“Stupid,” growled Scales. “Like this.”
Blade was not sure what Scales did. Kit stood for a moment with his head bent and then looked up at Scales in a startled way. “Is that all?”
“That’s all, unless you want to grow scales, spines, and spikes as well,” Scales answered. “Sit down while you’re growing them and explain how you got into that sandpit. All this prancing about is making me hungry.”
“He doesn’t mean most of the grumping,” Lydda murmured to Blade. “But I think dragons have to keep sort of half angry most of the time. Did you know you’d torn your vest?”
Blade looked down at the slash Kit had made. His vest was hanging open over goose pimples and bloodstains, but there was no sign of the cut. “Thanks,” he said to Scales.
“She wanted you in one piece,” Scales said, with a flick of his tail toward Lydda. “Well, Kit?”
Kit was crouched facing the wind, as griffins did to keep warm, concentrating in some way. “It was the geese,” he said.
“What?” said the other three.
“After the soldiers shot me and I fell in the lake,” Kit explained, “I lay in the mud at the bottom and thought I was dead. Then a goose dived down beside me and dragged the arrows out with its beak. And I realized then that I was holding my breath and thought I’d better come up for some air. So I shoved up and floundered and gasped at the surface. By that time the whole flock of the geese was around me, pushing and pecking and getting my blood on their feathers. I tried to get away—I mean I can’t swim, but they kept pecking until I arrived at the shore. There was a man there telling them what to do, but they couldn’t get me out of the water, whatever he told them. The man pulled me out in the end, by my beak. Then he told me that he was very sorry, but he thought I really had to learn that killing people wasn’t a game, and he went away with the geese and left me lying there. It was odd. I wasn’t bleeding anymore, but my wing was broken, and I felt awful. And after a bit the hunters from Costamaret came with a cart. They’d been hunting lions for the arena, but they didn’t mind catching me instead. They tangled me in a net and cut my wing feathers; then they heaved me onto the cart and brought me along to Costamaret.”
“I know how that feels,” Blade said, shivering.
Kit looked at him broodingly. “Only partly,” he said. “You were the fourth person I had to fight. What do you think happened to the others? It’s horribly easy to kill a human. Lions are much more difficult. I had six lions. But lions and people were just the same. They all wanted to stay alive. So did I, at first. That was the awful part—them or me. And I had no more right than they did to be alive. I just had a beak and talons, and they didn’t.”
“Yes, well, no need to get morbid,” Scales interrupted. “Dragons have that problem, too. Ah. Here comes that priggish mauve chit at last, being useful for once in her smug little life, I hope.” He lunged to his feet, suddenly dwarfing them all, and spread his wings with an impatient blatting. The mauve dragon circling in the distance snaked around into a long U-turn and glided toward him. “Shortsighted as well!” grumbled Scales. “Hurry it up, woman!”
The mauve dragon landed, rather awkwardly, at a safe distance. She looked quite small beside Scales, and lizardly slender.
“What’s the news?” Scales barked at her. The lady dragon released the claw she was holding awkwardly against her chest. Two white daylight owls sprang rather hastily out of it and glided, one to Blade and the other to Lydda. While they were detaching the message tubes from the feathery legs, the mauve dragon disdainfully shook free the padding the owls had been riding in. It proved to be Blade’s clothes that he had left in Mara’s Lair, and a thick coat. The messages were from Mara, too.
Blade read: “Blade, darling, for goodness’ sake try to get to Derkholm as soon as you can. Your father needs you badly. I’ll meet you there and explain.”
Lydda’s message said the same, except hers began, “Lydda, my love, I’m afraid your holiday’s over …”
Dragons, it seemed, did not need to speak in order to exchange news. Scales rumbled, “Let’s get going, if you’re up to flying, cat-bird. She says we have to get to Derkholm.”
TWENTY-SIX
WHY ARE WE WAITING?” sang the Pilgrims outside the gate. There were so many of them by now that Derk could hear them like a massed choir, even through his defenses. The noise was the last straw to skeletal Fran. She had grown tired of sharing the ruins of the village with more and more Pilgrim Parties, anyway, and now they had taken to walking up the valley every day, singing. The Wizard Guides with them just shrugged when Fran objected—she had an idea that the wizards had put the Pilgrims up to it in the first place—and so the morning came when she had had enough. She walked up the valley ahead of the Pilgrims, where she found Derkholm hidden behind a white shiny substance that hurt her knuckles when she pounded on it. So she ducked around to see if the back entrance was open at all. There she had a considerable shock.
“Did you know there’re dragons roosting all over the hills out at the back?” she demanded as she arrived on the terrace.
“Nothing to do with me,” said Derk.
Fran took in the hut on the terrace and the pigs. This was quite a shock to her, too. “I hardly know you from the pigs,” she said. “Are you coming out of there?”
“No,” said Derk.
“George!” screamed Fran. And when Old George arrived at a run, thinking someone was being killed, she said to him, “Hose. Now.” Then she rounded on Don. “And what are you doing—a great big creature like you—sitting there letting him get like this? Go and fetch your mother this instant. What are your wings for?”
Don gulped. “You said dragons—”
/> “That’s your problem,” Fran told him as Old George trotted back, unreeling hosepipe and surrounded by leaping, barking dogs, who were all looking forward to some fun for a change. “Fetch your mother this instant, or I’ll hose you, too!” Don fled in a squeak of talons and a rattle of wings. “Now,” Fran said to Derk, “I’m going to count up to three—”
“Count to a hundred if you like,” Derk said.
Fran snatched the hose from Old George, opened the nozzle to full, and turned it on the hut. Pigs squealed and squirted out from it, glistening. “Go back to where you belong!” Fran screamed at them, hosing mightily. They fled in sprays of water, and the dogs pursued them. By the barking and squealing, a royal chase shortly developed, around and around the plantations. Derk stood the hosing until he was soaked through and sitting in liquid pig manure and then crawled out onto the terrace. “Now get upstairs and get bathed and changed before Mara gets here,” Fran commanded.
“She’s not coming,” said Derk.
“Oh, yes, she is, if I have to fetch her myself!” Fran announced, and hosed Derk away in front of her, into the house.