The Farrow Ridges

‘My dear Forden,’ said Captain Gart Ironshank, clapping me on the back, ‘what we need, to brighten our spirits and restore the fire to our bellies, is an expedition!’

We were walking beside the Farrow Lake on a winding path from the bustling webfoot village towards the Levels. My nameless one, Kulltuft, was bounding ahead on those great galumphing legs of his. He’d grown to almost twice my size in the half year or so since I found him in the Northern Woods, and had proved a loyal and obedient companion, not to mention an excellent bodyguard.

‘Here, boy!’ I called. ‘Heel!’ In answer to my call, Kulltuft came bounding back down the path and came to a halt by my side, nuzzling me affectionately with his misshapen head. ‘An expedition, Gart?’ I said, turning to the old phraxship captain.

He nodded. ‘I’ve got it all worked out. In here.’ He tapped the side of his head and smiled. ‘What Farrow Lake needs to grow is industry - a stilt-factory producing goods we need right here, instead of shipping them all the way from Hive or Great Glade.’

Gart came to a stop and pointed out across the flat marshy mudflats of the Levels.

‘And what better place for a stilt-factory than here? Just think of it, Forden. The purified steam from the factory’s phraxengines would turn this wasteland into a market garden to rival any in Great Glade, and all the ironwood ore we could possibly need is just beyond, in the Western Woods…’

I tickled Kulltuft behind one ear, and was rewarded by a deep, growling purr.

‘That’s all well and good,’ I said, for I knew as well as Gart how the by-products of the phraxengines that powered stilt-factories didn’t produce pollution, but instead nourished and watered the land they stood on with the steam from their funnels. ‘But to build phraxengines, we’d need stormphrax - and plenty of it.’

‘Precisely,’ said Gart, smiling delightedly. ‘When the Farrow Lake militia defeated the mire pearlers, we captured Commander Felvis Yellowmane’s war-chest - a great iron-bound sumpwood thing it was, stuffed full of hivegeld and gladers; money he probably owed his troops and was hoarding. Well, as head of the Farrow Lake Chamber of Commerce…’

Gart drew himself up to his full height and puffed out his chest. For the first time I saw the ribbon at the collar of his topcoat, and the guilded carving of an ironoak acorn that dangled from it.

‘I proposed to the council that we invest that ill-gotten loot in buying stormphrax, and building a stilt-factory for the good of us all.’

‘But the stormphrax markets in Great Glade are controlled by the phraxmerchants. We’d need permits and permissions and payoffs…’

‘Not if we by-passed the phraxmerchants and went straight to the source,’ said Gart, his eyes twinkling.

‘To the phraxmines of the Eastern Woods?’ I said with a sharp intake of breath. ‘It would be risky. Even if we managed to get a berth on a sky tavern, we’d have to get past the merchants’ militia.’

‘Who needs a sky tavern when we’ve got the Wind Zephyr - the finest little phraxlighter this side of the Farrow Ridges? She’s fully repaired, supplied and ready to go. And I’ve got a very good friend in the Prade mine who I’ve been meaning to look up for years. What do you say, Forden?’

I weighed up Gart Ironshank’s proposal. If it worked, it could be the making of our little community here in Farrow Lake. But the risks were high and the dangers very real…

‘I’m in, on one condition,’ I said, patting Kulltuft on the head.

‘Name it,’ said Gart.

I smiled, ‘That you make room for one more.’

It was a balmy evening and the three of us were out on the veranda of my hive-house. Laria Chillax - the widow of the brave lancer I had fought alongside at the battle of Farrow Lake - and I were sitting in rocking chairs, sipping sapwine and watching the golden sunlight spread out across the Farrow Lake, then set above the Western Woods. Vitus, the little foundling I had rescued from the battlefield, was getting stronger every day. As we watched, he crawled across the boards, shepherding the three wooden balls I had carved for him.

‘I’ve been thinking about my future here in the Farrow Ridges,’ Laria was saying. ‘I was a seamstress back in Great Glade. And with an excellent reputation by all accounts,’ she added with a self-deprecating laugh. ‘With Parvis dead, there’s nothing for me back there. And I wondered whether the Farrow Ridges might benefit from a small tailor’s shop…’

I thought it was an excellent idea. Before the battle, the Farrow Ridge settlers’ clothing had been brought in on the trading vessels that docked at the Needles. None had visited for months, and I was sure Laria’s idea would prove a winner. We talked of where she might come by a sewing machine; whether there might be someone locally who could make her buttons, toggles, fasteners. We made plans for constructing her a cabin, to include a workshop and small store, on the lakeside plot next to my own hive-house.

Unlike the main cities of the Edge, where business is conducted in dockets, gladers, waifmarks , hivegeld and such like, the Farrow Ridges has no currency. Instead, we barter, exchanging goods for goods, or for works carried out - joinery, plumbing, tiling, boat-repairs, letter-writing. That sort of thing. Laria laughed as we tried to decide whether a worsted hackjacket and matching breeches were worth more or less than a side of hammelhorn, or a newly tiled roof, when all at once, Vitus let out a scream that was shrill and urgent and filled with terror and pain.

‘Vitus!’ Laria cried out, leaping from the rocking chair and dashing to the far side of the veranda, where Vitus lay, silent now and motionless. ‘Vitus, Vitus…’ she moaned, gathering his body up in her arms and cradling him to her breast. ‘Vitus, what is it?’

In the short time that she had stayed with me, Laria had treated Vitus like the child she had never had with Parvis Helm. And Vitus adored her in return.

She turned to me, her green eyes wild with fear. ‘Hedgethorn,’ she said. ‘What’s wrong with him?’

‘I… I don’t know…’ I said. ‘Perhaps…’ And then I heard it, a loud hissing noise, and I saw a flash of green and yellow. ‘Oh, no,’ I gasped. ‘A hoverworm.’

Laria spun round. ‘A what?’

‘A hoverworm,’ I repeated miserably. ‘A Deepwoods creature. It usually favours the darkest parts of the forest. It must have come down to the lakeside to drink…’

Laria inspected Vitus’s hot, limp body agitatedly, and let out a stifled cry as she discovered the two marks puncturing the skin of his left arm. She looked up at me.

‘He… he’ll be all right, won’t he?’ she sobbed, her tear-filled eyes imploring me to assure her that he would be.

But I could not. How could I? After all, I’d learned from bitter personal experience that, if the victim of a hoverworm’s bite was not given the antidote to its vile venom within the hour, then he or she would surely die…

The hive tower was decked out magnificently. Woven boughs of lufwood arched overhead, tiny lanterns hanging from them in glittering clusters, while the traditional sumpwood globes, painted green and red, floated in the warm air.

In the middle of the floor, a mighty fire blazed, around which long tables had been arranged to form a circle. These groaned under the weight of good things to eat - tildersteaks, glazed legs of hammelhorn, steaming bowls of spicy tripweed, and, of course, Wodgiss sausages.

Hedgethorn Lammergyre, the new mayor of Farrow Lake, had spared no expense to make this a Wodgiss Night to remember. After the terrible trials and tribulations of this last year, there are many of us Farrow Lakers who are heartily grateful to him for his efforts.

There is nothing like this great midwinter feast for bringing communities together and raising the spirits. This year, snow had come swirling down and a bitterly cold wind had turned the Farrow Lake to ice. Three of the Five Falls had turned to frozen icicles and many Farrow Lakers had likened this bitter winter to that legendary one, so long ago, that had afflicted the great floating city of Sanctaphrax.

But the warmth of the hive tower soon banished such thoughts from our minds as we raised goblets of hylewine and tankards of wodge-ale in the traditional toast - “Earth and Sky!”

I downed my drink in one and looked around at the faces in the firelight. They were my neighbours - the solemn long faces of the webfoot goblins of Farrow village; the hard, weatherbeaten traders from the shacks in the Western Woods, and the eager, excited faces of the new settlers and their young families, who were establishing themselves on the fringes of the eastern shore. Our little community had grown so much since I’d arrived, I realized, and now the war was over, would grow bigger than ever.

‘Earth and Sky… and Farrow Lake!’ I cried, raising my re-charged goblet.

‘Farrow Lake! Farrow Lake! Farrow Lake!’ The hive tower resounded with joyful voices raised in celebration. Across the fire, Hedgethorn, his little foundling cradled in his arms, laughed delightedly.

‘Why, Forden, came a familiar voice, and turning, I saw my old friend, Gart Ironshank, coming towards me. ‘Just the person I was looking for.’

The captain shook my hand warmly and drew up a chair. ‘Quite a festive gathering,’ he said, looking round appreciateively. ‘Good to see things getting back to normal…’

‘They’ll never be normal for me,’ I said. Alcestia’s beautiful face appeared in my mind. ‘But life has to go on.’

‘Indeed, indeed,’ said Gart, nodding, ‘which is why I have a very interesting proposition to put to you, Forden, old friend…’

Vitus, Vitus, Vitus…

I named him myself, the little bundle of life I found nestled among the death and destruction of the battlefield. Nearly three weeks have passed since the terrible events of the Battle of the Farrow Lake and, thank Earth and Sky, the little fellow is thriving.

It would be an exaggeration to say that everything is back to normal, for nothing will ever be the same again. Yet for all that, some semblance of normality has indeed returned to the Farrow ridges. The fallen - from both sides of the conflict - have been removed from the battlefield, and their bodies sent ceremonially and reverently soaring up to Open Sky on flaming pyres. Poor Forden was too ill to attend his Alcestia’s funeral, but later performed a solitary ceremony of his own. My friend has been subdued since his tragic loss and my heart goes out to him.

The lake and landing jetties and buildings that were damaged in the phraxfire have been repaired. The felled trees have been cleared, used for timber and firewood, and recent heavy rain has washed away the blood that stained the ground. In its place, thousands of red papery-petalled woodlilies have sprung up, their crimson flowers serving as a poignant memory to those who died.

Scores perished in the Battle of Farrow Lake, including many that I had come to regard as friends, yet today the Farrow Ridges are more populated than ever. For not only did several of the Freeglade Lancers decide to remain here, sending for their families to join them, but many others from Great Glade have decided to move to this quiet outpost, so different from the mighty city they chose to leave behind.

And then there is Vitus, who, at less than a month old, is the youngest of our community…

Despite asking around, I was unable to find out anything about the tiny newborn baby I’d found. No one knew anything of his mother or father, and I could only assume that they were newcomers who had been caught in the crossfire and perished.

Though tiny, Vitus is a strong little thing. He has dark blue eyes, sturdy limbs - and a powerful set of lungs. When I headed back to my hive-house with the little fellow swaddled in my scarf, he bellowed with red-faced indignation the whole way. Thankfully, his distress was caused only by hunger, and after drinking some warm hammelhorn milk (taken from a bottle with a makeshift teat I fashioned from the thumb of a glove), he fell into a deep and contented slumber.

Since then, Vitus has been as good as gold, feeding regularly and sleeping through the night. For the first couple of weeks, I left him in the cot I’d made him, with Plume - my loyal cantationary bird - on guard. Whenever Vitus stirred, he would fly off to find me, crying like the baby himself, so that I knew to return. This last week, however, with so much to do, I have kept him with me in an adapted backpack, his legs dangling down my back and head darting about in his curiosity, or resting on my shoulder, asleep. In this manner, he has accompanied me as I’ve dug my fields, gathered wood or taken my coracle out on the lake…

It’s strange how things work out. I’d always assumed I’d be a father, yet sadly it was not to be. When I was young, I fell in love with a grey goblin called Innis. She was beautiful and kind and, betrothed to one another, we made plans for our lives together - before she caught fog-fever and died in my arms. Some while after that, I was conscripted into the Hive army and sent to fight at the Midwood Marshes - and then, of course, I moved here. The years passed, and those early dreams faded. Yet now I have become a father - of sorts - after all.

‘We’ll be fine, you and me, little one,’ I told him one night as I settled him down in his cradle. ‘Don’t fret, Vitus. Hedgethorn will look after you just like his own.’

Even as I spoke, though, I knew that I was fooling myself. Oh, I could feed him and look after him well enough, but he needed more than that - baby Vitus needed the love and special care that only a mother could give him. But where could I, a battle-scarred veteran, ever find such a person?

As I pulled the tilder pelt up over his sleeping body, there was a gentle knock on the door. Wondering who might be visiting me so late at night, I crossed the room and opened the door to see a tall fourthling standing before me. She had long reddish hair and the greenest eyes I’d ever seen.

‘Hedgethorn Lammergyre?’ she said. ‘My name is Laria. Laria Chillax…’

I stood on the edge of High Farrow and looked out across Farrow Lake. Below me the Five Falls thundered into its glistening waters, while to the west, the Levels stretched away to the smoke-coloured blur of the Western Woods.

My pit-house home lay at the far end of the lake, and beside it, the pinnacled roofs of the webfoot village were glinting in the early morning light. Below Midridge, the ugly scar of the great trench stood out amid the desolation of the eastern shore, and close by, on the lakeside, was the battered hive tower of my friend, Hedgethorn Lammergyre.

Without him, I wouldn’t be standing here now, I thought.

He had found me on the battlefield and tended my wounds patiently for weeks, until I was strong enough to get up. And when I had, the first thing I did was to walk up here to High Farrow. I needed a crutch and stopped frequently on the path to catch my breath, but as the dawn broke, I reached the remembrance stones.

There were many of them, bearing the names of people I knew and people I did not. The fallen of the Battle of Farrow Lake. I had snapped a twig from a lufwood tree on my way and, clutching it in my hand, I searched among the stones at High Farrow’s edge. At last I found the remembrance stone I sought. Looking down at it, I read the name chiselled into the blue-grey rock.

ALCESTIA, of the Farrow Lake Militia, it read, May Open Sky Take Her Soul.

I knelt before it and traced the words with a finger. Alcestia, my Alcestia, was gone. She’d died of her wounds on the second day of the battle, the white trogs of the water caverns powerless to save her. As the smoke from the shattered Eastern Woods began to drift away, they had brought her body here to the edge of High Farrow for sky burial.

As I lay in Hedgethorn’s hive tower fighting for my life, they had prepared the lufwood pyre and laid Alcestia upon it. Then, with flaming torches, they had set fire to the buoyant logs and the pyre had risen into the darkening sky. Higher and higher the burning wood took her, until at last, she disappeared into Open Sky. Open Sky, where we all came from, and Open Sky, where we all must go…

I fumbled in the pockets of my topcoat and, drawing out a flintbox and matches, I lit the lufwood twig I had brought. It flared into purple flame and, letting go, I watched it soar up into the golden glow of dawn.

‘Farewell, Alcestia,’ I said, tears flowing freely now. ‘We’ll meet again… in Open Sky.’

Having set a poultice to draw the bullets from Forden’s wounds, sealed the whole lot in a clay cast and laid him in a hammock above a smouldering fire of thunderroot, I left the hive hut. There was nothing more I could do for him. He would sleep for at least three days. Time would be his healer now.

Part of the roof of my hive hut had been blown away in a phraxcannon bombardment, and there was also a gaping hole in the wall to the right of the doorway. I decided to start on the repairs immediately, relishing the thought of having something to do.

I worked all through the afternoon and into the night, cutting lengths of waterwillow to the right length and plaiting them slowly and methodically into place. The sun set and the moon rose, full and round and so bright it cast my beloved Farrow Ridges in eerie silver shadow.

It was close to midnight by the time my dwellings were patched up. Yet, even though I’d been up since daybreak, I was not tired.

I checked on Forden. He was out for the count. At least now, with the roof and wall repaired, he would not be chilled by the cold wind that was getting up outside. I heard it whistle and howl round my hive hut and I answered its call, stepping back outside and setting off on a walk.

I gave no thought to where I might head. I simply set off. Being outside, clearing my head; that was all I had in mind. It was only when I found myself in the Western Woods that I realized I’d walked right round the Farrow Lake and across the Levels. I stopped and looked about me…

Can there be any place more desperate than a battlefield at the end of a might battle? I strode through the decimated forest, picking my way over splintered tree-stumps, flattened rock-mounds and churned mud that was stained with blood and steaming with unspent phraxbullets, feeling sick to stomach. There were dead bodies on the ground, still to be cleared away, with shattered limps and gaping wounds. Our fighters and theirs. Enemies, united in death.

The horror of it all brought back flashbacks of the carnage wreaked at the terrible Battle of the Midwood Marshes. Back then, I’d lost many friends; grey goblins I’d grown up with, neighbours, comrades. The losses were soured by the fact that we all knew we were fighting on the wrong side of an unjust war. No-one dragooned into fighting for Hive by Kulltuft Warhammer and his cronies agreed with our battle with Great Glade.

Of course, we lost that war. And thank Earth and Sky we did! It meant that Kulltuft Warhammer was deposed, and a democratic council restored. Now, as I stared round me, I was more glad than ever that Great Glade had won. After all, if they had not, they could not have sent the Freeglade Lancers to come to our aid, and the Farrow Ridges would surely have fallen to our enemies.

What courageous fighters those Freeglade Lancers had proven to be! With their prowlgrins and their lances, theyhad routed the enemy, cutting them down like scythed blue-barley. I felt honoured to have ridden beside them into battle and humbled by the sacrifice they had made - a sentiment made all the more poignant by the body of the lancer I came across, lying on the ground.

‘Thank you, dear, brave comrade,’ I told him, tears welling in my eyes.

I noticed a piece of barkscroll protruding from his clenched fist. I prised his hand open. As the fingers unfolded, the barkscroll fell into my hand. I opened it and read the scrawled note written there.

To you, who has found this note, I would ask that the ring it encloses be delivered to my beloved, Laria Chillax, of the Reaches, Ambristown, Great Glade. Tell her I am hers until the end of time. Tell her, one day we shall be together again in Open Sky. Tell her, I love her. Tell her

The message stopped. My tears were flowing freely now. I looked at the ring - a simple gold band inscribed with two names; Parvis on one side, Laria on the other.

‘I promise you,’ I whispered, ‘I shall visit your Laria and…’

Just then, there was a noise behind me, and I turned to see a piebald prowlgrin pawing at the ground. It was snorting and growling and from the way it kept running off, then stopping and looking back at me, I knew it wanted me to go with it.

I wrapped up the ring, slipped it into my back pocket and followed the prowlgrin into the trees. We hadn’t gone more than a score or so strides, when I heard a strange noise. It was a plaintive mewling, like the cry of a snowbird, or the whimpering of a wood kitten, or…

As I rounded a vast lullabee tree, my jaw dropped. For there, amid the death and destruction of the aftermath of war, was the most incongruous sight I could imagine.

It was a newborn baby…

There were five leadwood bullets embedded in me - leastways, that’s what Hedgethorne told me. He asked me if he could keep one as a souvenir and said he could have all five for all I cared.

I had been well and truly peppered with the accursed things as I charged the enemy’s phraxcannon, and I can remember very little about it. Poor Lemquinx was mortally wounded and Hedgethorn found me lying next to my faithful prowlgrin’s lifeless corpse. The militia’s surgeon wanted me taken to the Water Caverns, where a makeshift hospital had been set up, but Hedgethorn would have none of it.

‘No sawbones is going to carve up my friend, I told him, Forden,’ Hedgethorn growled. ‘I’ll tend his wounds the old way.’

My old friend was as good as his word, though at the time I was running a high fever and was oblivious to everything.

I came to three days later to find myself in a hammock above a fire of aromatic thunderroot in Hedgethorn’s hive tower. I couldn’t move. My right hand side was encased in a heavy cast of baked lake mud from neck to ankle, and I was strapped to my hammock. The pungent sepia smoke rising from the fire numbed my senses and made me drowsy, and I slipped in and out of consciousness for most of that long afternoon. It was sometime after dark when I awoke to find Hedgethorn standing over me. He held a rock hammer and chisel in his hands.

‘The healing poultice will have done its work by now,’ he informed me. ‘Time to come out of your shell, Forden, old friend.’

As gently as he was able, Hedgethorn chipped away the mud cast on my right hand side. Beneath the grey crust, a brittle poultice of lake herbs and cavern moss was revealed. As Hedgethorn pulled this away, the leadwood bullets fell, one by one, into his hands. The old grey goblin smiled at me as he bathed and dressed my bullet wounds with crisp white bandages.

‘The old ways worked for arrowheads and spear-barbs,’ he said simply, ‘drawing them slowly from the wound without the surgeon’s knife. Seems they work equally well on leadwood bullets.’

I wanted to thank my friend, but drugged by the thuderroot smoke, I drifted off to sleep.

When I awoke, the fire had burned itself out and a bright shaft of sunlight was beaming down on the hammock from the tower windows above. Hedgethorn was in his galley beside the central fire, steaming lakefish and frying meadow turnip fritters. The smell was as intoxicating as thunderroot smoke, and I sat up. My side ached, but I was delighted to find that I could get to my feet without too much difficulty.

‘Looks like you’re on the mend,’ laughed Hedgethorn, ushering me over to his long table, which groaned under the weight of good things to eat. ‘Tuck in,’ he encouraged. ‘You need to build your strength up, Forden, lad.’

I needed no second invitation and ate hungrily, devouring the lakefish, meadow turnip fritters, tilder sausages and sticklehog bacon. Slumping back in my chair at last, I looked at my old friend.

‘I can’t begin to thank you, Hedgethorn,’ I began, ‘for looking after me, tending my wounds… But tell me, what has become of our militia? and Alcestia?’

The old grey goblin’s eyes filled with tears. ‘We lost many good people at the Battle of Farrow Lake, Forden,’ he said quietly. ‘And Alcestia was one of them…’

Back on board the Varis Lodd, I reflected on the five days since I’d set out on my mission. Thanks to Garulus Borg, the new High Professor of Flight, everything has finally come good. Not only did he pledge support for the Farrow Lake settlers, but he kept to his word and dispatched a force of forty Freeglade Lancers to help defend the Farrow Lake militia against the enemy forces.

I say forty. In fact there were thirty-nine. The fortieth was yours truly, clad in a green topcoat, armed with a lance and twin phraxpistols and seated astride a great skewbald prowlgrin by the name of Benefix. Together with the rest of the cavalry, I waited on the lower deck of the Varis Lodd, which had been set aside for the purpose of transporting us from Great Glade to Farrow Lake.

I confess I was anxious. Having fought at the Midwood Marshes, I knew the horrors of warfare. But that wasn’t all. You see, I’d never ridden a prowlgrin before and, although my fellow lancers assured me that there was nothing to it - that the prowlgrins themselves did all the work - I remained uncertain. Then again, I would not shirk my duty. I didn’t know if we would win or lose the battle, but whatever happened, I would play my part.

It was late afternoon when we got our first sighting of the Farrow Lake. From afar, it gleamed like a flawless opal in a setting of green. As we approached, however, the devastation wreaked upon my beloved home became clear for all to see. Great swathes of the Western Woods had been flattened by phraxcannon, leaving felled trunks and jagged treestumps. The landing-platform at the Needles had been destroyed; the levels were pockmarked and strewn with the bodies of the fallen.

I put my spyglass to my eye and surveyed the terrible scene. The Farrow Lake militia must have taken a terrible pounding. I saw no more than a handful of valiant souls, holed up in the trenches on the eastern lakeshore and clearly exhausted. By contrast, Felvis Yellowman’s troops - phraxmusketeers holding positions to the south, and cannoneers dug in near the phraxcannons on the far side of the lake - looked poised for the final assault.

The battle seemed all but over, yet our commander, Leb Whiteraven, a grizzled fourthling and veteran of many a successful battle, had other ideas. As the captain of the Varis Lodd steered a course round Farrow Lake and brought us down to the forest above High Farrow, the commander walked among us, issuing commands. Half of us were to advance from the north. The rest would take out the cannoneers and seize control of the phraxcannon. Then the hull of the sky tavern grazed the tops of the trees, and the order to disembark went up.

‘By Earth and Sky,’ Whiteraven shouted out across the deck, ‘and the honour of Great Glade! Troops… attack!‘

The prowlgrins kicked off on powerful back legs, leaping from the deck and down to the trees below. I watched the other lancers, thinking how effortless they made it look, when Benefix suddenly kicked off and joined the rest. My stomach lurched and I’m ashamed to say I cried out as I found myself plummeting down through the air. I needn’t have worried. Just as I’d been promised, Benefix took control, leaping from branch to branch of the forest, then boulder to boulder as we descended from High Farrow to Midridge, and down to the battlefield below. All I had to do was hold on.

We split up close to the forest floor. I was part of the force that was to take the phraxcannon. We were advancing stealthily through the trees when a loud cry went up. We’d been spotted! The next moment, the air exploded with flashing and crashing as phraxcannon and phraxmuskets were aimed at us, and fired. There were casualties. A lancer to my left was struck, knocked from his mount and fell to the forest floor below; ahead of me, a prowlgrin roared with pain as its belly was torn apart…

Yet the lancers pressed on undeterred, agile, fleet of foot, as they leaped through the forest branches. Up ahead, the phraxcannon came into view. One of them had been destroyed, but the other two were armed and ready for action. I was relieved to see that there were no more than half a dozen cloddertrog gunners operating them. We outnumbered them three to one. From far behind us, I heard bloodcurdling cries and, as the sound of phraxfire faded, I knew the well-disciplined and expertly trained troopers of the Freeglade Lancers were routing the enemy. My heart soaring, I gripped my lance in one hand and Benefix’s reins in the other as the noble creature crashed down through the branches towards the phraxcannon.

The cloddertrogs never stood a chance. One after the other, they were killed by the lancers, who sprang this way and that, picking them off with expert lunges of their lethal blackwood lances. Within minutes, the phraxcannon were ours. Benefix landed on the ground, and I was about to dismount when something caught my eye - the flash of black and silver of an enemy soldier fleeing into the trees.

I tugged the reins and Benefix and I galloped after him. He soon realized that he couldn’t outrun us, and he turned and drew a brutal looking scimitar. I looked at the scarred face of my adversary, with his broad shoulders and long yellow hair. This, I realized, was none other than Felvis Yellowmane himself.

‘Give yourself up!’ I told him.

The long-haired goblin sneered, roared and barrelled towards me, his scimitar raised. Shocked, I froze. The scimitar whistled down through the air. I was about to be sliced in two, when Benefix leaped vertically from the ground, avoiding the flashing blade, and soaring high in the air over Yellowman’s head. The long-hair turned and levelled a phraxpistol at us.

As Benefix landed, I gripped my lance with both hands and, with all my force, thrust it into Yellowman’s treacherous heart. With a throaty gurgle, the leader of the mire-pearlers sank to his knees, then toppled forward and lay still.

Felvis Yellowmane was dead! And our settlement was saved! I was about to return to my fellow lancers when I heard a soft groaning sound. I dismounted and followed the noise - and saw a dead prowlgrin, its rider lying next to it.

It was my friend, Forden Drew, the right side of his topcoat covered in blood. He must have heard me as I crouched down next to him, for he looked up, the expression on his face changing from fear to relief as he recognized me.

‘Don’t try to speak, Forden,’ I said. ‘The war is over!’ I smiled. ‘And we’ve won…’

The fires caused by the phraxcannon raged along High Farrow for most of the night until, just before dawn, a heavy rain began to fall. When it cleared, a heavy mist enveloped the Eastern Woods and lay across the Farrow Lake like a tilderdown blanket.

Fennith and his webfoot companions had taken Alcestia on board the phraxmarine the night before and transported her, along with our worst casualties, to the stalactite forest in the Water Caverns. When he returned, he tried to put on a brave face, but his crest glowed a mournful blue as he reassured me that Alcestia was receiving the best care the white trogs could provide.

‘We must force ourselves to concentrate on the fight that lies ahead,’ said the Roost Marshal when I joined him in the trench just as dawn was breaking. ‘Take what is left of Alcestia’s troop and combine it with yours, Forden,’ he instructed, ‘and then set off round the lake to the north around the enemy’s flank, and hunt down those phraxcannon of theirs.’

‘They’ll be well defended,’ I cautioned.

The Roost Marshall nodded. ‘Do what you can, Forden, lad, and I’ll try to hold the line here for as long as I can. Fog or no fog, I fear they’ll launch a full-frontal assault before midday.’

Promising to do my utmost, I left the trench and gathered the prowlgrin cavalry in the woods to the north. My troop numbered twelve, Alcestia’s a mere six, and the travails of yesterday’s fight sat heavily upon us all. But we were determined not to give up. We would sell our lives dearly for the cause of Farrow Lake freedom.

‘It’s down to us, lads,’ I announced as our ragged formation took to the trees. ‘We can’t expect any help from elsewhere.’

As I spoke, the first deadly volleys from the phraxcannon started up and, to the south of us, we could hear the phraxshells landing in our positions.

By mid morning we’d scouted round the enemy’s flank and picked off a party of fourthlings carrying supplies back to their positons. It was a brief fight, my prowlgrins leaping over the treetops and firing down into the midst of the enemy, who threw down their weapons and fled to their camp.

Unfortunately, that meant that Felvis Yellowman’s forces were now alerted to our presence and, as we regrouped and pressed on, we were suddenly confronted by a hail of phraxmusket fire coming up from the forest floor.

Five of our brave troopers and their prowlgrin fell, before we were able to find safety in a tall ironwood stand deep in the Eastern Woods, behind the enemy lines. We sheltered here until mid afternoon, licking our wounds and preparing for what we knew would be our last attack. Our ammunition was all but gone, our prowlgrins exhausted, and the enemy was alerted and waiting for us. It was then that Twill, an old treegoblin from Alcestia’s troop and a veteran of the Hive Militia, had an idea.

‘Since we’re almost out of ammunition, Captain,’ he said to me, as the thirteen of us stood beside our prowlgrins on the massive branch of an ironwood pine, ‘why don’t we avail ourselves of nature’s natural destructiveness - namely the pine-cones all around us. If we take ‘em, one between two troopers, and set ‘em alight, we can bowl them down at the enemy as we charge. What d’ya say, Captain?’

I clapped the old tree goblin on the back. It was an inspired idea. The resin in the pine-cones would burn fiercely, and who knows what damage they might cause if they landed on a fully-loaded phraxcannon?

We set to work immediately, making makeshift slings to carry the massive pine-cones between pairs of prowlgrins. The troopers each broke switches from the branches and dipped them in the pine resin that oozed from the bark of the ironwood pine, making ready-made torches. Then we set off towards the thunderous sound of the phraxcannon.

An hour later, we found them in a clearing on Midridge, their muzzles pointed down at our positions in front of Farrow Lake. It only took a glance to tell me that the Roost Marshal and our militia had taken a terrible pounding. I signalled to my troopers to light their torches and then to charge the phraxcannon.

As we surged down from the treetops and bounded across the clearing, a phalanx of enemy infantry guarding the cannon turned their phraxmuskets on us and fired. In the hail of bullets, I saw four pairs of troopers go down, the pine-cones they carried thudding uselessly to the ground. That left two pairs, and me. In the hopes of distracting the enemy, I lit the torch I carried and urged Lemquinx to leap out in front, yelling at the top of my lungs as I did so.

Behind me, the two pairs of troopers lit their pine-cones and leaped high into the air. As they released their flaming missiles, the air around me buzzed with flying bullets, and I felt an excruciating pain in my side.

Moments later I was falling to earth, as a brilliant explosion enveloped the clearing. Then I hit the ground, and everything went black…