Dark Lord of Derkholm (16 page)

Lydda's beak snapped. “Be quiet. We have to wait for the healer.”

They waited. Shortly Kit put his head through the window, grassy and ruffled with shame. He told them that Mara was still talking to the dragon. “It turns out to have been asleep for the last three hundred years,” he said. “I suppose that accounts for it. Things must have been very different when it was last awake.”

“I wish it had never woken up,” Elda said miserably.

Blade wished that, too. It seemed unbelievable that only half an hour ago he had been annoyed with Derk for making him drudge about getting lunch. Now he would have given anything to go back to being angry with his father in the old comfortable way. “We never had lunch,” he said.

Nobody wanted lunch. They waited.

About half an hour later Callette's wings boomed as she hovered above the terrace, carrying the healer slung in a blanket like a marshwoman's baby, while Don hastily landed to catch the healer as Callette tipped her out.

“Thank—thank
Anscher!
” said Lydda.

The healer, who was a thin, brown, harassed-looking woman, took one look at Derk and turned everyone out of the room except Lydda. “You look the calmest,” she said.

“I'm not. Really,” Lydda said, but she stayed.

Soon after, Mara left the dragon for a short while and went in to speak to the healer. She came out with a shawl wrapped over her startling dress, looking gray. “She's still trying to clear his lungs,” Mara said to everyone sitting or couchant on the terrace. “She says to thank whoever cooled the burns off because she can concentrate on his breathing first. But she'll have to stay the night. Shona and Elda, you run up and get her a bed ready and put clean sheets on Derk's bed, and Blade can move Derk when she's finished. Don and Kit, let me know at once when she's through, please. I want her to come and see to the dragon after that.”

“You want her to see to the
dragon!
” Shona exclaimed.

Mara gave Shona one of her grimmest, chin-up looks. “That dragon,” she said, “is half dead. His wings need stitching, and I think he has some kind of deficiency disease. It may have affected his mind. He needs help, Shona.”

“Oh, fine!” said Kit. “Fine! And has that dragon of yours killed Dad? Or not?”

“The healer
thinks
he'll be all right,” Mara said, at which everyone let out large sighs of relief. “But,” Mara added, “she'll have to put him in a healing coma for the next five days at least, and he'll be in bed for a while after that.”

“But,” said Shona, “Mum, the tours start the day after tomorrow!”

“I know. And the Dark Lord's army comes through tomorrow,” Mara said. “It's a disaster. Let me know when the healer's finished with Derk.” And she hurried away to see the dragon again.

I
T SEEMS RATHER HARD
on Barnabas,” said Blade.

“Not nearly so hard as it would be if we told him the truth,” Don muttered.

They were all clustered to the side of the terrace, watching Mara explain to Barnabas that Derk would be away for a few days. Mara was looking tired and harassed, in a coat thrown over her Enchantress finery. “Still in that awful dress, I see,” Shona said, arriving after seeing the healer off on one of the horses. The healer had flatly refused to let Callette or even Kit carry her home.

“I think it's a pretty dress,” said Elda.

“You would,” said Callette.

“I like it, too,” said Kit. “And it makes her look as if she's only just got here.”

There had not been much discussion about what to do. Everyone knew Mr. Chesney must not find out that Derk was injured, and nobody trusted Barnabas not to tell Mr. Chesney. Blade had not really understood how strongly they all felt this, until he saw Barnabas bouncing up the terrace steps this morning and jovially asking Kit, who was roosting there on watch, “Where's Derk? The soldiers have arrived.” When Kit answered that Derk was away for a while, the change in Barnabas was startling. He went pale. He sagged with such dismay that even his curls seemed to droop. “But he
can't
go away!” Barnabas protested. “He's Dark Lord! It's—it's irresponsible!”

“He's afraid
he's
going to have to do it,” Lydda said, while Don scudded away to alert Mara.

Mara shortly came rushing around the side of the house, coat and black lace and hair streaming. Barnabas turned to her indignantly. “What's Derk
playing
at?”

Mara was cross and out of breath and certainly looked as if she had just arrived from Aunt's house. In fact, she had spent the early morning carefully erasing the burned patch outside the gates and had just come from coaxing the sick old dragon up into the side valley where the mayor's cows were. According to Don, the first thing the dragon did was to eat two of those cows. “She was trying to stop it eating too much. She says its name's Scales or something,” Don reported, settling down among the others.

Mara's explanation went on for some time. “I hope she'll remember to tell us all the stuff she's inventing,” Shona remarked. “It could be awkward.”

“Godlike snacks,” Lydda murmured. “Those will distract him. Come on, Elda. The rest of you ask her.”

Barnabas turned eagerly to the tray of Umru-style pastries Lydda brought out to him. He accepted coffee from Elda. While he was occupied, Callette managed to insert herself between Barnabas and Mara, which separated them by some way. “I kept it simple,” Mara whispered to Shona, under Callette's big striped wing. “I told him there's a very old dragon just woken up after three hundred years—all truth, except I told him the old dragon's up north, and the younger dragons sent Derk an urgent message for help, and Derk rushed off at once. After all, it's just what your father
would
do.”

“But have you said we're going to fill in for Dad?” Shona whispered back.

“Several times,” Mara assured her. “Barnabas was terrified he'd have to deal with the soldiers on his own. Now let me rush off and get into proper clothes before I freeze.”

They saw why Barnabas was so frightened when they all arrived at the end of the valley half an hour later, the humans on horseback and the griffins on the wing. There was an enormous crowd of men just beyond the ruins of the village. Each man was dressed in shiny black and armed with a shiny black helmet and a long sword in a shiny black scabbard. Most of them were simply standing. Some were wandering in circles. A few others were sitting on the ground. And there was something very wrong with all of them. Beauty, who was carrying Shona, refused to go anywhere near. The other horses trembled and sweated.

“What's wrong with these people?” Callette asked, peering into the nearest blank face.

“It's all right,” Barnabas said reassuringly. “They send them through drugged.”

“Why?” said Callette.

“Er, well, you see they're all convicted criminals—mostly for murder and assault and so on,” Barnabas explained. “The tours clear out the prisons once a year. I believe Mr. Chesney has a contract with some of the governments in his world, and they pay him to take these convicts off their hands. It's a very neat arrangement. Most of them get killed over here, but they're all promised pardons and free land and so on. All we have to do at the moment is to get them to the camp I've made for them a couple of miles over there.”

Blade had spent the morning hastily reading the Dark Lord sections of the black book. “But don't we have to get them to march right across to Umru's country?”

“Burning and pillaging and trampling crops on the way,” Barnabas agreed. “But your father can do that at intervals after the tours arrive. I've got camps set up for him all along the route. No problem.”

Blade swallowed. Mara said, “And when does the drugging wear off?”

“In three days or so,” Barnabas said. “But they'll have been promised money if they behave themselves and do just what the Dark Lord says. We don't often have trouble.”

Derk's family looked at one another expressively and then back at the black shiny men. The sight was somehow even more unpleasant after this explanation. They were like cockroaches waiting to be squished.

“Ah, well,” said Kit. “Let's get going.”

Moving the men was a little like driving cows, except, Blade thought, you had to imagine the cows were deaf, twice as stupid as the Friendly Cows, and walking very slowly on two legs. And as Elda said, even the Friendly Cows didn't get in one another's way all the time. After Barnabas got the men moving with one of his weary, practiced little spells, it took most of the day to reach the camp, and it was not easy. Going through open fields, they worked out that the best way was for the griffins to walk with their wings spread, herding from behind, with mounted humans two on either side to keep the vast shuffling horde together. But getting through gates was terrible. They tried shooing the men through in batches, but that took so long that Kit decided simply to break down every hedge or wall they came to.

“They're supposed to be laying the country waste,” he said. “They may as well start now.”

“True,” Barnabas said cheerfully. “I'll break the walls. If it's a hedge, you and Callette can just walk through it.”

“But mind the thorns!” Mara called out anxiously. “Don't tear your wing feathers.”

As the drive went on, its pace slowed to a crawl. Men in the midst of the crowd kept stumbling. When that happened, one of the riders would have to force their way among the shiny black bodies and haul the fallen man up before the others trod all over him. As Beauty would not go near the army and Barnabas had to lead the way, it was mostly Blade or Mara who had to do this. Blade was riding Nancy Cobber, who was the most obliging of all the horses, so he did most of it. He hated it. Probably Nancy did, too. The black armor smelled like tar, and the men themselves had a nasty smell of sweat and the drug and something Blade had never smelled before, which he suspected was the smell of prison. And he hated being surrounded by all their blankly staring faces.

By evening it was worse. Men were stumbling so often by then that Don and Elda were flying overhead shrieking a warning every time a man fell. And when Blade went to pull the latest fellow up, he found expressions beginning to grow on some of the faces he was pushing past. They were not pleasant expressions. They were angry or sullen. Some were jeering or plain brutal. But a few faces were full of simple flat hatred. Blade went in and out as quickly as he could, and his stomach felt odd. He was sure the drug was wearing off. And unless Derk made a truly miraculous recovery, Blade knew that he and Shona and the griffins were going to have to march these dangerous people to more than just the one camp they were making for tonight.

The camp was a large transparent dome of magic in the middle of a big field, shining a faint blue-green in the evening light. Even the soldiers seemed to be aware of it. Their stumbling steps went faster, and they streamed through the opening Barnabas made in the side of the dome at what was for them a brisk walk. Inside, Blade could see heaps of bedding, piles of bread and barrels of other food and drink, and latrine huts at intervals.

“There. That should keep them safe and happy until Derk gets back,” Barnabas said cheerfully, sealing the dome shut. Kit, to Blade's admiration, hung over Barnabas while he did it, trying to learn how it was done. Blade felt sick. He saw one man pick up a loaf inside the dome and have it instantly snatched off him by another. When the drug wore off, he knew there would be bullying, quarrels, and strong ones forming gangs to terrorize the rest.

“Shouldn't we take their swords away?” he said.

Barnabas shrugged. “We don't usually bother. They have to be armed for the battles, after all. I don't suppose we'll lose many in camp fights. You reckon on twenty or so, most years.”

“They're criminals, Blade,” Shona said, seeing how Blade was looking.

Blade was not sure even criminals deserved this sort of thing, but he had no idea what to do instead. He felt miserable. He was still miserable when Barnabas said good-bye and vanished in a cheerful clap of thunder, horse and all. He found himself thinking of that camp most of the way home.

Mara had arranged for the skeletal Fran Taylor to come up from the village and nurse Derk. Fran met them at the gate, surrounded by pigs, who were all giving out anxious squeaks and snorts and fanning their wings in distress.

“I've got the supper on,” Fran said, “since you were all so late. And there's been no change. I had to spend all day chasing these pigs away from him.”

“I expect they're worried about him,” Mara explained, getting stiffly down from her horse.

“And the owls, too. You ask Old George,” said Fran. “He's had no end of bother with those birds. If he turns his back for a moment, they're in through that bedroom window and gobbing all over the bedspread like there was no tomorrow.”

“Old George?” said Shona. “Mum! I thought you had Old George over at Aunt's house to be your wasted lover.”