Freeglader (6 page)

‘I can't understand a word they're saying,’ he laughed as Rook ran up.

‘Wumeru!’ Rook shouted out in delight.

The banderbear turned. ‘Wurrah-lurra! Uralowa leera-wuh!’ she roared, her words accompanied by arm movements, curiously delicate for one so large.
Greetings, Rook, he who took the poison-stick. It is good you are back with us.

‘Wuh-wuh!’ Rook replied, his hand lightly touching his chest. It was good to hear his banderbear name again. ‘Wurra-weeg, weleera lowah.’
Greetings, friend. Together we shall face the journey ahead.

‘Wurra-weeg, wurra-wuh!’ the other banderbears joined in, clustering around Rook in an excited group. There was Wuralo, who he'd rescued from the Foundry Glade; Weeg, with his great, angry scar across one shoulder, and old Molleen, her single tusk glinting in the low sunlight as she tossed her head animatedly about.

‘What are they saying? What are they saying?’ said Xanth excitedly, joining the throng.

‘They're saying,’ laughed Rook, ‘that they've been searching the camp and have been trying to ask you if you'd heard of me – but you didn't seem to understand a word they said. Molleen here thinks you seem rather stupid, but that it isn't your fault – it's because your hair's so short!’

Xanth burst into laughter, and the banderbears yodelled in unison.

‘Tell her,’ said Xanth, ‘that I'll grow my hair just for her.’

As the sun rose higher in the milky sky, the chaos of the Mire encampment gradually took on a semblance of order. Every cart was laden, every backpack stuffed full; at Fenbrus Lodd's command, the prowlgrins had been harnessed up to the sledges carrying the precious library crates.

An hour earlier, following Deadbolt Vulpoon's orders, the Undertowners had started to rope themselves together in groups of twelve. Now, they were all taking up the positions allocated to them by the sky pirates in a huge column, with the family groups and the Great Library at the centre, the sky pirates themselves at the
head and the Ghosts of Screetown bringing up the rear. Roped together, Rook, Xanth and the banderbears were just behind the last of the huge library sledges, its jostling, slavering team of fifty prowlgrins raring to go.

Felix called to them from towards the back of the column. ‘Good luck, Rook! Make sure those great shaggy friends of yours don't step on any prowlgrin tails!’ His laughter boomed out across the Mire.

Rook smiled. He wished he could be as brave and cheerful as Felix.

Just then, Deadbolt Vulpoon strode past, his sword held high and the megaphone clamped to his mouth. Rook raised his scarf to shield his eyes from the dazzling whiteness ahead, his stomach turning somersaults. High above his head, a great flock of white ravens circled noisily, the furious cawing echoing off across the endless Mire, and reminding Rook just how far they had to go.

‘ADVANCE!!’ Deadbolt Vulpoon's voice boomed as he strode out ahead.

The column began to shuffle forward – front first, then further and further back down the lines, until every single individual in the vast multitude was in motion. Rook fell into step, Xanth and the banderbears marching beside him. Up ahead, families of gnokgoblins and lugtrolls marched, their makeshift mud-shoes slapping on the mud, keeping them from sinking.

Yet the going was tough for all that.

Soon, many were struggling – from frail old'uns, their aged limbs protesting, to young'uns, thin and under-nourished, yet too big to be carried. Behind them came
the library sledges, with Fenbrus Lodd and Cowlquape Pentephraxis walking alongside them, the High Librarian anxiously checking and rechecking the ropes, the runners, the prowlgrin harnesses…

‘Nothing must be lost,’ he was muttering. ‘Not a tome, not a treatise, not a barkscroll.’

They all tramped on resolutely through the afternoon and into the evening. Dark clouds gathered overhead once more, and Rook pulled his collar up against the rising wind.

From up ahead, Deadbolt's voice boomed. ‘Keep marching! There can be no stopping, you mudlubbers! Close up the gaps!’

It was almost completely dark when the rain first started – big, fat drops that spattered down on the mud-flats. Within seconds, it had become torrential, bucketing down on the Undertowners for the third time in as many nights.

‘We keep on!’ Deadbolt's voice called out above the hiss and thunder of the howling wind and battering rain.

His words were passed back down through the lines of the drenched multitude, growing more despondent with every repetition.

‘We keep on?’ muttered a gnokgoblin matron desperately, glancing back at her family, roped behind her, barely able to keep going.

A cloddertrog to her left, bathed in purple light from the brazier-cage he was carrying, nodded grimly. ‘We keep on,’ he said.

Rook himself was struggling. He was hungry, and
the icy rain had chilled him to the bones. On either side of him, the banderbears panted noisily, while behind him – pulling on the tether-rope that bound them together – Xanth slipped and slid on his unfamiliar mud-shoes.

A curious numbness seemed to grip both Rook's body and his mind. He was no longer thinking of where he was going. The future no longer existed; nor did the past. There was only this, here, now. One step after the other, trudging across the endless reaches of the Mire.

One step. Then another, and another…

The night passed in a stupor of mud, sweat and shivers, and a cold grey light began to dawn. Despite Deadbolt's best efforts, the pace had slowed to a painful crawl, with small pockets of stragglers beginning to fall behind. If this continued, he knew the column would soon cease to be a column at all, and become instead a disorganized rabble, impossible to lead.

At last there came the command everyone had been waiting for.

‘HALT!’ bellowed Deadbolt. ‘We rest for one hour! No more! Any longer and we'll all be muglump bait – that is, if the mud-flows don't get us first.’

With a collective sigh, the column stopped marching, and the long lines of Undertowners broke up into small groups, huddled together against the biting wind. Sitting between Molleen and Wumeru, Rook and Xanth escaped the worst of it – but were still both chilled to the bone.

‘I never thought I'd say this,’ said Xanth, smiling
weakly, ‘but I almost miss Undertown. How can anybody call this desolate waste home?’

Rook didn't answer. He was gazing past Xanth at the treeline in the distance.

‘The Twilight Woods,’ he murmured.

From the cold, icy mud of the Mire, the twinkling light of the Twilight Woods was hypnotic. Warm, inviting glades sparkled, fabulous clearings shimmered; nooks and crannies, sheltered from the bitter winds, beckoned seductively.

Xanth put his arm on Rook's shoulder. ‘Don't even think about it,’ he said sternly. ‘That path leads to death… A
living
death.’

Rook looked away and shook his head. ‘I know, I know,’ he said. The Twilight Woods! That beautiful, seductive, terrible place that robbed you of your mind but not your life, condemning you to live on for ever as your body decayed. ‘It's just that … it looks so…’

‘Inviting,’ Xanth said grimly. ‘I know that.’ He shivered as a blast of icy wind hit him. The next instant he was up on his feet and waving wildly.
‘Molleen! No!’ he cried out. ‘Molleen!
Come back!
’

Rook leaped up. The old banderbear had torn free of her tether and was stumbling across the mudflats, her eyes fixed on the Twilight Woods ahead.

‘Weeg-worraleeg! Weera wuh-wuh!’ Rook shouted desperately.
Come back, old friend, that is death calling you!

Wumeru, Wuralo and Weeg's anguished yodels rang out.
Come back, old friend! Come back!

But the old banderbear ignored them. And she wasn't alone. Up and down the column, individuals were cutting the ropes that bound them to their groups and dashing towards the alluring glades of the Twilight Woods.

Deadbolt's voice boomed from the front of the line. ‘Column fall in, and advance if you want to see another dawn! Advance, I say! And keep your eyes looking up front, you mangy curs!’

Ahead of them, the library sledges lumbered forwards. Rook, Xanth and the banderbears broke ranks as one, and made after Molleen, only to be jerked back by
the rope that secured them to their sledge. Rook tore at the rope feverishly.

‘Molleen, wait!’ he shouted. ‘We're coming to get you!

‘Fall back in line!’ roared a voice in Rook's ear. Deadbolt Vulpoon, his face like thunder, loomed over him. ‘Fall back in line or I'll run you through!’ He brandished a serrated-edge sabre menacingly. ‘And don't think I won't!’

Rook stopped, tears stinging his eyes. ‘But Molleen,’ he said, his voice breaking. ‘She's our friend, we must…’

‘You follow her and you'll all be lost,’ said Deadbolt firmly. ‘There's no saving her, believe me, lad.’

The library sledge pulled the rope taut as Rook fell back into line. The others followed, the banderbears moaning softly, Xanth shaking his shaven head.

‘Sky curse it!’ Deadbolt thundered. ‘This is all my fault. I took us too close to the treeline, then took pity on you mudlubbers and allowed you to stop. Well, there'll be no more of it. We march on! Or we die!’

With that he was off, striding back down the column, barking orders left and right. Rook shut his eyes, and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. The plaintive yodels of the banderbears rang out across the white mudflats as, in the distance, the shuffling figure of Molleen disappeared into the Twilight Woods.

They marched on all through that dismal grey morning and on into a rain-sodden afternoon. Few spoke; even the chants of the sky pirates up in front tailed off, and the only sounds were the barks and yelps of the
prowlgrins and the relentless
slap
,
slap
,
slap
of mud-shoes on mire mud.

The grey afternoon gave way to the dim half-light of evening, and the wind grew stronger once more, pelting them with heavy rain that stung their faces and soaked them to the skin.

‘That's the Edgeland wind,’ called back the librarian on the library sledge. ‘We must be getting close!’ He cracked the whip and urged the yelping prowlgrins on.

The rope round Rook's middle jerked taut, forcing him to quicken his pace. All round him, the air was filled with curses and moans as the marchers struggled to keep up.

Suddenly, rising above it all, there came the noise of squelching mud, and a curious
plaff-plaff
sound. Rook looked up. To the left of the column, a cluster of low mud-dunes seemed to be approaching, rising and falling in a slippery rhythm as they did so.

‘MUGLUMPS!’

The cry went up from the back of the column, where the Ghosts of Screetown had obviously spotted the danger.

The rope suddenly tugged Rook violently to the right as the librarian on the library sledge battled to control the panicking prowlgrins. Ahead, the four other sledges were in equal trouble. The low shapes were gathering and, from their path, it was obvious that the closely harnessed packs of prowlgrins were their intended prey.

Felix and his ghosts appeared out of the gloom on all sides. Fenbrus Lodd, Cowlquape beside him, shouted desperately to his son.

‘The library sledges! Felix!’ he screamed. ‘They're after the sledges!’

Rook was running now, with Xanth and the bander-bears dragged behind him, as the library sledge careered across the mud.

‘Cut yourselves loose!’ shouted Felix to Rook and the other librarians. ‘And follow the braziers of the sky pirates!’

With a grunt, Rook tore at the knotted rope round his middle and slid to a halt as it fell free.

‘There!’ shouted Xanth, beside him. He pointed.

Ahead, Deadbolt stood on a mud-dune, waving a flaming purple brazier over his head as if possessed. ‘Rally to me, Undertowners!’ he roared. ‘Rally!’