The Pillars of Aeden

By Peter Harris

The fourth volume of the 'Apples of Aeden' epic. This is the first edition, replacing the beta version, now (22nd of February 2016) fully edited, with pictures and maps.
The War of the Heartstone comes to an end, and the long-awaited Diamond Age begins - for some...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Peter Harris
• Release date: May 28, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301571857

Peter Harris

I joined GRID-Arendal as Managing Director in 2014. I am a native of the USA, citizen of Australia and resident of Norway; I describe myself as a “professional foreigner”. I am a graduate of the University of Washington (Seattle USA), completed a PhD at the University of Wales (Swansea UK), married an Australian and have 3 children. I have worked in the field of marine geology and science management for over 30 years and published over 100 scientific papers. I taught marine geology at the University of Sydney and conducted research on UK estuaries, the Great Barrier Reef, the Fly River Delta (Papua New Guinea) and Antarctica. I worked for 20 years for Australia’s national geoscience agency as a scientist and manager. In 2009 I was appointed a member of the group of experts for the United Nations World Ocean Assessment. Apart from managing all of GRID-Arendal’s amazing activities, my interests include new methods for the conduct of environmental assessments (the expert elicitation method) and the use of multivariate statistics and geomorphology to provide tools to manage the global ocean environment. I also enjoy sailing and playing the bagpipes.

Book preview

Book One

Raiders and Pirates

(higher resolution maps free at www.applesofaeden.wordpress.com )

1 Biteback Begins

At the Portal Gap the invasion army of the Boy Raiders had wept bitterly for the hostages who had been hanged at the very borders of their free lands. Over the Boys’ graves they raised mounds to guard the Gap forever, and on each mound Jewelheart planted a Jeweltree seed. Then they threw the bodies of the Aghmaath into the captured deathwagons and torched them. As the flames rose skywards they turned their backs on the Homelands and thundered towards the eastern coast, spurred on by their anger at the Aghmaath – and the evil collaborator Gareth.

They soon came to the first line of thorn hedges that had been grown across the plains to block their way, and the wagons stopped, and all looked to Flash for his promised secret weapon. He did not disappoint. ‘Spikers,’ he said calmly to his right-hand man, Wurria, and ‘SPIKERS!’ Wurria yelled at the top of his lungs. Then the fastest Flashwagon in the fleet drove inland a little way, and stopping just out of range of the deadly waving tendrils of the thorn hedge, the Spikers shot Flash’s silver arrows (actually made by the Padmaddim and bought from rebel Traders) which pumped bela gograth into the thorn branches. The tendrils thrashed madly and then sagged and the tips slowly curled like snakes going to sleep. Then the Spikers drove great barbed spikes of tempered iron into the hedge to block the tunnel within, one above the other angling upwards, anchoring the looped ends of the spikes into the ground with iron stakes, so that even the strongest of the Aghmaath inside the hedge could not pull them out.

Then the Spiker wagon raced back to the others, and Flash gave the word, and the Flashwagons spat firebolts at the hedge, and it crackled and came down, its charred branches slowly writhing. ‘Charge!’ cried Flash, and the wagons rumbled through the breach, lowering harrowing discs to cut the branches, and crushing under their broad steel-clad wheels what remained of the deadly tendrils. And the armoured horses that drew them neighed fiercely and trampled the shredded thorns with their ironshod hooves.

Some of the Aghmaath were inside the hedge on the near side of Flash’s barricade, but these were shot as they emerged, before they could so much as cast a mindbolt or throw a single spear.

The Aghmaath defenders were overwhelmed by the ferocity of the Boy Raiders’ army. There was a power in it they had not expected. As they died, their minds were open to Ovoghag, who welcomed them to the rest of the Void as heroes of the cause. He was not concerned at the loss, however. The very force of the boys’ hatred would soon make them his… In this he was mistaken: he still had little idea of the power which Flash was unleashing, the brutal power of all-out war such as Aeden had never known, backed by the obsessive creative human intellect bent on destruction by any and every means.

So Ovoghag made no further plans to deal with the Boy Raiders, and slowly day by day they hacked and spiked, drugged and burned their way past all the thorn hedges in their path, and at last approached the fords of Milkwater, and the hills of Tarim Argintia. But the rear-guard, looking behind, could not help noticing that the Aghmaath were clearing away the debris and burying their fallen in the gaps. In his haste and pride, Flash had not let them stop to burn the bodies, which now would sprout into Mother Thorns of great vigour and hatred for those who felled their fathers. There would be no easy return home, or retreat. But Flash wanted it so: he was bent on conquering, not striking and withdrawing as the Boy Raiders had done so many times before.

As the Biteback host rumbled relentlessly on, each morning at dawn the buzzards came down from their eyries in the Badlands and circled overhead until dusk, silent and watchful. The gulls cried and the surf roared on the lonely beaches as they crossed the wide plains, riding towards the dreadful heartland of the enemy, and some of the Boys became scared and homesick and wished they had not come.

Then the Ovoghag, sensing their fear, began to take the offensive. He sent in the black Aghmaath cavalry to sweep across one flank or another, coming out of the hills with the buzzards, circling just out of bowshot, seeking for weak points in the Boy’s defences. But there were none as yet, and each dusk they would return bearing Boy Raider arrows sticking in their thorny shields.

One day one of Flash’s champion archers shot a Bird Raider, as they nicknamed these menacing horsemen, and his fellow Aghmaath, digging a shallow grave, set up his spear and planted him even as the Biteback host rumbled into the distance, and Flash awarded his archer a bronze medal. The Birdmen, however, did not care. These impudent Nabdaïm, horse-boys - any who survived what Ovoghag the Master of Death had in store - must seek to return home eventually. And the Aghmaath they had killed would be planted in the breaches and become new thorns, and some of their killers would be enthorned on them, to slowly die, decay and be digested. Then the Boy Raiders would become part of the Mother thorns, and finally at the Day of Rognarak even the thorns would burn in the great Holocaust to the Void, and then the peace of the Void would descend on Aeden.

As it happened, that fallen Aghmaath horseman had with him a single leaf of a book whose very existence the Aghmaath kept secret, and when he fell, it fluttered in the wind and by chance fluttered before the face of one of the Boy Raiders. The Boy grabbed at it, thinking a giant butterfly or bat was attacking him. When he saw the strange crabbed writing on the thin rice-paper, he said, ‘Riter should see this! Perhaps it’s important.’ The Boy could not read a word in the Aghmaath script - or any other.

Riter was intrigued, and as was his way when impresses, employed alliteration. ‘A bit of Birdman baloney, bezarks! A mere missive maybe. But no, there is a page number here… five hundred and fifteen! It is odd! I knew nothing of any Aghmaath epic.’ He studied the lines with Stickla as they rode on the wagon, and on impulse, being bored with the long journey, wrote his own interpolations (and some of Stickla’s) between the lines:

Let Fear grow sharper thorns;

- Bold Boys will blunten them, bezark!

Let Death wax more eloquent

- Stickla will stop silly speech!

Let the mouth of Life be stopped

-Let it bite the Birdman’s butts!

Let greater gales lash the sea

- Let larger lifeboats launch!

Let deeper pits crack the earth

- Let’s lower longer ladders!

Let the ancient Negation be spoken

- Let younger Yesses yell!

Let the Life-Tree fall in flames

- Seedlings shall sprout from the cinders!

Let the Chrysalis burn on the branch

- The Hopemoth will hop out of hiding!

Let the proud Pillars fall to the Void

Let proud Pillars stand strong!

Let Rognarak begin! As it is written, so shall it be.

Let Riter reverse it rapidly: Karangor, karangor, so shan’t it be!

- Riter, Esq., Boy Raider, Biteback Rider, epic poet, Free fellow for Flash forever!

* * * * *

A shudder went through the Dreamweb as the two boys scratched these words of defiance, for unknown to Riter, the page was an incantation of power from the pages of the secret Aghmaath Bible, the Lagim Rognarakya, an ancient incantation for the bending and retaining of the thought-forms like thorn-hedges in mental avenues which all lead to the great central Truth of Truths: the Holy Void, the final goal of the faithful. The Aghmaath who bore this single sheet had violated a precept of secrecy in taking it into battle, and had paid the price. And the boys, in defacing it, had incurred the curse which is written at the end of the Aghmaath Bible:

V maddim zakim üra hith

Axpag Lagim-Rognarakya

V maddim zakim üra krith

Apad Zaghon Aghya Enpagrakwin é

Ov zurglime enpag Ovrha-Ovoya é

Temna enpag temnaya

Lagka lak é v’ov ban é

Oka Galem!

Ovo Ove Ovya!

He who adds so much as an o

Or takes away even one dot of an i

From the sacred incantations of Rognarak

Will be enthorned forever on the Wheel of Life;

In his agony he will see the peaceful Void below,

But never will he rest in its calm depths.

He will cry for Death, but it will not come to him,

Forever and ever until the final End of all.

So be it!

The Void, the Void which was before all

And will be ever after!

* * * * *

The boys knew nothing of this scripture, so they laughed and cursed away, and later showed the page to Rilke. But he did not laugh, and burned it in the campfire and threw salt after it, saying,

Evil words take flight

Be reversed, the speaker to smite!

But Riter had written a copy in his epic poem before Rilke burned the page, and through Riter the phrase Karangor, Karangor came into general Boy Raider use as a battle cry.

Every night the wagons of Biteback made a great circle, the scouts brought driftwood from the seaward side of the sand dunes, and memorable meals were cooked by Piglet, adding seaweed and other novel ingredients found along the Eastern Coast. Sometimes Waffler, personal pancake and waffle-maker to Flash, would make them all pudding: pancakes with honey (though he was not allowed to use when cooking for the army the special diamond-patterned waffle-maker Flash had designed for his own waffles).

Blossom kept their spirits up by telling them stories and ordering them around in the way they loved to be ordered around. And they loved to complain when she cried, ‘Bed-time!’ in her strident yet melodic voice.

Blossom also kept the rowdier Boys from drinking all the beer, and broke up many a fight. And with Jewelheart and the other Surrogate Mothers, she comforted Boys in the night when they woke with bad dreams, and she extracted any thorns which had pierced their leather leggings during a ‘thorn-crossing’, as they called it when the army trampled over the smoking remains of a thorn hedge.

It was during one of the thorn-crossings that a strange thing was noticed, small in itself, but sinister in its implications: one of the boys was bitten – or rather, slashed - by a small, fierce creature none of them had seen before. It scuttled off towards the remains of the thorn hedge, as the boy howled in pain, but a swift archer (it was Scar, as it happened) shot it, to Jewelheart’s sorrow and indignation. When they retrieved the creature, they stared in fascinated horror. ‘It’s a... a… anklebiter with spikes – and tusks!’ said the injured boy.

‘And warts,’ said Zoo, a friend of Fungus, as mad on animal lore as Fungus was on plants. ‘There’s something weird going on here. I reckon it’s a mutation.’

‘What the Zarks’s a mootashin?’ said the boy, as Jewelheart bound the wound on his ankle, an ugly gash that was bleeding profusely.

‘A creature that’s changed its genes,’ said the knowledgeable Zoo.

‘Oh.’ The boy looked puzzled, and poked at the strange little corpse with the toe of his boot. Suddenly it twitched and opened its pig-like eyes.

‘It’s still alive!’ said Scar. ‘We can…’ But the boy had already drawn his sword and stabbed it. Then he stamped on it for good measure. Jewelheart turned away, sickened.

‘Beast! You’ve mangled it!’ said Zoo, starting to wrap up the specimen carefully in the strong flax paper he kept for such purposes.

‘It’s mine, I shot it!’ said Scar.

‘No! I’m under strict orders from The Flash to show him anything out of the ordinary,’ said Zoo.

‘I’ll give you The Flash!’ said Scar, but Jewelheart cried, ‘Leave him alone! He can show it to Flash himself.’ Scar backed off, grumbling.

Flash and the other leaders discussed the strange creature that night. ‘I think Zoo’s right about the mutating, and I think I know what did it,’ said Flash. ‘There have been rumours of animals caught in the thorns turning into something else, then the thorns let them go and they run into the thornfields, or disappear into the woods, never to be seen again.’

‘Or, to be seen again later, by their hapless victims,’ said Pipes smiling. ‘An old wives’ tale, I think.’

‘But there is this spiny anklebiter,’ said Flash. ‘That, my friend, is hard evidence, unlike your Wouivre or your Lady.’

‘Stop it you two!’ said Jewelheart. ‘It’s not either-or – both can exist, and they do! Now, which one of you wants to give the poor thing a decent burial?’

‘Let the Diggers do it – that’s their job,’ said Flash with a wave of his hand.

Many of the Boy Raiders saw the creature before it was buried, and many wished it could have been kept and tamed. ‘Who knows,’ said Scar, ‘there could be more of ’em.’ He was thinking that such an anklebiter would be unbeatable in the ring. ‘I’d clean up!’ he said to Spewberry. ‘And look, I’ve kept the tusks. Sharp, ain’t they?’

Throughout that phase of Biteback, Rilke and Squeak spent hours chatting about small matters, and grew closer than Rilke would have believed possible that first day when the dishevelled Squeak had ‘bagged’ the right to be his squire. ‘A Quickblade or a Pipes you are not, my squire, but I do like you, big ears and all!’ he once said, under the influence of a little too much of Cora’s cider. He didn’t notice it at the time, but Squeak had blushed.

Off to one side were Riter and Stickla, who now worked together a lot, the one mostly composing alliterative verses on the happenings of the day and the other mostly just writing it all down. So Riter got so expert at flinging out fine couplets that sounded superb, but advanced the action very little, that Stickla worried they would run out of paper before they even arrived at the ‘real’ War.

Elra and Ainé spent their days apart, Elra flying on his kite at intervals on the stiff sea breeze to look down the coast and up into the Badlands to warn of imminent cavalry charges, and Ainé writing tiny messages on little pieces of paper for Batkiss to send off as bat-letters, or feeding the little amberbats, or helping Mappa to copy maps and mark new features as the army progressed down the lonely coast. But in the evenings they ate together and talked about their mother and father and the happy life that was no more.

Jewelheart and Pipes were inseparable, a romantic couple to be seen walking hand in hand after dinner, stopping now and then to speak with one or other of the host, gauging their morale, and checking that they had their thinking-caps with them ready to put on at a moment’s notice if any sign of a mind-attack was felt. It had proven impossible to get the Boys to keep the ‘stifling stinking monkey masks’ (as Cursa called them) on at all times.

Sometimes Jewelheart and Pipes would meet with Rilke (and his squire Squeak) and discuss the progress of the campaign and plans for the next, more dangerous, stages. Pipes would play his pan flute when Jewelheart asked him to, and then the sadness that sometimes afflicted him would disappear and they would all be merry together. And the morale of almost the whole army was high, so far. Rilke seemed in especially good spirits, which they put down to the joy of leading such a glorious Quest.

But Jewelheart’s concern about Flash was increasing every day. ‘I feel he is slipping away from us into some world of his own, a world of wheels and levers,’ she confided to Pipes. ‘I don’t think it’s a place where the Birdmen can reach him – not yet. It’s too mechanical for them. But there is a bitterness in him too – I can feel it. That’s what I am worried about. They could work on that.’

‘Yes, and there’s the matter of the fireswords,’ said Pipes. Flash had argued with him soon after setting out. ‘If you are right and your folk will not willingly give us the hoarded fireswords, we must persuade them,’ he had said. Pipes had walked away, angered but unwilling to confront Flash as to exactly how far he would go to ‘persuade’ the peaceful Waveriders. ‘Time enough for that. When Flash meets my people he may see things differently,’ he thought. ‘And we may be able to talk with Flash when he is in a better mood. There is still a long way to go before we reach the Waverider villages.’

‘I can talk to him when I take him his herbal tea for his insomnia,’ said Jewelheart when Pipes told her what Flash had said. She had been trying to help Flash be more relaxed and to get more sleep, to Pipes’ concern.

‘Flash seems only too keen to see you and your herbal draughts,’ he said.

‘Pipes! It’s not like that! You know he needs help. This is one way to get close to him.’

‘That’s what he thinks about you,’ Pipes said. He knew he was being jealous and ridiculous; Jewelheart was just very kind-hearted. But he had lost one true love long ago, and he could barely believe his luck in finding Jewelheart. ‘I should pity the poor boy, genius though he may be. He must be so lonely. But he never even tries to make friends.’

Indeed, apart from Jewelheart for her herbal remedies, Waffler for his personal pancakes, and of course Wurria his squire for general help, Flash let no one else into his own encampment around the golden Flashwagon, and he sneered at the goings-on of the others. ‘Ballista-fodder, mindless minions, how I despise them! They are not even wearing their thinking-caps,’ he thought to himself more than once as he listened to the hooting and skylarking of the boys. Then he stopped himself, knowing that he was being inconsistent with his own standards. ‘They all have their place in the scheme of life, like you, my minion,’ he told Wurria, waving in the direction of the campfire, where a dance had broken out. The boys were arm in arm, stomping and stumbling around the fire, some sunwise, some moonwise, and laughing when they collided. Wurria was wistful; he really would have liked to join them. And Worriette twitched her nose at the aroma of the beer and blueberries and apple pie, and looked up pleadingly at Wurria. ‘Master, will you be all right if we just go off for a bit?’ Wurria ventured. ‘I need to stretch my legs; I think I got pins and needles.’

‘Go if you must, minion,’ said Flash disdainfully. He knew what Wurria wanted. And he watched as Worriette and Wurria danced around the campfire, hand in hand with Pipes, Jewelheart, Rilke and all the others, as the sparks spiralled into the mystery of the starry sky. Flash tried not to dwell on those hands of Jewelheart’s, which were so warm, hot even, to his touch when once – only once! – he had held them to steady her as she stepped up into his golden wagon. ‘How warm her heart must be!’ he had thought then, and now that warmth mocked him: there she was, her warmth radiating out to the dancers she loved, and most of all Pipes. ‘Always Pipes. How she loves him! Why? What does that simple-minded Waverider have that I do not? She thinks he has Nobility; that’s what it is! But I am noble too; in the Mind, which is far higher. I know that Nature is to be harnessed, like a horse, not worshipped, as he seems to think. And she laps it up! How can I show her the true nobility of the man who is above Nature, who, unmoved, can move Nature to do his will?’

Then as he gazed up at the stars, his thoughts fled further out, left behind the unattainable warmth of her hands and the petty jealousy of a simple Waverider, and he was relieved to observe his mind being wholly taken up into one of his lofty reveries. ‘It was on a night just like this,’ he mused, ‘that father told me what the poets say about the stars:

The limitless Light was screened by Night,

Then only points were left, so bright

As witness to the Empyrean Light.’

But what does Metaphor know, or any of the poets? I think there is nothing behind the night but endless space, and the stars are mere matter, just like the sparks of a fire, and one day they will burn away. Then a void of sorts will reign supreme, just as the Birdmen say. Or perhaps it gives birth to more stars all the time, for though there are shooting stars falling to earth every night, the sky does not grow emptier. I wish I could build a star-ship and go and find out all about the so-called Empyrean realm. Perhaps, if I survive this war, I will set the conquered to building a great balloon, or a tower whose top may reach to the nearest stars, or a huge bundle of skyrockets like the ones Fizza makes, attached to a very light Anklebiter of beaten silver to keep the fires from burning the passengers. And Jewelheart would come with me, for she loves the stars, and could not resist such a great adventure. Then she would find out what true Nobility is in the Mind which dares to soar above the petty realms of everyday earth-bound life.’

Later that night, as Pipes sat by the embers of the campfire and the only lamplight was coming from Wick’s tent (he could not sleep without a night light) and the Golden Flashwagon (Flash always stayed up late into the night, drawing up designs he had thought of during the day, calculating and thinking) Jewelheart came to him and said, ‘I sensed your restlessness, Pipes. What is it?’

‘Nothing… It’s just, I feel it is odd that we are not being harried more, much more. Isn’t Gareth supposed to be the evil genius to rival the machinations of our Flash? Well, it seems to me these plains would be the ideal place for him to test out his devices of war.’

‘What about the black knights?’

‘They are no more than minor players. Where are Gareth’s heavy crossbows, his ballistas and deathwagons? I fear an ambush ahead. It can't be a secret that we are coming, and by now they must guess – or know – where we are headed. The boys could easily have been mindprobed, they are so complacent and so lax about wearing their helmets.’

‘Where do you think they might be waiting?’

‘I don’t know. But I fear it has something to do with their invasion of my village. Maybe they are seeking the hidden fireswords. Maybe they are building their forces on the other side of the Fire Rock, too. Dolphin Bay is a fine harbour for a navy, if they are building one.’

‘So where would they attack us?’

‘At the narrow point between the Fire Hills and Dolphin Bay I think.’

Jewelheart stretched and yawned. ‘That’s a long way off yet. So, let us relax now, and get our rest.’

So saying, she kissed Pipes and went off to sleep. But Pipes sat by himself and listened to the thunder of the surf on the coast. He was filled with a yearning to go to the beach and ride the starlit phosphorescent waves. ‘That easterly has built up the waves beautifully! But I have no board, and the enemy may be prowling,’ he thought sadly. ‘War is so dreary, when it is not downright horrific.’

On the fourth morning after the Biteback army had left Raiderville, the host set out on the last leg of the journey to the real war. Beyond the Milkwater loomed the peak of Baldrock, at the head of conquered Baz Apédnapath, now an enemy stronghold almost as fearful as the Valley of Thorns itself. Dark smoke hung over the mountain, as the forges of Gareth rang to the works of evil he had ordered there; armour-piercing crossbows, new and deadlier ballistas, and copies of the captured light-gun of Hillgard, Korman’s warlike brother, now a prisoner in the dungeons of the Dark Labyrinth. But so far the wild eastern coast and the mouth of the river Baldrock had not been colonised by the enemy, and Gareth’s dreaded war machines were nowhere to be seen. And the Boy Raiders became complacent.

The Milkwater was by far the hardest river they had crossed, and some of the wagons were mired in its milk-white silt, and one in a patch of quicksand, and a large force of Aghmaath cavalry from out of Baldrock shot some of the horses. But at last they were all across and the black cavalry were routed when Flash, in anger at the loss of one wagon which the Aghmaath had torched, ordered a sortie of his entire force of grim silver-armoured bowmen, who encircled and shot many Aghmaath before Flash sounded the trumpet calling them back to guard Thornroller, though it hardly needed any defence, being the most heavily-armed of all the fleet.

Meanwhile Pipes, Jewelheart and Rilke (and squire Squeak) scouted far ahead over the flats on their swift mounts. Pipes and Jewelheart rode Driftwood and Willow, and Rilke and Squeak doubled on Pebble (Squeak’s mare had been injured in one of the fords, and was limping along behind one of the wagons). In the distance, a little out to sea, Pipes saw a familiar sight: Sentinel Rock, which guarded the salt marshes of the river Baldrock. ‘We will be welcomed at Eelersville, I hope!’ he said to Jewelheart as they slowed to a trot. ‘Or not hindered as we pass, at least. Those hardy fisher folk will never bow to the Aghmaath!

‘And we must pass them if we are making for Firerock ford?’ said Jewelheart.

‘Yes. We can't go by the more direct route south over the marshes to Fire Rock, because of the wagons. We could stop and buy dried eels and any other supplies they may be able to spare, then on to the old Guardian enclosure of Lakeview. It used to be farmed by good Elgar and his wife Lilly… There we can camp for the night, safely enough, though some now say it is haunted. The scouts we sent out before the campaign heard strange noises in the night as they passed, and hurried on.’

‘But first we will pass Elgar and Lilly’s new enclosure, where I stayed when Shelley and Korman went on alone,’ said Rilke. ‘It should be over there somewhere.’ He pointed to the slopes between the Silver Hills and the Eel Hills, and they saw the restored perimeter walls of whitewashed stone shining in the morning sun. ‘Let’s go and see if they’re at home!’ said Rilke. ‘They are sure to have some news. We are way ahead of the host now. We've got plenty of time.’

Rilke had loved Elgar and Lilly almost as his own parents, and Jewelheart smiled at his enthusiasm. ‘Well, that makes sense, let us do it!’ she said. Sometimes it was hard to remember that Rilke was actually the leader, being so young and so often deferring to Jewelheart and Pipes and Flash. Yet his enthusiasm and courage buoyed them up, and his wisdom was growing daily.

So Rilke (and Squeak) and Pipes and Jewelheart approached the gates of the enclosure, and friendly but wary eyes watched them, and after a brief exchange the gates opened, and Elgar and Lilly came out. ‘Welcome to Seaview!’ said Lilly. They greeted Rilke like a long-lost son, and welcomed Pipes warmly. Pipes explained to Jewelheart, ‘We met when Rilke and I had escaped from the Dark Labyrinth and were heading north to rouse the Boy Raiders for this very mission.’

‘It is very good to meet some allies in this lonely place,’ said Jewelheart.

Then Rilke said, ‘This is Squeak, my squire.’

Elgar and Lilly greeted Squeak with respect and (Rilke thought) a questioning look at him and the hint of a smile. ‘He’s very brave and strong for his size,’ said Rilke.

‘I am sure he is!’ said Elgar, and Squeak looked at them both and blushed.

‘What about Pebblebrook?’ asked Lilly when they had gone inside the green oasis of the enclosure and were standing outside the house. ‘Did you visit on your way down? Or at least hear any news?’

Rilke looked up at her sadly. ‘We couldn’t stop there. The Biteback army needs to hold together. And we heard that all the people have been… taken…’

‘That’s why we are going to the Dark Labyrinth. To free them all,’ said Pipes.

‘It’s called Biteback. It’s the biggest raid we’ve ever been on. It’s the Birdmen or us this time!’ said Rilke.

Elgar looked at the two boys gravely. ‘A mighty task, dubious of outcome! Well, I take it you were successful in the first part: rallying the Boy Raiders to your bold quest!’

Even as he spoke the rumble of wagons and the rumour of many voices came from outside the walls. ‘There is your answer! We must rejoin them soon,’ said Pipes.

‘We have some surplus we can send out to help feed them. They say an army marches on its stomach, and Boy Raiders doubly so!’ said Elgar.

And his helpers led out several donkeys loaded with wheat and dried fish and figs, apples and peaches from their abundant orchards. ‘Can you spare all this?’ asked Pipes.

‘Better you get it than the Aghmaath,’ said Elgar. ‘Their so-called ‘missionaries’ have visited twice already; if we do not convert I fear we will be dispossessed. And already they take ‘tribute’ for their garrison at Baldrock. No doubt they will have seen you come here. We must hope for your victory and swift return, and prepare to fight for our lives. We are too old to run any more. Though if your Code permitted it, I would join your army now…’ Lilly opened her mouth to protest, and he added, ‘That is, if my wife did not need me.’

‘Not to mention the poor little orphans who depend upon you!’ said Lilly. Jewelheart then noticed there were many anxious little faces looking out of the windows of the house, and others peering around the corners.

‘Then Rilke should have this,’ said Elgar, and he took a medallion which hung on a chain around his ancient neck, and put it in Rilke’s hand. ‘See, this portrays a salamander entwined about a sword. It is a talisman of the Guardians, if you should meet any along the way. Korman gave it to me at Pebblebrook, but now you should have it. And when you reach the Valley of Thorns, if Korman is still alive, give it back to him.’

‘I don’t know…’ said Rilke. ‘I lost the ancient sword my father gave me, forged by the sons of Calibur the Edarthan. Perhaps it would be safer with you…’

‘Don’t be silly! Put it around your neck and do not take it off and then you can’t lose it!’ said Lilly. So Rilke did as he was told, and standing tall he said, ‘Thank you! Now I feel a bit like a Guardian!’

‘You look like one too!’ said Squeak.

Then Elgar kissed Pipes and Jewelheart on the forehead and blessed them, and Lilly embraced Jewelheart, saying, ‘You look after our Rilke, won’t you? And one day when you are able, you and Pipes come to visit us, and any children you may have by then!’

‘Mother! Always thinking about grandchildren!’ said Elgar, but his eyes were twinkling. ‘Well then, be off with you. There’s a whole army waiting on you, burning through their rations. No time for tea!’

They embraced Rilke one more time, and he told them, ‘Guess what else? I just about forgot to tell you; I’m actually the leader of the Boy Raiders now! But I couldn’t do it by myself. Pipes and Jewelheart and I are really a team.’

‘Well, I might have guessed! I always knew you’d go far!’ said Lilly. ‘You take after your father, you do. And now you have the wherewithal to find him and Ira, and bring them home where they belong! Oh, it’s cruel, not being able to talk any longer, or show you around the place, or feed you!’

‘One last thing I must ask…’ said Elgar. He hesitated, afraid of the answer. ‘…If you know… Where is Quickblade? And the Kortana?’

‘It’s all right, Quickblade helped Shelley through the portal to look for the Heartstone, and one day she will return, and save Aeden. Quickblade couldn’t go through the Portal, he was… growing up. So he had to step down.’

‘And where is he now?’

Rilke looked to Pipes, unsure whether to say.

‘In hiding with Moonwit - waiting at the portal for Shelley to return,’ said Pipes.

‘Moonwit!’ said Lilly. ‘The crazy hermit of the Portal Hills! Well, I hope he knows what he’s doing. And let us hope and pray he doesn’t have to wait as long as Korman. As I was saying to Elgar just the other day…’

‘Let them go, dear, or we will be feeding the whole Biteback army!’ said Elgar.

The Boy Raiders had seen the four enter the enclosure, and they had stopped on the plains below when the donkeys came out with the supplies, and now they were waiting for Rilke, ignoring Flash’s trumpets urging them on. Rilke had tears in his eyes and did not want to leave.

‘You look after our Rilke now, won’t you, Squeak,’ said Lilly as they mounted their horses.

‘I surely will, my Lady,’ cried Squeak, and held on so tight to Rilke’s waist as they galloped off to rejoin the Raiders that he could hardly breathe.

2 Firerock fords

The Biteback army slowly rounded the Eel Hills, and the Fire Rock peninsula rose on their left, a wall of tortured lava dotted with sprawling wind-sculpted trees and pockets of dark green scrub. The people of Eelersville did not come out to meet them with their wares as they would have in better days, but sent a messenger warning that they were ‘neutral’ and also to tell them they had no fish to spare. As the messenger talked with Pipes and Rilke, Flash cursed them. He knew his army must not run out of provisions. All his machines would be useless if the men deserted, or even if they were weakened by hunger.

‘It’s a great pity,’ said Pipes. ‘They are normally very hospitable, and their bamboo meetinghouse on stilts and their huts all lining the waterways are a fine sight! And their fish dishes are legendary. Trout and eels from the river, and octopus and bamboos shoots, and all manner of seafood from the coasts of Fire Rock.’

‘I’ll give you fish dishes, and more!’ said Flash, climbing back onto his wagon. ‘My wagon men will go in there and make them trade with us!’

Rilke looked up at Flash and said, ‘We are men of honour. We will not force them.’

Flash turned to Wurria and said, ‘Give the order to the wagons: follow my lead!’

Wurria looked at Rilke and then back at Flash. ‘Sire, are you…’

Flash opened his mouth to swear at Wurria, but Rilke said, ‘If you go, you’re on your own, Flash. We are the Boy Raiders, and we have a Code. And I am the leader, remember!’

‘You know-nothing stubborn little… Wurria, give the order.’

I expressedly forbid it,’ said Rilke as Wurria squirmed. (The Code allows a leader to use the word Expressly once a silver moon and once every Blue Moon, and any command so issued is unconditional, and cannot be challenged except by mortal combat. Flash did not want to stoop to such ‘brutality’ – nor to hurt the noble Rilke, whom he secretly admired greatly.)

‘Ach, bezarks, you lily-livered code-worshippers!’ said Flash, but he relented. ‘Tell Rilke the word is expressly,’ he growled to Wurria as they drove off.

‘That’s what he said,’ replied Wurria timidly.

‘Ach, I am surrounded by ignoramuses!’ said Flash.

So they passed regretfully by the village and its bounty, and all they could see of Eelersville were the groves of tall bamboo lining their boundaries. As they went inland the background thunder of the surf, which rose and fell like a slow giant heartbeat, and the cry of the gulls and the sighing of the wind in the dune-grass receded, and the tramping of the army was subdued as it marched and rolled over springy green turf. After some time, out of the silence they began to hear the distant singing of many birds in the western forests of the Eel Hills.

In the late afternoon they came to the ruined Guardian enclosure of Lakeview. Upstream from it, in the deep green channel of the Baldrock River, was a little rocky island. Beyond that, Pipes assured them, were the fords of Fire Rock. Some of the boys grumbled when they saw what lay on the other side: twisted, knobbly lava flows and high cliffs rearing up to a jagged, treeless skyline of rock that still shimmered with heat. ‘That firerock’ll be murder on the horses’ hooves, not to mention the wagon wheels,’ said Smithy.

The wagons were drawn up about inside what remained of the perimeter walls, and the horses were allowed to drink their fill at the river and graze the lush grass by the banks. The Firestarters made a big campfire of dead apple and peach wood from the deserted orchard, and driftwood from the shore. When the sun sank early behind the tall, forbidding cliffs of Fire Rock, the echoing birdsong suddenly stopped, and it became cold, and all was eerily quiet in the valley of the Baldrock. In the dusk the deserted stone round-houses in the rear of the enclosure looked down at them with dark empty window-holes like staring eyes, and the ruined doorways were like mouths with jagged teeth. The scouts who had passed the enclosure earlier in the year began talking about the strange sounds they had heard, and some of the Boys were saying, ‘This place could be haunted!’ Piglet meanwhile was complaining that there was none of the dried octopus or eels from Eelersville he had been promised, while someone teased him that he should cook up some wurrier weed and wild carrots and lose some weight. ‘So you think I’m fat?’ Piglet was saying, fingering the long carving knife he used so effectively, his eyes narrowing dangerously inside their plump folds, while Jewelheart was berating him for wanting to cook octopuses at all.

‘How about some music, Fiddla?’ said Pipes, worried that fights would break out and Morale would fall.

‘And can someone organise a hunting party and catch something decent for dinner!’ put in Flash. ‘We can't march on wild carrots and wurrier weed!’

Wurria squeaked, ‘But not wurriers, not any kind of monkey or wurrier!’

‘Of course not!’ said Spewberry kindly. ‘Not when there’s pigs! Which I bet there are up in those hills! Who’ll come pig-hunting with me?’

‘Not me!’ said many of the smaller ones. They did not like the look of the huge gnarled trees at the edge of the dark forest leaning over the back wall of the enclosure.

‘I will,’ said someone with a missing finger and a ragged-looking anklebiter.

‘Hey, don’t I know you?’ said Scar. ‘Weren’t you on the Banned from Biteback list? For being a total zuzu?’

Finger whipped his hand with the missing finger behind his back, but it was too late. It was definitely Finger. He had stowed away, helped by some of the Boy Defenders who didn’t want him hanging around Raiderville when the others had gone. He could be very annoying, so annoying they were willing to risk the Leader’s wrath. And in their hearts they did not really believe they would see the Biteback Boys again.

‘Please, send him back, for the love of Coder!’ said several boys. ‘We can't do that, not with all the thorns and black cavalry!’ said Jewelheart. ‘It would be the same as murder. You might as well cut his throat now as do that!’

‘I will! Said Piglet cried Scar together.

‘You didn’t think I was serious, did you?’ said Jewelheart, looking so shocked that they both hung their heads in shame to have taken her so literally.

Rilke had the last word. ‘I suppose you can stay, Finger, if you promise faithfully not to annoy anyone, and to stay with the army unless you get my express permission to go truffling.’

‘I swear. Can I go truffling now? With them?’ said Finger.

Rilke looked pained, but Piglet said, ‘Yes! We need more truffles despratly!’

Then Spewberry and Reedy and Scar (with Finger in tow, chattering annoyingly until Scar told him ‘Buzz off you zuzu, or I’ll swat you’) went off with their anklebiters boldly into the dark wooded hills behind the enclosure.

When the bats were whirling in the darkening sky catching insects, the hunters returned triumphant. They were carrying a huge black something, which as the Boys crowded around with improvised torches of dry flax stalks, turned out to be a boar. It had long razor-sharp tusks. Scar boasted another deep cut to add to his disfigurements, and his fierce anklebiter had been tossed, and its chainmail was torn. But they sang a hunter’s song of victory as they carved up the carcass on the shore, and many eels (the ordinary kind) broke the surface as they fought over the entrails the boys tossed into the river. ‘A good thing Shelley isn’t here to see that!’ thought Rilke, and he felt a sudden tug in his heart as he remembered her, and wondered if she was even alive.

Sir Snout, Finger’s anklebiter, had found several big black truffles in the grove of ancient oaks where they had bailed up the boar (Finger announced that the pig was there to eat truffles, so he would definitely go with the hunters every time and help find not only truffles but pigs. But Scar said ‘No! they’d ’ear ya comin’ an’ run fer cover!’).

Piglet was ecstatic with the boar. He waxed lyrical about the feast he would prepare. ‘Fresh pork roasted over an apple-wood fire, with apple and fig sauce - and even black truffles! – mmm! Pig-perfect!’ he said.

‘And herbs!’ said Jewelheart. ‘I found the old herb gardens and there’s everything – basil, rosemary, parsley, coriander – even rocket and some lettuce! The potato garden patch looks as if it has been turned over recently though – and no sign of any potatoes.’

‘That’ll be this fellow, or ’is friends,’ said Scar, as he knocked out the tusks of the boar with a hatchet, drilled a hole in them with Smithie’s awl, and added them to the collection around his neck, where they dwarfed the little mutant anklebiter’s tusks. ‘Beast!’ said Jewelheart under her breath.

As the fiddles played and the campfire blazed, the enclosure felt like a banqueting hall. Rilke, who was still a vegetarian since the moonbird incident, was sorely tempted as he smelt the aroma of roast pork, but Jewelheart came and offered him roasted wild yams and potatoes from the gardens with truffle sauce, and he was content. Pipes joined them, though he also had a piece of pork with crackling. Only Fishook was upset; he and Rilke had tried in vain to catch some meralav – they had seen them jumping - in the Baldrock river. Then, just at dusk there had been a strange surge in the river, like a tidal surge of very short duration, and at the height of the surge Rilke had hooked something huge which almost dragged him in before breaking his best fishing line. He had caught a glimpse of a flat silvery side and long fins when it broke the surface for a second before diving. Then the surge receded and the river was back to normal. The creature had reminded Rilke of the great Eel of the Bottomless Canyon he had hooked just before the fateful battle. ‘I hope it wasn’t,’ he shivered. ‘The Zagli-thingy… it was huge! The Eel of Ill Omen, the fisher lady called it.’

Fishook had shuddered, and crossed his fingers hastily then made a snipping sign. ‘The line is cut, the line is cut!’ he chanted. Like most fishermen, he was superstitious. ‘That’s the last thing we want to catch - ill omens!’

Rilke sat by the shore fretting to himself, ‘Could one have come down the river through the caves? What is happening in there, now the Birdmen have taken over? Floods and omens! Am I up to this? Why did I have to go and accept the leadership? Why did I have to go fishing? What could the omen mean, if it is an omen? Why do I like Squeak so much – what ever would Quickblade think?’ on and on, until Squeak (who hated fishing and had spent the time in a most ‘girly’ way, tidying up their packs, folding all Rilke’s clothes neatly and polishing his spare boots) found him again and dragged him over to the campfire to dance. Rilke looked at his squire with some apprehension. Then he gave in and joined Squeak and the revellers.

No one had bothered (or wanted) to go into the ruined roundhouses, and now that the bonfire was blazing and the fiddles fiddling, they hardly glanced behind them at the dark doorways and staring windows. But as the merrymaking went on into the night, dark figures appeared at the windows, watching. And then, at a silent signal from their leader, they all stepped down into the firelight, pale and ragged figures, silent and grim, holding aloft white rags. The fiddlers stopped in mid-scrape. ‘Ghosts!’ cried some of the Boys, and with a mixed rattle of various weaponry being drawn, the whole army turned to face the new threat, silver thinking-caps on, so they looked like gleaming, masked ghosts themselves – frightened ghosts, their swords and spears and arrows shaking.

But Pipes did not panic. ‘Who or what are you, strangers in the night?’ he asked, his hand on his swordhilt. Jewelheart and many of Rilke’s archers had their bows bent, ready to fire.

‘Please, don’t shoot, we’re just hungry orphans! We’ve been waiting here so long, the food all ran out,’ said a boy with a small pale voice and a pale, soot-grimed face.

‘Please let us join you,’ said another, a tall, scrawny girl. ‘Give us food and swords and we can fight! And we can tell you lots about… over there.’ She held a thin arm up pointing at Fire rock looming dark above them.

‘Yes, we can,’ said the boy. ‘They are waiting for you…’

‘Who’s waiting for us?’ said Rilke, stepping forward cautiously. The strangers were starting to put the wind up him, after the eel incident. Suddenly the night was full of ominous possibilities.

‘The terriblest army, the frighteningest machines…’ said another of the strangers, with a lisp.

Suddenly there was a terrible thrashing in the tall weeds of the potato patch, and Piglet came stumbling out into the firelight, followed by something huge and black. Quick as thought, while every other Boy stood agape, Jewelheart bent her bow and shot a deadly war arrow with triangular head of forged bronze. Swift and true it flew, and the black shape faltered and came crashing down, landing almost at her feet. ‘Ugh!’ she cried, and hid her face, weeping, as the second pig killed that night wheezed its last, its trotters twitching feebly.

‘Hooray!’ cried the scrawny girl. ‘That was the mother! It’s been after us for days!’

At that, several of the braver Boys dived off into the potato patch, and high-pitched squeals filled the night air as they tackled the fleeing piglets.

Ignoring the piglets and their hunters, Flash, who had come out of his wagon to see what the commotion was about, and to demand his waffles, which were late, interrogated the strangers. ‘Machines, did you say? What kind? Speak up! Ballistas, crossbows? Rams? Chariots? What?’

‘Let them answer!’ said Pipes irritably to Flash, trying to ignore the squeals of the piglets, and putting his arm around the shaking Jewelheart.

‘Everything!’ said the girl. ‘They destroyed it for… as if it was… just target practice!’

‘Destroyed what?’ asked Pipes.

‘Our village, of course,’ said the girl, her voice wavering.

‘Not that timber town which

Minds the mouth of bird-thronged Tharha,

Warm water winding, slowly streaming

From the sacred steaming springs

From the fabled Fire Hills flowing?’

said Riter sadly.

‘What did he say?’ asked the pale boy.

‘That he knows where you mean. Tharatan. It was a beautiful little town,’ said Pipes sadly.

‘How did you escape?’ asked Rilke.

‘We are all good swimmers. We dived into the harbour and swam across to Fire Rock,’ said the scrawny girl.

‘All but one of us,’ said the pale boy. ‘He got swept away and drowneded.’

‘No he didn’t!’ cried another of the children. ‘The dolphins came and rescued him.’

‘No they didn’t,’ said the pale boy flatly.

‘Come to the fire, you look cold,’ said Jewelheart, averting her eyes from the new carcass being dragged off for butchering.

‘Welcome to the Boy Raiders!’ said Rilke, and there was a chorus of agreement. They were glad of the reinforcements, now they saw that the children (eleven in all) were not ghosts.

‘Provided you take the oath of allegiance, and read the Code from front to back and pass a test,’ added Stickla sternly.

‘That can wait!’ said Rilke. ‘Can't you see they’re starving?’

‘I can't read,’ said the scrawny girl.

‘I’ll read it out to you,’ said Minute. ‘What’s your name anyway?’

‘Ragdoll.’

‘Your real name?’

‘Can't tell.’

‘Not allowed under the Code, not to tell your real name,’ said Stickla.

‘I’ll vouch for her,’ said Minute. ‘That’s allowed.’

So Minute took Ragdoll under his wing and they became fast friends.

After the new recruits had eaten the remains of the roast boar and drunk a lot of mead (which they loved), they repeated the Oath of Allegiance (with slurred speech) after Stickla, and each got a copy of the main points of the Code, scratchily copied onto a tirlag leaf by Minute, in anticipation of just such an event. Then as was the custom at investitures, someone led them in a rousing chorus of the Boy Raider’s song, We are the Children, while Piglet oversaw the roasting of the second pig:

We are the Children of the Wind

We come from the East, we ride to the West

We came from the stars, we fight for Aeden

Our mothers are lost, our fathers are blind.

We have no fear, we laugh at Death.

We ride like the Wind, we strike like the Snake,

The Caller will come, the Jewel will return

The Rainbow will rise, The Sword will awake.

But the pale boy said, ‘Why are you shouting? You should be quiet! They are waiting, up there!’ And those that heard him turned to look where he pointed, and some thought they saw silhouettes on the jagged ridge of the Fire Rock, and they fell silent. The Pipes told the boys who had caught some of the wild piglets, ‘No, you definitely cannot take them with you. Those squeals would alert every enemy for miles around!’

‘Well can we eat them?’ asked one of the captors.

‘NO!’ said Jewelheart, and so they dropped the squirming pets, and they hurried off grunting in a little pack like naughty children into the night.

Soon after the departure of the piglets, the whole camp was quiet, and after a second meal of pork the boys turned in for the night, well-fed, in fact ‘full as a bull’, as Cursa called it. But many of them had a scared, sinking feeling about what lay in store for them the next day, and were muttering about ‘Ill omens’. The story of the strange eel had spread.

As he was getting into his tent, and Squeak was helping him pull off his boots, Rilke saw a pale figure approaching. ‘Who’s that?’ he asked.

‘Sadman.’ It was the pale orphan boy.

‘What is it? It’s late, you know,’ said Rilke. He didn’t like the way the boy stared.

‘I think I knew your father and mother.’

Rilke felt a nasty chill run down his back. ‘Oh, did you?’ he replied, strangely reluctant to go on with the conversation.

‘Yes. Grim and Ira. They were refugees. They came to our village, and we took them in. Bad mistake,’ he said darkly.

‘What do you mean?’ said Rilke.

‘I reckon that’s why they attacked. Your parents were runaways from… that place.’

‘Are you blaming my parents for…?’

‘Not really. But I thought you would want to know...’

‘Well, where are they, for zarks sake?’ cried Rilke, dread and horror making his voice sound strangled. He was thinking of the Eel of Ill Omen, and was prepared to believe the worst.

‘Didn’t you hear us tell you? Everyone in Tharatan was killed but us. Everyone!’

Rilke collapsed back into the tent, doubled over with grief, and the pale boy, seemingly gratified by Rilke’s reaction to his news, left without a word. Squeak pulled the curtains shut, and held Rilke in his arms until his sobs subsided. Then they talked, in whispers, and Rilke told Squeak every detail of his last day with his parents at home in their cottage at Pebblebrook; the birthday cake which Ira insisted on baking for Shelley, the present of the heirloom sword from Grim, and Ira’s tears when he said good-bye and left with Korman and Shelley.

Then Squeak told Rilke, ‘I think I might be an orphan too. My village is over Fire Rock, way past Tharatan, at the source of the Third River,

Golden swift Agathrha!

Born of amber springs

And bat-thronged mines

Of lofty Labagathrhana

Cradled in Starfish Spines

And jeweltreed wings

Of Kor-Züratimmadi

Poured into the blue

Of Pagmara Sanmerya!

But the Aghmaath came, because of the bat caves, and they confiscated the amberbats and sent my parents away in the Deathwagon because they would not hand over their bats. But I escaped down the Agathrha in my coracle. It was very bumpy in the shallows and I got dizzy in the rapids but at last I got all the way down to the Bay.’

‘Then what? Did you paddle that thing all the way up the coast to Raiderville?’ asked Rilke, amazed and (as Squeak intended) distracted from his grief.

‘I started out, but a sailing Trader picked me up, and he made me scrub his decks and wash his dishes in the galley from dawn till dusk until we got to Raiderville. Then he tried to hold me to ransom, but I dived off the side and swam to shore.’

‘Poor brave Squeak! I didn’t know,’ said Rilke.

Finally, near dawn, they fell asleep in each other’s arms, exhausted. Rilke was now an orphan, and Squeak was his only comfort.

That morning only the sentries stirred at dawn; the rest of the army, except Flash, slept in. Flash was walking in the early light when he saw a buzzard circling overhead - or an eagle; he could not tell which. He hoped it was an eagle. ‘Shoot that bird!’ he commanded his best archer, kicking him where he slept beside the Golden Flashwagon.

‘Aye aye, sire.’ The boy jumped to his feet, almost as a reflex, and in a moment he had bent his bow and shot the bird out of the sky. It fell like a feathered ballista bolt, bouncing heavily off the roof of the wagon, and the horses grazing nearby shied away. Some of the army stirred, then went back to sleep. Flash picked up the bird when he was sure it was dead, and carefully cut off its wing. ‘Good, just what I wanted. A big well-muscled eagle wing. Perfect for dissection,’ he said to himself as he wiped his scalpel blade.

But the bowman was troubled. ‘We didn’t ought to have shot a seagull. It’s unlucky,’ he mumbled, and unstringing his bow he lay down to sleep again. But Flash was already inside his wagon, standing at his workbench, dissecting the wing and drawing the sinews and muscles and bone structure. ‘I will fly one day. I will. Kites are so limiting,’ he muttered. But his hands were shaking; he had never cut up such a noble creature, and it felt bad.

When all were dressed and the horses groomed and fed an extra ration of grain, the harnesses checked and weapons sharpened, a pale but determined Rilke addressed the host, in a speech mostly prepared for him by Riter. He was too grief-stricken even to protest at the obsessive alliteration:

‘Brave Boys of Biteback: today we cross the flowing fords of Fire Rock to pursue the paths of the perilous peninsula until we near the Northern Narrows by bellicose Baldrock. Forthwith we flee to Fairywater Fords, and the Fairy Forest. Then we must really ready for big battles. As our recent recruits revealed, Tharatan was thrashed by stones thrown from the Fire Hills, and a form of fire was thrown from afar. Beset by ballistas and fiendish fire, our best bet will be to go at a gallop and push past promptly. And if they have cavalry, we can’t let them corner us, but begone before the ballistas begin. Then we’ll come to the open acres again and none will know how to hinder us. Now, for freedom! For Raiderville! For Aeden!’ then a spasm of grief crossed his