by Robin Jarvis
Thomas clung onto Woodget as the bed of the ocean lifted and quaked with the shuddering violence of the tremendous, impacting blow.
Careering helplessly into the steadfast stone, the gilt head exploded with a thousand, sparkling splinters and, projected like precious missiles from its crumpling features, flew a horde of spinning, scintillating treasures.
Like flaming meteors, the ruby eyes shot high over the sea and, from the steel fangs, as they bit deep clefts into the rock, the diamonds went skimming over the waves.
Then down crashed the serpent’s body and into the sea it thundered—with an almighty, foaming tumult.
For several minutes, as the serpent’s head lay crushed and beaten beyond redemption against the rock, the monstrous tail lashed furiously, but the movements quickly subsided and with a final spouting splash, the tail fell into the sea.
At once the ancient spirit which possessed the idol fled the crushed and mangled fabric of the hideous, glittering titan and, like an immense cloud of shadow, drifted up into the fog, to vanish into the ether and return to the void without any further hope of re-entering the living plane.
The woeful terrifying menace of Suruth Scarophion, the Dark Despoiler, was finally at an end. No more would the threat of his return trouble the waking world, or strike fear into his enemies. His malignant tyranny was over at last; no longer would his name be a byword for pain and horror. The banishment was finally complete and eternal, and with a blast of salt air the cloud of his trembling shade was dispersed and his evil might passed into the echoing dark. Beyond the walls of creation he was thrust, and through the vast gates of night to the very mansions of the dead where his foul demonic spirit was doomed to rage—trumpeting its imprisoned fury until the very ends of time.
The fear of his reign was finished and the new day which rose about Thomas and Woodget as they stood up on the rock, surrounded by the twinkling sea, gleamed clean and bright and they breathed deeply, giving glad grateful sighs.
Staring incredulously at the buckled, twisted sculpture, the mice found it difficult to believe that only minutes ago it had been animated with horrid, writhing life and threatening them with death.
Tentatively, moving a little closer to the shattered scales and broken sections of its dented body, Woodget peered at the gloom that lay inside, then he looked about him and stared in horror at Thomas.
“Simoon!” he cried. “Where is he?”
Thomas glanced around for the aged jerboa but of him he could find no trace and his gaze became fixed upon the floating debris of the rowing boat.
“He did jump when we did—didn’t he?” the fieldmouse asked. “Don’t say he was still in that thing when the monster came a-smashin’ down on top!”
The mice stared at each other desolately but then a mumbling groan issued from behind the great, gold-bestrewn rock and with hope surging inside them they clambered over the broken idol and hared through the shallows to where the jerboa lay, groggy and bleeding from a cut in his forehead—but alive.
Deliriously, Woodget crouched beside him and dabbed at the wound with sea water. “Don’t you go a-frettin’ now,” he soothed. “Everything be fine. The snake god’s done for and we’ll come out of this in one piece yet.”
“Ahhh,” sneered a hissing, rabid voice, “there you are wrong. The battle is not quite over, not yet.”
Staggering from around the rock, with a broken shard of gold in his claws came the High Priest and he looked upon the mice and Simoon with no other feeling but malice and an unholy craving for vengeance.
But the destruction of the statue and his unwilling involvement in that calamitous disaster had wrought a drastic change in his appearance.
When the gigantic serpent had exploded into the towering stone, its golden scales had gone flying in all directions but, perched directly behind the gruesome, rupturing head, the sable had suffered a hundred razoring cuts.
Through his once sleek hide, the deadly, gleaming treasures had deeply sliced and his flesh hung in bloody rents all over his body. One of the sharp, glinting scales was still embedded in his shoulder and over his hatchet face the fur was sticky and gouted with scarlet.
Yet none of that mattered now, all he yearned for, all that inflamed his embittered soul was the aching desire to kill and butcher those who had vanquished his master.
Pushing himself forward, he lifted the spike of gold in his claws and aimed it at the jerboa’s head.
But Thomas grabbed hold of him and dragged the sable aside—flinging him against the clattering wreck of the statue’s ruptured head.
“Watch it, Tom!” Woodget cried, seeing the High Priest come bounding back.
Thomas ducked but the sable was prepared for that and he struck the mouse’s temple with his fists before spinning around in an attempt to thrust the shard deep into his side.
Yet, whilst Thomas stumbled under the blow to his head, Woodget had leaped to his feet and sprang onto the High Priest’s back—covering the sable’s darting, red-rimmed eyes with his paws.
Screeching in fury, the High Priest turned and deliberately fell against the crag, squashing the fieldmouse between him and its sharp stone in an effort to rid himself of that puny annoyance.
Squealing, Woodget let go and fell into the shallow sea water, arching his back and whining piteously—unable to move.
Above him, the High Priest drew back his thin lips to reveal his needle-like teeth but before he could lunge down, Thomas came crashing into his side and in his paws he held one of the shattered oars.
Brutally the two fought—the golden shard clashing against the splintered wood. Savage were those deadly blows and watching them locked in battle, Woodget was disturbed to see his friend’s face take on some of the sable’s despising resentment and bitter hatred.
Fiercely the strokes swiped the air. Once Thomas caught the High Priest a glancing blow across the arm, but the creature rallied straight away and flew at him all the more viciously.
Courageously Thomas strove against the wrathful enemy and though the sable was almost twice his height, the pains and afflictions of the night had taken its toll of him and so, for some time, the mouse held him off and at one point almost looked as though he might be victorious.
But in the end, the sable’s natural belligerence and pugnacious spirit swelled within his tattered breast and stroke after stroke rained down upon the splintered oar until it was knocked from the mouse’s paws, and Thomas was pinned against the rock with the glinting spike pressed at his throat.
“So perish all who come between Sarpedon and his designs,” the High Priest spat.
Thomas shrank against the stone as the sable gloated, and waited for the shard to drive into his neck.
Yet the High Priest continued to leer at him and Thomas suddenly saw a trickle of blood drip from the cruel misshapen mouth.
Down fell the servant of Scarophion and there, revealed behind him, stood Woodget—with a steel fang ripped from the statue’s jaws clenched in his little fist and both it and his paw were drenched in the High Priest’s blood.
Shivering, the fieldmouse stared down at the lifeless body and great tears welled in his eyes.
“That’s fer our friends!” he uttered huskily. “Mister Mulligan, Captain Chattan and Karim!”
Gently, Thomas put his arm about his friend’s shoulders and took the weapon from his paw.
“It’s all right, Woodj,” he said, “the enemy’s finished now.”
Woodget shivered and stared at the blood which stained his paws, then hurried to the water’s edge where he washed them clean. In all his life he had never harmed anyone, and now he’d committed murder. His noble heart was wracked with remorse and he squeezed his eyes shut to keep from weeping.
Watching his anguished face, Thomas understood what was passing through the fieldmouse’s mind. The endearing air of innocence which shone in Woodget’s face was gone for ever and he tried his best to comfort him.
“You didn’t have a choice,” he
said. “The villain would have killed us both. You saved me, Woodj—don’t torture yourself over the likes of him, he weren’t worth it.”
Woodget sniffed, then looked about them. “But how does we get off this reef and back to port, Tom?” he asked in a small, faint-hearted voice.
Thomas had been pondering the same question, and he gazed thoughtfully out to sea—to where the morning sunlight was shimmering over the water. To his surprise he saw that, upon the horizon, a great wall of white mist was moving and he shielded his eyes against the sun to peer at it curiously.
“Woodj...” he began.
“Verily,” Simoon’s rich tones interrupted and when they turned they saw that he was sitting up in the shallows, wringing out the velvet folds of his robe, his keen eyes seeming to pierce the swirling bank of fog in the distance. “Yonder is the silver ship of Hara. Come to give whatever assistance she may. Do not forget that within the Black Temple there is still a host of scaly terrors to be dealt with, but I think we might allow the valour of our friends to contend with them.”
Woodget caught his breath. “But who be aboard her?” he murmured.
“All those in the city who were not slain. Many of the drugged guards were not found or murdered, and there were others. Sobhan Giri, whose name shall always be remembered for saving the children of Hara, stands upon the prow behind the figurehead and even now is sighting us. But the commander of that most blessed ship is a rat named Jophet—a rare and most trustworthy exception to his kind.”
“Jophet!” the fieldmouse declared. “Why he was on the Calliope and tried to put me off mixing with old Mulligan—nearly succeeded too, he did.”
Simoon splashed to his feet. “Indeed,” he admitted, “and that was at my behest, for I knew what fate awaited the Irish nomad. The fragments had to go to the Scale; I did not wish for you to become embroiled in the grim business. Yet it is good my wishes were not hearkened to, for if it were not for your stout hearts, I quiver to think what would have ensued.”
“Then Hara will be rebuilt,” Woodget sighed. “I’m glad.”
“Maybe,” the jerboa said softly, “but never to its former glory, the magic of the mountain has departed and they shall have to rely on the skill of their bows and blades to keep the lesser dangers at bay.”
“Well I couldn’t go back there,” Thomas said, “there’s too many ghosts for me.”
“A pity,” muttered Simoon. “For some phantoms ought to be confronted.”
Then Woodget smiled up at Thomas and in a small, meek voice asked. “Is it over, Tom? Is all the horridness ended?”
“Yes, Woodj,” Thomas replied, “it’s over.”
Beside them, Simoon the prophet knitted his bristling, brambly brows but said nothing and together they awaited the silver ship of Hara.
Journey’s End
When four days had passed and the celebrations were finally over, the white and silver ship returned to India, but Thomas, Woodget and Simoon did not go with her.
After his many labours, the jerboa was weary and had decided that the time had come for him to retire and fade into the shadows. His part in the theatre of the world had concluded, his role had been to contest the Dark Despoiler and now, without the threat of his infernal return, Simoon began to feel the weight of his many years pressing upon him.
Retrieving such items that Madame Akkikuyu had not stolen from his pack, he hoisted it upon his back one more time and bowed low so that his sprouting beard touched the ground.
It was a bright, sunny morning in Singapore and by the docks they said their goodbyes.
“Farewell, my friends,” the prophet said solemnly. “In the great battle against Scarophion you have proved your worth. Yet there are others wars to fight, other enemies to slay, perhaps one day we shall meet again—if fortune smiles upon me.”
“Where will you go?” Thomas asked.
Simoon’s dark eyes glittered and he shrugged. “Where the forgotten track leads me,” he said. “But now I feel as though I could sleep for an age or more. The wheel has turned and I do not belong in this world. Perhaps when it turns again I shall awaken.”
“Goodbye, Simoon,” the fieldmouse snivelled, wiping his nose on the back of his paw. “I’ll miss ’ee.”
The jerboa placed his mittened fingers upon Woodget’s russet-coloured head and smiled sadly before pulling the fringed hood over his brow and turning away.
Thomas and Woodget watched his small figure go shambling through the dockyard until he disappeared.
“Just you an’ me again then, Tom,” Woodget said. “When’s that ship due that’ll take us straight home?”
Idly, Thomas kicked a pebble. “It’ll be here soon enough.”
“Fancy a walk till then, Master Triton?”
“Alright, Matey, but only if you’ll stop calling me that ridiculous name.”
Woodget chuckled and, chatting amiably, they wandered along the dockside and down towards the river bank where the Lotus Parlour stood empty beneath the rickety wooden pier.
With his paws behind his back, Thomas stepped out onto the old boards and listened to his friend talk about the things he would do when they returned home.
“First off,” the fieldmouse said with a wag of his head, “I’ll tell that Bess Sandibrook exactly what I thinks of her—so that’ll be settled. Lor, won’t she gape when I tells her of the times we’ve had. Does you think she’ll believe me, Tom? I knows our Cudweed won’t.”
“I’ll back you up,” Thomas laughed.
“They were a right scurvy lot them scaleys, weren’t they? Dunno if I can make ’em sound wicked enough.”
Thomas sighed. They had walked far along the pier and the high tide was sloshing below the boards. “Mind you,” he said, sitting down and dangling his legs over the edge, “in this, no sides were blameless.”
Woodget plopped down beside him, but unlike Thomas his feet could not reach the cooling water. “How’d you mean, Tom?” he asked.
“Well look,” Thomas began, “that Green Council were willing to sacrifice anything, weren’t they? And they did too! Mulligan, the entire city of Hara—not forgetting the other shrines—just so the Scale could get their claws on all nine pieces.”
Woodget considered this then tilted his head to one side and looked at the wobbly light patterns upon the sparkling water. “But they couldn’t just give them to the enemy now could they?” he murmured. “They’d have been right suspicious.”
“I suppose,” Thomas grunted. “But it makes me wonder all the same.”
For nearly half an hour the two friends sat there in the delicious sunlight and when they decided it was time to leave, Thomas glanced back along the pier and saw that a large, shabby shape was hobbling towards them.
Thomas thought that it was one of the many beggarly folk that drifted around the shanty town, for it held in its paw a wooden bowl containing a few jingling coins. Yet that was all he could guess for the figure was wreathed and wrapped in countless dirty rags and the face was hidden in the swathes of the binding.
“I bain’t got no moneys,” Woodget lamented. “Poor dear, she looks all in.”
Thomas squinted at the stranger in surprise. Woodget was right, the figure was female—but it was a very lame and a very fat one.
Closer to them the beggar creature came, tirelessly shaking the bowl in supplication.
“Spare a coin, sir,” she said. “Spare a coin.”
“I’m sorry,” Thomas answered, “we don’t have none.”
“Hang on, Tom,” Woodget piped up. “She’s welcome to the bit o’ bread an’ cheese we was saving fer our lunch. Us can allus find work on the ship to earn some more.”
And so the fieldmouse began to unfasten his bag and rummage around inside it.
Very softly, a faint uncanny melody drifted upon the air as the shabby-looking creature began to whistle through her teeth a haunting tune that Woodget thought he had heard somewhere before.
“Here y’are,” he cried, lifting t
he bread and cheese from the bag. There’s a couple o’ nice biscui...”
Woodget’s voice faded, for the beggar was not looking at him, her concentration was bent upon Thomas and to his consternation, the fieldmouse saw that his friend seemed suddenly pale and drawn.
A blankness had settled across his face and his eyes were glazed and vacant.
“’Ere, Tom,” the fieldmouse began. “You look plain awful. What’s the matter?”
Thomas made no reply and continued to stare fixedly ahead.
Woodget touched his friend’s forehead and passed his paw over his eyes but still he did not respond.
“I don’t like this,” he muttered, turning to the beggar. “Could you give me a lift with him? He’s a lot bigger’n me an’ I reckon he needs to...”
Again his voice trailed into nothingness for at last he recognised the eerie whistling and beneath the swaddling rags he caught a glimpse of the creature’s feet.
One was the fleshy claw of a rat, but the other was a splayed deformity covered in warts and scales.
Standing before him was Ma Skillet, she who had escaped from the Black Temple with her frazzling hide, but in her panic she had not managed to save all of it from Simoon’s rapacious flames—so forever she was condemned to remain half rat, half creature of the Scale.
“What does you want?” Woodget demanded fiercely as he reached inside the bag again for a small knife that Jophet had given to him. “There bain’t nowt fer the likes of ’ee here no more.”
Ma Skillet said nothing, but stooped over Thomas and, removing the wrapping from her disfigured countenance, blew upon him lightly.
“Stop it!” Woodget cried.
But Mother Lotus waved her claw before her and mechanically, Thomas turned to face the fieldmouse.
“Listen, Tom!” Woodget shouted. “’Tis me—remember?”
But Thomas did not know him; under the spell of the abhorrent creature he was powerless and when she instructed him to push the fieldmouse into the water he was compelled to obey.
Into the river Woodget splashed and he thrashed his arms feverishly.