The elf prince said silkily, ‘Are you crying, you little baby?’
‘No,’ said Geoffrey, ‘but you might be.’ For now his eyes had caught the flash of red fox fur swinging on its leather thong across the lord’s chest, and he felt a rage beginning to build. ‘We are not here for your … sport,’ he stated, throwing the glamour from his mind with a huge effort of will.
He clicked his teeth and Mephistopheles was on the elf.
It was a ballet with speed. The Mince of Darkness pirouetted to dangerous effect. He used his teeth first, then kicked hard with his legs, and ended by using his horns. Lord Lankin was spinning, kicked and tossed into the air from all directions, and the other elves drew back to keep out of the range of the maelstrom.
And Geoffrey said to the battered prince, ‘You are just a trickster. And I have found your trick.’ He shouted, ‘He’s down, gentlemen. Time to put him out.’
The branches parted and there was a twang as Mr Sideways yelled, ‘Keep your hats on, boys, cover your eyes,’ and the contraption sang, swinging up into the air, filling it with a twinkle of swarf and terrible death that came from nowhere to shower over the elves.
Smack Tremble cheered. ‘They don’t like it up and over ’em! Oh no, they don’t!’
‘Swarf,’ said Nanny Ogg approvingly, from one side of the woods, where she and some of the other witches were waiting — prepared for what Captain Makepeace had called a pincer movement, with Mrs Earwig and more witches on the other side. ‘Pieces of iron,’ Nanny told the witches with her. ‘Very small. Very clever. Throw it down on elves, and they’re in a world of hurt. Tiny bits of iron ev’rywhere. And, I stress, ev’rywhere.’
The Lancre Stick and Bucket machine sang again. And again. And each twang was followed by the war cries of ancient battles, rivalling those of the Feegles. On this day of days, the old boys were younger than they thought.
And the elves were, indeed, down and out, screaming from the pain of the terrible metal that stripped their glamour away from them, leaving them writhing. Many dragged themselves away back up the hill towards the Dancers, while any who had escaped the rain of swarf now found themselves sandwiched by the witches.
From one side, Magrat piled in to make life unlivable for those remaining, her armour shielding her from their glamour while her crossbow shot deadly arrows at them, and fire flew from her fingertips, forcing those who had ridden into battle on yarrow stalks to fall from the sky as flame destroyed the stems.
From the other side, the elves were assaulted by Mrs Earwig. And they really didn’t know how to deal with her. She was shouting at them like some horrible headmistress — and they couldn’t get through to her; she was impervious to their glamour. She also had an umbrella which she had opened, and it was amazing how much of a problem it was for the elves, its metal spokes poking at them, hitting tender spots.
‘This lady is not for turning,’ Mrs Earwig boomed. She rose among them like a whirlwind, and as they were floored, Long Tall Short Fat Sally became very fat and heavy and sat on them, bouncing up and down. While Mrs Proust hurled her novelties — novelties that now worked as advertised — over the elves, trapping them in curls of spells that seized their glamour and took it for their own.
The younger witches were in and out of the mêlée, diving from the skies on their broomsticks, throwing spells at every elf they saw: fire burning them where they stood, wind blowing dust into the horses’ faces, madness into their minds, such that the horses reared, throwing their elvish riders to the ground. Then there was the crunching as Nanny Ogg came to the fore with her big, big boots. The ones with nails everywhere.
Petulia was face to face with an elf — and a different kind of battle was going on, as the elf threw its glamour towards her, sparkling shards of glamour shining in the air between them, and Petulia fought back with her soft voice and strong will, her words hypnotic, irresistible, boring the elf as she bored her beloved pigs, lulling it until it dropped dramatically at her feet.
‘Hah! Easier than pigs!’ was Petulia’s response. ‘Less intelligent.’ And she turned to the next opponent …
And in a lull, there was Hodgesaargh, with his favourite gyrfalcon on his wrist — the Lady Elizabeth, a descendant of the famous Lady Jane. He slipped the hood off, and the bird joyfully hurled herself into the fray, hitting the nearest elf between the eyes with her sharp talons. Then her beak got to work …
When it came to it, the battle for Lancre was over quite swiftly. Queen Magrat had all the surviving elves brought before her. ‘Even the goblins are smarter than you — they work with us these days,’ she told them, standing tall and strong in her spiked armour, the wings on her helmet silvered in the moonlight. ‘We have had enough of this. You could have had it all. Now, go away to your forlorn spaces. Come back as good neighbours — or not at all.’
The elves cringed. But Lord Lankin, his warrior garb now only rags and his body bloodied by the terrible swarf, hissed in defiance at them as he crawled away. ‘You may have won this battle,’ he snarled, ‘but not the war. For our Lord Peaseblossom will yet make this world bow down to us.’
And then they were gone.
Nanny Ogg said seriously, ‘It seems to me, girls, that it goes like this. We fight the elves at every turn, and they is always comin’ back. Perhaps it might be a good thing? To keep us on our toes, to stop us from gettin’ lazy. To put us on the anvil, so that we remembers how to fight. And at the end of time, living is about fightin’ against everything.’
She laughed, however, when she heard the old gentlemen coming up the hill, singing, ‘There was a young lady from Quirm, whose thighs were exceedingly firm …’ And the rest of the song helpfully disappeared as the captain remembered just in time how that verse ended.
Captain Makepeace leaned over to Nanny Ogg and said, ‘They came through the Dancers, right? Let’s put a ring of swarf all around the stones. That would be the end of their fun. They would be locked out for ever.’
‘Well, I reckons it would be a good start,’ said Nanny.
But Lord Lankin had one thing right. The elves might have lost the battle in Lancre, but the war was not yet over. For, many miles rimwards, Lord Peaseblossom had indeed ridden through the stone circle on the Chalk, with a band of elite warriors at his back.
The Feegle mound was one big scuttle as the Nac Mac Feegles turned out of every nook and cranny to fight. Everywhere was heat and noise. You could call it something like an overgrown termite mound — not in front of the Feegles, unless you liked picking your teeth up from the ground — but there was the same bustling. It could even be said that the vanguard was steaming along, but these being Feegles, there were squabbles in the ranks which, as everyone knew, was just the way of the clan.
When Tiffany arrived at the mound with Nightshade, the throng spread out in the direction of the stones.
The gateway had fallen to the elves.
Who were now heading towards them, a glorious band of lords and ladies, resplendent in the moonlight. The air was thick with their glamour.
Miss Tick was waiting. A Miss Tick with a board propped up on a few sticks she had handily knotted together to create a trestle. And on the board was written PLN. With a teacher’s determination not to let anything interrupt her in the midst of any kind of lesson, her insistent voice was demanding the younger Feegles’ attention as she tied a strange net, a tangle of intricate, carefully woven knots and loops, to her broomstick.