At the inn, Adam tried to convince his sister to leave Trow Town at once. “You can’t be serious, you don’t mean to trust that…that creature! Didn’t you see his eyes? And why was he so interested in the Citadel?”
Emily didn’t reply.
“Come on! A famished crocodile would be more trustworthy!” He couldn’t believe how stubborn his sister could be. Adam turned in frustration to his friend, who was following the discussion anxiously. “What do you think?”
“I don't know,” Palustric said.
Adam hadn’t expected this reply. “What do you mean?” he snapped.
The dwarf hung his head. “I don't know what a crocodile is.”
Brother and sister looked at each other and started to laugh while Palustric scratched his head. But it broke the tension. “Look, Adam,” Emily said softly, “I didn’t like that horrid goblin, either. But goblins aren’t likeable. Everybody knows that. If we want his help, we have to trust him, I’m afraid. Don’t you think it would be a good thing, Palustric, if we convince the Highland Goblins not to join Pride?”
Palustric sat down on the edge of his bed. He sighed heavily. “Well, it would mean one less frontier to defend.”
“There you are,” Emily said, seizing the opportunity. “If we don’t try, we won’t gain anything, while if they refuse to help, we’ll have only lost half a day, but we’ll have gained a rest for Blitz and a night’s sleep in a comfortable bed.” She yawned at the thought and yawned again, her words difficult to understand. “We’ll travel faster tomorrow.”
Her last words convinced Adam finally to give in. Emily could be right and, in any case, they were tired. He yawned, too, soon lying in bed, thinking what a horrible smell freshly put out candles make, before falling into a deep refreshing sleep.
In the darkness, Palustric whispered, “Adam, what's a crocodile?” There was no reply. He never did find out.
Palustric’s deep-chested snores were interrupted before dawn when their door was flung open and steel blades pressed to their throats. The intruders dragged them out of bed and chained their hands behind their backs.
33
By the light of smoky lanterns, they recognised their captors’ burgundy uniforms. The Archgoblin’s men had caught up with them. They also recognised another uglier goblin in the doorway. Adam looked accusingly at Emily. “I told you a crocodile was more trustworthy,” he said even as the Highland goblin chief snatched his payment, a sizeable bag of gold, from the Archgoblin’s captain.
They didn’t have time to insult the treacherous goblin, for they were bundled roughly downstairs and out onto the street. Hoisted onto a horse in front of a guard, they left Trow Town just as the first cocks began to crow and daylight broke. Each of them weighed up the situation: twenty mounted guards with swords and Blitz’s reins in a goblin rider’s hands. They were heading back to the Citadel across country, not by road. On the whole, their situation seemed hopeless. Before long they would be in Pride’s grip and their mission failed.
Uncomfortable and sore, they travelled for two hours. When one tried to look around or call to the other, their captors slapped and pinched them cruelly. They stopped at another moorland stream, where the goblins flung them to the ground like sacks of potatoes. The goblins watered their horses and Blitz. They sat in a circle around their prisoners, occasionally tormenting them with jibes or offering the bread and cheese they were devouring, only to snatch it away again. The goblins soon finished off what food they had with them. Adam, who always had an appetite, began to worry. It was a long way to the Citadel. With this thought in mind, he noticed a guard staring at his belt. The goblin looked up and sneered as their eyes met, then leapt to his feet and tore the horn from the boy’s belt. With his hands chained behind him, Adam could do nothing.
The goblin turned the horn over in his hands and grinned, admiring his prize. He didn’t have much time to do so because another goblin jumped to his feet and ran his sword into the unsuspecting guard’s back. Before he could bend to pick up the horn, all the guards were on their feet. Only with difficulty and thanks to his greater strength did the captain restore order.
Two guards clung to the killer’s arms, and his captain stood in front of him. The goblin’s eyes were wide with terror under his sweated brow. The captain drew his sword slowly. Emily turned her face away as Adam and Palustric watched the captain coldly run his sword into the guard’s stomach.
When the goblin fell dying at his feet, the captain grinned and kicked his body. Then he reached down for Adam’s horn. Like the other goblin, he turned the prize in his hand, but not without warning glances at the other goblins. Slowly he raised the horn to his lips.
Adam was going to say, “Go on, then we’ll soon be free!” as a kind of bluff but then thought of a better idea. He put a pleased expression on his face. It was enough. The captain had been watching the boy for his reaction. When he saw that blowing the horn would please the boy, he lowered it at once and grinned slyly. He clipped the horn to his belt and set about cutting the dead guards’ purses, instead. Adam breathed a sigh of relief. No-one must blow the horn except himself. He remembered Balom’s warning, only to blow it as a last resort.
The goblins left their dead unburied and gave their horses to Emily and Palustric. So, only Adam was pinched and slapped from time to time. They travelled on until the sun was high in the sky. It was clear from their faces and their grumbling that the goblins were suffering the heat under their uniforms.
As soon as they saw woodland, their captain gave orders to enter. Under the broad-leaved trees, the air was cooler and fresher. For a while, they followed a track in single-file with the captain in front. He was the first to see the clearing with a giant oak stump in the centre. The stump was a living tree because at its edges were many new shoots that formed a coppice of young oaks. To everyone’s surprise, inside the circle of trees, on the old stump, was an irresistible spread of food. Adam’s mouth watered and his stomach rumbled at the sight of roast meats, bread, vegetables and fruit. The goblins were off their horses in a trice. Adam, Emily and Palustric could only watch enviously from their horses as the goblins threw themselves on the feast like a pack of starved wolves. Adam thought about escaping while the goblins were busy at their feast, but they wouldn’t get far with chained hands. It was no use.
Palustric nudged his horse over to Adam. “Look!”
One by one, the goblin guards were clutching their stomachs and toppling over, green in the face. Not one of them was left alive.
“They’ve been poisoned,” Emily said. She dismounted with great difficulty and went over to the captain. She poked him with her foot. He was dead.
“But who could have put poisoned food here?” Adam asked.
“I think I know,” Emily said and looked at Palustric, but he had no idea. “I’ll tell you, but I think you should get down off your horses.”
This was easier said than done, as neither Adam nor Palustric were horsemen. Both crashed heavily onto the hard, woodland ground.
“Are you all right?” Emily asked.
“Never felt better,” Adam groaned.
“Turn sideways, Ad,” Emily ordered, “I’ll try to get my hand into your pocket. Let’s see if Cari can help.” It took her a long time because she needed to be a contortionist to put a chained hand into her brother’s pocket. In the end, she managed it and pulled out the orb with a cry of triumph. She held the sphere in her open hands behind her. “Come on, Cari!” she pleaded. “Get these chains off my wrists!” She waited, but nothing happened.
Adam stood, groaning because of his bruised, aching body. It hadn’t been a good day, so far. “Give it here,” he said roughly and turned his back to his sister, who let the elven orb roll into her brother’s hand.
No sooner was the orb in his hands than he felt his wrists move apart. He held his hands out in front of him and was astonished to see that there was no trace of the heavy goblin chains. It was as if they had dissolved away.
&n
bsp; “Cari, you're fantastic!” he cried. “Now Emily’s,” he ordered, dropping the orb into his sister’s hands. The elven sphere glowed brightly and Emily’s chains vanished.
“I wonder why Cari doesn't work for me?” Emily said touchily as she stroked Blitz’s flank.
“I know why.”
“Why?”
“I'm not telling you until you’ve told me who put the poisoned food there,” Adam laughed.
“Hey!” Palustric boomed. “What about me?”
Adam looked at Emily and chuckled. “I quite like Palustric like this. I think I’ll leave him chained up!”
“Hey!” Palustric boomed menacingly, and Adam released him with a laugh.
Meanwhile, Emily ran across the clearing to a grassy bank where wildflowers grew between the trees. There she picked pale yellow blooms until she had quite a bunch in her hand. Adam and Palustric strode over to join her.
“Primroses?” Adam asked.
“Here, two-four-six, seven,” she passed seven to her brother and another seven to Palustric. She remained with seven in her hand.
They turned back to the centre of the clearing. In the oak coppice, growing among the bodies of the goblins were toadstools: poisonous toadstools.
Adam gasped. “It's impossible! I saw it with my own eyes. There was food there, not toadstools.”
“Give me your flowers,” Emily said.
Adam passed her the primroses, and as he did so, the toadstools became food to his eyes.
“It's an illusion,” his sister told him.
Palustric nodded. “Now I understand, Glamour! — magic made by the spirit of the felled oak.”
At these words, from behind the oak coppice stepped a curious, brown figure about as tall as Lar, but much older and even more wrinkled. He wore a large acorn cup for a hat. His bare chest and his long arms with oversized hands were gnarled; at his waist he wore a skirt of beaten bark. The strange creature bowed: “Good day,” he said in a gruff voice, “the Oakman, at your service.”
Emily and Palustric stared in surprise, but Emily remembered her manners. “Hello,” she said, “we’re Emily, Adam, and this is Palustric.”
“Who are you talking to?” Adam asked, puzzled. Emily passed back his primroses.
“Yes, I know who you are,” the Oakman replied, “a jay told me, and unless I’m wrong, a magpie told him.”
“What gossips birds are!” Emily laughed. “But how did they know?”
“A wizard asked them to spread the word, just in case you needed help. At your service,” the Oakman bowed again. “I really can’t stand goblins.” The strange creature waved at the bodies littering the oak stump. “They’re always cutting down trees and never planting them, for one thing…” He went on with a long speech about the nature of goblins. Then he explained how when he’d seen the goblin riders approaching with their captives, he’d glamourised the toadstools.
When he’d finished, Adam and Palustric dragged the dead goblins out of the Oakman’s clearing. Adam took his horn from the captain’s belt and gathered all the swords and money bags from the bodies.
“These could come in useful,” he said. In this practical spirit, he tied all the horses’ reins together. “The horses might be useful, too, it’s a shame to leave them behind.”
He looked round to say good-bye to the Oakman but couldn’t see him.
“Where's he gone?”
“I'm here,” said the Oakman.
“Where?”
“Adam, you can't see the Oakman without seven primroses,” Emily said, “but he’s still here.” She pointed to an apparently empty space. “Don’t worry, I’ll say good-bye for all of us. Good-bye, Oakman, and thank you for your help.”
Emily mounted Blitz while Adam and Palustric mounted two others, Adam leading all the other horses in a line. Adam’s horse was a chestnut. “I'll call him Oakman, it’s a good name,” Adam said.
34
They came out of the wood and headed uphill, knowing they would come to the road sooner or later. They had been travelling for half an hour when Emily remembered Cari. She rode up to Adam’s side. “Why doesn’t Cari work for me?”
“It’s obvious,” Adam smiled, “you’re not pure in heart like me!”
Emily gave her brother an impure glare and rode for an hour in wounded silence.
They finally regained the road which they had left for Trow Town the day before. By mid-afternoon, Emily broke her silence to complain about her hunger. She was right, of course, because they hadn’t eaten that day. She described her idea of a perfect meal to Palustric as they passed over the brow of a hill. Ahead of them, they saw travellers.
“Look, it’s Cloutric and the others!” Adam shouted.
This time the dwarves didn’t hide because they recognised the three horsemen. Instead, they waved and grinned at the newcomers.
Palustric was first to jump off his horse to shake Cloutric’s hand. Before long, all the sore-footed dwarves were on horseback, gratefully riding with them towards their homeland. Each had a goblin sword at his or her side, provided by Adam, whose providence had paid off. They rode along chatting, even Emily because she had eaten some excellent honey biscuits that Inga, a dwarfess, had given her.
It was perhaps an hour later, as they passed through a rocky defile, when fortune turned its back on them. Though the sides of the narrow valley seemed empty, the deep, raucous cawing of the raven suddenly filled the air: pruk, pruk, pruk.
“Spriggans!” Cloutric yelled as he drew his sword.
Even as the dwarf shouted his warning, a hail of blistering hot stones pelted down on them. Agony where they touched bare skin, the dwarves roared in anger and pain. Their horses reared in the commotion, and the air filled with dust as huge rocks rolled down upon them, leaving two riders and their horses lifeless beneath them.
The boulders crashed down in front of and behind them, sealing the defile and trapping them. Suddenly, the hillside was thick with spriggans, who launched their hairy, brown bodies down upon the riders. Their cruel, long-nailed fingers tore into the dwarves’ flesh or twisted in their hair. The hideous creatures pulled them off their horses and sent them crashing to the ground in a desperate struggle to free themselves. Outnumbered at least four-to-one, with Palustric completely buried under a mass of coarse-haired bodies, their situation was dire. The dwarves’ screams filled the air as teeth and claws dug home.
Much bigger than the dwarves and spriggans, Adam and Emily were not unsaddled in the ambush. Quick of reflexes, Adam had run one flying spriggan through with his sword and knocked another to the ground with his other fist. So, he was free to move from the start. Horrified at the number of writhing spriggans, he turned Oakman quickly and charged towards Blitz. Emily, who hadn’t been so sharp of reflexes, struggled to shake off two clawing spriggans.
Blood pounding in his head, Adam charged and hacked the spriggans from his sister. Leaping off his horse, his sword scythed through the enemies, freeing those dwarves who were still alive.
Already, a band of spriggans was escaping up the hillside as Emily dismounted and began helping her brother with her undamaged arm. The remaining spriggans fled, scrambling after their fellows over the rocks. Adam followed a little way like an avenging giant, but the spriggans were much faster and more agile over the rocky terrain. He turned back to look in dismay at the grim scene. Dead bodies sprawled on the ground. Thanks to him, there were many more spriggans than dwarves, but, in any case, it was a disaster.
Emily was clutching her bloodied arm while Cloutric was sitting on a rock sobbing. A wave of useless anger passed over Adam. Poor Cloutric had lost many friends and family. Two or three dwarves struggled to their feet, inspecting their wounds. They were the only survivors. Adam looked around desperately for his friend.
“Palustric! Palustric!” he called. The rocky hills echoed to his voice: the only reply. Adam rushed over to the heaped bodies, frantically heaving dead spriggans from their victims. Eleven dwarves lay on the gr
ound, four others and Cloutric were on their feet, but Palustric was nowhere to be seen.
“No!” Adam groaned and sank to his knees, understanding the reason for the attack. Cloutric came over to him, wiping his eyes, his face a mask of misery.
“They’ve taken Palustric,” Adam said.
“That's who they came for, but if Pride thinks he can use Palustric to get the Key,” Cloutric said stony-eyed, “he knows nothing about dwarves! Balom will never trade the Key for his nephew.” Cloutric shook his head sadly. “Poor Palustric!”
“I'm going after them!” Adam spat out. But Cloutric grabbed his arm as he turned. “No, it's no use. You’ll never catch them over this ground. Even if you did, they’d kill Palustric first, sooner than surrender him.” He squeezed the boy’s arm. “Palustric would want you to complete your task. We must hurry to warn our people, so they will have time to prepare for war.”
Adam nodded without a word. They began the sad business of burying their dead. The best they could do was cover them with a stone cairn, but they left the spriggans to the carrion. They used their fallen companions’ drinking water to rinse the cuts of their wounded. Luckily, none of the survivors had serious injuries. A sad and silent group made its way into the Dwarfish lands.
VII
The War of The Key
35
As Cloutric had foretold, Balom the Black did not waste time grieving for his nephew. Instead, he threw himself at once into organising preparations for war. For this reason, a steady procession of grim-faced individuals entered the sanctum where the dwarves kept the Key of Ingenuity. The same dwarves and dwarfesses, too—in their odd long, grey dresses—came out, faces aglow with inspiration. Wheelwrights made extra-sturdy cartwheels, smiths tempered and honed unmatchable battle-axes and needle-dwarves stitched brilliant-coloured war banners. The dwarves worked everything to the highest standard, as in the Old Days.
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