War in Hagwood Read online

  A shrill chorus rang out when the injured birds saw him. Snatching up a starling, he chewed its head off and his dark eyes roved covetously over the rest. A freakish chicken was raging toward him and he craved to bite its throat out.

  A shadow fell across the Redcap’s knobbly shoulder, and he glanced around sharply. He was amused to see a stunted figure standing behind him, with crudely carved wooden pegs instead of eyes, bearing an axe and a sword.

  The Redcap laughed creakily. “Blind fool!” he taunted. “Strike out in your darkness and cut me if you can. One jab of my little points will see you gone.”

  Before he could reach for his arrows, he was cloven in two by the Lubber’s axe.

  “I may be blind,” the Tower Lubber said. “But did you really think these great ears of mine are without use?”

  He spun around. Another soft slap announced a second Redcap had dropped from the ceiling. The Redcap snarled. There was a crunch of steel against bone and it was no more.

  One of the sluglungs guarding the windows was struck by an arrow and collapsed. Then another was shot on the stairs and died gasping and croaking as the poison did its work.

  More and more of the enemy came jumping from the ceiling and the Tower Lubber slew them all. One of them was still somersaulting down when the Lubber’s axe sliced it in two and the severed halves went spinning in opposite directions. When five leaped down at once, he lashed out and killed four, but the fifth ducked out of the way and sprang farther into the chamber.

  The Redcap put an arrow to his bow as he ran. The Lubber jerked his head around, trying to locate him. The bowstring was pulled back and the Redcap took special aim to hit the blind guardian right between those wooden pegs.

  Suddenly, from nowhere, a hazelnut hit the Redcap’s snout with stinging force. The brute squealed and the arrow fired wide. The Tower Lubber’s sword drove into the foul archer’s chest.

  Fly had come bounding down the stairs, Liffidia riding on his back. The girl had fashioned a small catapult for herself, and had removed her snookulhood and stuffed it and her satchel with hazelnuts. She was already loading up another round.

  “Behind you!” she called as two more Redcaps dropped to the floor.

  The Tower Lubber laughed and swung his mighty arms with deadly effect. Liffidia proved to be an excellent shot and knocked three Redcaps from the ceiling. They dropped, yelping, on top of others and vicious arguments broke out among them.

  A heap of hacked Redcap bodies and an ever-widening pool of their black blood littered the infirmary. No one encountered the Tower Lubber’s fury and survived. Abruptly, his enraged sword thrusts and wild axe swings slowed and he stumbled backward, falling onto the corpses of his enemies. A single arrow had punctured the shabby leather of his coat and was embedded deep in his shoulder.

  Dismayed, Liffidia watched him collapse. She saw the evil shaft standing proud and cried out in despair. Fearfully, she slid from Fly’s back and rushed over to where the Lubber lay gasping.

  “Don’t move!” she urged him. “I’m going to pull out the arrow. If I can cut the poison out …”

  The Tower Lubber forced a weak smile onto his ugly face. “Too late,” he whispered. “’Tis done. Tell Meg, my bonnie bonnie Clarisant, tell her … tell her Tammedor died with her name on his lips. Ask her to forgive him, there can be no … no more flowers from above. …”

  His barrel chest heaved one last time and the Tower Lubber’s final breath sighed out of him.

  “No!” Liffidia cried. “It isn’t fair, it isn’t fair.”

  The girl threw her arms around his neck and hot tears streamed down her face. “After everything you’ve done!” she wept. “Everything you suffered!”

  Riotous whoops and screeches issued from the Redcaps as the fearsome axe wielder fell and they danced a foul jig of victory.

  Liffidia rose and wiped her red-rimmed eyes angrily. Around her the injured birds were lamenting and crying sad, keening songs. Those who could walk crept toward their guardian and laid their heads upon him. The hen matron stepped forward in silence and rested her beak upon his nose. He had been more than a protector to them. He had been their truest friend. He had loved them as dearly as if they were his own children.

  “Fly,” Liffidia said in a cracked voice to her fox cub. “Go find Meg. She must be told.”

  The animal licked her hand then ran to the stairs and up to the roof.

  Liffidia gazed at the grieving flock and her loving heart bled for them. If by some miracle they survived this day, who would carry on the Lubber’s work? Who would tend to them?

  “I will,” she promised. “If I am spared.”

  Fly’s sharp barking cut through the noise of battle and, in moments, Peg-tooth Meg appeared at the top of the steps. The Redcaps ceased dancing and prowled forward once more.

  OUTSIDE IN THE WARMING SUNSHINE, the Lady Rhiannon heard her sister’s bellowing howl of grief. It was a soul-wrenching sound that seemed to fill the entire sky. Dewfrost, her silver-white horse, jerked her head and shuffled backward. Even the Redcaps halted and looked about them, amazed and confused.

  The only noise was Meg’s voice. Across the forest, every animal grew silent as Meg’s anguish screamed across the trees. Even the door wardens of the Hollow Hill heard it echoing through the stones and shuddered. Eardrums quailing, some of the Redcaps were scuttling down the tower to escape it—they had never heard such a sound before.

  Gritting their teeth against that profound, raw torment, the bogle keepers cracked their whips to drive their craven charges back.

  A supreme, gratified smile stole onto the High Lady’s face and she held up her hand to summon the owl.

  The bird spiraled down from above and alighted on her wrist.

  “Tell me!” she demanded. “What glad circumstance has wrung such misery from my sister?”

  “The faithless suitor, Prince Tammedor, is slain, M’Lady.”

  Rhiannon drew a marveling breath and cast her cold, sparkling eyes to the battlements. “He is dead?” she asked. “You are certain?”

  “Mine eyes are not as his were,” the owl chuckled. “I have glimpsed her through yon slit windows, cradling his oafish head in her lap, her grooly face contorted with woe.”

  A cold, prickling laugh left his mistress’s lips. “Then I have taken from her that which she most loved,” she drawled with genuine pleasure. “I could not have wished to wound her more deeply. Oh, may she savor that delicious bitterness and plumb the depths of her grief awhile. I would not deny her such treasured moments.”

  “How mean you, M’Lady?” her owl ventured.

  “Do you think I would rob my sister of this, her blackest hour? Oh no, the Redcaps must not end her sorrow too soon. I want her to drain that cup to its dregs before she joins her prince.”

  Spurring her horse, she galloped along the ridge to where Dedwinter Powfry, the head warden, was herding the few unwilling Redcaps back up the tower walls, beating them brutally with his stick. They glared at him murderously before starting the climb once more.

  “Master Dedwinter,” the High Lady called to him. “I want the attack to cease. Sound the retreat. Call the beasts back—every one.”

  The bogle stared at her, bewildered. “But, Majesty!” he exclaimed. “It cannot be done. Save for the tender eared, the rest are still consumed with famine and lust for butchery. No power can draw them down.”

  “No power?” she asked archly. “You dare contradict me? You think you know better than I?”

  “Of—of course not, Highness!” he stammered. “Yet I know these creatures well. They have been promised great pickings and no whip nor force will lure or compel them till they are sated.”

  The High Lady laughed lightly. “And you do whip and beat them with such passionate dedication,” she declared with approval. “But do not underestimate your Queen. Come here, Master
Dedwinter. I will show you the very thing to entice every single Redcap from the heat of battle.”

  Curious, the bogle approached her and she reached beneath her white mantle. Her long dagger glinted in the sunlight and she laughed coldly as she killed him.

  “There,” she said as he hit the ground. “What better inducement could there be?”

  Throwing her head back, she called to the swarming Redcaps. “Hear me, my savage pets!” she commanded. “Leave this fight and come feast on your keepers. Yes, come—massacre them all!”

  When the other bogles heard this, they could not believe their ears—but when they saw Dedwinter, lying in the grass with his throat cut, they knew they were finished.

  Every Redcap crowed with vengeful glee and came scuttling back from the battlements and surged, yammering, out of the tower.

  The keepers tried to run, tearing down the slope or back into the forest. But the Redcaps were too fast for them. Amid vengeful shrieks, they overtook the bogles and leaped upon them. Every punishing blow and lash was repaid in full. Their screams did not last long.

  Rhiannon watched indulgently, then returned her attention to the ruined watchtower. Meg’s cries had diminished—they were softer now, but that pain would never be quenched.

  “What use are hearts when they break so very easily?” Rhiannon murmured. “Now, my sister, sup long from the chalice of your despair. Stew in that salty sorrow. When dusk falls, I shall deliver you from it. Was there ever such a generous sister as I?”

  She turned her horse and walked it between the feasting Redcaps. Most of them had already steeped their headgear in the bogles’ dark-red blood and it streaked down their loathsome faces. The small fiends groveled before her and kissed the hem of her mantle, staining it with gore.

  “Remain here,” she ordered. “Set up camp and ensure nothing, not even a mouse, leaves that tower. Do not presume to make a second assault, or you will yearn for the days of the whip once more. Do you understand? Look for me at sunset. Obey your Queen and she will feed you on flesh more tender than this.”

  The Redcaps bowed and worshipped her, croaking her name and falling on their ugly faces.

  With a final, smiling glance at the battlements, the High Lady cantered into the forest as her owl flew after.

  “Whither now, M’Lady?” it cried.

  “This day many accounts shall be settled,” she told him. “Whilst Clarisant suffers, there are others who have not yet paid the price.”

  “Who M’Lady, who?”

  “The list is long, My Provost,” she declared. “My realm must be cleansed of the vermin that infests it. The time has come to avenge my thorn ogres.”

  And with her mantle flapping around her, she galloped through the trees.

  * Chapter 7 *

  Conspiracy

  GRIMDITCH UTTERED A GROAN and opened a bleary eye.

  “There!” Gabbity announced, swilling the shears and razor-sharp knife in a bowl of hot, now-filthy water. “Scoured and scraped and done.”

  The barn bogle watched her swim in and out of focus as his eye drifted left and right. His dazed thoughts did the same, flitting in and out of his head, waiting to be sorted into an order. He had no idea who he was or what this shadowy place might be, or the identity of the astonishingly ugly female. Wherever he was, he only knew he was thirsty and cold.

  “You’re awake then,” the goblin nursemaid observed dryly. “You’ve me to thank for saving your scraggy skin, you nasty barn bogle.”

  “Mother!” he burbled.

  “You lowly cur!” she scolded. “Don’t you slander me so! The very idea! Why, I’ve been nursemaid to the royal house since before even King Ragallach was born. Then I tended to his children, all three. And now I bide by the little lordling and see to his wants. Me, mother to such as you? Oh, the scandal of it!”

  Grimditch’s wits, such as they were, slotted back into place and fear seized control of him. He raised himself on his elbows. The sharp pain in his back instantly changed his anxious expression to a grimace and he slumped down one more.

  “Me was at the waterfall,” he murmured, thinking back to what had happened at the Crone’s Maw. “With the nice skin swapper and then … then She came!”

  “Spriggans carted you here,” Gabbity said with a sniff. “Now don’t you go jiggling about, you’ll open that wound again and I’ve bound it right well with good thick webs and a staunching bandage steeped in the juice of periwinkles culled ’neath a hedge at midnight.”

  The barn bogle peered down at the strip of cloth wrapped tightly about his chest.

  “Aaaaaiiyyee!” he shrieked. “Me’s been plucked!”

  He stared at his arms, polished, shiny and totally devoid of hair. Then he clapped his hands to his chin and scrabbled frantically for the tangled, bushy beard that was no longer growing there. His fingers reached up to his head and patted his egg-smooth pate and he let out an anguished howl.

  “Like a baby squeaker!” he bawled. “As pink and nekkid as a nibbler’s newborn runt. Poor Grimditch! Oh, cursed sack of bones he is. Stripped of all his cuddlesome thickets, what kept him tickling snug in the straw through the long winter nip.”

  Gabbity had followed her mistress’s instructions to the letter. Not one hair remained on the barn bogle’s body. Even his eyebrows and eyelashes were gone. He looked like a very scrawny, big-nosed, red-lipped, bald goblin whelp.

  “And me be stripped!” he cried, suddenly aware that his rags had been removed and his bare, bony bottom was jutting into the air. That too had been shaved.

  The goblin laughed at him. “You’ve naught I haven’t seen before,” she scoffed.

  “But you filched Grimditch’s vestyments! The farmer’s missus needled them with her own clean plumpsy fingers.”

  “Them tatters?” the nursemaid scorned. “If they was clothes, then a frayed kerchief and a bootlace make a bride gown.”

  “No, no, no, no, no! Grimditch liked the missus. Now he don’t have nowt left to remember her by. Where did you steal them off to, you warty old baggage?”

  Gabbity threw him her sourest look. “They’ve gone to be burned!” she declared. “Along with the mattress worth of hair and whiskers, and who knows what else I sheared off you. Stink the whole hill out, that will, when it sizzles in the fire. You’re a mangy flea-bitten beast, no mistake.”

  Wincing, Grimditch tried to get up a second time. He swung his long-toed feet off the table and sat upright.

  “There was keepsakes too,” he began, watching her intently. “In a little skin purse. Where did that go, me asks?”

  The nursemaid nodded toward the end of the table. “That paltry bag of grotty bones?” she cried in disgust. “’Tis yonder. I would have sent that to the flame as well, ’cept I know my mistress would want to inspect it Herself first.”

  Grimditch snatched up his purse and rifled through it, kissing each favorite rat bone that he found inside. Then he raised his large eyes and stared at her accusingly.

  “Not all here,” he said. “There’s things gone—one special thing.”

  Gabbity was an expert liar and she brushed the accusation aside with a careless shrug.

  “That’s all you was brought in with,” she told him. “Weren’t never no more. Maybe them spriggans took it? Or most like you lost it as they carried you here.”

  “Give it over!” the barn bogle demanded, swinging his legs impatiently. “’Twasn’t Grimditch’s. Me was only borrowin’. Me would’ve sneaked it back. Grimditch weren’t for keeping it! Little skin swapper would’ve never knowed.”

  “So whatever it was weren’t yours in the first place!” she said with a disapproving shake of her head that set her spire of white hair swaying. “Don’t you get no ideas of thieving in here.”

  “Give it back!” he implored her.

  “I don’t have your smelly old rat bone
!” she retorted crossly.

  Grimditch glared and ground his teeth together. “Weren’t none of that,” he said mutinously. “Were handsomer and more delicates than a jooly crown. Me only wanted to look at it and keep it for a titchy while. Them said it were important.”

  “Them?” the nursemaid repeated, curious. “Who’s them and what was it? How come something so small could be so important?”

  The barn bogle’s eyes glittered back at her. “Somethin’ small?” he said.

  “Must be small to fit in that purse of yours,” she answered. “I could only squeeze three fingers inside.”

  Grimditch regarded her a moment then pawed gently at the purse in his hand.

  “Overheard them, me did,” he murmured. “The two changing folk with the furtley bags. Oh yes, Grimditch heard what they was a-sayin’ as we tramped through the forest. Keen ears he has.”

  “What did you hear?” she asked sharply.

  Grimditch returned her steady stare. “Bad doings for your cruel Lady,” he told her. “That’s what they said it was. Do Her no good, it wouldn’t. An’ been a-hunting long time for it, She had. In old grave mounds, She’d gone delvin’—out there in the haunted woods.”

  Gabbity snorted. “There’s naught in Hagwood, nor beyond, to give a moment’s worry to M’Lady,” she boasted. “Deathless and mighty She is. What could give Her cause to fret?”

  The barn bogle jiggled the place where his eyebrows had once sprouted so unkempt and bushy. “Then why She go guising through the forest, huntin’ for my skin swappers?” he said. “And why me brought here and not left gurgling in the stream?”

  The goblin nursemaid’s wizened face crinkled even more. Her mistress had been acting strangely recently. She had overheard some very curious exchanges between Her and that owl. Did the answer really lie in the treasure she had hidden in her pocket? Could there be enough power in that tiny golden key to frighten the High Lady of the Hollow Hill? A dangerous thrill tingled through each one of Gabbity’s warts and a slow smile creased her crabbed lips. Then she saw Grimditch watching her closely.