by C. S. Lewis
And so it went on. Every few minutes they were joined by other creatures, some from the branches overhead and some from little underground houses at their feet, till the party consisted of five rabbits, a squirrel, two magpies, a goat-foot faun, and a mouse, who all talked at the same time and all agreed with the Hedgehog. For the truth was that in that golden age when the Witch and the Winter had gone and Peter the High King ruled at Cair Paravel, the smaller woodland people of Narnia were so safe and happy that they were getting a little careless.
Presently, however, two more practical people arrived in the little wood. One was a Red Dwarf whose name appeared to be Duffle. The other was a stag, a beautiful lordly creature with wide liquid eyes, dappled flanks and legs so thin and graceful that they looked as if you could break them with two fingers.
“Lion alive!” roared the Dwarf as soon as he had heard the news. “And if that’s so, why are we all standing still, chattering? Enemies at Anvard! News must be sent to Cair Paravel at once. The army must be called out. Narnia must go to the aid of King Lune.”
“Ah!” said the Hedgehog. “But you won’t find the High King at the Cair. He’s away to the North trouncing those giants. And talking of giants, neighbors, that puts me in mind—”
“Who’ll take our message?” interrupted the Dwarf. “Anyone here got more speed than me?”
“I’ve got speed,” said the Stag. “What’s my message? How many Calormenes?”
“Two hundred; under Prince Rabadash. And—” But the Stag was already away—all four legs off the ground at once, and in a moment its white stern had disappeared among the remoter trees.
“Wonder where he’s going,” said a Rabbit. “He won’t find the High King at Cair Paravel, you know.”
“He’ll find Queen Lucy,” said Duffle. “And then—hullo! What’s wrong with the Human? It looks pretty green. Why, I do believe it’s quite faint. Perhaps it’s mortal hungry. When did you last have a meal, youngster?”
“Yesterday morning,” said Shasta weakly.
“Come on, then, come on,” said the Dwarf, at once throwing his thick little arms round Shasta’s waist to support him. “Why, neighbors, we all ought to be ashamed of ourselves! You come with me, lad. Breakfast! Better than talking.”
With a great deal of bustle, muttering reproaches to itself, the Dwarf half led and half supported Shasta at a great speed further into the wood and a little downhill. It was a longer walk than Shasta wanted at that moment and his legs had begun to feel very shaky before they came out from the trees onto bare hillside. There they found a little house with a smoking chimney and an open door, and as they came to the doorway Duffle called out:
“Hey, brothers! A visitor for breakfast.”
And immediately, mixed with a sizzling sound, there came to Shasta a simply delightful smell. It was one he had never smelt in his life before, but I hope you have. It was, in fact, the smell of bacon and eggs and mushrooms all frying in a pan.
“Mind your head, lad,” said Duffle a moment too late, for Shasta had already bashed his forehead against the low lintel of the door. “Now,” continued the Dwarf, “sit you down. The table’s a bit low for you, but then the stool’s low too. That’s right. And here’s porridge—and here’s a jug of cream—and here’s a spoon.”
By the time Shasta had finished his porridge, the Dwarf’s two brothers (whose names were Rogin and Bricklethumb) were putting the dish of bacon and eggs and mushrooms, and the coffee pot and the hot milk, and the toast, on the table.
It was all new and wonderful to Shasta for Calormene food is quite different. He didn’t even know what the slices of brown stuff were, for he had never seen toast before. He didn’t know what the yellow soft thing they smeared on the toast was, because in Calormen you nearly always get oil instead of butter. And the house itself was quite different from the dark, frowsty, fish-smelling hut of Arsheesh and from the pillared and carpeted halls in the palaces of Tashbaan. The roof was very low, and everything was made of wood, and there was a cuckoo-clock and a red-and-white checked tablecloth and a bowl of wild flowers and little curtains on the thick-paned windows. It was also rather troublesome having to use dwarf cups and plates and knives and forks. This meant that helpings were very small, but then there were a great many helpings, so that Shasta’s plate or cup was being filled every moment, and every moment the Dwarfs themselves were saying, “Butter please,” or “Another cup of coffee,” or “I’d like a few more mushrooms,” or “What about frying another egg or so?” And when at last they had all eaten as much as they possibly could the three Dwarfs drew lots for who would do the washing-up, and Rogin was the unlucky one. Then Duffle and Bricklethumb took Shasta outside to a bench which ran against the cottage wall, and they all stretched out their legs and gave a great sigh of contentment and the two Dwarfs lit their pipes. The dew was off the grass now and the sun was warm; indeed, if there hadn’t been a light breeze, it would have been too hot.
“Now, Stranger,” said Duffle, “I’ll show you the lie of the land. You can see nearly all South Narnia from here, and we’re rather proud of the view. Right away on your left, beyond those near hills, you can just see the Western Mountains. And that round hill away on your right is called the Hill of the Stone Table. Just beyond—”
But at that moment he was interrupted by a snore from Shasta who, what with his night’s journey and his excellent breakfast, had fallen fast asleep. The kindly Dwarfs, as soon as they noticed this, began making signs to each other not to wake him, and indeed did so much whispering and nodding and getting up and tiptoeing away that they certainly would have waked him if he had been less tired.
He slept pretty well nearly all day but woke up in time for supper. The beds in that house were all too small for him but they made him a fine bed of heather on the floor, and he never stirred nor dreamed all night. Next morning they had just finished breakfast when they heard a shrill, exciting sound from outside.
“Trumpets!” said all the Dwarfs, as they and Shasta all came running out.
The trumpets sounded again: a new noise to Shasta, not huge and solemn like the horns of Tashbaan nor gay and merry like King Lune’s hunting horn, but clear and sharp and valiant. The noise was coming from the woods to the East, and soon there was a noise of horse-hoofs mixed with it. A moment later the head of the column came into sight.
First came the Lord Peridan on a bay horse carrying the great banner of Narnia—a red lion on a green ground. Shasta knew him at once. Then came three people riding abreast, two on great chargers and one on a pony. The two on the chargers were King Edmund and a fair-haired lady with a very merry face who wore a helmet and a mail shirt and carried a bow across her shoulder and a quiver full of arrows at her side. (“The Queen Lucy,” whispered Duffle.) But the one on the pony was Corin. After that came the main body of the army: men on ordinary horses, men on Talking Horses (who didn’t mind being ridden on proper occasions, as when Narnia went to war), centaurs, stern, hard-bitten bears, great Talking Dogs, and last of all six giants. For there are good giants in Narnia. But though he knew they were on the right side Shasta at first could hardly bear to look at them; there are some things that take a lot of getting used to.
Just as the King and Queen reached the cottage and the Dwarfs began making low bows to them, King Edmund called out:
“Now, friends! Time for a halt and a morsel!” and at once there was a great bustle of people dismounting and haversacks being opened and conversation beginning when Corin came running up to Shasta and seized both his hands and cried:
“What! You here! So you got through all right? I am glad. Now we shall have some sport. And isn’t it luck! We only got into the harbor at Cair Paravel yesterday morning and the very first person who met us was Chervy the Stag with all this news of an attack on Anvard. Don’t you think—”
“Who is your Highness’s friend?” said King Edmund, who had just got off his horse.
“Don’t you see, Sire?” said Corin. “It’s my dou
ble: the boy you mistook me for at Tashbaan.”
“Why, so he is your double,” exclaimed Queen Lucy. “As like as two twins. This is a marvelous thing.”
“Please, your Majesty,” said Shasta to King Edmund, “I was no traitor, really I wasn’t. And I couldn’t help hearing your plans. But I’d never have dreamed of telling them to your enemies.”
“I know now that you were no traitor, boy,” said King Edmund, laying his hand on Shasta’s head. “But if you would not be taken for one, another time try not to hear what’s meant for other ears. But all’s well.”
After that there was so much bustle and talk and coming and going that Shasta for a few minutes lost sight of Corin and Edmund and Lucy. But Corin was the sort of boy whom one is sure to hear of pretty soon and it wasn’t very long before Shasta heard King Edmund saying in a loud voice:
“By the Lion’s Mane, Prince, this is too much! Will your Highness never be better? You are more of a heart’s-scald than our whole army together! I’d as lief have a regiment of hornets in my command as you.”
Shasta wormed his way through the crowd and there saw Edmund, looking very angry indeed, Corin looking a little ashamed of himself, and a strange Dwarf sitting on the ground making faces. A couple of fauns had apparently just been helping it out of its armor.
“If I had but my cordial with me,” Queen Lucy was saying, “I could soon mend this. But the High King has so strictly charged me not to carry it commonly to the wars and to keep it only for great extremities!”
What had happened was this. As soon as Corin had spoken to Shasta, Corin’s elbow had been plucked by a Dwarf in the army called Thornbut.
“What is it, Thornbut?” Corin had said.
“Your Royal Highness,” said Thornbut, drawing him aside, “our march today will bring us through the pass and right to your royal father’s castle. We may be in battle before night.”
“I know,” said Corin. “Isn’t it splendid?”
“Splendid or not,” said Thornbut, “I have the strictest orders from King Edmund to see to it that your Highness is not in the fight. You will be allowed to see it, and that’s treat enough for your Highness’s little years.”
“Oh, what nonsense!” Corin burst out. “Of course I’m going to fight. Why, the Queen Lucy’s going to be with the archers.”
“The Queen’s grace will do as she pleases,” said Thornbut. “But you are in my charge. Either I must have your solemn and princely word that you’ll keep your pony beside mine—not half a neck ahead—till I give your Highness leave to depart, or else—it is his Majesty’s word—we must go with our wrists tied together like two prisoners.”
“I’ll knock you down if you try to bind me,” said Corin.
“I’d like to see your Highness do it,” said the Dwarf.
That was quite enough for a boy like Corin and in a second he and the Dwarf were at it hammer and tongs. It would have been an even match for, though Corin had longer arms and more height, the Dwarf was older and tougher. But it was never fought out (that’s the worst of fights on a rough hillside) for by very bad luck Thornbut trod on a loose stone, came flat down on his nose, and found when he tried to get up that he had sprained his ankle: a really excruciating sprain which would keep him from walking or riding for at least a fortnight.
“See what your Highness has done,” said King Edmund. “Deprived us of a proved warrior on the very edge of battle.”
“I’ll take his place, Sire,” said Corin.
“Pshaw,” said Edmund. “No one doubts your courage. But a boy in battle is a danger only to his own side.”
At that moment the King was called away to attend to something else, and Corin, after apologizing handsomely to the Dwarf, rushed up to Shasta and whispered:
“Quick! There’s a spare pony now, and the Dwarf’s armor. Put it on before anyone notices.”
“What for?” said Shasta.
“Why, so that you and I can fight in the battle of course! Don’t you want to?”
“Oh—ah, yes, of course,” said Shasta. But he hadn’t been thinking of doing so at all, and began to get a most uncomfortable prickly feeling in his spine.
“That’s right,” said Corin. “Over your head. Now the sword-belt. But we must ride near the tail of the column and keep as quiet as mice. Once the battle begins everyone will be far too busy to notice us.”
Chapter Thirteen
The Fight at Anvard
BY ABOUT ELEVEN O’CLOCK THE WHOLE COMPANY was once more on the march, riding westward with the mountains on their left. Corin and Shasta rode right at the rear with the Giants immediately in front of them. Lucy and Edmund and Peridan were busy with their plans for the battle and though Lucy once said, “But where is his goosecap Highness?” Edmund only replied, “Not in the front, and that’s good news enough. Leave well alone.”
Shasta told Corin most of his adventures and explained that he had learned all his riding from a horse and didn’t really know how to use the reins. Corin instructed him in this, besides telling him all about their secret sailing from Tashbaan.
“And where is the Queen Susan?”
“At Cair Paravel,” said Corin. “She’s not like Lucy, you know, who’s as good as a man, or at any rate as good as a boy. Queen Susan is more like an ordinary grown-up lady. She doesn’t ride to the wars, though she is an excellent archer.”
The hillside path which they were following became narrower all the time and the drop on their right hand became steeper. At last they were going in single file along the edge of the precipice and Shasta shuddered to think that he had done the same last night without knowing it. “But of course,” he thought, “I was quite safe. That is why the Lion kept on my left. He was between me and the edge all the time.”
Then the path went left and south away from the cliff and there were thick woods on both sides of it and they went steeply up and up into the pass. There would have been a splendid view from the top if it were open ground but among all those trees you could see nothing—only, every now and then, some huge pinnacle of rock above the tree-tops, and an eagle or two wheeling high up in the blue air.
“They smell battle,” said Corin, pointing at the birds. “They know we’re preparing a feed for them.”
Shasta didn’t like this at all.
When they had crossed the neck of the pass and come a good deal lower they reached more open ground and from here Shasta could see all Archenland, blue and hazy, spread out below him and even (he thought) a hint of the desert beyond it. But the sun, which had perhaps two hours or so to go before it set, was in his eyes and he couldn’t make things out distinctly.
Here the army halted and spread out in a line, and there was a great deal of rearranging. A whole detachment of very dangerous-looking Talking Beasts whom Shasta had not noticed before and who were mostly of the cat kind (leopards, panthers, and the like) went padding and growling to take up their positions on the left. The giants were ordered to the right, and before going there they all took off something they had been carrying on their backs and sat down for a moment. Then Shasta saw that what they had been carrying and were now putting on were pairs of boots: horrid, heavy, spiked boots which came up to their knees. Then they sloped their huge clubs over their shoulders and marched to their battle position. The archers, with Queen Lucy, fell to the rear and you could first see them bending their bows and then hear the twang-twang as they tested the strings. And wherever you looked you could see people tightening girths, putting on helmets, drawing swords, and throwing cloaks to the ground. There was hardly any talking now. It was very solemn and very dreadful. “I’m in for it now—I really am in for it now,” thought Shasta. Then there came noises far ahead: the sound of many men shouting and a steady thud-thud-thud.
“Battering ram,” whispered Corin. “They’re battering the gate.”
Even Corin looked quite serious now.
“Why doesn’t King Edmund get on?” he said. “I can’t stand this waiting about. Chilly
too.”
Shasta nodded: hoping he didn’t look as frightened as he felt.
The trumpet at last! On the move now—now trotting—the banner streaming out in the wind. They had topped a low ridge now, and below them the whole scene suddenly opened out; a little, many-towered castle with its gate toward them. No moat, unfortunately, but of course the gate shut and the portcullis down. On the walls they could see, like little white dots, the faces of the defenders. Down below, about fifty of the Calormenes, dismounted, were steadily swinging a great tree trunk against the gate. But at once the scene changed. The main bulk of Rabadash’s men had been on foot ready to assault the gate. But now he had seen the Narnians sweeping down from the ridge. There is no doubt those Calormenes are wonderfully trained. It seemed to Shasta only a second before a whole line of the enemy were on horseback again, wheeling round to meet them, swinging toward them.
And now a gallop. The ground between the two armies grew less every moment. Faster, faster. All swords out now, all shields up to the nose, all prayers said, all teeth clenched. Shasta was dreadfully frightened. But it suddenly came into his head, “If you funk this, you’ll funk every battle all your life. Now or never.”
But when at last the two lines met he had really very little idea of what happened. There was a frightful confusion and an appalling noise. His sword was knocked clean out of his hand pretty soon. And he’d got the reins tangled somehow. Then he found himself slipping. Then a spear came straight at him and as he ducked to avoid it he rolled right off his horse, bashed his left knuckles terribly against someone else’s armor, and then—
But it is no use trying to describe the battle from Shasta’s point of view; he understood too little of the fight in general and even of his own part in it. The best way I can tell you what really happened is to take you some miles away to where the Hermit of the Southern March sat gazing into the smooth pool beneath the spreading tree, with Bree and Hwin and Aravis beside him.