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‘A bangle! Couldn’t you at least have sent them to me with a chest full of gold?’ Kraa shouted up to Shrii. ‘And just look at your robbers! Did you want to insult me and not just steal from me? A child and a man with glass eyes! They weren’t even armed! Or is that green tree-man their weapon? Well, he at least will fetch a decent price from the poachers,’ he added, with a disparaging glance at Ben and Barnabas.
‘I’m going to pluck your feathers out one by one, you sandy crow!’ roared Hothbrodd down to him. ‘I’ll make myself a belt from your snake-tail and a pair of leggings from your coat!’
The troll threw himself against the basketwork of the cage so furiously that it swung back and forth like the clapper of a bell, and Ben and Barnabas thought they would end up lying in front of Kraa’s paws with their necks broken. But the griffins’ basket cages had already held many angry captives securely. Crocodiles and marbled cats fought for their freedom just as fiercely as a troll.
‘Hmm,’ purred Kraa, casting Hothbrodd a glance of amusement. ‘You remind me of a demon whose flesh I tore apart and sent to all four quarters of the compass six hundred years ago. It was much the same unappetising colour as your skin.’
Hothbrodd favoured him with his entire repertory of Viking curses. But Kraa had turned to Shrii again.
‘I’ll tell you what, sister’s son, I think I’ll leave you alive until all who helped you are sold or dead!’ he called to him. ‘Nothing I can do to you will hurt you more. Your mother too suffered every time she swallowed a beetle by mistake in flight. Pity… why should we feel what others feel? The only heartbeat we have to understand is our own. No other creature is the equal of a griffin.’
‘Yet you have served human kings for gold. You were nothing but their winged servant.’
Shrii’s voice was so different from Kraa’s. You could hear the song of gibbons in it, and the wind blowing through a thousand leaves and colourful feathers. Shrii had not been born in a desert far away. He was a child of this island.
‘All your strength, wasted on nothing but enriching yourself. Yet you can’t even eat gold! Every crocodile is better than you. Every beetle on the island is more useful, every fish in the ocean. You’re a parasite, Kraa, and I challenge you to a duel. I challenge you on behalf of all t
hose you have sold, although they trusted you and served you.’
A murmuring rose among the assembled monkeys, and the birds in the branches beat their wings uneasily. But Nakal struck the platform with his staff, and silenced them all with a shrill whistle.
‘Ah, yes, the old rumour that you and your followers like to spread.’ Kraa plucked a flying squirrel that had come too close to his beak out of the air and swallowed it whole. ‘How did it go again? Kraa even sells his subjects. Kraa sells his most faithful servants. Lies. I sell only traitors and thieves. And the usual creatures born to be the prey of hunters.’
‘Really?’ replied Shrii. The eagle and the lion could be heard in his own voice now. ‘What became of your last personal servant? Has Nakal ever asked about him? And where are the lorises who worked on your portrait in a way you didn’t like? Where are the birds of paradise who were heard in the evening? Where’s the albino macaque who had his nest right under your palace? Nothing and no one on this island is safe from you! All that counts to you is the glittering plunder that the poachers pay you, and the shells that sharpen your beak and the beaks of others!’
Once again, Kraa spread his wings menacingly. He beat them so strongly that the basketwork cages swayed, knocking against each other, and Hothbrodd almost crushed Barnabas and Ben with his weight. Even the monkeys and flying squirrels hanging in the branches above Kraa could hardly hold on, and something fell, with a shrill scream, and landed right in front of Kraa’s throne.
Nakal picked the Something up, and held it high in the air in his fingertips.
‘Twigleg!’ cried Ben. ‘Let go of him!’
But no one paid any attention.
Kraa was bending curiously down to the homunculus as a second figure jumped down from the branches above him, and landed beside Nakal.
‘Don’t you touch him, you feathered kitty-cat!’ Lola’s yell travelled all the way up to Barnabas. ‘And as for you,’ she snapped at Nakal, aiming her tiny signal pistol at the proboscis monkey, ‘let go of my friend or you’ve drawn your last breath!’
Lola was certainly one of the bravest people Ben knew, but she didn’t always stop to think. One of the jackal scorpions grabbed her with its pincers, and was obviously not impressed by the signal shot that the rat fired at its golden armour.
Ben rattled the twig bars of his cage in helpless despair. Even Barnabas had turned pale, and Hothbrodd uttered a roar that would have done credit to any griffin. The troll was very fond of the flying rat, although he would certainly have denied it to his own kind.
‘Well, look at this!’ Kraa scrutinised Twigleg and Lola with such interest that his beak almost touched them. ‘Vermin in the form of a rodent, and a jenglot! Your choice of allies becomes more and more bizarre, Shrii!’
‘I am not a jenglot!’ cried Twigleg in a shaking but very determined voice. ‘I’m a hom—’
‘Oh yes, he is!’ Lola interrupted him shrilly. ‘A jenglot! That’s what he is, and what a jenglot! A very dangerous one, a downright poisonous jenglot! And this rat, you avaricious desert bird…’ her boot missed the nose of the jackal scorpion holding her only by millimetres, ‘this rat is about to show you who’s vermin around here!’
Ben hardly dared to breathe as Kraa raised his head and looked down thoughtfully at the two tiny prisoners, as if wondering which to eat first.
‘What do you think, Nakal?’ he growled. ‘A rat in human clothing, and a jenglot with skin as white as ivory. Those two could fetch a good price.’
‘Indeed they could, Your Majesty,’ replied Nakal in a subservient voice. ‘Every collector of rare specimens would be keen to get hold of them. The lack of size could even be an advantage. After all, they’d both fit comfortably into a birdcage!’
Lola was about to reply, but before she could say anything, Nakal removed her from the jackal scorpion’s pincers and put her and Twigleg into a bag together.
‘There goes our hope of rescue, I’m afraid,’ Barnabas whispered to Ben. ‘Still, we’ve often thought so before, and we’re still alive and well, right?’
Ben nodded, although not with much conviction. He knew that if he had still been wearing Firedrake’s scale around his neck he’d have summoned the dragon now. To save Twigleg!
