Beyond the Valley of Thorns Read online

  “The first challenge will be hiding the fact that ogres are disappearing throughout the day and night. They check in with one another, not across sections so much, but within the forest or the Valley of Thorns or one of the other areas. They expect to encounter one another regularly. To overcome this problem we’ll have to systematically take out each area, one at a time. The easiest areas to clear out will be the wharf and the forest. The housetops and the trees, combined with the weaponry Armon has provided, will give us an advantage.

  “The guards that work for Grindall are all Castalians, and they are Castalians first. They have no weapons, but they do have two things we can use to our advantage: mobility and warning signals. I shall address the warning signals in a moment. As to mobility, some of the guards are actually assigned to patrol the forest along with the ogres. Others patrol the wharf, and still more include the City of Dogs in their rounds. To be fair, the rounds through the City of Dogs have been few and far between in recent years, as the dogs have become wilder and the dumping ground more uninhabitable. It’s often forgotten for long stretches of time by both ogre and man. This will prove a good piece of luck for us.”

  Balmoral looked at Piggott and Scroggs uncomfortably, as if the dogs made him nervous or unsure, and then he addressed them directly.

  “I can’t understand you, but if you can understand me, know that your role in this conquest is of critical importance. Without you and your respective groups, we’ll have no chance of winning the day.”

  Both Piggott and Scroggs sat tall and proud, and I was happy to see them as part of something so big, so important. Balmoral ran his hand along the map as he continued going through his plan.

  “You see, here, at the gate to the City of Dogs, I can send a half dozen guards through in the morning. They will tell the ogre at the gate that it has been a while since the dumping grounds have been patrolled, and they plan to spend several hours checking it thoroughly. The ogres will let them go, thinking they are making a reasonable request, and I will send them directly to the clock tower, where they can arm themselves and take up positions in the trees here, near the edge of the forest.” He pointed then to the area on the map where the forest met the City of Dogs.

  “The rest of the armor should be taken to the active dumping ground and hidden. My people will smuggle the weaponry in the garbage carts as they come back in, leaving just enough debris in the carts to cover whatever they can hold. Dumping runs begin in the early morning every day and there is at least one delivery of debris every hour. By midmorning all the armor will find its way into the wharf. Once inside, a network of peasants will distribute the various items, and by the time the noonday sun is straight overhead, two hundred Castalians will be armed and ready for battle.”

  Balmoral’s plan was beginning to sound like it would at least give us a fighting chance. I nibbled at some dried fruit as he went on, my head bobbing now and then from fatigue. I was very tired, but Balmoral remained so enthusiastic it was hard to imagine falling asleep.

  “The forest must be taken first. It’s the most critical early victory if we are to succeed. Now, as I promised, we have arrived back at the issue of the warning signals used by the guards. These are horns that can be blown at varying levels of sound. Blow hard, and the whole kingdom of ogres comes running. Blow soft, and only those ogres within a reasonable distance hear the warning. This tool can be used to our great advantage. The ten patrolling the forest are spread out, and we shall blow the horn very softly from the trees at the edge of the City of Dogs. One by one, or maybe two at a time, ogres will come to the rescue of the guard who calls the signal, and when they do, we shall attack them from above in the trees. The ogres carry the horns as well, and it is absolutely critical that we draw them in slowly, one at a time, so we don’t encourage suspicion. These ogres have a great deal of arrogance, and they will blow a horn only if the situation is desperate.

  “What we ought to be able to do is take out the ten in the forest first, then move to the edge of the forest here, where it meets the Valley of Thorns, and go about the same exercise once again, drawing the ogres along the Valley of Thorns into the forest where we will attack them. In this case, we are as far from the wharf and the Dark Tower as we can be while still finding ogres. These guard the outer perimeter, so we can blow the horn a bit louder, draw several at once, and take them down in groups of three or four.”

  “Yes, but how can we be sure, in either the City of Dogs or the forest, that the ogres will arrive directly under us so we can strike?” asked Yipes.

  “A guard calls them in, and when the ogre or ogres arrive, the guard will guide them to where we are hidden in the trees above. It will simply be a matter of a well-placed diversion,” Balmoral answered.

  “The wild dogs,” said Armon. “We can draw the ogres around a single tree with a pack of three or four wild dogs. All of their attention will be focused on killing the dogs, which will make our attack from directly above all the more surprising.”

  “Now you’ve gone and stolen my thunder. Bad giant,” said Balmoral. This brought a smile to my face, the first I’d had in quite some time.

  “It is unlikely that all of the ogres from the Valley of Thorns will be drawn into the forest,” continued Balmoral. “I think we will count ourselves lucky if we get half of them, which would leave seven or eight more roaming around. The Valley of Thorns backs up against the forest trees, and often in the late morning the ogres take refuge from the heat by standing near the trees for shade. Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing which trees the ogres will stand near, so we must use the dogs once again.

  “The wild dogs never roam outside the City of Dogs, and seeing a small pack of them attempting to pass into the Valley of Thorns will enrage the ogres. What remains of them will come to the edge of the trees — where we will be waiting. It will certainly be our biggest challenge; if we miss one of them we might just as well have missed them all. That one will blow his horn and the ogre barracks will blow open, unleashing an army we will never be able to overcome.”

  Everyone looked around the room at one another, sensing the enormity of the odds stacked against us. All I could think about was the ogre in that room with John and the others, how it had smelled and looked, the terrible sounds it had made. Only Balmoral and I had been so close to an ogre and seen its terrible rage. I was glad the others hadn’t seen such things.

  “This all must take place within a few hours tomorrow morning,” Balmoral warned, “between dawn and nine o’clock. If the guards from the wharf are gone much longer, the ogre at the gate will become suspicious. There are other guards in the forest and in the Valley of Thorns who will help you. Once the forest is cleared, you’ll have another six fighters. When you reach the last remaining ogres in the Valley of Thorns, you should have a dozen fighters in the trees. Along with Yipes and Alexa, that brings your total to fourteen.”

  “What about Armon?” I asked. “He’s our greatest weapon. Where will he be during all of this?”

  Balmoral pointed again to the map, this time to the cliffs beyond the City of Dogs, and looked at Armon.

  “I’m afraid you must find a way to destroy the three ogres at the cliffs on your own. This will require straight hand-to-hand combat, three against one. And, worse, you must somehow make sure they cannot blow their horns.” Balmoral glanced back at the map, then said, “I have had occasion to see this place. The cliffs rise high above the water, but how high no one knows. Even in the heat of summer the mist rises to hide the water below. The edges of the cliffs are solid underfoot and speckled with sharp rocks.”

  “I’ll take Scroggs with me,” Armon said. “Piggott and Odessa, you go with the others. Scroggs, bring six of your most trusted companions. Together we’ll divert them one by one, draw them to the edge of the cliffs, and hurl them into the mist.”

  Armon was so certain, so sure, his voice like a slab of rock. It gave us a new measure of confidence we had previously lacked.

  Balmoral
nodded his approval of Armon’s plan. “While the lot of you are at the business of clearing the forest, the Valley of Thorns, and the cliffs, I will guide my fighters on the wharf. The only way this works is if we strike at the wharf all at once, avoiding the gates to the Dark Tower in the process. The wharf is split into two sections, the forest end and the end nearest the Dark Tower. Five ogres patrol each — four on the castle side, since one was killed tonight. They are fairly regular about how they move around. An hour before dark, we will strike at the nine that remain and move the bodies off the street before darkness falls. I don’t think the one we’ve killed will be missed in the morning. Often they wander into the barracks as a pack, and stragglers arrive later, occupied with some duty that keeps them out a bit longer. Before long, they fall asleep and think nothing of one another. However, by the time the next shift goes out, he will be missed, so we must strike immediately.”

  “Let’s say for the moment that the plan works,” I said. “The forty-four that remain in the barracks will wipe out all our effort as soon as they wake up. How will we deal with all of them at once?”

  “As long as we stay away from the castle gate, the plan will work,” answered Balmoral. “The sleeping ogres follow the same pattern every day. They wake, they eat, they march out to the gate, and then they disperse to the places where they must work and replace the ogres from the shift before them. In doing so, they follow the same road away from the gate and onto the wharf. Once through the gate there are twenty ogre steps, then a sharp turn and a long, narrow walkway with buildings on either side. It is here that we will attack them all at once, all but the ones who exchange places at the gate and around the Dark Tower itself. I have other plans for those fourteen. But the thirty-seven who walk the shadowy narrow road will have no idea what is about to happen to them. I’ll have two fighters, each with swords, assigned to each ogre. They will be positioned along the tops of the buildings a few feet apart. A first strike all at once on every beast and a second just in case we miss our mark.”

  We all looked at Balmoral, his bulging eyes alive with victory, and we believed. We actually began to believe we could defeat the ogres, Grindall, even Abaddon himself. If we could do all that Balmoral suggested, there would only be the six ogres at the gate, the eight from around the castle, both the ones that had been on guard and the new four who had come to replace them. Those fourteen, plus the ten in the castle. With Balmoral’s plan, we’d gone from ninety-eight ogres to twenty-four in only one day. Still, even twenty-four ogres was a formidable army given their size and strength.

  “I know what you’re thinking — we still have fourteen outside and ten inside to deal with,” said Balmoral, as if he were reading my mind. “The ogres at the gate will have heard the commotion and they will come running. These will be easy targets for my fighters. But what of the ogres that remain around the Dark Tower? It is at this point we must take the tower by force. Two hundred armed Castalians, a hundred or more wild dogs, a giant of our own, all against what remains — eight giants outside and ten within the Dark Tower.”

  Balmoral paused and looked around the room, which was faint with light from our dying candle.

  “I believe at this point we will have created an even fight, a fair fight, a fight that could go either way.”

  That was a far cry from no fight at all, and we unanimously agreed to Balmoral’s plan. At last our preparations were complete. Balmoral went home to gather his forces, and I was able to lie down on the cold floor of the clock tower. As I lay there, just shy of sleep, thoughts of what we might find in the Dark Tower began to fill my mind. I began to wonder what Catherine would say when she saw me, if she was even alive. And I wondered for the first time what Grindall would look like, how he would act, what he might say.

  Murphy stayed with me and we whispered about John for many sad moments, and then we both fell fast asleep, exhausted from all that had transpired since our arrival in the City of Dogs.

  CHAPTER 21

  THE DARK TOWER

  The morning air was cool and pleasant, especially so given our location high in a tree at the edge of the forest, the smells from the City of Dogs somewhere off in the distance. Yipes and I sat next to each other, hidden in the leaves of a monstrous oak tree, fifteen feet above the ground. Murphy was up much higher, thirty feet or more, scouting the area for ogres. I seized my new sword firmly in my right hand and held onto a branch with the other.

  I looked over at Yipes, a few branches to my right, and saw that he was preparing his bow. Unlike the Castalians, he was very adept with an arrow. After some deliberation it had been decided that his best weapon would be the bow. I glanced at another large tree across the way and saw that two Castalian guards had taken up their positions and were waiting patiently. Beneath them were three wild dogs milling around the base of the great tree.

  Squire circled above, scouting the entire kingdom. I wished again that I could be her, seeing all that she could see, knowing the very position of each and every ogre.

  “I knew John a long time,” Yipes said, startling me. The two wild dogs below our own tree and Odessa broke their nervous pacing to look up at the sound of his voice.

  “He had a hard life,” Yipes continued, a little softer, “but he never complained, never once that I can remember. Though he had never met you, he spoke of you often.”

  “What did he say?” I asked.

  “He worried about you. He knew it was his greatest duty to protect you. This was the most important job that Warvold had ever entrusted him with. Until this journey I never understood what John was talking about, but now it seems clear that he knew all along it might cost him his life to make sure you were safe. He died protecting you, protecting the last Jocasta, which is precisely what he expected might happen.” Yipes smiled at me then, his wonderful little mustache covering up his lip, and I was suddenly afraid of losing him, too.

  “Did he ever tell you why he was imprisoned?” asked Yipes.

  “No. I asked him once on our journey but he wouldn’t tell me.”

  Yipes repositioned himself on a limb and fidgeted with his bow.

  “There was a group of women and children living in the forest,” he quietly explained. “The story goes that John felt especially sorry for the children, so much so that he raided the kitchens and stores of Ainsworth in search of food and clothing for them. This went on for some time, and he was very successful in his pursuits on their behalf — until he was captured and put in with the rest of the convicts.”

  “Is that really true?” I questioned, maybe a little louder than I should have. Yipes only nodded and before I could question him further one of the dogs beneath us barked in our direction.

  “Quiet!” Odessa growled from below. Then we could hear the faint sound of the horn being blown by the guard standing off to our left. My heart was racing, my palms sweating as we waited for what the warning sound would bring.

  We were all very still, and then Murphy came scampering down and held firm to the tree trunk at my side.

  “Hold tight, here they come,” he said. This meant more than one, and I signaled two with my hand, to which Murphy nodded.

  It was deathly silent, no wind in the trees, no sound of birds or other animals. The ogres were coming — I could sense them near. I began to hear the snapping of twigs and brush, and then I saw one of the hideous creatures come down the path, clearly irritated and looking around wildly for the guard who had called him. Another came bounding up behind him, scratching his head and grunting furiously. As they approached the guard, I looked over at Yipes. He had already drawn his bow and now held it firm, waiting for the moment when one or both of them stood beneath us.

  As the guard and the ogres approached between the two trees, the dogs began barking uncontrollably, just as we had planned. The two ogres split, one taking the opposite tree, the other advancing on ours. He was monstrous, his head only a few feet below us as he approached. The dogs stayed right at the base of the tree, then move
d back along its sides, drawing the ogre closer. The ogre drew his huge sword and appeared entertained by what he was seeing, excited about the prospect of putting his blade through these mangy animals.

  I looked across the way again and saw that the ogre there had done the same and was directly under the tree jabbing and poking at the dogs with his sword. Down came a guard out of the thick of the tree, five feet over the head of the ogre. He plunged through the air, landing on the ogre’s shoulders and thrusting the knife through the beast’s head. At almost the same moment, Yipes fired his arrow at the ogre under our tree, but the ogre had glanced back, hearing the other ogre’s scream over the incessant barking of the dogs. The arrow glanced off the ogre’s head and down into his shoulder. He screamed an awful roar of pain and rage. We only had another moment before he would grab the horn and blow it, so Odessa’s two companions went for the ogre’s legs and chomped down hard and fast. The ogre kicked and flailed but the dogs were locked on and only death would get them off. The ogre reached down and grabbed both dogs at the neck. I yelled, causing the creature to look up as Yipes fired again, this time hitting the ogre directly in the forehead. To my astonishment, the arrow disappeared almost entirely into the ogre. He teetered a little to the left as if in slow motion, then fell backwards, crashing to the ground under the tree.

  I came down from the tree quickly but kept my distance from the giant body, remembering what had happened to John. I was still surprised to see the ogre slowly sit up, then lean against the tree. He took his horn in his hand and tried to get it to his mouth. An arrow came from above and pierced the ogre’s palm. I jumped in, grabbed the horn, and quickly moved away. The ogre wobbled once more and fell back to the ground, the dogs still holding hard at his legs.

  I looked across the trail and saw that the guards had been victorious as well, and they were already calling us over to help drag the dead ogre into the thicket. It hadn’t gone perfectly, but we had done it. We had defeated two ogres in the span of a few minutes.