‘You're going to have to put this on,’ Paul held out the circlet to Lynella.
She looked horrified. He put it on her head. ‘The slightest use of your power inside that thing would wreck it.’
‘He's right. You must,’ Gardiner confirmed.
She said nothing but left the circlet in place.
They watched for the door to open, wondering how they would avoid the bolts which were now clattering against the pressure hull. The door did not open but, as they watched, they saw the loading ramp come down.
‘Good idea!’ Paul shouted into the radio as they leapt into the Jeep. Keeping their heads down they drove out onto the road and up the ramp at speed. Before it had even started to close, they lifted off.
They took Lynella forward into the cockpit. Paul looked at her nervously, but she smiled back.
‘Can I sit here?’ she asked, settling into the co-pilot's seat without waiting for a reply. Looking out through the window she immediately gave the pilot directions to find Angus's camp. When they landed she stood regally in the doorway before her stunned companions.
They had to wait for Atlanta to orbit before they could fly again, and they spent the time helping Angus and the others pack up the camp. Soon they were moving again. Sweeping over the sparsely populated Western castle, they saw a few poorly tended fields with the old castle crumbling slowly at their centre. A few minutes later, the Southern Castle came in sight and the pilot prepared to land in an open field, well away from the buildings.
‘Why are we landing here?’ Lynella asked.
‘Why not?’ Paul replied. ‘We don't want to frighten everybody. It won't take long to walk to the castle. They'll probably come and get us’
‘I don't want to be collected up, like some sort of vagrant,’ Lynella replied. ‘Land in the courtyard.’
‘It would be much too dangerous. They'd be terrified,’ the pilot replied.
‘Land in the courtyard!’ Lynella instructed him. He ignored her, but Paul and Angus soon noticed that she had removed the circlet from her head. The image on a display screen in front of her pixelated and then began to move around. The pilot looked on in alarm.
‘OK,’ Paul cut in quickly.
Approaching the castle, Paul saw frantic activity around the walls. The trees, undergrowth and creepers were being cut back, revealing the decaying stonework. Masons were working from ladders, filling in the gaps where stones and mortar had fallen away. Carpenters were assembling protective screens and complex catapult weapons behind the battlements at the top of the walls.
‘I thought you said they weren't expecting us to attack them,’ Smith said to Paul.
‘They're not,’ Lynella replied. ‘They're preparing to defend themselves against the dragons.’
The officers from the ship looked on in amazement. ‘It's all in my report,’ Paul said. ‘I haven't actually seen one, but I've seen plenty of descriptions in the books in the monastery.’
‘The dragons are coming to see your ship,’ Lynella added.
At this the Paul and the officers looked completely blank. Angus explained, ‘They can sense the field from your ship and they are drawn towards it.’
Smith took a moment to absorb this but finally asked, ‘If they're going to come and see us, how big are they?’
‘About twenty feet high and very nasty,’ Paul looked at him. ‘I never thought they would come near us.’
‘I'll tell the Captain.’
‘Don't worry. I can kill them,’ Lynella reassured him.
‘According to the books, she can,’ Paul added.
‘I'll tell him that, too.’
As they moved closer, they could see the ruins of the burnt-out stables.
‘What burned the stables?’ Paul asked. ‘The dragons can't set fire to things, can they?’
‘No, I don't think the dragons have been here yet,’ Lynella replied. ‘I burned the stables.’
‘I think I ought to tell him that as well,’ Smith added, looking at Paul.
‘It was an accident,’ Lynella replied.
The shuttlecraft was now manoeuvring above the courtyard. The people below had stopped work and were looking up in amazement.
The pilot switched on an external speaker and spoke into a microphone. ‘Nobody's going to get hurt. Please clear the courtyard, so we can land.’
This announcement seemed to have little effect on the crowd below and some of them were gathering up crossbows and aiming them up at the shuttle. Seeing how it worked, Lynella took the microphone.’
‘This is the Princess Lynella speaking. I am returning to rescue you from the many dangers you face. I have been to the....’ Paul took the microphone from her. ‘No need for a speech. We've got to land.’
Hearing this exchange, the tense expressions below them eased slightly and the courtyard was cleared. The shuttle occupied almost the entire space and, as it descended, the noise of the jets echoed off the walls and the dust flew up in a cloud over most of the castle. When the pilot stopped the engines, he went to open the door.
‘Wait!’ Lynella said. ‘We don't want to get covered in dust’
They waited for several minutes. The dust settled and, most importantly for Lynella, a crowd gathered as people emerged from alcoves and doorways to look at this incredible arrival. Some of the young men ventured up to touch the landing gear but most stood and watched and waited. The door opened, and the crowd pushed back as the steps descended. Lynella stepped out through the narrow opening and stood facing them.
Making the most of her moment of glory, she stood in silence for some time looking for eye contact with her many relatives in the crowd. Seeing her cousin Henry wearing the insignia of the commander of the army threw her for a second but she held his gaze and soon regained her confidence. She then started a long and well-embroidered account of events since her departure during the Council meeting. When she described her first encounter with the dragons in the forest by the road to the bridge, the steward interrupted her; ‘You really used your power on it, in the true mage fashion?’
Angus was standing awkwardly in the small space behind her, but he was able to reply, ‘I can confirm, sir, that she wounded it. I can also confirm that on many later occasions, she killed dragons.’ At this point, the crowd warmed to her and listened politely to the rest of her story.
The pilot was happy to wait, as the radar on Atlanta would not detect his craft as it was surrounded by the high walls. He was interested to see Lynella flinch slightly as his instruments detected the ship rising above the horizon. He pointed this out to the other officers and they saw signs of her pain growing as it came closer and receding as it moved away.
Lynella finished her story, asking the steward to convene the High Council again to prevent the Abbot from attacking Atlanta as it landed. He seemed to have aged visibly during her absence and Lynella thought she saw him glance momentarily to Henry as if seeking confirmation. She was relieved to see him agree.
31
Riding out to hunt the dragons in the early morning of the following day, Angus was at the head of the column. Despite not being an officer, he had been given this privilege due to his experience of supporting a mage in battle. The pennant of the Southern Kingdom snapped in the breeze as it flew from a hunting spear held upright on the pommel of his saddle. Its emblem showed an advancing dragon facing a line of spears. Henry rode at his side. Well behind them near the centre of the column, Lynella herself was flanked by the steward.
Almost every member of the Royal Family and a large proportion of the soldiers at their command had joined the hunt. They had been told that Lynella had the power to protect them and were looking forward to the spectacle. The early sunlight glistened on their armour and weapons beneath their brightly coloured cloaks. Paul rode near the back of the column, feeling self-conscious in his green uniform. He was carrying a high velocity rifle.
Lynella and Angus recognised landmarks that they had seen under very different circumstances in
their flight from the Council. Passing the farms surrounding the castle, they were soon on the valley road which led up to a few homesteads and on south to the bridge. While they had been away, they had all been abandoned as the population had fled to the safety of the castle. Near one of them, they saw the remains of some animals, so torn apart that it was impossible to see what they had been. The head of a carthorse was lying in a mass of dried blood and skin and Paul thought that he could make out the shape of the leg of a cow. In the heat of the day, a putrid smell surrounded the area and clouds of insects had gathered. The horses in the column flattened their ears back and some tried to bolt, leaving their riders struggling to control them.
‘Why were they left here?’ Paul asked the soldier riding next to him as they passed the carnage.
‘Not enough room in the castle,’ the man replied. ‘Only good animals allowed in; those ones would have been old or lame.’ He looked at the wreckage of the small vegetable garden. Even the building itself had not escaped damage. Windows and doors had been torn off and lay broken on the ground. ‘They won't move on until they have killed everything in this area. Then they will come down to the Castle.’
Soon after that, they saw their first dragon. It was alone near the road, a quarter of a mile ahead of them. The column halted and formed a line across the road. The discipline was impressive; the officers shouted orders and, when the dragon looked up from the carcass it was eating, it was faced with a solid rank of spears and shields, with Lynella at the centre.
The dragon charged straight towards her, its head low and its long claws digging deep into the soft ground. At a range of about a hundred yards, Lynella focused her power on it. It reared up throwing its head high in the air. It’s shriek of pain became roar that echoed along the valley. Rising up on it hind legs it turned and fled. The soldiers cheered.
‘Couldn't you kill it?’ Henry asked Lynella. ‘Can’t you do what the old mages did?’
‘Yes, but it's better to frighten it so it will spread fear to the others.’
‘You should have killed it.’ Turning away, he shouted out the commands for an advance.
‘We should stay here and be ready for them,’ Lynella said. ‘If we form a column again, I can't defend it’
Henry took no notice; one of the other officers turned to her, ‘We are in charge of this unit. We know what we're doing. We've been fighting these dragons for some time now and if we want advice, we'll ask for it. Now get into the column.’
Most of the troops began to re-form the column but Angus and his squad were not moving towards the front. Henry repeated his order.
‘With your permission, Sir,’ Angus started but Henry interrupted him. ‘No, we are not going to discuss it. Your oath of loyalty is to your monarch, not to a mage.’
Looking at Lynella shaking her head, Angus hesitated and, responding to some unseen command, six of Henry's men drew their swords and moved forward to disarm him. ‘You will be disciplined for cowardice,’ the commander was saying as Lynella watched in shock.
At that moment, they heard shouts and turned to see large numbers of dragons moving towards them. They showed slight signs of hesitation but were still moving at a good speed. New orders were shouted out and the soldiers quickly re-formed the spear line across the valley. Lynella concentrated on preparing herself. She focussed on the leading dragon. It was charging forwards looking directly at her. She looked into its eyes. She would kill it.
‘Kill the first six dragons!’ Henry shouted in her ear, grabbing her attention, breaking her concentration. Slowly she realised that this was an order. She was being ordered to use her power. This man who was going to discipline Angus was now ordering her to open up her mind and deliver from it. She felt overwhelming anger and injustice.
They were getting closer. Lynella was doing nothing. Henry shouted again ‘Do it now! Kill them!’ She resolved to do it. But she was in turmoil. She could not find the essential thread. The soldiers were shouting at her. Her mind raced back to the times when she had used her power, back to her childhood when she had first begun to explore it. She tried to fix on some essential way to do it. But there was nothing there. The jewel was on her forehead, but it was cold and lifeless. She felt cold to the core, as if the sunshine was drawing heat out of her rather than warming her. The sweat on her forehead made the jewel slip. She fumbled and almost dropped it.
The line of spearmen suddenly stepped back to reveal bowmen. A cloud of arrows flew out rattling onto the armoured scales of the dragons. But one found its mark and a dragon went down, a shaft protruding from its eye socket. Within seconds the spears were back in line across.
Four dragons had raced ahead of the rest. They were less than fifty feet away. All signs of caution were gone. They were charging at full speed, their jaws already open, showing the double lines of teeth. Lynella felt small and helpless. She was floating in an unreal state, trying to reach out for something solid to hold onto. There was nothing there; she could not even imagine how she had ever begun to use her jewel. It felt cold and repulsive.
The spearmen around her had stopped shouting as they waited for the onslaught. The points were held high while the long shafts were firm in the ground behind them. Between each man and the next there was a further point held by the rank behind. All stood perfectly still. She knew that without her to help them, many would die.
Suddenly, she heard a loud bang. She looked up to see if it was something the dragons had done and saw that one of their heads had been jerked to one side. A second bang and it was down, its head falling to the ground. The momentum of its body driving its shoulders forward to break its neck with a loud crack and almost turn it completely over onto the spears. Another bang and another and two more were down, large holes beside their eyes spurting blood. The fourth was slowing, just feet away from her. One more bang and it too fell. The other dragons were turning in flight.
In the confusion that followed, everybody seemed to ignore her. She saw Henry shouting at Paul.
32
‘Shouldn't we tell the Mission Director?’
Captain Turner looked at Smith and Gardiner across the desk. He hated politics and the complications that came with it. He thought of himself as a simple, straightforward man who had become Captain because he was good at doing the work required of him. He knew that his real reason for not approaching the Director was the man's ability to manipulate situations against people. This situation would become something that the Captain had created, and the Director must now help him to clear up. His help would come in the form of a few unhelpful orders and passing the problem back.
‘He'd only tell us to try to take control of the monastery,’ he replied, ‘and probably the Southern Castle too’
Smith thought about this for a minute ‘We'd lose a lot of men. They'd be ready for us next time’
‘And kill a lot of them as well,’ the Captain continued. ‘There's no way we could justify that either.’ He looked up at the two young men, knowing that he was asking them to risk their careers and even, possibly, their liberty for this. ‘Hopefully, this High Council Lynella talked about will meet and get the Abbot to stop whatever he's doing.’ He paused. ‘Do you really think that he could damage the ship?’
‘It all looked so strange. It's difficult to judge. We never actually saw him do anything except run a few lights. And there is the argument that Lynella's just as powerful as the machine so, if he can do it, she can stop him.’
‘That's another very good reason for not telling the Director,’ the Captain concluded. ‘He would be bound to do something to make an enemy of her or Paul, so they'd be fighting us instead of fighting the Abbot.’
‘Do you want us to try to keep a watch on them?’ Gardiner asked.
‘We can't risk another shuttle flight out. Just keep in contact with Paul by radio. Have a quiet word with that pilot to make sure he's not going to start spreading stories.’
The meeting ended, and the Captain was alone. As had happe
ned many times he thought about arriving back home on earth. What would be there for him? Would the mission director make sure he took all the glory, so the captain of the world’s first star ship just faded into obscurity?
An alerting beep sounded from his terminal and a message came up on the screen from the Mission Director: ‘Meeting at 14.00. Please attend.’ He looked at it in utter fury. Not a word about what the meeting was to be about, no check to see what had to be cancelled, just a summons to fly up in a shuttle and see him. The man even seemed to have the power to frighten him. He had a lurking fear that the Director might have found out about the shuttle flight to the castle. It annoyed him intensely that this man could make him feel like a school boy caught stealing apples.
Arriving at the meeting he felt things looked marginally better. All of the division heads were there. Perhaps somebody else would get the interfering instructions. They sat and waited, exchanging snatches of whispered conversation. By the time the Director emerged, ten minutes late as always, it was clear that nobody knew what this was about.
He strode into the room, clutching a pile of paper copies which he passed around the table. The Captain saw with dread that it was his latest status report.
‘Could you give us a quick verbal summary of this report?’
He, at least, felt confident he could handle this question. No idea where it was leading but his house was in order. He was even slightly ahead of programme. He was going to have time to clear up the landing field and even sort out a passable road round it before the landing. He explained this carefully and precisely.
‘What's the road for?’ The Director was asking.
‘Maintenance vehicles and things.’
‘What things?’
‘Possibly fire tenders.’
‘Are you expecting a fire? You never mentioned it as a possibility in your earlier reports. Do you have any idea how much it is costing to keep this ship here? Has it ever dawned on you to work out the cost of paying two thousand five hundred men?’
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