The Dragon's Dagger
Chapter 17 Cackling Crow

"There's trolls all about us," Mickey said softly.
"Well, why don't they just come out and play?" Geno growled, slapping a hammer across his open palm. He looked towards a pile of rocks two dozen yards away, suspecting that several trolls were concealed behind it, and let out an angry snarl.
Kelsey's hand was on his shoulder in an instant, bidding him to calm down. The elf, above all the rest of them, understood just how many trolls were circling about them, and the last thing he wanted was a fight.
"We may have to leave," he whispered to Mickey.
"What about the lad?"
Kelsey shrugged helplessly, and Mickey couldn't really argue. He knew that the others wanted to rescue Gary as much as he, but the young man had obviously already been taken to Ynis Gwydrin, and with these trolls looming all about, they would have a hard enough time even getting close enough to see the surrounding lake.
Kelsey glanced around, scanning their options. Geno and Gerbil sat atop the rugged pony (the gnome's quadri-cycle wasn't much good in rough mountain terrain), while Kelsey and Mickey shared Kelsey's steed. The riderless horse, Cedric's, was tied behind, the magical spear and helm strapped upon it, waiting for Gary.
Kelsey looked back to Mickey and shook his head grimly. He wasn't one to quit easily, but this trek seemed foolhardy. Even if they could get to the lake, how would they get out to the island? And even if they got out to the island, how might they deal with Ceridwen?
But all the logic in the world couldn't overrule the fact that one of their companions, a trusted friend, was in dire trouble.
"We cannot leave him to her," Mickey said firmly, grabbing the elf's wrist. Kelsey looked to Geno and Gerbil, and both responded with a nod ahead, to the path that would take them to the lake, and Kelsey nodded, too, thinking then that if they died in their foolhardy attempt, then so be it.
Kelsey just turned his attention to the path ahead when out stepped a surprising, and welcome, sight. "Troll!" Geno screamed, hoisting his hammer as if to throw.
Gary Leger looked back over his shoulder. "Where?" he asked innocently. "Laddie!" Mickey cried.
"What in the name of a smart goblin are you doing here?" Geno demanded, lowering the deadly hammer. "I thought you were a damned troll!"
"Trolls are taller," Gary replied sourly. He caught some movement to the side out of the corner of his eye. "Like those over there," he growled and picked up a stone. "Get out of here!" he cried, pegging the missile into the tumble of boulders. "Before Ceridwen turns you all into bunnies and puts you into a pie!"
The stone skipped off several boulders, might have hit a troll or two (for the sound wouldn't be much different from that of a stone hitting boulders), and a group of the monsters skittered away, boulders rolling about in their blundering wake.
Mickey and Kelsey exchanged incredulous looks.
"What've ye been doing, lad?" the leprechaun asked slowly, cautiously. "Arguing, mostly," Gary.replied, moving up to the riderless horse and seeming in no mood to talk about anything. Indeed, the young man was deeply troubled by his meeting with the witch, terribly afraid that he had acted wrongly in reducing Ceridwen's sentence. He put one foot in the stirrup and started to hoist himself up, then changed his mind, realizing that someone was missing.
"Where's Cedric?" he asked anxiously, privately guessing the answer. "He died happy," Mickey replied solemnly.
"Son of a bitch," Gary muttered, burying his face into the side of the saddle. He died happy, the young man thought. That meant he died thinking that he was helping Gary, the spearwielder.
Gary was surprised a moment later to feel the cold tip of Kelsey's sword pressed tightly against his shoulder blade, in a crease in the armor. He understood the elf's doubts and fears, and knew enough not to make any sudden moves.
"How did you come out?" Kelsey asked evenly, positioning his horse so that Gary was cut off to the right.
"Ceridwen sent me out," Gary answered.
Kelsey poked him. "Do not play me for a fool," he warned. Geno walked the pony around to the side, blocking off any escape to the left, as well. Gary could not see Kelsey, but he could see the dwarf and gnome, and while Gerbil seemed almost as confused and shocked as was Gary, there was little compromise in the sturdy dwarf's stern expression.
"Ceridwen let me go," Gary declared, his voice firm and confident. "She wants me to slay Robert."
"That makes sense," Mickey offered, but Kelsey kept the swordtip in tight against Gary's back.
"You're hurting me," Gary remarked.
"I will kill you," Kelsey replied in all seriousness, "if I find that you are not who you appear to be."
"How did you chase off the trolls?" Geno asked, and the question seemed more like an accusation.
"I didn't," Gary snapped back. "Then who?" the elf demanded, prodding him again. "They were working for Ceridwen," Gary explained. "Before she ever sent me out of her castle, she sent word to the trolls that we were not to be harmed, or bothered at all." Gary snapped his fingers as an idea popped into his head.
"The spear," he started to explain, reaching across the saddle. What he had intended was to take the weapon, reestablish a telepathic bond, and let it inform the others that he was indeed who he claimed to be.
What he got instead was the smack of an elfish sword off the side of his head, and a flying tackle from an outraged dwarf. The next thing he knew, he was sitting on the ground facing Kelsey's horse, his arms wrenched up high behind his head by the snarling dwarf.
"Should I break them off?" Geno asked in all seriousness, and it seemed to Gary as if the powerful dwarf wasn't waiting for an answer.
Kelsey slid down from his seat and put his sword to Gary's throat. "Who are you?"
"Someone who wants to go home," Gary said to Mickey. He tugged hard against Geno's grasp, but the dwarf's viselike hands did not loosen. "Someone who's feeling unappreciated."
"Enough of the cryptic answers!" Kelsey demanded.
"I'm Gary Leger, you stupid elf!" Gary shouted. "Ceridwen let me off of her island because I dealt fairly with her, and she told her trolls to leave us alone because that was part of the deal!"
Geno let go, stood staring blankly at Kelsey.
"Deal?" Kelsey asked.
Gary ran his hand through his thick black hair and sighed deeply several times. He didn't want to admit what had happened on Ynis Gwydrin, but he didn't see any other way to gain back the trust of his friends - friends he dearly needed now, perhaps more than ever.
"Ceridwen will walk free in three months," he admitted.
"Stupid ..." Geno stammered. He spun and punched the horse, and it snorted and leaped away. "Stupid! You really are a coward! You'd just do anything to save your worthless bones!"
Kelsey's forlorn, disappointed stare hurt more than the dwarf's tirade. The elf's swordtip dipped slowly to the ground.
"Oh, shut up," Gary said to Geno, though he never blinked in the face of that elfish stare.
The dwarf was upon him in an instant, curled fist only inches from Gary's face.
"I didn't do it to save my life," Gary said firmly. "Ceridwen wasn't going to kill me, anyway." He didn't know if that last statement was true or not, but it sounded good, and Gary needed something that sounded good at that moment. "I did it to save the four of you," he said.
"What are you saying?" Kelsey asked.
"She showed me your progress," Gary explained. "In a ... magic mirror, or something."
"A scrying device," Mickey helped, more versed in the ways of witches than the man from the other world.
"Whatever," Gary said. "I saw you, and saw the trolls." Gary eyed Geno directly. "Dozens of trolls."
"We would have willingly died," Kelsey boasted. "Rather than ..." "Rather than what?" Gary snapped at him. "If you had died, and I was captured, and Kinnemore's army was on the field, and Robert was flying free ..." "The lady paints a glum picture," Mickey offered.
"Any worse a picture than having that witch out and about?" Geno asked. "Oh, yes," Gerbil piped in unexpectedly. All eyes turned on him, and the gnome sank low in the saddle. "I mean, she was out before, after all, and things didn't look so very bad. Not like now, I mean."
"True enough," remarked Mickey.
"I had to make a choice," Gary said resignedly. "I don't know if it was the best one - maybe I should have let her out right away so that she could go against the dragon and save us .the trouble." He shrugged and ran his fingers through his black hair once more. "I did the best I could."
Kelsey took hold of Gary's hand and hoisted him to his feet. "It was a difficult choice," the elf admitted. "You said that Ceridwen would let us out of the mountains?"
Gary nodded. "I made her agree that she would not hinder us in any way in our quest to put Robert back in his hole."
"Why would she want to?" Mickey asked in all seriousness.
"Exactly," Gary agreed. "But I also made her agree to send Geldion and his troops back to Connacht. I figured that would give Pwyll and the others some time to regroup, maybe put up some defenses."
Kelsey was nodding approvingly, and Gary relaxed somewhat. '"I did the best I could," he said again.
"You did well," Kelsey replied.
"Just fine, lad," agreed the leprechaun.
"But what are we to do next?" Geno put in. "If we put the wyrm back in his hole, then the witch runs free."
Gary didn't miss the curious way Mickey's face seemed to pale. "The dragon must be stopped!" Kelsey and Gerbil said together, and they both looked at each other, surprised.
"Owe me a Coke," Gary said for both of them, though neither of them knew what the hell he was talking about, or what the hell a "Coke" might be. "Never mind," was all that Gary offered in reply to their curious stares, and he turned to his new mount.
Any levity that Gary had managed to forge, any relaxation that had come over him in learning that his friends approved of his desperate choice on Ynis Gwydrin, was washed away the moment the young man laid eyes on that riderless horse.
Cedric had died happy.
For the spearwielder.
Gary gritted his teeth and pulled himself up into the saddle, roughly taking the reins and turning the horse the other way on the trail. "Let's get the hell out of here," he said angrily, and he started the steed at a swift trot and then a gallop, playing his own anger out in the strong movements of the willing horse.
They came out of Penllyn later that afternoon, the sun fast disappearing behind the mountains. As Ceridwen had promised, no trolls, or any other monsters, blocked their way or hindered them in any manner at all. They retrieved Gerbil's quadricycle, stuffed under a bush for safekeeping. The gnome immediately opened yet another of the thing's seemingly endless compartments, pulling out a pile of badly folded parchments.
"Maps," he explained to the curious onlookers. "The most up-to-date and detailed in all the land. I know that I have one in here, oh, yes I must, showing the trails between Penllyn and the Giant's Thumb." Kelsey nodded in deference to the gnome, knowing that Gerbil needed to feel helpful, needed to believe that he was doing something to take revenge on Robert for what Robert had done to his village. In truth, Kelsey already knew the route they would take - the very same route he, Gary, Mickey, Geno, and the giant Tommy One-Thumb had taken on their first trip to the dragon's lair.
Kelsey waited patiently for the gnome to sort through the pile, though, and Mickey took that opportunity to leave Kelsey's saddle and go up to his customary position in front of Gary Leger.
"We will ride out a few miles from the shadow of Penllyn," Kelsey explained, as they regrouped and prepared to start away once more. Gerbil nodded eagerly and fumbled with the pile of parchments, narrowing down the possibilities. The light was fast fading, and none of the companions wanted to remain near to the witch's mountains after dark, but again, Kelsey waited patiently for the gnome.
"Then we set a short camp," he explained. "In the morn, we ride northeast until we reach the Crahgs, then cross them as best as we can."
"Not so best," came a cackling reply. The companions all looked to each other for a moment, until they realized that the source of the response had not been any of them.
"There," Gary said a moment later, pointing to a large crow sitting on the low branch of a lone tree not far from the bushes where they had stashed the quadricycle.
Instinctively, Geno's arm came up, a hammer at the ready, and Kelsey, his glare unrelenting, went for his bow.
"Don't shoot it!" Gary growled at both of them. "The bird seems to know something."
"Spy of Ceridwen," the dwarf remarked, for it was no secret among the peoples of Faerie that the talking crows were in alliance with the witch. Rumors had it that Ceridwen bought the birds' alliance by enchanting them with the gift of speech.
"And no friend to us," Kelsey added grimly, fitting the arrow to his bowstring.
"But an ally of our quest," Gary remarked.
"Crahgs are blocked," the crow cackled, and the actual sight of a talking bird gave even the stern elf pause. "Wolves and haggis, dragon friends." "That'd make sense," Mickey agreed, looking to Kelsey to lower his bow. "Robert's sealin' off the eastland for his own uses."
"Or he's looking for us and thinking that we'll go through the Crahgs," Gary added. Three grim faces turned on him (four when Gerbil took a moment from his map-watching to look up and figure out that something was amiss), none of his friends appreciating him speaking out that little possibility.
"Robert has more to think about than this bunch," Geno put in derisively, wanting to fully dismiss Gary's thought. The dwarf threw a smirk Gerbil's way, and the gnome responded in kind, but then went right back to his tangle of maps.
"And that crow is working for the witch," Kelsey added, lifting the bow once more. "For no better reason than to deter us, than to keep us confused until Ceridwen might come forth."
"Robert knows about us," Gary said immediately, before either Kelsey or the dwarf could take any rash action. Again, the grim gazes descended over the young man. "Ceridwen told me," Gary explained. "The dragon knows about the armor and the spear, and knows that I've returned."
Geno looked hopelessly to Kelsey, as if to say, "Now what?" but the elf seemed to have no answer.
"Even if that's true," Mickey put in hopefully, "he'd not expect us to go walking of our own free will back to his stronghold."
"Unless he thought we had something which could put him back in his hole," Gary remarked.
Kelsey looked questioningly to Mickey.
"It's a little-known detail of honorable challenging," the leprechaun said smugly, striking flint to steel to drop sparks into his long-stemmed pipe. "Robert'll never guess the truth." Mickey wasn't nearly as confident as he appeared. The last thing the leprechaun wanted, either out here or in the caverns beneath the Giant's Thumb, was an encounter with Robert. Mickey wanted his pot of gold back, nothing more, but his original lie seemed to have taken on monumental proportions suddenly, with so many side-players and kingdom-wide intrigue.
Kelsey looked to the northeast, as though he was spying out the distant Crahgs. He looked back to the smug crow, sitting confidently on the branch.
"Do you believe the bird?" the elf asked Gary suddenly.
Gary nodded. "I don't think that Ceridwen would have any reason to lie," he replied. "It's like she said, our victory over Robert will only make things easier for her."
"I'm starting to hate this," Geno remarked, impatiently slapping his hammer across his open palm. His pony nickered and started to rear, but the powerful dwarf tightened his legs around the beast and it went still. "Your point is well made," Kelsey said. "And the Crahgs will offer us little cover from the flying dragon." Kelsey turned his gaze more directly east, south of the distant hills.
"What're ye thinking?" Mickey asked him grimly, guessing exactly what Kelsey had in mind.
"There is a wood near here," the elf replied. "Dark and tangled. It might provide us cover for the next portion of our journey."
"There!" shouted the gnome, poking a finger so forcefully into the map that he drove it right through the parchment. He retracted the digit and looked at the map, scratching his head curiously. "Readwood?" he asked. "Dreadwood," Geno corrected, the dwarf's gravelly voice grave. "You poked out the first rune."
From Mickey's intake of breath, Gary could tell that this Dreadwood was not a nice place.
"I see no choice," Kelsey said to the leprechaun. "Not if the crow speaks truthfully about the Crahgs."
"Wolves and newts," the bird cackled.
"Shut your beak!" Geno roared, and he hurled his hammer the bird's way. The heavy weapon smacked the branch near the bird and ricocheted away, the crow taking wing into the dark air, shrieking in protest all the while.
"Shut your beak!" the dwarf roared again. "If I wanted to hit you ..." Geno let it go at that, just spat up into the darkness after the longgone bird. "How bad is this Dreadwood?" Gary asked Mickey privately when the commotion died away. Mickey shrugged, seeming nonchalant about the whole thing. "We'll get through, lad," he answered. "Don't ye fret."
Gary took faith in that, believed in his friends and in himself. "And once we get the dragon put away," he reasoned, a new idea popping into his head, "I'll make a deal with him."
"Full of deals that don't even concern you," Geno grumbled, crashing around in the brush to find his hammer.
"What are you thinking?" Kelsey asked, pointedly ignoring the dwarf, and his visage unexpectedly stern.
"I reduce Robert's time of banishment," Gary answered, smiling widely.
"To three months, as I did with Ceridwen. Then they both come out together and neither of them has any advantage." Gary thought his idea perfectly logical, and he wasn't prepared for the heightening intensity of Kelsey's glower. From that unyielding stare, Gary almost believed that the elf would trot his horse over and strike him down.
"Ye're forgetting something, lad," Mickey whispered.
"What?" Gary asked, to the leprechaun and the elf. Kel-sey let his stare linger a few moments longer, then turned his mount away.
"What?" Gary asked again, this time straight to Mickey.
"It was not yerself that challenged the wyrm," Mickey reminded him, and Gary's breath hissed as he sucked it in through his gritted teeth. He hadn't even thought of that, hadn't even realized that he might be overstepping his bounds and insulting his proud friend.
"Kelsey," he said, as apologetically as he could. "I didn't mean ..." "It does not matter," Kelsey replied, turning his mount back around. "Of course, you are the one who can reduce the dragon's banishment," Gary offered. "You're the only one who holds any right to deal with Robert. I just got carried away."
"You just might," Geno remarked dryly, and Gary glared at him, thinking that the dwarf might be enjoying this awkward situation just a bit too much.
"It does not matter," Kelsey declared again, his melodic voice firm. "We must worry first about putting the dragon back in his hole. Then we will decide which is the best course for the good of the land."
Gary agreed with the elf's choice of priorities, as did the others, but Mickey's thinking was following a slightly different course. Mickey understood the dragon better than any of them, and he knew that if Ceridwen's claims were correct, if Robert was on to them, then they could expect to meet him long before they ever got near his castle. Mickey understood, too, that Robert the Wretched had long kept spies in the dark forest of Dreadwood, and that those thick boughs might not provide as much cover as Kelsey hoped. Robert was going to have to be tricked -  not an easy task - and the cost might be high.
But leprechauns were the best in the world at deception. In truth, Mickey was deceiving his own companions even now. And so Mickey tuned out of the conversation altogether, began to plot as only a leprechaun can plot.
Whatever the cost, he meant to get back his pot of gold.