by Philip Reeve
“He means a ‘back scratcher’,” explained a smaller goblin sitting next to him, and then added, “Urf!” as Grumpling sat on him.
“I know what I means,” growled Grumpling, menacingly. “I means my scratchbackler. It’s mine. I found it in the ruins so it’s mine. How did you gets hold of it, softling? Give it here!”
He made a snatch at the scroll. Prawl flinched backwards and fell off his chair. Skarper and some other goblins grabbed Grumpling by his belt before he could leap across the table. Fentongoose said, “Now, now, Grumpling, do you remember that conversation we had about the difference between pictures of things and the actual things themselves?”
“Give me back my scratchbackler!” roared Grumpling.
“I knew he hadn’t really understood,” whispered Fentongoose.
Grumpling was one of Clovenstone’s Problem Goblins. There had been loads like him when Skarper was a hatchling. Big, brutish bullies, who got their own way by beating up the others. Most of them had perished in the furious fights that raged after the goblins finally found their way into the Keep, or been squished shortly afterwards, when it collapsed. For a while, the smaller and quieter goblins had been left in peace, and they had had Princess Ned to help them work out new ways of getting along together. Now Ned was gone, and Grumpling, who had been barely more than a hatchling himself when the Keep fell, had grown almost as big and strong as old King Knobbler.
He was a Chilli Hat, part of the tribe who lived in Redcap Tower. The differences between the goblins of the different towers had not mattered much in Ned’s time, but Grumpling seemed to want the old days back. The gang of bullies he had gathered round him wore their red caps with pride, and were filling their tower with trinkets pinched from other goblins, who were too scared of Grumpling to complain. Fentongoose and Henwyn were very worried about Grumpling and completely unsure of what to do about him.
“Grumpling!” said Skarper, as the angry Chilli Hat made another lunge for the parchment. “That’s not your scratchbackler! It’s just a drawing of it! Like the drawings Zeewa did to show us what the animals of her homeland look like? Remember?”
“Animals!” said Grumpling, and a glimmer of understanding flickered in his stupid eyes. Zeewa was good at drawing, and during the winter she had decorated the walls of Fentongoose’s study with lions and leopards while telling the goblins tales of the Tall Grass Country. Grumpling had often tried to spear and eat those charcoal creatures. Eventually even he had had to accept that, although they looked like animals, they weren’t real animals.
“Go back to your own tower, Grumpling,” said Skarper. “You’ll find your back scratcher lying wherever you left it.”
“And perhaps you’ll consider giving it to Prince Rhind?” suggested Henwyn. “That would be a friendly thing to do, wouldn’t it?”
Grumpling looked at him and curled his lip, baring a couple of off-white fangs.
“You know?” urged Henwyn. “For this quest of his?”
“Not flibbin’ likely!” growled Grumpling. “It’s my scratchbackler, softling, and it stays mine, understand?”
And with that he turned and went stomping from the hall, with a bunch of his red-hatted mates close behind him.
“Sorry,” said Henwyn.
“Grumpling is more of your traditional sort of goblin,” said Skarper.
Prince Rhind seemed confused. “And are you just going to leave it at that? Aren’t you going to make him hand over the Elvenhorn? The most important magical artefact in all the Westlands, the key that may unlock the secrets of the elves and begin a new golden age – and you’re going to let that scaly freak go on scratching his back with it?”
“Well, it is his,” said Henwyn helplessly.
“But you are his king! Or is Fentongoose his king? Who is king here? I’m confused.”
“Nobody is king,” said Skarper. “Not any more. We sort of look after ourselves.”
“How absurd!” snorted Breenge.
“How ridiculous!” snorted Rhind. “I insist that you fetch the Elvenhorn here and hand it into my safekeeping!”
“Sorry,” said Skarper.
“But without it, my glorious quest cannot succeed!”
“Sorry!” said Fentongoose. “Sorry!” chorused the goblins.
Rhind had already turned red in the face. Now he turned very pale instead. His voice, when he spoke, was tight and thin.
“Then we shall go to this Redcap Tower,” he said, “and take the Elvenhorn by force!”
The goblins chortled, and a few threw their hats and helmets high into the air with glee. “Good luck with that!” they shouted. The one whom Grumpling had sat on earlier said, “Grumpling loves that scratchbackler of his. He sleeps with it tucked under his pillow. You softlings won’t get it away from him without a fight, and if you fight, he’ll win.”
“And if he doesn’t,” said Libnog, “we’ll have to fight you too. Because Grumpling may be horrible and stupid but he’s a goblin, and so is we. So we’d have to avengle him. An there’s loads of us an only, er, one, two, three … not very many of you.”
The Sheep Lords stood silent, scowling, while goblin laughter racketed all around them. Prawl looked embarrassed. Breenge’s hand strayed to her bow.
When the merriment finally subsided, Prince Rhind said grimly, “So, it seems that my quest shall end here. I shall tell the world that we had a chance to raise drowned Elvensea, but that it was denied us by the goblins of Clovenstone.”
“Tell it to the sheep!” shouted a goblin.
“They’re the only ones who’ll listen to you lot!”
“Moo! Moo!”
“That’s cows, you idiot…”
“Oh. Baa! Baa!”
Rhind looked at his companions, and they all stood up and made their way through the throng of jeering goblins to the door. Henwyn hurried ahead of them to open it. “I shall lead you back to your horses,” he said, still trying to be polite.
Henwyn was the only one who had been troubled by Prince Rhind’s threat. He had travelled outside Clovenstone, and he knew that goblins had an evil reputation down in the softlands. Their defeat of the dwarves had done a lot to change that, so he did not want people to start thinking ill of them again. These were strange times, with all sorts of old powers and magics stirring, and they could never know when Clovenstone might need the help of its neighbours. So it worried him that they had managed to offend Prince Rhind, and he felt the least that he could do was to show him out, like a proper host.
Skarper, sensing what his friend was thinking, went after him. When they had gone, and the door of the hall was swinging shut behind the Woolmark folk, Doctor Prong said to Fentongoose, “Perhaps it is for the best. I’m not at all sure it would be a good idea to raise the lost island of the elves.”
“Why not?” asked Fentongoose.
“I can’t say for sure,” replied Dr Prong. “We know so little about it. But it seems to me that some things are better left lost.”
Skarper and Henwyn hurried with their visitors out of the doorway at the base of the Blackspike and down the steep street that led to the gate through the Inner Wall. Prawl kept trying to make conversation, but Rhind and his sister were silent and angry-looking. Only Mistress Ninnis still seemed cheerful, smiling at Skarper when he glanced at her, but she was just a cook so her opinion scarcely seemed to matter.
Skarper had a feeling that this was not over yet. Perhaps, if they couldn’t get the Elvenhorn just by asking, they would come back with an army. Prince Rhind could probably command a host of men; warriors of the Woolmark, mounted on vicious war-sheep. They might have all sorts of weapons and siege engines down there in Tyr Davas. They would probably bring battering rams which were actual rams…
He felt sorry that Prince Rhind and his companions had ever come to Clovenstone.
Then they rounded a corner,
and he saw a sight which cheered him up no end. His batch-brother Gutgust and a bunch of smaller goblins were just emerging from the cookhouse behind the cheesery, and they were carrying an enormous dish, as big as a good-sized rowing boat. It held a cheese cobbler, Gutgust’s speciality, and the delicious scent seemed to perfume the very air.
“Are you quite sure you won’t stay for a bite to eat before you leave?” asked Henwyn, still hoping that the goblins and the Sheep Lords might part as friends. “Perhaps if we talk things over some more…”
By way of answer, Prince Rhind simply picked Henwyn up by the scruff of his neck and hurled him at the oncoming goblins. He crashed headlong into the cobbler dish, and the goblins who had been carrying it fell like skittles. Skarper had a glimpse of Henwyn sledging down the street on the vast dish, covered in cheese. Then Breenge grabbed him. He squeaked in surprise, and kicked her hard in a soft spot that her fancy felt armour didn’t quite cover. “Ow!” shouted Breenge, and then, “Catch him, Prawl!”, but Prawl just dithered, not wanting to take sides, and Skarper scrambled out of reach, up some stone stairs and on to a narrow parapet that overhung the street.
Gutgust and the other goblin cooks were running for safety, too, alarmed by the sword which Rhind had drawn, and by the bow which appeared in his sister’s hand – goblins hated arrows.
“No matter, Breenge!” called Rhind. “We have the other one!”
Henwyn had come to a sudden stop when the cobbler dish hit a wall and overturned. As he scrambled out of the wreckage, dazed and cheesy, Rhind had snatched hold of him again and now held him upright by his hair.
“Ha!” shouted Prince Rhind, looking up at Skarper. “We have your friend, goblin! This human traitor deserves to die for throwing in his lot with the likes of you!” And he held his sword-point close to Henwyn’s throat.
“Eep!” said Henwyn.
“Don’t!” shouted Skarper.
“Oh, don’t fear for him,” said Prince Rhind. “I will not harm him. Not if you bring me the Elvenhorn. We shall camp tonight outside the southern entrance to this fell place. Bring the Elvenhorn there at dawn, and we shall release your friend.”
“You’re mad!” said Skarper. “There’s bloomin’ loads of us! We’ll rescue Henwyn easy!”
“Attack us and your friend dies,” said Prince Rhind. “Bring us the Elvenhorn, and he goes free. That is the only way that you will see him alive again.”
And he dragged Henwyn away down the street and out through the gate to where their horses grazed, Ninnis and Prawl trailing after him, Breenge going last, walking backwards with an arrow nocked to her bowstring and her eyes on the goblins.
As he vanished through the gateway Henwyn glanced back at Skarper with a look that seemed to say, “I’m sorry!” and also, “Help!” and, “I wish I wasn’t covered in cheese!”
Gutgust and a few of the other goblin chefs started to go after them, but Skarper called them back. He knew that Prince Rhind had meant what he said, and that it would take him only an instant to kill Henwyn. The goblins might kill him and his sister afterwards, but what good would that do if Henwyn were dead?
“No,” he said. “We need a plan of some sort.”
“Oh, we’re really good at them!” said one of the chefs eagerly. “Princess Ned taught us everything she knew. Quick, we’ll need some eggs, flour and butter...”
“Not a flan,” said Skarper wearily. “A plan.”
“Oh.”
“Are you any good at plans?” he asked them hopefully.
“Not really,” admitted the chefs.
“Anchovies!” said Gutgust. But “anchovies” was the only thing that Gutgust ever said (no one knew why).
Skarper wasn’t very good at plans either. He had come up with a few which he’d been quite proud of in the past, but he couldn’t think of any way to get Henwyn back from the Woolmarkers with all his different bits still attached and all his blood still inside him. And while he stood pondering, there came a faint rumble of hoofbeats from outside as the Woolmarkers cantered away with their captive. They would collect their wagon, which they had left on the far bank of the Oeth, and then go south through Southerly Gate, he thought. Perhaps the guards there would try to stop them – but why should they? They would not know that Henwyn was not riding with them of his own free will.
He glanced up at the sky, wondering if the cloud maidens could be persuaded to take a message to Southerly Gate. But it seemed the cloud maidens had grown bored of waiting outside while the mortals talked, and gone in search of other princes to pester. The sky was empty. The sun, sinking westwards now, piled purple shadows in the hollows of the hills.
Skarper and the chefs trudged back towards the Blackspike to tell the others what had happened.
Everyone was horrified when they heard what Prince Rhind and his people had done.
“I knew we shouldn’t trust those woollen-headed Sheep Lords!” said Doctor Prong.
“Poor Henwyn!” said Fentongoose.
“We must rescue him!” vowed Zeewa.
“It’s a tragedy!” wailed Libnog. “All that lovely cheese cobbler! Ruined!”
But it turned out that there was quite a lot of cobbler left, smeared on the cobblestones of the street and in the abandoned dish, and the goblins didn’t mind that it was a bit trampled. They carried it up to the hall and ate it while they discussed their plans for getting Henwyn back.
“We could use the Bratapult to shoot ourselves into the middle of their camp!”
“We could disguise ourselves as washerwomen!”
“We could train a badger to creep in and nibble through Henwyn’s bonds!”
“Anchovies!”
But though they talked till the sky beyond the hall’s high windows blushed red with evening, there still seemed to Skarper to be only one solution.
“Why not just give them the Elvenhorn?’ he asked. “We’ve got no use for it ourselves. We didn’t even know we had it till Rhind and his friends showed up. Let them have it. Then they can go off to raise Elvensea and they won’t never have to bother us again.”
“Grumpling won’t like that,” said Spinch, who was the goblin Grumpling had sat on earlier.
“Grumpling will just have to scratch his itchy back with a different priceless mystical relic,” said Fentongoose.
“But he won’t let you take it!” said Spinch. “He’s like that. When my batch-brother Flegg borrowed his favourite toothpick without asking, Grumpling chucked him down the pooin hole. He’ll never let you have his scratchbackler.”
“What if we just borrowed it?’ asked Libnog. “We could pretends to give it to the softlings an then when they let Henwyn go we can slaughter them all an take the scratchbackler an give it back to Grumpling. They won’t need it any more if they’re dead, so we’ll be doin’ them a favour, in a way.”
“That’s not very sporting,” Fentongoose objected.
“We’s GOBLINS!” said Libnog. “HELLO?”
Spinch was shaking his head so hard that his crumpled red cap slipped down over his eyes. “Wouldn’t work anyway,” he said. “Grumpling won’t let you have his scratchbackler even for a borrow.”
“Not even to save Henwyn?” asked Zeewa.
“Specially not to save Henwyn,” said Spinch. “Grumpling hates Henwyn. Grumpling says he wishes there weren’t no softlings in Clovenstone at all. He says fings was better in the old days when we had a proper goblin king. I reckon he finks he’d make a good goblin king himself.”
The other goblins shuffled nervously. None of them fancied having Grumpling as their king.
Skarper stood up. “I’ve had enough of this!” he said. “That Elvenhorn doesn’t belong to Grumpling anyway. It belongs to all of us. And if we need it to save Henwyn then we ought to just take it.”
“Take it?” The goblins looked worried. The older ones were remembering t
he furious and deadly battles which used to break out when goblins from one tower raided another, trying to steal their neighbours’ treasures. Some of them still bore the scars: missing eyes and teeth and legs and paws and tails. A Growler called Spikey Peet still had a short spear sticking right through his head from some long ago dust-up with the Grimspike Boys. (Luckily it had missed his brain.)
“But Grumpling is bigger and stronger and tougher than any of us,” said Libnog.
“Then we’ll have to use the one thing we’ve got that Grumpling hasn’t!” Skarper shouted.
The goblins looked blank. They weren’t good at this sort of clever talk. What could Skarper mean?
“I’ve got a bunion,” somebody suggested. “I don’t think Grumpling’s got one of them.”
“I’m not talking about BUNIONS!” shouted Skarper. “I’m talking about BRAINS!”
“Oh, those,” said the goblins, disappointed. (They thought that brains were overrated.)
“You mean we should outwit the brute?” asked Fentongoose. “An excellent idea!”
“We shall devise a strategy,” promised Dr Prong.
Skarper shook his head. The goblins didn’t have enough brains, but Prong and Fentongoose between them had far too many. If he were to let them start inventing strategies they would make everything far too complicated, and still be talking and drawing little maps when the sun rose.
“Leave this to me,” he told them. “Henwyn was my friend before he was any of yours, so I should be the one who steals the Elvenhorn and gets him back. I’ve got an idea about how to do it, too. But I’ll need Zeewa’s help.”
“This isn’t going to be very nice,” said Skarper, half an hour later.
He and Zeewa had slipped out of the Blackspike through one of the secret snickets which led beneath the Inner Wall. Now they were standing at the foot of Redcap Tower, which reared up into the night above them, looking tall enough and pointy enough to poke the moon’s eye out, if the moon wasn’t careful.