‘We’re doing it,’ she yelled exultantly to Nab. ‘It’s working.’ She prayed that the cloth of her jeans would hold. Very gradually, Nab felt himself being pulled out of the mire. Soon only the lower part of his legs was left in and he was able to move his hands along the cape to heave himself out more quickly. He would never forget the delicious feeling of freedom as each part of his body fought itself free of the clinging mass that had engulfed it.
Finally he lay on the firm grass path with Beth at his side, panting breathlessly with the effort of her exertions. The joint where her right arm joined the shoulder throbbed terribly with a pulsating ache and the mouths of Sam and Brock were bleeding but they were almost delirious with relief. When he had recovered a little from his ordeal Nab got up slowly and, having thanked them all solemnly picked some handfuls of grass and began to wipe some of the foul ooze from his body. Everywhere was deathly quiet. Then suddenly, for in the drama he had just been through he had completely forgotten him, his thoughts turned to Golconda. Surely he must have missed them by now and turned back? But there was no sign of the great white heron. Nab peered desperately into the darkness but all he could see were the shapes in the mist, dancing joyfully. For a moment the tiredness of his eyes played tricks and he almost believed they were laughing at him. Had the heron been a figment of his imagination? No; they had all seen and spoken with him. Worse still then, had he been in league with the goblins; leading them all into the middle of the bog by gaining their confidence and then abandoning them to wander about for ever in this terrible place to be swallowed up one by one by the marsh as he almost had been?
His thoughts were suddenly interrupted by the voice of Warrigal, who had perched on a stump at his side.
‘We have no guide,’ he said simply. ‘We have no alternative now but to go back along this path until we find another and then see where that leads us.’
‘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.
