“I will help!”
It was Hedor stepping forward. “I will fight by your side, to save your people and bring them into the sun.” His men were reticent, but once Ruig stepped up, nodding reluctantly himself, the others followed.
Gup looked at them but was not impressed.
“No, Hedor,” said Alfred. “I'm going to need you and the archers. You would not last long in the City of the Gnomes. It is a very tough place to move for us humans.”
“They will shoot you full of holes,” Gib added.
“But Gup and his troopers, many wounded, will be outnumbered!” Hedor said, grumbling.
“No! They won't. Tirnalth will go with them!” Alfred said.
They all looked at each other.
“Have you ever heard of a flash-bang?” Alfred asked the group. “I watched this cool SWAT team show and... never mind...”
Alfred motioned for them to wait a moment. Then he went to Tirnalth and whispered in his ear. Tirnalth's eyes wiggled. Curious, the others leaned in.
Tirnalth nodded and giggled but stopped and tried to act serious. “Yes, Alfred is right. I will go, but give me a moment. I have to depart. But I'll be back...” And with that, Tirnalth faded from their presence.
“Well, where's he going?” Hedor asked.
“Probably back to his magical lair?” Ruig said with a shrug.
“And why are you covering your eyes, Alfred?” asked Hedor. “Are you crying?”
KABOOM PFFZZOWWT!!!
A blinding light suddenly appeared, accompanied by an uproarious yell. Everyone fell or ducked covering their burning eyes. Hedor and his men flailed blindly. Gib stood in a daze. Gup and his stone troopers fell back stunned and disoriented.
Alfred uncovered his eyes. “Flash-bang! Hah!” He rushed over to Gup. “Can you see anything?”
“Whaaahhh??”
“Exactly, I'll give you a moment to recover. Don't worry! We did it. It was just a trick everybody! Nothing to worry about! Just a 'flash-bang'. You'll be okay. It's just light.”
Alfred stood and waited with a giggling Tirnalth, who knew his response was completely inappropriate. The old wizard wagged his finger at Alfred and himself for sharing giggles... again... and again. They waited a long time, giving each other smug looks, glances no one could see, of course.
Loranna and her archers were feeling about blindly, trying to find any who had fallen before they tripped over each other. Hedor just sat where he was, blinking blindly. He stretched out his jaw as if he had been knocked on his rear. Gup tried desperately to regain his footing but kept falling back and forth, clanking off his stone trooper brethren.
Tirnalth gave Alfred a very impressed look.
“I'll give you a moment. Yep. Just a moment. It's okay everybody. I had Tirnalth do the bright light!” Alfred involuntarily looked at his wrist. Though he had no wristwatch, he had often seen people on TV look at their watches while waiting. Tirnalth, who had never seen TV, followed suit nonetheless and looked at his wrist.
“Better?” Alfred held Gup's hands.
Gup desperately blinked over and over, gritting his teeth and squinting his eyes. “Oiy, was that some powerful spell!”
“Are you trying to kill us then?” Gib asked, blinking teary eyes.
“No, on the contrary,” said Tirnalth. “King Alfred is going to save the lives of any gnomes who oppose you!”
“And after you tie them up, you can bring them up to the surface,” Alfred said. “So you can show them the sun and prove to them all that the Artofessor has been lying to you and keeping you imprisoned far below.”
Gup finally opened his eyes. Tears flowed but through them he was just able to see Alfred.
“It was a flash-bang, a blinding light with Tirnalth blasting his voice too!” Alfred said.
“It blinds me?”
“Only for a moment! It blinds you because your eyes are so used to the dark. So when the light explodes so fast, it causes too much light to go into your eyes and, you know, messes you up! It's totally harmless, Gup! But look, it stuns everyone, and that's when you come and tie them up and take their weapons!”
“But it affects us too!”
“Not if you close your eyes right when Tirnalth explodes his light!”
Gup wiped his tears away as most of the others were recovering from the experiment. “So, he will give us a warning, we close our eyes, and he flashes and bangs...?”
Alfred nodded. “A flash-bang! Yes!”
“...and…and... when he does that, they are all surprised, blinded, stunned? We open our eyes, rush in and take them? No one is killed? No one gets hurt? It's harmless?”
“Yes!” Alfred did a little jig.
That is so very beautiful, King Alfred, so very beautiful!” Gup came up and hugged Alfred.
“Ow! Ow!” said Alfred, contorting in the painful hug of a fully armoured gnome.
“Oh sorry, my dear King of the humans. So sorry!” Gup’s eyes were full of tears.
Alfred had to step back from him. “Are you okay? Did the flash-bang make your eyes tear?”
“Oh these tears? I'm just crying for joy like a grown gnome!”
Chapter Forty-Nine: Rescuing Those Who Need Rescuing
Alfred came to the passages that led up into Grotham Keep. He had to pause as Gib rushed to him, waving him and the others back.
“Goblins are there. They are sleeping. I'm sure they're situated to watch the tunnels.”
“It's the only way we can rescue the men,” Alfred whispered. “We must bring them back through here.”
“We can take care of the goblins,” Loranna said, crouching nearby with her younger sister Niranna, Setheyna and the other girls.
“Everyone knows what they must do?” Alfred looked at each of them. Loranna and her archers nodded. Hedor and his men nodded. Gib winked. Alfred felt a slight shivery chill.
They set torches and oil lamps around to light the area – a path that ran along the underground river. Here it was nice and wide, leading to many tunnels that led up to the dungeons of Grotham Keep.
Alfred and Gib went into the tunnels first.
“Remember, wait for the signal,” Alfred whispered back loudly.
Loranna and Hedor nodded.
Loranna quickly skipped up to Alfred and kissed his cheek. “May the Father of Light guide you.”
Alfred gulped. The girls giggled. Hedor smirked. Alfred put on a goblin helm. He looked like a tall goblin in armour.
A goblin sat up and wiggled his nose. He sniffed the stale air around him. It was hard to smell anything other than the score of goblins sleeping on the dungeon floor of Grotham Keep. He looked to one side. He thought he saw a mouse. He got up to look. A small brown mouse hurried through the sleeping goblins. He licked his lips. Suddenly, a pebble flew behind him and hit another goblin. He sat up and looked at the first goblin.
“You hit me?!”
“I hit whah?”
“You hit me?!”
“Hit?”
“Yuh hit?!”
“What you talkin'bout?”
“Hit! Hit! You hit me!”
“I hit nuthin!”
The second goblin leaped up and jumped on the first. They rolled around as the rest awoke, grumbling and growling.
The little brown mouse scurried past them. Above them, a pale colored figure, smaller than a goblin, hurried along the ceiling, swinging with a pickaxe and a firm grip.
Dunther and Gorham woke to the sounds of griping goblins. They shared a look of subdued annoyance. Then they perked up. A disturbance could indicate what they were expecting. Both mouthed the word “Alfred,” and they sat up. They clung to the rustic bars, peering toward the openings that led to the dungeons below.
The cages were stacked atop each other in the ruins of the Great Hall. Dunther looked back at Abedeyan, Cory and the others. None looked well or capable. Then he heard a soft rough voice.
“Dunther? Where is Lord Dunther?”
Dunther an
d Gorham looked up to see a strange small-bearded man. Dunther rubbed his eyes. He couldn't understand why he was seeing a small burly man on top of his cage.
“Dunther? Are you Lord Dunther?”
Gorham blinked and slowly pointed to Dunther, who looked grimly back at Gorham.
“Alfred sent me,” said the tiny man.
Dunther looked up and suddenly realized what the visitor was. “Are you a pict?” he asked.
“A gnome, to be more cordial.”
“A gnome?”
“Yes, a gnome, I am friends with Alfred. We're here to rescue you.”
“Alfred?! Where is he?” said others as they woke and sat up.
“SSSHHHhhhhh!!!!....” Dunther brusquely flipped up his pointer finger to his puckered lips and stared meanly at all the occupants. Even the Khanifians woke to see the gnome. They pointed, but having seen many goblins during their enslavement, this small burly man wasn't too surprising.
Dunther pointed down the Great Hall. Atop several tables, snored two ogres
Gib looked and snarled. “I'm going to get you out. But we have to wait for the signal.”
“A distraction?” Dunther asked.
“Alfred is going to cause a distraction?” Gorham smiled through chapped lips and a bruised face.
“Yes,” said Gib.
“The cages are locked,” said Gunther. “We can't get out.”
Gib swung with his pickaxe on the stone wall and moved like a small monkey along the iron bars. He stopped to look at the large padlock the ogres used. He rolled his eyes. Then he tapped the lock at a specific point with his pickaxe. It unlocked. “Crude and simple,” he said. “Typical.”
Dunther covered the mouths of some gasping slaves. They had more fear of the ogres and goblins than courage to gain their freedom.
Dunther and Gorham motioned for everyone to be quiet. The Grotham folk were more than ready to leave, trying to ready their painful bodies for an escape. But the Khanifians began to quiver and sob.
“They look like they've seen this before, an attempted escape,” Gorham said to Dunther.
The Khanifians appeared to be begging the Grotham folk not to try this. Those from the castle tried calming the Khanifians and holding them down. Gib went from padlock to padlock, easily unlocking each with a tap of his pickaxe. The Khanifians in each cage began to whimper.
Suddenly an ogre, one younger than the others, sat up. He slapped his face, yawned and rolled off the table, cracking the wood with his great weight. He looked over at the commotion. The goblins were still arguing down below, but the noise had settled. What interested him more was the odd crying of the Khanifians.
He lumbered over and peered into the cages. Khanifians and Grotham folk cowered at his mean visage. Helplessly in fear, they stared between him and the unlocked padlocks. One hung loosely next to the ogre's face.
A rock suddenly flew and hit him in the head. He looked over to a passageway that lead to the dungeons.
“Whaahhg?”
The ogre ran to the opening. “Whoze down dere in dah dungeonz!!?”
“Whah? Boss?”
“Cum up! Nowz!!”
A lowly goblin came up the stairway to the Great Hall, shivering in fear. “Yess boss??”
“Whoze threw a rockz at meeez!?”
The goblin shrugged, just as another poked his head out and yelped. “He threw onez at meez too!”
Before the first goblin could defend himself, the ogre hammer-fisted him to a splatty goo. The second goblin giggled in delight. The ogre stopped and stared at the second, “Yourz in charge now!”
“Oh, oh, thank you boss!”
“Andz if enuddah rockz hit my headz, you payz!”
“Oh...?” The goblin didn't look too thrilled at his promotion.
The ogre shrugged in annoyance and sauntered back to the cages. The slaves within cowered in fear just as he wanted. He passed them unaware of the padlocks and went back to his creaky wooden bed.
Alfred scrambled quickly up and over and through the rubble. Sadly, much of the Great Hall and Grotham buildings were in shambles. Rocks and rubble lay everywhere. It was perfect for him as a mouse to sneak along. He felt a bit of enjoyment in cruising quickly on incredibly fast paws. The balance of being so low to the ground, with four capable feet scurrying him along, was like a cool sleigh ride down a bumpy hill – not that Alfred knew what that was like.
He stopped once in awhile to survey the ogres and their war gear. He found stopping difficult. A mouse leads a fast-paced life. Alfred could tell those qualities were affecting him.
As he was peering at the hobgoblins, mouse energy forced him to move and duck under rubble – just as a hyena snapped its jaws over at him. Alfred looked up and saw giant evil eyes. The hyena stuck its snout into the rocks, nearly sniffling Alfred into its gooey nostrils. Fortunately, it snorted out a blob of snot and sent Alfred scurrying away.
Scrambling under piles of shattered wood from the battlements, he saw war wagons and dragons nearby. He realized he was seeing a couple of versions of triceratops dinosaurs. He wondered if they had the mentality of an elephant, easily spooked by mice. He decided to find out. Several hobgoblins were feeding the triceratops hay from a supply wagon. Alfred leapt out of the wood near one chewing hay. As he stood on his hind legs and danced about, the pea-brain sized dinosaur stared blankly, chewing. Alfred flipped and ran to and fro, coming dangerously close to the creature’s mouth as it went down for another bite.
Alfred soon tired of this game, realizing it was hopeless. Just then a hobgoblin came up and grabbed him by the tail, pulling him up.
“Hahr look Thokko! I gots me a snack!”
“What? Put that down, idiot!”
The hobglobin dangled the mouse at eye level, swinging it in front of his sharp-teethed mouth and in close view of the three-horned dragon. The triceratops focused its eye on the flailing mouse.
UHHHNNNNNNNNN!!!!
The triceratops jerked away, knocking the hobgoblin and Alfred into the air. Panic spread to the next dragon and the next rhino, beginning a stampede through the grounds of Grotham Keep
Hobgoblins and hyenas did not stand a chance. Anyone that did not wake up or move in time was trampled. Hyenas and hobgoblins flew as giant running beasts of burden stomped through rubble openings and down the slopes outside.
Ogres awoke in frustration as the beasts rampaged. Several were able to grab dragons by their horns and bring them down. Some still got knocked or bowled over. The ogres were the only hope of keeping the beasts from fleeing in panic.
“Whoze did thizz!? Graahgg!! Get thatzz onez!! Headz them offz! Oooof!!”
The two ogres in the Great Hall smacked each other awake. They got up and lumbered outside to the chaos of fleeing dinos and rhinos.
“Is that the signal?” Dunther asked Gib.
“Nnnnnoo... don't think so,” Gib replied, staring at the departing ogres.
“They're gone. Seems like the signal to me,” said Gorham..
“Nnnope... that's not the signal. It's a good signal but not the right one,” Gib said, peering out of a rubble opening as dinos ran past, tossing hobgoblins and hyenas as they went.
“Seems like a great signal!” said Dunther, reaching for the padlock to loosen it.
Gib reached the padlock to keep it closed. “Wait!”
Dunther wanted to push the gnome hand aside but realized he was just an escapee, not the rescuer. He paused and waited – quite anxiously.
Pandemonium gave Alfred the mouse a chance to scurry. His tiny size and great speed helped him avoid rhino and triceratops stomps, hyenas scattering, goblins and hobgoblins thrown and crushed, and ogres leaping and bounding.
An ogre jumped on a many-horned dino to bring it down. The heavy landing was like a mini-earthquake to Alfred. He flew into the air. Fortunately, he landed on a wooden ramp and rolled back down to the hidden safety of the rubble. The ogre pushed the dino down until it snorted with exhaustion and relaxed. Alfred scurried
atop a rock near the dino's eyes and waved his tiny paws. The beast leapt up with new vigor, tossing the ogre and bounding over howling hyenas and injured hobgoblins.
Alfred snuck away, no one knowing it was he that had caused this entire ruckus.
Rushing forward, he saw the wagons full of cannons parked by other wagons. The goblins and hobgoblins had run off to hide in the few intact stone structures that remained. He snuck up, sniffing, and recognized a particular burnt charcoal-like smell. It was black powder. A cannon wagon was parked next to a wagon filled with barrels and sacks of very dangerous black powder.
Alfred scurried under the wagon and looked to see if the coast was clear. There was plenty of action occurring around the ruined courtyard. Ogres were wrestling and tying up beasts to settle them down. Strewn about were quite a few stomped goblins and a few whimpering hyenas. Alfred was surprised to see the ogres dispense with the injured hyenas so quickly. Whimpered and broken mounts were no good to the ogres. Just as they showed no mercy to humans, they had no heart for injured hyenas or goblins.
A few hobgoblins were recovering or climbing out of hidden spots. Alfred realized he had to work quickly. He rushed behind the wagons and remembered to relax, even in the midst of growling ogres, roaring dragons and howling hyenas. Suddenly, magically, he became Alfred the boy again.
From a distance he looked something like a tall skinny goblin. He wore fitted goblin armour and had a spear. It’s not to say goblin armour had a specific look. It was more a theme of dark, dirty metal and leather parts.
Alfred peered from around the wagons to see if any ogres or goblins saw him, but they were all crowding around the dragon beasts to settle them down and herd them back. He turned to see Nubio hiding behind some rubble.
“Nubio!”
“Yes, goblin?”
“No, it’s me! Alfred!” Alfred took off the goblin helmet to show his face.
Nubio's eyes widened, and he smiled. The growling and howling mayhem before them still kept him low and cautious. He crept over to Alfred. “What are you doing here?!”
Both crouched behind a wagon.
“I've come to rescue my people – and you!”
Alfred 2: And The Underworld (Alfred the Boy King) Page 28
