War in Hagwood Page 23

  Of the sixteen spriggans who set out with him, only eight remained, and two of those were still rolling on the forest floor, gasping, after the log had swung into them. The rest of his fighting force looked battered and dented and the traps had made them jumpy.

  He grunted and ground his teeth and called upon his years of training and command. His eyes flicked from side to side. There was a strategy to all of this. The enemy was deliberately keeping them on the outskirts of the wood. Every trap was designed to prevent them from pressing deeper into the trees, to engage them here at the edge. Grittle almost admired the skill and cunning behind these tactics. It was all very efficient, almost military. But just what were those little tree rats protecting? Not their homes, some of which were already ablaze. What secret lay at the heart of this land?

  An unpleasant grin split the captain’s face. He was determined to discover what that was.

  “You two stop clutching at yer guts and fall in!” he shouted to his soldiers. “The rest, make sure yer torches are burning bright and everyone follow me. Don’t let none of them tiddly mites lead you astray—no matter what they does.”

  He sprang forward and darted southward into the trees with his eight remaining soldiers hurrying after him.

  Figgle Tumpin watched in dismay as the invaders rushed off. They had other defenses to keep those brutes busy here at the fringes of the woodland.

  Figgle ran along the branches and joined a large group of werlings who were poised with ropes and nets.

  “What is happening, Mister Tumpin?” asked the elderly but commanding Diffi Maffin.

  “They’re making a dash deeper into the wood!” he explained hurriedly. “We need to lure them back here. I’ll go pretend I’m hurt and get them chasing me.”

  “That won’t work!” Tidubelle Tumpin cried, pushing to the front and smiling grimly at him. “They’ve seen you dodge and duck around already and know how quick you are. They won’t fall for it again. We need to use our wits. This is wife work. They might just think they stand a chance of catching me.”

  “And they’d be right!” her husband retorted.

  A terse glance from her told him what she thought of that and in a trice she had leaped from the branch onto the one beneath, then scrambled down the trunk.

  The spriggans were charging deeper into the wood. They were just running past the old apple tree, beneath which the werling council met, when they heard a frightened scream.

  Captain Grittle turned and, by the light of the torches, saw a small stricken werling woman staring at them a little distance away, petrified with terror.

  “Help!” she yelled, too afraid to move. “Help!”

  Bogrinkle lunged aside to snatch at her but Grittle caught him by the neck and yanked him back.

  “Don’t trust it!” he growled.

  “But I can catch that, easy!” Bogrinkle protested.

  “Keep to this path,” his captain warned.

  Tidubelle pretended to master her fear and tried to run. With great dramatic effect, she let out a howl and artfully tripped over a tree root then nursed her ankle as though she had twisted it. “Ow … ow!” Tidubelle yelped as she tried to stand.

  The spriggans stared at her. It was too tantalizing. She was practically begging to be caught. Every instinct burned in them to leap at her, but their captain slapped their slavering faces.

  “Don’t you go buying none of that there mummery!” he berated. “’Tis only more dust in our eyes. This way is where we’re bound. Yonder is where those tree lice want to keep us away from, so let’s press on. That she-rat would be off up a tree sooner than you could blink and then we’d find ourselves in another pit or snare.”

  Tidubelle scowled as the spriggans hurried on, ignoring her. Her face looked as vexed as that of her daughter, Kernella, often did, and she kicked the root she had pretended to fall over.

  Silently and swiftly, her husband scrambled down the tree to join her and others quickly followed.

  “I tried my best,” Tidubelle said sadly.

  Figgle hugged her. “I know, Belle,” he sighed. “We’ve all done our best, but it wasn’t enough.”

  Mister Doolan held up his hand abruptly. “Listen!” he hissed. “Those devils have found the Silent Grove.”

  The werlings held their breaths.

  “Then we’ve lost the battle,” Figgle murmured.

  The spriggans had hastened on and rushed down into a wide, basin-shaped dell where many ancient beech trees grew. This was the heart of the werling land. Grittle and the other soldiers knew it at once.

  Even their uncouth and brutal senses could tell that this was a sacred place. The trees were incredibly old and misshapen. Great bulges and bumps disfigured them, yet they were magnificent and somber and commanded attention. Wumpit had the uncomfortable feeling they were alive and aware. It was as if they were watching and waiting. All was hushed and still and the leaves that trembled overhead made no sound. The air itself seemed different. It was thick and sleepy and peaceful and a faint musty sweetness floated beneath the branches like incense. Wumpit didn’t like it one little bit. Neither did the others.

  Their captain sniffed and stuck out his tongue at the disagreeable scent.

  “More tricks?” Bogrinkle asked suspiciously.

  “I ain’t so sure,” Grittle answered. “This is deeper, there’s magic in these ’ere beeches, old wild magic, sucked up from way down.”

  “Does a forest god live here?” Wumpit wondered in a fearful voice.

  “There ain’t no forest gods!” Grittle snapped back. “Only … Her Majesty.”

  “And Batar,” one of the others added.

  “Aye,” the captain said with a nod. “Her and the bloody Wolf of War. That’s all there is.”

  Wumpit thought of the brass wolf’s head back in the spriggan dormitory. “We didn’t leave any offering to Him afore we set out,” he said unhappily. “And the others didn’t leave none this morning neither. ’Tain’t no surprise they lost that battle and why we been thrashed so bad by such tiny wer-rats. Batar’s angry with us.”

  The captain struck him fiercely and rounded on the rest. “That’s enough of that sort of talk!” he yelled. “We’re going to show them vermin we’re not to be duped and made fools of. I doesn’t care what sort of magic flows through this place—I wants it torched!”

  “No!” cried many voices suddenly.

  The spriggans turned. Assembled on the surrounding slopes stood every adult werling who dwelled in that land. Defeat was in their faces and they looked anxious and afraid.

  “Ho!” Grittle declared. “Come to watch, have you?”

  An elderly, silver-haired specimen, with an authoritative bearing and a defiant expression on her lined face, stepped forward. It was Diffi Maffin, and when she spoke, the spriggans recognized her voice as the one that had given the orders to spring the traps.

  “You must not set flame to these holy trees!” she said. “They are sacred to us.”

  Grittle leered at her. “What makes them so special?” he demanded.

  “They are our history and heritage,” she answered proudly. “Our forebears are interred within them. They are the living tombs of our ancestors. We know every name of every generation placed inside and revere and honor each one. The blessed beeches are our future resting places. We will surrender to you if you do not harm them. There is nothing we prize so highly and we are nothing without them. You have conquered us—we have nothing left to fight for.”

  The captain’s face twitched again, half suspecting some new deceit but one look at those small, ludicrously honest faces confirmed she was speaking the truth. He signaled to six of his lads and, with drawn swords, they approached the werlings.

  “Round ’em up,” he ordered. “Keep them penned in. If they try anything, start hacking.”

  The spriggans drov
e the little people together like miniature cattle and stood in a circle around them. The werlings looked up at their ugly faces and eyed the glittering steel of their blades. There would be no mercy from those villains. Wives and husbands, friends and neighbors hugged one another and were thankful that they had sent the children over to the Barren Heath earlier that day to hide in burrows. At least they would be spared.

  Captain Grittle swaggered up the sloping bank and surveyed them with a contemptuous glare.

  “Puny low breeds,” he growled. “Think you can make donkeys out of Her Highness’s finest warriors and then give in when it gets too big for you?”

  He raised a hobnail-booted foot and gave Diffi Maffin a kick that sent the elderly councilor sprawling.

  “I never was one fer dumping carcasses in holes,” he declared with a malicious grin. “Such a dirty, heathen custom. Cremation is so much tidier. I does like to be tidy.”

  He snapped his fingers and Wumpit and Bogrinkle ran immediately to the nearest beech. To the werlings’ horror, they laid their kindling down and within moments a greedy fire was blazing.

  “Stop it!” they begged. “Our families! Our loved ones—our glorious lineage!”

  Captain Grittle guffawed and shouted to his soldiers to continue.

  Presently, every tree within the Silent Grove was burning. The heat and the roar of the flames were unbearable. Bogrinkle and Wumpit came hurrying up the bank with their hair smoldering and their faces blackened with smoke.

  The werlings could only stare at the awful spectacle. Some were mouthing the names of their ancestors, but most of them were too aghast to do anything but watch as the enchanted and mysterious trees withered and charred in the destroying flame. Perhaps it was the shimmering haze or the stinging smoke in their eyes, but it seemed to them that the beeches were writhing and twisting in agony.

  Captain Grittle threw back his head and laughed, then gave orders to set the rest of the woodland alight.

  “And when every tree is burning,” he announced, “then me and the lads will get our knives wet.”

  One by one the oaks and chestnuts, rowans and sycamores were put to the flame. The hazel tree in which children had received their wergling instruction blazed fiercely and the council apple tree was engulfed in rivers of brilliant fire.

  Enjoying themselves immensely, the spriggans herded the defeated werlings away from the Silent Grove and through the burning woodland. The air was scorching. It burned their mouths when they breathed and singed the hairs on their heads. The night was filled with choking smoke and sparks. Flakes of drifting ash swirled thickly in the hot draughts, glimmering like clouds of sizzling butterflies. Their whole world was on fire. Everything they knew was gone.

  At the western edge of the wood, where the trees grew thin and a verge of grass and wildflowers lay before the cinder trackway, the spriggans halted and looked back at their handiwork.

  “Never been a fire like it!” Captain Grittle said proudly. “Proper inferno. She won’t have no complaint nor grumble about that. It’s enough to blister even the moon’s crusty hind parts. Job well done, that is, lads.”

  He turned to glower at the werlings, pulled a blade from his belt and added with a sickening hiss, “Or, should I say, a job half done?”

  The other spriggans held up their swords and knives, admiring the polished steel and how it mirrored the ferocious, raging light.

  “We should skewer some of these,” Wumpit said, pointing at the defeated werlings with the tip of his knife. “They might make a tasty bite if roasted.”

  “No more than three each if they do,” the captain declared. “I want to hang the rest from poles and take them back to Her so She can count the little corpses and see we’ve done our duty.”

  “Let’s get jabbing then,” Bogrinkle said. “I hopes they dance about a bit and make it lively.”

  “Just kill ’em,” Grittle ordered sternly. “But I bags that uppity old harpy what gave the orders before—and the fat one with the bushy tail.”

  The werlings closed their eyes as weapons were drawn back and each spriggan selected his first victim.

  FINNEN LUFKIN FLEW as fast as his new wings would carry him. The vast sprawl of Hagwood rushed beneath but he saw only the rim of fire that fringed the forest’s western edge. He did not notice the desperate figure of Grimditch clutching the little lordling upon the Hollow Hill, nor did he glance back when the trumpets blasted and the ground rumbled.

  The angry glare of greedy flames shone red before him. If only he could fly faster, he might arrive in time to help the werlings—unless it was already too late.

  He flew into the suffocating smoke and the furious beating of his wings made it surge and eddy in turbulent whirls around him. His bright blackbird eyes were streaming and the baking heats of the fires below were singeing his feathers.

  Flying as low as he dared, he tried to see through the leaping flames but there was no sign of the other werlings. Were they being burned alive within the trees or had they escaped? He called out at the top of his voice but his cries were drowned in the raging firestorm.

  Hurtling through the burning woodland, he finally beheld the furious, unstoppable fires that squalled throughout the Silent Grove. The horrendous sight was so alarming that he stopped beating his wings in shock. It was a disastrous blunder. Down he dropped. His feathers were burning and he yelled in pain.

  The blackbird fell to the steaming ground, a smoking, straggly bundle rolling helplessly down the slope into the grove.

  Devouring flames raced in every direction and the intense heat seared his lungs when he gulped for breath. Finnen looked around for the fire devil that had fallen from his grasp. The silver talisman was lying halfway up the bank, gleaming an infernal red, and he leaped upon it desperately. The wings shrank into his arms and the smoldering feathers dissolved. The bright yellow beak melted into his face and Finnen Lufkin swept the hair from his eyes.

  “The beeches!” he exclaimed, overthrown by despair. “Everything we are and have been, our history, all gone, all burning.”

  He tore his eyes away from that dreadful scene and stared into the woodland beyond. The trees there were like mighty pillars of fire upholding a lofty ceiling of smoke and sparks. Then he glimpsed something through the flaming tempest that made his heart thunder in his chest: A gang of spriggans were herding the werlings toward the cinder trackway.

  Hope burned in Finnen’s veins more fiercely than any of the surrounding fires. There was still a chance. But what could he do on his own against armed soldiers?

  He glanced around feverishly. Spriggans feared nothing, except the High Lady and the touch of water. His grandmother had told him many stories about them when he was younger and he ransacked his memory for anything that might help him now.

  Was Liffidia wrong to have such faith in him? He knew he was a fraud. His great wergling skill had been a grotesque cheat. He had chewed wood shavings stolen from the Lufkin beech to boost his powers of transformation and the shame of that ghoulish crime would always torment him.

  A wild and reckless idea flashed into his mind and Finnen broke into a huge grin. It was a crazy plan that probably wouldn’t work but, whatever else he was—cheat, liar, fraud—Finnen knew he wasn’t a coward.

  With fierce determination, he strode down into the maelstrom of the grove once more. Old fallen beechnuts were exploding on the ground and the seething air was filled with their flying shrapnel. Flames were dripping from above and smoke as thick as mud flowed densely between the blazing trees.

  His jaw set, Finnen marched fearlessly into the dark, billowing fumes. The thick black vapor wreathed about him and, in a moment, the boy was lost completely in the churning, blinding smoke.

  THE SPRIGGANS’ KNIVES WERE POISED to spear their chosen werling victims when a strange sound cut through the roar of the massive fires.

  The sprig
gans jerked their heads back toward the flaming woodland and their blood ran cold.

  “What were that?” Wumpit warbled.

  Bogrinkle spluttered and began to tremble. “I knowed what that were!” he gibbered. “Was a w … w … wolf.”

  The other spriggans gaped fearfully. “No,” they burbled. “Can’t be.”

  Captain Grittle scolded them. “You superstitious, thin-blooded ladies!” he jeered. “’Course it weren’t that!”

  Suddenly, the fearsome noise blasted out again. This time it was louder and nearer and unmistakable. It was the howl of a wolf.

  “There ain’t no such beasts in Hagwood!” the captain yelled, trying to quell his own rising panic. “Not since the troll witches slew ’em all, long before our time. You lot know that.”

  The howl ripped through the night once more and four of the spriggans began backing away.

  “Batar!” Bogrinkle gibbered. “The God of War has come to punish us!”

  “There’s more hot air in you than in the whole of that blasted furnace!” Grittle barked back. “’Tis only the fire wind wailing through hollow logs.”

  Wumpit’s face fell and he raised a quaking finger, pointing through the trees. “Well that ain’t no wind!” he shrieked. “It’s Him! I said He was angry! We didn’t leave an offering and now He’s here!”

  They stared into the burning wood and every spriggan whimpered in fright. A great shape was running under the flaming oaks, racing toward them. Its savage eyes were more hellish than the fires it leaped through and its ravening jaws were snapping and snarling.

  “No!” Captain Grittle cried.

  It was a massive, monstrous wolf.

  The spriggans screeched and fled to the trackway. Only their captain stood his ground, but the knife was quivering in his fist and his knees were buckling.

  He had never dreamed such a hideous moment would ever come. Batar was more terrible than he had imagined. The figure was as large as a horse, the coarse wolf fur was streaked with scarlet, and the fangs looked sharper than his best blades.

  “Spare me!” Grittle wailed, falling on his knees and cowering. “I’m a brave warrior—I am—I am! It’s the others you want—not me!”