by Philip Reeve
“Well, here is one, for a start,” said Garvon Hael, when Henwyn had shaken the seawater out of his ears. “I’m tired of being a decoration at Boskennack. My sword is at your service, if you want it.”
The evening sun was warm, but Henwyn and Skarper were still soggy by the time they returned to the house on the Street of Antiquaries. Mistress Carnglaze persuaded them that it would be silly to set off in wet things, with darkness drawing on, and so they had one more night in comfort, eating fish pie in the Carnglazes’ kitchen while their damp clothes dried on racks beside the fire.
“But we must leave early tomorrow!” said Henwyn. “Those dwarves will already be on their way home, I expect; off to tell their king that Clovenstone is defenceless.”
“They don’t have a king,” said Skarper. “They have this brass head thingy that tells them what to do.”
“How do you know that?” asked Carnglaze, and Henwyn looked surprised as well. Skarper kicked himself. He had not told anyone about his talk with Etty, and it seemed too late to do so now. “I, er, read it somewhere,” he said.
“Well, brass head or not,” declared Henwyn, “he shall soon know that the High King refused to help us. We must leave for the north at dawn!”
He regretted saying that, for Mistress Carnglaze took him seriously, and he and Skarper barely seemed to have closed their eyes that night before she was in their room and shaking them awake. A dim grey light lay over the rooftops of Coriander. They stumbled about bleary-eyed, getting dressed. Downstairs in the kitchen bowls of hot porridge waited for them, and so did Zeewa. Her ghosts roiled around her, clearly visible at this twilight hour. She had swapped her bright dress for a linen tunic, and she carried a square oxhide shield and a quiver of spears on her back. Her hair, undone from its plaits, stood out in a crackly black cloud around her dark face.
Skarper yelped as a ghost hyena came sniffing at him.
“Oh, Zeewa will be coming with us, too,” said Henwyn, who had somehow not found time to mention her to Skarper before.
“And all her phantom friends as well?” asked Skarper nervously.
“They may be useful,” said Henwyn. “Perhaps dwarves are scared of ghosts.”
“They will be scared of Zeewa’s spear!” said the ghost warrior Kosi. “I wish I were flesh and blood again, so that I, too, could wash my blade in the blood of your enemies, Henwyn of Clovenstone!”
“You?” sniffed Zeewa. “You only fought one battle, and look what happened to you!”
“That was an accident,” said Kosi, looking hurt. “If I hadn’t tripped and landed on your spear. . .”
The girl and the ghost were still quietly bickering ten minutes later, when they all went outside into the grey and silent street. Mistress Carnglaze wept and hugged them and handed them bags full of fresh rolls and cold meat; her husband said, “Farewell, but not for long. I’ll be at Clovenstone as soon as I can, with the best army money can buy!” King Knobbler slapped Skarper so hard on the back he nearly sent him face first on the cobbles, and growled, “You sort them dwarves out, young Scuffler.”
And then they were off, stomping through the cold silence of the streets, with the cats of Coriander fleeing from the ghosts which trailed behind them. They had expected to find the city gate closed, but the guards had opened it, and there beneath the archway waited Garvon Hael, seated on a huge, shaggy war horse as grey as the morning. Beside him stood a familiar, shabby figure.
“I thought I might come too,” said Quesney Prong hesitantly. “I should like to take a look at this Clovenstone place, and there is nothing left for me in Coriander. The autumn rains will be here soon, and they will turn my book-house to papier mâché. Anyway, I did a little sword-fighting in my younger days, at university. I may be of some use.”
“How?” asked Skarper, rather rudely, but Henwyn gripped the old man’s hands in his and said, “All are welcome! The dwarves will flee before us!”
Which was nonsense, of course, but even Skarper hadn’t the heart to point that out. Only Garvon Hael, high on his great horse, gave a wry smile: he remembered when he himself had been as young and as foolhardy as Henwyn.
Introductions were made: Garvon Hael dismounted and shook Zeewa’s hand, while his horse sniffed uncertainly at Tau the ghost lion. Kosi materialized in front of Dr Prong, who said, “I do not believe in ghosts, young man, but I suppose in your case I could make an exception.” The gate guards looked on curiously, and the flames in the brazier outside their guardhouse fluttered as ghost flies and ghost moths swarmed around it.
Skarper looked at his companions. A haunted girl; a penniless old philosopher; a drunkard; a shower of ghosts; and Henwyn. It wasn’t much of an army to fling against the whole dwarven nation. For a moment he thought about turning and running back into the city, finding himself a nice cosy nook somewhere, like those three trolls under their bridge, and forgetting all about Clovenstone. That would have been the gobliny thing to do, and he knew it. But he’d changed, just as Clovenstone itself had, and he didn’t always do the gobliny thing any more. With a last reluctant look over his shoulder at the waking city, he pulled his cloak tight against the chilly air and set off after his friends, along the pale road that led into the hills.
In fact, the three trolls were no longer living under the old bridge. Demoralized by the ease with which Skarper and Henwyn had defeated them, they had decided that city life was not for them. “These townspeople are too sharp for us, brothers,” Torridge had decided, as they all nursed their wounds on the night after the fight. “We’re hill trolls, we are, and the hills is where we should have stayed. Let’s go and find a nice bridge up on the moor’s edge: the sort that farmers drive fat flocks of sheep to market over.”
“Sheep!” said his brothers, and their eyes shone dimly like wet pebbles. They’d been living on old bones and midden scraps since they’d come to the big city. Just the thought of a nice plump sheep was enough to set their mouths watering.
So, while Henwyn and Skarper were waiting for an audience at Boskennack, the trolls had set off up the River Ystrad to the marshes, and across the marshes to the Ystwyth, and up the Ystwyth and its smaller, tributary rivers, until they reached places where men were few and the plump green downs of the Softlands lapped against the stony, brindled slopes of Oeth Moor. There, in a hollow among some ferns, beneath an old stone packhorse bridge, they made their new lair, and they waited.
On the first day nothing crossed the bridge except a stray cow. It had pointy horns, and looked far too fearsome for the nervous trolls to tackle.
On the second day a farmer rode across the bridge on his horse, but he had a sword slung from his saddle; the trolls thought better of it, and ducked back under the bridge before he noticed them.
On the third day, nothing crossed the bridge at all.
Then, as darkness fell, Torridge, who had gone out for a sulky walk to get away from the rumblings of his brothers’ empty bellies, came haring back to their holt in high excitement. “There’s a fire! A fire!” he panted.
“So what?” asked Kenn.
“We can live underwater, Torridge,” whined Cribba. “Fires don’t frighten us.”
“Not a wildfire! A campfire!” Torridge urged, waiting for understanding to dawn on their broad, stupid faces. It showed no sign of doing so, so he pressed on. “That means campers. Travellers! All alone in the wilderness! At our mercy!”
Like boulders on the move, the three trolls crept out of their lair and along the riverbank towards the orange eye of the fire.
The companions had made their camp that night on a little knoll where oak trees grew, surrounded on three sides by the river but high enough above the water that it would not flood. Garvon Hael’s grey horse cropped the grass under the trees, and Zeewa’s ghosts swirled like river mist just outside the circle of firelight. Within the circle, Henwyn was trying to help everyone get to know one another. He
thought that, since they were travelling companions, and might soon be comrades in a dreadful battle, they should know one another’s stories. He tried to persuade Zeewa to tell them something about her homeland, but all she would say was, “It is much like this place, except warmer, and not so wet.”
Next he turned to Garvon Hael, who was sharpening his sword, his back resting against an oak as weathered and as grey as he was. “Come, Garvon Hael,” said Henwyn, “you have fought real battles. Tell us about them!”
“Only one,” said Garvon Hael, looking up at him, and the red reflections of his firelit sword were in his eyes.
“That was the fight at Far Penderglaze?” asked Henwyn eagerly. “Carnglaze told me something of it: how you drove the pirates back into the sea, and killed their chief in single combat in the shallows, and burned their ships! It was a glorious victory!”
“Glorious?” said Garvon Hael. “I’d not call it that. A battle is a dreadful thing, Henwyn of Adherak, even when you win. I do not choose to talk of it.”
“Oh,” said Henwyn. Then, “Skarper, perhaps you’ll tell us something of Clovenstone, for you know it better than I.”
But Skarper was tired out by the long walk, and had fallen fast asleep, wrapped in his tatty cloak.
“Very well,” decided Henwyn. “I shall sing you the Lay of Eluned, which is the story of how Princess Eluned came to live at Clovenstone. This happened long ago, you understand: she had no idea then that she would one day be queen of the place.”
He stood up, stuck one finger in his ear, and began to sing in a high, nasal voice quite unlike the voice he spoke with.
’Twas on a summer’s morning
A Tuesday they do tell
The princess of Lusuenn sailed
Upon the grey sea’s swell,
And there upon the ocean deep
A dreadful thing befell. . .
The ghosts whispered in the darkness; Skarper stirred uneasily in his sleep; Garvon Hael’s war horse threw up its head and whinnied nervously, and its master exchanged a worried look with Zeewa. Some of these folk songs went on for twenty or thirty verses, and Henwyn hadn’t even reached the first chorus yet!
All in all, it was something of a relief for everyone when a large, wet rock came whirling out of the shadows and hit Henwyn a glancing blow on the head.
He collapsed in mid-song, luckily falling away from the fire, but unluckily landing on top of Skarper, who awoke with a strangled cry. But everyone was crying out by then; Zeewa screeching some Muskish war cry as she snatched up her spears, the horse rearing, Garvon Hael leaping up with a yell, reflections of the firelight darting as he swung his sword at the big shapes lunging out of the dark.
The trolls had scrambled up the riverward side of the knoll, from which Henwyn and the others had not imagined any attack would come. The voice of the river, tumbling in the darkness down below, had masked the sound of their approach. For a moment, as they leapt out upon the startled camp, the travellers were taken completely by surprise. As Zeewa straightened up, her short stabbing spear in her hand, Torridge swung a branch at her. Although it was soft and rotten, and broke on her shield with a wet thump, the blow was still enough to knock her down. But as the troll reached for her, the storm of ghosts came swooping and swirling around him, Kosi brandishing a ghostly spear, Tau the lion baring teeth and claws.
Meanwhile, Cribba’s attack on Garvon Hael had gone all wrong too: his tree branch was stronger, but the grey warrior parried it expertly, kicked his legs from under him and set his sword’s point against the troll’s throat. Kenn ran to help, but Dr Prong jumped on him from behind, and although the old man could not have weighed a quarter as much as the young troll, Kenn overbalanced and went sprawling in the cinders at the edge of the fire. He started to scramble up, but came face to face with the glowing, ghostly lion, so he gave up, put his big hands over his head, and crouched there, whimpering.
Torridge stumbled backwards against a tree, clutching at his chest, from which jutted the shaft of Kosi’s ghostly spear. It dissolved into smoke and nothingness before his boggling eyes, and when he tore open his clothes there was no blood, no wound, only his bald, pale, speckled chest.
Zeewa, recovered, approached him with her own spear raised. “What are these creatures?” she asked, never taking her eyes from Torridge.
“Urban trolls,” said Dr Prong, who was still sitting on the one he’d felled. “The same trio who used to haunt the riverside in Coriander, if I’m not much mistaken. They’re completely imaginary, of course.”
“Do we kill them?” asked the girl.
In a high, piteous voice, Cribba said, “Oh, please, your worships, don’t harm my poor brothers and me. We didn’t mean no harm. Well, we did, but not to you. It was all a case of mistaken identity, see: we mistook you for people who wouldn’t fight back. Oh, spare our lives, we’ll trouble you no more.”
Garvon Hael kept his sword point at Cribba’s throat but called over his own shoulder to Dr Prong. “How is the boy?”
The philosopher scurried round the fire to stoop over Henwyn. Garvon Hael glared down at Cribba and softly growled, “If you have killed him, troll. . .”
But Henwyn stirred and groaned as Dr Prong shook him. “Princess Ned!” he cried, and sat up, allowing a rather bruised and crumpled Skarper to emerge from underneath.
“It’s them!” wailed Kenn, peeking out between his fingers. “It’s those two from Coriander! They’ve followed us here!”
“Troll hunters!” wailed Cribba, quailing. “We’ll all be murdered in our riverbeds!”
The oak-grove filled with the stony clatter of the trolls’ knees knocking.
“What shall we do with them?” asked Zeewa.
“We must not kill them,” said Henwyn, dabbing at the blood that was trickling down the side of his face. “It would not be heroic at all.”
“Well, we can’t let them go,” grumbled Skarper. “They’ll just sneak back and attack us again, and maybe they’ll have better luck next time. And I wish you’d take a bit more notice of who you’re collapsing on: look, my tail’s all bent.”
“Please spare us!” whined Cribba. “We’ll do anything you want!”
“Anything?” asked Henwyn.
Garvon Hael glanced at him. “What are you thinking?”
Henwyn shrugged. “That they could come with us to Clovenstone. That they could fight with us against the dwarves.”
“They fight badly,” said Zeewa.
“I thought they did all right,” said Henwyn, rubbing ruefully at the lump on his head. “And they are big, and strong. You could teach them, Garvon Hael.”
Cribba was nodding eagerly. Kenn, down on the ground, said, “Oh yes! Take us with you! We’ll kill dwarves for you, loads and loads of dwarves.”
Torridge added, “Are dwarves like pixies? I hate pixies. They’re chewy.”
Garvon Hael stepped back, lowering his sword. After a moment, Zeewa did the same. The trolls relaxed a little, peering about meekly at their captors.
“They are quite young trolls,” said Garvon Hael.
“We hatched last spring,” said Torridge. “Three stones in the Ystwyth, that’s all we was till then. Then we woke, and felt hungry, and we moved downriver to that big man-town, but it was hard for us there, only scraps and cats to live on. So we came upstream again, looking for a good lair, and sheep to eat.”
“We’re starving,” whimpered Cribba.
“I think we have some rolls left,” Henwyn said. “And we can buy more food in Sticklebridge tomorrow.”
He fetched the last of Mistress Carnglaze’s provisions from the packs and the trolls squatted down gratefully to eat. Henwyn said, “It sounds as if Clovenstone is the place for you. There are rivers and woods and crags there, and lairs aplenty, so long as you promise to eat no people or goblins, only the wild goats and deer.”
T
he three trolls meekly munched their rolls. Garvon Hael had sheathed his sword, but his hand never strayed far from its hilt. Zeewa was looking at Henwyn as if she thought he was mad, though she was too polite to say so.
Skarper wasn’t. “Are you mad?” he asked, pinching his nose shut against the wet, weedy smell of troll. “Did that rock on the noggin knock you silly? There’s already one troll at Clovenstone, and one’s enough.”
But Henwyn didn’t think he was mad. If the dwarves were to be stopped, then Clovenstone would need all the help it could get, no matter what form it came in, or what it smelled like. And the dwarves had to be stopped. While he’d been unconscious, while the others were busy subduing Torridge and his brothers, Henwyn had drifted into a dream of the future. Once again, just as he had in Madam Maura’s tent, he had found himself at Clovenstone, and had seen it wrecked and burning. Once again he had stood in Ned’s garden, and seen her stretched out dead beneath the falling ash.
Henwyn knew that it had been no ordinary dream. It had been far more vivid; far more like the vision he had seen in the oracular bathtub. It had been the future that he’d seen, and it was a future that he was determined to change, even if changing it meant making friends with trolls.
Durgar and his dwarves were on their way homeward too. All the way, through old tunnels and new, Etty remembered the sights and sounds and smells of Coriander. Flowers and seagulls, painted houses and dresses made of printed Muskish silk: she had never realized that there was so much colour in the world.
She had been above the ground before, of course; in Clovenstone and the Bonehill Mountains, and in the dwarf farms at Delverdale, but those places were mostly the colours of stones and grass and trees; there was none of the brightness in them of the city she had seen. Why didn’t dwarves have bright clothes? she wondered. Why didn’t they paint the lovely houses that they carved, deep under the hills?