Dragon Rescue (10 page)

“And where will they muster, this army?” asked GB slyly. “Tell me you that!”

Murdan thought rapidly.

“I can’t say for sure, but probably at Peter Gantrell’s Morningside, in Overtide. Or perhaps at my castle at Overhall.”

“Morningside, I know of,” said the fat Relling monarch. “Never heard of Overhall...”

He reached for a greasy slice of cold roast, slapped it on a piece of bread, and took a tremendous bite. It reminded Murdan of his missed meals all that long day.

“So, where is your Overhall?” Grand Blizzardmaker asked through the mouthful of beef.

“Five days’ ride west of here,” Murdan told him.

He was suddenly very hungry, even while watching the disgusting way the Relling chief gobbled his food and spilled his drink.

GB continued questioning him for several minutes more, consuming another open-faced sandwich, two more goblets of watered brandy, an apple, and three pieces of something that looked...and smelled...like fruit cake doused in rum.

He belched loudly, fell silent, and contemplated Murdan with hooded eyes—or maybe he was just sleepy. The room was hot and stuffy. Freddie of Brevory had obviously liked his brandy very powerful and very plentiful. The assembled Rellings and their allies were quiet, listening or dozing, heads on their arms.

Someone coughed loudly and GB popped his eyes full open, startled.

“Well, nothing to be learned further from this bumpkin.” He belched again. “Toss him in the stockade or whatever they call ‘em in these parts.”

“Sire,” said a courtier near the head of the head table, “there are no stockades or dungeons in this palace.”

“No gaols? No lockups?” cried the War Chief in vast surprise.

“Just three short towers and a large wine cellar,” the official told him apologetically.

“Well...” GB drew the word out. “Lock him in one of the towers, then.”

“Hmmm,” replied his informant. “The tower rooms are already filled with our—your—officers and their...er...lady friends.”

“Damnation!” cursed the War Leader. “Hell’s fire! What do I do with important prisoners, then, Fraggle?”

Fraggle said quickly, “Leave him to me, sire. I’ll find a safe place to lock him up.”

“Do it! Now I’ll go to bed. Tomorrow we burst the flimsy walls of Lexor and slaughter the defenders in glorious, bloody battle. By tomorrow night I’ll sleep in this King Eduard’s own soft bed, over there in his dainty city. After that, it makes no difference what Eduard Ten does or says.”

The crowd roared in rather sleepy approval and applauded as the enormously fat man struggled to his feet and waddled off, accompanied by a number of courtiers to keep him from stumbling over his own feet and plowing into the doorjamb as he staggered out.

No one laughed—at least not out loud.

The crowd of officers heaved a collective sigh of relief, or yawned, and began to filter from the hall, ignoring Murdan, Fraggle, and the Relling sergeant.

*’Where?” asked the latter, remembering just in time to add, “Sir?”

“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” snarled the officer petulantly. “I need a breath of cold, fresh air. Do with him what seems proper and necessary, Sergeant Spring.”

He turned on his heel and stalked toward the door, ignoring the Sergeant’s parting salute.

“Well!” snorted Sergeant Spring. “I suppose I could take you back to camp. But I’d rather find us a corner near the fire here, where at least we’ll be warm for the rest of the night. I could tell the captain it was GB’s idea, couldn’t I?”

“Precisely,” agreed his prisoner, who had no desire to march back to the southwest gate and sleep in the deep, wet snow. “Good thinking, Sergeant!”

The noncom sent a cowering Brevory servant to fetch the rest of Murdan’s clothing and helped the Historian spread them to dry—along with some of his own—on the warm hearthstones.

“You’re not a bad sort, Sergeant Spring,” commended Murdan as they settled down before the glowing coals. “What do you think of such things as invasions and usurpations?”

“Invasions I approve of,” said Spring stoutly. “What soldiering is all about, says I. Usup...usurp...whatever you said...taking over a proper King’s throne? Well...I can’t see the use of it, sir. I really can’t! ‘Specially where it’s so hot here most of the year. Whew! I prefers colder climes me-self.”

After a while Spring fell asleep, forgetting to bind the Historian’s arms again. Before he drifted off he asked, sleepily, “What
does
a Historian do?”

“Keeps track of mistakes, so they won’t be repeated,” explained Murdan.

“No use to us, then,” yawned the soldier. “Relling never makes a mistake.”

Murdan smiled to himself.

Spring began to snore softly; by then forty other men and a few rumpled women enjoying the stuffy warmth of Brevory Grand Hall were snoring, too. The combined rumble was somehow soothing.

Murdan of Overhall fell asleep.

Chapter Seven

Prisoner of the Rellings

Murdan awoke in the dimly lighted Great Hall of Brevory just after dawn, groaning as he stretched stiff muscles, cramped from a night on the cooling stones of the hearth. The Great Hall smelled foul and damp of sour wine, acrid wood smoke, stale sweat, and old urine.

The fire was nearly out and the stone hearth had turned icy cold.

His clothes had dried nicely before the embers died, however, and he dressed quickly. He added a handful of split kindling to the low embers and, when they’d caught, put three half logs of pitchy pine on top of them. The morning chill became almost bearable.

Sergeant Spring rolled over on his back and squinted up at his prisoner. He had managed to wrap a hearth rug about himself for warmth.

“I intend to go find some breakfast,” the Historian told him. ‘‘Coming?”

“No, no. Why leave such comfort for an unheated mess hall?” the other responded. “You can’t get far. As soon as I show any sign of life, some stuffed-shirt officer’ll pop up and order me back to my outfit.

Let me enjoy this luxury for a short while yet.”

“If you say so,” Murdan agreed with a chuckle. “I’ll bring you something, if I find any food left in the mess.”

“Good man!” mumbled Spring, and before Murdan had turned his back he was fast asleep again.

The Royal Historian had visited Brevory Castle once or twice before and had a good idea where to look for breakfast. Down a wide corridor carpeted with sleeping soldiers he followed his nose, the smell of bacon and fresh-baked bread guiding him along.

In a side room he found a number of stout tables pushed together, laden with bowls, platters, and heaped-up plates of food: loaves of rye bread, bowls of applesauce, stacks of griddle cakes, racks of crisp bacon, pitchers of milk, flagons of strong, sweet tea, and jars of pale amber breakfast beer. The room was already crowded with sleepy-eyed and hungry warriors.

“Officer?” asked a servant who came to bar his entrance—not a Northman but one of the castle’s staff, Murdan surmised.

“What do you think?” he retorted brusquely and, not waiting for anyone’s permission, set about assembling the first hearty meal he’d enjoyed since leaving Overhall five days before.

The servant shrugged and went away.

Carrying his trencher—a flat, hard round of rye bread the size of a large dinner plate—and a mug of bitter but steaming-hot tea, he found a room nearby filled with enemy officers seated at trestle tables, on chests, straight chairs, and wide windowsills. Their conversation rumbled along like a herd of cattle, punctuated by occasional swearing and sharp exclamations.

Nobody showed signs of being fully awake yet—some were definitely hungover, Murdan observed—so he made himself at home at one end of a crowded table and began to eat. Either the food was surprisingly good...or he was hungrier than he’d thought.

“We gotta get out to the field,” said a rumpled, red-bearded scare-crow of a man halfway down the table. “GB’s ordered an assault on the west gate at nine of the clock. Damn! I was just getting to like this place.”

“How’s the weather out there?” said another.

His insignia indicated he was a cavalryman. Cavalry didn’t take part in frontal assaults on high, strong walls, of course. He was enjoying his breakfast in a leisurely manner.

“Cloudy and mild,” growled another breakfaster.

“Heavy going underfoot. Bad for horses, I’d guess. War Chief should wait until it gets colder to mount this attack, I say. Hard to haul mangonels and heavy catapults over muddy roads and wet slush.”

Obviously an engineering officer, Murdan guessed. Having tossed down his coffee, the engineer threw his cup to a servant and stomped out, pulling on his sword belt and clutching his white bearskin cap under his arm.

A coterie of younger men hastily gulped their cooled coffee, shoved bits and pieces of food into their pockets, and followed him through the door, chattering like magpies in spring.

“Do you have a spot in the line?” the youthful cavalry officer asked Murdan.

“No, actually I’m a prisoner,” Murdan answered honestly. “Captured last night. Good bread, isn’t it? Brevory always had a good bak-ery and a better cellar.”

“I wouldn’t know about the cellar,” snorted the horse soldier. “GB

has it under lock and bar, I hear.
We
get nothing better than this here watered-down, wretched, bitter beer! Fine way to repay our assistance in his little adventure.”

“You’re not Relling, then?” asked the Historian. “Of course not! I recognize your insignia. Bear Totem, isn’t it?”

“Yes, exactly!” the other said with some pride. “Our Queen hired us out to this Grand Blizzardmaker—Great Windbag, we calls him—

for his war. We get minimum pay and maximum looting, but there’s been pitiful little of looting so far.”

“Yet you’ve borne the brunt of the fighting, eh?”

“We Bears led the march all the way from Frontier! He didn’t even attack Frontier. Passed it by—although I guess that was a smart move.

The garrison was holed up behind their stockade. The Relling rear echelon will starve ‘em out eventually, I imagine. Is that real butter I see? Where’re you from?”

“The midwest,” replied Murdan, pushing a butter crock nearer to his companion’s elbow. “I was on my way to the capital on business when I was taken by a Relling patrol near the southwest gate.”

“Note the Rellings are in all the quiet sectors,” the other snorted derisively. “If Bear Totem horses could climb walls, we’d be halfway up the ladders right now.”

Murdan moved on to chat with several other table mates, most of them Rellings, who seemed more willing to fraternize with their enemy than socialize with their allies.

“Bear Totem cavalry,” snickered a loquacious supply officer. “Blue Ice pioneers. Bluewater boatmen from over to Foundlay Bay. I don’t trust any of ‘em! GB has contracted for their services for a year with an option to renew for another year. Good terms, at least on paper!

Not a really good Snowfield campaigner in the lot! What good are horses in snowdrifts, I asks you?”

“Well, you won’t find too many deep drifts in these parts, except in the dead middle of winter,” Murdan pointed out reasonably.

“Ho! Dead of winter is right! Give me Relling snow-sloggers and their long polar bear spears for this kind of work! Horses may be good for hauling supplies and carrying messages, but not much else.”

Fortunately the Bear Totem lieutenant had already gone off to look after his precious mounts or there might have been a fistfight then and there.

“The ones give me the creeps,” said a subaltern to the Historian,

“is these wicked, slippery, soft-talking ice wizards hanging about old Blizzardmaker, you know. Don’t see where they’ve done anything but take up space and gobble down the best provisions since we left the North Country a month ago!”

“Wizards and mages are better left to their gobbling and swilling,”

Murdan recommended. “Maybe Grand Blizzardmaker keeps them around for show.”

“Show, it certainly is! What kind of
real
man would wear lacy aprons and talk in singsong chantings? Remind me of the traveling-through medicine shows come to entertain us in summertime. Nasty-tasting medicine but pretty dancing girls with almost nothing left to the...”

As the hour approached nine o’clock, the dining room emptied rapidly. Murdan gathered a second trencher of cooling food and carried it back to the Great Hall, where Sergeant Spring was just reawakening, rubbing his eyes and looking about somewhat worriedly, thinking perhaps his prisoner had flown.

“I’d
have run for it, given your chance,” he said pleasantly as he greeted Murdan. “Thank you, sir! It’s better commons than we’re used to in camp. The good stuff seems to go to the other guys.”

“Other? Oh, you mean Grand Blizzardmaker’s allies?”

Spring dived with both hands into his breakfast trencher but spared a moment to nod.

“We could’ve done it all ourselves, you know. I think His High and Mightiness just wanted to show off for the neighbors. They’ve never liked us much.”

Murdan watched him eat for a while.

“I take it you aren’t fond of your allies, either?”

“Oh, I suppose they’re perfectly good fellows, in their place. I’ve got a sister who married a Bluewater fisherman. He only beats her when the fishing’s slow and the liquor’s quick. Spoiled rotten, she is, Sir Historian! Bluewaters are a womanly bunch, for all their brave boasts of the dangers of seagoing.”

A man in full armor clanked into Great Hall, stopped, and looked around. Spotting Murdan, he came over, pushing his heavy helmet up on his forehead and extending his right hand.

“Lord Murdan! A strange place and time to meet you again!”

For a moment Murdan was puzzled, but his excellent Historian’s memory came to his rescue.

“Ah, yes! Captain Basilicae, isn’t it? Mercenary Knights?”

“The same, Lord Historian! Are you in with this Relling mob?”

“No, I’m just a prisoner of war, I suppose,” said the Historian, shaking the hired soldier’s hand. “I’m more surprised to see you here than you should be to see me. I understood you had departed Carolna for good and all, after Sir Thomas and Retruance Constable rescued my Overhall people from you at...what was its name?”