Page 68 of The Neverfear

They were stacking the plates and wiping Teren’s face clean of jam when there was a sudden bird-high scream. Gallia flew in as if she had been shot from a gun. She was crying out as she came.

‘Bandits! Bandits! Anya! Christopher! Bandits!’

Christopher was on his feet, his hand reaching out for Teren. ‘What?’

‘There’s a boat on the horizon. It’s sailing due east towards us. I flew out past the fendthorn and I saw them. Bandits! Eleven masked men and women! They wear the bracelets of the snake upon their wrists! They are coming!’

Christopher’s stomach dropped away. ‘But they can’t get in,’ he said. ‘They can’t get past the fendthorn.’

‘Come!’ Gallia’s usually guttural voice was high with horror. ‘Come and see!’

Christopher lifted Teren in both arms and sprinted up the stairs, Anya darting ahead, to the telescope that had been installed on top of the Star Tower.

She set her eye to the lens. ‘I see them! They’re coming straight at us!’ she said.

Christopher looked. He could see the wind in the sails. The boat was moving fast.

‘But we’re safe!’ said Anya. She looked wildly at him. ‘They can’t get through the Hercules thorn! So even if they try—’

‘The what?’ Christopher’s head came round with a snap. ‘What did you call it?’

‘The fendthorn! That’s its other name, the Hercules thorn.’

Christopher felt a terrible thought rising in him, but he beat it back. ‘Why is it called that?’

Anya stared at him. ‘It’s not important! They’re coming now, Christopher!’

‘Tell me why it’s called the Hercules thorn. Because it’s as strong as Hercules?’

‘I don’t know! Something about Hercules making the thorn as his thirteenth Labour! Does it matter?’

Christopher kept his eyes on the boat. His breath began to come fast. ‘Anya. Can you list the tasks of Hercules?’

‘Of course,’ said Anya. ‘Even toddlers can!’

‘Do it. Please.’

‘He had to slay a Nemean lion and a hydra. He had to capture an Erymanthian boar, a Cretan bull and the Diomedian mares. He had to clean the Augean stables, defeat the stymphalian birds, steal the cattle of the giant Geryon, catch the Ceryneian hind –’ her voice slowed – ‘win the Belt of Hippolyta –’ she was very white now – ‘steal the golden apples from the Garden of the Hesperides …’

‘And bring back Cerberus from the underworld,’ said Christopher. He stared at her.

‘The Sailsman said Cretan bulls had been slaughtered,’ said Anya. ‘The pirates in Freondell – they said the Augean stables had been ransacked.’ Her eyes widened. ‘And at the race … those men were talking about a herd of stolen Geryonian cattle!’

‘Did your father say … how Hercules bred the thorn?’

There was a small cough; a very small cough.

‘The Spina herculis,’ said a voice from near his ankles, ‘also known as the Hercules thorn or fendthorn, is said by scholars to be practically unbreakable. I looked it up in the Ferox Library.’

‘Meri!’ The mouse crouched at their feet on the stones of the tower.

‘I hope you don’t mind, dear sir, and highness, that I followed you here – just in case I might be permitted to assist.’

‘Meri,’ said Christopher urgently. ‘Tell us everything you know. What do you mean, practically unbreakable?’

‘The twelve tasks of Hercules were not random. They were designed to give him the ingredients he needed to grow the fendthorn. He bred it from soil enriched by the products of the Twelve Labours, and in doing so he ensured that its power could be broken only by that same concoction of the twelve tasks. A snippet of hair from the Ceryneian hind, a pinch of manure from the Augean stables, and so on. Hercules believed that nobody could rival him and that defeating the thorn was essentially impossible, and so it has proved over thousands of years. Hence the term “practically unbreakable”.’

‘But it could be done?’