by Bryan Huff
He dropped the helmet into Hob’s arms. It was basically a rusty bucket with the lower half of a visor still attached. The half-visor was rusted in place, permanently covering the wearer below the eyes. It would disguise Hob’s face well.
The boy then set down his shield, and began fumbling with the straps of his breastplate.
“Here, let me help you,” said Isobel, stepping in.
“Thanks,” mumbled the boy, obviously surprised to be receiving help from the legendary Lady of Valley Top.
“You can’t be serious!” snapped the Spring Chicken, looking on. “You’re not setting him free?” He raised his sword, and tried again to push past the Captain to get to Hob.
Fist held the Spring Chicken back with an outstretched arm, but Hob flinched just the same—nearly dropping his new helmet.
The Spring Chicken raged. “That creature’s not going to save the Prince! He’s going to run away! You’ll never see either of them, ever again!”
“It is possible,” admitted the Captain, her voice measured but forceful. “Still, it seems he did help Lady Isobel. And I fear he might be right. He’s now our only hope.”
“No, I won’t let you. He belongs to me!” The Spring Chicken tried desperately to force his way past the Captain.
The Captain grappled with him. “Not until I’m done with him!”
“Be done with him then!”
The Spring Chicken finally broke loose, lunging at Hob, and raising his sword for a killing blow.
Tonk! This time, Hob did drop his helmet.
A second later, it was all over. With a sharp kick to the back of his knee, Captain Fist took out the Spring Chicken’s leg. He stumbled before he could strike. In a flurry, he twisted around, and slashed at her. Her hand shot out and seized his arm at the wrist, arresting his sword mid-swing. Then with her other hand, she grabbed the feathers of his chicken suit, and flipped him over the battlements.
With a shriek, the Spring Chicken tumbled down the front of the city wall. Plop! He landed in a mound of horse manure piled beside the gate. He was lucky; the manure had broken his fall and spared him serious injury. But he was left stuck upside down in dung, with only his skinny chicken legs poking out, flailing up at the sky. Hob craned his head through his crenel for a better look. The Spring Chicken would bother him no more.
“Here,” said Lady Isobel.
Hob turned to see her approaching with her arms full of the boy’s donated gear. She strapped the breastplate around Hob’s torso, and looped the shield over his arm.
“You may also need ’zese,” said Captain Fist, turning to Hob with the items she’d confiscated from him in the castle yard. In one hand, she held his goggles. In the other hand, she held his little sword, wrapped in its scabbard and sword belt.
Lady Isobel took the items from the Captain one at a time, strapping the sword belt around Hob’s breastplate, so the sword and scabbard hung at his hip, and strapping the goggles around his head, leaving them flipped up on top. Finally, she picked up the rusty helmet, and tried to fit it on him. It slid neatly over his goggles, but became stuck on his large ears.
“Ooo! Ooo!” Hob squeaked.
“Sorry!” said Lady Isobel. “It just needs a bit of a twist.”
“Oooooo!”
As Isobel worked the helmet down the rest of the way, Captain Fist took charge.
“Prepare to ride, men!” she ordered the Royal Guards. “We follow ’ze high ridge road from here to ’ze Riven Gate. We must open ’ze Gate as soon as ’ze army crosses ’ze ravine. If Prince Edric is rescued, ’ze goblins may try doubling back to take revenge on ’ze city.”
At last, Lady Isobel had Hob’s helmet on him. She stepped back, nodding her approval. The helmet was too tight, leaving Hob’s ears folded down uncomfortably inside. Still, all that could be seen of his face were two big eyes peering out of the darkness between the visor and the brim. This, in conjunction with his breastplate—which hung like a giant bell from his shoulders to his knees—meant he was well covered, even if he didn’t look very inspiring.
Hob was ready to go.
Captain Fist turned her attention back to him. “Find him,” she commanded.
Finally, Lady Isobel knelt down, and kissed him on the forehead of his helmet. “Thanks again, nice goblin,” she said. “And good luck.”
Chapter Sixteen
Into the Clouds
Hob ran heedlessly down the switchback road from the city into the mountain pass, his ill-fitting armor jouncing and jangling as he went. Soon, great bands of mist swept across his path—luminous in the pale moonlight—and he came to a stop on the shoreline of the vast cloud sea. It churned past the mountain, flooding the road ahead.
Tentatively, Hob took his first step into the clouds. They engulfed him, becoming fog, endless and all encompassing. Even inside, their vapors glowed with pale moonlight, brightening up the night, and yet hiding more from him than night ever could.
Alone and out of view, Hob could have abandoned his mission right then, just as the Spring Chicken had predicted. He could have turned and fled into the mountains where no one would ever find him. But he wasn’t going to. Not while Edric needed him.
He ran on.
The fog grew thicker and thinner in waves, as Hob hurtled down the rest of the switchback road and south into the pass. Mysterious shapes swam in the haze. Towering mountainsides, rock outcroppings, and scraggy trees were all reduced to shadows. It was a world of ghosts.
Finally, Hob heard the percussive clatter of the goblin march growing louder in the distance, signaling he was catching up. After a while, it echoed all around. thrump-thrump, thrump-thrump.
Then, new phantoms materialized ahead. Shadowy figures, hunched and heavy, tromped up and down in the mist, passing no more than ten abreast between the murky mountain slopes to either side. Hob had reached the army’s rear-guard. Though he couldn’t see very far, he knew the army stretched out almost endlessly before them, marching south down the pass.
thrump-thrump, thrump-thrump.
Was it the march or Hob’s heart that pounded so? He could feel the blood coursing through his veins. And, though the air was cool, his skin felt clammy with sweat. After escaping the Gobble Downs, he’d hoped never to see another goblin again. Yet, there he was, about to venture into the heart of a whole army of them.
Hob slowed his pace, but didn’t turn back. Instead, he crept to within a few yards of the trailing goblin ranks.
Taking a deep breath, he shook himself loose. For his plan to work, the other goblins would have to believe he was one of them. He would have to look the part. He drew his sword, raised his shield, hunched his back, and stuck out his elbows.
Then something else occurred to him; he’d have to smell the part too! He gave his armpit a quick sniff and recoiled. It had a proper goblin stink to it. Luckily, Hob had been too distracted to bathe since fleeing the Gobble Downs. He decided that if he survived the night, a wash would be his first order of business the next morning.
Finally, he hurried forward, and fell in at the back of the army.
“Oi!” growled a husky goblin, as Hob shuffled up beside him. “Where’d you come from?”
Hob panicked. “Uh … well, the fog, I guess …” he stammered. “Which is to say … Where’d you come from?” He growled that last part, in his goblin-iest voice, and pointed his sword.
The big fellow merely shrugged, as if to say fair enough, and then refocused his attention ahead.
Hob didn’t linger there. He knew Edric—the Sorcerer’s prize—would be at the center of the army, where he’d be hardest to reach. So, with muscles tensed, shield squared, and sword tucked firmly at his side, Hob scuttled ahead, plowing through the narrow space between the two goblins in front of him.
The interior of the march proved disorganized at best, full of goblins bumping, shoving, advancing, and falling back. Being small and sprightly, Hob found every opening that presented i
tself in the chaos. He ducked, dodged, and darted through a fog-bound obstacle course of tromping legs, clanking armor, and swaying swords and shields.
Several times, he thought he saw familiar faces from the Gobble Downs, but he didn’t stop to be sure. What mattered was that none of them seemed to recognize him.
Though most of the goblin warriors towered around him, Hob also encountered a few smaller goblins nestled among the ranks, who hadn’t been visible from his distant vantage point above the gate. While these little goblins made Hob’s own stature seem less conspicuous, they also frightened him. Each was a jittery blur of fangs, spiked armor, and wild eyes. Hob supposed any small goblin who’d made it through the Clobbering was bound to be extra mean—if not completely crazy.
Hob was fleeing one of these little terrors, when he ran into a much larger goblin.
“Watch it!” snarled the great hulk, grabbing Hob by the shoulder.
Hob thought fast. He growled and hopped madly from leg to leg, bashing sword against shield. If he could seem half as dangerous and unpredictable as the other goblins his size, the big fellow might just leave him alone.
It worked. The goblin backed off with an apologetic grunt, and Hob went on his way.
For more than two hours, Hob worked his way forward like this, until the rear-guard was finally behind him, and he was closing in on the middle ranks. Then the army reached the ravine. As the road constricted and snaked down between the rocks, it jammed up the goblins, halting Hob’s progress. Suddenly, he could do nothing but keep his shield squared in front of him and shuffle along with the rest of the pack, trying to hold his position.
As he stepped onto the bridge at the bottom of the ravine, the rocks receded into the mist. It was as if the bridge were floating there, unanchored on either end. Hob could hear the shallow stream trickling underneath, but could see only a short stretch of its dark waters on either side. Up in the western mountains, he thought he may have glimpsed the faintest specter of the Riven Gate, but it was likely just his imagination.
After the road climbed back out of the ravine, it widened again, allowing Hob to continue advancing. It also began to curve steadily eastward around the gravelly, scree-covered slopes of the great three-peaked mountain that bordered the lower half of the pass. All three peaks were now lost in cloud.
Eventually, the goblin army came around to the south side of the mountain, where the pass straightened and descended due east into the valley. It was then that the Riven Gate opened.
The goblins couldn’t see it happen. They’d left the ravine behind in the cloud. But they heard it—felt it! A tremor shook the earth, sending bits of debris clacking down from on high, and forcing them to stop and shield their heads. A dull screech of metal on stone split the air. The roar of rushing water echoed down the pass.
Hob alone understood the source of the phenomenon. The Royal Guards had released the massive counterweights on either side of the dam, which had, in turn, hauled up the ever-steel gate in its moorings, and flooded the ravine. There was no going back.
Hob took advantage of the goblins’ confusion to make up more ground. He hurried on while the others stalled.
“Move it, you lugs! Dawn’s a-coming!” came the call to resume the march.
Hob recognized the voice at once. It was Brute’s! Though Hob couldn’t see him, he sounded close by.
“That’s it! march!”
The goblins began shuffling forward again.
Hob pressed on with new determination, swerving around them, squeezing past them, and moving in the direction of Brute’s voice. If Hob could find Brute, he was sure to find Edric as well!
Soon, Hob fell in behind a wall of broad-shouldered goblins, all square to each other like enormous bricks marching in step. He got stuck there for a moment. Then, finally, a crack opened between them. He prepared to dash through, but checked himself at the last second. Framed in the space between the goblins was Edric, swaying along, slumped and beleaguered, atop the war-hog. His hands remained bound behind him, tied to the iron ring on the back of his crude saddle.
The sight filled Hob with hope—and dread. Brute and a posse of other thuggish goblins guarded Edric, forming two lines, one on either side of the war-hog, with Snivel at the beast’s rear end. They marched along as if in their own private parade, backs straight, chests out, and spears held high.
“caw! caw!”
Hob looked up. The Sorcerer’s crow was there too. It drifted languidly through the mists above, rarely bothering to beat its wings, a dark and watchful spirit at the edge of sight.
The goblins argued over what to do with Edric.
“Why can’t we kill him?” demanded a hulking mountain goblin with a face like a shark. “We’ve got the troll with us. He could give the boy the chop right now!”
The shark-faced goblin was almost as big as Brute, so his words carried almost as much weight. He and Brute led the escort, opposite each other at the front of the war-hog.
The only goblin ahead of them was the old fellow who led the beast by the reins. With his hunched back and protruding jaw, he looked a great deal like a war-hog himself. “I’m with Gnasher!” said the war-hog keeper. “Think how happy the Master’ll be, when he finds out we didn’t just capture the boy, we killed him!”
“You numskulls!” countered a gorilla-browed goblin, marching behind Brute. “He won’t be happy. He’ll kill us!”
“Right!” Brute declared. “The Master said to bring him the boy alive. So that’s what we’re gonna do!”
“Yeah!” added Snivel.
“Oh! ’Cause you’re the Master’s best buddy, and you know just what he wants?” Gnasher grumbled, scowling at Brute with his shark-like face.
“No! I’m in charge, so we do what I say!” said Brute, glaring back at Gnasher over the top of the war-hog.
Edric reclined in his saddle, trying to stay out of the line of fire.
Hob felt terrible. He had no clue how to help his friend. Edric’s guards were large and agitated, and there was no getting around them.
“I don’t ’member the Sorcerer puttin’ you in charge!” Gnasher protested. “I don’t ’member him puttin’ anyone in charge!”
“He’s right, the Master didn’t say,” confirmed the war-hog keeper.
“So maybe I’m in charge!” Gnasher declared.
“Fat chance!” scoffed Brute.
“What’s that?” said Gnasher.
“He called you fat,” said Snivel.
“I’m not fat!” said Gnasher. “He’s fat!”
“Hah!” Brute laughed. “I’m all muscle! Lemme show ya!” He drew back a fist, intending to put it straight through Gnasher’s face.
It was proof of Hob’s desperation that he actually wanted Brute to follow through. A brawl might have created an opening to get to Edric—as long as Edric survived long enough, that was. Hob prepared to make a break for it.
Then the ranks came to an abrupt halt, causing the goblins to crash into one another, and distracting Brute and Gnasher from their fight.
Brute straightened up, and raised a palm. “Hold!” he shouted.
Ahead, Hob could just make out the long line of the goblin army turning off the eastward road into the valley, and doubling back northward up the scree-covered slopes of the great three-peaked mountain. The line ascended into the mist.
“This is the spot!” Brute finished. He drew up a cattle horn trumpet, which hung at his hip, and blew into it. barooom! barooom! Then he turned to the rest of Edric’s escort. “If we don’t get back into the tunnels by sun up, it won’t matter who’s in charge!”
Even Gnasher nodded in agreement.
Only then did Hob realize, with horror, what he should have known all along. The goblins were headed underground!
Chapter Seventeen
Strange Apparitions
Surrounded by the brick-like goblins trailing Edric’s escort, Hob scrambled up the steep lower slopes of
the three-peaked mountain, through mist and over loose, gravelly scree. Hundreds of small stones slid and shifted with every step the goblins took, erasing their footprints as fast as they made them. This, Hob guessed, made the three peaks an ideal place to hide a large tunnel entrance.
The Sorcerer had ordered his troops to stick to the tunnels under Yore wherever possible on their march. In fact, his crow had likely found them in one of the nearby mountain tunnels, intercepting them as they traveled north from their gathering place at High-Hole toward Shadowguard. And if a tunnel had brought them as far as the three-peaked mountain, it explained why they’d been able to appear nearly halfway up the pass with so little warning.
Now, they were headed back below, with Edric in their clutches. Hob cursed his lack of foresight. If he and Edric were taken underground, there would be no escape for either of them. The passages would be too tight, too congested. And it would be impossible to tell where they’d come out again. For all Hob knew, some combination of ancient tunnels might take them all the way to Shadowguard!
Not far up the slope from Hob, the war-hog was putting up a fuss. It stamped and squealed, slipping on scree, and causing Edric to wobble precariously on its back. The beast had to be tugged at and prodded by Edric’s guards, until it finally got so high up that it became afraid to go back down. Only then did it begin to cooperate.
Hob followed the whole escort closely. Despite his bulky armor, he had little difficulty keeping up with the big, clumsy goblins around him, as they labored up the slope.
Eventually, the roots of two of the mountain’s three peaks appeared in the cloud ahead.
Between these peaks, a steep gorge opened up. It climbed between diverging walls of rock and into the mist. The army funneled up it, no more than five goblins abreast.
The climb with the army proved harrowing for Hob. The gorge was dizzyingly steep and full of rubble and melting snow. A fall backward would have been deadly. So too would have been capture by Edric’s guards. Even in the gorge, the same two lines still flanked the war-hog, led by Brute and Gnasher, trailed by Snivel, and watched over by the crow.