The Dragons 3 (6 page)

‘In my experience,' said Mordred, ‘it is probably best to let wild seagulls eat your dead cousins, then eat the seagull.'

‘My lord, you do impressings of me more and more,' said Sergycal. ‘Who would have guessed one as young as you would do being such a connoisseur of fine food.'

‘He's right,' said Captain Shortbread Silver. ‘I can vouch for it. We ate the seagulls that had eaten young Mordred's parents and right delicious they were, though I must add that the young lordship did vomit an enormous amount.'

‘That was the rough sea, not the seagulls,' said Mordred, though no one believed him, and as we know, they were right.

Once inside the castle, they all sat down to a splendid banquet prepared and served by several more of Sergycal's very large second cousins, who were reputedly women, though it was impossible to be sure except for the one who had shaved her beard off.

They dined on a small mountain of roast seagulls, who themselves dined on an assortment of dead things, ranging from other seagulls to walruses and tax collectors.

Sergycal stood up and made a speech, thanking some weird, obscure spirits for the safe return of
Mordred. They were to celebrate this day as the first official day of the Knights Intolerant and the start of their quest to rid the world of witches and wizards and anyone else they took a dislike to.

‘Let the world do knowing,' he ended, ‘that the Knights Intolerant are here and there and everywheres and all shall do the bowings before us or end up in a pie.'

Everyone cheered, for they did all like pie.

FAMOUS DRAGONS OF THE WORLD
GERMANY
COUNTESS KRAKEN VON BLIXEN

‘This pie is the best pie I have ever eaten,' said Princess Floridian.

Whether this was true or it just seemed like it after being locked up in a prison cell with nothing but turnips, there was no way of telling.

‘Indeed,' said Rampart. ‘It's my latest creation, seagull stuffed with turnip that has been marinated in fermented goldfish.'

Since they had been released from the prison, Princess Floridian and Brassica had shrunk back to their normal sizes and were now busy making plans for the invasion of Avalon. The first thing Brassica had done was change his name again. He had just seen the word brat in a dictionary so he was now called Ruthra, which was sort of like Arthur backwards if you couldn't spell properly.

‘I did try Ruhtra,' he said, ‘but no one knew how to pronounce it. And see, once I am returned to my rightful title of King, I'll change it back to front again and make that little scumbag Arthur call himself Ruhtra. So I shall be Arthur once more and no one will be able to say
his
name properly.'

‘Aren't you going to kill him?' said Princess Floridian.

‘Yes, but not until lots of people have made him feel really stupid because they can't say his name properly,' said Ruthra.

Sometimes you are such a stupid little boy
, the Princess thought,
but we won't worry about that until we've got you back on the throne again.

‘You could call yourself Hurrat,' said Rampart. ‘That's got all the Arthur letters in it. That'd be good. It sounds like hurrah.'

‘Yes, but it also sounds like
her rat
,' said Ruthra.

‘I like it,' said the Princess. ‘Her rat.'

‘I think I'll stick with Ruthra,' said Ruthra/ Brassica/Brat/Ex-Arthur Pendragon, ‘though I reckon Thumbscrew would be a good name.'

‘Yes, but that's my name,' said Thumbscrew, a wide, chunky neanderthal covered from head to foot in greasy dreadlocks.
³²
‘So if you want it, you'll have to kill me first.'

‘Well, umm, I have to admit that it suits you much better than it would me,' said Ruthra. ‘You are very lucky having such a wonderful name.'

Thumbscrew grunted.

They were sitting around a big table with some of the most dangerous people in the Diabolical Islands. There were pirates and renegades, ex-dictators and con men, vegans and cat lovers. In fact, whatever evil thing you could think of, there was someone who had done or was planning to do it. They were all armed to the teeth, except for those who had no teeth who were armed to the gums, except for those who had no gums and just held their weapons in their hands, except for those who had no teeth, no gums or no hands, but still looked very dangerous.

‘Why should we leave the comfort and safety of these islands,' said a one-legged tyrant called One-Legged Tyrant, ‘to go and help you?'

‘You must know that Avalon is one of the wealthiest countries on Earth,' said Princess Floridian. ‘When we kill that wimp Arthur and restore the great Ruthra to the throne, all that wealth will be ours, and when I say ours I mean everyone who fights with us.'

‘How do we know you're not just saying that?' said One-Legged Tyrant.

‘Have you heard of the Golden Turnip?' said the Princess.

‘Well, of course, but everyone knows it's just a legend like El Dorado, the city of gold, or the Holy Grail or that place where you never grow old.'

‘Shangrila.'

‘Yes. They're not real,' said someone else and most people agreed.

‘But that's where you're wrong,' said the Princess, realising there were probably enough people in the room who weren't sure and who could persuade most of the others.

‘Take Shangrila,' she said.

‘That's the most unlikely one of all,' said One-Legged Tyrant's brother No-Legged Tyrant, who was sitting propped up in a box on the table.

‘How old would you say I am?' the Princess asked.

‘Fifteen?'

‘Fourteen?'

‘Seventeen?'

‘Thirty-seven,' said Blind Pew, who was sitting in the corner facing the wall and was not actually blind.

‘I am eighty-seven,' the Princess lied. ‘I was born in Shangrila and only left there a few weeks ago.'

‘Wow!' said almost everyone except One-Legged Tyrant, who said, ‘I know that is amazing, but it doesn't mean the Golden Turnip is real.'

But he was outvoted. Everyone agreed that, even if there was no such thing as the Golden Turnip, invading Avalon would be better than sitting around doing nothing, which most of them did most of the time except when they were asleep, when they lay around doing nothing.

‘You have to admit,' said one of the oldest people in the room, ‘that life has got pretty boring lately. Ships go miles out of their way to avoid coming here or getting captured now, and they've all got spells and potions and wizardy stuff to protect them if we do go near them. This fleet of hijacked boats you're trying to build up, how many have you got?'

‘Two,' said Ruthra.

‘Two?' said Thorax. ‘Not exactly a fleet, is it? Unless, of course, they are gigantic vessels, the likes of
which we have never seen before.'

Ruthra mumbled.

‘What?'

‘One was a coracle, but it was a big one.'

‘How many ferocious pirates can that hold then?'

‘Two.'

‘Two?'

‘Yes, as long as they are quite small pirates and only have short swords.'

‘And the other ship, was that bigger?'

‘Oh yes,' said Ruthra. ‘It's as big as a big oak tree.'

‘That sounds more promising.'

Ruthra said nothing.

‘It is a big oak tree, isn't it?'

‘Yes.'

They went down to the dock and made a list of all the ships and boats and worked out how many bloodthirsty pirates they could carry to Avalon for the invasion. The Princess, who was very good at sums and algebra but rubbish at geometry and tact, worked out that if everyone stood up and didn't wave their swords around, they could carry an army of forty-three as long as they all emptied their pockets out first, or thirty-
nine if everyone insisted on taking their lucky rabbit's foot. Except that while they were working it out, one of the ships sank and another tilted over quite a lot, and they ended up with a carrying capacity of twenty-seven, thirty-three if they all went on a diet.

There were no actual boat builders on the island because boat builders are usually well-behaved, calm people and not the sort that went to or survived on the Diabolical Islands.

‘We did have a boat builder here once,' said the oldest man. ‘We had him for dinner and, if I remember right, we had the rest of him cold for lunch the next day.'

So it was agreed that building more boats was not going to be an option. The suggestion that they hollow out a lot of really big turnips and use them as little boats was rejected too, because everyone agreed it would be impossible to set sail in a big turnip without eating it before you reached dry land.

‘OK,' said Rampart. ‘That's plan A and plan B out of the window. What's plan C?'

Plan C was followed by several more impossible plans.

These are a few of them:

• Build a bridge to Avalon. This would only take a hundred or so years, and only need about one thousand times as many trees as there were growing on the Diabolical Islands., ,
  
• Dig a tunnel to Avalon. This would only take a hundred or so years, and only need about one thousand times as many trees as there were growing on the Diabolical Islands.
  
• Swim. This would take forever on account of the fact that it was such a long way that even the strongest swimmer would die of exhaustion, though that would never really be a problem because they would be eaten by sharks long before that.
  
• Walk on water. Only very few people have ever done this. Actually, thousands of people have done this, but none of them have travelled more than one millimetre before they were walking underwater.
  
• Fly. In those days there were no inventions that could fly, even hot air balloons didn't exist. The only thing that was big and strong enough to lift
  a person was a dragon and dragons never went anywhere near the Diabolical Islands.
  
• Make a REALLY BIG catapult. Then everyone can be thrown across to Avalon. This was an excellent idea, apart from the fact that elastic hadn't been invented yet.
  

There was only one plan that could possibly work:

• Forget about the whole thing and stay at home.
  

Merlin's spies told him all this and the old wizard decided to do something about it. It wasn't that he wanted to see Avalon overrun by pirates and fake King Arthurs, but knowing the Diabolical Islands and all their terrible inhabitants were just sitting there over the horizon was constantly nagging at the back of his brain. There was no way of being certain that they wouldn't one day find a way to invade Avalon. Even if they couldn't all come, they could still send a few
people to do nasty things, like putting turnip-eating maggots in the turnip fields, or dribbling into the water tanks. If he could get them all to come over to Avalon when he wanted them to, they could be dealt with once and for all. For the past two hundred years, he had had an army of marine worms eating away at the Diabolical Islands in the hope they would break free from the sea floor and drift far, far away, but the islands were made of very hard rock
³³
and the worms' teeth wore down very quickly.

Far away from Avalon, in fact, far away from everywhere, there is a place called the Sargasso Sea. It is a sea within a sea, a strange enchanted place,
³⁴
where huge rafts of seaweed are home to millions of eels, who travel there from all over the world to lay their eggs. There are some who say that the great rafts are
more than just seaweed. These people believe that they are floating islands with grass and small trees where mysterious beings live. This, of course, is absolutely true, or rather, it was back then in the Days of Yore.

It took very little magic for Merlin to take the largest seaweed island and make it drift towards the Diabolical Islands. As it floated along, it collected stuff: fallen trees, two half-wrecked ships and a small shed with an ancient mystic meditating inside. Birds landed and built nests, and a group of sea lions hauled themselves on board.

Knowing what the inhabitants of the Diabolical Islands would do to them, Merlin waited until the sea lions were asleep and then set them adrift to float south, away from danger.

By the time the Sargasso raft reached the Diabolical Islands, it was as big as an island itself. There was enough room for all eight hundred or so of the Diabolical Islands' inhabitants to climb aboard and set sail to Avalon.

Everyone thought it was wonderful.

‘What a fantastic bit of luck,' they said.

Everyone except Princess Floridian, that is. She
knew luck that amazing just never happened.

It's that wretched wizard,
she thought, though she couldn't prove it.

Since she'd caught the two crows, all the other bird spies had made sure they kept out of reach and well away from anything that looked like it might be a trap.

‘It's a trap,' the Princess kept saying, but no one wanted to hear her crazy theories about the magical raft and told her she was just a suspicious old misery.

They even ignored the ominous words, all three lots:

• It will end in tears.
  
• There will be tears before bedtime.
  
• Don't say I didn't warn you.
  

Everyone was obsessed with the Golden Turnip and, of course, whose story was that?

Princess Floridian's.

She thought of staying behind, but the idea of being left alone on the Diabolical Islands with only Blind Pew for company was more frightening than going. She had seen him wandering around in the
moonlight doing Naughty Things that convinced her he wasn't blind at all.

She made plans to ensure that if they got out to sea and the island sank, which is what she suspected Merlin was planning, she would be able to get away.

‘We need to gather up as many weapons as we can,' said Rampart once they had secured the Sargasso raft with ropes to stop it floating away.

‘And make sails so we can travel where we want to,' said one of the twenty-seven pirate captains.

The pirate captains were more excited about setting sail than anyone else. It had been a very long time since any of them had sailed the stormy seas, under the skull and crossbones flag, in search of a bit of pillaging or buried treasure.

Fifty-four trees were cut down and made into masts and every single bedsheet on the island was sewn together to make fifty-four sails. Each captain had two masts and two sails so there would be no bickering over who would be in charge. Someone did point out that because no one was in charge, it was very unlikely they would agree to sail in the same direction. But in all the excitement of getting ready, no one took any
notice, except Princess Floridian, and by then everyone was ignoring every single word she said. Of course she went through the warnings again: