“I cannot be your son because I’m a girl, Your Majesty. My name is Ingrid. Ingrid Norling.”
Her words hung in the air. The king’s retainers all held their breath as they waited for his reaction, but the monarch himself simply stared down at her, chin perched atop his palm, his entire body seemingly frozen.
After what felt like a lifetime, he blinked, languidly. His gaze shifted to his Captain of the Castle Guard. “Bergstrom,” he said with all the composure of a man used to getting his way, “order the servants to prepare a room for my son, and make arrangements to introduce him to the rest of the family and to the nation itself. Go on,” he added, shaking his fingers in a shooing motion. “You are all dismissed.”
Most definitely the wrong side of the bed, Inge thought as an iron grip pulled her stammering from the throne room.
Chapter 2: Son of a Lunatic
Captain Bergstrom kept a tight hold upon her arm as they crossed the open courtyard to a small antechamber. It was much the same manner he had brought her to the castle to begin with, and she resented it even more than she had only a half-hour ago. He released her the moment they were isolated in the smaller room.
“I’ll leave you here to guard the young prince, Raske,” he said, and Inge realized for the first time that the dark-haired colonel had followed them. “I shall prepare his rooms and return shortly.”
“Understood,” said Raske.
“I’m not a he,” said Inge indignantly.
Bergstrom favored her with a sidelong glance. “I suppose I should also instruct all the guards back in the hall not to refer to the prince as anything but a boy. You should instruct your men as well.”
“Lind was the only one present,” Raske replied. “I sent Modig, Dalstrom, and Lang to dispose of the night-walker’s carcass.”
“Very good. I’ll give Lind his instructions, if you don’t mind.”
Raske tipped his head, and Bergstrom left the room.
“You people can’t honestly expect me to pretend I’m a boy,” Inge protested the moment the door shut. She’d already assessed Bergstrom as a lost cause, but surely someone around here had to have sense enough to help her.
Colonel Raske, much to her ire, swept his glance over her person, noting in turn her muddy boots, baggy trousers, wrinkled shirt, and short hair. Dirt smudged her face and hands, scratched and callused from work. That wordless appraisal seemed to say, “Aren’t you already pretending?”
“Well, excuse me for borrowing my brother’s clothes this morning!” she cried defensively.
He turned his gaze to the wall in front of him, his stance at rigid attention.
“It’s not funny!” Inge insisted.
The dark-haired colonel kept his attention fixed ahead. “I did not laugh, Your Highness,” he said, even as the corners of his mouth twitched.
“Don’t call me that! And I can see your amusement plain as day! It’s not funny!”
He did look at her then, his green eyes wide. Inge had no idea why her words had shocked him, but he recovered quickly enough. “Try to bear it as best you can,” he said quietly.
“Bear it?” she echoed. “That… that lunatic thinks I’m a boy!”
“That lunatic is your king and protector. You’d best not refer to him in such terms again,” said Colonel Raske. Although his words were stern, they held no bite. He knew as well as Inge did how ridiculous this situation was.
If he hadn’t been left to watch over her, she might have escaped. There were plenty of guards between her and the city proper, but surely the word of a new prince hadn’t spread very far. The longer she was waylaid here, though, the less chance she had to slink away into obscurity. She was hard-pressed not to resent him for his mere presence. Her eyes darted to the door, to the window, assessing how quickly she could bolt and whether the armor-laden colonel would be fast enough to catch her if he followed.
In the midst of this silence, Raske cleared his throat. “He knows now that you’re not a boy. He just… doesn’t like to be wrong. Give it a day or two and you’ll be back where you belong.”
“I don’t have a day or two,” Inge said. “I have younger brothers and sisters to take care of! They’re probably worried sick because they can’t find me!” A sudden, horrifying realization struck her. “Or else they’re running amok. Nea’s not there. Eirik and Einar might have worked all sorts of mischief by now—they certainly will if they’re left alone for a day or two! And who’s to care for Sassa and Lisbet? You have to let me go!”
“I cannot disobey the king.”
Her panic was rising as she thought of her younger siblings left to their own devices. “This is like a nightmare! I knew I shouldn’t have gotten up this morning.”
“If it’s any consolation, the rest of us are grateful that you did,” said Colonel Raske. He still did not look at her as he spoke, and she might have mistaken his brusqueness for annoyance if she hadn’t heard those same tones in her father’s voice every time he had tried to speak words of thanks. Raske’s gratitude was sincere. He just wasn’t comfortable expressing it.
His efforts weren’t enough to quell her bad humor, though. “If you’re so grateful, why don’t you let me go home?”
She thought she saw a flash of pity cross his face, but it was brief. “We can’t do that,” he said. “The king has adopted you.”
“He can’t adopt me. I told you, I have a pack of siblings I have to take care of! What are they supposed to do, huh? Eirik and Einar are only ten—they can’t very well look after the little girls by themselves! And Gunnar’s monthly stipend isn’t enough to cover rent as it is—”
“Gunnar?” Raske repeated sharply.
“My older brother—he enlisted last winter, as a volunteer soldier. Why are you looking at me like that?”
Indeed, the colonel appeared to be thunderstruck. Before Inge could react, his hand shot forward and caught hold of her chin. He tilted her head to one side to look at her from another angle.
“Gunnar Lang?”
Inge regained her wits and jerked away from him. “Gunnar Norling,” she said irritably. What on earth had possessed him?
Colonel Raske shook his head. “No, there was already a Norling under my command. We changed Gunnar’s surname to Lang.”
Inge scowled. Her brother hadn’t written anything about a name change. Norling was the name he had enlisted under. Was this Colonel Raske really talking about the same person?
“So you’re Gunnar Lang’s sister?” Raske continued, though. “I thought there was something familiar about you, but I should’ve noticed the resemblance sooner. He’s not as spindly, of course, but you do have similar features.”
She’d been mistaken for a boy already this morning. Being compared in looks to her brother—who was as bearded and masculine as he could be—was hardly an improvement. Her scowl turned resentful. “How do you know Gunnar?”
“I just told you—he’s one of my men, one of my personal envoy. I handpicked him a month ago. He’s surprisingly adept with a sword for the son of a charcoal-burner. So are you,” he added with another speculative glance.
Inge’s heart quickened. Charcoal-burner—that was the occupation Gunner had given for their father when he enlisted. “I… I’m not, really…” Gunnar was going to wring her neck if any of these exploits reached his ears!
“If you’re worried about your family,” Raske continued, oblivious to her inner turmoil, “I can send your brother to check up on them. I brought him back with me from the border—”
“No!” Inge cried. Gunnar was here at the capital? He wasn’t supposed to be back for months! How was she to explain—? “You can’t! Don’t send for Gunnar, don’t send him to the house! Please, just let me go, and I’ll take care of the others myself! Gunnar has enough… to worry about…” Her voice trailed off into silence. Who was she to ask her brother’s commanding officer for such a favor? And was he the sort of person she wanted to be indebted to?
Raske studied her, his
gaze so intense that she squirmed.
“Please, just let me go,” she whispered.
He did not even consider her petition. “No. I cannot go against the wishes of King Halvard, and he has commanded that you remain here. But,” he added in a voice loud enough to drown out the protest on her lips, “if I promise to check on your family myself, to make certain they’re taken care of, will you play along with the king’s whims?”
Inge eyed him suspiciously. “Why would you do that?”
His expression turned cryptic. “Call it payback for this morning.”
Wretched despair struck as she remembered the circumstances that had brought her here. “All I did was hit that… monster… thing between the eyes with the end of my practice sword. If I’d known the trouble that was going to cause, I’d have let it eat me instead.”
He answered with a faint, bitter laugh. “You killed it with a sturdy piece of wood, which was more than any of us had been able to do with all of our fine steel blades. Look,” he added, suddenly more personable than before, “where do you live? I’ll make certain your siblings are safe while you’re here at the castle.”
Inge wanted to refuse him, she really did, but something about his quiet earnestness ate away her resolve. Whoever this Colonel Raske was—she’d never heard the name from Gunnar, that was for sure—he didn’t seem the type to offer favors lightly. Still, there was one essential point to consider. “You won’t tell Gunnar?”
“Not if you do not wish it.”
Her will had long-since crumbled. The location of her family’s residence fell from her lips in a muttered admission.
Raske curtly nodded. “I’ll go right now and tell your family what’s happened so that they don’t worry.” He started toward the door but paused halfway there. “You will remain here until Captain Bergstrom returns, won’t you?” he asked with a critical eye.
It was her part of the bargain, Inge realized. If she refused, he wouldn’t go to her family and she’d still be stuck in the castle. If she agreed and then broke her word, he already knew where she lived and thus how to find her. “Yes,” she sighed.
“Good. Then I shall take my leave, Your Highness.”
“Don’t call me that!”
The colonel arched an eyebrow. “You would prefer ‘Prince Inge’?”
Horror seized her in a firm grip. “No!”
He stopped himself from laughing. “Goodbye, Your Highness.”
Then, he left her. A strange person, Inge decided. What a pity there had been nothing handy to throw at him.
Not five minutes after he had gone, she realized that she might follow on his heels, pack up the children after he returned to the castle, and run off to parts unknown before anyone else was the wiser. She poked her head out the door, only to discover a guard positioned there.
Colonel Raske had not trusted her after all.
“Drat that man,” she muttered under her breath, and she retreated back into the waiting room.
Chapter 3: The Trouble with Twins
Colonel Raske’s steps lagged as he wended his way through the city streets. He had not slept since his arrival at the castle yesterday, having spent the night in watch for the monster that plagued King Halvard’s great hall. Fatigue pressed heavy upon him now. Once this errand was complete, he could give in to the enticement of the quiet quarters and the hard mattress that awaited him back at the castle.
He wasn’t sure what had prompted his offer to check on the family of the new “prince.” He thought, perhaps, that it was guilt. King Halvard had called him back from the battlefield specifically to exterminate the vicious night-walker, and he had failed. His precious sword had been all but useless, and in the end, the ravenous monster, which had already slaughtered a score of well-trained castle guards and left a trail of wounded in its wake, was haplessly slain by a mere girl.
That mere girl had been lucky. Raske and the other soldiers happened upon the scene just in time to discover the scaly carcass sprawled amid the bracken while its shaken executioner, bowled over by the dead monster’s final crashing momentum, struggled to be free of its oppressive weight. Relieved as Raske was that the creature had not killed her—which it certainly would have had she been unarmed—he was also annoyed.
The monster had been his responsibility, and someone else had disposed of it.
When Captain Bergstrom appeared and insisted that the traumatized girl be taken before the king, Raske irritably waved them on their way. He knew what was promised to the one who killed the monster, but he had underestimated Halvard’s determination to carry out his plans. The girl should have been allowed to leave with a royal thanks and nothing more. She shouldn’t have gotten mixed up in the aftermath.
Raske’s first inclination had been to laugh at the absurdity of it all. He might have walked away, absolved of his duty, having dodged a harebrained scheme in which he held little faith and no desire to participate. In truth, that was the very source of his guilt. The trouble he had avoided now settled on another, but far from being a careless youth, Inge had responsibilities of her own. Her anguish had rattled his overactive sense of duty: Raske was the one who had allowed Bergstrom to take her to see the king. He had trusted that King Halvard would simply rethink his plans when confronted with this unexpected savior.
Obviously his time away from the castle had made him forget what a stubborn old man Halvard was. That still didn’t absolve Raske of his part in the mess. If Inge had taken on the responsibility that had been intended for him, he could at least attempt to return the favor.
Her directions were not difficult. Soon enough Raske stood before a small cottage near the edge of town. It looked peaceful, with no sign of the mayhem that Inge seemed to fear. As he passed through the low gate, he glimpsed an empty chicken coop on the side of the house, next to a scraggly garden whose few plants looked as though they’d been recently trampled. Thick bushes lined the walkway, and a large tree dominated the rest of the tiny yard. Raske focused his attention on the weathered cottage before him. His ears barely registered a slight rustling in the bushes.
A trained warrior was always on his guard. Raske knew this, but his weariness and the peaceful domesticity of his surroundings lulled him into complacency. He never even saw the trip-wire that pulled taut across his path, or the face of the person who jumped from the tree to whack the back of his skull with a blunt object when he stumbled and pitched toward the ground.
***
Soon after Colonel Raske left, Captain Bergstrom reappeared to lead Inge up to the residential part of the castle. Her room, he said, was being prepared. In the meantime, he had commanded the servants to draw a bath for her.
“I hope you can bathe yourself,” he added with a critical glance over her untidy person. “You certainly need it.”
Of course she needed it. She’d been bowled into the bracken by a slime-ridden monster barely an hour ago. But that didn’t give him leave to be so snide.
He continued. “The servants have been instructed to give the new prince his privacy.”
“You don’t want them to discover that their new prince is missing telltale body parts,” Inge surmised.
“Don’t be crude,” said Bergstrom.
Inge rolled her eyes behind his back. Eirik and Einar had never been particular about clothing, so she’d seen her fair share of naked boys and knew perfectly well what distinguished the sexes. The noble class seemed to be more prim and proper, though. Inge made a mental note: perhaps if she was irredeemably coarse in her language and actions they would want to get rid of her sooner.
Bergstrom deposited her in a bathroom that she thought larger than necessary. Two maids poured the last of their hot water into the tub at the center of the room. Each stole curious glances Inge’s way before they retreated.
“Don’t be too long,” Bergstrom commanded her. “Clean clothes are over there. I’ll return soon to take you to your quarters. The window is too small to escape from, even for someone as skinny as yo
u.”
Inge bristled, but he shut the door before she could respond. Her indignation only heightened when she heard a key turn in the lock.
“Hey!” She lunged for the handle, but it was too late. “You can’t just lock me in here!”
“Take your bath, Your Highness,” Bergstrom answered from the other side. “I’ll be back shortly.”
She heard his footsteps retreat. Jannik Bergstrom was fast becoming her least favorite person in the castle, which was a feat considering her newly established grudge against the king himself.
Inge checked the window out of spite. It really was too narrow, unless she could somehow knock out the solid metal pane that split it in half. That was anchored into the very stone, though. “No escape there,” she muttered. She was tempted to refuse the bath, to just sit and wait until Captain Bergstrom returned so that she could emerge again in all of her grime-ridden glory.
The bath stood ready, though.
She glanced wistfully toward the tub—far nicer than any she had ever bathed in before—and tried to remember when last she had indulged in a warm bath. There hadn’t been time for any such luxury since her parents had died. Heating the water took too long in the cottage where she lived now, but back at the smithy, where a fire was always kept burning, it had been a regular part of life.
These days, for her, warm baths were impractical.
But then, everything that was happening right now was impractical. On that thought, she stripped off her brother’s clothes and blissfully eased into the tub.
After she had scrubbed herself until her skin was pink, she shook the excess water from her close-cropped hair and ventured to put on the clothing that had been left for her. It was men’s clothing, of course, and sat ill on her bony frame. As Inge surveyed herself in the mirror, she thought dismally that she really did look like a boy—a young one, maybe twelve or thirteen years old. If only she had more feminine curves, she might have avoided King Halvard’s near-sighted lunacy.
The Legendary Inge Page 2