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Raspberry got clumsily to his feet, which had fallen asleep, and scanned the mountains and the woods
again. The day was gray and dreary, pregnant with unshed rain, and he had been watching only general
movements of the fauna in the surrounding countryside. But that was definitely a flash he'd seen, definitely
coming from a flying form.
And... yes. The form was red. Grimley the dragon, out hunting, no doubt, flaming up to have a better
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look at the topography on this hazy day. Raspberry waved both hands. Though the dragon didn't seem to
see him, the creature nevertheless swooped out of the forest and made a great circle around the castle.
Raspberry hollered, in the elfin pan-tongue, the one all beasts could understand, and Grimley stopped,
almost falling out of the sky, backflapped hurriedly, and flew over to investigate, landing on tippy-claw
atop the crenelations of the round stone gate tower.
"Dragon Grimley," the wizard panted, exhausted from his leaping and shouting, not to mention all the
hopping he'd done earlier, "Am I glad to see you!"
"What's cookin', hot shot?" the dragon asked, amiably enough. "Say, you haven't seen any game down
here, have you? There's s'posed to be a herd of cattle for me and the missus, but I haven't found 'em.
The missus is due to hatch any time now, and she can't keep her mind on it proper-like when she's
hungry, now can she?"
Raspberry said he supposed not, and tried to tell Grimley of the King's plight, but to his chagrin the
dragon was unsympathetic.
"He'll keep till my son's hatched, hot shot. The agreement was he kept us a herd, and we provide him
with a dragon's-eye view of the country. I don't see a herd, do you?"
Raspberry had to admit he didn't.
"Well then, just cool your heels here for awhile, while I hunt up some meat before Grizel takes a bite out
of me."
Raspberry did the only sensible thing to do when such a large, determined dragon suggested that he cool
his heels. He waited.
"We're almost there!" Sally shouted to the men when they had eaten. She shouted not because the men
were making any more noise than usual, and certainly not because of the zombies or the unicorns, but
because of the river.
True to its name, the sluggish, mud-brown Blabbermouth babbled loudly and unceasingly, allowing no
one to be heard above it without effort. "Now that can't be true, says I, oh no, that will never do at all
and then he says to me, he goes, lookit here, if you didn't take on so about every little thing but I can tell
you I was having none of that, and I goes..." The raucous river sounded rather like the chatter of the
King's courtiers, Colin thought, allowing for certain lapses in diction.
Sally valiantly raised her voice several decibels higher than the river, and most of her men strained with
unbanditlike courtesy to hear her. "Always at times like this," she screamed, "I feel it lightens our loads-"
"WHAT?!" demanded a few on the outer fringes, reluctant to miss the message.
"LIGHTENS. OUR. LOADS." Sally obligingly screamed louder. "LIGHTENS OUR LOADS AND
QUICKENS OUR STEP TO RECALL THE HISTORY OF OUR GALLANT-"
"COME AGAIN?"
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"OUR GALLANT MOVEMENT. THEREFORE I WOULD HAVE YOU DRAW ASIDE WITH
ME, AT THIS TIME, SO I MAY SPEAK WITH YOU, MY BROTHERS-IN-ARMS, OF OUR
GOALS IN OUR GLORIOUS REVOLUTION."
"WHAT WAS THAT?"
"OUR GLORIOUS REV-COME ON." And with a graceful sweeping arc of her shapely arm, the
nymph led them as far back up the mountain and away from the river's babbling as she could go.
Primrose and Wulfric, still in wolf form, bounded after her, each claiming one of the nymph's knees for a
chin rest when she had seated herself.
Colin saw her point imperiously, and one of the bandits loosened the noose binding him to the zombies
and shoved him forward. "She wants you to come too, songbird," the bandit snarled, and grabbing the
ropes binding Colin's wrists dragged him up the hill.
Sally smiled a polite, social smile to the assembled ruffians.
"I know you are all impatient to be at our stronghold, as am I, and I regret the necessity of pitching our
camp beside this noisy river. But unlike myself, our brother, Wulfric, and the unicorns, you men, and
certainly our Master's new servants, would endanger yourselves if you tried to cross the river at night-"
"We know that, Sal," said Colin's escort.
Sally's voice was filled with emotion as she began speaking. In the deep shadows from the distant
campfire beyond and the soft wash of moonlight from above, the planes and hollows of her face took on
mysterious significance. Her voice was all the more effective because they had to listen carefully to hear
her when it dropped into its lowest registers, though when she spoke excitedly it fairly sang across the
night, cutting through the riverine rattling as if the Blabbermouth were an ordinary stream.
Pent-up tears glittered in her eyes, all the more starlike because there were no stars in this [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]