Goblin Quest

by Philip Reeve

  A tail seemed a dangerous place to be – it kept lashing about, as if Mortholow could feel him there and was trying to throw him off. He started to climb, using the spikes on her spine as handholds. The Western Ocean tilted beneath him. He was so far above it that he could see the Autumn Isles and the Nibbled Coast – he could probably have seen all the way to Clovenstone if he’d had time to look. But he hadn’t; he was climbing an angry dragon, and just ahead of him he could hear an even angrier Hellesvor shouting as she jerked at the reins.

  “What is wrong with you? Go down! Down! You are one of the great drakes of Elvensea. You need not be scared of a bottle of smoke. It is mortal trickery, no more. Go down and burn them!”

  She does not know that I am here, thought Skarper. She thinks the dragon is wriggling like this out of fright or stubborness. She doesn’t know it’s trying to flick me off.

  Just then, as he reached the place where her tail joined her body, Mortholow gave a fierce jerk and dislodged him. He slithered down her side and saved himself by catching hold of Breenge’s arrow, which stuck out like a little handle between the black scales. Black blood spattered down his arm as his weight began to drag the arrow free, and the dragon twitched like a pony stung by horseflies. She lashed her head back, trying to bite at Skarper, and her crocodile jaws went “clop” a few inches from his ear. He flung himself sideways as the arrow popped out, and seized one of the straps of the leather harness from which Hellesvor dangled.

  The elf witch noticed them. She twisted her fierce white face towards him and her eyes went wide and then narrow as she realized she had a stowaway. She reached for the sword whose scabbard was strapped across her back, its ornate hilt jutting over one shoulder. Before she could draw it, though, the maddened dragon made a move so violent that Hellesvor’s sword hand had to dart back to the reins.

  Skarper saw his chance. It wasn’t a very good chance, but it was the only one he seemed likely to get. He scrambled along the straps of the harness, seized the sword, and drew it from its scabbard himself.

  Hellesvor shrieked in fury and took both hands from the reins to snatch at him.

  Mortholow made another lunge with her head, determined to rid herself of this irritating creature on her belly. She almost bit Hellesvor instead; her sharp teeth struck sparks from the elven armour.

  Skarper, who had been dangling with one paw from the harness while he tried to raise the sword high enough to stick it into Hellesvor, lost his grip and dropped on to the dragon’s snout. The long neck lashed again, almost flicking him off, but he clung on grimly, glad of all the spines and spurs which dragons seemed to think were necessary facial features. Still clutching the sword, he scrambled up the long nose, over the ridge of the eyebrows, out on to the long neck, just behind the head. Mortholow could not bite him now, and he was out of Hellesvor’s reach as well. He turned to wave at the furious elf woman, making her more furious still and almost dropping the sword in the process.

  She snatched the flapping reins again. “Your friends shall burn,” she said, “and then I’ll deal with you! Dive, Mortholow!”

  Mortholow seemed to understand. She folded her wings. The air began to rush past Skarper’s face. The wind pushed its thumbs into his eyes, just as it had on that long-ago day when he was flung from Blackspike Tower. Between the dragon’s horny eyebrows he saw Elvensea grow larger and larger, and his friends on the battlements there, looking up.

  He did not think that arrows or even a smoke squirter were going to harm this dragon much. But elven steel might. He edged a little further down Mortholow’s neck, going, “Ooh!” and “Ow!” as he eased his bottom over her spines. Taking a firm grip with his knees and his scorched tail, he raised the sword two-handed.

  Just before the blow fell, Hellesvor realized what he was doing. “No, you fool!” she shouted.

  For once she sounded not just angry, but afraid.

  The sword slashed down. It was heavier than Skarper had expected; also, sharper. It cut through Mortholow’s bony scales like a cheese knife slicing Clovenstone Blue. Black blood spurted, flames flared, and the dragon’s head, wearing a look of extreme surprise, tumbled away from her still-flapping body.

  Skarper was so surprised that he dropped the sword. He stared at the lopped-off head as it tumbled away. He realized, numbly, that he had become one of those rare heroes whose names are remembered for all time, because they have slain a dragon.

  What separated him from them, of course, was that they had all had the sense to slay their dragons while the dragons were on the ground.

  Mortholow’s enormous wings had ceased to flap. Like a stone, like a broken statue of a dragon, she plummeted towards Elvensea.

  “Oh, bumcakes,” said Skarper, as he fell towards certain death. “Not again!”

  On the battlements of Elvensea, Henwyn and his companions cheered as they saw the dragon start to fall. Then their cheers faded, as they realized that she was going to fall on them.

  They scattered towards the landward end of the battlement, but could not go far because of the still-burning fires there. Henwyn ran back to fetch the smoke squirter, which he had set down beside the parapet after Skarper fell. He snatched it up, and ran to join the others cowering in the smoke with just seconds to spare.

  The immense, scaly carcass landed on the battlement with a thump that cracked the paving and sent chunks of the parapet tumbling down the sides of Elvensea. Black dragon-blood spattered the stonework, and hissed in the burning buildings.

  Skarper, clinging tightly to Mortholow’s neck, cautiously opened one eye and then the other, and checked to make sure that he was still all there. He was. The dragon had broken his fall. But when he looked for Hellesvor he saw only the crumpled struts of the harness protruding from beneath the wreck. The elven woman had been crushed under her own dragon. Which seemed to Skarper to serve her right.

  And then, while he was still getting used to the idea that he was not dead after all, his friends came running to help him down, and tell him what a hero he had been.

  “The bravest thing I ever saw!” Breenge was saying. “The way he leaped upon that dragon’s tail…”

  “It was all part of his plan, of course,” said Henwyn, who knew it hadn’t been but was pleased to see the proud Woolmarkers praising his friend.

  “The way he climbed its body, and used the elf witch’s own blade to behead it!” agreed Rhind. He shook Skarper manfully by the paw and said, “I am sorry I doubted you, goblin. You are worthy of your place in the Hall of Heroes!”

  “My what?” wondered Skarper, who was still feeling a bit dizzy.

  “The Hall of Heroes at Boskennack,” said Henwyn. “Didn’t you know? By ancient decree, anyone who slays a dragon is summoned to join the company of heroes there, and aid the High King in keeping the Westlands safe.”

  “What, with Lord Ponsandane and Kerwyn of Bryngallow and all them idiots?” asked Skarper.

  “They are not idiots,” said Rhind. “They are the bravest men in all the Westlands. But none so brave as you, Skarper of Clovenstone!”

  Skarper would have told him a few home truths about Kerwyn, Lord Ponsandane and the rest, but just at that moment there was a leathery rasp from behind him. One of Mortholow’s wings, which had settled like a tent across the wreckage of her body, was moving. Everyone stood and stared at it, as it was drawn aside, and out from the shadows behind it, battered and dented and slick with dragon blood, came Hellesvor. Her armour of elven steel had saved her, and while the mortals talked she had managed to free herself from beneath her fallen steed.

  Too angry to even speak, she stood and hissed at them, and raked them with her wintry eyes.

  Rhind sprang forward, raising his sword. She smashed him aside with a blow from her armoured fist. Henwyn swung his sword at her and she caught it in her gauntlet and snapped it, leaving him blinking at the useless stub. Breenge and Zeewa loosed the
ir bows, but she made a snake-quick movement of her head and the arrows slid past her, their flight feathers flicking her face. She snatched the bows and shattered them, flung Breenge and Zeewa aside and stalked on towards Skarper, who ran towards the edge of the battlement, and then could run no further. The parapet had collapsed when Mortholow fell, and he teetered among the rubble there, dislodging small shards of stone and watching them fall end-over-end down on to the rocks and roofs below.

  “Goblin,” said Hellesvor, finding her voice at last. “Meddling, stupid, ugly goblin. Not even a mortal man, and yet you have laid all my hopes in ruins.”

  “Sorry,” said Skarper.

  Hellesvor picked up Prince Rhind’s sword and swished it through the air. Severed sunbeams flicked from the bright blade. “At least,” she said, looking down at him where he cowered there on the battlement’s brink, “at least I shall have my revenge. Prepare to—”

  And then, out of the smoke at the battlement’s landward end, a tiny shape came running. A tiny, furry shape, long ears blown backwards with the speed of its coming. The movement caught Hellesvor’s eye. She turned her head, and gasped.

  “Fuzzy-Nose!” cried Breenge, delightedly.

  The rabbit jumped on to Prince Rhind, using his plump stomach as a trampoline to bounce itself up on to the ruined parapet. From there it launched itself at Hellesvor, somersaulting past the sword she held and landing with a furry thump in her face. She stumbled backwards, batting at the rampant rodent with her free hand while it scrabbled its paws at her eyes and nibbled at her nose with its long front teeth. With a cry of fury she caught it by the ears and flung it away from her. But while she had been struggling with it, Henwyn had run to fetch the only weapon left – the smoke squirter. As Hellesvor recovered and swung back towards Skarper, Henwyn came at her, emptying the white smoke into her face.

  “Argh!” and “Ack!” choked Hellesvor, her eyes and mouth and nose full of the choking, freezing vapour. She still swung the sword, she still kept staggering towards Skarper, but she could no longer see where she was going. Skarper curled himself into a tight little ball there at the battlement’s edge, and she bumped into him, tripped, and went tumbling over.

  Henwyn threw aside the empty smoke squirter, and he and Skarper peered over the edge. Hellesvor’s silver armour flashed and flickered as she fell, struck a rooftop, slid, hit another, slid some more, and went whirling clean off the edge of Elvensea, vanishing at last with a white splash into the deep blue water just off shore.

  A sort of shudder ran through the stone of Elvensea; a sort of shiver, swiftly stilled. And then there was only the smoke, and the whisper of the dying fires, the call of the gulls and the lonely distant murmur of the surf.

  “Is she dead?” asked Skarper.

  “I think so,” said Henwyn.

  “I thought elves are immortal?”

  “But not indestructible,” said Henwyn. “And even if she does still live, that armour will carry her down into the deep. And she has no dragon any more, no sword. We have defeated her.”

  “Fuzzy-Nose defeated her,” said Breenge, scrambling up and running over to where the rabbit had fallen. It was dazed, but it wriggled and twitched its nose as she picked it up. “Oh, Fuzzy-Nose, how brave you are!” said Breenge, kissing it. And whether it was the kiss that made it happen, or maybe Hellesvor’s magic had all died with her, there was a sort of flash, a popping sound, and suddenly Breenge was not holding a soot-stained rabbit any more, but staggering under the weight of a large, nude, and very embarrassed sorcerer.

  “Prawl!” everyone shouted.

  “Eep!” said Prawl, as Breenge dropped him in surprise.

  Henwyn handed him a cloak. Prince Rhind woke up and said, “What? Where’s Prawl come from? Where did Hellesvor go?”

  “Into the sea,” said Zeewa. “And we should go too; back to the Westlands, in case Elvensea decides to sink again.”

  Henwyn did not think that Elvensea would sink. He had a feeling that it was here to stay. The fires were failing now, and as his companions went down the winding paths to where the new ship waited, he went upwards, through the burned and blackened palaces. The hangings and fine furniture were all gone to ash, but here and there, on flat, empty places which the fires had not touched, he saw a blush of green, as if seeds that had slept a long time in the soil were waking and stretching up to feel the sunlight. Perhaps those were the real sleepers of Elvensea, he thought; the trees and grasses that would make it green again.

  And what about the elves, the ones who had fled, rather than stay with Hellesvor and wage war against the coming of the mortals? Were they still out there somewhere, in some unknown land across the Western Ocean? He walked through the ruins of the pillared hall (there were still a few wisps of mist in the enchanted pool) and stood outside it, looking westward where the sun was sinking, wondering. Some of the hall’s shining dome had melted in the fire’s heat and spilled down its walls, coating them with metal. The metal was black with soot and ash, but when Henwyn rubbed his hand across it the black came away and the space he’d cleared blazed brightly with reflections of the sun. And he thought, After we leave this place, the rain will wash it clean, and the sun will shine upon these heights, and maybe one day some elven ship, venturing from those far lands of theirs, will see the gleam, and know that Elvensea is risen again. And maybe the elves will come back here, and maybe they’ll be a bit friendlier than Hellesvor was.

  He found a roof slate, fallen from some lesser building, and with the stub of his snapped-off sword he scratched a little stone book of his own. Greetings, elves, he wrote. Hellesvor wanted war, and we defeated her, but if you come to the Westlands, the men and women and goblins and dwarves and giants who live there will welcome you in peace. Henwyn of Clovenstone. P.S. Sorry about the mess.

  He left it in the hall, beside the magic pool, and went running down to join the others. He hoped the elves would come back some day. He had a feeling that they couldn’t all be like Hellesvor. They were just a different sort of people, after all, and most people are all right, really.

  The white ship sailed like a dream, her sails filled by a kindly wind that blew her across the calm blue sea.

  “A fine ship,” said Captain Kestle, standing at the helm. “She needs a name, though. I was thinking of Sea Cucumber the Second, but there’s nothing cucumberish about her.”

  “What about the Swan?” asked Henwyn. “She is more like a swan than even Captain Gumpus’s old ship.”

  “But not the Swan of Govannon,” said Woon Gumpus, thinking sadly of his lost ship. “There was only one ship of that name, and she is gone for ever.”

  “Then she is the Swan of Elvensea,” said Captain Kestle. “A lovely name for a lovely vessel. If only I had somewhere to sail her to!”

  “To sail anywhere would be an adventure, in a ship like this!” said Woon Gumpus. “Look here, Kestle, you know all about sailing these things, which strings to pull and how to avoid large rocks and so on. And I can find you passengers! There are rich folk in Coriander and Porthquidden and Choon who will pay good money to sail in an elven ship. We’ll show them the night forests of Musk, the deserts of Barragan. We’ll visit the sea people. We’ll show them Elvensea itself. What do you say?”

  “I’ll have to think on it,” said Kestle gravely. But there was a look in his eyes which made everyone feel sure that he had thought about it already, and that his answer would be yes.

  Breenge and Prawl seemed to have come to an agreement, too. At first Breenge had been rather disappointed to find that her cute rabbit had really just been Prawl all along. But he had retained a few of Fuzzy-Nose’s rabbity ways, such as a tendency to twitch his nose, and a liking for salad – and she began to decide that he was still quite cute, in his way, even in human form. And he had saved her life, after all; he had saved everyone’s lives, hurling himself at Hellesvor like that.

  “Oh, B
reenge,” he said adoringly, as they sat together on a little sofa in one of the new Swan’s cabins.

  “Oh, Fuzzy-Nose!” she replied, with shining eyes.

  “Oh, yuck!” said the sofa, tipping them both on to the deck and squeaking away on its casters to another cabin. Spurtle might have had the outward form and semblance of furniture, but he was still a goblin through and through, and if there’s one thing goblins hate it’s romance.

  The Swan of Elvensea soon carried them to Far Penderglaze. Black badges of scorched gorse on the island’s summit showed where Mortholow had passed. They passed the rest of the Autumn Isles, and swung north-east to Floonhaven. There, upon the cliffs, they saw the two tall figures of the giants waiting to greet them, and they were amazed, because they had not known till then of Bryn’s discovery. At first they were inclined to be afraid of him, because he was so very big, but as they drew nearer they could see that the other giant was Fraddon. Fraddon was waving happily at them, and Bryn, who was so big that they could not stop staring at him, walked out and stood with one foot on the end of either wall of the harbour, beaming down at the pretty white ship as it passed beneath him.

  “He is as big as I was, when I was young,” shouted Fraddon, introducing the young giant to his friends aboard the ship. “But twice as strong, and thrice as brave! He kept the dragon from burning this town, and many another, likely! What of the dragon, by the way? Have you news of it?”

  “It is dead!” shouted Henwyn. “Skarper killed it”

  “Shhh!” said Skarper, because the others had been teasing him all the way from Elvensea, calling him Dragonslayer and asking him if they could come and visit when he was living at the Hall of Heroes.

  “Skarper has killed the dragon!” roared Fraddon, and before the Swan of Elvensea had even tied up at the quay the news had spread through the streets of Floonhaven. Bells were ringing, bright flags were unfurled, and the sounds of cheering voices echoed across the water, so loud that, far offshore, the people of the sea popped their ugly heads above the waves to see what was happening.