by Adam Roberts
‘Bingo!’ called Mori. ‘Bingo!’
The dwarf staggered towards him, his beard slick with blood – both the black blood of Gobblins, and the red blood of its owner. Several crooked Gobblin arrows poked out of his body. ‘You’re still alive, boyo!’ the dwarf called. As he reached Bingo he tripped and sank to his knees.
‘Mori – are you hurt?’
‘Oh it’s nothing,’ said the dwarf. Stings a bit,’ he added. Then he rolled on to his back.
Bingo dropped his sword as Gobblin arrows plocked into the turf around him to stick up like dead and blackened stalks. Grasping the dwarf’s legs, he pulled with all his weary might, hauling Mori to the higher ground. He arrived at a narrow ledge, on which some elves and men stood shoulder to shoulder. The paths were crammed with the dead. Stones and arrow shafts rained down from above. Six men were holding their broad shields in the air to provide shelter from this deadly hail.
‘Bingo,’ said Thorri, hurrying out to help the soddit drag Mori in underneath this rudimentary cover. ‘Good to thee you’re thtill alive.’
‘And you, sir,’ gasped Bingo, close to sobbing with his exhaustion. ‘The others?’
‘It’th been a grim day,’ said the dwarf. He shook his head.
‘This is our last stand,’ said Elsqare, crouching down to address the soddit. ‘We’ve been pushed back here – sheer weight of numbers. I’m sorry to say that Lord Lard is laid low.’
‘Dead?’
‘Dead, with many other heroic souls. Ah well,’ the elf added lightly, ‘some you win, some you lose.’
‘Lose?’ wailed Bingo. ‘Can it be true?’
‘They had another army behind the army we could see,’ explained Elsqare. ‘Twenty thousand soldiers in all. We had one thousand and six soldiers. We never really had much of a chance. See!’
Bingo looked out across the plain south and west of the mountain. The Gobblin dead were piled high, but were still vastly outnumbered by the living. Waves of Gobblins moved back and forth, some surging towards the mountain, others – it seemed – merely going round and round in a meaningless way.
The hail from above stopped. Bingo could see King Kluk processing through the files and ranks of his army, over the foothills and up towards them. As he approached, his troops chanted:
Bring the Thing®!
Bring the Thing®!
We want the Thing®!
We want the Thing®!
‘What can we do?’ asked Bingo, feeling a terrible and hopeless desperation. ‘We can’t give them the Thing® – they’ll do unspeakable and terrible wickedness with it! We can’t give them the Thing®.’
‘And yet,’ pointed out Elsqare, reasonably enough, ‘if we refuse it them, they’ll simply kill us and take it from our dead bodies.’
‘What can we do?’
A thousand Gobblin archers had taken up position around the last redoubt. Elsqare ordered his men to put their weapons down. ‘If we so much as notch an arrow to a string,’ he observed, ‘we’ll die in a swarm of Gobblin darts.’
But it was hard to obey, for Kluk was now within bowshot, and a single well-aimed arrow could have pierced his head. He drew closer and closer, and his followers muttered, Gobble, gobble, gobble’ and ‘Kluk! Kluk! Kluk!’ as he advanced. Finally the silver platform on which he was borne came to a halt.
‘Elves!’ King Kluk announced in his horrid voice. ‘Men! Dwarfs! You are defeated!’
A cry of triumph rose from the Gobblin hordes.
‘The Thing®,’ said Kluk, ‘is ours! Surrender.’
‘We surrender,’ said Elsqare suavely. ‘Certainly. We’re not at war any more, and I’d like to remind you of the terms of the Gungadin Convention—’
‘Silence!’ barked Kluk. ‘You may not be at war with us, but we are at war with you – always!’
Another great and terrible shout broke from the ranks of Gobblin troops.
‘Gobblins are forever at war with elves and men and dwarfs!’ shouted Kluk.
‘I think that meanth,’ said Thorri to Bingo, ‘that they’re going to kill uth, dethpite the fact that we’ve thurrendered.’
‘That may very well be the case,’ agreed Bingo.
‘Give us the Thing®!’ howled Kluk, and his army yelled in agreement.
‘This is a tight spot,’ said Elsqare. ‘What do you think we should do, O soddit?’
Bingo fingered the Thing® in his pocket. Now was the time to use it, if ever there had been a time to use it; but his mind went round and round in an empty track and he could think of nothing. He tried to think of a spell, or a form of words, that would save the day, but nothing came to him. He thought of saying ‘The Gobblins are victorious’, hoping that the device would change the world such that the Gobblins were defeated: but he knew, in his heart, that the Thing® wanted the Gobblins to triumph, and that it would twist his words to destroy him if he tried such a trick, perhaps by making their victory imminent rather than actual. Then he thought: perhaps I can use the Thing® to destroy the Thing®. What would happen if I said through the Thing®, ‘the Thing® exists’, would it cease to exist? But then, since it would no longer exist, it would not have been able to make itself disappear, and surely it would exist again. But then it would exist and would be able to make itself disappear … and so it would not exist … and so it would exist … and the possibilities whirled in Bingo’s exhausted brain until he could see nothing proceeding from such a wish except a great bang and Bingo lying dead on the floor, and the Gobblins picking the Thing® from his cold corpse.
‘Which one of you carries the Thing®?’ called Kluk. ‘Is it you, elf?’
Bingo saw Gobblin archers draw back their bows and aim darts at Elsqare. ‘It is I!’ he announced, stepping forward. ‘Bingo Grabbings, the soddit. I carry the Thing®.’
The whole hideous army seemed to breathe the words ‘Doom, doom’, the sound sweeping through the air like thunder.
‘Give the Thing® to me!’ called Kluk.
‘If I do,’ said Bingo, ‘will you allow us to go free?’
‘Ha!’ laughed Kluk. ‘No, manrunt, no – but I will kill you cleanly, and burn your bodies. If you deny me, I will kill you slowly and eat your corpses.’
‘Right,’ said Bingo, as if considering this. He could see a thousand Gobblin arrows aimed at his own chest. His mind raced. The arrows are not marshmallow, he thought to himself. Would that save them? What evil twist could the Thing® place on such a statement? King Kluk is alive, he thought. But if the King died, his soldiers would simply kill them all. All Gobblins are war-loving, he thought, and wondered to himself if even the magic of the Thing® were enough to reverse such a statement, to root out the love of war from all Gobblin hearts at once. What better phrase could he think of? None.
‘At once!’ shrieked Kluk. ‘At once! Or you will all die!’
Bingo’s hand went into his coat pocket. He drew out the Barkingstone, and it glinted in the dying light of the day. The Gobblin soldiers nearest him went ‘Ooo!’ and drew back a little.
It occurred to Bingo that the Gobblins did not know what the Thing® looked like. Why should they? It had never been theirs. It had been fashioned by Sharon in the fires of Mount Dumb, and had passed somehow to Sollum.
‘Here,’ he shouted holding aloft the great jewel. ‘Here is the Thing®!
‘Woof,’ went the Barkingstone.
Bingo threw the gem. It sailed, sparkling like a daytime firework, through the rays of the sinking sun, and Kluk himself reached out and grabbed it out of the air. ‘The Thing®!’ he yelled, holding the gem above his head. ‘The Thing®!’
Fearful and ugly was the cheering of the Gobblin host.
‘Now nothing will stand against us!’ cried Kluk. ‘All the world will fall before the armies of Gobblinkind!’
The cheer was renewed with even greater and uglier vigour.
Bingo was trying to think. It was his only and his last chance. Kluk would kill them all, sooner or later, and would kill them
at once if he realised he had been tricked. All Gobblins are war-loving, he thought to himself. The Gobblins are war-loving. Would ‘the Gobblins’ be better than ‘all Gobblins’? Or just ‘Gobblins’. Gobblins love war, perhaps? But ‘love’? What might the Thing® make of that? It might take the love of war from Gobblin hearts, yet leave a professionally disinterested dedication in its place. It might twist ‘war’ in strange ways, such that they loved not war but slaughter – not war but suicidal destruction. It was impossible to tell. But in his heart he knew it was hopeless. It was the wrong statement to make through the device.
Bingo’s fingers were around the Thing®. It was hot, and seemed almost to twitch and writhe in the soddit’s grip. It was eager, Bingo knew. Eager. It wanted to be taken by the Gobblins, for they would use it for what it had been originally made – for evil – instead of trying, all the time, to pervert the Thing’s® usage to good. Bingo felt his tiredness swirl up inside him like a sandstorm. He wanted nothing more than to lie down and sleep. He could not decide.
This was the moment of decision. As with many decisions in Bingo’s life, he made it without even realising it.
The Thing® was already in his hand, and his hand was already out of his pocket and up by his mouth. He caught a glimpse of Elsqare’s face, bent by anxiety and fear, as the elf saw what Bingo was doing. So much could go so badly wrong.
What to say? How to phrase it?
Inspiration failed at the vital moment.
‘War—’ said Bingo randomly. And the word drifted through the Thing®.
His heart stopped.
And started again. He took a deep breath. What had he done?
He had done nothing. He was exactly where he was. His few remaining comrades were disarmed, surrendered, surrounded on all sides by savage Gobblins. A thousand Gobblin arrows were still aimed at their breasts. Kluk was still holding the Barkingstone over his head. The Gobblin army was grumbling en masse, a rumbling noise of triumph and pride.
‘What did you say?’ Elsqare asked, hissing. ‘What did you say through the Thing®?’
‘I think it may be broken,’ said Bingo. And he said it hopefully, because if he had truly exhausted the magic potential of the device then it would matter less that Kluk had won the battle of the Famous Five Armies, it would mean that the Gobblins could do much less damage. ‘I did say something through the device, but nothing has happened.’
‘What—?’ Elsqare began saying, but his words were drowned out.
The rumbling had grown in volume.
Bingo realised that the sound was not issuing from the Gobblin horde. It was coming from the ground beneath him.
Kluk, still clutching the Barkingstone, looked to the mountain, and for the first time his expression of triumph was replaced by one of fear. Bingo turned and looked up.
From where they stood they could just see the little plateau where the dwarfs and Gandef and Bingo had camped days before. Gouts of smoke were pouring from that side of the mountain.
‘The chimney,’ he cried with sudden understanding.
Then fire burst from the mountain. A huge, blinding spout of light and heat thrust from the mountainside into the sky. Lava, boiling and spitting, poured in great waves from the mountain’s western flank, rolling down the side of the peak, bunching on itself like bales of rolling cloth, burning the mountain grasses and bushes in a hundred flare-ups as it proceeded.
A second mass of fire burst from the mountainside, and again molten magma poured from above, but this time it flew into the air, hurling in a wide arc, spraying north and west and – Bingo could see – spraying south as well, gobs of lava that curled and gripped at themselves in the air and descended upon them.
‘It is the end of all things!’ shrieked Elsqare.
And so it seemed, for the airborne wave of liquid rock was coming down with a terrible inevitability. The shouts of triumph in the Gobblin army had been replaced with gibbers and wails of terror. The archers had dropped their weapons, and were struggling to press backwards, prevented from escape by their fellows behind them. Kluk himself opened his mouth to say something, but he never spoke again, for a house-size gob of lava caught him and his bodyguard square on the front, and swept up his instantly burning remains and carried them downhill tangled inside the flowing rock. Bingo and Thorri cowered, and the elves and men hid their faces, as the scorching heat of lava engulfed a hundred of the Gobblin soldiers closest to Kluk and hurled them backwards. Spatters of hot rock sprayed all around, and yet none of these boiling fragments struck any of the remnants of the four armies. But more lava, and more, hurled through the air, and landed again and again amongst the Gobblins.
Bingo looked back at the mountain, and saw the searing stream of molten rock rushing down towards them. The air above it was so hot it seemed to tremble with fear, and smoke and dust turned the sky above dark. ‘This must surely be it,’ he said. ‘This great stream of fire will devour us all.’
And yet it did not. The mighty river of molten rock struck a boulder a little way up the mountainside above the ledge where the remnants of the four armies stood – and divided. To Bingo’s left and to his right the scorching fiery river flowed, and it ploughed into the Gobblins and licked them up with its fiery breath.
For many long minutes the burning river flooded on, pouring down and eating into the mass of Gobblins. They shrieked, they thrashed, they tried to run, but they were caught in the crush of their own bodies, and stream after stream of magma ploughed them down and burnt them up and buried them under.
Those few elves, men and dwarfs, and the one soddit, left alive on the little ledge clung together and hid their faces from the terrible heat of the lava streams that rushed past them. For an age and an age, or so it seemed, the heat lay on their backs like a huge weight. Sweat poured from Bingo’s skin like rain. His throat was parched and aching. He could taste nothing but hot ashes and death, and his eyeballs felt as if they were boiling in his head. His very hair smouldered, as if it would catch fire – and, truly, only his prodigious sweating prevented that chance.
But, after a long time, the heat began to diminish. When Bingo dared look, the rivers of fire had solidified into two vast trunks of blackened rock. Smoke rushed off them, and they were palpably hot through the air. Sometimes veins of fire would glow upon them, and the rock would shrug and change shape, and the fire would die away again.
There was little to be seen through the smoke and steam, and yet Bingo noticed the occasional grisly relic of the Gobblin horde: an arm encased in rock. Burnt arrows like bristles in the skin of the black rock.
‘It’s unbelievable,’ said Bingo. ‘I don’t believe it.’
‘Is it over?’ gasped Mori, from the ground. ‘Did we win? Or is it moot?’
‘We won,’ said Elsqare, his face grimed and slick with sweat. ‘It is not moot.’
‘Grand,’ said Mori. ‘Look you.’ And he passed into unconsciousness.
It was hours before the new rocks were cool enough for the party to leave their ledge. Seven men, eleven elves, three dwarfs and a soddit were all that were left alive of the four armies. And of the three dwarfs, only Thorri and Gofur were awake. Mori had passed into a kind of swoon; he was sorely wounded.
‘It’s unbelievable,’ said Bingo, for the nineteenth time. He was slumped on the ground, more tired than he had ever been before, and yet unable to sleep. How did the lava miss us? It destroyed the whole of the Gobblin army, and yet it just happened to miss us altogether? That’s an incredible chance. That’s unbelievable.’
‘Is it?’ asked Elsqare. ‘What was it that you spoke through the Thing® Was it the magic of that device that summoned up this volcanic destruction?’
‘I …’ said Bingo. ‘I didn’t know what to say. I said one word only.’
‘What word?’
‘I said, “war”.’
Elsqare nodded, and sat down on the hot ground next to the exhausted soddit. ‘I think I see,’ he said.
‘You do?’ sa
id Bingo.
‘It wathn’t the Thing® that called up the molten rock,’ said Thorri. ‘That wath Gandef.’
‘Gandef?’ said Bingo, leaping up. ‘How?’
‘We were afraid of it,’ said Thorri. The tranthformation from wizard to dragon ith a mighty tranthformation. A being changed from a being of earth and water, thuch ath you and me, to a being of fire and air, which ith what a dragon ith. A great amount of magic power ith produthed in the tranthformation. It’th an inherently unthtable time.’
‘From earth and water to fire and air,’ said Bingo. ‘Is that what caused the mountain to explode? Is Gandef all right?’
‘Thith,’ said Thorri, ‘ith why we wanted an experienthed dragon looking after him as he tranthformed. Ith he all right? I don’t know if he’th all right. I don’t know.’
‘I think he’s all right,’ said Gofur. ‘He is not what he was before. Fire would have burnt up the old Gandef – but he’s a new creature now. Fire can’t hurt him now.’
‘He has become a dragon?’ said Elsqare. ‘How interesting. His transformation happened at exactly the right time as far as we were concerned. Most fortuitous.’
‘It wath – fortuitouth,’ agreed Thorri. ‘Five minuteth more and Kluk would have thlain uth all, killed uth – and all would have been lotht.’
‘I do not believe it was fortuitous,’ said Bingo.
‘Nor I,’ said Gofur. Bingo said the word “war” into the Thing®, and it has brought about peace.’
But Elsqare shook his head. ‘Yet the Thing® is evil in its making and its mode, and will bring misery wherever it can. I do not believe it has brought peace. For what is war but struggle? And the opposite of struggle is not peace but death.’
‘It has certainly brought death,’ said Gofur, looking around.
‘Elsqare is right,’ said Bingo. ‘The Thing® was not happy with me – it was positively twitching and struggling in my hand, yearning to be free. Had the Gobblins seized it then it would have been able to do much more damage to the world, and that’s what it wants. It yearned towards the Gobblins. I could feel its yearning, as an almost palpable force. But, luckily, it was in my hands, not theirs. When I spoke the word “war” through it, it brought about the opposite. Lord Elsqare is correct – for all those at war it brought death. We were saved because we surrendered. We were not at war when the word was spoken, or the lava would have devoured us also.’