by Ben Walsh
Chapter Fourteen
Stan remained hidden in the bush for as long as he possibly could, not daring to emerge in case the eerie silence was a trap. It was only when that silence had been broken, by a shrill, recognisable shouting, that he dared to move.
“STANNNNNNNN!” One deep, manly voice bellowed.
“Stan! Where are you?” Another added.
Still Stan didn’t emerge from the undergrowth, even as the voices grew tantalisingly close. Eventually, the voices started to fade, and Stan realised that they must be heading to search another part of the woods, or had given up altogether. This realisation brought him to his senses, and snapped him out of the anxious haziness he had been submerged in. He brushed the branches aside and burst out, sprinting back up the hill and yelling for the group to wait at the top of his voice.
As he re-emerged to the opening which contained the natural spring they had been drinking from when the first arrow hit, Stan spotted the red head of Roxie, and slumped to his knees, panting. To his relief, everybody remained, unharmed, and began to head over towards him. However, as they began to reach him, they stopped suddenly, recoiling with a look of disgust on their faces.
Stan looked round and scanned their faces, confused, until Marvin took a big gulp and darted over to him, helping him up.
“What’s going on Marvin, why’s everyone so uneasy?” He asked, with a bewildered look on his face.
“Well, mate, it’s nothing really, it’s just that,” Marvin stuttered, unsure as to how to express his answer.
“YOU STINK MATE!” Roxie shouted, bursting into laughter as she finished, and as Stan’s face contorted into anger. Stan looked to Marvin, who simply nodded, looking down at his shoes.
Before Stan could understand what was happening, he was being forced into the spring to wash, with the group reluctantly helping him to wash goblin saliva and blood off of his filthy clothes. Stan was growing restless, eager to share what he had overheard, but every time he tried to do so he was interrupted, until he finally snapped in anger.
“Enough! I need to tell you something,” he started, emerging from out of the water, pushing Marvin’s hand away. Once he finally had everyone’s attention, he began to recount the conversation he had overheard, leaving out nothing, not even the gory decapitation.
After he finished, there was a hush around the group, with everyone seeming to be waiting for someone to say something.
“Well, it’s not ideal, but it could be a lot worse, we could be a headless goblin!” Worgan joked, and the group laughed, anxiously, all unsure of how to respond to the news that an enormous army of goblins would know of their presence at any moment.
“There is only one thing for it,” Maximus stated with authority, “we must move faster!”
As one, the posse gathered up their items, brushed themselves off and headed back onto the path, Maximus leading once again. This time, as they walked there was no light hearted joking, no laughter or songs. They proceeded quickly, with a sense of urgency and purpose, jogging in a crouched manner, keeping low to the ground to be less conspicuous.
Dark began to fall as they reached the base of the mountain at the point Stan, Edgar and Marvin had ascended it, but they skirted around the edge, back into the thick treeline to circle around it and climb from the opposite side, to avoid Gordon the Gruesome. They continued to plough on, Maximus adamant that they must not stop in spite of the complaints.
After several hours more, as the group trailed behind him in utter blindness, Roxie tripped over a fallen branch and flung forwards into an area of soggy marshland.
The men panicked as they searched for her, calling her to come towards them, but in the darkness it was impossible to know exactly where she had landed.
“She can’t swim!” Stan shouted frantically, remembering her on a sports afternoon, desperately splashing to stay afloat during the swimming races.
Without hesitation, Vlad waded in, his large, muscular arms snapping bushes out of his way. He called her name in a gruff voice, until finally he heard a desperate plea for help. He surged towards her, and before the group on the bank knew what was happening he had disappeared from sight. A panicked silence fell over the group.
“Shall we go in after him?” Loose asked, worried.
“Shush, let me listen for him!” Worgan snapped back.
Several silent minutes passed, without any trace of their companion’s return, before there was another splashing noise, and Vlad reappeared in front of them, with Roxie’s slumped body in his hands.
Stan rushed over towards them and helped Vlad out of the water, before wrapping several blankets around his friend. Ernest tried to help Vlad but he refused, instead simply heading towards Maximus and grunting, “Now, we rest.”
Stan, Marvin and Roxanne spent the rest of the night sat up against a tree, wedged under a large blanket together to keep warm. Marvin was asleep in minutes, snoring away heavily, but Roxie and Stan were restless, tossing and turning.
Stan opened his eyes to sunlight the next morning, and was surprised to realise that he must have got some sleep.
The morning was fresh, with a chilling wind and a clear blue sky, which allowed all of the heat from the already bright sun to escape. The group looked groggy, with even Worgan and Loose not joking around or laughing. They broke their fast on a few berries that Ernest had salvaged from a bush, and before long were back on the track, cautiously edging around the marsh area which Roxie had been sucked into the night before.
Stan found himself walking alongside Maximus, and finally asked something which had been on his mind all night.
“Who is this Gustavo, Maximus?”
“Ah, where do I begin? Let me see,” he pondered, scratching his head, “well Gustavo like me is a wizard, who sits on the Wizarding Council. He’s quite brilliant, truly he is. He’s a lot younger than the rest of us, and I had high hopes that he would be the leader of the new band of wizardry within this kingdom.”
At this point, Maximus hesitated, seemingly reluctant to continue, but Stan pried anyway, eager to learn more about their foe. “But?” He asked.
“Well, he has what many of us consider to be unconventional interests,” he began, “for example he, like the rest of us, likes to experiment. A few years ago we had a big falling out, our first. He wanted to experiment on living humans, to see whether he could split them. In simple terms, he wanted to take one man, and divide his soul into two, a truly dark form of magic, but one which would have left him with double or even triple, if he had attempted, the number of men.” Maximus shook his head, before continuing, “Now several of my fellows thought this could be of benefit, the reasons I cannot remember,” he paused, wiping his brow. “But I could see straight through the rubbish reasoning he provided. He was obsessed with power, he always has been.”
“I don’t understand, how is that even possible?” Stan asked, unsure as to the connection.
“As I said Stan, it is the single most evil form of magic. The man who is transformed becomes no longer a man, not how you or I would think of a man anyway. These beings would have possessed two bodies, but one soul. They would have been nothing more than a piece of meat, existing purely to serve and follow simple instructions.”
“I have always had my suspicions that Gustavo had desires, to become a true dictator. I invited him to join the counsel in the hope that I could tame him, re-educate him, but it appears I have failed, and it could be a very costly mistake,” he added, and as he did so Stan could see the pain in his eyes. “I felt that he wanted to experiment with cloning as a way of producing a large army. He failed, and the experiment didn’t work, but this hunt for the Emerald of Foundation confirms my fears. He wants control of this entire Kingdom, and if he can get it then anything beyond it too.”
Maximus said this with such certainty and fear that it turned Stan cold, his insides becoming frozen with fear.
They walked on in silence for a few moments, until an excitable shout from ahead notified
them that that they had finally reached the correct base of Mount Smouldotion.
From this angle the Mountain looked even more fearful, with its steep ascent, and jagged rocks. There was no sign of any life whatsoever, not even a mountain goat. The group assessed the best route to climb with frowns and little shakes of the head. Worgan untangled one of the lengths of rope they had brought with them, and looped it into a lasso, before throwing it at a particularly prominent rock sticking out of the surface, some 100 feet above them. He failed to catch it on the edge, with the rope falling some way short. He mumbled to himself about the wind and distance as he pulled it back down to try again. Stan felt sympathy towards him, as he knew the eyes of every single one of them was on him. Worgan spent an eternity eyeing up the angle while the group held its breathe, before he finally tried again, but this time he overshot it by a substantial amount, causing him to curse loudly to no one in particular. Loose took over and too had a try, but he also failed. At one point Roxie came close, with the lasso landing on top of the rock. However, the rope flopped back down to the ground once it was yanked to assess its durability.
There was an air of frustration as several hours passed, with each member of the group trying and failing to land the rope on the rock. With every minute that passed, Stan would scan the horizon with fear, half expecting an enormous goblin army to march over the horizon. The only member who had not tried to land the rope was Ponch, who had spent the time sat on a nearby rock, watching with what seemed like amusement. At one point, Stan caught him smirking after a failed attempt by Marvin had left him flat on his face.
For this reason, Stan recoiled in shock when the rope was snatched from his hands by Ponch, who removed several layers of clothing before strolling up to the beginning of the slope, with the casual approach of a man stepping outside for an afternoon stroll by the lake. As he reached the part of the slope where the incline increased dramatically, he turned and tossed the rope back down to Ernest, dropped to his hands and knees, and crawled up to a large looking rock which protruded out from the mountain’s edge. He pulled himself up onto it, with seemingly little effort, like a cat leaping onto a drainpipe. He tiptoed across the narrow platform, to the end of the rock, where he took a deep breathe to compose himself, before leaping across to an adjacent rock, catching himself on the ridges and grooves within the rock’s surface. There were gasps from below from the startled crowd, who began to encourage him as he made his way further up.
“This is incredible!” Marvin mouthed to Stan, who simply nodded in amazement at his friend. The surface was nearly vertical, and yet Ponch was ascending with seemingly little difficulty. After half an hour or so, he was nearing the rock that had been the target for the lasso, and he beckoned for the rope to be thrown to him. Ernest gathered it up, and hurled it up towards him. The throw was perfect, and sailed upwards directly towards Ponch. However, at the last minute, a sudden, enormous gust of wind caught it, and slightly altered the direction of the rope. Ponch shuffled sideways to react to this, but misjudged his distance from the edge. To the horror of the crowd below, his feet slipped off of the edge, and he fell, scrabbling desperately to catch himself on a nook or cranny within the rock’s surface. Suddenly, he disappeared from view. A deathly silence descended upon the group who were still at the bottom of the mountain, as they prayed he had managed to save himself. In the background was the quiet whooshing of the wind, rolling through the valley they found themselves in. Every single eye was fixed on the mountain, scanning it for any sign of life.
Eventually, after several heart stopping seconds, Roxie screeched in relief and pointed towards the rock they had been targeting. Somehow, Ponch had heroically caught himself, and was clambering up the last rock, with the rope in hand. The group cheered and clapped, laughter’s of relief echoing up to Ponch, who was grinning and, Stan imagined, probably sneering down at them, as he tied the rope and threw it down.
