Furnaces of Forge (The Land's Tale)

by Alan Skinner

  A few minutes after Kevin had gone, Crimson left the tent, carrying one of the empty boxes. Chaos stood at the door of the tent, watching as she walked past Hazlitt and Edith to the band of trees at the far end of the plateau. Spite rose to his feet and both hounds loped after Crimson.

  Hazlitt put down his pen and watched her out of the corner of his eye as she stopped at the trees and scanned the ground. She picked up a few pieces of wood and placed them in the box. After a minute or two, Hazlitt went back to his writing and, gradually, Crimson moved into the cover of the trees, collecting more dead wood.

  Once hidden from view, Crimson undid her fire jacket. Underneath, she was wrapped in coils of rope. Chaos and Spite sat and watched as she unwound the rope and let it fall around her feet until only one coil remained, tied round her waist.

  ‘It’s one thing watching,’ she said to the hounds, ‘it’s another thing to understand what’s going on.’ They looked at her blankly.

  Crimson gathered the rest of the rope and slung it over her shoulder. Chaos cocked his head and looked at her. ‘It’s OK, I’m not going anywhere,’ she said to him. ‘At least, not just yet,’ she added under her breath.

  Crimson was at the corner of the plateau, the ravine on one side, the river below on the other. She moved casually to a tree near the cliff top overlooking the river. She knelt and picked up a stick, letting the rope slip from her shoulder. The hounds were staring at her intently. She drew her arm back and threw the stick back past the hounds. ‘Fetch!’ she cried. The dogs ignored the stick sailing over their heads and continued to stare at Crimson.

  ‘Oh well, worth a try,’ she muttered.

  Quickly, she tied the loose end of the rope securely round the tree trunk. She stood facing the hounds, a sheer drop at her back.

  ‘I hope Kevin’s ready,’ she said to herself. She hoped a lot of things: she hoped she’d tied the rope properly; she hoped the rope wasn’t too long; she hoped she didn’t crash against the cliff. Most of all, she hoped her plan worked. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and then hurled herself backwards off the cliff.

  Chaos and Spite howled, a savage baying that rang across the plateau. They ran to the spot where Crimson had disappeared. The rope swung back and forth but the inward slope of the cliff hid Crimson from view. Chaos barked in frustration, then began chewing the rope.

  At the first howl, Hazlitt and Edith were on their feet, running to the cliff edge. Down by the stream, Clash and Strike heard the howls, the call of the pack after its prey, and their muscles quivered. Then they raced off towards the sound of the hunt. At first they tried to run directly up the wall behind them, but it was too steep and their paws slipped on the mossy rock. After a few unsuccessful tries, they wheeled round and went back to the front of the ravine where the slope became gentler.

  As soon as Clash and Strike were out of sight, Kevin tied one end of the rope to the handle of the bucket. With the other end in his teeth, he climbed the sapling. About halfway up, the young tree started to bend. Kevin shifted his weight so that the sapling curved towards the opposite bank. There was still plenty of slack in the rope attached to the bucket on the bank, and so he climbed higher. He was nearly at the top and the sapling formed a smooth arc, but his weight wasn’t enough to make it bend right across the stream.

  Sitting astride the tree and clamping his knees tightly round it, Kevin took the rope from his mouth and draped it over the slender trunk. Slowly, he pulled on the rope, until it went taut. Then he tugged once more.

  The bucket lifted from the bank. The sapling bowed under the extra weight and, in one graceful sweep, Kevin was carried to the other side of the stream, the bucket swinging like a pendulum below him. Kevin gradually let out enough of the rope so that the bucket came to rest on the opposite bank. Still holding the tip of the sapling, he slid from the tree on to the bucket.

  Balanced on the bucket, Kevin had to fight with all his strength to keep his little bridge across the stream. Crimson would come. He had to hold on until then.

  Crimson’s fall had ended with a wrenching jolt. Pain shot through her as the rope tightened around her waist. Her ribs felt as if they were being crushed and her stomach felt as if someone had pushed a knife into it. Every bone seemed to crack and she couldn’t breathe. And then she opened her eyes to see the cliff heading straight for her face.

  Just in time, she put her feet out in front of her. Even so, the shock of the impact ran right up through the soles of her feet, through her knees, into her hips and continued from there up to her neck. Pain and lack of air blurred her vision and fogged her brain. She hung limply for a second or two, unable to focus, and then breathed in as deeply as she could. Her vision cleared and her head started working again.

  She looked down. The waters of the Salvation rushed a couple of metres below her dangling feet. She could feel the spray from the river as it dashed against the rocks. ‘Good,’ she thought, ‘not too far to drop.’ She looked up. She could hear the howling of the hounds, but all she could see was the rope disappearing across the lip of the rock above her.

  Crimson put her feet against the cliff face and pushed. She twisted as she pushed so that she started to swing in an arc. She swung back towards the wall and pushed again, this time more to the side. After a few pushes she was swinging from side to side in a wide arc that took her round the cliff face into the ravine. Abover her, the rope frayed as it scraped against the rock. Strand after strand parted as the rock and Chaos’s teeth cut through the rope.

  At the furthest point of her arc, she was near enough to grab on to a rocky outcrop. She pulled herself up enough to take the weight off the rope. She undid the knot and dropped a metre or so to the floor of the ravine beside the stream.

  Crimson raced along the bank of the stream. She pushed through branches and brambles and stumbled over rocks, racing to get to Kevin. Above her, she could hear the howls of the dogs. They were getting fainter and she figured that Hazlitt and Edith must have pulled up the rope by now. If she was very lucky, they would assume that she had dropped into the river and been carried away downstream, perhaps even drowned. Even now, they would be hurrying to the other side of the plateau to see if they could spot her in the river.

  Of course, once they realised that Kevin was gone they’d know that somehow they’d been tricked. Crimson counted on them taking just a little time to work out how.

  She spotted Kevin ahead of her, on the other side of the stream, straining against the tension of the sapling’s supple trunk. In a few strides she was there. She launched herself from the bank and grabbed the slender tree. Hanging from the trunk, she crossed, hand over hand, to the other side.

  She dropped to the bank next to Kevin. Though her muscles ached, she immediately helped Kevin keep the tree bowed.

  ‘OK,’ she said hoarsely.

  With one hand, Kevin pulled the rope from the tree. Crimson nodded once and they both let go of the sapling.

  It whipped up right and across the stream, quivering until it had shed nearly all its few remaining autumn leaves.

  Crimson stuffed the rope into the bucket, filled with a few large rocks and dropped it into the stream, where it sank.

  ‘Let’s go!’ she said.

  ≈

  ‘Quiet!’ commanded Hazlitt. The hounds stopped barking.

  ‘If she went into the river she’s drowned,’ said Edith.

  ‘Perhaps,’ he spat, and he grabbed Clash’s collar and pulled the dog roughly until it cowered at his feet. ‘You left the other one!’ he yelled. He picked up a thick piece of wood and hit Clash across the ribs. The hound yelped and tried to escape his grip. Hazlitt’s face contorted with rage. He hit Clash again and then thrust the yelping dog away. Strike knew what was coming and fell on his belly, whining. Hazlitt stood over the hound, raised his stick and dealt Strike a cruel blow across his back.

  Both dogs were shaking and looking at their master with terrified eyes. ‘Find him!’ Hazlitt cried. Clash and Strike ran li
ke greyhounds back to the stream.

  ‘What are you waiting for?’ he screamed at Chaos and Spite. ‘You too!’ Chaos and Spite wasted no time getting away from Hazlitt’s wrath.

  ‘I knew we should have let the dogs have her sooner,’ Edith said angrily.

  ‘Now is not the time, Edith,’ Hazlitt growled. ‘Let’s hope the Beadle has enough sense not to run away. If he has, I’ll make him sorrier than he could imagine when I find him.’ With Edith close behind, he followed the hounds to the stream.

  The dogs scoured the bank, confused. Kevin’s scent stopped halfway along. Spite caught Crimson’s scent, but it, too, just stopped. Kevin and Crimson had vanished into thin air.

  Hazlitt collapsed his small brass telescope. ‘There’s no sign of them on the plain but there’s nowhere else they could have gone. It’ll be dark soon. We don’t have time to waste searching for them. We’ll have to leave for Forge in a couple of hours if we want to be there by morning.’

  ‘Like I said, we should have let the dogs have her back at the other camp,’ Edith snapped.

  Hazlitt gave a resigned sigh. ‘We’ve been through all that. We couldn’t take the chance.’

  ‘Amelia thought –’ Edith began.

  ‘Amelia was wrong, Edith. And not just about this,’ said Hazlitt tersely. ‘Crimson isn’t part Myrmidot. She’s not your “sister”, like Amelia imagined. If she’s sister to anything, it’s to the Land. But the other one, Beatrice – well, that’s another question.’

  Hazlitt gazed across the plain. ‘We’ve been studying the blue fire too long not to know now what that damn Muddle is. She could undo everything. We have to make sure she doesn’t,’ he said.

  ‘Clash and Strike can pay for their mistake. Send those two to look for them. They can’t have gone far;’ said Edith. ‘We’ll whistle the hounds when we leave.’

  Hazlitt called the dogs. ‘Find them,’ he ordered. ‘Find them. Kill them. Go!’

  The hounds needed no second bidding. Hunting was what they did best. Their powerful legs took them out of the camp and on to the wide plain of Myrmidia.

  Edith raised her eyebrows. ‘And the Beadle? After all the trouble we went to? Too bad. He would have made a very good example to the others. And Amelia had trained him rather well.’

  ‘Not well enough,’ said Hazlitt darkly. ‘Come, we’d better get ready.’

  From the top of the western ridge across the stream, Crimson and Kevin watched Hazlitt and Edith walk back to the pavilion. Clash and Strike were two small dots in the distance.

  ‘We’ll wait here until it gets dark,’ said Crimson. ‘Then we’ll head for Forge. Let’s hope we can get there without the hounds finding us first.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be safer to go to Home?’ asked Kevin.

  ‘It would take us a full day to get there, only half that to get to Forge,’ she answered. ‘Besides, we have to find out what they’ve done. And the answer is in Forge.’

  Chapter 12

  A Council

  The streets of Home were silent and empty. As evening came, the animals had drifted from the town and headed north. The weary Muddles had made their way to their homes, thinking of dinner and of their beds.

  Grunge walked through the quiet Common to the bandstand. The Mix had ended and he was glad to have his own legs back. He appreciated how difficult Leaf’s injuries were for her and promised himself he would visit her later.

  He looked around the bandstand. The rats had left, scurrying north with the other animals. Grunge hoisted himself on to the railing and sat with his back against a carved upright. He watched a twilight mist spread across the Common, clinging to the trees and rolling across the few flowers that had not yet succumbed to autumn. The terrible sadness that he had felt earlier was still with him. He could not bring himself to believe that the Myrmidots would knowingly bring harm to the Land, or to the Muddles or the Beadles. Although the different peoples of the Land kept largely to themselves, it was a comfort, snugly tucked away in their lives, to know that the others were there.

  He thought of Crimson. He knew he had to go with the others to Forge. He knew he had to wait to find her. And he knew that without Flyte to accompany him, he would stand little chance of getting Crimson and Kevin back. And Flyte had disappeared. In fact, every last Muddle animal had disappeared. Grunge wished he knew where they had gone. But he also knew that wherever they were, they had good reason to go.

  He rose to his feet and left the bandstand. It had been a busy day and he thought it best to go home, have dinner and get an early night. The Beadles, of course, would be punctual. As usual.

  ≈

  Beams of blue moonlight pierced the canopy of the trees, creating eerie patches of blue on the forest floor. Dark shapes, dappled by the shadows of the branches and leaves, moved through the moonlight. The forest was alive with the silent figures. They came from all directions, but each had the same destination: a flat-topped, treeless hill above the rushing Salvation River.

  It took a while for them all to assemble. The first to arrive stood on the hilltop. From here, they could see the plains of Myrmidia across the river. And each figure to join them did as those before, until they were all gathered, all gazing, spellbound, at the blue, glowing town of Forge.

  It was Miniver who broke the spell. She moved to the centre of the crowd and rose on her hind legs, looking at those who were standing before her. Satisfied that every Muddle animal in the Land was there, she began to speak.

  ‘They are returning,’ she growled. She raised a massive paw and pointed to the north. Several kilometres away, clear in the bright blue moonlight, they saw Welcome Bridge, and approaching the bridge, a dark, moving mass: the animals of Myrmidia.

  ‘They are not returning to their forests and fields, to their paddocks and yards; they are not going back into their dens and burrows or their stables and barns. They are marching against Forge.’

  Not one of the hundreds of Muddle birds and beasts staring at Miniver was able to comprehend what her words meant.

  ‘How’s that work, then?’ ventured Shades the meerkat.

  ‘Marching, like in a parade?’ asked Clark the penguin.

  ‘Do they get there and then march back again?’ wondered Bray the donkey. ‘You know, make their point and then call it a day?’

  ‘What if the people of Forge don’t want animals walking through their streets and flying over houses? What if they just tell them to go away?’ asked Jules the eagle.

  Question after question flew around the hilltop. The Muddles asked Miniver and they asked each other. There were scores of questions. But there were no answers.

  Edward sat, thinking. The fox’s tail curled up over his back like a question mark. ‘How will the Myrmidots know what the animals want? Even the animals don’t know what they want. They just feel frightened,’ he said when the questions began to die out.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Burrow the badger in his low, gruff voice, ‘animals can’t talk.’

  ‘And even if they did, Myrmidots aren’t the ones they should talk to. Myrmidots can’t even understand us,’ said Clark.

  Miniver asked for silence.

  ‘The blue fire should not have been brought into the Land. The Beadles and the other Muddles will go to Forge to persuade them to get rid of the stone. I fear that the animals are frightened enough to attack Forge. That could be as bad for the Land as the blue fire. We cannot let it happen.’

  ‘How do we stop them?’ asked Flyte. ‘There are ten times as many animals as us.’

  ‘I’m not sure. Whatever it is we do, we can’t do it standing here. We have to follow them to Forge. At least if we’re there, we might be able to calm them,’ said Miniver. She looked out across the moonlit landscape. ‘Although, maybe there is something . . .’ she added. Her eyes darted across the Muddles until she spotted the one she wanted.

  ‘Calamity, what exactly did Hazlitt and Edith say about Crimson and what the Myrmidots had done?’

  ‘Well, I don’
t know if I can remember exactly,’ replied Calamity. ‘Edith said that, without Crimson, nothing can change what has been done.’

  Miniver nodded her head. ‘We need Crimson,’ she said in a low rumble. ‘Flyte!’

  The wolf came from the pack and stood before Miniver.

  ‘You have to find Crimson. Bring her to Forge as quickly as you can.’

  ‘She could be anywhere in Myrmidia,’ said the wolf. ‘With all those animals crossing Welcome Bridge, I’ll not be able to get her scent.’

  ‘Quick!’ growled Miniver. The little brown swift darted between the Muddles and perched on Flyte’s back. ‘Quick, will you go with her and scout for Crimson?’

  ‘I’ll find her,’ sang Quick.

  ‘I’m going with Flyte, too!’ yapped Calamity.

  ‘I’m sorry, Calamity,’ said Miniver gently. ‘You’ll slow her down and we haven’t time to lose. Besides, we’ll need everyone else at Forge.’

  For a moment Miniver thought Calamity was going to refuse. At last the puppy gave a resigned bark. ‘OK. But Flyte – you tell Crimson I wanted to go with you!’

  ‘I will,’ promised Flyte. ‘Ready, Quick?’ The little bird chirped once, then rose into the night sky like an arrow. And even before Quick was lost in the darkness, Flyte had gone.

  The rest of the Muddles stared into the darkness where the wolf had disappeared.

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Miniver. ‘It’s a long walk to Forge.’

  ≈

  Quick flew fast and low over the Land. She flew down the hillside and over the long column of animals streaming across Welcome Bridge. She would have liked to have flown higher, but even with the unnatural blue glow of the moon, her keen eyes were hampered by the night.

  By the time Flyte reached the bridge, there were only a few stragglers crossing. The wolf weaved through the animals and into Myrmidia. She knew it was pointless trying to pick up Crimson’s scent after the great horde of animals had just crossed the bridge, so she raced straight on into the heart of great plain.