Armies of Nine, Book Three of The Adventures of Sarah Coppernick

by SJB Gilmour

  ‘Bring the prisoner,’ the captain ordered and then he too turned and followed the first gnome. Together, they marched away as the guards reached in and hauled Ronny out of the cell. Now having been locked up for two days without food or drink and very little sleep, Ronny was in no state for any sort of exercise. The guards half-carried, half-dragged the poor bedraggled gnome along through the horrid halls of Yuk.

  Finally, they reached a large cavern known by the inmates of Yuk as The Gateway. The Gateway joined two tunnels. One led to the courthouse and was used far more frequently to take prisoners to Yuk than from it. The other led to the huge hall that was Gnumph’s main town square, several hundred metres below ground. For any prisoner leaving Yuk, that was the most likely destination because it was there that executions were performed. It was there, in full view of any gnomes who wanted to be present — and there were usually quite a few — that prisoners were executed quite simply, but savagely, by a hooded gnome with a very large axe.

  Weakly, Ronny began to struggle but the Yuk guards were strong, hardy gnomes and there was no way he could escape their grasp. The hooded gnome paused and gave a few whispered commands to the captain, then marched to a very fancy mining machine that was definitely not one of the prison vehicles. He climbed inside and the hatch slammed shut. The machine spurred into life and began trundling off towards the town square.

  The captain turned to the guards and gestured to one of the waiting prison troop-carriers. These were basically stripped-down versions of regular mole-buses, but without any creature comforts whatsoever.

  Ronny stared in horror at the vehicle. If he was to be travelling in that thing, he was certain there would be an executioner’s axe waiting for him when he got out. The captain climbed inside and held the door open. The guards made sure Ronny’s hands were cuffed behind his back. They then shoved him inside and slammed the hatch. Ronny sat, now quite terrified, on what he thought was the only kind of seat in the vehicle — a long wooden crate. Miserably, he stared at the Captain of the Guard who was grinning wickedly.

  All hope he had felt back in the cell had disappeared completely. This was it. He knew it. He was going to be executed.

  ‘Stand up,’ the captain ordered Ronny as the mole-bus rolled away from The Gateway.

  Ronny swallowed and obeyed, his head hung low in misery. The captain grabbed him and turned him around. There was a click, and to Ronny’s surprise, the cuffs fell to the floor. Then to his even greater surprise, he was hauled up to stand beside the captain.

  The captain kicked open the lid of the bench seat. Inside was another gnome who looked even more bedraggled than Ronny. The newly-promoted soldier reached inside and hauled the gnome out and dumped him on the floor of the mole-bus. The gnome, who appeared drugged, stared blankly. Though clearly alive, this gnome did not appear to be breathing. Ronny stared at the gnome on the floor and then at the captain.

  ‘General Mason,’ the captain said proudly. ‘May I present the late, great Robbie Pebble?’ He gave the wretched gnome on the floor a harsh kick.

  ‘Wha… What?’ Ronny quavered. He had no idea what was going on and he certainly didn’t like this at all. ‘Captain—’

  ‘Quartz,’ the captain supplied. ‘This morning I was a sergeant, now I’m a captain, and this scumbag,’ he said turning back to the gnome on the floor of the carriage, ‘had the misfortune to die peacefully in his cell this morning.’

  ‘Late?’ Ronny demanded in confusion. ‘He’s dead?’

  Captain Quartz flashed him a tight grin. ‘Don’t get too close. The winteroom powder has only just started to work. Too much longer and he’ll be hungry for brains.’

  The scheme finally dawned on Ronny. Suddenly, he felt much, much better. ‘So he’s dead and you’re going to switch him for me?’ He pointed at Pebble with desperate hope. ‘That’s a zombie?’

  ‘Best-dressed zombie in town,’ Quartz replied. ‘Not for long though. Once his head rolls, he’s for a bonfire prepared especially in your honour.’ He squinted and peered hard at Ronny’s face. ‘Just one last thing.’ He fished a canvas hood out of one of his pockets. He knelt down and almost gingerly put the hood on Pebble’s head. He then drew in a deep breath and barked ‘Muckfacia!’ at the hood.

  Ronny gasped. The hood disappeared and there on the zombie was a face almost identical to his own.

  Quartz quickly looked from one to the other. Satisfied that this was enough, he gestured to the empty bench box. ‘Get in, General. Time for phase two.’

  Ronny clambered inside the box. As Quartz lowered the lid, Ronny held it open with his hand. ‘What do you mean, “General”?’

  ‘You’ll have to ask His Majesty that, General Mason,’ Quartz replied, and roughly shoved Ronny down into the box and shut the lid.

  Just as he did so, the mole-bus came to a stop. Ronny held still inside the box. He could hear a crowd cheering. He heard the hatch open and then a scuffling noise which he took to be Quartz dragging the newly disguised Robby Pebble zombie out. The crowd cheered even louder. One gnome must have started a long, slow clap. Soon the entire crowd was clapping the same beat. The beat increased slowly and the crowd cheered even louder.

  Finally, when the clapping was as fast as Ronny’s own heartbeats, there was a hushed silence followed by a bang and a muffled clatter. Then the crowd resumed cheering even louder. Moments later, Ronny heard more footsteps as a number of gnomes entered the bus and the hatch slammed shut again.

  Just as Ronny’s eyes had become accustomed to the darkness inside the box, the seat lid was wrenched open. Ronny blinked owlishly as he suddenly found himself staring face-to-face with His Royal Majesty, King Roger the Nineteenth.

  ‘Ahh there you are Mason, old boy,’ Roger said with a grin. ‘Welcome to your first day of military service!’

  Ronny gaped at his king. He couldn’t believe his eyes. One minute he was convinced he was about to be executed, then he found himself suddenly conscripted into the army as a general, no less!

  ‘Your Majesty!’ was all he could say.

  Roger grinned. ‘Don’t worry, your military service doesn’t have to be for life. It’s really just for show. I’m letting Quartz here do most of the work. We’re cleaning house. Once the fuss about your arrest has died down, we’ll circulate the news that the fellow we just cut in two was a spy in disguise.’ He grinned smugly. ‘Brilliant scheme, wot?’

  The mole-bus rattled and bumped its way back to Yuk. Once there, Quartz led Ronny and King Roger through a secret tunnel back into the main palace. Ronny peered at the walls of the tunnel curiously. The walls were covered in soft, downy webs of gnuck spiders and thousands more floodles scurried out of the way of their feet. Not all of them made it and the squeals of the fleeing and stench of those crushed by his feet was very nearly turning Ronny’s stomach.

  His bump-of-uppses told him that the tunnel was deep underneath several other, more widely used tunnels. As every gnome knows, a tunnel underneath another one isn’t the safest of places to be. If there were to be a collapse, the gnomes above would more than likely be fine. Those in the tunnel underneath might not fare so well. Feeling quite ill and very confused, Ronny peered at the walls and ceiling of the tunnel nervously.

  Roger caught Ronny’s worried expression and grinned. ‘My forefather, King Ted the Twelfth dug this tunnel,’ he told Ronny in a conspiratorial whisper. ‘The crazy old coot had some sort of arrangement with the Yukmaster, and he used to visit the women’s wing whenever he could.’

  ‘It doesn’t look like it gets used much now,’ Ronny observed. Then he remembered just who he was talking to, and blushed.

  Roger laughed and clapped Ronny on his shoulder. ‘Don’t worry old boy, I’m not offended. Ted was mad. I have enough trouble with the wives I have now. Believe me, I don’t need any more female attention.’ He waved at the tunnel wall and even pounded on one with his stubby fist. ‘It’s safe in here, I’m sure. Ted might have been bonkers, but he knew what he was doing when he bu
rrowed.’ Roger laughed gaily. ‘One time the sly old fox even burrowed into the Treasury!’

  ‘He didn’t!’ Ronny gasped. ‘But he was the King! Wouldn’t he have just been stealing from himself?’

  Roger held a finger to his nose. ‘Of course, but the Royal Treasurer was also stealing. They all do — it’s part of the job, but they have to keep their larceny within certain boundaries. Old Kennedy was pushing things a bit. Ted knew that, so he decided to teach him a lesson.’

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘Oh, the usual,’ Roger said with a shrug. ‘He stole all he could carry and then decided, out of a Royal whim of course, to have the Treasury audited. Kennedy wasn’t so stupid as to not cover his tracks, so he had all the excuses for the shortfall he anticipated. He didn’t anticipate the till to be short by what Ted nicked as well.’

  ‘What happened?’ Ronny asked as they walked. He had forgotten all about his fear and nerves. This was a great story!

  Quartz grinned smugly. ‘Treasurer Kennedy was executed for stealing two and a half billion gnang’s worth of Royal gems,’ he supplied for his king.

  ‘What?!’ Ronny exclaimed with a startled laugh. ‘I thought you said King Ted took all he could carry!’

  ‘True,’ Roger admitted, ‘but a gnome can carry quite a lot if he makes the trip every day for a couple of years.’

  A thought occurred to Ronny. ‘What happened to the stones King Ted stole? Did he put them back?’

  Roger grinned again. ‘Ah, Mason, that’s the great mystery. A week after Kennedy’s head hit the bottom of the bucket, Ted died of a double hearts attack. It was awful. His left heart gave out and then his right heart burst from the strain. The poor devil croaked before he told anyone where he’d hidden the stash.’ He looked around at the walls of the tunnel. ‘Who knows? The loot could still be hidden somewhere in another tunnel old Ted dug. It’d be worth even more than the entire current balance by now, I imagine.’

  Roger chuckled to himself. ‘So don’t worry, Mason, this tunnel’s safe. It’s been here for at least a thousand years. It’s not going to collapse while we’re in it. Believe me, I’m not that lucky.’

  Ronny was taken aback. ‘Your Majesty!’ he protested. ‘That’s an awful thing to say!’

  ‘You haven’t met my wives, Mason,’ Roger told him with a grimace. ‘When you do, you’ll know why I don’t want to or need to use this tunnel.’

  Quartz grinned. ‘You’re a wise gnome, Your Majesty.’ They arrived at a small round door at the end of the tunnel. Quartz yanked the door open and the three gnomes shielded their eyes from the sudden light. Quartz held the door open so Roger and Ronny could exit.

  Once out of the tunnel, Ronny blinked. They had emerged inside a very plush bathroom. The walls and floor were tiled and all the fittings were solid gold, even the toilet.

  ‘Welcome to the Royal Loo,’ Roger said mockingly. Then he leaned next to Ronny and nodded at the gold toilet bowl. ‘It’s not all it’s cracked up to be,’ he confided. ‘That thing gets really, really cold.’

  Unable to help himself, Ronny started to laugh. He’d been arrested and convinced he was going to die, rescued and commissioned and now here he was inside probably the most private place in all of Gnumphlatia, with the king, only to be told that the loo was cold! Ronny laughed and laughed until tears began to pour down his face. His face ached and his sides hurt but he just couldn’t stop laughing.

  Caught up by Ronny’s laughter, Roger and Quartz were both soon chortling away just as hard. Eventually, all three were rolling on the tiled floor, howling with laughter. Their laughter was cut short when a butler, alarmed at the ruckus coming from the Royal lavatory, popped his head in through the main door. When he saw the three chortling gnomes rolling about on the floor, he managed to keep a straight face and politely withdrew his head from the doorway. He shut the door without saying a word. The three gnomes looked at each other for a startled moment then burst out laughing again.

  Chapter Four

  Several hundred metres away from James’ and Ronny’s shed was Benjamin’s manor house, and the rest of the compound, including a small barn and a grain mill. The house consisted of three main wings. It was three storeys high and had several dozen rooms.

  The kitchen could easily feed a small army. There was a small private library, and several sitting and drawing rooms. An extensive wine cellar, meticulously cared for by a strange old vampire sommelier called Eddy, was stocked with a huge supply of wines and spirits, some several decades old.

  There was also a business wing with all the usual necessities for an office to run, including printers, photocopiers, computers, telephones and fax machines. Underneath the building was a huge, cavernous garage. Except for when the place was being built, the garage had never seen a vehicle. It was now cluttered with all kinds of junk, through which Sarah just loved to explore.

  The main feature of the house however, was Benjamin’s great hall. Stepping into the enormous room was like stepping back in time. It could fit hundreds of people and resembled the sort of hall a monarch would have as a throne room. The floor was polished granite and the walls were bare stone. In the very centre of the floor, a large nine-pointed star in a circle was inlaid in solid gold. Opposite the two front doors of the hall were two large parking spaces for two shiny Ottispuschenshuffen Brothers enchanted elevators, one of which was still in the Congo jungle. The only windows were high up near the arched ceiling. Torches hung from the walls to give a soft yellow light that filled the hall, reflecting off the floor and ceiling.

  At the far end of the hall, where one could easily imagine a throne being placed, was an enormous wooden table where dozens of people could sit along each side. Behind that was a fireplace that seemed impossibly large. It was roughly five metres wide by five metres high. The grille and grates inside were iron, but the surrounding decal and fireguards were made entirely of tarnished silver fashioned into the shape of a wolf’s head, tilted back and howling. The huge canine teeth were nearly half a metre long. The fire within burned enormous logs of eucalyptus hardwood felled from the great forest of bush-land on Benjamin’s property.

  High above the fireplace was a great enamelled shield, perched above two crossed swords. The design on the shield was the same as Heirogryph Publishers — a gryphon standing back-to-back with a wolf. Between them was an open tome, above which hovered a large silvery quill.

  To the outsider, this crest seemed like any other coat of arms. To anyone who knew Benjamin McConnell, its meaning was quite clear. Books and tomes were Benjamin’s life’s work. He was a spellweaver, and quite a powerful one at that. Moreover, he had become powerful through an awful tragedy. One day, hundreds of years before, he had encountered a gryphon demon that was hell-bent on killing a werewolf. Benjamin had intervened the only way he could — by intercepting the demon’s silver crossbow bolt intended for the werewolf.

  The bolt had pierced his heart. Under normal circumstances, this would have killed him instantly. In this case, the bolt was cursed with all the power the demon possessed and its purpose was very specific. It was only ever intended to kill the werewolf. When it hit Benjamin instead, the curse unravelled and the demon and all its power was absorbed into Benjamin’s body. At that terrible moment, when Benjamin, possessed by the demon and was devouring his own wife, the werewolf he’d rescued made a terrible and noble decision. She used every last shred of her own power to banish the demon from Benjamin’s body.

  Benjamin was left a Silver Shroud werewolf. Part of his curse meant any wound inflicted upon him would double back on the foe that inflicted it. The other was that he was immortal. His only vulnerability was the touch of a demon. Though it would not kill him, it would leave him almost comatose. Benjamin’s saviour that fateful day sacrificed the entirety of her power to save him. In so doing, she was rendered a mere, ordinary wolf. When she died not long after, her soul never made it to the sacred werewolf forests of Wolfenvald. But, she did leave Benjamin with the aptitu
de for spellweaving and his great hall was the perfect place to practise that art. It was big and airy. It was inside, out of the weather and, for the most part, easy to clean. The stone floor could, and indeed had many times, withstand explosions, fires and all kinds of mess quite easily.

  The oddly-assorted group of sorcerers and werewolves arrived through a portal in the middle of the driveway leading up to the front door of Benjamin’s manor house. Benjamin led them into the great hall and ushered them all to be seated about the table. The two werewolf packs each carefully placed the girls’ belongings in a pile on the stone floor. Instead of seating themselves at the table, they all immediately returned to their wolf forms then began scampering about, sniffing everywhere.

  Sarah sighed as she looked at the huge pile.

  ‘I’ll help you get settled,’ Angela told her comfortingly. ‘When the others have all had a look about and settled in themselves, we’ll all probably meet back here. It’ll only take an hour or so.’

  It took considerably longer than that. It had been mid-morning back in the Congo jungle. There in Australia, the group had arrived shortly before dusk. It was after midnight when the group finally gathered back in the hall.

  Sarah found Benjamin and James seated at the table. Benjamin was staring into the massive fire that was roaring away in the fireplace, while James, lounging in one of the chairs and with his feet crossed on the table, was holding a large glass mug of beer. Others in the group also wandered in as Sarah arrived.

  ‘So good of you all to join us!’ James said finally as most of Pack Mannix and all of Pack Fergus took their places around the table. Roberta and Robert crouched on the floor beside Sarah while Angela sat quite elegantly and properly at the head of the table.

  James waved negligently at one of the service doors at the fireplace end of the hall. It opened with a loud creak and a flurry of faeries fluttered in carrying large trays of roasted meats and vegetables along with several jugs of beer, wine and water. There was a loud commotion as four more faeries flew in, struggling to carry the bottom half of a large wine barrel. They placed the huge shallow container beside the fire and then flew off, only to return with dozens of jugs of cold water. The faerie-line proceeded to fill the barrel bottom with water.