Dragon - Dragon Companion - Dragon - Dragon Companion Part 35
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Dragon - Dragon Companion Part 35

An armed guard? Guarding what?

The soldier paused at the comer of the building nearest to where Tom was hiding. The Librarian faded back into the deepest shadows under the smithy's roof. At first he thought the man was staring at him across the fifteen steps between them, but the soldier dug something from his pocket and, walking right past Tom, he used a pair of smith's tongs to pluck a coal from the banked forge fire to light his pipe.

A cloud of aromatic tobacco smoke wafted past Tom; he almost sneezed. The soldier strolled back to his post, passing again within ten feet, leaned against the comer of the storage building, puffed his pipe, and gazed dreamily across the meadow to the fringe of trees.

Tom sank slowly to his knees to ease the strain of staying very still so close to the guard. But the soldier's attention was fixed on the edge of the trees long after he'd knocked the dottle from his pipe. Then he straightened, as though he'd seen something coming.

Tom, too, caught a nutter of white and heard almost inaudible footsteps in short-cropped grass. The soldier moved from the shadow of his building and raised a hand in greeting. A slight form slipped quickly over a stile in the meadow fence and ran to him. They embraced and Tom heard faint, soft words.

The lovers slipped back into the shadow of the storehouse. "Where's your mate, love?" he heard the girl ask.

"Shhh! Not so loud, damnit!" whispered her man. "He's asleep at the other end on a pile of hay. I told him we planned to meet and he promised to keep away."

"We're supposed to lie here? In the dirt and chicken droppings?" the girl protested, pulling away from his embrace, 270 Don Callander DRAGON COMPANION 271 her voice shrill. "There's nettles here, too!"

"No, no, wait, Lucy! I've a good, snug place in mind. Across there in the barn. I left the back door unhooked, see? We'll slip up there and be very comfortable in the loft for a long while."

"Let's go then!" cried the lass with a throaty giggle. The two, clinging together, skipped swiftly across the open yard to the barn and disappeared within.

"Thank God for Lucy's healthy hormones!" Tom breathed. He waited several minutes more, listening and watching, in case the guard sergeant was wise to the soldier's intentions. No one came.

The storehouse was as large as two houses, with widely overhanging eaves on all sides, providing welcome shadow. There was just enough light to see where the end door stood closed and a light push showed it to be locked. Tom circled the building, moving away from the direction taken by the lovers.

A burst of cheering from the Great House made him pause. There was a loud crash and a shriek of laughter.

"Damnation!" said a voice almost in his ear. "They're still at it!"

"Be thankful," Clem's voice said from further away, within. "I've got a sackful to be dumped, now that guard's gone off to sample love's sweet secrets."

Shutters on a window a few feet away slowly opened and arms stretched out, emptying a feed sack of dry, loose dirt on the bare ground.

"Psst!" Tom hissed softly. "Murdan!"

"The devil! Why *tis Tom Librarian!" hissed the Historian, pressing his chest tight against the window bars to see out. "Come to get us free, are you, Tom?"

In a moment they were shaking hands gleefully through the stout wooden bars.

"We're digging," Clem explained from the stygian darkness. "The hole's almost ready to crawl through. Only a short way to go."

"Chipping away at the window bars would've been quicker," Tom observed, drily.

"No tools," said the Historian. "We're digging with a piece of shingle. Besides, we're not digging out. We're digging in!"

"In?" Tom asked in surprise.

"Into the next room. Manda and Momie are locked in there with no way to get to them, except under the wall," explained Clem. "Lucky the floor is dirt."

"Manda? Next door?" asked Tom.

"We've a plan," said Murdan. "We get into the ladies' chamber and hide. Our meals are pushed through a grille in our door but the ladies are served by a guard who brings their food right into their cell."

"Jump the guards. Bolt through the door together," finished Clem.

"But," Tom objected, "that won't be until tomorrow morning!"

"Best we can do, my boy," said Murdan. "Here, spread that dirt around so the damned guard won't trip on the pile when he comes around again."

While they went back to work inside, Tom scouted around the building, locating the snoring second guard some distance beyond its far end. If needed, he could be overpowered.

He inspected the door that led to Manda's cell and found to his delight that it did not boast a mechanical lock like the end door, but was barred by two sliding bolts. He returned to the diggers to inform them of his find.

"We're six inches from breaking through to their side," whispered Murdan. "Be quicker now to go that way, collect the girls, and you open the door for us."

"Agreed," said Tom. "Will we escape on foot? I know where the stables are."

"No time!" said the Historian. Tom could feel him shaking his head in regret, despite the darkness.

"Once we're away I can call Retruance. But it'll take him several hours to get here. He's at Sweetwater Tower by now."

"We'll have to trust to our woodsman to get us through the woods," said Murdan.

"Get you through the hole in the floor first," said Clem, arriving with a heavy sack of dirt. "I've broken through, but I'll have to widen it a bit more before an overweight Historian can squeeze through."

Tom stood silent in thought while the two miners finished their tunnel.

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"Do you know any of Gantrell's guests?" he asked as the last bit of soil was dumped and spread on the bare ground.

"I know *em all," growled Murdan, dusting his hands together disgustedly.

"Give me the name of one from somewhere nearby. I'll go to the night groom and order him to saddle the man's horses on the pretense he wants to leave. We've got to ride, if we can. Dawn is no more than three hours away."

"Might work," the Historian conceded. "All right! Man named Folderal is here. Came with three companions in the late afternoon. We were able to see him."

"Master Folderal it is, then! I'll open the door, then go to fetch horses. Wait for me here."

He slipped around the storehouse once more and quietly unbolted the door to the adjacent storeroom.

In a moment he was inside, being smothered with hugs and kisses from a shadowy princess and her maid.

"Tom! Oh, Tom! I knew you'd come get us!" whispered Manda.

"Not a thing in the world could stop me," Tom declared, holding her close for a moment more. "But we're not out of this yet, my heart."

The Historian and the woodsman emerged from a far comer of the room, covered with mould and dirt but beaming happily. Their dirty clothes didn't prevent them from receiving kisses and hugs, too.

"Listen," Tom whispered, gathering them all close so he could speak very softly, "I'm going to get horsesa-"

"I'll go with you," interrupted Clem. "It'll take two to handle four mounts and knock out the groom, if needed."

"Good, then. Manda, wait here. Keep the door closed."

"Much too risky," declared Manda. "The guard might be back any minute. Better to stay together!"

Tom reluctantly agreed and in short order the five were creeping through the shadows, giving the barn and its lovers wide berth, back to the guest house. Tom ducked inside to recover his weapons and knapsack.

Clem found the others a hiding place behind the paddock fence.

Tom walked boldly to the groom's office at the stable's entrance, finding the man sleeping on a bare cot, fully dressed.

"Here, fellow!" Tom cried in an impatient, commanding voice. "Master Folderal wants his horses up to the house, at once!"

The groom grumbled and growled a bit but, more asleep than awake, found and saddled Polderal's four mares and gratefully turned them over to Tom and Clem so he could go straight back to his bed.

They mounteda-Manda and Momie on the same horsea- and walked the animals quietly around the paddock, through the meadow, into the orchard. As they rode under the fruit trees, Clem plucked a double pocketful of fall keepers for their breakfast later.

"Which way?" Tom asked, the first time he had spoken in a normal voice in what seemed hours and hours.

"North by west," Clem answered at once, pointing the way. He'd already given it some thought. "I noticed when we were brought here, the trees and underbrush are thickest there. There're deep ravines we can hide in and still go in the right direction."

"Will you call your Dragon?" asked Murdan.

"Only if I have to," answered Tom. He took several minutes of the ride to describe what he and Retruance had found at Overhall, and what had happened at Sweetwater Tower before that.

"Twins!" exclaimed Manda, grabbing Tom's nearest hand. "Beatrix, bless her heart and soul, had twins?"

"A loud and lively boy, Ednoll, and an equally lively girl, Amelia," Tom told her. "I'm their godfather."

"What beautiful names!" cried Manda. "Well, then, we have our little kinglet, don't we?"

"It would, seem," Tom smiled, a bit sadly. "It'll put a wrench in Peter's machinery, at any rate."

"Wrench?" wondered the princess.

"Never mind, Manda, dear! We need to talk it over, but we think, Retruance, your father the king, and I, that Gantrell will be defanged, what with you in our arms a ah, that is, hands a again, and Murdan free, and the trial of Freddie the Sponge ready to start."

"Defanged?" Manda giggled. "A perfect word! It suits Uncle Peter so very well!"

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^25^ A DHTerent Kind of Flight THEY reached the edge of Gantrell House farmland. Fields and woodlots gave way to a jungly tangle of close-set trees, thorny brush, and tangled vines that at first sight seemed impassable.

"Leave the horses," Clem decided. "There's enough light now to make our way through this. Horses would take us through no faster, and leave traces a blind man could follow."

They dismounted. Clem shouted at the horses and napped his cloak. They reared back in alarm and galloped off toward Folderal's distant farm.

"That'll perhaps lead any searchers astray for a while," the trapper said with satisfaction. "Now, friends, follow me closely and step as I step."

Clem knew how to move through rough country leaving no trace of his passing. He led them down brush-choked draws, through marshy wetlands, along shallow trickles between overgrown banks, through ever-thicker clumps of willow and white poplar, teaching them to leave neither footprint nor broken branch to show they'd passed that way.

"We could move a lot faster," he told them as the sun rose and full day dawned at last, "but they'd see exactly where we'd been and guess where we were going."

"No, no take your time! Slow and steady wins the race!" puffed Murdan the Historian. "I'm getting too old for dashing about in the woods."

Manda and Momie, as the morning became hotter and more humid, suffered with him from too little sleep and too much tension over the past four days. Tom suggested to Clem he find a hidden place to rest, perhaps to sleep, until nightfall.

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"Not quite yet," the woodsman disagreed. "We're only a short, fast ride from Gantrell House. You see? They're looking for us already!"

He pointed back and up the long slope they had been descending, keeping within a fringe of swamp birch. Along the top of the rise a troop of horsemen galloped swiftly by, rattling, jingling, and shouting to a baying pack of hounds in front of them.

"They're hunting us with dogs!" gasped Momie in hor-ror.

"That bunch will never see a sign of us," said Murdan, wiping his face with a soggy kerchief. "We were never near that road!"

"The dogs worry me more than the riders," Clem said. "They're old-timers at hunting, know the ground like their noses. We need a bit of woodland magic, just now."

They followed him as quickly as they could through the copse. His eyes swung methodically from left to right, back and forth, searching the ground.

"A-ha!" he said at last, going down on his knees in the leafy litter. He picked a handful of small, round leaves from a flat, gray-green plant beside a mossy rock. "Here's dogmaze! Great luck!"

He had them all sit on the ground right there and vigorously rubbed the soles of their boots with the thick, oily leaves.

"Dogmaze, eh?" commented the Historian, who considered himself something of an expert on herbs, spices, and woodland remedies. "It has a pleasant odor. Does it cover our own scent, then?"

"More than that," answered the trapper, applying the last of the leaves to his own boots. "The scent tells the dogs that we are friends and wish not to be found. The hounds'll pretend to lose the scent, run about as if confused. Actually they'll be covering our tracks for us."

"We must get some rest. We're all dead tired and stumbling," Tom insisted. Manda strove to appear fresh and willing to go on, but failed. Momie, with a smaller pride to defend, let her exhaustion show in lusterless eyes, sagging shoulders, and ragged breathing.

"We'll go slowly for just a bit more," promised Clem, shaking his head in sympathy. "Nearer the Samber we'll be 276.

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safe until Gantrell mounts a more careful search afoot." "How far?" Momie sighed, rising wearily. "In miles? Two or three at the most. In time? An hour or two, depending on how brave you are and how strong your reserves, lovely maiden," answered Clem with a tenderness his drinking companions in Wall would not have recognized. He took the lass's hand and led her into the thickest part of the tangle, ducking down a muddy watercourse that appeared before them, into a lowlying scrub even more tangled than before.

"There's River Samber," gasped Murdan. He pointed to a wedge of open water seen momentarily between the trees.

"Samber? What a pretty name for a river," murmured Manda. Tom held her arm as they plodded on. She seemed almost asleep on her feet.