Goblins Vs Dwarves Read Free Page B

we are so much larger than them. ‘Biglings’, they call us, and I’m afraid they see us as clodhopping, overgrown, stupid and clumsy.”
    â€œBut that’s not true!” said Henwyn, and he thumped Fentongoose’s table for emphasis, upset the plate, and catapulted the biscuits out of the window.
    â€œPerhaps not,” said Fentongoose. “But the dwarves believe it, and think that they are far superior to us. However, their scorn for us is as nothing compared with the scorn they feel towards goblins, whom they see as mere animals, interested only in food and violence.”
    â€œThat’s not true either!” shouted Skarper, over the noise from outside, where a whole bunch of goblins were fighting over the biscuits.
    Fentongoose wasn’t listening. There was a great deal of knowledge stored up in his head, and it wasn’t often that anyone asked to hear some of it: he was not going to be distracted from his history lesson.
    â€œDwarves are mortal beings, much like men,” he said. “They are born of dwarf mothers and grow up slowly, like ourselves. Once they lived under the open sky, although their love for minerals and metals soon led them underground. It’s said that the old dwarf mines and tunnels run beneath every part of the Westlands. But when the first men arrived, the dwarves retreated into the hills. They withdrew to their great citadel, a hollowed-out mountain called Dwarvenholm, in the valley of Delverdale, in the far north. They shut its great burnished doors behind them and became creatures of the under-places. They are seldom seen in sunlight nowadays.
    â€œBut there was always trade between Dwarvenholm and the lands of men. The dwarves were great workers of metal. Slowsilver was the stuff they valued above all else. That’s why they hated goblins, who guarded the natural pools of slowsilver where they hatched, down in the deep places beneath the hills. They fought the goblins, and drained the pools. The dwarf-smiths knew how to work magic into items forged from slowsilver. Even in the Lych Lord’s time, most of the magical weapons and artefacts in the world came from the smithies of Dwarvenholm.
    â€œBut the magic faded, and the power of the dwarves declined. I am glad to hear that they are mining again. Perhaps we shall be able to trade with them. I wonder if they like cheese?”
    â€œOh, look!” said Henwyn, pointing to the hearth. Several of the stone eggs there had started to jiggle. As Skarper and Fentongoose turned to stare, a large black crack spread over one of them. They hurried across the hearthrug to bend over it as it shattered. A small, damp, speckled goblin blinked out at them.
    â€œHello, little fellow!” said Fentongoose kindly, all thought of dwarves forgotten. “Welcome to Clovenstone.”
    The hatchling snatched up a log from the hearth and belted him over the head with it. Around it, the other eggs were starting to hatch too, and the new goblins bared their teeth and clenched their tiny fists as they tumbled out into the ashes of the fire, as eager for mischief as every hatchling before them. How were they supposed to know that things had changed at Clovenstone?
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Nobody gave very much thought to dwarves for the next few weeks. The new hatchlings turned out to be much too boisterous for Fentongoose to look after on his own, so Henwyn, Ned, Skarper, and even Skarper’s batch-brothers Libnog and Yabber had to help him. Princess Ned was determined that this new batch of goblins would have a gentler start in life than the older goblins of Clovenstone, so everyone spent a lot of time prising makeshift weapons out of their paws, showing them how to use the pooing holes, and trying to teach them not to steal, or strangle one another, or throw one another out of high windows.
    Summer was over and the long, golden days of early autumn were beginning. The first frost had come before Skarper and Henwyn