“Better milk those cows,” Scales rumbled, stopping a tactful distance from the horses. “Give the pails to the cat-birds to give to the soldiers when you fill them.”
He certainly does give his orders! Blade thought, sliding down from Nancy. Shona dismounted from Beauty, protesting, “We haven’t been bothering with lunch.”
“I know. They’ve been grumbling about it all morning,” Scales said. “They’ve worked up quite a grievance. Do you carry any food for them?”
“Not really,” Shona explained. “There’s food in the camps, and we’ve been relying on that.”
“Have to make do with what we’ve got then,” said Scales. He settled down into a great green hump halfway between the cows and the soldiers and seemed to be dozing comfortably while Blade and Shona got busy milking and handing swirling white pailfuls to Kit and Don as they were ready.
“They don’t like milk. They want beer,” Don reported.
“They get beer in camp this evening,” growled Scales.
There were no further protests, but when Kit alighted beside Blade, clanging down his empty pail and holding his talons out for the full one, he said, “I don’t understand. We’d only got the four pails, hadn’t we? And all four of them are in among the soldiers full of cheese. They’re guzzling it in hunks.”
Blade gave a puzzled look toward the soldiers and saw one of Scales’s great eyes closing in a wink. Kit was in time to see it, too. “Oh,” he said to Blade. “More encouraging nature.”
The milking was done at last. There was enough milk left for Shona and Blade, except that the milk in the bottom of Blade’s pail was in the form of a small round cheese.
“You prefer that to milk, don’t you?” Scales said when Blade looked at him. “I’ll have one of those cows now.”
“But—” said Blade.
“If I eat it in front of the murderers,” Scales explained, “there’ll be no arguing when I tell them what to do next.”
Scales did just that, with horrid rendings and mooings and much blood. To add to the effect, he tore off two large lumps and tossed them to Don and Kit. Both griffins were so savagely hungry by then that they ate the pieces ravenously. The soldiers went very quiet. But Blade counted the cows and found that they still had the same number. He rather thought Kit and Don might have been eating cheese.
“I don’t propose to inquire,” said Shona. “But I didn’t realize dragons could do this.”
“Mum said some of the old ones were quite good at magic,” Blade told her.
“And Scales is old,” Shona agreed. She sighed. “If I’d gone to Bardic College when I was supposed to, I’d probably have learned dragonlore by now. I might know all about Scales. He could have been a legend in his time for all I know.”
Legend or not, Scales got them across the moors to the camp long before nightfall that evening, and the following night, too. The next day they toiled briskly across much more broken terrain, filled with woods and small rivers, and arrived into camp rather later. The soldiers cheered. Inside the mist of the dome were the rows of barrels they had come to expect from the previous two nights.
“Thank goodness!” Shona said, sliding off Beauty. “We can rest while Blade does the avians.” Blade had been taking the geese around to all three tours, because that was the easiest way to do it.
“Not much rest tonight,” Kit said, groaning with weariness. “We’ve got the first Wild Hunts today.”
“Tonight? Really?” said Don. “Have we been going that long?”
“’Fraid so,” said Kit.
Blade looked at the row of geese. They looked up from eating something in the grass and dared him to put them in that hamper again. “I can’t,” he said. “I’m too tired.”
“Nonsense!” boomed Scales.
“Let’s eat, anyway,” Shona sighed.
They did that. Blade fell asleep over the last of his supper, despite rowdy noises from the soldiers around the beer barrels, and woke at sunset feeling much better. The geese, to his surprise, were sitting smugly in the hamper, waiting for him. They were not going to miss their chance to bully humans.
“All right,” Blade said to them. “I bet you don’t dare bully three lots again.”
They made scathing noises. Easy-peasy.
Blade left as Kit was hauling himself off the ground and preparing to do the illusions for the Wild Hunts. When he returned astride his hamper of highly satisfied avians—they had sent three wizards racing up three different mountains faster than ever, and Blade had still not set eyes on a single Pilgrim—Kit was still trying to do illusions. He had given himself red eyes. He had transformed the Friendly Cows into great black horned things with ordinary eyes. Nothing would persuade the eyes of the cows to flame as Kit wanted. And the dogs kept shaking themselves irritably and losing their black coats and burning eyes in a shower of misty droplets. None of the horses would show the slightest change. Kit was looking a bit wild over it all.
“You look tired, Blade. You don’t need to come,” Shona said kindly.