Or perhaps they were stretching to alleviate indigestion. I don’t know.
Aside from the odd detour so the Leviathan could feed on a flock of seabirds, we made good time, and were soon winging our way across the sea between Cornwall and the Scillies, the white foam of the cresting waves almost close enough to touch, the smell of salt spray in our nostrils. Ralph was flying low because he didn’t want us to be seen, and although the Leviathan’s four paddles made a thumping noise as they rhythmically beat the air, they would hopefully be mistaken for the sound of the sea. We approached the island of Tresco from the north-east, crossed the rocky shore and then glided softly up the hill to alight at an abandoned castle, where we found Colin and one of Sir Matt Grifflon’s men, bound up with rope. I recognised the latter as one of the minstrels, last seen at the Co-op. There was a walkie-talkie on the grass next to him.
‘Hello!’ said Colin cheerily. ‘I was wondering when you’d arrive.’
The jar containing the Mysterious X was sitting on a low wall, the loose collection of charged particles that made up the nebulous entity firing like fireflies. Colin must have brought X with him in case he needed to communicate some ideas across the ether.
It was no coincidence I had turned up.
‘Hello, Colin,’ I said, ‘that’s Ralph. He’s an Australopithecine.’
‘Is he, by gum? Hello, Ralph. I like your handbag. I’m a Dragon.’
‘Ook,’ said Ralph politely, although clearly unimpressed. When you can ride a Leviathan, Dragons don’t have quite so much ‘wow’ factor.
‘So,’ I said, getting straight down to business, ‘do the Princess’s kidnappers know you’re here?’
‘If they do they’re pretending they don’t,’ he said. ‘I was going to charge in and carbonise them all in a terrifying frenzy of barely concealed rage, reclaim the Princess and then fly away triumphantly across the sea like the badass Dragon I always wanted to be.’
‘What happened?’
‘My pilot light went out,’ he said, opening his mouth wide so we could see. The small flame at the back of his gullet was indeed extinguished.
‘So I overpowered Chuckles here, who was on guard duty, and tied him up. Actually, he tied himself up. They call in for an update every fifteen minutes. Do you have a lighter or a box of matches?’
Unfortunately, evolution had not so far supplied the Dragon with a natural method of reignition in the event of a pilot light outage, so they relied on either a man-made spark, a mouth full of flint, or a smouldering lightning-struck tree. Annoyingly, none of us had matches or a lighter, not even Ralph, who emptied his large handbag on the grass to check.
‘Crumbs,’ said Tiger, surveying the contents of the handbag, ‘you’ve come tooled up, Ralph.’
He had indeed. Among the collection of gold doubloons, romantic novels, a half-finished sampler, a CD of Rick Astley’s greatest hits and six fidget spinners was a large flintlock pistol complete with powder flask and six lead balls. Like most people, I wasn’t fond of projectile weapons, and even knights and other warriors regarded them as ‘the weapon of a snivelling coward’, preferring instead to use a sword, rapier or dagger. If you were going to kill someone, the saying goes, ‘only the worst cowards do it anonymously from a distance’.
‘Can you load one of those?’ I asked Tiger, and he nodded.
‘Then do so – and make it a double charge.’
‘High Ground, check in.’
The words had come from the two-way radio lying in the grass, and Colin picked it up. He placed it next to the captive guard’s ear, and then a razor-sharp claw on his opposite temple.
‘I lost my brother yesterday to this little caper,’ said Colin in a low growl, ‘so I’m feeling a little prickly right now. You’re going to reply that everything’s okay up here. Do you understand what I will do to you if you try to trick us?’
The minstrel nodded and Colin pressed the transmit button.
‘All clear up here.’
‘Well done,’ said Colin, ‘you have earned yourself another fifteen minutes of life.’
‘Miss Strange?’ said the captive in a plaintive sort of voice. ‘Please tell your friend not to kill me.’
‘He’s a Dragon,’ I said. ‘They kind of make their own rules. Do you want a piece of advice?’
‘That I should do what he says?’
‘You learn quickly.’
We crawled to the edge of the derelict building on the hilltop, hid behind a stone arched doorway and peered down the slope opposite. Cromwell’s tower was right on the edge of the sound between Bryher and Tresco, and looked about the most perfectly positioned tower for imprisoning a princess, and not by chance. Kidnapping royalty, as previously stated, was a growth industry in the UnUnited Kingdoms, not helped by the plethora of insurance companies which had sprung up to cover the cost of a safe return. In fact, some thought that the insurance companies might even have encouraged it, as pretty much every important person – and a few pets – were currently covered against ransoming.
‘How many?’ I asked as we peered at the tower.
