Labyrinth

by A. C. H. Smith

  Meanwhile, Ludo had gone up to the gates and given one of them a little push. It swung open.

  The three of them sneaked inside. As soon as they had done so, they heard the gates slam shut behind them. Ahead of them was another pair of gates. This pair was already open.

  “Ah!” Sir Didymus exclaimed, with a proud toss of his head. “They dare not shut their gates against the might of Sir Didymus.” And, holding his staff aloft, the flower of chivalry led his intrepid band onward.

  The inner pair of gates, however, swung shut before Sir Didymus reached them. And the appearance they now presented was a thousand times more daunting than mere gates. Each door was half a giant suit of armor. When the two halves of the gate met with a thunderous clang, they formed one titanic, mailed warrior, whom the goblins called Humongous. His cavernous mouth uttered an earthly metallic bellow; his eyes glowed. In one hand he wielded an enormous, double-headed ax.

  Sarah whimpered. She felt the ground tremble as Humongous, ax raised, detached himself from the doors and stamped toward them. Beside her, she heard Ludo roar, but it was a mere piping sound in comparison to the terrible noise made by this Goliath goblin.

  Ambrosius took one look and sensibly bolted. Sir Didymus, dumped on the ground, furiously ordered his steed to return. Ambrosius was having none of it. He lurked behind a buttress.

  “Pshaw!” Sir Didymus clicked his fingers in irritation. “Were yon warrior and I to joust with lances, I would make short work of him.”

  Humongous was not yon now. He had come close enough to aim a massive ax blow at the trio. It missed them, but gashed a great wound in the stone wall. A fountain of sparks spurted from the steel axhead.

  The three dodged past Humongous’s feet, but he jerked rapidly around and smashed his ax down again with both hands. Screaming, they leaped apart, and the ax hammered the ground between them, burying itself among shattered paving stones. The giant withdrew it effortlessly, and now, crouching, he delivered a scything swing at them. The threw themselves flat, and heard the ax whiz over them with a noise like an ignited rocket.

  They saw the ax raised high again, and scuttled for cover to the wall of the courtyard. The descending ax carved a slice off a buttress. Blow followed blow. Each one would have left no more of them than there is of a mosquito squashed on a wall. All that had saved them so far was the inflexible, jerky motion of Humongous’s attack, which gave them a split second’s forewarning of where the next annihilating crash was aimed. It was only a matter of time before they got it wrong, and Humongous seemed to have all the time he needed trampling after them around the closed courtyard and evidently not wearied by the atrocious energy of his onslaught.

  In a brief moment between one blow and the next, Sir Didymus spotted a movement along the parapet of the wall. “Look!” he panted, and pointed. It was nearly fatal.

  “Watch out!” Sarah screamed, and the three of them dived simultaneously sideways as the ax whistled and crashed down again, raising a spray of fragmented paving stones.

  While Humongous was lining up his next swipe, Sarah saw what the movement on the parapet was. Hoggle was running nimbly along the battlements, toward the arch over the inner gates.

  “Hoggle!” Sarah yelled in encouragement, before sprinting between Humongous’s feet and out of the way.

  It was obscure what assistance Hoggle could bring them, but he was scrambling so urgently up the arch that he clearly had some purpose in mind.

  Humongous shifted his feet, like armored tanks, to get in his next blow. In doing so, he positioned himself with his back to the inner gates.

  Sarah saw Hoggle, now on top of the arch, crouching, prepared to jump down on the horned helmet of the giant. She covered her face with her hands, terrified, and peeped through her fingers. What hopeless heroism it was in Hoggle, like a fly attacking a locomotive.

  With a triumphant shriek, Hoggle landed on Humongous’s shoulders.

  “Hoggle!” Sarah whispered, as she took off to avoid another thunderous stroke.

  Hoggle balanced on one leg, and kicked the giant’s helmet. The top half of it flew open, on a hinge. Inside Humongous’s head, a tiny goblin in a white lab coat, with eyes staring madly through thick lenses, was feverishly working a bank of levers. Hoggle reached down, grabbed the goblin under the armpits, and hurled him away. He landed haplessly on the flagstones of the courtyard and groped for his smashed spectacles.

  Already Hoggle had jumped down inside the giant’s head, and was operating the levers there as though he had always been the engineer. Perhaps he did know what he was doing, or perhaps he tugged the levers at random. The result was that, Humongous, elbows by his sides and arms raised robotically level, went into a convulsion. His feet did a shuffling sort of dance, his torso swayed from side to side, the ax jerked rapidly up and down, and his neck swiveled faster and faster. Hoggle pulled more levers and then had to make a wild jump for it, as Humongous went careering off blindly, with his ax oscillating and steam spurting from his joints.

  Hoggle landed in a heap at Sarah’s feet. She helped him up, but had no time to speak to him yet. Humongous was now rampaging around the courtyard like a mad bull, bouncing off the walls. His ax was lashing up and down on a long vertical axis, pulverizing the paving stones when it landed, and crunching into his own back on the reverse stroke.

  The giant’s random movements eventually brought him back to the inner gates, where he had started. On its next backward swing, the ax penetrated deep into the cleft between two stones in the arch. It stuck there. In consequence, Humongous’s next attempt at a mighty downstroke was converted into a terrifying leverage upward of his whole body. He was too heavy for his feet to leave the ground. What might have happened was that the ax could have snapped, or the wall collapsed. What did happen was that Humongous bent at the knees and sagged at the waist, looking like a failed giant hammer-thrower, and little blue sparks shot up and down his armor as his circuits overloaded.

  “Are you all right?” Sarah asked Hoggle, bending over to fuss over any bruises he might have.

  Hoggle retreated a few paces and stood with his face inclined. “I’m not asking to be forgiven,” he said obstinately. “I ain’t ashamed of nothin’ I did. I don’t care what you thinks of me.” He was toeing a little stone around with his boot, his eyes fixed on it. “I told you I was a coward. Now you sees I was only tellin’ the truth. And I ain’t interested in bein’ friends …”

  “I forgive you, Hoggle,” Sarah said, simply.

  Hoggle cocked his gnomish head and looked at her from under one bushy eyebrow. “You do?” he asked in a small voice.

  Sir Didymus strode across and slapped Hoggle’s shoulder. “And I commend thee,” he said, with his other hand resting on his staff. “Seldom have I seen such courage. Sir Galahad himself will be impressed when word reaches his ears. We owe to thee our lives. Thou art the fragrant bloom of knightly valor, Sir Hoggle.”

  “I am?”

  Ludo paid his tribute. “Hoggle — Ludo — friends.”

  “We are?” Hoggle agreed uncertainly.

  Sarah had unfastened the string of baubles she had taken from Hoggle in the hedge maze — so long ago, it seemed — and handed them back to him. “Here are your things, Hoggle. And thank you for your help.”

  Hoggle took the jewels and gazed down at them. Then he looked up with a puckered grin. “Well,” he said, and started to stride toward the inner gates, “what are we waiting for?”

  Sir Didymus called, “Ambrosius!” His steed poked his nose cautiously around the buttress behind which he had been hiding.

  “Ambrosius!” Sir Didymus raised his voice impatiently. Ambrosius did not so much trot as sidle up to his master.

  When the knight was mounted up, the party made its way carefully around the massive shape of Humongous. The blue sparks were still fizzing.

  Sir Didymus enthusiastically overtook Hoggle and beat upon the inner gates with his staff. Hoggle pushed. Neither of them could get the gates op
en, but it was an easy job for Ludo. Without Humongous, they were no more than a pair of heavy doors leading to Goblin City.

  ———

  ——

  —

  Jareth was lounging on his throne, propped up on one elbow. Beside him was Toby. Goblins stood around, watching them play together, and wishing that they had Toby to play with. It looked like fun. Jareth would tickle Toby, and whenever he was within range the baby would punch Jareth in the face. The game had been going on for some time.

  Jareth chuckled. “Spirited little fellow.” In more senses than one, he thought, but why bother to say it when all you’ve got in the audience are goblins? He nodded. “I think I’ll call him Jareth. He’s got my eyes.”

  Toby smacked him in one of them.

  “And my disposition,” Jareth added.

  A goblin came running into the chamber, tripped on a chicken carcass, fell flat on his face, and from there delivered his message. “Your Highness! The girl!”

  Jareth glanced up laconically. “What?”

  The goblin was picking himself up. “The girl who ate the peach and forgot everything?”

  “Yes, yes,” Jareth said testily. As though he had had more than one girl on his mind lately. “What of her?”

  The goblin’s eyes were boggling, and he had one arm flung out behind him, pointing. “She’s here.”

  “Hm?” Jareth stopped tickling Toby and scrutinized the moronic messenger.

  “She’s here, your Highness! With the monster, and Sir Didymus, and the gnome who’s in your employ.”

  “Here?”

  “They’ve gotten through the gates.”

  “What?” Jareth barked.

  “The girl who ate the peach and —”

  “Yes!” Jareth’s face was working. “She got past Humongous?”

  “Yes, your Highness. He’s blown his fuses.”

  “Blown his — where are they?”

  “They’re on their way to the castle.”

  Jareth stood up, holding Toby, who wriggled. “Stop her!” the Goblin King commanded. “Call out the guard!”

  The goblins milled around the chamber, screeching, “Call out the guard!” at each other.

  “Don’t mill,” Jareth told them. “Do something. She must be stopped.”

  As one goblin, they all dashed for the door.

  “Wait!” Jareth shouted. Carrying Toby, he strode over to them and handed the baby to one of them. “Here,” he said, “take Jarethkin. She must not get the baby.”

  The goblin with Toby ran off one way, while the rest rushed off to raise the alarm.

  Jareth was left alone. “She must not get the baby,” he repeated to himself. “She must be stopped.”

  Chapter Seventeen - Saints and Whiskers

  Goblin City was a shantytown, numbering about ten blocks of ramshackle houses, hiding in each other’s shadows, with winding lanes between them. The buildings rose to sharply pointed eaves or conical thatch roofs. The windows penetrating the walls were so higgledy-piggledy that from the outside you might wonder if the houses had floors at all. Most of the buildings were decorated in the Goblin Grotesque style, timber trimmed to a rising point like a waxed mustache, goblinomorphic feet or horns carved into a pediment. The cat-prowled lanes were littered with scraps of food tossed from the windows, and other garbage so rotten that it would be an unsavory task to analyze what it had once been.

  The place was huddled in the shadow of the castle, which rose behind it in bonnet-towered and turreted splendor. A wide flight of steps, the main entrance to the castle, faced the inner gates of the courtyard, and must have formed an imposing approach before the shantytown had risen up to interrupt the vista.

  Sir Didymus on Ambrosius, Hoggle, Sarah, and Ludo tiptoed through the marketplace just inside the gates. It was dawn and the city was apparently fast asleep. Seeing the castle looming up ahead of them, they made their way quietly through the lanes toward it. Here and there they crept past a snoozing goblin, propped against a wall.

  Sir Didymus cleared his throat and announced, loudly, “This stealth is alien to my nature.”

  “Ssshhh!” Sarah told him.

  “Quiet, yer windbag!” Hoggle added, in a growl.

  “Sorry, fair maid,” Sir Didymus apologized, in a voice hardly lowered at all. “I know not the word fear.”

  “I know,” Sarah answered, “but I do.”

  “And I does, too,” Hoggle added. “Shush!”

  Beyond the shantytown, they came into an open square. The steps up to the castle were on the far side. Everything was still eerily quiet. They began to walk softly toward the steps.

  Sarah’s heart was pounding. “We’re going to make it,” she whispered.

  “Piece of cake,” Hoggle told her.

  He should have known better. When he had heard her use that phrase, the penalty had been the slashing machine. This time, it was war. A bugle sounded, and from both sides of the square the goblin army suddenly came charging at them, with pounding feet and clanking armor and a weird, ululating war cry. Scores of helmeted heads could be seen scuttling along the lower ramparts of the castle. There was only one thing to do: run for it. And there was only one way to run — back into town.

  The armies were issuing from twin corridors, which curved around the sides of the main steps so that their exits faced each other. A platoon of bombardiers trundled a cannon in the vanguard of each army, and as the corridors were on an incline, and the cannons were heavy, and the trundling was enthusiastic, the cannon platoons were going to collide unless they hauled back hard. Which they did. Unavailingly, however, for the press of infantry and cavalry behind them drove them inexorably on. As the four invaders raced for the cover of the town, they heard a stupendous smash, like a thousand empty cans crashing together. They turned around, and watched wave upon wave of the goblin soldiers piling upon top of each other. On the ramparts, an inaudible bugler was red in the face with blowing the charge.

  Jareth was standing perpendicular at a window of the castle, watching the action. He winced, almost imperceptibly.

  Hoggle led Sarah, Ludo, and the mounted Sir Didymus in a sprint along the mazy lanes of the town. Goblin heads popped out of the windows above them to watch. Sir Didymus was protesting, “We must stand and fight them face to face. It is the only honorable …”

  Hoggle suddenly stopped, his arms spread wide in warning. The rest halted behind him. At the far end of the street, a detachment of goblins appeared facing them, spiky with spears.

  “Uh-oh,” Sarah muttered. “This could be it.”

  “Fear not, sweet damsel,” Sir Didymus told her. “These puny goblins are no match for Sir Didymus.” He raised his staff, and was about to charge the army single-handed when Ambrosius wheeled around and bolted again. This time, his rider managed to stay in the saddle and, after touring the streets, brought Ambrosius back to where they had started.

  Sarah called urgently from a doorway. “In here!”

  She had found a deserted house in which to make a stand. It was built like a tower.

  Reluctantly, Sir Didymus dismounted and led Ambrosius inside. Sarah slid the bolt. She was grinning with excitement. However extreme the peril they were in, nothing would ever be as daunting as the old junk woman. “You hold the doorway,” she told Sir Didymus. “Hoggle and I will guard that window. And you, Ludo — up on the roof.”

  Ludo nodded obediently. “Ludo — up.” He climbed the winding rungs of the stairs.

  “Look out!” Sarah cried suddenly. On the wall of the room, she had seen goblin shadows, snouted and horned, cast through the window by the rising sun. Sir Didymus at once took up his on-guard position beside the door. Sarah and Hoggle stood by a dresser full of china.

  Sarah called up the staircase. “Ludo, are you ready?”

  “Ludo — ready.”

  A goblin smashed the window with his pike, and stuck his head inside to see who was in there. Sarah, standing to one side of the window, brought a dinner
plate down upon his head. He collapsed onto the windowsill and rolled outside.

  Another took his place. Another plate served the same purpose.

  At once, a third head was poked in. This one had time to peer at the defenders. “Hoggle!” the goblin exclaimed. “You used to be with us.”

  “Yes,” Hoggle agreed, and broke a teapot on the goblin’s helmeted head.

  Another ugly head took its turn at the window, and another, and as fast as their pointed ears and jagged teeth appeared they were stunned by Sarah or Hoggle.

  Sir Didymus was watching with mixed feeling. He had to hand it to the girl, she was doughty, and she might make a decent commander of horse one day. On the other hand, she had posted her most valorous knight inside a bolted wooden door, where nothing at all was going to happen. Inexperience, that was all it was. He was wondering whether to disobey orders and join them at the window when an axhead shaped like a trefoil splintered the door. Through the crack it had made, he saw mad red eyes watching him and heard voices talking rapidly.

  This was more like it. He squared up. Then, through the crack, he saw half a dozen goblins charging with a battering ram. In a trice, he slid the bolt back and opened the door. As the ram went past him at full tilt he dealt with each of its bearers adroitly with a thrust of his trusty staff. “Have at thee!” he hollered excitedly. “En garde, sirrah!”

  He slammed the door shut and bolted it again, and was trying to use the battering ram to shore up the splintered door when it was burst open by a fresh squad of goblins. He had no time to grab his staff. They leaped upon him, pinioned him face down to the ground, and, holding his hair, began to bash his nose on the floor. After a while, they paused to examine their work.

  “Ha!” Sir Didymus shouted tauntingly. “Had enough, have ye? Craven curs, how little it takes to subdue varlets such as ye are!”

  They started to give him another bashing for that, but Sarah had seen what was going on. A well-aimed chamber pot sent the goblins flying, and in a moment Sir Didymus was standing over them. “Saints and whiskers!” he exclaimed. “Is it worth splintering my staff to dispatch the likes of ye?”