by Julie Leung
“I know,” Calib whispered. “But it’s definitely weasel musk.” His ears prickled. Even his tail felt stiff with anxiety. “The weasels must be close.”
“We should see what they’re up to,” Cecily said.
They ducked under an elderberry bush with ice clinging to its branches, and fought their way through a tangle of brambles. Calib’s nose was twitching, and his eyes watered from the stench.
Suddenly, the musk grew much stronger. Calib stopped short. Peering around, he saw a small fire burning through the trees. There was not a creature in sight. Calib motioned to Cecily, and she nodded. Together, they quietly approached the clearing from behind a small foothill.
Cecily jabbed Calib in the ribs.
“Look!” she said under her breath.
What they had thought was a small hill was actually a towering stockpile of foodstuffs. Everything from satchels of dried berries and acorns to slabs of dried honeycomb and fish were heaped in a large mound.
“There must be enough food here to last an entire winter,” Cecily whispered, her eyes round with awe.
“What do you want to bet that it’s all been stolen?” Calib thought of Valentina and her hungry tribe.
“Do you hear that?” Cecily’s soft ears quivered, trying to catch what she was hearing. There was nothing but stillness and then . . .
Calib gasped. “Are those . . . Two-Legger voices?” he asked, shock making his voice louder than he intended. “What are the Two-Legger knights doing so deep in the Darkling forest?”
Cecily shook her head. “I don’t think they are from Camelot.”
Cautiously, Calib crept toward the stockpile and peered around it. A strange shimmering in the air seemed to separate them from an army of a hundred men and women gathered around in groups, their weapons gleaming in the light of several campfires. Calib found it hard to look at the group directly.
In the flickering glow, Calib could just make out the flags on top of the armies’ tents: white dragons against a red backing.
The Saxons were back in Britain.
Calib was stunned. At last, everything made sense: the owls’ migration, the crows’ fear, the forest stripped of food.
At last, he could give a name to the evil advancing toward Camelot.
Suddenly, something grabbed Calib from behind and pinned his arms behind him. He saw another shape lunge out from the shadows for Cecily.
“Cecily, watch out!”
A smelly bag was thrown over his head. He could hear wicked laughter around him.
“Well, look at what we have here—a coupl’a mousling thieves!” one of his captors cackled in a strange accent. “Dumb ones, too, walking downwind like that—could smell them from a mile away! They’ll fetch a grand ransom, indeedy!”
The weasel scent was as strong as it had ever been, and Calib knew without a doubt that it was weasels who had found them.
“Take them to the Manderlean first!” hissed another voice.
“Aye, he will know what to do with them,” the first voice replied. Then it let out a sharp yelp.
“Aiiiii! This one’s got a sword!” it shouted. “Help!”
A tussle began to unfold just a few feet from Calib. He could hear more shouts of pain as Cecily made quick use of her weapon. His training taking over, Calib head-butted his captor hard in the chin and shoved him off-balance.
Ripping the bag from his head, he saw Cecily taking on a weasel with a torn ear. Blood already trickled from a gash on the weasel’s side. He held a cutlass and was swiping at Cecily, who deflected each attack. Calib’s captor—also a weasel, but with a tufted tail—was still bent over, winded.
Calib charged Tuft-Tail, sack in paw. He pulled the bag over the weasel’s head and pushed the creature to the ground. The weasel dropped the cutlass. Calib ran back toward Cecily.
But Cecily was already headed in his direction.
“Run!” she shouted to Calib. “To the river!”
He reached out and grabbed Cecily’s outstretched paw. Together, they sprinted as fast as they could through the trees. Calib couldn’t see anything. Any second, he expected to run into a wayward branch or trip over a rock.
Behind them, the voices of their pursuers grew louder.
“They’re gaining!” Calib gasped. His legs would not be able to keep up very much longer with Cecily’s sprinting. His pace began to slow.
“Calib, come on!” Cecily pulled at his arm, urging him to keep up.
Calib heard a crackling from underneath them. They were walking on nothing but thin twigs crisscrossed over a giant hole.
“Cecily, wait!”
It was too late. The ground gave way underneath their paws. With a loud snap, they plunged into darkness.
Cecily and Calib landed on the spongy forest floor a few feet below. Disoriented, Calib saw they had fallen into a trap.
“What is this?” Cecily whispered. Calib shushed her and pulled them both against the closest wall.
What little moonlight shining in from above was snuffed out. An enormous shadow loomed above and then scooped them up with a massive paw.
CHAPTER
27
Calib and Cecily were frozen, momentarily speechless as they stared snout-to-snout with their fearsome and gigantic captor.
Berwin Featherbane. Berwin the Beastly, the Vicious, the Cruel.
The bear appeared unimpressed with his catch. His glittering eyes narrowed with confusion. He sniffed at the two mice in his paw.
“Say something,” whispered Cecily through her teeth.
“H-Hello, Master Berwin,” Calib stuttered.
The bear growled, a deep rumbling that seemed to vibrate through his entire body. He puffed a gust of hot, fishy breath into their faces and tossed Calib and Cecily into the burlap sack he had been carrying over his shoulder. They tumbled around in the dark and landed alongside two dead trout.
“Well, that could have gone better,” Calib said, recoiling from the feel of the slick scales.
“We’re going to reek for weeks—the smell will never come out of my fur!” lamented Cecily as she tried to balance on top of a fish eye. She slipped and landed with a plop.
If we get out of here, Calib nearly said. But he bit his tongue.
After much bouncing and jostling, Berwin came to a stop. The top of the bag opened, and all its contents pitched forward. Cecily and Calib spilled out, coughing and gasping for fresh air, into a wooden basin.
Calib peered through a crack in the wood. They had arrived in a cozy, underground den, circular in shape and insulated with wattle. The room was sparse and undecorated, except for a suit of bear-shaped armor that hung like a prized antique against the far wall.
Without a word, Berwin leaned down to rekindle a dying fire in the hearth. He took a pipe from the mantel and lit it using a piece of tinder. A new smell filled Calib’s nose—sweet, dried dandelion smoke, the kind that his grandfather had liked to smoke after a stressful day of council meetings.
He could see Berwin clumsily puffing on the wooden pipe. The bear sat hunched on a stump, his paunch sagging over his thighs. His brown shaggy fur was matted, tangled, and tinged with gray hairs. Scores of pale scars raked across his back. Calib’s heart ached at the sight of so many old wounds.
This was not the monster from the stories he had heard in his childhood. This was a forlorn and weary bear, sitting all alone in his cave.
Calib gathered his courage. “Excuse me,” Calib squeaked from the basin. “Can we ask you a question?”
“I only answer questions after I’ve had dinner,” the bear groused, not bothering to look at him. “And you two make a pretty measly appetizer.”
Cecily gripped her rapier tightly, but Calib shook his head. They would never be able to use force against him. Calib climbed as high as he could onto the lip of the sink and cleared his throat.
“That’s a shame,” Calib called out with forced casualness, “because there’s trouble coming to the woods, and you’re going to need our help!”
“Ha!” Berwin replied. “Your help. That’s rich.” He shook his head. “Besides, you don’t know the half of it.”
“We know the Saxons are back,” Cecily said, climbing up next to Calib.
Berwin’s ears perked up a bit. “You’ve seen them too, eh?” He sniffed in their direction. “I thought their little bit of cloaking magic had everyone fooled. You must have been able to slip right under it, as small as you are.”
“Magic?” Calib repeated. This, of all things, was not what he’d expected Berwin to say. There used be spells, but he had thought all magic had left Camelot when the Two-Legger wizard Merlin had gone missing.
Berwin nodded glumly.
“But the Saxons were driven off the island years ago,” Cecily said. “Why are they back?”
“Same reason as before.” Berwin exhaled a cloud of smoke, so he looked like a smoldering dragon. “Not enough food in their homeland. But unlike last time, now they advance on Camelot with vengeance in their hearts. They still blame Arthur for the death of King Lot. The Two-Leggers still believe that Britain belongs to them.”
A smoke ring floated above Calib’s head, bringing with it the memory of the enemy’s campfires.
“And now they’ve brought their weasels with them, to eat all the berries and kill all the fish,” Berwin continued. “Weakening the Camelot Two-Leggers before they attack . . . and leaving me extremely hungry.”
“If all this is true,” Calib said slowly, “we will need to work together to defeat the weasels first. We need the owls and the Darklings to stand together with Camelot! We need you as well!”
The bear made a sound halfway between a cough and a wheeze, and for a moment, Calib thought Berwin was choking. It was only when his upper lip curled back in a terrifying grin that Calib realized Berwin was laughing.
“If you two think there’s any hope of change here in these old woods, then you’re more foolish than I thought,” the bear said, swiping his eyes with a paw. “The grudge between Camelot and the Darklings runs deeper than the roots of the oldest trees. That will never change.”
“We can’t just sit here and do nothing,” Calib said hotly. “Everyone’s lives are at stake—Camelot and Darkling, man and animal, even yours!”
“My life has always been at stake.” The bear waved his paw dismissively. “Tell me something new.”
“I thought the bear was the symbol of bravery and strength,” Calib said, letting his temper get the better of him. “It’s a symbol painted on the Two-Legger shields. But you’re . . . you’re not brave at all!”
At this, Berwin stood and stormed at the wooden basin. The ground shook underneath his gigantic paws. Seeing his fearsome yellow teeth bared, Calib and Cecily fell back against the fish, terrified.
“Don’t speak of what you don’t know!” Berwin roared, flecks of spittle hitting the mice like raindrops. His eyes were wild and full of pain. “Bravery did me no good when the Two-Leggers came and killed my family! Caring did no good in the arena when I had to kill to survive!”
Calib had struck a raw nerve. The bear was seething, and his muzzle twisted with uncontrollable anger. Pity and fear swirled in Calib’s gut.
“Why would I come to the defense of men?” Berwin continued to rage, spitting out his last word like a curse. “They slaughter my kind for sport. With their ceaseless hunting . . . For all I know, I may be the last bear left!”
Berwin yelled so loudly, Calib and Cecily had to cover their ears. He threw his pipe against the wall, and it cracked into two. Then he staggered toward the wall, leaning heavily against it, exhausted.
Calib’s heart was humming in his throat. And despite their great difference in size, he thought he understood the bear, at least a little. As the last Christopher, he too could imagine what it felt like to lose so much. Berwin was not born a villain; he was made one.
“Because it’s the right thing to do,” Calib said in a hushed voice. “Because justice looks different from revenge.”
“King Arthur freed you . . . and he’s a man,” Cecily chimed in.
“He should have killed me instead,” Berwin said hoarsely. He looked up at the mice, his eyes gleaming with some unspoken sadness. He picked up his broken pipe and threw it into the fireplace. “Why bother with anything when you’re the last of your kind?”
“There is always hope. If you help us, we’ll help you find other bears.”
Berwin Featherbane looked at the two mice and heaved a big sigh. He stared at his old armor, his gaze lost in the trenches of some painful memory.
“Fight with us,” Calib pressed. “Our futures depend on it.”
For a second, Berwin seemed to be considering it. Then he snarled.
“My future is simply my next meal,” Berwin said, licking his chops. “And two bony mice are better than no mice.”
Calib became aware of the smoke and fish smell still lingering in his fur as Berwin’s large black nose hovered above them. The bear inhaled deeply, and Calib hoped with all the pads on his paws that he and Cecily didn’t smell like a well-cooked meal.
Suddenly, Berwin grabbed Calib and Cecily in one enormous claw, and Calib banged his nose against Cecily’s head as the bear lumbered to the exit.
“What are you doing?” Cecily shouted, kicking her feet frantically. Calib grabbed pawfuls of the bear’s wiry hair and yanked, but a mouse’s strength was no match against a full-grown bear.
Then, without warning, the bear stopped. He dropped Calib and Cecily on the ground. Gasping, Calib rolled over onto his back and saw stars winking at him through the web of trees. They were out of Berwin the Beastly’s den.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen beasts with courage,” the bear said, his voice rough. “I will not fight for Camelot—but I will not eat you, either. Not today, anyway.”
The old bear turned and shuffled back down the dark passage to his lonely home.
Hardly daring to believe it, Calib took a moment before he could find his voice.
“We’ll come back!” he called after the lumbering shadow, his paws cupped around his mouth. “We promised to help find more bears like you, and we will!”
But either Berwin didn’t hear him, or he pretended not to, for the bear did not reemerge.
Calib felt a tug on his cloak and looked over at Cecily to see the moon reflected in her wide, brown eyes.
“Calib,” she said, paw on her rapier’s hilt. “Where are we?”
CHAPTER
28
By the time Galahad reached the final steps to the aviary, he was out of breath. Located high in the chapel’s bell tower, right below the bells themselves, the aviary housed a flock of larks that served as Camelot’s fastest messengers.
As Galahad entered the turret, he marveled at the hanging birdcages suspended by wires from the ceiling beams. He stood for a moment, mesmerized by the rustling of wings and soft coos of sleeping larks. It wasn’t yet sunrise, and Galahad knew they wouldn’t wake for a little while longer. Still, it was better to wait here for dawn than to toss and turn in his bed, haunted by dreams of fire and blood.
Stepping carefully around the bird droppings that littered the ground, Galahad unrolled a piece of parchment from his pocket. Holding it up to a flickering lantern, he double-checked his message to Sister Agatha for accuracy.
Sister Agatha was St. Anne’s head librarian and a precise grammarian. She would not take kindly to a message that was less than perfect, especially from her worst pupil. More than once, Galahad had been subjected to one of her fiery lectures on properly using commas. Nevertheless, Sister Agatha’s library was pristinely kept and contained the most thorough account of the kingdom’s history. If anyone could tell Galahad more about the Saxons, it would be her.
Galahad had tried the castle’s library first, but Camelot did not have Sister Agatha to keep its records neat and organized. It seemed like mice had chewed through many of the pages related to the Saxons from the books and scrolls, making them unreadable.
Galahad sighed, his breath clouding in front of him. He wondered what it would have been like to run away. He wished he did not care about what happened to the castle and its people, but he knew what it felt like to be abandoned. In that way, he didn’t want to be like his father.
Movement against the sky caught his eyes. Squinting, Galahad thought he could make out wings, but they were too small to belong to an owl. With a gasp, he realized it was a returning messenger lark struggling against the winter wind, which seemed determined to knock the bird out of the sky. It was highly unusual for a lark to fly in the night.
Galahad waved his arm out the window.
“Come on! You’re almost here!”
The bird persevered. It alighted on the window ledge and promptly collapsed from exhaustion. Its chest heaving, the lark tried to kick off a tattered roll of parchment that was attached to its leg. Gently, Galahad removed the message. The paper was badly damaged by rain, and it was burned on one side.
Galahad carefully scooped up the tired bird and placed it in a cage replete with water and paper bedding before turning his attention back to the message.
Most of the ink had run together, but Galahad could make out three blurry words that turned him cold with dread: “danger,” “rumors,” and “prepare.”
CHAPTER
29
They were lost—completely and hopelessly lost.
The only thing Calib was certain of was that they were now most definitely in Darkling territory.
“Let’s try to find the river,” he said, picking a fish scale off his fur. “When General Gaius doesn’t find us, he’ll probably look around the riverbanks.”
“But which way?” Cecily asked, tucking her shivering paws into the folds of her cloak. “If we choose incorrectly, we might run into the Darklings before Gaius returns with Merlin’s Crystal. And without the crystal, Leftie will probably kill us on sight—especially if he finds out Camelot broke the treaty and imprisoned a Darkling crow.”