The Last Battle (5 page)

The one who had already spoken to him rose to his feet. “Shadow or spirit or whatever you are,” he said, fixing his eyes full upon Tirian. “If you
are from Narnia, I charge you in the name of Aslan, speak to me. I am Peter the High King.”

The room began to swim before Tirian’s eyes. He heard the voices of those seven people all speaking at once, and all getting fainter every second, and they were saying things like, “Look! It’s fading.” “It’s melting away.” “It’s vanishing.” Next moment he was wide awake, still tied to the tree, colder and stiffer than ever. The wood was full of the pale, dreary light that comes before sunrise, and he was soaking wet with dew; it was nearly morning.

That waking was about the worst moment he had ever had in his life.

BUT HIS MISERY DID NOT LAST LONG.
Almost at once there came a bump, and then a second bump, and two children were standing before him. The wood in front of him had been quite empty a second before and he knew they had not come from behind his tree, for he would have heard them. They had in fact simply appeared from nowhere. He saw at a glance that they were wearing the same queer, dingy sort of clothes as the people in his dream; and he saw, at a second glance, that they were the youngest boy and girl out of that party of seven.

“Gosh!” said the boy, “that took one’s breath away! I thought—”

“Hurry up and get him untied,” said the girl. “We can talk, afterward.” Then she added, turning to Tirian, “I’m sorry we’ve been so long. We came the moment we could.”

While she was speaking the Boy produced a
knife from his pocket and was quickly cutting the King’s bonds: too quickly, in fact, for the King was so stiff and numb that when the last cord was cut he fell forward on his hands and knees. He couldn’t get up again till he had brought some life back into his legs by a good rubbing.

“I say,” said the girl. “It was you, wasn’t it, who appeared to us that night when we were all at supper? Nearly a week ago.”

“A week, fair maid?” said Tirian. “My dream led me into your world scarce ten minutes since.”

“It’s the usual muddle about times, Pole,” said the Boy.

“I remember now,” said Tirian. “That too comes in all the old tales. The time of your strange land is different from ours. But if we speak of Time, ’tis time to be gone from here: for my enemies are close at hand. Will you come with me?”

“Of course,” said the girl. “It’s you we’ve come to help.”

Tirian got to his feet and led them rapidly down hill, Southward and away from the stable. He knew where he meant to go but his first aim was to get to rocky places where they would leave no trail, and his second to cross some water so that they would leave no scent. This took them about an hour’s scrambling and wading and while that was going on nobody had any breath to talk. But even so, Tirian kept on stealing glances at his
companions. The wonder of walking beside the creatures from another world made him feel a little dizzy: but it also made all the old stories seem far more real than they had ever seemed before…anything might happen now.

“Now,” said Tirian as they came to the head of a little valley which ran down before them among young birch trees, “we are out of danger of those villains for a space arid may walk more easily.” The sun had risen, dew-drops were twinkling on every branch, and birds were singing.

“What about some grub?—I mean for you, Sir, we two have had our breakfast,” said the Boy.

Tirian wondered very much what he meant by “grub,” but when the Boy opened a bulgy satchel which he was carrying and pulled out a rather
greasy and squashy packet, he understood. He was ravenously hungry, though he hadn’t thought about it till that moment. There were two hard-boiled egg sandwiches, and two cheese sandwiches, and two with some kind of paste in them. If he hadn’t been so hungry he wouldn’t have thought much of the paste, for that is a sort of food nobody eats in Narnia. By the time he had eaten all six sandwiches they had come to the bottom of the valley and there they found a mossy cliff with a little fountain bubbling out of it. All three stopped and drank and splashed their hot faces.

“And now,” said the girl as she tossed her wet hair back from her forehead, “aren’t you going to tell us who you are and why you were tied up and what it’s all about?”

“With a good will, damsel,” said Tirian. “But we must keep on the march.” So while they went on walking he told them who he was and all the things that had happened to him. “And now,” he said at the end, “I am going to a certain tower, one of three that were built in my grandsire’s time to guard Lantern Waste against certain perilous outlaws who dwelled there in his day. By Aslan’s good will I was not robbed of my keys. In that tower we shall find stores of weapons and mail and some victuals also, though no better than dry biscuit. There also we can lie safe while we make
our plans. And now, prithee, tell me who you two are and all your story.”

“I’m Eustace Scrubb and this is Jill Pole,” said the Boy. “And we were here once before, ages and ages ago, more than a year ago by our time, and there was a chap called Prince Rilian, and they were keeping this chap underground, and Puddleglum put his foot in—”

“Ha!” cried Tirian, “are you then that Eustace and that Jill who rescued King Rilian from his long enchantment?”

“Yes, that’s us,” said Jill. “So he’s
King
Rilian now, is he? Oh of course he would be. I forgot—”

“Nay,” said Tirian. “I am the seventh in descent from him. He has been dead over two hundred years.”

Jill made a face. “Ugh!” she said. ’That’s the horrid part about coming back to Narnia.” But Eustace went on.

“Well now you know who we are, Sire,” he said. “And it was like this. The Professor and Aunt Polly had got all us friends of Narnia together—”

“I know not these names, Eustace,” said Tirian.

“They’re the two who came into Narnia at the very beginning, the day all the animals learned to talk.”

“By the Lion’s Mane,” cried Tirian. “Those two! The Lord Digory and the Lady Polly! From
the dawn of the world! And still alive in your place? The wonder and the glory of it! But tell me, tell me.”

“She isn’t really our aunt, you know,” said Eustace. “She’s Miss Plummer, but we call her Aunt Polly. Well those two got us all together partly just for fun, so that we could all have a good jaw about Narnia (for of course there’s no one else we can ever talk to about things like that) but partly because the Professor had a feeling that we were somehow wanted over here. Well then you came in like a ghost or goodness-knows-what and nearly frightened the lives out of us and vanished without saying a word. After that, we knew for certain there was something up. The next question was how to get here. You can’t go just by wanting to. So we talked and talked and at last the Professor said the only way would be by the Magic Rings. It was by those Rings that he and Aunt Polly got here long, long ago when they were only kids, years before we younger ones were born. But the Rings had all been buried in the garden of a house in London (that’s our big town, Sire) and the house had been sold. So then the problem was how to get at them. You’ll never guess what we did in the end! Peter and Edmund—that’s the High King Peter, the one who spoke to you—went up to London to get into the garden from the back, early in the morning before people were up. They were
dressed like workmen so that if anyone did see them it would look as if they’d come to do something about the drains. I wish I’d been with them: it must have been glorious fun. And they must have succeeded for next day Peter sent us a wire—that’s a sort of message, Sire, I’ll explain about it some other time—to say he’d got the Rings. And the day after that was the day Pole and I had to go back to school—we’re the only two who are still at school and we’re at the same one. So Peter and Edmund were to meet us at a place on the way down to school and hand over the Rings. It had to be us two who were to go to Narnia, you see, because the older ones couldn’t come again. So we got into the train—that’s a kind of thing people travel in in our world: a lot of wagons chained together—and the Professor and Aunt Polly and Lucy came with us. We wanted to keep together as long as we could. Well there we were in the train. And we were just getting to the station where the others were to meet us, and I was looking out of the window to see if I could see them when suddenly there came a most frightful jerk and a noise: and there we were in Narnia and there was your Majesty tied up to the tree.”

“So you never used the Rings?” said Tirian.

“No,” said Eustace. “Never even saw them. Aslan did it all for us in his own way without any Rings.”

“But the High King Peter has them,” said Tirian.

“Yes,” said Jill. “But we don’t think he can use them. When the two other Pevensies—King Edmund and Queen Lucy—were last here, Aslan said they would never come to Narnia again. And he said something of the same sort to the High King, only longer ago. You may be sure he’ll come like a shot if he’s allowed.”

“Gosh!” said Eustace. “It’s getting hot in this sun. Are we nearly there, Sire?”

“Look,” said Tirian and pointed. Not many yards away gray battlements rose above the tree-tops, and after a minute’s more walking they came out in an open grassy space. A stream ran across it and on the far side of the stream stood a squat,
square tower with very few and narrow windows and one heavy-looking door in the wall that faced them.

Tirian looked sharply this way and that to make sure that no enemies were in sight. Then he walked up to the tower and stood still for a moment fishing up his bunch of keys which he wore inside his hunting-dress on a narrow silver chain that went round his neck. It was a nice bunch of keys that he brought out, for two were golden and many were richly ornamented: you could see at once that they were keys made for opening solemn and secret rooms in palaces, or chests and caskets of sweet-smelling wood that contained royal treasures. But the key which he now put into the lock of the door was big and plain and more rudely made. The lock was stiff and for a moment Tirian began to be afraid that he would not be able to turn it: but at last he did and the door swung open with a sullen creak.

“Welcome friends,” said Tirian. “I fear this is the best palace that the King of Narnia can now offer to his guests.”

Tirian was pleased to see that the two strangers had been well brought up. They both said not to mention it and that they were sure it would be very nice.

As a matter of fact it was not particularly nice. It was rather dark and smelled very damp. There
was only one room in it and this room went right up to the stone roof: a wooden staircase in one corner led up to a trap door by which you could get out on the battlements. There were a few rude bunks to sleep in, and a great many lockers and bundles. There was also a hearth which looked as if nobody had lit a fire in it for a great many years.

“We’d better go out and gather some firewood first thing, hadn’t we?” said Jill.

“Not yet, comrade,” said Tirian. He was determined that they should not be caught unarmed, and began searching the lockers, thankfully remembering that he had always been careful to have these garrison towers inspected once a year to make sure that they were stocked with all things needful. The bow strings were there in their coverings of oiled silk, the swords and spears were greased against rust, and the armor was kept bright in its wrappings. But there was something even better. “Look!” said Tirian as he drew out a long mail shirt of a curious pattern and flashed it before the children’s eyes.

“That’s funny-looking mail, Sire,” said Eustace.

“Aye, lad,” said Tirian. “No Narnian Dwarf smithied that. ’Tis mail of Calormen, outlandish gear. I have ever kept a few suits of it in readiness, for I never knew when I or my friends might have reason to walk unseen in The Tisroc’s land. And look on this stone bottle. In this there is a juice
which, when we have rubbed it on our hands and faces, will make us brown as Calormenes.”