Freeglader (43 page)

Marching between them were battalions of other goblins – lighter, more agile, yet no less deadly. Pink-eyed lop-ears, with their back-quivers bristling with poison-tipped arrows; tufted goblins of the long-haired clan, ruthlessly disciplined and skilled both in flailwork and swordplay; black-eared goblins with their characteristic long-pikes, clustered together in
their tightly-packed ‘stickleback' formations.

There were furrow-browed and thick-necked goblins; tufted, crested and mossy-backed goblins; pink-eyed, scaly and septic goblins. And grey-goblins – thousands of them – fierce and fearless, and armed with their long swords and short spears, all keeping close together in their ‘swarms' and waiting for the order to launch a mass attack on their enemy.

As Rook stared at them in horror, he knew that that order would not be long in coming. He braced himself. There in the midst of the goblin army he could just see the heads of the clan chiefs. Rootrott Underbiter, Meegmewl the Grey, Mother Nectarsweet, Lytugg the hammerhead, and there at their centre, Hemtuft Battleaxe, a hideous grimace of triumph on his long-haired face. They bobbed up and down in the midst of their goblins, as if trying to get a better view of their impending victory.

To his right, Rook saw Felix step forwards and stride towards the approaching goblins, sword in hand, his eyes flashing with defiance.

‘Very well, then!’ he shouted at the taunting faces of the clan chiefs. ‘Let us end it now!’

Suddenly, Rook saw his friend drop his sword and sink to his knees, a look of horrified amazement on his face. The goblin army came to a shuddering halt, and five huge tusked goblins shouldered their way through to the front, poles clasped in their massive fists.

Rook looked up. On the end of each pole, instead of an ornate canopy, was a bloodied, severed head. Hemtuft's
hideous grimace greeted the astonished Felix and the Freegladers. Beside him were the heads of the other clan chiefs. Then a chant – soft at first, but growing stronger by the minute – rose up above the clatter of weapons being dropped to the ground.

‘Friends of the harvest! Friends of the harvest! Friends of the harvest!’

EPILOGUE

T
he Most High Academe and head of the Freeglades Council, Cowlquape Pentephraxis, stood on the upper gantry of the Lufwood Tower and let the warm sun soak into his tired old bones.

What a very long way he'd come, he thought with a smile. And not only him, but all of them in the Free Glades.

He gazed down at New Undertown. Already, the streets were clear of rubble, and the buildings were being repaired. Why, the New Bloodoak Tavern was almost its old self again. You could go down there any evening and hear Deadbolt Vulpoon telling stories of the Battle of New Undertown and the War of the Free Glades … War! It already seemed like a distant memory.

Waif Glen was full of goblins now, seeking the peace and tranquillity that Cancaresse offered, and the Goblin Nations were flourishing alongside the Free Glades. There would be no more war, Cowlquape thought, and smiled contentedly.

Over in the distance, the timber wagons of the woodtrolls trundled towards the Great Lake. The work both on the Academy at Lake Landing and on the new Great Library was already underway. He'd never seen Felix Lodd, or Fenbrus, so happy.

Looking towards the Ironwood Stands, Cowlquape saw two skycraft circling. Probably his old friend Xanth, he thought, and Magda – off to take a spot of tea with Tweezel the spindlebug. Yes, things really were getting back to normal…

A polite cough brought the Most High Academe out of his reverie, and he turned to see two low-belly goblins in splendid new straw bonnets standing before him.

‘Lob! Lummel!’ Cowlquape greeted the two newest members of the Freeglade Council. ‘Welcome, Freegladers!’

The Foundry Glades were silent. The furnaces were all extinguished, and the dense pall of smoke that had hovered in the air above them for so long had thinned and disappeared. The goblin guards were gone and the workshops and forges empty. The slave workers had packed everything they could carry and left for the Free Glades and Goblin Nations.

In a small, upper chamber at the top of the Palace of Furnace Masters, a single occupant remained. He was seated inside the soak-vat, but the water was cold, the bubbles had stopped and the attendant gabtrolls who had oiled him, anointed him and rubbed him vigorously down were nowhere to be found.

‘Hello?’ he called out weakly. ‘Hello? Is there anybody there? Where are my gabtrolls? I'm cold and I'm shivery and I can't get out on my own … Please, somebody …
any
body! Help me!’

Just then, to his right, he heard a
click
and the door opened. He turned.

‘Flambusia!’ he squeaked. ‘It's you! Thank goodness!’

‘So you remember your old nursie,’ said the huge, lumbering creature, her bright eyes darting round the room jerkily as she hurried towards him. ‘I thought you'd forgotten all about me.’ She smiled, her teeth glinting.

‘Forgotten?’ Amberfuce laughed uneasily. ‘Of course I hadn't forgotten…’

‘All those times I tried to see you,’ said Flambusia. ‘Standing at that door, calling your name – only to be turned away … Beaten … Made to wash floors … And me, a nurse!’

‘How awful,’ wheedled Amberfuce. ‘I had no idea.’

‘Really?’ she said, her eyes narrowing. ‘You didn't hear my cries? My pleading?’

‘No, no, nothing, Flambusia,’ he said. ‘I really had no idea.’

Flambusia's teeth flashed again. ‘Tut-tut, Amby, dear,’ she said, crouching down. ‘And you a waif. Shame on you. But perhaps Flambusia can take care of you now, then?’

‘Yes,’ said Amberfuce weakly. ‘Yes, that would be nice…’

The cloddertrog began pressing buttons, turning dials, switching levers, while Amberfuce looked on helplessly. The water inside the burnished metal vat began churning violently and suddenly began to steam.

‘Ouch,’ Amberfuce yelped. ‘That's a bit
too
warm, Flambusia, my dear,’ he said.

‘Sorry, Amby, dear, I didn't quite hear you,’ said Flambusia. ‘What did you say?’

‘Too hot!’ squealed Amberfuce. ‘Scorching, Flambusia!’

‘I still can't hear you, Amby,’ she said sweetly, giving the dial another violent turn. ‘You'll have to speak up.’

‘No … no … no … No, please, Flambusia!
Noooo!
’

The skewbald prowlgrin tethered to the sallowdrop tree snorted contentedly in the warm evening air. Its rider, a dark-haired youth in the uniform of a Freeglade Lancer, a sword at his side, stood on the small jetty gazing out over the still waters of North Lake to Lullabee Island. From the distant treeline came the far-off sound of a banderbear yodel.

The youth smiled, lost in thought. Then, as if sensing he was being watched, he turned – to find himself staring into the pale eyes of an old sky pirate.

‘Lullabee Island,’ said the pirate, his voice gravelly with lack of use. ‘A place of dreams, they say.’

The youth nodded. ‘I've been there,’ he said, ‘and dreamed the strangest of dreams … I was thinking about them just now.’

‘I guessed as much by the way you were gazing at the place,’ said the Mire Pirate, his sad eyes searching the youth's face. He cleared his throat and came to stand beside the youth on the jetty, his own gaze turning to the distant island. ‘There was once a great sky pirate captain,’ he said. ‘I served under him a long, long time ago. He came from a large family. Lived in old Undertown in a grand house, with a beautiful room, a fabulous mural on its wall…’

The youth turned to look at the old pirate.

‘It burned down,’ he said. ‘Tragically. He lost his mother, and his brothers.’

The youth's eyes opened wide. ‘I dreamed that!’ he said.

The sky pirate went on. ‘He grew up to be a sky pirate like his father. Took his wife with him … They had a baby…’

‘But something happened,’ the youth interrupted. ‘I dreamed that, too. They had to leave their child … in the Deepwoods.’

The Mire Pirate nodded. ‘But the captain found his child again, years later. I was there when he did. And that child grew to be as fine a sky pirate as his father, and his father before him. And I know, because I served under him, too – until…’

‘Until?’ asked the youth, hardly daring to breathe.

‘Until we were wrecked in the Twilight Woods and I was lost … lost for such a long time … I don't know for how long … Shrykes found me. Sold me in their slave market. I escaped and came to the Free Glades, where I found my brother's son, Shem.’ He paused. ‘Shem Barkwater!’

The youth gasped. ‘Barkwater? You said, Barkwater?’

The Mire Pirate nodded. ‘Shem took me in, and gave me a home after all my wanderings. I was so happy.
So
happy … And then he met Keris, and imagine my surprise and joy when I discovered…’

‘Discovered what?’ urged the youth, half remembering his dreams.

‘That Keris was the daughter of my sky pirate captain, Twig.’

‘Twig!’ exclaimed the youth. ‘Captain Twig!’

‘The very same. He'd married a slaughterer by the name of Sinew. It broke his heart when she died shortly after giving birth, but he did his best to bring his daughter, Keris, up, and he did a good job of it, too. When she grew up and left home, Captain Twig returned to his wanderings in the Deepwoods…’

‘And that's where
I
met him!’ said the youth. ‘Living with banderbears!’

The Mire Pirate smiled. ‘Yes, I heard tell of that … Well, his daughter married my nephew Shem, and the three of us lived so happily here in the Free Glades until…’

‘Go on,’ said the youth.

‘They had a child. A beautiful little boy. Dark, curly hair. He was about four years old when they decided to take him to see his slaughterer relatives in their village. I pleaded with them not to. I
begged
them! But they laughed and set off just the same…’

‘They wouldn't listen,’ said the youth, staring out at Lullabee Island, his dreams coming back to him. ‘They rode away into the sunset, and you stared after them, tears streaming down your face…’

The Mire Pirate nodded, his eyes glistening. ‘When they didn't return,’ he said, ‘I went after them. I discovered their upturned cart, their scattered belongings and…’ Tears flooded down the old pirate's cheeks. ‘Their poor, dead bodies. Killed by slavers, they were. But I found no trace of my grand-nephew, Captain Twig's grandson…’