Dragon Rescue (19 page)

“Understood,” the King said, nodding gravely. “We’ll take our chances in pitched battle. Carolnans will be fighting for their King and their own homes, remember. We’ll prevail, and quickly.”

“If it comes to that,” said Furbetrance thoughtfully, “we’ll snatch Ednoll but let Papa go and come to your aid on the battleground. It may be best that way.”

“Oh, but if you do,” objected Manda, “you’ll have to go through all the anguish of finding your papa all over again!”

“So be it, however,” decided Furbetrance firmly.

“We owe that much to the King and Carolna.”

Eduard clapped the Dragon on the nearside cheek, smiling proudly.

“No Trusslo has ever had even one Dragon by his side in past wars. We
will
succeed, even against these wild Northmen!”

The Queen and Princess Amelia would remain at Overhall, along with Rosemary and her children. Graham would command the castle and hold it if the Rellings renewed their attack.

“They’ve no experience at castle taking,” said Graham. “I foresee no problem, even if they were to send their entire force against Overhall.”

Furbetrance would take the King to Ffallmar’s camp outside Lexor that very night. Eduard’s desire and duty were to be at the head of his army. He would endeavor to wrest the whereabouts of his Royal Historian from Grand Blizzardmaker and rescue him, wherever he was being held.

“It might be better to offer this Blizzardmaker a large ransom for Murdan,” Manda suggested. “If you can bring him to negotiate in time.

Money might free Uncle Murdan faster than threats, Father.”

“I’ll keep your wise words close to mind,” Eduard answered, giving his oldest child a loving grin. “But this wicked Relling must know at once that we intend to fight and to win.”

When Furbetrance returned from Lexor, he, Tom, and Manda would fly
to
rejoin Retruance on the edge
of
Sinking Marsh, to rescue the little Princeling.

Eduard Ten adjourned the war council well after midnight. He girded on the heavy war sword of the Trusslos, kissed his wife and daughters good-bye, shook Tom strongly by the hand, and asked Furbetrance to go as fast as he could to find Ffallmar outside Lexor.

Tom and Manda walked on Overhaul’s wide outer battlements for a breath of fresh air, chatting with Graham’s guardsmen on duty and enjoying the cold, fresh air.

“ Tis blowing again now from the west,” Manda noted when they paused at their favorite spot—between a fierce stone gargoyle that bore a great resemblance to a Constable Dragon and a thick mullion, which hid them from all eyes except their own.

“It’s warmer than this morning by a good deal,” her husband noted, hitching himself to a seat on a convenient ledge. “That’ll bring rain, I fear. Sinking Marsh will be a real mess, if what the scholar Findles says is true.”

“But it’ll hamper the enemy around Lexor at the same time,” said Manda, snuggling against his shoulder. He drew his woolen cloak about them both.

“Furbetrance, my brand-new Mount, insists that Rellings can’t fight in warm weather, any more than our people would fight well in Relling cold and snow. That bodes well for father’s counterattack at Lexor.”

Tom nodded, feeling suddenly very comfortable and private.

“We’ve most of tomorrow to wait,” he said after a long comfortable silence between them. “Let’s to bed, sweet Princess! We will need our sleep against tomorrow night and beyond.”

“Wait a bit,” she protested. “Look! The clouds are parting. And the half moon should be coming up any minute.”

“We’ll wait for the moon, then,” her husband agreed.

A pair of Overhall Guardsmen walked their post not far away, keeping their eyes and ears on the deep snow on fields and forests beyond the walls.

“When this is over,” said the younger soldier suddenly after a long, companionable silence, “I shall resign and marry and settle down.”

“For heaven’s sake, why?” cried his watch mate, a confirmed bach-elor. “What can marriage offer that barracks life and frequent leaves cannot?”

“That,” said the other, pointing his thumb over his shoulder at the young couple seated on the parapet.

His partner sighed and nodded. They swung away to patrol the rest of their section of wall top before Captain Graham came to check on them.

rs

Lady Mornie of Morningside, wife of the fur trapper Clematis of Broken Land, vigorously plied a willow-twig broom to clear newly fallen snow off the slated front porch of their sturdy log cabin.

“We may be here all winter!” she called to her husband.

Clem appeared at the door, gazed at the white world without, then glanced up at the overcast sky.

“Entirely possible,” he said. “And not the worst fate we could suffer, I say. I’ve spent many a long winter cozy in this cabin, snug as a bear in his cave.”

“Well, I won’t complain—except that we promised Manda and Tom to go to Hidden Lake with them this wintertime,” replied his wife, handing him the broom. “Here, I must wake the boys. They’ll want to make snow-people on the lawn and tell the animal and bird tracks in the first snow.”

“Best sort of life for them! Better than being held prisoner by winter in a stony, chilly old castle,” exclaimed their father.

He quickly finished the sweeping, clearing a path also to the stable and the high-lofted barn, and down to the wellhead near the edge of the steep cliff.

“Better’n crammed in a stuffy castle, I adds,” he repeated, resuming the conversation when he came back indoors after stomping the wet snow from his boots.

He placed on the kitchen counter two brimming-full pails of milk he’d just coaxed from the family dairy cows.

“There are things to be said for both, castle and cabin,” his wife insisted.

“But,” Clem went on, “if we’re to help Tom and Manda with their house building, we should leave here before the really deep snows begin.”

Gregor, aged four, and Thomas, two and a half, tumbled out of the cabin door and raged across the soft snow, ignoring the swept path their father had made, shouting joyously at the tops of their voices, causing great dollops of wet snow to plop from the pine boughs at the edge of the forest clearing.

“Will it be safe, love?” Mornie said worriedly. “I mean, to travel in this snow over Summer Pass?”

“As safe as anything we might do, I suppose,” said Clem. “If we waited for a safe day, we’d never do anything.”

“You have me to consider, however,” said Mornie. “And the boys, too.”

He thought a moment of her objection while she laid a hearty woodsman’s breakfast on the smooth-scrubbed plank table—toasted sourdough muffins and wild berry jams; strong, steaming coffee in white mugs; and sausages with fried eggs.

“There
is
some danger, but we can withstand it, Mornie,” he said at last. “And I’ve a hunch...a feeling, that...well, that things are happening that call for us to go east now, rather than wait for spring.”

“I do respect your intuitions,” Mornie said with a sigh, “and I for one would dearly love to sleep behind stone walls again, and laugh at the cold and snow.”

“You agree to leaving at once, then?” asked her husband.

“Never any doubt!” she said laughing aloud, and she kissed him on the top of his head as he bent to sip gingerly at the steaming coffee.

“It’ll snow no more this week,” her husband said. “The wind’s turned to due west, and it’s already warmer. We’ll leave as soon as the boys are fed and I can saddle and pack the horses.”

rs

It always surprised the woodsman how much faster time and work flew, now that there were others sharing his once-lonely life. He was used to great, empty, silent spaces, and having the world to himself. To have Marnie and the bright, noisy little lads to love and help and to do for made the hours whirl by like leaves in an autumn gale.

Before noon all was ready. Each was mounted on a sturdy, shaggy forest pony. For each saddle pony, there were two pack horses, and during their journey, especially where the going was rough, they would switch horses frequently.

“We’ll soon look like four of your snowmen on horseback,” said Mornie to her older son, Gregor Clemsson.

The boy grinned up at her from a deep nest of woolen scarves, down mufflers, and a fur-lined parka hood.

“We’d better go, or we’ll become too hot for comfort,” said the father, swinging into his saddle. “All right, Hedy! We’ll break the trail for these city-and-castle folk, shall we?”

“I’m a
woodsman!”
protested little Thomas Clemsson, stoutly. “I live in Broken Land!”

“But it’ll be nice to stand once more between the fireplaces in Overhall Great Hall,” his mother reminded him, tucking an errant cloak tail under his saddle blanket.

“No more talk!” cried Clem, waving his arm and touching Hedy with his heels. “Keep your eyes open, lads! You, too, Mother! Snow changes things in the woods and sharp eyes are needed to avoid mis-steps or hidden deadfalls.”

The four saddled ponies and the eight pack ponies filed from the clearing in front of Clem’s winter quarters, down a long, wind-cleared slope, across the creek, not yet frozen over but rimmed with clear, starred ice.

Once across, they rode into the dense pine forest where everything was still and soundless. The normally raucous blue jays and the energetic brown squirrels slept in trees coated with a fresh blanket of snow.

Even the little boys fell quiet, impressed with the wintertime hush.

Gregor insisted on taking his turn at breaking trail when they started out the next morning. The family had spent the night in a cozy camp under the lee of a bank of broad-leaved rhododendrons.

Under the trees the snow sifted through the boughs was only a few inches deep, so Clem allowed him to lead the way while he checked the pack ponies once again.

Every hour or so they paused while the father and his sons scraped the horses’ hooves free of caked ice and pine needles. The going here was relatively easy and they made good time, ever climbing toward the open meadow at the foot of Summer Pass.

In the open, however, drifts were deeper where the wind had been trapped about clumps of bare-limbed birch and outcrops of stone.

Under the icy crust, the snow was clinging and wet. The west wind was almost warm, and the travelers shed and stowed away their heavier outer clothing before noontime.

*’Lunch soon!” Mornie called to her menfolk.

She knew her husband would go without lunch if he had his way, pressing on in order to reach the bottom of the pass before dark.

“If you say so,” Clem sighed. “We’ll stop over there, where the alders edge the tarn, you see?”

With their destination in view, Gregor and Thomas urged their mounts into a quick trot and quickly disappeared into the grove of leafless trees beside the mountain lake.

A moment later Gregor reappeared, waving silently for his father to come to them, fast.

Clem spurred Hedy forward along their track and quickly closed the gap between them. Little Thomas had joined his brother, waiting just inside the edge of the alder grove.

“Men on the lakeshore,” whispered Greg. “I heard them talking.”

“Well, we’ll move with some caution, then, sons,” directed Clem.

“No telling out here if they’re friends or foes. Most likely they’re friends.

Maybe lost in the snow. We can help them, then.”

He dismounted, leading Hedy by her reins, and followed Greg and Thomas’s beaten track through the close-set trees.

rs

“We can go ahead on foot, I suggest,” said Hoarling to Murdan.

“Not nearly as pleasant as flying, but...”

“We’d better camp here for the night,” decided the Historian, shaking his head. “It’s sure to get colder after the sun sets, even though it’s gotten somewhat warmer, if you’ll notice. The slopes will be slippery at night. By the morrow we can fly up to the top of the pass, if the day is clearer.”

“It’ll still be mighty deep underfoot,” predicted Peter of Gantrell.

“But I agree we shouldn’t press on tonight under the circumstances.”

Neither man thought to consult Plume, who sat in a clear spot under a pine, nursing a bruised knee and an elbow scraped in their crash landing.

“Hello!” came a sudden cry from the fringe of bare alders behind them.

Murdan and Peter spun about in surprise. Plume slunk deeper under his tree.

“Hoy!” cried the Historian. “Here we are!”

Clem’s mount came plowing through belly-deep drifts, churning her powerful legs to keep balance over rounded stones hidden under the cover.

“Lord Historian!” Clem cried in surprise as he dismounted in front of them.

He and Murdan clasped each other, as much to keep from falling as in greeting.

“This is Clematis,” said Murdan to Peter. “I don’t think you’ve met before. This is Peter Gantrell, Clem.”

“Ha!” snorted Clem, drawing back a step in surprise. “The exile?”

“Yes, the exile, but much humbled now by great adversity,” said Peter, shaking the woodsman’s reluctant hand. “I’ve heard naught but good report of you, Clematis of Broken Land.”

“Anyone living in these parts learns to forgive and forget,” Clem observed slowly. “If you say he’s to be trusted, Lord Historian, I’ll accept your word on it.”

“And yet keeping your eyes peeled, I suppose,” said Murdan with a chuckle. “We hoped to cross Summer Pass. We must get to Overhall quickly.”

As Mornie rode up and the boys stared curiously at the strangers from behind her, Murdan recounted recent events—the Relling invasion, his arrest, and the escape with Peter and the Accountant by way of the Ice Dragon.

Clem glared at the former Lord of Gantrell, saying, “We’ll see how you work out, shall we?”

He turned back to the Lord of Overhall.

“We were headed for the pass ourselves, and down to your Ramhold, then to Hidden Lake to meet Tom and Manda, Historian.

Not today will we make it over the pass. With luck, perhaps tomorrow.

Hello! What’s that?”

Hoarling, who had been exploring the surrounding countryside, had just now plowed into view.

“Our noble rescuer,” said Murdan dryly. “Hoarling the Ice Dragon, meet Clem the Woodsman.”