Excalibur (7 page)

‘We could always go looking ourselves,' said Sir Lancelot. ‘On my trusty steed, the magnificent Susan.'

‘Yes, but that could take forever,' said Morgan le Fey. ‘Even for me it can take half a day just to get across the bridges to the mainland.'

‘We do not need to cross the bridges,' said Lancelot.

‘Of course we do. How else can we go searching everywhere?'

‘Because Susan is no ordinary horse,' said Sir Lancelot. ‘She has wings on her heels. She can fly.'

‘Yes, right,' said Morgan le Fey. ‘You are a
wonderful man who I shall love and respect forever, but flying horses? Come on. This is the Days of Yore, not the Dark Ages when people believed all that sort of hippy stuff.
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Horses can't fly.'

‘But Susan was born in the Dark Ages,' said Sir Lancelot and went over to the window.

This time it was his turn to take a silver whistle from round his neck and blow it. Slowly a large horse that had been grazing in the courtyard below rose into the air. The back of each of her hooves was a blur as eight small wings carried the horse higher and higher. Luckily the window was a big window, so when Susan came level with the sill she simply drift ed silently into the room. She walked over to Lancelot and nuzzled him.

Morgan le Fey did not faint. She thought about it and decided fainting was not as fashionable as it had been last week, so decided against it.

‘Can she carry both of us?'

Susan nodded.

‘Can she understand what we're saying?'

Susan nodded again.

‘So does she know that we are as one and our destinies are intertwined forever?' said Morgan le Fey.

Susan looked surprised and fainted.
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When she came to, she stood up and smiled at Morgan le Fey as only a horse can smile, which is kind of weird. Then she nuzzled the Princess to let her know she was cool with the situation.

I don't think the Princess is ready for a talking horse
, Susan thought and winked at Sir Lancelot, who understood perfectly.

 

Meanwhile Brat, Bloat, Princess Floridian and Scraper were approaching the dragons' valley. Until recently it had been a desolate, burnt-out place. Every living plant, from the smallest blades of grass to the great oak trees and everything in between, had been scorched to death by angry dragons breathing fire everywhere, but since Spikeweed, King of the Dragons, had signed the peace treaty with King Arthur, everything had calmed down and the dragons only burnt nasty stinking nettle or prickly things. A good summer of warm rain had worked wonders for the place. The grass was lush and green and tall enough for rabbits to hide in, except for the burnt patches that hadn't been tall enough for rabbits to hide in, where rabbits had thought they were hiding until they were suddenly converted into dinner by a passing dragon.

The trees were heavy with fresh leaves and even a few birds had returned to nest in the topmost branches, where they were out of reach of the dragons' flames. If there is one thing a dragon likes for his tea more than a rabbit, it's a few roasted songbirds. Dragons can fly
and dragons can breathe fire, but they are rubbish at multitasking, so if they try to breathe fire while they are concentrating on flying, they usually burn their own wings which means they crash. The birds knew this and that is why they were safe in the treetops. The birds also knew that it could be really good fun to fly down and sing a lovely song to a dragon until it couldn't contain itself and flew after them up into the treetops and set its own wings on fire.

‘I just wish us birds could laugh,' they would tweet to each other as their latest victim fell headfirst onto a big rock.

‘We can,' said a kookaburra and laughed so hard it fell off its branch and was crushed to death by a falling dragon.

The four rebels hid behind a rock and looked down into the clearing where most of the dragons lived. Since the peace treaty other dragons had come to the valley. They had come from other countries where humans and dragons were still bitter enemies trying to wipe each other out. The countries included every country that wasn't called Avalon.

‘We need to pick a moment when my mum and
dad aren't around,' said Bloat. ‘Then we'll creep down and slip into Granny's cave.'

‘What about her?' said Princess Floridian. ‘Won't she say something?'

‘She doesn't even know what planet she's living on,' said Bloat. ‘If I tell her we've come to polish her scales, she'll be happy. Actually, if I tell her we are four large bunches of green bananas and have come to her cave to ripen, she'll be happy.'

‘What's a banana?' said Scraper. ‘Are they dangerous?'

‘No, they are cuddly little marsupials,' said Bloat.
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‘Oh,' said Scraper. ‘I spect your granny like them. My granny eated marsupials on toast for her brekfus.'

‘That was marmalade, you idiot,' said Princess Floridian.

‘Not marmalade,' said Scraper. ‘Granny sayed marmalade was evil. No, granny eated baby possums on toast for her brekfus every day.'

‘Shut up,' said Brat.

‘Do you want to hear a joke my granny done?' said Scraper.

‘No,' said everyone.

‘Sometimes she didn't have them on toast, sometimes she boiled them up in a bukkit, not my bukkit of course. She had her own bukkit wot was lovely, but not as lovely as my bukkit which is the loveliest bukkit in the whole world, and you'll never guess what she called it?' said Scraper.

‘Marsoupials,' said Princess Floridian.

‘Oh, I didn't know you knew my granny.'

‘Shut up.'

‘I will show your granny my bukkit,' said Scraper. ‘Grannies love bukkits.'

‘Yes, you do that,' said Bloat. ‘Look, there's no one about right now, let's go.'

The four of them crept out from behind the rock and tiptoed down into the cave. No one saw them except for two people flying through the clouds on a horse. Fortunately the two people were Morgan le Fey and Sir Lancelot and the horse was the wonderful Susan. Fenestra did not see them. She was back in her tower getting ready to begin the search. Vampires are
notoriously vain and will not go anywhere without sharpening their claws and covering their skin in a protective layer of magical grease to attract evil spirits.
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The ancient dragon was sleeping in a very large puddle at the back of the cave. King Arthur had given the dragons a large supply of incontinence pants for the old granny when they had signed their peace treaty, but even wearing three pairs of Super Strong Leakylegs was not enough to contain the endless stream of wee that leaked out of the ancient creature. The smell was so powerful that it made the visitors' eyes sting and burnt the back of their throats.

Although she was fast asleep and snoring like a hippopotamus with a very bad sinus problem, the minute the three runaways got within three metres of her she shook herself and spoke.

‘I smells visitors,' she said. ‘A boy, a lovely grandson, a lovely Princess and a big lovely walking
potato with a lovely bucket.'

‘Hello, Granny,' said Bloat. ‘We came to see how you were.'

‘Who's that?' said the old dragon. ‘Is it young Bloat?'

‘No, he's not here at all,' said Bloat. ‘It's me, Clarence, Bloat's cousin.'

‘Clarence?'

‘Yes, Granny,' said Bloat as the four of them tiptoed past the old creature towards the tunnel entrance.

‘Why are you all tiptoeing past me towards the tunnel entrance? Anyone would think you hadn't come to visit me at all and just wanted to go into the drains.'

‘Oh Granny, how could you think such a thing?' said Bloat.

‘Because it's true,' said the old dragon. ‘No one comes to see me any more except Wee Blind Jock.'

‘And we all know he's not real, don't we, Granny?'

‘Of course he is. Look at all the wee on the floor. That's Wee Blind Jock, that is. He comes every night and cocks his leg on me. How else do you think all this wee gets here?'

The old dragon opened her eyes and tried to breathe fire, but all that came out of her nose was a puff of damp black smoke.

‘I must get my nostrils cleaned out,' she said. ‘They're all full of clinker. I don't suppose you could do it, could you? I've got a wire brush and if you do, I'll let you touch my magic wart.'

‘Hey, look,' said Brat, pointing towards the cave entrance. ‘Here comes Wee Blind Jock now.'

As the old dragon turned to look they ran away down the tunnel.

‘Hello, Wee Blind Jock,' they could hear Bloat's granny say. ‘Come over here and speak up. I can't hear you because you're blind.'

‘Are you sure this is the only way in and out of this tower?' said Princess Floridian. ‘I don't think I can go through all that rubbish every time.'

‘Once we get set up in the tower, we can get Bloat to fly us in and out,' said Brat. ‘We'll just have to wait until it's dark.'

‘Can you see in the dark?' the Princess asked Bloat.

‘Of course I can,' said the young dragon. ‘It's easy.
I mean, it's only one colour, just a big black thing.'

Princess Floridian began to wonder if the whole pretending-to-be-kidnapped thing had been such a good idea. Maybe it would have been better to have beaten up the useless highwaymen and gone on to King Arthur's coronation. Who knows, she might have ended up becoming Mrs King Arthur. She knew that boys found her irresistible and OK, so the King was only eleven years old, but she could wait. In five years' time he would be eighteen,
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the same as her. Of course this could still happen. She could beat up Brat and Bloat, stuff Scraper's bucket over his head again and drag them all back to Camelot.

She would be a hero and
everyone
would want to marry her. She'd probably get a big reward too. But there was a bigger reward waiting to be claimed and she was determined to get it.

Excalibur was the stuff legends were made of and then
some. Children everywhere, not just in Avalon, but all over the world, knew about the magical sword. Thousands of them dreamt of the day plastic would be invented so they could have a model of their own. Sure, there were cardboard
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Excaliburs, but owning one of them always ended in tears. You would be out playing knights and damsels with all the other children and it would start raining, and before you knew it your Excalibur was a limp soggy mess with everyone laughing at it.

No, the Princess had seen the beam of sunlight shine down through the clouds on the mighty sword and she was determined that one way or another she would be the one to claim it. Legend said that whoever pulled it out of the rock would be the one true owner of the sword and its incredible powers and no one would ever be able to take it off you. Of course she could go and tell King Arthur about seeing the sword, but if she
did that, there would be no way she would be allowed to own it. No, her best chance was to use the idiots she was with to lead her to it. Brat might think he would be the chosen one, but Princess Floridian decided that once they found the right island, she would have no problem claiming ownership.

She would just kill the other three.

They reached the place where the tunnels led into the drains beneath Camelot. There were hundreds of pipes leading down from the castle. All the toilets, baths, basins, rainwater pipes and other leaky things like the blood pipes from the ancient torture chambers and the cheese overflows from the mighty pizza ovens fed into this one huge drain that flowed away into a darkness no one had ever explored. It was rumoured to run into the very core of the world itself, though a race of natives living on an undiscovered island somewhere in the South Seas knew otherwise. From the top of their single mountain, the most disgusting stream imaginable poured down over a great brown waterfall into their valley. The air was permanently filled with the aroma of ancient sewage and boiled cabbage and old blood and pizza. Of course, the natives had never known anything
else, so to them it was the river of life and it made their land so rich they grew potatoes the size of footballs.
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They tasted absolutely awful, but they were enormous.

Luckily, Bloat had been one of the young dragons who had blown bubbles up into the toilets of Camelot
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so he knew which drain led up into the remote tower where they were to make their hideout.

‘Me go, me go first, please, please,' said Scraper jumping up and down with excitement. ‘Bukkit all ready to clean up.'

‘All right,' said Brat, ‘as you have been such a good boy, we will let you go up first.'

‘Thank you, thank you, thank you,' said Scraper. ‘Me and bukkit will make so clean and shiny you could eat your dinner off it.'

‘Great,' said Brat.

‘Shouldn't you have some sort of brush?' said the Princess.

‘Got hairy arms,' said Scraper. ‘Better than brush.'

He forced himself into the pipe and began to wriggle upwards.

‘Well, if he can get up there, we'll have no problem,' said Brat.

Half an hour is not a very long time when you are enjoying yourself. However, if you are standing in an enormous sewer as all sorts of unmentionable things float past you, some of which reach out and try to grab your ankle, half an hour is a very long time indeed.

While Scraper worked his way up the pipe, two half an hours went by. Now and then something fell out of the pipe – one of Scraper's boots, two small crocodiles and a lot of brown things followed by nothing. The nothing went on for another ten minutes.

‘I hope he's not stuck,' said the Princess.

‘Well, if he is, there's nothing we can do about it,' said Brat.

‘I realise that,' said the Princess. ‘I don't care if he does get stuck, except
if
he does we won't be able to get up into the tower.'