How to Save a Kingdom

by Bill Allen

  At least the bear was the only beast they encountered in the woods.

  “I don’t get it,” said Marvin. “These woods are usually loaded with monsters.”

  Greg let out a grunt. “You’ve never traveled with Lucky before, have you?”

  He was quite content not to see any monsters himself. Well, perhaps content was the wrong word. Nothing could quell the fear he felt over his upcoming battle or the queasy feeling he got when he thought about how the prophecy predicting his success had already been proven wrong.

  Melvin, on the other hand, was oddly exuberant, so much so, he even started being civil toward Greg. “Why so glum, Greghart?” he asked.

  “You kidding?” said Greg. “You forget about the prophecy?”

  Melvin looked back at him, confused. Then recognition seemed to strike. “Oh, yeah. Don’t worry. We’re gonna go back and fight the spirelings as soon as we finish with these trolls.”

  Greg returned to brooding, but Melvin was in a rare good mood and seemed determined to lift Greg’s spirits, although after the first two hours of having his spirits lifted, Greg decided the boy was most likely only in a good mood because he knew he was annoying Greg to no end.

  “What do you call a dragonslayer who gets sliced by a swinging dragon’s tail?” Melvin asked now. It was just one of dozens of horrible dragonslayer jokes Greg had been forced to endure for the past two hours. Greg refused to bite, but Melvin was not put off.

  “Twins.”

  Marvin chuckled, as he had with each of Melvin’s jokes. Lucky and Priscilla, on the other hand, seemed no more impressed than Greg was.

  “Don’t you get it?” said Melvin. “He got sliced in two, see.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I got it.”

  “Well, how about this? Did you hear about the dragonslayer who forgot to jump out of the way of the swinging dragon’s tail?” Greg pretended he wasn’t listening, but still Melvin continued. “He was beside himself over his mistake.”

  This time Marvin openly snorted, while Melvin flew into a fit of laughter over his own joke. Greg tried to ignore the two of them but failed miserably, just as he failed to ignore each of Melvin’s next twenty-nine swinging-dragon’s-tail jokes, each remarkably worse than the last. Finally, to Greg’s relief, darkness settled in and forced the group to look for a place to camp.

  Dinner did not take long to prepare. Lucky pulled everything they needed, hot and steaming, from his pack.

  “Oh, no,” said Greg, as he sat down on a log to eat. “I forgot about Ruuan again.”

  “What about him?” asked Marvin.

  “We were supposed to wait for him back at your parents’ house. He was going to come get us once he finished his meeting.”

  Marvin looked puzzled. “I thought you wanted me to go with you.”

  “I do.”

  “So, what did you think? That we’d all just hop on the dragon’s back and he’d fly us back to Pendegrass Castle?”

  “Sure. That’s how we got to your place. There was plenty of room.”

  “You do know I’m a dragonslayer, right?”

  “Oh, right.”

  When Greg traveled the woods of Myrth on his last visit, each night after dinner he and the others had gathered with their walking sticks and honed their battle skills until they were too exhausted to stand. Tonight Greg was too exhausted to stand before they even finished dinner. The others agreed.

  “You carry a bedroll?” Marvin asked when Lucky began to unpack his magic knapsack.

  “You sound surprised,” said Lucky.

  “Well, being a famous dragonslayer, I have my pick of accommodations whenever I stop in populated areas,” he boasted, “but when I tour the back reaches, as we’re doing today, I live off the land. We dragonslayers have to know how to make do with what little we can find.”

  Greg looked Marvin over. He supposed with a sword in one hand, a shield in the other and wearing only a loincloth and a bear, it would be difficult to carry much more. “Did you pack a bedroll for me too?” he asked Lucky.

  “Of course,” Lucky said, pulling a second from his bag and handing it to Greg. The two laid out their bedding close together, but not so close, they soon found, as to prevent Priscilla from rolling hers out between them. The Greathearts gathered enough leaves to pad the ground and block out the wind, but within seconds Melvin’s teeth were chattering so loudly, it would have been impossible for anyone to sleep.

  “Want my bear?” Marvin asked, but Melvin wasn’t having any part of it. Besides, the critter ran off as soon as Marvin set it down. “How about my shield?”

  Melvin accepted the shield and curled up under it, looking quite snug beneath the unsurpassed protection of its insulating dragon scales. But that left Marvin to tough out the cold without even his shield to block the wind. He nestled as deeply as he could in the gathered leaves, but even Myrth’s greatest hero had his limits. In the end he squeezed inside Lucky’s pack, and the others didn’t hear from him again until morning.

  Snug within the heavy bedroll Lucky had provided, Greg could still feel the frigid wind whipping through their campsite. He was even gladder than normal when Rake snuggled up beside him, and he longed for morning, when the sun would bring an end to the paralyzing cold.

  But the following day dawned colder than the night.

  “I’m not coming out till you light a fire,” Marvin called from the depths of Lucky’s pack. When he finally did emerge, he brought with him a coil of rope and used it to cinch the boys’ bedrolls around himself for warmth. Then the five travelers huddled together for breakfast, exposing their bare fingers only long enough to eat a large stack of blueberry waffles, also from Lucky’s pack.

  “You have waffles here?” Greg asked.

  Lucky grinned. “You mean there’s a name for these? I just used my talent to prepare something I thought you might enjoy.”

  “Hey, mine are full of dents,” Melvin said. “What’d you do in there, Marvin, walk all over them?”

  “Waffles always look like that,” Greg explained, after which Melvin seemed to enjoy them more.

  After breakfast they had no more than started out before they approached a cave cut into a huge wall of rock. Marvin stopped just short of the entrance and asked Lucky for the eternal torch.

  “Where are we?” Greg asked.

  The torch burst into flames the moment Lucky removed it from his pack. He handed it to Marvin, who accepted it gratefully before answering, “The start of the quick way.”

  Greg peered into the darkness of the cave. “What’s in there?”

  “Relax, Greghart. This is the northern entrance to Guttering Torch Caverns. There’s an exit to the south no more than a quarter mile from here.”

  “Great, but what’s in there?”

  “No monsters, I can tell you that much. Way too dangerous for them to go wandering about.”

  Greg studied Marvin’s face, hoping to spot evidence he was joking. “Isn’t that what we’re about to do?”

  “Yes, but we have an eternal torch, and we’ll be wandering with a purpose. Now, you’ll want to stay close. One misstep and . . . well, best if you latch onto me.”

  Priscilla threw her arms about Marvin’s waist so quickly she nearly knocked him over.

  “Great. Now, the rest of you too. That’s it. Okay, here we go.”

  The five of them shuffled through the entrance into total darkness.

  “What happened to the torch?” Greg asked.

  “Oh, it’s burning. Give it a moment.”

  Greg stood motionless waiting for something to happen. Eventually he saw the faintest glimmer of light and recognized it as the flame of the eternal torch. Apparently, Guttering Torch Caverns was filled with extraordinary darkness.

  “Quickly now,” said Marvin, and th
ey began shuffling through the dark, following a twisted path that only Marvin could identify. They managed only a few feet before the dull flame guttered and expired. The resulting blackness pressed against Greg’s eyes. He moved his toe slightly and heard a stone fall. For several long moments it could be heard bouncing off the rock below until eventually the sound died away.

  “Don’t anyone move,” advised Marvin.

  Greg didn’t think the warning was necessary. “Our torch died,” he felt a need to point out.

  “Yes, they’ll do that. Good thing we’re not using an ordinary torch or we’d be in real trouble right about now.”

  They waited in total silence for several more seconds during which Greg was sure he heard the faint sound of a stone falling. “Is something supposed to happen?” he asked. No sooner had the words left his mouth than the torch rekindled to its previous state, casting barely enough light to reveal Marvin’s hand.

  “Hurry along, then,” Marvin called out, and the five of them shuffled another dozen feet before the fire flickered away again.

  “This is the quick way?” asked Lucky.

  “Oh yes.”

  Darkness had already fallen by the time the group emerged, starving and tired, from the caverns. Even so, the night sky was like a beacon of brightness compared to the gloom within.

  They camped just inside the cave, figuring nothing was likely to successfully negotiate the caverns to attack them from the north. After a much-needed meal, Greg thought about practicing his chikan, but he’d been on his feet without a moment’s rest since they entered the caverns. That, along with Melvin’s endless banter, left him too exhausted. Who would have thought the boy could have come up with another eighty-three jokes about swinging dragon tails?

  Oddly, it was Melvin who spent breakfast grumbling as if angry with the others.

  “What’s got into you this morning?” Lucky asked him.

  Melvin scowled, but not at Lucky, at Greg. “The princess told me about the next prophecy,” he said in an accusatory tone.

  Greg blinked back at him. “Yeah, so?”

  “So, I don’t like the way you’re horning in on my brother’s territory again.”

  “I’m not horning in on Marvin’s territory.”

  “Yeah, Melvin,” his older brother said, exposing a patch of skin on the right side of his chest as he adjusted his bedrolls to cover the left. “I asked him to come along, remember?”

  “I was talking about this new prophecy,” said Melvin.

  Marvin tried unsuccessfully a few more times to cover up his bare spots, but all he had were the two bedrolls, and his chest was just too massive. Finally he gave up and devoted his energies to trembling. “What about it?” he asked Melvin. “Greghart is the one Simon mentioned. If anything, I’m horning in on his territory.”

  “Simon never mentioned him,” argued Melvin. “He said ‘the Hero who slayed Ruuan.’ Obviously the old coot has lost his mind.”

  Marvin shook his head. “How can you say that? Lucky told me Simon was spot on with his last predictions. Besides, prophecies are never wrong. You think I’d go trotting into dragons’ lairs if they were?”

  “Well, we’ll see,” said Melvin in a tone that left Greg wanting to sweep out the boy’s ankles with his walking stick.

  Even though Greg knew Melvin was right, the two didn’t speak again that morning—not such a bad fate when Greg recalled the dozens of obnoxious jokes Melvin had shared the day before. He took the opportunity instead to talk to Marvin as they hiked. Lucky and Priscilla joined in too, eager to hear about the dragonslayer’s many heroic deeds.

  But while Greg thought Marvin’s stories fascinating at first, about midway through the day, after listening to the dragonslayer go on and on about his accomplishments for hours, Greg was beginning to regret ever asking to hear the tales. At first he thought he was alone in his opinion, but he began to suspect otherwise when he spotted Lucky with his knapsack pulled down over his head.

  Priscilla, on the other hand, managed to remain rapt with attention. Too busy staring at Marvin to bother looking where she was going, she’d tripped over a dozen roots in the last hour alone. Each time, Marvin stabbed out a bronzed arm to catch her and lift her easily back to her feet, and each time, Priscilla mumbled something about not usually being so clumsy.

  “Now, a lesser man might have thought about running when he spotted the basilisk headed his way . . .” Marvin was currently boasting.

  “Yeah, probably a smart thing to do,” interrupted Greg. “Say, how much farther is it to the southern border?”

  “What?” said Marvin, looking unaccustomed to being cut off in the middle of a story. “Oh, about a day, I guess.”

  Greg thought he heard Lucky groan. Marvin didn’t notice. The dragonslayer cleared his throat, as if about to return to his tale, and Priscilla tripped over another root.

  Greg frowned. “How many trolls do you think we’ll see?”

  “What’s it matter?” Marvin said with a chuckle. “I’d be surprised if we found more than ten or twelve. Certainly not more than twenty.”

  “But isn’t twenty trolls worth a bit of caution?” Priscilla asked, clearly awed by the dragonslayer’s carefree attitude.

  “Hah. Just like a woman.”

  Marvin’s tone was just as condescending as his words, yet Greg wasn’t sure Priscilla even noticed. Of course, the dragonslayer was just getting started.

  “Don’t you worry your pretty little head, maiden. You can’t be expected to know anything beyond cooking and cleaning and looking good for your man. Nor should you need to. Not with the Mighty Greatheart here to protect you.”

  This time Greg did hear Lucky groan, and Priscilla not only appeared to notice Marvin’s tone, she looked as if she were the dragonslayer and was just now noticing how much Marvin looked like a dragon.

  “What’s your strategy going to be?” Greg blurted, before the dragonslayer could dig himself deeper.

  Marvin offered him a look Manny Malice often used in Mrs. Beasley’s classroom. “My what?”

  “How do you plan to fight the trolls?”

  “Oh. I’m just going to march right in and give ’em a taste of the Mighty Greatheart, that’s all. You don’t need much of a plan with trolls. They aren’t that smart.”

  “Well, marching right into a band of them doesn’t sound smart either,” Priscilla said with a huff. “I agree with Greg. I think we should have a plan.”

  The smile that had been plastered across Marvin’s face all day quickly faded. “Nonsense, maiden. You just stand out of the way and let me handle things.”

  “Maiden?” Fortunately Priscilla took to humming after that, and Greg doubted it was coincidence that the volume of her tune increased each time Marvin opened his mouth. Shortly afterward, the two of them dropped into a silence so thick Greg considered asking Melvin to tell more annoying jokes just to break the tension. At the last second Greg came to his senses.

  “Say, did I ever tell you about the dragonslayer who tried to fight two dragons with one hand tied behind his back?” Melvin offered anyway.

  “Not now,” both Greg and Lucky told him.

  Greg strode purposefully ahead. He was still congratulating himself when a loud rustling erupted from the brush, and it suddenly occurred to him he’d left more than Melvin behind—he’d left Lucky’s good fortune back there too. He froze in place as the rustling grew stronger.

  The noise cut off abruptly when Lucky and Melvin strolled up the path.

  “What’s wrong, Greg?” Lucky asked. “That monkeydog scare you?”

  “Huh?” Though no one had ever actually seen one, monkeydogs, Greg knew, posed little threat to humans. They preferred to stick to the sides of the trail, making impossibly loud noises for anything small enough to remain concealed by the brush. Even
so, Lucky was just assuming the noise hadn’t originated from something far worse.

  Melvin snickered, then let out a roar and slashed boldly at the bushes with his walking stick as he stomped past. Greg frowned and followed.

  That evening Greg, Lucky and Priscilla spent a short time practicing the chikan moves Nathan had taught them during Greg’s last visit. Greg found it hard to maneuver inside the heavy cloak Lucky had provided, but he practiced hard anyway, knowing his skills would need to be sharp if he was to have any chance of surviving his battle with the spirelings.

  Who was he kidding? It didn’t matter how sharp his skills were. The spirelings’ axes were sharper.

  “You’re not thinking of trying that on a troll, are you?” Melvin called out from the edge of the clearing. He and his brother looked on with interest, but neither joined in the fun.

  Focused on his meditations, Greg ran through one of his favorite drills, spinning his stick through the routine with a fluidity only his mentor, Nathan, could best. But Melvin just laughed long and loud, and soon Marvin joined in on the ribbing. Greg ignored them both, displaying great restraint when he continued to sweep his stick through thin air instead of redirecting it toward either of the hecklers. He supposed it was all for the best. If it hadn’t been for the annoyances, he’d have surely felt a lot guiltier when he was preparing for bed later and had to ask Marvin to give up the two bedrolls the dragonslayer was using to keep from freezing.

  The following morning Greg got up before daybreak so he could spend the first hour in peace while the others slept. Unfortunately, Marvin was an early riser, and as soon as he noticed Greg awake, he deemed it appropriate to begin sharing more of his adventurous tales.

  “Shh,” Greg said, “you’ll wake the others.”

  “Great, then they’ll be able to hear my tale as well.” Marvin smiled broadly. “I’m sure they wouldn’t want to miss out.”

  With that, the dragonslayer had set the tone for the rest of the morning. When Marvin wasn’t sharing his tales, Melvin was telling more of his annoying jokes. The two were so irritating, Greg actually began to look forward to meeting the trolls. According to Marvin, today he would get his wish.