The Borribles Go for Broke

by Michael de Larrabeiti

  ‘Well, all right,’ said the Wendle, ‘but I’ll be buggered if I’ll go any further. I can’t stand it in there, it gives me the creeps.’

  Stonks winked at Vulge and whispered, ‘You stay here and send me another one when I asks yer.’

  Vulge perched on the coping of the shaft and watched Stonks follow the guard down the ladder. Bingo scrutinized the towpaths and Sydney placed herself near the treadmill. Whatever happened to her, she had decided, the guard with the whip was going into the mud. Her sharp knife was ready.

  The moment Stonks arrived below he went to stand by the Wendle and called his attention to a split in the shuttering. The guard leant over to examine the fault and Stonks nudged him gently into space. For a split second the Wendle ran on thin air like a cartoon cat; his spear sprang from his grasp, his eyes bulged and then down he went, surprised, leaving only a small and diminishing scream behind him.

  Stonks glanced up at Vulge and raised two fingers; he wanted another one.

  ‘I think your mate’s slipped,’ said Vulge quietly. ‘You’d better have a look.’

  The guards who were nearest came to the shaft and bent forward to see.

  ‘He’s fallen to the next platform,’ called Stonks. ‘You’ll have to come and help me fetch him up.’

  ‘Dammit,’ said the Wendles, but they laid their spears on the planking and climbed down the ladder.

  ‘Blimey,’ said Bingo, ‘that first guard was a pushover.’

  ‘No jokes,’ said Vulge. ‘Grab hold of one of them spears and pretend you’re on duty. We don’t want them Wendles on the shore to get suspicious. I’ll watch Stonks.’

  But there wasn’t much for Vulge to see. The two guards arrived on the landing. Stonks got them to the edge, the Wendles stared downwards and the next thing they knew they were falling fast, rigid with terror, clutching their bodies one to the other in the hope that somehow they could alter the laws of gravity and so save themselves. The noise when it came was solid and sickening. Stonks looked up and raised four fingers; he wanted the guard with the whip.

  ‘Here, mate,’ said Vulge. ‘Your two chums want you. I can’t make out what they’re saying, got a speech impediment have they?’

  The guard threw his whip on to a pile of tools near the treadmill and ambled over to where Vulge sat. ‘They’re a bunch of idiots,’ he said, and leant over the parapet. Sydney had kept pace with him across the platform and as soon as he halted she hit him very hard in the kidneys, taking the breath out of his body so that he couldn’t call or shout, then she bent rapidly to his heels, grasped them securely, and simply upended her victim into the mine. Fortunately he made no sound until his head hit the planks of the landing. There he rolled and groaned until Stonks helped him on his way with a soft touch of the foot, easing the unconscious Wendle into the shaft so that he could join his colleagues.

  ‘My, my,’ said Vulge as he watched the body swoop and dive like a swallow, ‘he has gone down in the world.’

  ‘Shall we tell Torreycanyon now?’ asked Sydney.

  Vulge looked at the river banks. All was quiet. ‘No,’ he said at length. ‘He might get excited and give us away. Hurry, let’s get on guard, them Wendles on the shore will get suspicious if there ain’t someone walking up and down all the time. And keep cracking the whip.’

  So the three Borribles seized their spears and stood sternly to attention or marched to and fro across the platform.

  ‘I can hardly believe it,’ murmured Sydney. ‘It all seems to be going to plan.’

  Twilight and Chalotte surveyed the river from the safety of a tunnel, staring anxiously across the Wandle to where the wooden derrick floated on the slow rise and fall of the black-green mud. Streams of darkness poured down between the yellow lights that the Wendles had raised and it was a darkness that was at one with the dingy waters of the river. Somewhere behind Chalotte sat Spiff, not watching, strangely melancholy, alone.

  ‘They’re going well,’ said Twilight. ‘Stonks has got three of them into the mine and no one on shore has twigged it yet, and Bingo and Sydney are pretending to be on guard.’

  ‘I know,’ said Chalotte, her voice hopeful. ‘But it’ll be a bit different when they bring the prisoners out; they’ll have to go like the clappers then.’

  Suddenly Twilight laid hold of Chalotte’s arm. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘What’s that whispering in the tunnels?’

  Chalotte cocked an ear and the whispering, faint at first, began to grow more definite. It was a threatening and insistent noise, a soft squelching, a noise that brought fear with it. Chalotte was mystified, then she realized what it was; it was the sound of many scores of Wendles in supple waders running at a relentless speed. It was the sound that Flinthead’s bodyguard made when it moved—direct, dedicated, unswerving and vicious—and when the bodyguard moved Flinthead moved with it, his shapeless nose sniffing the way.

  ‘Oh, it can’t be,’ wailed Chalotte, ‘it mustn’t be.’

  Her wishes made no difference. Within a minute or two a mass of heavily armed Wendles poured out of the tunnels on each side of the river, the light glinting on their spears and helmets. Many of them carried lightweight skiffs and their stride did not break as they reached the Wandle and ran on into it, launching themselves, their speed remaining constant as they went from running to rowing so that they flew on to the surface of the mud like black and orange water-bugs. Many more warriors spread out along the banks, prodding ordinary Wendles from the towpaths with the butts of their spears. Then came a clashing of weapons and a huge shout, and in the midst of fifty hand-picked soldiers Flinthead appeared, his golden jacket shining and his eyes brilliantly opaque with the coldness of his triumph.

  ‘Dammit,’ swore Chalotte, and she lifted her fingers to her mouth in order to whistle a warning, but strong arms seized her from behind and for a moment she thought she’d been captured—then she remembered Spiff.

  ‘Keep yer mouth shut,’ he said. ‘It won’t do anyone any good to let Flinthead know you’re here. Just keep quiet and get ready to run for your life.’

  On the platform, Bingo, Vulge and Sydney stood firm and made ready to defend themselves against the advancing warriors. It was pointless; the derrick was too large for three to hold against so many and the Wendle warriors overran the interlopers after the briefest of struggles. They were disarmed, bound and thrown to the floor. When all was secure Flinthead was rowed over and helped on to the platform by Tron, his captain of bodyguards, the stern fighter who had commanded and led the attack.

  Then the Wendles waited, silent and patient until, in the end, Stonks climbed into view at the top of the mine shaft, pulling three exhausted and slime-covered slaves behind him. It had taken all his massive strength to bring them up from the bottom of the digging and so engrossed in his task was he that he did not notice the eager faces above him. He raised a hand for assistance and the Wendles grasped it before Stonks realized that things had changed. He was quickly made a prisoner himself, bound with ropes and pushed to the floor to lie by the side of his friends.

  ‘Oh, Twilight,’ said Chalotte, the tears flooding her eyes, ‘this is awful, all of ’em captured. Look at those three covered in mud, the ones the Wendles are lifting out of the mine, that’s Knocker and Napoleon and Orococco. Hell, they’re so weak they can hardly stand.’

  What Chalotte said was true. The captives swayed and blinked stupidly in the light. They were caked in mud, months of mud, it was ground into their skins like a paste of graphite. Their hearts had filled with joy at Stonks’s unexpected arrival and in some unknowable and resolute part of their minds they had discovered strength enough to climb the long ladders upwards, only to find Flinthead waiting for them. It was one of life’s rotten jokes and their dejection was total.

  The Wendle chieftain laughed like a car-crusher. ‘I knew well that something was happening here,’ he crowed, ‘and look what we have. Another four of them, brought here by greed, trying to steal what is rightfully ours. Well, brother Wend
les, they will help us now, help us in our struggle to dig the mine.’

  Stonks began to fight against his bonds and he swore at Flinthead. ‘You snot-gobblin’ little shit-eater,’ he cried, ‘you no-name pig.”

  Flinthead was delighted and one of his guards kicked Stonks in the ribs.

  ‘He’s the strongest one, isn’t he?’ said the chieftain. ‘I remember his name from last time … Stonks. He’s the one who broke open the Great Door of Rumbledom, he’ll be just right for the treadmill. Put a good man on the whip. I’ve waited too long for my treasure, maybe now things will move a little faster.’

  ‘What do you want done with the old ones?’ asked Tron. ‘Shouldn’t we let them go? They don’t look as if they could work another day.’

  ‘Send ’em back down,’ said Flinthead, ‘they can work till they die. Shackle ‘em all up and over the top with ’em.’

  The new prisoners kicked at their captors as their legs were manacled together with heavy chains, but the others, those they had gone to rescue, had not a word to say. Their muscles had striven beyond pain and their minds were submerged below thought. They knew how to dig and they knew no other thing. When they were ordered to clamber back into the mine they did so in abject silence. Flinthead watched and smiled; that silence was his glory! How were the mighty fallen.

  ‘And let me warn you,’ he said. ‘If those buckets come up empty of mud I’ll make an example of those two in the treadmill. I’ll send ’em down to you headfirst, like you did with my guards. I want that treasure and I want it quick. You’ll soon learn—no mud coming up, no food going down.’

  ‘We’ll get you one day,’ shouted Bingo as he was forced on to the ladder with the others, ‘and I’ll have your nose off and slice it up like a side of bacon.’

  Flinthead did not wait to swap insults. ‘Double the sentries everywhere,’ he shouted, ‘twenty on each towpath too.’ Then he stepped into his skiff and was conveyed to the river bank, his bodyguard following.

  On the shore he was greeted by a multitude of excited Wendles. News of the attempted rescue and its failure had travelled fast. Flinthead was cheered till the roof resounded and there was great confusion as the crowd struggled to approach their leader, to touch him, to look at him.

  Chalotte and Twilight had been completely disheartened by the turn of events but now they came out of their tunnel to stare as the bodyguard cleared a path through the mob. Chalotte fingered the knife at her belt and wondered if she should assassinate the Wendle chieftain there and then, but Twilight saw the movement of her hand and guessed what she was thinking.

  ‘It would do no good,’ he said, ‘and would not help your friends; that is what we must think of now.’

  Chalotte was about to answer when a sudden surge in the crowd plucked her from her feet and swung her against the firm flesh of the bodyguard. She looked up and saw that she was only a yard or so from Flinthead, dangerously close to that damp green skin, those lifeless eyes of power and the great shapeless nose. Chalotte shivered in spite of the warm crush of bodies all round her. She turned her head away from the hideous countenance and immediately saw two faces she knew. There, just in front of the chieftain, marched Norrarf and Skug, resplendent in brand new uniforms. They had not seen her; they were too busy smiling with pride.

  ‘March on,’ cried Flinthead. ‘You did well, Norrarf and Skug; I will remember you when the treasure comes. March on I say, and sing the song of the Wendles.’

  Chalotte turned her back to avoid being noticed and pushed her way through the crowd until she reached Twilight. Despair swept through her body and, amidst all the cheering and shouting, the tears ran freely down her cheeks.

  ‘For Pete’s sake don’t do that,’ said Twilight. ‘The Wendles will wonder what’s wrong with you, this is their celebration.’

  Chalotte tried but could not stop her tears and Twilight guided her into a tunnel.

  ‘I saw Norrarf and Skug,’ she said miserably, ‘in Flinthead’s bodyguard. They weren’t bodyguards before so that means he must have promoted them … It means they must have told Flinthead about us trying to rescue Knocker … That can only mean one thing.’

  Now it was Twilight’s turn to touch his knife. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘it means that Spiff told them about Stonks’s plan, so now there’s only the two of us against everyone else.’

  A cool voice came to them from the darkness. Spiff’s voice. ‘If you’d listened to me none of this would have happened. I told you to wait.’

  Chalotte wiped her eyes and blinked, trying to locate her enemy; it was impossible. ‘You grassed on your friends,’ she said, ‘and now they’re down the bottom of the pit and we’ll never get them out.’

  ‘I can get them out,’ said Spiff, ‘on my own if needs be.’

  ‘Did you tell Norrarf and Skug to tell Flinthead about the rescue?’ asked Chalotte. ‘Because if you did I swear that I’ll kill you the first chance I get.’ -

  Spiff chuckled. ‘You scare me to death. Yes, I gave Stonks away and I had good reasons for it. Flinthead knew there was something going on down here, he knew that someone from outside was inside. He’d already doubled the guards on all the exits and all along the Wandle. Stonks had no chance of getting anywhere, with or without the prisoners. He would have been killed; now at least he’s alive, and all the others as well.’

  ‘Alive like slaves,’ said Chalotte, and she took her catapult from her belt and loaded it.

  ‘Don’t you realize,’ Spiff continued, ‘that I’ve been planning my revenge against Flinthead for years, every move, every detail. I didn’t want it spoiled, so I put a spanner in the works as soon as I could.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Chalotte angrily, ‘and it didn’t matter about our mates as long as your plan was all right.’ She began to stretch the catapult rubber. If she saw Spiff she’d kill him.

  ‘I’ll get ’em out of here. Look on the bright side. Sure I had Norrarf and Skug tell Flinthead but now they’ve been made members of the bodyguard. Now I’ll know everything Flinthead knows, but the best thing of all is that Flinthead thinks he’s captured everybody. He’s stopped sniffing; he doesn’t know about us, we’re a surprise.’

  ‘What d’yer mean, we?’ said Chalotte. She drew the rubber back to her ear and tried to judge Spiff’s position from his voice. She’d let fly with the stone, she thought, and then run forward with her knife.

  Spiff’s voice floated through the darkness again, only now it came from a different part of the tunnel. ‘If you put that catapult down, Chalotte, I’ll tell you … and you too, Twilight.’

  Chalotte cursed and lowered her weapon. She looked to her right and caught a glimpse of Twilight doing the same with his.

  ‘You sod,’ she said, ‘you’re about as straightforward as a left-handed corkscrew. Why didn’t you trust us?’

  ‘I don’t trust anyone,’ said Spiff. ‘If you so much as pee against the wall down here Flinthead knows about it before you’ve finished. I’ll tell you one thing and one thing only. You want your mates out and you’ll have ’em out, that I promise you. What you’ve got to decide, Chalotte, is this. Do you forget about killing me or do I kill you, right now, because I can. I don’t need you, I can do my plan on my own.’

  ’Chalotte squatted on the rough floor, behind her the glow of the river bank and the noise of the Wendles as they dispersed, in front of her the blackness and Spiff’s voice. There was no doubt that he could see her whereas she could see nothing. She would have to lie. She was determined to survive if only to make sure that Spiff got his come-uppance. She put her catapult away.

  ‘I’d agree to anything,’ she said, ‘if I really thought you could still get them out.’

  ‘And me,’ said Twilight.

  ‘You’ll both have to do exactly as I say,’ said Spiff, ‘and no questions. I ain’t telling anyone what my plan is.’

  ‘Just tell me one thing,’ said Chalotte, ‘for the sake of curiosity. Was it you who arranged for the Borrible message to
turn up in Neasden, the one that got Sydney so worried about Sam the horse, the one that made her come to see me at Whitechapel?’

  ‘Yes it was,’ said Spiff. ‘I wanted to get you all here but I wasn’t quite sure how to do it, then Sam and Sussworth and old Ben did it for me.’

  ‘If your plan only needs you why did you need us?’ asked Twilight.

  Spiff chuckled, but with real mirth this time.

  ‘Twilight,’ he said, ‘you’re as bright as a new bar of soap. It was because my plan needed to lull Flinthead, which ain’t easy. I needed someone to be captured, so he’d feel secure. Well he does now; all I’ve got to do is wait for the right moment.’

  ‘And when’s that?’

  ‘I ain’t saying. You can come along for the ride if you like or you can go away and hide in a corner till it’s all over.’

  ‘And the treasure,’ said Chalotte, ‘where does that come in?’

  ‘Oh, it comes in,’ said Spiff. ‘That’s power that is, not in a normal Borrible set-up, I know, but down here it is. I’ll be honest with you; Flinthead is first, then your mates, then the Rumble treasure chest. All three together would be lovely, but I’ll be happy to settle for the first one.’

  Chalotte hesitated. She wished she had time to think, wished she had time to talk to Twilight, but there was no time. She sighed in the silence and said, ‘All right, Spiff. I’ve got no choice, have I? It’s Hobson’s again. I’ll go along with you, but when we get out of here, if we do, I might just stick my knife in yer.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Twilight.

  ‘I wouldn’t expect anything else,’ said Spiff, and they heard him roll over and get to his feet.

  The sly bugger, thought Chalotte, he’s been lying on the floor, and she saw Spiff step into the light, holding a spear across his body.