Kit glowered. “Yes. Sir. My name’s Kit.”
“Just remember it,” Scales rumbled. “And you can be rude when you’re my size, but not before.” Blade looked at Kit unbelievingly. Kit was not going to be as big as Scales! Surely? “No, but he’ll be half as big again as he is now before he’s through,” Scales remarked. “It’s in the size of his bones. You’ll be that big, too, yellow one. Now get those wings moving. Nothing’s broken. They’re only bruised.”
Don cautiously opened his wings. His neck arched in pain. He screeched.
“Flap them. Keep fanning them,” Scales ordered unfeelingly. Don gave him a piteous look. “To get the blood moving,” Scales explained impatiently. “I can’t help you unless you help yourself.”
Don ground his beak sideways with a wretched, cracking sound and managed to flap his wings, slowly, dolorously. Scales put his vast head on one side and watched. Don’s wings began to move faster and then more freely until, in a second or so, they were truly fanning. “They’re all right now! What did you do?” he said.
“Can’t explain,” rumbled Scales. “Encouraged nature, I suppose. Keep fanning while I see to the other one.”
Blade had been worrying, at the back of his mind, at the way they had all left Shona lying beside that horrible crunched corpse. But when they went over there, there was no corpse. He wondered if Scales had eaten it in a spare moment. He felt rather sick.
“Don’t touch me!” Shona cried out as they all came near.
“Sit up! Look at me!” Scales thundered.
Shona sat up as if the ground had burned her and stared upward, cringingly, into the dragon’s huge eyes. After a moment or so her body straightened and seemed to relax at the same time. “Oh, that’s better!” she said. “Everything seems—a long time ago, somehow.”
“Best I could do,” Scales rumbled. He sounded slightly apologetic. “Try to keep it long ago.”
“I will!” Shona said devoutly. “Blade, can you fetch me my spare clothes? I’m so bruised—no, I’m not! How did that happen? I’ll get my clothes. You lot go and round up the animals.”
Blade found himself beaming with relief. Shona was back to normal, and her old bossy self.
THIRTEEN
IT TOOK MOST OF AN HOUR to round up the horses. Pretty, naturally, gave more trouble than the rest put together. Then they had to find the Friendly Cows, who really needed to be milked—but no one had time or energy—and then fetch back the dogs—who had in a bewildered way decided they ought to take off into the wild as a pack—and finally to assemble the geese, who refused utterly to get back in their hamper; they had decided it was dangerous in there. Nobody bothered to look for the carnivorous sheep.
“I’m glad to see the back of them, frankly,” Shona said, energetically buckling baggage onto horses. “I’ve always thought they were one of Dad’s failures.”
“Dad may be upset all the same,” Don said, humping his shoulders. His wings still hurt.
“Let him be,” said Shona. “There. All ready to go at last.”
Everybody looked at Scales. He was lying with his muzzle on his front feet, asleep. Two peaceful wisps of smoke curled from his nostrils. He was, Blade thought, very old even for a dragon, and perhaps all this activity had been too much for him. Blade wished he could go to sleep, too. He was so tired. Instead, he mounted Nancy Cobber and rode as near to Scales as Nancy would go. He gave a long-distance cough. Scales opened one vast green-gold eye. “Ready to leave?”
“Yes, sir,” said Blade.
“Aren’t we respectful all of a sudden!” Scales rumbled. He rose up. Nancy Cobber backed off and tried to rear until Blade rode her hastily out of the way. “Black Kit-bird!”
“Yes?” said Kit. He was not going to call Scales sir again even if Scales ate him for it.
“Go and open the camp entrance as soon as I get the murderers moving,” Scales ordered.
Sullenly Kit prowled off and sat himself in front of the place where the dome opened. Scales went to the other side of the dome. It suddenly seemed a tiny, flimsy thing beside him. All the soldiers inside crowded down to Kit’s end, away from Scales.
“You know, I think we’ve lost a few,” Don said to Shona. “It was fuller than that last night.”
“Too bad!” said Shona.
Scales thrust his snout at the dome where it met the ground. He worried at it for a moment and then pushed his head and great forequarters underneath it and inside, so that the dome wobbled above his spiny back like a soap bubble. “UP, SCUM! OUT OF THE DOOR! QUICK MARCH!” Smoke came billowing from his mouth with each order.
What with Scales inside and the camp filling with smoke, the soldiers had little choice. Coughing and staggering, they crowded toward the entrance as Kit opened it, and streamed outside in a great untidy gaggle. Scales took his head out from inside and trampled clean across the dome, bellowing, “FORM LINES, THERE! MARCH! LEFT-RIGHT, LEFT-RIGHT!” The last soldiers squirted out in front of him. Kit leaped aside, and Scales rumbled at him, “Keep them in a line your side. MARCH, YOU SCUM!” he howled to the soldiers. “LEFT-RIGHT, LEFT-RIGHT!”
It was wonderful how quick and straight and far those men could march, Blade thought as he followed surrounded by dogs and cows, if a huge dragon came after them and made them
do it. They streamed across fields, moorlands, an arid corner of the wastelands, and then across further moors, all that morning. The geese, who liked to see humans being bullied, kept up beside Scales, alternately flying and waddling. Don was commanded to keep the line straight on the other side from Kit’s. Blade wearily drove cows. He was utterly and hugely relieved when, about midday, Scales bellowed, “HALT! SIT DOWN! REST STOP!” and came gliding back toward the cows. Blade was even more surprised that the soldiers not only sat down but stayed sitting.