(A novel about Slugs falling in love and killing each other but not necessarily in that order) By Mike Batt

Chapter 10 - (Actually this chapter nine continued- there isn't a chapter Ten)

Quirkhardt quivered as Moundrot bashed on the door.

"Quirkhardt, you snivelling clot! Open this door or when we get in by breaking it down I'll mince you slowly from the feet upwards over a period of a three years!" Even Moundrot had to stop for a second to contemplate and appreciate the idea. It was one of his best. He bashed on the door.
"And don't think holding my wife as a hostage is going to work. You can have her! I was thinking of getting rid of her anyway." He smirked, in the certain knowledge that it would not come to that, - but knowing how much it would hurt Ursula to hear it. He actually did sort of love her, and anyway, she kept him company in the hibernation, and had a very nice pair of gooey, scaly, fat legs to lean against when he slept. Ursula was, indeed, mortified and horrified to hear her Jim being so horrible.

"MMMHHggHMMMM.." she protested, through the gag.

Ergo felt sorry for her. She was only a poor sowfrog who had fallen in with the wrong type. Mind you, she had probably enjoyed the spoils of success, he thought. She had probably kept quiet while Moundrot did his snarling despot act, and kicked everybody around, while she sat there and had her room service and her piano lessons. Maybe she even liked the idea of being married to a violent killer who was nice to her occasionally. Maybe she deserved this. But maybe not. He hoped not. He was an optimist. He hoped she was nice, really. (He was right and wrong - sometimes she was nice, and sometimes she wasn't - just like you and me. Well, you, anyway).

All of Ergo's thoughts, described above, flashed past in less time than it has taken you to read them. In a flash, he dropped to the floor, and using the strong stomach muscles of which he was so proud, he crawled over to he window which looked out across the front entrance of Pigfrog Command. He could see the snow, and the ground sloping away to the right, where Carol Singing Squad Number One had first dealt with Corporal Flighnever - in self-defence - (although Ergo was not aware of the particular pigfrog's name). He could see the snow, - now real, to Ergo's surprise, - and he deduced that his army must be out there, wondering where he was and whether he was alive.

"I've told them we're alive" chipped in the elf, intuitively knowing what Ergo was thinking.

"How did you know I was thinking about that?" said Ergo.

"I'm an elf!" said Horace. "My name is Horace, by the way".

"I think ?the elf' is nicer" said Ergo, cruelly.

"Oh", said the elf, deflated. "I quite like the name".

"Sorry", said Ergo, "yes, it is a nice name, I was just trying to make a joke about it. I do that. It's a very bad habit. I'm sorry. What can elves do, then", he added "apart from knowing what people are thinking?"

"Not a lot. Play the piano. We're quite good at crosswords. Knitting, that kind of thing."

"What, no magic or things like that?" said Ergo.

"Some of the clever ones are good at bridge, and others are able to turn people into handsome princes" said Horace, as if the latter was about as clever as the former. Certainly, in Horace The Elf's eyes, playing bridge was just as useful, and could be used more often.

"Are you lot coming out or are we coming in?" barked Moundrot through the door, the bass frequencies of his voice drumming up through the doorposts and around the walls.

"Get knotted, you fat, slimy old scumbag!" shouted Quirkhardt, in the bravest, most liberated and enjoyable moment of his life. If he was going to be minced from the feet upwards he might as well enjoy it.

"Aaaghrrummmppphhhh" thundered Moundrot as he threw his entire weight against the door, - but the door did not give way, as he himself had designed the bar which bolted it from within. He once again launched himself, with all his angry weight, against the strong door, and this time, with a splintering sound, one of its planks split down the middle, so that he could now see into the room. The crack was, however, too slim for a hand to get through and unbolt the door.

As Moundrot braced himself for another crushing charge, Ergo was rushing around the room for a suitable exit, which he was not hopeful of finding.
Ursula slipped her gag off.

"The bathroom!" she shouted.

So she was a good'un after all! Good old Ursula! Why, - we don't know. Probably because Jim had been so nasty to her, and in any case she couldn't stand to see blood all over her carpet. Goo, yes. But blood, no thanks. She was a lady. There were limits. Whatever the reason, she had given Ergo the tip he needed. He pushed himself into the bathroom, and came in sight of the shaft of light and hope which shone down at him.

"Flipping heck! Look at this! There's a shaft leading up to the daylight! Come on, Horace! Come on, Lance Corporal Thingey!"

Quirkhardt was livid to be addressed as "Lance Corporal" by a slug, but delighted to be given the chance to live. Livid and delighted, he hurtled past Ergo and was first up through the skylight, beginning to shin his way up the narrow shaft, not really caring whether Ergo and the elf followed him or not. In a way, he hoped that they wouldn't, so that Moundrot would catch them and spend precious minutes of Quirkhardt-escape-time ripping them limb from limb - except that Ergo didn't have any limbs, so that would have been alright.

Ergo stood back and helped the piano-elf up through the skylight. It was big enough for Quirkhardt, so it was easily big enough for Horace and Ergo. They scrambled in, just as the door shattered and Moundrot fell into the room at Ursula's feet.

"Where did they go?" demanded Moundrot. "Rubbtrubniggrabbadrotasoppa!" said Ursula, cunningly pretending to be momentarily insane. What a lovely lady she was! Well, not exactly lovely, but a nice person.

"The skylight in the bathroom!" shouted Moundrot. He was no fool! He bounded, in a middle-aged-to-old sort of way, into the thus-named room and missed Ergo's vanishing slug-tail by about a Woodland second.

"Damn! Damn! and Double-Blithering Goo-Gobs!" cursed Moundrot.

Undaunted, he pushed himself up the shaft and found that he fitted nicely. He reminded himself that he must tell his tailor, so that his ceremonial uniforms could be cut to the measurement of the shaft. He forced himself onwards. Ergo was only about two Woodland metres from him, and he knew he was faster than a stupid slug. He was, by now, frothing at the mouth and laughing in a really horrible way, like somebody who might be about to step on a ladybird, but a lot worse. Or somebody who has won a lot of money on the football pools and is going to spend it all on chips. His dribbling got wetter and louder as he reached Ergo in the tunnel, and he grabbed forward and just managed to catch his slippery tail as it wriggled frantically away from him. Ergo stopped with a jolt.

"Oh, No!"

To be caught in the spiny paws of his arch enemy, and soon to be ripped limb from limb, - well, in a manner of speaking. What a terrible fate! His life flashed before him and he thought, finally of Little Else, - beautiful Little Else, his very own fairy, who didn't, and would never know about his passion for her. He was going to die here, in a pothole shaft, miles from home, at the hands of a pigfrog, just like Elsie's brother. He didn't so much mind, or himself, but the grief Elsie would go through would be terrible. He hoped. Oh, what guilt to hope she would be stricken with grief! Maybe she wouldn't feel sad or anything at all. That would be better in a way, but worse in every other way than the way he first meant. Oh! Blithering, smelly rotten slimy bits! Goodbye, World! Goodbye, Don't Be So Ridiculous Valley. Goodbye, middle sized mates. Goodbye, George Formby records. But his main thoughts were that he had never been brave enough to talk properly to Little Else. He was brave enough in battle, but to talk frankly to Else, that was another matter. He was a coward. Oh, to die a coward!

Moundrot tightened his grip and pulled Ergo backwards and downwards. It hurt.

Hang on a minute, thought Ergo. This shaft is getting narrower. If I could only get a bit higher I reckon the slimy old bounder would get stuck. With a burst of adrenalin - yes, slugs do have it - (tick it off in your I-Spy Book Of Slug Body Chemicals, for forty points) - he pulled upwards, helped by his slime, and the general - I mean the other General, momentarily lost his grip. Ergo seized his chance and capitalised on his opportunity, which just about amounts to the same thing - and leapt upwards in the shaft, with the elf ahead of him, complaining that Ergo was forcing the pace, and Quirkhardt way up ahead, nearly at the entrance.

Moundrot grabbed again, this time, using one of his sharp claws, which penetrated Ergo's sensitive bottom area and caused him to let out a great cry of pain,- pleasing Moundrot no end. Moundrot pulled Ergo towards him and opened his huge, grinning, dribbling jaws, so that he could crunch down on his torso and rip him in half.

"You can have the piano!" shouted Ergo to the elf, in a last, unselfish gesture of unselfishness.

"It's mine already" shouted the elf, not realising the delicacy of the situation, and therefore appearing a tiny bit insensitive.

Moundrot's jaws closed, cutting through Ergo's flesh, and hurting like hell. Ergo responded by twitching his main body area upwards so that it slithered out of Moundrot's nasty, thrashing gob, to safety - leaving only the tip of his tail in between Moundrot's sharp and desperate teeth. Just at that moment, Moundrot, stopped abruptly. The tunnel had become too narrow, and he was stuck fast. Ergo continued upwards.

"Double-Blithering Goo-Gobs, and then some!" yelled Moundrot, dropping the tail piece from his jaws, so that it landed on his shoulder, where he could no longer reach it, as he was stuck fast in the shaft. Ergo couldn't see all this, as he was forcing himself upwards, using his highly developed and Very Attractive-To-Girl-Slugs-But-Unfortunately-Not Fairies-He-Thought stomach muscles, and gaining height and distance away from the cursing pigfrog general who stayed stuck by the force of his own bulk, in the ever-narrowing skylight-shaft of his own bathroom.

As he reached the top, Quirkhardt just managed to clear the sides, and leapt out jubilantly. He had known he would clear the width at the top, as he had, only a week before supervised a working party in the shaft, and had personally entered the shaft from the top. This had been necessary in order to prove to the soon-to-become late-lamented Corporal Flighnever that it was not difficult to fit a pipe over the top so that essence of dead-slug-body-goo could be injected into Moundrot's quarters to stimulate his supreme commander's thrill-buds while he slept through the off-season for slug- squashing, before the September Awakening.

That was only a week ago, mind. The thought seemed impossible. Now he was an enemy of the pigfrog nation, - an outcast, and his once-beloved, or at least respected and feared general wanted to mince him slowly from the feet up. Such was army life! Maybe another week and he might be back as a guest at Ursula Moundrot's sherry parties. Hhmm. Not a lot of realistic hope of that. Still, you never knew.

Like Ergo's thoughts earlier, these thoughts were rapid, and went gushing through Quirkhardt's selfish, cowardly and idiotic brain in a flash of a split woodland second.

He contemplated squashing the elf. He also thought it might be fun to squash Ergo, now that he no longer needed him to be the brains of the escape. As he was thinking about it, the Time Flies and Little Else appeared out of the sky and flew down towards him. Summoning up all her courage, and hoping the sleep-dagger really was only a sleep-dagger, for she had never tested it, Elsie drew level with Quirkhardt and stabbed him gently, sensitively. and in a ladylike manner. She had taken him for a nasty, smelly pigfrog, - which he was, - not recognising him as a semi-friendly one, since his washerwoman outfit was now in tatters, and his dribbling, horrid pigfrog characteristics were plain for all to see.

Quirkhardt fell into a sweet, dream-infested sleep, landing with a thud on the ground where he had stood as he had been trying to decide whether or not to give Ergo a right good squashing. Serve him right. Nasty piece of work. His mother had loved him once, but even she had given up all hope by the time he had reached the age of three. Anyway, he was asleep now, so everything was alright.

Ergo emerged from the shaft.

"Oh, Flipping, Flopping Slimy bits!" he said, falling down exhausted - (to the extent that, being slug, he wasn't already down), on the slushy, snowy, semi-grassy mountainside.

Little Else fluttered down to him like an Angel. She took his soft head in her hands and raised it as it slept, to her lips. She kissed it, slowly and lovingly. She moved her hands down until she was caressing his middle bit, and hugging him warmly. She put her head on his heaving, tired, slug-version-of-manly chest.

"Ergo", she whispered. "You are my beautiful hero. My heart is yours forever, and I wish we could get married."

"Pardon?", said Ergo, who had been half asleep. "What did you say, Elsie.. er..uh..Elsie! Haha! It's really you! I thought I was dreaming, and I was half way through my song where I sing "Thinking About Little Else" and playing the piano after several very serious music lessons from Horace The Extremely Clever Piano-Teaching Elf, at the Don't Be So Ridiculous Valley Academy Of Music."

"Yes, it's really me, Ergo, and it seems that the pigfrog that was following you up the shaft is stuck there, and the one that came out first is fast asleep, due to an experimental but very necessary stab from my sleep-dagger, invented by Nigel Farnsbarnes, patented somewhere between the olden days and last week, more like last week!"

"Oh, Joy!", shouted Ergo. "But what were you saying just now? Could you say it with me listening? Sorry about that!"

Little Else paused, rather irritatedly. She hated it when men didn't listen. It was disrespectful. What a way to start a relationship! But than, Ergo was a great general and probably had his mind on higher things, - and anyway, he had been asleep."

"Oh, I've forgotten".

" You said that he is your beautiful hero and you wish you could get married and your heart is his forever" said Quirkhardt, who appeared to have woken up.

"How did you know that?" asked Ergo, impressed but slightly miffed that Quirkhardt had known before he had.

"I was only pretending to be asleep", admitted Quirkhardt. "That thing's no good. Maybe the battery has run out."

Elsie was both deflated at the news that her sleep-dagger was a dud, and elated that someone had remembered her speech, - because she didn't think she would ever be able to remember it herself, let alone have the courage to deliver it when Ergo was listening. It had been easy when she had known he was asleep. But what would Ergo think of her now that she had told him openly what her true thoughts were?

Ergo was too moved to talk. He didn't want to burst into tears in front of the fairy he loved, and who apparently thought of him as a bit of a hero. What if she saw him crying and changed her mind about the hero bit? He wasn't worldly enough to know that to show his true emotions could only endear him to her even more, and that to hold them in was weaker and, er, not as strong.

Holding back his tears, he looked at her for a while, then said,"Oh, Little Else, I've dreamed about you - sorry it's a soppy thing to say, but even generals can be soppy sometimes, especially if they are me. I have wanted to hug you and hold you and be with you and wash your back in the bath since I first set eyes on you, but of course I didn't think it would be appropriate then, and by the way, this doesn't mean that I think your back is at all dirty in any way."

"Don't be daft, my beautiful, - well, fairly beautiful Ergo! Now you are alive and well and free from the evil pigfrogs - always assuming they don't come round that hill and kill us or something - which I bet you a woodland shilling they don't - and we can be together for as long as we like, and you can wash my back whenever you want to - even if it isn't dirty, which is often the case".

"Oh, how barbaric!" said Quirkhardt, who was genuinely disgusted at the thought of two people washing each other, - Or washing at all. It didn't seem to fit his pigfrog ethic of sweat and odour being right and proper and just plain natural.

A small tear appeared on his lower eyelid, and trickled down across his scaly, ugly, officer-material face, and dropped off his inadequate chin onto his vest. "You know", he began, "somehow I don't think I was cut out to be a nasty, aggressive pigfrog. It doesn't seem to suit my bio-rhythms or something, and I'm a Virgo, so it just doesn't fit into my natural way of doing things. It goes against the grain, in a sort of spiritual way, - perhaps that's why I'm such a failure".

Nigel had joined in crying by now but Nigel's crying was serious crying. (By the way, Dotty and Nigel had landed in the blue-at-the-moment helicopter,during Elsie's first speech.) Nigel was in a right state, crying and wailing into his pocket handkerchief, which, incidentally, was a special clockwork one. It was quite embarrassing, even for Elsie, whose moment it was, and who should have been expected to tolerate any displays of emotion, however excessive.
"My tail hurts like blinking blithery" said Ergo, not wanting to use stronger language in front of the fairy sisters, and sounding a little twee as a result.

Oh, these are my new friends, the Time Flies, by the way", said Elsie to Ergo, "They are flies who fly through time, hence the name and the tight costumes. Time Flies - Ergo, Ergo, Time Flies."

"Pleased to meet you" said the three Malcolms, in unison.

"And pleased to be met by you", said Ergo. "So you fly through time, eh? What's it like?" He felt it was a bit of a silly, nerdish question, but then he couldn't think of anything else to say. In any case, before they could answer, he remembered his injured tail. He could live without it, but then again, he'd rather not. Didn't see why he should, actually.

"I wonder if the old villain is still down there" said Ergo, knowing that the tail piece would have dropped out of Moundrot's mouth during the howling that followed his getting stuck, and that it would be very unlikely to have got past his fat body to drop further down the shaft. "They can sew things like that back on again, these days, you know", he said, with a knowledgeable look on his face, followed by a wince of pain. It was his flipping tail, after all! He would go back down and get it! What a flipping cheek to bite it off! He would soon show the old pigfrog what he thought about that!

"Dot, be a dear and tie me to the helicopter, would you?"

"No, no, no!", said Malcolm One. "Leave it to us! Not wishing to be presumptuous, but this is just up our street!"

Without a word, the Time Flies took the air and were soon down the dark shaft and back again, having lifted the missing piece of sluggy flesh right off Moundrot's shoulder, as he gasped and grunted and cursed.

"Here, you are Sir! Your bit of bottom, back again, good as new!"

"It's not my bottom, actually said Ergo, with as much dignity as he could muster. "It's my tail, - quite a different piece of the body with a totally different function. But thanks heaps for getting it."

He gratefully took the tail fragment and put it in Elsie's tea flask (which was, after all, half his now, if they were getting married). Married! Wow! To Elsie - Little Else! She had mentioned it, hadn't she? A bit forward, mind. But he cared not a tiny little jot about Elsie's forwardness, without which he would never have dared to even hope she might be, you know,.. well, - well, you know.

"Come on, then! Let's get back to the troops!" said Ergo, regaining his leadership qualities.

"What about me?", said Quirkhardt, rather pathetically. Ergo looked at him, for the first time in daylight. He was sitting on the snow, looking very sorry for himself.

"Well, you can come, too, but no funny business or else!" said Ergo.
There was still a very real danger that Moundrot might be rescued quickly from below by his soldiers, or that the pigfrogs who had pursued them up the stairs might be intelligent enough to work out that they were escaping through the ventilation shaft and go round to try to cut them off. In fact, the more Ergo thought about it, the more it seemed certain that this was about to happen.

They resolved to move quickly away from the area, skirt around a small mountain peak and down through a gully which the Time Flies and Elsie had explored from the air and identified as a good route back to the waiting slug army.

When they arrived at Sodge's position, they were greeted with loud cheering from the slugs, squirreloids, gnome-adds and trolls who comprised the slug force. They had been about to storm the place, which would have been the worst possible thing to have done, but all they could think of.

"It is a bit galling", said Sodge."It's lovely to see you, and all that, Ergo, but we feel a bit as if we haven't exactly done anything"

"I know", said Ergo, "We've had all the fun, but then it is important that some people don't get quite as much fun as others so that the ones having the fun can feel that they are having more fun than the first lot". This wasn't a particularly convincing or grateful comment, but Sodge took it in good spirit.

Ergo guessed that after the the terrible beating that Third Battalion had experienced, it was improbable that the pigfrogs would launch a full frontal attack on his main slug force (which, of course was not all slugs, as I have said, but was called the slug army because it had been their idea). Ergo was right. The pigfrogs spent the rest of the day pulling their esteemed general from the ventilation shaft and being nice to him. Moundrot lay in the bath for the first time ever, and soaked away some of his sorrows. Major Accuppa organised the general's dinner, followed by a huge glass of brandy and a large chocolate cigar.

Ergo's army set off for home and arrived three days later, unchallenged by any pigfrog forces, and with Private Quirkhardt as their prisoner.

"This isn't the last they'll hear from us", said Ergo. "After all, we said we'd wipe them out, and we haven't yet. What's more, they've got our piano and Nige's helicopter. And the real Christmas is coming soon".
"Oh, yes, so it is" said Sodge, without any particular feeling of excitement.

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More thrills in Slugs Chapter 11