The Dragons 3

Cover

Title Page

Copyright Page

Imprint Page

Dedication

Strange relations

Mordred = More Dread

We are sailing, we are sailing and we are also throwing up a lot

The Diabolical Islands Welcome You – NOT

The Calm before the Storm

Lady Tracyvere

The Enchanted Turnip Diet

The, er, riming of um, er, my Poims.

Sergycal

Ruthra

Meanwhile, meanwhile, meanwhile …

Time Drags On

Heading South

A Fizzle of Dragons

Smoke & Mirrors

The Dragons are a barbecue

We are sailing – sort of

We are sailing – very badly

Justice – Part 1

Justice – Part 2

The Grand Finale

And finally, again

And finally, finally finally

The Dragons advert page

The Floods advert page

Postest Postscript ever

As the years passed, King Arthur grew from a slight ten-year-old child into a fine young man with broad shoulders and even broader ideas.

The knowledge that his father, King Uther Pendragon, would have passed on to him – if he hadn't died before discovering that the child he thought was Arthur was not Arthur at all – was now bestowed on Arthur by Merlin, the wisest and most cunning wizard in all of creation and several other places, including one place that had the world's first tennis court several centuries before tennis was invented.
¹

It had been Merlin who had taught Uther Pendragon and his father before him and his father's father before that, for not only was Merlin the wisest wizard of all, he was also the oldest, older even than his own parents.

Merlin was better qualified to teach anyone because he knew absolutely everything, even how to tie
shoelaces blindfolded with one hand while balancing on a raw egg without cracking the shell while singing the Patagonian national anthem in fifteen different languages, including Mongolian Throat-Talking.

There was nothing Merlin had not seen, done, heard or had for breakfast. Nor was there any magic as powerful as what this great wizard possessed. With one click of his fingers, seeds became forests and peanuts became oranges, which a lot of monkeys found extremely annoying, especially when they had a mouthful of peanuts. Forests suddenly growing from a few seeds caused problems too, especially for farmers who had been cutting the grass where the seeds had fallen and now found themselves and their horses stuck up trees.

No one challenged Merlin's authority or wisdom. Not unless they were really, really stupid or actually wanted to be turned into a small chest of drawers, as Sir Climefast Sprockthornton of Medley Vale had done to escape some rather hard men he owed twenty-seven groats to and who were prepared to write off this gambling debt in exchange for some delicate parts of Sir Climefast's body on toast or, as it
was called in the Days of Yore, burnt bread.
²

The young King did not see any reason to challenge or question the great wizard. King Arthur learnt very quickly that Merlin was the one who was actually running everything, and he himself was just a figurehead, but he didn't have a problem with that.

‘After all,' he said to his squire, Sir Lancelot, ‘I'd much rather spend the day building toy boats than legislating about drains or collecting potato taxes or doing governmenty stuff.'

‘Indeed, sire, who wouldn't?'

‘And when I get older, I'll have lots of girlfriends and we can play with boats together while the good wizard looks after my kingdom.'

‘Indeed, sire.'

King Arthur didn't actually want lots of girlfriends for he was in love with the lady-in-waiting of his sister Morgan le Fey, the lovely Lady Petaluna.
When he looked at her, all thoughts of playing with toy boats went out of his head.

Funny that,
he thought.

By a lucky coincidence, the adorable Lady Petaluna was totally in love with King Arthur and when she looked at him not one single thought of toy boats entered her head. Actually, whenever she did anything, even being asleep, there was never a single toy boat thought anywhere about her person. The one and only time she had seen a real toy boat bobbing around in Lake Camelot her only thought had been,
I wonder what that thing is? Is it perchance a strange vegetable or a new species of fish?
Which was actually three thoughts.

As is usually the case in such situations, it never occurred to Arthur that Lady Petaluna might be in love with him, nor did she think the young King might love her.

After the true King Arthur had been set on the throne and the wicked impostor Brassica, formerly known as Brat, had been deposed,
³
a wonderful calm,
happy and peaceful atmosphere spread throughout the land of Avalon and everyone was filled with an enormous amount of contentedness not unlike the feeling a warm turnip might bring. The young King also grew to know his long-lost relations, in particular his older sister, Morgan le Fey, who was totally in love with Sir Lancelot and was actually betrothed to him.
⁴
One relation he did not get to know was the deposed Brassica. No living person, not even Brassica himself, knew that he was actually King Arthur's half-brother, though two dead people did.

Morgan le Fey was the best big sister a boy could have. It had been her suspicions about the fake King Arthur that had deposed him and put her real brother on the throne.
⁵

Arthur also discovered other not-so-close relations, such as cousins and aunts and fifth cousins
four times removed, particularly Nevylle of Tolpuddle-cum-Hardy, who was forever being removed because no matter how many times he had a bath, he always smelled of fish. And it is the same in every family the whole world over. Some relations are wonderful and just knowing you are connected to them makes you happy every time you see them, and then there are those who always smell of fish.
⁶

Then there are the other ones. The ones your mother says you must like because they are your cousins.

‘Because,' she says, ‘blood is thicker than water.'

And when you reply: ‘Yes, but cousin Henry is thicker than concrete.'

She says, ‘tutt, tutt' even though in her heart she knows you are right. Cousin Henry is the one who flushed your slippers down the toilet and tried to eat your hamster.

FAMOUS DRAGONS OF THE WORLD
ITALY
SPOTTY OREGANO

King Arthur's version of cousin Henry was called Mordred. He was a year older than Arthur and the weirdest and scariest child in the entire Kingdom and several other places as well. He had not learnt to be evil. It was a gift he had been born with. His parents, Lord and Lady Laclustre of Laclustre, were quite ordinary and quite nice and had only once in their whole lives said boo to a goose and that was only after it had flown out of earshot. What made his evilosity even more dangerous was that Mordred looked like a sweet little boy with big wide eyes and a lovely smile. He practised these looks in front of a mirror for hours on end while doing unspeakable nasty things to his sister's toy dolls.

His face said,
How could you not trust me with my big wide eyes and a lovely smile as soft and lovely as the sweetest puppy in the whole happy world?

His brain said,
One day I will tear your head off, Mummy/Daddy/sweetest puppy in the whole happy world.

And his hands said,
Rip, tear, burn, destroy!
and shredded the cute, cuddly dolly into a hundred little pieces.

As soon as he was old enough to walk, Mordred would tip-toe up behind people and stick a big needle into their bottom and then point at some innocent bystander, who would always get punished. After all, who would suspect a wide-eyed toddler who could barely walk or talk?
⁷

It had been Mordred who had flushed several small children's slippers down a Camelot toilet while the children were still wearing them. Only quick thinking by a diligent nanny, who had flushed herself down after them, had saved the day.

Mordred showed no remorse and had even tried to flush a large amount of concrete after the nanny.

However, because he was a royal prince and it was the Days of Yore, he was not thrown into a dungeon as he would have been in the Dark Ages. He was, with his poor innocent parents, banished to a very, very small remote island, where it was very, very cold, but not so cold that the sea might freeze over and allow them to escape. On top of which they were all blindfolded before the journey, so they hadn't the
faintest idea where they were being taken. The dragons that flew them there also went a very long way round to disorientate them even more.

Once there, Mordred began to plan and plot horrible revenge on the House of Pendragon, especially on his young cousin Arthur, who had everything Mordred thought he should have. Mordred's parents had been sent with him because it was assumed that he must have been very badly brought up to be so evil. This was not true. His parents were devoted, kind people. Mordred had just been born that way.

‘If things had taken a slightly different turn,' he would say, ‘I would be the King of Avalon, not that goody-goody Arthur.'

His father tried to point out to him that if things
had
taken a slightly different turn, he would be the King, not his son.

‘No problem,' said Mordred and killed him.
⁸

‘How could you murder your own father,' Mordred's mother cried, ‘and leave me to spend the rest of my life in loneliness?'

‘No problem,' said Mordred and killed her.
⁹

When he realised he was now completely alone on this very, very small remote island, with no one to cook his tea, wash his tights or tuck him in bed with a hot water bottle and a story, Mordred got really cross.

‘I am really cross!' he shouted into the howling wind.

‘You're cross?' said a voice. ‘How do you think I feel?'

Mordred spun around slowly. Spinning around fast on a very, very small island can lead to falling off and drowning. Lying in front of him was a very, very wet, bedraggled sailor in rags. He had a very, very bright red beard that was all tangled up with his not-quite-so-bright red hair and bits of fish, so that from the neck up he looked like a ball of angry knitting with two eyes. He had a wooden leg that was an old tree stump and an eye patch with a big eye drawn on it.

‘Who? Where? How long?' Mordred spluttered.

‘Captain Shortbread Silver at your service. Over the horizon. About two years,' said the sailor.

Captain Silver explained that he was the captain of a great sailing ship that transported a cargo of corks from a far-off land. His ship had been struck by a terrible storm, which had ripped the sails to shreds and snapped the mast. For six weeks they had drifted helplessly, carried along at the mercy of ocean currents with never a sight of land and nought but a one-legged albatross as their guide.

‘We ran out of bully beef. We ran out of friendly beef. We ran out of weevils and were forced to eat our own boots. We ate the albatross's remaining leg and finally ate our cargo,' said Captain Silver.

‘The corks?' said Mordred.

‘Indeed so,' the Captain replied. ‘One by one the crew began to die. We tried to bury them at sea in the traditional way, but after two weeks of eating corks the bodies wouldn't sink. We weighed them down with cannonballs, but they kept bobbing up again. So we hauled them out and ate them.'

Even Mordred, who had eaten a baby pony stuffed with slug's intestines, looked a bit green at this, though he had been thinking about eating the softer bits of his dead parents.

‘Finally there was just me and young Jim, the cabin boy, who, I would say at a guess, was about the same age as you,' said Captain Shortbread Silver. ‘It was terrible for I was very fond of the child. He had been like a son to me, though I suppose that was because I was his father.'

‘But, you ate him?'

‘No, I didn't. For just as I was about to pop him into a saucepan another storm blew up. Ten times wilder than the one that had almost wrecked us before, and now there was no crew to help control our ship. I sent young Jim to the top of the mast to look for land, then I remembered the mast had gone. It was the last I saw of him.

‘I was furious,' the Captain continued. ‘Not only had I lost my only child, I had lost a damn fine supper too.'

Shortly after, the ship was smashed into very, very small pieces on Mordred's very, very small island and the Captain was thrown ashore.

‘How long ago was that?' said Mordred.

‘About two years before you arrived.'

‘How come we never saw you?'

‘I hid inside that dead whale down on the beach.'

This time Mordred didn't just look green, he threw up and fainted. But every cloud has a silver lining, which is more than a dead whale has. In a cave – hidden from view unless you went down to where the whale was decomposing, climbed inside it and peered out through its bottom – Captain Shortbread Silver had been building a boat. He had used the timber salvaged from his shipwreck, bones pulled from the rotting whale and various bits of rubbish that had washed ashore.
¹⁰

‘I have fashioned ropes to tie it all together from the sinews of the whale and for a sail I have used the skin of the whale,' he said. ‘I have a few loose ends to tie up and then I shall set sail.'

Mordred threw up again and fainted again and then threw up again, though not necessarily in that order.

‘Fair enough,' said Captain Silver when the boy came round again. ‘I can understand how you feel, so I will sail away from here on my own.'

‘No, no, no,' Mordred implored him. ‘Take me with you. I am a high-born noble and now that my parents are dead …'

‘The ones you just killed, that is?'

‘Well, yes. I only had one set of parents.'

‘OK, go on then.'

‘Well, now that my parents are dead I am the fifteenth Lord Laclustre of Laclustre and I am a rich man,' said Mordred. ‘If you deliver me safely to my estate in the Dark Kingdoms to the north of Avalon, I will reward you handsomely.'

Mordred considered killing Captain Silver and taking his boat, but decided against it. First of all, he didn't know where the boat was. He had walked the length and breadth of the island and had seen no sign of it. In fact, he wasn't sure if there really was a boat or if the old sailor had just gone mad after being cast away for so long. And secondly, Mordred was small for his size and probably not strong enough to guide a boat through the wild seas to the mainland, wherever that might be.

I'll wait until we get there and then I'll kill him,
he thought.

‘I expect you're planning to kill me once we reach the mainland,' said Captain Silver.

‘The thought never entered my head,' said Mordred.

‘Probably because it was already there,' said the Captain. ‘Give me your Lord's Ring. I will keep it as a guarantee until we are safely ashore and back at your castle.'

‘Are you mad?' said Mordred. ‘Surely you know it is against the law for a commoner to carry a Lord's Ring?'
¹¹

‘No ring, no boat ride,' said the Captain.

‘I command you –'

‘No, you do not. The commander is the one who is in charge, the one who has the upper hand. Now, let us see who that is, shall we? Two people want to get
off this bleak, revolting and very remote island. One of these people has a boat, knows how to sail a boat and knows the way back to the mainland. The other person does not have a boat, has probably never been in a boat, never mind knowing how to work one, and even if he did find the boat, got it into the sea and managed to haul the sails, still would not know which way to point it and would probably end up frozen solid at the North Pole with polar bears eating his feet,' said Captain Silver. ‘So let us now decide who is in charge.'

‘You are,' Mordred muttered.

He stuck out his sulky bottom lip so far that a passing seagull mistook it for a toilet.

‘Yes, I am,' said the Captain. ‘So now you will give me your Lord's Ring and that nice sharp dagger hidden inside your shirt.'

You would imagine that at that very moment, and for quite a lot of following moments too, the one person in the world that Mordred would hate more than anyone would be Captain Shortbread Silver. This, however, was not the case.

‘You are the nastiest, most unscrupulous person I have ever met,' Mordred said.

‘Quite so, my lord,' said the Captain. ‘And I am also the one in charge.'

‘Indeed you are,' said Mordred, ‘and when I said you were the nastiest, most unscrupulous person I had ever met, perhaps you misunderstood me.'

‘I think not, my lord. Correct me if I am wrong, but did you not say those words with a tone of admiration in your voice?'

‘I did, good captain,' Mordred replied.

He then told Captain Silver the story of how he had ended up being banished to the remote island. The fact that a mere twelve-year-old child had been considered so evil impressed the Captain immensely. He particularly liked the part about the baby pony stuffed with slug's intestines. Mordred went on to reveal his plan to raise an army, kill King Arthur and claim the throne for himself.

‘With allies like you, good captain, we cannot fail,' he said.

‘I am flattered and honoured, my lord, and will gladly join your cause,' said the Captain. ‘On one condition.'

‘Name it.'

‘When we have killed Arthur and you rule Camelot, will you give me his sister, Morgan le Fey, to be my wife?'

‘Absolutely,' said Mordred, ‘though I think you may live to regret it. She may have a legendary beauty, but she has a ferocious temper.'

‘No problem. Look at me, I have survived many fates worse than death,' said the Captain. ‘I'll keep her in leg-irons and handcuffs and put a very big cork, which by chance I managed to salvage from my cargo, in her mouth.'

‘That would not be enough,' said Mordred. ‘Were you to chain her up like that and then blindfold her and keep her in a barrel of dirty water full of piranhas, she would still make you suffer. I guarantee that no matter how you restrain her, she will still find a way to maim you.'

‘Even so,' the Captain continued, ‘it would be worth the loss of a limb to make her mine. Pain holds no terror for me. You may have noticed that I have a wooden leg.'

‘Well, yes,' said Mordred. ‘It's kind of hard to miss.'

‘When I was cast ashore on this godforsaken rock, I had nothing to eat but the last few corks, an enormous amount of rotten whale meat and some sand lice. I grew so hungry that I was forced to eat my boot and, as I only had one boot left, I thought I might as well eat my leg. I could possibly have planned this better for, as you can see, there are no trees on this island from which to carve a wooden leg. Thus, that is why I wear this twisted, old tree trunk that washed ashore during a storm and I curse it.'

‘Why?' Mordred asked. ‘Do you keep losing your balance?'

‘No, it is not that,' the Captain explained. ‘It is the fact that this tree is still alive and has grown into me, so that my very bones are part of it and I cannot remove it and because it is alive, it does what all trees do: it keeps growing so I become taller and more lopsided by the day. I shall be forced to saw it off or else I will tip over. And if that wasn't bad enough, whenever I stand still for any length of time it starts to take root, fixing me to the spot.'

‘Could you not perhaps apply weedkiller to your leg?'

‘I fear that were I to do such a thing, it would kill me too,' the Captain cried. ‘And yet for all that, it is not the worst curse of this leg.'

‘There's more?' said Mordred.

‘Indeed. I am plagued with woodworms. They have tunnelled through my leg and are now making little holes in my bones.'

‘That's dreadful.'

‘Indeed, and yet there is worse.'

‘No?'

‘The woodpeckers.'

‘What?!'

‘They cling to my leg and peck ferociously at my knee,' said the Captain. ‘Still, it could be worse. At least the woodpeckers are eating the woodworms and I can pick the rest out with my hook.'