Goblins Vs Dwarves (8 page)

The High King looked at Skarper, and it was pretty clear that he was thinking no, it wasn't. The world would be a better place with a few less things like Skarper in it, seemed to be his view.

“Your majesty!” blurted Henwyn. “Don't listen to him! Goblins are not wicked by nature. They like a fight, it's true, and steal things sometimes – well, quite often – and they don't like washing, or wiping their bottoms, or tidying up after themselves. And their table manners are atrocious. But they are good and bad and in between and often all three at different times, just as other people are. Clovenstone needs your help! You must not let these devious dwarves tell you what to do!”

“Oh, but I should let you tell me, should I?” snapped the king, losing patience with Henwyn. “My decision is made, young fellow. The dwarves should be allowed to go about their business undisturbed. We shall neither aid nor hinder them.”

“But. . .” Henwyn began.

“Throw this impertinent scoundrel out!” ordered the High King, turning to his heroes. “His friends too. Let them go back to their nasty little kingdom. I've heard enough of them.”

The heroes were eager to show how brave and strong they were after Garvon Hael's mockery. Merion of Porthkindlass picked Skarper up by his tail, Kerwen and Ponsadane took hold of Henwyn, and two others seized Carnglaze. Roughly and speedily the three friends were marched out of the great hall, back through the colonnades and courts, and flung out on to the paving in front of the castle, where Knobbler and Dr Prong were waiting beside the Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow.

“How did it go then?” asked Dr Prong, as they picked themselves up and dusted themselves off.

They did not bother to reply.

“If the High King will not help us,” vowed Carnglaze, “we must help ourselves. I will raise an army of mercenaries! There are many old warriors in Barragan and Musk who would be glad of employment now the wars there are ended!”

Henwyn shook his head. “That may take too long. The dwarves' tunnels must already reach almost to the Inner Wall. But you are right, we must help ourselves. Skarper and I have wasted too many days here already. We shall start for Clovenstone this very afternoon!”

They drove back down the corkscrew road, but when they reached the waterside they found the tide had risen, and the waves now rolled over the causeway. Worse, the people who plied the little ferry boats that went to and fro between Boskennack and the shore had all heard that Henwyn and his friends had earned the High King's displeasure. None of them would take the companions back across the bay to Coriander.

“We shall have to wait here until the tide subsides this evening,” said Carnglaze angrily.

“I mean to be on the road to Clovenstone by then!” said Henwyn, and he scooped up Skarper, set him on his shoulders, and waded into the sea.

He had not gone ten paces before he started to regret it. The cold waves came up to his knees, his thighs, his waist, and he had a nasty feeling he'd be swimming by the time he reached the middle of the causeway. But behind him he could hear all the ferrymen jeering, and he did not want to give them the satisfaction of watching him turn back, so he kept going.

“What can we do when we get back to Clovenstone?” asked Skarper.

“I don't know. We'll think of something. Perhaps between us, if Fraddon lends a hand. . .”

“Fraddon wouldn't even fit down those little dwarf tunnels,” said Skarper.

The waves were lapping around Henwyn's chest by then. He heard the creak and splash of oars behind him, and guessed that one of the ferrymen had rowed after him to do a bit more jeering. “Don't look round!” he said to Skarper. “Don't give him the satisfaction. . .”

The boat came alongside. It was a shabby little tar-stained lobster boat, and the oarsman was Garvon Hael.

“So you are going home alone?” the grey man asked, resting on his oars and watching Henwyn push through the waves.

“What other choice do we have?” asked Henwyn.

Garvon Hael snorted. “It seems to me that you came to Coriander looking for warriors, and found only a gaggle of fat and pompous old windbags. It seems to me that if it is warriors you need, you must find them for yourself, not look to the High King to provide them.”

“And where would I find warriors?” demanded Henwyn. “Carnglaze said he would find some in Barragan or Musk, but that will take weeks, and we may have only days!” He was about to add something more but a wave chose that moment to break right in his face and so he just said, “Glup!”

“Well, here is one, for a start,” said Garvon Hael, when Henwyn had shaken the seawater out of his ears. “I'm tired of being a decoration at Boskennack. My sword is at your service, if you want it.”

The evening sun was warm, but Henwyn and Skarper were still soggy by the time they returned to the house on the Street of Antiquaries. Mistress Carnglaze persuaded them that it would be silly to set off in wet things, with darkness drawing on, and so they had one more night in comfort, eating fish pie in the Carnglazes' kitchen while their damp clothes dried on racks beside the fire.

“But we must leave early tomorrow!” said Henwyn. “Those dwarves will already be on their way home, I expect; off to tell their king that Clovenstone is defenceless.”

“They don't have a king,” said Skarper. “They have this brass head thingy that tells them what to do.”

“How do you know that?” asked Carnglaze, and Henwyn looked surprised as well. Skarper kicked himself. He had not told anyone about his talk with Etty, and it seemed too late to do so now. “I, er, read it somewhere,” he said.

“Well, brass head or not,” declared Henwyn, “he shall soon know that the High King refused to help us. We must leave for the north at dawn!”

 

He regretted saying that, for Mistress Carnglaze took him seriously, and he and Skarper barely seemed to have closed their eyes that night before she was in their room and shaking them awake. A dim grey light lay over the rooftops of Coriander. They stumbled about bleary-eyed, getting dressed. Downstairs in the kitchen bowls of hot porridge waited for them, and so did Zeewa. Her ghosts roiled around her, clearly visible at this twilight hour. She had swapped her bright dress for a linen tunic, and she carried a square oxhide shield and a quiver of spears on her back. Her hair, undone from its plaits, stood out in a crackly black cloud around her dark face.

Skarper yelped as a ghost hyena came sniffing at him.

“Oh, Zeewa will be coming with us, too,” said Henwyn, who had somehow not found time to mention her to Skarper before.

“And all her phantom friends as well?” asked Skarper nervously.

“They may be useful,” said Henwyn. “Perhaps dwarves are scared of ghosts.”

“They will be scared of Zeewa's spear!” said the ghost warrior Kosi. “I wish I were flesh and blood again, so that I, too, could wash my blade in the blood of your enemies, Henwyn of Clovenstone!”

“You?” sniffed Zeewa. “You only fought one battle, and look what happened to you!”

“That was an accident,” said Kosi, looking hurt. “If I hadn't tripped and landed on your spear. . .”

The girl and the ghost were still quietly bickering ten minutes later, when they all went outside into the grey and silent street. Mistress Carnglaze wept and hugged them and handed them bags full of fresh rolls and cold meat; her husband said, “Farewell, but not for long. I'll be at Clovenstone as soon as I can, with the best army money can buy!” King Knobbler slapped Skarper so hard on the back he nearly sent him face first on the cobbles, and growled, “You sort them dwarves out, young Scuffler.”

And then they were off, stomping through the cold silence of the streets, with the cats of Coriander fleeing from the ghosts which trailed behind them. They had expected to find the city gate closed, but the guards had opened it, and there beneath the archway waited Garvon Hael, seated on a huge, shaggy war horse as grey as the morning. Beside him stood a familiar, shabby figure.

“I thought I might come too,” said Quesney Prong hesitantly. “I should like to take a look at this Clovenstone place, and there is nothing left for me in Coriander. The autumn rains will be here soon, and they will turn my book-house to papier mâché. Anyway, I did a little sword-fighting in my younger days, at university. I may be of some use.”

“How?” asked Skarper, rather rudely, but Henwyn gripped the old man's hands in his and said, “All are welcome! The dwarves will flee before us!”

Which was nonsense, of course, but even Skarper hadn't the heart to point that out. Only Garvon Hael, high on his great horse, gave a wry smile: he remembered when he himself had been as young and as foolhardy as Henwyn.

Introductions were made: Garvon Hael dismounted and shook Zeewa's hand, while his horse sniffed uncertainly at Tau the ghost lion. Kosi materialized in front of Dr Prong, who said, “I do not believe in ghosts, young man, but I suppose in your case I could make an exception.” The gate guards looked on curiously, and the flames in the brazier outside their guardhouse fluttered as ghost flies and ghost moths swarmed around it.

Skarper looked at his companions. A haunted girl; a penniless old philosopher; a drunkard; a shower of ghosts; and Henwyn. It wasn't much of an army to fling against the whole dwarven nation. For a moment he thought about turning and running back into the city, finding himself a nice cosy nook somewhere, like those three trolls under their bridge, and forgetting all about Clovenstone. That would have been the gobliny thing to do, and he knew it. But he'd changed, just as Clovenstone itself had, and he didn't always do the gobliny thing any more. With a last reluctant look over his shoulder at the waking city, he pulled his cloak tight against the chilly air and set off after his friends, along the pale road that led into the hills.

 

In fact, the three trolls were no longer living under the old bridge. Demoralized by the ease with which Skarper and Henwyn had defeated them, they had decided that city life was not for them. “These townspeople are too sharp for us, brothers,” Torridge had decided, as they all nursed their wounds on the night after the fight. “We're hill trolls, we are, and the hills is where we should have stayed. Let's go and find a nice bridge up on the moor's edge: the sort that farmers drive fat flocks of sheep to market over.”

“Sheep!” said his brothers, and their eyes shone dimly like wet pebbles. They'd been living on old bones and midden scraps since they'd come to the big city. Just the thought of a nice plump sheep was enough to set their mouths watering.

So, while Henwyn and Skarper were waiting for an audience at Boskennack, the trolls had set off up the River Ystrad to the marshes, and across the marshes to the Ystwyth, and up the Ystwyth and its smaller, tributary rivers, until they reached places where men were few and the plump green downs of the Softlands lapped against the stony, brindled slopes of Oeth Moor. There, in a hollow among some ferns, beneath an old stone packhorse bridge, they made their new lair, and they waited.

On the first day nothing crossed the bridge except a stray cow. It had pointy horns, and looked far too fearsome for the nervous trolls to tackle.

On the second day a farmer rode across the bridge on his horse, but he had a sword slung from his saddle; the trolls thought better of it, and ducked back under the bridge before he noticed them.

On the third day, nothing crossed the bridge at all.

Then, as darkness fell, Torridge, who had gone out for a sulky walk to get away from the rumblings of his brothers' empty bellies, came haring back to their holt in high excitement. “There's a fire! A fire!” he panted.

“So what?” asked Kenn.

“We can live underwater, Torridge,” whined Cribba. “Fires don't frighten us.”

“Not a
wild
fire! A campfire!” Torridge urged, waiting for understanding to dawn on their broad, stupid faces. It showed no sign of doing so, so he pressed on. “That means campers. Travellers! All alone in the wilderness! At our mercy!”

Like boulders on the move, the three trolls crept out of their lair and along the riverbank towards the orange eye of the fire.

 

The companions had made their camp that night on a little knoll where oak trees grew, surrounded on three sides by the river but high enough above the water that it would not flood. Garvon Hael's grey horse cropped the grass under the trees, and Zeewa's ghosts swirled like river mist just outside the circle of firelight. Within the circle, Henwyn was trying to help everyone get to know one another. He thought that, since they were travelling companions, and might soon be comrades in a dreadful battle, they should know one another's stories. He tried to persuade Zeewa to tell them something about her homeland, but all she would say was, “It is much like this place, except warmer, and not so wet.”

Next he turned to Garvon Hael, who was sharpening his sword, his back resting against an oak as weathered and as grey as he was. “Come, Garvon Hael,” said Henwyn, “you have fought real battles. Tell us about them!”

“Only one,” said Garvon Hael, looking up at him, and the red reflections of his firelit sword were in his eyes.

“That was the fight at Far Penderglaze?” asked Henwyn eagerly. “Carnglaze told me something of it: how you drove the pirates back into the sea, and killed their chief in single combat in the shallows, and burned their ships! It was a glorious victory!”

“Glorious?” said Garvon Hael. “I'd not call it that. A battle is a dreadful thing, Henwyn of Adherak, even when you win. I do not choose to talk of it.”

“Oh,” said Henwyn. Then, “Skarper, perhaps you'll tell us something of Clovenstone, for you know it better than I.”

But Skarper was tired out by the long walk, and had fallen fast asleep, wrapped in his tatty cloak.

“Very well,” decided Henwyn. “I shall sing you the Lay of Eluned, which is the story of how Princess Eluned came to live at Clovenstone. This happened long ago, you understand: she had no idea then that she would one day be queen of the place.”

He stood up, stuck one finger in his ear, and began to sing in a high, nasal voice quite unlike the voice he spoke with.

 

'Twas on a summer's morning
A Tuesday they do tell
The princess of Lusuenn sailed
Upon the grey sea's swell,
And there upon the ocean deep
A dreadful thing befell. . .

 

The ghosts whispered in the darkness; Skarper stirred uneasily in his sleep; Garvon Hael's war horse threw up its head and whinnied nervously, and its master exchanged a worried look with Zeewa. Some of these folk songs went on for twenty or thirty verses, and Henwyn hadn't even reached the first chorus yet!

All in all, it was something of a relief for everyone when a large, wet rock came whirling out of the shadows and hit Henwyn a glancing blow on the head.

He collapsed in mid-song, luckily falling away from the fire, but unluckily landing on top of Skarper, who awoke with a strangled cry. But everyone was crying out by then; Zeewa screeching some Muskish war cry as she snatched up her spears, the horse rearing, Garvon Hael leaping up with a yell, reflections of the firelight darting as he swung his sword at the big shapes lunging out of the dark.

The trolls had scrambled up the riverward side of the knoll, from which Henwyn and the others had not imagined any attack would come. The voice of the river, tumbling in the darkness down below, had masked the sound of their approach. For a moment, as they leapt out upon the startled camp, the travellers were taken completely by surprise. As Zeewa straightened up, her short stabbing spear in her hand, Torridge swung a branch at her. Although it was soft and rotten, and broke on her shield with a wet thump, the blow was still enough to knock her down. But as the troll reached for her, the storm of ghosts came swooping and swirling around him, Kosi brandishing a ghostly spear, Tau the lion baring teeth and claws.

Meanwhile, Cribba's attack on Garvon Hael had gone all wrong too: his tree branch was stronger, but the grey warrior parried it expertly, kicked his legs from under him and set his sword's point against the troll's throat. Kenn ran to help, but Dr Prong jumped on him from behind, and although the old man could not have weighed a quarter as much as the young troll, Kenn overbalanced and went sprawling in the cinders at the edge of the fire. He started to scramble up, but came face to face with the glowing, ghostly lion, so he gave up, put his big hands over his head, and crouched there, whimpering.

Torridge stumbled backwards against a tree, clutching at his chest, from which jutted the shaft of Kosi's ghostly spear. It dissolved into smoke and nothingness before his boggling eyes, and when he tore open his clothes there was no blood, no wound, only his bald, pale, speckled chest.

Zeewa, recovered, approached him with her own spear raised. “What are these creatures?” she asked, never taking her eyes from Torridge.

“Urban trolls,” said Dr Prong, who was still sitting on the one he'd felled. “The same trio who used to haunt the riverside in Coriander, if I'm not much mistaken. They're completely imaginary, of course.”

“Do we kill them?” asked the girl.

In a high, piteous voice, Cribba said, “Oh, please, your worships, don't harm my poor brothers and me. We didn't mean no harm. Well, we did, but not to you. It was all a case of mistaken identity, see: we mistook you for people who wouldn't fight back. Oh, spare our lives, we'll trouble you no more.”

Garvon Hael kept his sword point at Cribba's throat but called over his own shoulder to Dr Prong. “How is the boy?”