Goblins (12 page)

With so many unexpected visitors, Princess Ned was kept busy that day airing cabins, baking bread, making cakes, fetching preserves from the storerooms she’d established inside the old gatehouse. All the travellers felt a little embarrassed at imposing on the kind princess in this way, and they did their best to help. The Sable Conclave meekly presented her with a bottle of Mendervan wine they’d brought with them to celebrate the reconquest of Clovenstone. Even Skarper peeled some carrots. Twiglings, who seemed fond of Ned, came creaking and whispering out of the woods with woven baskets full of mushrooms. There was so much activity in the old ship that it was quite easy, towards the end of the afternoon, for Skarper and Henwyn to quietly slip away.

They felt the eyes of twiglings on them as they crossed the clapper bridge and went into the woods, but, as Skarper had hoped, they were known as friends of Fraddon and the princess now, and the people of the trees stayed high in the branches and let them pass. They climbed broad, grassy streets between the empty mansions, scrambled through thick stands of trees which had once been parks or kitchen gardens or parade grounds, and Skarper took the chance to roll in piles of leaf mould and the pungent places where passing badgers had peed, until he no longer smelled of softlings, giants, or Princess Ned’s ship.

As the sun dipped beneath the grey clouds and spread a bloody evening light over Clovenstone, they came again to the Inner Wall.

Skarper sighed with relief. No trolls; no goblins; no unknown monsters of the woods had tried to stop them. He hadn’t needed Henwyn to protect him after all. For a moment he felt that he’d been foolish to tell the cheesewright his plans and offer to share the treasure with him. But it had been good to have company on the journey through the woods, and besides, Henwyn’s sword might still come in handy later, if any of Blackspike’s sentries caught him on his way out with the map.

They slunk like shadows through the ruins below the wall, and soon came to the place where the goblins had attacked the day before. “Shhhhht!” warned Skarper, nose twitching as he sniffed for goblin scent. “We’re going to keep creepy-quiet this time. No shouting about like that stupid Fentongoose.”

Henwyn did as he was told. He hid himself in a bush and peered up nervously at Blackspike Tower. Lights burned in the mean little windows high above; distant snarls and drumbeats drifted down.

“What’s happening up there?” he asked.

“They’re gettin’ ready to make this big raid,” said Skarper. “We just need to watch, an’ wait. . .”

They watched. They waited. Some of the lights went out. There were faint sounds of movement on the battlements. Skarper had never been out on a raid, but he’d seen some, and he knew that by now all the goblins of Slatetop and Redcap would have gathered in the Blackspike and they and the Blackspike Boys would be hurrying along the wall towards the eastside towers as quietly and quickly as ever goblins could. That wasn’t
very
quietly, but it was pretty quick: he had not watched for long before he saw a tall gush of fire roar up from the roof of Sternbrow Tower, and the faint squeals and clangs of far-off battle came drifting over the ruins.

“Right,” he said, turning to the bush that Henwyn was hiding in. “You wait here.”

The bush gulped. “I should come with you.”

“Not likely. The guards’ll smell your man-stink as soon as you get near the entrance, but they won’t notice my nice goblin scent.”

The moon was rising, fat and full above the Bonehills. Skarper scampered to the secret entrance which the goblins had spilled out from the day before. He slipped his paws under the edge of the loose stone and heaved, but although it shifted just enough to prove it was the right one, he could not lift it. He hissed at Henwyn. “Don’t just stand there! Come and help!”

“But you said. . .”

“Come on!”

Henwyn loped over to join him, and together they lifted the stone aside and laid it down. From the black hole beneath it came a stink of goblins.
Phew
, thought Skarper, flapping a paw in front of his nose. He’d only been out of the ’Spike for a day and a night, but he’d forgotten quite how badly it stank. He crouched down and swivelled an ear to pick up the sounds from inside the hole. As he’d hoped: faint snoring. King Knobbler always served out wine before a raid, and even the goblins who were being left behind made sure they got some. The sentries would have snuggled down to sleep as soon as Knobbler left.

Leaving Henwyn to sneak back to his bush, he dropped into the hole. It was about six feet deep, and from its bottom a long stone tunnel stretched under the wall. Skarper trotted along it, and soon saw the sentry, curled up at the bottom of a flight of stairs which led up into the tower. As he crept past, he saw that it was his batch-brother Yabber, and he was tempted to kick him or set his tail on fire to pay him back for all the blows and kicks he’d landed on Skarper in the past . . . but the thought of Stenoryon’s map kept him going, tiptoeing past the snoring goblin, up the stairs, and through the doorway at the top.

It felt strange to be back within the familiar walls of Blackspike. Strange and almost nice. He wanted to go back to his old hole and snuggle down and sleep. Maybe when he woke, his adventure would turn out to have been only a dream. But he made his way to the bumwipe chamber instead, along the weirdly empty passageways. The wind moaned in the tower’s complicated guts. Somewhere high above a drunken goblin laughed, and Skarper froze until he was quite sure the sound was not getting closer, then went on.

The bumwipe heaps were just as he had left them. He groped inside and found the tight tube of the rolled-up map. In the dim glow from the bat droppings he drew it out and unfurled it, peering at it, searching for Stenoryon’s secret markings as intently as he’d once sought for the meaning of all those scrawly letters. “Well,
I
can’t see any invisible writing,” he grumbled to himself.

That was when he realized the flaw in his plan. He’d been so excited by the thought that he knew where Stenoryon’s map was that he’d forgotten its secret could only be revealed by the light of burning slowsilver. He smacked a paw against his face. “Where am I goin’ to get slowsilver at this time of night?”

Then he remembered the ball that old Breslaw had squeezed together out of the scrapings and shavings of slowsilver from all the eggstones he’d helped to hatch. It lived in a secret hole in the wall of Breslaw’s chamber, and although Breslaw didn’t go out on raids, he liked a drop of wine as much as any other goblin.

And it wouldn’t really even be stealin’
, Skarper thought,
cos some of that slowsilver’s off my eggstone, so he stole it from me in the first place!

He rolled the map again, stuffed it down his trousers for safekeeping, and hurried upstairs towards the hatchery.

Outside, Henwyn was relieved to hear the sounds of the goblin battle growing fainter. The raiders had gone right through Sternbrow and were moving away along the wall towards Grimspike and the tall two-headed tower called Growler. As he watched, a flag of fire unfurled from Grimspike’s roof, smudging black smoke across the moon. He heard a far-off scream as some unlucky goblin was pushed off the battlements, but the clash of weapons and the war cries were mostly too distant now to reach him.

He began to relax a little, listening to the soft whispers of the woods and the voices of the little streams which flowed among the ruins. He glanced behind him, checking the shadows for danger. A face stared at him through a gap in the weeds, white in a fall of moonbeams, making him start – but it was only a fallen statue. The Lych Lord himself, done in white marble. He had been handsome and noble-looking, as far as Henwyn could tell beneath the ivy and the owl-droppings. He wondered why such a man had turned to evil, and the little whispery voice of his conscience said, “Perhaps he started out just the way you are: going behind his friends’ backs; keeping secrets to serve himself. . .”

“You’re right, conscience,” Henwyn said aloud. All the way through the woods he had been uneasy; excited, but uneasy. He still knew that deceiving Princess Ned like this was wrong, whatever Skarper said. Skarper was a goblin; what could he be expected to know about right and wrong? Henwyn was a cheesewright of Adherak, and cheesewrights knew better.

Just then the pale moonlight that reflected from the statue showed him something else; something pale that lay among the brambles and dead leaves at the Lych Lord’s feet. Henwyn stooped and picked it up. An ivory carving in the shape of a winged head, with the same face as the statue. It was the amulet that Fentongoose had dropped the day before, but of course Henwyn didn’t know that; he had never seen it before. He almost threw it down again, but it looked so beautiful in the moonlight, and the shape of it felt so satisfying as it nestled in his palm, that he decided to keep it. He knotted the frayed ends of the cord where it had snapped and looped it over his head, tucking the amulet down inside his shirt.

“I shall take it back as a present for Princess Ned,” he said. “To make up for slipping off like this.”

The statue stared down at him, and its marble mouth seemed twisted in a sneer.

At first, everything went brilliantly. The goblins Knobbler had left behind were all up in the top of the tower, busy rummaging through the possessions of those who’d gone on the raid. There was no one about at all in the middle section as Skarper hurried up the stairs from the bumwipe chamber to Breslaw’s hatchery. When he paused outside the hatchery he could hear the old goblin’s slow and heavy breathing, and when he stooped and peeked through one of the holes in the door (for it was very old and wormy) he saw Breslaw asleep on his nest of old tapestries in the far corner, an empty wineskin on the floor beside him.

Quietly, Skarper lifted the latch and slipped inside. He stood by Breslaw’s nest and reached over the sleeping hatchling master to remove a small stone from the wall behind him. It made a little stony rasp as it came free, and Breslaw stirred and muttered, “Eh, what’s that?” before mumbling off into his dreams again.

In the space behind the loose stone his secret treasures gleamed: an old gold ring; a couple of jewels prised out of sword hilts; and the misshapen orb of stolen slowsilver, faintly shining. Skarper lifted it out. It was as big as a duck’s egg, surprisingly heavy, and faintly warm to the touch.
Hopefully I can just scrape off a little bit to burn and see the secret writing by
, he thought.
And the rest I’ll keep for me.
It would be a good start to his new treasure hoard.

He put it in his pocket and carefully replaced the loose stone. Then he let out his pent-up breath and turned to go back to the door, but his tail whisked against one of the training cudgels which stood propped in a row against the hatchery wall. It fell and hit the cudgel next to it, and that one hit an old halberd, which toppled against a blunted battleaxe, and the whole row of weapons went crashing and clattering down. The last in the line was a three-pointed spear, and as it fell it hit Breslaw’s food bowl, balanced on a high shelf. The bowl dropped, and Skarper leapt forward and caught it just before it hit the floor, but the shelf had been struck too; it came away from the wall at one end and a cascade of old eggstone shards came clattering down, pummelling Skarper like angry little stone fists and dancing on the wormy boards around him.

He stood there for a few seconds in the silence after the noise had finished. Slowly he started to hear the sounds of the tower again. The goblin voices still hooted and laughed way up above, and they did not seem to be coming any closer. Was it possible that they had not noticed the din? Perhaps it had not been as loud as he’d feared. . .

He looked round.

Breslaw had lifted his head off the mound of tapestries, and was regarding Skarper with one bleary yellow eye.

Skarper waved the bowl at him. “I’m just a dream,” he said. “It’s all that wine that’s done it. You’re dreamin’ me.”

It was worth a try. Any other goblin would probably have taken Skarper’s word for it and gone back to sleep, but Breslaw was wilier than most. “Skarper?” he said. For a moment he looked almost pleased to see his old star pupil standing there; then, as more bits of his brain stirred and yawned and came awake, he scowled suspiciously. “What you doin’ sneakin’ about. . .?” He scrambled up and snatched the loose stone from its hole.

“Thief!” he bellowed.

Skarper was already running. Out of the hatchery, down the spiral stairs so fast it made him dizzy. Behind him he could hear other feet pattering down higher stairways as the goblins at the top of the tower came running down in answer to Breslaw’s shrill shouts.

“Thieves! Burglars! Invaders!”

Down in the cellar, even Yabber had been woken by the noise. “Halt, who goes –
Skarper?
” he said, blocking the way as Skarper bounded down the final flight of stairs.

Luckily Skarper had forgotten to let go of Breslaw’s bowl. He smashed it over Yabber’s bony head and scrambled over the other goblin as he subsided, burbling. A moment more and he was outside, breathing clean, cold air again and looking for Henwyn among the shadows and the moonlight. Behind him, though, he could hear the snarls of angry goblins, the stamp of their feet and the clang of arms and armour as they came hurrying after him.