The Dragons 3

by Colin Thompson

  The two of them untied both rafts, climbed onto one of them and set themselves adrift. By the time anyone noticed, they would be safely away.

  ‘And if anyone ever finds out we are here,’ said Tracyvere, ‘we’ll tell them that we were kidnapped by Mordred but managed to escape.’

  ‘You are the most devious person I have ever met,’ said Culvert. ‘No wonder I love you so much.’

  ‘I see that the Clapshamshires have left the others and are paddling the two rafts away from here,’ said Merlin, taking out his pocket crystal ball.

  ‘Maybe they’d been kidnapped and have managed to escape,’ said King Arthur.

  ‘I’m sure that is what we will be told,’ said Merlin. ‘I don’t think we’ll have any more trouble from them, but just in case, we’ll deal with them later.’

  Mordred took a hairpin from one of the fake washerwomen’s hair and picked the lock, letting the remaining attackers into the castle. It was pitch black.

  ‘Er, anyone got a lantern or a candle?’ said Mordred.

  ‘I have a lantern and a flint with which to light it,’ said Captain Shortbread Silver. ‘A well-prepared sailor never goes anywhere without such things.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Mordred.

  ‘Indeed,’ said the Captain.

  ‘So perhaps you could light your lantern?’

  ‘I left it on the raft,’ said the Captain. ‘I’ll just nip back and get it.’

  ‘Take a couple of soldiers with you,’ said Mordred, ‘in case any guards come by.’

  What he really meant was that he didn’t completely trust the Captain and wanted to make sure he wouldn’t run away.

  Suddenly, there was a small outbreak of more bad timing as a second falling dragon killed Captain Shortbread Silver and his two companions. Mordred, who had been watching from the doorway, was hit full in the face by an unspecified lump of burning sailor. It burnt off both his eyebrows and left him with a nasty scar in the middle of his forehead that was shaped like a rude sign.

  So now the invading army was reduced to seven.

  ‘I was doing some wondering,’ said Sergycal, ‘and my wondering was thinking that maybe we should be quietly withdrawing in order to be building up our army.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Mordred. ‘Remember, we are the Knights Intolerant and the Knights Intolerant never retreat.’

  ‘No, no, of course they don’t,’ said Sergycal, ‘but this will not be a retreating we are making. This will be a tactical withdrawallery. It’s the sort of things great soldiers do all the time.’

  Mordred was torn. The adrenaline that had been racing around his brain – hyping him up at the thought of stabbing King Arthur to death at least fifteen times, dragging Morgan le Fey off in rusty shackles and chains, throwing Merlin off the tallest tower in a really baggy pair of dirty grey tights covered in suspicious stains, and drowning Sir Lancelot in a vat of very bad cooking sherry53 – was slowing down. Instead it was being replaced by the fact that there were only seven of them left and Camelot was a huge place overrun with people, all of who adored King Arthur and would defend him to the bitter end. A tactical retreat did make sense, but it still felt a bit like running away.

  Mordred suggested that maybe they could go down to the kitchens and kill a few scullery maids or junior cabbage operatives, just to show they had been inside Camelot and were a force to be reckoned with.

  ‘But then they would know of us being here,’ said Sergycal, ‘and then when they are not finding us they might be thinking we had done some runnings away.’

  ‘Good point,’ said Mordred, but he really wanted to leave some evidence that he had been inside the castle.

  They were, of course, still in complete darkness and blundered on until they found a door. It was the Number Twelve Turnip Store and it was full of turnips and a very small child.

  ‘Listen, you little brat,’ said Mordred, dragging the child to the door. ‘I want you to go upstairs and …’

  ‘I aren’t allowed upstairs,’ said the child.

  ‘Yeah, OK then, just go to the cook and …’

  ‘I aren’t allowed to talk to the cook.’

  ‘Well, just go and tell someone that Prince Mordred and his men were here and they did wee wee all over King Arthur’s turnips,’ said Mordred, doing exactly that.

  The boy ran off into the darkness as Mordred and the others blundered back towards the door. Three of them totally managed to not avoid the open trapdoor that no one remembered being there on their way in, leaving the army of four to make its way out of the castle.

  Fortunately, the dragons had finished falling out of the sky and the army of four were able to cross the four metres of narrow land and reach the bulrushes, where the two rafts were no longer hidden.

  ‘Maybe they were further along there?’ said Mordred.

  ‘No, they were doing being here,’ said Sergycal, bending down to pick up a button. ‘And if I’m not mistakenly, this button is from the sleeves of Lady Tracyvere’s dressing clothes dress.’

  ‘But she and her husband were killed when the first dragon fell on them, weren’t they?’

  ‘It would appearing not,’ said Sergycal.

  ‘But could she not have lost the button when we were coming ashore?’ said Mordred.

  ‘She could have, but I am having thinkings that they took the rafts and fleeded before we entered the castle,’ said Sergycal. ‘Your parents never did trusting the Clapshamshires. They did thought them to be up themselves, with all their stucking-up ways, like peeling turnips and trimming their body hairies and not letting the sheeps sleep on their bed.’

  ‘I think you’re probably right,’ said Mordred, ‘but without the rafts what are we going to do? Our retreat is not so much tactical as impossible.’

  ‘It would seem that we are having no choices but to do going back into the castle,’ said Sergycal. ‘We could do swims to the nearest island, but that would not get us anywheres and we could get eatended by the olm things. Though if we swimming for it or do staying here, we will have nothing for eatings and the nights are doing so cold now we could freezed to death be. No, we have no choices but to returning to the castle. At least we should be able to find some foods and shelter.’

  As if to prove his point, it began to snow and hail and rain all at the same time. The four of them opened the door and re-entered the dark tunnel.

  ‘I be starvationing, cousin,’ said one of the two of them who weren’t Mordred or Sergycal.

  ‘We’ll do going back to that turnip room,’ said Sergycal. ‘At least can get something to eat there.’

  On their way there, the two of them who weren’t Mordred or Sergycal totally managed to not avoid the open trapdoor that they all remembered being in a quite different place, leaving the army of two to make its way back to the Number Twelve Turnip Store, where they were so faint with hunger they had eaten three turnips each before they remembered these were the very turnips they had peed on.

  ‘It wasn’t supposed to be like this,’ said Mordred, slumping down in the corner.

  His one and only slight consolation was that it was so dark Sergycal couldn’t see him crying.

  ‘Never mind, my lord,’ Sergycal said. ‘It is times are doing like this that show us who the real mens are. Lesser mens than us would be doing slumped down in a corner crying like baby things, but us fearlessly Knights Intolerant just take firmly controls and tell ourselves that things can’t do getting any worse.’

  Mordred couldn’t answer without letting Sergycal know he was crying. He was also shaking with fear and shivering with cold, though not necessarily in that order.

  Sergycal had been wrong. Things could do getting worse and they did.

  A bolt on the outside of the door slid shut, followed by seven more bolts, which rattled in a taunting sort of way before sliding shut too. Water began to rise up through the floor. It could have been worse. The water could have been freezing cold and kept rising until Mordred and Sergycal were drow
ned, but it didn’t. It rose halfway up their thighs, gurgled in a taunting sort of way, then stopped. One by one the turnips rose to the surface and bobbed around in the darkness.

  ‘Oh well,’ said Sergycal, ‘at least the turnips will be having our urines rinsed off them.’

  ‘Not exactly,’ said Mordred.

  It promised to be a long night.

  ‘I think our two visitors in the turnip cellar will not cause any more trouble,’ said Merlin, taking out his pocket crystal ball again and passing it round the room for everyone to see.

  ‘We’ll deal with them later,’ he added. ‘In the meantime, some more visitors are on their way up the River Stycks.’

  FAMOUS DRAGONS OF THE WORLD

  BELGIUM

  COUNT FLATLUENT VON BROCCOLI

  And in that meantime, having cut the Sargasso Island into narrow strips, the entire population of the Diabolical Islands were about to try sailing their very long raft upstream against a very strong current that didn’t want them to.

  It was obvious to everyone, except ninety per cent of those on board who were dead thick, that there was no way they were going to make it to Camelot in time for the longest night of the year.

  Everyone lined up on either side of the raft and pushed against the river banks with long poles, but for every metre they moved upstream, they moved almost a metre back downstream each time they lifted their poles to put them in place for the next push. After four hours they had covered eight hundred centimetres.

  So they sent men ashore to collect, borrow and steal every horse, cow, sheep, dog and cat they could find to tie to the raft to drag it along. This worked a lot better. In the next four hours they advanced four whole metres.

  ‘Of course,’ said Princess Floridian, ‘we could just leave the raft and walk.’

  ‘Do you realise how far it is?’ said Rampart. ‘I have walked the distance with my father when our boat sank from carrying a load of turnips that had a very high lead content. It took more than a week to reach home, not to mention all the hundreds of groats everyone charged us to walk across their land.’

  ‘So if my calculations are correct and it took a week to walk to Camelot, and if we stay on the raft at the rate we are going, it will take about a year to get there.’

  ‘Well, in that case we would get there in time for the longest night of the year,’ said Rampart.

  ‘Yes, next year,’ said Ruthra. ‘Very funny.’

  Their rapid progress with all the assorted livestock dragging the Sargasso raft got slower and slower, as the animals attacked each other, chewed through the ropes and ran away or simply dropped dead from exhaustion.

  And then their progress stopped altogether. There was a bend in the river that was sharper than the very, very long raft could negotiate and it became totally stuck. Bits of the raft fell off and raced back downstream, carrying people with it. Other bits of the Sargasso raft jammed up close to the rich, welcoming earth of the river bank, sent out roots and began to grow.

  Eventually everything that was floating, sailing or generally drifting down the river from Camelot jammed up against the front of the raft, and as more stuff came up behind it, everything was forced together tighter and tighter until it made a dam. A family of beavers, who had been contemplating evolving into a race of creatures that might enjoy damming up rivers, took the opportunity to add bits to the raft until it was not exactly watertight, but dense enough to stop most of the water getting through.

  The river flowing down to the harbour shrank to a stream, while the water level behind the raft got taller and taller. It climbed over the riverbanks and began to spread across the surrounding countryside.

  ‘Not exactly what we had in mind,’ said Blind Pew, ‘but I suppose if we wait long enough, we could probably flood Camelot and drown Arthur and everyone.’

  ‘And by the way,’ he added, ‘I think I should tell you that I’m not blind.’

  ‘WE KNOW,’ shouted everyone within earshot. ‘WE’VE ALWAYS KNOWN.’

  ‘Well, you never said anything,’ said Blind Pew. ‘I suppose I ought to change my name then.’

  ‘We will call you Bright Eyes,’ said everyone.

  ‘Bright Eyes?’ said Blind Pew. ‘No Pew bit? I mean, it’s an old family name.’

  ‘OK,’ they said. ‘From now on you shall be known as Bright Eyes Pew.’

  ‘All right,’ said Bright Eyes Pew. ‘So what do you all think about the flooding Camelot idea?’

  ‘I think,’ said Ruthra, ‘that by the time the water’s high enough to do that, I will be a very old man.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Princess Floridian. ‘Love the idea. Beautiful image, the thought of the turrets sticking out of the water as the olms circle round and round, waiting for the tallest tower to vanish beneath the waves and the last of the bodies to float out. But, as Ruthra says, it will probably take years to happen.’

  ‘Besides, they would all see it coming and have time to escape,’ said Ruthra.

  ‘Fair point,’ said Bright Eyes Pew. ‘So what’s your plan?’

  ‘This is what we will do,’ said Rampart, taking charge. ‘We are only a few minutes away from the harbour. So a couple of us will go down and get a small boat, sail it up here, haul it across our raft to the other side and then sail it up the river to Camelot.’

  ‘We’d never get a boat big enough to carry us all,’ said Ruthra.

  ‘No, so we will just go on with a few of us,’ said Rampart. ‘We’ll travel through the night and reach Camelot before dawn, then enter the castle through the back door. When my father and I delivered vegetables to Camelot, I often went that way and now know the place like the back of my hand. Our main weapon is that no one will be expecting us. There is no doubt that Merlin has spies and he’ll know we are stuck here in the river. Even Blind Pew could see this raft …’

  ‘Well, duh,’ said Bright Eyes Pew. ‘One, I am not blind and two, I am actually standing on it.’

  ‘It was a figure of speech,’ said Rampart. ‘What I mean is, Merlin will be watching the raft. He won’t notice a tiny boat slipping through the night.’

  ‘What sort of vegetables?’ called a voice in the crowd.

  ‘What?’

  ‘What sort of vegetables did you deliver?’

  ‘Which hand, left or right?’ called another.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The inside of the castle, you know, like the back of your hand, which hand is it, left or right?’

  ‘I think you all need to go and have a bit of a lie down,’ said Princess Floridian. ‘It’s been a long day and you’re all obviously very tired.’

  ‘The figure of speech,’ called a third voice. ‘What figure is it? Is it a seven? I hope it’s a seven. That’s my lucky number.’

  There were a lot more questions and a huge argument over which vegetable would be your favourite one to deliver if you were actually a deliverer of vegetables, which no one was because none of them had had training for it.

  While this went on, Rampart and Ruthra cut a large log free from the tail of the raft and floated back down to the harbour, where they stole a small boat.

  ‘We do not want the sleekest, fastest boat,’ said Rampart. ‘We want the darkest one. The one that will be best for slipping unnoticed through the night.’

  This was, unsurprisingly, the undertaker’s funeral boat. Every square inch of it, including the sail, was pitch black. It was so dark that Ruthra and Rampart crashed into it because they hadn’t been able to see it.

  ‘Perfect,’ said Ruthra as he threw the solitary night watchman overboard.

  ‘Perfect,’ said Princess Floridian when they got back to the raft.

  ‘Where is it? I can’t see it,’ said Bright Eyes Pew as they dragged it out of the water and along the river bank past the raft.

  ‘I wonder when they’ll be back with a boat,’ said quite a lot of people on the raft, who couldn’t see a thing as the funeral boat was dragged right past them. ‘Because we need to get ready to g
o.’

  ‘Go? What do you mean go?’ said someone. ‘They won’t be taking you. They’re only getting a small boat. There’ll only be room for about six of us.’

  ‘Us, us? What do you mean us? You won’t be coming.’

  A MASSIVE, HUGE fight broke out on the raft, which was still going on as Rampart pushed the funeral boat back into the water and everyone climbed aboard to slip up the river to Camelot.

  Everyone was:

  Ruthra.

  Princess Floridian.

  Rampart.

  Bright Eyes Pew.

  Two of the biggest, strongest, thickest people from the raft.

  A chicken called Marion who had appeared as if from nowhere.

  As Rampart had predicted, they reached the back of the castle just before dawn. They hid the boat in the same bulrushes as Mordred’s group had, but with one slight difference. When one of the two big, strong, thick men said, ‘I wonder why they are called bulrushes?’ and a huge bull rushed out and charged him, it was the bull that ended up dead. It ran headlong into him and broke its head.

  ‘I’m glad that’s cleared that up then,’ said Bright Eyes Pew.

  They slipped into the dark tunnel, but, unlike Mordred, Rampart knew exactly where he was and what to do. He told everyone to keep quiet while he let out a strange deep whistle that echoed along the tunnel until it reached its destination, which was the left ear of the fourteenth assistant turnip polisher, who had just fallen asleep and totally failed to hear it.

  ‘That’s strange,’ said Rampart. ‘She always comes when I whistle. We have an understanding. I whistle. She wakes up and comes down here with a lamp and then I give her a little turnip, one of those sweet baby turnips that girls simply adore. Then we go up to the kitchens and she gives me a wonderful pie.’

  But the girl did not wake up because she was no longer in charge of her own brain.