Dragon - Dragon Companion - Dragon - Dragon Companion Part 27
Library

Dragon - Dragon Companion Part 27

Then the mayor-judge stood and spoke.

"The court believes piracy has been committed by a party or parties unknown upon the open lake, against the persons of Captain Boscor Sack, his crew, and six unknown passengers, although it remains to be seen whether all or some of said passengers were perpetrators or victims.

"The court orders the lord's bailiff, who is charged with prevention, apprehension, and punishment of the crime of piracy on our lake, to proceed at once to find, arrest, and bring to trial said pirates and to rescue their victims, if they still live."

Kedry signified his willingness to begin an investigation at once. He asked for permission to form a posse to carry out the search.

"I guess we'll have to wait for the pirates to send some sort of ransom note, then," said Trover wearily to the mayor.

"Kedry is an incompetent blowhard and sometimes a downright fool, but he's an honest, incompetent fool," said Fellows. "It's possible he'll locate where the captives are being held."

"Just barely possible," muttered the lake captain, shaking his head sadly. "I'm not sure Kedry could find his mouth, with a spoon. Well, friends," he said, turning to Tom and Clem, "let me invite you to bunk at my house for the night. It's the least I can do for you."

They accepted his invitation and shortly, while the bailiff huddled with the two dozen men of his posse on how best to 206.

Don Callander DRAGON COMPANION.

207.

search out the pirates, the three of them retired to Trover's lakeside cottage for a late supper.

Over a Spartan meala-the lakeman was a bachelora-Tom turned Trover's thoughts from his brother's tragedy with questions about the king and the lord of Lakehead.

"Is Peter of Gantrell an evil man. Captain? Some say he is so, but others aren't so sure."

"I've heard the gossip and watched the man's actions from afar. I say that he's no better or worse than many men, just richer. He's very ambitious, it's obvious. He's said to have done cruel things, but I've read of kings who have been as cruel in the past, some for good motives, others for selfish ones."

"But you personally don't like Lord Peter, do you?"

asked Clem.

"N-n-no, I must admit that I dislike a man with so much ambition that he forgets he can do great harm to innocents who might be in his way. Several years ago Gantrella-I mean Lord Peter, of coursea-was suddenly given Lakehead as a holding by our former longtime liege, one Beryl of Beryl. No one ever found out why Beryl gave up such a lucrative property. It was rumored that Gantrell forced Beryl to cede him the whole county as payment of a gambling debt. Unfortunately, Beryl died shortly afterward." He paused to sip from his mug of birch beer. "We were upset by the change, you can imagine. Beryls had been our masters for centuries. We prospered most of the time, despite outbreaks of piracy. The first two things Lord Gantrell did were, one, to appoint a respected local man as mayor. That was a good thing. Mayor Fellows is well liked and fair, as you could judge from his court of inquiry."

"Yes, I was impressed with how well he handled it,"

responded Tom.

"The second thing he did was not as popular. He made this man Kedry his bailiff. Kedry is a long-told joke. He's tried his hand unsuccessfully at a half dozen different trades. He lost his father's two shipsa-bad luck, he claimed; bad judgment, his creditors said! He opened a chandlery, but lost all when he lowered his prices to beat his competitors, and went bust. Another time he tried bottling lake water and shipping it to Waterfields, where he heard the water was rank and bad tasting. Imagine! Shipping bottled water to a place as wet as Waterfields!"

They laughed at Trover's description of the fiasco and foolishness.

"As bailiff, he uses his office to punish those he feels drove him out of his businesses. Last year we all signed a petition against him, and the mayor took it to Lord Peter. Lord Peter laughed it out of his house! And it was signed by fifty of the staunches! Gantrell supporters in Lakehead!"

"That was when you turned to the king's side?" Clem guessed shrewdly.

"I had my doubts long before, but it was the straw that broke my back, I tell you. We deserve better from the man to whom we pay enormous imposts each year. Why else have lords?"

"Why, indeed?" Tom asked quietly.

"There are some very frightened sailors out there somewhere," Clem said as he prepared for bed.

"We may be able to help them more tomorrow," said Tom from the bed, already half-asleep.

"How so? Neither of us is a boatman. These pirates could be hiding in any of a hundred coves on either shore, or on a thousand islands between."

"You forget who will join us in the morning, if all has gone according to plan." "Who's that?" "Retruance Constable, of course," answered Tom.

^i9^ Retruance to the Rescue THEY were at breakfast when the sun, which was shining brightly through the east windows, suddenly was blotted out, plunging the room into shadow. "What in a !" exclaimed Trover, leaping to his feet. "Nothing to worry about," Tom reassured him, con-208 Don Callander DRAGON COMPANION.

209.

tinuing to fork fried egg. "Just a Dragon arriving."

"My God!" exclaimed the captain, rushing to the win-dow. "The size of him!"

Retruance lowered his great head to the window and peered in, eye to eye with the lake man.

"Is this the house of Trover Sack?" he asked politely. His head was at the house but his tail was splashing playfully in Lakeheart Lake.

Tom came to the window to greet his mount and, after Trover had thrown the shutters wide, he patted the Dragon fondly on the snout.

"You had no trouble finding us?" he asked. "None at all. I stopped this morning to ask Ffallmar if he'd seen you. He'd received a note by pigeon saying you were staying with a sailor named Sack."

"Have you had breakfast. Sir Dragon?" asked Trover, swallowing his amazement long enough to remember his manners.

"Yes, thank you. I found the lake trout in your waters most delicious!"

He retreated to the lakea-a Dragon finds few freshwater lakes large enough to actually swim in comfortablya-while his companions finished breakfast.

"What's to do?" Retruance asked, when they appeared on the lakeshore, accompanying the captain. "Are we off to Lexor now, or direct to Sweetwater Tower?"

"We've got a task to do here first." Tom told him the events of the previous day. "We need to search out these pirates and rescue their captives, especially Captain Tro-ver's brother."

"Shouldn't be too hard to find *em," Retruance said with great confidence. "We'll go aloft and look for signs of *em. If they're pirates, they'll probably stay near the water, I'd think. Boats are pretty hard to hide and harder to drag overland, aren't they?"

It took a bit of persuading to get Trover to climb aboard the Dragon's brow and fly out over the lake, but the thought of having to wait on shore for others to rescue his brother steeled him to do it at last. Shortly they were winging over the calm, blue water. The Dragon flew with his pinions widespread and almost unmoving, providing a slow and silent flight. Tom knew from past experience that the Dragon's blue-silver underside made him virtually invisible from below.

"Skimmer was just about here when we found her," said Trover. He had quickly adapted to the viewpoint, the result of years of reading charts, which were, after all, a kind of overhead view.

"Where would you go if you were in an open boat in the middle of such a sea?" Retruance asked.

"The nearest shore is sixteen miles north of herea-but the road along the North Shore is rather heavily traveled by local merchants and those who can't afford lake passage. If I were a pirate, I wouldn't want to go ashore there," said Trover Sack.

He hunched forward in the Dragon's saddle, studying the scene below; lake, waves on the shoreline, and islands scattered over the surface as far as the eye could see.

"In fact," he said thoughtfully, "having given it some thought during the night, I've about decided that, if it were me, I'd head for one of the larger islands just over the horizon to the east. Bear Claw, perhaps, or Midlakea- no, not Midlake. There's a fishing village there."

"How many islands are there?" asked the Dragon, serene-ly banking to head east again.

"No one's ever counted that I know of," answered Tro-ver. "Fifty, perhaps. If you count the really small ones, ten times that number. Only a few are large enough to hide a handful of men and at least two boats, however. That leaves maybe twenty islands to look at."

"We've got the time and the Dragon," decided Tom. "Let's give them a good look from the air first. If we see anything suspicious, we'll investigate. If not, we can look more closely later."

"The south shore is mostly swampy and tangled," said the Dragon, who had flown that way many times. "It's an equal thing, whether the south shore or the islands would make the better hideaway."

"My own feeling would be to hide on an island. My grandfather, who dabbled in piracy in his time, I suspect, used to say, *Stick to what you know best.' Pirates usually do best on the water, not dry land."

They flew over the first of dozens of green islets dotting the surface of the lake, some with narrow, rocky beaches, 210.

Don Callander DRAGON COMPANION 211 a few with no beach at all. All had close-set central crowns of pines and cedars.

"Bear Claw, over there," said Trover, pointing off to the right. "It's one of the largest, but very rugged and steep sided. Too steep to log, you see. Fishermen turn loggers in winter when they can drag the logs through snow to open water and float them home. Most of these isles are burned clean of underbrush every few years to keep them from becoming too tangled for dragging the trees out. Not Bear Claw, however. It's without a safe harbor and too chopped up for logging."

"We'll take a closer look at Bear Claw, though," said Tom, and the Dragon swooped low over the rounded isle, circling while they peered down at it from a hundred feet in the air.

"See? No place to pull even small boats out of the water," Trover said, shaking his head. "Hardly any level ground anywhere, even if you could drag your boats up the cliffs."

Clem, who was best at reading signs, nodded agreement.

The Dragon climbed back to a thousand feet and the search continued.

"Would it do any good to ask the fishermen of Midlake Island?" wondered Clem.

"Not likely! They're all likely to be related to the pirates if not actual pirates themselves," sniffed the lake captain. "They're a suspicious and closemouth lot at best."

"Maybe a fire-breathing Dragon could convince them to talk," said Refinance, shooting a short, hot flame before them to demonstrate, much to Trover's discomfiture.

"Hold to that thought, if needed," said Tom with a laugh at the Dragon's pretended ferocity.

The search went forward until after the sun reached the top of the sky and began to slide down the other side.

"We should have brought lunch," complained Clem. "I was forethoughtful enough to bring a loaf of bread, in case you're interested."

" *Woodsmen,' " Tom quoted, " *are always hungry.' "

"I can go as long as any man without victuals," huffed Clem, "but in this case, if we're to have lunch, we've got either to land and eat my bread a or go back to Captain Trover's cottage."

"The lake's full of great trout," Retruance reminded them. "And Dragons are unsurpassed fishermen."

He chose a tiny, flat islet crowned with white birch, gray poplars, and dark green firs but with a gently sloping, shingle beach. While the Librarian explored the island on foota-its only inhabitant was a huge porcupine, asleep in the sun in the lee of a bouldera-and Clem scrambled to the highest point of the island to look about, the Dragon quickly captured four fat lake trout. By then, the lake captain had a fire going and was ready to broil them.

When Tom returned, having failed in an attempt to rouse the sleepy porcupine and Clem slid down the rocks from the top of the island, the trout were sizzling cheerily in a black iron frying pan from Clem's pack. From the pack Clem also produced a large white onion and the loaf of bread. He sliced them both and, when the fish filets were ready, made trout-and-raw-onion sandwiches for everybody. To wash their food down they dipped up cold, fresh lake water.

"What next?" Retruance asked, his usual question after lunch.

"More scouting, I guess. Unless anyone has a new idea where to look," Tom said. His companions shook their heads.

"We should keep in touch with Lakehead, perhaps," thought Trover. "Kedry and his posse may have found something. And there'll be a ransom note delivered soon, I think."

"With Retruance's speed, we can return to Lakehead in a few minutes," said the Librarian. "We'll check there later in the afternoon."

"Work like this requires patience," Clem pointed out. "Don't give up yet."

The fire was doused. The Dragon carried them aloft once more and they resumed looking down at dozens of islands of all sizes, from square yards to a few square miles.

The sun was slanting down to the horizon behind them. A new gray cloud bank in the west, laden with rain and flashes of lightning, threatened to cut the long summer afternoon short. They'd gone thirty more miles across the lake until no more islands showed ahead. Tom suggested they turn back.

"Good!" cried Retruance. He made a wide, banked turn 212.

Don Callander DRAGON COMPANION.

213.

and set a course toward the sun just as it reached the tops of the thunderheads piling up in the Carolna midlands.

"Aha! Hoy! What do I see!" cried Clem just then, pointing straight ahead. "Is that a whiff of smoke?"

"Probably one of the fisher villages," said Trover. He rubbed weary eyes and studied the faint blue trace of smoke rising straight into the unmoving afternoon air.

"No, no, a village would have more than one smoke,"

Clem insisted.

Retruance slowed his pace and dropped down to keep the thin apostrophe of smoke between them and the sun.

"Hook Island!" exclaimed the lake captain, recognizing it as they came closer. "No village there. We passed over it earlier, I recall."

"Carefully now. Dragon," cautioned Clem. "Slow, low, and easy. We don't want them warned of our coming."

Retruance glided silently down, as slowly as possible for his great bulk and wingspread. They seemed to be standing almost still, a hundred feet above the dead-calm water in the lee of the isle.

"It has the look of a campfire rather than a chimney smoke," thought Clem, aloud. Just then a breeze, stirred by the approach of the storm, came their way and they all caught the smell of wood smokea-and of frying fish and baking bread.

"I think we should look at this one very closely," suggested the lake man. "It could be innocent fishermen, or the bailiff's boys spending the night after a day's searching."

"Or pirates, hiding," said Retruance. "You see? There?

The island has a neat little cove."

"That's why it's named Hook," explained Trover. As they dropped almost to the level of the tallest pines atop Hook Island, he started in excitement.

"Boats! Beached in the cove, under those waterside willows!"

"Veer away to the left, Retruance," Tom said quickly, but the Dragon was already changing course to the opposite side of the mile-wide islet. He made a tight circle below the level of the treetops and landed abruptly on a flat, smooth rock at the water's edge.

"I think it's best if you look more closely on foot," he said. "I'm much too big to sneak up on them, here. If they are the pirates, I fear they could harm their captives."

"My fear, also," said Trover, grimly. "Some pirates are bloody enough to dump captives in the lake rather than risk being caught with them."