Goblins Vs Dwarves (16 page)

Skarper booted the huge head. “I don't care how angry it is,” he said. Then he looked at the rest of the worm, slumped in the entrance to its hole. Blood had stopped flowing from its severed neck. In fact, the worm's flesh had closed over the wound. As he watched in horror, the stump bulged in two places. The bulges grew, swiftly developing eyes, nostrils, beaks and expressions of extreme annoyance. The corpse twitched, wriggled, and rose up, two-headed now, both heads hissing and growling, “Moawwrr!” as it writhed towards Skarper, hungry for revenge and goblin flesh.

“Now that's why we don't deal with tunnel worms by chopping off their heads,” said Durgar. “Chop a tunnel worm's head off and two more grow in its place, see?”

Skarper ducked under the worm's heads as they lunged at him. “Henwyn told me a story about a creature like this!” he shouted, sidestepping as the beaks snapped fiercely at him. “Some hero killed it with fire! You burn the stump before new heads can grow!”

He nipped behind it, stepped up on its slimy back and swung the axe again, lopping off both heads. Almost instantly, four heads emerged from the stump of the creature's neck. They looked even more annoyed than the previous two.

“But we don't have any fire!” said Durgar.

“We can make it!” said Etty. “Give me your tinderbox, Father!”

Skarper jumped out of the way as the worm's four new heads twisted round, searching for him. “Moawwwrrr!” they all screamed, in unison. But the “Moawwwrr!” was higher-pitched than before, because the heads were smaller. They had to be. How else could they have fitted on the worm's neck? Each new pair of heads that grew were about half the size of the one that they replaced. Encouraged, Skarper swung the axe again. The four heads fell; eight more shoved their way out of the stump, glaring at him with sixteen angry eyes.

Meanwhile, Etty was crouched over a little pile of kindling, striking sparks with the flint and iron from her father's tinderbox. But it is not easy to make fire at the best of times, and here in the cavern, with her hands trembling and Skarper fighting for his life, it was almost impossible. Red-gold sparks showered on to the kindling, but they did not catch. Even if they had, what else could she find that would burn, in this lifeless cave?

Skarper's arms were getting tired, and the raging tunnel worm now had thirty-two heads.

“Here, Daughter!” called Durgar, dragging himself closer. He had taken out his knife, and he used it chop off the end of his beard. He handed the tuft of hair to Etty, and when the sparks fell on it it kindled quickly. She pulled her cloak off, wrapped it around a metal bar that had come loose from one of the wrecked carts, and thrust it into the flames.

“Stand back!” she shouted, turning to run to Skarper's aid.

“Eh?” Skarper was leaning on his axe among a pile of lopped-off worm heads, quite exhausted. The tunnel worm roared its anger at him; tiny thin howls of “Moawwwrr!” from one hundred and twenty-eight tiny heads. It was starting to look a bit embarrassed. None of its new heads was much bigger around than Etty's little finger, and although the little snapping beaks looked like they might give a nasty pinch, they didn't hold any real terror any more. Two hundred and fifty-six baleful little eyes winced as Etty came nearer and the torchlight fell upon them. The worm slithered backwards, and vanished into its hole.

“Phew!” said Skarper. “Good riddance!”

“Skarper, you were wonderful!” said Etty.

“Aye,” agreed Durgar, looking the goblin up and down. “That was bravely done, goblin. I owe you my life, it seems.” He looked almost as embarrassed as the worm had. It did not come easy, giving thanks and praise to goblins. He shook his head and tried to stand, but the worm's beak had bruised him badly and the pain made him slump down again. “That damned worm must have eaten all the dwarves who manned the way station here.” He kicked one of the chopped-off heads as if it were a football. “Worms were rare till lately, but there are more of the foul creatures since the Lych Lord's star returned. They come up from the under-underworld, melting their way through the rock with a noxious vitriol that oozes from them. The dwarves of old tried taming them and using them to mine, but they are savage beasts, and quite untameable. So they roam wild, a menace to dwarves and dwarvish works alike.”

Skarper looked down at the axe in his hands. Its blades were notched from slicing through so many wormy necks, and etched with odd scars and scorch marks, perhaps from the vitriol that Durgar spoke of. (Actually, Skarper himself had been spattered with the stuff; there were little singed patches on his clothes and skin.) He went to where Durgar sat to give the axe back to him, reflecting that a proper goblin would have chopped the old dwarf's head off too. But Etty would not have liked that, and anyway, he sensed that he had won Durgar over when he saved him from the worm.

But just as he held out the axe, something struck him a terrible blow on the head. “Arkle!” he cried, collapsing. If it had not been for his tough dwarven helmet and the thick goblin skull beneath it, his story would have ended there.

Langstone, who had crept up behind Skarper and belted him while he was talking to Durgar and Etty, gave a shout of triumph and waved his dented war hammer in the air. Behind Langstone a whole crowd of other dwarves came scrambling through the stalagmites, armed with all sorts of weapons. “Where is it?” they shouted, and “Let us at it!” They were the dwarves from the way station, who had not been eaten by the tunnel worm at all; they had simply run off to fetch help and equipment when the worm appeared, and Langstone had bumped into them as they were returning to deal with it. They had overcome their fear of the creature and were eager for a fight, and they stopped and stared in bewilderment when they saw all those severed worm heads, in assorted sizes, scattered on the cavern floor. “By all the gold in Delverdale!” they muttered, and “Flippin' Ada!” A burp of fire escaped from somebody's flame-hose and set light to somebody else's beard.

Etty flung herself down beside Skarper and gently rolled him over, crying out, “Oh, Skarper! Skarper!”

“Steady on, Etty!” said Langstone. “The foul goblin may not be dead yet. Stand back and I'll give him another bash.”

“Then you'll have to come through me to do it,” said Durgar, and he stepped between Skarper and the other dwarves, gripping the axe which Skarper had just returned to him. “This goblin saved my life,” he said gruffly. “He single-handedly saw off a tunnel worm that would have taken ten dwarves to deal with, and without the use of fire, either – a very interesting technique. Oh, and my daughter seems fond of him. I think at the very least we owe him a chance to explain himself.”

The dwarves all glanced uneasily at one another. Let a goblin explain itself? This was unheard of. But Durgar was a surveyor, and senior to them, so they dared not argue.

Skarper sat up, rubbing his head. He twitched his ears a bit, one by one, just to make sure that they were still attached. He blinked his eyes, and counted his teeth. He didn't feel ready to speak yet, but he didn't need to, because Etty was speaking for him.

“It's wrong for us to be taking all the goblins' slowsilver!” she said loudly. “We can't need all of it. Those gallons and gallons all gushing through the new pipe back to Delverdale. . . What is it all for? We should take what we need, and leave the rest for the goblins.”

“Stone-born hooligans!” growled one of the dwarves (he was the one whose beard had caught fire, and he was still smouldering a bit, which may have been why he was in a bad mood).

“They are not hooligans!” said Etty firmly. “Not all of them, anyway. Skarper isn't.”

The dwarves looked uneasily at Skarper, remembering what Durgar had said about him saving his life and defeating the tunnel worm. “The Head Knows All. . .” grumbled one.

“. . .and the Head Knows Best,” the others agreed.

“But what if it
doesn't
?” asked Etty. “How can it know all, unless we tell it when new things appear? Goblins have changed; there's no need for us to just fight them any more. That's why I'm taking Skarper to Dwarvenholm, so that I can bring him before the Head and explain.”

“A goblin in Dwarvenholm?” shouted one of the dwarves.

“Never!” cried another.

“The girl has a right to take her troubles to the Head if she so wishes,” said Durgar firmly. “That is the right of all dwarves.”

“But I've never heard of any dwarf actually doing it,” said Langstone. “None but overseers dare enter the hall of the Head usually, and as for goblins. . .”

“Nevertheless,” said Durgar, “'tis Etty's right, and if that is what she wants to do, I shall not stop her.”

The dwarves muttered and shuffled. “Well,” said one, “if the goblin really did save you from the worm. . .”

“If you're sure it's not all some goblin trick. . .”

“Etty,” said Langstone sternly, “no good will come of this troublemaking. The Head Knows All and the Head Knows. . .”

But Etty, ignoring him, was helping Skarper to his feet, and Durgar, stuffing his axe back into his belt, called loudly, “Right, lads; how long will it take us to get these rails repaired?”

It did not take very long at all. Dwarves might be annoying, hairy, set-in-their-ways, axe-happy killjoys, thought Skarper, but they were hard workers, and well organized. Ask a bunch of goblins to repair a broken railway and they'd just bicker for a while and end up hitting each other with the bits; the dwarves, under Durgar's supervision, went to work like the pieces of one big, beardy machine. Before Skarper's ears had quite stopped ringing from that hammer blow the railway was repaired, and he was back in a cart with Etty, Durgar and Langstone, rumbling towards Dwarvenholm.

The caverns through which the railway led were larger now, and more often lit by mole-dung lamps, or the furnaces of smithies and smelting works. This part of the Bonehills had been home to dwarves for long, long centuries, and it looked much grander and more settled than the newer tunnels which lay closer to Clovenstone. Multi-storey dwarf burrows had been hollowed from the cavern walls, huge stalagmites had been wrought into frowning likenesses of the Head, and above the mouths of tunnels big runes were carved, spelling out encouraging slogans like DELVE FOR VICTORY or KEEP CALM AND QUARRY ON.

Soon the railway was rising steadily, and the carts no longer rumbled along under their own momentum but were hauled up a series of steep inclines by mole-powered winches. At the top of the last of these steeps spread a broad marshalling yard, where carts from all over the dwarves' underground empire arrived to be unloaded. The travellers disembarked here, and even with his dwarven helm and cloak Skarper drew more wide-eyed stares than ever he had from the people of Coriander. “Goblin!” The word ran ahead of him through the bustling streets of Delverdale like a fire through dry grass, until everyone in the great cave city seemed to know. “A goblin has come to Dwarvenholm!”

Along the vaulted streets they went, lit by hanging lamps like pocket suns. Up broad stairways carved from living rock, and across bridges which arched above chasms and cataracts. Here and there teams of harnessed moles turned enormous gears, working pumps which carried clean air down from the world above. Outside the warrens and the factories, dwarves gathered to stare and point, murmuring “Goblin!” as Skarper passed. Dwarf children toddled out into the roadway to peer at his face and see if he was as scary as the goblins were in stories, and their mothers snatched them out of his path as if they feared he might eat them. Young dwarves threw pebbles and pasty crusts at him, and earned themselves hard stares from Etty and her father. Older ones demanded, “What is he doing here, Durgar?” and “How dare you bring one of our enemies into Dwarvenholm, Langstone?”

Langstone could only shrug, and say, “It wasn't my idea.”

Durgar said, “Etty and I are taking him to the Head. It's the Head who will decide if he's our enemy or not.”

They climbed a long, curving stairway, and passed beneath the shadow of a richly carven arch. Two dwarves with staffs stood guard there and stepped out to bar the way, but Durgar said, “My daughter has come to lay her grievances before the Head, as is the ancient right of every dwarf.”

“But that's not a dwarf, Durgar!” said one of the sentries, jabbing his staff at Skarper. “That's a goblin!”

“You think I don't know that?” said Durgar angrily. “This goblin is the subject of Etty's complaint to the Head. Now, will you let us pass, Slab Stonethwaite, or will you break the oldest custom of the dwarves?”

Slab Stonethwaite mumbled something about the other oldest custom of the dwarves being not to let goblins go wandering about inside Dwarvenholm, but Durgar's fierce glare silenced him, and he and his companion stepped aside. Durgar, Etty, Skarper and Langstone passed between them, and entered a huge space: a hall hollowed from the heart of the mountain, ringed with pillars and pierced screens of living rock as delicate as lace.

In the centre of that hall, in a pool of light cast by lamps which hung on long chains from the high ceiling, there stood the Brazen Head. It was a handsome dwarf head, wrought from dull, aged bronze, and the size of a large house. There were gaps and openings in it – at its temples, and in its sunken eyes – and through these holes Skarper could see big, toothed wheels turning amid a complicated tangle of pipes and tubes. These inner workings had a silvery sheen, an owl-light glow that Skarper knew meant they were forged from slowsilver.

All around the Head, and up and down ladders and walkways which spidered over it, there hurried important-looking dwarf overseers in purple robes. Some climbed up to feed small, polished stones into its brass ears; some stood ready to catch other stones which emerged from its open mouth and slid down the flutings of its beard into their waiting hands. The stones being fed in had questions on them, runic letters carved by dwarves who sat in rows at low stone benches. The stones coming out bore the answers. The dwarves who caught them shouted out these answers to young dwarf messengers who waited eagerly in the shadows around the edges of the hall. “Excavations in the Elkendelve shaft are to proceed; send three squads of miners there. . .”

“Level Fourteen of the mine at Boldventure is to be abandoned before the yield drops any further. . .”

“Cardle's mole cavalry may withdraw from Clovenstone.”

Awed by the ants'-nest bustle of the place, Skarper hung back in the shadows near the entrance until Etty took him by the paw and led him forward. “The Head must get a look at you!” she said.

“No!” said Langstone. He had been uncomfortable about her wild plan all the way from the worm's hole, and now the looming presence of the Head so overawed him that he was trembling. “Don't do this! I will not be a part of it! I am going to fetch Overseer Glunt; I shall tell him that this is all your idea and nothing to do with me.”

He reached out to pull Etty back, but Durgar thrust him away. “Fetch Glunt, if that's what you want,” he said. “No doubt he'll be down here soon enough anyway. The whole of Dwarvenholm is buzzing like a kicked hive with news of our coming. Etty, lass, if you're sure you want to do this, do it quick.”

Langstone made an exasperated, strangled noise, then turned and went running from the hall. As his footsteps faded, Etty squeezed Skarper's paw and led him on across the hall, with Durgar. Slowly the shouted orders, the pecking of the question-carvers, and the clumping footsteps of the departing messenger-dwarves fell quiet. Only the Brazen Head kept clanking and rattling and chunking, as it had clanked and rattled and chunked for centuries. The gears revolved behind its empty eyes. All other eyes in the hall were turned upon Etty and Skarper.

“Hello!” said Skarper, trying to sound friendly, and he waved a paw at the nearest overseer. The dwarf just stood glaring at him with an unread answer stone clenched tightly in his trembling hands.

“What is the meaning of this intrusion?” another overseer demanded, his long white beard quivering with outrage.

“I have a question for the Head,” said Etty.

The question carvers looked nervously at her, then at the Head, wondering what to do.

“Certainly not!” blustered the white-bearded overseer. “This is a time of great deeds and mighty undertakings. The Head is busy with important computations. It is not to be bothered with questions from a girl-child and a goblin!”

“Yet it
is
her right,” said another overseer.

“The right of every dwarf,” agreed a third.

“Hurry up and tell us your question, girl,” said a fourth, and signalled to the oldest of the question carvers that he should write it down.

Etty coughed twice to clear her throat. She was not used to having quite so many eyes upon her, quite so many ears waiting to catch her words. She said, “I want to ask the Head, does it know that goblins no longer want to be our enemies? And, if it does, why is it that dwarves and goblins may not live in peace?”

The question carver plucked two fresh stones from the basket that stood at his side. (Like all the question stones, they were flat, black pebbles, smoothed and rounded in the River Blindwater, which ran through deep caves far beneath Dwarvenholm.) Quickly the carver's chisel pecked out Etty's questions, one on each stone. Then an overseer gathered them up, climbed the spindly ladder to the Head's ear, and fed the stones in, one by one.

The Head quivered. Clank, it went. And rattle, and chunk. Reflections of the hanging lamps danced in the flutings of its beard where the bronze had been worn smooth and bright by all the answer stones sliding down. Clank, rattle, chunk – and out came another stone; a single answer to Etty's two questions. It dropped into the hands of a waiting overseer, who raised it and read it aloud.

“The Head says, ‘Goblins have always been the enemy of dwarves. Goblins will always be the enemy of dwarves.'”

Clank, rattle, chunk, went the Head, but no more stones emerged.

“Well, lass, you tried,” said Durgar, placing a fatherly hand on Etty's shoulder. “The Head has spoken, and now we must leave. . .”

Etty shook herself free of him. “But it didn't answer my question!” she said angrily. “I asked if it knew goblins had changed. I asked why goblins must be our enemies. It's not good enough, just to say that they always have been and they always will!”

“But the Head knows all. . .” said one of the question carvers.

Etty strode to the overseer who had read the answer stone and snatched it from him. She hurled it at the floor, where it shattered, and the shards went skitter-skating across the marble and away into the shadows. “It doesn't really know anything, does it?” she shouted, pointing up at the great, impassive face of the Brazen Head. “You ask it questions and it gives you answers, but it doesn't know anything! It still thinks things are as they were all those years ago when it was made. It's just a clanking, rattling, chunking
contraption
!”

All around her, overseers gasped, while messengers and question carvers covered their ears to try to stop themselves hearing any more of her terrible, blasphemous words. One messenger fainted. Another said, “How could she?” Even Durgar muttered, “Steady now, lass.”

“But it's true!” shouted Etty. “We've all known it's true, haven't we, really, for years and years? It was just easier to pretend that the Head knows all!”

Not many of the dwarves in the hall were listening to her any more, and it wasn't just because half of them had stuck their fingers in their ears and started going, “La-la-la. . .” There was a commotion going on outside: a blur of voices and a tramp of iron-shod shoes. Skarper, who had been thinking of slipping quietly away while Etty's angry outburst was distracting the overseers, turned to find that his way was barred. A squad of armoured dwarves was marching into the hall of the Head, forming a line across the entrance with their spears levelled.

“Who are they?” asked Skarper nervously.

“Those are the tallboys,” said Durgar grimly. “The tallest dwarves of each generation are picked to serve as defenders of Dwarvendom and bodyguards for the overseers. . .”

Skarper gulped, looking at the barrier of spears. The bosses of the tallboys' shields and the visors of their helmets were forged in the likeness of the Head, and some of them were very tall indeed, real giants of dwarves, almost four and a half feet high.

Their ranks shifted slightly, and out between the spears stepped a shorter figure; one that Skarper knew. It was Overseer Glunt, whose ugly head he'd landed on when he first fell into the dwarf tunnel in the Bonehills, all those weeks before.

“All right, Durgar, this nonsense has gone far enough!” Glunt announced, with a nasty sneer. “Langstone has told me the whole sorry tale. To think, a surveyor of your age and standing, doubting the wisdom of the Head! And you, Etty – conspiring with goblins and biglings against your own people! It's Dungeon Crag and the Bright Bowl for all of you.”

“What's that mean?” asked Skarper. “Is it bad? Is it an actual bowl? How bad can a bowl be?”

His friends did not answer, but they did not really need to. Skarper could see the look of dumbstruck fear that had settled upon their faces. It told him that whatever this Bright Bowl was, it was something very bad indeed.