Capablanca tried to answer casually.
‘There are tales of paths that lead to overhanging cliffs, of thundering death-dealing avalanches that can be triggered by the slightest cough, of mysterious wild beasts with fearsome tusks that roam in packs, ready to disembowel any intruder in their lofty domain.’
‘But you climbed it to imprison Zoltab,’ said Princess Lois.
‘Yes, Princess,’ agreed the wizard. ‘But you must remember that I used the power of magic to help me. I expect I used the Spell of Heat to warm me, the Spell of Navigation to lead me, the Spell of Invisibility to prevent the wild beasts from seeing me and the Spell of Silence to render any cough noiseless. This time we must climb the mountain without the aid of magic. It will be far more treacherous. We will land on its lower slopes.’
‘Couldn’t we just land on the top?’ said Blart.
‘The nearer the summit we land, the greater the risk of starting an avalanche,’ explained Capablanca. ‘We must land in the foothills, leave Pig behind us to save time, and head for the top on foot.’
‘Pig climbed it last time,’ protested Blart. ‘Why does he get to stay behind?’
‘Last time Pig would have been needed to carry Zoltab,’ replied Capablanca. ‘This time everyone in the party is willing to go.’
‘I’m not,’ said Blart. ‘And you’ll probably need someone to stay at the bottom and look after Pig the Horse. I’ll do that.’
Capablanca shook his head.
‘We must all climb to the summit.’
‘But,’ protested Blart, ‘poor Pig might be captured and returned to the circus while we’re gone.’
Capablanca’s expression hardened.
‘It is most unlikely that the circus will be visiting the foothills of the most inhospitable place in the world.’
Onwards flew Pig towards the Xanthean mountains. As the fearsome peaks grew nearer Blart’s excuses as to why he couldn’t climb the mountain grew ever more ludicrous.
‘I think my cold is turning into a cough and I could easily start an avalanche,’ he suggested. Then, ‘I have bad circulation in my toes.’
Finally, Blart produced his best excuse of all.
‘I was once attacked by a snowman.’
‘How did it attack you?’ demanded the Princess.
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ said Blart.
Now they were flying amongst the mountains. The air had a fresh sharp bite Blart had never experienced before. Towering above were white peaks, serene, implacable and utterly merciless. They looked fit to swallow an army without trace, let alone five questors.
Blart heard a deep ominous rumble.
‘What’s that?’ he asked Capablanca, not really sure that he wanted to know the answer.
The wizard responded by pointing towards a nameless peak. Blart squinted through the glare and saw the snow moving, rolling down the mountain stronger and more powerful than any river, covering everything that it swept up with wave upon wave of snow.
‘Avalanche!’ shouted the wizard through hands cupped for warmth.
Blart turned away from the fearsome sight. But wherever he looked there were white mountains stretching into the distance and reaching high into the sky.
‘There!’ shouted Capablanca suddenly. ‘Mount Xag!’
In front of them, silent and impassive, sat the king of mountains – higher, sharper and more ferocious than any other peak in the range. It was massive in a way that was beyond Blart’s puny comprehension.
It lay in wait for them.
Chapter 45
Pig whinnied.
‘Farewell, Pig,’ said Princess Lois. ‘When we return I promise I shall take you back to Illyria and you shall have a life of ease such as no horse in history has ever known.’
She patted the horse and followed the others along the path that led from the foothills upwards towards Mount Xag.
‘Are we ready?’ said Capablanca.
All the questors nodded. Apart from Blart.
‘Remember we must move quickly,’ instructed the wizard. ‘In cold such as this we will not be able to survive for more than two days. Keep close together. Do not shout. Avoid mysterious creatures with tusks. Let us climb.’
The questors set off. A few moments later they stopped. The path had disappeared under a fresh carpet of snow.
‘Hmm,’ said Capablanca.
‘Oh dear,’ said Blart cheerily. ‘We’ll have to turn back. Nobody can say we didn’t try.’
‘This could be a good thing,’ said Capablanca.
‘How can it be a good thing?’ demanded Blart. ‘There isn’t a path any more. We don’t know which way to go.’
‘You forget,’ said Capablanca, ‘that many of the paths that crisscross the mountain lead over precipices. It is probably good to be without one.’
The wizard sounded more confident than he felt. A climber doesn’t need a path to find himself tumbling over a precipice. He can do that just as well without one.
‘It’s a mountain,’ added Uther. ‘One keeps going up until there is no more up to go. Then one is at the top.’
‘Unless one has fallen off a cliff before one gets there,’ said Blart bitterly.
‘There is good visibility,’ Capablanca assured him. ‘We would see a cliff long before we fell over it. Now, let us have no more talking. Beo, lead the way. We must climb.’
And climb they did. For the rest of the day barely a word was spoken as they trudged steadily through the snow, following in the giant footmarks of Beo the Warrior. Though the air was crisp and the snow was cold, the combination of their movement, a regular bite of Uther’s endless supply of lard and the sun above served to keep them warm enough. Up and up and up they walked, sometimes battling against enormous drifts of snow which seemed ready to engulf them, sometimes inching along snow-covered ridges, sharp as knives, that sheared down to deep ravines filled with cold black merciless tarns, and sometimes hurrying beneath frozen waterfalls where icicles hung like deadly daggers ready for the kill.
After hours of ceaseless toil they reached a high plateau that promised easier walking. The questors, whose hearts were fit to burst after exerting so much energy, each breathed a sigh of relief.
‘We will sit and rest and have some lard when we have crossed this plain,’ said Capablanca.
‘Remember it’s got to be paid for,’ Uther reminded him. ‘I’m keeping count of the amount of lard you’ve all eaten in my head.’
‘You will be paid when we return to Illyria,’ said Capablanca.
‘And it’s a delicacy in these parts,’ added Uther, ‘so I’ll have to adjust the price accordingly.’
‘You mean your lard is more expensive here than it was in the Baron’s castle?’ said Blart.
‘Of course,’ said Uther.
‘But it’s the same lard.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Uther. ‘Here it is much rarer and so the price has to rise. It’s a firm rule of trade. You can’t buck the market.’
Blart always found himself puzzled by Uther’s explanations of economics. Somehow every rule seemed geared to ensuring that the merchant made lots of money and his customer had to pay the highest price.
‘Come on,’ said Capablanca, pointing to the other side of the snow-covered plateau. ‘Each step brings us closer to our next bite of lard.’
It was not a cry that would have motivated many groups, but the hungry questors rallied to it.
‘Follow me!’ cried Beo enthusiastically.
‘Sssh,’ hissed Capablanca. ‘Remember avalanches.’
‘Follow me,’ whispered Beo.
They set off, glad for the first time not to be going uphill. This was like normal walking. This was almost easy. This was …
‘Whoa,’ shouted the warrior.
‘Beo,’ hissed Capablanca again. ‘No shouting.’
But the warrior was not listening. Instead he was trying to stop with all his might. The snow on which he had placed his front foot suddenly disappe
ared and the other questors saw why.
A crevasse. One of a mountain’s deadliest traps. A gash in the ice just wide enough for a man to fall into but far too deep for him ever to be seen again. Once a man had fallen into a crevasse all that was left to do was to wait for his blood to freeze.
The warrior wobbled precariously. All of his momentum was pushing him into the icy void. He waved his arms in a desperate attempt to pull himself back from the brink. Capablanca and Princess Lois rushed forward to help. But they were too late. Beo’s momentum was too great. With a cry of horror he toppled into the deadly blue abyss.
Chapter 46
If Beowulf had been a fit young knight he would never have been seen again. But thanks to a diet largely made up of succulent pies and numerous flagons of ale, he was not. And how grateful he was for each mouthful of pastry and gravy and each draught of ale now. For although he toppled into the crevasse, he did not disappear. Instead he found himself securely wedged.
‘Get me out of here,’ demanded Beo’s top half – the only bit that was visible.
‘Say please,’ said Blart, who was not going to let an opportunity as good as this go by.
‘I say that I’ll kill you if you don’t,’ answered Beowulf gruffly.
‘Blart,’ said Capablanca sternly. ‘You must help your comrade. This is why quests are such valuable things. They demonstrate that by working together we achieve much more than by working apart.’
Blart sighed. He had heard far too many lectures on the benefits of quests and he knew that the only way to stop them was to do what the wizard was asking. Aware there might be more dangerous crevasses ready to swallow him up he tiptoed gingerly to the edge and, along with the wizard, grabbed hold of one of the warrior’s arms. Princess Lois and Uther took the other.
‘Pull,’ said Capablanca.
They pulled. The warrior didn’t move.
‘Pull with all your might,’ urged Capablanca.
The questors did as they were bid. They pulled, they tugged and they strained, but Beo remained stuck firmly in the crevasse.
‘If I was pulling I’d have had myself out in no time,’ remarked Beo somewhat ungratefully while the other questors collapsed, exhausted, into the snow.
‘He’s too fat,’ said Blart.
‘I have big bones,’ protested Beo. ‘It runs in my family.’
‘We must wait until he gets thinner,’ said Uther.
‘This is no time for diets,’ said Capablanca, shaking his head vigorously. ‘We have to get to the top of Mount Xag.’
‘I can’t feel my legs,’ said Beo.
The questors looked at the helpless warrior. Whereas his upper half was out in the sun his lower half was dangling inside the freezing glacier. Frostbite was setting in rapidly. If they didn’t get him out fast then he might never walk again. And not to be able to walk when stuck high on Mount Xag was a sentence of death.
The questors were sobered by these thoughts. That is, all the questors except Blart.
‘I’m hungry,’ he said to Uther. ‘Can I have a bite of lard?’
‘Of course you can’t,’ interjected Capablanca. ‘One of your comrades is fallen, his legs face an uncertain future. It is not appropriate to be snacking.’
‘I don’t see why not,’ said Blart. ‘I don’t see why me being hungry is going to help.’
‘It is a matter of respect,’ said Capablanca. ‘When one’s comrade is suffering it is appropriate to try and share that suffering a little rather than indulge yourself in the joys of la…’ He paused. ‘Unless, of course, lard is the answer.’
‘You think we should all eat some?’ said a puzzled Blart. ‘I thought you just said –’
‘Not eat it,’ said Capablanca. ‘Rub it. If we rub it between our hands we will make it warm and soft. Then we can rub it on to Beowulf and he will slide free.’
‘Can I eat some first?’ asked Blart.
‘No,’ said Capablanca fiercely. ‘Every bit of lard might be necessary to free Beowulf. There is a lot of him to cover.’
‘I tell you, it’s my big bones,’ protested the warrior again. None of his fellow questors listened though. They had already set to work warming up the lard. A casual bystander might have spotted that one of the questors appeared to be surreptitiously eating the portion of the lard he was supposedly preparing to free his comrade. Luckily for Blart, they were high up a desolate mountain and any casual bystander would have frozen to death long ago.
Once the lard was soft enough, the questors forced their hands into the crevasse and coated Beo’s midriff with it.
‘If we run out of food it’s all your fault,’ pointed out Blart while applying the lard he hadn’t eaten.
‘Is everyone ready?’ asked Capablanca. ‘Then let us pull once more.’
The questors took Beo’s arms, braced themselves and pulled. And tugged. And strained.
And dragged the warrior out of the crevasse.
‘Hurrah!’ shouted the questors, momentarily linked by a fleeting sense of achievement.
But the look on Beo’s face suggested that something was still wrong.
‘I can’t feel my feet,’ he said.
‘Get his boots off,’ Capablanca ordered Blart.
‘Why me?’ said Blart.
‘My hands are old and gnarled,’ said the wizard, ‘and are not as flexible as they once were.’
‘So are mine,’ said Uther quickly.
Blart glumly removed the boots. The feet revealed were dirty, smelly and blue.
‘My feet aren’t that colour,’ commented Blart.
‘Of course they aren’t,’ said Capablanca. ‘Beo is in the early stages of frostbite. He will lose his toes unless they are massaged back to life.’
Blart sighed. Here I am, he thought bitterly, being forced to rub a warrior’s dirty toes in order to save the country of Illyria. A country I don’t even like.
For a supposedly brave man, Beo made a great deal of noise while his toes were being rubbed.
‘Ooooh!’ he shouted.
‘Beo,’ said Capablanca.
‘Aaaah!’ replied the warrior.
‘You’ll set off an avalanche,’ warned Capablanca.
‘But it hurts,’ said Beo.
‘They’re better now,’ said Blart, for his efforts had restored a healthy pink to Beo’s toes.
‘We must get on,’ said Capablanca, looking across the white plain they had only just begun to cross. ‘This glacier could be riddled with crevasses, so we must move carefully.’
Under Capablanca’s instruction the questors walked in a straight line. Beo led, using his sword as a stick to check the reliability of the ground ahead. Before each step he would sink his sword into the snow. Usually the glacier beneath stopped it with a judder and then they knew it was safe to proceed. But sometimes there was no glacier beneath the snow to stop the thrust of the mighty sword and this meant that they had located yet another crevasse. Their progress was slow and laborious and they grew colder and more irritable.
‘My sword is going to be blunt after all this banging,’ lamented Beo.
‘Why did you imprison Zoltab in such a cold place?’ Blart demanded of Capablanca. ‘Why couldn’t you put him somewhere warmer?’
‘The more inhospitable the location the less the chance of his Ministers and minions freeing him to reek a terrible vengeance on the world.’
‘We have heard nothing of Zoltab’s minions for many days,’ said Uther. ‘We shouldn’t worry about them when we have so much else to concern ourselves with.’
Blart ignored Uther and continued to question the wizard.
‘But when we captured Zoltab the first time you said that you were going to put an irreversible spell on him which would keep him imprisoned for ever,’ said Blart.
The wizard shook his head.
‘You misunderstand magic,’ he told Blart a little haughtily. ‘It is not constant but is always changing as wizards in ancient libraries research new spells. So even though th
e spell was eternal a Minister could by now have researched a spell to remove it.’
‘But how would they know what spell to reverse?’ asked Princess Lois.
Capablanca coughed.
‘There may have been certain banquets held in my honour at the Cavernous Library of Ping when I first returned after imprisoning Zoltab, where I may have mentioned it.’
‘Why would you do that?’ demanded the Princess.
‘It is important for a great wizard like myself to impart my knowledge to younger wizards.’
‘He was showing off,’ translated Blart.
The wizard grew more agitated.
‘The young don’t understand the first thing about battling against evil,’ he said. ‘You think you can just defeat evil once and that’s it. But evil’s not like that. Evil gets angry, evil regroups, evil gets worse and comes back for more.’
‘Can evil get worse?’ wondered Blart idly.
‘Of course evil can get worse,’ shouted Capablanca, showing scant regard for the danger of avalanches. ‘Why, when I was a young wizard evil wasn’t much more than nasty. Evil played by the rules. But with each defeat evil toughens up. It learns. And it comes back nastier than before.’
There was a silence as the questors contemplated an eviller evil. Flakes of snow began to fall around them. So engrossed had they been in their argument that they had not noticed a dark cloud drifting menacingly towards Mount Xag from the east.
‘We must make haste,’ said Capablanca. ‘Soon the light will be fading.’
Beo stabbed his sword into the snow in front of them and they resumed their plodding progress across the glacier. It seemed as if they were trapped in an immense maze to which someone had forgotten to build an exit. But with the aid of Beo’s careful prodding they somehow managed to keep moving slowly forward until, with gasps of relief, they stepped safely off the glacier and back on to the solidity of snow-covered rock. They were chilled to their very core and the snow swirling around them was thickening into a blizzard as night fell.
‘We must find shelter,’ said Capablanca. ‘We cannot blunder on in darkness or we will stumble over a cliff.’
‘There is no shelter, wizard,’ said Uther, shivering angrily. ‘And if we stop on the bare mountain then we will freeze to death.’
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