War in Hagwood Page 14

  “’Tis true then,” she said, slopping green milk over the floor as she planted her bare feet apart and regarded the almost-empty barracks. “I’d heard your lot had run off. How come you stayed behind? Scared, was yer?”

  The enraged spriggans sprang to their feet and snatched up their daggers.

  “We ain’t scared of nowt!” Captain Grittle roared, puffing out his chest so that the family medals clattered together. “An’ they did not run off, orders from Her Majesty most like.”

  “We was out the whole night on special commission, catchin’ barn bogles!” Wumpit boasted. “If we’d have been here for the order, we’d have marched out with the rest! Hearts and stomachs of iron we have.”

  “Don’t you be leavin’ that nasty wet mess on our floor!” Bogrinkle warned her.

  The goblin scoffed and slopped a bit more milk on purpose. “Such brave warriors,” she laughed. “’Fraid of naught, ’less it’s wet an’ drippy. Then you hitch up yer skirts and pelt, squealin’ like so many urchins bobbin’ in a pot.”

  “Get you gone!” the captain threatened.

  “’Least we ain’t affrighted of the sunshine!” Wumpit barked.

  “Where’s Fat Jansis with our ration of worms and cheese?” Bogrinkle demanded.

  The milkmaid chortled and spilled even more of her burden. “Jansis thought it weren’t needed,” she told them. “The Redcaps weren’t there fer my milk dole, an’ seein’ as how some of your crew have only just started dribblin’ and drabblin’ back, all shamed an’—”

  “They’re back?” Grittle cried. “Where? How many? And when?”

  She shrugged and again the buckets tipped.

  “About a dozen or less,” she said. “’Least there was when I went to gander at the south gate. The door guards are holdin’ them there till they knows what to do with ’em. Ooh you should see the bruisy glares your lads are flinging ’em. But them’s proper scared all the same and look like kicked dogs. The guards are havin’ good sport chafin’ ’em.”

  Captain Grittle pulled his boots back on, too angry to even bother with his socks. “Oh, is they?” he growled. “I’ll not stand by and allow that!”

  He leaped over the widening pool of green milk and stormed off down the hallway, heading for the main south gate. Ordering the milkmaid to mop the floor and fetch their rations, Wumpit and Bogrinkle hurried after him.

  Squinting Wheyleen dredged the finger from her nose and flicked the harvest into one of the buckets. Then she shambled her way to the dairy.

  At the south gate, fourteen spriggans were lined against the wall and Waggarinzil was taunting them. They were the first to have returned after the humiliating fiasco that morning at the Battle of Watch Well. Peg-tooth Meg had sent them fleeing into the forest when she summoned the well waters to burst forth and rain down. Once their blind panic had ebbed and they found themselves wandering in the trees, they immediately realized the horrendous trouble they were in. They were deserters.

  The bravest of them decided the only honorable course was to return to the Hollow Hill and face their punishment. Others slew themselves rather than confront the High Lady’s wrath and many more were still lost in the wild woods.

  Those brave fourteen now stood, sheepish and cowed, in front of Waggarinzil. He was having a very satisfying day and could scarcely wait for the Queen to return, but whiling away the time tormenting this sorry lot was the most fun he had enjoyed in ages. The spriggans had always bragged about their courage and how being infantry was so much more honorable than sitting atop a horse in battle. They had often derided the door wardens, calling them nothing more than ignoble butlers.

  Waggarinzil licked his lips. He had years of conceited insults to repay.

  Each one had been disarmed as soon as he had come staggering through the gates and the confiscated weapons were ranged in a gleaming row on the ground before them.

  “By the old wolf’s blood!” he bawled. “If you had tails they’d be clamped tight twixt your legs! I never saw a more hobbled clump of craven daisies. Where’s your vaunted dandy-cock swaggering now, eh?”

  Parading up and down, his gauntleted thumbs tucked into his belt, his ugly, piglike smirking face mocked them.

  “Look at you,” he scorned. “The famous standard bearing foot soldiers, sniveling and trembling like the frightened sheep you really are. So, what happened out there? What scattered you and forced the High Lady to come back and whip the Redcaps to finish what you’d started?”

  The spriggans shook their heads miserably. They were too ashamed to repeat it and they bitterly regretted returning to the hill.

  It was then that Captain Grittle came blustering in.

  “What’s this slouching?” he shouted. “There’s no room for slacking in my garrison. Straighten up there, Jibbler, and you, Chumpwattle—wipe that snotty nose!”

  The old training seized control of them immediately and they stamped to attention.

  “Don’t you barge in here and spout your orders,” Waggarinzil told him crossly. “This is out of your jurisdiction.”

  Grittle grabbed the hilt of one of his knives. “Step aside, gate slave!” he snapped. “This is infantry business and I’ll have your head as a basket to keep our old socks in if you don’t move out of my way.”

  “By my leathery liver,” the goblin breathed, narrowing his fierce green eyes. “You’ll pay for that before this day is done.”

  “What’s a servile chain puller goin’ to do to me?” sneered Captain Grittle. “Set hoity-toity Fanderyn on me if you want. He don’t scare me neither. I’m the High Lady’s bodyguard, remember.”

  Waggarinzil chuckled foully. “You won’t get no bother from m’lord Fanderyn,” he said with a sly, inscrutable smile. “But this matter comes under gate regulations so these straggly pigeons are mine. Cast your slanties on that wibbly lot; they’re half jelly with fear and I mean to find out why.”

  Hearing the word jelly the spriggans grimaced and shuddered at the memory of the sluglungs they had fought.

  “They was ’orrible!” one of them burbled.

  “Who was ’orrible?” Captain Grittle demanded.

  “Nasty frogspawn vilies,” answered another. “But we was battlin’ like heroes and would’ve won through if … if the wet hadn’t come gushing up and pouring down.”

  The captain slapped his own face. “And you ran!” he seethed. “One spit of drizzle and you scream like popped mice.”

  Waggarinzil let out a belly-shaking laugh. “So that’s all it was!” he cried. “The mighty garrison went scampering in case their bloomers got drenched. Hoo hoo—She won’t have liked that.”

  He nodded at the other door wardens and winked at one of them to run and tell the torturers to stoke their braziers and get the tongs ready.

  “I shouldn’t like to be in your skins once they gets to work on you,” he sniggered. “But then, in a day or two, you might not be wearing your skins anyway.”

  Captain Grittle knew he was right. The garrison had fled in the midst of battle. There was no crime worse than that for a spriggan. The traditional, deserved punishment was to be strangled by their own mothers in order to preserve the honor of the family name. Yet he understood too well that morbid, unreasoning terror of water. He would have done the same.

  “Is this all there is of you?” he asked in a leaden voice. “Where are the other captains?”

  The shame-faced soldiers shook their heads and stared at the floor.

  “Still racing like hares ’neath the trees, I’ll wager!” Waggarinzil cackled. “What a day this is!”

  While he guffawed, Bogrinkle and Wumpit came running up behind their captain—but before they could ask what was happening, they all heard a steady thudding rhythm overhead. Out on the hillside, a horse was descending.

  “It’s Her!” the spriggans wailed as one.

 
Waggarinzil rubbed his gauntleted hands together. After he watched the High Lady vent her fury upon those cowards, he would give her the enchanted key and inform against the conspirators. It really was the best of days.

  Suddenly, the great doors yawned open. The first pale shadows of evening were gathering outside and Dewfrost, the silver-white mare, came cantering into the Hollow Hill bearing Rhiannon Rigantona on her back.

  Waggarinzil was the first to greet the Queen with a flourishing bow.

  The High Lady ignored him and turned her lovely face to the petrified spriggans.

  “So,” she said, in an icy voice that chilled them even more. “Is this all who have slunk back?”

  “Aye, Your Supremeness,” Waggarinzil informed her, still locked in his scraping bow.

  The owl on her shoulder opened its golden eyes wide as he stared at the commander of the door guards. The untrustworthy goblin had never groveled quite so much before, and the bird’s well-honed suspicious mind pondered on it. What treasonous wheels were in motion under that mail coif? But its mistress was speaking and the owl had to spin its head about to pay attention. He would cogitate on the goblin’s unprecedented smarm later.

  “You have debased the repute of the Hollow Hill,” she condemned the spriggans. “Never in the long history of this realm was there ever such a faithless dereliction of duty. I should not suffer you to live an instant longer, unless it be wracked by the worst torments my dungeons can devise, for throttling is too lenient a sentence for you rabbit-hearted lice. Your names will be bywords for cowardice and dishonor for as long as the standing stones endure.”

  Her soldiers fell on their knees and wept. They could not bear the pitiless glint stabbing from those cold eyes.

  Captain Grittle and his two lackies set their jaws against the inexhaustible malevolence that flowed from her. The others were doomed to agonizing and lingering deaths. Grittle stared at the floor. His only consolation was the bright thought that he could have the pick of the booty in their quarters now.

  Then, to the amazement of everyone present, spriggans, goblins, and even the owl, the High Lady said, “You have disgraced your once-proud legion, yet there is still a chance for your redemption.”

  Waggarinzil started and stood upright, his surprise displayed fully on his porcine face.

  “My Lady?” blurted Captain Grittle.

  She bestowed a smile upon them, perhaps more terrible than any sign of anger because it was so wholly unexpected.

  “I have a task for you,” she announced. “Succeed in this and your dereliction of duty will be atoned for and forgiven.”

  The spriggans could hardly believe their ears. Surely this was some trick?

  “Wha-what would you bid us do, M’Lady?” one of them stammered.

  Rhiannon ran her fingers through her horse’s silver mane. “There is a strip of woodland,” she began, “in the western corner of my realm. It lies between the old cinder track to the west and the Hagburn. I want you to march there at once, without delay.”

  The spriggans nodded briskly, unable to understand why they had been pardoned, when none had ever been before. But they weren’t about to argue or question it.

  “That woodland is overrun with vermin,” she continued. “Disease-ridden wer-rats have infested the trees. They must be destroyed and the wood purified with fire. Do you understand? Let none of those creatures escape. I want them killed, every last one. Leave nothing but charcoal and smoking bones behind.”

  “W-wer-rats?” the spriggans murmured ignorantly.

  The High Lady’s eyes flashed at them with impatience.

  “Some of them were present at the well this morning,” she said. “But the redoubtable Captain Grittle knows them also. He encountered one by the Crone’s Maw.”

  “The spying soapy weasel!” Grittle declared.

  Wumpit pulled a face. “Is there more of them lickle things?” he asked. “Eewww!”

  “Just so,” Rhiannon said. “Now be gone, Captain. Lead your foot soldiers and be sure the task is accomplished.”

  The reprieved spriggans hastily grubbed up their weapons and praised the High Lady for her clemency, and they were out of the door before she could change her mind.

  Last to leave, Captain Grittle and his two subordinates saluted her. “For the honor of the legion,” he announced.

  “No Captain,” she corrected. “For obeying your Queen and the extermination of Her enemies. See that you do not fail in this.”

  “Not one of those pink rats will escape my knives,” he promised. And with a final nod, he, Wumpit, and Bogrinkle hurried out into the evening.

  While they had departed from view, the owl held on tightly to its mistress’s shoulder as she dismounted and gave the reins to Waggarinzil.

  “Keep Dewfrost here,” she commanded. “There is not time to summon the esquire from the stables; I shall return swiftly and ride out once more.”

  The goblin bowed again, but by the time he raised his head, she was already striding through the courtyard, headed for the hallway beyond.

  Waggarinzil pushed the reins into another guard’s hand and went lumbering after her.

  “Gracious Majesty!” he called urgently. “I would have words with you.”

  The High Lady showed no sign she had heard him and continued on her way. Only the owl turned its head around to see the goblin come running after them.

  “If it please you, Your Ladyship?” Waggarinzil implored. “I have information of the highest import to relay, and …”

  “Do not dare hound thy Queen in this fashion!” the owl hooted back at him. “Return to thy gate duties.”

  “But I have this day unmasked a most treasonous plot,” Waggarinzil insisted. “They are conspiring to usurp our most fair and noble ruler!”

  Rhiannon wheeled about and the full power of her wintry glance fell on him.

  The goblin halted and cast his eyes down.

  “Tell me,” she demanded. “Yet I warn you, if this is some minor, prattling species of testimony intended to paint your own petty enemies in unfavorable colors, you have chosen the wrong day. I shall cut off those flapping ears of yours and feed them to you, then nail your tongue to the very door you are supposed to be guarding.”

  Waggarinzil shook his head so hard that his whiskery jowls joggled and one of his ears hit him in the eye.

  “Never, My Queen!” he vowed. “By my scales, I swear it. This is most vital, the biggest hazard to your throne there ever was.”

  Her eyes burned at him.

  “Explain,” she commanded. “And quickly!”

  The goblin took a breath as he marshaled his thoughts and sorted them in order. He would save the revelation of the key till last.

  “It was Lord Fanderyn,” he began. “This very day he called a secret meeting by the tomb of your dead father, the High King.”

  The High Lady and her owl regarded him afresh.

  “’Tis death to enter there!” the owl cried. “What miscreants attended this heinous assembly?”

  With the exception of Gabbity, Waggarinzil recounted everyone who was there. The nursemaid’s presence was bound up with the key and therefore part of his main disclosure.

  “Suspected brewers of dissent, each one,” the owl remarked. “Such vain folly. What doth they hope to achieve? They are but paltry spiders, spinning trifling webs to catch the lightning.”

  The unrelenting glare that beat from Rhiannon’s eyes pricked and stung the door guard. He could feel her seeking out his innermost hidden thoughts, trying to peel away his guile and uncover the truth.

  “Why was this meeting so different?” she demanded. “Why risk so much to repeat the same tired bleating?”

  “Ah,” Waggarinzil said. “You put your royal finger straight on it, Majesty. Fanderyn told them there was summat out there in the forest, summat new foun
d, that you was frighted of—”

  “He dared say that?” the owl screeched in outrage. “Noble or no, his head is forfeit!”

  Rhiannon’s face became even more frozen. “Did he say what manner of thing this was?” she asked in a glacial voice that made the goblin catch his breath and set his scales crawling.

  “Said it were a gold box,” he answered.

  There was ghastly pause. The owl was so shocked to hear those words that its talons bit into its mistress’s shoulder and blood welled through the cloth of her mantle. No trace of pain showed on her face.

  “A gold box?” she repeated in a calm yet deadly voice. “Why should I fear such a thing? Did Fanderyn say what it contained?”

  “N-No, Your Mightiness,” the goblin stuttered, wishing he was far away from her baneful glance. “If he knew, then he weren’t telling. But he sent the others into the forest to hunt for it. The nobles and their followers left some while ago by their own hidden ways, but the goblin knights are still here, waiting for the sun to set. They’ll be creeping out soon, I’ll wager. And the kluries have been sneaking here and there with poisoned words all the day.”

  “But the others have gone in search of this box?” the owl screeched. “With the sole intent of doing their Queen harm. Death is too generous a gift to bestow upon them!”

  Rhiannon held the goblin with her penetrating stare. “There is more to tell,” she said. “Continue.”

  Waggarinzil felt as though a thousand scorching knives were slashing at him and sweat was pouring from under his coif.

  “One other was there!” he confessed in a rush. “One close by you, Your Sovereign Majesty.”

  The High Lady’s head reared slightly and for an awful instant the owl thought the goblin was accusing him. His creamy feathers were already fluffed in righteous indignation when his mistress whispered, “Gabbity.”

  “Yes, Highness,” Waggarinzil declared. “She was there; she betrayed you.”

  Rhiannon Rigantona’s eyes left the commander of the door guards and at once the horrendous, piercing tension collapsed. His knees buckled under him and he mopped his face, breathing hard.