by Chris Tookey
“Playthings?” asked Wenda. “What do you mean?”
“There are some things it is better that you do not know,” said Osprey. “Suffice it to say that these slave-traders are the worst kind of barbarians.”
“Who are they?” asked Wyrd. “Where do they come from?”
“Most round here come from the Isle of Erin,” said Osprey, “and that is what the green flag testifies. Others travel all the way from the Mediterranean Sea, from Phoenicia or North Africa.”
“And they simply land and kidnap people?” asked Wenda.
“Not only people,” said Osprey. “Humans fetch the highest price, whether as slaves or as breeding stock. But I have heard of elves being captured, dwarves, lizard-men, even bugbears.”
“But why do you fear them?” asked Wyrd. “After all, you’re a wizard.”
“Wizards have many powers, it is true,” said Osprey grimly, “but the slave-trading peoples have their own magicians, their own tricks of necromancy. They use blocking spells, invocations of paralysis, to say nothing of the more customary weapons. No magician has the power to survive an arrow through his heart or a stake through his head.”
“So, we have to wait for these ships to pass?” asked Wyrd.
“Yes,” said Osprey. “Then we must ride as fast as we can to the other side of the valley. You see those dark patches in the bushes opposite?”
Wyrd and Wenda looked across the valley. Sure enough, there were two irregularly shaped holes in the bushes. Both looked tall and wide enough to accommodate a horse and rider. Behind the bushes lay tall trees and thick woodland.
“You mean those two holes over there?” asked Wyrd. “Is that where we’re going?”
“I don’t like the look of the one on the left,” said Wenda.
“What’s wrong with it?” asked Wyrd.
“Look at the top of the hole. The leaves are all charred.”
“So?” asked Wyrd. “Maybe someone lit a fire?”
“If that’s the case,” said Wenda, “wouldn’t you be able to see the ashes?”
“Exactly. Uther, you have much to learn,” said Osprey. “Your young friend is right. Take the left-hand route and you will end up as dragon’s meat.”
“You mean there’s a dragon living in there?” asked Wyrd, feeling even weaker at the knees than he had done at the talk of the slave-traders.
“Not a large one,” said Osprey, with what might have been intended to be an encouraging smile but came across as a supercilious sneer. “No more than fifteen to twenty feet long and six feet high, but still big enough to snap your head off as soon as look at you.”
“So, we’re taking the right-hand route,” suggested Wyrd.
“That would appear the more sensible course,” agreed Osprey, turning to watching the slave-ship disappear from view. “Now ride!”
The three travellers rode as quickly as possible across the valley. A hundred yards before they reached the other side, Wyrd heard the drumbeat of another slave-ship. He turned at full gallop to see its prow sliding into vision.
Osprey and Wenda had already reached the right-hand hole in the bushes. They too had seen the second slave-ship.
“This is no time to admire the scenery!” Osprey snapped. “Ride as you have never ridden before!”
Wyrd dug his heels into the sides of his pony and galloped after his two companions into the cavernous undergrowth.
***
Wyrd hated the path through the woods. Bushes and trees on either side prevented him seeing any likely danger; and from the look of Osprey and Wenda, they felt the tension as much as he did. They rode on for several minutes in a silence as heavy as lead. Leaves and bare twigs ruffled his hair, and he was fairly sure he could feel spiders crawling down his neck and back. He shuddered.
But then, suddenly, the trees cleared and rays of sunshine lit up the most beautiful sight he had ever seen. Playing in the shafts of sunshine were creatures that Wyrd thought at first were beautiful butterflies, moths or dragonflies, until he realised that – although they were diminutive – they were human in form. Each had perfectly chiselled features, elegant if tiny limbs and wings of breathtaking colour and iridescence. In the sunlight, they sparkled, shone and reflected into Wyrd’s eyes. Some of them were so bright that he had to lift one hand and shade his face.
His movement alerted one of the creatures to his presence, and it let out a tiny shriek.
“Puca! Puca!” it screamed.
Others turned to look aghast at Wyrd and his human companions. With high-pitched shrieks and screams they flew off into the undergrowth.
“Is Puca all they ever say?” asked Wyrd.
“They have only one word in their language,” whispered Osprey. “But they have thousands of ways to say it.”
“They were upset, weren’t they?” asked Wyrd.
“How would you feel,” asked Osprey, “if a lumbering monster hundreds of times your size came blundering into your home?”
“Scared? Angry?” suggested Wyrd. “Threatened?”
“Precisely,” said Osprey.
“Have they really run away, I mean flown away – or are they going to come back with weapons?” inquired Wyrd, nervously.
“I would suspect the former,” said Osprey. “They were Puca children, and presumably at play. But that’s not to say they won’t warn their parents.”
“Shouldn’t we be moving on, then?” asked Wenda, wondering why both Wyrd and Osprey were conversing in whispers.
“Ssh!” hissed Osprey. “Do you want the dragon to hear us?”
After that, neither Wyrd nor Wenda dared to say a word – not, at least, until the path through the undergrowth turned a corner, and Wyrd let out a gasp.
There, not six feet in front of them, lay a dragon’s head lying on its two enormous front paws. Its red talons were smeared with blood, and red drool dropped from its half-open mouth, as though it had just eaten. It was surrounded by skulls and bones, many of them human, though some looked much smaller, like the remains of newborn babies. Wyrd supposed these must be the remains of the little people, or Puca.
Wyrd thought at first that the dragon was staring straight at him, until he noticed its eyes were closed.
There were only two alternatives: go back the way they had come, or try to pass through the glade that was quite obviously the dragon’s lair. Osprey seemed in no doubt as to the wiser option.
“Follow me,” he mouthed to his two companions. “And don’t wake it up!”
The three of them inched around the dragon, which had a head three times the size of a crocodile and was at least fifteen feet long.
Wenda’s pony let out a terrified whinny as she passed the dragon’s left ear, and Wyrd thought he saw the dragon twitch. But perhaps that was only his imagination.
It was only when the three riders reached the dragon’s back feet that Wyrd saw why it was no longer a threat. About six diminutive figures in green and purple, no more than nine inches high, were munching on the dragon’s tail.
Now, when Wyrd looked back at the dragon’s head, he could see twenty or more shining spears sticking out from its most vulnerable point, a strip of bare flesh on the back of its neck where the scales on its head didn’t quite touch the bony armour on its back.
“It’s dead!” he exclaimed without thinking.
The little people looked up at the sound of his voice.
“Puca! Puca! Puca!” they cried, raising their bloody mouths and scattering. Wyrd noticed that they had transparent, iridescent wings, which lay flat on their backs during feeding but flicked up at the first sign of danger and enabled them to fly and hover like dragonflies, before they darted off into the woodland.
“Brilliant,” said Wenda, in a disgusted voice. “Now every Puca in Scilly is going to know that we’re here.”
“So?” asked
Wyrd. “Look at them flying off! They’re scared of us!”
“That’s only because they don’t like to be seen eating,” said Osprey. “They’ll be back. With spears and poisoned arrows.”
“How dangerous can they be?” asked Wyrd. “They’re tiny!”
“Wyrd,” said Wenda, pityingly, “who do you think killed the dragon?”
“Oh,” said Wyrd. It was at times like these that he realised he really did have a lot to learn. “So, I suppose we’d better not stick around.”
“That,” said Osprey, “is an understatement.”
Wheeling his horse round to face due east, Osprey was off at a gallop, with Wenda just behind him. Wyrd’s pony struggled to keep up, weighed down as it was with provisions for the journey and several leather-bound volumes which Osprey had said he needed. So why, Wyrd thought mutinously, looking around him for angry Puca, wasn’t Osprey’s horse carrying them?
Osprey was only a hundred yards away from the end of the woodland tunnel when Wyrd saw a hail of arrows and spears rain down from the trees above them. They descended upon the magician, and he writhed with pain as they turned his chest, back and shoulders into a pincushion.
Wounded though he was, Osprey pointed ahead at an innocuous-looking puddle, cried something that Wyrd couldn’t make out and urged his horse to jump it. With one bound, the horse cleared the tiny pool, and Osprey vanished into the open air beyond the tunnel.
Wenda, too, made her pony leap the puddle and was soon out of the woodland. As she vanished into the bright light, she turned and yelled something at Wyrd that sounded like “Jumper!”
Twenty feet behind, Wyrd could feel his pony struggling under the weight of his baggage. He noticed that a branch had dipped into the puddle and was resting on its surface. Rather than jump the puddle, Wyrd decided to gallop through it. It was a decision he rapidly regretted.
His pony missed its footing and stumbled as it galloped through the water and, as it splashed, Wyrd was surprised to discover that it smelt and tasted of salt. Hardly had he reached the other side of the puddle and begun galloping towards the light at the end of the tunnel, than he felt himself being dragged back.
He looked down at his pony and saw to his horror that some kind of huge serpent, with a head the size of a fully grown horse, had its jaws locked around the back legs of the pony. The serpent’s body stretched back into the puddle, and Wyrd realised for the first time that it was not a puddle at all but the top of an underground cave that led straight back to the sea.
The massive sea serpent pulled with all its strength, and the pony began sliding back towards the monster’s treacherous lair.
“Puca! Puca! Puca!” cried the little people, emerging from the bushes and throwing spears at both serpent and pony.
Though none of the projectiles hit Wyrd, he was uncomfortably aware that, if he didn’t do something quickly, he was about to be either swallowed whole by a sea serpent or nibbled to bits by a tribe of angry Puca. Hurling himself from his pony, he climbed to his feet and ran to the edge of the wood.
Once in the open, he turned in time to see his pony disappearing into the puddle with a last, despairing whinny. The aggrieved Puca turned to face Wyrd, hovered in the air and shook their tiny fists.
Wyrd made a crude gesture back at them, glad that, for the time being, the little people seemed to have run out of ammunition.
***
Wyrd saw Osprey and Wenda a few hundred yards ahead of him. They had dismounted and tied their mounts to a skeletal tree.
Osprey sat on a granite boulder that emerged from the purple heather like a grey seal. He was stripped to the waist – literally so, since in order to get at his wounds Wenda had had to tear off his upper garments. Osprey grimaced with pain as Wenda pulled out each tiny arrow and dabbed it with a sponge, on which she had smeared orange ointment.
“Are you all right?” Wyrd asked the magician.
“Do I look all right?” rasped Osprey. “I’m in pain. A lot of pain.”
“Stop fidgeting,” said Wenda, addressing Osprey as if he was being an annoyance. “It’s lucky for you I brought this along.”
Wyrd smiled at her forthrightness and marvelled that Osprey did not rebuke her. Wyrd bent down to sniff the jar of orange ointment that she was smearing on the querulous wizard and wrinkled his nose. It smelt horrible.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Concentrated walrus vomit,” said Wenda. “I gathered it myself, in Walrus Cove.”
“Oh. Right,” said Wyrd, not sure where Walrus Cove was but perfectly certain that he and his nose had no wish to visit it.
Wyrd looked over his shoulder at the woods.
“Er, shouldn’t we be getting a move on?” he asked. “Those Puca were more dangerous than they looked.”
“They won’t venture out of the woods,” said Osprey. “They’re too frightened of the bears.”
Wyrd looked around nervously.
“I can’t see any bears,” he said.
“Neither can I,” said Osprey, “but they are why we’re sitting on this rock, able to see a good distance all round us.”
A thought seemed suddenly to strike the magician.
“What’s happened to your steed?” he asked Wyrd.
“Steed? Oh, you mean the pony? I think some kind of serpent got him. It looked like a sea serpent, except it was on land, obviously.”
“You didn’t gallop through that puddle?” asked Wenda.
“Er… It wasn’t a puddle, was it?” said Wyrd, knowing what she was about to say.
“My books!” wailed Osprey, as though their loss was even more painful than his wounds. “My beloved books! Gone forever! You foolish boy!”
He trotted away.
“Oh, Wyrd! I told you to jump it!” cried Wenda.
“Oh, is that what you said?” asked Wyrd. “I thought you were telling me to put on a jumper.”
“No. I said ‘Jump it!’” exclaimed Wenda, crossly.
“What was that thing, anyway?” asked Wyrd, who was more concerned about the loss of their food than Osprey’s books and was even more sorry to have been the cause of his pony’s demise. “I’ve heard of sea serpents, but that seemed more like… well, a puddle serpent.”
“I think, although I could be wrong,” said Wenda, “that that may have been one of the serpents that used to live off the coast. The King said they might have swum under the island to escape.”
“And one of those things swallowed you?” gasped Wyrd, looking at Wenda with new respect.
“It was only for a moment or two,” replied Wenda, matter-of-factly. “Then it threw me up. I was lucky, really. You are an idiot.”
Osprey raised a hand wearily to make her stop.
“No. It’s my own fault,” he said, with uncharacteristic humility. “I should have warned Uther before. I’ve been so involved with history that we haven’t yet reached the Threatening Beasts section of the school curriculum.”
“Er, how many threatening beasts are there?” inquired Wyrd, with a sinking feeling that perhaps he really didn’t want to know.
“More than you can imagine,” said Osprey. “That’s on Atlantis alone.”
Wyrd gave an involuntary moan. Merlin had been right to say he’d be safer if he stayed inside the castle.
“The whole of the northern part of Atlantis is riddled with underground caves that fill up with water at high tide. And sea serpents like nothing more than to hide beneath the places where the sea bubbles up to ground level and…”
“Pull unwary travellers to their doom,” said Wyrd, with a trace of bitterness. “Thanks for not telling me before.”
“Ow!” exclaimed the magician, as Wenda grabbed a spear that was sticking into his shoulder and pulled it out with a nasty, tearing sound. “What are you putting on it, to stop the bleeding?”
; “I thought some bear’s blood mixed with dwarf’s urine.”
“Is the dwarf’s urine really necessary?”
“It should help the clotting.”
“Oh, very well,” said Osprey, grimacing and turning back to Wyrd. “Where was I?”
“You were telling me about threatening beasts,” said Wyrd. “Now, as we’re out on the moors, perhaps you could tell me what to look out for. Apart from serpents lurking in puddles, obviously.”
“Bears are a danger, naturally,” said Osprey. “And wild trolls.”
“Wild trolls?”
“They’re the ones too stupid or rebellious to work as labourers. They tend to hang about the moors, disguised as rocks. They wait for passers by and then…”
Osprey opened and closed his mouth expressively.
“Crunch,” he said.
“They eat people?”
“Usually just the heads,” said Osprey, reassuringly. “The rest they leave for the bears.”
“Fine. Anything else I should know about?” inquired Wyrd, trying not to sound nervous.
“Have you told Uther about the vampires?” asked Wenda. “The ghouls? The harpies?”
“I hardly think any of them are likely to attack us by day,” protested Osprey mildly.
“Have you seen how low the sun is in the sky?” asked Wenda, pointing to the west. “At the rate we’re going, we’ll be lucky to reach the Empress Honoria before dusk.”
“WHAT?!” exclaimed Wyrd, turning on Osprey. “I thought you said I’d be safe outside the castle. Now I’m hearing about all these horrible creatures!”
“Pull yourself together, boy,” snarled Osprey, his good humour not improved by Wenda’s painful extraction of one last spear from between his shoulder blades. “I’ve told you I’ll protect you, and so I will.”
The magician staggered to his feet.
“We haven’t a minute to lose. The sun dips ever lower, and the smell of my blood is likely to attract whatever foul, blood-sucking creatures there may be around here.”
“Oh, well, that’s just great,” muttered Wyrd.
