going soft,’ falling for a girl. He told himself that his interest in Shelley was purely warlike. She could be, after all, the ultimate weapon against the enemy. He just hoped the Jilters wouldn’t get to her first.