“Is that what you think we should do, sir?” Geoffrey asked, polite but anxious.
Difficult question. Derk thought about it. They were days of travel from anywhere except Derkholm here. By the time they reached the Emirates, the Emir would not be expecting them anymore. If they cut out the Emir and made straight for the Inland Sea, the pirates would have gone home for the winter. The pirates had been very firm about when they would stop. If the party went the other way, it might just arrive in time for the very last battle—or it might not. “Do you all want to carry on?” he asked.
By this time most of the other Pilgrims had dragged their resisting horses within earshot. Derk’s question caused Miss Ledbury to come striding forward. “My good man, are you suggesting we have any choice in this matter?”
Dear, dear, what a dragon! Derk thought. She must have been quite a match for Scales. How does she keep her hair so neat? “Of course you have a choice, madam,” he said. “You are the customers, and customers are always right. I was simply thinking that if you were to turn around and travel due south—that way, Shona—you would eventually reach a road. You’ll know it, Shona. It goes to the University one way and Derkh—er, the Dark Lord’s Citadel the other way. You could all get home quite quickly from the Citadel.”
“Oh, thank goodness!” exclaimed a straight-haired girl. “I am so sick of this!”
“On the contrary,” snapped Miss Ledbury. “I have by no means completed my surv—er, tour.”
A fierce argument broke out. It sounded as if half the party agreed with Miss Ledbury and the rest had had more than enough already. Derk said quietly to Shona, “I’m afraid I shall have to leave you to sort this one out. I must go and look for Blade and the other two.”
Geoffrey smiled at him. “Don’t worry, sir. I’ll let them argue, and when they’re tired of it, I’ll tell them they’re going south.”
“And they’ll do it,” Shona said, “believe me. See you soon, Dad. Find Blade quickly.”
But Derk could not find Blade. Beauty went around and around in ever-enlarging circles centering on the place Derk guessed the Pilgrims had been when they were raided, and there was nothing. No sight, scent, feeling of Blade or anyone else—nothing but broken, hilly landscape and no roads, no people, and not even a solitary house. Blade could hardly have chosen a more deserted area to disappear in. In the end Derk had to give up and return to base, or Beauty would have been too tired for the battle the next day.
The three griffins came anxiously to meet him. “Any luck?” asked Kit.
Derk sighed and explained.
“We’ll all go looking when the battle’s over,” Kit said. “If I give us each a sector on the map—”
Don rolled his eyes. “You and your maps. Barnabas is back, by the way.”
“He’s drunk again,” said Callette.
Derk sighed even more heavily as he led Beauty over to the horse lines and unsaddled her. “I can’t stand much more of this,” he said to Pretty, who came cantering over to greet his mother.
“Why do you?” Pretty asked brightly.
“Good question,” said Derk. The sight of Pretty soothed him. He was now a splendid colt, almost as big as Beauty, bright-eyed and strong, and those striped wings of his were showing signs of being twice as efficient as Beauty’s, just as Derk had hoped. He patted Pretty’s neck and went to discuss tomorrow with Kit. Naturally he fell over Ringlet on the way.
Kit had a problem. “I didn’t think we’d wear the valleys out so quickly,” he said. “We’re on the last one already. We can’t use the one beyond that. It’s full of lake. And beyond that there’s nothing but thick woods. I think we may have to go out into the moors for the next battles, and that would be difficult even with the Forces of Good up to proper strength.”
Derk sat on a tree stump with the map draped over one knee and Ringlet’s snout affectionately on the other. He saw what Kit meant. This last valley, the one Kit was using tomorrow, was quite steep and small, anyway. The next one, over a wooded ridge, was almost entirely a lake. “How many more battles have we?”
“Six. We’re almost halfway through now.” Kit sighed a little as he saw the end of his planning and conferring coming closer. He did love it so. “If we don’t move out to the moors, we have to go back and reuse the earlier valleys, and I don’t see how we can. The first valley we used is still only trampled mud. I flew over and looked.”
“Grass doesn’t grow back at this time of year,” Derk observed. “Ask Barnabas to go and green it up.”
“He’s asleep. Snoring,” said Kit.
“I’ll do it then,” Derk said wearily. Callette silently handed him a cheese sandwich. Derk took it, moved Ringlet and the map, and translocated to the site of the first battle, eating as he went.
The valley was an awful, desolate mess, worse now the leaves had come off the trees. The autumn rains had swollen the stream into a muddy marsh, and the place was full of crows, picking over the bare ground. Derk drove the birds off and got down to work. He felt better as he set the spells for greening. Making things grow was what he was good at, clean, absorbing, refreshing work. He was ankle-deep in marsh and the ground was already spiked with grass blades, bright green in the setting sun, when Don came hurtling in.
“Dad! All the horses have gone!”
Derk looked sadly at the four skidding, muddy tracks Don had made landing. “What?”
“Beauty, Pretty, Nancy Cobber, Billy—all of them!” Don said breathlessly. “Kit and Callette have flown off after them, but I’m not sure—It was more like magic. They left all their bridles behind.”
The Horselady, Derk thought. Some Pilgrim somewhere had mistreated a horse. She had carried out her threat and recalled every horse there was. “She’d no call to take Beauty and Pretty, too!” he said. He was quite hurt that the Horselady had done that. “Anyway, fly after Kit and Callette and tell them to come back. It’s specialized magic. They can’t do any good.”
Don dithered. “But you need Beauty tomorrow!”