Goblins Vs Dwarves (20 page)

“Nevertheless,” rumbled Fraddon, “I shall do my best.”

“Sorry!” Skarper squeaked. He had forgotten that he was standing next to the giant's ear. If he'd remembered, he would never have said anything so gloomy.

But Etty was feeling gloomy too. “It is horrible,” she said. “All those burning houses. Dwarves should
make
things, not destroy them. I wish there was some way I could stop it, before it does any more harm and damage.”

Skarper wished that too. All the way from Clovenstone, the thought had been growing in him that he really, really didn't want to be in another battle. He said, “What about those workings inside it? The wheels and levers and clockwork bits? What if someone got inside and smashed them up?”

“The dwarves are all around it,” said Etty. “And the wheels and levers are dwarf-wrought, and hard to smash.”

“Poke a hole in it, then: let all the slowsilver run out. . .”

But they had thought of that already, and discarded it. They needed that slowsilver, and besides, you do not simply
poke holes
in things that dwarves have made.

The dust cloud kicked up by the hooves of the heroes' horses rose up from the shadowed land into the sunlight, blushing gold. The riders were halfway to the giant dwarf now. The goblin army was silent, waiting to see what would happen when they reached it. Skarper imagined the smug smiles fading from the faces of Merion and Ponsadane as they realized just how big it was.

“What is that?” asked Etty suddenly, and Skarper saw that she had turned and was looking behind them, back the way they had come into the shadows of Sticklecombe. A mist was rising there. For a moment he was afraid that it was dwarf smoke, the signal of some sneak attack, but it was mist all right, spilling down the valley of the Stickle like cauldron smoke, just like the mists which hung over the Oeth and the Natterdon Mire at home. “It's only mist. . .” he said.

“Ooh!” cried all the goblins suddenly. “Aaah!”

Skarper forgot the mist and looked north again. Out in the farmlands the last long rays of sunlight flashed and flickered upon naked blades. More dust was rising, and it was clear now even to those goblins who had not mastered trigonometry that the Giant Dwarf was not just Giant, it was
enormous
. The sound of its huge feet stamping up and down could be heard quite clearly on the hilltop now. So could a faint clatter of dropped weaponry and abandoned shields as the cowardlier goblins started to slink away. But they did not go very far, because as they started back down the hill towards Shallowford they saw the mist coiling up at them.

“That is not just mist!” said Etty firmly.

It was thick and white and it reached like a tentacle out of Sticklecombe, feeling for the ford over the Sethyn. It found it, and began to climb the hill the goblins stood on. The goblins who had been sneaking away from the Giant Dwarf all started to back away from the mist instead, and bumped into the ones who were still on the hilltop, staring north. Consternation spread. Soon everyone was looking at the mist, and nobody even noticed the great burps of fire that shone briefly behind them in the north.

The strange mist was so dense that it was impossible to see anything through it, but now and then its edges lifted slightly from the ground, and beneath it, in the very last of the sunlight, Skarper saw little marching shapes: fat bodies with bandy legs, web-toed feet stamping up and down.

The boglins had arrived.

One small patch of mist detached itself from the rest and drifted ahead. Skarper and Etty, watching from the giant's shoulder, could see that it was like a mist umbrella, or a mobile tent of shade and dampness, beneath which three big boglins squelched along. Two clutched trailing stalks of mist to keep it from blowing away. The third was Fetter of the Mire.

Henwyn went forward to meet him. Not sure how to greet a boglin king, he held out his hand. Not sure how to greet a warmblood, Fetter stared at it for a moment, then reached out his webbed hand and shook it firmly. His touch was as cold and sticky as a slug.

“We came,” he said. “We are here to help, as the crumble-lady asked.”

“You are welcome!” said Henwyn. “Look northward! There are the dwarves. Your mists will hide our true numbers from them.”

Fetter turned away, shouting to the mass of boglins who were toiling up the hill. They began to move faster, breaking into different groups, and the mist went with them, rolling screens and curtains of it, wrapping the goblin army. By some magic, the boglins made little holes and slits appear in it, so that the goblins could still see out.

“Riders coming!” shouted Gutgust, from the front rank of the army.

Racing specks showed on the pale road ahead of the Giant Dwarf. The goblins drew their swords and levelled their spears as the specks grew closer, coming up the hill. But it was no dwarfish attack; it was the heroes from Boskennack returning. Nine had gone down to face the Giant Dwarf; only two came back, and three riderless horses, wild-eyed, with foam upon their flanks. The trappings of the horses and the fine clothes of the heroes were torn and scorched. Kerwen's cloak was on fire.

“That thing breathes flames!” cried Lord Ponsadane.

“Run for your lives!” shouted Kerwen. “Arrows just bounce off it!”

“What of the others?” demanded Garvon Hael, as they stopped to rest their gasping horses on the hilltop.

“Smashed! Crushed! Stomped! Burnt!” said Ponsadane, all the redness and smugness gone from his big face, which quivered like an agitated blancmange as he stared about him at the goblins. “The greatest heroes of the Westlands could not stand against it! All is lost! Flee, all of you! Save yourselves!”

“Stand with us!” said Henwyn. “We shall stop the Giant Dwarf here. Look, we have mists to hide us from it, and a giant to challenge it!”

Ponsadane shook his head. “Not likely! I'm off!” he said. He dragged his weary horse's head up by the reins and set his spurs to its dripping flanks, ready to ride on to Shallowford and Adherak and away, and Kerwen of Bryngallow did likewise.

But before they could start down the southerly slope of the hill the ground began to tremble. For a moment Skarper thought it was the footfalls of the Giant Dwarf, but no. The road across the hilltop heaved and split, shattered chalk churning like the foam of a wave. The defeated heroes' horses reared in terror, spilling their riders in the dust, as a great armoured nose came snuffling up through the rubble.

“Moles!” goblins were shouting, all over the hilltop.

Then it was mostly chaos, and running about. A dozen diremoles must have been sent ahead of the dwarf army, and they had burrowed up through the soft chalk of Adhery Hill. They emerged all over the hilltop, white with chalk dust, dwarves upon their backs. Their plan had been to herd the goblins downhill into the path of the Giant Dwarf, like beaters driving wild animals on to the spears of a hunt, but they had not reckoned on the desperation of the goblins, or on the walls of magic mist that cloaked and screened them. Dwarves and goblins met in the mist's white corridors, and the clash of weapons echoed across the hill. Through the battle ran Zeewa, her spear in her hand and her ghosts behind her, and the diremoles sensed the ghosts and fled from them, just as they had at Clovenstone, trampling dwarf and goblin alike in their panic. Ponsadane and Kerwen realized their escape was cut off and decided they might as well fight too, drawing their swords and joining Garvon Hael. Boglin blowpipes spat drugged darts that dropped dwarfs drowsing in the dust.

Henwyn hurried through it all, shouting, “Fraddon! Fraddon!” Through rents in the boglins' mists he could see the Giant Dwarf, almost at the hill's foot now. He knew that it did not matter how well his friends fought: if the dwarves could keep them busy for a few more minutes till that monstrosity arrived, they would all be doomed. “Fraddon?” he shouted, then, “Ooof!” – he had crashed into one of the giant's big feet, which loomed out of the murk like a boulder.

The giant had a diremole in either hand, and he was busy banging their heads together.

“Fraddon! It is time!” Henwyn shouted up at him. “The Giant Dwarf comes!”

Fraddon nodded, put down the dazed moles, and picked up his club. “Good luck, little softling,” he said.

“Good luck, Fraddon!” shouted Henwyn.

The giant strode downhill in the twilight, tearing through curtains of mist, which clung like cobwebs to his legs. The noise of the battle faded behind him, and the noise of the Giant Dwarf swelled ahead; the clank, rattle, chunk of its mysterious workings, the stamp of those huge feet falling. Fraddon raised his club and ran at it. Etty and Skarper, whom he'd completely forgotten, clung in terror to the hairs in his right ear. Darts whined past them as the dwarf crossbowmen on the Giant Dwarf's shoulders shot at Fraddon. The little missiles could not pierce Fraddon's thick hide, of course, but for a moment Skarper and Etty were in danger.

The Giant Dwarf seemed to grow bigger as Fraddon ran towards it. Skarper had grown used to Fraddon himself being the biggest thing around. Now the Brazen Head on its new body loomed above him. A huge iron fist swung at him, and Fraddon sidestepped and slammed his club into the Giant Dwarf. It rocked backwards, and a dozen dwarves tumbled off its shoulders and the platforms that jutted from its chest, but the Giant Dwarf itself did not fall. A silvery glow shone through gaps and gratings in its sides as it reached out a huge hand and seized Fraddon's club, snapping it in two. Fire snorted from its nostrils, playing across the giant's broad chest and setting his shirt a-smoulder. The Giant Dwarf wasn't really breathing fire – Skarper could see two dwarves hiding up its nose with those dragon-snouted flame-hose things of theirs – but that wasn't much consolation as the flames gushed and crackled. If the jet had touched Fraddon's hands or face it might have done real damage, but luckily his shirt was thick, and before the flame-hose operators could improve their aim the Giant Dwarf was distracted by another onslaught, this time from above.

The cloud maidens, who had been watching from on high, had decided it was time to lend a hand. Black and angry, their cloud swung low over the Giant Dwarf's head, and lances of lightning crackled down, striking its shoulders and chest, playing across its great bronze face in showers of coloured sparks. Hailstones pounded it, hard enough to dent its brazen mask, and rain turned the ground around its feet to a quagmire. Above the noise, the clear voices of the cloud maidens rang out, shouting, “Go away, you big bully!” and “Pick on someone your own size!”

The Giant Dwarf raised its head. Twin jets of flame geysered from its nostrils, engulfing the cloud. “Oh poo!” and “Bother!” shrieked the cloud maidens. Fire couldn't hurt them, but the fierce heat made it impossible to hold their shape; their cloud was thinning, and they thinned with it, becoming a fine mist which blew away on the wind.

With a roar of anger, Fraddon lunged at the Giant Dwarf before it could bring its fiery breath to bear on him again. He grappled with it, grasping its metal body in a bear hug. The shock as the two huge figures collided was so great that the remaining dwarves were shaken from the Giant Dwarf's shoulders like shouty dandruff, while Skarper and Etty lost their grip on Fraddon's ear hairs and went tumbling down his scorched chest.

Skarper, who had had a lot of experience falling from great heights, knew that the thing to do was flail blindly for a handhold. He flailed, and found one. As he clung there, Etty grabbed his tail. It was not until a moment later, when the Giant Dwarf had thrust Fraddon away from it, that Skarper realized he was dangling from the handrail of one of the platforms on its armoured chest. The Giant Dwarf lurched and rolled, almost shaking Skarper loose, and Etty swung from his tail's end like a pendulum with plaits, but at last he managed to struggle up onto the platform, and heave her up after him. Then he looked round for Fraddon.

The giant was nowhere to be seen.

Skarper squeaked in alarm, looking left and right. He could see the battle raging on Adhery Hill, the dwarf host spreading up the hillside ahead of their giant contraption, but no sign of Fraddon. Then, looking down, he saw him; stretched on the fields like a fallen colossus, felled by the Giant Dwarf's fists.

Was he dead? Or simply dazed? There was no telling, in the twilight, with the great fallen figure dwindling behind as the Giant Dwarf started to climb the slopes of the hill.

“Skarper!” shouted Etty, over the rattle and clatter and chunk from inside that vast iron chest. “We can't stay here!”

As if to underline her point, a crossbow dart came whirring between them and pinged off the Giant Dwarf's hide. The dwarves milling about its feet had seen the two stowaways, and were hurling missiles and rude names at them. Skarper looked for a way off the platform, and found one: a circular door, just big enough for a stooping dwarf to pass through. He tried its metal handle, and it opened. Dragging Etty after him, he crept into the hot, dark innards of the Giant Dwarf.

 

Up on the hill, the battle between dwarves and goblins raged back and forth, and always where it was at its thickest, there was Zeewa, seeking her own death. But getting killed was turning out to be surprisingly difficult. Wherever the Muskish girl went, the diremoles fled before her ghosts. Even the dwarves ran from her, because the drifting dust from all their chalk molehills had coated everyone white, goblins and boglins and dwarves and men alike, and the mists made everything appear vague and ghostly, so the ghosts themselves looked no different now to anyone else. Kosi kept leaping in front of Zeewa, shouting challenges and brandishing his ghostly spear, so that the dwarves who might have struck her down wasted their time slashing at him instead, and getting confused when their weapons passed straight through. Most just fled before Tau and the tide of charging animals. Once three fearless tallboys cornered Zeewa and she thought her end had come, but a huge chalk boulder from the bratapult flattened all three before they could land a blow. And when others tried to fight her, her instincts kept saving her; she meant to stand and wait for death to come, but she always ended up lashing out with her spear, sinking its red blade into dwarf flesh, slamming its butt against dwarf helms.

And despite all her efforts, and all the bravery of goblins, boglins and men, the dwarves seemed slowly to be winning, and the little army of Clovenstone was being driven back to make its stand on that burial mound, under the comet banner. There Fetter fought side by side with Fentongoose, while Yabber and Lord Ponsadane led desperate sorties to gather lost and wounded goblins from other parts of the hill. There Cribba, Torridge and Kenn heaved huge stones into the bratapult, and shouted “Boing!” as they sent them hurtling into the dwarvish host. There Nurdle blew his war horn, and boglin mist weavers worked their spells. There Garvon Hael rode his grey horse through the ranks of the dwarfs as if they were waves on the sea at Far Penderglaze, and Henwyn fought bravely too, and wondered what had become of Skarper.

And the ground beneath the battling warriors shook, and above the crash and cry of war they could all hear the clank and thunder of the footfalls of the Giant Dwarf.