Double Dragon Trouble (3 page)

They waited. But all was quiet.

Clutching each other, they took one step. Then another.

Suddenly the cave floor gave way beneath their feet.

“AHHHHHHHHH!” screamed Wiglaf.

“AHHHHHHHHH!” screamed Angus.

They kept screaming as they tumbled down, down, down.

T
HUD!

Wiglaf hit the hard, rocky bottom.

THUD!

Angus landed beside Wiglaf.

The mini-torch went out. Wiglaf blinked in the dim light. He wiggled his fingers. Shook his arms and legs. Rolled his head around. Nothing broken. He sat up and asked in a whisper, “Angus? Are you all right?”

“Uhhhh,” said Angus.

Pounding feet sounded from high above. Then BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! Was someone banging a gong? Wiglaf heard whooping and shouting and shrieking. Now what?

“Angus,” whispered Wiglaf. “I think maybe we have been kidnapped, too.”

“This is the end!” wailed Angus. “Bye, Wiglaf. Nice knowing you.”

“Do not give up,” said Wiglaf. “We may yet escape.”

“Escape?” shouted a voice above them. “I don't think so.”

A small daggerlike stone came zooming down into the pit. And then another. And another! Wiglaf and Angus shielded their heads with their hands as the pointy stones rained down on them.

“Ow! Ow! Ow!” cried Angus and Wiglaf.

At last the stones stopped falling.

“Are you all right, Angus?” Wiglaf asked.

Angus nodded. Then he shook his fist at the enemy above them and shouted, “You are the world's meanest kidnapper!”

A face jutted over the edge of the pit. A pair of eyes looked gleefully down at Wiglaf and Angus.

Wiglaf gasped. He had expected to see a cruel villain. But he found himself looking up at the face of a lad. A little lad! He looked about his brother Dudwin's age—six, maybe seven. The lad wore a bucket-shaped helmet, held on with a metal chin strap. Tufts of bright yellow hair stuck out from under the helmet.

“Who are you?” shouted Angus.

“None of your beeswax!” the lad shouted back. And he vanished from above them.

Wiglaf's head was spinning. What was going on? Why was this little lad shouting at them? He could make no sense of it at all.

“Have you been kidnapped?” called Wiglaf.

“Have you been kidnapped?” mimicked the lad.

Wiglaf looked up. There he was, peering down at them again. He had put on another helmet. This one had a metal nose-guard. All Wiglaf could see were his eyes and his grinning mouth. He was missing a front tooth.

Now a second head appeared beside the first. This one wore the bucket helmet. Wiglaf blinked. Zounds! There were two little lads!

Angus began shouting, “No! Oh, no! Oh, woe is us!”

“Angus! What is wrong?” cried Wiglaf.

“I wish it were a pair of demons!” cried Angus. “Anything would be better than this!”

“What!” cried Wiglaf. “Do you know these lads?”

“Yesssssss,” wailed Angus. “They are my cousins, Bilge and Maggot!”

Wiglaf looked up. Bilge and Maggot stood at the edge of the pit, grinning down at them.

“Hallo, Angus!” said the lad with the bucket-shaped helmet.

“Hiya, Angus!” said the lad with the nose-guard helmet.

“Hiya.” Angus sighed.

“We came to rescue you,” Wiglaf called up.

“We don't want rescuing,” said Bilge.

“Yeah,” said Maggot. “We like it here.”

“Can you help us out of this pit?” asked Wiglaf.

“We could,” said Bilge. “But we won't.” Then they both burst out laughing.

“See, Wiglaf?” Angus groaned. “They are horrible.”

“Hey, guess what?” said Maggot. “This is a dragon's cave. And the dragon will be back soon. He'll be good and hungry.”

“Your friend is too bony for the dragon to eat,” said Bilge.

“Yeah,” said Maggot. “But the dragon likes nice fat lads like you, Angus.”

“Ha-ha,” said Angus glumly. “Very funny.”

“Angus is dragon candy,” said Bilge. The two cracked up.

Angus sat straight up. “Speaking of candy,” he said. “I'll give you some if you help us get out of here.”

“What have you got?” asked Bilge.

“Jolly Jelly Worms,” said Angus.

“Blaaaach!” said Bilge. “We hate Jelly Worms!”

“Yeah,” said Maggot. “We like real worms.”

“And bugs,” said Bilge. “Nice crunchy ones.”

Wiglaf felt sick to his stomach.

“I've got Medieval Marshmallows,” said Angus.

ZIIIIIP! A rope dangled down into the pit.

“Thank you!” Wiglaf cried. He took hold of it quickly.

“Not for you,” shouted Bilge.

“Just tie on the candy,” shouted Maggot.

“Nothing doing,” said Angus. “You want my stash, you'll have to bring me up with it. And my friend, too.”

WHISK! The rope disappeared.

“Let's eat some stash, Wiglaf,” said Angus loudly. He pulled candy from his pocket. “I've got Graham Cookies, Cocoa Cubes, and a bag of Medieval Marshmallows. If we had a campfire down here, I'd toast a marshmallow.”

“Mmmm,” said Wiglaf.

“I'd put the toasted marshmallow on a Graham Cookie and top it with a Cocoa Cube,” Angus went on. “I'd put another Graham Cookie on top and—yum!”

Not a peep came from Bilge or Maggot.

“It's called a s'more sandwich,” Angus said. “Because after you eat one, you want s'more!”

ZIIIIIP! The rope appeared again.

Angus grinned at Wiglaf and said, “Saved by a s'more.”

A
ngus handed the rope to Wiglaf. “After you,” he said.

Wiglaf climbed up quickly, before Bilge and Maggot changed their minds. He scrambled to his feet on the cave floor.

“Thank you, lads,” he said.

He saw that the twins wore old, rusty pieces of armor that were way too big for them. They rattled when they moved.

Bilge stepped up to Wiglaf and took the rope from his hand. P.U.! Wiglaf reeled backward. His own father, Fergus, smelled awful, as he did not believe in taking baths. But Bilge and Maggot
really
stank.

The twins threw the rope down to Angus.

With Wiglaf's help, they managed to haul him out of the pit. Then, with surprising speed, Angus rolled away from the twins and jumped to his feet.

“Stay away!” he called. “If you want a s'more, I'm warning you—keep your distance!”

“Aw, Cousin Angus,” said Bilge. “Don't you trust us?”

“No,” said Angus.

Maggot turned to Wiglaf. “You trust us, don't you?”

“I guess,” said Wiglaf, trying to be agreeable.

“Mistake!” cried the twins together. They fell upon Wiglaf, knocking him to the cave floor. Wiglaf didn't have a chance to put up a fight. The next thing he knew, the twins had wrangled his arms behind his back.

“Egad!” cried Wiglaf as they tied his hands together and sat him up against the cave wall. “What are you doing?”

“You're our prisoner,” said Bilge.

“Untie his hands!” said Angus. “Or I won't give you any stash!”

“Oh, yeah?” said Maggot.

“That's what you think!” said Bilge.

And they set upon Angus like a pair of hungry wolves.

“No!” cried Angus. “Stop!”

But his little cousins shoved him to the ground. They wrestled his stash out of his clutches and tied his hands behind his back. They dragged him over to the cave wall and propped him up beside Wiglaf.

“Two prisoners,” said Maggot, grinning his gap-toothed smile. He tied Angus's right ankle to Wiglaf's left one.

“Ouch!” cried Angus. “Not so tight!”

Maggot pulled the rope tighter.

Then the twins began galloping around their camp fire. They whooped and roared. The stalactite daggers hanging from their belts banged on their rusty armor: BONG! BONG!

BONG!

“They're animals,” muttered Angus.

“Animals,” said Wiglaf, “would never behave this badly.”

From where he sat, Wiglaf could see he was in a huge, round cavern. Long stalactites dripped down from the domed cave ceiling. Their drips formed squatty stalagmites on the cave floor below. Some stalactites and stalagmites had grown together to form thick pillars. A camp fire crackled in the middle of the cavern. The smoke rose upward to some unseen hole at the top of the cave. A ring of stalagmite benches circled the fire.

When the twins finished their wild dance, they squatted down beside the fire and dumped out all the marshmallows. Then they took their stalactite daggers off their belts, shoved marshmallow after Medieval Marshmallow onto them, and stuck them into the fire. The smell of flaming marshmallows filled the cave.

“You're burning them!” cried Angus. “Roast them slowly!”

“We like 'em burnt,” said Bilge. He blew out the flame and pulled a blackened marshmallow off his stalactite. He popped it into his mouth. “Mmmm.”

Tears welled up in Angus's eyes.

All this time, Wiglaf kept working to loosen the rope that tied his wrists.

“I want a s'more,” shouted Bilge.

“Yeah!” yelled Maggot. “Me too.”

The twins pawed through Angus's stash until they found the cookies and Cocoa Cubes. Wiglaf watched, amazed, as the twins began cramming cookies, chocolate cubes, and burnt marshmallows into their mouths, all at the same time.

“Ohhhh, I can't watch,” said Angus, shutting his eyes. “Tell me when it's over.”

The twins gobbled up all the cookies, chocolate, and marshmallows.

Maggot opened his mouth wide: BURP!

Angus opened his eyes. “We came to rescue you,” he said. “And this is the thanks we get.”

Bilge opened his mouth so they could watch him chew.

“At least tell us what you're doing here,” said Wiglaf.

“This cave is our hideout,” said Maggot.

“Who are you hiding from?” said Angus.

“Ma said we had to go to school,” said Bilge. “She wrote to Uncle Mordred and said we were coming. Then she packed us up and sent us off to DSA.”

“Yeah,” said Maggot. “But we didn't want to go.”

“So we ran away,” Bilge went on. “We found this cave. It was empty, except for all the old knights' armor and stuff. So we moved in.”

“You mean you were never kidnapped?” Wiglaf asked the twins.

“Nah, we wrote that ransom note ourselves,” said Maggot proudly. “We ran to DSA in the dark of night and left the note on the drawbridge, under a rock.”

Wiglaf closed his eyes. This was nothing but a big prank!

“Did Uncle Mordred get the ransom note?” asked Bilge.

Angus nodded.

“Did he send you here with a wheelbarrow full of gold?” asked Maggot eagerly.

“Fat chance,” said Angus. “You know Uncle Mordred. He's way too cheap to part with any of his gold.”

“I told you so,” said Bilge. He shoved his brother.

“So what?” shrieked Maggot. He threw a stone dagger at Bilge. Bilge dove for him, and soon the twins were rolling around on the ground, wrestling, punching, kicking, and biting each other.

Angus shook his head. “To think they're my blood relatives,” he said sadly.

“Good thing they're wearing armor,” said Wiglaf.

He was still trying to work his hands free from the rope around his wrists. He thought maybe it was a teeny bit looser. As he struggled, he felt the cave floor shake.

Wiglaf looked at Angus.

Angus's eyes widened. He had felt it, too.

THUD.

The twins stopped punching each other. They both had bloody noses.

“What is that?” whispered Wiglaf.

Bilge and Maggot only stared toward the tunnel.

“Sounds like a dragon,” said Angus.

“A dragon?” said Bilge.

THUD, THUD.

“There's no dragon. We made it up,” said Maggot. “To scare you.”

A cloud of foul-smelling yellow smoke billowed out from the tunnel.

“Wanna bet?” said Angus. “We're all about to become dragon candy!”

T
he twins looked at each other and yelled, “Run!”

“Wait!” cried Wiglaf. “Untie us!”

But Bilge and Maggot zoomed to the back of the cavern.

“We're toast,” whimpered Angus.