Podkin One-Ear Read online

  For Amelie

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Map

  Chapter One: A Bard for Bramblemas

  Chapter Two: The Worst Bramblemas Ever

  Chapter Three: Starclaw

  Chapter Four: Timber!

  Interlude

  Chapter Five: Redwater

  Chapter Six: One-Ear

  Interlude

  Chapter Seven: The Witch in the Woods

  Chapter Eight: Boneroot

  Chapter Nine: Shape and Quince

  Chapter Ten: Fox Paw

  Interlude

  Chapter Eleven: Sellswords

  Chapter Twelve: The Burning

  Chapter Thirteen: Tales Within Tales

  Interlude

  Chapter Fourteen: The Wagon in the Woods

  Chapter Fifteen: The Battle of Camp Gorm

  Chapter Sixteen: The End of the Beginning

  About the Author

  About the Illustrator

  Copyright

  CHAPTER ONE

  A Bard for Bramblemas

  Crunch, crunch. Crunch, crunch. The sound of heavy footsteps, trudging through knee-deep snow, echoes through the night’s silence.

  A thick white blanket covers the wide slopes of the band of hills known as the Razorback downs. Moonlight dances over it, glinting here and there in drifts of sparkles, as if someone has sprinkled the whole scene with diamond dust.

  It is perfect – untouched except for one spidery line of tracks leading down from the hills towards the frosted woodland beneath.

  Crunch, crunch. Crunch, crunch go the footsteps of the track-maker. He is hunched and weary, using a tall staff to help him through the snow. He might have been an old man, if it hadn’t been many hundreds of moons since men trod these lands. Move closer and instead you will see he is a rabbit, walking upright in the way men once did, his ears hidden beneath the hood of a heavy leather cloak, fierce eyes peering out at the wintry midnight world.

  The thick fur on his face and arms is dyed with blue swirls and patterns, which marks him out as a bard. A travelling, storytelling rabbit. A wanderer with nothing on his back but a set of travel-worn clothes and a head stuffed full of tales and yarns: old, new, broken and mended. Just about every story you ever heard, and many more yet to be told.

  Don’t worry about him being out in the cold on such a wintry night. His trade will see him welcomed in any warren. That is the tradition and the law throughout all of the Five Realms of Lanica, and woe betide anyone who doesn’t keep it.

  Crunch, crunch. Crunch, crunch. His breath steams out behind him as he forces his way through the snow. Listen closer and you can hear him mumbling curses with each hard-fought step. Closer still and you can hear the strings of wooden beads around his neck clicking and clacking. The bone trinkets and pouches around his belt knocking and niggling.

  He marches with a purpose, as if he has someplace to be and he is already late. But where is there for him to go? There is nothing but snow and trees from here all the way to the horizon. Until, of course, you remember that he’s a rabbit. Rabbits live underground, in warrens and burrows: warm and safe, out of the winter ice and frost.

  And that is indeed where he is heading. Into the woods and through the trees until he stops before a pair of huge entrance doors, set into the side of a little hill. Behind them is Thornwood Warren, and there had better be a warm welcome for him, or there will be serious trouble.

  Boom, boom, boom! He smacks the end of his staff against the oak and waits for an answer.

  Back when rabbits were small, twitchy, terrified things, warrens were little more than a collection of holes and tunnels in the ground. Now, in this new age, they are something different altogether: there are entire villages and cities built under the earth, completely out of sight.

  The bard knew that behind those wooden doors would be nest-burrows and market-burrows, workshops, temples, libraries, larders, pantries and a dozen kitchens to feed them all. There would be soldiers and healers, servants, cooks, smiths, weavers, tailors, potters and painters. Old rabbits, young rabbits, poor rabbits and noble rabbits. All walks of life hidden away in cosy, torch-lit, underground houses; all arranged around every warren’s hub: the longburrow, a great feasting hall with a huge fireplace, rows of tables and nearly always music. Music, noise and merriness – that is what rabbits love. Especially tonight, for this was Bramblemas Eve: the night on which the winter solstice was celebrated with a special feast, and the promise of presents in the morning, left behind by the mysterious Midwinter Rabbit.

  And stories of course. Special stories, told by a visiting bard – that is, if he ever got inside the place.

  Boom, boom, boom! He smacks the doors again and is about to do so a third time when he hears a muffled voice on the other side.

  ‘All right, all right, keep your ears on, I’m coming!’ There are more words about stupid people being outside on this kind of night, but luckily the heavy wood absorbs most of those. Finally, the doors creak open, spilling golden torchlight on to the snow, and the face of a burly soldier-rabbit pokes out.

  ‘Who in the Goddess’s name are you?’ he says, glaring at the stranger. Underneath the hood, the pale green eyes glare back.

  ‘Is that any way to treat a bard, come to tell tales on the Eve of Bramblemas? Is that how the old ways are kept here at Thornwood?’

  Even though the soldier-rabbit is the size of a small armour-clad mountain, something about the bard makes him tremble a little. ‘Sorry, sir,’ he says, and pushes the door open further with his shoulder. ‘Come in and share our hearth on this Middlewinter night …’

  ‘Midwinter, turnip-head,’ corrects the bard, stepping into the torchlight and the warmth. The warren doors close behind him, and he shakes the snow from his cloak with a shudder. ‘Now. Which way to the fireside?’ And he strides off down the paved entrance hall as if he has been here a hundred times before.

  ‘What’s a Midwinter Turnip-head then?’ mumbles the puzzled guard, before turning to trot after him.

  *

  Just as every warren is carefully built around the longburrow at its centre, the rabbits inside are organised around their chieftain. He is the leader of the tribe, just as his father was before him, and his son will be after. Between him and his wife, all the warren decisions are made, all the arguments settled and all the feasts and festivals organised.

  In Thornwood, the chieftain is Hubert the Broad. A great big-bellied lop rabbit, with brown and white patched fur, ears down to his knees and a stomach you could build a house on. He is currently sitting on his throne at the head of the feasting table, a bramble crown on his head and his great piebald stomach bursting the seams of his tunic. He is singing a merry song about the Midwinter Rabbit getting stuck in his burrow, while all the little rabbits sit laughing at his feet. When he sees the bard enter, he stops, stands and raises his drinking horn in salute.

  ‘Welcome, bard!’ he shouts, in a voice that shakes earth from the ceiling. ‘Welcome, on Bramblemas Eve!’

  ‘That’s more like it,’ mutters the bard, shrugging off his leather cloak. He keeps his hood on, but the light from the fire still shows off the swirls and whorls of blue patterns dyed into the fur on his bare arms.

  ‘We thought you weren’t coming,’ says Hubert. ‘But Bramblemas Eve is full of surprises. Will you sing for your supper?’

  The bard chuckles. ‘My voice is too old and cracked for singing.’ He takes a seat by the fireside and warms his hands. ‘But I might be persuaded to tell a tale or two.’

  ‘Bring this man some food! Quick, sharp,’ Hubert shouts, flicking his ears at his cupbearers. They scurry off and return moments later with a bowl of buttery turnip soup and a p
latter of cornbread. The bard tucks into it like a rabbit starved and, finishing it, wipes his mouth with the back of his paw.

  ‘I suppose that deserves a tale,’ he says. ‘What would you like to hear?’

  The little rabbits swarm to his feet, all crying out at once. ‘Beobunny!’ ‘The Fisher Rabbit!’ ‘Podkin One-Ear!’

  ‘Did I hear someone mention Podkin One-Ear?’ says the bard, settling further into his chair. ‘Podkin the Horned King? The Moonstrider? Podkin of the magic knife?’ When the little ones nod their heads and shriek with excitement, he folds his painted arms and tugs at his beard.

  ‘I do know some tales of that one, but they will be different from those you have heard. Nothing about shooting fire from his eyes or wrestling giant rabbits with bare hands. Nothing like that at all.’

  ‘What kind of tales, bard?’ ‘Why are they different?’ ‘Why won’t there be fiery eyes and giants?’

  ‘They’re different,’ he says, ‘because they are true. And because fiery eyes don’t exist anywhere except in fairy tales and the heads of silly young rabbits.’ The bard waves a hand for silence, and then he begins.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Worst Bramblemas Ever

  The Gorm. First, you need to know about them.

  Nowadays, thank the Goddess, they are nothing but a bad memory. Something to scare the little ones with at night. But back when your grandparents were young, rabbits lived in constant fear of their strange riders, of the screeching of metal in the night and the echoing of their terrifying war-horns.

  The Gorm.

  Nobody knows exactly how they came to exist, only that they were first seen in a little warren called Sandywell, up in northern Enderby, where the Red River meets the sea.

  A meek little tribe of rabbits lived there. Grey-furred sable bunnies that liked fishing, sailing and building boats. They never caused any trouble, and nobody paid them much attention. Until, one day – everything changed.

  Some say there was something in the river that got into their veins. Some say they tunnelled too far down and came across something cursed and poisonous. Others say it was the work of witches. Whatever the reason, they stopped being the Sandywell greys overnight, and turned into something else. Something evil and unnatural.

  First the warren changed – just a little at first – until eventually great spikes of jutting metal burst out of it, sticking up into the air like poison porcupine quills, and the land around became blackened and scorched. The waters of the Red River turned black and noxious as they ran past. Animals that lived in the woods and waters either died or became warped and ruined. Folk started calling the warren Splinterholm and stayed well away. But that didn’t help them.

  Next, the old Sandywell rabbits reappeared, except now you wouldn’t have recognised them. They were clad head to foot in iron armour. Iron – that metal that rabbits find impossible to work with, and poisonous to the Goddess herself.

  The Sandywell rabbits had not only shaped and moulded it; they had bonded with it somehow. It seemed as though the metal had fused and pierced their very skin. It ran through their veins and bled into their eyes, turning them blank and rusty red. The rabbits used the metal to bend and shape the creatures around them as well: the dumb giant rats that all rabbits use as beasts of burden, and the black crows of the nearby woods. They changed them into shrieking flocks of rusted metal harpies.

  When they rode out of Splinterholm, they came to devour and destroy, and they were called the Gorm by all who feared them.

  If they called at your warren, then that was the end of you – they would kill your chieftain and his sons. They would rip your warriors into shreds. Then they would carry half of you off to be changed into Goddess-knows what. The rest would spend their miserable lives making food and supplies to feed their new masters, never knowing when they too would be dragged away, wailing in the night.

  It was a dark time for all rabbitkind, is what I’m saying.

  It was in those days that Podkin One-Ear lived. He wasn’t a hero back then: he hadn’t slain any giant rabbits, or formed any robber bands, and he hadn’t even begun to think about rescuing maidens. In fact, he was only a youngling; eight summers’ old. Oh, and he still had both his ears.

  Podkin was the son of Lopkin, chieftain of the Munbury warren, which meant that someday he himself would be chieftain, just like his father’s father had been, and his father … all the way back to when the Goddess first made the twelve tribes. For now, that all seemed a long way off, and that was the way he liked it.

  He had an older sister called Paz, who liked to boss him around as much as possible, and a young kitten of a brother called Pook, who didn’t do much except chew things and ask for soup.

  You might think as a young rabbit that Podkin was already showing signs of heroism: great skill with a sword, maybe. Bravery, courage, wisdom, determination.

  You would be wrong.

  If anything, he was perhaps the laziest, most spoilt son of a chieftain in the whole Five Realms! At least he was, up until the start of this story. His father tried his best to prepare him for leadership with lessons in history, rabbit-lore and soldiering, but Podkin took great delight in avoiding them all. Daydreaming and snoozing were the only things he practised and, to be fair, he was very good at them. He was the despair of all his tutors, especially poor Melfry, the weaponmaster, who resigned three times or more from the task of teaching Podkin. The young rabbit simply had no interest in doing what was expected of him.

  So it came to pass, that on a Bramblemas Eve – much like this one – Podkin One-Ear (although technically Two-Ears at this point) was sitting upstairs in the wooden gallery that ran around the edge of Munbury longburrow. He was lazily pushing around a toy wagon, munching on a stolen piece of cornbread and daydreaming about the Midwinter Rabbit, who would be visiting that night (hopefully with a sackful of presents). Would he get the wooden soldiers he’d asked for? Or the toy sword and shield? Or would it be the disappointment of a badly knitted woollen tunic, like last year?

  ‘What are you doing up here, Pod?’ His sister had tiptoed up the stairs and was now glaring at him. Podkin’s little brother Pook was nestled in the crook of her arm, chewing away at a carrot. ‘Mother sent me to get you. They’re about to have turnip soup and dance the Bramble Reel. You should be there, seeing as you’re next in line to be chief.’

  Paz took it hard that she was never going to lead the warren, even though she was the eldest. But it was tradition, fair or not, that the first son took over.

  Podkin yawned deliberately. ‘The Bramble Reel. How exciting.’ He took Pook from her and tickled his tummy. He could hear all the festivities in the hall below, and had absolutely no desire to join in with them. ‘Please stand aside, so I can rush down the stairs and prance about like a prize pudding.’

  ‘If you don’t come down, you’re going to be in trouble,’ said Paz. ‘Do you have any idea what it takes to be chieftain? Nobody will want to follow a lord who spends all his time tickling his baby brother, playing with toys and hiding away in corners daydreaming.’

  Podkin huffed and flicked his ears at his sister. ‘You’re just jealous because you think you would make a better chieftain than me.’

  ‘Well, I would, wouldn’t I? Anyone can see that.’ Paz started ticking off a list on her fingers. ‘I’m the eldest. I do what Father and Mother tell me. I go to all my lessons, instead of hiding in the meadow and picking daisies like a rat-brained, fairy flump. If there was any justice, girls would be allowed to become a Chief, instead of brats like you who don’t deserve it!’

  Podkin was about to leap on Paz and pull her ears, when the warren horn began to sound. The three young rabbits rushed to the edge of the gallery and looked down on to the hall. Soldiers were grabbing spears and shields, children were being herded into the corners and their father, Chief Lopkin, was striding towards the burrow entrance, drawing his sword. His great silver broadsword that everyone thought was magical.

  ‘M
i’winter wabbit! Mi’winter wabbit!’ Pook shouted, trying to wriggle free.

  ‘It’s not the Midwinter Rabbit, Pook,’ said Podkin, the argument with Paz forgotten. ‘It looks like trouble. And trouble doesn’t leave presents outside your burrow at night.’

  Frightened murmurs were drifting up from the crowd below. ‘A rider’, ‘a lone rider coming’, and then ‘a rider wearing armour … iron armour’, and finally ‘it’s the Gorm! The Gorm are here!’

  This last shout caused mass panic. Podkin could see his father shouting, but his voice was swallowed up by the hubbub. The warren was terrified, losing its head. This was the time it really needed its chieftain: somebody to lead them all. Pod watched Lopkin breathe deep, then bellow in his great commanding voice: ‘Silence!’

  The whole longburrow instantly froze, hundreds of scared eyes turning to Lopkin who stood amongst them, his magic silver sword flashing. He let the silence stand for a moment before speaking in as calm a voice as he could.

  ‘A rider approaches, true. A Gorm, true. But it is a lone rider, and he carries the white flag of peace. We will let him enter and see what he has to say.’

  The sound of the heavy oak entrance doors opening echoed down the warren. The rabbits in the longburrow pressed back against the walls. Spears were raised, breath was held. Something was making its way along the entrance hall.

  ‘Will it be okay, Paz?’ whispered Podkin. He had always been in awe of his tall, powerful father. He had always seemed invincible – at least until now.

  ‘I don’t know, Pod,’ Paz replied. ‘Father has his sword …’

  The look in her eyes was enough to make Podkin truly afraid for the first time in his short life.

  Chief Lopkin called out the traditional greeting to the darkness of the tunnel. ‘Enter, stranger, and be welcome on this Bramblemas Eve.’

  Clank.

  Screeeeeech.

  Grinding metal, followed by the clump of heavy leather boots. It seemed the rider had dismounted whatever had been carrying him and was now coming down the entrance tunnel on foot. One hundred and fifty terrified rabbits all held their breath.