Cupping paws around his mouth the Squirrelking called back, ‘Yes, I’m on the battlements. Mariel, I don’t need the rope to go the rest of the way, I can climb down the wall, the plateau side too, once I’ve got across the moat.’
Mariel’s answer came back immediately. ‘Good, then don’t wait about there, escape while you can. We’ll be down right after you. Go, your wife and babe need you.’ Gael started scaling the walls down to the moat, sure pawed and nimble now that freedom was within his reach.
Mariel nodded to Dandin. ‘You’re next, mate.’
‘No, after you, miss. I’ll go last!’
‘I’m the senior officer here, I go last, m’lad!’ huffed Meldrum.
Mariel spread her paws in despair. ‘We can’t all go last. Look, who’s going now?’
Dandin and Meldrum pointed firmly at her. ‘You!’
Mariel let herself down on to the ropes, muttering, ‘Well, if somebeast doesn’t go we’ll be stuck up here all season. Here goes!’
Armed with pikes and archery equipment, thirty horderats, led by Nagru and Silvamord, sneaked furtively along the ramparts until they were at the west battlement edge. Crouching down in the shadows, Silvamord whispered to Nagru, ‘We catch them one by one as they land, right?’
Pulling the wolfhide about him to shelter from the rain, Nagru neatly sidestepped any responsibility. ‘Your idea, my Lady. Make your move.’
Silvamord crawled forward armed with a pike that was double hooked below its blade. She thrust it at Bluebane. ‘Hook them in by the footpaws,’ she hissed. ‘We’ll be waiting to grab them.’
The vixen winked at the spy. ‘Do it well and I’ll reward you!’
Mariel had reached the rope’s end. Kicking against the wall, she began swinging herself. Rain beat on her face as she pendulumed back and forth, widening the arc each time. Blinking water from her eyes, she peered into the mist each time she sailed west.
Bluebane recognized her as she swung into view and vanished back into the night again. ‘My Lady, it’s not the Squirrelking, it’s the mousemaid!’
Nagru growled out of his wolfhide shelter. ‘I don’t care who it is, yank them in. Do it!’
Bluebane timed it nicely. He stood erect, holding the battlement with one paw, and swung the barbed end of the pike towards the mousemaid on the rope.
Mariel could not stop herself. She saw the rat strike out towards her with the pike as she sped towards the battlement on the rope. Kicking her paws hard against the wall, she shot outward. The kick gave her extra impetus – she avoided the pike and shot over Bluebane’s head. The rope struck the gable of the wall and was torn from her paws. From behind came the sound of a vicious hiss; an arrow stood out between Bluebane’s eyes. He fell backward into the hordebeasts as Mariel landed heavily on top of Nagru. Pandemonium broke out – stamping hard on the wolfskull, the mousemaid leapt free and went dashing along the ramparts. The dead wolf’s fangs had cut two furrows on Nagru’s brow. Lying flat out, he roared, ‘Get her, kill the mousemaid!’
The first rat who jumped upright to obey met with another arrow. Silvamord scrambled on all fours after Mariel. Taking her lead and keeping safe, the other rats followed. Nagru sat up, tenderly feeling his head where the fangs had pierced. Looking around, he realized that he was alone. An arrow zipped by overhead, and instinctively the Foxwolf ducked and scurried off on all fours, shouting, ‘Come back here, you deserters, wait for me!’
Dandin leaned over the rafters, staring down into the mist, his vision hampered by the night-time rain. ‘There’s something gone wrong down there. Mariel may need help, I must go to her!’
Without wasting further words he grasped the ropes and vanished over the edge of the tower top. Meldrum wrung rainwater from his ears as he called after Dandin, ‘As y’were! I gave no orders for you to go shimmyin’ off down that rope, sah! Come back, d’ye hear me?’ The hare watched the rope begin swinging from side to side and straightened his jacket resolutely. ‘Hmph, mustn’t have heard me, not like that young feller to disobey an order! Right, you’re next, Fallowthorn.’
23
MARIEL WAS FAR too quick to catch. Vaulting battlements, cutting corners and slamming doors behind her, she dashed off into the rambling passages of Castle Floret. The mousemaid could hear her pursuers behind her, tripping and stumbling as they hastened to catch her. Skipping nimbly down the dizzying stone steps of a spiral staircase, she ran full-tilt into a horderat coming the other way. The mousemaid could not stop herself barging into the rat; he was taken completely off guard, and with a panicked squeak he toppled backwards, hurtling tip over tail down the stairs. Bruising her paws on the rough-hewn stones, the mousemaid managed to stay upright. She slowed her pace as she approached the rat. He lay crumpled at the bottom of the stairwell, completely senseless.
Mariel paused momentarily to relieve him of a sharp, double-headed axe he had thrust in his belt. The sounds of Silvamord and her troop pattering down the stairs kept the mousemaid on the move. Hurtling out down a corridor she cut left and then right, looking wildly about for somewhere to hide.
Nagru had travelled down by a different route, ordering horderats to follow him as he went. ‘Leave what you’re doing, come on, bring your weapons!’ Threading his way through chamber and hall he rushed onward, with more than a score in his wake. Now Mariel could hear her enemies coming from both sides, still some distance away, but getting closer by the moment. She brandished the axe, looking left and right desperately. There was only one way left to go. Lifting the latch of a door in front of her, she entered. It was a small inner chamber, devoid of windows. Mariel closed the door, noting that it had neither lock nor bolt to protect her. She had run herself into a cul de sac and it was too late to escape now. Taking up a warrior’s stance, she gripped the axe handle tight, prepared to go down fighting.
Safely on the battlements, Dandin reached out with the pike that Bluebane had been carrying. Meldrum wobbled and swayed as he clung for dear life to the swinging rope. The young mouse called encouragingly to him, ‘Just a bit more, sir, come on, swing yourself forward another fraction.’
With both eyes shut tight the hare did as he was bidden.
‘Gotcha!’ Dandin hooked the curved pike crosstree into the hem of Meldrum’s pink mess jacket and pulled him to the battlement. Seizing both the old hare’s footpaws, Dandin stretched him over the stone top and took the weight. ‘You can let go of the rope now, Meldrum! Let go of the rope and open your eyes, that’s an order!’
The old hare opened one eye, saw he was safe and clambered down on to the rampart with as much dignity as he could muster. ‘Incorrect procedure, laddie buck, a subordinate can’t give orders to a rankin’ offisah. We’ll let it go this time, well done, well done. Now, what’s been goin’ on round here, where’ve all the bally vermin gone?’
Dandin gazed at the rat carcasses and the empty rain-swept walltop. ‘More important, where’s Mariel gone?’ he said.
The rope was caught on a niche of the battlement. Meldrum began pulling it in and coiling it. ‘Where d’you think she’s gone, bright little gel like that, escaped of course, bally well scarpered!’
Dandin however was not convinced. ‘Escaped, how could she have escaped?’
‘Don’t ask me m’lad, I’m no expert in these matters,’ Meldrum said as he fussed with the torn hem of his tunic, ‘but I’ll lay you an acorn to an apple they’ve not captured her. She’d have yelled out an’ warned us.’
Dandin peered down, he could barely make out the moat below. ‘I suppose you’re right, sir. Wonder how she got to the moat without the rope, though?’
Meldrum the Magnificent snorted through his mustachios. ‘Jumped, of course, a young rip like her wouldn’t think twice about takin’ a leap. Good job we don’t have to, wot? Wouldn’t chance it at my age, lucky for us we’ve got the jolly old rope to swarm down, eh!’
Dandin still looked doubtful, so Meldrum took command. ‘Mariel will be furious if she thinks we’re standin’ u
p here twiddlin’ our paws all night. Situation calls for decision. I’m givin’ the orders now. Get that rope round this battlement, look sharp now, you’re first down!’ Realizing there was no other sensible course to follow, but still beset by doubts, Dandin doubled the rope about the stones and began his descent to the moat.
A voice startled Mariel as she stood alone in the darkened chamber. ‘A mouse that fights and runs away, lives to fight another day!’
Barely visible in the dim light from under the door, a fat mole clad in a belted shagreen tunic stood watching the mousemaid. ‘Twittering is for the birds, but earthly creatures heed wise words. Follow me mousemaid,’ he said, nodding sociably at her.
The exit appeared to Mariel as a small black hole in a corner, but as she crawled through and watched the mole close it behind them, she realized it was a cunningly hinged stone door, which blended perfectly with the walls about it. Feeling completely safe she followed the mole down dark dusty tunnels, keeping one paw against his back in case she lost him in the gloom. They travelled downward, twisting and turning in the strange mole’s silent world. Sometimes they passed through cellars and caves, other times they had to bend double and crawl along. They halted at a small, stout-timbered door, whereupon the mole produced a key and opened it.
‘This humble abode doth suit me fine,
a simple homely place, ’tis mine.’
He turned up the flame on an oil lamp, and yellow light flooded the room. It had a couch which served as a bed, a table, and a big, elm-planked larder cupboard. The whole place was littered with books, scrolls and parchments. The fat mole bobbed his head politely to her, extending well-groomed digging claws. ‘I am Egbert the Scholar, and you, I take it, are the escaped prisoner, Mariel.’
Questions flooded to Mariel’s lips as she took Egbert’s paw and shook it. ‘Pleased to meet you, Egbert, but how do you know my name, and why do you not speak like other moles?’
Egbert sat her down on his sofa bed, then taking a thin tin plate, he placed it on a bracket above the oil lamp and began warming two plump vegetable turnovers. Filling a beaker, he offered it to Mariel. ‘Dandelion cordial, I brew it myself. Drink up, food will soon be ready. As to your questions, Mariel, I know your name and your companions too, nothing goes on in Floret that escapes my notice. You were very clever to escape the way you did, extricating yourself from a dire predicament – ah, long words, I love the sound of them! As to why I am, who I am, that is a complicated narration, a long story.
‘Egbert the Scholar is a name I gave myself. I was once a mole like others, humming and urring and much given to bucolic speech forms. I had a mole name too, something very moleish, Soilburr it was, as I recall. I lived a happy and simple existence with my tribe, east of here, but I thirsted for learning and the ways of the scholar. So I left home and came here, tunnelled in and set myself up. Nobeast ever knew I was inside Floret, not Gael or Serena, or that pair of barbarian vermin, Nagru and Silvamord.’
Mariel accepted the hot turnover, biting into the pastry and eating ravenously, regardless of the dark aromatic warm gravy that dribbled on to her paws. She spoke around mouthfuls of hot tender vegetables and pastry crust. ‘Mmm, s’lovely! But what do you do here with your life?’
Egbert gestured at the files of books and scrolls lining the walls of his little home. ‘I study to better my knowledge, to improve my powers of learning, one can never have sufficient education. Did you know that the Squirrelking and his family were heirs to an extensive library? Oh yes, a veritable palace of literature, all in one great room. My life’s work is dedicated now to saving it. Those dreadful rats use rare manuscripts and valuable books to light their fires, can you believe it!
‘Fortunately I come and go in Floret by my own secret routes. I pop up in the library whenever I can and take away material, though I fear my little abode is getting too small to hold it all. Just look at these scrolls I retrieved today, a treatise on autumn-cloud formations in the south – invaluable!’
Egbert paused and smiled apologetically. ‘Mariel, forgive me for prattling on ceaselessly, I must be boring you to death with my lengthy discourses. Being alone one tends to talk to oneself a lot, but twice as much to visitors like yourself. Is there anything you want? Would you like to take a nap – you look tired – or is there any way at all I can help you?’
Mariel finished the turnover, washing it down with refreshing dandelion cordial. She stood and picked up her axe. ‘I must go and help my friends now. They are trapped at the top of the north tower.’
Egbert clipped a quaint pair of spectacles to his nose and studied a blueprint of Floret pinned on the wall. ‘Ah yes, the north tower, very high, extremely perilous. So that’s where you got to; I thought you were all lost or slain when you escaped the dungeons. North tower, hmm, not a lot we can do up there, I’m afraid. Maybe if you created a diversion in another part of this castle, that would give your comrades time to escape without interference.’
Mariel hefted the axe eagerly. ‘That sounds good Egbert, what do you suggest?’
‘Let me apply logic to this problem,’ the scholar said as he sat on his bed and nibbled at his turnover. ‘Now, let me see. If you have allies outside, some of the otters, say . . . Ah yes, that’s it! The drawbridge, find your way into the gatehouse and mess up the mechanism, cut the ropes. Then the drawbridge will fall open, giving easy access to your allies, and Foxwolf will have to defend it with his horde. I should think the last thing he’ll be worrying about in a case like that is a few escaped prisoners stranded on a towertop . . .’
Mariel was already holding the door open. ‘What a great idea! Lead on Egbert – where’s this gatehouse?’
‘A creature of action I see, a warrior!’ The scholar put aside his food and arose. ‘But you cannot do it alone and I am not a fighter. Follow me and I will take you to where there are other warriors.’
Again they were off, Mariel hurrying in Egbert’s wake, through a succession of tunnels and underground chambers where daylight had never shone. The mousemaid sensed they were moving in a downward direction, she felt a coolness across her nostrils, which she knew could only be the air from outside. After rounding a few more bends and climbing over a blockage of rubble and rock, they emerged into a sizeable cavern. The rain outside could be heard pattering and splashing; half the chamber was thick with mist that had rolled in from the valley floor. Egbert sat on a rock, nodding with satisfaction. ‘Ah, here we are. Hello my friends . . . anybeast at home?’
A lightning-swift form snatched the axe from Mariel, bowling her over. The mousemaid’s cry of surprise was squashed from her as two huge paws swept her off the ground, crushing and squeezing unmercifully. Mariel found herself dangling helplessly in the air, staring into a pair of maddened bloodshot eyes . . .
24
FINNBARR GALEDEEP WATCHED anxiously as the triangular grey-blue fin sailed in close to the midships of Pearl Queen. Rufe tugged at the sea otter’s paw. ‘Well, is it a shark, Mr Finnbarr?’
Finnbarr nodded unhappily. ‘Aye, liddle Rufey, ’tis a shark all right. Big monster too, lookit that, ’e’s watchin’ us, the villain.’
The shark had turned slightly on its side. Above the crescent-gashed mouth with its rows of ripping teeth a small circular eye stared at them. Finnbarr kept his good eye on the monster. ‘Don’t call out loud or make sudden movements, Rufey,’ he murmured quietly. ‘We don’t wants ter excite this fish – they’ve been known to wreck vessels, just to git at the crew an’ eat ’em.’
Rufe stole silently away. Finnbarr called after him in a loud whisper, ‘Rufey, mate, where are ye goin’?’
‘To keep miz Rosie quiet – if she starts laffin’ we’re all done for!’
Rufe was knocked from his feet as Pearl Queen shook from stem to stern. He crawled over to Finnbarr. ‘Is the shark attackin’ our ship now?’ he said.
The sea otter watched the manoeuvres of the great shark. ‘No, ’e’s only playin’ with us, scrapin’ his hide along th
e ship’s sides, scratchin’ hisself, y’might say. Sharks likes to do that now an’ agin. Lookout, ’ere comes the other sleepin’ beauties, all waked up an’ fit fer a fright.’
The vessel juddered again under the impact of the shark’s rubbing. Rosie Woodsorrel was knocked in a heap with the rest. She sat on the deck giggling aloud. ‘Whoohahahooh! I say, bit bumpy t’day, wot? Whooha . . .’ Rufe effectively gagged her by throwing himself bodily across her face.
‘Miz Rosie, hush, please hush!’
Log a Log lifted Rufe off Rosie. ‘What’s the matter, young un?’
Rufe seized hold of Durry and Fatch, pulling them to the rail. ‘It’s a shark monster attackin’ our ship!’
They grabbed the rail alongside Finnbarr as the vessel quivered under a heavy swipe from the shark’s blunt snout. Finnbarr slapped the rail, exhaling loudly. ‘Well ’e wasn’t attackin’ us afore, jus’ bein’ playful an’ nosy. That was ’til you started laffin’, marm!’
Rosie leaned over amidships to view the massive bulk of the shark. It could be seen clearly now by all the crew. From tip to tail it was nearly as long as Pearl Queen, a true monster of the deep, with rows of slitted gills either side of the huge evil head, a white underbelly and bluey-black back markings. With a powerful flick of its sickle-shaped tail it sped away from the ship.
Rosie waved. ‘Oh look, he’s going, good show, wot? Whoohahahooh!’
Finnbarr gritted his teeth as he looked at Joseph. ‘Will yew stuff a gag down that long-eared foghorn’s mouth, mate, that shark ain’t goin’, ’e’s just takin’ a run so ’e kin charge us proper. All crew ’ang on tight!’
The shark came back like a juggernaut, spray flying from its fin as it headed straight at Pearl Queen’s bows. Finnbarr leaped to the tiller, shoving it hard over in the same direction as the shark was travelling. It hit for’ard.
Whummmm!
Log a Log ran to Finnbarr’s assistance, shouting, ‘Well done, Finn, you took most of the force out of that blow, goin’ the same way the shark did!’