‘Poor creatures,’ muttered Stegrewl, the long-haired goblin.
‘Oi! You, there!’ came a rough voice. ‘Stop right there!’
They turned to see a phalanx of burly flat-head goblin guards bearing down on them, a large, battle-scarred captain at their head.
Amberfuce tapped Flambusia on the shoulder, motioning her forward, but before he could speak, Quillet Pleeme had pushed past her and addressed the captain face to face.
‘Greetings!’ he said, bowing his head in salute. ‘We are sky pirates who have risked our lives to escort Chancellor Amberfuce of old Undertown safely to the Foundry Glades…’
The captain delivered a swift blow to the quartermaster's midriff that sent him tumbling to the ground, doubled up and gasping for breath. ‘Silence, scum!’ he roared, raising his sword.
My dear captain … er … Hegghuft, is it? Amberfuce's honeyed tones sounded inside the guard's head. I can tell you are a warrior of great distinction. One of my great friend Hemuel Spume's most trusted captains. He will be pleased when I tell him of your … er … diligence.
The waif pulled his scarf down to reveal a sickly, ingratiating smile.
The goblin stared back at him and slowly lowered his sword.
‘Now if you would be so kind as to take me to your master …’ Amberfuce said out loud, fighting to stifle the cough rising in his throat.
The captain nodded slowly, then turned to his guards. ‘Take their weapons,’ he ordered, indicating the sky pirates before turning back to the waif. ‘This way, Chancellor,’ he growled.
They made their way through the Foundry Glades, past furnaces bigger and more terrible than the first, barging through scurrying workers and their bullying guards, until at last ahead of them, the palace loomed into view. They hurried across the front courtyard, in through the gates and – still accompanied by the goblin guards – up a broad staircase to the third floor. In front of them, a huge metal-plated door swung slowly open and a stooped individual with steel-rimmed glasses and long side-whiskers appeared, flanked on either side by palace guards.
‘Amberfuce! Amberfuce!’ he cried, peering up at the ghostwaif slumped on Flambusia's back. Can it really be you? After all these years!’
‘Hemuel, my dear friend,’ said Amberfuce, looking down. He pursed his lips with irritation. ‘Get me down, Flambusia,’ he said. ‘Now!’
The nurse reached up, lifted her charge out of the sling on her back and plonked him down with just a touch more vigour than was absolutely necessary. ‘There,’ she said, smiling sweetly.
Amberfuce collected himself. ‘It's been far too long, Hemuel,’ he said, breathlessly.
‘Indeed,’ said Spume. ‘But I've made great progress here in the Foundry Glades while you've been holed up in Undertown.’ He smiled, revealing a row of jagged yellow teeth, and rubbed a forefinger and thumb together. ‘Your investments have done very well. We're expanding, Amberfuce, expanding beyond our wildest dreams. I've got the goblins just where I want them, and the Free Glades in my sights. And now you're here, Amberfuce, old friend, to share in this great venture.’
‘Wild prowlgrins couldn't have kept me away,’ said Amberfuce excitedly, his barbels quivering. ‘We must speak in private, right away.’ He tapped the box clutched to his chest. His voice dropped. ‘I think you'll find what I have here of interest.’
‘Oh, but of course,’ said Hemuel Spume. ‘Follow me.’
He turned away. Amberfuce followed, Flambusia stooping over him, mopping his sweaty brow with her handkerchief as she went.
‘What about us?’ said Quillet Pleeme, peevishly. ‘Aren't you forgetting something? You promised that your friend here would make us Furnace Masters…’
Hemuel Spume stopped and spun round on his heel. ‘Furnace Masters?’ he said, a ghost of a smile playing on his thin lips. He looked at the ghostwaif, who smiled back at him. ‘Oh, Amberfuce, you naughty old thing! Sky pirates as Furnace Masters? Whatever next! You knew I'd never agree.’
Amberfuce nodded. ‘Yes,’ he whispered, ‘but they didn't know that.’
‘You said you'd have a word!’ Quillet Pleeme pleaded, his voice a thin whine. ‘A word, you said. A word …’
‘Oh, I have a word,’ said Amberfuce nastily. ‘Perhaps you recognize it?’
Quillet, Myzewell and the sky pirates stared back at the ghostwaif as the guards seized them by the arms.
‘Goodbye!’
Hemuel Spume smiled. ‘Some do very well here,’ he said, ‘if they work hard. Guards, take them away!’
As the cursing and moaning faded behind them, Hemuel Spume led Amberfuce and Flambusia to the back of the great hall. He paused by a small door, and waved Flambusia away.
‘If you'd be kind enough to leave us, my dear,’ he said.
‘But … But …’ cried Flambusia outraged. ‘His medicines! His embrocations! His…’
‘Flambusia never leaves my side,’ said Amberfuce, his barbels quivering with agitation.
Hemuel flashed the same thin-lipped, yellow-toothed smile as he turned the handle, pushed Amberfuce inside the ante-chamber and slammed the door in Flambusia Flodfox's pink, indignant face. Locking it, he turned to Amberfuce.
‘First things first,’ he said. ‘You wanted to speak to me in private…’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Amberfuce. ‘But I didn't mean without Flambusia…’
Hemuel steered the ghostwaif over to a small table. ‘Forget the nurse for a moment,’ he said, ‘and show me what's in that box!’
Amberfuce laid the box down, pulled a key from around his neck and opened it. Inside, there were wads of folded paper. He pulled one out at random, opened it up and spread it out on the table. He cleared his throat.
‘As the right-hand waif to Vox Verlix, the most brilliant mind in old Undertown, I had access to his private chambers. When I sent word to you that I was coming, I promised I'd bring something special with me.’
‘Indeed you did. But just how special?’ said Hemuel Spume, his eyes glinting.
‘This,’ said Amberfuce with a little chuckle, ‘is one of Vox Verlix's blueprints. Everyone knows the Sanctaphrax Forest, the Tower of Night, the Great Mire Road…’ He shrugged. ‘Yet they were but a few of his ideas. He worked on others, too. Many others.’ He removed a second blueprint and spread it out over the first; then a third … ‘Catapults, log-launchers, flaming slings … His mind was never still. And this …’ He took a fourth blueprint from the box and spread it out carefully on top of the others. ‘This is the finest of the lot.’
‘So I can see,’ said Hemuel, his eyes glinting wildly as he pawed over the detailed design. ‘Wonderful! Wonderful!’ he breathed.
‘I knew you'd be pleased,’ said Amberfuce.
‘I couldn't be more pleased,’ said Hemuel. ‘And now, in return, I have a little surprise for you.’
‘A surprise?’ said Amberfuce, coughing with excitement. ‘What … sort of … sur …’ The coughing grew worse. ‘Oh, Flambusia!’ he gasped. ‘I need Flambusia!’
From behind them, there came a muffled hammering on the door and the sound of Flambusia's outraged voice, demanding to be let in.
‘You don't need her, believe me,’ said Spume with a smile, as he led the frail ghostwaif over to the far side of the ante-chamber, and opened a second door.
Amberfuce looked through into the room on the other side. His eyes widened, his cheeks coloured – and his cough magically melted away. ‘Hemuel,’ he gasped. ‘Have I died and gone to the Eternal Glen?’
The Foundry Master chuckled as he ushered the waif inside the room, where a score of gabtroll apothecaresses immediately surrounded him, each one bearing kneading-rods, birchwood-twigs, rough flannels and spicy, aromatic massage-oils.
‘I'm putting my own personal attendants at your disposal. Enjoy!’
‘Amby?’ Flambusia wailed bleakly.
The ghostwaif was gently laid out on a raised table.
‘Amby?’
But Amberfuce didn't rep
ly. Doused in oils and ointments, unguents and salves; rubbed, kneaded and stroked, a radiant smile spread across his face. His eyelids fluttered for a moment, then closed.
‘AMBY!’
‘Not now, Flambusia,’ he purred happily, as he submitted to the wonderfully rough, firm hands. ‘Not now.’
ii The Goblin Nations
‘But why must the lop-ear clan always bear the heaviest burden?’ Meegmewl cried out indignantly.
The old grey goblin had heard some things in his life, but to demand a consignment of a thousand goblins a month was outrageous, even for Hemuel Spume. With the harvest not yet in, it would mean hunger in the clan's villages at the very least.
‘Because, old goblin, my flat-heads and hammerheads are warriors,’ said Lytugg fiercely. ‘They're willing to act as guards, but as for operating the foundries and furnaces…’
‘And that goes for my lot, too,’ snarled Rootrott Underbiter. ‘We tusked goblins are prepared to make sacrifices, don't get me wrong.’ He drained his tankard and slammed it heavily down on the table. ‘We're ready to fight, of course we are, but as for those accursed Foundry Glades, enough is enough!’
Hemtuft Battleaxe shifted forward in his chair, adjusted his feathered cloak and cleared his throat. ‘We need those “accursed Foundry Glades”, as you put it,’ he said, fixing the tusked clan chief with a cold stare. ‘I don't believe we have any choice in the matter.’ His eyes darkened. ‘Now, more than ever before, it is vital to keep them well supplied with labour.’ He looked round. ‘I take it we're all agreed on that, at least.’
The other clan chiefs nodded cautiously.
Sensing that his hastily convened closed-meeting was shifting in his direction at last, Hemtuft seized the advantage. He looked sternly at the clan chiefs, one after the other: Lytugg the hammerhead, her red eyes blazing; Rootrott Underbiter the tusked goblin, scowling; Grossmother Nectarsweet the symbite, her huge chins glistening with drops of woodale, and Meegmewl the Grey, shrunken and frail, yet defiant even now…
‘There are great plans afoot in the Foundry Glades,’ Hemtuft said. ‘Plans that will bring the clans untold wealth and prosperity in the future – if only we are
prepared to make a sacrifice now…’
As he spoke, a dumpy black-eared goblin matron went round the table, topping up the goblets. Knowing how challenging the meeting would be, Hemtuft had got in extra woodale specially. The five of them present were already on their second barrel.
‘What are these plans you speak of?’ Meegmewl asked. ‘Plans that demand so much of my clan brothers.’
Hemtuft Battleaxe looked grave. ‘You must trust me, Meegmewl the Grey,’ he said. He looked askance at the black-eared goblin matron retreating from the chamber. ‘There are Free Glade spies everywhere! We must be careful. All I can say is that Hemuel Spume is working on something big; something that will take a huge workforce to bring to fruition, but something that will guarantee us victory! He calls it “the glade-eater”.’
For a while, no one spoke. The only sounds were those of sipping and slurping, and the hammering down of pewter tankards on the ironwood tabletop. It was Rootrott Underbiter who first broke the silence.
‘Glade-eater, eh?’ he said. ‘I like the sound of that.’ He smiled unpleasantly. ‘I'll give you old'uns, the sick and the lame, and that's my final offer. As for my finest tufteds and black-ears, they're needed for battle. The Furnace Masters aren't getting their sooty hands on them!’
A murmur of agreement went round the table. Hemtuft nodded sagely. ‘I'll send our third-borns,’ he said. ‘They never make the finest warriors anyway.’
‘No hammerheads, but I can spare some flat-heads,’ said Lytugg. ‘Strictly for guard-duty, you understand.’
‘Good,’ smiled Hemtuft. ‘How about you, Nectarsweet?’
‘I suppose I can spare a colony or two of gnokgoblins,’ she replied, the rolls of fat beneath her chins bouncing about as she spoke. ‘But I need my gyle goblins, every one of them. They're my babies …’ Tears sprang to her tiny eyes.
‘Yes, yes,’ said Hemtuft, turning to Meegmewl. ‘You heard the sacrifices the other clans are prepared to make,’ he said sternly. ‘Now it is the turn of the lop-ear clan.’
Meegmewl sighed. ‘I've already sacrificed too many a pink-eye and grey,’ he said. He shook his head. ‘The mood in the clan villages is turning ugly…’
‘Pah!’ said Lytugg scornfully. ‘Is the great clan chief, Meegmewl the Grey, frightened of his own goblins?’
Meegmewl looked down at the table. Hemtuft laid a hand on his shoulder.
‘What about your low-bellies, old friend?’ he said, smiling. ‘They're a good-natured, docile lot – and there's plenty of them. I'm sure Lytugg can lend you some of her flat-heads to round them up.’
Lytugg nodded. ‘
Ah, yes, the low-bellies,’ said Meegmewl quietly. He sighed again. ‘I suppose you're right, though I don't like it. I don't like it at all. Good-natured, docile creatures they may be, but even a low-belly can be pushed too far.’
Hemtuft raised his goblet. ‘To the glade-eater!’ he roared.
‘Now, friends of the harvest, let us gather round the table and each say our piece.’
‘It's not a table!’ someone shouted. ‘It's a hay-cart!’
‘Move over!’
‘Who are you pushing?’
Lob and Lummel Grope were attempting to bring a meeting of their own to order. Having attended Hemtuft Battleaxe's great assembly of the clans in the long-hairs' open-sided clan hut, they knew more or less what to do. The trouble was, no one else did.
‘Friends,’ said Lob, in a loud whisper. ‘Please! If we all speak at once, no one will be heard.’
‘S'not fair, so it isn't and that's a fact,’ said an old low-belly, scratching his swollen stomach through the grubby fabric of his belly-sling.
‘S'always us,’ another piped up, his straw bonnet jiggling about on his head. ‘An' I for one have had enough of it.’
‘I've lost a father, two brothers, eight cousins …’ broke in a third heatedly.
‘No one cares a jot about us…’
The babble of voices rose, with everyone trying to speak at the same time and no one able to hear anyone else. It was punctuated by occasional knocks on the barn-door, as others arrived to join the meeting. Lummel raised his hand to restore order. The last thing they wanted was to get into a shouting match and attract the attention of a flat-head patrol. But feelings were running high.
Word of Hemuel Spume's latest demands had gone round the Goblin Nations like wildfire, and it wasn't only the lop-ears in the western farmlands who were protesting. Goblins from all over were covertly whispering, one to the other, that enough was enough, and the meeting in the old wicker barn was getting larger and more unwieldy all the time.
‘Who goes there?’ bellowed a low-belly with a stubbly chin and a pitchfork, menacingly raised as yet another visitor knocked on the door.
‘A friend of the harvest,’ came the hissed reply. ‘Let me in.’
The door was unbolted and pulled back. The newcomer – a young tufted goblin with a jagged-toothed sabre and an ironwood shield – poked his head inside.
‘Enter, friend,’ the low-belly guard said. ‘But leave your weapon outside.’
The tufted goblin did as he was told and went in. A moment later, the guard was admitting a sick-looking tusked goblin, and a trio of garrulous gnokgoblins.
‘Friends …’ Lob shouted, his call lost among the rising cacophony of voices.
‘I mean, we've only got half the harvest in,’ someone was complaining. ‘Are we expected to leave the rest in the fields to rot?’
‘It just don't seem to occur to them that we all gotta eat!’
‘War, war, war – tha's all they ever seem to talk about.’
‘Friends, one and all!’ Lummel called out. ‘We must band together…’
But no one heard him. Of course, it didn't help that each and every one
of the gathered goblins was tucking in to the woodapple cider that they had discovered was being stored in the barn. In the end, it was an old tusked goblin who took it upon himself to impose some kind of order on the proceedings. He strode to the front, where Lob and Lummel were now standing on top of the hay cart, and bellowed for quiet, before collapsing and calling for a swig of cider.
Shocked, the gathering of goblins fell silent. All eyes turned to the front.
‘Thank you, friends,’ said Lob, humbly. He turned to face the expectant crowd. ‘We have all lost loved ones to the Foundry Glades,’ he began.
‘And soon the flat-head guards will come for us,’ Lummel continued. ‘Low-belly, gnokgoblin, long-hair and tusked, young and old, frail and sick!’
The crowd murmured, heads nodding. ‘But what can we do?’ called out a gnokgoblin.
‘We must work together,’ said Lob.
‘We must help each other,’ said Lummel.
A muttering got up in the crowd as the two brothers' words sank in. They made sense, and the goblins started offering help to one another, suggesting places where those who were on the lists for the Foundry Glades might safely be concealed. As the noise began to rise once more, Lummel raised his hand for quiet.
‘We all know what this is about,’ said Lob, as the noise abated. ‘The clan chiefs want a war against the Free Glades, a war that'll make them rich. That much is clear. But why should we fight the Freegladers? Do not all of us have friends and relations who live among them?’
A murmur of assent went round.
‘What quarrel have the Goblin Nations with the Free Glades?’ Lummel added. ‘Why, their mayor is a goblin. A low-belly goblin! Hebb Lub-drub is his name.’ He paused, to let the words sink in. ‘A low-belly goblin, mayor of New Undertown.’ He shook his head. ‘Do any of us here want to help destroy such a place?’
For a moment there was silence. Then, tentatively at first, but with growing conviction, voices from all round the old wicker barn answered.
‘No…’
‘No…’