For now, they would have to take whatever initiative they could think of if only to buy time until help came.
But, however they looked at it, what happened next surely involved this group of friends heading over the forest to Berkhamsted Castle.
So Nimbus eventually returned the pot and book to travel size and, with a last goodbye to the Sentinel Tree, they set off across the tip of the Chalk Downs and back over the dark forest.
“If we fly high enough we will be boosted by the thermal currents channelled through the Chalk Downs. Should get us there a lot faster than travelling along the ground,” motioned Dianah as she climbed higher. “But keep your eyes peeled for raptors. This is where the red kites hunt, remember.”
From above they could more readily see how the glowing effluent, the pollutant, was seeping from the factory site and leeching into the forest.
It was clearly burning and poisoning boughs, bushes and whole animal setts and burrows alike.
There could be little doubt that this pollution was to blame for creating whole families of twisted creatures tormented by its evil influence.
“How can the humans have allowed this to happen to our home, and theirs?” shouted Sylvie as they passed over an entire grove of elm trees that had shed their leaves in distress.
“Well,” said Nimbus, “if they don’t wake up to this soon, it very much looks as if we will all have to pay a heavy, heavy price.
“There will be a battle like none ever seen. Yet I really can’t see how either side can come out of a war as winners.”
Back at the quiet campsite in the middle of the castle ruins, Lucy and her friends slept soundly in their tents.
They were clearly oblivious to what was unfolding steadily around and, in fact, right underneath them.
JJ snored and twitched in his sleep, chasing imaginary rabbits down imagined burrows. He was ignoring the pleas and calls from the girls in his sleep, much as he mostly did when awake.
Lucy was dreaming a strange dream.
In her dream she was dressed in multicoloured clothes, like a crazy morris dancer or one of those Harlequin clowns from the logo of the rugby team Tait’s dad Mark supported, covered in frills and patches of rainbow.
She was dancing through the narrow streets of a coastal town, a bit like the beloved Cornish port town of Coverack but with smaller and tighter paths and roads.
She was playing on a flute and as she danced and played all sorts of animals were joining her. They were just appearing from everywhere, from houses, bushes, hedgerows and paths.
But they weren’t ordinary animals. They were exotic creatures and beasts, like tall giraffes, huge elephants and herds of exotic antelope and deer.
They were following her hypnotic playing and her crazy, crazy jig of a dance.
Outside, back in the real world, it was still that pre-dawn time, crisp with early frost and the kiss of dew on green grass.
In the swampy moat, newts searched for breakfast, hungry mouths agape, while dragonfly larvae darted at tadpoles hiding in the mud.
A fruit bat circled above, its clicking failing to disturb a shiny kingfisher that slept on a perch, ready to catch the first sticklebacks of the morning unawares.
None of the adults stirred.
They were lying on groundsheets millimetres above the meadow that covered the tunnels below. A thin mist licked about their tents and they seemed to have fallen into a very deep sleep indeed.
All around them their children snuggled peacefully in their sleeping bags.
Ordinarily, this would have been a scene of peaceful slumbering bliss.
Yet none of the campers had the slightest notion of the hateful forces heading their way. Nor could they have imagined the horrors that would soon be converging on that ancient, enchanted, fateful spot.
Flying with the breeze at their backs, the wood nymphs made it to the castle ruins before daybreak.
Dianah led them to the highest of the remaining flint ramparts, from where they could survey most of what would originally have been the castle floor, now a lush platform of well-kept lawn.
Tall grasses grew most of the way around the ground, on either side of the raised path that overlooked the moat, much of which was now drained of water. Ducks, coots and moorhens had set up home in the reeds in the deeper areas, doubtless well fed by visiting families.
Several old oak trees had fallen and bridged the moat in certain areas, places where children played during long summer days before storming the last remaining watchtower atop the last intact hill.
Few people ventured here at night as it was reputed to be haunted by the spirit of the prisoners held then executed here in ancient times. Which is why it came as such a shock to the sprites to see the modest encampment right in the middle of the grounds.
“Humans,” said Sylvie, nodding towards the assorted triangle shapes visible through the morning mist.
“Certainly complicates things,” pondered Nimbus, looking to Dianah for answers.
She, however, had her head on more pressing matters.
She had noticed the buzzards circling just beneath the cloud line for some time now.
They too were riding the thermals, as the nymphs had, but vertically, rising and falling in the sky as if anticipating a large meal to come and checking when it was likely to arrive.
As if on cue, Alice was the first to notice the light begin to glow and then grow in the tree canopy surrounding the watchtower. It was the same putrid hue that lit up the quarry on the hill.
“Look,” said Alice. “It is starting. They are coming.”
As the friends watched the glow grow brighter, reflected off the stone walls, from the west a large, dark cloud loomed suddenly larger.
At first, the woodland nymphs feared it may be another aerial threat, until they made out the distinctive flying style of their friends the owls.
The rodents had free rein in the forest that night as it seemed that every barn, eagle and even little owl had rallied to join the faeries of the forest and fly to their aid.
Each bird had given a ride to a nymph or an elf, some clad in wooden armour, and soon hundreds of enchanted folk took up defensive positions of their own.
Soon the ancient walls were lined with razor talons, needle-sharp beaks, slingshots, wands and spears and the night sky was a blur of bats and songbirds answering the rallying call to arms in their own distinctive way.
From the north, over the brow of the hill, galloped wave after wave of woodland deer.
First arrived the horned monarchs, then the juvenile bucks before the herds of sinewy does and barking muntjac the size of dogs, all prepared to do what they could for the natural order.
At the lip of the moat, an army of moles, helped by powerful badger clans, busied themselves undermining the grassy banks, creating traps and pitfalls that would slow the enemy down.
While up in the trees, squirrels and wood mice bit through branches preparing perils from above and bees swarmed, buzzing patiently until called into action.
Even the hedgehogs had come in their hundreds, prepared to curl into spiked balls to be fired from miniature machines magically fashioned by the clever gnomes.
Hundreds of thousands of normally peace-loving forest creatures had answered Hearne’s emergency call.
Even though they all knew that mankind had faults and many were responsible for the greed and pollution that had created the evil race of creatures marching underground, they also knew what would happen if the peace with the humans was broken.
So they had come to fight with their friends to defend the land they loved and the right of everyone to continue to share it, in peace.
The first sighting of the werebeast army was, as expected, at the top of the tower.
But Hearne’s forces held their ground, hoping that sense would prevail and the werew
ytch would either open talks or back off in the face of overwhelming odds.
Yet the monster mass that trickled down from the top of the tower was nothing like the size the nymphs had seen earlier and, even with a steady flow of hunched horrors, gathering in a mob, they were little more than a single battalion. They were outnumbered and surrounded.
It was then that Dianah’s clever strategic eye realised that something was wrong here.
As the forest force tightened around the chattering werebeasts, she suddenly noticed movement around the extreme perimeter of the moat.
She fired a signal flare from her wand but it was largely too late.
Hundreds of bizarre beasts were emerging from the roads the other side of the raised moat.
Clearly there were a number of tunnel exit points and now their enemies streamed over the logs that bridged the moat, flanking then encircling the forces that trapped their decoy army.
The forest force was suddenly caught in two minds and had to engage on two fronts as first the decoy monsters charged at them and then the screaming beasts smashed into their rear.
Their aerial forces tried valiantly to restore balance and filled the air with a swirling, noisy mass intended to confuse and frighten the enemy.
But their foes were fearless and possessed, snatching starlings, sparrows and robins from the air and crushing them on the run.
The faerie folk sent volley after volley of sharp thorn arrows and spiked hedgehog balls into the charging beasts, forcing them back into the murky moat waters in places.
But there were just too many of them.
Even the monarch bucks with their great antlers scything through rows of the bizarre beasts found their powers blunted when the werewytch appeared on the tower hill and worked her black magic.
To their horror, many of the bucks shed their horns suddenly, something they normally only do in the autumn, so they had to turn to sharp hooves and barging bodies instead. While they gave a powerful account of themselves, she had taken away much of their potency. Even so, many a werebear, badger or wolf met its end as a result of a well-placed kick or determined trample.
Wielding the Willowand, Alice made short work of the last of the decoy force by turning a couple of hives of bees into flying perils the size of cats.
But the problem with bees, whatever their size, is that as soon as they sting they sadly die. So, while effective, it was a trick simply too sad to repeat as the world could not afford to lose too many of their striped kind.
Dianah, meanwhile, jumped from the flint walls onto the back of an eagle owl. Then, followed by a dozen of the bravest nymphs, they flew with stealth and grace towards the tower where the werewytch commanded her force. It was typical of Dianah, running straight at the trouble others run away from.
She signalled for four companions to launch a frontal assault on the wytch, who noticed them coming, as planned, and was drawn into directing a counter-strike by her own raptors.
The aerial fight that followed was well balanced until she intervened and downed two of her opponents with dark spells. But this bought Dianah time.
Before the wytch could react, her own owl had circled behind her and was on her and clawing at her eyes.
Dianah managed to somersault from the bird’s back and sank her spear into the wytch’s neck, causing her to scream with pain and drop back through the tunnel entrance.
But, just as hope started to rise, a massive werebeast raced from the shadows.
It was Sam.
In the blink of an eye, he pounced at Dianah, hungry for meat.
He caught her off guard and the last her companions saw was the sudden eruption of white feathers that sprang from the beast’s snapping jaws.
Word of Dianah’s demise, their greatest warrior, soon rippled around the faerie folk, making its way to Alice and Nimbus, who were riding upon the backs of brave deer, darting into and out of the ranks of the monsters, luring them into the traps set by the diggers.
They barely had time to feel sorrow or fear, however, as they were struggling for their own survival.
Snatching a look around the battle ground, Helice, the lord of the nymph folk, could see that they were being squeezed into a tighter and tighter defensive circle by the snarling, snapping, crazed werebeasts.
He summoned a row of archers, who fired swift volleys into a section of the beasts and they then led them on a merry dance back to the moat, creating some brief respite for their encircled friends, much to Sam’s howling fury.
Meanwhile, the enchantment spell the girls’ father had cast on the tents of the campers still ensured that no-one stirred there. However, the unwitting human families were now right in the centre of battle and nobody knew how long the enchantment would last.
As the dark horde closed ranks yet again, a loud roar and then series of screams and yelps erupted from the rear.
Sylvie could see a gang of around a dozen werebeasts, slightly taller than the rest, led by one with a distinctly thicker and glossier pelt. Incredibly, they soon realised that these werebeasts were savagely attacking the others.
The new creatures were slightly different in that they moved almost upright and used their limbs in attack more than biting jaws. But they were clearly incredibly strong, worked as a close team and were causing mayhem and waves of fear to wash over the enemy unnerved by what appeared to be treacherous betrayal by their own kind.
Sylvie looked up to where the wytch had reappeared, one hand to her neck which now clearly distressed her. The sight of the traitorous werebeasts clearly distressed her as she could be heard above the hubbub, screaming in anger.
By this stage, the branch traps were raining down on her army. But, with a wave of her arms, accompanied by a bluish light, she appeared to summon a mini whirlwind that whipped around the foot of the hill before picking up the broken branches and hurling them into the fighting crowd.
Her attack hurt and disabled more of her own allies than the enemy. But it succeeded in breaking the line of the backup force, if not their spirit.
Her victory was short-lived, however, as she quickly had to wheel and turn her attention to a new, unanticipated threat.
A series of loud screeches marked the sudden arrival of a most unexpected foe.
Alice noticed the new threat but couldn’t believe her eyes, for through the gap in the tree line flew a large mob of emberhawks. But, just as their hearts fell, she noticed something about the lead hawk.
There, riding the same bird that had carried him off earlier, was none other than their fallen friend, Zephyr.
He was clearly unhurt by his ordeal and was now standing proud aboard his feathered steed, firing his bow into the werewytch’s minions, accompanied by the rest of the elders, fighting like a creature possessed.
The aerial battle between the emberhawks and the red kites dominated the castle skyline as they darted and slashed, dived and parried with terrible beaks and claws. Some, locked in a terrible dance, plummeted into the wrestling masses on the ground, never to rise again.
But the werewytch had more misery planned.
On her signal, several of her twisted creatures set about burrowing into the banks of the watchtower.
Eventually cracks appeared and a terrible cloud of foul-smelling gas bubbled out, forcing winged creatures from the air and pushing the defensive circle to crumble on the northern edge.
The werebeasts, seemingly unaffected by the foul fumes, roared louder now and started to drive a wedge into the heart of the forest force.
Only the rallying of Helice and the elders provided a countering presence and were it not for a concentrated blast from their wands, which Alice and Nimbus joined, all would have been lost there and then.
To howls of derision from their foes, however, their powerful force field, bounced off the flint and crystal in the castle walls, and shattered before it coul
d do most damage.
Yet their force was much reduced now. Those isolated by the surge had been compelled to turn and flee. Many were hurt and wounded and others simply exhausted struggling with a foe driven by a strange power they just didn’t understand. Alice and the spellcasters looked especially drained. There was something about this place that was sapping them more than usual.
Shrouded beneath a magical bubble created by Helygenn, the forest folk could at least draw breath and regroup.
Huddled around their elders, what remained of their brave warriors patiently awaited news of their plan while rows of eyes and teeth watched intently and lustily from the dark places.
Helice, nursing a deep gash across his chest, was still gathering his thoughts when the castle walls started to glow with a golden light.
Then they all started to notice a hush that had descended upon the castle; even the werebeasts had fallen silent.
All eyes were gradually drawn towards the south and main gateway close to where a railway bridge now stood.
Various creatures were shuffling aside respectfully, until the mob parted, forming a tunnel of bodies.
Into the midst of this train of anger, walking slowly and regally, the woodland nymphs and forest creatures were shocked to see none other than Hearne, their prince, their monarch, their king.
And alongside him walked a human, a man. He was instantly recognisable to many of the party as Lord James Trelgathwin, of the Legend of the Lost. He was known by some as James Savage. But he was known, simply, by his children, as their dad.
At first, Holly and Savannah, in their human form, made as if to break through the rainbow shield to join him.
But a simple look and slight shake of his head halted that plan.
The path created by the werebeasts extended from the gate to the watchtower on the hill that the werewytch had commanded since the battle began.
Atop the platform at the crest of the hill, Alice recognised the cauldron Nimbus had liberated from their cabin. It was glowing ominously.
Then her heart dropped when she realised that Nimbus too must have fallen during the battle, a terrible thought confirmed by the fact that her searching eyes couldn’t find his normally beaming face in her modest crowd of comrades.
Legend of the Lost Page 12
