Murdan saw nothing happening in or around his tall castle. Bees buzzed lazily between the meadow flowers and a hive hidden back in the trees. Soldiers drilled to a sergeant's shouted orders on the flat ground at the foot of the castle slope. The thunk-thunk-thunka of arrows into rolled-straw butts in the lacy shade of outlying trees was surprisingly soporific.
"Damnit all!" yelled the Historian. "What are you doing and when, dew-eyed Librarian! If I don't clear those bloody knights out of Overhall soon, I'll lose my whole Achievement! I'll have to start over again from scratcha-at my age, too."
Graham, his captain of the guard, said nothing but shook his head. They were seated at a frugal lunch outside the pavilion, so placed to see the looming front of Overhall Castle without hindrance.
"Get me a horse! I'll just ride down to see what they're up to, that Librarian and that Dragona-and my niece in man's clothing!"
"I believe Retruance is a suitable chaperon," remarked the old soldier, purposely misunderstanding his chief's remark.
Murdan glared at him in exasperation, then laughed and shook his head.
"I'm not worried about the Princess Royal. If she could stand up to the Mercenary Knights as she did, she can handle a love-struck Librarian."
"This Librarian, however," said Graham, "strikes me as somewhat tougher and abler than your usual run of scholarsa-yourself excluded, of course. Didn't hesitate to go into Overhall to find the old Dragon's plans, did he?"
"I wonder if *twas braverya-or fear of the stake?" wondered the Historian.
"One learns quickly to live with fear," observed the other, "but bravery either exists or does not in a man. I say it was bravery."
"You are overlooking another possibility. Insanity!"
Graham laughed. "Who isn't insane at times? I like the boy."
"Well, so do I, greatly," admitted Murdan calming again. "But if you ever tell him I said so, I'll bind you at the stake and set the faggots a-buming, single-handed."
MIDAFTERNOON brought a brief, warm rain shower and a bit of thunder and lightning up in the hills, but the orange-clad soldiers, resting after noon mess, didn't bother to move into shelter.
When the shower passed, Overhall gleamed like purest silver in the bright, newly washed sunlight, a most pleasant sight but for the black Mercenary Knights flags flying from the three towers' conical roofs.
Murdan scowled up at them. The sun would soon dry the walls, the steeply peaked roofs, the stone-paved pathway climbing the hill to the main gatehouse in sweeping switchbacks.
The pathway? He called for his most powerful spyglass and studied the facade of his castle.
"Here, old man! Take a look at this and tell me what's going on," he said to Graham. The soldier focused the glass, sweeping it back and forth in short arcs.
"Water! Running out the gate under the portcullis," he murmured. "Quite a bit of water, at that. I wonder where it's coming from? It didn't rain that hard, did it?"
"Not here, at least, but maybe up therea"
"The Dragon is flying in circles over the castle, I see. Looks like he has young Tom and Princess Manda aboard. They seem to be watching something within."
"Let me see," cried the Historian.
"Sallyport just burst open," exclaimed Graham, leaping to his feet and dropping the spyglass to the turf. "Sound the call to arms!"
Bugles blared and the well-rested troops dashed to fall in files and ranks on the near flats, craning over their 42 Don Callander shoulders to see what was happening above them in front of Overhall.
Murdan recovered the discarded glass, unbroken, from the ground. He eagerly studied the castle.
"I see clear watera gushing from the lowest arrow-slits," he called. "Damned if it's not! How in the worlda ?
"He's dammed Gugglerun at the bottom end," cried Graham, "and the water is overflowing the great cistern, backing up into the castle. Instead of denying them water, he's given them far and away too much!"
"Yes! Yes! I see!" Murdan laughed in high glee. "Truly wonderful! That Librarian is more than I had hoped he'd be."
A minute later he called to Graham again.
"At the rate Gugglerun flows in at the top, the whole lower part up to the first story will be awash in no time. He'll have to open the main gate to let the water flow out. Quick, march the men up the hill. Quick, Graham! Someone or something is going to give, soon. I feel it!"
"Carefully but speedily," Graham ordered his sergeants. "If the forecourt fills with water to more than a story, you can be sure the great gates will give way. It'll wash the gate, the portcullis, and even the drawbridge entirely before it. Watch where you stand your men!"
"Aye, sir," chorused the sergeants, and the men in orange started to march, double time, up the hill. A few defenders fired hastily aimed black arrows over the battlements, but they all flew wide of the moving men.
Inside Overhall, Captain Basilicae strode along the rampart at the top of the outer wall, shouting encouragement to his hardened professionals.
"Stand your ground, archers! Your target is that blasted Dragon. Shoot at will!"
"Sir," called his second in command, "the water level has reached the six-foot mark at the gate and still rises!"
The knight captain made a furious gesture and swore mightily. "Open the main gates, at once! Let the water out. Maybe it'll wash the orange men back down the hill again."
"Sorry, sir!" called the senior noncom in charge of the great gate and its draw and portcullis mechanisms. "Sorry, DRAGON COMPANION 43.
sir, but the gate opens inward! The water won't let us open *em!"
"Axes!" cried the chief, sloshing as close as he could to the gatehouse without having to swim. "Chop it lose."
But the water was already too high.
"Wait a minute," advised his second officer. "See? The gates are already leaning outward. Soon they'll open themselves!"
IT'S a great tribute to Altruance's construction standards that the gates are holding as long as they have, Tom thought as the Dragon circled Foretower once more. Now streams of water carrying floating debris, loose furniture, and trash were pouring between the dentals atop the battlements, squirting far out from the walls and thundering into the overflowing moat.
"There goes the gate!" shouted Manda, beside herself with excitement and pummeling Retruance's left ear with both fists. "Oh, Uncle, get your men to cover!"
"No, see?" said the Dragon, hovering for a moment like an enormous hummingbird, wings thundering. "The moat carries most of the water away. Our people may get wet but not swept away."
"I hope," he added.
The orange sergeants on the slope ordered their men to fall to the ground as a first, three-foot-high wave of water spouted from the shattered gate, flowing toward them faster than a man could run. His men grabbed handfuls of brush and grass and dug in their elbows, knees, and toes, fearing the worst, but by the time the wave reached them, halfway down the slope, it had flattened to only a few inches in depth.
"Up, up, and forward!" shouted Graham, who led them. "A little wetting won't hurt you, you stable sweeps. Archers! Keep them strings dry! Forward and guide on the drawspan."
His choice was apt. The great drawbridge chains had snapped like kite strings when the great valves had given away. It had fallen into place with no way left to drag it up again, if the defenders had so wished.
They, however, were having troubles of their own. The sudden surge of water when the gate blew swept at least half 44 Don Callander of the black-clad defenders, already standing waist-deep or more on the low, outer battlements, from their places and flung them cruelly through the open gate, into the moat and beyond.
Among them was Knight Captain Basilicae, weighed down by polished but businesslike body armor.
"ALL the inner courts funnel the flood into the outer bailey," Tom explained to the girl beside him. "The narrower the passage, the higher the water and the greater its pressure." "I see! It's terrible, awfula-but glorious!" Manda shouted back.
"Keep an eye on the survivors," warned Retruance.
"Watch where they hole up. Our soldiers will have to root them out of the upper baileys and the towers."
"I think we can leave that work to them, though," decided Tom. "See, they've already come in through the sallyport! It's almost time to unstop Gugglerun, to make it easier for them to mop up."
Retruance and the princess laughed at his unintentional pun while the Dragon circled twice again, to make sure the orange men had things well in hand inside Overhall, where the enemy, realizing that they couldn't fight under such circumstances, were surrendering right and left.
Only then did the threesome return to where they had dumped tons of rocks into the Gugglerun tunnel mouth to back up the flow into the castle.
"I HAVE to say *well done,' young Librarian!" cried Murdan expansively when they found him on the drawbridge, surveying the damage. "Good job! Excellent thinking! Mini-mum damage to the castle and a clean sweep of the baileys and lower tower floors, also, according to Graham. Greatest spring cleaning ever," he added his own unintentional pun and then laughed long and loud when he realized what he'd said.
"The most iffy part was whether the sewage drain would prove small enough to let the water build up," said Tom to Murdan, who was still pumping his hand joyfully. "I must admit, sir, that the water level was much higher than I thought it would be."
"Old Altruance would be proud of his worka-and yours, DRAGON COMPANION 45.
too. Librarian. My congratulations, also," said Graham, rescuing Tom's hand from the Historian's.
"I couldn't have done it without Retruance Constable," insisted Tom. "He did the greatest part of the work. You should have seen the size of some of the boulders he moved to plug the drain!"
Everyone was talking furiously at once. Orange bowmen who had waded against the current to be first through the burst gate now returned, shepherding a long double line of bedraggled black-clad mercenaries and their officers, confused and very damp.
The knight captain was found half-conscious and disarmed on the lower slope and brought to Murdan, his wrists bound before him.
"My congratulations. Lord Historian," said he, gravely. "The strategem of flooding us out was inspired."
"I thought so, also, sirrah," said Murdan. "I wish I could say as complimentary things about you. Your invasion of my Achievement, young man, was a black-handed thing to do a sneaking into a castle at night when the lord was away. Fortunately for us, most of my men at arms were with me, not sleeping in the castle barracks."
"Our client ordered the way it was to be done. Most of us thought it unseeming, to say the least, but the client said it was his way, or no way."
"Ah, yes, your mysterious client," muttered Murdan. "Well enough, and can you give us some help there, in exchange for your freedom and your cutlery? Whatever your name is."
"Basilicae, sir Historian, of Plaingirt."
"Never heard of it," responded Murdan, frowning.
"Little place at the eastern end of the Snow Mountains? Poor as mice?" asked Retruance.
"Yes, Sir Dragon. Most sons of Plaingirt leave home to make their living fighting in foreign armies. I was lucky to prove myself able enough for the Mercenary Knights."
"Well, you'd best go home now. There'll be no good tidings for your client, I fear."
"Yes, Historian. We lost more than a third of our best, almost all our Knights, for they were, to a man, overburdened with steel and iron."
"Will you tell me anything of this client who wanted Overhall so badly?"
46.Don Callander The beaten knight had shook his head. "No, such information is our professional secret. The fee was higha-"
"And is no doubt salted away somewhere safe," put in Graham, who made no secret of his contempt for freebooting mercenaries of any stripe, no matter how good they were.
"I will tender it in ransom for my surviving men and myself. To do less would ruin me in my profession. Who would fight for me again, or hire us, for that matter?"
"I have a better idea than that," said Murdan. "Damage was done to Overhall by your soldiers, I'm told, and then the water that drove you out did much more. We will put you on your professional honor to make full resti-tution for the repairs. I'll swear not to innate the cost unreasonably."
Basilicae agreed immediately. A simple contract was drawn up and signed, witnessed by senior sergeants on both sides.
"I need no piece of parchment to remind me of my duty,"
objected Basilicae.
"Who knows what your next client will ask? You could easily be killed. Your successor conveniently might not remember our pact, when time came to pay," lectured the Historian. "Thus, it's better for your honor and our peace of mind to have it on parchment as well as in the memories of men."
They watched the mercenary soldiers skulk away, hurt in more than just their pride.
"Here, my boy," said Murdan. "Keep this contract among my papers up there in Middletower. It's your responsibility, you know."
"Gladly," responded the Librarian.
On his employer's other side. Princess Manda leaned forward as if better to watch the departing foe.
But she winked at Tom instead.
^7^ Life, Lessons, and a Loss WHEN the dust settleda-or rather, when the floodwaters had at last drieda-Overhall became no longer the. enormously strong fortress held by invading warriors, but a bright, sunny, pleasant, and fascinating place to live.
The orange levies enjoyed their victory banquet, at which almost every one of them got pleasantly sloshed on some very good beer from the vast, cool cellars under Foretower. The next morning they straggled off to their farm and village homes, nursing various hangovers.
They went, composing in their minds tall tales about the Gugglerun War to be told around Midsummer Bonfires and at Long Night's Eve skating parties for decades to come.
That left the large Overhall household and a troop of forty house guards, the permanent core of Murdan's levy, still in residence. The full-time soldiers lived in apartments within the castle walls or, if unmarried, in low wooden barracks set against the wall of Middle Bailey.
The Historian's household, which included the new Librarian, was quartered in roomy, wood-paneled or brightly muraled apartments in either Middletower or Foretower.
Aftertower, the shortest of the three, contained the castle armory, several prison cells, and storage for equipment and supplies. With the only ground floor in the castle to escape inundation, Aftertower's storerooms were quickly replenished with the vast amounts of foodstuffs needed to feed household and guards, and prepare for future emer-gencies.
Tom was assigned a small, bare suite of three rooms on the third level of Middletower, with Guard Captain Graham to one side and the physician, Arcolas, on the other, just beneath the rooms of the architect Dragon, Altruance, on the fourth level.
47.48.DRAGON COMPANION.
Don Callander 49.Tom's windows faced east and caught the rising sun every morning. His rooms were soon filled with sturdy but comfortable furniture, gifts from Murdan or from Princess Manda (who again occupied the children's level, two floors above), and other necessities requisitioned as needed from the Aftertower storerooms.
In this way he acquired a good bed, a dresser, an armoire big enough to hold his new wardrobe, several easy chairs and straight chairs, as well as a large table to use as a desk.
Shortly after the departure of the levies, Murdan called his Librarian to his own office in Foretower.
"Your service was outstanding, I need not tell you, young Librarian. If I've not said my thanks, it's not because I'm ungrateful."
"I'm very pleased that I helped," said Tom. Murdan waved him to a chair.