Chapter Nine
Sir Rudyard’s autumn began badly, and got worse.
Indeed, the highest point of the season, the absolute apex of accomplishment and satisfaction, had been the discovery that the new cook knew how to poach an egg.
Mistress Clove’s only experience of poaching was the sort you hang thieves for; there was nothing she liked better than sitting at the foot of a gallows giving mordant commentary.
And Sir Rudyard hadn’t even got to enjoy the egg; his breakfast had been interrupted by the return of the dragon.
A dragon! The thought was . . . well, by definition it was not unthinkable, but neither was it easily thought. Encompassing it in his mind required serious mental effort, stretching the sinews of his brain around all its terrible implications.
He rode out to survey the afflicted region.
As he rode, he ruminated. In the old days, Dunshelm Keep marked the very edge of the frontier and there was nothing beyond but the wild, and they leave the edge of the map blank and ignore it.
But now the kingdom had pushed beyond its old borders, and there were people living outside the protection of the keep .
. . not that the keep could have offered much protection.
Wood-witches and goblins – he had been instructed on how to deal with such things.
You ordered scouts and hunters to search the woods, you stationed sentries in the villages, you lit torches to drive away the dark. For such perils, there was a plan.
But a dragon? No scout or hunter knew the way to the dragon’s lair. Sentries in the village couldn’t drive a flying dragon away. And lighting fires was definitely not helpful.
Sir Rudyard rode past scorched fields, cottages blasted to skeletal ash, whole herds destroyed.
Like a fox in a henhouse, Nithscalpa had been indiscriminate in his slaughter.
Once he’d eaten his fill, he’d kept killing for the hot joy of it, for the perfumed smoke and sizzle of roasting flesh.
Terror was his delight, and the dragon’s autumn had begun very well indeed. Sir Rudyard’s got worse with ever step.
The surviving peasants approached Sir Rudyard, and in hollow voices asked what was to be done.
He’d looked out over the smouldering fields, over the fire-blasted carcasses of precious milk cows, over the incinerated hopes of all those people, and the only answer that sprang to mind was “. . . roast beef sandwiches?”
In his defence, first, he had missed breakfast, and, second, he had sense enough to know that it was a thought that should remain unvoiced.
He muttered platitudes about courage and resilience and the necessity of avoiding undue emotion.
Weeping would not bring the fields back to life; wailing would not stir fire-blackened bones.
What was needed now was discipline and order.
He commanded that the castle’s storehouses be opened, that the grain and cheese and salted beef be distributed to those who would otherwise go hungry.
What was to be done about the dragon? Another agenda item entirely.
Sufficient unto the day the evil thereof, and so on.
Indeed, it probably wasn’t his problem to deal with at all.
He knew his place, and dragons were well above that.
Someone else – some legendary hero, some battle-tested veteran, maybe a great army bristling with spears – would be sent down from the capital to deal with this peril.
Sir Rudyard’s duty was the wise husbandry of resources. Eggs and bacon and bread and rules and order and hold the line until help arrived.
By the time he reached the keep, he already had his urgent letter to the king drafted in his head.
The messenger left, hooves churning up autumn mud.
The messenger returned, shivering, forcing his way through winter snow.
He was not accompanied by a legendary hero or battle-tested veteran.
There was no room in his saddlebags for a great army bristling with anything at all.
Instead, he brought a letter. Although it bore the king’s seal, it was not from the king.
It had been written by the Chancellor. It was brief; indeed, once you skipped over the salutations (perfunctory) and the list of titles and honours held by the Chancellor (extensive), its contents could be summarised thusly:
You’re on your own.
P.S. You still owe us the usual taxes.
In truth, heroes are in short supply at the best of times, but they were especially scarce then. Sir Peledon was the only real example of the breed left.
As for battle-tested veterans, the Great Northern War had produced whole hosts of them, but they were all otherwise engaged in the Westerlund.
King Arus was dying, the rumours said, and several of his barons had taken advantage of his weakness by joining together in a rebellion against the Chancellor (who they despised as an upstart interloper) and the Princess Aldebara (who they admired for her gentility and poise, and all thought would make an excellent consort in a few years for whichever of them won the throne).
So, any battle-tested veterans were busy putting down the rebels, so for a time both the Royal Antiquarian Survey and any prospective dragon-slaying was on hold.
The rebellion had already lasted two years.
A suspiciously convenient thunderstorm wrecked the rebel fleet at Vellisport, safeguarding the capital from attack.
After that came months of gruelling siege warfare as the king’s armies eliminated the rebel barons, castle by castle.
A well-designed castle, by the by, has an escape tunnel, so often a given baron was able to flee the fall of their own fortress and seek refuge with a neighbour.
By month fourteen, there was a pack of about thirty barons scurrying from one castle to the next like frightened mice.
They ended up in the last fortress at the very end of the Westerlund peninsula, a miserable lump of rock caked in seagull droppings, which describes both fortress and peninsula.
They all crowded into a damp keep, all screeching blame at one another over the failure of their rebellion, all waiting for the king’s armies to slaughter them.
The Chancellor ordered his troops to blockade the tip of the peninsula with the intent of starving the rebels into submission.
Knowing the man, I suspect he threw a few daggers over the battlements to quicken things along – though some of the rebel barons were beefy, and their deaths would have staved off starvation.
Another counterproductive effort on his part.
In any event, before the rebels ate each other or surrendered, there came a white horse clip-clopping daintily over the shore, and riding it was a herald sent by the Princess Aldebara.
In sight of both the rebels and the Chancellor’s forces, the herald unrolled a scroll and read the princess’s message: if the barons surrendered personally to her father the king, and commanded their remaining followers to lay down their weapons, then they would all be spared and no punishment would fall upon them.
She decreed this very loudly, and very publicly.
Not even the Chancellor could gainsay her.
After, it was known as Aldebara’s Mercy – but you know all this better than I.
Anyway, it did not end. The barons promised they would go straight to the palace to surrender. Instead, they slipped away into the hills and gathered new strength.
The Chancellor rushed back to the king’s side to ensure that there were no more troublesome letters, but the damage was done, or, rather, not done. Within a year, the war was on again.
Anyway, I mention all that to explain why Sir Rudyard’s pleas for aid went unanswered.
Almost unanswered.
“Begging your pardon, sir,” said the serving boy, “it’s only that . . .”
Sir Rudyard frowned at the lad, trying to recall his name. Awful. Offcut. Offal. Something like that. “Only that what?”
“I’ve heard things . . .”
“As have I,” snapped Rudyard. “Right now, for example, I am hearing a boy who is not getting to the point.”
“I’ve heard that there are ways into . . . into down there. The Underhalls.”
“The foresters report that there was a landslide shortly before the dragon’s first assault. The door’s blocked.”
“There’s other ways in. Other doors.” Offa dropped a handful of treasures on the table.
Ancient gold coins, the broken hilt of a dagger, monstrous teeth.
“A village boy I know went in. Just in the first chamber, mind, but he brought back these. I took them off him. The door’s there.
The Dungeon . . .” Offa’s eyes were wide as breakfast plates.
“Someone could sneak in and take the dragon unawares. Catch it by surprise and kill it—”
“Slay it. One slays dragons.” Sir Rudyard blinked, as if waking from a dream.
“This is arrant nonsense. You saw what became of those gentlemen” (they were not gentle) “from the Survey. They were professionally trained soldiers, experts in the field of, of . . . well, experts. I don’t see any such experts around here, do you? ”
“No, sir.”
“Well then.” Sir Rudyard felt as if he had won the skirmish.
“Isn’t that the problem, sir?”
Bacon hung from fork paused between plate and mouth.
“That there’s no one around to stop the dragon but us, sir?”
The bacon fell from Rudyard’s fork.
“Arrant nonsense,” he said again, more thoughtfully this time. “That will be all.”
Sir Rudyard speared the bacon once more, but found he had quite lost his appetite. He’d piled order upon order, propriety upon propriety. He’d put everything in its right place, done all that was expected of him.
He was tired of this dish, and ready to try something new.
“On second thoughts,” he said, “fetch my armour.”