Armies of Nine, Book Three of The Adventures of Sarah Coppernick

by SJB Gilmour

  Angela disagreed with the werewolf. ‘Nathan,’ she said, stepping between Mannix and the nervous purple worm, ‘you take as much time as you need. Remember, you could always call Maddy in to help you.’ She fixed Mannix with a steely glare.

  Mannix was a seasoned warrior and not in the least intimidated by Angela. He glared back at her just as coldly but did wag his tail once to show he would be nicer to frightened archivist.

  Nathan smiled. ‘That really would be a great help,’ he suggested with a hopeful look at Benjamin.

  Benjamin agreed. ‘The Australian mortals have introduced another tax system that’s an absolute schemozzel. I’m sure she’d love the distraction,’ he assured Nathan. ‘Quicklings get frustrated so easily.’ He yipped out a call to the surrounding bush. A small tree-sprite fluttered out to him nervously.

  ‘Yes, Silver Shroud?’ she piped.

  ‘I need you to go to my offices. Find the quickling Maddy. Ask her to come here with the twins.’ Benjamin’s tone was as gentle as though he was talking to a child. ‘She’ll give you a reward for your trouble.’

  The sprite curtseyed and then vanished.

  ‘Beaut!’ James announced. ‘What do we do now? Cromwell’s buggered off which leaves just us.’

  ‘He’s not coming back, is he?’ Sarah asked, feeling rotten.

  ‘If he does, his life is forfeit,’ Mannix growled. ‘Do not regret this, Golden Mane. Better he show his hand now than in the midst of battle. We know him to be a traitor now and should view him as such.’

  James thumped Sarah on the shoulder fondly and rubbed her ears. ‘Never mind, kiddo,’ he said confidently. ‘We were doing alright without Cromwell before. We’ll do alright without him now.’

  ‘James is right, Sarah,’ Angela said warmly. ‘We’re all behind you.’ She smiled confidently. ‘Now we know more or less what to expect when we do go to Conundrum, I’m sure we’ll be more than able to cope.’

  James shook his head. ‘I hope,’ he said cautiously. He looked at Sarah with one eyebrow raised. ‘Tell me, kiddo, how did you get to Conundrum?’

  Sarah hung her head briefly. The memory of her terrible fight with N’butu and the hurricane she had created inside Conundrum was still fresh in her mind. She wasn’t particularly proud of it at all.

  ‘The sorcerer I killed at the Ottispuschenshuffen’s shop left a portal open,’ she replied. ‘I just followed it.’

  Benjamin made a strange noise — halfway between a growl and a whine. ‘You followed a portal that you didn’t know the end of?’ he asked incredulously. ‘What made you do that?’

  Now Sarah felt even more rotten. It was bad enough that Angela had been mad at her. Her bond with Uncle Benjamin was even stronger. She whined and her tail went low to the ground.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she whined.

  ‘Easy,’ James said again. He patted Sarah comfortingly on her shoulders. ‘She’s okay now and that’s all that matters.’ He grinned. ‘Kiddo, you are extraordinarily lucky sometimes. That portal could have come from anywhere. You’re lucky you didn’t wind up in a hell. Worse, if Loki’s involved, you could have found yourself in Valhalla!’

  Sarah wagged her tail apologetically. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I guess I wasn’t thinking too clearly.’

  Mannix padded up to James, his huge eyes very serious. ‘Though you and Master Harding are pack-mates of the Golden Mane, it does not serve her well for you to display such familiarity in public,’ he advised in a quiet voice. ‘A First commands certain respect and though the Golden Mane loves you and is your friend, in times like these, she is a commander and not to be trifled with.’

  James nodded and gave the Black an accepting grimace. ‘I get it,’ he said, understanding. ‘It’s the same with my crew. By ourselves, I’m James but when there’s business to be done, I’m Master Isaacs. Good idea.’

  ‘It is good that we understand each other,’ Mannix replied, wagging his tail.

  Benjamin padded out into the middle of the clearing. ‘Hear this!’ he barked. ‘As Second of Pack Kopernik, I advise you all to spread the word! Oliver Cromwell is not to be trusted!’

  The gathered werewolves wagged their tails and yipped in agreement.

  Nathan looked up from the ruins and bobbed his head up and down enthusiastically. ‘I don’t know about you folk,’ he confided, ‘but I’ll be quite grateful to spend some time on some solid ground for a change. Master Cromwell’s island is a most uncomfortable place.’ The purple archivist paused for a moment as he looked about at the devastated jungle around them. ‘Umm, what are you going to do now?’

  As always, when Sarah was feeling upset or emotional, Wolfenvald whispered to her to reassure her. The voices of that ancient forest told her just how to answer Nathan’s question.

  ‘I think we should unite our forces,’ she told the group. ‘There’s no point us all being scattered all over the place like this.’

  ‘So who isn’t here?’ James mused. ‘Mason’s on Gnumphlatia—’

  ‘He’s safe there,’ Benjamin told him with more authority to his voice than he’d used recently.

  James nodded and winked at his friend to tell him he knew exactly why Benjamin was being so gruff all of a sudden. This was now a military operation and that meant strict rules applied to the chains of command.

  ‘The werewolves are returning to Wolfenvald as fast as they can,’ Mannix added. ‘They’ll all come when called but right now it’d probably be best if they stayed where they are. There’s a lot of scuttlebutt about the Werenmesse at the moment. Best to let things settle until we drag them all into it.’

  ‘Werenmesse?’ James asked curiously. ‘Surely they don’t still believe that old story?’

  Mannix gave him a rueful grin. ‘Even a race as superior as werewolves is not without its share of superstitions.’ He sat and scratched vigorously behind one ear with his hind paw.

  ‘What about the dragons?’ Robert suggested. ‘Siouxanne’s no friend of Mautallius, and a diamondback like her is likely to have a fair amount of influence among the various dragon wings. She’s also adopted Jimbeaux, I think his name is now — the young firedrake who was Mel’s familiar. Siouxanne branded Mel as Amixo so she’s as good as blood to any dragon. Jimbeaux would probably take it pretty personally if anything were to threaten her. If he gets upset, so will Siouxanne. Dragons tend to stick together.’

  ‘Could give it a try,’ James mused. ‘Where are they?’

  ‘Vendor, I believe,’ Angela told him. ‘Or somewhere else far enough away so The Guild can’t get to them. Don’t worry, Cexil will find them.’

  ‘That leaves the Hazelwoods and Cassandra and her minotaurs,’ James concluded. He looked down at Sarah. ‘Ever been to Crete?’

  ‘Before we go anywhere,’ Benjamin interrupted, ‘we’ll need to set up some sort of home base.’

  ‘I agree,’ Fergus added. He turned to Sarah. ‘Where do you want to do that?’

  Before Sarah could answer, several werewolves suggested Wolfenvald with yips and barks.

  ‘Wolfenvald is fine fer the werefolk,’ Sheila Freeman argued pointedly. ‘But not every member of this new pack hunts on four paws.’

  ‘What about our place, McConnell?’ James suggested. ‘Mason and I have set up a decent supply dump already. There’s ample bush-land for the werewolves to stretch their legs—’

  ‘How much is ample?’ Mannix demanded.

  Benjamin shook his head, flapping his ears. ‘About five hundred acres of bush that I own outright, plus it’s next to a State Park and that’s several thousand.’

  ‘Anything to hunt in that forest?’ Mannix asked warming to the idea.

  Benjamin shrugged again. ‘Kangaroos, wallabies, and a few wombats,’ he supplied. ‘Be careful when you hunt rabbits. There are the mixematosis and the calici viruses that the mortals introduced to keep their numbers down, and stay away from the koalas. They’re more trouble than they’re worth, and watch out for snakes. The brown ones and the bl
ack ones pack a nasty bite and there’s a striped one that’s plain deadly.’ He looked around at the grinning werewolves. Several were wagging their tails and most of them were licking their chops hungrily.

  Sarah looked at the pile of her possessions Oliver had dumped on the ground, and sighed. Then a thought came to her and she looked slyly at the gathered wolves. She changed back to her human form. Now, again dressed in cargo pants, runners and a t-shirt under a checked shirt, Sarah again began to feel small and insecure among this large and very powerful group.

  Fergus winked at her and wagged his tail. ‘Steady,’ he warned her gently. ‘Remember, wolf or human, you’re still the Golden Mane. That means you’re the Grand Pooh-Bah.’

  Sarah chewed her lip for a moment. ‘Doesn’t it bother you that as a human I’m only thirteen years old?’

  ‘Does it bother ye that as wolves, some of us are thousands of years older than ye?’ Sheila responded dryly, also wagging her tail. She changed form into a grey-haired woman who appeared about sixty. She wore jeans, boots and an old hand-knitted sweater which was really too heavy for the climate in the middle of the Congo jungle. Without waiting for an answer, the old woman picked up one of the bags. ‘Well,’ she demanded in a no-nonsense tone, ‘are we going to Melbourne or not? It’s too bloody hot out here, I’ll tell ye all that fer nothing!’

  Sarah was surprised at the woman’s appearance. She knew her from somewhere!

  ‘Oh, now ye recognise me, girlie,’ Sheila observed crisply. ‘Ye dunna remember, do ye?’

  Sarah remained silent for a moment. Just where did she know this brusque woman from?

  ‘I was a teacher at yer old school in Romania when ye were just a wee lass,’ the old woman told her. ‘Someone had to keep an eye on ye.’

  A flood of memories came back to Sarah. She remembered when she was so much younger, just before her parents disappeared, she had been schooled by this old woman. Sarah realised she knew more now. She had absorbed a great deal of information from Jasper when she restored his youth. She saw what Jasper remembered of the fight near the fixed portal in the Carpathian mountain range where her parents were abducted by Mautallius. More flashes of Jasper’s memories came to her. She saw female soldiers fighting alongside lots of werewolves. Their enemy was a mercenary band made up of a mixed lot of humans, quicklings, trolls, goblins and some other creatures she had not seen herself but knew to be elves.

  Sarah paused and gasped as the reality of what happened that night came to her. Her parents may have been abducted, but a great many werewolves and Amazons died trying to save them.

  ‘I remember,’ she breathed. She turned to Sheila. ‘I’m sorry.’

  The grey-haired woman looked at her sideways. ‘How? Ye weren’t even there!’

  ‘Jasper was.’

  Sheila squinted shrewdly at her. ‘I see,’ she murmured. ‘When ye healed him, ye absorbed a lot of his memories, dinna ye?’

  Sarah nodded.

  ‘Well, never mind, lassie,’ Sheila told her in her tough manner. ‘That was a long time ago and there’s no sense worrying about it now so let’s be off!’

  While the others prepared to leave, Nathan made a startled noise. ‘Master McConnell, Sir?’ he wailed, looking fearfully up into the sky.

  Benjamin nodded at Mannix to take care of Nathan.

  ‘Never mind, bookwyrm,’ Mannix growled. He turned to his pack and nodded at four of them. ‘You four stay with archivist. Anything other than McConnell’s quickling, ourselves or Isaacs’ ogres go anywhere near it, you know what to do.’ He turned back to Nathan. ‘Happy?’

  Nathan bobbed his head and stammered a ‘Th, th… Thank-you, Master Freeman.’

  At that moment, a shimmering enchanted elevator appeared with a loud crash as it crushed a large patch of vegetation.

  James sighed regretfully. ‘Stupid machine,’ he muttered.

  The doors opened and two enormous ogre heads poked out. Castor and Pollux, who were both really very cramped inside the elevator, shambled out into the jungle. They were followed by the very relieved-looking quickling, Maddy. The elevator made a disgusted sound and could hardly wait for Maddy to flash out before it slammed its doors shut.

  ‘Oh no you don’t,’ Benjamin told the rude machine. ‘You’re staying here until these people have finished their work. Then you get to come home.’

  The elevator muttered several things that don’t bear repeating. However, it did obey its owner’s instruction.

  Maddy walked up to Benjamin as slowly as she could, which was very, very fast for a normal human. ‘You sent for us, Master McConnell?’ she said in what Sarah realised was a very deliberate slow manner so she could be understood by everyone present.

  Benjamin smiled at his employee. ‘Thank-you, my dear,’ he replied, and nodded to Nathan, who was busily sorting out a great mess of sheets of parchment. ‘Would you mind giving Nathan a hand?’

  Maddy smiled gratefully and flashed into a blur of motion. James watched her dash about with a look of admiration on his face. He glanced down at the palms of his hands then grinned at Roberta who had noticed his appreciation of the pretty quickling.

  ‘Just checking,’ the cocky botanist said with a grin.

  Castor stomped forward next. ‘And what does youse wants us to do, Boss?’ he asked James.

  ‘Yeah,’ Pollux added, squinting about him suspiciously. ‘Who’s da ones dat needs killin?’

  ‘No-one yet, boys,’ James told them. He waved at the four Blacks who were all standing guard around Nathan and the blurring that was Maddy at her work. ‘You’re here for back-up and to haul anything that the quickling wants moved. While she and bookwyrm are working, you’re also on guard duty. ‘Till they’re done, the Blacks are in charge. When she and Nathan have finished, join us back at McConnell’s place.’

  Grinning from hairy ear to hairy ear, Castor and Pollux stomped over to join the Black Coat werewolves guarding Nathan and Maddy.

  Sarah grinned and picked up her satchel. ‘Let’s go,’ she told them. She turned and created a large portal that led directly to the driveway outside James’ warehouse in Gembrook. She took two steps towards it when Benjamin issued a warning bark.

  ‘Better let me go ahead, First,’ he told her seriously. Then he changed form and picked up a large box full of books and tomes, and marched through the portal. The remaining members of the pack all assumed their own human forms and picked up yet more of the girls’ belongings from the pile. Grinning to herself, Sarah followed her most favourite uncle in the whole world through the portal.

  Chapter Three

  Ronald Trustworthy Mason, adventurer and renegade, was now a criminal. He sat in a tiny putrid cell in abject misery. All around him, the air was thick with the stench of unwashed bodies and filth and all the other horrid things inside Yuk prison. The stone floor was covered with bug-ridden straw so rotten it wasn’t good enough for a pigsty.

  He gazed up at his only source of light — a tiny open window, high in the wall. The window, no bigger than a few centimetres across, did very little to freshen the air. Though he had only been in the cell for a few days, Ronny felt he was very near the end. How could a gnome end up like this? How could he have come this far only to end up in the worst possible place of all?

  The foul straw on the floor rustled and shifted continuously as hundreds of cockroach-like floodles scurried about. As hungry as he was, Ronny was not about to do as he’d seen several other jailbirds do and eat one of the horrible critters (being careful to avoid the venomous little beasties’ poison glands, of course). They smelled absolutely awful and squealed quite disturbingly when picked up.

  Miserable, tired and starving, Ronny rested his head in his gnarled hands and let the tears gently roll down his smudged face. After he had cried for perhaps an hour or so, he heard the moans and cries of misery from the inmates in the surrounding cells change to jeers and catcalls. Someone was coming!

  Ronny pressed his face up against the cold steel bars
and peered into the hallway. Three gnomes were marching towards his cell. One was the very guard who had arrested him, Ronny was sure, but his uniform was different now. He was sure a sergeant had arrested him. This gnome was dressed in captain’s uniform. The second was wearing some kind of officer’s uniform, though he was cloaked and wore a long hood that covered his features.

  Behind them was the third gnome and Ronny definitely recognised him. He was one of the most evil-looking gnomes Ronny had ever seen. The gnome was known only as Yukmaster and he was the Warden of Yuk prison. He was tall and incredibly well muscled for a gnome. He wore leather boots and thick, greasy looking pants and was bare-chested. Around his wrists were studded leather braces and he carried the badge of his office — a deadly yukstick, which was a large silver-spiked mace.

  Ronny stared at the yukstick. Several of the silver spikes were missing and Ronny knew that the Yukmaster was only too willing to use his deadly weapon.

  The Yukmaster’s pockmarked face was absolutely merciless. A black leather patch covered his left eye. His right eye glared angrily after the two gnomes ahead of him. When they reached Ronny’s cell, they paused.

  ‘I think you’re being generous!’ the Yukmaster complained. ‘I’ve got dozens of prisoners who’ve been waiting for execution years before this wretch, Your—’ the Yukmaster began.

  He was cut short by the captain. ‘That’s none of your concern, Yukmaster.’

  Now that he was closer, Ronny was certain this was indeed the former sergeant. He began to have suspicions about the identity of the hooded gnome. He felt a twinge of hope and both his hearts began to beat very fast.

  Two more prison guards appeared behind the Yukmaster as he opened Ronny’s cell.

  Ronny quickly bowed respectfully. ‘Please!’ he pleaded. ‘I’ve done nothing wrong! I desperately need an audience with His Majesty! I’m—’

  He didn’t get to finish.

  ‘You’re a renegade, a thief, a procurer and you consort with all sorts of riff-raff,’ the hooded gnome accused harshly. ‘You bribed and blackmailed your way into the palace and now you’re going to be shown your reward for such sneakery!’ The gnome spat, turned on his heel, and marched back down the corridor.