or-balins prefer better odds and their gaunt faces dropped as the grey-suits and fair-folk charged. Now emboldened, Benissimo and Mr Fox joined George and the three of them hurled themselves at the Demon, George knocking it to the ground with his shoulder as Benissimo’s whip turned to flames and caught it about its neck. At its sides, grey-suits with their electrical batons were firing bolts of electricity at the Guardians in great arcs of blue light, and the creatures, though unable to feel pain, shuddered and stopped mid-strike.
Heart racing, Ned stole a moment by the Chinooks and their spinning blades with Lucy. Gorrn was undulating protectively in the shadows and Whiskers had already crawled up her leg and hopped into her readied arms.
“It’s all right, Whiskers, everything’s going to be fine,” she hollered.
Ned watched her as she peered at the chaos. She looked different somehow – there was a sureness to her gaze that he hadn’t seen before.
“Thanks for coming, Lucy. It’s good to see you.”
“You know, none of this would have been necessary if you’d just told us where you were. Now come on, quickly – let’s give them a hand.”
Ned’s heart sank. Whatever trouble he’d been having with his Engine was clearly his alone. Lucy was already pacing down the hill and he hadn’t the courage to tell her about his issue, or that he’d be useless in the fight.
“Ned?” said Lucy, turning back. “Don’t just stand there – they need us!” But her face quickly paled at the sight of something behind him. “NED!”
He turned too late. A clenched fist came at him at a pace and struck him in the cheek. Dazed and confused, he fell to the floor, pain searing up the side of his face, and the world for a moment became black and blurred. Not all the gor-balins had cowered from the charge. In the clash that had followed, four of the creatures had used the chaos to circle round their flank and they now launched themselves at Ned and Lucy. Ned heard the squeak of his mouse as it leapt from Lucy’s arms towards him, and saw Gorrn rise up, his vast mouth descending violently on one of the assassins.
“Grak!” he hollered, and the gor-balin was gone.
Lucy stood her ground, closing her eyes in deep thought, and another of the creatures howled. Ned could only guess at what she’d done inside its mind, but her powers proved more than enough to bring it to its knees.
The other two separated, one thrusting at Gorrn with its sword.
The other, to Ned’s horror, pulled out its dagger and held it to Lucy’s throat. It smiled. Even with its comrades fallen and the battle behind it all but lost, the gob’s yellow eyes and sallow cheeks oozed with delight.
Lucy tried to pull away but the thin-limbed creature held strong, the claws from its hand digging at her arm.
“Ned?!” she cried.
His voice wouldn’t carry over the din of the Chinook’s blades or the raging battle, and even if it could, Benissimo and Fox would never reach them in time. Ned could only watch, just as he had outside Mavis’s, just as he had a dozen times before.
“Lucy, I—”
“Squeak!”
Whiskers bit at the gor-balin’s ankle and it howled before kicking the brave rodent away. Finally it laughed, eyes locked with Ned’s as it drew the dagger so close to Lucy that her skin flared pink. He was going to cut her, to kill poor innocent Lucy right then and there, and there wasn’t anything that Ned could do about it.
A fury fired inside him and he screamed, “STOP!”
And just as he did so, a pain shot up his arm, as bright and white as lightning. He could feel the atoms in the air with his mind, feel them fusing and growing in mass, hurtling at one another to be reshaped and whoosh! – his ring fired.
The gor-balin screamed and his scream was matched by another dozen down the hill. Ned refocused his eyes and saw that the ground by the Darkling’s legs had erupted with great barbs of metal and ice. They’d shot up his body in an instant, forming a cocoon round it so complete, so complex and strong, that the air had been kicked from the creature’s lungs, and the gor-balin stood helpless and frozen in place. Further down the hill, other gor-balins had met the same fate, encased where they stood and with no hope of escape. Knowing that the battle was lost, the Demon and its Guardians retreated from sight and back into the forest.
Giddy, ecstatic and very slightly delirious, Lucy fell on Ned and hugged him.
“Ned, that was amazing!”
Ned paused to catch his breath.
“I, erm, I’m not sure that I know how I did that,” he finally managed.
“Told you we’d see them soon enough!” grinned Benissimo, as he came running back up the hill.
He inspected the cocoon-like prison that Ned had trapped the gor-balin assassin in with a whistle.
“Well, pup, whatever trouble you were having, it appears to have been fixed.”
Ned looked at the Ringmaster. The man had led both him and Mr Fox into the worst imaginable danger and it was only because Ned’s Amplification-Engine had for some unknown reason decided to work again that Lucy wasn’t dead.
Ned flexed his hand slowly and tried his ring again, just a small test to see if it still worked. The air around his ring shimmered feebly, before sputtering away to nothing. The next time they came across the butcher’s minions, both Engineer and Medic might not be so lucky.
“Benissimo, I think you and I need to talk.”