BerthaYankee66668
Beeches and Bluebells
Badbury Clump, near Faringdon, Oxfordshire.
HINGEFINKLE''''S LOGBOOK (Sixth Instalment)
The Great Goblin War
I have long been fascinated by the morphological characteristics of the various races of hominids; so much so, my dear boy, that when you arrived on my doorstep at Samhain all those months ago, and I discovered that you had pointy ears, my most urgent task was to determine the number of chambers in your heart. There were three, little Alias, whereas men like Agrimony and myself possess four. Four is such a prosaic number; but a heart with two ventricles and one auricle is a wondrous thing indeed. Its beating has that sophistication which a waltz possesses, and which the average bawdy song so sadly lacks. You share this honour with numerous other creatures: the hydras, the dragons – and, of course, the elder hominid races: the High Elves, the Gnomes, and even, so I have heard, the Dwarfs. Three is really the minimum practicable number in a hominid, unless one unwisely includes the Goblins, those horrid, merciless, treacherous travesties of humanity, whose hearts (if you can call them that) are nothing but a knot of black muscle which spasmodically squelches blood about the body, and makes no effort whatsoever to separate the fresh blood from the spent. The result is that the blood of Goblins is as black as the ink of the Kraken, and far smellier. I should know, for in darker days than these, I have had occasion to observe it running thick and fast.
It is evident that the freshness of the blood is a great virtue, for in Goblins, where it is foul at birth and grows the fouler with age, it addles the brain and incapacitates all powers of reason. If a good man were to pursue his goodness with the single-mindedness and devotion with which a Goblin pursues evil, his life would indeed be spotless and pure; the lives of Goblins, by contrast, are dark, grim and grotesque. It is a well established fact, too, that two Goblins are not merely twice as evil as one – for they have not lost their powers of inventiveness, nor have they abandoned the obvious advantages gained by co-operation. The atrociousness of their deeds increases exponentially as a group becomes a gaggle, and a gaggle a conglomerate, and a conglomerate a fully-fledged organisation (for Goblins, you should know, are not averse to bureaucracy). When Goblins form an alliance, misery is never far off; if ever it should happen that they gain the resources to form an army, one must have no reasonable justification for expecting anything but a reign of terror lasting a thousand years.
And yet, when all is said and done, the worst thing about Goblins is that they have, as I have already demonstrated, an uncanny ability to cover all that corruption and vice with a thin smear of whitewash, and thereby to seem all sweetness and light. You will have noted already my remark that the Goblin who endeavoured to steal my Hydra (and his purposes in doing so shall soon become evident), had, judging from his most excellent cravat, all the external makings of a man of true panache. The Goblins’ veneer of respectability is so very near to being flawless that they have become specialists in the art of beguilement, inspiring the admiration and even the loyalty of the innocent until, once they have earned unqualified trust, the veneer quite literally cracks open, and all at once their true identity is revealed. I have been told that the Goblins of other countries are not like this; they are quite content to be perfectly horrible creatures and leave it at that. But here, Goblins are so obsessed with manners that, when I see a man piling his peas on the back of his fork, or opening a door for a lady, or refusing to enter a room before somebody else - I instantly become suspicious. The gratuitous display of unnecessary airs and graces, the sonorous musicality of a genteel South-Eastern accent, the wearing of spatterdashes, cravats and bowler hats: all of these have become cause for alarm. Anyone behaving thus will, upon being introduced to me, be subjected to a simple taxonomic test. I will smell them.
For that is the one flaw in the average Goblin’s disguise. No Goblin can hide the fact that he stinks like fermented bat’s bile, as Agrimony so picturesquely puts it (Goblin skin is also bright green, of course, but as a morphological character that is not quite so decisive). So the average yokel is in fact relatively safe from Goblin beguilement; one whiff and the game is up, so to speak. Difficulties only really arise when the intended victim lacks a sense of smell, and that, I am sorry to say, was the problem with Prince Eugene, son and sole-surviving heir of Leartus, King of the East, who, as you may remember, lost his daughter Catriona in a most regrettable incident in the forests beyond the Bluebell Wood. Rumour has it that Eugene’s sense of smell had abandoned him when, as a little boy, he had been kidnapped by Orcs and forcefed on six-week old tripe seasoned with pickled Stapelia flowers. Typical Orcish delicacies, to be sure - and incontrovertible evidence that the Orcs were trying to fatten him up for the pot - but it just about blew Prince Eugene’s head off, and his olfactory organs were thoroughly cauterised. And so, when poor Prince Eugene, who had inherited his father’s hatred of the lands which had robbed him of his sister, was visited one day by a dapper little fellow named Scabpicker, wearing a pin-striped suit and a blue carnation in his buttonhole, he was happy to let the visitor into his throneroom provided he did not speak with a Cambrian accent. Furthermore, when Scabpicker, partaking delicately of a water-cracker smothered with caviare from the royal table, informed Prince Eugene that he was the owner of a large and well-equipped private army, and would be willing - for a small fee, of course - to invade the West, Eugene greeted him with open arms and signed a non-aggression pact with Scabpicker’s Notoriously Odious Territorials (or SNOT for short) that very evening.
Scabpicker went on to explain whilst politely nibbling on a prawn vol-au-vent (which he held expertly between thumb and forefinger with his pinkie sticking up in the air) that he would initiate the campaign that very night by sending an advance cohort of spies and undercover operatives to jinx the government of King Math, make black puddings out of any potential future leaders, and persuade some of the less scrupulous inhabitants of the West to become honorary members of SNOT and assist the invasion by provoking insurrections. Prince Eugene and Scabpicker exchanged innumerable bows, handshakes and insincere pleasantries, and Scabpicker introduced his Chief Military Advisor Spitmucus. They held a council of war which lasted all night, and in the morning, Prince Eugene issued a royal proclamation making King Math and his regent Llew Llaw Gyffes outlaws, declaring war on the West, and announcing that, due to unforseen circumstances, all caviare, prawns and vol-au-vents were required by the State for the war effort, and should be delivered up to the local magistrates. It is a terrible thing when those whose hearts have multiple chambers see fit to take counsel with those whose hearts have only one.
*
With hindsight, it seems obvious that Agrimony had been on to the conspiracy from the very beginning. I caught up with him at the Hermitage on the same evening that the Hydra had gained his fortuitous release, determined to persuade him to explain why it was that the anonymous Hydra-thief’s caper should be considered an event of the utmost importance. For I must confess that I was flummoxed: why should Agrimony, a man whose predilection for inaction was notorious, be so concerned about the deeds of a hapless monster-collector who - to use an apposite metaphor - bit off more than he could chew? I was therefore in a state of considerable bewilderment when I knocked on Agrimony’s door, and that bewilderment was only compounded when the door swung open and I perceived that the front room, normally so quiet and still, was filled with a group of illustrious personages, all of them angry, and arguing loudly.
“Codswallop!” roared Agrimony as I entered, “You cannot appease Goblins, King Math, any more than Bilgeguzzle could appease the Hydra. They will take what you offer, say thank you very much with a great show of civility, and then take your generosity as a sign that they can do whatever they like. The land will be awash with blood before you know it, and it will be your fault. And when they want the royal blood for a black-pudding - don’t come crying to me!”
“Well we never!” cried King Math indignantly. “We do not take kindly to being spoken to in that manner, even if you are a Druid.”
“Verily, verily, merrily, merrily, m’Lord,” squeaked Codpiece the Fool, bashing the back of his neck with his bauble, “It is his head which is the problem. Too many brains - too many objections! Chop it off, m’Lord, chop it off, and see if it will say codswallop from the bottom of a basket!” He waddled over to the corner of the room, tipped the firewood out of Agrimony’s basket, and mimed a beheading, with himself as both victim and executioner.
“Agrimony may be discourteous, King Math, but he is also right. You would do well to listen to him.” The voice was unknown to me; it came from a figure sitting by the fireplace, clad in leather armour, and with a great iron-headed spear at his right hand. He stood up as he spoke, and I gasped with wonder, partly because of his great height, which compelled him to stoop beneath the rafters, and partly because, in his gaunt, hawklike face and his long black locks, I beheld the likeness of Gwydion the Mage.
“Llew Llaw speaks well,” said Agrimony, giving an uncharacteristic nod of respect. “Say on.”
“We must resist the East without further ado. They have formed an unholy alliance, and they must be stopped in their tracks. The Elf-Lords realise this; that is why they have reoccupied their ancient castles along the Eastern marches.” Llew Llaw paced the floor gravely as he spoke, rapping the butt of his spear with every step. “But the Elf-Lords will not be able to withstand the flood - make no mistake about it. They do not belong to this world any longer, and the ways of war are not what they were when the Shard was shattered. The Goblins and the Easterners will be held on the Marches of the Elf-Lords for a week at the most. If Agrimony is correct, and the Goblins mean to bring other creatures with them to aid them in their rampage, then the Elf-Lords will not even last that long -”
“Fiddlesticks!” I interjected. “So that is why that Goblin - Sewerdrinker, did you call him? - wanted to steal the Hydra. Well, well! It certainly would have made a formidable secret weapon, if it hadn’t been so incorrigible!”
“Indeed,” said Agrimony. “But other creatures with more concentrated mental powers might possibly be persuaded to co-operate with the invading forces, if they can be convinced that there is something in it for them.”
“Hum, yes. Some of the lesser species of fire-dragon might be quite amenable to the idea, provided they could have a share in the treasure. Draco diminutivus obnoxiosious, for example, would jump at the chance-”
“- And there will be weeping in the Bluebell Wood before this is over,” added Llew Llaw, looking King Math in the eye. Coxcold started to say something, but stopped when Llew Llaw lifted his spear. He scurried behind an armchair, and cowered there, shuddering with fear. The war-lord looked out the window, casting his pale, blue eyes towards the east. “We must show no mercy,” he said. “The Easterners must be annihilated. I understand, Agrimony, that your friend Gladys Sparkbright has power over fire?”
Agrimony turned to face Llew Llaw, and met his gaze without flinching. “You would do well to keep her out of this, Llew Llaw. You say the Elves are otherworldly - but they know more of fighting than do the Gnomes. Gladys is an inventor - her explosives are for mining, nothing more. And besides, explosions like that would do untold damage among the Easterners. Their use would not be justifiable.”
“Untold damage. That is precisely what we want to do to the Easterners,” replied Llew Llaw. “We must obliterate their army, and launch a counter attack on their own people. I will not rest until we have annexed their whole territory.”
“And in so doing, you will become like a Goblin,” roared Agrimony. “For a moment I thought you were a man to be trusted, but now I perceive that you are a bloodthirsty tyrant. I’m not sure which is worse: your battle strategy, or King Math’s lily-livered appeasement plan. Frankly, I can’t be bothered -”
“We are not lily-livered,” blustered King Math. “We are the King, and we will observe the wisdom of Codpiece. Fool, go fetch the basket. Orf with his head!” But as he spoke, Agrimony turned upon him in a paroxysm of rage, and thrashed the floor with the end of his staff. The room was plunged into darkness for a moment, and then was filled with dazzling lights; it felt as though the whole fabric of the universe was being turned inside out. And then everything was back to normal again, except that, in the place where King Math had been sitting, there now crouched a bleary-eyed frog. It croaked forlornly, and hopped wetly onto the floor. As it did so, a second frog hopped from behind a chair and made for the basket, its belly making a hollow plopping noise at the end of each leap.
“Well, at least we are agreed on one thing,” said Llew Llaw unshaken. “Math and Codpiece had outlived their usefulness. Besides, he once did a similar thing to my father - it will do him good to have a dose of his own medicine.” And with that, he returned Agrimony’s nod of respect and marched out of the room, almost tumbling me to the floor as he passed.
“So,” said Agrimony, throwing himself into his armchair and gazing expressionlessly into the fireplace. “What did you think of that little interview, Hingefinkle?”
“Hum. Well, it certainly had a spectacular conclusion. I suppose you will be wanting some help with the paperwork?”
“Paperwork schplaperwork!” bellowed Agrimony, and he leapt from his seat, seized the appropriate notification forms from the table, and tore them to shreds until the remains lay on the floor like so many snow-flakes. “This is no time for bureaucracy! Exploding mice take the lot of them!” He collapsed once more into his chair.
“Hum. Speaking of exploding mice, what about Gladys? What is she going to say when Llew Llaw wants to use her magical explosives in battle?”
“She will not understand what he is talking about,” said Agrimony. “Gnomes and war do not mix. In the meantime, what are you going to do with those pathetic frogs? I’m sure they are more in your line of specialism than mine.”
“Indeed,” I said, regarding the two bewildered amphibians with some perplexity. “I know!” I cried at last, “I’ll take them to the Rancid Swamp! They’ll like it in there!”
“Quite so,” said Agrimony, and I scooped the two frogs into my pockets, and left Agrimony to brood over the state of the realm.
*
You may read of the terrible onslaught of the Goblins and the Easterners, my dear little Alias, in the Chronicles of the Elf-Lords. I am not a historian, and military matters bore me almost as much as political intrigues, but I must concede that there were certain aspects of the conflict which were truly remarkable. The Goblin hordes surrounded the castles of the Elf-Lords, having quite abandoned their urbane and sophisticated facades, and the fortresses withstood the sieges well until the Sun reached the twentieth degree of Aries. Shortly after midnight, just as Vega reached the fortieth degree in the Eastern sky, Scabpicker rode forth on a steed so terrible that all who beheld him went mad with fear. For he rode upon a dragon, dear little Alias - not, to be sure, anything so fearsome as Draco terribilis pyromanicus, but it was a fire-dragon nonetheless: a hideous creature, black with its own soot, which belched and vomited great sheets of flame over the battlements of every castle until all who sought shelter within the walls were burned or cooked alive. And at his cruel, taloned heels, there swept a host of other creatures, the like of which have never been seen in the East, and which - may Oghma be merciful - will never be encountered again. For Scabpicker and his general Spitmucus brought forth a great host of reptiles, all of them deformed by excess of evil, all of them with baleful slitted eyes which glowed green in the darkness. Some of them flew; others of them crawled. The ones without legs made do by slithering and puking venom into the waters. Some spat fire; still others contented themselves with more conventional deployments of tooth and talon. And some of them - not very many, but enough nonetheless - were skilled in the arts of enchantment, and toyed with their victims as cats do with mice, before pursuing them to their inevitable doom at the foothills beyond the Marches of the Elf-Lords. And so, at last, they flowed like a furious, unstoppable river into the realms of King Math, and fire and death followed after, until, as Agrimony and I stood atop the highest hill in the village, we cast our eyes on an eastern horizon littered with plumes of smoke, and the stars could be seen no more.
“Thar’s no doubt abaht it - that Llew Llaw duzzne know nothin’ abaht explosives!” said a voice behind us. I turned to see Gladys Sparkbright, even more bedraggled-looking than usual, and, beyond her, a large group of very despondent-looking Gnomes, all of them, apparently, employees from her workshop. “He has requisitioned all mah equipment,” she sighed, and her arms flapped limply at her side, betraying a state of nervous exhaustion. “An’ he’s started testin’ mah explosives already. Three of ‘is men got blown ter smithereens as we watched!”
Agrimony touched her shoulder with his hand. “Then you and I are both opposed to the way Llew Llaw chooses to conduct this war. Perhaps I was over-hasty in turning King Math into an amphibian - at least he represented an opposite point of view, however ineptly.”
“Hum,” I said. “What will you and your friends do now?”
“Ah don’t doubt that most of us will pack up shop an’ move further east.”
“Fiddlesticks!” I cried, “But there’s only ocean further east!”
“Aye,” said Gladys. “An’ after th’ ocean thar’s more land. Th’ Goblins surely won’t be comin’ that far. But Ah’ll be stayin’ nonetheless. Ah made t’explosives, an’ if thar’s any trouble with ‘em, Ah figger it’s dahn ter me.”
And so it was that when the Goblins and the Easterners entered the realm of King Math, they found hardly a single Gnome, for Gladys was sheltered by Agrimony, and the rest had taken their ships over the seas to the land where Bendigeidfran once walked. Gnomes are not like us men; they set no store by places. They could live anywhere and leave anywhere - but try to persuade a Gnome to change one of his ideas and, well, he won’t budge an inch. In this, as in so many other things, Gnomes are the precise opposite of Goblins, who set very great store by places (provided they can get them, and bleed them dry), and care not a fig for ideas.
In the meantime, Llew Llaw was implementing ideas of his own. He had employed all the mages in the land to attempt a reformulation of Gladys’s recipe which would be guaranteed to burn all of the Eastern forces to a crisp. The net result of all those intellects being combined was a magical formula which, when transformed into a concoction of powders and potions, ought to have made the breath of dragons look like harmless pyrotechnics. Then he invited all his most trusted advisors, and anyone with any influence in the realm, to a special Council of War, and he even - oh, dubious honour! - invited Agrimony and myself. We were ushered into the Royal halls and offered a sumptuous banquet, which Agrimony resolutely declined, and as the others ate, Llew Llaw invited us all to gloat over the new secret weapon, describing in detail its unparalleled destructive capacity, and providing a bewildering array of figures and formulae designed to provide an impression of the extent of damage to everything from city walls to chain armour to human tissue. He spoke with a very beguiling politeness, and his audience was enthralled. He made all sorts of courteous and flattering comments about the abilities of his advisers, and, seeking refreshment during a break in his speech (which lasted, all told, for three hours), he was observed to have developed a particular predilection for caviare and vol-au-vents. He condescended to eat some peas, too, piling them up in a precarious little pyramid on the back of his fork. And then he rose to speak once more, remarking in the gentlest of tones that he had saved the best for last.
“And so it is evident,” he said, “that while the Easterners -” (and how odd it was, I noted, that Llew Llaw now spoke of the enemy only as “Easterners” and never once mentioned Goblins) “- that while the Easterners think they have the advantage over us, we are in fact in possession of a weapon which will bring them to their knees. But I have, as I said before, saved the best for last. Deployment of this weapon against the advancing forces, spread out, as they are, in a line across the country, would be wasteful of its potential. So, even as we speak, Gentlemen, a special envoy of mine has entered the court of Prince Eugene, ostensibly to offer our terms of surrender. The envoy will, however, do nothing of the sort, for he is carrying in his backpack certain powders and potions. Hingefinkle, will you kindly tell us the time?”
I moved to the window, and measured the altitude of Vega, twenty-two degrees above the horizon. “Hum. It is ten o’clock.”
“Oh, how spiffing,” said Llew Llaw. “Ten o’clock is it? Marvellous. In that case, Gentlemen, I am delighted to inform you that the court of Prince Eugene no longer exists. Neither, for that matter, does the town surrounding it, nor any of its inhabitants. Now, fellows, don’t you think me remarkably clever? Let me propose a toast,” and here he lifted the stem of his glass between thumb and forefinger, his pinkie pointing in the air, “to Gladys Sparkbright!”
And as Llew Llaw spoke, the people at the table slowly began to shrink back towards the walls. Agrimony grabbed a napkin and clapped it to his nose. Some of the people with weaker stomachs were sick on the floor. It was not possible. It could not be. And yet, most assuredly it was true that the breath of Llew Llaw Gyffes had suddenly begun to smell like fermented bat’s bile. And when the wall caved in behind him to reveal Spitmucus astride what was - I am compelled to admit - a particularly impressive specimen of Draco diminutivus obnoxiosious, it was my distinct impression that the General of the Goblin Army, in all his hideous, pungent glory, was Llew Llaw’s identical twin.
Beeches and Bluebells
Badbury Clump, near Faringdon, Oxfordshire.
HINGEFINKLE''''S LOGBOOK (Sixth Instalment)
The Great Goblin War
I have long been fascinated by the morphological characteristics of the various races of hominids; so much so, my dear boy, that when you arrived on my doorstep at Samhain all those months ago, and I discovered that you had pointy ears, my most urgent task was to determine the number of chambers in your heart. There were three, little Alias, whereas men like Agrimony and myself possess four. Four is such a prosaic number; but a heart with two ventricles and one auricle is a wondrous thing indeed. Its beating has that sophistication which a waltz possesses, and which the average bawdy song so sadly lacks. You share this honour with numerous other creatures: the hydras, the dragons – and, of course, the elder hominid races: the High Elves, the Gnomes, and even, so I have heard, the Dwarfs. Three is really the minimum practicable number in a hominid, unless one unwisely includes the Goblins, those horrid, merciless, treacherous travesties of humanity, whose hearts (if you can call them that) are nothing but a knot of black muscle which spasmodically squelches blood about the body, and makes no effort whatsoever to separate the fresh blood from the spent. The result is that the blood of Goblins is as black as the ink of the Kraken, and far smellier. I should know, for in darker days than these, I have had occasion to observe it running thick and fast.
It is evident that the freshness of the blood is a great virtue, for in Goblins, where it is foul at birth and grows the fouler with age, it addles the brain and incapacitates all powers of reason. If a good man were to pursue his goodness with the single-mindedness and devotion with which a Goblin pursues evil, his life would indeed be spotless and pure; the lives of Goblins, by contrast, are dark, grim and grotesque. It is a well established fact, too, that two Goblins are not merely twice as evil as one – for they have not lost their powers of inventiveness, nor have they abandoned the obvious advantages gained by co-operation. The atrociousness of their deeds increases exponentially as a group becomes a gaggle, and a gaggle a conglomerate, and a conglomerate a fully-fledged organisation (for Goblins, you should know, are not averse to bureaucracy). When Goblins form an alliance, misery is never far off; if ever it should happen that they gain the resources to form an army, one must have no reasonable justification for expecting anything but a reign of terror lasting a thousand years.
And yet, when all is said and done, the worst thing about Goblins is that they have, as I have already demonstrated, an uncanny ability to cover all that corruption and vice with a thin smear of whitewash, and thereby to seem all sweetness and light. You will have noted already my remark that the Goblin who endeavoured to steal my Hydra (and his purposes in doing so shall soon become evident), had, judging from his most excellent cravat, all the external makings of a man of true panache. The Goblins’ veneer of respectability is so very near to being flawless that they have become specialists in the art of beguilement, inspiring the admiration and even the loyalty of the innocent until, once they have earned unqualified trust, the veneer quite literally cracks open, and all at once their true identity is revealed. I have been told that the Goblins of other countries are not like this; they are quite content to be perfectly horrible creatures and leave it at that. But here, Goblins are so obsessed with manners that, when I see a man piling his peas on the back of his fork, or opening a door for a lady, or refusing to enter a room before somebody else - I instantly become suspicious. The gratuitous display of unnecessary airs and graces, the sonorous musicality of a genteel South-Eastern accent, the wearing of spatterdashes, cravats and bowler hats: all of these have become cause for alarm. Anyone behaving thus will, upon being introduced to me, be subjected to a simple taxonomic test. I will smell them.
For that is the one flaw in the average Goblin’s disguise. No Goblin can hide the fact that he stinks like fermented bat’s bile, as Agrimony so picturesquely puts it (Goblin skin is also bright green, of course, but as a morphological character that is not quite so decisive). So the average yokel is in fact relatively safe from Goblin beguilement; one whiff and the game is up, so to speak. Difficulties only really arise when the intended victim lacks a sense of smell, and that, I am sorry to say, was the problem with Prince Eugene, son and sole-surviving heir of Leartus, King of the East, who, as you may remember, lost his daughter Catriona in a most regrettable incident in the forests beyond the Bluebell Wood. Rumour has it that Eugene’s sense of smell had abandoned him when, as a little boy, he had been kidnapped by Orcs and forcefed on six-week old tripe seasoned with pickled Stapelia flowers. Typical Orcish delicacies, to be sure - and incontrovertible evidence that the Orcs were trying to fatten him up for the pot - but it just about blew Prince Eugene’s head off, and his olfactory organs were thoroughly cauterised. And so, when poor Prince Eugene, who had inherited his father’s hatred of the lands which had robbed him of his sister, was visited one day by a dapper little fellow named Scabpicker, wearing a pin-striped suit and a blue carnation in his buttonhole, he was happy to let the visitor into his throneroom provided he did not speak with a Cambrian accent. Furthermore, when Scabpicker, partaking delicately of a water-cracker smothered with caviare from the royal table, informed Prince Eugene that he was the owner of a large and well-equipped private army, and would be willing - for a small fee, of course - to invade the West, Eugene greeted him with open arms and signed a non-aggression pact with Scabpicker’s Notoriously Odious Territorials (or SNOT for short) that very evening.
Scabpicker went on to explain whilst politely nibbling on a prawn vol-au-vent (which he held expertly between thumb and forefinger with his pinkie sticking up in the air) that he would initiate the campaign that very night by sending an advance cohort of spies and undercover operatives to jinx the government of King Math, make black puddings out of any potential future leaders, and persuade some of the less scrupulous inhabitants of the West to become honorary members of SNOT and assist the invasion by provoking insurrections. Prince Eugene and Scabpicker exchanged innumerable bows, handshakes and insincere pleasantries, and Scabpicker introduced his Chief Military Advisor Spitmucus. They held a council of war which lasted all night, and in the morning, Prince Eugene issued a royal proclamation making King Math and his regent Llew Llaw Gyffes outlaws, declaring war on the West, and announcing that, due to unforseen circumstances, all caviare, prawns and vol-au-vents were required by the State for the war effort, and should be delivered up to the local magistrates. It is a terrible thing when those whose hearts have multiple chambers see fit to take counsel with those whose hearts have only one.
*
With hindsight, it seems obvious that Agrimony had been on to the conspiracy from the very beginning. I caught up with him at the Hermitage on the same evening that the Hydra had gained his fortuitous release, determined to persuade him to explain why it was that the anonymous Hydra-thief’s caper should be considered an event of the utmost importance. For I must confess that I was flummoxed: why should Agrimony, a man whose predilection for inaction was notorious, be so concerned about the deeds of a hapless monster-collector who - to use an apposite metaphor - bit off more than he could chew? I was therefore in a state of considerable bewilderment when I knocked on Agrimony’s door, and that bewilderment was only compounded when the door swung open and I perceived that the front room, normally so quiet and still, was filled with a group of illustrious personages, all of them angry, and arguing loudly.
“Codswallop!” roared Agrimony as I entered, “You cannot appease Goblins, King Math, any more than Bilgeguzzle could appease the Hydra. They will take what you offer, say thank you very much with a great show of civility, and then take your generosity as a sign that they can do whatever they like. The land will be awash with blood before you know it, and it will be your fault. And when they want the royal blood for a black-pudding - don’t come crying to me!”
“Well we never!” cried King Math indignantly. “We do not take kindly to being spoken to in that manner, even if you are a Druid.”
“Verily, verily, merrily, merrily, m’Lord,” squeaked Codpiece the Fool, bashing the back of his neck with his bauble, “It is his head which is the problem. Too many brains - too many objections! Chop it off, m’Lord, chop it off, and see if it will say codswallop from the bottom of a basket!” He waddled over to the corner of the room, tipped the firewood out of Agrimony’s basket, and mimed a beheading, with himself as both victim and executioner.
“Agrimony may be discourteous, King Math, but he is also right. You would do well to listen to him.” The voice was unknown to me; it came from a figure sitting by the fireplace, clad in leather armour, and with a great iron-headed spear at his right hand. He stood up as he spoke, and I gasped with wonder, partly because of his great height, which compelled him to stoop beneath the rafters, and partly because, in his gaunt, hawklike face and his long black locks, I beheld the likeness of Gwydion the Mage.
“Llew Llaw speaks well,” said Agrimony, giving an uncharacteristic nod of respect. “Say on.”
“We must resist the East without further ado. They have formed an unholy alliance, and they must be stopped in their tracks. The Elf-Lords realise this; that is why they have reoccupied their ancient castles along the Eastern marches.” Llew Llaw paced the floor gravely as he spoke, rapping the butt of his spear with every step. “But the Elf-Lords will not be able to withstand the flood - make no mistake about it. They do not belong to this world any longer, and the ways of war are not what they were when the Shard was shattered. The Goblins and the Easterners will be held on the Marches of the Elf-Lords for a week at the most. If Agrimony is correct, and the Goblins mean to bring other creatures with them to aid them in their rampage, then the Elf-Lords will not even last that long -”
“Fiddlesticks!” I interjected. “So that is why that Goblin - Sewerdrinker, did you call him? - wanted to steal the Hydra. Well, well! It certainly would have made a formidable secret weapon, if it hadn’t been so incorrigible!”
“Indeed,” said Agrimony. “But other creatures with more concentrated mental powers might possibly be persuaded to co-operate with the invading forces, if they can be convinced that there is something in it for them.”
“Hum, yes. Some of the lesser species of fire-dragon might be quite amenable to the idea, provided they could have a share in the treasure. Draco diminutivus obnoxiosious, for example, would jump at the chance-”
“- And there will be weeping in the Bluebell Wood before this is over,” added Llew Llaw, looking King Math in the eye. Coxcold started to say something, but stopped when Llew Llaw lifted his spear. He scurried behind an armchair, and cowered there, shuddering with fear. The war-lord looked out the window, casting his pale, blue eyes towards the east. “We must show no mercy,” he said. “The Easterners must be annihilated. I understand, Agrimony, that your friend Gladys Sparkbright has power over fire?”
Agrimony turned to face Llew Llaw, and met his gaze without flinching. “You would do well to keep her out of this, Llew Llaw. You say the Elves are otherworldly - but they know more of fighting than do the Gnomes. Gladys is an inventor - her explosives are for mining, nothing more. And besides, explosions like that would do untold damage among the Easterners. Their use would not be justifiable.”
“Untold damage. That is precisely what we want to do to the Easterners,” replied Llew Llaw. “We must obliterate their army, and launch a counter attack on their own people. I will not rest until we have annexed their whole territory.”
“And in so doing, you will become like a Goblin,” roared Agrimony. “For a moment I thought you were a man to be trusted, but now I perceive that you are a bloodthirsty tyrant. I’m not sure which is worse: your battle strategy, or King Math’s lily-livered appeasement plan. Frankly, I can’t be bothered -”
“We are not lily-livered,” blustered King Math. “We are the King, and we will observe the wisdom of Codpiece. Fool, go fetch the basket. Orf with his head!” But as he spoke, Agrimony turned upon him in a paroxysm of rage, and thrashed the floor with the end of his staff. The room was plunged into darkness for a moment, and then was filled with dazzling lights; it felt as though the whole fabric of the universe was being turned inside out. And then everything was back to normal again, except that, in the place where King Math had been sitting, there now crouched a bleary-eyed frog. It croaked forlornly, and hopped wetly onto the floor. As it did so, a second frog hopped from behind a chair and made for the basket, its belly making a hollow plopping noise at the end of each leap.
“Well, at least we are agreed on one thing,” said Llew Llaw unshaken. “Math and Codpiece had outlived their usefulness. Besides, he once did a similar thing to my father - it will do him good to have a dose of his own medicine.” And with that, he returned Agrimony’s nod of respect and marched out of the room, almost tumbling me to the floor as he passed.
“So,” said Agrimony, throwing himself into his armchair and gazing expressionlessly into the fireplace. “What did you think of that little interview, Hingefinkle?”
“Hum. Well, it certainly had a spectacular conclusion. I suppose you will be wanting some help with the paperwork?”
“Paperwork schplaperwork!” bellowed Agrimony, and he leapt from his seat, seized the appropriate notification forms from the table, and tore them to shreds until the remains lay on the floor like so many snow-flakes. “This is no time for bureaucracy! Exploding mice take the lot of them!” He collapsed once more into his chair.
“Hum. Speaking of exploding mice, what about Gladys? What is she going to say when Llew Llaw wants to use her magical explosives in battle?”
“She will not understand what he is talking about,” said Agrimony. “Gnomes and war do not mix. In the meantime, what are you going to do with those pathetic frogs? I’m sure they are more in your line of specialism than mine.”
“Indeed,” I said, regarding the two bewildered amphibians with some perplexity. “I know!” I cried at last, “I’ll take them to the Rancid Swamp! They’ll like it in there!”
“Quite so,” said Agrimony, and I scooped the two frogs into my pockets, and left Agrimony to brood over the state of the realm.
*
You may read of the terrible onslaught of the Goblins and the Easterners, my dear little Alias, in the Chronicles of the Elf-Lords. I am not a historian, and military matters bore me almost as much as political intrigues, but I must concede that there were certain aspects of the conflict which were truly remarkable. The Goblin hordes surrounded the castles of the Elf-Lords, having quite abandoned their urbane and sophisticated facades, and the fortresses withstood the sieges well until the Sun reached the twentieth degree of Aries. Shortly after midnight, just as Vega reached the fortieth degree in the Eastern sky, Scabpicker rode forth on a steed so terrible that all who beheld him went mad with fear. For he rode upon a dragon, dear little Alias - not, to be sure, anything so fearsome as Draco terribilis pyromanicus, but it was a fire-dragon nonetheless: a hideous creature, black with its own soot, which belched and vomited great sheets of flame over the battlements of every castle until all who sought shelter within the walls were burned or cooked alive. And at his cruel, taloned heels, there swept a host of other creatures, the like of which have never been seen in the East, and which - may Oghma be merciful - will never be encountered again. For Scabpicker and his general Spitmucus brought forth a great host of reptiles, all of them deformed by excess of evil, all of them with baleful slitted eyes which glowed green in the darkness. Some of them flew; others of them crawled. The ones without legs made do by slithering and puking venom into the waters. Some spat fire; still others contented themselves with more conventional deployments of tooth and talon. And some of them - not very many, but enough nonetheless - were skilled in the arts of enchantment, and toyed with their victims as cats do with mice, before pursuing them to their inevitable doom at the foothills beyond the Marches of the Elf-Lords. And so, at last, they flowed like a furious, unstoppable river into the realms of King Math, and fire and death followed after, until, as Agrimony and I stood atop the highest hill in the village, we cast our eyes on an eastern horizon littered with plumes of smoke, and the stars could be seen no more.
“Thar’s no doubt abaht it - that Llew Llaw duzzne know nothin’ abaht explosives!” said a voice behind us. I turned to see Gladys Sparkbright, even more bedraggled-looking than usual, and, beyond her, a large group of very despondent-looking Gnomes, all of them, apparently, employees from her workshop. “He has requisitioned all mah equipment,” she sighed, and her arms flapped limply at her side, betraying a state of nervous exhaustion. “An’ he’s started testin’ mah explosives already. Three of ‘is men got blown ter smithereens as we watched!”
Agrimony touched her shoulder with his hand. “Then you and I are both opposed to the way Llew Llaw chooses to conduct this war. Perhaps I was over-hasty in turning King Math into an amphibian - at least he represented an opposite point of view, however ineptly.”
“Hum,” I said. “What will you and your friends do now?”
“Ah don’t doubt that most of us will pack up shop an’ move further east.”
“Fiddlesticks!” I cried, “But there’s only ocean further east!”
“Aye,” said Gladys. “An’ after th’ ocean thar’s more land. Th’ Goblins surely won’t be comin’ that far. But Ah’ll be stayin’ nonetheless. Ah made t’explosives, an’ if thar’s any trouble with ‘em, Ah figger it’s dahn ter me.”
And so it was that when the Goblins and the Easterners entered the realm of King Math, they found hardly a single Gnome, for Gladys was sheltered by Agrimony, and the rest had taken their ships over the seas to the land where Bendigeidfran once walked. Gnomes are not like us men; they set no store by places. They could live anywhere and leave anywhere - but try to persuade a Gnome to change one of his ideas and, well, he won’t budge an inch. In this, as in so many other things, Gnomes are the precise opposite of Goblins, who set very great store by places (provided they can get them, and bleed them dry), and care not a fig for ideas.
In the meantime, Llew Llaw was implementing ideas of his own. He had employed all the mages in the land to attempt a reformulation of Gladys’s recipe which would be guaranteed to burn all of the Eastern forces to a crisp. The net result of all those intellects being combined was a magical formula which, when transformed into a concoction of powders and potions, ought to have made the breath of dragons look like harmless pyrotechnics. Then he invited all his most trusted advisors, and anyone with any influence in the realm, to a special Council of War, and he even - oh, dubious honour! - invited Agrimony and myself. We were ushered into the Royal halls and offered a sumptuous banquet, which Agrimony resolutely declined, and as the others ate, Llew Llaw invited us all to gloat over the new secret weapon, describing in detail its unparalleled destructive capacity, and providing a bewildering array of figures and formulae designed to provide an impression of the extent of damage to everything from city walls to chain armour to human tissue. He spoke with a very beguiling politeness, and his audience was enthralled. He made all sorts of courteous and flattering comments about the abilities of his advisers, and, seeking refreshment during a break in his speech (which lasted, all told, for three hours), he was observed to have developed a particular predilection for caviare and vol-au-vents. He condescended to eat some peas, too, piling them up in a precarious little pyramid on the back of his fork. And then he rose to speak once more, remarking in the gentlest of tones that he had saved the best for last.
“And so it is evident,” he said, “that while the Easterners -” (and how odd it was, I noted, that Llew Llaw now spoke of the enemy only as “Easterners” and never once mentioned Goblins) “- that while the Easterners think they have the advantage over us, we are in fact in possession of a weapon which will bring them to their knees. But I have, as I said before, saved the best for last. Deployment of this weapon against the advancing forces, spread out, as they are, in a line across the country, would be wasteful of its potential. So, even as we speak, Gentlemen, a special envoy of mine has entered the court of Prince Eugene, ostensibly to offer our terms of surrender. The envoy will, however, do nothing of the sort, for he is carrying in his backpack certain powders and potions. Hingefinkle, will you kindly tell us the time?”
I moved to the window, and measured the altitude of Vega, twenty-two degrees above the horizon. “Hum. It is ten o’clock.”
“Oh, how spiffing,” said Llew Llaw. “Ten o’clock is it? Marvellous. In that case, Gentlemen, I am delighted to inform you that the court of Prince Eugene no longer exists. Neither, for that matter, does the town surrounding it, nor any of its inhabitants. Now, fellows, don’t you think me remarkably clever? Let me propose a toast,” and here he lifted the stem of his glass between thumb and forefinger, his pinkie pointing in the air, “to Gladys Sparkbright!”
And as Llew Llaw spoke, the people at the table slowly began to shrink back towards the walls. Agrimony grabbed a napkin and clapped it to his nose. Some of the people with weaker stomachs were sick on the floor. It was not possible. It could not be. And yet, most assuredly it was true that the breath of Llew Llaw Gyffes had suddenly begun to smell like fermented bat’s bile. And when the wall caved in behind him to reveal Spitmucus astride what was - I am compelled to admit - a particularly impressive specimen of Draco diminutivus obnoxiosious, it was my distinct impression that the General of the Goblin Army, in all his hideous, pungent glory, was Llew Llaw’s identical twin.