‘Search me,’ puffed Arty.
‘You aren’t being much help,’ groaned Toby as he copied Arty, leaning on his chin.
The squat dwarf smacked Alex’s legs with a piece of paper. Alex snatched it out of his hand giving him a ‘what for’ look at the same time.
‘Thanks,’ snapped Alex. ‘We have just received notice of a change of personnel on the Mer-team – always leaving it to the last minute. Tut, tut. Oh, well, look at this!’ he exclaimed. ‘You might be enthralled by this, and then again you may not, but his royal highness the Mer-king’s very own nephew, uhm, sorry I can’t pronounce that – I can’t squeal high enough. Anyway the king’s nephew is playing for the Mer-team. He’s the one wearing the number five shirt and the silver spoon hanging out of his mouth if any of the White Horse team is listening.
‘We also have an important notice from one of our proud sponsors the Cornish pixie king, who is still looking for his stolen shipment of gold.’ The squat dwarf groaned. ‘If you see any mer-people walking around can you ask them if they have any information that may help? There is a finder’s fee of two weeks in the Seychelles, all expenses paid, care of Boris Airways. Cheers Boris, such a nice fella. I reckon he could be Prime Minister one day. He’d get my vote. Can I vote? No? Can any of us vote? Ah sorry, Boris, I think you’re sponsoring the wrong event.’
The squat dwarf looked at Alex as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing; Alex was attacking a highly prized sponsor.
Arty was trying to inspire Toby into action about the pirates’ ship. Alex the centaur’s mention that the mer-people may have the gold was evidently enough to feed Arty’s inquisitive mind again. It wasn’t the breakthrough they were looking for but it got them talking. And that was a good start.
‘They traded with land people so if we find out where that happened then surely we can get in that way?’ offered Arty hopefully.
‘And then what? The gold may still be thousands of metres under the sea. And what if we get caught? We may never be found and what use would that be? Let’s face it, I think I’m better off waiting at Tintagel. The general didn’t see me. I’m safe there.’
‘Yeah, but for how long?’ Arty challenged him.
‘I’m beginning to think all you want is the gold—’
‘Shhh! someone might hear you. And thanks very much. I’ve supported you so far, haven’t I? What’s got you so moody?’ said Arty in a huff.
‘Listening to you. It was only two minutes ago you were examining his zits.’
The goblin with the zitty head briefly turned around and growled. Toby dropped his head into his hands in frustration. He knew so much about the general and, most importantly, he now knew exactly what he wanted to do. The very thought of the general being able to change history was simply unbelievable; it was an incredibly scary thought. Toby knew that the only chance he had of stopping the general and saving his uncle was finding the pixie gold first. But how?
The loudspeakers crackled as Alex fiddled with the microphone. ‘So, let’s move on. First of all, let me introduce you to our brave if not possibly suicidal adjudicator for today. He’s officiated at three matches: twice as a field ref and once as the time keeper. In fact, he is one of the few who can actually referee a match without loss of his limb or life. Nobody messes with this leggy leviathan. I need not remind you, folks, that this event is hotly contested. Two years ago the referee was quite rightly stampeded for disallowing a last-second-of-the-match goal which would have given the White Horse team victory. Boo!’ shouted Alex encouragingly. But only a handful of the crowd joined in, followed by an anonymous, desperate-sounding, completely off-on-their-own-tangent squeaky voice, ‘Alex, I want your baby.’
Alex coughed in embarrassment. He quickly continued.
‘There can be no other, for here he is, the muscles from Brussels, the—’
The dwarf briefly interrupted. Alex responded grumpily. ‘What? Where’s he from then? Really! Oh, err, quick, what rhymes with Scotland?’ he stage-whispered through his unfeasibly large, smiley, whiter-than-white teeth. ‘Great! He’s the hot-man from Scotland.’ A young dwarf sniggered out loud. Alex blushed. ‘He . . . he’s the strong man from Scotland. Err, why couldn’t he be the crusher from Russia or something. I got it. He’s done with roamin’ in the gloamin’, he’s the terror of Teesside, he’s the hammer of Hamilton, the scot that shot the, the—’
The crowd started to boo.
‘Move on, Alex,’ urged the squat dwarf.
‘Here he is, the one you been waiting for. He’s the reigning Octopush Champion. It’s your eight-legged yeoman from Loch Lomond. Ooh, that rhymes.’
All the crowd heard were the words ‘eight-legged’ and ‘Loch Lomond’. It could only mean one thing. They all sat up, craning their necks.
‘It’s the one, it’s the only . . .’ The crowd were hanging on the edge of their seats. Alex was clearly loving it. ‘I-I-it’s HAYYYY-MISSSH!’ Alex finished in a wild frenzy of windmill-like arm swinging and pointing out to sea just below the great cliffs of the Minack Theatre. The crowd erupted into song:
‘Oh flower of Scotland
When will we uhm . . .
Der dum de tum tum’
Their enthusiasm broke down into titters and laughter as each accused the other of failing to remember the words. A deathly hush of salivating expectation quickly followed. The sea started to bubble and froth rising like a massive balloon from below. A slimy green head the size of a fishing boat pierced the water. The crowd immediately chanted, ‘HAMISH, HAMISH, HAMISH.’ The large slimy green dome continued until Hamish the giant octopus sat above the sea, his large tentacles paddling frantically to maintain his body above the water, his green tartan kilt flicking up with the movement of his tentacles. Hamish raised two large muscular arms and pointed at people in the crowd, winking at each one. He got a little carried away – he lifted all eight tentacles in the air and tried to flex his enormous biceps, which worked fine for two seconds until he started to slide under the sea. He recovered by flipping out of the water and somersaulting in the air. The crowd went wild for more. A female troll swooned hitting the theatre floor with her head and cracking the stone clean in two. Hamish lapped up the attention as he recovered his composure, waving and pointing with two tentacles again.
Alex whinnied in jealousy. ‘Show off.’
The squat dwarf walked to the edge of the cliff and waved at Hamish frantically. Hamish waved back; he seemed to misunderstand the angry hint to get on with it. The large octopus reached into his kelp sporran and withdrew a large sea-horn shell. He raised it high and waited as the crowd hushed again, holding their breaths. Alex mumbled something that didn’t sound very friendly into the microphone. Everyone seemed to ignore him. The crowd stood up en masse and edged forward an inch at a time. Hamish placed the sea horn to his enormous rubbery lips and gave it an almighty blast. The crowd erupted.
‘What-e-ver!’ whinnied Alex. He looked as nearly as green as Hamish’s large dome head.
Even Arty and Toby were distracted by Hamish’s antics on the water.
‘What about that big octopus?’ whispered Toby. ‘I bet he could go very deep? I bet he’s strong enough to carry the gold too, or maybe the White Horses could help.’
‘The White Horses can’t go underwater – that would be like asking them to fly,’ said Arty.
‘Pegasus can fly and he’s a white horse,’ said Toby, pointing out the obvious. Arty groaned. ‘So who are they then?’ mumbled Toby in an unexcited tone, with his chin cupped in his hand.
‘You can see them out at sea – they live out there – the white frothy bits on top of the waves,’ explained Arty. ‘At the moment the sea is so quiet you would be lucky to see the tips of their ears. Most of the time that’s all you get to see but when they get going it’s amazing. They’re like big powerful watery white horses that charge across the crest of the waves. They’re that strong they can destroy ships and bring down the cliffs as the white waves crash into anyt
hing solid. They control the waves – they are the waves and a lot more. They say that whenever there’s a storm at sea it’s usually because they’re battling with the mer-people again.’
The Mer-team had arrived in the bay below the theatre. They were bobbing serenely, waist-high above the water as their powerful fins paddled below. They all wore blood-red tunics with numbers on the back: 1 to 9.
The prince was their standard bearer. He held it aloft with a sneer: a blood-red flag to match the tunics with a golden, three-pronged pitchfork, a trident, pointing downwards as if buried in something.
Hamish blew the horn twice.
A narrow white line was developing out at sea. At first it sounded like distant thunder in the skies but as it drew closer the white line got larger, taller, and started to break off into nine distinct columns. The noise grew in a rhythmic thunder.
‘Listen,’ shouted someone. Everyone craned their necks directing their ears out to sea.
In front of each column grew a bow of white foaming water rolling over again and again. The columns continued to grow into distinct shapes the largest of which was in the middle. The elongated shape of a head broke the white screen; it was a watery horse’s head. Watery hooves powerfully kicked forward free of the white frothy shield into a canter as each horse built up speed, pounding across the sea, riding on the crest of a very large and dangerous-looking wave. It was the sea-born White Horses, rulers of the sea’s surface world, deadly to any stricken ship in a storm and sworn enemies to the mer-people.
Someone in the crowd recognised the middle White Horse and dared whisper its name. Others joined in until the crowd were chanting the name loudly.
‘AJAX, AJAX, AJAX.’
Even the grumpy Alex stepped forward to take a look when he heard the name. Arty told Toby that Ajax was the legendary king of the White Horses, the supreme and undefeated ruler. This match was so important Ajax had come out of retirement to lead his team to victory. The white wall of sea horses continued as the vast wave carried on, straight for the Mer-team who waited impatiently by the cliffs. The prince quickly signalled to his team and they slipped under the water just in time as the white wall crashed over their heads and smashed into the foot of the cliffs. The impact reverberated up the hard rock, shaking some of the spectators off their feet. The wall of water thrashed and boiled as Ajax and his team made their power and their strength known to all. They had arrived in spectacular fashion. They reformed under the cliffs with their watery hooves firmly embedded in the foaming water. A cream flag with a golden trident emblazoned in the centre hovered over the head of Ajax; a golden ring hung from one of the trident’s prongs. The muscular white horses looked magnificent if not a little intimidating.
Toby couldn’t believe what he had just seen as fully grown white horses majestically galloped the crest of the waves. It was completely unfathomable how such incredibly heavy-looking creatures could even stand on the water’s surface, but stand they did. And they waited.
Murmurs reverberated around the theatre. Toby’s attention was drawn towards the White Horses’ flag. He was listening to a young goblin sitting to his right and plucked up the courage to ask him a question – the flag seemed to be the subject of the murmurs.
‘What does that mean?’ asked Toby, pointing at the White Horse flag.
‘The white horses have been allies of the Cornish pixies for ages. It’s a dig at the mer-folk because they won’t return the gold. They won’t even admit they have it.’
Toby suddenly had a dreadful thought – the mer-people had been using the gold and they were running out of it just like the professor.
‘Uhm, how do we know they have any left?’ Toby was trying to give the impression he was just curious but the goblin looked at him strangely, suspiciously even.
‘They can’t. It’s useless to them. I thought everyone knew that,’ it finished sarcastically. He returned to his friend, making a point of turning his back on Toby in a no-more-weird-questions kind of way. He spoke to his friend in Goblish, and the friend looked over his shoulder and gave Toby a disapproving look.
But the fact that the gold was still there, and unused, was amazing news to Toby; he barely noticed the goblins’ reaction.
‘Did you hear that?’ said Toby excitedly. Arty grinned.
They watched as Hamish pulled the two captains aside. ‘Okay, lads, that’s enough! You will play by my rules, lay all differences aside. We’re here for entertainment not to settle old scores, so that means no hooves, no kicking,’ he said sternly, locking eyes with Ajax. He then turned to the prince. ‘And no tridents and no biting. In fact, you can leave the tridents over there with Sid the squid.’ Hamish pointed over to where a yellow one-eyed squid the size of a large motorcycle sat on the rocks. Major had told the boys that Tuck Shop Sid had closed the sweet shop and was the official time keeper for the day. Sid blinked his single large beady eye. He peered closely at the unfeasibly large seaweed sundial and gave a tentacle thumbs-up to Hamish. Everything was ready!
‘Now, since you managed to kill the goal posts last time we’ve changed the rules slightly,’ continued Hamish in his broad, authoritative Scottish accent. ‘We have two volunteers today to act as goals. I would like to introduce Betty and Willy, our resident minke whales.’
Betty and Willy, the two minke whales, popped their heads above the water and opened their mouths indicating exactly where the goals were.
‘Now, because they prefer fish we have squished a load of sardines together and wrapped it in a skin of kelp. So it’ll smell a bit. You may need to wash your hands thoroughly, err, hooves or mouths after the game otherwise the stench will be with you for weeks. Right any questions – no? Good. Get to your marks! And let’s not have too much blood today – it stains the sea bed badly.’
The crowd roared as the teams retreated to their respective whale goal. The White Horses stamped and whinnied and the waves began to build, crashing in powerful bursts around them. Hamish raised the sea horn to his lips. The crowd hushed. The prince formed his team into a bull-horn shape. He was clearly going for a full-on frontal assault. The White Horses huddled tightly together, blending into the frothing waves perfectly.
Hamish blew the horn with all his might. He threw the kelp ball in the air and waded backwards. ‘Game on!’ he bellowed.
The prince was off the mark, leaping in and out of the water building up speed. It was neck and neck as Ajax pounded across the surface of a large and menacing rolling wave, his hooves sending out shockwaves across the sea’s surface. Ajax and the prince leapt for the ball at the same time. The prince got a hand to the ball first; he slammed it towards his number eight.
Alex was screaming into the microphone: ‘The mer-number-eight has the ball. He’s looking for support. Yes, there,’ he shouted, ‘mer-six is calling for it but two White Horses have seen it too. They’re charging down fast. Mer-eight has seen them, he’s panicking. He looks for mer-six again, he reaches his arm back. No, he’s looked back to the horses – fatal, they’re too close, his arm is frozen, and he can’t take his eyes off them. Ooh! That’s got to hurt. It’s the famous Trojan-Horse manoeuvre, folks: a third horse was hiding behind the other two. Mer-eight has been pulverised, he’s nothing more than water vapour and he’s gone. Well, you can’t keep a good mer-player down for long, and . . . yep, this mer-player has stayed down. I think that says it all, folks.’
Arty had been deep in thought. He suddenly piped up, ‘How about this?’
‘What’s that?’ said Toby eagerly shaking away the image of a watery white horse pulling a wooden cart deep under the sea and returning with the gold, whilst also carrying Toby and Arty who had miraculously avoided drowning.
‘Look, we know where the ship is and the mer-people have the gold.’
Toby nodded.
‘We also know the mer-people traded, maybe via some hidden tunnel or something probably around here somewhere, yeah? And we know that there was an old human man who was trading with them just
before his death at eighty-nine years old, and he lived in Porthcurno Bay. Just down there,’ said Arty, as he pointed to the rocks below the theatre. ‘Which means?’ he dragged out the words, waiting for Toby to switch on and understand what he meant.
‘He couldn’t have walked far from home,’ exclaimed Toby. ‘He was old so he couldn’t go that far.’ Arty and Toby stared at each other. They grinned, and the image of a white horse pulling a cart morphed into a rocket-propelled jet in Toby’s mind.
‘They’re off again,’ shouted Alex. ‘Mer-seven has the ball. He sidesteps horse-three, so lucky but horse-six wasn’t so fooled – he’s gone in teeth first. He’s got the ball – what a brilliant manoeuvre. Ooh, he’s got mer-seven’s arm as well. That’s going to sting tomorrow morning. Yikes – is that blood? Poor horse, I hope his tetanus jabs are up to date. You just never know where these mer-players have been. Horse-six has spat the ball out, and the arm. MEDIC! I think horse-six needs a health check.’
‘All we need to do is scout the cliffs by the bay. Do you think the protection here goes as far as Porthcurno?’ asked Arty with his fingers crossed.
‘I don’t know,’ said Toby warily. ‘If we had a pair of binoculars then we could at least start looking from here, couldn’t we?’
Arty’s face blew up into a massive smile. ‘I know exactly where to get a set,’ he said, almost laughing with relief. ‘Come on. Let’s watch the game. We’ll look afterwards.’
‘Brilliant,’ said Toby. He grinned.
‘It’s even-stevens folks: twenty-seven all. There’s one minute of normal time to go and Sid has signalled there’ll be no extra time played. I reckon he’s decided the wasteful and unnecessary injury play-acting from the Mer-team should not be added on.’
Toby Fisher and the Arc Light Page 18
