The_Complete_Chronicles_of_Narnia_(volumes_1-7,_in_order_of_publication)

again. It all seemed to belong to an even older Narnia than the Narnia of which his nurse
had told him.
It was after they had taken up their quarters in and around the How that fortune began to
turn against them. King Miraz's scouts soon found their new lair, and he and his army
arrived on the edge of the woods. And as so often happens, the enemy turned out stronger
than they had reckoned. Caspian's heart sank as he saw company after company arriving.
And though Miraz's men may have been afraid of going into the wood, they were even
more afraid of Miraz, and with him in command they carried battle deeply into it and
sometimes almost to the How itself. Caspian and other captains of course made many
sorties into the open country. Thus there was fighting on most days and sometimes by
night as well; but Caspian's party had on the whole the worst of it.
At last there came a night when everything had gone as badly as possible, and the rain
which had been falling heavily all day had ceased at nightfall only to give place to raw
cold. That morning Caspian had arranged what was his biggest battle yet, and all had
hung their hopes on it. He, with most of the Dwarfs, was to have fallen on the King's
right wing at daybreak, and then, when they were heavily engaged, Giant
Wimbleweather, with the Centaurs and some of the fiercest beasts, was to have broken
out from another place and endeavoured to cut the King's right off from the rest of the
army. But it had all failed. No one had warned Caspian (because no one in these later
days of
Narnia remembered) that Giants are not at all clever. Poor Wimbleweather, though as
brave as a lion, was a true Giant in that respect. He had broken out at the wrong time and
from the wrong place, and both his party and Caspian's had suffered badly and done the
enemy little harm. The best of the Bears had been hurt, a Centaur terribly wounded, and
there were few in Caspian's party who had not lost blood. It was a gloomy company that
huddled under the dripping trees to eat their scanty supper.
The gloomiest of all was Giant Wimbleweather. He knew it was all his fault. He sat in
silence shedding big tears which collected on the end of his nose and then fell off with a
huge splash on the whole bivouac of the Mice, who had just been beginning to get warm
and drowsy. They all jumped up, shaking the water out of their ears and wringing their
little blankets, and asked the Giant in shrill but forcible voices whether he thought they
weren't wet enough without this sort of thing. And then other people woke up and told the
Mice they had been enrolled as scouts and not as a concert party, and asked why they
couldn't keep quiet. And Wimbleweather tiptoed away to find some place where he could
be miserable in peace and stepped on somebody's tail and somebody (they said
afterwards it was a fox) bit him. And so everyone was out of temper.
But in the secret and magical chamber at the heart of the How, King Caspian, with
Cornelius and the Badger and Nikabrik and Trumpkin, were at council. Thick pillars of
ancient workmanship supported the roof. In the centre was the Stone itself - a stone table,
split right down the centre, and covered with what had once been writing of some kind:
but ages of wind and rain and snow had almost worn them away in old times when the