Freeglader (39 page)

His brother shrugged as he looked round. ‘Maybe we can go home,’ he said.

‘Not so fast,’ came a low growl and the low-bellies looked up to see a phalanx of hammerhead goblins glaring down at them from the forest shadows. Their captain stepped forward, his brow rings jingling, his lips set in a contemptuous curl. ‘The battle,’ he snarled, ‘is only just beginning.’

At the sound of the tilder horn, Chinquix leaped forwards – his muscular rear-quarters propelling him up half a dozen strides into the air and down again. All round, flashes of orange and brown bounding across the meadowlands told Rook that his friends were following. In front, the huge shape of a glade-eater raced up to meet them, its forward platform bristling with spears.

With another huge bound, Chinquix leaped past the rumbling machine as the air filled with the hum of serrated spears. Rook stood high in the saddle and gripped his ironwood lance tightly as they came down in the midst of the following goblins. A jolt ran down from his elbow to his shoulder as the lance struck

something solid – and then Chinquix was back in the air with another huge leap.

Rook looked down and noticed that the lance was dark with blood. Behind him, there were gaping holes in the ranks of the goblins – but with the scattered corpses of prowlgrins, too. He twitched on Chinquix's reins and the powerful creature bounded forward as another glade-eater reared up in front of them. Rook gripped his lance with all his might and felt Chinquix's powerful legs tense once more as they prepared to spring.

The glade-eater roared, the air black with smoke, as Rook and Chinquix sailed up to meet it. He felt his lance buckle as it struck the metal side of the furnace, then shatter. Chinquix's reins snapped out of his grasp and the stirrups were ripped from his feet as Rook felt his prowlgrin fall away beneath him. With a deafening
clang
, Rook hit the burning hot metal of the furnace and rebounded from it with a soft hiss, before falling back to land in the soft meadowland grass with a bone-jarring thud.

Struggling for breath, he leaped to his feet and drew his sword. The glade-eater trundled past belching flames and sparks, and Rook found himself confronted by a war band of powerful long-haired goblins in ornate tooled armour, wielding huge double-bladed axes.

With a savage roar, a massive black-haired goblin, his beard glinting with rings and his blue eyes flashing, swung a copper-coloured axe at Rook's head. Although his helmet crest deflected the blow, Rook was knocked back down to the ground. The goblin towered above him, hate blazing in his eyes.

‘Death to the Freeglader scum!’ he screamed, raising his axe. ‘
Unnnkhh!
’

The blue eyes glazed over suddenly as an ironwood pellet embedded itself in the goblin's forehead with an audible skull-splitting crack.

Rook tore off his shattered helmet as, overhead, skycraft flashed past, their riders raining down a deadly shower of bolts, flaming darts and ironwood pellets.

The long-hairs scattered, swinging their mighty axes above their heads with howls of rage.

Rook climbed to his feet. The Freeglade Lancers' charge had cut a swathe through the goblin army, but at a terrible cost. All around, desperately wounded prowlgrins thrashed about amid heaps of goblin dead. What was more, the charge had failed to halt the glade-eaters, which trundled on ever deeper into the heart of the Free Glades. And, as Rook looked, fresh goblin war bands swarmed out of the Deepwoods and along the scorched tracks.

Suddenly, a flash of white in the corner of his eye, made Rook spin round. And there beside him stood Chinquix, his nostrils quivering and the veins in his temples throbbing with exertion.

‘Chinquix! There you are!’ Rook cried, leaping into the saddle as the long-hairs regrouped and came on again. Rook raised his sword and urged Chinquix forward, a defiant cry on his lips.

‘FREEGLADER!!’

Xanth pulled on the flight rope and climbed high above the meadowlands of the southern fringes. The squadron was regrouping flight by flight, the holes in their formation a testament to the desperate fight they'd been in. He looked back over his shoulder and shook his head ruefully. The charge of the Freeglade Lancers had been truly magnificent – more so, even, than the Battle of Lufwood Mount.

But at what cost?

All along the southernmost borders of the Free Glades, orange, black and brown corpses lay amidst heaps of bodies, marking the course of the lancers' charge. It had cut through the advancing columns of the goblin army, but had failed to stop the advance of the monstrous glade-eaters. Even now as he looked, Xanth could see the fiery furnaces glowing as they cut a swathe through the Timber Yards to the east.

The librarian knights had done what they could to help the lancers, flying down low over the goblin army time after time until their quivers were empty and their missiles spent. And they'd paid dearly for their persistence. Green Flight was down to two dozen craft, Centre Flight had lost fifty and Grey Flight…

Xanth let out his loft-sail and urged
Ratbird
forward. The remnants of the Freeglade Lancers had fallen back towards New Undertown, their sacrifice buying time for the woodtrolls and slaughterers to find safety in the caves of the northern cliffs. Now the librarian knights had to look after their own.

Xanth gathered speed and caught up with the tattered
scattering of skycraft that, at first, he had taken to be stragglers, but now saw – as he approached – were actually all that was left of Grey Flight.

Your Flight Leader?
he signalled to a librarian knight who was struggling with a torn nether-sail.
Where is she?

The librarian gestured ahead. There, at the head of no more than twelve skycraft, Xanth saw the unmistakable prow of the
Woodmoth
, a figure slumped low in its saddle.

‘Magda!’ he called out. ‘Magda! Are you hurt?’

Magda looked up with dull, glazed eyes, her face black with soot – except for white tear-streaks.
I'm fine, Flight Marshal
, she signalled.
But look what they've done to my Flight.

She slumped forward again, and they flew on together in silence towards Lake Landing as the thin light of dawn rose behind the dark treeline. Or, at least, what the librarian knights of Varis Lodd's depleted squadron took to be the dawn. It was only as they approached the Ironwood Stands and dropped lower to skim over the Great Lake and down to Lake Landing that they realized their mistake.

There was a glow in the sky all right, but it didn't come from the dawn. Instead, a red tinge lit up the drawn and weary faces of the librarian knights as they approached the lake.

‘The Great Library!’ gasped Varis Lodd, raising her arm to signal the following skycraft to hover.

In front of them, on the lake shore opposite Lake Landing, the new library blazed like a lufwood torch. All round it, a mighty goblin army danced and howled as a dozen mighty glade-eaters shot burning logs into the
inferno. On the library steps, the bodies of librarians were piled high, their robes smoking as the burning embers of the blazing new library showered down on them.

Varis put her head in her hands. ‘Father, father, father,’ she sobbed.

The librarian knights clustered round, hovering uncertainly, unnerved by their leader's breakdown. But when Varis looked up, her eyes were blazing and her face was a mask of stone.

They haven't got to Lake Landing yet
, she signalled.
The sight of the Great Library burning has proved too much of an attraction
…

Her eyes glinted with a fierce hatred.

Flight Marshal!
She turned to Xanth.
Take Grey Flight and save the apprentices at Lake Landing,
she signalled – and Xanth could tell by the look on her face that it was useless to argue.

And you?
he signalled back.

We have the honour of the Great Library to uphold!
Varis's hand touched her forehead and then her heart. She turned to the others.
Are you with me, librarian knights?

In Centre Flight and Green Flight, all seventy heads nodded as one.

Then follow me!

Varis Lodd fed out a length of rope in a graceful arc, and her spidersilk loft-sail billowed out like an unfurling woodapple blossom. Around her seventy librarian knights did the same and, with a soft sigh, they sped away over the still waters of the Great Lake like silent stormhornets.

Xanth felt a hand on his forearm. It was Magda, tears streaming down her face. ‘Make them come back!’ she sobbed. ‘Xanth, please! Hasn't there been enough useless sacrifice?’

Xanth turned back to her, the old haunted look in his face that she hadn't seen since the Reckoning.

‘Stob Lummus and three hundred apprentices who have never flown before need our help to get to New Undertown. Varis and the squadron have laid down their lives so that we might succeed.’ He gazed into Magda's eyes. ‘A sacrifice, yes, Magda,’ he said softly as the squadron approached the burning library in the distance. ‘But not a useless one!’

• CHAPTER TWENTY •
THE THREE BATTLES

i
The Battle of the Great Library

T
he following morning, seemingly out of nowhere, an incoming leadwood log smashed into the side of the New Bloodoak Tavern with a great
crash!
, setting its foundations trembling and opening up a crack that ran from the bottom to the top of the eastern wall. Cleeve Hakenbolt shuddered, the paraphernalia at the front of his heavy sky pirate coat jangling, and gripped his pikestaff with white-knuckled ferocity.

‘That was close,’ said Rickett, the wiry ghost at his side. He peered up anxiously at the wall of the tavern. ‘Another direct hit like that and the whole lot's gonna come crashing down on top of us.’

Cleeve nodded, the expression on his face drawn and sombre. ‘What are they waiting for?’ he snarled, poking his head up over the barricade of hastily constructed drinking troughs and tavern tables.
‘They've got us surrounded. Why don't they attack?’

On the outskirts of New Undertown, the glade-eaters crouched like monstrous fire-bugs, gleaming in the dawn light. Their furnaces sparked and rumbled; their chimneys smoked. Behind them stood a vast mass of symbite goblins – gyle goblins, web-foot, tree and gnokgoblins, together with low-bellies and their lop-eared cousins. They shuffled from foot to foot miserably, and the air was filled with the sounds of their coughing and spluttering.

‘They're softening us up,’ said Rickett, his face appearing next to Cleeve's at the barricade. ‘Using those infernal machines to batter Undertown to pieces, and then …
Get down!
' he bellowed, as a huge boulder whistled overhead and crashed into a section of the barricades to their left.

Dusting himself down, Rickett saw a couple of sky pirates emerge from the rubble and begin repairing the shattered section of barricade with matter-of-fact efficiency. He turned to Cleeve.

‘It'll take more than a few leadwood logs and boulders to soften you lot up. Tough as old Mire ravens, so you are!’