Inkdeath

58. HELP FROM MOUNTAINS FAR AWAY

Meggie waited… while her ears were filled with screams.

While Farid put out Sootbird's black fire with white flames. While Darius soothed the children by telling them stories, his soft voice louder than usual to drown out the noise of fighting, and Elinor helped the other women to cut the ropes that the Milksop's men had shot up into the tree on arrows.

Meggie waited, quietly singing the songs Battista had taught her – all the songs full of hope and light, defiance and courage – while down at the foot of the tree the robbers were fighting for the children's lives and their own. Every scream reminded Meggie of the battle in the forest in which Farid had died. But this time she feared for two boys, not one.

Her eyes didn't know who to look for first, Farid or Doria, black hair or brown. Sometimes she couldn't see either of them, they moved so fast in the branches, both of them following the fire that Sootbird sent up into the huge tree like burning tar. Doria beat it out with cloths and mats, while Farid mocked Sootbird from above and sent his own flames to nest on the murderous fire like doves until their fiery plumage smothered it. He had learned a great deal from Dustfinger. Farid was no novice now, and Meggie saw jealousy distort Sootbird's leathery face, while the Milksop sat on his horse among the trees, observing the fighting men with as little expression on his face as if he were watching his hounds bring down a stag.

The robbers were still defending the tree, even though they were hopelessly outnumbered. But how much longer could they fight?

Where was he? Where was the creature she and Fenoglio had called to their aid? It had all been so quick with Cosimo!

No one knew what Meggie had read aloud a few hours ago except Fenoglio and the two glass men, who had listened to her openmouthed. They hadn't even had a chance to tell Elinor about it, since the Milksop's attack had been so sudden.

"You have to give him time!" Fenoglio had told Meggie when she put down the sheet of paper bearing his words. "He has to come from far away, or it couldn't be done."

Just so long as he didn't arrive only after they were all dead…

The Black Prince was bleeding from his shoulder. Almost all the robbers were wounded by now. It would be too late. Too late.

Meggie saw Doria barely avoiding an arrow, Roxane comforting the crying children, and Elinor and Minerva desperately trying to cut another rope before the Milksop's men could climb it. Oh, when would he come? When?

And, suddenly, she felt the sensation, exactly as Fenoglio had described it: a trembling that shook the tree to its topmost branches. Everyone felt it. The men fighting stopped and looked at one another in alarm. The ground quivered beneath his footsteps. That was what Fenoglio had written.

"Are you really sure he'll be peaceful?" Meggie had asked anxiously.

"Of course I am!" Fenoglio had replied in some annoyance. But Meggie couldn't help thinking of Cosimo, who hadn't turned out as Fenoglio imagined him. Or had he? Who could say what exactly went on in the old man's head? Perhaps Elinor was more likely to guess than the rest of them.

The quivering grew stronger. Branches broke, shoots, saplings. Flocks of birds flew up from the undergrowth, and the battle cries under the tree turned to screams of terror as the giant pushed his way out of the thickets.

No, he wasn't as tall as the tree.

"Of course not!" Fenoglio had said. "Of course they're not as tall as that! It would be silly! Anyway, didn't I tell you these nests were built on purpose to keep the people who lived in them safe from the giants? Well, there you are! He won't be able to reach up to any of them, but the Milksop will run for it as soon as he sees the giant, that's for sure. He'll run as fast as his spindly legs can carry him!"

And that was what the Milksop did, although he left it to his horse to do the running. He was the first to turn and flee. Sootbird was so terrified that he burned himself on his own flames, and the robbers themselves stood firm only because the Black Prince made them. It was Elinor who let the first rope down to the men and snapped at the other women as they stood there, petrified, staring at the giant. "Throw down ropes!" Meggie heard her shouting. "And get on with it, or do you want him to crush them underfoot?"

Brave Elinor.

The robbers began climbing, while the screams of the soldiers rang through the forest, retreating farther into the distance all the time. However, now it was the giant's turn to stop and stare up at the children, who in turn were staring down at him with both delight and terror on their little faces.

"They like human children. That's the problem," Fenoglio had murmured to Meggie before she began to read. "After a time they begin catching them, like butterflies or hamsters. But I've tried to write one here who's too lethargic to do that. Although it presumably means he won't be a very clever specimen."

Did the giant look clever? Meggie couldn't say. She had imagined him as quite different. His mighty limbs were not grossly massive, and he moved only a little more ponderously than the Strong Man. For a moment, as he stood there among the trees, it seemed to Meggie that he, not the robbers, was the right size for this forest. His eyes were strange. They were rounder than human eyes and rather like a chameleon's. The same could be said of his skin. The giant was naked, like the fairies and elves, and his skin changed color with every movement he made. When he first appeared it had been pale brown, like the bark of a tree, but now it was patterned with red like the last of the berries hanging in an almost leafless hawthorn bush that came up to his knees. Even his hair changed color – sometimes green, then suddenly pale like the sky. All this made him almost invisible among the trees. As if the air were moving. As if the wind, or the spirit of this forest, had taken visible shape in him.

"Aha! Here he is at last! Fabulous!" Fenoglio appeared behind Meggie so suddenly that she almost stumbled off the branch where she was standing. "Yes, we know our craft, you and I! I wouldn't say a word against your father, but in my view you're the true mistress of this art. You're still child enough to see the pictures behind the words as clearly as only children can. Which is probably why this giant doesn't look at all the way I imagined him."

"But I didn't imagine him like this, either," Meggie said in a whisper, as if any loud word might attract the giant's attention.

"Really? Hm." Fenoglio took a cautious step forward. "Well, never mind that, I can't wait to hear what Signora Loredan thinks of him, I really can't."

Meggie could see what Doria, for one, thought of the giant. He was perched in the crown of the tree and couldn't take his eyes off the apparition. And Farid was looking as captivated as he usually did only when Dustfinger was showing him a new trick, while Jink, sitting on his lap, bared his teeth in alarm.

Meggie felt pleased. She had done it again! She had used Fenoglio's words and her voice to go on telling the story. And, as on those other occasions, she felt exhausted and proud at the same time – and a little afraid of what she had summoned up.

"So now, do you have the words for my father ready?"

"The words for your father? No, but I'm working on them." Fenoglio rubbed his lined forehead as if he had to wake up a few thoughts slumbering there. "I'm afraid a giant wouldn't be much help to your father, but trust me. I'll get that done tonight, too. When the Adderhead reaches the castle, Violante will receive him with my words, and the two of us will bring this story to a good ending once and for all. Oh, he really is magnificent!" Fenoglio leaned forward to get a better look at his creation. "Although I wonder where he gets those chameleon eyes. I never wrote a word about them! Never mind, it makes him look… well, interesting. Perhaps I ought to write a few more giants like him here. It's a shame they hide away in the mountains now."

The robbers did not appear to agree with him. They were still climbing the ropes as hastily as if the Milksop's men were after them. By now only the Black Prince and his bear stood at the foot of the tree.

"What's the Prince still doing down there?" Fenoglio leaned so far forward that Meggie instinctively grabbed his tunic. "For heaven's sake, why doesn't he leave the damn bear alone? These giants don't have particularly good eyesight. He'll be trodden underfoot if the giant stumbles just once!"

Meggie tried to haul the old man back. "The Black Prince would never leave the bear alone, you know he wouldn't!"

"But he must!" She had seldom seen Fenoglio so concerned. Obviously, he really was fonder of the Prince than of most of his characters.

"Come on up!" he called down to him. "Come on, Prince!"

But the Black Prince went on talking to his bear as if the animal were a sulky child, while the giant stood there staring up at the children. Several women shrieked when he reached out his hand. They pulled the children away, but however far the giant stretched, his mighty fingers couldn't reach the nests, just as Fenoglio had said.

"Made to measure!" the old man whispered. "See that, Meggie?" Yes, this time he obviously had thought of everything.

The giant looked disappointed. He reached up once more, and then took a step to one side. His heel missed the Black Prince by no more than a twig's breadth. The bear roared and stood up on his hind legs – and the giant, in surprise, looked down at what was there between his feet.

"Oh no!" faltered Fenoglio. "No, no, no!" he shouted down to his creation. "Not him! Leave the Prince alone. That's not what you're here for! Go after the Milksop. Take some of his men, if you want anyone! Go on, go away!"

The giant raised his head, looking to see who was shouting like that, but then he bent and picked up the Prince and the bear with as little ceremony as Elinor picking caterpillars off her roses.

"No!" stammered Fenoglio. "What's going on now? What went wrong this time? He'll break every bone in the Prince's body!"

The robbers hung from their ropes, frozen rigid. One of them threw his knife down at the giant's hand. The giant pulled it out with his lips like a thorn and dropped the Black Prince as he might have dropped a toy. Meggie flinched as he struck the ground and lay there without moving. She heard Elinor scream, while the giant hit out at the men on the ropes as if they were wasps trying to sting him.

Everyone was shouting in confusion. Battista ran to one of the ropes to go to the Prince's aid. Farid and Doria followed him, and even Elinor ran after him, while Roxane stood there, horrified, with her arms around two crying children. As for Fenoglio, he was shaking at the ropes hanging from the tree in helpless fury.

"No!" he shouted down once more. "No, you just can't do that!"

And suddenly one of the ropes tore away and he fell into the void below. Meggie tried to grab him, but she arrived too late. Fenoglio was falling, with an expression of surprise on his wrinkled face, and the giant caught him in midair like a ripe fruit dropping from the tree.

The children had stopped screaming. The women and the robbers were silent, too, as the giant sat down at the foot of the tree and examined his catch. He put the bear carelessly on the ground, but as he did so his glance fell on the unconscious Prince, and he picked him up again. Roaring, the bear went to his master's aid, but the giant just flicked him away with his hand. Then he rose to his feet, looked up at the children one last time, and strode away with Fenoglio in his right hand and the Black Prince in his left.