Magician Murphy had come up again. "You are courting disaster," he said. "I respect your courage, Dor-but I must urge you not to go out so foolishly into the goblin horde."
"Listen, snotwing-" Cedric started.
Dor cut him off. "If you really cared, Magician, you would abate the curse. Is your real objection that you fear this ploy can succeed?"
The enemy Magician was silent.
"You'll need someone to lead the zombies in," Vadne said.
"Well, I thought maybe Jumper-"
"The big spider? You'd better have him with you, protecting your flank," she said. "I will guide the zombies in."
"That is very generous of you," Dor said, gratified. "You can transform any creature that gets through the zombie lines. The Zombie Master himself is the one who must be protected; get as close to him as you can and-"
"I shall. Let's get this mission going before it is too late."
The King and Magician Murphy both shook their heads with resignation, seeming strangely similar. But Roogna fetched the flute and the forget spell. They organized at the main gate. Dor mounted Cedric, Jumper joined him and bound him securely in place with silk, and Vadne mounted another centaur. The remaining centaurs of the north wall disposed themselves along the east wall, bows ready. Then the small party charged out into the melee of goblins and harpies.
There was a withering fire from the wall, as the centaurs shot fire arrows and the goblins, trolls, gnomes, and ghouls withered. It cleared a temporary path through the thickest throng. Cherry bombs and pineapples were still bombarding the allied army. This didn't seem to faze the goblins or their cohorts, but it made Dor extremely nervous. Suppose a pineapple were to land in his vicinity? He would be smithereened! And, considering Murphy's curse-
"Change course!" he screamed.
Startled, Cedric jounced to the side, through a contingent of elves. There was an explosion ahead of them. Shrapnel whizzed by Dor's nose, and the concussion hurt his ears. Eleven bodies sailed outward Cedric veered to avoid the heavily smoking crater.
"Hey!" a centaur bellowed from the wall. "Stay on course! I almost catapulted a pineapple on you!"
Cedric got back on course with alacrity. "Centaurs have sharp eyes and quick reflexes," he remarked. "Otherwise something could have gone wrong."
Murphy's curse had tried, though, almost causing Dor to interfere with the centaur's careful marksmanship. Dor realized that he would do best to stick to his own department.
He put the flute to his lips, thankful that Jumper was there to help him, so that he had his hands and attention free. He blew experimentally into the mouthpiece. The flute played an eerie, lilting, enticing melody, which floated out through the clamor of battle and brought a sudden hush. Then dwarves and gremlins, vampires and harpies, and numberless goblins swarmed after the centaurs, compelled alike by that magic music.
The winged monsters closed in faster, diving in toward Dor. Cedric twisted his human torso in that supple way centaurs had, facing back while still galloping forward. He swung the hoop through the air in an arc, intercepting the dirty birds as they came-and as each passed through the hoop, she vanished. Dor wondered where they went, but he was too busy playing the flute-if his labored blowing could be called playing-and keeping his body low so as not to get snagged by the hoop himself. He could not keep his attention on all the details!
With two of his legs, Jumper held a spear with which he prodded any goblins or similar ilk that got too close. No ilk could match the galloping pace of the centaur, but since they were forging through the whole goblin allied army, many closed in from the sides. Dor saw Vadne converting those goblins that she touched to pancake disks, and her centaur was fending off the aerial creatures with his fists.
Quickly they reached the zombie contingent. "Follow the woman in!" Dor cried. "I'll lead the monsters away! Block off your ears until I'm beyond your hearing!" Yes, that would be a fine Murphy foul-up, to lure the goblins away only to lure the Zombie Master and Millie into the same forget-spell trap! But a problem anticipated was a problem largely prevented.
Then he was off, playing the magic flute again. No matter how grossly he puffed into it, the music emerged clear and sweet and haunting. And the creatures followed.
"Where to?" Cedric inquired as they galloped. Dor had an inspiration. "To the Gap!" he cried. "North!"
The centaur put on some speed. The air whistled by them. Experimentally Dor held the flute into the wind, and sure enough: it played. That saved him some breath. The goblins fell behind, and the elves and dwarves, but the trolls were keeping up. Cedric accelerated again, and now even the vampires lost headway. But Dor kept playing, and the creatures kept following. As they had to.
At centaur speed, the Gap was not long in drawing nigh. They had to wait for the land and air hordes to catch up.
"Now I want to get them close to the brink, then detonate the forget spell," Dor said, dropping the flute to his side for the moment. "With luck, the harpies will fly on across the Gap and get lost, and the goblins will be unable to follow them, so won't be able to fight any more."
"Commendable compassion," Jumper chittered. "But in order to gather a large number here, to obtain maximum effect from the spell, you must remain to play the flute for some time. How will we escape?"
"Oops! I hadn't thought of that! We're trapped by the Gap!" Dor looked down into the awesome reaches of the chasm, and felt heightsick. When would he stop being a careless child? Or was Murphy's curse catching them after all? Dor would have to sacrifice himself, to make the goblins and harpies forget?
"I can solve it." Jumper chittered. "Ballooning over the-"
"No!" Dor cried. "There is a whole hideous host of things that can and will go wrong with that Last time we tried it-"
"Then I can drop us down over the edge, into the chasm, where the goblins cannot follow," Jumper suggested. "We can use the magic ring to protect us from descending harpies."
Dor didn't like the notion of descending into the Gap either, but the harpies and goblins and ilk were arriving in vast numbers, casting about for the missing flute music, and he had to make a quick decision. "All right. Cedric, you gallop out of here; you're too heavy to lower on spider silk."
"That's for sure!" Cedric said. "But where should I go? I don't think I can make it back to the Castle. There are one or two zillion minor monsters charging from there to here, and I'd have to buck the whole tide."
"Go to Celeste," Dor suggested. "Your job is honorably finished, here, and she'll be glad to see you."
"First to the warlock!" Cedric exclaimed, grinning. He made a kind of salute, then galloped off west.
Jumper reattached the dragline to Dor, then scrambled over the cliff edge. This easy walking on a near-vertical face still amazed Dor. However, it was decidedly handy at the moment
Dor resumed playing the flute, for the goblins were beginning to lose interest That brought them forward with a rush. They closed on him so rapidly that they wedged against each other, blocking themselves off from him. But they were struggling so hard that Dor knew the jam would break at any moment. Yet he kept playing, waiting for Jumper's signal of readiness.