Dragon Rescue

by Don Callander

  Peter had built the fire close to a great bole where the smoke might, with luck, escape to the open air and the heat would not bring as much meltwater down on their heads from the overhead boughs.

  They wrapped themselves in their cloaks, ate the last of Murdan’s unleavened bread crusts, which were toasted over the fire, and went at once to sleep.

  Hoarling lay in soft snowdrifts outside, allowing a new, light fall to drift about his sides to camouflage his outline. In a half hour anyone passing within twenty paces of the grove would have seen nothing.

  Even the glow of their fire was completely hidden by the heavy pine boughs and the snow covering them.

  Breakfast consisted of a hot tea made from old, dry sassafras twigs Murdan found buried in the snow near the edge of the grove.

  “Hot, at least,” he said.

  “And remarkably delicious,” exclaimed Peter. “I always liked sassafras tea. My late, loved Lady Mother used to make it for Granger and me on cold evenings when we were lads.”

  “I have trouble thinking of you as a little boy,” admitted the Historian. “I knew your Lady Mother quite well, of course. Fine figure of a woman, and very, very patient, I remember. Your father...well, he wasn’t the easiest man to have around, I imagine.”

  “I’ve thought about them both often these past few weeks,” said Peter, sighing and pouring himself a spot more of the tea. “Being in mortal jeopardy seems to bring one’s memories flooding back, I think.

  I don’t really know, but I suspect that much of what I tried to do as an adult was because...well, I was trying to best my father. He was a remarkable fighting man, an unquestioned leader. He wanted everything to be done just his way.”

  “I remember him well,” said the Historian, nodding.

  “I admired him greatly. He was a perfectionist, so I wanted to be one, too. Goodness knows, he was not easy to like.”

  “Children tend to credit their fathers and mothers for what they become,” said Murdan.

  They climbed back aboard the Dragon, ready to fly.

  “And I suppose that’s natural and logical,” continued the Historian, “when you consider we also give ourselves credit for having good parents, as well as bad ones. You’ll meet my mother soon.”

  “I’ve not had the honor before, Lord Historian,” Peter said with a smile. “But the court people always spoke very well of Lady Murtal.”

  “Well, when you meet her you’ll know why I’m proud to say I followed in her precepts, ofttimes. But in the end, Peter, we are what we make of ourselves, not what our folks made us into.”

  Hoarling snorted derisively and leapt into the air, flapping his wings up and then down with a clap like thunder, sending loose snow flying in a great cloud that obscured the wintry sun.

  After that, the roar of the wind was too great for conversation, which suited all three of them marvelously well.

  rs

  Murtal, the lady of Old Place, woke early, as she almost always did, with a strong intuition that important visitors were coming that day.

  Her premonitions were so seldom mistaken that she bounced out of bed, despite her seventy-odd years of age, and called at once for her butler, a man even older than she, a great deal more dignified, and almost as spry.

  “Garley! Visitors coming! Air out the guest rooms, lay good fires there, and have the upstairs maids change the bed linens and put out fresh towels. In this weather, they’ll appreciate warm baths ready when they arrive! Send the cook to me, at once!”

  She rushed headlong through her breakfast, volleying orders this way and that, scattering her servants and soldiers to their tasks and trotting about inspecting everything, strewing praise and comments as she went.

  “Who would be coming in this weather, I wonder?” one of the grooms asked Garley.

  “Haven’t the faintest idea,” replied the ancient majordomo. “But our lady’s never wrong.”

  “It’s almost certainly Murdan,” declared Murtal, with growing enthusiasm. “I can feel his nearness stronger than anyone else since his father, my late husband, passed on. A family talent.”

  She ordered the outer and inner baileys swept clear of new snow and pine-knot cressets set at intervals on the walls. All the lanterns and candles were lighted as the afternoon grew dark toward evening.

  Only when all was in readiness to receive Murdan...or whoever was coming...did the lady sit down before the fire to sip hot tea, eat a jam sandwich, and wait.

  When Hoarling at last slanted down to Murtal’s snug little keep amid its snow-draped gardens and frozen fountains in the very late afternoon, the whole place was ablaze with lights. Its mistress stood at the main door, swathed in luxurious furs and warm woolens, waving to them cheerily.

  “Mother!” shouted Murdan as he dismounted. “Sorry to drop in on you unannounced like this!”

  “Give us a bear hug, my sweet son,” Murtal cried, laughing with pleasure. “No trouble at all! I had the feeling you were coming since early this morning. My, you look a bit underfed and chilled. Who’s with you?”

  “You know of Peter Gantrell, don’t you?” her son answered, waving at the frost-whitened lord who had just slipped stiffly from the Dragon’s broad back.

  “Ah, of course, Peter!” said Murtal, taken aback at the sight of her son’s archenemy. “Peter of Gantrell! And in chains! I thought you were...ah...out of the country, so to speak.”

  “A story best told,” interrupted Murdan, taking her arm, “in front of your best, warmest, most roaring fire and over hot spiced rum...if you please, Mother.”

  “Of course! Of course!” she said quickly, and led the way into her main hall and over to the nearest hearth. Garley handed them each a mulled and spiced toddy, and footmen and maids helped them off with their ice-stiff outer garments and carried them away to beat off the ice and warm and dry them and make them clean again.

  “This is...?” prompted the lady.

  “Oh, you may remember my former Accountant. Master Plume.”

  “Ah,” said Murtal, bemused again.

  “Mother, there is much to tell, to explain,” said the Historian.

  “But first, have you a blacksmith? We’ll strike off Peter’s chain, please.”

  “You certainly travel in strange company, my son! A dangerous old enemy in chains and a spying renegade, too, if what I’ve heard is true!”

  The lady of Old Place sent a boy to fetch her blacksmith and his hammers and chisels, and in few minutes Peter Gantrell was, at last, free.

  “Dinner will be served within the hour, gentlemen!” announced Garley.

  “Hot baths and dry clothing await!” added his mistress. “Then you can tell me everything over supper!”

  By the time she’d heard the news of the Relling invasion, the capture of her son, and his discovery of Peter and Plume, captives on the iceberg, supper was finished and the three winter travelers had largely recovered from their days’ flight.

  Hoarling, protesting that he preferred to stay cool and comfortable in the deep snow beyond the castle walls, begged the lady’s par-don and went off to find whatever it was that Ice Dragons preferred to eat.

  Murdan gave his mother the news from Overhall and Ffallmar Farm, which she had not heard, due to the inclement weather on the mountains.

  “I must ask you,” said Lady Murtal severely to Peter, “two important things. First, did you plan the kidnapping of the little Prince Royal?”

  “No, m’lady, I swear by my own mother’s revered memory, I did not.”

  “I believe you,” said Murtal, nodding her white head sharply.

  “As I do, too,” said the Historian.

  “Peter, has this experience and ordeal at the hands of the savage Rellings changed you at all? You’ve behaved perfectly awfully over the past eight or ten years. What’s ahead for you? Tell an old woman truth-fully.”

  Gantrell had the grace to look ashamed and paused so long for-mulating his reply that Murdan was opening his mouth to prompt him.


  “Lady Murtal, you are very like my own mother. You ask the hard but appropriate questions at the right time.”

  “I’ve been a mother a great deal longer than you’ve been a grown man,” said Murtal somewhat testily. “Answer me, sirrah!”

  “I was dead,” said Peter in a flat tone. “I’d given myself up for lost on that iceberg. Even if Plume kept me barely alive, in a few hours or a day the ice would have broken up and I—we—would have been dropped into the deepest, coldest part of Athermoral Strait!”

  Murtal looked sharply at the Accountant but Plume was staring at the fire, ignoring the conversation altogether.

  “I actually saw my whole life again,” Peter continued, “but from a different point of view, it seemed. I thought of my lovely mother and my dreaded—yes, dreaded—soldier father, my quiet and competent younger brother, and all the longtime Gantrell servants who raised us and took care of our needs.

  “Most of all, I saw the certain consequences of my every action.

  And suddenly I was terribly, terribly ashamed.”

  He paused to wipe his eyes, which had begun to tear embarrass-ingly.

  “I saw what I was like, truly. What it must have felt like to be Manda, Eduard’s brave little girl, sent off all alone when her mother died. Kept from her father in a strange household. I did that to her!

  “I realized what I demanded of poor Granger, who was as loyal as he possibly could have been, far beyond what a man should expect from a younger brother. Yet, I cursed him for refusing to do evil for me!

  “I remembered what it was like to deal with the twisted, lowest levels of Elves, the ones I used and discarded like dulled tools—men like Basilicae, the Mercenary Knight, and foolish, foppish, drunken, bellicose Freddie of Brevory, and—it’s true, I can’t deny it nor can you, Accountant—with the kind of dog who willingly turned on a kind master! A sneak and a spy.”

  Plume tried to disappear into the shadows beside the hearth but Peter speared him with his piercing eyes.

  “And here I was depending on such as you to bring me food and keep me from freezing to death! I was reduced to such a slender, fast-raveling string of hope for life.”

  “So what did you decide about yourself?” Murtal prompted when he fell silent for a long while.

  “Ma’am, I’m not sure what I concluded. I know I have no desire left now for power over people, nor hunger for greater and greater wealth. I do have a great, overwhelming desire to live in peace and do the things I always sneered at others for doing before, like build fine houses and plant sweet-smelling gardens; to marry at last and sire children. To have good men admire me...for myself, not for my strength and wealth.”

  “Admit that sounds pretty unlikely coming from your lips, Gantrell,” said Murdan, but very gently. “Given your past record.”

  “I know, Historian! And I can’t expect you to believe me. I’ll have to convince you and the King and Manda and Tom, my brother and his family—everybody—that I truly regret what foolish pride and child-ish anger made me do. I would make amends.”

  “You’re still under the King’s solemn sentence of exile,” Murdan pointed out. “The penalty for returning unbidden to the kingdom is...death.”

  “Not unjustly,” Peter sighed. “I’ve caused many, many innocent deaths in order to excel, dominate, rule. Perhaps I only deserve to die.”

  “I doubt that,” said Lady Murtal, suddenly reaching out to pat Peter’s trembling hand.”

  “As for returning unbidden, I believe no Royal Court would convict you on that charge,” said Murdan. “You came back at my bidding, and the King will agree that I did what was best for him and his people.

  Don’t worry about that. He may even commute your exile, given sufficient proof of your reform.”

  “It seems to me,” said his mother firmly, “that Carolna and its King and all of us must give you the benefit of a doubt, Peterkins. If you can now exercise power over yourself, it’s possible you’re worth our forgiveness. Of course, I don’t speak for our good Lord King...”

  “Nor can I, but I’m willing that you shall have a second hearing,”

  added Murdan. “But first we have to find our way to the King’s side, to defeat these Rellings and their plunder-seeking allies and send them running for our borders, back where they started!”

  “For tonight,” said his tiny mother, rising, “I say you need a good night’s sleep in a comfortable bed with a hot brick wrapped in flannel at your feet—all of you—even you, Master Accountant. In the morning we can discuss what’s to do next. Come all! Garley and I will show you to your rooms.”

  rs

  Murdan woke in midmorning, aching in most of his muscles but able to eat an enormous breakfast of oatmeal with brown sugar and sweet cream, buttered white toast and orange marmalade, four fried eggs with two slices of ham, and six cups of sweetened, tongue-scald-ing coffee.

  That was even before he climbed out of bed and began to dress in clothes, which his mother’s people had dried, cleaned, pressed, and mended while he slept.

  “What’s the weather like?” he asked Garley, who supervised the service of his breakfast and his dressing.

  “Bright as a well-scrubbed copper pot, Lord Historian,” replied the ancient butler. “And not quite as cold as it’s been for a week past.

  The snow on the roof is melting fast.”

  “Not the best news for travelers, however,” said Peter, who entered just then to hear the weather report. “I’ve looked at the road west and it’s well on its way to being one long mud hole already.”

  “We must persuade our dour Ice Dragon to carry us still farther, then,” decided Murdan. “I think he’s rather enjoyed his journey so far.

  Is my Lady Mother up and about yet, Garley?”

  “Up, about, and halfway through her day’s work, Historian,” said the older man with a chuckle. “No one here rises earlier than Lady Murtal.”

  Below stairs they found the Historian’s mother in high boots and a thick-knit sweater, inspecting her kitchen garden. Three groundskeeper’s boys were sloshing about in the heavy, wet snow, pulling late cabbages and winter sprouts from their stalks.

  “Soup and sauerkraut and pickled beets,” cried Murtal, almost singing the words. “Who says winter is without its fruits?”

  “I wish I could stay for a roast of pork and your delicious sauerkraut,” said Murdan, laughing. “But we’re leaving at once, afoot or a-wing. I don’t like being out of touch, and Eduard Ten needs me, and...”

  “...and you’re worried about the bairn, of course,” Murtal finished for him, bobbing her silvery head. “I agree! Will the Dragon fly you over the mountains to Overhall?”

  As if summoned by the speaking of his name, Hoarling the Ice Dragon emerged from a snowbank just beyond the garden gate, snorting cold mist and shaking ice from his tail.

  “Ah, what a pleasant place you have here, Lady Murtal,” he said to them in greeting—really quite pleasantly, for him. “Best nap I’ve had in months!”

  “I’m glad to hear you say it,” said Murtal, laughing, not at all disturbed by the sudden appearance of a fierce-looking Ice Dragon at her gate. “You’re welcome to stay as long as you like of course, Master Hoarling.”

  “But,” said the Dragon with a sigh, “did I hear aright? Your son wants me to carry him back into the fray, just like a silly Companion of yore? Where is your own Dragon-friend, Lord Historian?”

  “I wish I knew,” replied Murdan honestly. “I intend to go find out as soon as I settle a few other matters, down south.”

  “Well,” said Hoarling with pretended reluctance, “I should assist in finding one of my warmer Constable cousins if he’s lost, I suppose.

  I can take you on the next step of your journey, at very least. Haven’t seen Carolna in centuries! Too warm, taken all in all. But it’s winter there, almost, isn’t it? And I suppose I can endure the heat long enough to collect my wages. Are you ready to leave?”

  “You can get
over the mountains, then?” Peter asked him.

  “We must fly through the mountain pass called Summer,” answered the Ice Dragon. “The air atop the eastern Snows is too thin to bear me so loaded with passengers. So thin, in fact, you’d fairly choke to death before I could get you to the lower lands.”

  “Summer Pass,” volunteered Garley, “was impassable for horses or men afoot from the time of the first snow last autumn. Won’t open until springtime thaws, as usual, sirs.”

  “We’ll fly medium high, then,” explained the Dragon. “Deep snows shall not hinder us!”

  “But there is a limit,” he said, puffing wearily six hours later, “to what even an Ice Dragon can do in such unsettled weather.”

  They’d left Old Place in midmorning, loaded with a picnic lunch and dinner rations provided by the lively lady of Old Place. For a while Murdan thought she was going to insist on going along—she was so concerned for the missing royal twin—but in the end her common sense prevailed and she sent them aloft with double-knit pullovers, extra warm socks, scarves, a bright smile, a blown kiss, and one last wave.

  By midafternoon, as they approached the north-facing slope rising to Summer Pass, the sky had turned a dark, dismal gray again.

  When they turned to begin ascending the pass itself, heavy, wet snow suddenly began to fall.

  The air remained relatively warm. There was no wind to speak of, so the snow struck and clung—to the passengers’ clothes; to the Dragon’s back, head, and tail; and, most important, to his long silvery wings.

  Try as he might to shake the freezing slush from all his surfaces, especially his wings, the snow fell faster than the Dragon could brush or shake it away, and within an hour it was weighing his body down so heavily that he began to sink toward the rugged ground some miles short of the summit of the pass.

  “We’re certainly not going to make the top of the pass today,” he announced with a worried strain in his voice. “We’d better find a place to land and take some shelter. If this keeps up, I could crash. Even I!”

  “Turn back,” agreed Murdan. “Head down for that line of trees there. The firs will again provide us some protection. We can wait it out for days, if need be. Damnation!”