by Robin Jarvis
A draught of cold, stale air drifted up from the uncovered darkness and the werlings wrinkled their noses and shivered as they peered down into the pitch black.
“Is it a dungeon?” Bufus wondered aloud.
“A bottomless pit to throw folk down!” Tollychook whimpered. “With poisonous snakes at the bottom—if it has a bottom.”
“Or an escape tunnel,” Gamaliel suggested.
“With vipers that bite and make you drop down dead!” Tollychook felt compelled to add.
“We don’t have time to find out,” Finnen said firmly. “Let’s put Gamaliel’s plan into action.” He hurried over to where the three sluglungs were quarreling over the juice and, with a fierce shout, ordered them to leave it alone.
“Any idea what’s down there?” Gamaliel asked the Tower Lubber.
“None.”
“Only one way to see!” Bufus declared and he ran to the fire, pulled out a burning stick and cast it into the hole.
The flames flickered in the draughty drop as the stick twirled and tumbled. It did not have far to fall—in a moment it hit the ground with a burst of sparks and the fire was extinguished. But the brief flare of light had been enough to illuminate part of what was down in that chamber.
Bufus whistled through his teeth and Kernella let out a cry of astonishment.
“Ooer,” said Tollychook.
“What is it?” the Tower Lubber demanded. “What can you see?”
Gamaliel was almost laughing. “What was this place built for originally?” he asked.
“It was a watchtower and fortress,” the Lubber answered, a little tetchily. “Built by Man to spy on the eastern moor, fearing invaders. But no mortal men can dwell nigh Hagwood for long, and so this was abandoned. Old tales tell that the soldiers went mad and slew one another.”
“I’d like to hear that story!” Bufus said, ghoulishly.
“Well, whatever happened,” Gamaliel declared, “they must’ve been expecting a huge invasion—they left their weapons behind.”
In the fleeting flurry of light, an arsenal of ancient weapons had been revealed: spears and swords, shields and axes, sheaves upon sheaves of arrows, forests of longbows and large timber constructions for hurling missiles great distances.
“If those sluglungs hadn’t stuffed themselves stupid,” Bufus grumbled, “I bet we could’ve won the war with that lot.”
“No amount of arms can give us victory,” the Lubber reminded them.
Kernella put her hands on her hips and snorted. “I’ll settle for just making it through the next few hours,” she said.
“Fetch more torches!” Gamaliel urged. “Let’s bring it all up.”
Frowning, Finnen joined them and swept the hair from his eyes as he peered into the gloomy pit.
“I’ve put the fire devil in the jar,” he announced. “That’s our best hope—not blunt old knives. We should dash outside while we can and start collecting.”
“This won’t take long!” Gamaliel promised. “Don’t you see? We need every little scrap of hope we can find. What about the Redcaps who don’t eat the birds? What if the talisman doesn’t work? We’ll need to fight with something.”
Folding her arms, Kernella tutted. “We also need a rope to climb down there,” she remarked.
Her brother shook his head and beckoned a sluglung over. “Oh no we don’t!” he said. “Not when we’ve got these fellows with us.”
Grasping a burning stick, he explained to the sluglung what he wanted. The creature nodded, then grasped him around the waist, leaned over the hole and started to lower him down, its arm extending and stretching into the darkness.
Finnen muttered under his breath. This was madness. Every moment was vital. He strode away to see which of the sluglungs were able to walk and follow him outside. Kernella would have gone with him, but the thought of those slaughtered birds was too great a deterrent. She could always praise his courage when he returned—provided he wasn’t covered in blood and feathers.
“Be careful,” she told him. “And hurry back!”
Finnen was too busy assessing the sluglungs to hear her. Out of their number, there were only fifteen who could still stand, and only nine of those were able to waddle or walk.
“This way,” he commanded. “Bring as many baskets and pots as you can. One of you bring that jar of juice out to the entrance.”
Burping and squelching, the bloated creatures obeyed. There was a squeal of rusted hinges as the great door was pulled open and they lumbered into the bright sunshine.
Gamaliel’s descent into the hole was smooth and steady. Holding the torch above his head, he saw the flame glinting in hundreds of tarnished blades around him. But the light did not penetrate far into the darkness and he wondered how vast this secret hoard could be.
His knees bent gently when his feet met the floor and he tapped the clammy fingers that held him.
“I’m here,” he called up to the hole in the ceiling. “You can let go now!”
The hand retracted and began rising upward. Gamaliel heard Bufus’s impatient voice demanding to be next. Then he turned about to examine this hidden chamber.
“Aarghh!” he howled.
He had pushed the torch right into the empty nose cavity of a great, grinning skull.
The flames bounced up into the hollow eye sockets and the shadows whirled around, making the skull seem alive and ferocious.
Gamaliel wailed again, then tottered backward and thrashed the fire before his face. “Get away—get away!” he squealed.
He was so afraid that he did not notice the sluglung’s hand sliding down beside him or the Doolan boy hopping onto the ground.
“Ha!” Bufus snorted when he saw the skull. “This your new girlfriend, Gammy?”
He knocked on the dome of its forehead with his knuckles, sending up a cloud of ancient dust that made him cough and splutter. Then he pulled a succession of rude faces at it before placing his hand into the open jaw and feigning panic.
“It’s got me, it’s got me!” he joked.
Conquering his fear, Gamaliel leaped forward and pulled him away.
“Don’t do that!” he shouted. “It isn’t funny!”
“Oh, get your head out of your breeches,” Bufus jeered. “It’s only a musty old skully. I really don’t think it minds.”
Gamaliel walked away in disgust. He ventured further into the dark chamber. Mighty posts of oak that gave extra support to the beams of the ceiling emerged from the gloom as he pressed onward. Most were sound and solid but one or two had rotted or were chewed through by worms and crumbled into brown powder under his fingertips. The ground was uneven and sloped downward, with large holes here and there. He stumbled several times and, if it wasn’t for the torchlight, he would have fallen in or broken an ankle.
Picking his way around these hazards, he marveled at the scores of weapons stowed in that forgotten place. They were too massive for a werling to wield—even the arrows were too long to use as spears.
“The sluglungs have got to be able to fight,” he muttered in desperation. “They must.”
Behind him, another burning torch came gliding down from the room above. With some reluctance, Kernella had allowed herself to be gripped about her middle and was descending with a regal and nonchalant air as if she traveled this way all the time.
“What’s taking you two so long?” she demanded before she even touched the floor. “Those slimy monsters are too fat to squeeze down that hole so we’ve got to guide their hands to the swords and such and then they’ll hoist them up.”
She reached the ground and the fingers released her. Another hand was already stretching down and she glanced quickly around while she waited.
The first thing she saw was the skull. Its jaw opened slowly and, in a sepulchral voice, it let out a long desolate moan. Then it said, �
��Have you seen my hat?”
Kernella tapped her foot and pursed her lips, unimpressed. “You always did have a big head,” she told the figure squatting behind the teeth.
Bufus crawled out, sniggering.
“You Tumpins have no sense of humor,” he laughed. “If we get through this, I’m going to take skully back home in triumph. I wonder who it belonged to originally? Probably one of them soldiers who went loopy. Do you think he cut his own head off, or someone else obliged?”
The girl ignored him and planted her torch firmly in the earthen floor. The sluglung’s other hand was already dangling at her side like a cluster of wobbly stalactites and, taking the forefinger of both, she led them to a great pile of swords and yelled upward.
“Get a move on; don’t take all day.”
The glistening, clammy hands scrambled over the blades like two jelly crabs. Then each fumbling finger coiled around a sword and, with a scrape of metal, lifted them into the air. Kernella watched the deadly array rise upward with satisfaction. A few more hauls like that would do very nicely. Then she cast around for her brother.
Gamaliel had discovered other skulls. They were impaled on spears and the leaping shadows painted accusing or piteous expressions across their bony faces. He did not like to look at them. The men who built this tower must have indeed been driven mad. It was a chilling reminder—not that he needed one—of just how dangerous a place Hagwood was.
“Anything different over there?” Kernella called to him.
“More swords and lots and lots of shields!” he shouted back. “It goes on a bit farther; I’ll just take a look.”
Placing the sluglung hands on a bundle of arrows, his sister took up her torch, determined to go explore as well.
“You supervise the next haul,” she told Bufus. “Get some of those spears up and then try tackling one of these big wooden contraptions.”
Bufus sneered at her. “Stuff that, Bossydrawers,” he refused. “I’m not missing out.” Tilting his head back, he yelled up to Tollychook to come down next and take over.
“Down there?” came the woeful response. “Me in that girt dark hole?”
“Yes, you fat, dithering lump!”
So Bufus and Kernella hastened after Gamaliel.
Bufus was thrilled to see the other skulls but the girl was more interested in the weapons. There were so many. She wished she had a little sword and shield of her very own, perhaps even a helm. She was sure she would be an impressive, striking figure, but she had to admit she would be of little use against marauding Redcaps.
Some way ahead and down the slope they could see the bobbing flames of Gamaliel’s torch, nipping left and right behind heaps of rusting breastplates and regimented rows of shaft and blade. Kernella and Bufus hurried on, taking care to avoid the treacherous holes in the ground.
With a wretched look on his face, Tollychook descended. He yelped when he beheld the skull but, in a jittery panic, guided the hands that brought him to a rank of spears.
They were quickly drawn upward through the hatch and Master Umbelnapper suddenly felt horribly alone. The skull unnerved him and he turned his back to it to look searchingly across the densely filled darkness toward the glimmering torches of his friends.
“Don’t ’ee be too long!” he shouted.
One of his friends called something in reply but he couldn’t make out what was said, or even who said it. He shivered nervously and the hairs on his neck began to prickle.
“That evil old skull be staring clean at you!” he whispered to himself.
Summoning his tiny courage, he turned, shakily. He had been expecting the skull to have moved—to have somehow crept a fraction closer—but it was in the same place.
“You’re daft, lad,” he chided, feeling foolish but immensely relieved.
Tollychook let out a sigh and leaned against the rusted blade of a sword propped against one of the huge wooden catapults. The weapon shifted, then slid away, falling against another sword, which knocked into another, until a whole row of them went clattering to the ground—but not before the last three swung into the poles of a dozen spears. They went clonking against a stack of round, metal shields that toppled over with a resounding crash and went rolling down the slope, bowling and spinning recklessly. They smashed into the heap of breastplates with a tremendous, clanking racket, then bounced and rebounded wildly. Other unseen things came thundering down and the darkness was fogged with teeming dust.
“Lumme,” Tollychook breathed, aghast. “What’ve I done?”
Everything in that armory was in motion, falling and toppling, rolling down the slope right toward the three small flaming torches.
Gamaliel had gone as far as he was able. At the end of the chamber the floor had fallen away completely and a deep chasm lay before him. He stooped to pick up a pebble and tossed it in. It rattled down the immense, slanting shaft to an unimaginable depth, echoing in the foundations of the earth—further down even than the caverns of Peg-tooth Meg.
“Tollychook was right,” he muttered. “There was a bottomless pit after all.”
With a shivery shrug, he turned to go back and rejoin the others. His sister and Bufus were still picking their way toward him.
“There’s nothing more down this way,” he told them. “Just a huge deep hole.”
“I’ve had enough of those!” Kernella declared, disappointed.
“No more bones?” Bufus asked.
Before Gamaliel could answer, they heard the first thudding rumble caused by Tollychook’s blundering.
“What’s that?” Kernella cried.
“Bad news!” Bufus predicted.
The uproar grew louder and closer, and clouds of dust came billowing from the gloom. A wooden support post was struck by the full toppling force of a mountainous stack of heavy bronze shields. There was an explosion of sound and a sickening CRUMP that shook the soil beneath the werlings’ feet.
Suddenly, a shield came whooshing over their heads. It glanced off the far wall and came zinging back.
Yelling with fright, they sprang out of the way and the shield drove into a pile of helmets, scattering them like skittles.
“That nearly cut our bonces off!” Bufus shouted, clamping one hand on top of his curly hair. “I might like skulls, but I want to keep my own attached to the rest of me.”
Kernella was too busy fleeing a bouncing helmet to heed him. A sword flew past her, somersaulting in the air, and she veered sharply left, colliding with her brother. Both fell to the ground—just as the blade of a spear sliced through the air above. Kernella dropped her torch and the flames fizzled and died.
Pandemonium reigned. An avalanche of arrows swept toward them and they hopped about in a mad dance to avoid it. Nearby, another support post shattered, firing splintered shards into the swirling dust.
The Tumpins became separated from Bufus, each dodging perils of their own. Gamaliel was the next to lose his torch. It was smacked from his hand by a flying post fragment and the cavern grew even darker.
“We’re sitting ducks!” Bufus cried, breathlessly. “We’re going to get hacked or stabbed or squashed—or all three together.”
A drizzle of dirt and debris was now raining from the ceiling and Gamaliel ran to one of the helmets that had rolled to a halt and dove beneath it for protection.
“Hide and be safe, hide and be safe,” he repeated to himself. That was the werling creed and had been drummed into him for as long as he could remember.
“In here!” he yelled to the others.
Kernella darted in after him, but Bufus was farther away. Anxiously, they watched him hurrying toward them. A hail of stones drummed onto the helmet and Kernella covered her ears.
“Faster!” Gamaliel hollered to Bufus.
The Doolan boy jumped over another surging tide of arrows, then stumbled to a stop as all expres
sion drained from his face. He stared over at the helmet in which Gamaliel and Kernella were sheltered and then raised his eyes to the ceiling.
“What’s he doing?” Kernella demanded. “He’ll get killed out there.”
Gamaliel could not understand. He saw him lift his torch as high as he could, then heard him call in a strangled, panic-filled voice, “Get out—get out of there!”
“What did he say?” Kernella asked.
“GET OUT!” Bufus bawled at them.
The Tumpins looked at one another, dumbfounded.
There was a deafening, splintering roar overhead. The ceiling was collapsing.
At once they charged from their shelter and pelted toward Bufus. Above them, the oak beams were sagging and bowing. A moment later one came slamming down and the helmet they had taken refuge under was pulverized.
Another beam buckled ominously.
“When that goes, we’re done for,” Bufus told them. “That’s the only thing keeping the flagstones up on the next level. If they come down on top of us …”
Gamaliel hunted around wildly. There was no chance of escape, no way out. He knew they were completely trapped—except perhaps … no. That was sheer madness.
A creak ripped through the choking atmosphere. The beam directly above the werlings split into kindling, and the flagstones it had supported began to quake alarmingly.
His mind racing, Gamaliel seized hold of the upturned shield and started pushing it toward the far wall, raging at the others to help him.
They were too astonished and terrified to argue. They grasped the rim of the great bronze dish and together they heaved it down the slope. The heavy shield gained momentum and skimmed even more swiftly over the lines of fallen arrows.
“Jump on!” Gamaliel yelled.
Bufus and his sister obeyed. Gamaliel gave it one final, running shove, then leaped in beside them.
The ground shuddered as the flagstones came thundering down in their wake. The shield was jolted into the air and Kernella finally saw her brother’s plan. Clamping her eyes shut, she screamed.
They were speeding directly for the huge hole in the earth.