The Last Apprentice: Complete Collection

by Joseph Delaney

  With those words, the Spook led us away, and an hour later we came down off the moor and moved northward, arriving at Stone Farm before dark. William, the farmer’s son, was waiting for us at the end of the lane, and we made our way up the hill toward the farm just as the light was beginning to fail. But before visiting the farmhouse, the Spook insisted on being taken up to the place where the body had been found.

  A track from the back farmyard gate led straight up onto the moor, which was dark and threatening against the gray sky. Now that the wind had dropped, the clouds were moving sluggishly and looked heavy with snow.

  About two hundred paces brought us to a clough far smaller than the one where the Spook’s house was built but no less gloomy and forbidding. It was just a narrow ravine full of mud and stones, split in two by a fast-moving shallow stream.

  There seemed nothing much to see, but I didn’t feel at ease and neither did William. His eyes were rolling in his head and he kept spinning around suddenly, as if he thought something might be sneaking up on him from behind. It was funny to watch, but I was too scared to manage even a smile.

  “So this is the place?” asked the Spook as William came to a halt.

  William nodded and indicated a patch of ground where the tussocks of grass had been flattened.

  “And that’s the boulder we lifted from his head,” he said, pointing at a large lump of gray rock. “It took two of us to lift it!”

  The rock was big and I stared at it gloomily, scared to think that something like that could drop from the sky. It made me realize how dangerous a stone-chucker could be.

  Then, very suddenly, stones did start to fall. The first was a small one, the noise of it hitting the grass so faint that I only just heard it above the gurgling of the stream. I looked up into the clouds just in time to see a far larger stone fall, narrowly missing my head. Soon stones of all sizes were dropping around us, some large enough to do us serious damage.

  The Spook pointed toward the farm with his staff and, to my surprise, began to lead the way back down the clough. We moved fast, and I struggled to keep up, the bag getting heavier with every step, the mud slippery beneath my feet. We only came to a breathless halt when we reached the farmyard.

  The stones had stopped falling, but one of them had already done some damage. There was a cut on the Spook’s forehead and blood was trickling down. It wasn’t serious and no threat to his health, but seeing him injured like that made me worried.

  The stone-chucker had killed a man, and yet somehow my master—who wasn’t in his prime—was going to have to deal with it. I knew he really was going to need his apprentice tomorrow. I knew it would be a terrifying day.

  Henry Luddock made us very welcome when we got back to the farm. Soon we were seated in his kitchen in front of a blazing log fire. He was a big, jovial, red-faced man who hadn’t let the threat from the boggart get him down. He was sad at the death of the shepherd he’d hired but was kind and considerate toward us and wanted to play the host by offering us a big supper.

  “Thanks for the offer, Henry,” the Spook told him, declining politely. “It’s very kind of you, but we never work on a full stomach. That’s just asking for trouble. But you just go ahead and eat what you want anyway.”

  To my dismay, that’s exactly what the Luddock family did. They sat down and tucked into big helpings of veal pie, while a measly mouthful of pale yellow cheese and a glass of water each was all the Spook allowed us.

  So I sat there nibbling my cheese, thinking about Alice in that house where she was so unhappy. If it hadn’t been for this boggart, the Spook might have dealt with Morgan and made things better. But with a stone-chucker to face, who knew when he would get around to it now?

  There were no spare bedrooms at the Luddocks’, and the Spook and I spent an uncomfortable night, each wrapped in a blanket on the kitchen floor, close to the embers of the fire. Cold and stiff, we were up the following morning well before dawn and set off for the nearest village, which was called Belmont. It was downhill all the way, which made progress easy, but I knew that soon we’d have to retrace every step, making the hard climb back up to the farm.

  Belmont wasn’t very large—just a crossroads with half a dozen houses and the smithy we’d come to visit. The blacksmith didn’t seem very pleased to see us, but that was probably because our knocking got him out of bed. He was big and muscular like most smiths, certainly not a man to trifle with, but he looked at the Spook warily and seemed ill at ease. He knew my master’s trade, all right.

  “I need a new ax,” said the Spook.

  The smith pointed to the wall behind the forge, where a number of ax heads were displayed, roughly shaped, ready for their final finish.

  The Spook chose quickly, pointing to the biggest. It was a huge double blade, and the blacksmith looked my master up and down quickly, as if judging whether he was big and strong enough to wield it.

  Then, without further ado, he nodded, grunted, and set to work. I stayed by the forge, watching while the blacksmith heated, beat, and shaped that ax head on his anvil, every so often quenching it in a tub of water with a great sizzle and cloud of steam.

  He hammered it onto a long wooden shaft before sharpening it at the grindstone, the sparks flying. In all, it was almost an hour before the blacksmith was finally satisfied and passed the ax to my master.

  “Next I need a large shield,” said the Spook. “It has to be big enough to protect the two of us, yet light enough for the lad to hold at arm’s length above his head.”

  The blacksmith looked surprised but went into his store at the back and returned with a large circular shield. It was made of wood with a metal rim. It also had an iron center boss with a spike, so the blacksmith began by removing this and replacing it with more wood to make the shield lighter. Then he covered the outside of the shield with tin.

  By gripping its outer edge, I was now able to hold the shield above my head with both arms outstretched. The Spook said that wouldn’t do because my fingers could get hurt and I might drop the shield. So the usual leather strap was replaced by two wooden handles just inside the rim.

  “Right, let’s see what you can do,” said the Spook.

  He made me hold the shield in different positions at different angles, and then, satisfied at last, he paid the blacksmith and we set off back toward Stone Farm.

  We went up onto the fell right away. The Spook had to leave his staff behind because he had his hands full carrying the ax and his own bag. I was struggling with the heavy shield, glad that he didn’t expect me to carry his bag as well. We climbed until we reached the place where the man had died. Then the Spook paused and looked hard into my eyes.

  “You need to be brave now, lad. Very brave. And we have to work quickly,” he told me. “The boggart’s living under the roots of an old thorn tree up yonder. We have to cut down and burn the tree to drive it out.”

  “How do you know that?” I asked. “Do stone-chuckers usually live under tree roots?”

  “They live anywhere that takes their fancy. But generally boggarts do like living in cloughs, and particularly under the roots of thorn trees. The shepherd was killed at the foot of this clough right here. And I know there’s a thorn tree farther up, because that’s exactly where I dealt with the last one, almost nineteen years ago, when young William was just a babe in arms and Morgan was my apprentice. But that’s given us a problem, because whereas that boggart listened to a bit of friendly persuasion and moved on when I asked, this is a rogue stone-chucker that’s already killed, so words won’t be enough.”

  So then, heading due north, we entered the western edge of the clough, the Spook setting a fast pace ahead of me: soon we were both breathing hard. The mud gradually gave way to loose stones, making it difficult underfoot.

  At first we kept close to the top of the clough, but then the Spook led the way down the scree until we reached the edge of the stream. It was shallow and narrow, but still it boiled across the stones, rushing downward with
such force that it would have been difficult to cross. We continued upward against its flow, the banks on either side rising up steeply until only a narrow crack of sky was visible overhead. Then, despite the noise of the stream, I heard the first pebble drop into the water just ahead.

  It was something I’d been expecting, and soon there were others, forcing me to take the shield from my back and try to hold it over our heads. The Spook was taller than me, so I had to hold it up high, and it wasn’t long before my shoulders and arms began to ache. Even though I held it at arm’s length, the Spook was forced to stoop, and progress wasn’t comfortable for either of us.

  Soon we came in sight of the thorn tree. It wasn’t particularly big, but it was an ancient tree, black and twisted, with gnarled roots that resembled claws. It stood defiant, having survived the worst of the weather for a hundred years or more. It was a good place for a boggart to make its home, especially a stone-chucker like this, a type that avoided human company and liked to be alone.

  The falling stones were getting larger by the minute, and just as we reached the tree, one bigger than my fist clanged onto the shield, nearly deafening me.

  “Hold it steady, lad!” the Spook shouted.

  Then the stones stopped falling.

  “Over there . . .” My master pointed, and in the darkness below the tree’s branches I could see the boggart starting to take shape. The Spook had told me that this type of boggart was really a spirit and had no flesh, blood, and bone of its own; but sometimes, when it tried to scare people, it covered itself with things that made it visible to human eyes. This time it was using the stones and mud from beneath the tree. They rose up in a big whirling wet cloud and stuck to it so that its shape could be seen.

  It wasn’t a pretty sight. It had six huge arms, which, I suppose, were pretty useful for throwing stones. No wonder it could hurl so many so fast. Its head was enormous, too, and its face was covered with mud, slime, and pebbles that moved when it scowled at us, just as if an earthquake were taking place underneath. There was a black slit for a mouth and two large black holes where its eyes should have been.

  Ignoring the boggart and wasting no time, as stones started to shower down again, the Spook went straight for the tree, the ax already swinging down as he reached it. The gnarled old wood was tough, and it took quite a few blows to lop off its branches. I’d lost sight of the boggart, being too busy trying to hold up the shield and ward off the worst of the stones that came our way. The shield seemed to be getting heavier by the minute, and my arms were trembling with the effort of holding it aloft.

  The Spook attacked the trunk, striking at it in a fury. I knew then why he’d chosen an ax with a double-blade: he swung it both forehand and backhand in huge scything arcs, so that I felt in danger of my life. Looking at him, you’d never have guessed he was so strong. He was a long way from being young, but I knew then, by the way the ax-blade bit deep into the wood, that despite his age and recent ill health he was still at least as strong as the blacksmith and would have made two of my dad.

  The Spook didn’t chop the tree right down; he split the trunk, then put down the ax and reached into his black leather bag. I couldn’t see what he was doing properly because the stones began to rain down harder than ever. I glanced sideways and saw the boggart begin to ripple and expand: huge bulging muscles were erupting all over its body like angry boils. And, as more mud and pebbles flew up, it almost doubled in size. Then two things happened in quick succession.

  The first was that a huge boulder fell out of the sky to our right and buried itself half in the ground. If that had landed on top of us, the shield would have been useless. We’d both have been flattened. The second was that the tree suddenly burst into flames. As I said, I didn’t get a chance to see how the Spook managed it, but the result was certainly spectacular. The tree went up with a great whoosh and flames lit up the sky, sparks crackling away in every direction.

  When I looked left, the boggart had vanished, so with trembling arms I lowered the shield and rested its lower edge on the ground. No sooner had I done so than the Spook picked up his bag, leaned the ax against his shoulder, and, without a word or a look behind him, set off down the fell.

  “Come on, lad!” he called after me. “Don’t dawdle!”

  So I picked up the shield and followed, not risking even a glance backward.

  After a while the Spook slowed down, and I caught up with him. “Is that it?” I asked. “Is it over?”

  “Don’t be daft!” he said, shaking his head. “It’s only just begun. That was just the first step. Henry Luddock’s farm is safe now, but that boggart will strike again somewhere else very soon. There’s a lot worse to come yet!”

  I was disappointed, because I’d thought the danger was over and our task completed. I’d been really looking forward to a hot, tasty meal, but now the Spook had dashed my hopes, because we’d have to carry on fasting.

  As soon as we got back, he told Henry Luddock that he’d got rid of the boggart. The farmer thanked him and promised to pay him the following autumn, directly after the harvest; five minutes later, we were on our way back to the Spook’s winter house.

  “Are you sure that boggart will come back? I really thought the job was done,” I told the Spook as we crossed the moor, the wind blustering at our backs.

  “In truth, the job’s half done, lad, but the worst is yet to come. Just as a squirrel buries acorns to eat later, a boggart stores reserves of power where it lives. Mercifully, that’s now gone, burned away with the tree. We’ve won the first big battle, but after a couple of days spent gathering strength, it’ll start plaguing somebody else.”

  “So are we going to bind it in a pit?”

  “Nay, lad. When a stone-chucker kills so casually, it needs to be finished off for good!”

  “Where will it get new strength from?” I asked.

  “Fear, lad. That’s how it’ll do it. A stone-chucker feeds upon the fear of those it torments. Some poor family nearby is in for a night of terror. I don’t know where it’ll go and who it’ll choose, so there’s nothing I can do about it and no warnings to be given. It’s just one of the things we have to accept. Like killing that poor old tree. I didn’t want to do it, but I had little choice. That boggart’ll keep moving, gathering strength, but within a day or two it’ll find itself a new, more permanent home. And that’s when somebody will come and ask us for help.”

  “Why did the boggart become rogue in the first place?” I asked. “Why did it kill?”

  “Why do people kill?” asked the Spook. “Some do and some don’t. And some who start out good end up bad. I reckon this stone-chucker got fed up with being just a hall-knocker and lurking around buildings scaring people with raps and bumps in the night. It wanted more; it wanted the whole hillside to itself and planned to drive poor old Henry Luddock and his family out of their farm. But now, because we’ve destroyed its home, it’ll need a new one. So it’ll move farther down the ley.”

  I nodded.

  “Well, maybe this’ll cheer you up,” he said, pulling a piece of yellow cheese out of his pocket. He broke off a small piece and handed it to me. “Chew on this,” he told me, “but don’t swallow it all at once.”

  Once back at the Spook’s house, we brought Meg up from the cellar and I settled back into my routine of chores and lessons. But there was one big difference. As we were expecting boggart trouble, the fast continued. It was torture for me to watch Meg cook her own meals while we went hungry. We had three full days of starving ourselves, until my stomach thought my throat had been cut, but at last, about noon on the fourth day, there came a loud knocking on the back door.

  “Well, go and see to it, lad!” commanded the Spook. “No doubt it’s the news we’ve been waiting for.”

  I did as I was told, but when I opened the door, to my astonishment, I found Alice waiting there.

  “Old Mr. Hurst sent me,” Alice said. “There’s boggart trouble down at Moor View Farm. Well? Aren’t you going
to ask me in?”

  CHAPTER VIII

  The Stone-Chucker’s Return

  THE Spook had been right in his prediction, but he was as surprised as I’d been when I showed our visitor into the kitchen. “The boggart’s turned up at the Hursts’ farm,” I told him. “Mr. Hurst’s asked for help.”

  “Come through to the parlor, girl. We’ll talk there,” he said, turning to lead the way.

  Alice smiled at me, but not before she’d glanced toward Meg, who had her back to us and was warming her hands over the fire.

  “Sit yourself down,” my master said to Alice, closing the parlor door. “Now tell me all about it. Start at the beginning and take your time.”

  “Ain’t much to tell,” Alice began. “Tom’s told me enough about boggarts for me to be sure that it’s a stone-chucker. It’s been throwing rocks at the farm for days— it ain’t safe to go out. Risked my life just getting out to fetch you. The yard’s full of boulders. There’s hardly a pane of glass left, and it’s knocked three pots off the chimney stack. It’s a wonder nobody’s been hurt.”

  “Hasn’t Morgan tried to do anything about it?” asked the Spook. “I taught him enough of the basics about boggarts.”

  “Ain’t seen him for days. Good riddance to bad rubbish!”

  “Sounds like it’s what we’ve been waiting for,” I said.

  “Aye, reckon so. You’d best prepare the herb tea. Make it as strong as last time.”

  I stood up and opened the cupboard next to the fireplace, taking out the big brown glass bottle. As I turned around, I could see the disapproval on Alice’s face. The Spook saw it, too.

  “No doubt, as usual, the lad’s told you all about my private business. Therefore you’ll know what he’s going to do and why it’s necessary. So take that look off your face!”

  Alice didn’t reply but followed me into the kitchen and watched me make the herb tea while the Spook went into his study to bring his diary up to date. By the time I’d finished, Meg was dozing in her chair, so I had to wake her gently by shaking her shoulder.