Goblins (20 page)

“Hello!” said Henwyn. “What is your name, goblin?”

Knobbler mumbled something. He felt shy, which was a strange new feeling for him. He couldn’t help it, though. The goblins of Clovenstone had been servants for so long to the power of the Stone Throne that he could not help but bow before this new Lych Lord. “Knobbler,” he said. “
King
Knobbler. King of all the seven towers.”

“Excellent!” said Henwyn. “Then you shall be their captain when I get a proper goblin army sorted out. Things have been allowed to get pretty slack around here, Knobbler, but that’s all going to change now. I’m the new Lych Lord, it turns out. So kneel, and swear your loyalty to me.”

King Knobbler did not kneel, but he looked as if he half wanted to, and behind him Yabber, Gutgust, Bootle, Wrench and Libnog all sank to their knees.

Henwyn jumped up from the throne and came striding down the steps, and vague dark robes swirled around him like smoke and shadows. “My lord!” said Eluned in a warning voice as he went past her and strode across the bridge, but he paid her no heed. The Dragonbone Men stood aside to let him pass, and as he walked towards Knobbler the goblin king bowed lower and lower, until at last he was down on his knees, while Yabber, Gutgust, Bootle, Wrench and Libnog pressed their ugly faces against the floor and stuck their ugly bottoms in the air.

There was a clink of metal on metal as Knobbler set Mr Chop-U-Up on the floor before him. He was laying his weapon at the Lych Lord’s feet just as the goblin kings of long ago had done. But at his shoulder Breslaw gave a scathing hiss. “Lych Lord? That’s no Lych Lord, Knobbler! Shams and trickeries is what he’s working! He’s naught but a softling! A stupid snivelling softling such as you’ve slaughtered by the score! Ignore him! Look at the throne, Knobbler! The throne! Ain’t it time it felt a goblin’s behind upon it?”

And to Knobbler it seemed that the smoky robes of the tall man who stood before him thinned and melted, and instead of the Lych Lord, grim-faced, terrible, he was looking at some shabby boy out of the softlands, with travel-stained clothes and a second-hand sword at his side. Indeed, it was the same shabby boy who had faced him two days before in the woods by the Oeth; the same second-hand sword that had left such a dent in his old helmet.

“You’re going to let yourself be owned and ordered by the likes of him?” asked Breslaw.

“Never!” grunted Knobbler. “NEVER!” he roared, and he snatched up the great blade that he had laid before the Lych Lord’s feet and, rising, swung it at his head instead.

Skarper was fast, but Dungnutt was faster. Skarper hared through the dim, vaulted passageways of the Keep, running he knew not where, and Dungnutt’s angry cries grew louder behind him, and the clatter of Dungnutt’s iron-shod paws came closer and closer.

Then, suddenly, from the shadows at the entrance to another stairway, a figure leaped out. Skarper, thinking it was more goblins come to head him off, squealed in terror and threw himself flat on the floor. Lucky for him that he did, for something big and dimly shiny swung above him and smashed into Dungnutt’s face. There was a loud, hollow dong like the note of a cracked bell: Dungnutt reeled backwards, and friendly hands heaved Skarper up and thrust him onwards, round a corner, up yet another stair.

It was a few seconds before he understood that he’d been rescued, and not until they paused for breath on a deserted landing that he saw who by.

The Sable Conclave had been forgotten by the goblins as soon as the lychglass broke. Ignored and half trampled, they had followed Knobbler’s boys into the Lych Lord’s halls and slunk up a narrow side stair to avoid the looting going on in the main part of the Keep. They had been looking for the Stone Throne, of course, but they soon got lost, and wandered vaguely among old bedchambers and wardrobes, doing a little genteel looting of their own.

It was pure luck that they had found themselves in the path of Skarper and his pursuer.

It was pure luck that Prawl had recognized him.

It was pure luck that Carnglaze happened to be carrying an enormous copper frying pan which he had taken from a pantry they’d explored. That was the thing he had used to wallop Dungnutt. It was still ringing faintly with the impact of the blow, and bore a deep dent in the shape of Dungnutt’s face.

“Did you see that?” Carnglaze chuckled, patting the pan. “
Whang!
That will teach those louts to tangle with the Sable Conclave!”

“And Fentongoose can work proper magic!” said Prawl excitedly. “‘Open,’ he said, and the lychglass shattered!”

Skarper shook his head. “That wasn’t Fentongoose,” he said. “That was the Lych Lord’s doing.”

Carnglaze shook his head. “Poor goblin! His adventures have sent him funny in the head. There is no Lych Lord, Skarper; he has been dead for years. . .”

“There is a new one!” explained Skarper. “And it’s Henwyn! He sat down on the Stone Throne. He’s descended from the old Lych Lord, it turns out, and now he’s flinging spells about. Look!” He showed them the glorious coat of mail he wore; his one remaining shoe (he’d lost the other tumbling down the stairs). “He made this stuff! He turned Princess Ned young again!”

“Henwyn? Descended from the Lych Lord?” Fentongoose said. “Then that explains why the cheese spell worked; why we picked on him in the first place! The old powers were not working through
us
, but through
him
.” He sounded both disappointed and a bit relieved. “All the prophecies – the Lych Lord’s return – it was young Henwyn all along.”

“Then the power of Clovenstone is in good hands,” said Prawl.

“Idiot!” said Skarper. “There aren’t no good hands for power like that! You remember what Princess Ned said? Power poisons people. You wait, he’ll be just like the old Lych Lord; conquering this and trampling that.”

“Then we must stop him!” said Fentongoose. “We must save him from himself!”

“How? Haven’t you been listening? He’s gone all magic!”

“Not yet,” said Fentongoose.

“Not wholly,” agreed Prawl.

“The power of Clovenstone will not wax full until the Lych Lord’s star hangs directly overhead,” explained Carnglaze. “Whatever spells Henwyn is weaving now, they are weak things, and will not have much power outside the chamber of the throne. Look. . .” And he reached out and pulled one of the scales from Skarper’s golden armour. It crumbled in his hand, dry and brown like a dead leaf, and Skarper looked down and saw that all the rest had withered too. He touched them with a paw and they dissolved into a drift of dust, and he was standing in his own clothes again.

“We may still persuade him to give up his power,” said Fentongoose.

“And hand it over to somebody who knows how to use it, you mean?” asked Skarper.

The old sorcerer blushed, and mumbled something about having spent a lifetime preparing to sit upon the Stone Throne and what a pity it would be if all that training went to waste, but his companions looked angrily at him.

“If we’ve learned one thing from our adventures here,” said Carnglaze, “it is not to tangle with goblins and magic and the old powers of the earth. Let us save Henwyn if we can, and then go home and take up a safer hobby.”

“Let’s save Henwyn,” said Skarper, “and then smash that Stone Throne up so there can never be another Lych Lord at all.”

Henwyn leaned backwards just in time, and Knobbler’s sword whisked past a half inch from the tip of his nose. He tried to work a spell, but although he could feel magic flaring and weaving all around him, it no longer seemed to flow through him; he couldn’t shape it or command it. It was the throne, he realized; he had to sit upon the throne. He turned to flee back across the bridge, but Knobbler blocked his way, breathing hard inside his bucket and readying his sword again. Magic lightning flamed and flared between the horns of Clovenstone, kindling a wicked gleam on Mr Chop-U-Up’s cutting edge.

“Dragonbone Men!” Henwyn shouted desperately.

With a leathery rustle the Lych Lord’s servants sprang forward to defend him. The other goblins cowered against the chamber walls, but Knobbler was braver than your average goblin, and Mr Chop-U-Up was not just any old goblin sword. Gods knew where Knobbler had come by it, in what deep armoury or warrior’s tomb, but it had been forged in the great furnaces of Clovenstone in days of old, and spells were layered in the folds of its steel. (It had probably had a better name than Mr Chop-U-Up in those days, but that was long forgotten.)

Swish! Flicker! Snick!
The heads of three Dragonbone Men went bowling on the floor like wasps’ nests knocked down from the rafters.

“Hooray!” cheered the watching goblins.

“Nice one, King Knobbler!”

“Anchovies!”

Flicker! Swish! Spiff!
Three more Dragonbone Men were felled. Arms and heads and spindly kicking legs tumbled over the flue’s brink and away down the long drop into the lava lake.

The last of them landed one blow, drawing black blood from Knobbler’s shoulder and opening a long gash in his armour, but then Mr Chop-U-Up went through him too and with a wrench and a kick Knobbler sent him after his comrades down the flue.

“The softling!” shouted Breslaw. “He’s getting away! Don’t let him reach the throne!”

Knobbler looked round. Sure enough, while he had been distracted, Henwyn had made it past him and out on to the bridge. Knobbler roared and leapt after him, and Henwyn, knowing that he could not reach the throne without a fight, turned to face him, drawing his own sword and trying to remember the moves he’d practised in his bedroom at the cheesery.

That was when Skarper arrived, scrambling up the stairs with the Sable Conclave panting and complaining behind him. He felt his eyes turn wide as saucers as he took in the scene. He saw the strewn wreckage of the Dragonbone warriors. He saw Eluned pale and beautiful beside the throne. He saw Henwyn and King Knobbler facing each other on that narrow bridge.

He did not see Breslaw and the other goblins, who had drawn back into the shadows around the edges of the room to watch the fun. He didn’t see them until it was too late. “Stop him!” hissed Breslaw, and he found himself wrestled to the floor by Yabber and Libnog while the rest of his batch-brothers lay in wait to grab the sorcerers, one by one, as they came to the top of the stairs.

Out on the bridge, Henwyn swung his sword, but it rebounded from Knobbler’s gnarly armour. He raised it again to parry the blow that Knobbler swung at him, and Mr Chop-U-Up bit through the second-hand blade in a shower of sparks. Henwyn was left nursing a jarred arm and clutching the useless stub of his sword while the broken-off shard went ringing and dinging away down the shaft beneath him, down, down, down towards the lava far below. Knobbler started to laugh, but Henwyn, in desperation, jabbed the broken blade at him, and luck guided his hand. The sharp stub grated across the goblin’s breastplate and slid through the gash the Dragonbone Man had opened there, biting deep into Knobbler’s vitals.

The watching goblins gasped and growled.

“Henwyn!” shouted Skarper.

“Oh well done!” called the sorcerers.

“Arrghle!” said Knobbler, swaying backwards. Mr Chop-U-Up fell from his paw and clattered on the bridge. He collapsed slowly, like a goblin-shaped tent with all its guy-lines cut, till he was kneeling in front of Henwyn again. Black goblin blood twined down his thighs and puddled around his knees like oil.

“Ow!” he said. “Help! Spare me!”

Henwyn had been just about to discard his broken sword and snatch up Mr Chop-U-Up. It was a far more fitting blade for the Lord of Clovenstone, he thought, and it would easily split Knobbler’s head in half, war-bucket and all. But although he was the Lych Lord now, he was still Henwyn as well, and Henwyn wasn’t the sort of person who cut down unarmed and wounded enemies, even if they were goblins.
Wouldn’t it make a change
, he thought,
to begin my reign with an act of mercy?

Don’t!
warned the Lych Lord part of him, the cold, greedy voice of the Stone Throne in his mind.
Goblins respect strength, not mercy.

“Don’t!” yelled Skarper, fighting his way free of Yabber and Libnog and running towards the bridge, with some idea of tackling Knobbler from behind. “You can’t believe anything goblins say! Except this, obviously. . .”

“Don’t!” warned Eluned, waiting behind Henwyn at the bridge’s end. “I know that goblin! I’m sure I do! Not his size or strength, but that whining voice! ‘
Spare me!
’ Oh, slay him, Henwyn, for he is the very one that betrayed my father with that cowardly trick at Porthstrewy all those years ago!”

Henwyn reached out and lifted the bucket off Knobbler’s head, revealing his sweaty, pain-strained face.

Those jutting fangs. . . Those yellow eyes. . . That nose patch. . .

“Oh,” said Eluned, quite surprised. “Oh, no, it isn’t him at all. My mistake.”

“I think
I
am the goblin you is thinking of, actually, my dear,” said a voice out of the shadows behind Knobbler. Old Breslaw, whom everybody had forgotten, hobbled towards the bridge, batting Skarper aside with a shrewd blow from his teaching mallet. “It was
me
that tricked your daddy and let the Blackspike Boys inside his castle, Princess,” he said, as he stepped on to the bridge. “Last fight I was ever in. Cowardly, did you call it? Well, I takes that as a compliment. I’m clever, see, and clever folk are always cowards. Just ask young Skarper here. Why should we risk these bulging brains of ours when there are big, brainless lunks like Knobbler here to do the fighting for us?”

“Who are you calling brainless?” asked Knobbler, confused.

Breslaw’s teaching mallet fetched the king a vicious clout on the back of the head. Knobbler’s eyes crossed, and he toppled sideways off the edge of the bridge.

“All right, lads,” called Breslaw, to the confused goblins clustering behind him. “Let’s send these softlings to the lava too, and then the Stone Throne will be mine, and won’t we have some fun, terrorizin’ and rampagin’ and stuff?”

“You shall not pass!” said Henwyn, trying to retrieve that Lych Lord tone of voice which had come so easily to him before. He took a step backwards towards the Stone Throne, hoping he could sit down on it again before this latest goblin worked out that he couldn’t do magic without it. But it was an uneasy feeling, walking backwards on that spindly bridge, above that deadly drop. He turned, and as he did so Breslaw snatched Mr Chop-U-Up and drove it into Henwyn’s back.

Eluned shrieked. Skarper and the sorcerers howled, struggling against the strong goblin paws which held them back. Henwyn went down on his knees, down on his face on the narrow bridge.

As a boy in Adherak he had always imagined that he would be wounded once or twice when he was a hero; it was only to be expected with all those battles and things, and a scar or two was part of the look. He had just never imagined that it would
hurt
quite so much, or that quite so much red blood would come gushing out of him. Dizzily, he raised his head and saw Eluned at the bridge’s end, white hands outstretched towards him. He saw the Stone Throne waiting. If he could just climb on to it all would be well; the powers of Clovenstone would heal his hurt and give him the strength to defeat this traitorous goblin. But the throne looked so far away; the steps that led to it seemed so steep and high; and now Breslaw was stepping over him, stopping to look down at him, lifting the bloody sword.

“Oh, won’t I have some fun when I’m the Lych Lord?” the goblin chuckled. “But I’d better finish you off first, my lovely. I may be only a poor old goblin, but I know better than to turn my back upon a foe.”