by Adam Roberts
Gofur barked a shout of laughter. ‘And had the Gobblin King accepted our surrender, then the war would have been over – and the Thing® would have been powerless to destroy him! Do you remember what he said? ‘You may not be at war with us – but we are at war with you – always!” Those words brought his doom. They meant that the Thing®’s magic applied to him and his army. But not to us.’
‘Verily,’ said Bingo. ‘Blimey,’ he added.
‘You speak truly, Sir Dwarf,’ said Elsqare. ‘The Gobblin King’s pride destroyed him. He could have accepted our surrender and then he would not have been at war, and Bingo’s word would not have harmed him.’
‘The Thing® thertainly found the motht dethtructive manner of inverting Bingo’th word,’ said Thorri.
They carried Mori, sorely wounded and still unconscious, over the warm black rocks, bearing him towards the main doorway of the mountain. The lava had not flowed here, because the Gobblins had been swarming around their King and had not been concerned with access to the mountain – that would have come later, when they would have burst the stone doors asunder and looted the halls within. Now the stream trickled thinly in its bank, and the only Gobblins were corpses, and there were other corpses there too – elves and men.
As the sun rose in the east, Elsqare found a trampled silk pavilion, paw marks and footprints all over the white cloth. With his surviving elves he pulled it out of the dirt and bound up the splintered poles that supported it, and made a tent again in that place. Mori was taken inside, his armour removed and his wounds tended. But he was badly hurt.
Elves scavenged amongst the fields to the west and brought back rabbits, which they cooked in the morning. The survivors drank from the stream, and then slept. Bingo himself was roused by Thorri after a few hours.
‘Come,’ said the dwarfish King. ‘Inthide.’
In the tent Mori had regained consciousness, but his eyes were wild and wandering. ‘Soddit?’ he said. ‘Are you there?’
‘I’m here.’
‘We won, then?’
‘We won. It was a great victory. The mountain exploded, and carried the Gobblin horde away with it, leaving the survivors untouched.’
‘Really!’ said Mori. ‘Really! Extraordinary, look you. A few clods fly through the air, and the Gobblins are blown away.’
‘It was more than a few clods, actually,’ said Bingo.
‘And the survivors! Were many killed on our side?’
‘Oh,’ said Bingo, embarrassed. ‘We got off lightly. Compared to the Gobblins certainly. Indeed, at least one of the armies suffered no casualties at all.’
‘I’m going to choose to believe,’ said Mori, in a fading voice, ‘that that’s the dwarf army you’re talking about. But never mind,’ he added, his eyes clouding. ‘Glad to have known you, boyo,’ he said, his voice very faint. ‘All the best. Where to now?’
‘Where indeed?’ whispered the soddit.
Mori grunted. ‘Moot,’ he said. And so he died.
1 Son of Gallopavo the Meagre, who had been slain in the Minty Mountains by Thorri’s father, Phwoah the Stunner.
Chapter Twelve
THE RETURN JOURNEY
The survivors of the battle of the Famous Five Armies numbered no more than twenty one. Thorri and Gofur alone remained from the troop of dwarfs that had departed from Soddlesex. The men of Lakeside had lost their mayor. It was a grim day.
The eruption of Strebor had laid swathes of jagged black rock over the western and southern flanks of the mountain, a desolate and wasted prospect. Yet the meads by the river were clear of lava, and the water still flowed. Bingo, Thorri and Gofur dug a deep grave for Mori and buried him. Gofur sang an ancient dwarf lament at the graveside.
So, farewell
then
Mori the dwarf.
You fought
bravely,
but now you’re dead.
Trevor’s mum says that
if Trevor were
half the man
you were, he’d be
a fifth of the man he is.
Then she laughs, which
I don’t think is very
appropriate.
Bingo didn’t understand it, but it brought tears to his eyes.
The survivors rested, but on the second day after the battle it became clear that disposal would have to be made of the many corpses that still littered the open ground. ‘The mountain did much of our work for us,’ said Elsqare. ‘Most of the Gobblins tens of thousands are encased in the new rock – very hygienic, that. But there are many hundreds of bodies that the lava did not touch, and amongst them are some of our own comrades.’
They spent that day and the next searching amongst the dead. It was terrible work, or at least Bingo thought so at the beginning. But after a few hours he became used to it, immune to the shock of hauling dead Gobblins. There was a place where the lava had settled into a basin, forty yards across and twenty deep, and the Gobblin dead were placed there. The occasional elfen or human body was carried respectfully to the river’s edge. On the evening of the third day elven runners brought back wood and also pigeons from the nearest copse. The victorious four armies ate the pigeons and drank water from the clear stream. As the sun set, the bodies of elvish and mannish warriors were burnt on a funeral pyre.
‘I am sorry,’ said Elsqare, ‘that we have not discovered any of the dwarfish fallen.’
‘We are content,’ said Thorri. ‘As dwarfth, we require burial in rock – and the mountain hath provided that for uth in iths eruption.’
‘It is a bitter and a sweet victory,’ said Elsqare.
‘Quite,’ said Thorri.
On the morning of the fourth day, seven days after he entered his great sleep, Gandef the Dragon stirred in his mountain home. He padded down his corridor on his new legs, and drew back the brass lock of the main entrance. Then he pushed the mighty stone doors apart and put his enormous dragonish head out into the sunshine.
‘Hello,’ he said. ‘What’s new?’
Bingo, Thorri and Gofur were overjoyed to see him again, for all that he had changed and grown out of almost all recognition. A grey-skinned, bright-eyed young dragon greeted them, its wings black, its claws obsidian. And yet there was something familiar in its gaze, and its voice – though deeper and huger than the wizard’s had been – was nonetheless familiar.
He perched on a spur of black rock that lay, newly created by the eruption, parallel with the meads, and listened politely to Gofur and Bingo’s account of the battle. ‘Dear me,’ he rumbled. ‘And I missed it all?’
‘You played a crucial part,’ insisted Bingo. ‘Your fire brought us victory.’
‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘Excellent.’
Then Gandef reared into the air and flew around the mountain’s peak, trying his new wings. He flew over the pile of Gobblin dead and blasted down with a spout of blue-grey fire, burning up the bodies in a purifying conflagration. After that he flew far to the north, and returned clutching two heifers, one in each hind claw. One of these beasts he gave to the survivors of the battle, and the other he ate himself, roasting it with puffs from his nostrils.
‘Peckish,’ he announced. ‘Haven’t eaten in seven days.’
The men roasted the cow on a spit, and the veterans of the battle ate heartily.
The following morning the Lakeside men departed, beginning their march downstream to their town. They carried with them a portion of the wealth from inside the Only Mountain – ‘Take it, take it,’ Gandef insisted. ‘Fat lot of good it’ll do me. When am I ever going to go shopping? I couldn’t so much as fit inside a shop any more. Take it – take it.’
The elves were similarly rewarded, and they struck out over the new black rocks and beyond them to the fields westward, making for the forest. ‘My cousin the woodelf, Ele the Elcoholic, has a place there,’ Elsqare explained. ‘It’s all feasting and drinking, and it gets tiresome after a while, but it’ll do for now. Then it’s back over the Minty M
ountains. Things should be quieter in our lands now that the Gobblins have been overthrown. Farewell!’
‘Farewell!’ said Bingo.
And so it was that only Thorri, Gofur, Bingo and Gandef remained. ‘What will you do?’ asked the soddit.
‘We’ll thtay here,’ said Thorri. ‘That’d be betht. There’s plenty of room inthide – room for a whole population of dwarfth, in fact. And you?’
‘I’d like to go home,’ said Bingo. ‘But I do not know the way.’
‘I’ll carry you,’ said Gandef, rumbling and smoking. ‘I need an excuse to stretch my wings, and I quite fancy a really long fly.’
‘Thank you, Sir Dragon,’ said Bingo, bowing.
The soddit spent his last night inside the mountain, sleeping on a huge bed that had once, Gofur said, been the bed of a King. The walls of his rock-carved chamber were hung with antique armour, rusty pikes, gold and silver chain mail, works of fine carving and art. It was a spooky place, but Bingo slept deeply and slept long.
In the morning he said his farewells. ‘We’ll thee you again thoon, I hope,’ said Thorri. ‘Pop by, any time. You know – if you’re paththing, on your way, thome-where, you know.’
‘Likewise,’ said Bingo. ‘I’m sure. Do you know a strange thing?’
‘What?’
‘My feet haven’t hurt in weeks. Or I haven’t noticed it if they have.’
‘Bit of exerthithe,’ said the dwarf King sagely. ‘Doth the world of good.’
Finally Bingo clambered up Gandef’s leg, and settled himself between the dragon’s great shoulder blades. ‘Righto,’ rumbled Gandef. ‘Off we go.’
He sprung upwards, and soared into the air. The ground shrunk beneath them like a craven thing, and the wind boomed in Bingo’s ears. Clutching the swaying stalk at the base of Gandef’s left wing, the soddit leaned a little out to stare in frank amazement.1 In moments the river had become a silver strand, the fields were no bigger than leaves, Lake Escargot shone like a puddle of mercury in the sunlight. Mighty Strebor itself had dwindled below them to a conical stump, splotched about its western and southern skies with black marks, like pitch spilt on a grey wizard’s hat. And peering forward, over the undulating shoulders of the dragon, Bingo saw the whole expanse of Mykyurwood laid below them like a rough-woven quilt of green and black.
‘You all right?’ Gandef asked.
‘It’s marvellous,’ called Bingo, his voice swamped by the white rushing of the wind through which they flew. ‘Marvellous!’ They had left the earth far behind, and moved now amongst air and space and sunlight. The sun, rising behind them, was sharper, clearer, its light purer and more enormous. Bingo scrunched up his eyes and gazed at the sun for long minutes, its outpouring fountain of light. When he looked down again, clouds swept past below them like pipesmoke, and hurried away. It was blue all around them, dazzling blue above, blue-hued greens below.
‘Marvellous!’ he called again.
They flew on and on.
‘I meant to say,’ thundered Gandef, twisting his neck and bringing his head a little way round so that he could observe the soddit from one eye. ‘Thorri told me about the Thing® you know.’
‘Don’t you remember it,’ Bingo said, ‘from before your transformation?’
‘No,’ rumbled the dragon. ‘I was far gone before you told the dwarfs that it was in your possession, I think.’
‘Oh,’ shouted Bingo.
‘May I see it?’ the dragon asked. Bingo looked into the beast’s eye, and hesitated. But he took the Thing® out of his pocket and held it up.
The dragon’s snaky neck curled again, and his head – large as a horse’s and considerably more intelligent – swung in towards Bingo. The great wings continued beating, the wind continued rushing past them, although the pilot was not, now, looking where he was going. The dragon’s nostrils were wide as inkwells, and as black, and they approached the Thing® with a sniffing eagerness. Bingo controlled the urge to snatch the Thing® away, and held it out.
Eventually Gandef withdrew his head, faced forward again and flew on for a long while in silence.
‘Well?’ Bingo prompted.
‘It is as I feared,’ said the dragon. ‘A terrible device, filled with evil potential. My own magic is much greater now than it was when I was a wizard, and I can sense much wickedness in it – I can smell it, if you like. But,’ and here he turned his head and met Bingo’s gaze a second time, ‘I can tell you something else. It has been long separated from its evil creator, the dreaded Sharon, and accordingly its magic is greatly weakened. In fact, it is nearly exhausted – it has been used recently, and used several times, and each usage has drained more of its magic potential. It would take only a very little spell now to drain it completely.
Bingo’s clothes were fluttering and wrestling in the wind. ‘And then would it be safe?’
‘Safer. Not wholly safe, for Sharon could recharge its power. But safer – much less likely to do mischief in the wrong hands.’
‘A little spell,’ said Bingo thoughtfully. ‘What must I say?’
‘You are the Thing®-carrier,’ said Gandef. ‘It is for you to decide. Say, “my clothes are green”, or “fish have two eyes”, or “gherkins are unpleasant food”, and the Thing® will try and make the reverse true, but it will be unable to – it will become denuded of all power, exhausted, worn out in the process.’
‘A spell as small as that?’ cried Bingo.
‘I think so,’ said the dragon, turning his head again to face the direction of flight. ‘It has only the merest trickle of magic left inside it. Or so it smells to me.’
‘And a larger spell. What if I say “the oceans are blue”, or “two and two are four”? How would a larger spell effect it?’
‘A larger spell would be more sure to exhaust the Thing®. It is very weary, its magic very small, a mere shadow of what it once was.’
Bingo pondered this for a while. He did not have the sureness in his mind that the dragon seemed to possess, and he knew from his own experience how sly the device was. Could it have hidden its true power from Gandef? Was it even now scheming, hoping to trap the soddit into saying something that it could twist to evil? He thought of many possible phrases, trying them out.
Below them the forest had come to an end, and the sharp clean lines, white and blue, of the Minty Mountains were visible. Bingo could see the expanse of the mountain chain now, a tremendous ridge in the landscape running to the horizon left and right. Then he looked up again at the blue of the sky and the pouring, clean, bright light of the sun.
On an impulse he lifted the Thing® to his mouth and spoke.
He said, ‘The sun shines.’ And so it did, it shone with a glorious and an undiminished brightness.
1 Frank Gerard Amazement II was a fabled prince of the realm of RororoHyorboat, far to the south. His amazement and ingenuous open-mindedness had become a byword amongst his own people, and this byword had, evidently, spread far to the north as well.
Have you enjoyed The Soddit?
Why not read the three volumes of A. R. R. R. Roberts’s magical sequel The Lord of the Dancings1
[Text copyright © NonWin Books, all rights reserved, 75% lefts reserved.]
The Lord of the Dancings Volume I:
The Yellow Ship of the Thing®
Wrenched again from his ordinary, peaceful life as a soddit, Bingo the Thing®-Mule becomes embroiled in the rise to power of the Evil Sharon. A group, well, more a party, a – what would you call it – band, no group – yes, band – of individuals from all the races of Upper Middle Earth assemble to help Bingo on his quest: to sail over the sea to the Whirlpool of Dshwshrs (a feature of the oceans of Upper Middle Earth that was named, clearly, onomatopoeically) and there to cast the Thing® into the swirling waters and rid the world of its deadly threat for ever, and for ever!! (Or just ‘for ever’ now that I come to think of it, that second ‘for ever’ is redundant, really, isn’t it, like saying ‘infinity plus infinity’ that’s just inf
inity, not double-infinity or anything like that. Anyway. There you go.)
‘But how shall we travel across the waves?’ asked Bingo in a querulous voice. ‘Are they not wet? Is there not the risk of wetting? Not to mention drowning?’
‘Fear not, young soddit,’ said Strudel. ‘In the land where I was born there lived a man who sailed the sea.’
‘Will you tell me of his life in the land of such marine,’ Bingo pressed, ‘adventures?’
‘Tell you of his life?’ repeated Strudel, a pastry halfway to his mouth and a startled look in his eye. ‘You what? I don’t know anything about his life. Why do you want to know about that? What’s to know? Only that he proved that it is possible to sail the sea. He did it in a big yellow boat of some kind. You and I and the rest of our band will do so too – we shall charter a Yellow Ship and sail the sea of green. Y,’ he added, thinking more carefully about it. ‘Green-y bluey sort of colour.’
‘Hurrah,’ said Bingo weakly.
The Lord of the Dancings Volume II:
The Twins’ Tower
After the abject failure of the question to destroy the Thing® in the Whirlpool of Dshwshrs (warning, the previous sentence may contain spoilers: do not read the previous sentence if you wish to preserve narrative suspense during The Yellow Ship of the Thing®), the quest passes to Bingo’s cousin, three-times removed (by court order), Frodeo. Frodeo and his faithful companion Scram – his, shall we say, um, servant? Or just friend? Yes – friend, his friend. But nothing funny, no funny business about their friendship, they just happen to be extremely close friends that’s all. Where was I? Oh yes, Frodeo and Scram cross a landscape of razor-sharp rocks and stagnant pools, attended by Sollum – a foul, skinny philosopher who, thanks to a piece of malign magic exists not as a real person, but as an animated Manuscript Illumination-cum-Illustration. Although he’s terribly realistic. Terribly. Some of those monks who did that sort of artwork were terribly talented you know, geniuses some of them, although of course we don’t know their names in the way that we know Raphael and Picasso and so on. Anyway, this threesome must make their way to the great tower in which the Twins live, Tomson and Tombson (the ‘b’ is silent, as in ‘basilica’), and recruit their twinnish excellence in the process of destroying the Thing®. Meanwhile Strudel can no longer fit into his lederhosen, and reveals himself to be the Secret King of Sh!-Tellnoone! The survivors of the original sea quest to destroy the Thing® reassemble.