Murdan advised him to call at once and the Librarian went off to a quiet corner of Ffallmar’s orchard to do so. Manda watched him go, a worried frown creasing her usually sunny face.
“I’ll go to Knollwater with Tom,” she said. “My place is with my father and stepmother. We may be able to help prevent the kidnapping—if we are on time.”
“Yes, do that,” agreed the Historian. “Ffallmar, issue a call to arms!
I intend to go to Lexor immediately myself. Gather our combined levies and follow me as fast as you can march.”
Ffallmar called for his stable hands to saddle horses and began assigning to each rider an Achievement and a rallying point. Rosemary rushed inside to begin writing the call to muster each would carry, so there would be no doubt of their authority to call the United Small Achievements to war.
Murdan stripped an ornate old ring of gold, set with a red stone, from his finger and handed it to Ffallmar.
“Use my signet as authority. My people know it—and you—and will follow at once!”
Before sunset the Royal Couriers had ridden southwest on fresh Ffallmar horses toward the watershed where Cristol River rose.
Ffallmar himself galloped off to Sprend, designated as the mustering place for all Overhall lands and farms, after hurriedly kissing his wife and children and pulling on his half-armor and buckling on his sword as he ran for his horse.
Tom and Manda did all they could to assist Murdan.
“By fastest horse to Lakehead,” the Librarian advised the Historian, pointing to the map. “Mayor Fellows’ll find you a sloop to carry you to Rainbow. From there, Granger Gantrell should be able to furnish you transport either by fast ship along the coast, or by horse across Override and through Greenlevel Forest.”
“Raise my forester militia at Greenlevel Royal,” Manda reminded him, handing him a note addressed to Strongoak, the Chief Forester of her Royal Forest. “They can reach Lexor faster than Ffallmar and his midland farmers.”
“I’m off!” said the Historian grimly. “Good-bye, lad and lass, daughter! I don’t know what I can do in Lexor, but I hope to be able to aid Walden in withstanding the attack on the capital. Leave military strat-egy to me and militia matters to Ffallmar, you two. Protect the King and Queen and the royal children—what you do there in Waterfields is at least as important to the Kingdom as fighting the Rellings in the field. Did you hear from your wandering Dragon, Tom?”
“He answered, but I don’t know how long it’ll take him,” said Tom.
“A Constable Dragon can be pretty fast when he must!”
“So can I,” muttered Murdan. He slung his leg over his saddle, stuck his booted feet in the stirrups, and shot off down the farm lane, not looking back.
“Come inside and have some supper,” urged Rosemary. “Try to get some sleep. No telling when Retruance will come dropping down out of the sky.”
A moment before, if you’d asked him, Tom would have sworn he wasn’t hungry, but the Historian’s daughter’s words made him realize how famished he really was.
He and Manda stood embracing each other for a moment of mu-tual comforting, then followed Rosemary into the warm and brightly lighted farmhouse.
“Oh, come
on,
Retruance!” Manda cried fiercely. “I wish I were a Companion myself!”
“Sooner than later,” Tom promised, comforting her. “Come on, yourself! Let’s prepare for what is coming by filling our stomachs and getting a bit of rest.”
Manda nodded, in control of her emotions and her mind.
“If
we
can’t do it, nobody can!” she said firmly.
Eddie of Ffallmar yielded his father’s place to Tom with only a little reluctance. With Ffallmar away, Eddie felt he was entitled to sit at the head of the table. Tom accepted the honor with grace and served bowls of steaming, savory chicken stew with dumplings and rich squares of golden cornbread. Eddie contented himself with passing the cornbread squares and making sure the milk pitcher was passed to his guests, his mother, and his sisters.
Everyone retired as soon as the supper dishes were cleared away.
Tom, an old campaigner by now, fell at once into deep sleep but his wife lay awake at his side for a long time, thinking worriedly of her stepsiblings and of her father and his Queen.
At last, when the lights in the kitchen and pantry were blown out by the servant girls on their way to bed, she moved close to her husband’s sleeping form and composed herself for sleep.
Chapter Four
Knollwater Uproar
Retruance and his brother sat on a sandy Gulf of Carolna beach, paddling their tails in the warm salt waves and wondering what to do next.
“Just peters out!” cried Furbetrance, irritably. “Do you think he went out to sea? There’re a lot of islands out there. But Papa was ever a Mountain Dragon by choice, you know. Would he have hidden himself on an island somewhere?”
Retruance shook his head but didn’t reply.
Furbetrance turned to demand an answer but recognized the far-away look in his brother’s golden eyes.
“What! What is it?” he asked, anger and frustration forgotten.
“It’s Tom. Calling me. I must fly to Ffallmar Farm at once!” said Retruance, rising and shaking the sand and saltwater from his tail.
“I’ve got to go!”
“Of course you do!” agreed Furbetrance, also rising. “But what shall I do? Go along? Stay here?”
Retruance lifted his enormously powerful wings in preparation for a fast takeoff, but paused a moment to consider his answer.
“Try the nearer islands you see out there,” he suggested. “See if the animals or the birds have seen anything of a wayward Dragon. I’ll get word to you as soon as I find out what’s going on...if I can. Good-bye, little brother! Tom wouldn’t call if it weren’t urgent, you know.”
“I know,” said the other, wistfully watching him soar into the blue tropical sky. “I often wish I had a Companion myself.”
He took off eastward, more gently and thoughtfully than Retruance had flown northward, mulling over in his mind the matter of a Companion.
Dragon Companions weren’t all that common. Perhaps one in ten Dragons found such a close Companion in his lifetime.
When one
comes along, you ‘re supposed to know it at once, no matter who or
what,
Furbetrance thought to himself.
That’s the way it was with
Murdan and Papa, I’ve heard them both say, and with Tom and
Retruance, too.
“I’ve always been very much drawn to Princess Manda myself,”
he said aloud as he flapped along low over the gulf waves. “Why have I never gotten up enough nerve to ask her? Because she’s a Princess, I guess.”
He slowly circled the first of a thousand small islands that dotted the vast Gulf of Carolna. Most were uninhabited except by birds and turtles and such. Or so he’d heard. Little was known of the gulf, actually. No Dragon he knew had ever lived or even visited there.
“Which is a good reason to look for Papa there, I suppose,”
Furbetrance said, sighing.
He lowered himself toward the closest white sand beach, fringed by graceful coconut palms. A great cloud of seabirds screamed into the air, startled to see the huge stranger arrive. They were cautious but not especially afraid.
rs
Tom was awake when he heard his Dragon land in Ffallmar’s farmyard. The rooster in the chicken run had just announced the rising of the sun and, looking up, had choked out a frightened
gurk!
when he saw the dark, reptilian form dropping down upon him.
He and his hens scattered, clucking and bawling in panic. Things that dropped from the sky meant only one thing to chickens: danger!
Hawks! And hawks meant death and bloodshed and sudden bereave-ment.
“Oh, hush!” Retruance snorted after them. “Good morning, ma’am!”
This last was to a startled farm lass who’d just come to the hen coop to gather breakfast eggs for her mistress.
“Good morning, Sir Dragon,” she said hurriedly, to cover her start.
“Welcome to Ffallmar Farm! You are the Dragon Retruance Constable, I know.”
“Right! Come for my Companion, Thomas of Overhall. Is he here still?”
“Here and ready for breakfast,” Tom hailed from the bedroom window. “Be right down!”
He finished dressing hurriedly, not worrying about waking his wife. Manda could sleep through a riot usually, and the day before had been trying, at best.
She did murmur his name and turn toward him as he opened the bedroom door.
“Wha’s?” she asked.
“Retruance is come. I’m going down to tell him the news. Getting up?”
“Of course!” said Manda, sliding out from under the comforter and shaking her thick blond tresses vigorously. “Be right along.”
By the time she’d quickly bathed and dressed in a comfortable and serviceable traveling costume and come down the stairs to the breakfasting room off the big farm kitchen, Tom had already told Retruance the information the Lord High Chamberlain had sent the day before.
Retruance was shocked and more than a bit angry.
“Let’s go at once!” he rumbled. He was standing in the barnyard with his head at the open kitchen window. His voice shook the house and brought Rosemary running, followed by her children.
Eddie ran to give Retruance a hug—or as much a hug as a small boy could manage on the huge Dragon—and the girls piped their delighted greetings. Retruance was a great favorite with them all.
Rosemary leaned out the window, kissed Retruance on the nose, and said, “Now, give them a minute to wake up and have a bite of food, Retruance! No one should go flying off into certain danger without some of my eggs and hickory-smoked ham and pecan pancakes inside.”
“You sound just like your father,” the Dragon said good-naturedly with a snort. “Oh, all right. I’ll give them time to eat, at least. I’d welcome a bit myself, if you can manage it.”
He allowed the nightdress-clad Ffallmar children to climb merrily over his head and shoulders and slide down his long, scaly tail while he ate a vast quantity of pancakes submerged in maple syrup and butter. Manda and Tom ate breakfast quickly, all the while discussing their route with the Dragon.
“How long to reach Knollwater?” asked Manda.
“Five hours or so from here, if we fly fast and high. I generally avoid flying low. It tends to frighten children and chickens, you see,”
answered Retruance with a chuckle. “Now, my good little barnstorm-ers, your mother has your breakfast ready for you and Uncle Retruance has to rush off and save the kingdom once again, so slide into your places and say good-bye, for we are off!”
Tom helped his wife to her accustomed place on the Dragon’s broad, smooth head between his foremost pair of ears and then climbed up next to her, saying his farewells to the Historian’s daughter and her brood.
“I wish I could come along this time,” called Eddie wistfully.
“But someone has to stay here and forward important messages and protect your mother and sisters,” his mother told him. “Militia-men will be asking all sorts of questions, and someone must be here who knows the answers. I’ll need all the help you can give me, Eduard.”
The boy gracefully accepted the responsibility, even though it didn’t involve flying off on a Dragon.
“I hope your father’ll be all right, Rosemary,” worried Manda. “He should be in the capital by Thursday night—if he travels fast.”
“Father can take care of himself,” insisted Rosemary of Ffallmar loyally. “And my husband will be back for a few hours, before the militia marches, I’m quite sure. Say good-bye to the Princess and Sir Tom, children, and get dressed to do your chores. Colts, calves, and chicks must be fed! Lessons start right on time, in an hour.”
“Lessons! When the kingdom is in awful danger of invasion and the royal babies are threatened!” protested ten-year-old Molly.
But young Eddie clapped his hands sharply and said, “Daddy would want us to carry on here as usual, so he can go to war without worry.”
“Yes, Eddie!” said both his sisters, amazingly obedient considering he was the youngest of the three.
They waved once more to Retruance and his riders and dutifully trooped off to make their beds and don their working-day clothes.
In considerably less than the five hours he’d predicted, Retruance swooped down on a large and graceful, rambling old mansion flanked on all sides by wide verandas and surrounded by sweeping lawns and carefully tended flower gardens, set among a glistening network of canals and connected ponds.
This was Knollwater, the childhood home of Queen Beatrix of Carolna.
“Easy now!” cried Tom, leaning far forward over the Dragon’s brow.
“Look out! Soldiers seem to be expecting an air raid!”
Below them formed tense ranks of soldiers with raised pikes and shouts of defiance, grim officers with drawn swords, and archers with bows bent, as if they were expecting an order to shoot.
“Ho, whoa!” roared Retruance, sliding to a halt in the graveled courtyard. “ ‘Tis but me, Retruance Constable, and the Princess Manda and the Librarian of Overhall. Where’re the King and the Queen! What’s happened?”
An officer looking greatly distressed rushed up to them, waving his sword in salute and wiping tears from his eyes.
“Thank goodness you’ve come, Dragon! Princess! Librarian! Port your arms, men! Stand at ease!”
Manda slid from the Dragon’s lofty forehead, followed by her husband.
“What news, Colonel?” she asked at once.
“The poor little babe’s been stolen away! Snatched during the early-morning hours, soon after breakfast. It’s just horrible, my Lady Princess! No one saw or heard him come ‘til it was too late! We could do nothing to stop him!”
“Babe!
Which
child?” demanded Manda, running full tilt toward the main entrance to the mansion.
“Get yourself together, man!” Retruance snapped quite sharply to the shaking officer. “Order your men to put up their weapons before someone gets hurt!”
Tom followed Manda at a run.
They were met at the main door of Knollwater House by King Eduard Ten himself, who through his bedroom window had seen them arrive.