Goblins Vs Dwarves (19 page)

Ned was good at organizing. As soon as she had waved the cloud maidens off on their mission to Coriander she made Fentongoose and Dr Prong sit down with some old maps from the bumwipe heaps and plan the shortest route to Adherak and the best place to try to stop the Giant Dwarf when they got there. Meanwhile, Henwyn and Garvon Hael ran around making sure that all the goblins at least had weapons and shields, and Fraddon lifted the Bratapult down off the battlements and replaced its creaky, half-rotten wheels with some new iron-bound ones from one of the wrecked war machines the dwarves had left behind. And while they were all busy, Princess Ned gathered the best goblin cooks, lit fires under the great cauldrons and kettles in the scoffery, and set about cooking up an enormous stew, so that the army would not have to set out for Adherak on empty stomachs.

That was not all she cooked. She also made a big dish of crumble, and later, when the rest were eating, she asked Fraddon to carry it for her, and led him around the Inner Wall and down to the edge of Natterdon Mire. It was almost dark by then. Everything was grey: grey ground, grey sky, grey ruins, and the paler grey of the shifting mist. Here and there a marsh light flickered, drifting eerily above the meres; here and there a bittern boomed, and unseen creatures splashed and rustled in the reeds.

“O boglins!” called Ned, feeling a little silly to be talking to a marsh. “Boglins of Natterdon! Thank you for warning us about the dwarves. We are going out to find and fight them, to try and put things right again. There are not very many of us, and we are not sure that we can do anything, but we have to try. And you could help us. You could weave mists that would hide our little army, so that the dwarves would not see how few they are. You could go with the goblins to Adherak, and help save Clovenstone, and all the Westlands.”

She stopped and listened for an answer, but none came; only the wind, sighing through the feathered reed tops, stirring the water in the secret pools.

“Well,” said Ned, motioning for Fraddon to set the crumble dish down on a flat stone near the mire's edge, “here is some crumble for you, anyway.”

“Do you really think they'll help?” asked Fraddon. “Boglins have never been helpful yet. They only told Henwyn and Zeewa of the dwarves because their precious dampdrake had been scared away. Boglins don't care for anyone but boglins.”

“Maybe not,” said Ned. “But much has changed in the world: perhaps boglins have changed a little too.” She sighed. “I wish I could go with Henwyn and the others! I feel so useless, staying here! It is dismal, growing old. If I were as young and strong as Zeewa I would be leading the army, not Garvon Hael.”

She heard Fraddon's huge face crease into a smile in the darkness above her. “And if I were three hundred years younger,” he said, “I would walk to Delverdale in ten great strides, squeeze the slowsilver out of this giant dwarf like wringing water from a dishcloth, and carry it home to you. But I am not. All things grow old, and that's as it should be. There comes a time when we must let the young take over.”

He reached down his hand, as big and comfortable as a favourite armchair, and Princess Ned sat down in it, and let him carry her home to her ship.

 

All was quiet in Clovenstone by then. The only sound was the soft rasp of metal on stone, coming from the armoury, where Zeewa sat by the light of the dying fire and sharpened her spears, all alone with her ghosts.

She had been thinking hard since she'd spoken to the Gatekeeper. It seemed to her that she owed it to her ghosts to leave them in that afterworld, beneath the green hill at Clovenstone, where they could taste and smell and touch. It was not fair to keep dragging them around after her, and she was tired, so very tired, of being haunted. So it seemed to her that the best thing would be if she were to die in this battle. She had talked of it to Fentongoose, without admitting what she was planning, and he had agreed that someone who fell fighting for Clovenstone would surely be allowed to enter the Houses of the Dead. She would die then, and lead her ghosts after her down into the grass.

 

The night passed, and as the sky grew grey again above the crumbled spines and spires of Clovenstone the goblins stirred, grumbling and stretching, yawning and farting, and gathered themselves into the order that Garvon Hael had decreed. War horns were blown, startling sleepy birds out of the ruins; the gate in the Inner Wall was opened, and the first goblin army since the Lych Lord's time went marching down the long, rubble-strewn road to the Southerly Gate. Garvon Hael led the way, mounted on his grey horse, and behind him came the oldest, toughest goblins. Henwyn and Skarper were in the middle somewhere, trying to keep order among the hatchlings, and beside them strode Zeewa, her ghosts mingling mistily with the marchers. Behind her walked Fraddon, carrying the bratapult in one hand and his tree-trunk club in the other, and on his broad shoulders rode Etty and her father. It seemed a strange thing for dwarves to be marching with a goblin war band off to make war on their own people, but Ned had persuaded them to go: they understood this Giant Dwarf better than anyone, and perhaps, with their help, it would be possible to defeat it without too much loss of life. At the rear came Fentongoose and Dr Prong, along with Torridge, Cribba and Kenn. The trolls were carrying the two philosophers' bags of bandages and medicines, and as the day wore on they ended up carrying the two philosophers as well, for they were not young men, and found it hard to keep up with giants and goblins.

In the pale grey dawn as the first birds were stirring the host passed beneath the trees of the great woods which filled the southern parts of Clovenstone. Twiglings kept pace with them, scampering through the branches over their heads, their woody feet sending down a rain of autumn leaves, red and gold and brown, which fell like tears on the goblins. Looking up, Skarper saw that most of the twiglings carried sharp spears, and their eyes glinted fiercely in the half light, but their anger was not directed at the goblins. Fraddon had spoken with them in the night, and they knew what was at stake; for once they were happy to let goblins pass through their woods. They would have liked to join the army themselves, and go to fight the dwarves whose tunnels had harmed the roots of so many fine trees, but they could not survive for long in treeless country, and the moors between Clovenstone and Adherak were bleak and bare.

As for that other inhabitant of the woods, the old troll who lived under the crossing of the River Oeth, he had never heard so many pairs of feet go tramping over his bridge. He was quite alarmed, and sank deep down into his pool, only emerging when the army had passed. He peeked out through the hart's tongue ferns that grew from the buttresses of the bridge and was just in time to see the last of the rearguard marching away through the trees on the south bank.
Ooh, trolls!
he thought, recognizing the lumpy, lumbering shapes of Torridge, Cribba and Kenn as things like him, and for a moment he was tempted to scramble up the riverbank and follow them, but he was a solitary old stone, and he stayed where he was.

At the southern edge of the woods the twiglings stopped, and the goblins looked back to see the treetops bristling with them, spears and twiggy hands upraised in salute. Voices like the wind in dry leaves called out to them, wishing them good luck and a safe return, and promising, “We shall keep Clovenstone safe while you are gone: woods, waters, stones and all!”

And then, quite quickly, they were at Southerly Gate, and setting out across the wide, brindled hills, and very soon Clovenstone was lost behind them, hidden by low cloud and the folds of the land. The black banner with its silver comet streamed out on the moorland wind, and the road swung east and south to Adherak.

 

Adherak lay cupped between green hills, on a curve of the River Sethyn, where the road from Coriander crossed the road to Lusuenn. It had been a walled town once, but the Softlands had been so peaceful for so long that the town had spread far beyond its walls, spilling down the hill to the river, where the boats and barges of the floating market moored.

Except that now, most of those boats and barges had gone, slipping their moorings and drifting away downstream. Many of the houses had been hastily shuttered too, and the people who lived in them had taken to the roads, heading south to stay with friends and relatives in Nantivey or Chinnery. News came early to a crossroads-town like Adherak, and for some days now frightened people from the northland farms had been crowding down the Old North Road with their tales of the Giant Dwarf. Not all the stories were accurate, because the farmers and their families had left their homes in too much of a hurry to study the approaching terror in any detail. Some said that the giant was as high as a house; some claimed it was taller than a mountain. A few said it had three heads, and sneezed fireballs. One man claimed that a whole army of Giant Dwarves was on the march. But the people of Adherak got the general idea: something bad was coming, it was coming from the north, and it would be upon them very soon.

The town emptied quickly. Even the Lord of Adherak remembered that he had important business down in Porthzafron and shut up his castle before haring off down the South Road in a carriage with smoked glass windows. Soon a strange silence settled on the once-busy streets. Only a few brave Adherakians stayed behind, vowing to defend their town against whatever it was that had come out of Delverdale.

Henwyn's mother, father and sisters were among them. They were cheese-makers, not warriors, but bravery ran in the family; that was where Henwyn had got it from. Anyway, they had a fine new cheesery, built only the previous year to replace the one that had been accidentally destroyed by a cheese monster. “If any dwarf, giant or little, thinks he can take our cheesery from us,” said Henmor, Henwyn's father, “then he has another think coming!” And his wife and daughters all agreed, and busied themselves fixing cheese knives to the ends of old broom handles to make pikes.

Then came more bad news. Farmers from the west started arriving, pausing at the Adherakians' hastily built barricades before taking the road south. They told of another menace. “Goblins!” they said, breathless with fear and the effort of hauling all their best possessions on handcarts. “A goblin host is coming, pouring out of Clovenstone, just like in the bad old times! Run, friends, or you'll all be robbed and murdered!”

The Adherakians looked worriedly at one another. Were the goblins in league with the dwarves? Had some great alliance been forged among the old things of the world to overthrow human beings?

“What say you, Henmor the Cheesewright?” people asked Henwyn's father. “Your lad lives at Clovenstone, doesn't he? You've had dealings with these goblins. What does this mean?”

Henmor shook his head. “I can't say for sure. Goblins are rough, roistering types, but good cheese-makers. I don't know why would they want to go hallooing about, starting armies and such.”

“Why don't you go and talk to them, Henmor?” said his wife. “See what all this is about?'

So Henmor fetched his old dappled mare from the stables behind the cheesery, and a few of the more curious Adherakians found horses too, and soon they were riding up the narrow road to Sticklecombe, where they could see the goblin host coming over the moor towards them like dark cloud-shadow.

The goblins had been on the road for two days by then. Rainstorms had swept over them as they came down off the high moors (there was a reason why those hills were so green) and the villages where they'd hoped to find food and lodging were all shuttered and deserted. The tooting of the war horns had a weary sound, and rather than chanting war songs they were bickering, complaining about their poor tired paws, or asking in whiny voices, “Are we nearly there yet?”

The humans were just as tired, but Henwyn perked up when he recognized his father's horse on the road ahead. “Come on!” he shouted to Skarper, and they jogged on together ahead of the footsore army and met Henmor in the valley bottom, where the road forded a little river. There father and son hugged, and Henwyn explained that the goblins had not come to loot Adherak, but to save it.

The other Adherakians who had ridden out with Henmor looked warily at the goblin army, and raised a cautious-sounding cheer. Few of them had ever seen a goblin before, and they were appalled by all the scaly, furry, fanged, ferocious faces which peered at them from behind Henwyn. They weren't at all sure they wouldn't rather just take their chances with the dwarves. But Henmor said, “You are welcome, then! You must come into the town.”

“No,” said Garvon Hael, riding up on his grey horse. “You are kind, but we have not time to accept your hospitality. We will make our way to the Old North Road, and try to stop the Giant Dwarf there.”

A cloud, which had been hanging above Sticklecombe all this time, descended now, and the astonished men from Adherak saw the cloud maidens who rode upon it, and blushed under the gaze of their colourless hailstone eyes. The cloud maidens had delivered Ned's warning to the High King at Boskennack (in fact they'd startled him rather badly, by hovering outside the window of the royal toilet and calling in to him while he was concentrating on his morning poo). Since then they'd been riding the winds of the upper air, racing north to spy on the progress of the dwarves and then rushing back to report on it to the goblin army. Now they said, “Henwyn, the Giant Dwarf is twenty miles from here, stomping down the road from the north and burning man-houses as it comes.”

Garvon Hael shouted an order, and goblin captains ran up and down the long, ragged column of the army, chivvying back into line all those goblins who had collapsed on the roadside or gone to bathe their blistered feet in the River Stickle. Griping and complaining, the goblins went on, pausing only to scoop up drinks of water in their helmets as they splashed across the ford. To the north, thin trickles of smoke were rising up the sky.

Henwyn's father sent one of his companions galloping back to Adherak to fetch the rest of its defenders, and then he and the others joined the army, looking nervously at the goblins, and the trolls, and the giant, and even more nervously at Zeewa. Why did the air around her flicker and shift in that strange way, making their hair stand on end and causing their horses to shy? “Is that dark queenly looking lass a
witch
?” whispered Henmor to his son.

“Oh no, she's just haunted,” Henwyn replied, as he hurried back to his place in the middle of the column.

“Ghosts, now?” said Henmor, trying to calm his panicky horse as Zeewa's ghosts went brushing and rushing by. “Ghosts and cloud ladies. Whatever is the world coming to?”

“Oh, you'll get used to it!” Dr Prong called happily, as he went piggybacking by on Torridge's shoulders. “Creatures out of children's tales!”

Over the hills the army wound its way, through meadows Henwyn had known since childhood. They crossed the Sethyn at Shallowford and climbed up to meet the Old North Road where it ran over Adhery Hill. There on the hill's crest, they halted. Looking north, they could see the rolling farmlands reaching away to the blue distance where the mountains rose. And there upon the patchwork of fields and commons, like a chessman on a counterpane, they saw the Giant Dwarf.

“We shall stop here,” said Garvon Hael. “Climbing this hill should slow it; that's when we'll take it down. The trolls can bombard it with the bratapult from the shelter of that wall; Fraddon will do battle with it, and the rest of us can deal with the dwarves who march beside it.”

“March beneath it too, maybe,” said Fentongoose. “This hill may be riddled with dwarf tunnels for all we know. They could attack from beneath our feet, or burrow behind us and attack us in the rear!”

Some of the goblins put their ears to the ground, listening for signs of tunnelling, but all they could hear was the faint, far-off tramp of the feet of the Giant Dwarf.

By that time, evening was drawing on. The goblins lit campfires and brewed up horrible stews for themselves, squabbling over who got the juiciest bits of the rats, bats and slugs they'd caught on the march from Clovenstone. Garvon Hael took Fentongoose, Durgar and Dr Prong up on to an ancient burial mound which stood near the road, and Henwyn went with them, trying to look important.

“What do you make of it?” asked the grey warrior, squinting at the Giant Dwarf, which was shining golden now with the light of the low sun.

“It is at least two hundred feet high!” said Dr Prong.

“How on earth can you tell that from this distance?” asked Durgar.

“Oh, you work it out with trigonometry,” said Dr Prong.

“It is coming fast,” said Henwyn.

“It will be here in another hour or two, is my guess,” said Fentongoose.

Henwyn glanced up at the sky. “It will be dark by then.”

“The dwarves won't mind that. They fight happiest in the dark. This will be a hard battle, Henwyn.”

“But we'll win, won't we!” said Henwyn bravely.

Garvon Hael looked grimly northward, and said nothing more.

Soon after that there was a clatter of hooves on the road and a group of horsemen came riding up the hill from Adherak. The goblins who had been sitting on the road moved aside to let them through, and Henwyn and the rest went to meet them, assuming they were more of his father's friends, come to help save their town. He was startled to see how elaborate their armour was, and how rich their cloaks and clothes. He was more startled still when he recognized them as the High King's heroes from Boskennack.

“What's this rabble doing all over the road?” demanded Lord Ponsadane in his high, sneering voice.

“Make way!” bellowed Kerwen of Bryngallow.

“Goblins, I'd say,” observed another man. “When we've sorted out this dwarvish nonsense we should come back and put these horrors to the sword, too!”

Angrily, Henwyn stepped into the road in front of him. The man made as if to ride him down, but Zeewa came forward, and the horse sensed her ghosts and began to rear and skitter.

“We are the army of Clovenstone,” said Henwyn, “and we have come here on the orders of Princess Eluned herself, to defend Adherak.”

The man he had spoken to was too busy trying to control his horse to offer any answer, but the others laughed. “Very kind of you, cheesebearer!” called the one named Merion. “But you can take your tribe of boggarts and long-leggedy beasties home again; we're here to sort out these dwarvish scum.”

“I thought you were frightened of fighting dwarves?” said Garvon Hael, walking over to stand with Henwyn.

“It's Garvon Hael!” said Merion. “Sounds almost sober, too!”

“Dwarves in tunnels I can't abide,” said Kerwen of Bryngallow. “But these dwarves are above ground, by all accounts, and relying on some sort of clumsy war machine to scare the common folk. Cowardly lot. We shall teach them a lesson: smash their machine and put them across our knees for a good spanking, eh, friends!”

The other heroes roared their agreement. “We'll kick them like footballs back to Dwarvenholm!” shouted one.

Garvon Hael nodded, waiting patiently for the loud laughter to subside. “At least join your forces with ours,” he said. “We've fought these dwarves once; they nearly destroyed us, and they didn't have their giant mannequin to help them then. Perhaps if we stand together. . .”

“Stand with goblins and drunkards?” sneered Ponsadane. “We are heroes, and we are riding north now to do what heroes do. Will you ride with us, Garvon Hael, or would you rather stay here with this menagerie of yours?”

Garvon Hael stepped aside to let the horsemen go clattering by. “My place is here with my friends,” he said.

Henwyn stood watching as the heroes galloped on down the road, and were quickly swallowed by the shadows of evening. “To think I once dreamed of being one of them!” he said bitterly.

The goblins craned their necks, watching the progress of the riders. Skarper, who had always been brighter than the rest, trotted across the hilltop to where Fraddon stood, and ran like a squirrel up the giant's body to perch on his shoulder. There he found Etty, who had had the same idea and stood holding tight to the hairs which sprouted from Fraddon's huge ear. She was looking northward.

“Do you think they can fight it?” she asked.

“I think they're idiots,” said Skarper. “Mind you, I think we're idiots too. Look at that thing! It's two hundred feet tall! Dr Prong worked it out with trigopromontory. Like Garvon Hael said, it was bad enough fighting them when they
didn't
have a giant dwarf. Soakaway got skewered, and I was dragged underground by a maniac mole. Now that there's the Giant Dwarf too. . . We're doomed! It will be like trying to fight a castle!”