Podkin One-Ear Read online

  Clank.

  Screeeeeech.

  Pook began whimpering. They could now see something moving in the darkness of the tunnel. Torchlight from the great hall caught on metal and bounced back in orange glints.

  ‘Enter!’ Lopkin called out again. ‘We mean you no harm!’

  With a final grinding squeal, the figure emerged and leapt from the tunnel to land in the centre of the warrior’s circle.

  The rabbits had all heard terrifying tales of the Gorm, but none had done the real thing justice.

  This wasn’t a rabbit any more. If it ever had been, it was now something else entirely. A walking slab of metal and meat, pierced through with rusty thorns and nails. Its armour overlapped in sheets of jagged, dented iron; mottled with rust and splashes of dried crimson that looked very much like old blood.

  Its head was completely covered by a helm, dotted all over with cruel shard-like spikes and curved metal horns that almost scraped the ceiling. From the shadowy eye slits, two dim scarlet pupils glowed: blank and mottled with rusty red veins.

  Podkin was so scared, he wanted to cry. Worst of all was the thing’s jagged black iron sword. That and the skulls that hung from its belt. Rabbit skulls, painted all over with evil-looking runes. Skulls of all sizes, including ones that looked like children’s.

  The Gorm rabbit turned his head to and fro, taking in the warren’s inhabitants, before resting his gaze on Lopkin himself.

  ‘I don’t want your welcome.’ The deep voice echoed inside its iron shell. A cold, iron, killer’s voice. ‘I came to tell you I am taking your warren. That, and your magic weapon.’

  Instantly, every spear was raised and pointed at the armoured intruder. The Gorm tilted his head slightly, as if curious, and leant over to thump his sword three times on the floor.

  There was a rumbling, deep below the ground. The whole floor of the longburrow began to shake, and then parts of it started to crack and crumble. The Munbury rabbits backed against the walls, as piles of mud burst upwards, shattering the tiled floors and overturning benches and tables. From beneath the ground, armoured Gorm began to clamber out into their midst. Pushing their way up through the soil, spilling torrents of mud from their spiked iron shoulders, as the Munbury rabbits stared on in mute horror. Five, ten, fifteen of them and more, each one clad head to foot in jagged rusty armour and wielding an axe or sword.

  ‘This warren is ours now,’ said the first Gorm, his voice like the metallic screeching of his armour. ‘And we will kill anyone who thinks otherwise. So says the chief of all the Gorm.’

  ‘Scramashank,’ said Chief Lopkin. The Gorm Lord’s name was well known amongst rabbits, and well feared.

  Lopkin raised his silver sword and stepped into a battle stance. ‘Scramashank – leave my people out of this. We will settle this between the two of us.’

  ‘They aren’t your people any more.’ Scramashank laughed, as if this were all some elaborate Bramblemas joke. ‘They are the Gorm now. Or they will be. Once you are dead.’

  In a flash of iron, Scramashank swung his sword over his head and down, trying to cleave Lopkin in half. The chieftain raised his silver sword just in time, and there was an almighty clang as the blades clashed, showering sparks about the hall.

  ‘Father!’ Podkin and Paz both screamed out at the same time. Pook began to bawl and wail.

  They had a brief glimpse of Lopkin gazing up at them, Scramashank drawing back for another blow, and then they were pulled back, away from the gallery rail.

  All three young rabbits shrieked, expecting to see a Gorm standing behind them, but instead it was their Auntie Olwyn. Tears had dampened the fur around her eyes, but her jaw was set and fierce.

  ‘Come with me, you three.’ She pulled them back towards the stairs.

  ‘But, Father …’ Podkin began.

  ‘Don’t think about him. He has to fend for himself.’ She was dragging them down the stairway. ‘You have to leave with me now. Before the Gorm come for you too.’

  She was too strong to resist, and even as the sound of shouts and clashing metal began to echo up from the longburrow, the little rabbits ran with their aunt through the Munbury tunnels. Twisting this way and that, they soon ended up at their parents’ bedchamber.

  ‘In here,’ whispered Auntie Olwyn, shoving them inside and barring the door behind them. She ran straight to the bed and began rummaging around underneath it.

  ‘What are you doing, Auntie? We have to go back! We have to help Father!’

  ‘There’s no helping him now. He’ll soon be in the Land Beyond, Goddess save him,’ she said, under her breath. She stood up, holding something long and thin, wrapped in cloth. She thrust it into Podkin’s hands.

  ‘Your father told me to give you this, should anything ever happen to him. And your mother told me to bring you here, if the warren should ever fall.’

  ‘To the bedroom?’ Paz looked at her aunt as if she had gone suddenly mad. Podkin was peeking under the cloth bindings. They hid a battered old copper dagger, dull and blunt with a crude face carved on the pommel.

  ‘There’s a secret tunnel here.’ Olwyn pulled on the bedpost and a little door slowly opened in the wall. She gave each of the children a quick kiss on the forehead. ‘Go now,’ she said. ‘Get out of the tunnel and run as fast as you can. Get to Redwater warren and ask for help there. Don’t even think of coming back here. Not ever.’

  ‘But what about you? What about Mother?’ Podkin asked.

  ‘Don’t worry about us. We’ll be all right. And if not, we’ll see you in the Land Beyond. Remember, children: your parents love you. They love you so very much.’

  With that, she bundled them into the tunnel and then, before they could do anything about it, she shut the door behind them and locked it tight.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Starclaw

  I don’t need to go into detail about that awful flight out of the dark tunnel, about how the three of them sobbed and wailed their way to the surface, and out into the snowy woods. Or about how they ran through the rest of that dark, blizzard-choked night, terrified that every shadow hid an enemy, that every second could be their last on this miserable earth.

  You don’t need to know how many times they thought about going back, of trying somehow to save their mother or their aunt or their friends. Or how often each one of them stumbled to the ground, overcome with grief, until the other pulled them up and onwards again.

  That terrible night can only really be remembered by those two poor little rabbits (Pook was thankfully too young to know what was going on beyond being cold, hungry and away from his mother) and neither of them will ever speak of it again – not even to each other.

  All you need to know is that, as the sky began to lighten in the east, the young rabbits staggered into a clearing and finally rested against the trunk of an old frost-covered oak.

  ‘W-where do you think we are?’ stammered Podkin. ‘Are we anywhere near Redwater?’

  ‘How am I supposed to know?’ said Paz. Pook was nestled inside her tunic, the only one of them feeling slightly warm. ‘I was lost five minutes after we came out of the tunnel. Maybe if you’d paid attention in our geography lessons …’

  ‘You were paying attention for me! And you don’t know where we are either, so the lessons were a fat waste of both our time, weren’t they?’

  Neither of them spoke for several minutes. They knew how serious it was to be lost in the woods in this weather. The cold was deadly, and there were hungry wolves and bears around, not to mention the Gorm.

  ‘I think we should …’ began Paz, but she was interrupted by an explosion of fluttering overhead. A large bird flapped its way up through the falling snow and away over the trees. ‘Just a crow,’ she said, relieved. ‘I thought it might be … you know …’

  ‘Not just a crow,’ whispered Podkin. ‘It was one of them. Didn’t you see? It had metal spikes bursting through its skin. And its eyes … its eyes were like theirs …’

  ‘You
’re imagining things, Pod. After what happened … your mind isn’t working properly.’

  ‘It is! I saw it!’

  ‘A crow? How can a crow be like them?’

  ‘Don’t you remember Father saying?’ Podkin was crying again now: big fat tears that splashed down to melt holes in the snow. ‘They change things. Things like crows and rats. They turn them into their servants. That crow spotted us, and it’ll tell them where we are.’

  Paz still wasn’t convinced, but they had to keep moving. Hoping all the time that they would see something to give them a clue as to where they were. If only everything wasn’t covered in so much cursed snow.

  Paz shifted the sleeping lump inside her tunic that was Pook, and started to move off again, only to notice Podkin wasn’t following. He had his nose stuck in the cloth-wrapped bundle that Auntie Olwyn had given him. ‘Come on, Podkin! We have to get moving!’

  But Podkin wasn’t budging. ‘Wait a minute, Paz. There’s something here.’

  Podkin hadn’t paid much attention to the dagger all night. In fact, he had been using it as a walking stick to help pull himself through the snow, and had half forgotten he had it at all. But now that there was some dawn light, he was curious as to why it was so special, and a quick peek had revealed a piece of parchment wrapped around the blade. He pulled it out.

  ‘It’s a message.’ He handed it to Paz. ‘Here, you look. I can’t read Ogham.’

  As I’m sure you will all know, Ogham is an ancient written language and was designed for simple marking of posts, trees and standing stones. Podkin had always been too lazy to learn it, much like everything else, although now he was sorely regretting it.

  Paz stared at the parchment for a few seconds, her breath steaming around her head in a cloud as she gasped. ‘It’s a letter from Mother.’

  My darlings. If you are reading this, then our worst nightmares have come true, and the Gorm have come to Munbury. Thank the Goddess that you have escaped. This dagger you are holding is our warren’s greatest treasure: the magical dagger known as Starclaw. Your father lets everyone think that his silver broadsword is the magic weapon, but it has always been this simple copper knife. It is one of the Twelve Gifts given to the first tribes back at the start of time. It may not look special, but it has the power to cut through anything. Anything, that is, except iron.

  We know the Gorm are hunting the Twelve Gifts for some evil reason, so this dagger must be kept from them at all costs. That is now your job.

  Run fast, my darlings, and run far. Your father and I love you more than you will ever know. Mother.

  If Paz hadn’t already cried out every last tear in her body, she would have started sobbing again. Instead she stood, numb both inside and out, staring at the copper dagger in Podkin’s hands.

  All Podkin could think to say was, ‘What use is a magic dagger that doesn’t cut iron against a load of iron-armoured warriors?’

  ‘What were you thinking of doing with it, genius? Storming back and chopping the Gorm to bits?’

  Podkin shrugged. ‘It is a magic weapon.’

  ‘But we’re not heroes out of some story. We’re just children.’

  Podkin stared at the dagger again. A useless hunk of metal, and yet so precious to the Gorm that his father had to die for it. He was so upset and confused he felt like flinging it away into the snow.

  Only his mother’s plea stopped him. Would he ever see her again? He tried to think of the last words she had said to him, the last time he had hugged her, but he couldn’t remember. It suddenly seemed so important, but his mind was frozen blank.

  ‘Run fast, my darlings, run far.’ That would have to do instead. He would keep hold of the dagger for her sake. He rolled it and the parchment back into the blanket and looked up at his sister.

  ‘Well, what shall we do then? We don’t even know where we are!’

  ‘Redwater is north-east. The sun is rising in the east. We head that way.’

  Podkin didn’t feel as if he could go another step, let alone run all the way to Redwater. He was about to argue some more when he thought he heard a noise in the distant woods.

  The rabbits pricked their ears, listening for something in the heavy silence of the falling snow. In amongst the muffled forest sounds and Pook’s wheezy little snores, they heard it again: a sound that made their blood run cold (well, colder – it was already almost frozen).

  Somewhere far behind them, but growing louder very quickly, was the echoing wail of a strange horn. And behind that was another, quieter sound. The clanking, scraping of iron against iron.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Timber!

  If there’s one thing rabbits are good at, it’s running away. It goes back to the days when we were tiny tasty bundles of fluff: top of everyone’s menu, and afraid of our own shadows. The slightest hint of danger, and we’d be scurrying for shelter before we became breakfast for something with sharp teeth and an appetite.

  But Podkin and Paz had already done their fair share of running that long cold night. Their muscles were torn and aching, their fur matted with clods of frozen snow. Paz’s arms were weary from carrying Pook, even though he was only a little bundle. The best they could manage was a kind of panicky stumble, on through the trees and away from the sounds of the oncoming Gorm. Those terrible wrenching sounds that were getting closer by the heartbeat.

  Paz hoisted Pook further up with a grunt, ignoring his little squeal of protest. ‘We need to run faster, Podkin!’

  ‘I’m going as fast as I can,’ Podkin managed to gasp.

  If Podkin had had the energy, he would have grumbled some more, but it was all he could do to keep moving. They struggled on, wading through the snow, until they found themselves faced by a wall of earth and tree roots. There were banks on either side of them too. In their panic they had dashed into a cranny: a scooped-out section of the forest floor, hidden beneath the swathes of drifted snow.

  From the trees behind them came the screeching of jagged metal armour. The Gorm were close now – minutes away, seconds even.

  Podkin stared around, eyes wide with terror. ‘We’re dead,’ he whispered, his voice harsh and strangled. ‘There’s no way out. They’re going to kill us, just like they did Father.’

  ‘Shut up! You’re scaring Pook.’ Paz pulled her tunic tighter around the baby rabbit, who was starting to squeak with fear.

  ‘Well, what else is going to happen? How can we get away?’

  Paz stood still for a moment. Her brain was whizzing, trying to come up with an idea that would save them. She was good under pressure, but there had never been pressure quite like this before. ‘It did say that dagger could cut through anything except iron, didn’t it?’ she said. Podkin nodded.

  ‘Right then.’ It wasn’t much of an idea, but it would have to do. She grabbed Podkin and whispered into his ear.

  *

  Half a minute later, after a desperate scramble up the cranny side, Podkin stood hidden behind a tree. With shivering paws, he unwrapped the cloth bundle and drew out the copper dagger.

  It should have been cold metal, as icy as the snow around him, but instead the hilt was hot – tingling almost. Could that be the magic? Would it really cut through anything? It certainly felt powerful. Not like the wooden practice swords he used to use in his boring weapons lessons.

  Podkin swished it through the air a few times. Just a dagger, but to him it was more like a short sword, although he didn’t feel much of a soldier. Certainly nothing like his father: facing down the Gorm Lord all on his own. Father. Was he looking down on them now, from the Land Beyond, or wherever he might be? Would he try and help them somehow, or would he only be able to watch them die? Now is not the time for this, Podkin told himself. They had a plan. He had a job to do.

  Below him cowered Paz, out in plain sight, backed up against the bank of tree roots. She was clutching Pook to her chest and looking suitably terrified. Bait for their hastily assembled trap.

  From his hiding place, Po
dkin could hear the Gorm, riding through the forest on their mounts. They were heavy, lumbering things, smashing against saplings and branches and ploughing the snow aside with brute force. He could hear the tortured creatures breathing and growling; he could hear the slow grinding of armoured plates sliding against one another.

  Pod held the dagger hilt close to his face and gave a small prayer to the Goddess. Should he do it now? No, he told himself. Better to have a peek first. The timing must be right.

  Podkin never wanted to see another Gorm in his life, but he forced himself to peer around the tree trunk. There were two of them: riders sitting on top of things that might once have been giant rats.

  Rats were normally docile, fluffy, stupid creatures that spent most of their time eating and squeaking. These looked as though they had been forged from shards of rusted iron, pounded together in the blacksmith’s of hell.

  They were covered all over with plates of jagged metal, studded with spikes and hooks, and scrawled on in blood-red runes. At the front, where their heads should have been, were fanged, drooling mouths, and glaring out from holes in the armour were blank rust-red eyes. They weren’t rats any more. Every part of them, down to their bones, had been changed and twisted. These things were now beasts. Iron beasts. Monsters.

  They clanked and shrieked their way along the little track of footprints that Paz had left, their riders leaning forward on their backs, gnashing their teeth with hunger. They looked as if they had grown out of their mounts’ spines, or been fused together into some new horrid form of life.

  A voice came then. Sharp and loud, it sounded like sheets of tin being ripped into shreds. ‘You! Girl! Where is your brother? Where is the chieftain’s son?’