by Nick Earls
‘Caractacus said that happens sometimes.’ Al could remember it from their visit to Northwic.
‘But it doesn’t last, does it? Something’s tipped it over again and it’s found you.’
‘Tea anyone?’ Grandma Noela said loudly as she pulled the door open.
Lexi and Al could see their father looking out at them through the kitchen window. He pointed to his index finger and raised his eyebrows.
‘It’s okay,’ Lexi called out. She rubbed her finger. ‘Not as bad as I thought.’
Grandad Al said yes to tea and Grandma Noela went back inside as the kettle reached boiling.
‘So, we can stop now?’ Lexi wanted him to tell her it was over. ‘We found you and you got home—’
Grandad Al’s smile looked tired all of a sudden. ‘If only. Someone has to keep doing the job. I’m sure Caractacus has been through all that with you. But things are far worse than he knows. It’s not just a matter of making sure that language doesn’t slip away.’ He stopped and turned to check what was going on in the kitchen. Mike was slicing cake. Noela was jiggling tea bags. ‘You know who Caractacus is, don’t you? He’s Merlin. You know the story of King Arthur? That Merlin.’
‘Except that’s a—’ Al had read plenty about Merlin. ‘Isn’t it a mistake from the 12th century?’
‘Yes, it is. I’m glad I gave you those books.’ He could remember the moment. Al had been eight, nearly nine. It had been the first step towards getting him ready for what was to come. ‘There was a Myrddin – a Welsh bard who, after one of the ugly battles with the Saxons, fled to the woods and became known for his visions and prophecies. That’s where the name Merlin came from. At the same time our man was working with the British kings – Ambrosius, Uther Pendragon, Arthur – but it was a lost cause. It’s from that work that the Merlin story began. To us he’s called Caractacus, but even that’s just a game he’s playing. It’s a name he’s taken from a British king who lived centuries before. He almost told me that. He said, “You can call me Caractacus, if you like. There was one of them here once. They’ll forget him soon enough, unless a few of us can keep him written down.” He wants to stay invisible. He thinks we should all be invisible. He’d hate all that Merlin TV stuff being out there. We need to find him soon. We’re going to need everything he’s got to get us through what’s ahead.’
‘What do you mean?’ Lexi didn’t want anything to be ahead.
‘Those men who took me, the men in grey who are turning up more and more often. We’ve been betrayed. There’s a hunter – I don’t know when he’s from, but he’s raising an army and sending them across time. He’s got some of Caractacus’s powers. He’s killing word hunters. He’s killing the language. He’s going to take power, long long ago, unless someone stops him. And who knows what he’ll do if he gets it?’ He heard footsteps inside. Noela was coming out of the kitchen with a tray loaded with plates of cake. ‘Can you see what I’m saying?’ he said quietly. ‘If we don’t stop him, the world – the English-speaking world at least – will be completely different. The language may not exist. The three of us may not exist. We need to get you ready to fight. With swords and bows, I mean. And to ride. The biggest battles we’ve ever seen are ahead of us.’
It was late summer and Lexi and Al would soon be 13. They were survivors already, but not warriors yet. Will was the closest to that and, at 19, he was a good age for it too, even if he was technically 110. Which was nothing on Mursili, who had been born almost 3,200 years before and managed not to look a day over 35.
At least Mursili could handle a sword, even if it was in an ancient kind of way, and shoot a bow, and ride. He had been a Hittite boy before he’d become court librarian, and all those were part of a standard Hittite boyhood in the BC 1200s.
And now it was time to put the padding on and start fighting. Grandad Al lifted the gear out of the bag.
‘I know it’s hot,’ he said. He had a motorbike helmet in each hand. ‘We’ll only do five minutes at a time. Who wants to go first?’
There was a pause and then Will said, ‘Me. I’ll give it a try.’
‘And me.’ Mursili swaggered across to Will and drew himself up to his full height, which put his head at the level of Will’s chest. ‘You probably don’t need the helmet, but your femoral arteries are in grave danger, let me tell you.’
Lexi picked up a spare sword and imagined a shield on her other arm.
‘What if one of them’s coming at you from this way?’ Al said to her. He was over to her right and he made a move in her direction. She lifted her sword to block his imaginary axe swing as she turned.
‘Good.’ Grandad Al clapped his hands together. ‘You two work on the theory while these two get the gear on. And, Lexi, if Al’s swinging something big at you, like an axe, just try to deflect it rather than take the full force of it with your sword. Your choice is right though. Use the sword if you can’t get the shield there in time. And focus on the defence. You won’t get to attack if you don’t remember to defend. And remember, we’re not there to win these battles. It’s about staying alive.’
Al swung again and this time her shield arm was ready.
‘So you’re a Viking or a Saxon?’ She couldn’t really picture Al as either, but that wasn’t the problem. She turned to her grandfather. ‘What if he was a grey-robe with a sword? How do they fight? Are they like everyone else from whatever time it is or —’
She wanted the answer to be yes. She wanted Grandad Al to know, and something to be certain about the people who seemed to want to kill them.
Grandad Al looked at Will, who shook his head.
‘I don’t think we know,’ he said. ‘We don’t know if they’re gathering in some of the times we go to, or if they’re being sent through time to find us. We might not be the only time travellers.’ He couldn’t help looking past her through the trees, checking. ‘None of us has seen them after 1648. And they didn’t take my pegs then.’ It sounded like two pieces of good news, but it didn’t amount to much. ‘We have to assume the worst. They know who we are, they know what we do, they know most of what we know and if they’ve got swords we should expect them not to be surprised by the thrust.’
Lexi nodded, and tried to pretend that she hadn’t wanted a different answer. Her friends from school were on their way to Madison Bond’s house for a sleepover. They would play music, eat junk food, stay up late and take a thousand photos of the whole thing. Not a second of the evening would be spent discussing sword-fighting techniques. Sometimes it seemed to Lexi as if she had to be ready to ride into battle against the entire past, just to keep the present what it was – to make sure iTunes existed, and phones. As well as the English language and perhaps most of the people she knew.
She poked at the ground with the wooden sword. ‘So, can I have the next fight?’
About the Author
Nick Earls is the author of 16 books, including five novels with teenage central characters. 48 Shades of Brown was a CBCA Book of the Year, and his other four young adult novels were Notable Books. After January was also shortlisted for the National Children’s Literature Award, won a 3M Talking Book of the Year Award and was shortlisted in the Fairlight Talking Book Awards. The International Youth Library, Munich, included it in its White Ravens selection of international notable new books. It was the first of five of Nick Earls’s novels to become plays. Two have also been adapted into feature films.
While the English origin of the name Earls is the old Saxon word ‘eorl’ or ‘jarl’, meaning ‘village elder’, in Nick’s family’s case it began somewhere totally different – in Arles in France. It’s a place-based name. The family story behind it goes like this. When Hannibal of Carthage set out to attack Rome in 218BC, he established a base on the Rhone River before crossing the Alps. That base became a permanent settlement and took the Roman name Arelate, meaning ‘town by the marshes’
. Over time that name became Arles. (History records that some Greeks or Phoenicians were there before Hannibal, but the town was called Theline then.) Around 800 years ago, someone from Arles who had taken the place name as a family name moved to England. Over the years, various spellings emerged, ‘Earls’ among them.
About the Illustrator
Terry Whidborne has worked in the advertising industry for many years, and is now recognised as one of Brisbane’s most award-winning senior Art Directors. But as Terry’s family grew, so did his interest in illustration. He began developing his style for clients such as Vogue, Virgin Blue and many of London’s top ad agencies, before deciding that what he really wanted to do was concentrate on books, film and animation. Terry’s first foray into books is the Word Hunters trilogy he co-created with Nick Earls. He lives in Brisbane with his wife and two kids.
To be honest, Terry didn’t have a clue where his family name came from. But Nick, not for the first time, had a theory. Whidborne looked like a classic place name, but where was it? Nowhere. So Nick started factoring in spelling variations and thought ‘Whid’ and ‘borne’ had the look of old Anglo-Saxon (or possibly Celtic) words, though they weren’t quite right. ‘Hwit’ – now written as ‘Whit’ – was though, and meant ‘white’. After trying ‘borne’, ‘born’ and ‘burn’, he settled on ‘bourne’. ‘Whitbourne’ meant ‘white stream’ and it turns out to be a town in Herefordshire in England. Then Terry found an old book confirming this as the origin of his family name.
Have you read
The Curious Dictionary,
the first book in the
Word Hunter series?
Nick Earls &
Terry Whidborne
Lexi and Al Hunter are twins with almost nothing in common – except their parents and their birthday! At school Lexi hangs with her friends, while Al hides in the library reading about history, battles and faraway places.
When the twins stumble upon an old dictionary, the world as they know it changes. They are blasted into history to hunt down words that threaten to vanish from our past and our present. Their lives and the future of the world are at stake. Can they find a way back home? Or will they be trapped in the past? For once, they’ll need to depend on each other if they want to survive.
‘An action-packed adventure story filled with humour, excitement and mysteries to solve.’ Kids Book Review
‘All-round fun and a little bit irreverent, Earls and Whidborne have created what is sure to be a favourite with a 9- to 13-year-old audience.’ Bookseller + Publisher
ISBN 978 0 7022 4945 7
First published 2013 by University of Queensland Press
PO Box 6042, St Lucia, Queensland 4067 Australia
www.uqp.com.au
[email protected]
© text Nick Earls 2013
© illustrations Terry Whidborne 2013
This book is copyright. Except for private study, research, criticism or reviews,
as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without
prior written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher.
Typeset in 11/16pt Horley Old Style by Jo Hunt
Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group
Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
National Library of Australia
Earls, Nick, 1963-
The lost hunters / Nick Earls and Terry Whidborne.
Earls, Nick, 1963- Word hunters ; 2.
For primary school age.
Whidborne, Terry.
ISBN (pbk) 978 0 7022 4958 7
ISBN (pdf) 978 0 7022 5072 9
ISBN (epub) 978 0 7022 5073 6
ISBN (kindle) 978 0 7022 5074 3
A823.3
University of Queensland Press uses papers that are natural, renewable
and recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests.
The logging and manufacturing processes conform to the environmental
regulations of the country of origin.