Goblin Quest (15 page)

Hopping about on the deck, just at the foot of the steep stairs which led up on to the forecastle, was the dearest little white rabbit.

Breenge hauled herself out of the pool. (The water had started to grow unpleasantly hot anyway, making her feel as if she were a lobster being slowly boiled alive for someone's dinner.) She wrapped a towel around herself and went to scoop up the rabbit, which made small frightened noises and rolled its eyes at her as she cuddled it. “There, there,” she cooed. “Don't be frightened, little bunny. How on earth did you get aboard?”

Ninnis, watching from the far end of the ship, smiled a smug little smile to herself. “That's the last time you'll try to make trouble for me, Mister Prawl,” she said. “And now Breenge will love you, just as you always wished.”

But Prawl had made more trouble than she had realized. Instead of following him up on to deck to watch and gloat as her rabbit spell transformed him, she should have gone down into the galley. If she had, she might have seen her spellbook smouldering there beside the stove, and had a chance of saving it before it burst into flames.

But she hadn't, and she did not realize the danger until she noticed the steam wisping up off the surface of the swimming pool, which was directly above the galley. Then she guessed, and went running back below, but it was already too late. When she flung the galley door open, air rushed in and fire rushed out. A tawny torrent of flames, playful as a young lion, pawed at her pinafore and singed her eyebrows off.

“Fire!” screeched Ninnis. The sailors heard her, and took up her cry. First they ran for buckets and hoses. Then, when they saw how far the blaze had spread, they ran for the boats.

“Fire! Fire!”

Prince Rhind and Breenge stood on the forecastle, Breenge holding the rabbit, all three of them wondering what to do. After a while Woon Gumpus appeared too, clutching his hurdy-gurdy and blinking at them through a mask of soot. “It seems that a small fire has broken out,” he shouted, over the noise of the crackling flames, which had burst up through the deck and were gathered around the mast, leaping up to lick at the sails like wolves nipping at the toes of a tree-bound traveller.

“What shall we do?” asked Breenge.

“Oh, it is nothing to worry about,” said Woon Gumpus. “We are at sea, and it stands to reason that that is the safest place to have a fire. All this water will soon put it out.”

“Then why are your sailors scrambling into those little boats?” asked Breenge. “Why are they launching them? Why are they rowing away so fast, and shouting things like, ‘Save yourselves, mateys, 'tis all over with the barky'?”

“Oh, you know these seafaring types. Superstitious and easily spooked. They'll soon have the flames out.”

The main sail caught fire with a massive
woof
, and transformed into a blinding golden rectangle of flames, like the window into a furnace. Everyone on the forecastle took a step back as the heat scorched their faces. Through the rippling air above the deck, through the smoke, the rising and the falling sparks, Ninnis came scampering to join them, patting at her skirts to put out the fires that had started there.

“Are there… Are there any more of those little boats?” asked Prince Rhind.

“Um … no,” admitted Woon Gumpus.

The
Sea Cucumber
, meanwhile, was still barging her way steadily through the waves. Henwyn and the goblins had spent the first part of the voyage being noisily seasick over her sides, but slowly they had grown used to the pitching and swaying of the ship. Slowly, too, their fear of sea serpents had faded, but they still kept a sharp lookout. Captain Kestle might say as often he liked that sea serpents were solitary creatures, almost never seen, but Captain Kestle had not had dozens of them biting at his bottom on that lonely walkway. When they weren't busy being sick or helping him to sail the ship, the goblins stared out at the sea, sharpening their weapons and daring the serpents to appear.

None did. A day and a night and another day passed, and all they saw was a pod of playful porpoises which swam alongside for a while.

Then, on the second evening, the sea people appeared. Skarper was the first to spot them: three riders, mounted upon the big fronded seahorses of the western deeps, surfing on the crest of a foaming wave.

“Sea people?” said Henwyn, when he heard Skarper's shout, and he and Zeewa ran to the side to look. The other goblins gathered there too, and even Captain Kestle ambled over to see, enjoying their amazement, although he'd met the sea people often enough before.

“They aren't much like their pictures in the books,” said Skarper, joining him.

“Those pictures was drawn by folk who'd never been to sea, I daresay,” Kestle said. “Those books were written by men who'd never voyaged further than a waterfront tavern in Porthquidden.”

The sea people were indeed a bit of a disappointment. No golden hair blown backwards on the breeze; no combs or mirrors, or fair voices singing. Mermen and merwomen alike were brownish, scaly, finny creatures, and they carried spears made from narwhals' horns and the business ends of swordfish. Their voices were as hard and clanging as the calls of gulls when they hailed the
Sea Cucumber
.

“Hello, old man! Hello, ugly goblins! What are you doing, so far from home, so far from shore? Why do you venture out upon the sea, which does not want you and does not like you?”

“I've as much business here as any of you,” Captain Kestle shouted back. “Don't you know me?”

They came nearer and circled the
Sea Cucumber
, looking up. Their golden eyes were flecked with darkness, like the eyes of fish. “Old Kestle,” they said. “So it is you! We thought you'd gone to the dry land and put down roots. That would have been wiser. The sea will eat your silly ship. You'll sink to the bottom and we'll take your nice pewter buttons and all your goblins' swords and axes too.”

“The sea folk value metal,” said Kestle to his passengers. “They cannot forge their own, of course, because it's so difficult to get a fire lit down beneath the sea. But don't worry; they know we are too strong for them. They rob wrecks, but they seldom attack sound ships.”

The sea people circled once more, calling out their taunts and empty threats. Then they grew bored, and sank beneath the waves again, speeding off towards the west.

 

There was no swimming pool aboard the
Sea Cucumber
, unless you counted the eight inches of salt water which swirled about in the hold, and which the goblins kept on falling into when they were trying to bale it out with leather buckets. The dinners, cooked by Skarper and Henwyn, were odd affairs, because the tins of food that Etty had given them didn't have pictures on them to tell you what was inside, like the tin cans in her dream, only dwarf runes, which nobody on the
Sea Cucumber
could read. The first night they had sausages and custard; the second, beef and apricot stew, with some crabs which Spurtle and Flegg caught by trailing their tails over the side.

As for the on-board entertainment, there was only Henwyn. Henwyn had come by the idea somewhere that when people were off on quests or long journeys they liked nothing better than to sit around after a hard day's questing or journeying telling stories and singing songs. The fact that he was the only one who believed this never discouraged him, and he was always ready to start a rousing sing-song, even though nobody else ever joined in.

“Tonight,” he said, picking bits of crab shell out of his teeth, “I shall sing you ‘The Ballad of Prince Brewyon'.”

“Washing up to do,” said Spurtle, scampering off towards the galley with the supper dishes.

“My turn to bale the hold,” said Zeewa, hurrying below.

The other goblins made excuses too, except for Grumpling, who never bothered making excuses but just left anyway.

Skarper went scrambling up the mast into the crow's nest. “I'll see if I can see any more of those sea people,” he called down as he climbed. And there he sat, swaying to and fro in the gathering twilight, high above the ocean, while the plump sail spread beneath him and the sounds of canvas and rigging and waves almost drowned out Henwyn's voice from down below as he began his song.

Skarper could not see any sea people, but he soon noticed something else. Due west, dead ahead of the ship, an orange tongue of fire had appeared, as if someone had built a big bonfire out there on the horizon.

He found a useful rope and slid back down it to the deck. Captain Kestle was standing at the helm, tapping his foot to the rhythm of Henwyn's song.

“What's that?” asked Skarper, pointing to the flame in the west. “Is it a lighthouse? Is there land out there?”

“None that I ever heard of,” said the old seafarer.

They watched the fire while it slowly sank and dimmed and went out. There was a stain on the sky where it had been, as if a patch of smoke hung there.

“I'd say a ship has caught fire, and burned,” said Kestle.

By this time the other passengers had realized that something was happening, and were beginning to gather. Even Henwyn stopped his singing and came aft to stand with them and peer at the distant smoke, which was almost invisible by then against the deepening dusk.

“Was it the
Swan of Govannon
?” he asked.

“I know of no other ship in these waters,” said Kestle.

“Good!” said Spurtle. “Then the fire has done our work for us. That'll put an end to Rhind's mischief, and the Elvenhorn will be back in the deeps where it belongs. Can we go home now?”

“But what about Prawl?” asked Skarper.

“And what about Prince Rhind, and his sister, and their nice old cook?” said Henwyn. “I wanted their quest to fail, but I did not want them all drowned!”

“What about my scratchbackler?' growled Grumpling.

“If the fire did not catch hold too quick, there's a hope they got off safe,” said Kestle. “We should be in the waters where they foundered by sunrise. We must keep a good look out for their boats.”

 

Dawn came, and the sides and rigging of the
Sea Cucumber
were lined with watchful goblins, but they saw no sign of any boats. All they saw was some flotsam riding the grey waves – charred spars trailing blackened snakes of rope; a few drifting timbers. One of the timbers came from a ship's stern, and on the blistered paintwork a name was still visible. As they had thought, she had been the
Swan of Govannon
.

They had almost given up hope of finding anyone alive when Zeewa sighted a larger fragment, not far off. It was a floating portion of the forecastle, and it was bristling with people. The people seemed to be hopping or dancing around, and the sounds of shouting came faintly across the water.

“It is them!” said Henwyn.

“But what are they doing?” asked Skarper.

“Anchovies!” roared Gutgust.

“The sea people are attacking them, that's what!” said Spurtle, who had borrowed Captain Kestle's telescope.

He was right. A dozen or more of the people of the sea were riding their seahorses in rings around the wreckage, waving their swordfish blades and narwhal horns.

Prince Rhind had been very brave. When the Swan's mainmast had collapsed in a flurry of sparks and the ship had begun to founder, he had wrapped himself in Breenge's wet towel and gone racing down to the cabins. He had saved the Elvenhorn, his sword, and Breenge's bow, and also his splendid armoured coat, which shone silvery bright in the dim morning light as he perched on the highest point of the floating forecastle, waving his blade at the people of the sea and shouting his war cry – the long, quavering, “Baaaa!” of the men of Tyr Davas, which had struck terror into the hearts of so many sheep rustlers down the years.

The sea people shouted back, but they dared not go close enough to test their swords against Prince Rhind's. A few had tried, and Breenge had shot their seahorses from under them. Woon Gumpus had found a length of charred plank that he was waving like a club, and Ninnis whacked her wooden spoon on the webbed hands of the unseahorsed riders as they tried to grope their way aboard the wreckage.

What Rhind didn't realize was that it was his armour which had attracted the sea people in the first place. They had been happily ransacking the wreck of the
Swan
way down on the sea floor, until the glimmer of those silver-bright scales caught their eye, glinting through the wave tops. How could they resist such shiny splendour? So they kept circling and circling, too scared of Breenge's arrows and her brother's sword to actually attack, but waiting for the moment when the forecastle finally sank and they could help themselves to that wonderful metal vest.

The goblins, watching the battle from the
Sea Cucumber
as it swung towards the wreckage, understood what was going on at once. They loved shiny things themselves, and many a war had been fought in the corridors of Clovenstone over mail shirts far less fabulous than Rhind's.

“Take off your armour!” Skarper shouted, as Kestle steered the
Cucumber
nearer.

“What, so you goblins or your mermen friends can shoot me down?” Rhind shouted back.

“Oh, do be polite to them, Rhind,” Breenge told him. “We need them to rescue us!”

“We can't shoot you!” Skarper yelled. “Goblins are rubbish shots and we haven't got bows anyway.”

“I reckon I get him with a spear from here,” said Grumpling. “Why's we got to rescue them anyway?”

“Because they are fellow mariners, in peril on the sea,” said Henwyn.

“And because if you got him with a spear he'd fall in the sea and sink like a stone in all that armour, and then how will you get your scratchbackler back?” said Skarper. “Look, there it is, a-dangling round Rhind's neck.” He cupped his paws around his mouth and yelled at Rhind again, “Take off your coat of scales! That's what the sea folk want! Let them take it, and save yourself!”

Reluctantly, Rhind took off his armour. He lifted it high above his head and threw it as far as he could from the wreckage. It hit the waves with a white splash and sank, and the sea people followed it down, shouting, “Mine! Mine!” and “I saw it first!” until the water swallowed up their voices.

Then Captain Kestle took the
Sea Cucumber
closer until it bumped against the wreckage, and the stranded Woolmarkers and Woon Gumpus scrambled aboard up ropes and ladders that the goblins dangled over her side.

They were a sorry sight, these shipwrecked woollen-folk, charred and sodden, dazed with weariness after their night adrift. At least Rhind had salvaged enough of his princely good manners to say, “Thank you for rescuing us, Henwyn of Clovenstone. Decent of you.”

Henwyn just said, “I think you have something that belongs to us?”

“Belongs ter me,” snarled Grumpling.

Rhind looked grim, but he took the baldric from around his neck and handed it to Henwyn with the Elvenhorn dangling.

“So is my quest to end here?” he asked.

“Too right it is,” said Grumpling. He snatched the horn and shoved it down the back of his armour for a good old scratch. “Ahh,” he said, “Nuffin' sorts out them flea-bites like my own scratchbackler!”

“And where is Prawl?” asked Henwyn, looking at Rhind's bedraggled followers. “I cannot see him among your number. Did he stay behind at Floonhaven?”

Rhind and his companions looked at one another. In all of the excitement, none of them had spared a moment's thought for Prawl.

“I think he was aboard the ship,” said Breenge. “His cloak was aboard, anyway. It was kicking about on the deck. I noticed it, just before the fire started.”

“The poor gentleman must have gone down with the ship,” said Ninnis, wiping away a tear.

“
I'm here!
” said the white rabbit, which Breenge was still cuddling. “
Oh, this is so humiliating!
” But its little rabbity mouth could not form the words, so all that came out was a faint squeaking.

“Your rabbit?” asked Zeewa, reaching over to tickle it between its long ears.

“I found him aboard the
Swan
,” said Breenge. “He must have stowed away. I call him Fuzzy-Nose.”