The Dragons 3 Read Online Free PDF Page B

crested the last hill and began to walk down towards Castle Culvert, they were all too bad-tempered to talk to each other or even to themselves.
    As the three soaked-through travellers, their clothes ripped to shreds by the hail, came within sight of the castle, Urngristle, Culvert’s squire and Number One Personal Persecutor of the estate’s peasants, looked out of the window and called the guards.
    â€˜Three disgusting tramps are approaching,’ he said. ‘Go down and clamp them in chains and throwthem into the dungeons, and on your way out tell the dungeon master to put fresh goose grease on the torture equipment. We don’t want a repeat of that time we stretched those Vikings on the rack and their heads fell off. I’ve never been so embarrassed.’
    â€˜Good Urngristle,’ said Lady Tracyvere, Prince Culvert’s wife, ‘have you no word of my beloved husband?’
    â€˜I have not, my lady,’ Urngristle replied. ‘Maybe these three tramps have attacked him and he lies wounded or dead on some deserted hillside.’
    â€˜Oh, say it is not so.’
    â€˜My lady, I shall personally give the three of them a seriously good torturing,’ said Urngristle. ‘And I will keep on torturing them until we find the truth.’
    â€˜Shall you use the thumbscrews?’ Tracyvere asked, a naughty sparkle coming into her eyes.
    â€˜Thumbscrews, nosescrews and elbowscrews, my lady.’
    â€˜And the bottomscrews, shall you use them too?’
    â€˜Oh indeed.’
    â€˜Well then, good Urngristle, please wait while I change into my torturing dress so none of their flyingbits and pieces may leave any stains,’ said Tracyvere. ‘It  would seem that using your full range of screws may take some time, so I shall bring some sandwiches and a flask of warm mead too.’
    â€˜I will see you in the dungeons in thirty minutes, my lady,’ said Urngristle.
    His eyes lit up at the thought. His fingers twitched in anticipation and he began to dribble, which had nothing to do with the thought of torture, but because he had been born with his tongue upside down and actually dribbled most of the time. 23
    Three soldiers left the castle, waving their swords and pikestaffs 24 at the three travellers walking towards them. Normally this would involve the visitors turning tail and trying to run away, which would then prompt the soldiers to catch them, hit them a lot and drag them back to the castle.
    However, the opposite happened. The three arrivals threw themselves at the soldiers, who were so surprised they tried to run away but tripped overeach other’s pikestaffs and fell in a heap on the ground, where they were hit a lot with their own pikestaffs before being tied up in a big bundle with their own tabards. 25
    â€˜Guards! Guards! Guards!’ Urngristle shouted. ‘Go to the aid of your fellows.’
    Five more guards ran out, only to be flattened and tied up with the first three.
    Culvert walked towards the castle, looked up at the window and began to curse.
    â€˜Urngristle, this is your lord and master and if you send one more of my own soldiers out to attack me, you shall die in the slowest, most painful way you could ever imagine,’ he shouted.
    â€˜Oh … [ insert a lot of delicious swearwords here ],’ cried Urngristle. ‘My lord, I did not recognise thee. I thought thou was three tramps.’
    Urngristle shivered in terror. He knew what thousands of the slowest most painful ways he could ever imagine were because he had imagined them. It was something he thought about every night beforedropping off to sleep. He had a book full of terrifying ways to kill your enemies and it now appeared his master had read it.
    â€˜Indeed,’ Culvert called out, ‘page three hundred and seventy-six. We have enough rusty nails, though I am not sure where we shall get one thousand jellyfish or a very big funnel.’
    Urngristle raced