Ratastrophe Catastrophe (14 page)

J
IMMY WAS TRYING TO
get a grip on his excitement.

“Let me get this straight,” he said. “You saw a stranger leading a large group of children through here?”

“Yeah, like I said,” Stump yawned. “There’s a grate in the back of the cell, you see. I saw ’em all filing past in the next tunnel, so I shouted for help. Funny thing was, they didn’t even hear me! It was like they were all hypnotized or somethin’. Totally zonked. Are you all right? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Jimmy swallowed, swallowed, and swallowed again. “Please listen to me very carefully,” he began, his hands shaking violently as he spoke. “My name is Jimmy Quickstint; I come from Dullitch. That scoutmaster is some kind of evil enchanter. He
stole
those children from Dullitch, and I need to get them back before, well, before he decides to do something unspeakable to them.”

“That’s awful!” Stump gasped. “Hang on, though, wait a minute; are you telling me they’ve sent you out on your own to stop this fella?”

“No, not exactly. I was supposed to find these mercenaries who are traveling with my granddad—he’s an ex-sorcerer, by the way—and oh, it’s all too complicated to explain now! Listen, do you think there’s any way we can get through this wall?”

Stump peered into his cell for what seemed like a long time. “No,” he said eventually, turning back. “But you shouldn’t need to. The Twelve’s full of these tunnels; one big network from the outside in; junctions all over the place. You just have to follow this tunnel through; no doubts it’ll link up to the others somewhere along the line. Maybe Mick would know, he’s lived down here for years.”

This time, Jimmy just couldn’t let the question go unspoken.

“Is Mick a ghost?” he asked tentatively.

Stump frowned at him. “Mick doesn’t know whether to be insulted or not by that remark.”

“Oh, sorry. Tell him I apologize.”

“Look,” said Stump, suddenly straightening up. “I ain’t no mediator; tell him yourself.”

“I can’t see him!” shouted Jimmy. He shoved the prisoner aside, marched into the cell and walked twice around it. Then he got down on his hands and knees to crawl under a sloping wall in the rear of the room. Stump watched with a detached amusement.

“What are you up to?” he asked.

“I’m just trying to prove to myself,” said Jimmy, prodding a leg into parts the rest of him couldn’t reach, “that I’m not going crazy. There is no Mick.”

“Did you hear that, Mick?” said Stump. “He says you don’t exist.”

The thief struggled to his feet and shook his head. Of all the prisoners in all the cells, in all the lands, he thought, why did I have to get this lunatic?

Then he saw Mick waving at him.

Standing on the prisoner’s palm was a man two inches tall. He was wearing britches and a jerkin. He had a tiny eye patch over one eye. Jimmy gaped at him.

“See?” said Stump, excitedly. “That’s Mick, that is.

“Flimder,” said Mick. It sounded more like a squeak than a word.

“What is he?” Jimmy asked, fascinated.

“Mick’s a mite. Says he’s the bastard son of Tim Index. He don’t say much, but I think we understand each other on a kind of spiritual level. He might be telepathic.”

The little man produced a miniature rope and looped the end over Stump’s forefinger. Then he started to rappel down the prisoner’s hand.

“Look at him,” said Stump cheerfully. “He’s always tryin’ to get away.”

Jimmy watched as he flicked his wrist and caught the mite back in the palm of his hand.

“He’s a real one for escaping, is Mick.”

“But that’s ridiculous! He could’ve walked between the bars at any time.”

“Eh?”

Jimmy shook his head in disbelief. “You said,” he began, trying to speak in plain language in case Stump was having problems in that department, “that he was already here when you arrived. Why didn’t he just leave?”

“I think he’d made himself at home, to be honest. He had a nice little house built out of an old tinderbox.”

“What happened to that?” said Jimmy, looking around again.

“I landed on it.”

“Flimder,” said Mick, shaking a minuscule fist at the prisoner. It appeared to be the only sound the little creature was capable of making.

“You know something, Stump?” said Jimmy.

“What’s that?”

“I don’t think Mick likes you very much.”

Jimmy slumped down on to the dusty stone and wiped some sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.

“So,” he said. “We know the children are down here somewhere. If we find them, that leaves me to fight the enchanter. Great, just great. I wonder where Granddad is?”

Groan Teethgrit was experiencing a situation which, to his mind, simply didn’t add up. Usually when he threw punches people fell; most times they just fell over and, occasionally, they fell thousands of feet. They never just stood there looking at him. Groan felt as if he were punching a cushion.

The giant just stood motionless, and continued to glare.

“C’mon then,” Groan managed, after the third blow had failed to garner a reaction. “I’m not touchin’ me sword, this is fightin’ ol’ style, han’ to han’. Lesee what you got.”

The giant reeled back and gave him a slap. Groan sailed backward, hitting a young coomba tree so hard that he actually heard the roots splitting as he lost consciousness.

The giant stepped amid the rubble and reached down to pick up the comatose barbarian. Unexpectedly, he got a battle-axe buried in his back. It felt like a wasp sting.

Gordo yanked as hard as could but the axe simply wouldn’t come loose. He put one foot on the giant’s back for leverage and found himself on the receiving end of a slap from a hand of pumpkin proportions. The giant didn’t see where Gordo landed, but he did see, out of the corner of his eye, the old man running toward him, frantically waving a broken branch. He stretched out a fist and there was a dull thud. The branch fell to the floor.

The giant yawned, removed the axe from his back, and hung it on a belt hook. Then he slung Tambor over one shoulder, snatched hold of Groan’s boots, and began dragging the barbarian back through the forest. On the way, he collected Gordo Goldeaxe, who’d landed upside down in a briar patch.

In the far distance, a coil of smoke headed skyward. The giant smiled. He always lit a succession of small fires whenever he went out to chop wood. They marked the path back to the entrance of his cave in the mountainside. He headed toward it with his new prisoners, feeling that on the whole, life couldn’t get much better.

S
TUMP HAD SECRETED MICK
about his person. Jimmy didn’t dare to ask where.

This is ridiculous, he thought. Even if I do find out where the foreigner took them, how am I ever going to sneak hundreds of children out of a mountain without him noticing?

“Look,” he said eventually, employing what he hoped was a friendly smile. “I’ve got to start looking. Can you help me?”

“No,” answered Stump, flatly.

Jimmy boggled at him. “No? You won’t help me rescue kidnapped children?”

“The thing is,” Stump continued, “it feels like I’ve been down here for ages and I wanna go back and see my family, you know how it is. Beryl, that’s my wife, she’s probably remarried, thinkin’ I’m a goner.”

“Oh, right,” said Jimmy. “You’d better get back to her, then.”

“Yeah, well, you know how it is. Sorry about that; good luck and all.”

“Thanks. I think.”

Jimmy nodded, got to his feet and marched off toward the lower staircase.

“No hard feelings,” Stump called after him. “I’m sure you aaaahhh! Mick! Stop bitin’ me!”

“Tambor?”

Eyelids flickered. A light in the darkness: small, indistinct. It hovered around at the edge of the sorcerer’s field of vision. Then, slowly, shapes began to swim into focus. He saw a lot of faces, no, correction; he saw a lot of
face
….

“You’re all right, then?” asked Gordo.

“Let’s not jump to any conclusions,” said Tambor weakly.

“I thought you might be dead,” said Gordo.

Tambor stared blearily around the room. It seemed to be a cell of some kind. He noted the half-rusted chains and manacles that hung from every wall. A tiny grille offered one of only two light sources, the other being a rather pathetic candle, half melted, on a shelf above Gordo’s head. There were also some half-rotted torches stacked in one corner.

The dwarf was kneeling beside him. Blood leaked from a cut on his forehead and his clothes were in tatters. Despite all this, he seemed as companionable as ever. Groan was lying flat out like a felled oak. He twitched every few seconds.

The sorcerer moaned. A dull throb that had started in the base of his spine was gradually working its way north, planning a terrible assault on his neck and shoulders. “What happened?” Tambor said.

“Well, I don’t know what happened to you, but we’ve taken a right old belting. Groan got KO’d by the giant, and I tried to help but he knocked me flying. Then I think he must have dragged us up to his cave. Groan was spark out, but I came round pretty quick.” Gordo grinned with masculine pride. “I’m tougher than I look.”

“You’d have to be. So, in fact, we’re inside a cell, inside the giant’s cave, inside the mountain. Sound right?”

“Yep, that’s the way of it.”

“I don’t understand,” said Tambor. “Why would he keep us here?”

“Who knows?” answered Gordo. “Maybe he’ll ransom us.”

Tambor nodded, and had a good go at a positively wretched expression. As his vision improved, so the scene around him was becoming progressively worse. When things were bad they were bad; you didn’t want details.

For example, he hadn’t seen the snake before. It slithered from a hole in the wall and wriggled into a crevice beneath the stone staircase. A number of indescribable obscenities crawled, on a wide variety of legs, across the cell floor. Tambor closed his eyes and pretended he was somewhere sunny.

There was a commotion outside, the cell door flew open and a few plates were thrown in, landing facedown on the stone. The door closed again.

Tambor managed to fight off a few of the milder monstrosities to gain possession of something that looked like a distant relation to the dumpling.

He bit hard, closed his eyes, and swallowed. “I expect he’s fattening us up,” he told Gordo. “Well, fattening two of us up. He might want to starve you.”

“He’d better not,” snapped the dwarf. “Before we got into this mess, I hadn’t missed a single meal in thirty years.”

“Now, why don’t I find that surprising?” said Tambor sarcastically.

He struggled to his feet and kicked some dust over a dubious shadow in the corner. When it didn’t slink back or make a dive for his leg, he gave it a tentative tap with the toe of his boot. It turned out to be an old rag. He subjected it to a malicious stare, and then kicked some more dust over it. “Well, we’re done for, then,” he said.

Gordo gazed up at him, his face radiating surprise. “Really?” he said. “I was sure you’d think of something. You sorcerers always struck me as the intelligent sort, specially when it comes to escape and the like.”

“Oh, we are, generally speaking,” said Tambor. “It’s just that, well, being a sorcerer with a bad memory and no spell book doesn’t really prepare you for a prison break, if you know what I mean.”

“Mmm. I see your point,” said Gordo. “So, that’s it. We’re doomed.”

“So it would appear,” said Tambor, with a sigh.

They sat sharing the embarrassed silence for a while, before Gordo jumped to his feet. “I’ve got an idea,” he said.

Tambor started; he’d seen ideas dawn on people before, but Gordo gave the term “stroke of genius” a literal meaning.

“Why don’t we turn out our pockets and see if we’ve got anything that might get us out?” he said, excitedly.

“Fine,” said Tambor. “Let’s see. I’ve got a mousetrap and a piece of cheese. How about you?”

“Er, oh…I don’t have anything. Sorry.”

“Good plan, though.”

“Thanks,” said Gordo.

“I’m going to sleep now,” said Tambor, yawning. “Wake me up if anything dramatic happens.”

Jimmy had been wandering along the same dank tunnel for what seemed like hours. He looked at the walls on either side of him, wondering if it was one of those deceptive tunnels, where it appeared as if you were getting somewhere when you were actually just walking around in a circle.

It was gloomy too; secret tunnels and passageways beneath a mountain should surely be covered in symbols and runes or
something
. Not like this one, all brown and sewery. He reached out and touched a wall that felt pretty much the same as the walls back home.

Jimmy was just wondering whether he should check for hidden doors or concealed levers, when he heard footsteps approaching. He panicked and ran along the passage a little way, his head throbbing as he searched for somewhere to hide. There was nowhere. How could you hide in a place like this? He realized that the only way to survive would probably be to surprise whoever it was, and the only way he could do that would be to lie down on the floor and suddenly leap up, before he was trodden on. Things didn’t go according to plan.

“Ahh! My nose—”

“Sorry, mate.”

Jimmy looked up and could just about make out a grubby countenance staring down at him. “Stump?” he managed. “I thought you’d gone.”

“Couldn’t get past the rock door,” said the prisoner, looking around the tunnel with a grim smile.

“No, I tried getting back out that way when I first came in,” said Jimmy.

“Sick and tired of this place,” sighed Stump.

“I’m not surprised. Good of you to come back, anyway. Even though you didn’t have any option.”

“Exactly,” said Stump. “So, how are you gettin’ on? Found the children yet, have you?”

Jimmy subjected him to a thoughtful look. “Do you see any children?”

The prisoner peered over his shoulder and shook his head.

“Well, then,” said Jimmy. “Let’s assume the obvious, shall we?”

Stump reached down to pick some grime from his toenails. “Pity about Mick,” he said, after a while. “I really liked him.”

“Why?” asked Jimmy. “What happened?”