by Finley Aaron
She peeked out to see what the fuss was. “We’re coming ashore,” she observed. “Where are we?”
Without waiting for an answer, she dressed hurriedly and slipped on her boots, strapping on her sword in case the commotion had to do with pirates or the merchant blockade.
Then came the tricky part—exiting the cabin without being seen. She and Henry had agreed that, along with keeping her identity a secret, they ought not let on that she was sleeping in the main cabin instead of below decks. With the rotating schedules for sleeping and rowing, this had not been a problem. And the one time a man saw Ella leaving the cabin (they usually had their backs to her when they rowed, or when on the lookout for gravel spits ahead), she happened to have a map in her hand, and waved it at him, explaining that she was fetching it for the prince.
Not that the man even questioned, or seemed to care.
Still, she didn’t want to be discovered or questioned with any sincerity, so she looked carefully about before exiting.
Henry was already up, having not yet retired to bed, and Ella spotted him trotting on dry ground alongside the boat.
She ran to the rear of her craft in time to see him alongside several other men, working to pull the second boat ashore.
“Where are we?” she asked Philip, who had come to watch the proceedings from the stern.
“Near to approaching Devin castle.” He pointed behind them, where distant torches shined like yellow stars in a line. “We came aground to avoid being seen, but there’s little for cover here. Once the sun’s up, they’re likely to spot us.”
Ella looked around and noticed that the side of the river where they had come aground was level floodplain, the fertile soil planted to grains right up to the riverbanks in every direction.
She hopped off the boat and trotted over to Henry, who had just finished helping to pull the second boat ashore, and was headed to the third.
“Shall I assemble the scouting party? We need to finish our reconnaissance before sunrise, or we’ll be seen and lose the advantage of pulling in to shore.”
“Do that, and hurry,” Henry agreed. “And don’t be misled if you return to this spot and see the boats gone. I allowed us to sail much too close to the castle in the darkness. There’s a grove of trees a few furlongs back downstream. We’ll try to row back that way and hide in their cover.”
“I’ll look for you there,” Ella agreed.
She and Henry had discussed their scouting party previously, and while the larger group had never reached any agreement, the pair of them (together with me, of course) had decided the “scouting party” should consist only of Ella and me.
After all, Bruce had forbidden Henry from going for fear he might lose his life, and neither of them wished to explain to even one more person that a magical fairy was going to be the only one doing the scouting.
So Ella ran down the riverbank, alone save for my tiny twinkle perched atop her right ear. She sprinted swiftly for two reasons—one, we didn’t know how long my reconnaissance might take, and she wanted to have the job completed before sunrise.
But equally important, she didn’t want any of Henry’s men to see her leaving, for fear they might try to come after her.
When she’d thought it through before, she’d remembered the floodplain as being rimmed with bushes all along the riverbank. These, she now realized, had been swept away by high waters in the years since last she’d traveled that way. So the cover she’d hoped would hide her, wasn’t there.
Which was probably why she didn’t get far before heavy footfalls and panting filled the air behind her.
“Hey there. Allard?” The approaching soldier at least had the good sense not to shout. He didn’t even whisper very loudly.
Ella thought about trying to outrun him, but there was nowhere to hide, and she didn’t want to jump into the river with her boots on (and if she took the time to take them off, of course he would catch up to her).
“Stop there, you.” The voice came again, closer this time. It sounded like Bruce, which made Ella cringe, because Bruce was one of Henry’s biggest critics, who treated him, not like a prince, but like a child in need of protection. No doubt the man viewed Allard much the same way.
With little other choice, Ella stopped and turned around, hoping against hope that the man behind her wouldn’t be Bruce.
Chapter Thirty
It was Bruce.
“Allard, Boy, where are you heading?”
“Scouting party. Henry sent me alone, since no one else could agree. I’ve got to hurry. I want to be back to the boats before sunrise.” She kept jogging down the riverbank toward the confluence.
“You can’t go alone,” Bruce protested, jogging alongside her. He wore his sword, as well, and kept one hand on the hilt as he ran.
“It’s more discreet this way.”
“What if something happens to you?”
“Look, I need to be going,” Ella insisted in her deepest, most authoritative voice, and picked up her pace. “I think Prince Henry may need your help with the boats. He talked about taking them back upstream to the cover of those trees. He’ll need every strong man he can get.”
“Nonsense.” Bruce kept up with surprisingly little effort. “He doesn’t need one more man—the men are tripping over each other, there’s so many of them already. You can’t scout out all of Devin castle all by yourself. You’ll be captured or drowned, or fall to your death from those cliffs. That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard, sending the smallest man on the boat all alone.”
They were nearly to the confluence by this time, so Ella slowed and looked up at Bruce. “Actually, it makes a great deal of sense to send the smallest person. They’re the least likely to be seen.”
Ella had been weighing her options all this time. She obviously wasn’t going to get rid of Bruce. She thought about signaling to me to fly on ahead—after all, I could fly fast as a streak and find her again whether she went back to the boats or stayed to wait for me on the bank.
But the truth of it was, she and Henry had discussed the possibility of bringing another person in on the secret of my existence. After all, it only made sense that more than one person go on the scouting party. Neither of them thought it wise to take Gustav. Not only was he still weak from the rushed trip to the river port, but no reasonable man would really think an eighty-year-old had swum the river, scaled a cliff, slipped past guards, and then done it all again in reverse without getting caught or going into cardiac arrest.
And since several men knew Allard as Bertie’s brother (many, like Dominic, were familiar with the pair from their tournament circuit years), Gustav was not needed to identify the location of the key merchant they sought to release.
When they’d tossed around the names of men who might be understanding of their choice to send a fairy godmother to scout for them, they’d never come up with a satisfying option.
Ella really didn’t see Bruce as a major contender for sympathetic co-conspirator, but by this point, he’d more or less foisted himself into the job. She had no desire to let him in on my true identity—fairy godmothers, after all, only exist for girls, and Ella didn’t want to spill all her secrets—but she decided the most expedient way to proceed, at that moment, was to explain the real plan.
She held out her hand. “The smallest person can go nearly undetected.”
Bruce looked as though he was about to laugh, but then he saw my glow.
I started out small as a twinkle, then grew to the size of a grasshopper on Ella’s upturned palm, keeping my glow to a bare minimum so I wouldn’t give us away to the watchmen at the castle.
“What is this witchcraft?” Bruce asked.
His response was not a reassuring one.
“This,” Ella explained patiently, “is our scout. She can fly.”
I did so, circling Bruce’s head once, swiftly, before returning to my perch on Ella’s hand.
“So, we don’t have to swim the river or climb the c
liffs. She can get in and out of the castle without being seen, and report back to us exactly what’s going on over there.”
“Exactly what’s going on over there, is that men are asleep. She’s not going to learn anything.”
“She’ll learn where the merchants are chained, and plot us a route to reach them.”
“She’s a bug,” Bruce snarled, looking as though he might try to swat me at any moment.
“Go on, little scout,” Ella called to me, before Bruce could swat me.
I flew swiftly, eager to be on with my task. When I reached the old fortress, I looked back, just once, to see Ella and Bruce with swords drawn, locked in furious battle. Ella appeared to be holding her own just fine, as well I knew she could after so many tournament fights, and since I doubted there was little I could do to aid her against Bruce, I flew like a stray spark over the heads of the guards, through the tiny barred window set high in the wooden door, and down the hall, following my nose.
The smell was atrocious, as was the sound. It was a kind of collective moaning, a human anguish that had grown so intolerable it became audible. There was a rattle of chains like a haunting, a few quiet sobs, the occasional desperate cry…but mostly, there was the moaning.
I flew above their heads, moving as swiftly as I dared, scanning each face for the one I sought. My stomach churned at the sight of them—cheeks hollowed from hunger, hair unkempt and almost certainly crawling with bugs, stinking of sweat, the rotten breath of hunger, and their own filth.
But what startled me most of all was that none of them looked like the type of man you’d expect to see chained in a dungeon. These were not hardened criminals or even revolutionaries. These were merchants. Working men, used to travel, they had once been fit and well-dressed.
They were also, many of them, young. Bertie, being a year younger than Ella, was only fifteen, but I judged some of the boys in the dungeon to be younger than that. Most of them were dozing, braced against the wall, unable to lie down because of the shackles at their wrists.
I looked for young faces with pale hair, steeling myself for the way Bertie might look when I finally found him, but I spotted another familiar face first.
“Rolf!” I was so shocked, I yelped his name aloud.
He awoke and looked at me blearily. “Sweet angel of death, have you come for me?” he whispered.
“Merciful heavens, I’m not the angel of death. I’m your ticket to freedom.”
“Freedom?” Rolf questioned, his voice rough and dry. “The only ones who get out of here are carried out. Dead. Three more last week. Don’t let the shackles rub you. Infection sets in. It’s not a pretty way to die.”
That was the other scent I smelled, on top of all the others. Infected flesh. It turned my stomach, and I resolved that we wouldn’t just free Bertie or even Bertie, Rolf, and their friends.
I couldn’t leave any of these men and boys behind, not to face a death like that.
“Don’t you worry, Rolf. We’re going to get you out of here. Now, where’s Bertie?”
“Bertie of Caprese?” Rolf spoke the name a little louder, calling it out as though asking for his friend.
“Here, Rolf. Still here. Go back to sleep.”
Before Bertie was quite done speaking, I’d flown over to him.
He recognized me immediately, and his face brightened. “Fairy Godmother?” he whispered with excitement.
“Yes, it’s me.” I kept my voice down as well, hoping the sleeping men beside us would not awaken or cause a commotion. I had too much to do to waste any time with a commotion. “Your sister’s here with Prince Henry and a hundred and fifty men. We’re going to free you all, but I need you to tell me how best to do it.”
“The guards at the main doors have keys. Knock them out, take their keys, unlock us, and we can all run out the door, roll down the hill, and swim away to freedom.”
“Can everyone swim?”
“I doubt it. You’d need rafts, then, or boats, or something to float them on.”
“Are they strong enough to do it?” I’d been studying Bertie’s face as we talked. He wasn’t in as bad of shape as the men and boys I’d passed when I’d first entered. He hadn’t been there as long.
“Most of them, if they don’t have an infection. They do feed us once a day, a big pot of gruel with a wooden spoon. They walk down the line and shove each man a bite, one after the other, and walk back and forth until the food’s all gone. We get water morning and evening, much the same way. It’s not much, but we’ve enough strength to roll down a hill and away.”
“Good, good,” I said. “Now, where are the carts and horses? Are they still being held at Pressburg as before?”
“They were when last I saw them, but that’s been weeks.”
“How heavily are they guarded?”
“Guarded? The horses have barely enough men assigned to them to keep them fed. They’re not brushed down nor hardly cared for. As for the carts, there were a handful of guards that I saw. We thought about trying to take them, but Father insisted we do right by the law, sham law that it is, and present our papers to the officials. Not only did they turn us down, they arrested us on the spot. We resisted. Father was killed.”
By the time he reached the end of his story, Bertie was weeping silent tears.
So it was true, then, about Robert. I knew Ella had harbored some hope her father might still be alive, but Bertie had watched him die. It wasn’t just a lie from Thomas.
“Bertie, I’m so sorry. Your father was a great man. We’re not going to let you die here. If you can, spread word among the men—but quietly, so the guards don’t overhear. Tell them we’re coming, under the cover of darkness, if we can. Possibly even yet tonight. What do you know of the political situation?”
“Ah, that’s the one good to come from this dungeon. Some of the prisoners are here because they don’t agree with what’s going on. They’re quite vocal about it, so I’ve learned many things. Here’s the heart of it, though. Did you notice any pirates on the river?”
“None. We thought that odd.”
“Quite odd. It’s because they’ve all been bought off to help with a different level of piracy. None of the local kings actually favor what’s going on. Pressburg, Devin, none of the surrounding kingdoms want the trade routes stopped, but they’re powerless against the combined efforts of the Saracens. The Saracens, through the efforts of their armies and the pirates, have stopped trade. None of the kings dare resist them, because they’ve infiltrated their castles and have threatened to kill all their families.”
“That’s awful!”
“Yes, but it’s not just the wealth of the trade routes they’re after, and it’s not just the Saracens behind it. They couldn’t afford the kind of war they’re waging. Someone’s bankrolling it—we just don’t know who. There’s rumors it might be Richard, the king’s brother, trying to use this situation to help him gain the crown. That much makes sense, but how could he ever afford it?”
“He’s doubled everyone’s taxes, paid the king his usual sum, and kept all the rest for himself,” I explained swiftly. “Enough to start a war. I don’t dare linger. We need to get you out of here and put a stop to all of this.”
“If we can get the merchant carts through to Charmont, Richard will fail,” Bertie agreed. “But the Saracens have warriors aplenty, and they’ll come after you. Cavalry run far faster than merchant caravans.”
“I know, Bertie. But we’ve got to try. Tell the others. We’ll be back for you soon!” the last bit I called over my shoulder as I shot off like a tiny flash toward Pressburg.
A swift circle of the corral and impound yards told me everything I needed to know, and I flew back to the bank where I’d left Ella fighting with Bruce.
She had the tip of her sword against his leather armor, and held it there, panting, while she made her demands in a growling whisper.
“You will not breathe a word of the fairy to the other men. Not a word. You will follow Henry
into battle with no hesitation, and enthusiastically support his every command.”
Bruce gritted his teeth and looked pained in the face, but nonetheless agreed. “I promise.”
“You will not question me, you will not question our tactics, and you will not do anything to cause even so much as a single man to doubt for one moment that this mission will be anything other than a rousing success. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Sir. Of course.”
By this time, I’d flitted across Ella’s line of vision so that she’d seen me.
“Fairy G—” She swallowed the second half of my usual title, recovering quickly. “You’re back sooner than I thought.”
“I found your brother. It’s all quite straightforward. He’s in the dungeon at the top of the cliffs. There are two guards at the main door. The carts and horses are just where Gustav said they were. I think we need to go tonight, before our enemies realize we’re here. If we catch them unaware, we’ll have the advantage. If they have time to assemble a defense, they’ll outnumber us a hundred to one, and we’ll all be cut down.”
Ella nodded once, sharply. “Let’s get back to Henry, then,” she insisted, and withdrew her sword from Bruce’s chest in the same motion as she struck out to run for where we’d left the boats.
Bruce fell into step beside her. As they ran, I quickly informed them of what Bertie had told me regarding the Saracens and Richard’s plot.
“I knew Richard was up to something,” Bruce said.
Given that he was a bit out of breath from running, I couldn’t tell from his voice if he meant the words, or if he actually felt the opposite, and was only saying what he did in an attempt to throw us off.
It was an important question, no doubt, but given that an answer would not be readily forthcoming, I focused my attention on the rescue mission at hand. I’d no sooner explained to Ella about Bertie’s thoughts of boats and rafts, than we reached the barges just as Henry was getting the men back on board to attempt to row upstream, around the bend, and out of sight.