“How long has today been?” Vierran asked Mordion as she slid back on to the bench beside him.
“Too long,” he said, wondering what was the matter. “The Bannus sometimes likes to fast-forward things. We seem to have caught it at it for once.”
“Or it’s let us see it at it,” Vierran said distrustfully. She wished she had her voices to check how long it had been, but there was only silence from them, making a miserable gap in her mind. She realised that she had forgotten to warn Mordion about Morgan La Trey. She turned towards him to tell him, wondering how she would do it without confessing what she had just said to La Trey.
“Your lad’s coming along rather well,” Sir Bedefer said, sitting down on the bench beside them. “And I had a very interesting talk with that silver man of yours. Hope you didn’t mind me hunting it out in your room. It knows a lot, doesn’t it?”
Mordion turned to talk cautiously about Yam, though he would much rather have found out what was worrying Vierran. Vierran listened to them talking and tried to be patient. They both liked Sir Bedefer, that was the trouble. But Vierran was certain afterwards that her impatience caused her to say what she did.
“I was asking your – robot, did you say the word was?” Sir Bedefer said, “whether it thought there was any truth in what that mad monk came in here and told us. You know he said we had rulers beyond the stars, or some such rubbish. Called them Reigners and said they ruled Earth. Now your robert-man—”
“But it’s true,” Vierran said, without thinking. “There are Reigners. But they don’t rule, they exploit. They take flint from Earth that’s so valuable you wouldn’t believe, and pay nothing for it, and keep Earth primitive on purpose. Rayner Hexwood Earth sells guns to the natives.”
“Oh, no we don’t,” Sir Bedefer answered, also without thinking. “I like to run a clean ship.” Then he blinked and obviously wondered what had possessed him to say that.
Vierran looked uneasily at Mordion. He was sitting very upright and very still. That’s done it! she thought miserably. The end of the good times, and I’ve only myself to blame!
Orm Pender was hungry by now. Uneasy acids broiled in his vast stomachs. The discomfort became so compelling that he was forced to halt his slow, deliberate progress towards his enemy and turn his great head about to sniff for closer prey.
Ah! Men. From some miles upwind came the appetising curry-like scent of a number of men sweating with effort of some kind. Better still, it was mixed with the more succulent odour of women and the rank, meaty smell of horses. Orm turned, snaking among the trees in that direction, moving faster now, helping himself along in the open glades by spreading his huge rattling wings. He came to a river in a deep trench and glided across it. When he was nearly over, he almost stooped towards an old human corpse rolling in the shallows there, but that cadaver was too rotten to please him when fresh food was so near. He glided on.
The food was on the further bank, in the fairly open wood beyond a copse. Orm furled his wings, spread his claws, and came to a silent raking landing in the copse. He crawled gently among the trees and, trusting to his green-brown mottled scales to hide him, couched cunningly among the bushes at the edge.
Copper blood smells came to him, tantalisingly. There was a battle going on out there. Large numbers of poorly armed men and women on foot were fighting a smaller band riding horses. Annoyingly, the warfare had reached the stage where everyone had scattered into small individual struggles, giving Orm no large or easy target. Orm turned his great yellow eyes this way and that, deciding which prey to select. Here a rider crunched the unfurling green bracken, turning and turning his horse to spear at two footmen trying to pull him down. Here another rider thudded in pursuit of several women with longbows. Here two other footmen were using the nearer trees as cover, crackling and slipping in brambles as they tried both to fend off a posse of attacking horsemen and to rally others of their people around them. Orm’s ears were offended by the hoarse, yelping shouts of these men.
All the same, both the shouting men were tall, meaty types, and others were running to join them. There were a couple of boys with them, one with his arm in a sling. Easy, tender meat for hors d’oeuvre. Orm decided that this group would do. He emerged slowly, slowly from his bushes and crept towards them, swallowing back a belch of hunger as he crawled.
That swallowed sound gave him away – or maybe it was the slight rattle of his wings or the scales of his dragging tail. Orm had forgotten that men, when they are fighting, are abnormally alert. White blobs of faces turned his way. A boy’s high voice screamed, “Dragon!” It was shrill as a trumpet and carried to all the other fighters. The battling stopped while more faces turned Orm’s way.
Orm gave up caution and put on speed, snaking towards his chosen group, belching out his hunger openly in hot, putrid blue clouds. But they were scattering, running away. All over the battlefield, his food was throwing down weapons, whipping up screaming horses, and taking to its heels. He broke into a gallop and roared his frustration.
But one of the riders – and only one – who shone in steel and had a lot of green about him, seemed to regard Orm’s approach as a challenge. This one reined round his terrified horse, fought it brutally under control, jabbed it with his spurs and, with a great yell of “Fors, Fors, Fors!” came galloping straight at Orm pointing a long green stick at him.
Orm halted. He could scarcely believe his luck. Food was running straight down his throat. He waited until the galloping pair was only yards away and laughed – laughed out his surprise and scorn in a big rolling billow of flame. Hair and skin sizzled. Orm made a leisured move sideways and let the smoking corpses thunder on under their own impetus. They fell just where he wanted them, beside his great clawed feet. To his annoyance, the rider was still moving inside the blackened armour. He even seemed to be trying to get to his feet. Orm put a stop to that by biting his head off, helmet and all, and throwing it aside with a clang.
Two spears hit him as he did so. Orm reared up, stretching his great neck, hissing his outrage and rattling his scales to dislodge the things. As the spears dropped off him, he spotted the two who had thrown them, the two tall meaty men, hastily retreating to either side. Orm lowered his head and sent two rolls of fire after them, to left and to right, which had them both diving for cover. He crawled forward and sent more fire, in a great arc, to discourage any others who might want to creep impudently up on him. The few who were left ran away with most satisfactory urgency.
Orm returned to feast on parboiled horse. He saved the pleasure of picking pieces of the man out of its shell of armour for a second course, when he was not so hungry and could enjoy it. When at last he put out a claw and dragged the delicacy towards him, his eye was drawn to the bright colours of the knight’s shield, which had fallen underneath him and was barely more than singed. Two unequally balanced golden pans glittered there on a green field. Orm had a notion that this should mean something to him, but his mind was still on food. He looked irritably round for the detached head, the tastiest part of all. Ah, there it was.
“Oyez, oyez!” the herald Madden shouted, on the steps of the castle hall. “Know ye that our gracious king, great Ambitas, is once again forced to postpone his marriage to the Lady Morgan La Trey. Being sore troubled with his wound the king took advice of the noble physician Agenos, and by the advice of this same Agenos now hereby makes it known that to his great regret his marriage must be put off for a year and a day.”
Morgan La Trey listened to this news leaning from the window of her tower. She allowed her fury to show only in a long, tight-lipped smile. “Fools!” she said. “Both of them. They have now given me the reason I needed.”
The herald had scarcely retired from the steps when the gates were flung open for the twenty-eight remaining horses of Sir Fors’s expedition to clatter through. They were all exhausted and foam-damped, and many were carrying two riders. Those poor horses, Vierran thought. The Hexwood Farm Riding School – where those horses
must have come from – was going to be twelve short after this.
“It looks just as bad as I feared,” Sir Bedefer said, and went down into the front court at a run. After a very few words with the lieutenant, he hurried him to the king. “Worse than I feared. Dragon,” he said to Mordion and Vierran, as he passed them in great strides, towing the tired lieutenant.
Morgan La Trey raced down the spiral stairs, jubilant. Sir Fors had not come back! One down and three to go. She scooped up Sir Harrisoun as he loitered in an antechamber, and the two of them got to the king first.
Sir Bedefer came back from the king with his mouth crimped shut and his eyes like angry slots. His request to take a large force out to deal with the dragon had been denied. His further despairing suggestion, that they make a pact with the outlaws and ask them to kill the dragon in exchange for weapons, had been met with astonished suspicion. Ambitas had expressed doubts about Sir Bedefer’s loyalty. “Mine!” said Sir Bedefer explosively to Hume. “Let him look at some of the others, I say!”
Hume nodded, puzzled, and not willing to be disillusioned about life in the castle. Vierran looked from him to Mordion and thought there was not much to choose between Mordion and Sir Bedefer for grim looks. She wished she knew what Mordion was thinking.
Overpowering disgust, Mordion would have told her. Beyond that he could not and would not think yet.
Minutes later, the herald Madden was once more on the hall steps.
“Oyez, oyez! Let all here know that our noble Champion Sir Fors did this day meet with a most valiant death at the hands of a vile dragon. Our most generous Majesty, great Ambitas, herewith orders that all in this castle shall now give proper honour to the noble Sir Fors. Every soul within these walls is commanded, on pain of death, to go forthwith and in haste to the field before the castle, there to gaze into the west where the noble Fors now lies, while the Reverend Sir Bors leads them in both song and prayer to the memory of the said Sir Fors.”
“Better go,” Vierran said to Hume and Mordion.
They joined the crowds streaming out of the gates in the sunset. Mordion walked pale and upright, struggling with an uprush of notions that threatened all the time to become outright memories if he let them. The worst of it, he thought, trying not to look at Vierran, was that under the influence of the Bannus, he had completely deceived her. She had no idea of the horrors he had been hiding.
The crowd spilled into a great half-circle by the lakeside: pages, cooks, squires, scullions, soldiers, maids and ladies – all the population of Hexwood Farm estate, Vierran thought wryly – leaving a space by the gates for the nobles, the choir, the king and Sir Bors. The choir, some of them still struggling into surplices, hastened through the gateway. Sir Bors, standing under the archway, was moving after the choir to take his place, when he was stopped by Morgan La Trey. She handed him a small golden flask.
“What is this?” he said.
“Holy water, Reverend,” she told him. “For you to sprinkle upon one we both know consorts with the devil.”
Sir Bors had long suspected that La Trey herself consorted with the devil. Everyone said she was a witch. He held the flask up to the light and examined it dubiously. It was, he saw, decorated with the device of the Key in hammered gold. His heart was eased. No one who consorted with the devil would have been able to handle such a thing. He thanked her and tucked the flask into the front of his robe. He knew what he had to do.
Morgan La Trey paused under the archway to back up her pressure on Sir Bors by invoking and manipulating the field of the Bannus. It was as well to leave nothing to chance. Then she went sedately out to take her place beside Sir Harrisoun and Sir Bedefer. Ambitas was carried out behind her and the service began.
This is going to be so tedious! Vierran thought, after the first few sentences. She thought with yearning sympathy of her own King, who had to put up with so much of this, and wished for the hundredth time that her voices could speak to her here. She was so bored! She occupied her mind as best she could by admiring the peachy ripples of the lake, or looking at the castle people and wondering who they had really been in the Hexwood Farm estate.
Some of the soldiers, oddly enough, reminded her of security men she had seen around the House of Balance. And then there were the outlaws. Who were they? Not to speak of the choir, she thought, as the choristers started to sing the first of no doubt many, many hymns. There was a big church two streets away from Wood Street. Maybe—
Someone tugged gently at her sleeve.
Vierran turned her head. She found herself looking at a dark-haired shabby boy with a large graze down one side of his face. He was a stranger. Yet she knew him very well. Who—? “Martin!” she said, unwisely loud. Martin shook his head urgently at her. “What are you doing here?” Vierran whispered, as Hume and Mordion both turned to see what was going on.
“I sneaked in on a horse behind one of the soldiers,” Martin whispered back. “Dad told me to try it. Dad and Mum want you with them in the outlaw camp.”
Hearing this, Mordion turned his face to Sir Bors again and pretended to be very attentive to the next prayer, but Hume remained turned half round, looking at Martin with puzzled, appraising, friendly interest. Vierran was rooted to the spot, torn. It’s not really Mother and Father, she thought. Is it? I have to see. But Mordion—
“I’m to tell you the castle’s not safe,” Martin whispered. “They’ll be attacking it tomorrow.”
Unfortunately, the slight disturbance they were making attracted the roving attention of Sir Harrisoun, who was as bored as anyone there. Even more unfortunately, Hume, by turning round, had left a gap through which Sir Harrisoun could see Martin. He stared, with dim memories of a greengrocer’s shop.
“Lord! You took a risk!” Vierran whispered. She hovered. “Look, if I come, can Hume and Mordion—?”
The right connection clicked in Sir Harrisoun’s mind. He took off running and dived through the gap Hume had left. “An outlaw!” he bellowed, seizing Martin’s arm. “Here’s a filthy little outlaw SPY!” Hume jostled at Sir Harrisoun, trying to protest, and Sir Harrisoun kneed Hume in the groin. “Ware outlaws!” Sir Harrisoun roared as Hume doubled up helpless.
Mordion went into action as Hume fell. He chopped Sir Harrisoun’s wrist to free Martin and then hip-threw Sir Harrisoun, who went down on the turf still yelling. “And Agenos is another spy! Agenos is a spy for the outlaws!”
Soldiers and servitors ran at Mordion in a crowd. Mordion smiled. He had little doubt about being able to hold his own. It was a relief to fight, in a way, though without magic he would have been severely hampered by not wanting to kill anyone. No more killing, never again! As it was, he used his staff as a weapon and as a power to hold off the most murderous of his attackers. One soldier who, Mordion remembered, was among the most brutal of the House of Balance security men, he felled with a sizzling blue bolt. He did not see Sir Bors stare at that blue light in horror and then start to make his way over to the fight, but as he jabbed, twisted, kicked and jabbed again, Mordion did spare a look to see what had become of Martin. Vierran, fluttering artistically with foolish alarm and stupid dismay, managed to get herself and her skirts in the way of the soldiers going after Martin. Martin went off like an eel through the crowd, pushing and ducking, relying on the fact that most people still had no idea what was going on, and Mordion lost sight of him.
While Mordion was looking, a servitor seized the chance to snatch his staff off him. Mordion smiled more widely and felled the servitor, before he turned to take on two soldiers. The staff was nothing, only a useful channel. He saw Vierran run and help Hume to hobble clear of the fighting. Hume was hugely annoyed and spitting swearwords Mordion had no idea he knew. Then a fresh crowd of soldiers rushed upon Mordion.
Amid the fury of their beating limbs, Mordion saw Martin break out of the crowd lower down and run along the lakeside with nowhere to go. That was stupid! Mordion thought. The bridge was drawn up and there was no way across the water. Worse
, many people had now grasped what was happening. Men from the lower edges of the crowd were running inwards from both sides to cut Martin off. Mordion flung the remaining soldiers away from him in a heap and then used the outflung power he had once used to destroy the waterfall to send Martin instantly as far away as possible. That was not across the lake, unfortunately. He put Martin as far away as he could, behind the castle. At the same time, he raised his arms theatrically and called a sizzle of lightning to the spot where Martin had been. With any luck, people would think Martin was invisible and look for him in the wrong place. He wondered, as he did it, why he was doing this for Martin. He had no idea who the boy was – except that Vierran cared about him. I’m always defending children, he thought, watching the crowd recoil from the flash of lightning.
He turned round to find himself face to face with Sir Bors. The man was shaking and had a look of total horror. “Abomination!” Sir Bors cried out, and poured the contents of the golden flask over Mordion’s head.
Mordion was instantly caught fast in a net of pain. The net grew and grew, and he grew with it, writhing, swelling, coiling, heaving, rolling, pawing, clawing, caught and unable to free himself. Dimly he heard Sir Bors crying out, “Behold! Your secret enemy is unmasked! This is the abomination that killed our good Sir Fors!” before he blanked out in the agony of it.
Everyone else in the crowd stampeded backwards from the great glossy black dragon that heaved and rolled, and gouged out lines of turf with its claws, and shot frantic fire that boiled the lake to steam, until it finally lay still down by the edge of the lake.
Morgan La Trey watched people fleeing past her into the castle. “I don’t understand,” she murmured to herself. “Is it dead?”
“No,” said the beautiful voice of the Bannus in her ear. “You should have got him to drink it.”
Here, the black dragon roused itself and came crawling up the slope towards the castle gates. Ambitas called frantically to his bearers, who carried him back inside at a run. Morgan La Trey went with them, but paused to watch everyone else pouring inside around and behind them. Among the last to come was Vierran, crying and struggling hysterically, so that the new young squire in blue had more or less to carry her.