Eva Ibbotson - The Ogre of Oglefort

He picked up a floor mop and hurled it into the mass of troops, and it dislodged a fusilier, who fell to the ground.

“I’m going to grind your guts like corn. I’m going to dig your tonsils into the ground.”

But if the soldiers were frightened, the children and the rescuers on the battlements were utterly amazed. An hour ago the ogre had been lying limply in his bed waiting for death — and now he was roaring and threatening. Surely he would have a heart attack and drop dead?

Prince Umberto, who was already right at the back, edged his horse farther away. It was as though the ogre’s power could somehow reach them even from the roof.

But Prince Phillipe and Prince Tomas were made of sterner stuff. They repeated the signal to the archers and a volley of arrows sped toward the towering figure on the roof.

The arrows missed — and the ogre picked one up and scratched his armpits with it. Then he looked around for a weapon and Ivo handed him a coal bucket, which he hurled with all his might into the army — and a member of the Household Guards cried out and fell to the ground. The troll had made a sling from a sheet. He put in a metal cooking pot and sent it flying toward the Soldiers of the Bedchamber. It glanced off a sergeant’s arm, and he cried out but managed to stay on his horse.

A second hail of arrows flew up to the roof — and missed again.

“Come on you, lily-livered, cow-handed imbeciles. How dare you attack Oglefort Castle, which has stood for five hundred years. Just you wait till I get down there and crunch you up between my molars.”

But one of the fusiliers had broken ranks and was setting his horse at the moat. He could not jump it, but he meant to swim it — and he shouted to his sergeant to bring reinforcements. If he could get into the castle by the back he had a good chance of rescuing the princess.

The horse, however, had different ideas. It stopped dead and the soldier shot over his head into the deep and slimy water.

Mirella, emerging from the shelter of the chimney stacks, looked down and remembered what Bessie had said about the weeds in the moat. Well if the soldier drowned that was one less for the attack. But as the fusilier’s anguished face appeared above the surface and vanished again she saw, to her horror, that it was somebody she knew. One of the servants who had been kind to her in the palace: the son of the carpenter who had helped her to make her ant nest.

Without thinking, Mirella rushed down the curving stone staircase and out by the sally port. There was an old life belt fixed by a rope on a stand, and she threw it with all her might into the water.

“Go back,” she shouted. “The ogre will kill you if you come any farther.”

The soldier caught it and held on but as he did so he saw Mirella. Here was his chance for fame and glory — he and he alone would rescue the princess. Instead of swimming back to the army, he thrust out toward the castle side of the moat and grabbed Mirella’s legs.

Taken by surprise, Mirella let go of the rope and stumbled — and he pulled her into the water.

“Hold on, Your Highness,” he spluttered. “We’ll soon have you safe.”

Ivo, who had gone around to the back to fetch some loose bricks for ammunition, saw what had happened.

“They’ve got her — they’ve got Mirella,” he shouted. “I’m going down to help her.”

“No you’re not,” said Ulf, grabbing him. “They’ll only get you, too.”

But someone else was in the moat, swimming strongly toward the soldier and his burden. And when the fusilier saw who it was he screamed in terror.

A great mouth had opened in front of him, a crimson cavern with fearsome yellowing teeth. A mouth belonging to the most dangerous mammal in Africa, who could snap people in half with one movement of the jaw.

“Watch out!” Mirella shouted to the soldier, who held her in his grip. “It’s the Oglefort Hippo — she’s a killer!”

Mirella was right: it was indeed a hippopotamus. This gentle animal who wanted nothing except to live in peace had come lumbering up before the battle and taken it on herself to patrol the moat.

There was no way the soldier could have known that Bessie would have died rather than taste his horrid flesh. He saw only the gaping mouth, the terrible teeth, and he loosened his hold on Mirella and — still in the life belt — he struck out for the bank.

Mirella managed to swim back to the castle side of the moat, but the bank was steep and slimy. As she struggled to get out, Prince Phillipe rode over.

“Don’t worry, my dear,” he called to her in a patronizing voice. “We’ll soon have you out of here and safe back home.”

“I don’t want to be safe,” she spluttered. “And I’m not going home.”

“She’s been brainwashed,” said the prince to his aide — and since no one could swim the waters of the moat while the wild hippopotamus patrolled it, he gave orders that a big tree nearby should be cut down to make a bridge.

“Like that, we’ll be able to get her out of the water and storm the castle,” he said.

But Bessie was not the only animal who had come to help.

“We need more ammunition,” shouted the ogre — and vanished, to return with a grandfather clock, an iron bedstead, and an armchair, which he sent crashing down from the battlements.

“Come any closer and I’ll blister the skin off your backsides!” he roared.

“I’ve run out of boulders,” said the troll — and then he heard above him Nandi’s quiet voice and saw that the aye-aye, in spite of her terror of men, was on the roof above him prying off the razor-sharp slates, which she handed to him so that he could send them flying like knives through the ranks.

But the army stood its ground, and the arrows came steadily.

Ivo was standing between the Hag and the wizard. He had thrown a footstool, a bedpan, and a set of fire irons. His aim had been good, but what use was that? Mirella’s white face and her look of terror when she heard that her father’s army was coming wouldn’t leave him.

“Isn’t there any magic you can do?” he begged the Hag. “Anything at all?”

The Hag turned, still holding the soup tureen she had been about to throw.

She saw Ivo’s pleading face and remembered the time she had told him about Gladys’s treachery.

“I could be your familiar,” he had said. And later: “Familiars serve for life.”

And what sort of an employer had she been, what sort of a witch?

The Hag, in the midst of the battle, examined her soul. Just because no one seemed to want magic anymore, just because she was content to sit in the Dribble soaking her feet, she had let it go.

Ivo said no more. He only looked.

But could she in fact do any serious magic? Wasn’t her power all gone? Yet Ivo believed in her; she could feel his trust streaming toward her. On her other side, Dr. Brainsweller was muttering something. It sounded like a spell. Was he trying to prompt her? Yes, he was.…

The Hag threw the soup tureen, closed her eyes, called on the Great Witch of the Nether Regions — and began to mutter.

And down below the soldiers started to bat away something with their arms, to make noises of disgust. One tore off his helmet to try and squash a thing which had appeared on his horse’s neck. There were cries of “Ugh,” and “Disgusting,” and “Horrible, slimy things.”

There is nothing terrible in itself about frogs. One or two at a time can be pleasant to have about — but a whole host of them is different: frogs on the saddles, frogs in the arrow pouches, frogs on one’s face — that is different. They got into the horses’ ears and were squashed under the horses’ hoofs and slid down the necks of the riders — and as the soldiers looked upward, they landed in their mouths.