attached to Murdan and the king's party or, at least, quite sympathetic with it."
"Do you misdoubt the king's party?" asked Captain Tro-ver, surprised.
"I only want to hear what his enemies are saying about the king, about Murdan and about Princess Royal Alix Amanda. You can't know too much about your enemy's thoughts, can you?"
"I'd agree with that. Me worst enemy is me own brother, ye*11 have heard from the dove lover, I warrant."
"Yes, he told us about that," said Clem.
"A good man, for all he talks way to much," said the rather dour lake captain. "Excuse me. Master Librarian, but I must see to me sails, now."
He dashed forward, shouting to two of the three men who formed his crew. The third handled the tiller.
Pinnacle Flyer skimmed along before the west wind, which carried them and a few brief showers of slanted rain with it. Once they had left Lakehead, the lake widened rapidly. They were almost out of sight of the northern shore while the south shore was already over the horizon.
The wind was warm and wet, not uncomfortable. They sat on a cushioned thwart just abaft the sloop's single mast. Captain Trover roamed back and forth, stepping over their legs to go forward and stand with his hand shading his eyes, gazing forward.
"Damnation!" they heard him swear. He stomped aft and stopped next to Tom and Clem.
"We're overtaking him, the slimy rat!"
"I assume you're referring to your brother," said Clem.
"Blast his eyes!" swore Trover. "He must have sailed late, rather than on time."
"No, Maiden Skimmer was just sailing when we met the dove seller on City Pier, two hours back," Tom remembered.
"He should have made better time than this!" the captain calculated. "Something must be wrong aboard Skimmer!"
"Will you go alongside her to help?" Clem wanted to know. His nature urged him to assist anyone, even enemies, when they were in trouble.
DRAGON COMPANION 199.
"I should let the mad dog sink!" growled Trover. He shook his head angrily. "Buta he's me brother, for all his misguided ways."
He raised his voice to call, "Stand by to go about! Lively there, boys. Not too near, but close enough to cuss at the damned reprobate."
^18^ Lake Piracy A FEW minutes later Pinnacle Flyer had run close enough to Maiden *Skimmer to see she lay almost dead in the water, her sails in heaps on the deck and trailing over. They saw no one aboard.
"Ahoy!" Captain Trover hailed. "Ahoy, Maiden Skimmer Boscor, you blacksnake, is this your idea of a joke? Ahoy, anyone aboard the sloop!"
No answer.
Trover ordered the helm put hard over, and as the wind spilled from her main, stay, and jib sails. Pinnacle Flyer rocked to an uneasy stop half a length from the silent barkentine.
Trover stood beside his helmsman, staring out over the water at his brother's vessel, taking in every detail, studying how she lay, how she rolled in the swell.
"Break out the sweeps," he ordered in a subdued voice.
His lake men unlashed long, slim oars from under the gunwales on either side of the cockpit and set them in oarlocks on the rail.
The tallest and huskiest of his three men seated himself on a thwart and dragged the long oars through the water. In five strokes he sent Pinnacle toward the derelict.
"Easy!" cautioned Trover, signaling to his helmsman with his hands. "A bit to port, lad. Midships now."
Just as it seemed they would ram the other ship broad-side, he ordered, "Back water!" and the oarsman pushed 2.00 Don Callander heavily on his sweeps, slowing the tiny ship to a halt. Pinnacle's bow scraped softly along Maiden amidships, swinging slowly to come to rest parallel to her length.
The distraught captain scrambled onto her deck, eighteen inches higher than his own, while his crew made lines fast between the two ships.
"Can we help you. Captain?" called Tom. "Right! Come aboard her, then, sirs. You lads stay at your posts and be ready to cast off if I say so." * The travelers from Overhall joined him on Maiden's empty deck.
"No one," noted the lake captain, puzzled and worried.
"I'll look below. Better come with me, sirs, just in case.
Keep your eyes open."
The main cabin, five steps below the deck, was a sham-bles. Papers and clothing were scattered over the whole. Broken glassware and spilled liquids made walking treacherous as they moved forward. In the tiny galley alcove half-prepared food had been left standing and an iron cookstove still smoldered, chaired rags piled about it on the deck.
"Pirates!" howled Trover, wringing his hands. "My poor brother! What's been done here? Murder? Larceny?"
"Calm yourself. Captain," Tom soothed. "I see no signs of violence to men, at least. No blood or bodies. If these were pirates, they must have taken the passengers and crew off as captives."
"It appears to me," said Clem, kneeling to examine the charred rags, "that they hoped to bum her when they left. This tinder is still hot and smoking. It was too damp to bum well, is all."
"Toss it over the side," urged Trover with a shudder.
Clem did so, and Tom and the captain followed him up to the deck.
"Captain!" called out a crewman. He pointed aft. "Maid-en carried a skiff and a longboat, there and there."
"They've been kidnapped, then," cried Trover. He looked about in dismay. Maiden wallowed in the choppy waves pushed up by the westerlies. "They put everybody into her boats and abandoned her to bum. Even if she hadn't burned, she'd have drifted before the wind for miles and miles before she ran on shore."
DRAGON COMPANION.
201.
"Is this usual?" asked Tom. "Piracy on Lakeheart Lake, I mean."
"Not in recent years," said one of the lake men when Trover wandered off, not answering. "Most every boat family on Lakeheart was lake pirates at one time. Including the Sacks. That's the captain's family."
Trover Sack returned, shaking his head, now recovering from his shock.
"If we read the signs aright, they didn't harm anyone.
They'll send a demand for ransom soon. We must return at once to Lakehead and tell Bailiff Kedry. Not that he could do much. Wait for the ransom demand a and meet it."
"We'll stay with you until you recover your brother," Tom promised him. "Man needs company at a time like this." "Ia Ia I thank you, from me heart," replied Trover Sack. "Ye're strangers here, but good king's men, I see.
Thank you for your help and support!"
He quickly made arrangements for his first mate, the most experienced of his crewmen, to take command of poor Maiden and sail her home.
"If you'll be so kind as to lend me your hands," he said to Tom and Clem, "we can sail Pinnacle while the boys bring in Maiden."
Tacking against the stiffening breeze, the two ships struggled together back to Lakehead, arriving after dark and mooring at City Pier in Maiden's usual spot. Even before they stepped ashore word had spread that something unusual had happened, and a crowd of lake sailors and merchants gathered. "They know Boscor and I wouldn't sail together, unless something had gone very wrong," explained Trover. "Our fool feud is the talk of the entire town."
He sent a boy to fetch the bailiff from his supper. Kedry arrived, red faced and looking angry at the imposition, just as the sailors finished furling the sails and battening hatches against the rain and night. "Ho!" shouted the burly official. "What is it couldn't wait *til I'd finished dinner? You brothers had a falling out, is it? What have you done to him and his crew? And his passengers? I've a good mind to clap you in irons in the town jail!"
202.
Don Callander DRAGON COMPANION 203.
"Wait just a damned minute," said Tom in some heat. "You don't even know what happened out there and you're talking of irons and jail!"
"It's my judgment that counts," Kedry screamed back. "Every man here knows about Trover and Boscor Sack. At each other's throats all the time! Something like this was bound to happen in the end, I say."
The growing crowd was quite obviously polarized, half supporting the bailiff's guesses, the other half shaking their heads and muttering that he was being unfair.
"Hear their story at least," someone shouted. Tom thought it was the dove seller, on the back fringe of the crowd, but he couldn't be sure. Neither could Kedry.
"Well, then, tell us how you did it. Trover. Waited for him over the horizon and surprised him, was it?"
"No, bailiff! I just got this charter with these two young men. Otherwise I would not have sailed today at all! We a"
Kedry squinted at Tom and Clem, saying, "I thought I sent you to sail with Boscor, lads. Why did you change your minds, eh?"
"We missed Maiden's sailing and a passerby told us about Captain Trover," Tom explained patiently. "We sailed with him aboard Pinnacle, and after an hour or so on the lake he sighted Maiden becalmed, her sails in the water, and nobody aboard."
"Pirates!" someone yelled, and the uproar over this kept anyone from speaking for several moments. At last the bailiff raised his voice in a harsh, wordless shout and the furor died away.
"Pirates, indeed!" he scoffed. "We've not had such in this lake for close to fifty years. It's a story made up by Trover to fool the law, believe me."
"Be of some sense, Kedry," said an important-looking gentleman, just arrived on the scene. The crowd parted to make way for him.
"Mayor Fellows!" the bailiff cried, almost bowing double at the waist to the newcomer. "Here's a mystery and a dispute, sir! I say Trover did away with his hated brother Boscor, and Trover and his passengers say it were pirates!"
"Let us get this inside out of the rain," said the mayor. He was a tall, middle-aged man, evidently of some position and respect. He wore a gold chain of office about his neck and his doublet was discretely embroidered with the Standing Bear symbol of the Gantrell family, the first Tom had seen since Wall.
"Can you get a fair hearing in this town?" Tom whispered to Trover as they followed the mayor off the pier.
"Mayor Fellows is a good man, fair and just, even if he be a Gantrell creature. He'll control Kedry, at least. To Fellows, renewed piracy will be more important than a mere family quarrel."
Tom smiled at the man's new view of his brother. The crowd followed them all the way to Town Hall on the square, opposite City Pier. Those not quick enough to take seats within stood about the open doors and windows to listen.
"Now, then," began Mayor Fellows, "by virtue of my powers and duties and so forth, as Mayor of the Town of Lakehead and Justice of Lakeheart County, I declare open a court of inquiry under the laws of the king, Eduard Ten, whom God bless with long life, and the guidance of my lord, Peter of Gantrell, our liege lord."
He clapped his hands once and sat behind a massive desk carved with looping ropes and fouled anchors. There was a pause while someone hastened to bring out flags to place on either side of the bench. A crier rephrased the mayor's words with proper regard to ceremony, in a loud, high-pitched voice.
Mayor Fellows waited impatiently until this was completed, then slapped the desktop with his open palm and at once the crowd fell silent.
"Let the bailiff testify first what information he has, then," said he.
Kedry, looking flustered, stood in the center of the open space before the mayor's desk. To give him credit, now under oath, he made a straightforward statement of the facts as he knew them.
"Now, Captain Sack, let's hear your story of what happened," said Mayor Fellows. "Under oath, please."
Being sworn. Trover Sack related for the court what he had done, and when, down to taking his brother's ship under his care and returning to harbor.
"I understand you dispute Trover Sack's testimony. Bailiff Kedry?" inquired the mayor when Trover had finished and taken his seat.
204 Don Callander "Well, Your Honor, I may have been hasty in me words, although it seemed obvious that if our friend Boscor Sack is dead or missing a"
"No evidence of his death has been adduced," (he mayor interrupted.
"Well, Your Honor, sir, I merely suggest an interpretation of the facts based on the known quarrel between the Sack brothers. They've been heard to threaten bodily harm to each other, ofttimes, even to threats of death! I can take witnesses from this very crowd, here, to those facts."
"That may be necessary, later," agreed the judge-mayor. "For now, I'd like to hear the witness of the two young men who were passengers aboard Pinnacle Flyer."
Tom stepped forward and was sworn in in due form. He identified himself and his companion, showing the mayor a letter of introduction that the Historian had provided for just such a purpose, should it arise. The mayor entered into the record that their identification was true and proper, as he recognized Murdan's signature and seal.
"Now tell us, please, what happened today, beginning when you entered Lakehead."
Tom told the story, ending with the discovery of the sloop Maiden, adrift and abandoned on the lake.
"Do you have any reason to believe Captain Trover Sack planned to intercept his brother's ship while underway?" asked Fellows.
"No, Your Honor. Although I'm not conversant with ships and sailors' ways, I have to say that when we arrived at Pinnacle's mooring, which is some distance from the town, her crew was not prepared or even preparing to sail. They knew Boscor's Maiden usually sailed on schedule at noon. Everyone else knew it, it seems, including the bailiff, who recommended her to take us over the lake."
"Is this so?" the mayor asked the bailiff.
"It is true. Your Honor."
"Then," said Fellows, leaning forward in his chair, "had Trover intended to waylay his brother in open water, he would have departed his anchorage at least two hours soon-er than he did, according to Master Thomas's testimony."
"It would seem so. Your Honor, sir," agreed the deflated bailiff.
"Then we can accept the matter as Trover and this wita"
DRAGON COMPANION 205.
ness testify, I believe. The barkentine belonging to Boscor Sack, I must believe, was intercepted, boarded, and captured by unknown pirates and her passengers and crew carried away captives."
"It would seem so. Your Honor," replied Kedry grudgingly. "And I apologize to Captain Sack for doubting his truthfulness."
The mayor called for the witness of Clem of Broken Land, and the experienced woodsman carefully described what he saw when they boarded the abandoned sloop, down to the charred rags and the missing boats.
Mayor Fellows heard corroborating evidence from the three Pinnacle sailors, who were all of good reputation in Lakehead, being sons of long-standing families.