Panting, Rook reached Deadbolt, who was now surrounded by a huge crowd of mud-spattered and bewildered Undertowners. The mud-dunes seethed and boiled with the low, flapping shapes of the half-hidden muglumps in pursuit. The huge library sledges slewed and skidded away to the right, the yelping screams of the prowlgrin teams drowning out the cries of their drivers.
He pointed.Īhead, Deadbolt stood on a mud-dune, waving a flaming purple brazier over his head as if possessed. With a grunt, Rook tore at the knotted rope round his middle and slid to a halt as it fell free. ‘Cut yourselves loose!’ shouted Felix to Rook and the other librarians, ‘and follow the braziers of the sky pirates.’ Rook was running now, with Xanth and the banderbears dragged behind him, as the library sledge careered across the mud. ‘The library sledges! Felix!’ he screamed. Fenbrus Lodd, Cowlquape beside him, shouted desperately to his son. The low shapes were gathering and, from their path, it was obvious that the closely harnessed packs of prowlgrins were their intended prey.įelix and his ghosts appeared out of the gloom on all sides. Ahead, the four other sledges were in equal trouble. The rope suddenly tugged Rook violently to the right as the librarian on the library sledge battled to control the panicking prowlgrins. The cry went up from the back of the column, where the Ghosts of Screetown had obviously spotted the danger. To the left of the column, a cluster of low mud-dunes seemed to be approaching, rising and falling in a slippery rhythm as they did so. Suddenly, rising above it all, there came the noise of squelching mud, and a curious plaff-plaff sound.
All round him, the air was filled with curses and moans as the marchers struggled to keep up. The rope round Rook’s middle jerked taut, forcing him to quicken his pace.
‘We must be getting close!’ He cracked the whip and urged the yelping prowlgrins on.
‘That’s the Edgeland wind,’ called back the librarian on the library sledge. The grey afternoon gave way to the dim half-light of evening, and the wind grew stronger once more, pelting them with heavy rain that stung their faces and soaked them to the skin. Few spoke even the chants of the sky pirates up in front tailed off, and the only sounds were the barks and yelps of the prowlgrins and the relentless slap, slap, slap of mud-shoes on mire mud. They marched on all through that dismal grey morning and on into a rain-sodden afternoon.
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