by Philip Reeve
“Oh, poor Langstone!” gasped Etty.
Skarper was more worried about poor Skarper. Durgar had ducked the stalactite, and was now poised to jump from the fourth cart to the third. He had pulled a big, two-headed axe out of his belt, and he was eyeing Skarper as if he meant to use it.
Desperately, Skarper looked round, hoping that there might be another low tunnel ahead. There wasn’t. But there was something else; something which scared him even more than Durgar’s axe.
“Dwarves are not short!” Etty was saying. “It’s the biglings who are too tall! Everyone knows that!”
“Etty!” Skarper shouted, pointing, and she looked, and saw what had frightened him.
About one hundred feet ahead of them, just beyond that brightly lit building, the track started to rise; a gentle slope, up which the carts would easily be carried by their own momentum. Except that halfway up, a large chunk of the rails was missing. There was a hole in the cavern roof there – a sort of raggedy, melted-looking hole, not at all like a tunnel dwarves would make – and the tracks beneath it seemed to have melted too, the spindly viaduct that supported them collapsing to leave a wide gap in the railway.
“Oh!” said Etty, staring at it. “A tunnel worm!”
“A what?” yelled Skarper. They shot past the lamplit building, and he caught a glimpse inside, of overturned chairs and tables, fallen tools, the place deserted. And now the cart was starting uphill, slowing a little as it hit the incline, but not enough that he could see any hope of stopping it before it reached that damaged section.
From behind him came a crunch as Durgar leaped and landed in the second cart. “I have you now, goblin!” he gloated.
“Oh bum –” Skarper started to say, and the cart was suddenly off the rails and spinning through empty air, ore, girl and goblin spilling out and tumbling down among the roots of the stalagmites. Skarper clamped his dwarf helm down tightly with his paws and felt chunks of ore and other debris rattling against it. “– cakes!” he said. He scuffled into a niche between two stalagmites and peered back to see the carts come crashing down off the broken track one by one. The enormous din of their falling made his teeth rattle.
“Etty?” he shouted, through the rolling echoes. “Etty?”
“I’m all right!” she called, standing up nearby, caked with dust and touching her forehead, where a small wound dribbled blood.
“I have you now, goblin!” roared Durgar again – he seemed to think it was a pretty good line, and worth repeating. He came stumbling out of the wreckage with his axe agleam, and his eyes gleamed too, focusing on Skarper. “Sneak into our delves, would you, stone-born scum? Kidnap my daughter? Sabotage our railway?”
“But I never. . .” Skarper whimpered, drawing his short sword and thinking how little use it would be against this strong, angry dwarf with his dirty great big axe.
“Skarper didn’t do this, Father,” Etty shouted. “Don’t you see the signs? That hole above us? ’Tis a tunnel worm!”
“A worm?” Durgar looked suddenly uncertain.
“What’s a tunnel worm?” asked Skarper.
As if to answer him, a long, terrible shape burst from the shadows where the wrecked carts lay. It was a serpentlike thing, as thick around as the pipe that was drinking Clovenstone’s slowsilver.
“Oh, right,” said Skarper.
“Moawwrr!” roared the worm, opening its vicious beak and lunging at Durgar. The dwarf, taken by surprise, had no time to turn and face it. His axe clattered uselessly to the ground as the creature seized him round his middle and lifted him high into the air.
“Father!” screamed Etty.
“Run, Daughter!” Durgar cried, kicking his short legs as the thing shook him furiously from side to side. His helmet flew off and fell among the stalagmites with a clatter like a dropped pan. “Run, Etty! Save yourself!”
Near Skarper’s foot the fallen axe glinted, catching the faint lamplight which filtered between the stalactites. Not quite sure what he was doing, nor why he was doing it, Skarper threw his sword aside and picked the axe up. The tunnel worm was sliding backwards, dragging Durgar with it into another of those melted-looking tunnels, which opened in the cavern floor between the supports of the dwarves’ viaduct. Durgar was grabbing at anything that came in reach – wrecked carts, stalagmites and bits of spilled ore – but the worm was stronger, and it plainly meant to drag him back into its lair.
“Father!” wailed Etty again.
Skarper lifted the axe, and brought it down hard on the worm’s neck, just behind its outsized, ugly head. There was a splatter and fountaining of dark blood, and the head, with Durgar clamped in its beak, dropped off. The bleak light faded from its eyes. Durgar wrenched the beak open and stumbled free, staring at Skarper in astonishment.
“Skarper, no!” shouted Etty, scrambling over the heaps of tipped-out ore to support her father as he stumbled and almost fell. “You don’t chop off a worm’s head!”
“Why not?” asked Skarper, who had been feeling rather pleased with himself.
“You’ll just make it angry!” Etty cried.
Skarper booted the huge head. “I don’t care how angry it is,” he said. Then he looked at the rest of the worm, slumped in the entrance to its hole. Blood had stopped flowing from its severed neck. In fact, the worm’s flesh had closed over the wound. As he watched in horror, the stump bulged in two places. The bulges grew, swiftly developing eyes, nostrils, beaks and expressions of extreme annoyance. The corpse twitched, wriggled, and rose up, two-headed now, both heads hissing and growling, “Moawwrr!” as it writhed towards Skarper, hungry for revenge and goblin flesh.
“Now that’s why we don’t deal with tunnel worms by chopping off their heads,” said Durgar. “Chop a tunnel worm’s head off and two more grow in its place, see?”
Skarper ducked under the worm’s heads as they lunged at him. “Henwyn told me a story about a creature like this!” he shouted, sidestepping as the beaks snapped fiercely at him. “Some hero killed it with fire! You burn the stump before new heads can grow!”
He nipped behind it, stepped up on its slimy back and swung the axe again, lopping off both heads. Almost instantly, four heads emerged from the stump of the creature’s neck. They looked even more annoyed than the previous two.
“But we don’t have any fire!” said Durgar.
“We can make it!” said Etty. “Give me your tinderbox, Father!”
Skarper jumped out of the way as the worm’s four new heads twisted round, searching for him. “Moawwwrrr!” they all screamed, in unison. But the “Moawwwrr!” was higher-pitched than before, because the heads were smaller. They had to be. How else could they have fitted on the worm’s neck? Each new pair of heads that grew were about half the size of the one that they replaced. Encouraged, Skarper swung the axe again. The four heads fell; eight more shoved their way out of the stump, glaring at him with sixteen angry eyes.
Meanwhile, Etty was crouched over a little pile of kindling, striking sparks with the flint and iron from her father’s tinderbox. But it is not easy to make fire at the best of times, and here in the cavern, with her hands trembling and Skarper fighting for his life, it was almost impossible. Red-gold sparks showered on to the kindling, but they did not catch. Even if they had, what else could she find that would burn, in this lifeless cave?
Skarper’s arms were getting tired, and the raging tunnel worm now had thirty-two heads.
“Here, Daughter!” called Durgar, dragging himself closer. He had taken out his knife, and he used it chop off the end of his beard. He handed the tuft of hair to Etty, and when the sparks fell on it it kindled quickly. She pulled her cloak off, wrapped it around a metal bar that had come loose from one of the wrecked carts, and thrust it into the flames.
“Stand back!” she shouted, turning to run to Skarper’s aid.
“Eh?” Skarper was leaning on his
axe among a pile of lopped-off worm heads, quite exhausted. The tunnel worm roared its anger at him; tiny thin howls of “Moawwwrr!” from one hundred and twenty-eight tiny heads. It was starting to look a bit embarrassed. None of its new heads was much bigger around than Etty’s little finger, and although the little snapping beaks looked like they might give a nasty pinch, they didn’t hold any real terror any more. Two hundred and fifty-six baleful little eyes winced as Etty came nearer and the torchlight fell upon them. The worm slithered backwards, and vanished into its hole.
“Phew!” said Skarper. “Good riddance!”
“Skarper, you were wonderful!” said Etty.
“Aye,” agreed Durgar, looking the goblin up and down. “That was bravely done, goblin. I owe you my life, it seems.” He looked almost as embarrassed as the worm had. It did not come easy, giving thanks and praise to goblins. He shook his head and tried to stand, but the worm’s beak had bruised him badly and the pain made him slump down again. “That damned worm must have eaten all the dwarves who manned the way station here.” He kicked one of the chopped-off heads as if it were a football. “Worms were rare till lately, but there are more of the foul creatures since the Lych Lord’s star returned. They come up from the under-underworld, melting their way through the rock with a noxious vitriol that oozes from them. The dwarves of old tried taming them and using them to mine, but they are savage beasts, and quite untameable. So they roam wild, a menace to dwarves and dwarvish works alike.”
Skarper looked down at the axe in his hands. Its blades were notched from slicing through so many wormy necks, and etched with odd scars and scorch marks, perhaps from the vitriol that Durgar spoke of. (Actually, Skarper himself had been spattered with the stuff; there were little singed patches on his clothes and skin.) He went to where Durgar sat to give the axe back to him, reflecting that a proper goblin would have chopped the old dwarf’s head off too. But Etty would not have liked that, and anyway, he sensed that he had won Durgar over when he saved him from the worm.
But just as he held out the axe, something struck him a terrible blow on the head. “Arkle!” he cried, collapsing. If it had not been for his tough dwarven helmet and the thick goblin skull beneath it, his story would have ended there.
Langstone, who had crept up behind Skarper and belted him while he was talking to Durgar and Etty, gave a shout of triumph and waved his dented war hammer in the air. Behind Langstone a whole crowd of other dwarves came scrambling through the stalagmites, armed with all sorts of weapons. “Where is it?” they shouted, and “Let us at it!” They were the dwarves from the way station, who had not been eaten by the tunnel worm at all; they had simply run off to fetch help and equipment when the worm appeared, and Langstone had bumped into them as they were returning to deal with it. They had overcome their fear of the creature and were eager for a fight, and they stopped and stared in bewilderment when they saw all those severed worm heads, in assorted sizes, scattered on the cavern floor. “By all the gold in Delverdale!” they muttered, and “Flippin’ Ada!” A burp of fire escaped from somebody’s flame-hose and set light to somebody else’s beard.
Etty flung herself down beside Skarper and gently rolled him over, crying out, “Oh, Skarper! Skarper!”
“Steady on, Etty!” said Langstone. “The foul goblin may not be dead yet. Stand back and I’ll give him another bash.”
“Then you’ll have to come through me to do it,” said Durgar, and he stepped between Skarper and the other dwarves, gripping the axe which Skarper had just returned to him. “This goblin saved my life,” he said gruffly. “He single-handedly saw off a tunnel worm that would have taken ten dwarves to deal with, and without the use of fire, either – a very interesting technique. Oh, and my daughter seems fond of him. I think at the very least we owe him a chance to explain himself.”
The dwarves all glanced uneasily at one another. Let a goblin explain itself? This was unheard of. But Durgar was a surveyor, and senior to them, so they dared not argue.
Skarper sat up, rubbing his head. He twitched his ears a bit, one by one, just to make sure that they were still attached. He blinked his eyes, and counted his teeth. He didn’t feel ready to speak yet, but he didn’t need to, because Etty was speaking for him.
“It’s wrong for us to be taking all the goblins’ slowsilver!” she said loudly. “We can’t need all of it. Those gallons and gallons all gushing through the new pipe back to Delverdale. . . What is it all for? We should take what we need, and leave the rest for the goblins.”
“Stone-born hooligans!” growled one of the dwarves (he was the one whose beard had caught fire, and he was still smouldering a bit, which may have been why he was in a bad mood).
“They are not hooligans!” said Etty firmly. “Not all of them, anyway. Skarper isn’t.”
The dwarves looked uneasily at Skarper, remembering what Durgar had said about him saving his life and defeating the tunnel worm. “The Head Knows All. . .” grumbled one.
“. . .and the Head Knows Best,” the others agreed.
“But what if it doesn’t?” asked Etty. “How can it know all, unless we tell it when new things appear? Goblins have changed; there’s no need for us to just fight them any more. That’s why I’m taking Skarper to Dwarvenholm, so that I can bring him before the Head and explain.”
“A goblin in Dwarvenholm?” shouted one of the dwarves.
“Never!” cried another.
“The girl has a right to take her troubles to the Head if she so wishes,” said Durgar firmly. “That is the right of all dwarves.”
“But I’ve never heard of any dwarf actually doing it,” said Langstone. “None but overseers dare enter the hall of the Head usually, and as for goblins. . .”
“Nevertheless,” said Durgar, “’tis Etty’s right, and if that is what she wants to do, I shall not stop her.”
The dwarves muttered and shuffled. “Well,” said one, “if the goblin really did save you from the worm. . .”
“If you’re sure it’s not all some goblin trick. . .”
“Etty,” said Langstone sternly, “no good will come of this troublemaking. The Head Knows All and the Head Knows. . .”
But Etty, ignoring him, was helping Skarper to his feet, and Durgar, stuffing his axe back into his belt, called loudly, “Right, lads; how long will it take us to get these rails repaired?”
It did not take very long at all. Dwarves might be annoying, hairy, set-in-their-ways, axe-happy killjoys, thought Skarper, but they were hard workers, and well organized. Ask a bunch of goblins to repair a broken railway and they’d just bicker for a while and end up hitting each other with the bits; the dwarves, under Durgar’s supervision, went to work like the pieces of one big, beardy machine. Before Skarper’s ears had quite stopped ringing from that hammer blow the railway was repaired, and he was back in a cart with Etty, Durgar and Langstone, rumbling towards Dwarvenholm.
The caverns through which the railway led were larger now, and more often lit by mole-dung lamps, or the furnaces of smithies and smelting works. This part of the Bonehills had been home to dwarves for long, long centuries, and it looked much grander and more settled than the newer tunnels which lay closer to Clovenstone. Multi-storey dwarf burrows had been hollowed from the cavern walls, huge stalagmites had been wrought into frowning likenesses of the Head, and above the mouths of tunnels big runes were carved, spelling out encouraging slogans like DELVE FOR VICTORY or KEEP CALM AND QUARRY ON.
Soon the railway was rising steadily, and the carts no longer rumbled along under their own momentum but were hauled up a series of steep inclines by mole-powered winches. At the top of the last of these steeps spread a broad marshalling yard, where carts from all over the dwarves’ underground empire arrived to be unloaded. The travellers disembarked here, and even with his dwarven helm and cloak Skarper drew more wide-eyed stares than ever he had from the people of Coriander. “Goblin!” The wo
rd ran ahead of him through the bustling streets of Delverdale like a fire through dry grass, until everyone in the great cave city seemed to know. “A goblin has come to Dwarvenholm!”
Along the vaulted streets they went, lit by hanging lamps like pocket suns. Up broad stairways carved from living rock, and across bridges which arched above chasms and cataracts. Here and there teams of harnessed moles turned enormous gears, working pumps which carried clean air down from the world above. Outside the warrens and the factories, dwarves gathered to stare and point, murmuring “Goblin!” as Skarper passed. Dwarf children toddled out into the roadway to peer at his face and see if he was as scary as the goblins were in stories, and their mothers snatched them out of his path as if they feared he might eat them. Young dwarves threw pebbles and pasty crusts at him, and earned themselves hard stares from Etty and her father. Older ones demanded, “What is he doing here, Durgar?” and “How dare you bring one of our enemies into Dwarvenholm, Langstone?”
Langstone could only shrug, and say, “It wasn’t my idea.”
Durgar said, “Etty and I are taking him to the Head. It’s the Head who will decide if he’s our enemy or not.”
They climbed a long, curving stairway, and passed beneath the shadow of a richly carven arch. Two dwarves with staffs stood guard there and stepped out to bar the way, but Durgar said, “My daughter has come to lay her grievances before the Head, as is the ancient right of every dwarf.”
“But that’s not a dwarf, Durgar!” said one of the sentries, jabbing his staff at Skarper. “That’s a goblin!”