The Last Battle (8 page)

All this while Jill went to and fro, sometimes stirring the pot and sometimes looking out enviously at the Donkey and the Unicorn who were contentedly grazing. How many times that morning she wished she could eat grass!

But when the meal came everyone felt it had been worth waiting for, and there were second
helpings all round. When everyone had eaten as much as he could, the three humans and the Dwarf came and sat on the doorstep, the four-footed ones lay down facing them, the Dwarf (with permission both from Jill and from Tirian) lit his pipe, and the King said:

“Now, friend Poggin, you have more news of the enemy, belike, than we. Tell us all you know. And first, what tale do they tell of my escape?”

“As cunning a tale, Sire, as ever was devised,” said Poggin. “It was the Cat, Ginger, who told it, and most likely made it up too. This Ginger, Sire—oh, he’s a slyboots if ever a cat was—said he was walking past the tree to which those villains bound your Majesty. And he said (saving your reverence) that you were howling and swearing and cursing Aslan: ‘language I wouldn’t like to repeat’ were the words he used, looking ever so prim and proper—you know the way a Cat can when it pleases. And then, says Ginger, Aslan himself suddenly appeared in a flash of lightning and swallowed your Majesty up at one mouthful. All the Beasts trembled at this story and some fainted right away. And of course the Ape followed it up. There, he says, see what Aslan does to those who don’t respect him. Let that be a warning to you all. And the poor creatures wailed and whined and said, it will, it will. So that in the upshot your Majesty’s escape has not set them thinking
whether you still have loyal friends to aid you, but only made them more afraid and more obedient to the Ape.”

“What devilish policy!” said Tirian. “This Ginger, then, is close in the Ape’s counsels.”

“It’s more a question by now, Sire, if the Ape is in
his
counsels,” replied the Dwarf. “The Ape has taken to drinking, you see. My belief is that the plot is now mostly carried on by Ginger or Rishda—that’s the Calormene captain. And I think some words that Ginger has scattered among the Dwarfs are chiefly to blame for the scurvy return they made you. And I’ll tell you why. One of those dreadful midnight meetings had just broken up the night before last and I’d gone a bit of the way home when I found I’d left my pipe behind. It was a real good ’un, an old favorite, so I went back to look for it. But before I got to the place where I’d been sitting (it was black as pitch there) I heard a cat’s voice say
Mew
and a Calormene voice say ‘here…speak softly,’ so I just stood as still as if I was frozen. And these two were Ginger and Rishda Tarkaan as they call him. ‘Noble Tarkaan,’ said the Cat in that silky voice of his, ‘I just wanted to know exactly what we both meant today about Aslan meaning
no more
than Tash.’ ‘Doubtless, most sagacious of cats,’ says the other, ‘you have perceived my meaning.’ ‘You mean,’ says Ginger, ‘that there’s no such person as either.’ ‘All
who are enlightened know that,’ said the Tarkaan. ‘Then we can understand one another,’ purrs the Cat. ‘Do you, like me, grow a little weary of the Ape?’ ‘A stupid, greedy brute,’ says the other, ‘but we must use him for the present. Thou and I must provide for all things in secret and make the Ape do our will.’ ‘And it would be better, wouldn’t it,’ said Ginger, ‘to let some of the more enlightened Narnians into our counsels: one by one as we find them apt. For the Beasts who really believe in Aslan may turn at any moment: and will, if the Ape’s folly betrays his secret. But those who care neither for Tash nor Aslan but have only an eye to their own profit and such reward as The Tisroc may give them when Narnia is a Calormene province, will be firm.’ ‘Excellent Cat,’ said the Captain. ‘But choose which ones carefully.’”

While the Dwarf had been speaking the day seemed to have changed. It had been sunny when they sat down. Now Puzzle shivered. Jewel shifted his head uneasily. Jill looked up.

“It’s clouding over,” she said.

“And it’s so cold,” said Puzzle.

“Cold enough, by the Lion!” said Tirian, blowing on his hands. “And faugh! What foul smell is this?”

“Phew!” gasped Eustace. “It’s like something dead? Is there a dead bird somewhere about? And why didn’t we notice it before?”

With a great upheaval Jewel scrambled to his feet and pointed with his horn.

“Look!” he cried. “Look at it! Look, look!”

Then all six of them saw; and over all their faces there came an expression of uttermost dismay.

IN THE SHADOW OF THE TREES ON THE
far side of the clearing something was moving. It was gliding very slowly Northward. At first glance you might have mistaken it for smoke, for it was gray and you could see things through it. But the deathly smell was not the smell of smoke. Also, this thing kept its shape instead of billowing and curling as smoke would have done. It was roughly the shape of a man but it had the head of a bird; some bird of prey with a cruel, curved beak. It had four arms which it held high above its head, stretching them out Northward as if it wanted to snatch all Narnia in its grip; and its fingers—all twenty of them—were curved like its beak and had long, pointed, bird-like claws instead of nails. It floated on the grass instead of walking, and the grass seemed to wither beneath it.

After one look at it Puzzle gave a screaming bray and darted into the Tower. And Jill (who was
no coward, as you know) hid her face in her hands to shut out the sight of it. The others watched it for perhaps a minute, until it streamed away into the thicker trees on their right and disappeared. Then the sun came out again, and the birds once more began to sing.

Everyone started breathing properly again and moved. They had all been still as statues while it was in sight.

“What was it?” said Eustace in a whisper.

“I have seen it once before,” said Tirian. “But that time it was carved in stone and overlaid with gold and had solid diamonds for eyes. It was when I was no older than thou, and had gone as a guest to The Tisroc’s court in Tashbaan. He took me into the great temple of Tash. There I saw it, carved above the altar.”

“Then that—that thing—was Tash?” said Eustace.

But instead of answering him Tirian slipped his arm behind Jill’s shoulders and said, “How is it with you, Lady?”

“A-all right,” said Jill, taking her hands away from her pale face and trying to smile. “I’m all right. It only made me feel a little sick for a moment.”

“It seems, then,” said the Unicorn, “that there is a real Tash, after all.”

“Yes,” said the Dwarf. “And this fool of an Ape, who didn’t believe in Tash, will get more than he bargained for! He called for Tash: Tash has come.”

“Where has it—he—the Thing—gone to?” said Jill.

“North into the heart of Narnia,” said Tirian. “It has come to dwell among us. They have called it and it has come.”

“Ho, ho, ho!” chuckled the Dwarf, rubbing his hairy hands together. “It will be a surprise for the Ape. People shouldn’t call for demons unless they really mean what they say.”

“Who knows if Tash will be visible to the Ape?” said Jewel.

“Where has Puzzle got to?” said Eustace.

They all shouted out Puzzle’s name and Jill went round to the other side of the Tower to see if he had gone there.

They were quite tired of looking for him when at last his large gray head peered cautiously out of
the doorway and he said, “Has it gone away?” And when at last they got him to come out, he was shivering the way a dog shivers before a thunderstorm.

“I see now,” said Puzzle, “that I really have been a very bad donkey. I ought never to have listened to Shift. I never thought things like this would begin to happen.”

“If you’d spent less time saying you weren’t clever and more time trying to be as clever as you could—” began Eustace but Jill interrupted him.

“Oh leave poor old Puzzle alone,” she said. “It was all a mistake; wasn’t it, Puzzle dear?” And she kissed him on the nose.

Though rather shaken by what they had seen, the whole party now sat down again and went on with their talk.

Jewel had little to tell them. While he was a prisoner he had spent nearly all his time tied up at the back of the stable, and had of course heard none of the enemies’ plans. He had been kicked (he’d done some kicking back too) and beaten and threatened with death unless he would say that he believed it was Aslan who was brought out and shown to them by firelight every night. In fact he was going to be executed this very morning if he had not been rescued. He didn’t know what had happened to the Lamb.

The question they had to decide was whether they would go to Stable Hill again that night, show
Puzzle to the Narnians and try to make them see how they had been tricked, or whether they should steal away Eastward to meet the help which Roonwit the Centaur was bringing up from Cair Paravel and return against the Ape and his Calormenes in force. Tirian would very much like to have followed the first plan: he hated the idea of leaving the Ape to bully his people one moment longer than need be. On the other hand, the way the Dwarfs had behaved last night was a warning. Apparently one couldn’t be sure how people would take it even if he showed them Puzzle. And there were the Calormene soldiers to be reckoned with. Poggin thought there were about thirty of them. Tirian felt sure that if the Narnians all rallied to his side, he and Jewel and the children and Poggin (Puzzle didn’t count for much) would have a good chance of beating them. But what if half the Narnians—including all the Dwarfs—just sat and looked, on? or even fought against him? The risk was too great. And there was, too, the cloudy shape of Tash. What might it do?

And then, as Poggin pointed out, there was no harm in leaving the Ape to deal with his own difficulties for a day or two. He would have no Puzzle to bring out and show now. It wasn’t easy to see what story he—or Ginger—could make up to explain that. If the Beasts asked night after night to see Aslan, and no Aslan was brought out, surely even the simplest of them would get suspicious.

In the end they all agreed that the best thing was to go off and try to meet Roonwit.

As soon as they had decided this, it was wonderful how much more cheerful everyone became. I don’t honestly think that this was because any of them was afraid of a fight (except perhaps Jill and Eustace). But I daresay that each of them, deep down inside, was very glad not to go any nearer—or not yet—to that horrible bird-headed thing which, visible or invisible, was now probably haunting Stable Hill. Anyway, one always feels better when one has made up one’s mind.

Tirian said they had better remove their disguises, as they didn’t want to be mistaken for Calormenes and perhaps attacked by any loyal Narnians they might meet. The Dwarf made up a horrid-looking mess of ashes from the hearth and grease out of the jar of grease which was kept for rubbing on swords and spear-heads. Then they took off their Calormene armor and went down to the stream. The nasty mixture made a lather just like soft soap: it was a pleasant, homely sight to see Tirian and the two children kneeling beside the water and scrubbing the backs of their necks or puffing and blowing as they splashed the lather off. Then they went back to the Tower with red, shiny faces, looking like people who have been given an extra good wash before a party. They rearmed themselves in true Narnian style, with straight
swords and three-cornered shields. “Body of me,” said Tirian. “That is better. I feel a true man again.”

Puzzle begged very hard to have the lion-skin taken off him. He said it was too hot and the way it was rucked up on his back was uncomfortable: also, it made him look so silly. But they told him he would have to wear it a bit longer, for they still wanted to show him in that get-up to the other Beasts, even though they were now going to meet Roonwit first.

What was left of the pigeon-meat and rabbit-meat was not worth bringing away but they took some biscuits. Then Tirian locked the door of the Tower and that was the end of their stay there.

It was a little after two in the afternoon when they set out, and it was the first really warm day of that spring. The young leaves seemed to be much further out than yesterday: the snow-drops were over, but they saw several primroses. The sunlight slanted through the trees, birds sang, and always (though usually out of sight) there was the noise of running water. It was hard to think of horrible things like Tash. The children felt, “This is really Narnia at last.” Even Tirian’s heart grew lighter as he walked ahead of them, humming an old Narnian marching song which had the refrain:

Ho, rumble, rumble, rumble,

Rumble drum belabored.

After the King came Eustace and Poggin the Dwarf. Poggin was telling Eustace the names of all the Narnian trees, birds, and plants which he didn’t know already. Sometimes Eustace would tell him about English ones.

After them came Puzzle, and after him Jill and Jewel walking very close together. Jill had, as you might say, quite fallen in love with the Unicorn. She thought—and she wasn’t far wrong—that he was the shiningest, delicatest, most graceful animal she had ever met: and he was so gentle and soft of speech that, if you hadn’t known, you would hardly have believed how fierce and terrible he could be in battle.

“Oh, this
is
nice!” said Jill. “Just walking along like this. I wish there could be more of
this
sort of adventure. It’s a pity there’s always so much happening in Narnia.”

But the Unicorn explained to her that she was quite mistaken. He said that the Sons and Daughters of Adam and Eve were brought out of their own strange world into Narnia only at times when Narnia was stirred and upset, but she mustn’t think it was always like that. In between their visits there were hundreds and thousands of years when peaceful King followed peaceful King till you could hardly remember their names or count their numbers, and there was really hardly anything to put into the History Books. And he went on to talk of
old Queens and heroes whom she had never heard of. He spoke of Swanwhite the Queen who had lived before the days of the White Witch and the Great Winter, who was so beautiful that when she looked into any forest pool the reflection of her face shone out of the water like a star by night for a year and a day afterward. He spoke of Moonwood the Hare who had such ears that he could sit by Caldron Pool under the thunder of the great waterfall and hear what men spoke in whispers at Cair Paravel. He told how King Gale, who was ninth in descent from Frank the first of all Kings, had sailed far away into the Eastern seas and delivered the Lone Islanders from a dragon and how, in return, they had given him the Lone Islands to be part of the royal lands of Narnia forever. He talked of whole centuries in which all Narnia was so happy that notable dances and feasts, or at most tournaments, were the only things that could be remembered, and every day and week had been better than the last. And as he went on, the picture of all those happy years, all the thousands of them, piled up in Jill’s mind till it was rather like looking down from a high hill onto a rich, lovely plain full of woods and waters and cornfields, which spread away and away till it got thin and misty from distance. And she said:

“Oh, I do hope we can soon settle the Ape and get back to those good, ordinary times. And then I hope they’ll go on forever and ever and ever.
Our
world is going to have an end some day. Perhaps this one won’t. Oh Jewel—wouldn’t it be lovely if Narnia just went on and on—like what you said it has been?”

“Nay, sister,” answered Jewel, “all worlds draw to an end, except Aslan’s own country.”

“Well, at least,” said Jill, “I hope the end of this one is millions of millions of millions of years away—hallo! what are we stopping for?”

The King and Eustace and the Dwarf were all staring up at the sky. Jill shuddered, remembering what horrors they had seen already. But it was nothing of that sort this time. It was small, and looked black against the blue.

“I dare swear,” said the Unicorn, “from its flight, that it is a Talking bird.”

“So think I,” said the King. “But is it a friend, or a spy of the Ape’s?”

“To me, Sire,” said the Dwarf, “it has a look of Farsight the Eagle.”

“Ought we to hide under the trees?” said Eustace.

“Nay,” said Tirian, “best stand still as rocks. He would see us for certain if we moved.”

“Look! He wheels, he has seen us already,” said Jewel. “He is coming down in wide circles.”

“Arrow on string, Lady,” said Tirian to Jill. “But by no means shoot till I bid you. He may be a friend.”

If one had known what was going to happen next it would have been a treat to watch the grace and ease with which the huge bird glided down. He alighted on a rocky crag a few feet from Tirian, bowed his crested head, and said in his strange eagle’s-voice, “Hail, King.”

“Hail, Farsight,” said Tirian. “And since you call me King, I may well believe you are not a follower of the Ape and his false Aslan. I am glad of your coming.”

“Sire,” said the Eagle, “when you have heard my news you will be sorrier at my coming than of the greatest woe that ever befell you.”

Tirian’s heart seemed to stop beating at these words, but he set his teeth and said, “Tell on.”