“Pretty deep for man-made wells, however,” warned the young scientist. “A thousand feet? At least eight hundred!”
“I’m not sure how deep man-made wells can be dug with present technology here, but I know they go deeper than that at home,” said Tom thoughtfully. “I’ll have to check that out. You don’t know, do you, Retruance?”
“Not a bit of it!” cried the older Dragon. “We Dragons deal in fire, not water, my boy.”
Findles was excited by Tom’s proposed practical use of his information on the deep water’s flow.
“You’d dig deep wells to tap the aquifers and use it to water crops in the middle of the desert? No reason why it can’t be done, I say!” he enthused. “When you’re ready to start, call me. I’ll come help all I can.
You know,” he added, just struck with a new thought, “if the overbear-ing layer is impervious desert rock, as I suspect, the water must be under considerable pressure. In that case it might gush up through a strong well casing without pumping. What a sight!”
“We’ll have to be careful, won’t we, not to take too much of the water?” inquired the Librarian.
“I’ll have an answer for you on that in a few weeks,” promised Findles. “Some care is indicated, of course. Waterfields might go dry!
Of course, I’ve been saying for years and years, Waterfields could stand to have a little less water flowing through!”
As they rested in the late afternoon the white heron glided down to land on a low-hanging oak bough nearby. Tom greeted her eagerly and introduced her to his friends.
The bird overcame her first fears of the huge Dragons and politely exchanged bows with them.
“Now, as to the Dragon’s lair,” she said. “The hummock is most certainly man made, or rather, Dragon enhanced. It’s so large it takes three full minutes to fly across...”
“That would make it six miles wide,” interrupted Findles, consulting an ivory slide rule he pulled from his breast pocket.
“That’s right!” said the heron. “And as long, too.”
“I see why Papa was so long gone,” said Furbetrance, nodding gravely. “It would have taken even a Dragon quite a long time to make such a safe, dry haven.”
“I flew as low as I thought prudent,” continued the heron. “As it turned out, the Dragon was not paying any attention to me. He was playing catch with the man-child.”
“Catch?” cried Furbetrance. “You mean the boy was running away and the Dragon was trying to catch him?”
“No, no! They were tossing a ball back and forth. Quite cunningly, I thought, too,” replied the bird. “I’ve played in such manner with my own children, at times, before they learned to fly and left the nesting area.”
“So the child seems safe and well?” asked Retruance with considerable relief in his voice.
“Very much so, I should guess,” the heron answered. “He, the other Dragon, has built a covered nest—a hutch or a cote, I believe you’d call it—so they have a roof over their heads when it rains or the sun’s too hot. The center of the island is smoothly rolling and planted with lawns and flower beds, orchards and gardens of vegetables and fragrant ferns.”
“Papa was always a dirt gardener at heart,” murmured Retruance with a sentimental sniff.
“That’s about all I can tell you, friends,” said the heron, accepting a plateful of broiled bass fillets from the scholar. “I can tell you that anything as big as a Dragon or even a grown man couldn’t approach the Dragon’s island by either air or on foot without being seen when they were yet miles off. At night, perhaps, but I for one wouldn’t want to try it.”
They thanked the bird sincerely for her help. After they’d finished off the broiled fish and cleaned up the campsite, the researcher sat with his back against a tree trunk, smoothing his rough notes of the day and transferring them to his notebook.
The adventurers huddled on the other side of the campsite to discuss their next moves.
“I say we go over tonight, fly in quick and quiet, and snatch the child straight away while he sleeps,” Furbetrance insisted.
“But Papa won’t be asleep, especially if he knows we’re close by,”
his older brother objected. “No, what we need is a diversion. Somehow draw Papa away from the boy long enough to slip in behind him.”
“Wouldn’t he be expecting just that sort of thing?” asked Tom.
“You’re right, of course. That’s just what he would expect and plan for,” the Dragons said in agreement, sighing.
They fell silent for a long while.
Tom at last said, “What he won’t expect is anyone to come on foot to his hummock.”
“But that’s impossible!” cried Retruance. “Anyone trying to walk through the quicksands would be swallowed up in a trice! A horrible death and for naught.”
“Still, I recall ways men have managed to cross such quagmires before. I’ve read of their exploits, at least. A keeled boat would become trapped, but if we used Findles’s wide, flat boat that wouldn’t sink. I could lie in it and paddle it ashore under the cover of night.”
“I see what you’re saying,” cried Furbetrance. “Or you might use two wide wooden boards and move one ahead while you lie on the other, and alternate like that. Hard work, however!”
“And very slow,” added his older and wiser brother “It’d take a full night to reach the hummock’s edge. Tom’d be exposed to full view once daylight came. Hmmm!”
“Something must be done, though,” Tom insisted. “What else is there?”
“That’s good enough for a beginning,” agreed Furbetrance, rising and stretching his wings. “I’ll find a tree to cut up to make the flats, shall I?”
Retruance stayed him with a lifted claw.
“Wait! I suggest what Tom said earlier is still a good idea. It’s unlikely, as long as we don’t threaten him, that Papa’ll move or harm the Princeling.”
“Agreed,” said Tom.
“We need help. Murdan is, after all, Papa’s Companion.”
“I’d forgotten that,” admitted Furbetrance. “Yes, he would be most helpful.”
“And you’ve been meaning to ask Princess Manda to be your Companion for some time, I believe.” Retruance continued.
“True. I’m rather too shy to ask, if the truth were to be known!”
“Go to Overhall...fetch Murdan and the Princess...propose Com-panionship to Manda. I have no doubt she’ll accept you.”
“Nor have I,” said Tom. “She hasn’t ever really said so, but I know she truly wants to be a Companion.”
“If I’d known that,” grumbled Furbetrance, “I’d have asked her ages ago.”
It was quickly agreed that while Furbetrance and Tom returned to Overhall, Retruance would stay on the edge of Sinking Marsh, keeping an eye on his papa. He’d circle the hummock, at a distance, each day, and enlist the herons to fly closer to check on the welfare of Prince Ednoll, just in case.
“We can be back in three days if we fly straight to Overhall without stopping for food, drink, or sleep,” decided the Librarian.
“Be on your way, then!” said Retruance gloomily. “Waiting is the hardest part.”
Chapter Eleven
Old Place
As Tom and Furbetrance were departing from the edge of Sinking Marsh, Manda and her parents arrived at Overhall, after an unevent-ful overland ride north and west.
They were greeted warmly, and with great relief, by Rosemary of Ffallmar. She’d moved to her father’s castle after Ffallmar and his troops had marched off to lift the siege of Lexor.
“They’ve surrounded poor Lexor!” Rosemary told the King. “The Rellings, I mean. According to the last pigeon-post message we’ve had from your Lord High Chamberlain, the city is yet holding fast...at least as of yesterday morning. They’ve plenty of food and water, according to Walden. The townspeople are manning the wall along with the Royal Guard and maintaining good discipline.”
“Good old Walden!” exclaimed the
King with a relieved laugh. “How he’s improved! He used to be such a stuffed shirt, wasn’t he, sweetheart?”
The Queen nodded agreement while handing the sleeping Amelia to Rosemary, who snuggled her down with her own brood in the pleasant nursery atop Middle Tower.
“But, Father, what of Murdan?” asked Manda with concern. “He went ahead alone to Lexor and has since disappeared!”
“So it seems,” said the King, shaking his head. “Certainly Walden would have mentioned the Historian if he were safe in the city.”
“What must we do now?” Beatrix asked after they’d dined and were only waiting for someone to suggest an early bedtime.
“I’ll follow Ffallmar to Lexor,” decided the King. “The levees will expect me there, although Ffallmar of Ffallmar Farm will do perfectly well without my interference, I suspect. Sometimes a King must act the figurehead and let the people who know best work. You and Amelia should stay here, my dear. Overhall is the stoutest and safest castle anywhere in the kingdom.”
“I’ve visited here before,” the Queen reminded her husband, politely covering a deep yawn. “It’ll be as great a pleasure as possible under the circumstances, my dear! Isn’t anyone going to say, ‘Let’s to bed’? I can hardly keep my eyelids from falling shut!”
Eduard saw her abed and already sleeping soundly before he went to look into the nursery for a moment, and to walk the battlements, inspecting Murdan’s orange-liveried Overhall Guard where they stood their posts.
Captain Graham came to him and saluted gravely.
“Bad news, sire!” he announced. “They say Lord Murdan was captured by Rellings and imprisoned on an island in midst of the northern Blue!”
“Who sends this evil news?” cried the King.
“A Relling sergeant was captured by General Ffallmar’s scouts during a sortie from the southwest Lexor gate, sire. He said he was the one who captured my master, and that this leader of theirs, Great Blizzard-maker or whatever, condemned him to death by starving or freezing on an island of ice.”
The two, captain and King, stood in silent commiseration for a long while. A cold wind whipped the castle’s banners and pennants out straight to the east. The chill wind smelled of approaching snow.
“The others can wait until morning to learn of it,” decided the King at last, sadly. “Anything else?”
“There’s a report that a force of Northmen marches this way, sire, having outflanked Ffallmar...or missed him entire. No confirmation of that yet. We’re ready to defend Overhall. We’ve plenty of food and fod-der. Water’s no problem, thanks to Gugglerun. My entire force is on alert, as you’ve seen. I vouch for their courage and skill!”
“Of course you do!” cried the King, clapping him on the back.
“Well, we’ll just have to wait and see what comes. I was hoping to ride to join Ffallmar this morning, but this will hold me here for a while, I suppose. Somehow I’m not worried about Murdan, though. He’s surely a match for a petty Relling tyrant.”
“I believe so, too,” Graham agreed. “Lord Ffallmar and his main troops cannot reach the capital before tomorrow afternoon, however.
They’ll have their work cut out for them, especially if it snows yet again.”
“Ffallmar can relieve the city if anyone can,” the King said stoutly.
“No news from Sir Thomas and Retruance Constable, either, which means, I’m afraid, that they haven’t recovered your son, Lord King. If word comes, shall I awaken you?”
“Only if it’s good news,” decided Eduard, for he was a sensible man. “I need a good night of sleep more than evil tidings about which nothing can be done, save worrying.”
Graham saluted and watched him go stumping wearily down the stone stairs to the courtyard below.
“Keep your eyes peeled, you dairy-maid swains!” he barked in his best parade-ground bellow to the lookouts atop the three towers and along the encircling walls.
To his second-in-command he said, “Wake me if they see or hear anything. Anything at all!”
He clumped down the stairs to the outer bailey, making a mental note to have them swept clear if new snow fell during the night, and headed for his own bed. No good was served by staying awake and worrying, as the King said. Graham had long experience at soldiering to back him on that.
Despite his determination, he lay awake worrying for a long time before sleep captured him at last.
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Hoarling, who functioned best in subfreezing weather and winds, stopped twice on his way across the north slopes of the Snow Mountains to allow his passengers to eat, relieve themselves, warm hands and feet over a fire, and stretch their weary legs.
“Only a little bit better than that iceberg,” Murdan complained, pounding his hands on his forearms, trying to work up some warming circulation. “Brrr!”
“If you’d been chained on that iceberg for fourteen days as I was,”
said Peter Gantrell, still chained and huddling close to the fire of dry twigs and pitchy pine-wood—lots of light and fragrant smoke but too little heat, unfortunately—”I’m just beginning to feel my toes again, as it is.”
Plume nodded glumly but made no comment. He’d avoided speaking to or even looking at Murdan, his former employer, shrinking from contact even when they rode the Ice Dragon’s slippery back scales.
“You people just don’t appreciate a pleasant season when you see it,” said the Ice Dragon, chuckling. “We’d better get up and going again, friends. It’ll be blizzarding here in half an hour. The farther west we go, the heavier snow we’ll meet. Not that I mind, but poor visibility could cause us to miss our way.”
The first night they flew until the Dragon complained his wings were growing weary. They sheltered until dawn in a deserted, half-ruined village surrounded by a sturdy palisade of upright logs.
Murdan recognized it as Plaingirt, once the stronghold of Gantrell’s hired soldiers, the Mercenary Knights. Inside its abandoned log huts and halls it was almost as cold as the outside air, but at least there was no wind and plenty of wood to burn.
The last of the Historian’s meager supply of bread had long since been consumed, but, poking about in the kitchen storehouse and pantry, Peter found a half sack - of wheaten flour and a moldy green smoked ham.
“These must be three, four years old!” protested Murdan.
“It never gets warm enough up this high on the mountainside, even in summer, to cause food to spoil very fast,” the Dragon explained with exaggerated patience. “It should be perfectly edible for you lesser types of life.”
“I remember how to make bread of a sort, from my campaigning days with the old Gantrell, your father, Peter,” the Historian said.
“Scrape the mold off and the ham will be quite good, I expect.”
He set the Accountant to work on the latter task while he tried his hand at campfire bread—without leavening, of course. Once pared, sliced, and warmed on sticks over the coals, the ham, along with the hot, flat bread and melted snow to drink, made a fair supper.
The fire in the log hall’s stone fireplace allowed them to spend the night in some comfort while the storm howled outside and dumped another foot of white on everything in sight.
Peter Gantrell did his share of menial chores despite the dragging chain: cutting wood, tending a boiling pot, or clearing away the clutter left by the Mercenary Knights when they left. Plume, on the other hand, stayed far from doing anything at all, unless ordered to it by Murdan or Peter. Then he performed his assigned tasks with disgust written all over his pinched face.
“I really can’t figure that man out,” muttered Murdan after he’d sent the Accountant out to fetch a bucket of clean snow to melt for drinking water. The village well had a half foot of ice plugging it. “His life was saved from the ice as surely as yours—and mine, for that matter—but he doesn’t seem very grateful for it, does he?”
“You know him better than I,” Gantrell said with a shrug. “He was ever very slick, subservient, and cal
low, I thought, when I had deal-ings with him...er, before.”
He meant “before” his defeat and exile, but refrained from saying what they both knew very well.
Plume returned and sullenly hung the bucket of snow over the fire to melt. When it was steaming, all three took turns washing their grimy hands, face, and feet. It was much too cold for further bathing.
Razors and soap had been taken from them by their Relling captors.
The Ice Dragon needed little rest, as he slept in glacial ice caves all summer, as suited his subspecies. He was nowhere to be seen when they arose in the morning.
Murdan shook his head in disgust. At least here they were warm, had shelter and some food, and wouldn’t have to swim to safety across a stormy sea. If the Dragon had deserted them, they could still hope to make their way back to Overhall in time.
But as they finished eating the last gristly chunks of ham, hard bread, and plain, hot water, Hoarling came swirling down from the overcast sky and poked his head through the front door of the hall where they’d spent the stormy night.
“Just off checking up on our Rellings,” he explained, accepting a smoking ham hock to crunch between his powerful teeth.
“Are they near, then?” asked Peter, startled by the thought.
“No, m’lord! The nearest Northmen are in a rough circle about the stockaded fort at—Frontier, isn’t it? I’m a stranger here myself.
South and east of here, it is.”
“Frontier that would be,” agreed Murdan. “We’ll continue on to my mother’s Old Place, if you please, Master Ice Dragon.”
“I keep my bargains,” said the Dragon huffily, and when they had packed their few belongings, he took them aboard and shot off north-west by west, trailing swirling streamers of ice crystals behind him in the weak winter sunlight.
The second night was spent under a thick clump of majestic blue spruce. Their haven wasn’t as uncomfortable as Murdan had feared it would be. The close-set boughs were layered heavily with snow and, once the travelers crawled under the wide-spread branches that swept the bare ground and lighted a small fire on a stone hearth, the air became quite warm.
Dragon Rescue Page 12