Dark Waters of Hagwood

by Robin Jarvis

  It was a riotous, frightening sight.

  The High Lady’s barn owl could not understand what was happening and was mortally afraid. When the birds rose from the trees and set upon the hillmen, a group of kestrels had flown straight toward the owl, and it had only just managed to escape their talons.

  What could they be protecting? What force could possibly unite the wren and the hawk?

  The owl was totally bewildered. Leaving the nightmare scene behind, it rushed through the sky, over the outlying trees, to try and escape that harrowing cacophonous din.

  The cool, rushing air calmed its ragged wits.

  Its mistress would soon be there to take command. She would vanquish those mutinous birds. Not one of them would dare fly against her. Then they would suffer.

  The owl veered westward. It would fly over the forest and meet the Lady Rhiannon as she galloped toward the tower and inform her of all that had occurred. It could imagine her displeasure at the news, and it looked forward to the retribution that would be visited upon those verminous flocks. Never had its authority been so flouted and disregarded in such an insolent fashion. They would all pay dearly.

  Eager to greet its mistress, the barn owl hurried on. Then suddenly it wheeled about and stared down at a clearing that had appeared below.

  In the center of that glade was an ancient well, and standing beside it was a peculiar stunted creature with wooden pegs for eyes, and with him—three wer-rats.

  The owl hooted with triumph as it recognized two of them as those who had escaped from its mistress.

  Circling in the sky, its sharp golden eyes taking in every detail, the owl knew what it must do.

  There was no time to fly to the High Lady. Those loathsome, puny worms had to be seized without delay.

  Beating its great wings, the owl hurtled back to the lower slopes of the ridge where the spriggans were still floundering beneath the aerial assault. There were so many birds covering the thrashing, howling soldiers that it was impossible to recognize which of them were the captains, so it alighted upon the lowest branch of an elm and cried in a loud, commanding voice: “Soldiers of the Hollow Hill! Where is thy courage? Wouldst thou be beaten by mere sparrows and finches? Take out thine arms! Let knife and blade cut through wing and plume. The lowly peasants of the air are no match for such noble guards. Master thyselves. These are but beggarly opponents. They insult thy rank and office. Rally and conquer, in the name of thy Deathless Queen!”

  Smothered by the murderous birds, the spriggans heard his proud words and cursed him in their hearts. Yet they knew he was right. If they ever escaped this evil morning and returned to the Hollow Hill, they would be a laughingstock. The gibes and jeers would never cease. The Redcaps and blue-faced bogles would always be chirping and flapping their arms in mockery and ridicule.

  Stung into action, the spriggans swallowed their fear and began to fight back.

  Seizing hold of their swords and long knives, they swiped them feverishly about their ears, jabbing and stabbing in all directions.

  The birds shrieked and screamed, and many bloody bodies crashed to the ground.

  “Hack them, lads!” the captains hollered. “It’s not the battle we was expectin’, but we’ll learn this lot to dread us this day! They’ll lay addled eggs whenever they remember us horrors!”

  “Them what’s left, you mean!” yelled another.

  Within every spriggan breast burns the desire for bloodshed. They are naturally vicious, and crimson war banners billow through their dreams. Having overcome their initial fright, this raging malice was set aflame, and their counterattack was so ferocious that within moments the surrounding grass was deeply carpeted with fallen birds.

  “Slice them from the air!” the owl cheered. “This way, my fine warriors. Follow me.”

  It launched itself from the branch and flew to the next tree, waiting for the spriggans to catch up.

  Their winged attackers were tiring, and the furious squawks were now filled with panic and pain.

  A peregrine abandoned the soldier it was slashing with its claws and turned its marigold gaze full upon the barn owl. Determined to rid the forest of the tyrant’s despicable servant, it flew toward the great bird, talons outstretched. An instant later it dropped like a stone—speared by a spriggan’s knife.

  Step by step, the owl guided the High Lady’s soldiers toward the clearing that it had seen from the air.

  Gradually and obediently, the spriggans followed, chopping their way through the birds that still swooped and plucked at them. But the numbers were fewer than before, and soon they were standing beneath the trees that fringed the glade. The remaining birds took flight to warn the Tower Lubber of the peril that awaited him.

  “Now charge!” the barn owl cried. “Capture the enemies of our beloved Queen. They await thee by yonder well—go!”

  Yelling and raging, the spriggans rampaged through the trees.

  Sitting in a silver birch, the barn owl pulled its head to its shoulders. Its mistress would be mightily pleased.

  CHAPTER 21 *

  THE BATTLE OF WATCH WELL

  WHEN THE GEESE HAD FIRST honked their warning, the Tower Lubber had turned his blind face toward the ridge and stepped forward, his fists clenched.

  “I should be with them,” he told the werlings. “My place is up there, with my little charges. I should not be down here.”

  Bufus caught his sleeve and tugged it violently.

  “There’s nothing you can do for them now,” the boy shouted. “By the time you hiked back up there, it’d be too late.”

  Tollychook sucked the air in through his teeth. “Just listen to the rumpus!” he exclaimed in amazement. “Don’t sound like them spriggans are having a happy time of it. Hark at ’em yelpin’! Your crows an’ hawks are goin’ berserk. I wouldn’t want to have them dive-bombin’ at me.”

  “They are my friends and my children,” the Tower Lubber answered. “They are defending the tower, the one sanctuary where they know peace and feel secure. They are brave and loyal, but they cannot withstand a legion of spriggans. Hundreds will be slain. I must go and stop this carnage.”

  Even as he spoke, they all heard the barn owl hooting high above them, and a fierce, hate-filled expression twisted the Tower Lubber’s face.

  “If I had but one eye and a stone in my hand,” he growled, “then the deceitful brains of that accursed fowl would be spattered into the winds.”

  “It was staring down at us,” Liffidia said. “Now it’s gone back towards the fighting.”

  “It’ll fetch them ’orrible hillmen ’ere!” Tollychook burbled wretchedly. “They’ll chop us into bits and put us in their stews.”

  “I’m not going to wait for that!” Bufus cried, swinging his legs over the side of the well and preparing to leap to the ground. “If we dash for it, we might be able to run and hide.”

  “Nothing escapes the spriggans when they’re hunting a scent,” the Tower Lubber said softly. “They will run you to earth in no time at all. No hollow tree or empty hole will be safe. They will burn you out and delve deep to find you.”

  Bufus snorted.

  “It’s worth a try,” he argued, and he jumped from the well into the surrounding grass.

  Many of the squawking birds had reached the clearing and were wheeling overhead. Bufus glanced up at them. He knew the spriggans were not far behind, and he looked around desperately. If he raced southward, then he was sure he could dodge and evade them. But to his surprise he found that he could not abandon the others.

  The words of his dead brother and the promise he had made to him at the Pool of the Dead welled up inside him. He would make Mufus’s spirit proud of him—he would do his very best ever.

  “Hurry!” he called to Tollychook and Liffidia. “This way!”

  The werlings looked down at him.

  “Us’ll never make it!” Tollychook cried. “Not with my sore foot.”

  “I’ll help you, Chookface!” Bufus promised.<
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  Tollychook wavered, not knowing what to do. His face was scrunched up in misery, and he looked from the Doolan boy across to the far trees, where already he could hear the spriggans’ heavy trampling.

  “They are here,” the Tower Lubber said gravely.

  Bufus whirled around and knew that his plan was useless. Through the birches he saw the sunlight glinting off polished weapons and the scintillating gleam of armor. Even if he did run off on his own, he would be caught in no time.

  But the Doolan wiles were not yet defeated and immediately furnished him with one last hope.

  Swiftly, he scrambled up the side of the well once more and ran over to where the rope plunged into the darkness within.

  “Only one thing for it then,” he declared. “We climb down!”

  “Down there?” Tollychook gasped. “Into that stagnant murk? No way. I can’t do that!”

  Liffidia tore her eyes from the sinister shapes that were moving through the trees toward them and stared at Bufus. He was right—clambering down the rope was their only chance of escape.

  “You must come with us!” she told the Tower Lubber.

  The blind creature turned to her. “I think not,” he said. “No one is going down there.”

  “I am!” Bufus replied, and he began to lower himself down the rope. “You two come straight after me!” he called as he disappeared into the shadows of the well shaft.

  “Please!” Liffidia begged the Tower Lubber. “The spriggans will kill you if you stay. Just think—you will meet your beloved Princess Clarisant again if you climb down here! I’ll guide you.”

  The Tower Lubber shook his head.

  “You do not hear what else is approaching,” he said mysteriously. “That way is barred to us. The water is coming.”

  The werlings did not understand what he meant. Bufus was already lost in the dark interior.

  “If Prince Doodah doesn’t want to come along,” his voice came echoing upward, “then that’s his hard luck; I can’t—”

  He suddenly fell silent. Tollychook gingerly edged his large bottom over the side to follow him, but he gave a yelp and lurched away as Bufus came scuttling back up the rope again.

  “What’s the matter?” Liffidia cried when she saw the astonished look on his face.

  Bufus stared at her, his eyes boggling with disbelief.

  “I can’t get down!” he spluttered, “and I just got shouted at by something coming up!”

  As he spoke, a pair of plump mouse paws came into view, rapidly followed by a goofy-looking rodent dressed in a cape, which hopped onto the wall and shook itself.

  “Miss Kernella!” Tollychook choked in surprise as the mouse shape was discarded. “How’d you get down that big hole? What was you doin’ of?”

  Kernella Tumpin squinted in the sunlight and looked around her in a bad-tempered daze.

  “Whereabouts am I?” she demanded. “What are you three doing here and who’s that?”

  She was pointing at the Tower Lubber but, before they could answer, there came a ferocious yell and the spriggans came rushing into the clearing.

  Tollychook squealed in dismay. Liffidia reached across and took his trembling hands in her own.

  They were completely defenseless in the ravening path of hideous and brutal enemies. Bufus braced himself for the onslaught, and the Tower Lubber lifted his blind gaze toward the vicious soldiers, defiant and noble to the end.

  Whirling their knives, swords, and maces in the air, the spriggans came charging over the wild grasses. Their red tongues flicked and lolled from their open mouths, and their eyes roved wildly in their sockets.

  “Do not harm the wer-rats,” the barn owl called out to the captains as it flew above them. “Thy Queen needs them alive!”

  The remaining birds that scratched and pecked at the spriggans’ faces were now no more a threat than if they had been stinging flies. The soldiers’ warrior blood was pumping and nothing could stop them.

  In moments the clearing was crossed, and the spriggans pounced upon the werlings and the Tower Lubber.

  “Snatch them, lads!” the captains bellowed.

  “What is these nasty titchy runts?” one of them snarled as he grabbed hold of Bufus and shook him roughly. “Can I bite it to see what it tastes of?”

  “Let go!” the boy yelled, kicking and punching the spriggan who had caught him.

  The other werlings were gripped in equally powerful fists. Tollychook could barely breathe, and Liffidia was the subject of an argument between three soldiers who each wanted to claim her. Kernella bit the spriggan who lumbered up to grab her and called him a “ditch-breathed, flap-eared armpit.” But she was captured all the same.

  “No injury must come to them yet,” the owl commanded. “They must be questioned first by Rhiannon!”

  Growling bitterly, the spriggans peered at the werlings, sniffing and prodding them. The others turned their attention to the Tower Lubber.

  “What about this beast?” they demanded, their blades directed at his throat. “Is this to be interrogated as well?”

  The owl regarded the blind stranger distastefully.

  “What manner of creature standeth there?” it sneered, alighting upon one of the captain’s helmets. “Neither dwarf nor klurie nor goblin, that much is plain. What crudely fashioned mannikin dares to hold its ugly head so high before the High Lady’s lieutenant? Why doth the witless dolt not quake and quail before its betters?”

  The spriggans leered at the Tower Lubber, and the tip of one of the swords nicked his neck.

  “Unclean carrier of lies!” the Tower Lubber spat. “Base defouler of the morning airs. Do you not know me? Look on my face, and mark there the work of your hellish mistress. It was She who gouged out my eyes and set these wooden pegs in their sockets, even as you feasted upon them. Have so many rolled down your gullet since that you have forgotten even me?”

  The owl leaned forward and stared hard at that singular windburned face, but it could not penetrate the enchantment the Wandering Smith had placed upon Prince Tammedor.

  “I know thee not,” it declared dismissively. “Yet many are the rogues and felons whom My Lady doth punish in that way. Thou art vulgar and squalid as the soil. Thou art naught.”

  To the bird’s surprise and consternation, the Tower Lubber laughed back.

  “I’ll warrant you never fed upon the equal of my eyes,” he shouted. “But you will find those highborn morsels will cost you and your loathly Lady dear. Her malignant reign is hurtling to its final day. You would do well to fly from this forest if you value your treacherous neck. I have devised many fitting ends to your servile and deceitful lieutenancy.”

  The owl ground its beak together and stamped its feet in fury, causing the helmet it was standing on to slide over the face of its wearer.

  “What blood is in thee to bear thyself so like a king?” it screeched. “Thine overbold, conceited tongue shouldst also have been torn from thy head, and gladly would I have devoured it! None may decry my exalted Lady and live. Thy treasonous speech hath bought thine own miserable end.”

  The bird shrieked out to the spriggans. “This uncouth wretch is without worth. My Mistress will not need to question him. He is thine to torment as thou wilt. Indulge thy blackest instincts; his life is forfeit but thou may prolong his suffering with knife sport and torture.”

  The spriggans whooped with foul glee, and their brutish hands pulled and tore at the Tower Lubber. In a moment he was thrown to the ground and dragged from the well.

  “Let’s tickle our new playmate with our knives,” one of them cackled.

  They hauled their blind victim across the clearing so that they could all gather around him and decide the slowest and most entertaining way to put him to death.

  Throughout it all the Tower Lubber made no protest. Though they wrenched his arms and leaped upon his chest, he did not cry out.

  Stifled in one soldier’s grip, Liffidia could only watch in horror. Tollychook refused to l
ook and would have stopped his ears, if his arms had not been clamped down by iron-hard fingers. Bufus Doolan prayed that the Tower Lubber’s torment would not last long. But he knew that it would.

  Kernella Tumpin did not know what was happening. Having just escaped Peg-tooth Meg’s horrible darkness, she now found herself locked in some new and bewildering nightmare, which was so hideous she could hardly believe it was real.

  Thumping her fists against the hand that clutched her, she twisted around and stared anxiously at the well. Where were Finnen and her brother? She knew she should warn them, but her voice would never be heard above the din that the soldiers were making.

  “Now then!” one of the captains roared as he stepped on to the Tower Lubber’s chest and tapped the tip of his sword against the helpless prisoner’s nose. “How shall we make a start?”

  “Slice off that big hooter of his,” someone suggested.

  “Snip them great ears into lacey patterns,” said the one at his side.

  “Why don’t we eat him from the toes up?” offered a third.

  The captain licked his fangs and narrowed his squinting eyes. “Too much too early,” he drawled. “First things first. We have to stake our claim to him. Each one of us must write his name on this villain’s hide. With claw or knife, it don’t matter.”

  The others hissed their agreement.

  “But I can’t write my name!” one of them objected.

  The rest of them ignored him.

  “Then what?” they asked greedily.

  “Then we bait him a bit. Form a ring and watch him run about from one side to the other. Lots of nasty fun, that is.”

  “This one won’t do no runnin’ about,” one of the old campaigners commented. “He’s too stubborn and mean to give us our fun.”

  “Oh, he’ll run about all right,” the captain answered. “In fact he’ll dance for us and won’t never want to stop—once we hammer thorns up into his shoes.”

  The soldiers burst into unholy laughter.

  “You’re good at this!” They cheered, and the barn owl hooted with them.