alex piper

If you happened to visit Llwnffylch village in Wales and asked anyone about Benedigeidfram Dyfnallt, they'd tell you that young Bennie was the mole-catcher's apprentice and quite a deft hand with the spade. Outside of Llwnffylch, you'd hear that Ben Devonald was one of the greatest adventurers of the Empire and the hero in dozens of stories that every schoolboy could recite by heart.

Both are true, of course.

Not that Bennie particularly wanted to be a hero, mind you; he was perfectly happy catching moles in the gardens of Llwnffylch. But the world had a habit of dropping adventure right in front of him. Take, for instance, the entire affair with the clockwork knight.

Bennie had only just returned home from dealing with the ice dragons of the South Pole, and now he was settling in to deal with far more important matters. Moles had tunneled beneath Eira Hamer's garden, eating the roots of her prize-winning vegetables. Removing them without doing more damage to old Eira's crops would be a delicate task. Bennie was just putting the final touches on the plans for a highly specialized mole-extraction device -- consisting of a wheelbarrow, two jars of marmalade, a pair of trousers and a tame dormouse named Daffyd -- when someone knocked insistently on his door.