War in Hagwood Page 3

  “Looks long dead,” she said sniffily. “Best you can do is smoke it over oak chips—easiest way to hide the bitter, bogley taste, barrin’ pickling.”

  Captain Grittle clenched his teeth and tried to control his temper. “You doesn’t know its proper dead till you inspect it,” he told her.

  “Me waste my good nursin’ on a common barn bogle?” she cried. “What do M’Lady want it for? She’s got better pets than that hairy skelly bones.”

  “There’s questions it must answer,” the spriggan explained. “Vital questions, so you see, you have to keep it livin’ long enough for that.”

  Gabbity grumbled to herself then pushed the door wide.

  “Get you over there at a safe distance,” she told Captain Grittle as she came out, waving her knitting needle at him. “Now, you two dim daisies lay the beast down and back away.”

  “Doesn’t you want us to carry it in there?” Wumpit volunteered.

  “And have you gawp and slobber over my little lordling?” she shrieked in outrage. “I’ll pop all three of your heads like balloons first.”

  Lunging forward, she thrust her needle at them. Wumpit and Bogrinkle put their burden down smartly and sprang away.

  Gabbity pursed her lips and crouched by the barn bogle.

  Grimditch—the poor, bedraggled, impish creature who had guided Gamaliel Tumpin through the deadly forest—was deathly still. Lying on his stomach, his face against the floor, the bogle looked stone dead. The rags that covered his back were dark with blood and Gabbity stared at the dagger hilt that jutted from his shoulders with a sorry shake of her head. Gingerly, she placed a bony finger to his neck and groped for any sign of life.

  Long moments passed. The three spriggans looked on with anxious faces.

  “Well?” Captain Grittle asked at length.

  Her knees clicking, the goblin rose.

  “There’s a gnat’s cough of a chance,” she said, rolling up her sleeves and gently lifting the bogle in her sinewy arms. “I’ll sees what can be done, but the mangy beast’s got both feet in Death’s own country and only a toenail in ours.”

  With that, she carried the creature into the chamber and shut the door behind her.

  Left outside, Captain Grittle exchanged gloomy looks with the others. Then he cursed and spat on the floor.

  “I didn’t get me knife back!” he fumed.

  GABBITY PLACED HER NEW PATIENT ON A STONE TABLE and lit several candles.

  “Now,” she said, begrudgingly. “Let’s see what the High Lady’s old nurse can do for you. You was lucky them brutes didn’t dip their blades in Redcap poison before spearing you. They do that sometimes. Of course, you’d have been luckier still if they’d have missed.”

  Humming to herself, she tore the tattered fragments of cloth from Grimditch’s back and then hunted in her knitting bags, fishing out bundles of dried herbs and two jars of foul-smelling ointment. Adding a pinch of mud-colored powder from a small wooden box in her pocket, she mixed the ingredients vigorously in a bowl and smeared the noxious concoction around the wound before attempting to draw the dagger out.

  Very gently, she placed a hand upon the hilt and pulled. The weapon slid clear while, with her other hand, Gabbity clapped even more of the reeking mixture over the wound to seal it, calling on the ancient forest gods to imbue her paste with healing virtue.

  The barn bogle uttered a feeble cry of pain and shuddered.

  Gabbity gurgled with satisfaction, but her delight was soon replaced by frowning concern and she gave the bogle a cautious prod.

  “Don’t you die now!” she warned. “Not after I’ve gone to all this trouble!”

  Hurriedly wiping her hands on her skirts, she felt for the creature’s pulse again and moaned dismally.

  “On its last croak,” she lamented. “Won’t be long now. M’Lady won’t be pleased with you, stupid bogle—or with Her Gabbity.”

  Unnerved by the prospect of her mistress’s wrath, the goblin nursemaid grimaced and crept miserably back to her stool, but was too nervous to resume her knitting. The spriggans should have brought the beast to her sooner. Yes, they must take the blame.

  Within the cradle, the infant stirred and kicked his chubby legs in enchanted slumber. The pale radiance welled up for a moment and danced in Gabbity’s eyes.

  “Be still, my Podgy Pup,” she whispered. Then, suddenly, an idea gripped her and she leaped to her feet once more.

  “Just a meager scrounging!” she cried out. “Nothing that would be missed. Why, less than a cap’s worth would do it, I reckon.”

  Excited, she drew the gossamer canopy aside, and the spiders that crouched there scuttled to safety.

  Reaching down, the goblin dipped her fingers into the cradle. The soft light of the child’s life force flickered and trembled and Gabbity held her breath. Carefully, she scooped out a shimmering handful. It shone upon her palm like the first frail beams of daylight and she hurried back to the table before it could fade.

  “Here now,” she addressed the dying barn bogle. “Gulp this down and be healed.”

  She pushed her hands under Grimditch’s nose and, as he gasped and sighed his final breaths, the pulsing glow was drawn into his mouth and nostrils.

  When it was done, Gabbity clasped her hands under her chin and waited in anticipation.

  She did not have to wait long.

  In an instant, every hair on the barn bogle’s scalp bristled and his beard crackled and writhed. A shiver ran through him and his toes jiggled.

  Groggily, he raised his head, opened one bleary eye, stared at the goblin nursemaid, and yelped, “Urgh—you be powerful ugly!”

  Then his head fell forward again and he began to snore.

  Gabbity scowled and regretted saving the ungrateful wretch.

  “You’ll not be so full of chaff when M’Lady’s back,” she scolded.

  She was about to return to her seat when her glance fell upon a small leather purse strung about the waist of the barn bogle’s torn breeches.

  It was a moment’s work to open it, delve inside and fish out the contents.

  “Rat bones!” she snorted in disgust, sorting through a well-gnawed selection. “I’ve always said barn bogles are nowt but …”

  The insult died on her crabbed lips as she lifted up something that was certainly no rat bone. Between her thumb and forefinger gleamed a dainty, golden key.

  * Chapter 2 *

  The Drum of War

  GAMALIEL TUMPIN STARED MISERABLY at the rat bone in his hand. “Grimditch swapped it!” he repeated to the others around him.

  His friends Finnen Lufkin, Tollychook Umbelnapper, and Liffidia Nefyn; his sister, Kernella; and the two large, strange-looking people—Peg-tooth Meg and the Tower Lubber—said nothing. Bufus Doolan, however, had plenty to say.

  “Oh, well done, Gammy!” he jeered. “Our one chance to get rid of the High Lady and you’ve gone and messed it up—typical, that is. You stupid, great lump of … of stupidness! Have you been taking lessons on being extra thick and gormless? You must be top of the class in idiot school. How can anyone be so hopeless and dim? I’ve trodden in things with more sense than you and sneezed out more brains than you’ll ever have.”

  While the Doolan boy ranted, Finnen Lufkin tore his eyes from the rat bone in his friend’s hand. Even he was furious with Gamaliel. After everything they had endured, the perils they had survived, to have lost, here at the end, through sheer carelessness, was a bitterness beyond anything he had ever known and he didn’t trust himself to speak.

  The sunlight beat upon his neck and he looked around the clearing as if searching for an answer to their plight.

  Bodies of spriggans, birds, and sluglungs littered the surrounding grass. The battle had been brief but bloody and Finnen knew a greater, deadlier confrontation was yet to come. The High Lady’s wrath would
soon crash down on them.

  The two score surviving sluglungs crowded around the wellhead where he and the others were gathered. Their toadlike eyes were fixed upon their mistress, Peg-tooth Meg: a hunched figure with lank green hair and pallid gray skin who had hidden in the caves beneath Hagwood for many, many years.

  Finnen stared at her. It was almost impossible to believe that, in truth, she was Princess Clarisant, Rhiannon’s sister who had fled from the Hollow Hill with her lover, Prince Tammedor. In order to escape the tyrant’s vengeance, they had assumed grotesque new forms and hidden from her, waiting for some new hope or chance to present itself while the years rolled by. But even that had been in vain.

  Finnen looked down at the stone ring of the wellhead. A golden casket glittered in the sunlight next to him, containing the High Lady’s one weakness: Rhiannon’s own heart, still beating due to dark magic. Without the key there was no way of reaching it.

  Frustration boiled up inside him and he almost threw the casket down the well. Instead, he let out a cry and kicked the empty air.

  “Kick Gammy down,” Bufus suggested, shrewdly guessing what was running through his mind. “He’s not good for anything else, and it’d save me the bother of throttling him.”

  Ashamed and disgusted with himself, Gamaliel hung his head. He had failed everyone.

  “I’m sorry,” he said in a voice choked with emotion. “I didn’t know Grimditch had swapped it. … If I had …”

  “Oh, stop sniveling,” his sister, Kernella, scolded, looking more vexed than ever before. “You’ll get no sympathy from me, nor no one else.”

  The Tower Lubber’s eyes had been plucked out long ago by the High Lady and replaced with wooden pegs. Now he turned his blind face to the miserable boy and asked gently, “Who is this Grimditch? What manner of creature is he?”

  Gamaliel was grateful for the softness of his tone, but he had to clear his throat to steady his voice and struggle not to burst into tears when he answered.

  “A barn bogle,” he replied. “A bit barmy and impish, but he saved my life more than once. He won’t give the key to the High Lady—I’m sure of it.”

  The Tower Lubber laughed bleakly. “She’ll rip it from him quick enough,” he said. “And that’s before She throws him upon the mercy of the torturers for their sport.”

  Peg-tooth Meg lifted the golden casket in her large, clammy hands. A mournful weeping could be heard coming from the enchanted heart within.

  “We were so close,” she murmured. “So close to putting an end to her reign once and for all.”

  “Are you sure there ain’t no way of opening that thing?” Bufus asked. “How about whacking it with a great big stone? It’s sure to smash—or even a dent would do. We only need a little crack or chink, just big enough to push a knife in and turn the heart to mincemeat.”

  “There is no way,” Peg-tooth Meg said flatly. “The Puccas crafted this, and their skill with metal had no rival. The casket is woven about with spells and only the key will unlock it. My sister is safer now than she has been in all the long years she has sat upon our father’s throne.”

  A grumbling rumble interrupted her and Tollychook blushed. The mention of mincemeat reminded him that he was famished and his stomach growled loudly.

  “’Scuse me,” he mumbled shyly.

  “So what are we going to do?” Kernella demanded, ignoring him.

  “Rhiannon will return,” the Tower Lubber answered grimly. “She will bring her most bloodthirsty servants: the Redcaps. We will not survive the onslaught.”

  “So we’re supposed to just stand here and wait for that?” she cried. “I don’t think so!”

  “Me either!” cried Bufus.

  “There is no escaping them,” Peg-tooth Meg said. “They are little more than wild beasts and they revel in carnage.”

  “Well, I’m not stopping to meet them!” Kernella declared and she took hold of the rope that trailed down into the well.

  “There is no refuge down there,” Meg told her. “My sister will drive them into every cavern.”

  “You would be devoured in the darkness,” the Tower Lubber added. “It is better to die here, beneath the sun.”

  The jellylike creatures around the well muttered to themselves. The sluglungs blinked their great round eyes in the bright daylight. They preferred the damp and dark places underground, but if Meg, their mistress, chose to remain here, then they too would stay.

  Liffidia stroked the neck of Fly, her fox cub, and hugged him tightly. “I don’t care what happens,” she whispered to him. “So long as we’re together.”

  Bufus scrunched up his freckled face in disdain.

  “So that’s it then?” he shouted. “We just give up? We might as well march to the Hill and deliver ourselves to save Her Ladyship the bother.”

  “There is nothing we can do,” the Tower Lubber said gently.

  Bufus rounded on him. “There’s always something we can do!” the boy yelled vehemently. “If Her Redcaps want to breakfast on werling, I’m not going to make it easy for them. I’ll fight back with every bite they take out of me! I’ll rub poisonous leaves on my skin and stuff more in my pockets. I’ll be one unhappy meal they won’t enjoy the taste of.”

  “That’s just like you,” Kernella said sniffily. “You’ve always made everyone sick.”

  “Wait!” Finnen cried, his despair changing to excitement. “Bufus is right. So what if we don’t have the key? I’m not simply going to bow down before Her—I’m going to fight till the end.”

  A smile spread over the Tower Lubber’s wind-burned face. The werlings’ defiance was infectious.

  “In my old kingdom, there were few knights as stout of heart as you small folk!” he exclaimed. “Great courage blazes in the littlest breast. We shall make one last stand against Rhiannon Rigantona and Her bloodthirsty horde. One final battle before the eternal dark takes us.”

  The sluglungs gripped their rusty swords and shook them excitedly.

  “Megboo!” they called, brandishing the blades before Peg-tooth Meg.

  The woman clasped the Lubber’s large leathery hand and squeezed it. “I would have gladly died with you those many years ago,” she said. “Now I know that not even death shall divide us.”

  “No more talk of death,” her blind lover answered. “This open ground is no place to meet the Redcaps; we must hasten to my tower and there speak of war—quickly.”

  Urgently, the Tower Lubber led the way from the well and through the trees. He had walked that path every day for hundreds of years and knew every stone upon the soil and every root that lifted it.

  Hunched beside him, the golden casket clutched in her hand, Peg-tooth Meg hurried as fast as her cave-warped bones permitted. She sent one of her sluglungs back down the well to fetch her macabre harp and the rest of the slimy creatures swarmed thickly about her. Some formed a guard around the werlings who, now under her protection, were treated with the highest honor and respect.

  And so they hurried to the broken watchtower. Climbing a flight of stone steps, they crowded inside the infirmary where the Tower Lubber tended to sick and wounded birds. It was busier than when they had last seen it, for the survivors of the battle had swelled the numbers of the patients and the Lubber’s helpers were scurrying to and fro, giving what aid they could. A chorus of agonized squawks and frightened twittering filled the great circular room and the featherless chicken matron was clucking and fussing around those in the greatest need.

  Gazing at the scene, Liffidia was filled with pity and compassion. She wanted to go and help, but Fly needed her too, and she would not be parted from him. Liffidia drew the cub to one side and he laid his head upon her lap. He needed rest more than anything, for he had run a long distance to be with her and, almost at once, fell into a deep healing sleep.

  The Tower Lubber took Meg, Finnen, Gamaliel
, Kernella, and Bufus up the winding stone stairs to the roof.

  Tollychook chose to remain with Liffidia. If there was any food available, it would be in the infirmary. He hoped his last meal before the battle would prove to be something better than breadcrumbs and worms.

  Meg instructed the sluglungs to stay behind, and told them to care for the stricken birds and await their orders. The creatures bowed obediently but they did not like to be parted from their queen and stared at the empty steps once she had departed, croaking miserably.

  THE RUINED WATCHTOWER CLIMBED into the bright blue March sky. It was the highest point for miles around and the great forest of Hagwood spread into the west beneath it.

  When Kernella ventured out onto the roof, she recoiled from the dizzying height and clung automatically to Finnen. She caught her breath at the thrill of this hasty embrace and silently reproved herself for never having thought of this ploy before. She would have to contrive to be a lot more frightened in the future.

  The girl shivered as the stark truth struck her. There would be no future. They might have only hours—maybe just minutes—left before the attack. Chilled by the thought, she moved toward the small fire that the Lubber kept constantly burning on the roof, but it did not warm her.

  With the breeze streaming through her long lank hair, Peg-tooth Meg leaned against the weather-worn stones of the broken battlements that ringed the bare roof. In the distance, across the undulating treetops, the vast shape of the Hollow Hill rose in majesty. It was the first time she had seen it since she had taken refuge in the caves.

  “The kingdom of my father, the High King,” she murmured. “I spent my childhood in that great green mountain. During the wars with the troll witches, it was the one safe place in all the land. Now I can hardly bear to gaze on it, knowing the evil that has sat enthroned there these many years.”

  “It is against that evil we must fight,” the Tower Lubber told her. “What chances have we against that? You know better than most the strength of Her forces—how can we defend ourselves?”