by Philip Reeve
The giant had a diremole in either hand, and he was busy banging their heads together.
“Fraddon! It is time!” Henwyn shouted up at him. “The Giant Dwarf comes!”
Fraddon nodded, put down the dazed moles, and picked up his club. “Good luck, little softling,” he said.
“Good luck, Fraddon!” shouted Henwyn.
The giant strode downhill in the twilight, tearing through curtains of mist, which clung like cobwebs to his legs. The noise of the battle faded behind him, and the noise of the Giant Dwarf swelled ahead; the clank, rattle, chunk of its mysterious workings, the stamp of those huge feet falling. Fraddon raised his club and ran at it. Etty and Skarper, whom he’d completely forgotten, clung in terror to the hairs in his right ear. Darts whined past them as the dwarf crossbowmen on the Giant Dwarf’s shoulders shot at Fraddon. The little missiles could not pierce Fraddon’s thick hide, of course, but for a moment Skarper and Etty were in danger.
The Giant Dwarf seemed to grow bigger as Fraddon ran towards it. Skarper had grown used to Fraddon himself being the biggest thing around. Now the Brazen Head on its new body loomed above him. A huge iron fist swung at him, and Fraddon sidestepped and slammed his club into the Giant Dwarf. It rocked backwards, and a dozen dwarves tumbled off its shoulders and the platforms that jutted from its chest, but the Giant Dwarf itself did not fall. A silvery glow shone through gaps and gratings in its sides as it reached out a huge hand and seized Fraddon’s club, snapping it in two. Fire snorted from its nostrils, playing across the giant’s broad chest and setting his shirt a-smoulder. The Giant Dwarf wasn’t really breathing fire – Skarper could see two dwarves hiding up its nose with those dragon-snouted flame-hose things of theirs – but that wasn’t much consolation as the flames gushed and crackled. If the jet had touched Fraddon’s hands or face it might have done real damage, but luckily his shirt was thick, and before the flame-hose operators could improve their aim the Giant Dwarf was distracted by another onslaught, this time from above.
The cloud maidens, who had been watching from on high, had decided it was time to lend a hand. Black and angry, their cloud swung low over the Giant Dwarf’s head, and lances of lightning crackled down, striking its shoulders and chest, playing across its great bronze face in showers of coloured sparks. Hailstones pounded it, hard enough to dent its brazen mask, and rain turned the ground around its feet to a quagmire. Above the noise, the clear voices of the cloud maidens rang out, shouting, “Go away, you big bully!” and “Pick on someone your own size!”
The Giant Dwarf raised its head. Twin jets of flame geysered from its nostrils, engulfing the cloud. “Oh poo!” and “Bother!” shrieked the cloud maidens. Fire couldn’t hurt them, but the fierce heat made it impossible to hold their shape; their cloud was thinning, and they thinned with it, becoming a fine mist which blew away on the wind.
With a roar of anger, Fraddon lunged at the Giant Dwarf before it could bring its fiery breath to bear on him again. He grappled with it, grasping its metal body in a bear hug. The shock as the two huge figures collided was so great that the remaining dwarves were shaken from the Giant Dwarf’s shoulders like shouty dandruff, while Skarper and Etty lost their grip on Fraddon’s ear hairs and went tumbling down his scorched chest.
Skarper, who had had a lot of experience falling from great heights, knew that the thing to do was flail blindly for a handhold. He flailed, and found one. As he clung there, Etty grabbed his tail. It was not until a moment later, when the Giant Dwarf had thrust Fraddon away from it, that Skarper realized he was dangling from the handrail of one of the platforms on its armoured chest. The Giant Dwarf lurched and rolled, almost shaking Skarper loose, and Etty swung from his tail’s end like a pendulum with plaits, but at last he managed to struggle up onto the platform, and heave her up after him. Then he looked round for Fraddon.
The giant was nowhere to be seen.
Skarper squeaked in alarm, looking left and right. He could see the battle raging on Adhery Hill, the dwarf host spreading up the hillside ahead of their giant contraption, but no sign of Fraddon. Then, looking down, he saw him; stretched on the fields like a fallen colossus, felled by the Giant Dwarf’s fists.
Was he dead? Or simply dazed? There was no telling, in the twilight, with the great fallen figure dwindling behind as the Giant Dwarf started to climb the slopes of the hill.
“Skarper!” shouted Etty, over the rattle and clatter and chunk from inside that vast iron chest. “We can’t stay here!”
As if to underline her point, a crossbow dart came whirring between them and pinged off the Giant Dwarf’s hide. The dwarves milling about its feet had seen the two stowaways, and were hurling missiles and rude names at them. Skarper looked for a way off the platform, and found one: a circular door, just big enough for a stooping dwarf to pass through. He tried its metal handle, and it opened. Dragging Etty after him, he crept into the hot, dark innards of the Giant Dwarf.
Up on the hill, the battle between dwarves and goblins raged back and forth, and always where it was at its thickest, there was Zeewa, seeking her own death. But getting killed was turning out to be surprisingly difficult. Wherever the Muskish girl went, the diremoles fled before her ghosts. Even the dwarves ran from her, because the drifting dust from all their chalk molehills had coated everyone white, goblins and boglins and dwarves and men alike, and the mists made everything appear vague and ghostly, so the ghosts themselves looked no different now to anyone else. Kosi kept leaping in front of Zeewa, shouting challenges and brandishing his ghostly spear, so that the dwarves who might have struck her down wasted their time slashing at him instead, and getting confused when their weapons passed straight through. Most just fled before Tau and the tide of charging animals. Once three fearless tallboys cornered Zeewa and she thought her end had come, but a huge chalk boulder from the bratapult flattened all three before they could land a blow. And when others tried to fight her, her instincts kept saving her; she meant to stand and wait for death to come, but she always ended up lashing out with her spear, sinking its red blade into dwarf flesh, slamming its butt against dwarf helms.
And despite all her efforts, and all the bravery of goblins, boglins and men, the dwarves seemed slowly to be winning, and the little army of Clovenstone was being driven back to make its stand on that burial mound, under the comet banner. There Fetter fought side by side with Fentongoose, while Yabber and Lord Ponsadane led desperate sorties to gather lost and wounded goblins from other parts of the hill. There Cribba, Torridge and Kenn heaved huge stones into the bratapult, and shouted “Boing!” as they sent them hurtling into the dwarvish host. There Nurdle blew his war horn, and boglin mist weavers worked their spells. There Garvon Hael rode his grey horse through the ranks of the dwarfs as if they were waves on the sea at Far Penderglaze, and Henwyn fought bravely too, and wondered what had become of Skarper.
And the ground beneath the battling warriors shook, and above the crash and cry of war they could all hear the clank and thunder of the footfalls of the Giant Dwarf.
Skarper had never had a chance to see inside a gigantic mechanical dwarf before, and he had to admit that it was quite interesting. Wherever he looked, huge toothed wheels were spinning, turning mysterious shafts and causing sleek silvery pistons to pump up and down. There was a smell of slowsilver in the hot air, and all around him, like iron spaghetti, a mad tangle of pipes coiled and curved. These were the Giant Dwarf’s veins, along which the slowsilver went gurgling, carrying magical power to all its metal organs.
Unfortunately there was not much time to look around, for in between the pipes and wheels and shafts and pistons there were more platforms, linked by iron ladders and lit by glowing mole-dung lamps, and on every platform clustered dwarf overseers and their followers.
If they had had crossbows, or even spears, that would have been the end of Skarper and Etty. But foolishly, the overseers hadn’t imagined anyone getting inside their miracul
ous Giant Dwarf, and so they were armed with nothing more than the spanners and wrenches they used to keep it running. All the same, the intruders were soon captured, and forced up a ladder to the highest platform of all, just underneath the Head itself, where Overseer Glunt was poring over a thick sheaf of plans.
The angry voices of their captors distracted him, and he looked up to see the girl and the goblin standing before him. “Etty!” he said, ignoring Skarper completely. “Thank the depths! Is your father with you?”
It was not the welcome they’d expected. They had both been expecting something more along “Off with their heads!” lines. But Overseer Glunt’s whole manner had changed. Gone was the sleek, pompous dwarf who had condemned them to the Bright Bowl. This new Glunt looked worn with worry. His hands shook, and his fingernails were nibbled. Beside him, holding more plans, stood Langstone. His reward for turning against Etty and her father had been to become Glunt’s assistant, but he didn’t look as though he was enjoying it very much.
Glunt came close to Etty and spoke in a voice as quiet as he could make it and still hope to be heard above the din of the Giant Dwarf. “This thing’s mad, lass! It crushes everything in its path!”
“I thought that’s what it was supposed to do,” said Skarper.
“Oh, aye, it was meant to crush everything, but not to actually crush everything. Not literally! We want to look down again on men, we don’t want them all dead, or driven away across the sea – what use are they to us then? We need people to trade with, to buy the fine things we make. How can they even afford to trade if the Head and its new body has trampled their cities flat?” He looked around him in despair at the shining pistons and the grinding gears. “It won’t stop, Etty! I thought if Durgar was here. . .”
“He’s not,” said Etty. “He’s up on the hill, and your tallboys may have killed him by now. Oh, Master Glunt, what have you done?”
“It wasn’t my doing!” pleaded Glunt. “We overseers thought we controlled the Head, but no! It has a mind of its own, Etty! It has just been biding its time, waiting for us to build this body for it, and find slowsilver to fill its veins with!”
“The dwarves of old built the Head to make them great again,” said Langstone. “And that is just what it means to do! We cannot stop it!”
“Why not jump out?” said Skarper, not much liking the thought that he was stuck inside a runaway dwarf. “You could jump out, couldn’t you?”
“Aye,” said Glunt, “but that won’t stop this thing. The Head thinks for itself! It will just go crashing on!”
There was a clang from somewhere; a screech of escaping steam; shouts and running footsteps. The smell of slowsilver in the tight, lurching space grew stronger. An overseer came up the ladder and pushed past Etty and Skarper to tell Glunt, “Another of them! And Feldspar thinks some may be collecting in the S-bend behind the right hip!”
“Well get them out!” shouted Glunt, waving his short arms in fury.
“What is it?” asked Etty, as the other overseer scampered back down into the Giant Dwarf’s depths.
Glunt would not answer her, but Langstone said, “Things keep appearing in the slowsilver. As if it is solidifying. They are blocking its passage around the dwarf’s veins. Our spell-smiths can’t explain it.”
“But that’s good, isn’t it?” asked Etty. “If the slowsilver stops flowing, the Giant Dwarf will stop too, won’t it?”
Glunt shook his head. “It’s not that simple, lass. The slowsilver rushes through these pipes under great pressure. A blockage could lead to terrible disaster. A magical explosion! We could all be drenched in slowsilver. There have already been a couple of serious leaks. Look at what happened to Overseer Bendick here.”
“Ribbit!” agreed a bearded frog, hopping across the pile of plans which Glunt had thrown aside.
“We have to open the pipes as carefully as we can and fish these stones out,” said Glunt. “It’s dicey, dangerous work while the Giant Dwarf keeps moving, but the alternative. . .”
“Stones?” said Skarper. “You said stones?”
Glunt looked at him. “Aye, goblin. Stones. That’s what these things in the pipes look like.”
“Show me!” said Skarper.
Langstone led the way, and Etty went with him. On a high, narrow platform behind the Giant Dwarf’s beard stood a barrel. It was almost full of eggstones. Some were fresh, with the veins of slowsilver still glowing on their surfaces; others had cooled, and were dark as cannonballs.
“We store them here,” said Langstone. “They are too valuable to throw overboard. See how the slowsilver shines in them. . .”
“There must be dozens!” said Skarper. His mind raced. The slowsilver lake had not been due to cough up any eggstones yet. But what if the business of piping the slowsilver north to Dwarvenholm and then decanting some of it into the veins of the Giant Dwarf had made it produce eggstones early? Perhaps that was the slowsilver’s way of trying to escape; turning itself into goblins, who could run away. . .
He thought some more. “Fire!” he said. “We need fire! What about those flame-hose thingies up in the nose? Can we bring one down here?”
Langstone looked uncertain. “What are you planning?”
Skarper thought it better not to say. He didn’t need to, anyway: Etty took Langstone’s hand and, shouting “Come on!”, led him up a ladder into the dark, turning shadows of the Head. A moment later they were back, uncoiling the long, snakey metal tube of a flame-hose behind them. A dwarf in scorched leather armour came with them, lugging the fat metal bottle which held the flame-hose’s fuel, and grumbling, “What’s all this then? Goblins?”
“Just do as he says!” ordered Etty, and Skarper said, “Pour fire on that barrel!” and jumped aside as the hose roared, wrapping the barrel of eggstones in gaudy flames.
At Clovenstone, eggstones took days to hatch. They sat beside Fentongoose’s fire, gentled in its warmth, until the hatchlings inside them woke and bashed their way out. But Skarper didn’t have time for that. He hoped this would work instead. Shielding his face from the flames with both paws, he went as close as he dared. The hose roared, the barrel burned, the fire crackled. Inside the fire the eggstones cracked and banged like popcorn.
“Stop!” shouted Skarper, adding his own voice to the voices of dwarf overseers, who had come running to see which idiot was letting off a flame-hose inside the Head.
The flames subsided, leaving only the fires of the burning barrel. In the heart of the heat, something moved. Skarper blinked away bright after-images, edged nearer – and a new hatchling, slightly singed, came tumbling out of the heap of flame-wrapped stones and landed at his feet.
“Urple!” said the hatchling, coughing smoke. Two more followed. Then suddenly there were hatchlings everywhere, and like all goblin hatchlings they were spoiling for a fight. Some snatched up still-burning barrel staves; some simply used their fists. One picked up the flame-hose (he didn’t know what it was for; he was just planning to use its heavy iron nozzle to thump his batch-brothers with). But as he swung it at them he overbalanced, and plummeted with a yelp over the edge of the platform (being even littler than a dwarf, he fitted easily under the brass handrail).
With a shriek, the unlucky hatchling dropped down into the Giant Dwarf’s innards; into the rolling wheels, the sliding gleam of pistons. He was still clutching the flame-hose, and as it went slinking, link by metal link, over the platform’s edge, it began to tug the big iron bottle that held its fuel after it. “No!” shouted Langstone, reaching for it – but by then the hose’s end was caught in the teeth of great gears far below, and although the operator and other dwarves joined him in trying to hold the bottle back, it was a tug of war that they were doomed to lose.
Over it went, and away into the depths. Skarper and the dwarves on the platform all stared at one another, appalled. Even the hatchlings stopped fighting for a moment.
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A terrible red glare came up out of the dwarf’s belly, and a boom. Shadows of the machinery went wavering over the faces of the watchers on the platform. The glare faded, and for a moment it seemed that all was well below. Then, echoing up through the innards of the dwarf, they heard the gush of spilling slowsilver, and the pop and crack of eggstones.
Panic took hold then. “Abandon Dwarf!” screamed Overseer Glunt.
“Run for your lives!” suggested Langstone.
All hope of salvaging the Giant Dwarf was forgotten. The overseers ran hither and thither, up and down the iron ladders, making their way to whatever doors and hatches and openings they could find. They jumped over the squabbling hatchlings, who were spilling all through the Giant Dwarf’s interior. The ones Skarper had hatched in the barrel were ganging together to fight new hatchlings, who came spidering up the ladders from below. It seemed to Skarper, looking back as he reached one of the hatches, that all the slowsilver gushing from the Giant Dwarf’s severed veins was turning into eggstones, and all the eggstones were hatching instantly in the heat of the fire that had started down in its belly. Even the whirling wheels and gears, which had been forged from slowsilver long ago, were developing odd warts and pimples which swelled and burst and spat out hatchlings. The clank and rattle and chunk of the magical machine was almost drowned out by the squealing voices of new goblins.
Then Etty pulled him through the hatch, and they followed the escaping dwarves, scrambling perilously down the Giant Dwarf’s armour until they were low enough to jump the rest of the way to safety.
“Ghooooof!” said Skarper, landing next to Etty in a hedge. He scrambled out in time to see the Giant Dwarf reach the hilltop. The fighting there had stopped: dwarves and boglins, goblins and men, all stood amazed, gawping up at the mighty figure. But instead of raising its huge feet to trample the enemies of Dwarvendom, it stopped and stood there. Weird groans and gurglings came from its insides. If it hadn’t been a two-hundred-foot-tall magic-powered mannikin, you would have said that it had terrible indigestion. A moment more, and the Brazen Head began to wobble and rattle on its shoulders like the lid of a saucepan coming to the boil.