by Philip Reeve
Dr Prong bowed. “I shall examine you in the morning, if you wish, and perhaps prescribe some herbal remedy.”
Ned beamed at him. “There! You see? You have found your place after all! Welcome to Clovenstone, Dr Prong!”
It was long after midnight that Skarper scrambled back up the many stairs of Blackspike to his own little chamber and snuggled down in his old, familiar nest. Outside, drunken goblins caterwauled around. The burping competition seemed still to be going on – or maybe it was just ordinary burping now. Skarper couldn’t hear any judging, although there were still rowdy outbursts of applause after the loudest burps.
For the first time since the coming of the dwarves, Skarper felt quite hopeful. There might not be many of them, the little army of heroes he and Henwyn had brought back from Coriander, but perhaps what Henwyn had said was right: their hearts were true. Give us a couple of weeks, he thought, as he drifted off into a deep and dreamless sleep, and we’ll be more than a match for those blimmin’ dwarves. . .
*
But as it turned out, they did not have a couple of weeks. They did not even have a couple of days. They did not even have a couple of hours. In the hour before dawn, while most of Clovenstone was sleeping soundly with its belly full of stew and crumble, the dwarves began their war.
Henwyn’s bedroom was one of the spare cabins of Princess Ned’s ship, up on the top of Blackspike Tower. He had a comfy bed there, and he had been glad to crawl into it after days on the road and then that long and happy feast. He was fast asleep, snuggled up on his side under the thick coverlet, when the braying of a goblin war horn reached down into his dreams, hooked him like a fish, and dragged him, spluttering and groaning, back into waking life.
He lay there a moment, unsure where he was. Slowly it came to him that he was home; he recognized the familiar timbers of the cabin roof, and the sampler that his sister Hirda had stitched for him hanging on the curved wall. He was a bit alarmed to find that the old ship was swaying and turning round in giddy circles, until he realized that that was just an after-effect of the wine he had drunk at the feast. But a glare of reddish light was coming in through the porthole, and he was pretty sure that didn’t have anything to do with the wine. Also, there was that dreadful yowling noise. . .
He rolled out of bed and wobbled his way to the porthole. Outside, on the battlements of the Inner Wall, goblins were running about with flaming torches, and one was blowing steadily on a huge brass war horn. BWAAAAAAT! it went.
Being used to goblins, Henwyn assumed this was just mischief. But as he turned to go back to bed, there came a panicky hammering on his bedroom door, and the voice of Fentongoose. “Henwyn, awake! The dwarves are upon us!”
“Argh!” said Henwyn. He stumbled around the cabin, pulling on his boots, his tunic, his sword belt, pulling his boots off again so he could get his trousers on, and eventually opening the door and barging out into the ship’s main cabin. Fentongoose and Dr Prong were there, still in their nightshirts, and Princess Ned was buckling on her breastplate. “Fetch Garvon Hael!” she said.
“I knocked on his door a few minutes ago,” said Fentongoose.
“Then knock again!”
“I’ll try!” said Henwyn. It was he who had brought Garvon Hael here, after all; he felt responsible for him.
The old warrior had been given one of the spare cabins to sleep in. Henwyn blundered through the snaky passageways of the ship and banged loudly on the door. From outside came the screams and shouts of goblins. What was happening out there? Henwyn thumped on the door again, then shoved it open.
Garvon Hael was asleep face down across his bed. It looked as if he had started to get up, and even got as far as pulling his trousers on, before falling back to sleep. He was snoring quite loudly.
Henwyn shook him. “Garvon Hael! Awake! We have need of you!”
“Gffuffgtherguerr,” said Garvon Hael, half-opening one bloodshot eye.
“We are under attack!”
Garvon Hael sat up. “Pirates again, is it?” he slurred. “I’ll show them. . .”
“It is the dwarves!” cried Henwyn. “You are at Clovenstone! Do you remember? You said you’d help us!”
Garvon Hael stared blearily at him. He pointed a wavering finger. “Now listen to me, you young whippersnapper: I don’t like people who take that kind of tone with me. . .” He stopped, looking confused, and belched – not loudly enough to win a goblin burping competition, perhaps, but he would certainly have been awarded a place among the top three runners-up. His breath stank of stale wine. Henwyn remembered what Carnglaze had said. He crawled into a wine jug, and he has never come out again. How many bottles had Garvon Hael downed at the feast last night?
From outside came a mighty boom, a crash and slither of falling masonry, the squeals and shrieks of goblins. The war horn had stopped.
“Get dressed!” shouted Henwyn, heaving the drunken warrior to his feet. “Gird on your sword and come with me! There is a battle to be won!” He strode across the cabin and snatched up Garvon Hael’s sword. When he turned back to the bed he saw that the warrior had slumped across it again, singing a melancholy song about a worm who accidentally fell in love with a piece of string.
“Oh,” said Henwyn, “this is useless!” He dropped the sword and ran back to the main cabin. The others had already gone outside, and he followed them, out into the grey, cheerless, predawn light; out into the fire-glow and the smoke of war.
It had begun with molehills. Among the ruins which lay between the woods and the Inner Wall, flagstones had begun to tremble; walls had toppled. Up through the earth and the crusts of masonry the Lych Lord’s builders had laid upon it, the diremoles came nosing, lifting tall cones of rubble and wet earth into the starlight. How many of these mounds there were, nobody was certain. Most of the goblin sentries who had been standing guard that night had sneaked off to the feast, and those that had stayed behind had mostly persuaded their mates to bring back some wine and food for them, so they were sleeping as soundly as the rest. It was young Soakaway, wandering out on to the battlements for a pee, who eventually noticed something moving down among the old buildings. He strained his sharp, night-seeing goblin eyes and saw the starshine glint upon a diremole’s armoured nose.
That was when the panic began. The few goblins who were awake ran frantically in every direction, kicking their friends out of their nests, grabbing weapons and armour, falling over, getting up again, forgetting everything that Fentongoose and Princess Ned had tried to teach them. “The dwarves!” they shouted. “The dwarves are here!” In the confusion a few goblins were mistaken for dwarves themselves, and terrible fights broke out. It was minutes before anybody thought to start blowing the war horn.
Down in the woods, the giant Fraddon woke. He picked up a club he had fashioned for himself out of a fallen oak and strode towards the Inner Wall. He looked about, and saw the dark mounds growing, the earth tumbling down their sides. Wherever an armoured mole-nose gleamed he brought his club down, smashing the diremoles back into the tunnels they had made, stunning or killing the ones which had already started to heave themselves free of their hills.
But moles were rising everywhere, and as the huge creatures kicked their way free of the earth and rubble, the dwarfs emerged behind them. These were not dwarf miners, like the ones Henwyn and Skarper had encountered. These were warriors, their faces hidden behind blank iron visors, their tough bodies armoured with coats of iron scales. Wielding hammers, axes and spears they marched towards the Inner Wall, urged on by their commanders, who rode in little castles mounted on the backs of the moles.
Skarper slept through all of that. Growing up in the noisy chambers of the Blackspike had given him an ability to sleep through almost anything, and no one had thought to come and tip him out of bed. He only stirred when a huge blow shook the tower, and half the ceiling caved in. Luckily it was not the half that he was sleeping
under, and the crash of the falling timbers startled him awake. He sat up, and found that his nest was hanging halfway out of a big hole which had appeared in the wall. Below him, among the ruined buildings at the base of the wall, he saw firelight glittering on the armour of marching dwarves.
“Oh bumcakes!” he gibbered, scrabbling his way to the door just as whatever mighty engine of war the dwarves had brought with them launched another huge missile at the Blackspike. The crash as it landed sent him somersaulting out into the corridor, and a tide of squealing, yowling goblins carried him out on to the battlements.
The first thing that he noticed there was that Growler Tower had lost its top.
The second was that Redcap was on fire.
The third was Henwyn, running madly towards him, shouting, “Come on! We must drive them back!”
“What? Must we? Why?” asked Skarper, suddenly very wide awake, and very aware that he did not want to go and meet a whole bunch of dwarves with pointy things. “Can’t we just hide? They can’t really get through the Inner Wall, can they? Can’t we just pretend we’re not in?”
“Fraddon is out there,” said Princess Ned (Skarper had not noticed her till then). “And the guards at the outer gates may be beset, and trying to fight their way back. Besides, we cannot let them batter down the gates; if they get inside the Wall they will be able to reach the lava lake. That is their plan, I expect! Come, we shall make a sortie, and drive them off.”
“No!” said Henwyn, catching her by the elbow as she turned to go. “I mean – not you. It is too dangerous! You might be hurt!”
Ned looked strangely at him. “Of course it is dangerous! That’s why I am going, to share in the danger. I will not skulk here while others fight.”
Henwyn would not let go of her. He couldn’t shake off the memory of the dreadful thing he’d seen in Madam Maura’s vision. “You must not!” he said. “Imagine if you were harmed. What would the goblins do without you? What would any of us do? You are the Lady of Clovenstone. . .”
“I’m sure you’d manage,” she said, shrugging him off. But she looked thoughtful. “Very well; I shall stay here. We must organize some catapults of our own to answer all these brickbats which the dwarves keep hurling at us.”
“Yes,” cried Henwyn, “yes! You do that! Let Skarper and me go forth and fight!”
“Now hang on a minute. . .” said Skarper, not at all sure he felt like fighting, and wondering if Princess Ned needed help with the catapults. But Princess Ned had help already; the three trolls had just emerged blinking from whatever hole they’d slept in and she snapped her fingers at them and shouted for them to follow her as she strode away. Skarper gulped. There was nothing for it but for him to follow his friend.
They started down one of the long, winding stairways which led down inside the Inner Wall. Henwyn was in the lead, with Fentongoose and Dr Prong close behind them, and then a great mass of the braver goblins, their war cries and the clatter of their rusty armour making a terrible din in the narrow, low-roofed passage. Close to the front were the new hatchlings, with Soakaway brandishing his sword in just the way that Garvon Hael had shown him – he had not had time to find himself a shield, though, and was still using a plate instead.
“Where is Garvon Hael?” shouted Skarper, thinking that he and Henwyn really weren’t qualified to lead a war-band. But no one answered him.
Outside, the dwarves were dragging all manner of interesting objects out of the holes their moles had made. Giant catapults and bolt throwers, battering rams, and long hoses of jointed metal with dragon heads which sprayed jets of liquid fire. These they turned on Fraddon, driving him backwards towards the woods, where the treetops were full of leaping twiglings, terrified by the flames. Meanwhile the rest of the dwarven host tramped with their battering ram towards the great gate in the Inner Wall, while missiles whooshed over their heads to burst on the battlements, scaring away any goblins who might have tried to drop stones and boiling oil down on them.
But the Inner Wall had many gates; all sorts of secret ways which the goblins had made for their own comings and goings. One of these opened now, and out rushed Henwyn, with sword in hand and a horde of goblins at his heels.
He had been frightened on the way downstairs, but now, facing the enemy, he was not afraid at all; everything seemed to be moving too quickly for there to be any time for fear. He flourished his blade, and was about to shout something encouraging and historic-sounding, but before he could think of anything the goblins surged forward, carrying him with them. All the discipline that Fentongoose and Princess Ned had tried to drum into them was forgotten; they attacked the dwarves pell-mell, shouting wild war cries and whirling flails and clubs around their heads. They were almost as much danger to each other as to the enemy.
The dwarves around the main gate were taken by surprise. They gave way a little as the goblin charge slammed into them. The goblins, encouraged, scrambled over each other’s heads in their eagerness to bash dwarves.
Meanwhile, high on the battlements, Princess Ned had found her way to the bratapult. The ancient war machine had once been mounted on top of Blackspike, where it had been used to fling cheeky hatchlings to their doom. It stood on an out-jutting of the battlements now, and had not been used since Princess Ned arrived. Now she set the three trolls to work heaving it to a better position, and told them, “Bring me rubble!”
Luckily there was no shortage of that – Clovenstone was probably the rubble capital of the whole Westlands. While Ned gathered passing goblins to help her operate the bratapult, Torridge, Cribba and Kenn found a huge fallen granite slab and dragged it over, lifting it into the bratapult’s cup. Ned’s goblins had already wound the rope tight. At Ned’s command, Torridge pulled the lever which released it. The slab was heavier by many times than a hatchling, so it did not fly far and free as hatchlings did; just somersaulted clumsily over the wall and dropped. Down it went, punching through rags of cloud and the veil of smoke which hung above the battle. The dwarves below looked up and saw it falling. They scattered away from their battering ram just in time as the slab smashed and splintered it, and the goblins cheered and pressed in even harder.
For a while then it looked as if the counter-attack would succeed. But after a few fierce seconds the dwarves rallied and started to push back. Their armour was tougher than the goblins’ armour, their blades were sharper, and they fought with a cold ferocity that the goblins found unnerving. There were no war cries from the dwarves, just the odd grunt of effort as they swung their big axes or threw their spears. Worst of all, they had a strange habit of changing places with one another: when a dwarf warrior grew weary of swinging his axe or hammer he simply stepped sideways and another took his place from the rank behind. This meant that, while the frantic goblins got achey arms and repetitive strain injuries from wielding their swords, the dwarves they faced were always fresh and rested.
It was more like fighting machines than living beings, although not many of the goblins knew what a machine was, so the thought did not occur to them. Anyway, they were too busy fighting to think. So was Henwyn, beset on every side. Luckily his sword was a good one, taken from one of Clovenstone’s oldest armouries; it had belonged to some great captain of the Lych Lord once, and it hewed easily through the half-moon-shaped shields the dwarfs held up, and clove their helms in two amid bright showers of sparks. Even so, he was tiring quickly.
Down among the knees of the fight, among the dropped weapons and dying bodies, Skarper scrabbled about, tripping dwarves whenever he could, but mainly just trying to avoid getting bashed, spiked or speared himself. He wasn’t a very large goblin, and he’d never been much of a fighter; he soon found his way back towards the door in the wall. Fentongoose and Dr Prong had already retreated to it, after learning in a few terrifying seconds that they were not cut out for battles either. Instead they were doing their best to tend the wounded; those poor goblins who were limpin
g out of the melee with arms and legs missing, dripping dark goblin blood and grizzling loudly.
Fentongoose was struggling to staunch the flow of blood from Yabber, who was shouting angrily, “That dwarf chopped my tail off! They take ages to grow back!” when two of the littlest hatchlings appeared, dragging Soakaway.
“Fetch water!” shouted Dr Prong.
“It is no use!” said Fentongoose, bending over Soakaway. “He is stone dead!”
“Fetch water anyway!” said Dr Prong. “There will many more wounds to wash before this night is out.”
As he spoke, a discarded dwarven helm went rolling by. It looked a bit like a bucket, and Skarper decided that it might as well serve as one. Snatching it up, he went scampering down the steep, narrow paths between the ruins, heading for a place he knew where a clear stream spilled down the side of the crag. But just as he neared the spring, a movement caught his eye below. There, in a flat space between two ruined houses, the old flagstones were wobbling and rising. As he watched, the nose of an armoured diremole came pushing up into the firelight.
Skarper had forgotten how horrifyingly huge the creatures were. The pavement burst upwards, allowing the diremole’s shoulders and its huge, pale hands to force their way out amid a tumble of dark, wet earth. As it heaved itself free of the ground its masters climbed up out of the hole it had made, seized handholds on its armoured flanks and scrambled up on to its back. Skarper heard them shouting to each other, and saw them point. He could see that they were going to guide the creature up the crag’s flank, to attack Henwyn and the goblins from the rear. He turned, shouting, “Help! Here! Help!” into the din of the fight going on above him, knowing that no one would be listening.
The diremole was starting to scrabble its way up the hill. It didn’t like being out in the open air. It tossed its huge, blunt head from side to side, firelight flashing in the dark bulbous goggles which hid its eyes. It whined shrill protests, but the dwarves on its back struck at it with goads and long leather whips and it crawled forward, starting up the slope.