“I know. And the Dark Lord’s army comes through tomorrow,” Mara said. “It’s a disaster. Let me know when the healer’s finished with Derk.” And she hurried away to see the dragon again.
NINE
IT SEEMS RATHER HARD on Barnabas,” said Blade.
“Not nearly so hard as it would be if we told him the truth,” Don muttered.
They were all clustered to the side of the terrace, watching Mara explain to Barnabas that Derk would be away for a few days. Mara was looking tired and harassed, in a coat thrown
over her Enchantress finery. “Still in that awful dress, I see,” Shona said, arriving after seeing the healer off on one of the horses. The healer had flatly refused to let Callette or even Kit carry her home.
“I think it’s a pretty dress,” said Elda.
“You would,” said Callette.
“I like it, too,” said Kit. “And it makes her look as if she’s only just got here.”
There had not been much discussion about what to do. Everyone knew Mr. Chesney must not find out that Derk was injured, and nobody trusted Barnabas not to tell Mr. Chesney. Blade had not really understood how strongly they all felt this, until he saw Barnabas bouncing up the terrace steps this morning and jovially asking Kit, who was roosting there on watch, “Where’s Derk? The soldiers have arrived.” When Kit answered that Derk was away for a while, the change in Barnabas was startling. He went pale. He sagged with such dismay that even his curls seemed to droop. “But he can’t go away!” Barnabas protested. “He’s Dark Lord! It’s—it’s irresponsible!”
“He’s afraid he’s going to have to do it,” Lydda said, while Don scudded away to alert Mara.
Mara shortly came rushing around the side of the house, coat and black lace and hair streaming. Barnabas turned to her indignantly. “What’s Derk playing at?”
Mara was cross and out of breath and certainly looked as if she had just arrived from Aunt’s house. In fact, she had spent the early morning carefully erasing the burned patch outside the gates and had just come from coaxing the sick old dragon up into the side valley where the mayor’s cows were. According to Don, the first thing the dragon did was to eat two of those cows. “She was trying to stop it eating too much. She says its name’s Scales or something,” Don reported, settling down among the others.
Mara’s explanation went on for some time. “I hope she’ll remember to tell us all the stuff she’s inventing,” Shona remarked. “It could be awkward.”
“Godlike snacks,” Lydda murmured. “Those will distract him. Come on, Elda. The rest of you ask her.”
Barnabas turned eagerly to the tray of Umru-style pastries Lydda brought out to him. He accepted coffee from Elda. While he was occupied, Callette managed to insert herself between Barnabas and Mara, which separated them by some way. “I kept it simple,” Mara whispered to Shona, under Callette’s big striped wing. “I told him there’s a very old dragon just woken up after three hundred years—all truth, except I told him the old dragon’s up north, and the younger dragons sent Derk an urgent message for help, and Derk rushed off at once. After all, it’s just what your father would do.”
“But have you said we’re going to fill in for Dad?” Shona whispered back.
“Several times,” Mara assured her. “Barnabas was terrified he’d have to deal with the soldiers on his own. Now let me rush off and get into proper clothes before I freeze.”
They saw why Barnabas was so frightened when they all arrived at the end of the valley half an hour later, the humans on horseback and the griffins on the wing. There was an enormous crowd of men just beyond the ruins of the village. Each man was dressed in shiny black and armed with a shiny black helmet and a long sword in a shiny black scabbard. Most of them were simply standing. Some were wandering in circles. A few others were sitting on the ground. And there was something very wrong with all of them. Beauty, who was carrying Shona, refused to go anywhere near. The other horses trembled and sweated.
“What’s wrong with these people?” Callette asked, peering into the nearest blank face.
“It’s all right,” Barnabas said reassuringly. “They send them through drugged.”
“Why?” said Callette.
“Er, well, you see they’re all convicted criminals—mostly for murder and assault and so on,” Barnabas explained. “The tours clear out the prisons once a year. I believe Mr. Chesney has a contract with some of the governments in his world, and they pay him to take these convicts off their hands. It’s a very neat arrangement. Most of them get killed over here, but they’re all promised pardons and free land and so on. All we have to do at the moment is to get them to the camp I’ve made for them a couple of miles over there.”
Blade had spent the morning hastily reading the Dark Lord sections of the black book. “But don’t we have to get them to march right across to Umru’s country?”
“Burning and pillaging and trampling crops on the way,” Barnabas agreed. “But your father can do that at intervals after the tours arrive. I’ve got camps set up for him all along the route. No problem.”
Blade swallowed. Mara said, “And when does the drugging wear off?”
“In three days or so,” Barnabas said. “But they’ll have been promised money if they behave themselves and do just what the Dark Lord says. We don’t often have trouble.”
Derk’s family looked at one another expressively and then back at the black shiny men. The sight was somehow even more unpleasant after this explanation. They were like cockroaches waiting to be squished.
“Ah, well,” said Kit. “Let’s get going.”
Moving the men was a little like driving cows, except, Blade thought, you had to imagine the cows were deaf, twice as stupid as the Friendly Cows, and walking very slowly on two legs. And as Elda said, even the Friendly Cows didn’t get in one another’s way all the time. After Barnabas got the men moving with one of his weary, practiced little spells, it took most of the day to reach the camp, and it was not easy. Going through open fields, they worked out that the best way was for the griffins to walk with their wings spread, herding from behind, with mounted humans two on either side to keep the vast shuffling horde together. But getting through gates was terrible. They tried shooing the men through in batches, but that took so long that Kit decided simply to break down every hedge or wall they came to.