by Jack Heckel
“That would explain why he was so grumpy all the time,” Charming muttered. “But is it also why he was so fat and bald?”
Charming ran a worried hand through his thick brown hair. He was still pondering the question and his waistline when the soft blue light of dawn began to seep into the land around them. Charming cooked a very light breakfast and waited for Will to wake up.
Finally, Will murmured, “I didn’t kill the dragon. I’m not a dragonslayer. I don’t even know how to kill a dragon! Take my crown. Just give me back Elle.”
Charming leaned close, and said softly, “Your Majesty, it is okay. I am here.”
On reflection, Charming wasn’t sure whether Will would see him being there as reassuring, particularly given how the previous night had ended.
Will shook his head and blinked open his eyes. “Charming?”
“I’m afraid so, Your Majesty.”
“Where are we, and what time is it?” Will asked with a groan, and levered himself to a sitting position.
“Well, Your Majesty,” Charming said, biting his lower lip. “It is about six in the morning, I think on a Tuesday, if that helps. As for where we are, we seem to have misplaced ourselves.”
Charming watched carefully for another explosion, but it didn’t come. Instead, Will just sat there, stupidly looking at the dancing flames of the fire.
“Would you like some breakfast, Your Majesty?”
Will gave a shake of his head.
“How about some water, Your Majesty?”
Will nodded, and Charming handed him a waterskin he’d filled earlier in a nearby stream.
The cold water seemed to revive Will. “I’m sorry about last night.”
“No apology necessary, Your Majesty. No harm done. Well, to me anyway,” Charming said wryly, trying to raise Will’s spirits.
Will glared at him.
“Don’t mock me, Charming” said Will coldly. “I am still your King, and we are on a serious quest. Instead of trying to play the fool, why don’t you work at being my squire and get us ready to move out of here.”
They stared at each other, but Charming could see the doubt and guilt creep into his friend’s eyes. It was a familiar, haunted look, and Charming felt that it was the precise look the Beast had seen in his own eyes when they first met. Will was lost, and it would be up to Charming to lead him back home. But first, Will was going to need to be knocked off his pedestal, and Charming knew he needed to do it before he was tempted to knock the King on his backside.
Charming nodded, and rising to his feet, made a deep and elegant bow of supplication. “As you wish, Your Majesty.”
Will looked away and said nothing. Charming crossed to the fire and made Will a plate of food. He knelt in front of the other man, and, holding the plate above his head, said, “Your Majesty, your Royal Breakfast.”
“Stop that!” Will said with a shout, rising to his feet to loom over Charming.
“I am merely trying to serve,” Charming said innocently. “Am I not pleasing, Your Majesty?”
“No!” Will said still shouting. “Elle has been taken by a dragon, and you’re playing games and making jokes and getting us lost! You never take anything seriously. You never . . . You . . .”
Will spread his arms wide and yelled incoherently, and he kept yelling as loudly as he could until he finally ran out of breath. He was swaying on his feet, and a vein on his temple pulsated violently.
“Your Majesty?” Charming said, putting the plate to the side and rising to give him a steadying arm.
“I . . . I need to save Elle,” Will gasped, leaning against Charming.
“I know we do.”
Will shook his head. “You don’t understand. I need to save her, and I need you to be a squire, not a hero. I lost her. I failed to protect her. I need to find her. I need to prove to her and to myself that I can keep her safe.”
“First, Your Majesty, may I call you Will?” Charming asked, moving closer so his face was close to his panting friend’s. “It will make what I am about to say a lot easier for me to say, and hopefully for you to hear.”
“Yes. Fine. Call me Will.”
“Thanks, Will,” Charming said, and helped Will pull himself back upright.
He stood there a moment, realizing again how enormous Will was and thinking how much better it would be if he could take a step or two back in case this conversation became more physical.
“Well?” Will said impatiently.
Right, here goes, Charming thought, then said quickly, “No offense, Will, but you’re being an ass.”
“What did you say, Charming?” Will said with a hiss, knocking Charming’s arm away.
“You are being an ass, Will, and you can take that from someone who has been one for most of his life,” Charming said, certain that he was very close to being punched in the face.
“Why?” Will fumed. “Because I want to save Lady Rapunzel, my wife-to-be, the love of my life, the wheat in my field?”
“No,” Charming replied flatly, “because you seem to think that I don’t,” and he added in disbelief, “Did you really say ‘wheat in my field’?”
Smacking his forehead with the palm of his hand, Will cried, “You ask me that, then question how I can think you aren’t taking this seriously. How in the world can you be so dense and infuriating at the same time?”
“I suppose that’s part of my charm,” Charming said with a raised eyebrow, trying to break the tension.
Will flushed scarlet with anger. Charming held up his hands in a gesture of peace. “I know you think I’m taking things too lightly, but it is only because you have enough rage in you for the both of us. Do you honestly believe that I don’t know what you’re feeling? Have you already forgotten what I was like when we first met? Do you really think the only way to save Lady Rapunzel is to become that guy?”
He gestured helplessly, trying to put into words what it was he was feeling back when he tried to kill Will in the throne room of Castle White, and when he tried to battle a troll single-handedly, and when he tried to betray Will to bandits. “When you came, you took my whole world away. I was so intent on hating you and on trying to prove my greatness that I was blind to everything else. In my blindness, I moved from disaster to disaster, and you will suffer the same if you don’t find a way to stop feeling and instead start thinking.”
Charming took a deep breath and gathered his courage. This next thing would be hard to admit.
“I . . . I . . .” he hesitated, then plunged on, “I always thought my squire Tomas was trying to undermine and humiliate me when he made jokes at my expense or groused at my excesses, but I see now that the brutal little hobgoblin”—Charming couldn’t help describing him this way—“was trying—unsuccessfully for the most part—to keep me from being an idiot.” He sighed. “I suppose you could say I am trying to be your squire.”
Charming was emotionally spent. To compare himself to his former squire was one of the hardest things he’d ever done.
“And that’s all I want from you,” Will said as he chewed once more on the side of his hand. “I am probably making mistakes right now—” He stopped, then started again. “No, I know I am making mistakes right now. Elle is lost, and I can’t think of anything else. Every time I sleep, all I dream of are the things that might be happening to her. Every time we stop, all I can think of is that I should still be going. I just want to find her. I need to find her. Edward, help me find her!”
Will began pacing up and down, chewing on his fingers and mumbling. Charming shook his head. He knew that he had gone as far as he dared. Will was in no state to deal with the larger issues, so they would just have to start with the small ones first.
Charming sat down on a log and gestured for Will to join him. Will ignored the gesture and kept pacing. Charming shrugged and, moving his head
back and forth to keep Will in his sight, said, “Fine. Let’s start with why we are traveling this direction. You keep insisting that we go north by the most direct route, but, in case you hadn’t noticed, it’s rather easy to get lost in this kingdom. We should stick with the main thoroughfares. They may wind here and there, but they will get us where we need to go reliably even if the distance is a bit longer.”
“Nonsense,” Will mumbled from around his thumb. “If we try to use the larger roads, you know I would be recognized, and Tomas and Alain would catch up with us, which would mean an escort of soldiers, which would mean a caravan of supply wagons, which would mean delay. Besides, I always took back roads from the farm to Prosper, and I never had any trouble.”
Charming gritted his teeth in irritation. Alain and Tomas and a troop of soldiers were exactly what they needed. Also, that Will would compare going at most a league from his farm into town to the hundreds of leagues they would need to travel to the Northern Mountains was exactly the sort of thing Prince Charming would have done.
After several deep breaths, Charming decided to try a different tack. If Will intended to act like Prince Charming, then he needed to see how it was done.
“So, you mean to go after Volthraxus, the Great Dragon of the North, without soldiers or archers to support you? You, alone against a hundred-foot-long fire-breathing monster. Exactly what I would have done.” Charming smiled his most obnoxious smile. “I’m curious what you are planning, though. You know, I am a bit of a student of dragon-slaying tactics. Maybe I could give you a couple of pointers. Although, maybe not. A real dragonslayer would never take advice from his squire.”
Will looked over at him with alarm painted clearly on his pale face. “What are you talking about? You know I have no idea how to kill a dragon. That’s why you’re here. You need to tell me how to kill the dragon.”
“You mean slay a dragon,” Charming said seriously. “It’s important to have the verb right. You don’t kill dragons, Will.”
“Why?” Will barked. “Why do our clothes have to be right and the words we use have to be right and our posture on the back of a horse has to be right? What does it matter? Maybe I’m not doing it right. Maybe I haven’t spent my entire life training to fight a dragon, but I can’t see that any of it matters. We keep going north until we find the monster. We fight it. We kill it. We rescue Elle. Simple. Stop trying to complicate it.”
“I’m not trying to complicate things. I’m . . .” I’m trying to work up the courage to admit what I have never admitted to anyone.
“You’re what?”
Charming didn’t answer immediately but instead stood and began to saddle his horse.
“You’re what?” Will asked his irritation rising again in his voice.
“What must you think of me?” Charming asked in an apparent non sequitur.
“What?”
“If slaying a dragon is simple, then what must you think of me? I had years to slay my dragon and knew exactly where it was. Didn’t you wonder why I never tried?”
Will shrugged. “No, I just thought you were . . . well . . . you know . . .”
“Busy? Going to get around to it after I finished my dalliances with the ladies of the realm? Forging a master plan?” Charming asked as he tightened the straps on his saddle. “No, Will, I wasn’t doing any of that. Perhaps I was trying to decide what armor to wear, it was a subject that could occupy my thoughts for days at a time, but that’s not important. What is important is that I spent years studying dragons. I was determined to learn everything I could about them. I had tutors to help me, and a library stocked with every book of dragon lore imaginable. Do you know what I learned?”
“No. That’s why you’re here,” Will said with an impatient grunt.
Charming took a deep breath and, leaning his head against the side of his horse, said, “What I learned is that it isn’t possible.”
“What are you saying?” Will asked in a voice several octaves higher than normal.
Charming turned back to Will. “What I’m trying to say is this . . .” He stopped, searching for the right words. “Will, imagine for a moment that a creature with scales harder than iron flies at you and breathes flame hotter than a forge down upon you. What do you do?”
Will bit his hand, then hastily pulled it out of his mouth. “I raise my shield and use it to hold off the fire.”
“No, Will.” Charming shook his head sadly. “You roast alive in your armor. That’s what you do. If a dragon has his wits about him, you die.”
“But you said that hunting and killing dragons was ‘what you do.’ ”
“I never said anything about killing dragons, Will,” Charming said pointedly. “That’s what I need you to understand. Killing dragons happens very rarely and only when the dragon makes a mistake. The best way to get a dragon to make a mistake is to make it fear you. In order for that to happen, you have to make the creature believe the impossible—that you can actually kill it. That you are so certain that you can win that you are more concerned with your dress and appearance than with real strategy or tactics. But, Will, this is Volthraxus. He’s a legend. He’s old and he’s smart and he knows what humans are capable of. He won’t be impressed by a feather cap or even a well-turned set of calves. I’m saying that if we make our quest to kill Volthraxus, then short of divine intervention, we die, and Elle is never freed.”
Will was staring at him, white-faced with shock. Charming took a deep breath before continuing in a quiet voice. “However, maybe, if we appeal to his sense of honor and decorum, and are very lucky, we might make a sufficient impression on Volthraxus that he will agree to exchange one or both of our lives for Elle’s. I will help you do that even if it means leaving Liz a widow for the sake of your bride, but I will not help you immolate yourself for no purpose trying to kill Volthraxus.”
With that, Charming mounted and started off down the trail.
Charming set a slow pace. Even so, it took some time for Will to catch up. They rode in silence until Will cleared his throat. “Charming,” he began, then stopped. “Edward, I’m sorry about the way I’ve been behaving. I never gave a thought for the sacrifice I was asking you and Liz to make. You . . . you don’t have to come with me. I release you from your pledge.”
Charming reined his horse to a stop. “I care too much for you as Liz’s brother and my friend to abandon you on this quest. I only need you to understand what we are riding into.” Charming shifted in his saddle, and added, “And it would help me if you would stop referring to me as your squire. I would hate to think that you might be calling me a gnarled hobgoblin behind my back.”
“Agreed!” Will said, and extended his hand. They shook, and Will added, “Thank you, Edward. I mean . . . for everything . . . for . . .”
“Please, don’t mention it, Your Majesty.”
The two men turned and spurred their horses onward again.
After a time, Charming asked, “Now that we know what we are riding toward, can we talk about why we are going north?”
“We are hunting the Great Dragon of the North, Charming! Where else would it go?” Will said, as though this logic was so compelling as to forestall any further debate on the issue.
“Will,” Charming said, trying to keep the irritation from his tone. “Just because he’s called the Dragon of the North doesn’t mean Volthraxus went north. Few people know this, but the Wyrm of the South was originally from the north.”
Will shrugged. “This is all we have, Charming. Where else would you have us go?”
“I would have us go back to the castle to await word from your Royal Huntsmen,” Charming said sharply. “I would have men-at-arms about us so that we don’t have to set up and take down camp every night, and so a group of bandits or a passing troll doesn’t end our quest prematurely. I would have a proper valet so I don’t have to press my coats on
rocks. I would . . .”
“I get the point,” Will said with a growl. “But the answer is still no. If I go on a quest as King, then everything I do, every decision I make will involve the whole kingdom. Your father and Tomas and Alain and every courtier will want me to consider their opinions in every step I take. I will not turn this quest into a bloody carnival.”
Will raised his arm and pointed dramatically to the horizon off to their right. “We go north!”
“Will, that’s south,” Charming said dryly, pointing at the afternoon sun, which was behind them.
Will put his arm down, raised his other, and pointed in the opposite direction.
It was at this point that the trail they’d been riding on for the better part of the day simply stopped. They were surrounded by trees and bushes.
Charming grunted in disgust and began to turn his horse around, saying, “The last turning I saw was around noon. I suppose we will have to backtrack.
“No.”
“Well, what would you suggest we do?” Charming asked, turning back around.
“We skip the road and go north until we find a new road,” Will said, pointing at the dense forest.
“That’s a terrible idea,” Charming said.
“I know, but you are the one who’s been trying to convince me to change my approach,” Will said with a flicker of a smile.
Charming wondered if any man in the kingdom had ever been so pigheaded and stubborn. As he contemplated that question, he felt certain that someone had.
The next few hours were spent hacking their way through the dense brush. The day had faded to evening when they finally emerged onto a new road. They were covered with scratches and cuts from pushing through the thick branches of the woods, and Charming knew after only the most cursory of inspections that his clothes were ruined. They looked like vagabonds. Charming resigned himself to the fact that unless they fixed their appearance, not only would they not receive assistance along the way, but it was likely that they would not even be allowed into respectable establishments. They had lost one of the few advantages they had started with: noble names and noble bearings. They were common travelers now.