Fair Wind to Widdershins (8 page)

There was a muffled sound of movement from somewhere close by. Trundle saw a door handle turning.

“Get back!” he hissed. Esmeralda and Jack scrambled back up the stairs, and Trundle ducked behind the suit of armor.

The door opened. Peeping from between the leg armor, Trundle saw a bespectacled old badger in long purple robes come sweeping into the corridor. He was followed by a scuttling line of hedgehogs and voles and squirrels, all dressed in brown habits, and all tottering under the weight of scrolls and parchments and books and folders.

As he swept majestically along, Trundle could hear the elderly badger talking rapidly to himself.

“… with no equator, save that which can be extrapolated from the relative positions of the islands
in situ
and calculated as an empirical mathematical inevitability, using the explosion as point zero, how do we now utilize the meta-planispheric astrolabe without taking into account the effects of the gravitational pull of both the sun itself and those higher bodies in the Sundered Lands which, it must be admitted…”

As he passed along the corridor, the patter of two dozen following feet drowned out his voice. Blinking, Trundle watched them trail off into the distance. A few moments more, and the corridor was empty and quiet again.

Trundle stepped out of hiding as Esmeralda and Jack came back down the stairs.

“Did you hear him?” asked Trundle, wide-eyed. “I didn’t understand a word he was saying! He must be such a brainbox!”

Esmeralda raised an eyebrow. “That’s what they’d like everyone to think,” she said. “If you ask me, all that science talk is a lot of blather and waffle.”

Jack looked thoughtful. “If we were dressed up in brown robes like those chaps following the badger, we’d be able to get around here without making people suspicious,” he said.

“Good thinking,” said Esmeralda. “Let’s keep our eyes peeled for a cloakroom or a store cupboard.”

Luck was with them. They had only gone down two flights of stairs and along three corridors before they spotted a pair of squirrels pushing a trolley filled with crumpled brown habits.

“Laundry basket!” whispered Esmeralda, following at a safe distance.

The trolley was pushed into a deserted washing room, and the two squirrels scuttled off. A few minutes later, the three companions were wrapped up in the cleanest of the brown habits from the laundry. Thus disguised, they found that they were able to walk quite freely through the halls and corridors without anyone paying them any attention.

There were plenty of people about—scores of small animals in brown habits swarmed around the hallways, sometimes bearing armfuls of books and scrolls, sometimes hauling trolleys along behind them, the wheels creaking under the weight of musty old books.

Every now and then they would pass a room with an open door. Trundle found these rooms fascinating. Some were like classrooms, every desk occupied by badgers paying earnest attention to teachers who scribbled complex equations on big blackboards. Other rooms were filled with strange machinery that whirred and chimed and clicked and spun while badgers moved around taking notes or making adjustments or rubbing their wise chins and looking thoughtful.

There were signs at every turn and junction in the maze of corridors, pointing to the Orrery Chamber, or the Torquetum or the Astrarium or the Gymbelorium. And many of the doors had brass plates attached, such as P
ROFESSOR
E
RASMUS
Q
UIVERWHISKER:
A
DVANCED
T
HEORIES
IN
C
IRCULAR
D
IMINISHMENT
or D
R.
J
ERVAYS
H
ARDCLAW:
P
ONDEROLOGY
AND
I
MPONDEROLOGY
.

Slowly they wound their way down and down until they came upon a sign that read E
NTRANCE
L
OBBY,
V
ISITORS’
W
AITING
R
OOM,
O
UTER
B
AILEY,
G
UARDHOUSE,
M
AIN
G
ATE,
AND
E
XIT
.

“What if the guard recognizes us?” Trundle asked as they walked across the cobbled courtyard toward the great wooden gates and the small stone guardhouse that stood to one side.

“So long as we keep our hoods up, he won’t see our faces,” Esmeralda said. She looked from Jack to Trundle. “Now, remember—we’ve been sent by Doctor Hardclaw to collect the crown and the key so they can be studied.”

“Got it,” said Jack, only his nose visible under the hood.

“Check,” added Trundle, pulling his hood deeper over his face.

The guardhouse door was wide open, revealing a small chamber with a desk and a chair and with various racks and notice boards attached to the walls. The guard was leaning back on two legs of the chair, his feet up on the desk and his nose in a newspaper.

Esmeralda rapped on the door. “Excuse me!” she said in an authoritative voice. “We’re here to collect the crown and the key.”

The guard turned his head and eyed her without interest. All the same, Trundle pulled his hood a little farther forward as the three of them stepped into the room.

“Izzat so?” said the guard. “Oo wants ’em?”

“Doctor Hardclaw,” said Esmeralda. “He needs them urgently, so be a good fellow and hand them over.”

The guard leaned down behind his desk and pulled out the crown and the key. Trundle could hardly believe how smoothly things were going. Their plan was really going to work!

Esmeralda took the two precious objects from the guard’s big, clumsy paws.

“Thank you,” she said. “Sorry to disturb you.”

The guard snorted and picked up his newspaper.

Esmeralda turned and headed for the doorway. Trundle did likewise, with Jack close behind. But just as they were about to exit, Trundle felt something come down hard on the hem of his robes, bringing him to a jerking halt and yanking the hood back off his head.

“Oops, sorry,” said Jack. “Excuse my big feet!”

The guard turned and peered at Trundle’s suddenly revealed face.

“Here! I know you!” he growled. “You’re the bloke wot woz outside not two hours since! How’d you get in?” He lurched forward. “Gimme them things back! You ain’t from Doc Hardclaw at all, I’ll warrant. You’re interlopers and trespassers.”

So saying, he leaped up, and with one hand he slammed the door shut in Esmeralda’s face, while with the other he reached for his halberd.

Reacting in an instant, Esmeralda spun around and kicked the guard’s shins.

“Yowp!” howled the guard, almost dropping his halberd.

A moment later, Jack jumped up onto the desk, swiping up anything he could lay paws on and flinging it at the guard’s head. And while all this was going on, Trundle was struggling to get his sword out from under his habit.

“Take that!” howled Esmeralda, swinging the crown in both hands and bringing it into sharp contact with the guard’s midriff.

“Oof!” gasped the guard, doubling over as Jack brought a tin mug down on his head.

But the guard wasn’t so easily dealt with. He swiped a long swipe with the halberd. The sharp edge only missed Jack by a hairs breadth as he leaped for his life off the desk. The other end of the halberd caught Esmeralda behind the ear and sent her sprawling, the crown and key skittering across the floor, between the guard’s legs and out of sight under the desk.

“Now I gotcha!” snarled the guard, his teeth bared as he stooped over the sprawling Esmeralda. “Mincemeat, you’re gonna be!”

At that moment, Trundle finally got his sword free. Without pausing to think, he leaped between the guard and Esmeralda, determined to protect her. He held his sword out in both hands as the guard loomed over him. The look on the guard’s face was so ferocious that he backed away, the sword quivering in his grip.

At that moment he was aware of a large brown shape leaping through the air. It was Jack. With a skirling cry, he launched himself onto the guard’s back. The guard tottered forward, trying vainly to pull Jack off his neck.

In all honesty, Trundle could not really have explained in detail what happened next. One moment he was waving his sword in the air, and the next moment, the guard came plunging toward him like a felled tree.

There was a dull
bonk
! as the flat edge of the sword whacked the guard a good one on the side of the head. And then, quite suddenly, Trundle was flat on his back and covered all over in heavy, limp guard.

“Gurrg,” he gasped, the breath quite beaten out of him. “Get him off!”

Esmeralda and Jack dragged the unconscious guard off, and Trundle sat up, spluttering and befuddled. “What happened?” he gasped, gazing anxiously at Jack. “Did I kill him?”

“Hardly!” said Jack. “But you did manage to knock him out.”

“But for how long?” wondered Esmeralda, peering into the guard’s face. “I think we should tie him up—just to be on the safe side.” She turned, her eyes shining. “Well done, my brave and dashing Trundle! I never thought you had it in you.”

Trundle got dizzily to his feet. “I didn’t … it wasn’t…” He looked at the guard, a feeling of pride growing in him. “Serves him right!” he declared. “What can we tie him up with?”

“With his own trousers, what else!” laughed Jack, already loosening the limp guard’s belt. “Come on, you two—help a chap out!”

In next to no time they had whipped off the guard’s pants, leaving him in rather grubby knee-length underwear with frayed ends and burst seams. He was tossed unceremoniously onto his front, and the legs of his trousers were looped around and around his wrists and knotted tightly.

Esmeralda then peeled off his long socks and tied one expertly around his ankles. Finally, she lifted his head and stuffed the other sock into his mouth. “In case he wakes up and feels like shouting for help,” she remarked heartlessly.

Trundle’s forehead wrinkled. “All the same,” he said. “Putting stinky socks in a person’s mouth is a bit much, don’t you think?”

Esmeralda eyed him. “He was going to chop us into tiny pieces, Trundle,” she said, patting him on the back. “I think a mouthful of old sock is the least he deserves!”

Trundle picked up his sword from the floor. It felt different in his paw now—it felt suddenly very serious and important and …
fateful
. It had knocked out the guard and probably saved them all.

“He was going to kill us, wasn’t he?” Trundle said, slipping the sword into his belt. “And I stopped him!”

“He certainly was, and you certainly did,” replied Esmeralda, crawling under the desk to retrieve the crown and the key.

“You’re a hero, Trundle!” said Jack.

“And now let’s get out of here before someone finds us,” said Esmeralda, tucking crown and key in among the folds of her robes.

They departed, and for the first time, Trundle felt as though he really was
meant
to have the sword!

T
here was a key in the lock on the inside of the guardhouse door. Esmeralda took it out as they left and locked the door behind them. She lifted a cobblestone and placed the key under it while Jack and Trundle kept anxious watch.