Dark Lord of Derkholm

  The griffins were tired, too, and Pretty was bored. Pretty was so bored with the Wild Hunt that he started leading the dogs off in the wrong direction. Don got quite hysterical about it—even worse than Prince Talithan over the empty cities, Derk thought. But he forgave Don because it was borne in upon him that Don was too young really to be in charge of anything. He put Callette in charge of the Hunt instead, and Don wretchedly agreed to have another try at helping with the battles.

  Then the geese replaced themselves with six pigs and vanished. Now not only was Callette furious, but they had six puzzled pigs getting under everyone’s feet in the base. Every time he tripped over Ringlet, Derk hoped savagely that the geese had gone home and the dwarfs had eaten them. But when he flew Beauty to Derkholm to get tipped into his balefire, Derk found no sign of any geese, only increasing numbers of dwarfs. Scales seemed to have rounded up almost all of them. Look on the bright side, Derk thought. Kit’s den was packed full of treasure, Old George was being quite a convincing wailing skeleton these days, and the demon turned up faithfully to terrify the Pilgrims at every confrontation. Derk gave up wondering why the demon was doing it. He was simply almost grateful.

  He flew back to the base to find more things going wrong. Emperor Titus came apologetically to report that half his younger legionaries had resigned and gone home. “They all say their mothers are ill,” he said. “We sent to check, and it seems to be true. There’s some kind of illness that only affects older women. We had to give them all compassionate leave.” And after the Emperor came the mercenary chief of the Forces of Good, swearing and cursing because every one of his female soldiers had deserted in the night.

  Kit’s brow jutted and Kit’s tail lashed at this news. Derk could hardly blame him. It was a real puzzle how the Forces of Good could win convincingly when half of them were missing. Kit, Derk sometimes thought, was the only one not being a problem. Now he had stopped feeling so important, Kit had settled down and become almost sunny. Kit was the one who tried to joke Callette out of her fury over the geese. It was not Kit’s fault, Derk thought, that this had only made Callette angrier.

  But behind all this, Derk was increasingly anxious about Lydda. She ought to have come back from laying clues long ago. He kept hoping she had gone to Mara. In the end he sent Prince Talithan to find out. Mara would talk to Talithan, and it would take Talithan’s mind off the disappearing citizens. But Talithan came back within the hour to say that Lydda was not with Mara and Mara was as anxious as Derk. “She says she will cause other lady wizards to search, Lord.”

  Derk sent the daylight owls off to look for Lydda, too. Lydda was too young, just like Don, and he knew he ought not to have asked her to fly so far. He never would have asked her if he had not been ill.

  He had just sent the owls off when Scales arrived with the news that Blade had disappeared. Derk’s stomach twisted, and he was nearly sick with worry. At first he thought that the whole party, Shona included, had gone missing. “No. You misheard me,” Scales rumbled. The reason he knew Blade was missing, he said, was that while he was checking for dwarfs from the Eastern Range, he had flown across a Pilgrim Party wandering miles from anywhere a tour should be. “I dropped down and spoke to them,” he said. “Your Shona seemed to be in charge, and she told me. Some crisis in the night. Young Blade seems to have vanished in a clap of noise, taking two of the others with him.”

  Blade now! Derk thought. Blade was too young, just like Don and Lydda. He ought to have refused to let Blade be a Wizard Guide, whatever the Oracle said. “Show me where they are on the map,” he said.

  He unrolled the map and pinned it down with stones. Scales’s great head bowed over it, and one long claw very delicately made a tiny prick mark, right in the middle of nowhere. “There,” said Scales. “Nothing else for miles.”

  “Hmm,” said Derk. If he got the balefire fallen into quickly tomorrow, he would be able to get to that region and still be back for the battle the day after that. “Thanks,” he said to Scales. “Could you spare time to look for Blade at all?”

  “Be glad to,” said Scales. “I was getting bored hunting dwarfs.”

  Before he left for Derkholm the next day, Derk checked up on the soldiers in the dome. This was another worry nagging at the back of all the others. It was hard to pin down, but years of spells not going quite right, from the blue demon on, had given Derk a feeling for magic that was not acting as it should, and he was sure that the spells Barnabas had put on the dome were not holding in some way. The men in black were behaving as soldiers should, drilling, exercising, queueing at the cookhouse, resting, caring for weapons, but Derk was sure that something somewhere was not quite right. He could not place it. He went around and looked carefully at all Barnabas’s workings. But they seemed to be correct. He would have liked to consult Barnabas, but Barnabas was not there to consult. Barnabas spent less and less time in the camp. Sometimes he only turned up at the last minute before a battle, in a strong gust of beer smell, which was the main reason why Derk was sure something was wrong. But he could not find it. Besides, Beauty was ready, and he was in a hurry. He left.

  At Derkholm, he fell into his balefire three times in quick succession and did not wait to chat with Serklid, the third wizard, at all. “Blade’s missing,” he explained. “I have to go. Could you do me a favor and ask the dwarfs if they’ve eaten goose lately?”

  He left Serklid murmuring, “Goose? Why goose?” and took off in a whistling of Beauty’s black pinions.

  Beauty was as glad as anyone to have a change from routine. She flew with a will, circling high above the hilly, trackless region that Scales had pricked out and searching as earnestly as Derk did. It was she who found the Pilgrims. “Smhell hhorses,” she announced, and she began descending long before Derk spotted the group of riders straggling across a grassy upland. When they were low enough, Derk saw the one in front was wearing bardic green.

  “That’s them!” he said joyfully. “Clever of you, Beauty!”

  The riders all looked up as Beauty came swirling down. Most of the horses spooked, and so did some of the riders, to judge from the way at least four of them fell off. Derk landed a prudent distance away. Shona swung down from her bucking horse and came racing over, followed by a tall male Pilgrim.

  “Oh, Dad! I am so glad to see you! We thought you were another dragon for a second. This is Geoffrey,” Shona said.

  She looked wonderful, quite her old self and prettier than ever, Derk saw. He examined this Geoffrey who was clearly so important to her. What a pity the man was a Pilgrim. What Derk saw he liked. A nice person, an honest one, with a commanding look to him. “What on earth are you all doing so far off the tour route?” he said.

  “That was Blade,” Shona said. “Oh, Dad, he never looked at the map once! I’m not sure he knows how to read a map even. You know how you always think he must know because of the way he translocates, but I think that must be something quite different. So he’s been leaving maps to Kit, because Kit’s good at them, and we were quite lost long before he vanished.”

  “Yes, but what happened to Blade?” Derk asked.

  “And my sister and her latest boyfriend,” Geoffrey said ruefully. “They’re gone, too. We don’t quite know what happened, sir. Our camp was raided in the night, we do know that, by quite a lot of people on horseback. Professor Ledbury over there woke us up, shouting and swinging his sword about, and we all jumped up. But it was dark and pretty confused, sir, and all I can work out is that my sister was wearing pale blue, which made her the easiest to see, and the raiders grabbed her and rode off at a gallop with Sukey screaming blue murder. We think Reville—he seems pretty taken with Sukey—went chasing after them on foot and that Blade went after them both. But it’s only guessing. There was a sort of bang, anyway, and Shona says it makes a bang when someone translocates fast, and the three of them have been missing ever since.”

  “We’ve been trying to carry on,” Shona explained. “We did follow the riders’ tracks
for a day, but we lost them the next day, and now we’re trying to go on with the tour. But Blade had the map, and we don’t really know where we are.”

  “Is that what you think we should do, sir?” Geoffrey asked, polite but anxious.

  Difficult question. Derk thought about it. They were days of travel from anywhere except Derkholm here. By the time they reached the Emirates, the Emir would not be expecting them anymore. If they cut out the Emir and made straight for the Inland Sea, the pirates would have gone home for the winter. The pirates had been very firm about when they would stop. If the party went the other way, it might just arrive in time for the very last battle—or it might not. “Do you all want to carry on?” he asked.

  By this time most of the other Pilgrims had dragged their resisting horses within earshot. Derk’s question caused Miss Ledbury to come striding forward. “My good man, are you suggesting we have any choice in this matter?”

  Dear, dear, what a dragon! Derk thought. She must have been quite a match for Scales. How does she keep her hair so neat? “Of course you have a choice, madam,” he said. “You are the customers, and customers are always right. I was simply thinking that if you were to turn around and travel due south—that way, Shona—you would eventually reach a road. You’ll know it, Shona. It goes to the University one way and Derkh—er, the Dark Lord’s Citadel the other way. You could all get home quite quickly from the Citadel.”

  “Oh, thank goodness!” exclaimed a straight-haired girl. “I am so sick of this!”

  “On the contrary,” snapped Miss Ledbury. “I have by no means completed my surv—er, tour.”

  A fierce argument broke out. It sounded as if half the party agreed with Miss Ledbury and the rest had had more than enough already. Derk said quietly to Shona, “I’m afraid I shall have to leave you to sort this one out. I must go and look for Blade and the other two.”

  Geoffrey smiled at him. “Don’t worry, sir. I’ll let them argue, and when they’re tired of it, I’ll tell them they’re going south.”

  “And they’ll do it,” Shona said, “believe me. See you soon, Dad. Find Blade quickly.”

  But Derk could not find Blade. Beauty went around and around in ever-enlarging circles centering on the place Derk guessed the Pilgrims had been when they were raided, and there was nothing. No sight, scent, feeling of Blade or anyone else—nothing but broken, hilly landscape and no roads, no people, and not even a solitary house. Blade could hardly have chosen a more deserted area to disappear in. In the end Derk had to give up and return to base, or Beauty would have been too tired for the battle the next day.

  The three griffins came anxiously to meet him. “Any luck?” asked Kit.

  Derk sighed and explained.

  “We’ll all go looking when the battle’s over,” Kit said. “If I give us each a sector on the map—”

  Don rolled his eyes. “You and your maps. Barnabas is back, by the way.”

  “He’s drunk again,” said Callette.

  Derk sighed even more heavily as he led Beauty over to the horse lines and unsaddled her. “I can’t stand much more of this,” he said to Pretty, who came cantering over to greet his mother.

  “Why do you?” Pretty asked brightly.

  “Good question,” said Derk. The sight of Pretty soothed him. He was now a splendid colt, almost as big as Beauty, bright-eyed and strong, and those striped wings of his were showing signs of being twice as efficient as Beauty’s, just as Derk had hoped. He patted Pretty’s neck and went to discuss tomorrow with Kit. Naturally he fell over Ringlet on the way.

  Kit had a problem. “I didn’t think we’d wear the valleys out so quickly,” he said. “We’re on the last one already. We can’t use the one beyond that. It’s full of lake. And beyond that there’s nothing but thick woods. I think we may have to go out into the moors for the next battles, and that would be difficult even with the Forces of Good up to proper strength.”

  Derk sat on a tree stump with the map draped over one knee and Ringlet’s snout affectionately on the other. He saw what Kit meant. This last valley, the one Kit was using tomorrow, was quite steep and small, anyway. The next one, over a wooded ridge, was almost entirely a lake. “How many more battles have we?”

  “Six. We’re almost halfway through now.” Kit sighed a little as he saw the end of his planning and conferring coming closer. He did love it so. “If we don’t move out to the moors, we have to go back and reuse the earlier valleys, and I don’t see how we can. The first valley we used is still only trampled mud. I flew over and looked.”

  “Grass doesn’t grow back at this time of year,” Derk observed. “Ask Barnabas to go and green it up.”

  “He’s asleep. Snoring,” said Kit.

  “I’ll do it then,” Derk said wearily. Callette silently handed him a cheese sandwich. Derk took it, moved Ringlet and the map, and translocated to the site of the first battle, eating as he went.

  The valley was an awful, desolate mess, worse now the leaves had come off the trees. The autumn rains had swollen the stream into a muddy marsh, and the place was full of crows, picking over the bare ground. Derk drove the birds off and got down to work. He felt better as he set the spells for greening. Making things grow was what he was good at, clean, absorbing, refreshing work. He was ankle-deep in marsh and the ground was already spiked with grass blades, bright green in the setting sun, when Don came hurtling in.

  “Dad! All the horses have gone!”

  Derk looked sadly at the four skidding, muddy tracks Don had made landing. “What?”

  “Beauty, Pretty, Nancy Cobber, Billy—all of them!” Don said breathlessly. “Kit and Callette have flown off after them, but I’m not sure—It was more like magic. They left all their bridles behind.”

  The Horselady, Derk thought. Some Pilgrim somewhere had mistreated a horse. She had carried out her threat and recalled every horse there was. “She’d no call to take Beauty and Pretty, too!” he said. He was quite hurt that the Horselady had done that. “Anyway, fly after Kit and Callette and tell them to come back. It’s specialized magic. They can’t do any good.”

  Don dithered. “But you need Beauty tomorrow!”

  “I’ll have to do without her, won’t I?” said Derk. “I’ll speak to the Horselady after the battle.”

  The battle started several hours late the next day. Almost the only people who were in place in the last valley at the right time were the legions and the werewolves, who did not use horses to get there. King Luther was over an hour late. The fanatics and the mercenaries were an hour later still. It was possible that some Pilgrims never got there at all. Agitated wizards kept appearing all through the night and during the dawn, imploring Derk to hold the battle up because their parties were still ten, or twelve, or twenty miles off and were going to have to walk all the way. Nobody but Barnabas got much sleep.

  At least the delay meant that Barnabas could be sobered up. While Kit paced up and down beside the river in black impatience, slapping the shingle with his tail, Derk marched to Barnabas’s tent and hauled the sleeping wizard out. When Barnabas did nothing but curl up on the stones and moan, Derk took the bucket of river water Callette handed him and poured it over Barnabas. Barnabas sat up with a yell, dripping twirls of water from every curl on his head.

  “Have a heart, Derk!”

  Derk took the flask of coffee Don handed him and passed it to Barnabas. “Drink this. Then check the battle spells on the soldiers, please. They don’t seem right to me.”

  Barnabas glanced up the hill to the dome, where the soldiers were dimly to be seen forming up in ranks on the parade ground. “They’re fine, Derk. Promise.”

  “Check all the same,” said Derk.

  Barnabas swigged down the coffee and got up, dripping and dismal and grumbling, and trudged his way around the dome. Derk went with him to make sure. As far as he could see, the spells were indeed in place and all correct, but yet he was still not happy about them. When Barnabas opened up the dome and the army marched
out, Derk watched the men narrowly. They all seemed just as usual. By this time the black armor, though brightly polished, was battered and rather worn and a lot of the soldiers had got themselves extra weapons—bows and arrows mostly, but some had morning stars, dwarf axes, or a second sword—picked up from dead enemies. But they had had those for several battles now. That was nothing new. Their faces inside the black helmets looked grim and unfeeling, just as usual. And yet—Derk was frustrated. Nothing was obviously wrong, but he was sure something was. He sighed and took his place at their head, on foot for a change, with Callette beside him carrying the black banner with the strange device. Drums beat; trumpets sounded. They marched to the valley.

  It was just as well this was a much smaller valley, Derk thought when they reached it. Now half the legions and a third of the mercenaries were gone, the Forces of Good, up among the trees opposite on the hill that hid the lake in the next valley, were small indeed. Kit had had his work cut out to plan their victory convincingly. Their own side was smaller, too, but this was because people had been killed. Kit called this natural wastage. Derk wished he wouldn’t. He gave the signal to advance.

  Both sides shouted and began moving downhill. As the front lines closed on one another, Kit as usual rose majestically from behind Derk’s lines, twice the size and with the illusion of a dark shadow riding on his back, and circled above the fighting, uttering dreadful screams. It was always awesome. Derk stared upward admiringly. Kit looked almost as big as Scales. He blocked off the light.

  Movement caught the corner of Derk’s eye. He turned sharply to the right. Half the soldiers there were down on one knee on the hillside, bending longbows, aiming upward. The glimpse he had of the nearest face did not look bespelled in the least. What the—? Derk slapped a hasty and ragged stasis spell out there. Bowstrings twanged, and most of the arrows looped harmlessly around the hillside. But almost at the same time, Don screamed a warning from Derk’s left, and behind Don’s scream, Derk heard the breathy whuff of a flight of arrows truly aimed. He whirled that way to see arrows storming into the sky and the soldiers on that side punching the air, capering about waving longbows, and pointing triumphantly.