‘Where is Golconda?’ asked Nab.
‘I do not know but I fear we shall never see him again. You rouse the others; we must be on the move.’
Beth’s eyes were closed and the other animals were asleep. It seemed a great pity to disturb them while they were still enjoying the exhilaration of success and before they realized the desperateness of their situation, but Nab agreed with Warrigal that they dared not delay.
Eventually, after Nab had woken them up gently, they started walking back along the path down which Golconda had led them that evening. The relative happiness of that earlier walk was difficult to believe in now; it was almost as if they had dreamt it. Suddenly, when they came to the spot where Nab had heard the cry, he stumbled over something on the ground and almost fell over, toppling Warrigal off his shoulder. He bent down and saw a bolt lying across the path; the shaft was made of rough wood and the head was a jagged rock. Then he looked up and saw that the others were all staring at a tree stump on the other side of the path. He followed their gaze and then he saw Golconda. His head had been severed and stuck on the top of the stump; the eyes wide and staring and the long sharp beak gaping open. The rest of his body had been dismembered and each part had been attached to a different part of the stump so that the whole represented some ghastly caricature. The snow-white feathers were speckled and streaked with deep crimson where the blood had run. They all stared for what seemed an age, transfixed with horror, and an icy fear gripped their hearts and froze the blood in their veins so that they were unable to move. Then the physical manifestation of that horror took over and they all began to retch violently, their stomachs heaving and churning till they were shaking with weakness. Beth, summoning up from within her a reserve of emotional strength she was unaware she possessed, pulled herself together and shouted at them to move and, when there was no response, she went round to each animal and shook him fiercely by the shoulder until the daze of horror was shaken free. Finally, they all began to move, slowly at first, stumbling as if in a dream but then as the fog in their minds cleared they walked faster and faster until they were almost running in their efforts to get away from that dreadful place. How long they went on for or how far they went they did not know, but finally, and all at the same time, exhaustion overtook them and they slumped down. The awful truth now occurred to Nab. The splash and the cry which he and Warrigal had heard had been when the bolt had struck home and the goblins had pulled Golconda off into the marsh. The figure that they had then followed had not been Golconda at all but some creature of the marshes controlled by the goblins; it may even have been the mist itself summoned up by the goblins to do their bidding and taking the animals further and further into the depths of the bog while they did their grisly work knowing that any survivors would be bound to come back that way. The thought came to him that they were being played with and a feeling of utter and complete hopelessness swept over him. He looked round at the others sitting or lying down on the sodden strip of ground which kept them from being sucked in by the bog. Their coats were saturated and matted with mud and on their faces Nab saw only utter misery and despair. Even Warrigal was staring down at the ground, his eyes dull and listless and his shoulders hunched over in an attitude of weariness and apathy. Beth lay face down with her head buried in her arms, and her body quivered slightly as she sobbed quietly to herself. Next to her sat Perryfoot, staring out over the marsh with his ears flat along his back and at his side lay Brock and Sam like two ghosts. They could go no further, thought Nab. This was it; the goblins had done their grisly work well. Any will to continue had been extinguished completely by the sight they had seen back along the path.
For some time, as these thoughts went through his mind, he had been growing gradually more and more aware of a sound coming over the bog. At first he thought it was no more than the wind blowing through the rushes but as it grew slowly louder he could distinguish an underlying conglomeration of noise which sounded very much like the murmur of low conversation and the splashing of footsteps. The others had also heard it for they had looked up and were staring in the direction from which the noise was coming; the expression on their faces having changed from despair to terror. Nearer and nearer the noise came until suddenly, abruptly, the murmur stopped and all they could hear were splashes as the footsteps continued over the marsh towards them. Then even those stopped and they saw through the darkness and the mist a long line of shadows standing silently and still, just within their sight but too far away to be able to distinguish any features.
‘Goblins, ’ Brock whispered to himself under his breath but so quiet f was it that they all heard him.
The line of shadows stood like that for what seemed an age to the terrified animals and then, once again, it began to move forward. They could just make out, now, the separate figures as they walked. Then suddenly, like a shaft of sunlight, they heard a cry echo over the bog and shatter the dreadful silence. It was a pure liquid cry which pealed out through the darkness and seemed to fill the air with light and beauty so that the travellers felt their hearts instantly freed from the cold terror that had gripped them. In it was the happiness of the first call of the curlew after the winter and the warmth and comfort of the first sunshine in spring. Dawn was just breaking and in the golden iridescent light of the early sun as it shone through the mist the animals could see the dark ominous line start to break up and divide as a host of elves fell among them, their swords glinting and flashing in the sun. They watched spellbound as the goblins fell back in disarray and the air was filled with the sounds of battle; the clashing of sword against sword and the terrible cries of the goblins as they were wounded or killed, for they did not accept defeat easily and fought with a dreadful strength, their short squat bodies wielding massive swords and maces as if they were feathers. But they were slow and clumsy and the elves danced around them confusing and taunting them so that they became angry and lunged wildly until they grew tired and their strength left them. Then the elves would quickly and deftly finish them off. The battle raged all morning but eventually the last few goblins fled away over the marsh and the air was once again still. Then the animals saw the elves coming towards them out of the mist. They walked slowly for it had been a long hard fight and they were weary. They were also sad, for killing is not in the nature of an elf and they will avoid it if at all possible. Even the killing of goblins is to them an evil and victory in battle was never a glorious time for them.
Soon the elves were standing on the path and their leader spoke.
‘You are safe,’ he said. ‘Welcome to the land of Sheigra. I am Faraid, battle leader of the sea elves and I have come to take you to Saurelon, Lord of the Sea. It came to us that you were assailed by the forces of Dréagg and you were long overdue. Come now, drink this; it will revive you until you can rest and eat in the caves of Elgol.’
From under his garments of spun silver Faraid produced a flask and handed it to Nab, who raised it to his lips and drank deeply of the sparkling liquid inside. The colour he could not see but the flavour reminded him of the sweetness of sun-ripened clover and he could feel it coursing through his body, reviving and refreshing him. He passed it to Beth and then Faraid took the flask back and poured it into a large bowl-shaped shell inlaid with mother-of-pearl for the animals to drink from.
When they had drunk their fill and vitality and life had begun to appear once more in their eyes, Faraid led the little band out over the marsh with the elven army following behind. They shuddered with repulsion as they walked through the area of battle and saw the black blood seeping out of the goblins’ wounds and mixing with the stagnant oily waters of the bog. The whole area was now thick with the foul stench that escaped from these wounds and the animals found great difficulty in getting their breath. They picked their way between the fat ugly bodies lying where they had been felled and could hardly bear to look at the faces which in death were even more vile than in life. The hideous puffy features were twisted and contorted and the slavering viscous lips had pulled themselves into such an attitude of hatred and contempt that even in death they still made the animals feel afraid. The sight of death reminded Nab of Golconda and he told Faraid of the goblins’ treatment of the heron but the elves already knew because they had passed the awful spectacle on their way.