The Duke tapped his fingers on the table.
‘Your King thinks ill of me for wanting to expand my territory into the Dragonlands when Maltcassion passes on. He does not appreciate that my Kingdom is one tenth the size of his and considerably poorer. But Snodd’s designs are not wholly centred on the Dragonlands. He has been looking for a good reason to invade my country for years; if a battle starts on the Dragonlands it will end in only one way for me: the invasion of our territory and an end to the Duchy of Brecon. Wales is suffering disunity at present, and would be a walkover for King Snodd. I would expect this to be the first step in a potential invasion. Snowdonia might put up a fight, but Hereford has many friends in the east who might willingly form an alliance—the tourism dollars of the mountainous nation alone are potentially worth billions.’
‘The King would never do that!’
‘Alas, I think he might. You are too young to remember the previous king’s annexation of the Monmouth Principality on the grounds of historical ownership, but I am not. Snodd is looking to increase and consolidate his lands, and I will not let him do it.’
‘I think you’re wrong.’
‘He has thirty-two landships,’ remarked Brecon, ‘when it would take only one to crush my small duchy. Think about it, Miss Strange.’
Brecon’s words had the ring of truth about them. It had always been thought that the King of Hereford simply liked having parades, but perhaps there was a more insidious reason for his love of military hardware.
‘How will you react?’ I asked. ‘When the force-field comes down?’
Brecon stared at me for a moment.
‘Come Maltcassion’s demise we do not aim to move into the Dragonlands at all.’
‘Then what are the soldiers for?’
‘Defence,’ replied the Duke, ‘pure and simple.’
‘Why are you telling me all this?’ I asked, not understanding why Brecon should be giving me delicate state secrets.
‘I tell you because I know I can trust you. The Dragonslayer is historically a neutral party, belonging to no kingdom, making no decision for one dominion in favour of another. King Snodd appears a fool but is well advised—I suspect he has offered you inducements to help stake claims within the Dragonlands.’
I thought of the promises that King Snodd had made to me, the land, money, freedom and title in exchange for staking his claim.
‘So you will make me a better offer?’ I asked, thinking naively that Snodd and Brecon were different fleas on the same Quarkbeast.
‘No,’ asserted the Duke, ‘I offer you nothing and will pay you nothing. Not one Breconian groat. I simply ask you to abide by the rules of your calling.’
I noticed that several excavators were starting to build large defensive ditches for the expected invasion on Sunday afternoon. It would be a waste of time. Landships would pass over them as if they were not there. Brecon had nothing compared to the military might of King Snodd.
‘It will be bows and arrows against the lightning,’ I told him.
‘I know,’ replied Brecon sadly, ‘my artillery will barely dent the landships. But we will fight to maintain our freedom. I will be here, next to my men, defending my beloved country to the last shot in my revolver, and the final breath in my body.’
‘I wish you luck, Sire.’
He thanked me but said nothing. He had a lot of work to do. I returned to the Dragonlands deep in thought. Right now, I couldn’t see anything but bad news in every direction. And it suddenly struck me that everyone kept forgetting about Maltcassion himself, even though he was at the heart of everything that was happening. And the fact remained that the pre-cogs had spoken of a Dragon death at the hand of a Dragonslayer. Destiny had me killing Maltcassion at noon on Sunday. But the fact of the matter was, if Maltcassion didn’t transgress the Dragonpact, I didn’t have to.
I slipped back to Zambini Towers to tell Tiger what had happened. More sorcerers and magicians had arrived, and a party seemed to be going on. All the retired magicians of the lands were making their way to the small kingdom, following an instinct to lend whatever power they had to the Big Magic.
Dragon Attack
I was awakened by Gordon van Gordon, who was pulling on my sleeve and urging me to wakefulness. I had been dreaming of Dragons again, but not all the dreams were good ones. Maltcassion had been looking at me with a grim expression, explaining what it meant to him to be a Dragon, but I hadn’t really been listening and missed something important, which annoyed me.
‘What’s that noise?’ I asked.
‘It’s the red phone.’
‘I don’t have a red phone. And what are you doing in Zambini Towers?’
‘We’re not in Zambini Towers.’
He was right. I was in the Dragonstation. I hurried downstairs. The red phone was kept under a glass dome a little like a sandwich cover just next to the sword Exhorbitus, and the phone was wailing slowly to itself. If a Dragon had done something wrong, then this was how a Dragonslayer would know about it. With shaking hand I picked up the receiver and listened intently. The news was not what I had wanted to hear.
It was five in the morning, and the low sun was just spreading its rays across the land as I drove towards Longtown, a town right on the edge of the Dragonlands. A ‘Police line do not cross’ tape was stretched across the road near the castle, and I parked the Rolls-Royce next to a large contingent of police cars. I introduced myself to a policewoman, who guided me among the many emergency personnel and news crews. The road underfoot was awash with water and the sheer number of fire appliances made me uneasy.
‘We meet again, Miss Strange,’ said Detective Norton, who was standing with Sergeant Villiers near an upturned eighteen-wheeled truck. ‘I should arrest you right now for withholding evidence.’
‘I didn’t know I was the last Dragonslayer then.’
‘That’s your story.’
‘Events have moved on,’ I told them. They looked me up and down.
‘Kind of young for a Dragonslayer?’ said Norton finally.
I stared back at him.
‘Perhaps you’d tell me what’s going on?’
‘We found the claw marks in the cab.’
He beckoned me to follow, and we walked towards where a large ConStuff truck was lying upended in a field. It had been completely gutted by fire, and the water used to extinguish the flames had run down the field and flooded the road with mud. Norton pointed. On the bodywork, just below the roofline, were two large grooved holes, as though something very massive and very strong had simply squeezed it.
‘Vandals?’ I asked, somewhat dubiously.
Detective Norton stared at me as though I were an imbecile.
‘Talons, Miss Strange, talons. This van was taken from Gloucester last night and turns up here. When the fire services arrived they were positive there were no wheel tracks; if you look here...’
He indicated an area of damage to the rear of the truck, which had been heavily stoved in—the back axle had almost been torn off.
‘It looks as though the truck was dropped from a great height.’
‘So what are you saying?’ I asked him.
‘You tell me, Miss Dragonslayer. Looks as though Maltcassion picked up this van, tried to fly with it back to the Dragonlands but dropped it on the way. To try and disguise the crime, he torched it.’
‘A truck hardly counts as livestock, does it?’
‘A technicality. The Dragonpact cites damage to property as a punishable offence. I think what we’ve got here is a rogue Dragon.’
‘That’s sort of far fetched,’ I said, trying to play the incident down. It was a serious accusation. A rogue Dragon was a Dragon out of control; one that had transgressed the rules of the Dragonpact. Such a Dragon could legally be destroyed. That’s the trouble with premonitions; they have an annoying habit of coming true.