The Ogre of Oglefort

CHAPTER 21 The Battle

Oh when will the aunts come?” said the ogre in a weak and trembling voice. “I feel terrible. I’m sure I can’t last much longer.”

“You said it would take them at least a week to make the journey,” said Ulf. But he was getting worried. If the ogre died before it was decided which aunt was going to inherit the castle it would make a nasty muddle.

He felt the ogre’s pulse, which was indeed extremely feeble.

“Try a spoonful of this — just a small one,” said the troll, reaching for a plate of gruel which the Hag had made, but the ogre only turned his head away and sighed.

It was at this moment that the gnu, out in the garden, lifted his great head. His ears twitched; he rose to his feet.

“What is it?” asked Ivo.

The gnu was looking anxious. “I hear something,” he said. “Keep very still.”

The children did as they were told. At first they could hear nothing — antelopes have much more sensitive hearing than humans. But as they waited and listened they too heard it.

Hoofbeats. A large number of them. Horses were approaching the castle.

The gnu pawed the ground, ready to take off.

But at that moment the aye-aye came bounding through the branches and dropped to the ground beside them. Her eyes were wide with terror.

“There are men with uniforms riding toward us. I could see them coming over the hill. Many men — a whole army.” She began to whimper. “Men like that are bad — very bad. They have flags with many colors — green and yellow and blue, and foolish hats. When men have such silly clothes they are dangerous.”

“Oh heavens!” Mirella had put her hands over her mouth. “Those are my parents’ colors — they have them on the royal standard. They’ll have sent an army to fetch me away but I won’t go — I won’t go.”

“The drawbridge,” said Ivo. “We must pull up the drawbridge.”

The children ran as fast as their legs would carry them into the castle.

The Hag and the wizard were in the kitchen. They had heard nothing, but when they saw the children’s faces they wasted no time.

“Only Ulf has the strength to shift the bridge,” said the Hag. “He’s upstairs with the ogre.”

They ran upstairs and burst into the ogre’s bedroom. The ogre was dozing and Ulf was just covering him with a blanket.

“Ulf, come quickly — we’re being attacked. We must pull up the drawbridge.”

Ulf wasted no time. He pulled the blanket farther up on the bed, hoping that the ogre had not heard, and ran downstairs.

But the ogre had heard. The children were about to follow the troll downstairs when a great roar came from the bed. Then the blanket was thrown off, and after a few convulsions the ogre was on his feet.

“Oh be careful!” said Mirella — for the ogre had not been out of bed for days.

The ogre swayed and clutched the bedpost. He straightened himself. He flexed his biceps — and the bulge of muscle rolled down his arm and grew bigger and bulgier by the minute. He lifted one leg, and put it down. Then he lifted the other — and kicked a chair, which flew across the room.

“Attacking us, are they,” he roared. “Attacking Oglefort! Get me my club and my entrenching tool. And my trousers,” he added as an afterthought.

“Boiling oil,” said the Hag, looking around hopefully. “They used to pour boiling oil on invaders — but we don’t have any. Only salad oil and not much of that. And you two must go down into the dungeons and hide,” she ordered the children. “Mirella must keep out of sight.”

“Well I won’t. I’m going to fight with everything I can find,” said Mirella. “We can throw things off the battlements.”

It was ridiculous how little they had to defend themselves with — but it was hundreds of years since the castle had been attacked. Ivo had found some fire irons; Mirella grabbed a footstool. The wizard had seized a marble bust of Germania’s grandmother.

Ulf with all his might pulled up the chain which held the drawbridge in place. To get into Oglefort now, the invaders would have to swim the moat.

The army had been advancing steadily, and now it took up its position in front of the castle. It wasn’t quite the troop which had set out from Waterfield. It was, in fact, considerably smaller. Three members of the Royal Fusiliers had turned back when they saw the narrow bridge over the gorge which they had to cross. Two soldiers from the Household Guards had fled when a giant had come roaring out of a forest that they had to pass through, and the Soldiers of the Bedchamber were down to four very bedraggled-looking riders.

But the two princes who were married to Mirella’s sisters were still mounted — and leading the charge. Prince Phillipe on a black charger rode on the left flank. He had left his stamp collection at home and was waving his sword and shouting abuse. Prince Tomas, still sucking a peppermint, led the right flank. But Prince Umberto, who was meant to be at the head of the whole troop, had somehow managed to get to the back. He rode a gray stallion that was tossing his head and fidgeting because Umberto had no idea how to control him, and Umberto looked sick with fear.

“We come to kill the Ogre of Ogelfort,” shouted Prince Phillipe.

“And to free the Princess Mirella,” shouted Prince Tomas. “Open the gates!”

Prince Umberto didn’t shout anything because he was trembling too much, but Mirella, up on the roof, had caught sight of him.

“I’m going to be sick,” she said as the horror of his courtship came back to her, and she vanished behind a chimney stack on the other side of the ramparts.

The soldiers looked up at the castle. It was frighteningly large but there did not seem to be any cannons pointing in their direction. Prince Tomas gave a command and the archers laid their arrows to their bows. But before they could shoot, there came a mighty roar from the battlements. Then an enormous figure, hid-eous and hairy, his huge arms raised threateningly, appeared and glared down at them.

The riders shifted in their saddles. Prince Phillipe’s horse took a pace backward.

Silhouetted against the sky, the Ogre of Oglefort was a terrifying sight.

“How dare you try to invade my castle, you vile scum,” shouted the ogre. “I spit on you! I’m going to tear you limb from limb. I’m going to devour you toe by toe and ear by ear and nose by nose.”

He picked up a floor mop and hurled it into the mass of troops, and it dislodged a fusilier, who fell to the ground.

“I’m going to grind your guts like corn. I’m going to dig your tonsils into the ground.”

But if the soldiers were frightened, the children and the rescuers on the battlements were utterly amazed. An hour ago the ogre had been lying limply in his bed waiting for death — and now he was roaring and threatening. Surely he would have a heart attack and drop dead?

Prince Umberto, who was already right at the back, edged his horse farther away. It was as though the ogre’s power could somehow reach them even from the roof.

But Prince Phillipe and Prince Tomas were made of sterner stuff. They repeated the signal to the archers and a volley of arrows sped toward the towering figure on the roof.

The arrows missed — and the ogre picked one up and scratched his armpits with it. Then he looked around for a weapon and Ivo handed him a coal bucket, which he hurled with all his might into the army — and a member of the Household Guards cried out and fell to the ground. The troll had made a sling from a sheet. He put in a metal cooking pot and sent it flying toward the Soldiers of the Bedchamber. It glanced off a sergeant’s arm, and he cried out but managed to stay on his horse.

A second hail of arrows flew up to the roof — and missed again.

“Come on you, lily-livered, cow-handed imbeciles. How dare you attack Oglefort Castle, which has stood for five hundred years. Just you wait till I get down there and crunch you up between my molars.”

But one of the fusiliers had broken ranks and was setting his horse at the moat. He could not jump it, but he meant to swim it — and he shouted to his sergeant to bring reinforcements. If he could get into the castle by the back he had a good chance of rescuing the princess.

The horse, however, had different ideas. It stopped dead and the soldier shot over his head into the deep and slimy water.

Mirella, emerging from the shelter of the chimney stacks, looked down and remembered what Bessie had said about the weeds in the moat. Well if the soldier drowned that was one less for the attack. But as the fusilier’s anguished face appeared above the surface and vanished again she saw, to her horror, that it was somebody she knew. One of the servants who had been kind to her in the palace: the son of the carpenter who had helped her to make her ant nest.

Without thinking, Mirella rushed down the curving stone staircase and out by the sally port. There was an old life belt fixed by a rope on a stand, and she threw it with all her might into the water.

“Go back,” she shouted. “The ogre will kill you if you come any farther.”

The soldier caught it and held on but as he did so he saw Mirella. Here was his chance for fame and glory — he and he alone would rescue the princess. Instead of swimming back to the army, he thrust out toward the castle side of the moat and grabbed Mirella’s legs.

Taken by surprise, Mirella let go of the rope and stumbled — and he pulled her into the water.

“Hold on, Your Highness,” he spluttered. “We’ll soon have you safe.”

Ivo, who had gone around to the back to fetch some loose bricks for ammunition, saw what had happened.

“They’ve got her — they’ve got Mirella,” he shouted. “I’m going down to help her.”

“No you’re not,” said Ulf, grabbing him. “They’ll only get you, too.”

But someone else was in the moat, swimming strongly toward the soldier and his burden. And when the fusilier saw who it was he screamed in terror.

A great mouth had opened in front of him, a crimson cavern with fearsome yellowing teeth. A mouth belonging to the most dangerous mammal in Africa, who could snap people in half with one movement of the jaw.

“Watch out!” Mirella shouted to the soldier, who held her in his grip. “It’s the Oglefort Hippo — she’s a killer!”

Mirella was right: it was indeed a hippopotamus. This gentle animal who wanted nothing except to live in peace had come lumbering up before the battle and taken it on herself to patrol the moat.

There was no way the soldier could have known that Bessie would have died rather than taste his horrid flesh. He saw only the gaping mouth, the terrible teeth, and he loosened his hold on Mirella and — still in the life belt — he struck out for the bank.

Mirella managed to swim back to the castle side of the moat, but the bank was steep and slimy. As she struggled to get out, Prince Phillipe rode over.

“Don’t worry, my dear,” he called to her in a patronizing voice. “We’ll soon have you out of here and safe back home.”

“I don’t want to be safe,” she spluttered. “And I’m not going home.”

“She’s been brainwashed,” said the prince to his aide — and since no one could swim the waters of the moat while the wild hippopotamus patrolled it, he gave orders that a big tree nearby should be cut down to make a bridge.

“Like that, we’ll be able to get her out of the water and storm the castle,” he said.

But Bessie was not the only animal who had come to help.

“We need more ammunition,” shouted the ogre — and vanished, to return with a grandfather clock, an iron bedstead, and an armchair, which he sent crashing down from the battlements.

“Come any closer and I’ll blister the skin off your backsides!” he roared.

“I’ve run out of boulders,” said the troll — and then he heard above him Nandi’s quiet voice and saw that the aye-aye, in spite of her terror of men, was on the roof above him prying off the razor-sharp slates, which she handed to him so that he could send them flying like knives through the ranks.

But the army stood its ground, and the arrows came steadily.

Ivo was standing between the Hag and the wizard. He had thrown a footstool, a bedpan, and a set of fire irons. His aim had been good, but what use was that? Mirella’s white face and her look of terror when she heard that her father’s army was coming wouldn’t leave him.

“Isn’t there any magic you can do?” he begged the Hag. “Anything at all?”

The Hag turned, still holding the soup tureen she had been about to throw.

She saw Ivo’s pleading face and remembered the time she had told him about Gladys’s treachery.

“I could be your familiar,” he had said. And later: “Familiars serve for life.”

And what sort of an employer had she been, what sort of a witch?

The Hag, in the midst of the battle, examined her soul. Just because no one seemed to want magic anymore, just because she was content to sit in the Dribble soaking her feet, she had let it go.

Ivo said no more. He only looked.

But could she in fact do any serious magic? Wasn’t her power all gone? Yet Ivo believed in her; she could feel his trust streaming toward her. On her other side, Dr. Brainsweller was muttering something. It sounded like a spell. Was he trying to prompt her? Yes, he was.…

The Hag threw the soup tureen, closed her eyes, called on the Great Witch of the Nether Regions — and began to mutter.

And down below the soldiers started to bat away something with their arms, to make noises of disgust. One tore off his helmet to try and squash a thing which had appeared on his horse’s neck. There were cries of “Ugh,” and “Disgusting,” and “Horrible, slimy things.”

There is nothing terrible in itself about frogs. One or two at a time can be pleasant to have about — but a whole host of them is different: frogs on the saddles, frogs in the arrow pouches, frogs on one’s face — that is different. They got into the horses’ ears and were squashed under the horses’ hoofs and slid down the necks of the riders — and as the soldiers looked upward, they landed in their mouths.

“It’s a very common spell,” said the Hag modestly, “a Plague of Frogs — but it can be useful. This one came off well, I must admit.”

Mirella was still trying to climb out of the moat, and two men, batting away the frogs, had begun to chop down the tree which was to make a bridge across the water. The marksmen, making noises of disgust as their hands encountered the slimy amphibians, went on firing.

Up on the ramparts, the wizard spoke a single word — and the Hag nodded.

“Yes,” she said. “I can do those.”

Nothing happened at first — then the men who were chopping down the tree put down their axes.

“There’s something on your nose,” said one.

“And there’s something on your nose,” said the other.

They began to finger their faces, to make noises of disgust. The warts were enormous, with tufts of hair on them, and wobbly dark skin.

Shrieking with fear, they ran back to the rest of the army. Everybody was touching their noses now, looking at their reflections in the polished harness, pointing at each other.

All the soldiers were upset, but Prince Umberto, still at the back of the troop astride his charger, was almost out of his mind.

“What will my tailor say, and my hairdresser?” he squealed.

“There’s witchcraft about,” said Prince Tomas.

Prince Phillipe agreed, but they had sworn to slay the ogre and bring back the princess, and once again both princes gave the signal to fire.

“Ow!” said Ulf — and put his hand to his shoulder.

It came away streaked with blood, but when the others rushed forward to help him he pushed them away.

“It’s only a scratch,” he said. “Trolls don’t feel pain.” And he called up to Nandi for more tiles.

But the Hag was very upset. She and the troll had been friends for a long time. She took a deep breath and turned to Ivo. “The one I’m going to do now is a nasty one — very physiological. Are you all right with that?” and Ivo said, “Oh yes! Please.”

The Hag muttered again — and down below the soldiers, ignoring the frogs and the warts, began to scratch themselves. They scratched their armpits and their heads and behind their knees. They tore off their doublets to get to their skin. They howled and twitched and cried out as their bodies turned into a fiery hell.

There are ordinary itches — itches you get from mosquito bites and sunburn. There are serious itches you get from eczema and chilblains and scabies. But the Great Itch, which the Hag had unloosed, was like none of these! After a few hours of the Great Itch, men are ready to leap into the sea and drown.

The ogre threw a kitchen table. Soon there would be no furniture left in the castle.

But now came the gnu. He trotted up slowly, because going to war was not to his taste, but he did not mean to fail his friends.

He came up behind the army — and as he drew closer he increased speed and put his head down… and choosing the largest horse with the strongest buttocks, he charged!

The horse was Prince Umberto’s. It was a brave and fiery horse, but being charged in the backside by a gnu was too much. The stallion reared, whinnied, swung around — and bolted from the battlefield.

The gnu pawed the ground and looked for another backside. He took care not to charge too hard, for his quarrel was not with the horses but with the men who rode them — but the soldiers now had had enough.

“We’ll retreat to the top of the hill and then re-form for another attack,” ordered Prince Tomas, scratching like a flea-ridden monkey.

And gathering up their wounded as best they could, they rode away.

But they did not re-form. When they reached the crest of the hill the men, still itching madly, gazed upward and pointed to the sky. Flying above them toward the castle was a swirl of dark shapes so terrifying that they could not even cry out.

In a moment they had urged their horses into a gallop and were out of sight.

And the ghosts smiled and glided on, making their way to the castle.