Podkin One-Ear Read online

  Podkin heard Paz say something, but it was too weak and stuttering to make out. Could it be she was terrified speechless, or was she just luring the Gorm riders in? That was the sort of clever trick she would try. Podkin remembered all the wily things she would do to taunt and tease him back in the warren. Nasty names and embarrassing pranks. He used to hate her sneaky cleverness then, but now he silently thanked the Goddess for it.

  ‘Speak up, you little runt!’

  The rider’s voice sounded very close to Podkin. With small, silent steps, he edged around the tree trunk.

  The two riders were right below him now. He could see the little pits and scratches on the surface of their armour. He could smell the hot iron stink of their steaming breath.

  Now. Do it now!

  He remembered being shown how to chop down a tree, back when his father was trying to teach him to do chores. He hadn’t really listened because why should a chieftain’s son have to do hard work? Now he really wished he had paid more attention. Something about cutting out a wedge …

  He almost had to shout at his frozen, terrified body to make it respond. Tearing his eyes away from the Gorm, he set the edge of the dagger against the tree trunk. The blade was blunt tarnished copper, marked with notches and dents. It made him doubt the magic. There was no way it would even make a mark on the wood, let alone cut through it. Why had he listened to Paz’s stupid idea?

  Podkin held his breath, teeth gritted. If the riders looked up and saw him now, it was all over. He had to get this done – and quick. He moved the blade up the trunk and angled it downwards. Holding his breath, he pushed it into the bark.

  He half expected nothing to happen, so when it did, he was shocked dumb. The dagger slid through the hundred-year-old oak like it was butter. Podkin only just managed to stop it before it came out the other side.

  Now the upwards cut. Quick!

  Podkin pulled the dagger out and made another cut from the bottom up. A thick triangle of wood dropped out and thudded into the snowy ground. Down below, the riders were slinking forward; Paz was still stammering something about losing her brother in the snow. And then came a low, groaning sound that made Podkin’s ears judder. It took a moment for him to realise it was coming from the oak tree as it began to topple forward. Slowly at first, but picking up speed, cracking and snapping branches as it fell. Pod saw the Gorm riders look up, surprised clouds of breath gushing from behind their iron masks, and then the tree hit them with an explosion of snow crystals and a roar that echoed through the forest.

  It took several moments for the snow clouds to settle, for the echoes to bounce away into silence. When all was quiet again, Pod peered down into the cranny and saw the great oak trunk snapped in half, blocking the whole thing. Snow crust lay crumbled and piled around it. Of the riders, nothing could be seen except a twisted shard of armour and a splash of rusty crimson blood on the snow.

  INTERLUDE

  The bard stops talking and gazes in Chief Hubert’s direction, smacking his lips and generally trying his best to look thirsty. Hubert takes the hint and flicks an ear at his dozing cupbearer, so hard it nearly knocks him backwards. The startled rabbit grabs a wooden flagon, filled to the brim with frothy honey mead and dashes over to the storyteller. Amongst protesting cries from the little rabbits sitting around his feet, the bard drains the whole flagon in three long gulps, and then wipes the froth from his beard with the back of his hand.

  ‘Don’t stop! Don’t stop!’ the rabbits cry. ‘Tell us what happened next!’

  The bard lets out a belch, frowns, then lets out another. ‘Give me a minute,’ he says. ‘My pipes don’t work as well as they used to. Bless my turnips, that was good mead.’

  ‘Were the Gorm really real?’ one little rabbit asks. ‘My brother said they were just made up to frighten baby bunnies at night.’

  ‘They were … burp … really real,’ replies the bard. ‘Excuse me.’ He eyes a plate of fresh steaming cornbread, next to a huge bowl of turnip soup, a knob of creamy butter slowly melting in its centre. But his audience have no intention of letting him stop for much longer.

  ‘What do you think it was that changed them then? Did anyone ever find out? Was it the witch’s curse, or was it something else?’ The fear in the little rabbit’s eyes makes it all too clear she is worrying that the same thing might happen in Thornwood.

  ‘Could’ve been a curse,’ says the bard. ‘Could’ve been something much more horrible. As far as this part of the story goes … Ooh dear. I really shouldn’t gulp my drink like that … As far as this part of the story goes, nobody had any idea. That’s all you need to know for now.’

  The bard is about to carry on, but something in the little rabbit’s eyes makes him stop. Wide, white and terrified, with tears glistening in the corners. He likes to scare his audience a little, but this is Bramblemas Eve. She should be going to bed with dreams of sugared carrots and carved wooden dollies, not lying awake, scared witless.

  He tugs his beard a few times, then reaches into one of the pouches on his belt, bringing out an ancient, much-folded piece of leather.

  ‘Listen,’ he says. ‘I don’t normally do this, but …’

  ‘What?’ the rabbits all squeal. ‘What have you got there?’

  ‘This?’ says the bard, unfolding the stained leather. ‘This is something I found on my travels. Something I don’t usually read out to children. Especially not when I’m in the middle of a tale.’

  ‘Oh please read it! Please.’ The little rabbits are desperate for something secret, something forbidden.

  ‘It’s an account, you see. A tale of its own, copied down word for word from this old rabbit I met, far to the east of here, in Hulstland.’ The bard holds up the leather to show rows and rows of tiny runes, burnt or inked into it. The rabbits all kneel up to squint at it, even though most of them can’t yet read.

  ‘A tale of what? The Gorm? How they were made?’

  ‘Rhubarb and radishes, but you are nosy ones! Yes. How the Gorm came to be, in the words of one that was there. Now, I’ll read it to you, but only if you promise to remember where we got to in the story. Do we have a deal?’

  The rabbits all shout about how well they can remember, and that the deal has definitely been made. Nodding and waving at them to shush, the bard spreads the leather out on his knee and begins to read.

  My name is Auna. I am old now – a longtooth as they say here in Hulstland – but once I was a young rabbit, born in a little warren on the northern coast of Enderby called Sandywell. A simple place, full of simple grey-furred fisher-rabbits.

  That warren has another name now, and the rabbits don’t fish any more. Now they are called the Gorm, and they do things that set your fur shivering and your ears shaking. But it wasn’t always that way. That’s why I want my story written down: so that others can learn from it. So that the same thing doesn’t happen to any other warren like it did ours.

  When I was a little doe, we had a happy, carefree life. We lived right on the edge of the sandiest beach you ever saw, and we used to spend hours running around the dunes and splashing in the rock pools.

  When I think back, all I remember is the sun in my eyes, sand between my toes and salt spray on my fur. Happy days.

  Our chief was a funny little rabbit named Crama. Crama the Cautious, he was known as, for he never made a decision without going over it a hundred times or more. He was known for changing his mind, getting muddled and generally putting everything in a pickle.

  I remember hearing my father and his friends moaning about him many an evening in the longburrow, but nobody dared do anything about it. He had the magic helmet of the Goddess, you see. A great metal thing with copper horns. On him it looked like an upside-down cauldron, but it protected him from any spear or blade, and he never took it off. It did have a special name, but we just called it ‘the Copperpot’.

  Sandywell wasn’t the most exciting warren to live in, but it was safe and warm and we were happy. At least until that te
rrible day.

  I don’t like to speak of it, but I know I must.

  Crama, our chief, had finally decided that we needed to dig a new longburrow. The sandy soil of the warren tended to crumble, and the older parts were wearing away. It was a big job, and all the rabbits had to help. Even us young kittens: we carried baskets of soil out for the diggers and brought them drinks and food.

  The soil was soft and loamy, and the new burrow fast appeared. Then, after a few days of digging, a cry went out that something had been found. I remember dashing down there with my friends, expecting to find pots of gold or fairy treasure. Instead there was something … something else.

  It makes my fur crawl to think of it, even now, after all this time.

  The thing. It was there, jutting up out of the ground like a great rotten fang. It was dark metal: iron of some sort, perhaps. We had seen lumps of iron before. We knew it was metal the Goddess hated, and that no rabbit could work it. But they had been tiny lumps – the size of your paw or so. This thing was huge. As tall as the biggest rabbit in the warren, and then some.

  And there was something about it. It didn’t feel right. You could sense it pulsing and grinding inside itself – as if it were angry or full of something nasty.

  It was jagged and rough, but under the surface you could see things. Things that seemed to twitch and move. Spikes and horns here, a tentacle there. Even an eye or a mouth.

  We all knew it was evil. That was very clear. Nobody wanted to go near the new longburrow after that. Our priestess sealed off the tunnel with magic charms, and we all tried to pretend it hadn’t happened, but none of us slept easy after that night.

  And then the noises started.

  Deep in the dead of night, you could hear them. Voices mostly. Some belonging to rabbits, some belonging to something else. Sometimes there was laughing and chanting too, although not in any language we had heard before. And then the hammering started.

  From that day Crama, our chieftain, was almost never seen in daylight.

  Every night, when the warren was asleep, he went down there with his soldiers to be near that thing. It changed them. Told them how to take the iron and hammer it and shape it. Whispered dark secrets and forbidden promises in their ears. That evil shard of metal took our chief, it did. What could it have offered him? Power, strength, riches? Maybe it took away all his caution and gave him something else instead?

  I know this for sure, though: all the time he was forging it into something else, it was forging him as well.

  The bard stopped a moment – he could see the little rabbits enraptured. The older rabbits too. The entire longburrow was now hanging on his every word. He cleared his throat and continued.

  A week or so later, the night hammering stopped.

  The next day, Crama showed himself. It was a Mer’s Day feast, as I remember – the day we honoured our goddess of the sea. We were all sat in the longburrow, about to start a dinner of grilled mackerel and crab cakes. The last fish I ever ate.

  Crama walked into the longburrow with his soldiers, and every rabbit almost screamed. The oversized Copperpot wasn’t on his head any more. In its place was a different helmet. An iron one, all twisted and spiked. It had two horns, like a mockery of the Goddess’s helm, but they were mismatched and jagged things. He walked taller and broader than before. This was not Crama the Cautious any more. This was a part of that evil iron thing, walking around in rabbit form.

  He spoke to us then, in a grating, scraping voice that none of us recognised. In the years since, I’ve tried to remember what he said, but the truth is I wasn’t really listening. All I could do at the time was stare. Stare at that iron war-helm of his, but mostly at his eyes – his and all his soldiers’. They weren’t rabbit eyes any more, you see. They were red like rusted iron or dried blood.

  Some rabbits stood up and protested. Our priestess was one, my uncle another. The soldiers grabbed them and took them away, deep into the warren. We never saw them again.

  That night, my family and I (and a lot of others besides) all crept out of Sandywell and ran. We ran for our lives, and we didn’t stop until we had forests, rivers and mountains in between that place and us. If you’re listening to this, and you want to stay safe and free, you’ll do the same.

  And wherever you end up, take this one piece of advice from an old rabbit who’s kept her skin long enough to know: keep your warren safe, keep your warren warm but … don’t dig too deep.

  The bard folds up the old leather parchment and tucks it back inside his belt pouch. There is silence for a little while afterwards, as the little rabbits imagine horrid things buried in the earth beneath their bottoms. But buried is perhaps better than a wandering witch putting curses on you and turning you into a monster. The bard looks at the little girl rabbit and sees she is slightly less terrified, which will have to do.

  The silence doesn’t last for long, of course.

  ‘Was the Copperpot a magic weapon like Starclaw then? Did the chief turn into Scramashank?’ A little speckled rabbit looks up at the bard with huge saucer eyes glinting in the firelight. Her friends all nod, wanting to find out too.

  ‘Even more questions? You are an inquisitive one indeed, aren’t you?’ The bard reaches down and tweaks one of her floppy ears. ‘Way back, before memories even began, the Goddess herself gave each of the twelve rabbit tribes a magic treasure. Sandywell had the Copperpot, and Starclaw was the prize of Munbury warren, who were once the greatest tribe of all.’

  ‘Did we get a gift? Where’s our magic weapon?’

  The bard laughs at this and winks over at Chief Hubert, who is rolling his eyes as he sips at a bowl of buttery turnip soup. ‘Thornwood warren is too new for that. It hasn’t been here much more than sixty years. In fact, at the time of my story, it was little more than a scrape in the ground – which is why the Gorm never bothered with it.’

  ‘Where are the magic gifts now then? Who’s got the dagger? Did the Gorm destroy the helmet? What other magic things were there?’

  ‘Yes, yes!’ call the other rabbits. ‘Where is the dagger now? What happened to it? What happened?’

  Bang! The bard brings his wooden flagon down on the tabletop, making all the little rabbits jump.

  They squeak and shiver for a bit, until he fixes them all with his best glare. Then they are completely silent. When all that can be heard is the crackle of the fire and the slurping of Chief Hubert’s soup, he speaks again.

  ‘I do believe we had a deal, didn’t we?’

  ‘They were running from the Gorm!’ one rabbit calls out.

  ‘Podkin had just toppled a tree on to the riders!’ yells another.

  ‘They were squished like raspberry jam! There was blood everywhere! And eyeballs and things!’

  ‘All right, all right,’ says the bard. ‘That’s quite enough gory detail. Now. Let me carry on where I left off …’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Redwater

  Well. As you so beautifully described, the fleeing rabbits had just toppled a tree on to two Gorm riders. Very impressive too.

  After they had stood for a few moments, taking in what had happened, slowly realising they were still alive, they headed off into the woods again.

  The sun was well risen now, and they followed it eastward, crunching through the snow as drips from melting icicles pattered on their heads and ran down their necks, making them shiver even more.

  Before long they stumbled down another bank and on to a narrow, frozen river. Paz, who actually had been paying attention in those geography lessons, recognised it as the Red River.

  ‘This is the river that runs past Redwater warren! Don’t you remember it?’

  Podkin was too cold to remember anything, even if he had been listening, about river names and types of trees. The terror of nearly being caught, and the amazement at the power of Starclaw was gone. All he really wanted to do now was lay down in the soft white snow and fall asleep forever. But there was a dim little thought tugging away at
the corner of his mind. Hadn’t they used to come here at Midsummer, every other year? There had been other little rabbits, hadn’t there? And dandelion salad, with carrot juice dressing. He was sure he remembered that.

  ‘W-was it different then? Not w-w-white everywhere?’

  Paz gave him a worried look and grabbed him by the arm. They half-ran, half-fell all the way along the riverbank until they came to an arched wooden bridge, and from there they followed a snowy track, cut into the forest floor. It led them to a pair of oak doors, set into the hillside. Notched Ogham writing, carved into the gateposts, declared it to be Redwater.

  ‘Thank the Goddess,’ said Paz, tears in her eyes as she used the last of her strength to bang on the door. Podkin could do nothing but stand and shiver at her side, and little Pook was too cold even for that.

  After a few moments, the warren door creaked open, and a ginger-furred guard-rabbit poked out his head.

  Now, Paz and Podkin might have been half-frozen, but they had been here several times before, and they remembered the famous hospitality of the Redwater rabbits. Everyone for miles around knew how excitable and fun-loving they were. Any rabbit who stopped here was practically dragged inside and made to eat, sing and dance until they dropped.

  Which is why they were shocked by this gloomy-faced, dreary soldier who peered at them now. His ears drooped, his eyes were shadowed and bloodshot. His leather armour was unlaced, unpolished, battered and torn. It barely fitted, hanging off him like old clothes on a scarecrow. If they hadn’t been so frozen, they might have wondered why such a skinny, undersized rabbit was doing the job of a hardened warrior.

  ‘What d’you want?’ he said, not looking like he cared in the slightest.

  Paz could sense something was wrong but was too desperate to listen to her gut. She cleared her throat and spoke. ‘We need help. Please.’

  ‘The G-g-gorm are after us,’ Pod added.