by A. J. Ponder
The battle with the thurgle still raged. Sylvalla had entered the fray none too soon, flashing about grandiosely with Jonathan’s blade as if she wanted to make a statement. Francis wouldn’t have been surprised if it was something like, Here I am—kill me first.
Francis’ technique was little more than holding his blade between himself and the enemy. The only reason he hadn’t died yet was because he posed little threat and kept good distance. He was an archer after all, and the motto of any archer is, Only idiots get close to an enemy.
“Fall back,” Francis begged. It was all he could do not to break and run as the skittering of stones intensified. He was hoping for some kind of divine intervention, of the sort where they lived and the enemy didn’t. Something like a rock landing on the thurgle’s head, or a magical attack from Mr Goodfellow Senior. Anything that would prevent his premature arrival in heaven would be more than welcome.
A stalactite crashed to the floor.
This wasn’t exactly the type of intervention Francis had in mind. He pushed Sylvalla back once more, then reached for Dirk—before thinking better of it. Too dangerous. For everybody.
Dirk was tiring. His opponent had longer reach, and in this wretched cave Dirk couldn’t use the fancy footwork he’d against the dragon—mostly because it was very hard work not dying every time he stumbled on the broken rock.
A wicked attack from the thurgle’s shiny sword almost took his head off. Dirk parried, stumbling backward.
The thurgle attacked again—
A rock the size of a wolf landed in the middle of the combatants—right on top of the thurgle’s enormous, booted foot.
Francis’ heart lurched. “Fall back!”
This time Sylvalla echoed his call. “Dirk, come on! It’s time to go …”
Boulders smashed to the ground as the ceiling began to collapse in earnest. Francis jumped back as the thurgle howled in pain.
Seizing their opportunity, Sylvalla and Francis grabbed Dirk and scarpered, not so much as glancing behind to see whether Fergus was chasing them.
Against his code of bravery, Dirk ran too.
The thurgle let out another horrendous wail. Maybe he’d suddenly noticed the absence of his companions, for the sound spoke of anger as well as pain. But, in truth, Francis, Dirk and the rest of the party didn’t really care what the thurgle was up to—preferably dying—but not chasing them was definitely a good start.
Jonathan worried, if the thurgle did survive, what else would he, or his companions, get up to? Especially that wizard. Pity Sylvalla hadn’t killed him when she’d had the chance.
Mother/Father …
Asumgeld waited outside the caves with the patience of a dragon. Not so very unlike a cat who expects mouse to dinner, and, having attacked the mice, is now hiding altogether too obviously outside the mouse-hole.
Unfortunately for the adventurers, this was no cat. Asumgeld would only wait so long, and then she’d make certain the puny murderers who’d slain her baby died for their crimes.
She knew their scent. If they were alive, she would find them.
Under the Mountain
As soon as they were out of harm’s way, Jonathan found a jar of Granny’s Cure All and smeared it over the wound on Mr Goodfellow Senior’s arm.
“He’s dead,” Sylvalla said gently. “You need to leave him be.”
Jonathan pulled out a cloth and carefully bandaged the arm. “He just lost a lot of blood. He’ll live. His vitals are low, that’s all.”
They were the words his father had used when he’d lavished two vials of Granny’s Cure All on a street-boy lying in the gutter and saved the wretch. Besides, the old man’s rock was glowing brighter now, and that was sign enough.
Jonathan’s faith paid off. Mr Goodfellow Senior soon woke up and looked around in wonder.
It took a moment for him to realise that his injury had not been mortal. And that he was most definitely not in heaven.
After a little soppy grinning, the two Goodfellows quickly returned to their bickering. Mr Goodfellow Senior returned to the same irascible and ill-tempered father Jonathan so fondly remembered, and Jonathan couldn’t help wondering, every few minutes, about their chances of making it out of the caves alive. He also wondered, loudly, about how it was that his father claimed to know the way through this maze when he hadn’t been able to find his way into the caves in the first place. But, most of all, Jonathan wondered when his father would think of a plan to catch the evil wizard who had ruined his life.
Mr Goodfellow Senior, for his part, asked incessant questions about the sword the thurgle had carried. Given a minute spare, he would loudly berate Jonathan. “I don’t know why the gods bothered to give you eyes, you never use them.”
Dirk and Francis found these conversations unnerving. In their experience, banter like this had serious repercussions, like people’s heads being chopped off, but for the Goodfellows the result was little more than stress release.
§
All through the dark, uncomfortable stay underground, Sylvalla imagined her return home. She liked to mull over the spectacle of the proud warrior princess and her noble followers, entering the city gates as heroes. They would be cheered by the masses, flowers piling around their feet, before being taken to the palace and lauded by bards who would immortalize their victory. This pleasant daydream helped her forget about the weight of the mountainside crushing down upon them as they groped their way along the tortured trail of the mountain’s gut in the gloomy half-light provided by their wizard.
Trouble and hardship and the dank cave atmosphere was part of the adventure. They were the very things she would linger on when she related her story to an admiring audience back at home.
By the morning of the third day (by Dirk’s reckoning), even Sylvalla was anxious. She was beginning to think Jonathan might be right with his pessimistic talk about getting lost in the bowels of the mountain and never making it out alive. She was also finding it hard to sleep. Pursued in her dreams by dragons and magicians and people of unusual size, it became more and more difficult not to fall asleep while walking, and slip behind.
To keep their spirits high, their minds off their problems, and quell some particularly unsettling talk about turning back, Mr Goodfellow Senior began to spin tales about dragons. Tales of cunning and pure maleficent evil he wove, along with legendary feats of magic and daring. He talked of swords that could kill any creature, including a dragon, with a single blow. He talked of magic and heroes, and of a dragon that had kept guard over a cavern entrance for a hundred years, slaying all those who tried to pass. He told everybody in hushed tones that these were indeed true stories.
Nobody believed him. Or at least they professed not to, although nobody suggested turning back either. Possibly because it was clear Mr Goodfellow Senior was dead set against it, but more likely because Dirk had quietly mentioned that Dothie’s party couldn’t be far behind. So now they just hoped to find another way out before they died of hunger.
Sylvalla stayed close to Mr Goodfellow Senior, not because of the stories—they were probably why her nightmares were so vivid—but because he had the light.
And old Capro was especially fond of her, mainly because she called him Mr Goodfellow Senior in the voice princesses are taught to address their elders and betters.
Out of the blue, he promised her a blade the like of which she’d never seen before. A blade the heroes of old would be proud to call their own. Sylvalla didn’t really believe it, but she liked to listen to his talk anyway. At least when she wasn’t daydreaming about returning to Avondale to a hero’s welcome.
Jonathan seethed with jealousy to see his old man favour Sylvalla. Why would Capro want to give the princess a sword when there was a stack of heroes (most especially himself) who deserved one more than she?
Out of the Frying Pan
Jonathan kicked a rock and sat down. “We can’t keep going like this. There’s no food and no water.”
Sylvalla sat
down beside him. “We can’t go back.”
“Get up,” Mr Goodfellow Senior said. “We move, or we die.”
Jonathan shook his head. “I don’t want to die in these caves, but let’s face facts, we ran out of food two days ago.”
“I’d give almost anything for a decent drink of water,” Dirk croaked. “There was a nice trickle, back aways.”
“Even if that dragon’s gone, we’ll never make it back that far,” Francis said. “It’ll just make things worse.”
“Things can’t get any worse,” Jonathan said. “I’d rather die here than walk one more step. At least I might be able to kill that wizard before I die.”
“See that?” Mr Goodfellow Senior said, ignoring Jonathan and bounding off with renewed vigour.
Dirk also cracked a grin and increased his pace.
Jonathan watched everyone disappear around the corner. “I don’t see what everyone’s so happy about,” he muttered before hurrying to catch them up, hope triumphing over exhaustion.
Dirk croaked with joy.
A shaft of natural light pierced the darkness of the cave.
They all rushed toward it, not quite believing their luck.
The light did not disappear. It grew stronger, far stronger than their light-starved eyes could handle. Sylvalla and Francis laughed in the shadow of the caves, their eyes streaming with tears—although they both blamed the sun for the water leakage.
Jumping around for joy like madmen, Sylvalla and Francis pulled the others into the light, crying all the harder as they were exposed to the full radiance of the midday sun.
Their exuberance was short-lived in the heat.
The celebration over, Dirk wasted little time before encouraging everyone to set off in search of water. They were all very glad when they found it, drinking deeply and lolling around on the water’s edge before drinking some more. Everyone except Sylvalla, who nipped upstream and took three very cold baths before she felt quite herself again, and not like a slightly damp rock with a piece of rotten meat clinging to it. Such things as appearance and smell suddenly seemed far more important now she was returning to Avondale.
§
That night, Jonathan reminded everybody about how important it was to keep an eye out for Dothie’s group. He regaled anybody who would listen, as well as those who wouldn’t, that Dothie had ruined his life, and turned him into a fruit fly.
Only Mr Goodfellow Senior took Jonathan seriously. Who else would believe such outlandish tales? Mr Goodfellow assured the party that such a thing was possible and should be guarded against. As he handed them cups of tea, he even quipped that fruit flies were not exactly devastating combatants. But he refused to take Jonathan’s suggestions of three people on watch seriously. If anything, Mr Goodfellow Senior pushed them all to walk faster and sleep less as he constantly looked to the sky. A certain two-winged creature terrified him more than a wizard with only one decent spell.
Soon enough, Mr Goodfellow Senior’s fears were confirmed as Francis pointed to a strange-shaped cloud hovering on the horizon. “Can you see it? The gold shimmer?” Francis asked. “I could swear it’s moving, and not with the wind.”
“It’s nothing,” Mr Goodfellow Senior said. “Just some cross breezes in the upper atmosphere. Don’t worry about it.”
“You sure that wasn’t the dragon?” Jonathan whispered to his father later.
“Of course, I’m not a hundred percent sure. Don’t tell the others, though,” Mr Goodfellow Senior whispered. “I don’t want to panic them if it’s nothing.”
The only problem was, Mr Goodfellow Senior was lying. He’d seen the dragon clearly with his farsight. He knew for sure that, not nearly far enough away, the dragon Asumgeld was coming for them.
Terrible Tales of Derring-Do
Asumgeld landed, searching for the bitter tang of human scent. There! It assailed her nostrils. Humans. Her meticulous search had, at last, revealed that the filthy creatures had exited here, on the other side of the mountains.
She howled in an octave too high for human hearing. Dogs and other animals shivered in dread, for they knew a dragon was on the hunt.
The trail might be days, even weeks, old.
It was a penalty of extreme old age that days passed like the flickering of an eyelid, and yet Asumgeld knew she’d find the murderers of her only child. She’d not given up. Far from it. If anything, she was more determined than ever.
She found their tracks at last and followed them to a village. From a goodly distance, she listened to the local gossip, unobserved in a way only something the size of a small mountain can be so monstrously overlooked. Her ears were sharp, and her mind, well, possibly that was not as sharp as the time when she had revelled in dwarven gold so many eons ago, when she was a youngling.
Asumgeld found the villagers tedious with their endless prattle. They liked to talk about the price of flour and wool almost as much as tales of adventurers and derring-do. All this was bad enough, but they never stayed put. There were so many of them that the words were often a confusing jumble. But a few snippets did stand out as particularly infuriating …
§
Pretty enough, but if you ask me, women should cook, clean and mind babies. Though, I’m sure I’d never tell royalty as to how to behave. Them’s anover breed, them is. Whether they be dragon killers or not.
§
The girl says it’s all her. She’s the hero. And, you know how it is, blokes just stand around when there’s work to be done. Jus’ the other day—
§
Asumgeld decided she could no longer abide listening to the humans. Annoyed, she raged against the feeble creatures, destroying everything in her wake.
Small farmsteads were tasty enough, but they did little except whet her appetite. Later, she consumed a whole village. It didn’t satiate her hunger. Nothing would, except revenge. She vowed never to rest until that vengeance was hers.[38] Meanwhile, the whispering was driving her crazy …
§
They comes back. They do. Sylvalla, the princess and all, and Dirk’s supposed to be her henchman? Now, you ask me, I’m not sure as I believe it. Him’s not the type to listen to girls. Or kidnap kings, or any of that. He’s a hero, and if any dragons were to be slayed, it’d be him did it. Mark my words.
§
Now, you ask me, there ain’t no dragon. It’s just that she didn’t ’ave the guts t’ come back and beg fo’ fo’giveness. An’ I sed so to the maid, jus’ this mornin’.
Homecoming
As Sylvalla neared her hometown of Avondale, she became very excited—and concerned at the same time. According to her daydream in the caves, people would be flocking out of the gates to give them a hero’s welcome. But that was not happening. It was becoming obvious that there was a flaw in her plan.
For a start, Avondale wasn’t quite as she remembered it. There was something wrong with the gate: It was attached to a wall. A good strong wall. That had never happened before. And it had guards like those at Scotch Mist, only more effective.
All this made it more difficult for people to welcome the heroes. And that was bad enough, but nobody was here to welcome them at all. Unless you counted the people milling around outside the city gates because they couldn’t get in.
“Who goes there?” cried the guards as they approached.
Sylvalla, still taking all this in, peeked through the grill to make sure this really was Avondale.
Mr Goodfellow Senior took it upon himself to answer the guard’s question. “We bring the tooth of the dragon. We noble few. The Princess Sylvalla; Jonathan Goodfellow; Francis of, er, the Mist; Dirk the Sword; and myself, Sir Goodfellow, Knight of Seven Kingdoms, and Hand of the Hidden Order of Bairnsley.
“Let us in!”
Sylvalla, instead of joining Mr Goodfellow Senior to demand entrance, just stood there, trying to put all her thoughts together and coming to a very disturbing conclusion: Her parents were dead.
Ignoring Sylvalla’s odd gulp, and t
he tears running down her cheeks, the guards consulted their book. (They both did, even the one who couldn’t read, so as not to look stupid.) “It doesn’t say anything here about a group with dragon’s teeth, Bob. What do you think?”
“Maybe it says somethin’ about the princess? I’d think they’d be keen to have her back after all that fuss. Don’t you, Fred?”
“No, nothing about princesses. It does say something here about es-cort-ed noble-parsons and, oh yeah, royalty. There it is. I guess we let them in, Bob.”
“You sure?” Bob eyed the book, then the adventurers. He hefted his sword. He’d rather trust that comfortingly familiar piece of metal than some poxy book. “How do we know she’s the princess, anyway? She don’t look much like a princess to me. Ain’t princesses s’posed to be pretty and have milky-white skin? She’s all sunburnt and red-eyed and sniffly.”
Fred hummed and hawed. “We’d better get King Rufus, or perhaps the queen. You know, they’ll go nuts if we don’t follow proper porceedure. I mean, what if we let impostures in.”
“You mean they’re alive?” Sylvalla said, her voice edged with confusion.
Dirk, though, had lost patience, and his shout drowned out Sylvalla’s revelation. “You all know who I am. Do you think I could not kill you from here? And this here is Francis, the finest bowyer I’ve seen.” (He hadn’t seen that many people use a bow, but he suspected Francis should easily be able to kill both the guards from where he was.) “So, I suggest you choose now. The return of the noble princess to her home city, or a cold, cold grave.”
“An escort!” blurted Davie who was listening nearby from one of the crenulations. “Dat’s what you need for da royal princess.”
The gate guards were very relieved to have their conundrum solved for them, although not so relieved as to forget that Davie had just made them look like the incompetent fools they were.
Davie, instead of seeing the relief and goodwill he’d expected, saw the look of angry humiliation in their eyes and decided he’d eat at home tonight. It was a shame; he was only being helpful. Why was it some people couldn’t take a little friendly advice?
