The Orphan King (Merlin's Immortals)

by Brouwer, Sigmund

  Lined with small stone towers on each side—small only in comparison to the twin towers of the gatehouse itself—thick walls guarded a steep approach to the castle entry.

  “If this gives a hint of the defenses, I can only guess at the treacherousness of the gatehouse itself,” William said. He opened his mouth to say something, then paused as a new thought struck. “Not even vespers, the sixth hour past noon. Yet this road is as quiet as if it were already dusk. No passersby. No farmers returning from the fields. No craftsmen to or fro. What magic keeps this castle road so quiet?”

  “What does it matter?” Thomas shrugged. “All we need to do is get within the walls as any passing strangers seeking a night’s rest. From there, we shall find the weakness of Magnus and complete my plan. As I have said, once we have this, it only makes it easier for us to keep—”

  “Don’t be a blind fool,” snapped William. “I am bound to you by a vow, but I will not follow you to certain death. Lords of manors like this have power and wealth beyond your greatest imagination. Inside those walls will be soldiers to jump at his every whim. It is a rule of nature that when men have power, they use it with joy, and also use it mercilessly to keep it.”

  “William,” Thomas said, unperturbed by the knight’s sudden anger, “not once have I given you any indication that I expected you to fight. I simply need your military knowledge.”

  Thomas thought of his book, still hidden safely at the abbey. “With you as advisor, I have ways of using my own powers …”

  “Then we shall proceed to the gatehouse,” William said. “But slowly. I do not like this situation at all.”

  As they began the journey across the narrow finger of land to the drawbridge, Thomas watched as William began to drag one foot and work enough spit into his mouth so that it drooled from his chin.

  A huge lattice wall of wood meshed with iron bars hung head high above the first opening past the drawbridge. Each iron bar ended in a gleaming spike.

  “Not good,” William whispered. “Someone cares enough to maintain those spikes in deadly order. An indication of how serious they are about security.” He motioned his head briefly at the shadows of two men standing at the next gate at the end of the stone corridor that ran between the portals. “All those soldiers beyond need to do is release a lever, and those spikes crash down upon us like a hammer of the gods.”

  Thomas held his breath. The gate remained in place as they passed beneath.

  William maintained his whispered commentary as he trudged and leaned heavily on Thomas. “Look above and beside. Those slots in the stone are called ‘murder-holes.’ Designed for spear thrusts, crossbow arrows, or boiling liquids from hidden passages on the other side.”

  Thomas tried not to wince.

  With his dragging foot, the knight tapped a plank as wide as two men imbedded in the stone floor. “It drops to a chute, probably straight to the dungeon.”

  The knight took two more slow and weary steps, then paused, as if for rest, just before earshot of the two guards. He spoke clearly and softly from the side of his mouth in the dark corridor as he wiped his face in pretend fatigue.

  “Thomas, the outside defenses of this castle are as fiendish and clever as I’ve seen. It does not bode well for any man’s chances on the inside. There is only you and me. Something impossible like this.” William hesitated and lightly touched the scar that ran jaggedly down his cheek. “You may still turn back with honor. And live.”

  Thomas felt very young as he stared at the broad shoulders of the first soldier at the gate.

  Night after night in the darkness of the abbey, lying on a straw bed during his waking dreams of glory, it had seemed so easy. Now, in the harshness of the sunlight and the dust and the noise of the village beyond the stone-faced soldiers, it seemed impossible. Not even the solid presence of William helped.

  The guards blocked a narrow entrance cut into the large gate. Dressed in brown with a wide slash of red cloth draped across their massive chests, each stood as straight and as tall as the thick spears they balanced beside them.

  “Greetings to you,” William said in a hopeful, almost begging tone.

  The guards barely grunted to acknowledge the arrival of the newcomers. Thomas forced himself to look away from the cold eyes of the soldiers.

  Suddenly, the guard on the right whirled and tossed his spear sideways at William.

  “Unnnggghh,” the knight said weakly. He brought his left hand up in an instinctive and feeble motion to block the spear that clattered across his chest. The effort knocked him back, and William sagged to his knees.

  “I beg of you,” he moaned as spit dribbled from the side of his mouth. “Show mercy.”

  The soldier stood over him and studied the knight’s dirty cloak as William cowered.

  Thomas remembered William’s earlier advice about the advantage of an enemy who underestimates. And he remembered a passage from one of his precious hidden books, a thought written by the greatest general of a faraway land who had lived and fought more than fourteen centuries earlier.

  One who wishes to appear to be weak in order to make his enemy arrogant must be extremely strong. Only then can he feign weakness.

  Thomas grinned inside. He felt fractionally more confident than he had upon approaching the gate.

  Finally, the soldier sneered down at William. “Mercy indeed. It’s obvious you need it. Get up, you craven excuse for a man.”

  William wobbled back onto his feet. The spit on his chin showed flecks of dirt.

  “Lodging for the evening,” the knight pleaded. “We are not thieves. I am but a worker seeking employment to support my family.” He gestured at Thomas and the other two, as if they were his children. Then fumbled through his leather waist pouch and pulled free two coins. “See, we have money for lodging. We ask no charity of the lord of the manor.”

  The second soldier laughed with cruelty. “Make sure it is cleaning and slopping you seek. Not begging, as it appears.”

  The first soldier kicked William. “Up. Get inside before we change our minds.”

  William howled and held his thigh where the soldier’s foot had made a sickening thud. He hopped and dragged his way inside the gate without looking back to see if Thomas and the two children followed. Thomas pushed Tiny John and Isabelle ahead of him.

  Not until they had turned past the first building inside did William stop. He waited and watched Thomas with a proud chin and guarded eyes.

  Thomas did not let him speak.

  “Artfully done,” Thomas said. “By using your left hand instead of the right when he threw that spear, you made it impossible for them to guess you are an expert swordsman.”

  William motioned for them to continue walking. “I like this less and less,” he said in a low voice. “When I showed those coins, I expected greed would force the soldiers to demand a bribe for our entry. They did not.”

  Thomas raised a questioning eyebrow.

  “Corruption shows weakness, Thomas. We are now inside, and everything points to unconquerable strength.”

  Thomas usually slept lightly. Years of constant awareness in the abbey had taught him to do so. Here, in strange lodgings, with a fortune of gold hidden in his leather pouch, he expected even the slightest shifting of movement would have pulled him from slumber.

  He woke as first light nudged past the wooden crossbeams of the crude windows high on the dirty stone wall of the stable where they had found shelter and was surprised to discover Isabelle gone. Somehow she slipped away without his notice.

  Thomas did not stop to wonder why his first waking thoughts—and his first waking glance—had turned to her.

  At least a dozen times each day, Thomas realized that only the girl’s poor rags and intermittent spasms had hindered grown men from staring at her with open admiration. Her role as a deaf-and-mute girl seemed more and more like a good strategy to defend herself.

  Thomas rose to his feet.

  “She’s gone,” he blurted, not
icing William awake beside him.

  “She is indeed,” William replied. “It happens that way.”

  “That’s it? You care so little about her that you make a vague philosophical statement like that?”

  “Shall we start searching for her?” William asked as he stood and stretched away his sleep. “She’s gone by her own choice. If we find her, are you going to drag her back and force her to be with us like a prisoner?”

  “No,” Thomas lied. “I don’t care that much.”

  Thomas adjusted his clothing as a way to struggle through an ache he couldn’t explain.

  Tiny John merely sat up, hunched against his knees in his corner position, and grinned at the world.

  I’m in Magnus, Thomas thought. With a task that threatens my life, will test everything I have been taught, and demands that I use every power available to me. Yet my mind turns to sadness. How could that have happened?

  Isabelle pushed open the door by walking backward through it. When she turned, the bowls of steaming porridge in her hands gave obvious reason for her method of entry.

  She looked shyly at Thomas and smiled as she offered him a bowl, saying nothing.

  I shall conquer the world, Thomas finished in his mind.

  “The walls of Magnus contain no mean village. There must be nearly five hundred inside,” William said. “I’m surprised it has no fame outside this county.”

  And I’m more surprised, William thought anxiously, that there was so little traffic on the road during our approach. The enemy has so thoroughly taken Magnus that the entire countryside appears to be in its power.

  He did not voice his worry. It might not have mattered anyway, as it appeared Thomas was not listening. He was too busy staring in all directions to reply. If the boy had been raised in an abbey in the countryside as he said, William could imagine his awe. No village could compare to this.

  Already the clamor in Magnus was at a near frenzy.

  “Fresh duck!” a toothless shopkeeper shouted as he dangled a bird by the feet in one hand and waved at Thomas with the other. “Still dripping blood! And you’ll get the feathers at no charge!”

  Thomas smiled politely and pushed ahead of the knight. Tiny John and Isabelle followed, staying close to William. Shops crowded the street so badly that in occasional places, crooked buildings actually touched roofs where they leaned into one another. Space among the bustling crowd was equally difficult to find.

  William scanned the buildings for identification. There was the apothecary, marked by a colorfully painted sign displaying three gilded pills. He made a note to remember it. The potions, herbs, and medicines inside might be needed on short notice. A bush sketched in dark shades—the vintner, or wine shop. Two doors farther along, a horse’s head—the harness maker. Then a unicorn—the goldsmith. A white arm with stripes—the surgeon-barber.

  There was a potter, a skinner. Shoemaker. Beer seller. Baker. A butch—butcher.

  William grimaced and pulled his foot away from the puddle of sheep’s innards that had been thrown into the middle of the street. Butchers did their slaughtering on the spot for customers and left behind the waste for the swarms of flies already forming black patches on nearby filth.

  “Where is it we go?” Thomas called.

  “A stroll,” William said. “I have a few questions that simple observation should answer.”

  At the end of the first street, they turned left, then left again to follow another crooked street. It took them away from the market crowd and past narrow and tall houses squeezed tightly together.

  “Well, Thomas,” the knight said, “is it all you expected it to be?”

  “As long as we are able to continue to walk freely,” Thomas said, “how much danger can there be?”

  Isabelle caught up to Thomas. He remembered what Sarah had taught him about manners and quickly moved so that he walked on the outside, ensuring Isabelle stayed nearer the houses. Thus, if a housewife emptied a jug of water or a chamber pot onto the street from the upper stories, Thomas would suffer, not Isabelle. She seemed content to stay beside him, glancing over to smile whenever Thomas stared at her for too long.

  In contrast, Tiny John burned with energy and scampered in circles around them. First back to William, then ahead to Thomas and the girl.

  “Check his pockets,” William said without breaking stride. “If that little rogue so much as picks a hair from a villager, all of us are threatened.”

  Tiny John stuck out his tongue at the knight but quickly pulled his pockets open to show he’d managed to remain honest.

  More walking.

  Thomas sniffed the air with distaste. They were approaching the far edge of the town—the traditional location of the tannery. Thomas knew the procedure too well. How many times had one of the monks at the abbey ordered him to scrape hair and skin from the hide of a freshly killed sheep? As many times as they had then ordered him to rub it endlessly with cold chicken dung. That ingredient, plus the fermented bran and water used to soak the hides, made it an awful job.

  They walked by the tannery quickly. Thomas felt sympathy as he watched one of the apprentices scraping flesh, mouth open to keep his nostrils as useless as possible.

  The street turned sharply, and within a few hundred more paces, they were back within earshot of the market. Just before reaching the market area, William held up his hand.

  “Thomas,” he said with low urgency. “Look around. What strikes you?”

  Thomas had a ready reply. “The crippled beggars. The men with mutilated faces. Far more than one would expect.”

  The knight’s eyes opened wide. “My mind was on military matters. I had not noticed. Surely the lord of Magnus hasn’t …”

  Thomas shrugged. “I have been told many stories of the evil here.” In his mind, he heard Sarah singing gently: “Delivered on the wings of an angel, he shall free us from oppression.”

  William said, “Scan the shop signs. Tell me what’s missing.”

  “Missing?”

  The knight only frowned in thought. Thomas began to study the busy scene ahead.

  Finally he answered. “I see no blacksmith.”

  “You speak truth. Why is that significant?”

  Thomas had a flash of comprehension. “Horseshoes and hoes are not the only items a blacksmith makes. Blacksmiths also forge swords. Without a blacksmith, there are no weapons. No armor. Whoever controls Magnus takes few chances.”

  “Well spoken.”

  Before William could comment further, a small man broke toward them from the fringes of the crowd. His shoulders were so insignificant they were nearly invisible under his brown full-length cloak. A tight black hat emphasized the smallness of his head. His wrinkled cheeks bunched like large walnuts as he smiled.

  “Strangers!” he cackled. “So brave to visit Magnus, you are! No doubt you’ll need a guide. No doubt at all!” He rubbed his hands briskly. “And I’m your man. That’s the spoken truth. No doubt. The spoken truth.”

  Thomas made a move to step around him, but William shook his head at Thomas, then addressed the small man.

  “What might be your name, kind man?”

  “Ho, ho. Flattery. Always wise. Indeed, you are fortunate. I am a kind man.” The small man paused for breath, winded by his rapid-fire words. “And I am called Geoffrey.”

  “Hmm. Geoffrey. You are a merchant?”

  “Indeed I am. But strangers are wise to engage a guide in Magnus. And I make a fine guide. A fine guide indeed.”

  “Any man can see that.” William smiled. “What is it you sell when you are not a guide?”

  “Candles. Big ones. Little ones. Thick ones. Skinny ones. The finest in the land. Why, the smoke from these candles will wipe from a window with hardly any—”

  “Sold.” William jammed his single word into the pause that Geoffrey was forced to take for breath.

  “Sold?” Geoffrey’s confidence wavered at this unexpected surrender. “I’ve not shown a one. How can you say�
�”

  “Sold,” William repeated firmly. He pulled a coin from his pouch. “Maybe even as many as we can carry.” He peered past Geoffrey’s shoulders. “Where might your shop be?”

  Geoffrey opened and closed his mouth like a fish gasping for air. He did not take his eyes from the coin in William’s palm. “My … my shop is away from the market. I only bring enough candles for the morning’s sales. I …”

  “Lead on, good man,” William said cheerfully. “It’s a pitiable guide who cannot find his own shop.”

  Geoffrey turned and excitedly led the way through the market crowd. Every five steps or so, he rudely pushed people aside despite his runtlike size. The resulting arguments proved to be a humorous distraction. Thomas took advantage of the noise to address the knight.

  “He’s a blathering fool,” Thomas whispered to William. “What do you want from him?”

  “Certainly not candles,” William whispered from the side of his mouth. “I want a safe location to ask questions.”

  Thomas could not fault the knight for his strategy. Yet must the information come from an empty-headed babbler?

  As the others followed the candle merchant through the crowd, Isabelle drifted away to stand in the shadows of a doorway. A hunched beggar approached her. His face was obscured by dirt, and he held out a filthy hand, as if begging.

  His words, however, did not match his actions. “Sacrifices must be made beneath a full moon.”

  “And a full moon shines upon us with favor,” she answered.

  The beggar grunted satisfaction that she had not shown any surprise.

  “Does Thomas suspect you are anything but what you appear to be?” he asked.

  “He suspects nothing.” Isabelle fumbled with a pocket, searching for a coin. “I even pretended great fear upon learning this was his destination.”