Goblins (4 page)

After that, several whole hours went by without anybody trying to kill him. No tree monsters or angry dryads appeared to drive him from the wood, and he saw that goblins had sometimes been this way on raids, because he recognized their crude graffiti on the ruined buildings which stood on either side of the roadway. That made him feel a little more at home, and he decided that things were looking up (although he kept looking up, too, checking those tiny flakes of sky which showed between the bare branches, just in case that cloud was still around).

Skarper cast his mind back again to
Stenoryon’s Mappe of All Clovenstone
(how he wished he could have brought it with him!). The vast Outer Wall which ringed Clovenstone was roughly circular, with four gates in it: north, south, east and west. This road that he was walking down must be the way from the Keep to Southerly Gate. In the days of the Lych Lord whole armies had marched down it, off to carry terror and war to the lands of men. The buildings on either side would have been their barracks and armouries, their kitchens and saddleries and the stables for their steeds. Now there were only ruins, subsiding into the undergrowth like sinking galleons. Everything was furred thick with dense green moss and filled with dim green light and the song of unseen birds and the chuckle of running water. Streams which had once run obediently along neat channels of dressed stone had now escaped to find their own ways through the wood, sometimes flowing knee-deep across depressions in the old roadway.

Leaving the road, Skarper pushed his way through the undergrowth to start exploring the old buildings. He soon decided that he did not much like them. Even before they rotted into ruin they must have been mean, cramped, low-ceilinged places. Now they were floored with heaps of slates or mouldered thatch that had slumped down through their roofs as the rafters rotted. Goblins from Blackspike and the other towers had long since taken any treasure they had held, but in many of the rooms lay bones, and in high corners the black bees of Clovenstone had built huge paper nests from which low and dangerous buzzings emerged whenever Skarper blundered too close. He was pretty sure that worse things than bees had made their homes among the ruins, too. His ears kept prickling: a sure sign that he was being watched. Scuttling sounds and half-glimpsed movements filled the shadows. The trees creaked and whispered, peering down at him through the holes where roofs had been.

Warily, he found his way back to the old road. He could do better for himself, he decided, if he kept going south; Stenoryon’s map had shown great bastions just inside Southerly Gate, and now that he cast his mind back, Skarper thought that he might have glimpsed them for himself, while he was falling. So he kept walking, picking handfuls of dead thistles to munch and enjoying their peppery flavour, until the road turned into shallow stairs, descending into a valley where the trees grew even more thickly, winding their leafless, moss-shaggy branches together in great green nets which overhung a river full of big stones.

Skarper guessed at once that this must be the River Oeth, which flowed down out of the Oeth Moors and curved through the outer regions of Clovenstone before flowing on to meet the sea. It was swift and white and startlingly loud, but he was glad to see it, because he knew that once he was on the far side of it he would be only a short way from Southerly Gate. The old buildings crowded empty-eyed along either bank of the river, their walls so thick with moss that they seemed to be made of green fur. The road spanned it on a bridge; not one of the primitive clapper bridges which goblins made to cross the streams behind the Inner Wall, but a proper, man-built bridge, with piers and buttresses and things. It must have been elegant back in better days but was now looking overgrown and crumbledown and rather sorry for itself.

It was just the sort of place where trolls might lurk, according to the books that Skarper had read. He had never seen a troll and wasn’t completely sure that they existed, but after his meeting with the cloud maidens he wasn’t going to take any chances, so before he crossed the bridge he went carefully down the riverbank and peered beneath it.

Nothing stirred in the green shadows, but the place still made him uneasy. The ferns and mosses grew so thick beneath the bridge that he could not see all the way through. He climbed back to the road and was about to go down and take a look from the other side when a voice from the far side of the river called: “Aha!”

Skarper looked up. There, striding towards him across the bridge, was a softling; a human; a real, live, actual human being: quite a young one by the look of him, with a dark cloak, travel-stained boots and breeches and a leather tunic with iron studs. Skarper stared at him. He had heard of softlings venturing into Clovenstone – outlaws and fortune hunters, drawn by stories of the Lych Lord’s treasure chambers – and he had seen the skulls of some of them, decorating King Knobbler’s kinging chair. But it had not occurred to him that he might actually meet one, and he could only stand and watch as the softling swung a long sword down from his shoulder. Hanging from its notched and obviously not very sharp blade were various bags and satchels and blanket bundles, which the softling hastily unhooked and shed on the flagstones of the bridge as he hurried across it towards Skarper.

Skarper ducked, and felt the blade slice through the air where his head had just been.

“Stand and fight, foul troll!” the softling shouted.

“I’m not a
troll
!” Skarper said indignantly, scuttling sideways.

The softling swung at him again. “I saw you with my own eyes!” he cried. “You were creeping out from under this bridge to waylay me!”

“I’m not waylaying anybody!” shouted Skarper.

“You lie!” said the softling, panting with the effort of swinging that big sword to and fro as Skarper ducked beneath it. “Stand still, can’t you? Make your peace with your fell trollish gods and prepare to die!”

“Trolls are taller!” shouted Skarper. “
Much
taller! I’ve seen woodcuts. . .”

Dodging past the swordsman, he turned and started to flee over the bridge, but as he set his foot on it there came a wet, echoey roar from below, and out from among the moss and the ferns beneath the arch there oozed a great grey-green shape. Thick-fingered hands seized the parapet as the figure heaved itself up to block the bridge; dull dark eyes gleamed hungrily behind a fall of pondweed hair; a gout of vapour and a musty smell enveloped Skarper as its broad mouth opened to let out another roar.

He pointed at it, and turned to look back at his attacker. “Now
that’s
a troll,” he said.

Skarper had expected the troll to reach straight past him for the softling, who was so obviously larger and more tender and better to eat. Instead, to his surprise, it closed one of its big hands about his leg and lifted him upside down in front of its face, blinking at him with those black, wet-pebble eyes. Trolls, he realized, as it opened its spike-toothed maw to gulp him down, are
really
stupid. . .

The softling must have been stupider still. He came charging in under the dangling Skarper and swung his blunt and rusty blade straight at the troll’s chest. Had no one told him that troll hide was as tough as stone? The sword rebounded; it clattered to the flagstones as the softling yelled in pain and stuck his jarred hands in his armpits. The troll knocked off his hat and lifted him by his curly golden hair. As it did so, Skarper managed to lash out with one foot and catch it in the eye with his heel. The troll grunted and stepped backwards. Overbalanced by the weight of its struggling prey, it stumbled against the bridge’s parapet, and the rough old ivied stones gave way. Down they went, man, troll and goblin, into the cold dark swirl of water under the bridge.

The troll let go of Skarper, but that didn’t help much; water is no place for goblins. He sank, choking and flailing, until a firm hand grabbed him and heaved him up into the air and then ashore. The softling let him go and turned back to the river, drawing a knife from his belt as the water heaved in the bridge’s shadow and the troll burst up roaring, looking for its prey.

“Over here, spawn of evil!” shouted the softling, waving his little dagger.

“Hush! Shhh! Psst! Don’t attract its attention! Running’s our only hope!” hissed Skarper, grabbing the flapping end of the softling’s sodden cloak and trying desperately to pull him backwards.

It was too late; the shouting or the flash of the blade had caught the troll’s eye. Its big head turned; it roared its fury at the pair on the bank.

Fortunately the parapet of the bridge had not quite finished falling to pieces. One huge stone still teetered, leaning far out over the river but held in place by a tether of ivy stems. At the troll’s roar the last stem broke; the stone toppled, fell, and landed with an ugly thud on the troll’s flat skull. The troll collapsed into the water and did not come up again; a few bubbles rose, and the river whirled them away. The white rapids downstream flushed a rusty red.

“Victory!” cried the softling triumphantly, and started to wade towards the pool where the troll had sunk, holding his knife aloft. “I shall cut off its head!”

“Not with that, you won’t,” shouted Skarper, still holding on to the raggedy end of the softling’s cloak and pulling hard to hold him back. “Don’t you know the king of Coriander dresses his bodyguards in trollskin armour because it deflects the blows of any man-forged blade?”

The softling looked back, a glimpse of doubt in his large blue eyes. “You have been to Coriander?”

“I read it in a book,” said Skarper. “And I read in another one that trolls’ bones are hard as upland stones,” he added, and fell backwards on the bank as the softling turned and waded back to shore.

“You think it might only be stunned?” he asked as he scrambled out of the water.

“Let’s not wait around and find out,” said Skarper.

“No; perhaps that would not be wise,” the softling said, showing some sense for the first time since Skarper met him, and together they scrabbled their way up the bank to the road and hurried along it until the river was well behind them, its voice far and faint behind the trees. The softling had retrieved his baggage and his sword, and Skarper eyed him warily as they both paused to catch their breath and ring water out of their soggy clothes.

“Henwyn,” said the softling.

“Eh?”

“My name. Henwyn of Adherak.”

He held out his hand, though Skarper did not know what he was supposed to do with it. He looked the softling up and down.
He’s not much more than a hatchling
, he thought.
Maybe that’s why he’s so stupid. . .

“You must be a man of great learning,” Henwyn said earnestly. “To have read books and things. I hope that you can forgive me for trying to. . . Well, I mistook you for a troll, you know. It was quite understandable, seeing you creep out from under the bridge like that, and what with you being a rather strange-looking fellow, if you don’t mind me saying so. Where I come from, in Adherak, people are taller than you and, well, different altogether, so when I saw you I naturally assumed. . .”

He paused, and suddenly bowed low and dropped his sword on the road with a clang that made Skarper leap back nervously.

“Allow me to apologize and to lay my sword at your service. I should be glad of company in this fell place. Everyone knows that Clovenstone is full of ravening, rampaging goblins of the most wicked and unsightly sort.”

“Really?” asked Skarper. He glanced sideways at his companion. Surely this idiot must have noticed his goblin ears, his goblin paws, and the goblin tail that stuck out from under his thick leather goblin jerkin? “So what do these goblins look like, then?” he asked.

“Oh, they are great big hulking brutes,” Henwyn explained. “Taller and broader than men, dressed all in iron armour, with red, glowing fangs and terrible pointy eyes.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“I may have got the eyes and the fangs the wrong way round, but otherwise, yes, quite sure. That’s what all the songs and stories say. They are supposed to infest those tall towers around the Great Keep, but who knows how far they might creep in search of loot and victims? Even on this road I feel that I may be close to a goblin. . .”

“So what’s brought
you
here?” asked Skarper, thinking,
You have no idea how close
. . .

“Oh, I am a hero,” said Henwyn airily, and then, as if he sensed that Skarper did not quite believe him, “At least, I mean to be. Like in the old tales. I am of humble birth, but I’ve always had a feeling that I am destined to do great deeds. My mother came from the line of King Kennack, you see; a daughter of heroes. So I decided to try my hand at heroing. Slaying monsters, rescuing princesses. Though there’s not much call for that sort of thing in Adherak these days. That’s why I came to Clovenstone. I haven’t actually done any great deeds yet, not unless you count that troll, and that wasn’t really a deed, more of an accident. I wish I could have got its head. . .”

He paused, looking thoughtfully back towards the river, and Skarper said, “So you decided to just come and wander about in the ruins till you found something heroic to do?”

“Oh no,” replied Henwyn. He sat down on the mossy kerb and took his boots off, tipping the water out of each before pulling them back on. “No, no; I am on my way to the Westerly Gate.”

Skarper’s eyes narrowed as he recalled Stenoryon’s map. “Why’s that, then?” he asked.

“It is the home of the giant Fraddon,” said Henwyn.

That meant nothing to Skarper. “I don’t know what a giant fraddon is,” he said. “I don’t even know what a normal-sized fraddon is.”

“No, he’s a giant
called
Fraddon,” explained Henwyn. “A very wicked, villainous giant. There is a song about him, ‘The Lay of Princess Eluned’, all about how he carried off Princess Eluned of Lusuenn and keeps her prisoner in the old fortress that guards the Westerly Gate of this evil place. It’s quite catchy. Shall I sing it to you?” And without waiting for an answer he began singing in a thin, tuneless voice:

“O, ’twas on a summer’s morning,

A Tuesday, I’ve heard tell,

The princess of Lusuenn sailed

Upon the grey sea’s swell. . .”

“Some other time, maybe,” said Skarper hastily, for although he didn’t know that particular song, there had been books in the bumwipe heaps full of others like it, and some of them went on for pages and pages.

Henwyn stopped singing. “Well, anyway,” he said, “if I can rescue Princess Eluned and slay the giant, the king of Lusuenn is certain to reward me with half the kingdom and her hand in marriage.”

“Her
hand
?” said Skarper (for the ways of men were strange to him).

“Oh, and the rest of her, of course. At least, that’s the way it generally works. Lusuenn is only a small kingdom, but it would be a start, and the song says that Princess Eluned is a great beauty. . .”

He stopped talking and looked round in surprise, for Skarper had started to make a strange creaking, croaking, snoring sound, which turned out to be laughter.

“You?” cawed Skarper. “You, defeat a
giant
? With that overgrown butter knife? Oh, he, he, he!”

“Well, I don’t see what’s so amusing about it,” said Henwyn huffily. “I am a hero, and that is the sort of thing that heroes do.”

Skarper shook his head. This wasn’t funny any more. It was sad. He had read about giants in the bumwipe heaps, and once, from one of the roofs of Blackspike Tower, he and Breslaw had watched one moving about among the ruins up northerly way. “All sorts of old things are coming here out of the Bonehills and the tangleywoods,” Breslaw had said. “There ben’t no place for them in man-country any more, so they comes to make their homes at Clovenstone. That’s why wise goblins stay safe within the Inner Wall.” The giant had been a long way off, and fog had been brewing in the bogs that lay north of the Inner Wall, so it had been hard to say just how tall the giant was, but he’d stood high enough to lift the roofs off buildings as if they were the lids of treasure boxes.
It would need a whole army of softlings to defeat him
, Skarper thought.

“I came in through Southerly Gate because it seemed easier than skirting round outside the walls, through all the mires and crags and things,” said Henwyn. “I hoped to find a road through these woods to Westerly Gate. Have you passed one, friend?”

Skarper shrugged. All sorts of little roads and side ways had branched off the road he’d come down, but there was no telling where any of them went. “You’ll have to follow your nose,” he said rudely, and pointed vaguely westward, where scraps of golden sunlight showed between the trees.

Henwyn did not seem offended. “Very well. It looks a difficult and dangerous path through these haunted trees, but that is where my fate must take me. Will you join me on that road, Master, er. . .?”

“Skarper,” said Skarper. “And no: I’m heading south. . .” He had no idea where his fate was taking him, only that it wasn’t going to involve giants. Or would-be heroes. He raised a paw in farewell and scurried on along the road. He looked over his shoulder twice as he went. The first time he could see Henwyn standing staring after him. The second time, the road was empty. He paused, and thought he heard the young man’s voice raised in song, dwindling westward between the trees.

What an idiot
, he thought.