Dragon Rescue (11 page)

“Plaingirt,” supplied Basilicae. “Well, sir, we had every intention of never setting foot on your fair land again. Two defeats at your hands made for a bad resume.”

“You were offered a contract by this Blizzardmaker person?”

“It’s business! His terms seemed generous. My men voted to accept it, and I had to go along. We needed the cash after Gantrell reneged on our fees.”

The two chatted beside the fire while Sergeant Spring wolfed down his food and toasted his bread over the coals, broke it into pieces, and stuffed it into a pocket for later consumption.

“I advise you to tread carefully with this lordling from the Far North,” Murdan told the mercenary. “There’s reason to believe he’s allied with or even subservient to your former client, Peter of Gantrell.

It may be that Peter’s behind this whole thing.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me, and I’ll take your warning seriously. Peter Gantrell was bad news for us! I’ve attended this Relling War Chiefs councils for months—more than a year, in fact—however, I’ve never once felt Gantrell’s presence or even heard his name.”

“Hmmm! That’s interesting. What would move Peter to hide his light from the world, I wonder?”

“If I hear any word of him, perhaps I could slip it to you, Lord Historian. Professional courtesy, shall we say?

“Or a bit of revenge? In case things get too sticky here, I mean.”

“Good enough!” agreed the Historian. “It’ll be remembered, I assure you.”

“A suit for our full fee was still in court last Sessions, you know.

We could use a friend at law. Where will you be, do you know?”

“It depends on what GB intends to do with me. Prison? Maybe even execution? Who knows? At the moment, he seems to have forgotten me.”

“I wouldn’t lay bets on that!” the mercenary snorted bitterly. “He has a mean streak down him that’s fair broad...like everything else about him.”

“What does he do with important captives, then?” asked Murdan.

“I know of several he set out on floes in Blue Ice without food or even clothing. That’s considered a merciful death by our dear GB, they say. I’ve heard some say he chained his most important enemy to an iceberg in the Strait of Athermoral. It’ll slowly float south until it melts or breaks up as the waters warm, so the victim will suffer first from the cold, then hunger, and then drowning when the ice melts all away.”

“Pleasant man, this Relling War Chief!” exclaimed Murdan.

Spring had finished his meal, wiped his hands on his coattail, and stood listening to their conversation.

“Oh, Rellings’re all right as such things go,” Basilicae conceded.

“We get along with them fairly well.”

“Well, Sir Mercenary,” put in the sergeant, “it may be because he pays you better than others.”

“What do you mean by that?” the knight asked, surprised.

“Most of these so-called
friends
came along for minimum pay promised and a free hand at...er...”

“Loot, rape, and plunder, I suppose,” furnished Murdan. “I’ve heard that already this morning.”

“We Mercenary Knights refuse to fight on a contingency-fee basis,” claimed Basilicae stoutly. “Bad business! Cash on the barrelhead; half in advance, or we don’t lift a finger. Learned that from old Gantrell!”

“A business policy with much to recommend it,” agreed the Historian. “But I still suggest you watch your step. If Gantrell is involved...”

“Do you suppose he supplied the capital for this venture?” asked Basilicae. “I wondered where GB got his stake all along.”

“Peter may have had hidden resources somewhere over the border,” murmured Murdan. “It’s possible.”

“The state prisoner I spoke of—the one set adrift on the iceberg?

They say he was a major participant in the early stages of the planning to invade Carolna, but GB turned sour on him.”

“Who is he, then?” asked Murdan.

“Never heard him called anything, save ‘state prisoner,’ “ claimed the Mercenary Knight. “You’ll have to excuse me, m’lord. I’ve a meeting with my officers. We’re expected to provide follow-up after the Lexor wall is breached, later today.”

“I won’t wish you good luck, then, but say to you, be careful!—not of your foes, but of your client.”

“We don’t trust him further than we could toss his vast carcass,”

Basilicae assured him, grinning, and he clanked off at a fast pace to gather his men.

“State prisoner, eh? I’d like to talk to him myself, actually,” mused Murdan aloud.

“It’d be suicide, sir!” cried Spring. “You’d have to be sent to his ice island and share his cold and wet fate.”

“Still...” began the Historian, thoughtfully.

The be-furred Colonel Fraggle appeared, lashing a swagger stick against his boot and scowling darkly.

“Still here, Sergeant? Get you back to your company at once!”

“Yes, m’lord! But the prisoner, m’lord?”

“I’ll take him in charge,” said Fraggle. “Begone, sirrah!”

“Well, that’s the end to being warm and well fed,” Spring said, sighing in an aside to Murdan. “Good fortune to you, sir! You’ve been a gentleman where few are found.”

He snatched up his pack and pike and clattered out of Brevory Great Hall.

“Now!” said Fraggle, impatiently. “Come with me, Lord Murdan.

His Majesty has asked for you. He will decide your fate this morning.”

“At your service, sir,” said Murdan.

The officer spun on his heel and stalked away toward the far entrance, sweeping lesser men from his path with his swagger stick and his unhappy frown.

Grand Blizzardmaker looked rather frazzled around the edges, blinking painfully in the morning light through the high windows and wincing at sudden noises.

Murdan stood at ease before the desk where the War Chief, looking rather green and uneasy, lolled.

“Mordock of Overhill, Royal Historian of Carolna and friend of the cowardly Eduard Ten,” growled the War Chief, referring to a sheaf of papers before him.

“Murdan, rather,” the prisoner corrected him mildly.

“Eh? What?”

“My name properly is not
Mordock
but Murdan,” repeated the Historian.

“Bloody incompetent scribblers! No matter! After this morning your name will really be ‘history,’ believe me, bucko!” snarled the War Chief.

His heavy humor set his attendants to snickering.

“You’re a dangerous enemy, and must be eliminated at once.”

Murdan nodded.

“It will be an honor to die for my King and my country,” he announced, rather sententiously, for all to hear.

“Bosh, tosh, and mealy rot! Neither your King nor his lousy little kingdom will exist much longer. You might as well die.”

“I welcome it, however,” said Murdan, affecting a sad look of resignation.

“Oh, don’t make me sick!” snapped the War Chief. “You’ve considerable wealth and influence in Carolna, I’m told.”

“I cannot deny that,” replied the Historian.

“Then why not foreswear your silly allegiance to this snowflake Eduard? Join me—I mean
us!
Bring your people over to my—our—

side, eh?”

“Oh, I think not, really, old Rell,” said Murdan evenly. “I have better regard for my King and my fealty oath to him than that!”

“So be it, sirrah! I’ll enjoy your...what do you people call them?

Achievements! I’m about to order your execution by strangling!”

“Better that than set out to freeze in your chill country, like some!”

said Murdan, eyes downcast.

“Ha!
Aha!
A quick, easy death’s too good for you, Murdam of Coverhall! It occurs to me it may be amusing to keep you alive for a while, although suffering.”

“No, please, sire!” cried the Historian in a shrill voice. “A quick, honorable death, I beg of you! I’d go insane in prison—especially a
cold
prison! I cannot abide being cold! I implore you...”

One of the advisers behind the fat War Chief leaned forward to whisper in his crumpled right ear. Blizzard-maker suddenly roared with coarse laughter that shook his entire, obese body like a molded jelly. He caught his breath and began to cough, then choked and spat upon the floor beside his couch.

“Yes!
Yes!
I’ve got just the place for you, sniveling scrivener! My judge advocate here reminds me that we have a nice, very cold place reserved for important prisoners like you.”

“No, good, dear sire! I beg of you...!”

“Silence!
Take him,” rasped GB to an officer in black fur standing nearby, “to the nearest seaport and send him by ship to the ice floe and maroon him there. No need to chain him as the other was chained.

The berg’s too far out in the strait by now for him to swim ashore.”

He pointed a stubby and dirty forefinger at Murdan, chuckling wickedly.

“I hope you
do
try to swim, Burdock! Three minutes in those pleasant waters and you’re an icicle, I promise. Drag the yellowed slush out!”

The black-furred soldier, who was not at all looking forward to a sea voyage to the stormy Strait of Athermoral, saluted glumly and gestured to underlings to lead Murdan after him as he stalked out.

rs

Only a half-grown polar bear witnessed Murdan’s marooning on the iceberg. Three beefy Relling soldiers simply lifted the Historian between them and dropped him onto the edge of the ice alongside the sloop’s low midship rail.

The sloop’s helmsman turned her away at once, the crew hoisting her mainsail despite the near-gale winds, and the little ship fled the ice-clotted strait as fast as she could safely go.

The polar bear considered investigating the mealtime possibilities of the dramatically cursing Historian but some slight taint in the air pulled him up short.

Sniffing once again, the white bear decided to let well enough alone and dived with a thunderous splash into the icy chop and began to paddle toward the low, white hills of the mainland some distance away to the east.

“Thanks for even small blessings!” gasped Murdan, watching him go.

He found a handhold to pull himself up the steep slope at the edge of the berg.

“Damnation, it’s cold!”

Still, the exertion of climbing up the ice shelf served to warm his body long enough to find shelter from the biting wind in a hollow between two pinnacles of clear green ice.

Even there his clothing quickly froze fast to the ice upon which he sat. As soon as he’d regained his breath he pried himself free and set out to climb to higher ground. It was a clear, cold day and by staying in the sun as much as possible, he kept a little warmth within.

Enough to survive.

For a while, at least.

“A mistake? Well, maybe so, but better than being strangled, I still think,” he said aloud to himself.

As much to keep from freezing as anything, Murdan explored the iceberg, slowly circling clockwise, spiraling higher and higher with each turn.

The floe was perhaps a mile across, irregularly round, and it rose a hundred feet in the air at its jagged crest—a large area to cover on treacherous footing.

Where was this state prisoner chained to the ice in punishment for some real or fancied crime against Grand Blizzardmaker and his Rellings?

Entirely possible his particular portion has already sloughed
off and floated away, I suppose,
thought the Historian to himself.

“Hello? I thought I saw something dark moving up there!”

Although he stood in the blustery wind and searched the area above him carefully for some minutes, whatever it had been didn’t reappear. He made a fourth and a fifth circuit of the floe, slipping and sliding constantly on the ice, more than once in danger of
sliding
back down the slope into the sea.

The short autumn day was fast closing down into night. The waxing half-moon was already in the sky and a curtain of ice-bright stars twinkled above him. He used his eyes to watch his step and look for the chained prisoner, but his mind was busy thinking how to survive the coming night as the wind picked up and temperatures plunged.

rs

At the start of his sixth lap, now well above the heaving waves of the Strait of Athermoral, Murdan stumbled upon a deep cleft hidden under a cliff. It was as good as he would find for shelter, he realized at once, and he used the very last light of day to explore within.

Fifty steps or so within it came to a dead end, but the air seemed not nearly so cold in here, and no wind entered.

If I could just find something to burn,
he thought.

There might be driftwood on the shore, but it was too dark to go back and look for it now.

He tried lying down on an ice shelf at the back of the cave and found it surprisingly cozy, as long as he kept everything covered with his coat, hood, and scarf. Fortunately he’d dressed as warmly and waterproofed as possible for his ride from Morningside to Lexor, and despite the wetting he’d gotten aboard the guard ship from the crashing bow spray, his inner clothing had remained dry.

Murdan fumbled inside his coat until he found an inner pocket in which he had secreted a portion of his breakfast that morning—

bread and sweet rolls, some griddle cakes now grown cold and soggy but still powdered with sugar, a fist-sized chunk of some greasy sort of meat or other.

He fell to eating hungrily. It would freeze solid if he didn’t consume it soon.

“Oh, where are you wizards and magicians and sorcerers when one needs you?” he asked half-seriously. “Could use a fire-maker, right now!”

By the time he’d finished eating half of his tiny store, feeling rather warmer and better than before, it was fully dark within the cave. He walked to the mouth and looked out.

The waxing moon was near the horizon and the sky was crowded with hard, bright stars, more than he had ever seen, even from the tip of Middletower at Overhall on a midwinter’s night.

Returning to the far end of the cavern, he wrapped himself in his fur-lined cloak and settled himself to try to sleep. It was obvious that only a few days of this climate would be the death of him, but for the moment he felt confident and even rather optimistic.

Chaper Eight