The Orphan King (Merlin's Immortals)

by Brouwer, Sigmund

“Let go,” Thomas said, trying to pull himself loose. He was astonished at the knight’s strength and at the futility of his attempt. “I have plenty of gold!”

  “Certainly I’ll let go,” William said in a laughing voice. “Once I have you back where you belong.” He shook his head at the farrier. “He’s a nice enough boy but suffers delusions that make it difficult on his mother.”

  The farrier grinned in return. “Better your problem than mine.” He stepped to the other side of the horse and lifted the other hind foot.

  William kept what appeared to be a friendly arm on Thomas’s shoulder and moved him away, well out of earshot. Then he hissed, “Want us all arrested?”

  “I want two horses,” Thomas said. He shook himself loose. Rather, it seemed as though William allowed him to shake loose. “It will cut our travel time in half.”

  “Or perhaps now that you have more gold than you can spend, you want the status that comes with sitting on a horse as all the peasants scatter out of your way?”

  Thomas fought a tinge of guilt. He had pictured himself in a noble posture atop a horse’s back. After years of enduring harsh treatment by the monks, didn’t he deserve the elevation that would come with a horse?

  “I don’t need you to lecture me,” Thomas said.

  “How about to give you some perspective that will save your life?”

  “I—”

  “You don’t have a choice in this. I won’t tell you what to decide. Ever. But you’d better have as many facts as possible before you make a choice. So my role will be to supply you with facts that you don’t have. After that, if you prefer suicide, I’ll not stop you.”

  “Suicide? That’s a harsh—”

  “Suicide. First, we had agreed that it was a risk to travel through towns. All of us are fugitives, after all.”

  “I’m no fugitive.”

  “No? What’s a judge going to say after discovering that you assisted the escape of three people condemned to the gallows? You’re as stuck with us as we are stuck with you.”

  Thomas had no reply to this.

  “And you were about to flash a year’s wages of gold in front of that farrier. Think that wouldn’t get some gossip going? Then he’d wonder how someone in garb barely better than suits a peasant managed to secure the gold. He’d have asked plenty of questions after that. If not to you, then to all he meets. And among them would be those who would decide you were a nice fat goose that needed plucking. And in defending ourselves from them, again, we’d draw attention to ourselves. Is attention what you want?”

  Thomas shook his head.

  “Even if the farrier was discreet and said nothing about a young man carrying enough gold to buy two horses and still have a full pouch of coin left over, you need to take into consideration how much more attention you would draw riding a horse through the countryside. Word would travel far faster than any horse, I promise. Might as well leave a trail of crumbs for anyone searching for us to follow.”

  “Enough,” Thomas said.

  “Enough? Hardly. Now imagine the reaction to those at the entrance to Magnus. Men approaching on horseback? Those are the kind of men with enough money and power to be a threat. No, lad, you want to appear weak. The more you are underestimated, the better it will suit you in battle.”

  “I meant enough said because I was wrong and you were right. You’d made your point. No sense beating me further.”

  “It felt like a beating, did it?” William said. He grinned. “Good. I meant it as one.”

  I’m glad for a warm summer evening,” William said, sitting on the trunk of a fallen tree.

  The group had traveled until the approach of dusk, then stopped on a hillside to eat cold duck and cheese and bread. Darkness was nearly upon them.

  “You have a reason for saying that,” Thomas told him. He sat farther down, not on top of the trunk of the fallen tree but leaning against it. “You always have a reason for everything, don’t you? And I’m guessing you are pointing out how pleasant it is because you’re about to tell us we’ll not build a fire. Best not to attract attention.”

  “Now that you mention it, there was a reason I insisted on the purchase of blankets,” William said.

  “Always a reason.” Thomas had not departed from the town with the magnificent horses of his dreams but a few knapsacks of sensible provisions. “And the reason for rope?”

  “Rope is something a man can always use. That’s enough reason.”

  The mute-and-deaf girl, who lay on her side on the ground, stared at the stars, oblivious as always to their conversation.

  “No fire?” John said. He perched beside William on the trunk and gave a theatrical shiver. “What’s going to keep away wolves and such?”

  “The heart of a brave man,” William said, patting him on the shoulder. “And that brave man is Thomas. He’ll stand guard half the night. I’m not near as brave, but I’ll stand guard the other half.”

  “No,” John said. “I’ll take half myself. If three of us each take half the night, it’s a burden easy to share.”

  “But if you add three halves,” Thomas began, “the total is—”

  William cut Thomas off. “The boy is right. Half the night for you as sentry. Half for me. And half for him.”

  John puffed out his chest, proud to be included. “And when I see a wolf, I’ll yell so loud it will run. And if it doesn’t, William has a sword and he’ll wake up in time. Right?”

  “Of course.”

  “But how many nights will it be like this?” John asked. “We can’t expect every night to be warm. If it rains, we’ll want a fire.”

  “A couple more nights,” William said. “Then we’ll reach Magnus.”

  “Magnus!” The mute-and-deaf girl whirled toward them. “Magnus!”

  John fell backward off the trunk, scrambled to his knees, and peered over the fallen tree. “She speaks.”

  “Indeed,” William said. “She does.”

  “She never told us she couldn’t speak,” Thomas said, happy for the chance to defend the enchanting woman who’d walked beside them their entire first day together in silence.

  “Of course not,” John said. “If a person says they can’t speak, it proves they can. But she pretended she couldn’t speak. That’s almost like saying so.”

  “People leave you alone if they think you are mute and deaf and have no wits about you,” the girl said. “I’ll not tell you the abuses I suffered until I learned to make myself someone that nobody would want for fear of an episode.”

  “Yet you speak now,” William said. “What is your name?”

  “Isabelle.”

  “Isabelle, why choose now to speak?”

  “Only to stop the madness,” she answered. “Magnus! Surely you’ve heard the stories about Magnus. We can’t go to Magnus. Anywhere but Magnus.”

  “Tell us the stories.” William spoke quietly.

  “It contains terrible secrets. Strangers who enter the castle never come out. Their bodies are roasted, fed to the peasants. There is witchcraft practiced openly, so it’s told.”

  “It’s just a castle,” Thomas said. He wished he’d been able to put more conviction into his voice.

  “Just a castle? It once was ruled by King Arthur himself! And you know where he got his power, don’t you? From a witch. Merlin.”

  “How do you know this?” the knight asked.

  Isabelle stood. “I’ve spent years listening. When people assume you are deaf, they talk as if you don’t exist.”

  “There is a grain of truth in her words, Thomas,” the knight said. “Magnus is more than an ordinary castle. Witchcraft and cannibalism, those are stories encouraged by those who live there to keep strangers away. But there is a certain darkness to it. Somehow, it remains a small kingdom of its own within the king’s realm of Britain. Not that it has ever officially been recognized as that. The lord pays taxes, to be sure, but not once in the last two centuries has any king tried to place authority directly upon i
t.”

  “That’s because the last king who tried it died a horrible death, eaten as if by invisible goblins,” Isabelle said. “Insects crawling out of his head as he begged for help.”

  William sighed. “No. But the king’s eldest son died in mysterious circumstances. And in his sorrow, the king left Magnus alone. And I must repeat, that was two centuries ago.”

  “Eaten by invisible goblins,” John echoed. “That’s mysterious.”

  “What’s mysterious is the broad range of human illnesses,” William said. “I’ve traveled the world, enough to know there are dozens of natural ways to die that seem like the act of an invisible hand.”

  “Nobody visits Magnus!” Isabelle said. “Nobody. It’s riddled with witches. I don’t care what the knight says against that.”

  “You’ll not be forced to go with us,” Thomas said.

  “What choice do I have? If I travel alone, I’m as good as dead. Please, please, let’s go anywhere but Magnus.”

  “I must,” Thomas said.

  “But why?”

  “Nothing matters to me more,” Thomas said. “And you will get no other answer from me than that.”

  “If we go to Magnus, then we die,” Isabelle said. She stood and turned away from them, her arms crossed, forming a silhouette against the stars. “Screaming, with insects crawling out of our heads as we fight for our last breaths. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  John let out a deep breath. “I have to say, it was better before, when she didn’t speak.”

  As they traveled through the forest, John roved ahead with the boundless energy of a puppy, and, like a puppy unsure of its master, he just as frequently ran back to check on the progress of the rest of the group.

  Thomas, William, and Isabelle walked in companionable lack of conversation.

  The canopies of tall trees on each side of the narrow road made it feel like they were walking through a hallway with an arched ceiling. Although the sun was at its highest point, the denseness of the forest and the thickness of the leaves overhead put them in shadow so dark it felt as if twilight were pressing upon them.

  The near silence was eerie too. Birds sang ahead of them and behind them but fell silent around them. Occasionally there would be a crashing sound in the underbrush away from the road, and Thomas could only guess—and hope—it was caused by a deer.

  There was no doubt who owned this land. The king of England.

  Otherwise, peasants too poor to own the iron for an ax head would have stripped the branches for firewood and pulled out the fallen trees. But the king’s land? For peasants, it wasn’t worth the risk of imprisonment to be caught off the road. The king’s gamekeepers wouldn’t even have to find them with firewood in their hands, or more damning, a bow with arrows. Leaving the road was considered intent of stealing from the king, whether dead wood for fireplaces or meat for the fires.

  As for the solitude, if there was no purpose in entering the forest, why waste time walking along the road? Peasants often lived and died without leaving a five-mile radius of the huts where they’d been born. They had no need to travel.

  Those who moved through the forest on the grassy road in places worn to dirt were those with money. Deep ruts from the thin wheels of coaches were a testament to that.

  This wealth made them attractive prey for bandits, men who lived in the forests and saw no reason not to kill the king’s deer as needed, men who knew that capture would result in execution and thus had little to lose by attempting brazen robbery. Indeed, all that would stop them from attacking a coach was the retinue of guards a nobleman could hire to travel with him through the king’s land.

  Thomas was well aware of all this; he’d heard plenty of tales from the monks during their drunken meals, jests about thieves captured and women taken as prey.

  Isabelle must have been equally aware. She moved beside Thomas and put an arm through his, clutching him close for protection.

  Thomas caught an amused glance from William. He pretended not to see it and matched his stride to Isabelle’s.

  Physical contact with her was entirely pleasant, and he found himself dreaming about how it might feel if she held him tight, her head against his chest, the softness of her hair against his chin. Or her lips brushing against his.

  These daydreams were much more than entirely pleasant.

  It irritated Thomas then, when John came dashing back toward them, waving his arms.

  “Hurry! Hurry!” he shouted from two paces away. “It’s a family! They’ve been robbed!”

  Isabelle gasped and pulled her arm away from Thomas. Another reason for him to be irritated at John.

  “Slow down,” William said.

  “I’m stopped,” John replied indignantly. “I can plainly see where you are, and I haven’t gone running past you like a madman.”

  “No,” William said in an even voice, “slow down your thoughts. Your voice. Collect yourself. If they’ve already been robbed, nothing we can do now will help them prevent the robbery.”

  John frowned at William, then spoke in a dead monotone at an exaggerated slow pace. “Hurry. Hurry. It’s a family. They’ve been robbed.” He cocked his head and grinned. “That better?”

  “Actually, yes. A panicked man inspires panic, just as a calm man inspires calm.”

  “Well, thanks for the lesson. But is that going to help the young woman get her clothes back?”

  John had been exaggerating, but only a little.

  The young woman had long black hair, messy like a bird’s nest. She sat beneath a tree, clutching an old blanket around her like a cape. Holes in the blanket showed that one of her shoulders was bare.

  “We barely got away,” the old man beside her told them. A hood covered much of his head. Gray hair stuck out like straw, and his face, in shadow, was smeared with accumulated dirt and grease. He spoke in a reedy, frail voice. “They had hold of her coat, and she had to slip out of it to run. As it was, they ripped her blouse. And we had to leave everything behind. Everything. We’ll starve, to be sure.” The old man spit. “Bandits.”

  Thomas felt a sharp jab in his left buttock. He bit off a yelp and glared at William, who had just used the end of his knife to prod him.

  “Eyes to yourself,” William growled in a low voice that only Thomas could hear. “It’s not fair, taking advantage of the woman’s indecency.”

  Thomas looked past the old man and his daughter to the fork in the road ahead. “Where did you come from?” he asked.

  The old man pointed at the road on the left. “There. They were waiting just beyond a stream. There’s a bend, and when we crossed the water and rounded the bend, they sprang out at us. Twenty of them or more. It was all we could do to save ourselves.”

  “Twenty,” John said. He held up his hands to count his fingers, then shook his head when he reached ten. “That’s more than this. Even if William takes ten of them, that leaves …” He thought briefly, but couldn’t come up with the number, and concluded, “That leaves too many for me and Thomas.”

  “You’d be fools to tangle with them,” the old man said. “Have you any money you can give us for saving you from grief?”

  “Grief?” William said.

  “Aye. Now you know which road to avoid. Take the road to the right and you’ll not be trapped. Instead of losing all that you have to them, perhaps you can give us a pittance as a reward.”

  Thomas reached into his shirt to pull out his pouch.

  He felt William put out a warning hand as he leaned into Thomas. “It’s that bare shoulder that’s addled you. Haven’t you learned? Keep your pouch hidden. Turn your back and find the smallest coin you have, then let’s be on our way.”

  Thomas changed his mind about offering a reward and pulled his hand out empty.

  “That’s better,” William said. “I’m glad I’ve been able to teach you a thing or two.”

  “I think instead,” Thomas said, “we should take back from the bandits what they stole from these t
ravelers.”

  Thomas reached the fork in the road before he realized William was not walking beside him but deliberately hanging back. When he glanced over his shoulder in curiosity, he saw that William had a restraining hand on John’s shoulder. Isabelle walked behind them, obvious worry across her beautiful face.

  “Well,” Thomas said to William, half-grinning, half-serious, “I suppose it’s better to find out here than at our destination what kind of man you are.”

  “You’re accusing me of cowardice.” It was said flatly.

  John squinted as he watched and waited for Thomas to react.

  “I’m accusing you of walking behind me as we approach a decision. You tell me if that’s cowardice.”

  John swiveled his head toward William.

  “Curiosity,” the knight said.

  “To find out whether I’m a coward?” Thomas asked.

  “I have no doubt about your bravery. You’ve firmly established that. Just wondering which road you’ll take after your brave declaration back there. The one with the bandits. Or the one without.”

  “You heard the old man. They attacked the girl, nearly ripped the clothes off her. Took everything they had.”

  The knight put a hand on each hip. “Is this a battle that belongs to you?”

  “They were robbed.”

  “It’s your duty to correct every injustice in the world?”

  “They were robbed! You have a sword and are a fighting man. I have my own sorts of weapons. We can find a way to defeat a few meager bandits. And if we can’t, what chance do we have against a castle?”

  “Robbery happens every day, and gangs of desperate men are on every road,” William said. He gestured around him, indicating the roads. “Why bother seeking Magnus? Spend all your days pursuing bandits.”

  “I am not on every road. I do not see every crime.” Thomas crossed his arms. “But the ones I see, I cannot ignore.”

  “Do you propose that if, somehow, we defeat these bandits, we herd them like cattle to a local sheriff and have them imprisoned? I thought you agreed that we should avoid towns because three of us are outlaws ourselves, escaped from the gallows. Bringing in bandits will likely result in a return to the gallows, you included for helping us escape.”