Urchin and the Raven War (22 page)

“Needle,” he said, “we all know that. We’re all important, and this is a war. Some of us are going to die.”

With pain and horror in her eyes, she swung around to face him. “Don’t say ‘us’!” she cried. “You mustn’t say ‘us’!” She turned and ran for the stair.

At the top of the stair she stopped to dry her tears, take a deep breath, pull herself together, and wish Urchin hadn’t said that. It was bad enough knowing that one of the royal family would die, without thinking that Urchin might, too.

Urchin used the paddle to push the boat out again. He would have explained to Needle that by “us” he meant all the islanders, not just the two of them, but she had run up those stairs before he could say another word. Hope was waiting patiently at the other side. There wasn’t much to say as they crossed the lake. But when they pulled the boat to shore, a slapping of otter paws and tail and the bright, torchlit face that appeared made everything feel better.

“That’s what I said,” said Hope, and blew out the lantern. “Fingal’s made it nice here.”

“Fingal!” cried Urchin.

“Hello, Urchin and Hope!” said Fingal. “Needle just flew up here like a squirrel up a tree, wanting to know the quickest way back to the tower. I showed her the way through the cellar and the kitchens—Oh, that’s a secret route, so I haven’t told you that—and she was off. Come and join us in the ottery!”

“I have to get to the king,” said Urchin, but as Fingal was lolloping up the stairs and around the corner, there wasn’t much chance to argue. Following him, he found a pleasant, comfortable cave with a sandy floor, lanterns casting a warm light on the pale gold rock, and a fire burning. (“Makes it look cheerful!” said Fingal.) With another staircase leading upward out of the cave, it was almost like being on a tower landing.

“Tide and Swanfeather!” said Urchin. Seeing Padra and Arran’s son and daughter safe was such a relief that, for a moment, everything looked better. “Oh, and…are you Corr? I’ve heard all about you. I’m Urchin.”

He wondered why Corr was staring at him in that wide-eyed way. Was he covered in blood, or was he just a mess? Then he realized that Corr was looking at him the way he used to look at Crispin and Padra.

“Good to see you’re safe, Corr,” he said.

Warmth and joy flowed through Corr. He had dreamed of meeting Urchin of the Riding Stars, but never of meeting him like this.
Glad to see you’re safe, Corr.
As if they’d known each other for years.

Fingal held out a cup of water, and Urchin gulped it down gladly. There hadn’t been time to feel tired or hungry, but he knew he was desperately thirsty. It didn’t take long to tell Fingal all that had happened, while Corr looked from one to the other and tried to make sense of it all. When Urchin reached the part about Brindle, Corr gasped.

“He can’t be dead!” cried Corr. “Brindle was my friend!”

Fingal put a paw around his shoulders. “I’m so sorry, Corr,” he said. “He must have been a very good friend.”

“He was,” said Corr.

“I’ve been finding out about Corr,” said Fingal, looking past him at Urchin. “He has a great-aunt Kerrera and a boat that needs to go to Twigg. He had a great time at Curlingshell Bay; he made friends with a squirrel called Lapwing.” He raised an eyebrow.

“Please, Master Urchin, sir,” asked Corr, “what happened to Lapwing? You keep talking about Catkin…the only Catkin I know about is the princess, and she wasn’t at Curlingshell Bay, but Lapwing was….”

He stopped. Urchin saw the question on his face.

Fingal patted his shoulder. “You’re not supposed to know about this, Corr,” he said. “But everything’s different now, and we may as well put you in the picture. One—Lapwing is Princess Catkin. Two—we know the ravens have caught her, but not where they’ve taken her. Three—we have to pound it into Urchin’s thick skull that it
isn’t his fault.
”

“Don’t bother,” said Urchin.

“But we’re still
talking
!” cried Corr. “We should be finding her! I mean”—he added, embarrassed by his own outburst—“with respect… sorry.”

“Respect, plague,” said Fingal. “You’re right. But there’s no sighting of her and no clue as to where to start looking.”

“I’ve listened everywhere I’ve gone,” said Hope. “You learn to listen with paws and prickles as well as ears, and there hasn’t been a trace of her.”

“Corr and I can go for a swim and see if we can find anything out,” said Fingal. “Does anyone know if it’s day or night?”

Hope raised his head and twitched his nose. “Needle will know,” he said.

Urchin began to say that Needle wasn’t there, but a moment later she appeared from the upward stairway. She still looked anxious, but this time she had the air of a female hedgehog with a task on her paws.

“The kitchens!” she said, and licked stickiness from her paws. “They’re doing their best to clean up, but it’s such a mess.”

“Any news of Catkin?” asked Urchin.

“None,” said Needle. “Listen, everyone. There are ravens all over the tower. I heard that Crispin and Cedar are still alive, but nobody seems to know anything about them. They’re almost certainly in the Gathering Chamber. I’ve worked out what we can do. We need a few slim, nippy animals who know every back stair of the tower, animals who can wriggle behind skirting boards and come and go without the ravens knowing anything about it.” She looked hopefully at Urchin.

“I was a tower page,” he said. He removed a spider that was swinging by a thread from Needle’s prickles and transferred it to a lamp bracket, where it began to spin a web. “Pages know all the secret ways and the back stairs.”

“And I found a new one whenever I went exploring and got lost,” said Hope. “I did a lot of that when I was small, and I’ve remembered them all.”

“And there’s Sepia,” said Needle.

“Where is she?” asked Urchin.

“She stayed in the tower, helping Juniper look after Brother Fir,” she told him. “She wasn’t supposed to, but she did. She doesn’t know the tower as well as you two, but she learns quickly. If you three—Urchin, Hope, and Sepia—are hidden in the tower, you can listen and spy, find out who’s safe and who isn’t, then we can decide what to do about it. You might learn something about where Catkin is.”

“Trust Needle to be sensible,” said Fingal. “Make her a captain at once. Urchin, Hope, you go and do your spying in the tower. Corr and I will have a swim around and find out what we can.”

“Can we come?” piped up Swanfeather.

“If anything happened to you,” said Fingal, “your father would bite my head off, run me through with his sword, and keep me locked up in a barrel for a week. Then he’d give me to your mum, and I’m really, really scared of her. Ready, Corr!”

Corr jumped to his paws. Then he stared at the lamp bracket.

“That spider,” he said. “Catching things in webs. Like fishing nets.”

“What?” said Swanfeather.

“There could be something in that,” said Fingal.

“Sorry,” said Needle. “I know what you’re thinking, but it doesn’t work. Thripple and I tried it in the workrooms. We thought we could trap the ravens by weaving meshes and webs all over the place, but the ravens just ripped them to bits. Good idea, though, Corr.”

Corr was still gazing at the spider. “But spiders have
sticky
webs,” he said. “That’s how they catch things.”

“So if spiders can catch flies in sticky webs…” said Needle.

“… and if we can make sticky meshes…” said Urchin.

“Sticky fishing nets!” cried Corr.

“Brilliant!” exclaimed Fingal.

“Where can we find some rope?” asked Tide.

“And there are workroom animals,” said Urchin, warming to the idea. “They’ll be really good at that. They must be scattered all over the island, but we can get messages out to them… . Apple and her friends all knit… . We need fast animals who know the tunnels, to get the message out. Teams of them to relay it all over Mistmantle. Get the whole island making raven traps. Needle, what time is it?”

“Early evening,” she said. “Still light.”

“The ravens should be slowing down,” said Fingal. “But they’re bound to attack in full force in the morning. We’ll have to work all night. Tide, Swanfeather, there’s rope in the boat coves. You’ll have to tease it out to make it finer. Corr, let’s go for that swim.”

Corr slipped into the water beside Fingal, still reminding himself that this was really him, young Corr, who had never counted for anything much, swimming alongside Fingal of the Floods as if they had grown up together. He glanced sideways at Fingal, who turned his head and grinned.

The underground lake lead to a twisting waterway between the rocks. Corr gazed about as he swam. He had heard of places like this, high-roofed, rocky tunnels where reflections of the water danced all around. Weeds drifted about them and tangled gently in his paws. They swam on in magical silence until Fingal said, “This comes out near the tower rocks. There’s a good view of the jetty, but since we’re more useful alive than dead, we have to stay well hidden. We’ll just scan the shore, see where the birds are, slip a word to anyone we see, make sticky nets, look out for Catkin, and get out of the way sharpish, away from the tower. It’s a bit of a tight squeeze here, but we’ll manage it. There’s nothing like being besieged by plaguing ravens for keeping us thin.”

The tunnel became so tight that Corr feared he’d get stuck and have to ask Fingal to take his paws and heave him through—but by squeezing his shoulders in and his head down, and scrabbling with his paws, he pulled himself out and scrambled up the rocks. Harsh raven voices cawed above and around him.

“They’re making a lot of noise around the jetty,” whispered Fingal. “Don’t shake yourself!”

The warning came just in time to stop Corr from instinctively shaking himself dry. It was the most natural thing in the world to do, and not doing it was uncomfortable; but a spray of water in the evening sun could have caught the ravens’ eyes. He let the cold water seep through his fur and chill on his skin; and, as they clambered onto the rocks and looked cautiously over, he forgot everything but the sight before him.

From their hiding place, they had a clear view of the jetty. When he saw what the ravens had done, he knew he had never in his life before been truly angry.

“Lapwing!” he whispered.

“Get down!” whispered Fingal.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

EEDLE PICKED HER WAY
over tangled wool, silk, and ribbon. She held her spines as tightly flattened as she could, but fragments of frayed silk and tufts of wool still snagged in them.

Her nose twitched. Why was there a smell of ginger? Something moved in a corner, and she whirled around.

“Myrtle!” she whispered. “You were supposed to run away!”

“I ran a little bit,” said Myrtle, her eyes huge as she looked up at Needle. “Then I ran back and hid in the cupboard.”

“Whyever did you do that?” demanded Needle.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I put gingery stuff all over me so they can’t eat me.” She opened her paw, in which a few small beetles wriggled. “I found these. Would you like one?”

Needle ate the smallest one to please Myrtle. Searching for undamaged skeins of wool, she felt those large eyes following her. Myrtle, nervously popping beetles into her mouth, must be wondering what to do next.

“You can help me, Myrtle,” she said. “We need to make a web. Shall I show you how to do that?”

They worked steadily together, side by side, Myrtle singing softly to herself and rocking with the rhythm of looping and knotting the wool. When there was a scuffling sound in the skirting board, and Needle lay on the floor and whispered something into it, she hardly seemed bothered. They worked on so busily that neither of them noticed the ravens approaching until the sky darkened.

Myrtle glanced up, shrieked, and cowered as huge black wings rustled. A raven flew in through the window, knocked the torch bracket from the wall with a swing of its beak, and tipped over a lamp stand. Two more followed it.

“This is our place,” cawed the first raven, flexing silver claws and tipping its head sideways. “We will sleep here tonight.” He pecked at a piece of lace so fine that Needle couldn’t help wincing as he tossed it about and dropped it. “This rubbish will do to nest in. Shred it!” His eyes fell on a tapestry frame leaning against the wall, almost the only unbroken thing left in the room, with a barely started Threading across it, and he tilted his head. “What is this?”