The Farrow Ridges

‘Help me, somebody. Help me…’

I set my spoon aside and looked round from the bowl of tilder-broth to see Plume, my pet cantationary bird, standing in the doorway. Her great crested head was cocked to one side.

‘Help me, somebody. Help me…’ she said a second time, the voice she was mimicking, low and frail.

Plume has been with me now for more than a month. In that time, she has become so tame that I no longer need to keep her tethered. She flies off, soaring up into High Farrow or across the lake to the Western Woods, sometimes remaining gone for hours at a time, but always returns. During her time here, as well as the phrases she knew before, she has added to her repertoire; phrases that she had picked up from me. ‘Damn it to Open Sky!’ when I was angry, and ‘Well paint me blue and paint me to the sky!’ - one of my grandfather’s expressions that I was unaware I even used. The desperate plea she was now repeating was quite new. Someone out there needed my help.

‘Show me, Plume,’ I said, gathering together a knife, a rope and, since night had already fallen, a tilder-oil lantern.

The bird flapped off, and I strode after her. Round the eastern edge of the Five Falls she went, flapping from branch to bough of the forest trees, up the steep track to Midridge and beyond. As I crested High Farrow I lost sight of her.

‘Plume!’ I called. ‘Plume!‘ But the bird was nowhere to be seen. I stumbled on, down the scree-strewn slope on the far side of the ridge and round behind the water caverns. ‘Plume, where are you?’

‘Help me, somebody. Help me…’

‘There you are,’ I muttered, as I heard the plaintive cry coming from some way to my right. I raised my lantern and pushed my way through the dense undergrowth of comb-bushes and stunted thorntrees.

‘Help me, somebody. Help me…’ The voice was coming from behind me now, and I turned to see a cluster of jagged rocks, and jutting out from behind them, the shattered hull of what looked like a phraxlighter. I was hurrying towards it when the voice came again. It wasn’t coming from the surrounding trees at all; it was coming from somewhere below me. ‘Help me…’

It was then that I noticed the crevice in the rocks. If it hadn’t been for the voice I would never have noticed it. I crouched down and thrust the lantern down into the gap. Some way below the surface, the crack opened up into a gaping cavern - and there, eyes glistening in the yellow lamplight, was something or someone staring back at me.

‘Am I dreaming?’ came a whispered voice and, squinting into the gloom, I saw a thin shivering figure clutching to a spur of rock which jutted out over a yawning chasm.

‘No, friend,’ I replied, my voice echoing. ‘I’m here to help you.’

‘I… I lost control… In the storm… A sudden gust of wind seized it… seized the phraxlighter… And I crashed it…’ The stranger was babbling excitedly, the relief of being found, loosening his tongue. As I tied one end of the rope round the trunk of a stout ironwood pine, his story continued, echoing from the top of the hole. ‘I must have knocked my head. When I came round, it was dark… I stumbled from the wreckage, then… suddenly, I was falling…’ The voice became shot with sudden panic. ‘Are you still there?’

‘I’m here,’ I said. I knelt down at the lip of the hole and lowered the rope. ‘Tie the end round you,’I told him.

By the lantern glow I watched as, with shaking fingers, he wrapped the rope around his chest and knotted it firmly. I took the strain and pulled. From below me, I heard him groan softly as the rope tightened around his chest. The next moment, the weight became suddenly heavy. Grunting with effort, hand over hand, I pulled, my jaws clenched and sweat breaking out across my brow. It was hard work, particularly when the dangling body began to sway. But I wasn’t about to give up, and slowly, painfully slowly, I was doing it, tugging the hapless figure from the chasm that had swallowed him up.

My arms were feeling as though they were being pulled from their sockets when, all at once, I saw a hand emerge from the hole. It grasped at a gnarled root. Then another hand appeared and, with a soft grunt, the figure hoisted himself up and crawled out onto the rock. I dropped the rope and ran across to him. He looked up, and I gasped.

‘You!’ I exclaimed.

It was Gart Ironshank, the fourthling. He climbed to his feet, a smile on his face. ‘Hedgethorn Lammergyre,’ he said and thrust out his hand. ‘You saved my life.’

‘One good turn deserves another,’ I said, shaking his hand warmly.

‘Indeed,’ the fourthling said. ‘If I hadn’t rescued you, there’d have been no one to rescue me.’ He laughed. ‘Now didn’t you mention something about a flagon of woodgrog?’

The guttural cries of the white trogs were followed, moments later, by the great hulking cavern dwellers themselves. Bedecked in fishbone breastplates and clutching barbed harpoons, twenty or more white trogs emerged from the stalactite forest and set out across the Underlake in three long narrow war canoes.

The caverneer turned to me, grim-faced and unsmiling. ‘Something seems to have upset them,’ he observed drily. ‘They know me, but as a stranger, it might be best if you returned to the cavern mouth and waited for me there.’

‘If you’re quite sure…’ I began, eyeing the war party as they approached the shore.

‘Go,’ said the caverneer sharply and turned on his heels.

I didn’t need further encouragement, retreating swiftly to the tunnel from which we’d so recently emerged and burying myself in its protective gloom. Only once safely inside, did I permit myself a backwards glance and was instantly hit by a lurch of guilty regret, deep in the pit of my stomach.

The white trogs had surrounded the diminutive figure of my friend the caverneer, and were roughly pushing and shoving him towards one of their beached war canoes. The caverneer spoke in a calm low voice, but the huge trogs seemed uncontrollably angry and, to my horror, one of them felled my friend with a sickening blow to the head. Several of his fellow trogs then turned and began to make their way up the rubble-strewn screebank towards my vantage point.

‘Go.’ The caverneer’s voice rpeated itself in my mind and, panic-stricken but ashamed of my cowardice, I turned and ran. The sound of my footsteps on the rocky ledge of the tunnel was mercifully masked by the roar of the cavern water flowing just below and, as I approached the cavern mouth, I was relieved to discover that I hadn’t been followed.

Moments later, I scrambled out into the daylight and began to make my way shame-facedly along the east path towards Midridge. I would make my way home along the midridge and round the eastern shore of Farrow Lake, I decided, in order to drop in on my friend, Hedgethorn Lammergyre’s hive-hut. The old grey goblin was far more experienced in the strange ways of the Western Woods and might be able to offer help and advice on what I should do next. One thing was certain though, the caverneer needed help of a kind that a former city dweller like me was ill-equipped to deliver.

As if in answer to my thoughts, a striking figure stepped out from the ironwood stands at the bottom of the midridge and into my path.

She was a young fourthling, clad in green tilderleather leggings and a short cutaway topcoat, a crushed funnel hat set at a jaunty angle on her head. But this, I could tell at a glance, was no Great Glade basket tourist from a passing sky tavern. No, her cross-strapped hunting knife, tool-laden waist belt and sumpwood haversack told me she was a Deepwooder to her fingertips, and a well-armed one at that. The two polished phraxpistols in the reverse-holsters on each hip suggested she knew how to take care of herself.

‘Coming down from the Five Falls?’ she enquired by way of greeting, ‘and in a hurry from the look of it.’

I nodded. ‘My friend and I ran into some trouble in the water caverns…’

‘So you’re a caverneer,’ she said, a look of surprise crossing her pretty face. Her eyes were a deep dark brown I noticed, and her hair, swept up beneath the funnel hat, was as black as Riverrise night.

‘No, not me. But my friend is,’ I blurted out, my face flushing as I remembered my cowardly retreat. ‘He’s an experienced caverneer. Goes by the name of “the roost marshal”. Perhaps you’ve heard of him?’

‘Heard of him?’ said the girl, her brown eyes flashing. ‘He’s my father!’

To think this extraordinary place, certainly one of the wonders of the entire Edgelands, was right here in the Farrow Ridges all along. Or rather, beneath the towering tree-fringed bluffs, in this immense subterranean cavern. I have the old caverneer to thank for showing me the vast expanse of dark, shimmering water that is the Underlake.

I met him, as arranged, on the High Farrow path that leads to the Five Caverns, and he led me towards the first and smallest of these cave mouths. The east trail from Midridge was a far easier path, but I sensed the old caverneer wanted to get the measure of me by taking the western High Farrow path, above the Five Falls. It had been an early start, but by mid-morning we’d reached the cave mouth of the first of the five caverns.

‘Follow me, Master Drew,’ counselled the caverneer, who answered to the intriguing name of “roost marshal”, ‘and make as little noise as possible. The white trogs have keen hearing, unaffected by the roar of the water.’

‘White trogs?’ I asked, but the roost marshal ignored me, intent as he was on scrambling down the slope and entering the stalactite-toothed opening.

I followed, eager to explore this strange new underground world. For an hour or more, we edged our way along a narrow ledge, through a dark tunnel, while below us the first of the five falls thundered towards the cavern mouth. The roost marshal used hooks, crampons and an array of specialized tools to help us navigate along the watery tunnel walls and, as we reached the far end, deep beneath the Farrow Ridges, I was full of admiration for his methodical skill and poise. Finally, hammering a last ironwood peg into the cave wall, the roost marshal proffered a calloused hand, which I gratefully took, and pulled out of the tunnel and into the great cavern of the Underlake.

‘Behold!’ he announced in a voice barely above a whisper, ‘the realm of the white trogs.’

I gasped. The huge lake lay spread out before us, its dark waters glistening with fluorescent light and illuminating a mighty forest of stalactites that bristled down from the vaulted cavern ceiling high above. But, magnificent though this sight was, the Underlake wasn’t what caught my eye and held me transfixed.

Instead it was the great looming figure of a trog standing stock still by the water’s edge, and looking up at us, his mighty torso bedecked in the skeletal remains of huge subterranean fish, the like of which I’d never seen before. As I gazed down at this monstrous figure, it threw back its head and gave a shrill, keening call that seemed to fill the immensity of the shimmering cavern. Moments later, that call was answered from deep within the stalactite forest…

The storms were bad for two weeks, but, as with everything - both good and ill - they finally passed, and I stepped outside to find the warm sun beating down. The landscape gleamed as though it had been freshly burnished. The trees were glistening, the Five Falls gushed full, while the lake - still, now that the wind had dropped - reflected the sky and the distant Western Woods like a vast looking-glass

There were holes in the side of the hivehouse that had taken the brunt of the lashing winds. A closer inspection revealed the damage to be superficial though, and I spent the morning plaiting reedgrass into the wicker to plug the gaps. And when that was done, I set to work on my vegetable garden, repairing the fences, splinting the broken fruitwood saplings and staking the battered pumpkins, farrow-kale and glade-onions. By midday, my homestead was as looking almost as good as new.

The only thing I didn’t have, since it had been destroyed in my close encounter with the snagglemouth, was a coracle. I decided to make myself a new one.

First I made the seat. This is the main part of the boat, and has to be robust. I fashioned it from a length of wood that I’d cut from one of the fallen copperwood trees. It was a good piece of timber, hard and knot-free, and with a wonderful swirling grain. Beneath the seat itself, I secured a row of vertical struts to the base, to form a fish trap that would keep my catch at the back of the vessel and away from my feet.

Once the seat was finished, I turned it upside down. I nailed several long thin strips of wood to the front and back, curving the wood round to form the oval shape of the coracle. I used farrow-willow, a light and flexible wood ideal for the purpose. Then, having nailed the whole frame into position, I began the painstaking process of weaving in the thin strips of farrow-willow to form the sides. It was a bit like weaving a basket - or indeed a hivehouse.

The next part of the process was to cover the frame with a waterproof material. My old coracle had been covered with tilderhide, but it wasn’t the ideal material. Not only did it have to be regularly oiled, but it was heavy. This time I used a length of thick canvas. I’d obtained it from my good neighbour, Forden Drew, who had bought a whole bolt of the stuff from a passing merchant, in exchange for half a dozen flagons of woodgrog. The canvas was stiff and awkward to work, but I persevered. I started at the middle and worked round the boat, pulling it tight and nailing it into place around the top frame, then pleating it at the back and front to get rid of the wrinkles. Each pleat had then to be stitched, using strong twine.

Next, I made it waterproof. I painted the coracle with a thick, sticky tar that I’d boiled up from fishbones and ironwood pine resin. It was a messy job and, to make sure the boat was absolutely watertight, I had to apply four coats. Each coat took about an hour to dry. While I was waiting, I fashioned a paddle from a second length of copperwood.

Finally the boat was lakeworthy - yet there was still one last thing I had to do. Grey goblins are superstitious folk by nature, and I am no exception. Since time immemorial, each clan had adopted a creature as its totem - vulpoons for the Greylings, prowlgrins for the Snitluggers, and so forth. We Lammergyres have the banderbear as our totem. Once, our ancestors carved their image onto their shields and spears. In more modern times, grey goblins back in Hive decorated their platters and drinking vessels with the same noble creatures. I took up my colours and, taking care with the design, painted a banderbear onto the side of the coracle - a banderbear that would protect me while I was out on the Farrow Lake and, I hoped, would inspire great catches of fish.

The sun had set by the time the coracle was ready. I carried it down to the water’s edge, pleased at how light it was. I turned it right side up, and was about to lower it into the water, when I noticed something bobbing about at the water’s edge.

It was the body of a small grey creature. I recognized the limp wing-like fins and toothy snout at once. It was the baby snaggletooth that I’d netted the previous week. As to what had killed it, I wasn’t sure, but there were deep gashed in its neck. Leaving the coracle on the shore, I waded into the water and dragged the dead creature to dry land. Although I was sorry the snaggletooth had been killed, I couldn’t afford to be sentimental - not when there was good meat and hide to be had.

I rolled it onto its back and was crouched down, my back to the lake, when I heard a loud bubbling splash behind me, followed by a heartrending howl. I straightened up and turned, to be confronted by the dead creature’s mother. She had reared up out of the water and, as she hovered for a moment above the lake, our gazes locked.

The next moment, the huge creature plunged back into the lake, sending bucking ripples galloping across its surface. I waited for her to re-surface, but instead, the stillness of the lake returned. She was gone, yet the expression in her gaze remained imprinted on my memory. I knew that, unfair as it might be, it was me, Hedgethorn Lammergyre, she blamed for the death of her infant.

She would be back. I could count on it. For it wasn’t just rage and pain I’d seen in her blazing eyes, it was the promise of revenge…

Ever since encountering the nameless one hatchling, I have been formulating a plan. This extraordinary creature needs my help, and I intend to deliver it.

Today I spent the morning cutting lake willow near the pit house, and this afternoon I wove a cage with flexible, but immensely strong, switches. It is a fine piece of work, though I say so myself, worthy of a goblin hive tower weaver. I enjoyed the task, wood-weaving being a skill I picked up as a young’un back in Hive.

By dusk the cage was completed, and I took it out into the forest to the north of Low Farrow, and baited it with a freshly caught craycritter. I intend to revisit my little trap tomorrow at first light, to see if my plan has worked…

I know Farrow Lake well. I’ve taken my coracle onto her surface a thousand times and dived in her unfathomable depths almost as often, harpoon at the ready. I thought I’d seen all her moods, from the placid calm of summer evenings to the stippled agitation of winter storms. But today was different. High winds had whipped the water into a turbulent swirl of jagged waves. Underwater, the sumpgrass and lakereeds would be pitching and swaying like the forest trees above - and the fish jumping.

As if on cue, I heard a splash, and turned to see one, then two, then a whole shoal of plump silver bellyfish break the surface, arc through the air and dive back down. Waves or no waves, it was too good an opportunity to miss. I unhitched my coracle from the jetty and paddled after the skittish shoal, my pouch-net dragging behind me. If I was lucky, I knew I could end up with enough fish to last me a half-year, possibly more…

The blast of a steam klaxon put paid to all such thoughts. As the raucous noise echoed, the bellyfish plunged back into the water, where they remained. I turned to see a sky-tavern approaching from the east. A figure in an old-fashioned tricorn hat stood at the portside balustrade, waving down at me and shouting something I couldn’t make out. Angry that my fishing plans had been thwarted, I brandished a fist at him.

With the fish spooked and the lake rougher than ever, I started paddling for the shore. All at once, the coracle lurched and tipped backwards. There was something in the net after all. I dragged it aboard and inspected it. Instead of the bellyfish or two I expected to find, I saw a creature I had never seen before.

 It had a plump body, claw-tipped back flippers and long sail-shaped forepaws, fringed with talons. Its fur was grey, its skull ridged. Its bulbous snout parted to reveal a mouth full of teeth and fangs that jutted every which way, and it mewled plaintively, fear in its large black eyes. As with all such unknown creatures, it was in need of a name, I decided.

‘A snagglemouth,’ I told it, as I crouched down and wrapped my arms around its warm, soft body. ‘That’s what I’m going to call you.’

The creature was clearly only a pup, and I was about to return it to the water when the coracle began to pitch wildly. A deafening roar echoed across the lake. I spun round to see a second creature, identical to the one in my arms, but twenty times bigger. It reared up out of the water, its sail-like forepaws slashing at the coracle and snaggle-toothed maw gaping. I dropped the young creature over the side, but the attack continued. Its outraged mother didn’t simply want the return of its young; now, it wanted revenge.

It rammed the coracle, which dipped to one side. Holding on for dear life, I watched helplessly as my paddle floated away. The creature turned and came at the coracle a second time. There was a splintering sound, and the tiny vessel started taking on water. Any second now, I would be tipped into the churning water and eaten alive.

‘Grab a hold!’

The words rang out from far above my head. I glanced up to see a small phraxlighter hovering some twenty strides above me, a long rope dangling from its stern. At the same moment, the snagglemouth came up directly beneath the hull. Its bulbous snout struck the coracle and sent it hurtling into the air. I seized the rope, which rose up as the phraxlighter soared off over the lake. Behind me, I heard the snaggle-toothed jaws slam shut, and looked back to see the coracle being smashed to smithereens.

Moments later, the phraxlighter reached the shoreline. I dropped to the sand and looked up. The figure I’d seen on board the sky-tavern, a fourthling, looked back and raised his tricorn in greeting.

‘The name’s Gart Ironshank,’ he called. ‘I saw the creature heading for your boat. I tried to warn you…’

‘Thanks for your help,’ I called back. ‘Hedgethorn Lammergyre. Will you come and share a flagon of woodgrog for your trouble?’

‘I must return to the Felix Lodd.’ With that, in a cloud of steam and a blast of white heat, the phraxlighter headed off towards the Needles. ‘Farewell, Hedgethorn Lammergyre,’ his voice floated back. ‘I’ll take you up on your kind offer when I’m next passing this way.’

As I watched the helpful stranger fly off, my gratitude to him was tempered by a sense of shame. I’d been too quick to anger when he’d first tried to warn me of the danger I was in. It came of being on my own too long. I’d become too self-reliant and complacent of the perils of this beautiful spot I’d made my home, and I told myself I should take care to heed warnings when offered. After all, out here in the treacherous Western Woods, even an old-timer like me sometimes needs a little help.

It’s been very windy this last week, with severe gales blowing in from the northwest, bringing destruction, but no rain. Last night was the worst so far. I lay awake in my hammock, listening to the howling, whistling wind as it sliced through the plaited wicker of my hivehouse, my tilderskin blankets pulled up around my ears. From beyond, I could hear the creak and crash of trees being uprooted, and the booming clatter of dislodged rocks as they tumbled down from the high pinnacles.

This morning I emerged at first light to a scene of devastation. My vegetable garden had been flattened, while the familiar skyline to the south was quite changed, with dozens of the trees of High Farrow lying on their sides. One massive copperwood had tumbled down the cliffside and lay inches away from my hivehouse. I thanked Earth and Sky I had not been crushed. The wind had dropped, but was still fierce, driving in relentlessly as I spent the morning turning the felled tree to firewood.

‘Greetings… slurp,’ I heard as I was wheeling my second barrowload of logs to my covered wood-store.

‘Who’s there?’ I called, looking round, but seeing no one. I put the barrow down. ‘Who’s there?’ I demanded again.

‘Come and get it! Greetings… slurp.’

The voice was coming from above me, and I looked up to see a gaudy green and purple bird perched on the edge of the roof, a beady eye fixed upon me. I recognized it at once. It was a cantationary bird, a famously gifted mimic, often kept as a pet by Deepwooders. I reached towards the bird, which flapped down and landed on my arm.

‘Greetings… slurp. Come and get it…’ It cocked its head to one side. ‘Who’s there?’

I recognized my own gruff voice, and smiled. The creature might once have belonged to a gabtrolled, I thought, as I slipped a plaited sumpgrass tether round its left foot.  But now it belonged to me.

A high wind had got up and the Farrow Lake was wild and choppy. In the distance, the Five Falls billowed from the mouths of the water caverns and out across the lake, like  great writhing logworms. Waves pounded my jetty and broke over the balustrade, threatening at several points during the day to swamp my pit house. Out across the water I glimpsed a lone coracle making for the eastern shore, and realized that even my neighbour, Lammergyre, experienced sailor that he is, was finding the conditions too testing.

As for me, I took my wormskin cloak and phraxmusket, and headed into the forests to the north of Low Farrow. The wind was whipping the treetops and disturbing the creatures of the upper canopy who were seeking shelter below - perfect conditions for a hunt. I had my heart set on a brace or two of plump pine-plovers, or even a weezit, if I was lucky, though these spindly-armed branch swingers are considerably harder to hit.

Sure enough, after a short hike, during which the howling gale above my head sent great shudders through the ironwood pines and lufwood stands, I came across a roost of fan-tailed bough-runners - fat-bodied birds with small wings and long powerful legs, which they use to leap from treetop to treetop like prowlgrins. I took aim and brought one down with a musket shot that sent the others back towards the treetops in a squawking flurry, regardless of the breaking storm. Congratulating myself on my good fortune at bagging a week’s worth of good eating, not to mention some fine writing quills into the bargain, I rushed towards the fallen bird which lay in a small clearing a little way off.

Just as I approached, I was astonished to be confronted by an extraordinary-looking creature of about knee height, which emerged from a whitethorn thicket and fell upon my prize. Before I could intervene, the misshapen apparition had swallowed the bough-runner in one gulp, its broad ears flapping and stalk-like eyes popping as it ground its jaws in an effort to digest the meal it had just stolen from me. It then turned and loped off through the trees on its spindly, taloned feet, emitting a curious mewling cry as it went.

Despite losing the bough-runner, I was fascinated by what I had just seen. This creature was a nameless one from the Nightwoods far to the west, I was sure of it. These primitive individuals grow to an enormous size when fully mature, and take on all sorts of strange characteristics in their adult form - tusks, horns, hooves and claws - and have long been of interest to scholars and academics of the three cities. This nameless one was clearly no more than a hatchling and must have wandered far from the dark forests of its birth.

I was intrigued. The nameless one hatchling was obviously famished and in need of help if it was to survive in the Western Woods, and I resolved, then and there, to befriend it…