Prince Caspian by C. S. Lewis Read Free Book Online Page B

badger’s, though larger and friendlier and more intelligent than the face of any badger he had seen before. And it had certainly been talking. He saw, too, that he was on a bed of heather, in a cave. By the fire sat two little bearded men, so much wilder and shorter and hairier and thicker than Doctor Cornelius that he knew them at once for real Dwarfs, ancient Dwarfs with not a drop of human blood in their veins. And Caspian knew that he had found the Old Narnians at last. Then his head began to swim again.
    In the next few days he learned to know them by names. The Badger was called Trufflehunter; he was the oldest and kindest of the three. The Dwarf who had wanted to kill Caspian was a sour Black Dwarf (that is, his hair and beard were black, and thick and hard like horsehair). His name was Nikabrik. The other Dwarf was a Red Dwarf with hair rather like a Fox’s and he was called Trumpkin.
    “And now,” said Nikabrik on the first evening when Caspian was well enough to sit up and talk, “we still have to decide what to do with this Human. You two think you’ve done it a great kindness by not letting me kill it. But I suppose the upshot is that we have to keep it a prisoner for life. I’m certainly not going to let it go alive—to go back to its own kind and betray us all.”
    “Bulbs and bolsters! Nikabrik,” said Trumpkin.“Why need you talk so unhandsomely? It isn’t the creature’s fault that it bashed its head against a tree outside our hole. And I don’t think it looks like a traitor.”
    “I say,” said Caspian, “you haven’t yet found out whether I want to go back. I don’t. I want to stay with you—if you’ll let me. I’ve been looking for people like you all my life.”
    “That’s a likely story,” growled Nikabrik. “You’re a Telmarine and a Human, aren’t you? Of course you want to go back to your own kind.”
    “Well, even if I did, I couldn’t,” said Caspian. “I was flying for my life when I had my accident. The King wants to kill me. If you’d killed me, you’d have done the very thing to please him.”
    “Well now,” said Trufflehunter, “you don’t say so!”
    “Eh?” said Trumpkin. “What’s that? What have you been doing, Human, to fall foul of Miraz at your age?”
    “He’s my uncle,” began Caspian, when Nikabrik jumped up with his hand on his dagger.
    “There you are!” he cried. “Not only a Telmarine but close kin and heir to our greatest enemy. Are you still mad enough to let this creature live?” He would have stabbed Caspian then and there, if the Badger and Trumpkin had not got in the way and forced him back to his seat and held him down.
    “Now, once and for all, Nikabrik,” said Trumpkin. “Will you contain yourself, or must Trufflehunter and I sit on your head?”
    Nikabrik sulkily promised to behave, and the other two asked Caspian to tell his whole story. When he had done so there was a moment’s silence.
    “This is the queerest thing I ever heard,” said Trumpkin.
    “I don’t like it,” said Nikabrik. “I didn’t know there were stories about us still told among the Humans. The less they know about us the better. That old nurse, now. She’d better have held her tongue. And it’s all mixed up with that Tutor: a renegade Dwarf. I hate ’em. I hate ’em worse than the Humans. You mark my words—no good will come of it.”
    “Don’t you go talking about things you don’t understand, Nikabrik,” said Trufflehunter. “You Dwarfs are as forgetful and changeable as the Humans themselves. I’m a beast, I am, and a Badger what’s more. We don’t change. We hold on. I say great good will come of it. This is the true King of Narnia we’ve got here: a true King, coming back to true Narnia. And we beasts remember, even if Dwarfs forget, that Narnia was never right except when a son of Adam was King.”
    “Whistles and whirligigs! Trufflehunter,” said Trumpkin. “You don’t mean you want to give the country to