"Oh, not yet, Papa!" Cordelia protested, and Magnus agreed, "Aye. Let us hear one more song, at least."
"It will not be so long, husband." Gwen touched his hand. "And our poor minds do need rest, surely."
"Well… okay." Rod wasn't very hard to convince; he wasn't exactly looking forward to another trip into pandemonium.
But the clams were already singing again, a ballad about a lighthouse keeper, lively and quick. The children began to nod their heads—and Gregory, belly-down with his chin in his hands, watching the clams, began to tap his toes against air.
"Music hath charms," Gwen murmured, "and they are the most charmed of all."
A scream tore the fabric of the song, and men began to shout.
The Gallowglasses looked up, startled.
Out of the trees came two of the strangest animals they had ever seen—four feet tall and four feet thick, like fur-covered globes, with thick, stumpy legs and shaggy dappled coats. Tiny eyes glittered toward the top of each ball, just above a long, tapering nose. They waddled toward the water, and the clams gave a burbling scream of fear.
"Have no care—we shall ward thee," Geoffrey said quickly. "What doth affright thee so?"
"Those beasts!" cried a clam. "Hast thou never seen them?"
"Never. What's there to fear in such foolish animals?"
"Their noses!" cried a clam. "They will suck us up, they will tear us from our bed!"
"Not whiles we are here to guard thee," Cordelia assured them. "What manner of beast are these?"
"They are clamdiggers!"
The peasant men caught up clubs and attacked the things with blows and shouts, but the globular animals scarcely seemed to notice. They reached the water and splashed in.
"Zap 'em, kids!" Rod cried.
Magnus and Geoffrey launched into the air and swooped toward the beasts, drawing their swords. They stabbed at the clamdiggers, trying to turn them, but the beasts scarcely seemed to notice, the moreso because Cordelia was pelting them with sticks and pebbles from the bank. But Geoffrey lost his temper and dive-bombed, stabbing hard, and a long thin nose swept around in a blur, to swat him out of the air. He splashed down, and the beast lumbered toward him. Gwen screamed, shooting over the water like a rocket, whirling about to swat the reaching nose with her broom. The nose recoiled.
Rod leaped onto Fess's back. "Charge!"
But on the bank by the clams, Gregory glared, narrowing his eyes.
Soft implosions sucked air inward toward the center of the pond, and where the clamdiggers had splashed, two rectangular objects floated, bobbing in the ripples. They had no eyes or noses, only straps and buckles.
Rod stared. "Do my eyes deceive me, or did my son change those clamdiggers into…"
"A pair of trunks," Fess finished. "That is exactly what he has done, Rod. You have seen it clearly."
Geoffrey shot back over the water to clap his brother on the shoulder with a dripping hand. "Most marvelously done, little brother! How chanced thou to hit 'pon so excellent a scheme!"
Gregory blushed with pleasure. "Why, such ungainly beasts as they could only be things of witch-moss, look you—so I thought at them, to change their shape to something harmless."
"A thousand thanks," said a shaky clam-voice.
"Aye," said three more, and a fourth, "If there is aught that we may ever do for thee, thou hast but to ask it."
"Why," said Gregory, at a loss, "I can only ask that thou dost keep this fen free for all that is best in music, as a sanctuary for all of good heart."
"And tender ear," Rod muttered.
"Why, that shall we do!" the clams assured him. "And we shall ever sing thy praises!"
Gregory reddened again. "Spare my blushes, I pray thee! Sing only hearty songs of excellence, as thou wast wont to do!"
"As thou shalt have," a baritone clam said. "Yet I doubt not we'll sing of they who defend the weak, also."
"Why," said Gregory, "I can only therefore praise thee."
"Then let's go look for someone who's picking on the weak." Rod took his son firmly by the hand and turned him away. "What do you say, Gwen?"
"Aye, my husband." Gwen glanced at the sky. "We must make five more miles ere nightfall. Magnus, Cordelia! Geoffrey! Come!" They turned away, walking back along the sand-spit.
"I had liefer stay, Papa," Geoffrey volunteered.
"Stay! Are you kidding? When there might be a battle on our trail?"
"Art thou sure? There hath been naught but skirmishes thus far."
"All right, so you're on a diet." Rod halted and looked around. "I think we're a little shorthanded here."
"Magnus! Cordelia!" Gwen cried. "Come—and now!"
"Eh? Oh! Certes, Mama!" Cordelia shot toward her like a broomstick juggernaut. "Their music is so entrancing."
"Thy pardon, Mama." Magnus sighed as he came up. "They are wondrous minstrels."
"Farewell, good clams," Cordelia called back, and the song broke off for a burbling chorus of goodbyes. Then the Gallowglasses strode away, while behind them a voice cried, "Come, another roundelay!" and the singing began again.
Chapter Twenty-One
They left the fen refreshed, but they were instantly immersed in pandemonium again. They followed the blimp from a distance, and by late afternoon they were dazed and reeling as they topped a ridge and saw a village below them, tranquil under the evening sun, with peasants coming in from the fields, hoes over their shoulders. Wreaths of smoke rose from the central holes in the thatches of the cottages. Wives came out to chat with one another for a few minutes, then returned to their homes. Adolescent girls shooed children and chickens. On the village green, young men kicked an inflated bladder around.
Magnus looked, then looked again. "Why, their young folk abide with them!"
"Yes, and they're doing something besides listening to the music." Rod smiled. "There's a certain amount of promise in this. Let's go find out how they're doing it."
They went down into the town, finding the large hut with the bunch of greenery hanging from a pole.
"Pretty dried-out bush," Rod said, with critical appraisal. "Old ale, then."
"Thou hast told me old ale is better, betimes," Magnus reminded him. "Come, Papa—at the least, 'twill be another's cooking tonight."
"Hast thou aught to complain of?" Gwen demanded as they walked in.
"Naught, yet thou hast," Cordelia reminded her. "Wilt thou truly regret not preparing a meal o'er a campfire?"
"Well, I shall suffer it," Gwen allowed.
They sat at a table. The landlord looked up, then looked again in surprise. "Good e'en, gentlemen and ladies!"
"Just travelling through," Rod assured him. "I could stand a flagon of ale, landlord. Is there a supper?"
"Aye, milord—Timon, ho!"
A lanky teen-ager came in from the back room, saw the Gallowglasses, and smiled in welcome. Then he saw Cordelia, and the welcome deepened. She smiled back, coming a little more alive somehow, and Magnus cleared his throat. "Good e'en, goodman!"
"And to thee." Timon wrenched his eyes away from Cordelia, amused, and turned to the landlord. "What need, Dad?"
"Ale, my lad, and quickly, for these good folks!"
"Only the two," Gwen qualified. "As to the rest, hast thou clear water?"
"Aye, most surely. That too, lad."
"As thou wilt, Dad." Timon turned away and ducked back through the doorway.
"Ho! 'Dad,' is it?" Magnus grinned. "What meaning hath that?"
"Oh, it's just another intimate form of 'Father'—the one I expected my own children to use, in fact. But you four preferred 'Papa.'"
"I shall no longer, then! Oh, nay, I would not disappoint thee so! Aye, 'Dad' it shall be henceforth! Oh, ho!" And Magnus couldn't quite hold his laughter in.
Rod frowned, turning to Gwen. "What's the joke?"