by Allan Jones
“I was just saying—” Esmeralda began at high volume. But before she could finish, something came crashing down at Trundle’s feet. He leaped back in shock. It was a wide leather belt, studded with iron hooks from which hung an assortment of keys.
A moment later, something roundish whacked down on the boards nearby and went bounding along the jetty.
“Don’t look!” warned Esmeralda. “I think that was Grunther’s head!”
But Trundle was far more interested in the singed and smoking belt. He picked it up and hung it around his neck, the keys jingling.
He looked at Esmeralda. “Now can we go and help the slaves?” he asked, drawing his sword.
“You bet!” she laughed. “Lead on, Trundle, my lad!”
Chapter 10
Homeward Bound?
Trundle and Esmeralda ran into the main entrance of the mines. A scene of complete pandemonium met them. Guards were running this way and that, wielding their whips and yelling for the slaves to behave themselves.
The enslaved animals were having none of it! It was as if the explosion had ignited a new and fierce spirit in them. Despite their chains, and despite being tired and worn down and weak from hunger and overwork, the slaves were revolting! Some were up on the terraces, pelting the guards with lumps of coal. Others had surrounded their captors and were giving them a thorough pummeling, while yet another group was charging about with a ladder held between them, using it as a very effective battering ram to fell any guard who got in their way.
Esmeralda scooped up a pickax and raced to join in the fray, while Trundle, sword in hand to be on the safe side, put his best efforts into finding the right key for the right padlock on every set of slaves’ chains.
It didn’t take long for Trundle to do his work. Soon all the prisoners were free and all the guards were either stretched unconscious on the ground or herded together and fettered by their own chains. The liberated animals came swarming around Esmeralda and Trundle, cheering and shouting for joy.
“Quiet, please! Quiet!” howled Esmeralda. “We don’t have time for a barn dance! As soon as word gets to Rathanger of what’s happened in the mine, they’ll send more guards to put down the rebellion. We need to get out of here!”
“To the skyboats!” shouted a voice.
“To the skyboats!” echoed dozens of other voices, and moments later all the slaves were streaming from the cavern and heading for the jetty.
Suddenly Esmeralda and Trundle found them-selves quite alone in the mine. Trundle was feeling a little dazed by what had happened.
“We did well!” grinned Esmeralda. “And you did manage to free them, you resourceful hedgehog, you!”
“I couldn’t have done it on my own,” replied Trundle, which was perfectly true. “And I’m sorry I called you a heartless brute.”
“Don’t mention it,” said Esmeralda.
Trundle frowned at her. “This is where you apologize for calling me an idiot,” he pointed out.
Esmeralda gave a merry laugh. “But you are an idiot, Trundle,” she chuckled. “The bestest, bravest, smartest, luckiest idiot I ever did meet!”
“All right, then . . . apology accepted,” said Trundle. He looked out through the mine entrance. “I hope they all get away.”
“Lawks!” hollered Esmeralda. “Never mind them—what about us? All the skyboats will be gone!”
They bolted for the open air. A marvelous, heart-lifting sight met their eyes. All along the dark length of the jetty, skyboats full of jubilant ex-slaves were casting off their moorings and rising into the air.
“Oh, crikey!” wailed Trundle as he realized that almost all the vessels had already moved away out of reach.
The leading skyboats were now turning and gliding off along the chasm toward the distant lights of Rathanger, their propellers whirring as they moved swiftly through the dark air like a school of slender fish.
Trundle and Esmeralda pelted along the jetty. “Wait!” Esmeralda yelled, waving her arms. “Wait for us!”
But the buzzing of the propellers was like a swarm of angry bees, and her voice was lost in the noise.
“Look!” gasped Trundle, pointing to the very last skyboat that was still attached to the jetty. Its name was written in silver leaf on the bows: the Thief in the Night.
A solitary figure was straining and tugging at the rope that held the skyboat up against its moorings. It was a bedraggled squirrel. He stared at them with bright, worried eyes as they came hurtling toward him.
“I can’t get the knots free!” he called.
“Allow me!” said Trundle, bringing his sword down with all his strength on the knotted rope.
The blade cut through the knot. At once, the squirrel leaped into the skyboat, plumped himself down in the mechanical seat, and started pounding away at the treadles with both feet.
Esmeralda jumped in just as the skyboat started to move away from the jetty. Trundle hesitated for a second as the gap grew, then flung himself headlong into the bottom of the vessel. Even before he got himself untangled and sat up, their skyboat had risen high above the jetty and caught up with the last few stragglers as they sped to freedom. He and Esmeralda had made it in the nick of time!
The squirrel was singing at the top of his voice as he pedaled away in the stern of the skyboat.
Sing ho! For the open skyway,
Sing ho! For the open sky!
With a yo-ho-ho, and a yodel-dee-doh,
We’re off to distant islands-o!
Trundle and Esmeralda looked at each other and laughed.
The squirrel paused in his singing and gave them the widest grin they had ever seen. “The name’s Jack Nimble,” he said. “At your service, my fine friends! Traveling troubadour, minstrel, and bard by trade.”
“I’m Esmeralda, and this is Trundle,” said Esmeralda.
“Well, hello to the both of you,” said Jack. “Do you by any chance have a sunder for a song upon you? It’s been an age since last I performed a ditty, and I’m so full of music I think I might just burst clean out of my skin!”
And he began to sing again, his voice soaring as his knees pumped up and down and the propeller spun and the swift little vessel zipped along.
There was a brisk young weasel
Who did a-wooing go!
But he found himself at the bar of an inn
And that weasel just couldn’t say no, ho-ho,
Oh, that weasel could never say no. . . .
While he sang, the flotilla of skyboats flew over Rathanger. The escapees shouted and waved merrily down at the verminous creatures who stared angrily up at them, shaking fists and clubs and calling out terrible oaths and curses as they flashed by.
Esmeralda leaned out over the bow. “Look! Trundle! There’s the Iron Pig with its sails furled and its decks empty! Ha ha! While Grizzletusk’s brigands are getting soused in the Strangled Stoat, we fly away like birds!” She leaned farther out, yelling rude comments down at the ironclad pirate ship.
“Careful,” warned Trundle, catching hold of her belt to save her from toppling out of the little vessel.
She pulled herself back, her eyes shining. “We beat ’em, Trundle! We totally beat ’em!”
“Yes, we did!” laughed Trundle.
Once they were out in the open and clear of Drune, the skyboats began to dart off every which way into the star-filled night.
“So?” said Jack. “Where are we going, my fine fellows? I know of a delightful little hostelry out near Dangler’s Calm where we’ll receive a hearty welcome. Or we could go to Willowland or Swiveltree or Port Trimble or anywhere else you might fancy in all the wide worlds! You choose—I’m easy!”
“I’d like to go home,” Trundle said.
“And where might that be?” beamed Jack.
“Shiverstones,” said Trundle.
Jack Nimble gave a visible shudder. “Cabbages and cabbages and more cabbages,” he said. “Choose again, for pity’s sake.”
“Actually, w
e’re on a quest,” said Esmeralda.
Jack smacked his paws together, his eyes gleaming. “That sounds more like it!” he said. “A quest for what, pray? Not cabbages, I hope.”
“We’re looking for the Six Crowns of the Badgers of Power,” said Esmeralda.
Trundle half expected Jack to burst out laughing, but he didn’t. “Is that so?” he said. “Hmm. Interesting. And unless I’m much mistaken, that there shiny thingamajig would be the first of them,” he added, pointing to the Crystal Crown that was still tucked under Trundle’s arm. “So? Where are the others?”
“We don’t know,” said Trundle.
“But we found this with it,” said Esmeralda, pulling the key out of a fold of her dress and holding it up. “We’ll have to ask my aunty about that. She’s the queen of the Roamanys and by far the cleverest person in the whole of the Sundered Lands.”
“And she’ll tell us where the next crown is and what mysterious lock the key will open!” shouted Jack. “A most excellent plan! And what a worthy enterprise!”
Trundle looked from Esmeralda to Jack Nimble. He did rather want to go home. He felt that he’d played his part and was due a nice long rest. But any hope he had that Jack might be a sensible, level-headed animal who would help him convince the crazy Roamany girl to forget about the crowns evaporated as he saw the light of new adventure shining in their eyes.
“All right,” sighed Trundle. “Have it your way. Let’s find your aunty.”
And let’s hope she puts a stop to all this gallivanting and takes me home! he said secretly to himself.
“Where shall we find the queen of the Roamanys?” asked Jack.
“I’ll have to think about that,” said Esmeralda. She stood up and began to unfurl the sail. They would no longer need pedal power now that they were out among the winds of the Sundered Lands. She glanced back the way they had come. “Uh-oh!”
“Now what?” sighed Trundle.
“Look!”
The three animals turned to look back toward Drune. A windship was sailing out of the gaping mouth of the Rathanger chasm. A large windship, bristling with cannon. An ironclad windship with billowing bloodred sails.
“The Iron Pig,” groaned Trundle.
“Oh, heck!” exclaimed Jack.
“Help me hoist the sail,” shouted Esmeralda. “Maybe we can outrun them!”
Trundle looked anxiously back as the sails of the pirate windship caught the breeze and filled to bursting.
“Can we outrun them?” he asked uneasily.
Esmeralda grinned wildly at him. “Let’s find out!”
A moment later, the sail was unfurled and the yellow canvas caught the wind, and the little skyboat went skimming away across the dark star-strewn heavens like an arrow from the bow.
About the Authors
ALLAN JONES is the author of numerous fantasy books for both children and teens. He lives in London, England.
www.allanfrewinjones.com
GARY CHALK is an illustrator and model-maker. He lives in France.
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Copyright
Trundle’s Quest
Text and illustrations copyright © 2010 by Allan Frewin Jones and Gary Chalk
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Jones, Allan Frewin, (date).
Trundle’s quest / by Allan Jones ; illustrated by Gary Chalk.
p. cm.—(The Six Crowns) “Greenwillow Books.”
Summary: Trundle Boldoak’s simple life as the town lamplighter is turned upside-down the night he meets Esmeralda, a Roamany hedgehog, who whisks him away on a quest to find six fabled crowns and fulfill his role in an ancient prophecy.
ISBN 978-0-06-200623-3 (trade bdg.)
[1. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. 2. Prophecies—Fiction. 3. Badgers—Fiction. 4. Hedgehogs—Fiction. 5. Animals—Fiction.] I. Chalk, Gary, ill. II. Title.
PZ7.J67795Tr 2011 [Fic]—dc22 2010010341
EPub Edition © 2011 ISBN: 9780062098399
11 12 13 14 15 CG/RRDB 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Edition
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