"No sound and ye*11 survive the night," he growled in the captive's left ear.

He stepped back out of the tiny sleeping cabin and closed and bolted the door from the outside. Tom rapped on the next door but when there was no answer, he swung it open. Empty.

"Next!" whispered Clem. "No great rush. It'll take *em ten minutes to bash down that outside door."

"I hope!" said Tom. He knocked on a third door. No answer. Empty! Then the fourth and last.

A woman's voice cried out in alarm and a child whimpered sleepily.

"Lady Rosemary!" Tom shouted aloud. He slid back the bolts and opened the door.

"Here's old Clem the fur trapper and friends, come to DRAGON COMPANION 103.

rescue you, m'lady!" called Clem, showing himself in the doorway.

"Clem! Of all people!" exclaimed the woman. "Come on, children! We're escaping these vile men. Quickly and quietly, all!"

In a moment the four captives were in the saloon, dressed in their nightclothes and looking more than a bit frightened and confused. When they spotted Clem the children smiled tentatively.

"How do we get out of here?" asked Rosemary. "They'll be all over the deck if we go out!"

"Through the windows," urged Tom. "There's a Dragon you'll recognize outside, to fly us away!"

Rosemary had the quick wit of her father. She neither hesitated nor asked further questions.

"Take the boy," she told Tom. "Valery! Go through the window to the Dragon and find a place to sit and hold on. Come on, Molly," she added to the second little girl. "I'll help you climb over the coaming. There!"

Tom scooped up the smallest child and trotted after the mother.

"I'm Eddie. Who are you?" asked the boy, a lad of four or five years. "I don't know you, do I?"

"Not yet, you don't. I'm a servant of your grandfather," Tom told him. "Are you afraid?"

"I'm not afraid," said Eddie stoutly. "Who's the Dra-gon?"

"Furbetrance Constable," Tom told him. "Do you know Furbetrance?"

"He's my friend," said the boy, clinging to Tom's neck as the Librarian swung his legs over the rail. "Mama! I'll be a Dragon Companion now!"

"Yes, dear, so you shall. Hang on to this ear for dear life!"

Clem swung through the after-windows just as a great pounding began on the companionway door. Voices shouted angrily.

"Time to go ashore," said Clem. "Took *em less than the ten minutes I figured," he added ruefully.

"All settled down?" asked the Dragon from beneath them. "Here we go! Up, up, and away, as we Dragons say!"

Several heads appeared at the poop rail above their heads, 104 Don Callander bowmen drawing strings to their ears.

"Back!" cried the Dragon in a shrill, terrifying voice, accompanied by a jet of brilliant flame that lit the stem and the sea around them.

The archers fell back from the flame in fear. An officer screamed at them to return to the rail and shoot.

"Forget it," advised Furbetrance. He sent another, white-hot stream of fire at the cabin windows. Glass shattered and the casements exploded inward. Drapery and upholstery caught fire and black smoke began to pour through the broken lights, blinding the archers leaning over the poop rail, above.

Someone on deck shrilled in fear, "Fire! Fire!"

"They're away!" shouted Petros, watching as the flames rose from the stem of the Gantrell ship and began to lick at the tarred rigging and furled sails. "Time for us to haul off, too."

Their prisoner squirmed in the bottom, tied with his own velvet cloak, crying pitiably for mercy. Nobody paid him any attention. The two oarsmen from the Gantrell ship sat on their thwarts, looking shocked and helpless.

"Shove off there," Petros said roughly. "If you hurry you can make it back to your ship before she bums to the waterline with the rest of your mates."

"Hell with that!" cried one of the oarsmen. "We'll go ashore if you'll let us."

"Follow us, then," cried Jamey with a laugh of pure excitement. "Give way. Dad!"

The lighter, followed by the gig, spun about and headed swiftly for the dock at the end of Wall.

*^.ii^.

Unfinished Business

ROSEMARY'S return to Overhall was a gala occasion, reminding Tom of a Fourth of July in Iowa. The three towers were draped with bright bunting. The roofs were studded with dozens of flagpoles, each flying a different banner, pennant, streamer, or burgee.

The meadow before the castle was fresh-mowed and carpeted with spring flowers. Sconces usually holding smoky pine-knot torches were stuffed instead with daffodils, irises, jonquils, and trailing strands of dark green ivy. Tapestries that in winter warmed the halls within were hung from balcony to balcony to flap gaily in the breeze. Everything was scrubbed spotless and every vestige of Gugglerun's overflowing had been cleared away.

Even the swallows, doves, and wrens that nested under the castle's eaves flew excitedly about the towers, calling, cooing, and singing with pure joy.

Furbetrance Constable, with a fine sense of the dramatic, plunged out of the blue sky and swooped to a daring landing on the lea, putting his precious load of passengers down on the wide road to the foregate.

Both sides of the path were lined ten deep with Murdan's and Ffallmar's retainers, neighbors, crofters, farmers, foresters, freeholders, servants, pensioners, and men-at-arms, cheering and waving and calling out in welcome and hap-py relief.

When Tom and his group reached the foregate and had crossed the drawbridge over Gugglerun moat, they were showered from the battlements with flowers and gaily colored ribbons. The guards snapped to attention and the castle band played a fanfare.

Ffallmar rushed forward to gather his wife and children into his strong arms and Murdan hovered about the group, 105.

106 Don Callander DRAGON COMPANION 107 clucking like a great mother hen.

"My boy!" he shouted, clapping Tom on the back and hugging Manda tightly, "My princess girl! Well done! Well done!"

There were tears in his eyes and the smile on his face was wide enough to take in the whole world as he led them to the inner bailey, where tables loaded with all sorts of wonderful foods and drinks had been set under striped awnings.

"Everybody! No protocol! Dig in and eat and drink, for my only child has been restored to us! Ffallmar's goodwife and children are back in his arms, where they ought to be!" cried the Historian, quite full of himself.

Everyone seemed transported with joy. Except for two men, Tom noticed. Comptroller Plume hid a sour grimace behind an overflowing flagon of foaming ale and turned his back on the celebration.

Is that man just a crab by very nature? wondered Tom. Nothing seems to please him!

The other sour face was more to be expected. A rumpled and besmudged young man wearing a Standing Bear blazon upon his torn sleeve, Fredrick of Brevory, trailed the fur trapper, tethered to him by a long leather rope. Even he was greeted by the crowd as much with good nature as with jeers. When Clem loosed his tether, someone handed Freddie a jack of ale and he drank of it deeply.

"Eat, drink, and be merry, for my family is safe and sound!" shouted the Historian. "Princess, come sit by my right hand. Librarian, you've earned my undying gratitude! Furbetrance Constable, eat me out of castle and home, if you want. You and your family are ever welcome at the Overhall table!"

"I hope you don't regret that," muttered Furbetrance, burying his nose in a huge vat of savory beef, onion, and tomato, highly spiced salmagundi the way Dragons best like it. "We Dragons eat sparingly most days, but not at panics."

"Since when have Dragons eaten lightly of anything, anywhere?" scoffed Murdan.

"I worry about my brother," continued Furbetrance. "Our family has a penchant for disappearing, perhaps. I wonder where Retruance could have gone?"

"We'll tackle that problem, soon, I promise you," said Tom. "He's my Mount and I'm his Companion. We're a team when we're together and lost when apart."

"Retruance has sworn fealty to me personally," said Murdan soberly. "Think not that I'm indifferent to his fate. Yes, tomorrow morning we'll take up his case and set out to find him, trust in me!"

The crowd cheered lustily. Lady Rosemary and Lord Ffallmar, her husky, handsome husband, stood to drink their healths in gratitude. The party looked to go on for hours and hours, but nobody much minded.

SOME hours later Tom, unable to keep up with the Carolnans in dining and drinking, looked about for Furbetrance and found him seated beside the Gugglerun cistern in the upper court, happily blowing red and yellow smoke rings to amuse a giggling gaggle of castle children, including little Eduard of Ffallmar and his sisters.

"Where's our dandy?" Tom asked.

"We got so tired of his dour, sour, whining face that Murdan stuck him in the tip-top cell under Aftertower's roof," replied the Dragon. "Come on, children, catch that one! Ho, Eddie! That's the boy!"

Tom watched the fun for a while, then went to rescue Manda, who was seated still at table, toying with a confec-tion of whipped cream and minted custard, looking bravely interested in a long and flowery speech by a slightly tipsy cottager.

"Let's go up and sit on the battlements," she whispered when she saw Tom. "I need a little peace and quiet and a hug or two. We've had little time to ourselves lately."

They climbed the narrow stone stairs to the top of the wall and perched on an out-of-the-way cornice, watching an evening rainstorm sweep across Overhall valley in the far distance, holding hands and speaking little.

"We must go find Retruance," she said at last.

"I must, yes. Will Murdan allow you to go, also?"

"He'll want me out of the way, or at least out of sight," Manda said, smoothing her skirt about her knees as a cool, rain-scented breeze puffed about them. "It'll be no problem 108 Don Callander DRAGON COMPANION.

109.

getting his permission. Uncle Peter is coming to Overhall, you know."

Tom nodded.

"Yes, I remember. He wants you, Manda. You're his ticket to power over your father and a"

"It's the *and' that worries me most," the princess confided with a shiver. "He believes if he holds me, he'll gain the kingdom. He'll try to marry me to one of his nephews, or someone like that nasty little Freddie of Brevory, and force Session to have him made co-equal sovereign with me."

"He'll try, certainly. Many powerful men will oppose him in that."

"Including you," she said with a sudden grin.

"Ia I don't consider myself powerful," Tom objected.

"On the contrary! Tom, you don't realize your own pow-er. First of all, I love you, and that can't be ignored. Secondly, you're human, which makes you an unknown quality in this broth of politics."

"Say *unknown ingredient,' rather," prompted the Librarian.

"You know what I mean!" she cried.

"Not really. I really don't know. Why should I be an *unknown power'? I certainly don't feel powerful."

"Uncle Murdan should explain it to you. Maybe I can make you understand a little."

She gazed thoughtfully at the curtain of rain across the valley.

"Tom, ours is a world in which magic, sorcery, wiz-ardry, witchcraft, spells, and enchantment are common-place. Only a few of us, like Murdan, comprehend a different scheme of things, in which great deeds are done and difficult tasks accomplished without the use of magic."

"Well, I guess I seea," Tom said hesitantly.

"Take Overhall, for example," she went on. "You know very well it was built by a Dragon. You must know that Altruance, bless his fiery soul, designed and built it in a few short years with the help of some great magicians. Some used their powers to quarry, hew, and fit these very stones. Others levitated heavy beams and great vats of mortar as high as the tallest tower top."

"The point is, they were all skilled craftsmen in their fields. They had studied long and hard to learn how to do things like change the course of underground Gugglerun to flow into the castle and through the moat, there."

"Hmmm!" murmured Tom. "If that was so, why didn't Murdan simply hire one of them to cut off Gugglerun, when the Mercenary Knightsa ?"

"You must see! Not every wizard can do such magic. And they all take time. Murdan would have had to send far off for a wizard powerful enough to change the flow of Gugglerun, set by strong magic in the first place. Unlike many elf folk, Murdan hoped to retake the castle by strength of arms, to save time and expense. Others would have thrown up their hands in despair.

"Why, though? Despite the costa"

"If he had. Uncle Peter, who is many times richer than Murdan, would have just brought up his own specialists, fought magic with magic. There would have followed an expensive series of stalemates, you see, at best."

"You're saying that nobody would have thought of plug-ging the outlet and forcing Gugglerun to back up inside the castle?"

"What seemed to you a simple and logical solution to the problem might not have occurred even to Murdan for months! Remember, too, that Uncle Peter isn't really interested in Overhall. He wants to gain control of your sweet little princess and to destroy Murdan's power to assist the king."

"Without his keep, Murdan would be less powerful, I suppose."

"Without his keep, his people, and the wealth within his castle, too," Manda said with a nod. "And at a great loss of time! Time is the most precious coinage of all, my dear. Murdan could have grown old in the attempt. I would have had to marry someone suitablea-or risk not having a royal heir. If Queen Beatrix failed to produce an heir in time, and if Peter Gantrell held me in thralla well, you can see time would be on Gantrell's side."

"But, my dear, what did I do to change all that?"

"Peter never expected Murdan to use a humana-your powers, reason, common sense, I guessa-to solve the conflict. It just didn't occur to him!"

110 Don Callander DRAGON COMPANION 111 "It seems sort of farfetched. I can't believe no one would have said, *Forget magic! Let's do something direct and simple!' "

"Well, turn it around, can't you? If you had built Overhall, would you have said, *Forget stonemasons, forget carpenters! Let's try magic'?"