Henmor shook his head. “I can’t say for sure. Goblins are rough, roistering types, but good cheese-makers. I don’t know why would they want to go hallooing about, starting armies and such.”
“Why don’t you go and talk to them, Henmor?” said his wife. “See what all this is about?’
So Henmor fetched his old dappled mare from the stables behind the cheesery, and a few of the more curious Adherakians found horses too, and soon they were riding up the narrow road to Sticklecombe, where they could see the goblin host coming over the moor towards them like dark cloud-shadow.
The goblins had been on the road for two days by then. Rainstorms had swept over them as they came down off the high moors (there was a reason why those hills were so green) and the villages where they’d hoped to find food and lodging were all shuttered and deserted. The tooting of the war horns had a weary sound, and rather than chanting war songs they were bickering, complaining about their poor tired paws, or asking in whiny voices, “Are we nearly there yet?”
The humans were just as tired, but Henwyn perked up when he recognized his father’s horse on the road ahead. “Come on!” he shouted to Skarper, and they jogged on together ahead of the footsore army and met Henmor in the valley bottom, where the road forded a little river. There father and son hugged, and Henwyn explained that the goblins had not come to loot Adherak, but to save it.
The other Adherakians who had ridden out with Henmor looked warily at the goblin army, and raised a cautious-sounding cheer. Few of them had ever seen a goblin before, and they were appalled by all the scaly, furry, fanged, ferocious faces which peered at them from behind Henwyn. They weren’t at all sure they wouldn’t rather just take their chances with the dwarves. But Henmor said, “You are welcome, then! You must come into the town.”
“No,” said Garvon Hael, riding up on his grey horse. “You are kind, but we have not time to accept your hospitality. We will make our way to the Old North Road, and try to stop the Giant Dwarf there.”
A cloud, which had been hanging above Sticklecombe all this time, descended now, and the astonished men from Adherak saw the cloud maidens who rode upon it, and blushed under the gaze of their colourless hailstone eyes. The cloud maidens had delivered Ned’s warning to the High King at Boskennack (in fact they’d startled him rather badly, by hovering outside the window of the royal toilet and calling in to him while he was concentrating on his morning poo). Since then they’d been riding the winds of the upper air, racing north to spy on the progress of the dwarves and then rushing back to report on it to the goblin army. Now they said, “Henwyn, the Giant Dwarf is twenty miles from here, stomping down the road from the north and burning man-houses as it comes.”
Garvon Hael shouted an order, and goblin captains ran up and down the long, ragged column of the army, chivvying back into line all those goblins who had collapsed on the roadside or gone to bathe their blistered feet in the River Stickle. Griping and complaining, the goblins went on, pausing only to scoop up drinks of water in their helmets as they splashed across the ford. To the north, thin trickles of smoke were rising up the sky.
Henwyn’s father sent one of his companions galloping back to Adherak to fetch the rest of its defenders, and then he and the others joined the army, looking nervously at the goblins, and the trolls, and the giant, and even more nervously at Zeewa. Why did the air around her flicker and shift in that strange way, making their hair stand on end and causing their horses to shy? “Is that dark queenly looking lass a witch?” whispered Henmor to his son.
“Oh no, she’s just haunted,” Henwyn replied, as he hurried back to his place in the middle of the column.
“Ghosts, now?” said Henmor, trying to calm his panicky horse as Zeewa’s ghosts went brushing and rushing by. “Ghosts and cloud ladies. Whatever is the world coming to?”
“Oh, you’ll get used to it!” Dr Prong called happily, as he went piggybacking by on Torridge’s shoulders. “Creatures out of children’s tales!”
Over the hills the army wound its way, through meadows Henwyn had known since childhood. They crossed the Sethyn at Shallowford and climbed up to meet the Old North Road where it ran over Adhery Hill. There on the hill’s crest, they halted. Looking north, they could see the rolling farmlands reaching away to the blue distance where the mountains rose. And there upon the patchwork of fields and commons, like a chessman on a counterpane, they saw the Giant Dwarf.
“We shall stop here,” said Garvon Hael. “Climbing this hill should slow it; that’s when we’ll take it down. The trolls can bombard it with the bratapult from the shelter of that wall; Fraddon will do battle with it, and the rest of us can deal with the dwarves who march beside it.”
“March beneath it too, maybe,” said Fentongoose. “This hill may be riddled with dwarf tunnels for all we know. They could attack from beneath our feet, or burrow behind us and attack us in the rear!”
Some of the goblins put their ears to the ground, listening for signs of tunnelling, but all they could hear was the faint, far-off tramp of the feet of the Giant Dwarf.
By that time, evening was drawing on. The goblins lit campfires and brewed up horrible stews for themselves, squabbling over who got the juiciest bits of the rats, bats and slugs they’d caught on the march from Clovenstone. Garvon Hael took Fentongoose, Durgar and Dr Prong up on to an ancient burial mound which stood near the road, and Henwyn went with them, trying to look important.
“What do you make of it?” asked the grey warrior, squinting at the Giant Dwarf, which was shining golden now with the light of the low sun.
“It is at least two hundred feet high!” said Dr Prong.
“How on earth can you tell that from this distance?” asked Durgar.
“Oh, you work it out with trigonometry,” said Dr Prong.
“It is coming fast,” said Henwyn.
“It will be here in another hour or two, is my guess,” said Fentongoose.
Henwyn glanced up at the sky. “It will be dark by then.”
“The dwarves won’t mind that. They fight happiest in the dark. This will be a hard battle, Henwyn.”
“But we’ll win, won’t we!” said Henwyn bravely.
Garvon Hael looked grimly northward, and said nothing more.
Soon after that there was a clatter of hooves on the road and a group of horsemen came riding up the hill from Adherak. The goblins who had been sitting on the road moved aside to let them through, and Henwyn and the rest went to meet them, assuming they were more of his father’s friends, come to help save their town. He was startled to see how elaborate their armour was, and how rich their cloaks and clothes. He was more startled still when he recognized them as the High King’s heroes from Boskennack.
“What’s this rabble doing all over the road?” demanded Lord Ponsadane in his high, sneering voice.
“Make way!” bellowed Kerwen of Bryngallow.
“Goblins, I’d say,” observed another man. “When we’ve sorted out this dwarvish nonsense we should come back and put these horrors to the sword, too!”
Angrily, Henwyn stepped into the road in front of him. The man made as if to ride him down, but Zeewa came forward, and the horse sensed her ghosts and began to rear and skitter.
“We are the army of Clovenstone,” said Henwyn, “and we have come here on the orders of Princess Eluned herself, to defend Adherak.”
The man he had spoken to was too busy trying to control his horse to offer any answer, but the others laughed. “Very kind of you, cheesebearer!” called the one named Merion. “But you can take your tribe of boggarts and long-leggedy beasties home again; we’re here to sort out these dwarvish scum.”
“I thought you were frightened of fighting dwarves?” said Garvon Hael, walking over to stand with Henwyn.
“It’s Garvon Hael!” said Merion. “Sounds almost sober, too!”
“Dwarves in tunnels I can?
??t abide,” said Kerwen of Bryngallow. “But these dwarves are above ground, by all accounts, and relying on some sort of clumsy war machine to scare the common folk. Cowardly lot. We shall teach them a lesson: smash their machine and put them across our knees for a good spanking, eh, friends!”
The other heroes roared their agreement. “We’ll kick them like footballs back to Dwarvenholm!” shouted one.
Garvon Hael nodded, waiting patiently for the loud laughter to subside. “At least join your forces with ours,” he said. “We’ve fought these dwarves once; they nearly destroyed us, and they didn’t have their giant mannequin to help them then. Perhaps if we stand together. . .”
“Stand with goblins and drunkards?” sneered Ponsadane. “We are heroes, and we are riding north now to do what heroes do. Will you ride with us, Garvon Hael, or would you rather stay here with this menagerie of yours?”
Garvon Hael stepped aside to let the horsemen go clattering by. “My place is here with my friends,” he said.
Henwyn stood watching as the heroes galloped on down the road, and were quickly swallowed by the shadows of evening. “To think I once dreamed of being one of them!” he said bitterly.
The goblins craned their necks, watching the progress of the riders. Skarper, who had always been brighter than the rest, trotted across the hilltop to where Fraddon stood, and ran like a squirrel up the giant’s body to perch on his shoulder. There he found Etty, who had had the same idea and stood holding tight to the hairs which sprouted from Fraddon’s huge ear. She was looking northward.
“Do you think they can fight it?” she asked.
“I think they’re idiots,” said Skarper. “Mind you, I think we’re idiots too. Look at that thing! It’s two hundred feet tall! Dr Prong worked it out with trigopromontory. Like Garvon Hael said, it was bad enough fighting them when they didn’t have a giant dwarf. Soakaway got skewered, and I was dragged underground by a maniac mole. Now that there’s the Giant Dwarf too. . . We’re doomed! It will be like trying to fight a castle!”
“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 spu
rs 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.