was found tied up at Twoshirts, where the river ran under the coach road. But then the overnight mail coach that had been waiting outside the inn ran away by itself, with all the mailbags left behind. The coachman borrowed a horse to give chase and found the coach in the shadow of the Chalk with all the doors open and one horse missing.
The horse was returned a couple of days later by a well-dressed young man who said he’d found it wandering. Surprisingly, then, it looked well fed and groomed.
Very, very thick would be the best way to describe the walls of the castle. There were no guards at night, because they locked up at eight o’clock and went home. Instead, there was Old Robbins, who’d once been a guard and was now officially the night watchman, but everyone knew he fell asleep in front of the fire by nine. He had an old trumpet that he was supposed to blow if there was an attack, although no one was entirely sure what this would achieve.
Roland slept in the Heron Tower because it was up a long flight of steps that his aunts didn’t much like climbing. It also had very, very thick walls, and this is just as well, because at eleven o’clock someone stuck a trumpet against his ear and blew on it hard.
He leaped out of bed, got caught in the eiderdown, slipped on a mat that covered the freezing stone floor, banged his head on a cupboard, and managed to light a candle with the third desperately struck match.
On the little table by his bed was a pair of huge bellows with Old Robbins’s trumpet stuck in the business end. The room was empty, except for the shadows.
“I’ve got a sword, you know,” he said. “And I know how to use it!”
“Ach, ye’re deid already,” said a voice from the ceiling. “Chopped tae tiny wee pieces in yer bed while ye snored like a hog. Only jokin’, ye ken. None of us mean ye any harm.” There was some hurried whispering in the darkness of the rafters, and then the voice continued: “Wee correction there, most o’ us dinna mean ye any harm. But dinna fash yersel’ aboot Big Yan, he disna like anybody verra much.”
“Who are you?”
“Aye, there ye go again, gettin’ it all wrong,” said the voice conversationally. “I’m up here an’ heavily armed, ye ken, while ye’re doon there in yer wee nightie, makin’ a bonny target, an’ ye think ye are the one who asks the questions. So ye know how to fight, do ye?”
“Yes!”
“So you’ll fight monsters tae save the big wee hag? Will ye?”
“The big wee hag?”
“That’s Tiffany tae ye.”
“You mean Tiffany Aching? What’s happened to her?”
“You’ll be ready for when she needs ye?”
“Yes! Of course! Who are you?”
“And ye know how tae fight?”
“I’ve read the Manual of Swordsmanship all the way through!”
After a few seconds the voice from the high shadows said: “Ah, I think I’ve put ma finger on a wee flaw in this plan….”
There was an armory across the castle courtyard. It wasn’t much of one. There was a suit of armor made of various nonmatching pieces, a few swords, a battle-axe that no one had ever been able to lift, and a chain-mail suit that appeared to have been attacked by extremely strong moths. And there were some wooden dummies on big springs for sword practice. Right now the Feegles were watching Roland attack one with a great deal of enthusiasm.
“Ach weel,” said Big Yan despondently as Roland leaped about. “If he never meets anythin’ other than bits o’wood that dinna fight back, he might be okay.”
“He’s willin’,” Rob Anybody pointed out as Roland put his foot against the dummy and tried to tug the sword point out of it.
“Oh, aye.” Big Yan looked glum.
“He’s got a bonny action, ye must admit,” said Rob.
Roland succeeded in pulling the sword out of the dummy, which sprang back on its ancient spring and hit him on the head.
Blinking a little, the boy looked down at the Feegles. He remembered them from the time he was rescued from the Queen of the Elves. No one who met the Nac Mac Feegles ever forgot them, even if they tried hard. But it was all vague. He’d been near crazy part of the time, and unconscious, and had seen so many strange things that it was hard to know what was real and what wasn’t.