But she let her husband seat her on a fiat stone in the shade of the fragrant lemon tree, the quicker to recover.
Murdan tried vainly to brush sticky, fragrant cedar resin from his hands as he came over to them.
“Clean simple fracture,” he reported. “Painful for a while, I’m sure, but Dragons can handle a lot of pain and they heal very fast. He’ll sleep shortly, and the process of healing will be well under way.”
Retruance nodded his agreement with the Historian’s prognosis.
“We should get him to Overhall, perhaps,” said Tom. “There we can watch and care for him.”
“No, I think we’d best leave him here. He needs only quiet and some curing sleep. Sleep for a week or so, now, or I’ve missed my guess,” said Retruance. “It’ll keep him out of trouble, too, in case he has a relapse into his enchantment.”
“Retruance and I will take turns watching over his convalescence,”
said Furbetrance. “And perhaps we can prevail on the brave Ice Dragon to lend a hand, if we need it.”
“I’m sure you can,” said the Ice Dragon, forgetting to be sarcastic for the second time in a quarter hour.
“He’ll probably enjoy your company once he’s awake,” Murdan said. “Having flown alone for so long. You’ve been more than just a help, Ice Dragon. A true friend, I’ll be the first to say.”
Hoarling came as close to blushing as ever he had.
Manda picked an armful of lemons and made lemonade with sugar borrowed from the scholar’s stores. They sat in the evening dusk around a comforting fire Retruance had ignited to warm them and the patient, who was still sound asleep, breathing greenish-tinted puffs of smoke as he gently slept.
“He’ll be all right?” Ednoll asked with a worried frown.
“Yes, my dear,” Manda reassured her half brother. “His wing will take a week or so to knit properly and at least that long again to get its full strength back. After that he’ll be the same, wonderful old Arbitrance Constable.”
“I want to show Amelia to him,” said Ednoll, with a five-year-old’s logic. “After he’s well again, I mean. When are we going home, Manda?
My mother will be worried about me, I know.”
Tom answered for her, “In the morning, Princeling. We’ll fly off to Murdan’s Overhall, where your lady mother is worrying about you.
Amelia is there and the Ffallmar children to play with, too.”
“Never been to Overhall,” the Princeling said, yawning.
“You have, but you were too young to remember,” Manda told him. “Here, Arbitrance made this downy bed for you to rest upon. Go you to sleep, little Prince. Tomorrow will be busy and very exciting.”
“I was,” murmured the Prince, fighting the good fight against falling asleep, “looking forward to sleeping in the hunter’s hut over on that other island.”
He slept between one thought and the next.
Murdan wearily wrapped his cloak about his shoulders against the evening dampness, pillowed his head on his Dragon’s warm flank and fell into deep slumber also.
Retruance, Hoarling and Furbetrance chatted softly about family matters and how they would divide the nursing care between them these next few weeks. Furbetrance decided to send for his wife, Hetabelle, from their home in the far west to assist them.
“We’ve still got a whole nation of Rellings to chase home,” Hoarling reminded them.
“That’s our final concern,” agreed Tom.
“Except for one,” said his wife.
“And that is?” Tom wanted to know.
They’d found a soft, sandy spot near the fire on which to spread their blankets.
“Why is it nobody has asked any questions about Arbitrance’s terrible enchantment?” she asked. “Who enchanted him? Who wanted Carolna to suffer so? Who i s our enemy? So far we’ve dealt only with his tools and fools.”
“I agree. Someone or some force seems to be interfering,” her husband nodded. “Murdan has been quietly working on it for some time. He also seeks to learn who or what brought me to Carolna in the first place.”
“Is that connected with this, does he think! With this business of invasions and kidnapping babies?” his beautiful, sleepy wife asked.
“I don’t know, but the Historian may have some ideas.”
“There are obviously two forces at work,” Manda reasoned. “It was a friendly someone who brought you to us five years ago. You helped save the kingdom then.”
“Well, perhaps. Are you suggesting that a second person enchanted the Dragon to kidnap the Prince?”
“And that makes at least two interferers. One good, one evil,” replied Manda with a slow nod. “I think it’s time we found out who’s playing with our lives this way and force them to stop.”
“Perhaps,” repeated Tom. These things were very far from his realm of experience. “Well, it can wait until we get back to Overhall.
The library there and the Royal Library at Sweetwater Tower may have clues. Maybe even answers.”
“Once a Librarian, always a Librarian,” giggled Manda, snuggling even closer to her husband’s side. “Is every answer in a book somewhere?”
“Of course not, else why would anyone ever write a new book?”
replied Tom. “But a whole lot is hidden away in a good library, if you know where and how to look.”
The train of thought this started kept him awake for a while after everyone else in the camp was sleeping. But only a little while.
Chapter Fifteen
Retreat of the Rellings
Retruance handed Manda a red and a green stone, each about the size of a wren’s egg.
“Now, Princess,” he said. “We need to decide which of us will stay here with Papa and who will fly everybody to Overhall.”
Manda hid the stones behind her back and shuffled them from hand to hand several times.
“Brother,” said Retruance, “which color do you choose?”
“Red stone I stop, green stone I go.”
“Agreed!” said the older Dragon. “Let Hoarling pick! We agree he should return north as soon as possible. This is not his kind of climate.”
Hoarling carefully touched Manda’s left fist with a long, silver claw.
She opened it to show them the red stone.
“I’ll hang around, then, at least until Hetabelle arrives,” said Furbetrance. “Can you handle the passenger load, older brother?”
“I’m not that decrepit!” snorted Retruance. “I once carried a fully armed platoon of soldiers, youngster. Hauled a whole boatload of pirates, too! Besides, Hoarling will be flying with us.”
Manda left them to their good-natured squabbling to go find Tom and Ednoll. The Librarian had borrowed Findles’s fishing rod and was showing the Princeling how to catch his breakfast. The two were sitting together on a log fallen half in the water, casting for largemouth bass among the offshore lily pads.
“No breakfast fish, today,” Tom told her. “I think the fish were frightened by all the commotion yesterday afternoon.”
“Besides, fish never bite just before a rain,” said his Princess, pointing at the leaden skies again rolling over Sinking Marsh. Her odd bits of knowledge often surprised her young husband.
“In Iowa,” he insisted, “fish bit before, during, and after rain. Or so I remember.”
“I doubt it,” she scoffed. “Come and have some flapjacks with syrup and wild blueberries, instead. Findles has it ready.”
Ednoll, knowing a good thing when he heard about it, reeled in his line and set off for the open-air breakfast table, shouting with a five-year-old’s enthusiasm. A flock of white herons who had been watching the fishing and making delighted (and humorous) comments, followed them, hoping for some table scraps in lieu of the promised bass.
“You’re quite good with children,” Tom’s wife said rather thoughtfully.
“Thank you! I come from a large family in which I was the youngest,” he explained. “Youngest children of large f
amilies know very well what it takes to amuse other little ones.”
“I was all alone, a little girl with two faster brothers, which I guess is the same thing.”
“Foster, rather,” Tom corrected her automatically.
“Boo to you, sirrah! They were faster as well as foster, you see. I used to pretend I was the eldest of a large family, left to care for my younger brothers and sisters in place of our mother. Poor mother always had perished in very tragic, very romantic circumstances.”
“Who will ever understand little girls or their dreams?” asked Tom, rolling his eyes in pretended mystification.
They walked arm in arm across the hummock to Findles’s campfire under the arching willows. The smell of bacon and pancakes met them halfway.
“I’m glad you like children,” resumed the Princess after a long, companionable silence.
“I love children,” said Tom, looking at her sideways.
“Good!” she said, and would say no more.
They waved good-bye to Findles and Furbetrance, swooped low to check on the still-sleeping Arbitrance once more, and shot away to the northeast as fast as Dragon wings could flap. Murdan rode the Ice Dragon’s back, after conning all the warm clothes he could garner from the others in the party.
Manda, Tom, and the little Prince Ednoll sat on Retruance’s broad brow.
The day had turned faultless, the autumnal rain having passed on over the waters thereabouts while they ate breakfast and prepared to depart. It was a gem of a midday, cool and diamond clear.
“Bright as a new penny,” Tom said.
Manda and her half brother wanted to know what a penny was, and the resulting conversation about money, metals, and coinage lasted for more than an hour.
They crossed wide Cristol River during the middle afternoon.
This great stream almost divides Carolna into northern and southern halves, Findles explained to the boy. Retruance turned to follow its course eastward until they reached the confluence of the Cristol and Overhall Stream some time well after midnight. The Prince had fallen into a deep, child’s sleep. Manda had tied him to Retruance’s forward right ear for safety.
“What are you thinking about, my love?” Manda asked Tom.
They watched dawn come up off toward Lexor and Rainbow.
“Water,” he answered. “A major concern for those of us who live on the edge of a desert.”
“Oh, you mean Findles’s ideas about water flowing deep under Hiding Lands? What use is it to us at Hidden Lake Canyon?”
“Not so much at Hidden Lake, but it was never my intention that we should live alone and isolated, always, there. How to get farmers to take up our land and make it green and grow? What if we were to draw up water from below the desert itself?”
“It would all evaporate away in the heat,” she replied, quite reasonably.
“Maybe...and maybe not. In my home world, men cleverly dug wells or diverted rivers and made dry deserts bloom. Given a reliable, year-round supply of water, we could grow crops right in the middle of Hiding Lands and attract good, practical farmers like Ffallmar’s to come and establish their own Achievements near us.”
“A very pleasant thought, even if it’ll rather spoil the peace and quiet I love so at our lake,” murmured his wife. “If it’ll work, that is.”
“Worth trying someday. First, we want to build our house. Murdan says Clem and Mornie are already at Ramhold. When we finish with the Rellings I’d like to go back to the canyon with Clem and begin building. Start digging and pouring foundations before springtime...if you can be there, Retruance.”
“Papa will be completely well by then, yes,” answered the Dragon, who had been listening, as Tom knew he would be. “I’ll come with you, of course! Probably Furbetrance and his Hetabelle, too. More hands, quicker done!”
“It’ll be nice having Mornie and the boys with us. We have Fall Sessions first, of course,” Manda reminded him.
“I’d forgotten! It’ll be a long and busy Sessions this year, what with the war and all.”
Murdan called over to them to look ahead where Overhall had just come into view as the sun rose out of the distant Blue.
“It’s a special pleasure to see home after a long, arduous adventure,” he said to the Ice Dragon sentimentally.
“So it is,” agreed Hoarling. “I look forward to deep summertime sleep myself. Winter’s my kind of time and place.”
Manda began pointing out the local sights to her just-awakened half brother, who fairly jumped with excitement as they gazed down on farms and fields, orchards and woodlots and trout streams, and the magnificent castle towers, gay with pennants and flags and banners.
“There are three towers,” she told him. “Fore-tower—that’s where Uncle Murdan has his apartments. Middletower—that’s where we have our place, me and Tom...”
“Tom and I,” the Librarian corrected her.
“Well...and that’s where the nursery and library are, and the work-room of the late, great Dragon architect, Altruance.”
“My own grandfather,” put in Retruance proudly.
“What’s in the third tower?” the boy asked.
“Aftertower,” said Manda. “Uncle Murdan uses it for storage and as a prison, sometimes. Your great uncle Peter is living there just now.”
“Ugh! I was hoping he’d stay in exile for a century or so,” said Tom, making a face.
Ednoll thought this very amusing, and wanted to know what else was housed in the wonderful tall towers. Tom told him of the time he and Retruance had sneaked into the castle after it’d been captured by Mercenary Knights to find Altruance Constable’s construction plans—
and a way to drive the Mercenary Knights from Overhall by diverting Gugglerun into the castle itself.
Overhall was fairly brimming with people and excitement.
Word from the front was of sharp skirmishing near the northern city walls between Carolna’s forces and the Relling invaders. The Rellings and their remaining allies had concentrated to the north of the city and at first refused to give way. At the moment they had begun to retreat, according to daily messages received from Eduard by pigeon post.
The smaller force that had attacked Overhall was slowly retreat-ing also, raiding and marauding as they fled, burning farms and villages whose men had gone to fight around Lexor. The womenfolk had run from their homes, many of them coming to Ffallmar Farm and Sprend, and even to Overhall Castle, for safe refuge.
“They need a second lesson in Dragon war,” decided Retruance, a hard gleam in his eyes. “I think I’ll see if I can convince them to go away quickly and permanently.”
“They fight on because they’ll never make it back to their own country before the northern winter sets in,” said Murdan. “I’ve a plan.
It’ll serve two purposes.”
He sent Tom and Retruance, accompanied by Hoarling, who was going that way anyway, loaded down with his fee for assisting them, to herd and harass the raiders to Plaingirt, the deserted log-walled town that had once been the stronghold of Basilicae’s soldiers for hire.
Isolated here, they’d be allowed to settle in for the winter, unable to rejoin the main Relling force in their own withdrawal. In spring they would be allowed to return to their frozen Northlands homes, never to return again.
Murdan guessed that a number of them would elect to stay in Plaingirt. A deserted town was always a temptation to soldiers weary of fighting. True, he admitted, they might be a problem in the future, if the wrong sort took the leadership there.
“We’ll have to see to it that the ‘wrong sort’ doesn’t get control.”
said the Historian. “The Rellings as a whole are not a wicked people—
just adventurous and restless at times. A few of them in a nice, solid little town like Plaingirt might be a welcome addition to that part of Eduard’s kingdom. They might even appreciate good government, for a change.”
“You’re far too lenient with them,” complained Retruance. �
�They started this war. They deserve to be punished more than just a little for it. We can drive them right into the North Blue, if you and the King but say the word.”
“Only Eduard Ten is empowered to make such decisions. The important thing is, the King and Ffallmar can use you at Lexor. Men are being hurt and killed there, yet. Secure this raiding party at Plaingirt, leave some of Manda’s foresters to watch them over winter, then report to the King at the capital.”
After seeing the Relling raiders, short on weapons and nearly out of food, safely holed up and snowed in at Plaingirt, Tom and Retruance flew to Lexor to find the King and Ffallmar.
“We’re preparing a major counterattack against the remaining enemy in the hills just to the north of the city,” Ffallmar told Tom.
“Do we call you general, now?” Tom teased the Historian’s solid, bucolic son-in-law.
“No, no! I’m but a patriotic countryman,” answered Ffallmar, blushing. “I just did what I could to relieve the capital and assist the kingdom. Somebody had to take charge.”
“No matter what he says, I’ve made him a Baron-Knight and commander in chief of all my forces, outranking everyone except me,” said King Eduard. “He’s superb in the field, understands his enemy almost as well as he does his own men. Never has the Carolnan militia fought better or served so willingly, even against great odds.”
“They fight for their families, homes, and lands, just as I do,” said the modest farmer-soldier. “I admit it’s nice to hear people call me
‘Lord Ffallmar’ once in a while. It’ll sound nice when they introduce My Lord and Lady of Ffallmar at the Sessions Ball next month.”
rs
The Battle of Near Hills proved sharp but mercifully short.
With the Dragons appearing early in the day, striking justifiable terror in many Relling hearts, the forward works were stormed and the makeshift defenses scaled and breached in double-quick time.
“I suspect,” said Tom to Eduard during an afternoon lull in the attack, “that they have already made their plans to escape.”
“I have that feeling, also. What can our Dragons tell us?”
Retruance and the Ice Dragon went aloft to have a look behind the Rellings’ ragged lines and returned to say that it was packed to overflowing with armed men, moving off to the north.
Dragon Rescue Page 19
