The police swarmed the orchestra, batons raised. The symphony orchestra had played the first bars of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue at the news that they would be arrested and carted off to jail, but held firm, and as the police reached them switched spontaneously into Beethoven’s Symphony No 9 in D Minor, Op. 125: IV (also known as the Ode to Joy).

Then, without ceasing to play or losing their tempo, they proceeded to… fight the police.

The resulting fight should have ended swiftly - after all, who ever heard of a bunch of classical musicians fighting off the police?

But decades of state-administered and mandated corruption had weakened the police (many of whom filed Bribery or Fraud reports with the Ministry of Crime when their physical fitness checks came up), while the classical musicians were surprisingly strong. They couldn’t use their hands, but they didn’t let this stop them from giving the policemen a good kicking, and getting them into reverse leg grabs. Nor did the exertion trouble them, for they had mastered their breathwork to such a degree that they could play and fight simultaneously.

There was a reason for this. Claireholm had observed, years ago, that in every fairy tale of true heroism the hero - whether strapping young man or tiny tot - has to run, climb, and exert large amounts of strength. Even if they don’t fight per se, the sudden nature of the few tasks they undertake often involves the application of massive forces.

Any oaf can topple a beanstalk if it’s just standing around and you have hours and hours and hours to whack it with an axe, but to topple a beanstalk while a giant is climbing down it and threatening to eat you is quite another matter. (Especially given his garish taste in food - who in their right mind would want bread made from the bones of Englishmen, when you could enjoy the taste of English cooking instead?)

But to use Claireholm’s own example: the amount of force needed for Gretel to push a witch into an oven is equal to the mass of the witch multiplied by the acceleration required to move her with sufficient speed that she can’t react to being shoved. Since witches aren’t as light as some people seem to think - their heads alone are as thick as a brick - this requires a fairly impressive application of force, far beyond what might reasonably be expected of a wee girl.

Claireholm had not, of course, made this observation with the intent that the members of his symphony orchestra would all get gym memberships and join multiple local martial arts clubs - he’d been struggling to open a jar of pickles at the time, and was trying to convince himself to go back to mountain climbing. Nonetheless his symphony orchestra - in whom the spirit of fairyland was alive and well - took these words to heart, dedicating themselves to becoming the heroes of fairy tale yore.

(The concerned reader may be glad to know that Claireholm was successful in reviving his mountain climbing hobby, and also in opening the jar of pickles.)

For years now they would all troop out to the local gym, horrifying the other gym members by doing one hundred person joint exercise routines, and then break up as they went to their respective dojos and boxing gyms. They wouldn’t be caught doing the French Mistake.

Claireholm had not actually known anything about this, nor had he planned for anything other than a full route, and he was as stupefied as the police at the sight of his symphony orchestra staging a successful counterattack.

Throughout this all Brunehilde continued to sing, half a dozen policemen clinging in vain to her arms as she strode forwards, Schiller’s aria on her lips.

Laufet, Brüder, eure Bahn,

Freudig, wie ein Held zum Siegen.

She would not allow herself to falter, for she was here not as Brunehilde, the Woman, but as the fat lady, the Proverb. All the officers in the City of Tombstones, she swore, would not stop her aria… or her wallops, as she thumped and tossed screaming police officers around.

And then the orchestra came to life.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Officer Ernst had just been on the receiving end of one of Brunehilde’s wallops, and staggered back, trying to remove his pith helmet from over his eyes. He had finally succeeded, after a Herculean struggle, and was holding it in his hands when he felt a tap upon his shoulder.

He turned around, and then was punched in the face by the fat lady's tuba.

But here I should back up about two minutes, for it should be clear to the attentive reader that we have missed something. After all, the symphony orchestra fighting the police and winning, however rousing an experience it may be, cannot have been the plan B of Claireholm.

He didn't know they would win, and while Yaaroghkh or the Doll would have known the orchestra's real strength neither had any standard against which to judge it. (A world-famous champion wrestler does not appear inordinately strong, when one can cause earthquakes by stamping one’s feet.)

But the Doll, ah, there it was. For Claireholm had told the Doll to activate plan B; and plan B the Doll activated. As the police rushed into the ranks of the symphony orchestra, brawling with the bassoonists, tussling with the trumpets, and veering from the violinists (lest they be vexed, violated, and vanquished), the Doll pulled out his own teensy weensy baton and stood on a chair. (Its owner, the orchestra’s kazooist, had Officer Bart in the infamous wrestling move known as ‘the Chibougamau Cryptic Chokehold.’)

The orchestra realised plan B was at last afoot and spontaneously leapt into Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker Suite, Op. 71: Russian Dance, much to Claireholm’s bewilderment. (Did they even need him any more?)

As the vibrant tune washed over the Doll he began to dance in place upon the chair, spinning and leaping and waving his baton, singing a poem of his own composition, one that was distinctly…goblinesque.

It was not a composition I can render into English, nor am I greatly inclined to try. He warbled, light flashing in his eyes, the words bubbling out of his mouth in a thousand tongues and yet none, as he kicked his feet in tune with his own arrhythmic beat.

The very atmosphere changed as he did his little dance. A warm, silent beat called to the musicians from out of nowhere - speaking to them within their souls, but from outside - and the air shimmered with a hidden light. Then they jumped with surprise as their instruments shifted in their grip, starting to move of their own accord.

This was no crude animation spell, such as Ray used to animate the statues, hurling his will into their vessels. The Doll had mastered the Way of the Ten Thousand Changes, and the sound of his song caused the will of the instruments to animate themselves.

…Which is an inordinately fancy way of saying that the orchestra came alive, and began fighting the police of its own accord.

Trombones trounced, throttling officers in their slides, the drums began pounding out a beat on pith helmets, and Officer Oleandra was chased in a circle by the cello section. Not to be undone, the flutes disproved the superstition that you need feet to tap dance, while the oboe took advantage of several officers who’d been tied up by the strings to demonstrate its skill at auctioneering.

“And that’ll be three dollars… do I have three dollars, three dollars… four dollars… five dollars… do I have five dollars… going once… six dollars! We have six dollars, credit to the lady in the back…”

All this risked proving a great source of distress to the symphony orchestra who, though their hands were free to better fight, now had no instruments to play. Would the vicissitudes of Fate - which is to say, the magical whims of an immortal children’s toy - render them worthless, mere wastes who knew a little about how to fight? But our readers need not worry:

They practised as a choir on the side.

It is, admittedly, hard to sing along to Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, Third Movement, which was what the instruments were playing as they sawed and hammered at the police, but a little thing like “no choral line” isn’t enough to stop a symphony orches- er, choral ensemble. Voices roaring (in perfect tune) the classical musicians pounced on the panicking police, with the instruments ‘instructing’ alongside them. It was corporal punishment, for the privates.

Claireholm kicked away a despondent Officer Fido (he’d been pounding ineffectually on the conductor the entire time), and raised his baton to the sky. The symphony orchestra, mortals and musical instruments alike, paused mid-fight to listen to him speak.

“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, instruments and goblins,” he called, his deep baritone voice echoing over the entire square. In the parking lot of Das Gleiche the goblins paused in the middle of doing a square dance on top of a pile of sobbing demonic cultivators. The crowd listened attentively. They were enjoying themselves immensely, and had grown sizeably in the course of the last half hour with the addition of hundreds of adults and several schools’ worth of children.

“I’d like to ask you all to join us in the closing act of our performance.”

And with those enigmatic words, he turned to the symphony orchestra.

“Ahem…Offenbach’s Infernal galop, if you will.”

And the police and demonic cultivators were chased down the street, to the tune of the can-can.