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.
CHAPTER 22
The Haunting
In the kitchen of the castle they were celebrating.
The ogre sat in his big carved chair, stuffing himself with anything the Hag could put on his plate.
“Shouldn’t you start eating gradually?” she asked in a worried voice. “You must have shrunk your stomach with all that refusing to eat, and you might be ill, suddenly filling it up.”
But the ogre said that was nonsense; the Ogres of Oglefort had cast-iron stomachs and he now felt absolutely fine.
“Repelling a whole army did me all the good in the world,” he said — and no one liked to suggest that it wasn’t just he who had repelled the army, but the Hag with her spells and the animals, not to mention the troll and the wizard and the children manning the ramparts. They also wondered what would happen when the aunts arrived to attend his deathbed and found him restored to health.
Meanwhile nothing could stop him from celebrating. The gnu and the aye-aye had been invited in, and the spider sisters hung down over the table by a specially long thread so that they could see what was going on.
“We showed them, didn’t we?” said the ogre, gulping down the Hag’s plum cordial.
Only Mirella found it difficult to rejoice. Bessie had helped her out of the moat by swimming underneath her and making a kind of shelf. She had changed out of her wet clothes and had a hot drink — but seeing her father’s army had frightened her badly, and Umberto’s stupid face, under the ridiculous helmet, wouldn’t go out of her mind.
“What if they come back?” she whispered to Ivo.
“They won’t. We really scared them,” said Ivo, and he looked proudly at the Hag, who had shown herself to be a proper witch.
No one in the castle had seen what the army saw: a swirl of hideous black shapes flapping across the sky, and then dissolving into nothingness.
The ghost train had become a boat train for the first part of the journey. The Norns had sent it on the ferry to Osterhaven with the ghosts still inside, but once they arrived in Ostland they had been forced to glide to the castle under their own steam.
The long cold journey, and the need to be invisible most of the time, had annoyed them, but now they were settling in. They had found a suitable place for their headquarters — a clump of trees not far from the castle and close to a large mound of bones which seemed somehow familiar — and they were planning their special effects.
The Bag Lady had emptied out her shopping bags and was rummaging with pale, plump fingers among her filthy clothes, looking for her corset. Being blinded by a corset often got people very upset.
The Honker was spitting steadily onto the grass. In spite of his age and the missing leg, his aim was still good.
The Aunt Pusher ran at an oak tree, his great hands held out in front of him, and the tree trembled and swayed.
“What’s keeping him?” asked the Smoking Girl, lighting a cigarette from the stub of her old one. “It’s nearly dark.”
The Inspector had glided off on his own to investigate, which was his name for spying.
“You’d better unstick your jaws,” said the Man with the Umbrella to the Chewing Head. “You can’t grin properly with all that gum, and severed heads are no good unless they’re grinning.”
The ghosts had been feeling quite cheerful, getting ready for the night’s work, but now they felt a shivery kind of bleakness, and looking up they saw the Inspector.
His stony gaze traveled over them, taking in the Smoking Girl’s untidy scarf, the Honker’s crutch thrown on the ground.
“We leave in half an hour,” he said.
They all knew what to do; they had rehearsed it again and again. The rescuers must be punished, but the ogre must be killed — and killed absolutely. Only then would the ghosts get the reward they so yearned for: new stations, new junctions, new tunnels — perhaps even a new viaduct.
Their eye sockets glittering with greed, the ghosts took to the air.
It began with Charlie. He woke up in Ivo’s bed with a yelp of fear and stood with his coat on end, shivering.
“What is it, Charlie?” asked Ivo sleepily.
Charlie leaped off the bed and disappeared under it, moaning pitifully.
Then there came a thud from next door.
Ivo went out into the corridor. It had been a warm night, but now there was an icy chill. Ulf always left a single lamp burning and the flame was flickering as though in a high wind. Then the door of the Hag’s room opened, and she stumbled across the threshold and fell to the ground.
“Don’t,” she begged. “Don’t do that, I haven’t hurt you.”
Running to help her, Ivo saw the dark shape of a man with enormous hands standing above her. He was so angry that he almost forgot to be frightened. What sort of a man pushed an old woman to the ground?
And then he realized. Not a man of course. Something different. And suddenly the corridor was filled with specters. An old man glided past waving a crutch, and Ivo felt a blob of something so disgusting in his face that he began to retch. This couldn’t just be spit — this slimy, creeping, slithery nothingness which yet got into every crevice and hole.
These were not ordinary ghosts; they were something obscene and diabolical.
Mirella came out of her room, blinking, still half asleep, and saw Ivo bending over the Hag.
“What is it?” she asked. “What’s happening?”—and then cried out as she felt a steel spike digging into her shoulder.
“Steady on, she’s the princess,” said the Aunt Pusher, floating in midair. “Must be. They didn’t say there was a girl with the rescuers.”
“Can’t be,” said the Man with the Umbrella. “That’s not how princesses look.” And he gave her another jab.
“Stop it, stop it,” screamed Ivo, rushing toward her, but the Umbrella Man had seen Ulf coming out of his room and swooped toward him. Ghosts really hate trolls, their uprightness and strength, and he thrust the steel point of the umbrella into the troll’s arms and chest and legs.
The wizard woke, sat up in bed, found himself staring at a grinning bodiless head — and fainted.
Suddenly there was a kind of exodus — a swirl of phantoms along the passage toward the ogre’s room. Punishing was one thing but now the killing had to begin.
It began quietly, with the ogre waking to find a girl sitting on his bed, draped in gauzy scarves. The ogre was surprised, but not displeased — and he sat up and said politely, “Who are you?”