He was being cooked.
‘No!’ screeched Blart. ‘No!’
When a being has assumed that he is top of the food chain it is always a sobering moment when he discovers he isn’t. Humans who for centuries have been roasting, boiling and grilling every animal that they can get their hands on get notoriously uppity when someone starts cooking them.
‘Doomed,’ repeated Tungsten.
‘Help!’ yelped Blart as a particularly sensitive part of his anatomy began to singe.
‘Farewell,’ responded Tungsten, which wasn’t much use in the circumstances.
Blart squirmed until he managed to loosen slightly whatever was gripping his head. He turned his neck to one side and what he saw made his entrails turn cold with fear. However, little stays cold with fear for long when it is being heated powerfully from below. Instead his entrails became hot with fear, which doesn’t sound right, but that was what happened.
For the sight that met Blart’s eyes was indeed terrible. Next to him was Capablanca and further away was Tungsten. They were naked and tied on to spits under which burned fires. Below them, their clothes lay in untidy piles on the ground. But terrible as this sight was, it was as nothing to what Blart saw next. Hordes of thin spindly creatures surrounded the spits, their grey bodies standing out from the gloom of the cave. Their eyes bulged as they gazed rapt at the three captives with famished glee. Greasy globules dripped from their chins.
‘Goblins!’ screeched Tungsten. ‘Doomed!’
Dwarves have only one natural predator, the goblins, so-called for their habit of gobbling any dwarf they catch. They live deep in the bowels of the earth and catch dwarves by digging holes under their tunnels. Dwarves falling through these holes are spirited away to the great fires of the deep where they become the goblins’ breakfast, lunch or dinner depending on the time of day. Breakfast is generally thought to be the worst fate, as goblins like their first meal to be raw and alive.
What with dwarf holes and goblin holes, not to mention moles, it’s quite surprising that the earth manages to stay up at all, but it does and we should all be thankful for that. Thankful, though, was not the most dominant feeling in the heart of either Blart or Tungsten as they revolved steadily. The wizard was unconscious so his feelings were a mystery.
‘Doomed!’ cried Tungsten once more. ‘The shame! That I, Tungsten, son of Gravel, grandson of Slab, great-grandson of Tar, should be eaten by foul goblins.’
For his part, Blart had no ancestors’ names to recite. Instead he watched the goblins. They stared hypnotically back at him, salivating at the sight of their barbecue. A curious slapping noise came from their mouths as they opened and closed them in anticipation of the feast that was to come.
Blart decided to take the situation in hand.
‘I’ll tell you what!’ he shouted out. ‘Let me go and eat the other two. I’m poisonous.’
The goblins showed no sign of having heard what Blart had said. Their mouths slapped louder as the moment for them to feast grew closer.
‘Traitor!’ screeched Tungsten. ‘Die like a dwarf with honour!’
Blart tried again.
‘If you let me go,’ he shouted to the goblins, ‘I’ll bring back my pigs for you to eat. And I’ll throw in my granddad as well.’
This was truly shocking for, despite all the disgraceful acts we have witnessed from Blart, we have never seen him stoop to the level of betraying his pigs.
But even this astonishing betrayal had no effect. The goblins continued to slobber and slather expectantly and Blart, Tungsten and the unconscious wizard continued to rotate.
Blart watched Capablanca revolve. And, as he stared at him, a huge well of anger and bile rose inside his chest like a bubbling volcano, or it might just have been that the fire had made his gastric juices boil. He felt a tremendous sense of hostility towards Capablanca. He was, after all, the reason that Blart was being cooked alive and would soon be consumed by goblins with their starved slathering faces.
And what was worse, whilst Blart was experiencing all this horror, Capablanca was happily unconscious.
‘Oi!’ yelled Blart.
‘Wizard!’ he shouted.
‘Capablanca!’ he bellowed.
There was no response. Capablanca’s eyes stayed shut. Unless Blart did something soon the wizard was going to die peacefully, never knowing the torment of his fellow questors. The thought of Capablanca having it easy whilst he himself suffered was more than Blart could bear.
Blart was not a boy with a vast array of talents. But he was capable of producing a piercing whistle. It’s not much of a talent and the quest has managed quite well without it up to now. But now its moment had come. Blart pursed his lips and blew.
In the enclosed space the noise was ear-splitting. The walls shrieked with its echoes. Tungsten felt the sound shoot through him. Even the goblins, who do not have very good hearing, took a step back. Two bats hanging innocently off the roof of the cave doing nobody any harm were instantly deafened and the wizard woke up.
‘This is all your fault,’ yelled Blart immediately.
‘What?’ stammered Capablanca.
‘We’re being cooked, thanks to you.’
‘Cooked?’ repeated Capablanca, whose incredulity was swiftly undermined by the searing pain in his bottom.
‘I wish I’d never met you.’
‘Be quiet,’ screamed Capablanca, ‘and I might just get us out of here.’
This shut Blart up fast. When you are being steadily roasted and someone offers you an alternative you tend to jump at it.
Luckily for our three questors the goblins did not think anything unusual was going on. They were quite used to their dinners shouting during preparation. Normally, of course, it was merely dwarves reciting the names of their ancestors but as the goblins couldn’t understand a word of what was going on they couldn’t tell the difference.
The wizard closed his eyes and searched his brain for a spell that would save them. It had been many decades since Capablanca had studied spells as all of his time recently had been dedicated to research in the Cavernous Library of Ping. Spells are like foreign languages and musical instruments. If you don’t use them, you lose them.
‘Come on,’ said Blart, unhelpfully breaking the wizard’s concentration.
‘Sssh. He’s thinking,’ hissed Tungsten.
‘Don’t tell me to ssshh, shorty.’
There was a blue flash from the wizard’s eyes. The knots that held them to the spits began to unravel. The ropes loosened. They were free.
If you were being choosy about the method adopted to release you from being barbecued this would not be the one you would pick, for as soon as the ropes were undone each of them dropped like a stone into the fires below. Luckily the fires weren’t too big as the goblins preferred their dinner slow-cooked to keep more of the juices in. Still, each of them uttered a high-pitched squeal as they dropped into the burning coals, and a moment later the three were standing facing the circle of goblins, their posteriors gently steaming behind them.
‘Aaargh,’ uttered Blart, raising his fists and baring his teeth at the goblins.
‘Grrrrr,’ rumbled Tungsten, grabbing his axe that had been left near the fire and brandishing it in the faces of the goblins.
‘Where is it?’ asked Capablanca, fumbling in his pile of clothes for his staff.
Now for the goblins this was a new experience. Their dinner had never made a bid for freedom before and they were shocked. Being creatures with few physical skills, their reaction to this was to open and close their mouths some more.
The wizard searched frantically through his coat for his staff while Tungsten gripped his axe tighter. The goblins with their bulging eyes and dagger-like teeth got closer. Blart felt a mixture of fear and embarrassment. Not only were the goblins about to kill him they were also seeing him naked which, as he was a teenage boy, felt worse. He turned away from the goblins, grabbed his trousers and pulled them on. Unfortunately,
this turning away was the sign of weakness that spurred the primitive goblins to attack. They surged forward in a slavering mass.
‘Aha,’ said Capablanca as he finally found his staff and then ‘Ouch’ as a goblin sank his teeth into his leg. The first goblin’s bite was the sign for a general attack. From all sides the goblins dived at the three questors, hoping to bite chunks from their bodies. Tungsten’s axe rose and fell as he twisted and turned, chopping to his left and to his right. Blart, newly confident now he was dressed, smashed his fists into the advancing grey shapes. Capablanca whirled his staff in a great circle, smiting the attackers that came his way, but still the goblins and their teeth got through. Flesh was bitten, blood ran down their legs and arms and still the famished figures flung themselves at their bodies, each desperate for another mouthful. It seemed as though at any moment the goblins would overwhelm their prey and that Blart, Capablanca and Tungsten would be overpowered and forced to the floor where, in a frenzied attack, their flesh would be torn from their bones.
And yet, desperate as the goblins were to eat, there was a greater force working within their intended prey – the desire to live. Blart, Capablanca and Tungsten found extra reserves of strength. When it seemed all was lost, they fought on. Forced on to the defensive, they now stood back to back in a rough triangle as the goblins leapt at them with even greater ferocity.
‘Aaarrrggghh!’ yelled Blart as his fist smashed into the face of an attacking goblin.
‘Yeeeaarrgghh!’ yelled Tungsten as he swung his axe in a horizontal arc, separating an approaching goblin’s upper half from his lower half with one sickening squelch.
‘Huummph,’ grunted Capablanca as he raised his staff with such precision timing that two advancing goblins snapped their necks on it.
More goblins attacked. More were killed or repelled and yet still they came. Sooner or later this wild savagery was destined to overpower the three fighters. They could not resist the irresistible for ever.
Except that suddenly the assault seemed different. The goblins still leapt towards the triangle of defenders but they did not seem to be reaching them. In the panic of flying goblins it took a little time for Capablanca to realise that they themselves were no longer being attacked.
‘Cease the combat!’ he bellowed, and the others were so surprised by the order they obeyed it. Nothing happened to them. The goblins had forgotten they were there and were leaping in to feast on the corpses of their own dead. The jagged teeth tore at the soft pulpy flesh and the feverish slapping of mouths grew quieter as the starving goblins satisfied themselves.
‘We must get as far away as possible before they are finished eating,’ urged Tungsten. ‘For if we are still nearby they will come after us once more.’
The three picked up their clothes and ran for the nearest tunnel. It was completely dark and they could have no confidence in their footing but still they ran. Anything to escape the awful sight of the goblins devouring each other. They ran until they could run no more.
Chapter 34
‘I want to go home. I’m fed up,’ said Blart.
Now there had been many occasions when Blart had announced he wanted to go home, but this was undoubtedly the least appropriate. None of them had the faintest idea where they were and their chances of returning to the earth’s surface were remote. No creature venturing into the goblins’ passages came out alive.
‘Doomed,’ announced Tungsten, presumably to confirm that his prediction of their future hadn’t changed.
‘Oh, grow up!’ snapped Capablanca.
‘Oh, outrage!’ shouted Tungsten. ‘That I, Tungsten of the iron dwarves, should be so insulted!’
‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ explained Capablanca. ‘I meant it like –’
‘I don’t want to know,’ said Tungsten.
And there was silence.
Which was a good thing because otherwise they might not have heard the noise above them. At first it was a scratching noise. Then a scraping noise. And then a digging noise. And then the roof fell in on top of them.
There are remarkable similarities between drowning in water and being covered in earth. Both events have the same effect – the removal of air. Unsurprisingly, humans behave similarly in these situations. They keep their mouths tightly shut and wave their hands wildly, trying to push the water/earth away so that they can reach the air. Blart, who had now experienced both these life-threatening situations, could have reflected upon this if he hadn’t been so busy panicking. He felt the earth rise up his chest, over his face, his eyes and above his head. He was being buried alive. Frantically, he flailed his arms from side to side. A wild urge to survive beat inside him. However much human beings moan about what a miserable life they lead and how they’d be better off dead they are always unwilling to go when their time comes.
Blart pushed away the earth closest to his face. More fell in its place. Again he fought to dig out a space but again it was filled. Sick with fear, he thrashed out one final time. He must have air. He scraped a gap around his face. The pocket of air did not disappear. Blart breathed in. He was safe.
Except, of course, he wasn’t. Air that goes in is filled with oxygen, which is good, whereas the air that comes out is filled with carbon dioxide, which is very bad. Blart had only succeeded in making a tiny space around his head. Each breath was bringing death closer. Luckily for Blart, death was not the only thing getting closer.
There were voices.
‘What happened?’
‘Don’t know, Chief.’
‘What do you mean, you don’t know? I’ll whip the skin from your back, you scum.’
‘It’s collapsed, Chief. The sides have collapsed.’
‘Shore it up, then, you dolt. Have we lost any workers?’
‘The earth has covered some of them.’
‘How long will it take to dig them out?’
‘I don’t –’
There was a crack followed by a scream.
‘I told you what would happen if you said that again. Get them out. We have lost too many already and we need them. But any more mistakes and I’ll flay you alive. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, Chief.’
‘Get moving. We must be very near Lord Zoltab now.’
Blart’s heart skipped a beat. What he’d just heard could only mean one thing. They were in the Great Tunnel of Despair. Zoltab’s minions were all around him. He felt very lonely and very afraid.
Above him came the noise of frantic digging.
Blart’s oxygen was rapidly disappearing. What would happen if they didn’t find him? The answer was becoming all too obvious. He choked and coughed. He fought to make his air pocket bigger but the faster he scratched the faster earth slipped in. He could hear the digging coming closer but he could feel death coming closer too. Which would get there first?
Chapter 35
Suddenly there was light. After so long in the darkness it made Blart squint.
Precious air rushed into his lungs.
‘I’ve got one, Chief.’
Blart’s eyes adjusted to the lanterns. Above him was a figure covered entirely in earth. Behind him stood a cleaner figure holding a more powerful lantern and a whip. Blart gulped. These were minions of Zoltab. There was no sign of Capablanca or of Tungsten.
‘Don’t stand there gawking at each other,’ said the man with the whip. ‘Pull him out.’
Two hulking figures grasped Blart around the shoulders and dragged him free of the earth. Blart lay panting for air on the ground.
‘Get up,’ yelled the man with the whip and a crack by Blart’s nose showed that he was prepared to use it. Hurriedly Blart got to his feet. He stood, head bowed, waiting for his punishment. If Capablanca was right, then to be found in the Great Tunnel of Despair by Zoltab’s minions could mean only one thing – death.
Therefore, the next words of the figure with the whip came as a great surprise.
‘Where’s his shovel?’
‘He must have
lost it in the landslide, Chief,’ said one of the figures that had pulled Blart free.
‘Give him another one,’ ordered the Chief. ‘And do it fast.’
The figure scurried off and swiftly returned with a shovel that he thrust into Blart’s hand.
‘Get digging,’ he said.
‘What?’ said Blart, finally finding himself able to speak.
‘Dig,’ ordered the man.
‘Oh,’ said Blart.
But he didn’t start digging. He couldn’t understand what was happening to him. These were the dreaded minions of Zoltab. Why weren’t they killing him?
‘Aaaarrrggghhh!’ screeched Blart as a terrible pain cracked across his back. Maybe they weren’t killing him but they were certainly whipping him. Blart started to dig.
‘That’s right, you worm!’ bellowed the Chief’s voice behind him. ‘And don’t let me see you slacking or we’ll bury you again!’
‘Found another two, Chief!’ yelled a voice nearby.
Blart sneaked a glance while making sure he continued to dig. From the rubble there appeared two figures caked in mud and earth. Their faces were totally unrecognisable. Now he understood why he had not been killed. Zoltab’s minions had simply assumed that he was one of the workers buried in the landslide. The lanterns in the tunnel were not strong and one figure covered in mud looked very much like another.
The two figures clambered into the tunnel. One was tall and thin and one was short and sturdy and Blart knew that they were Capablanca and Tungsten. He felt a curious feeling he had never felt before. He didn’t know it, but in this terrible tunnel at the mercy of Zoltab’s minions he was suddenly happy.
‘Get them digging!’ yelled the Chief. ‘They’d better work hard after wasting our time or they’ll suffer tortures that will make them wish we’d left them to die.’
‘Shall we keep looking for the others?’
‘No,’ said the Chief. ‘We can’t afford the time. Leave them to choke. They deserve nothing better. Now, all of you dig. Straight down. Faster than you’ve ever dug before.’
And so they dug. Blart did not dare look towards the mud-caked figures of Capablanca and Tungsten, for the Chief prowled so closely behind them that Blart could smell his foul breath. Any slowing was punished with a slash of the whip. The cry of anguish from the recipient echoed through the tunnel and proved a great incentive to the others. As they worked, a tuneless dirge rose from the minions, the beat provided by the thump of the shovels into the earth.
The Boy Who Didn't Want to Save the World Page 16
