“Oh?” Siegfried was glad of this. There was always a chance that metal gauntlets would still be too clumsy to handle the eggs. And the rules specifically said that gauntlets had to be worn.
“The rules say nothing about using tools. I picked up what we need in the market this morning.” Leopold held up a wooden spoon and a small dustpan, the sort that careful housewives used to collect crumbs from tabletops, to go into the chicken feed.
“Oho!” Siegfried grinned around his pie. “Roll the egg into the dustpan with the spoon, use the spoon to guide it into place in the line. We are clever fellows.”
“I’m sure the smart ones will figure out something similar. Or use magic.” Leopold shrugged. “One race isn’t going to win this set of trials.”
“Well, this should be interesting,” Lily observed to the Princess, as they watched the candidates milling about and getting themselves lined up for the start of the race. She felt relatively relaxed; word from the borders was that all the armies had withdrawn—though not completely. At least they weren’t bivouacked close enough that it would be an easy march to invade. “It’s certainly proved lucrative for the local shepherds.” It was an absolutely lovely day; the sun shone down with a warmth that was pleasant in a summer gown, and would soon be hideous for anyone in armor. There was a brisk breeze that no one in armor would feel. The scent of the Forest—green with a hint of something blooming deep within the shelter of the trees—was in the air, which none of the candidates would appreciate, poor fellows, because they would be far too busy concentrating on the trial.
Rosa giggled; about twenty of the sixty or so riders had someone up behind them—obviously shepherds. The lucky ones had a couple of pretty little shepherdesses, and their dogs, tireless little fellows who could run all day and easily keep up with a horse, were sitting patiently at the horse’s heels. The unlucky ones had taciturn old men with older dogs in their laps. All of the dogs were of a small, shaggy, black-and-white variety that was the only sort of dog she had ever seen tending sheep. As she and Lily had guessed, of the hundred or so princes who had first arrived, a good half had decided that they would either take the penalty of not being in the first trial, were not in the least prepared for a race in full armor and what that implied about the difficulty of the rest of the trials—for some of them had not bargained on trials that might actually require fighting something—or were not interested in taking part in a contest that began with so little dignity. The Palace was a good bit emptier this morning. It probably would get even more empty when those still competing or those waiting on the sidelines realized that things were only going to get worse from here.
Of the adventuring types…well, they weren’t out here right now, but the requirements for them were more stringent. They either would take this first trial, or forfeit and leave. Their race would be tomorrow, but already the tents were emptying. A great many of them simply could not ride a galloping warhorse, or even ride any sort of horse whatsoever, and that disqualified them immediately. Sadly, that was most of the clever shepherds, and a great many of the sell-sword mercenaries, who typically were infantry, not knights or cavalry. Rosa felt a bit sorry for them, but not so sorry that she was going to allow people who had turned up uninvited any sort of leeway. Lily was in agreement here.
It wasn’t as if anyone could claim she just didn’t want to marry a commoner, either. Not with her pedigree…
The starting line was well away from the Palace, on common grazing land that anyone could use, and many city folk had a beast or two out here, tended by herders whose wages were shared among all those who used his services. Even in a wealthy land like Eltaria, meat was not the sort of thing you had on your table every day if you were a common working man. The animals generally grazed there were milk cattle, geese and goats; these had been herded off to one side so the race could take place. It would follow the edge of the Forest, rough land that wasn’t much good for farming, so no one’s crops were going to get trampled. That had been a great concern for both Lily and Rosa; how was it fair to destroy someone’s livelihood just to have a race? Yet there was no way to have that many men pounding around on horses on a road. Once they had decided on the form of the trial, the hardest part had been finding a good place to hold it.
In the interest of fairness, or at least the appearance of it, Lily had decided to supply everyone with the same mouse-horses and magically created armor. She and Rosa were the only ones who knew where these things came from; it was possible that the ability to just produce that many trained mounts and suits of armor on a moment’s notice might give their enemies something to think about. But that was only one of the reasons; given the rough ground, neither of them wanted to risk a horse stepping into a hole and breaking something.
A mouse-horse, being a Magical Beast, might step into a hole, but if he did, he knew to roll so he didn’t break a leg. And hopefully the rider knew to leap off if the horse went over. He might end up lying on his back, unable to get up, like an overturned turtle, but if he knew how to fall, he wouldn’t break anything of his own, either.
The muttering and sounds of restless hooves on turf began to die away as the candidates sorted themselves out into a line. Finally the milling stopped. All eyes were on the majordomo, splendid in the royal livery, who had a flag-boy beside him, a blue-and-white banner held high and floating bravely in the breeze. The tension mounted, and from where she sat, Rosa was able to make out the majordomo smiling a little.
He tapped the boy’s shoulder. The flag dropped.
They were off, pounding away in a flurry of hooves and flying clods. The noise was louder than anything Rosa had ever heard before, louder than thunder. The earth trembled under her feet, and the air filled with the scent of fresh earth and bruised grass. A clear number of faster riders surged ahead of the rest. All those carrying double immediately dropped back; so did the most timid riders, as the more aggressive shouldered their way through the pack. Before they were out of sight, the pack had gotten strung out, and it was possible to single out individual riders and identify them. Siegfried and Leopold, easily picked out because of Siegfried’s height, were a bit ahead of the middle.
“What on earth do that Northlander and the scoundrel have tied to their saddles?” asked Lily, shading her eyes with her hand and peering as they all vanished into the distance. “Some great shaggy bundle of green. I couldn’t make out any details.”
Rosa could only shrug; she had seen whatever it was, too, and had been just as puzzled by it. “It looked like bushes. I can’t imagine why they would have bushes with them, but I’m sure they have a plan.”
“I would be surprised if they didn’t,” Lily replied matter-of-factly. “Well, time to go to the next stage. I confess, I am looking forward to this.” She turned around and went into a small pavilion that had been set up with a guard to mind it. Inside was nothing but one of her mirrors, but no one would know that but the two of them. She set the spell, and led Rosa through the mirror.
They came out of a second one in another small pavilion set up at the middle stage.
The race was going to be long enough that overeager riders would exhaust even mouse-horses, which only had the stamina of real horses—but the mouse-horses had more sense than a real horse and could not be goaded into overextending themselves no matter what you did. So if the mouse-horses pulled up here tired, they would be trotting, or at best cantering, the return route. At this end of the course, there was an enormous sheepfold made of stakes with thorn-bushes impaled on them—in it, the flock of sheep drifted from one side of the fold to the other, baaing and bleating.
There was more than a hint of pungent wool on the breeze.
These were white-face sheep, although Eltaria supported flocks of both black and whitefaces. Far enough away from the full sheepfold to make it a challenge were the small pens, attached to another, empty sheepfold. These were the pens that the candidates were supposed to get their sheep into, and once they did, gates would be opened in
the back of the pens to let the sheep into the other fold. Along the back of the space between the two folds were the baskets of eggs for the egg-challenge. In theory it didn’t matter which you did first, but the smart ones would see how crowded and chaotic the sheep situation was before they decided.
They stood now on a bit of a hill set out with the shade-pavilion; in the back of it was the mirror behind a dividing curtain. The front of it held a pair of chairs and a table that provided a viewing stand for Rosa and Lily. There were already servants here—Brownies disguised as ordinary human servants—with cold water and fruit. “I would willingly have killed someone for all this when I was in the forest,” Rosa said, looking down at the food, the comfortable chairs, being careful not to mention the renegade Dwarves.
“We have to look the part, dear,” Lily replied, taking a fan from the servant and fanning herself with it. “Appearances are important. You don’t know who is watching. We must show that we are vitally interested in the outcome of this trial.”
Rosa took that as the cue and warning that it was, and nodded. There truly was no telling who might be listening. Unless Lily took magical precautions, which in and of themselves would betray that she was, in fact, a magician, it was very easy for another magician to eavesdrop on everything they said and did here. Some would be friendly, some merely opportunistic, and some unfriendly.
When the first riders came over the hills, their horses were, predictably, tired—not quite stumbling with exhaustion, but not far from it. The mouse-horses were not going to put up with that sort of abuse on the return leg, and all the speed that the riders had gotten on the outward leg would be lost as their mounts took their time getting back.
And now came the part that Rosa had been looking forward to. She had not really laughed much since her mother died. She and her mother had shared so many things, and laughter was high on the list of the things she missed. And—all right, she knew she was going to be laughing at those hapless Princes, and that was not kind—she needed laughter desperately.
As she had known it would be, as the trial unfolded before them, it was not just funny, it was hilarious.
Three of the first men to arrive had brought shepherds with them, the lightest of the lot, two girls and a boy and their relatively small dogs. The shepherds jumped off the rumps of the horses without being told; the little dogs looked eager to get to work. The shepherds at the big sheepfold released about two dozen sheep, which looked bewildered at suddenly finding themselves without the fence around them; the dogs went to work, each of them cutting out three sheep and driving them expertly toward the little pens, while the Princes went straight for the eggs.
But although they had thought through the sheep problem, they had not thought about the eggs, nor the difficulty of handling them in heavy metal gauntlets. Very shortly all three of them were cursing and covered in bits of shell and spattered egg. Their return trip was going to be quite…fragrant…as the raw eggs aged ungracefully in the heat.
Rosa only hoped they weren’t getting egg inside the armor. That would be rather nasty.
Meanwhile more riders were appearing with every moment, and more sheep being released, and the ensuing chaos as riders left their horses at a run, only to be confronted with a sea of swirling sheep, was hilarious. It was a giant white wooly whirlpool, in which every sheep had only one urge—not to get away from the flank of its neighbor.
Some just stood and stared. One very large man had evidently decided that the only way to deal with the problem was to tackle it as he would another unarmed warrior. Which was to say, he was tackling the poor sheep.
Or to be more precise, he was trying to. Sheep, it appeared, were able to evade tackles fairly well, and he ended up facedown on the turf time and time again as the flock swirled away from him. When he finally did manage to seize one, he caught it firmly around the middle and hauled it up off the ground—except that the poor thing was upside down, bleating pathetically while he tried to ignore the fact that he had a smelly sheep’s rump right in his face. Doggedly, he hauled the bleating, struggling, unhappy animal to the pen, dumped it in and went after another.
Another fellow had the idea that he was going to toss a loop of rope over each sheep’s head and lead it to the pen one at a time. This was, in theory, a good idea. The problem was the sheep were not cooperating. He’d get the rope almost over the beast’s head, and it would toss it off again. He kept trying to get closer and closer to it, talking coaxingly, but what he was cooing to them were the vilest, funniest epithets Rosa had ever heard. Evidently the sheep’s father, mother and grandparents for the last hundred years had gotten up to some interesting assignations if you believed the incredible words emerging from this man’s mouth…. It was a wonder this beast still looked like a sheep.
“You really shouldn’t be listening to that,” Lily murmured, her eyes sparkling with suppressed laughter.
Other men were just attempting what the big man was doing, and the herd swirled faster, in further confusion, sheep leaping over each other in alarm as armored men lunged at them. Finally some of the men realized that once the designated three sheep had been herded up for those who had the foresight to hire shepherds, those shepherds no longer had a job to do. In other words, there were an increasing number of shepherds standing around laughing at them.
But shepherds standing around were shepherds who could be hired now. At least the sheep got a chance to settle down, as the princes converged on the shepherds and began desperate bargains with them, the bids rising higher and higher as each one tried to get his sheep to be the next in line.
Then more riders arrived. One, an extremely handsome fellow—Prince Desmond, Rosa thought—clearly had some magical charm to help him; he simply walked up to three sheep and touched them, and they followed him as if they were lambs and he was their mother. She narrowed her eyes and concentrated, and sure enough, she saw a sort of green-brown glowing tether reaching from their foreheads to his hand. Magic. Another had a different sort of charm; he flung some sort of dust at them, and wherever the dust fell, a sheep fell asleep. This wasn’t magic, per se…it must have been some sort of herb. He put halters on three and led them to their pen; the stuff didn’t last long, since the rest of the sheep woke up pretty quickly once he was working on the eggs.
Oh yes, the eggs. Some of the men had clearly thought the egg problem through and had brought various things to pick up and move the eggs with.
Others…had not. And they waited like hungry ducks, watching the wiser fellows, ready to beg the use of their tools when they were done. Rosa made a note of who took pity on his fellows and gave them the tools, and who did not. “I’d like to add a point for whoever shares his egg-things,” she said quietly to Lily, who nodded. “Not penalize for not sharing, but reward for generosity.”
“That’s a good idea,” the Godmother replied, and designated a Brownie to keep track of just that.
Prince Desmond, interestingly enough, had neither tools, nor trouble. Rosa wondered if he had another magic spell to keep the eggs from breaking. If so, it was so minor she couldn’t see it from this distance. Well, that was not against the rules, and it was a good idea…though it also made it impossible to say whether he would have shared or not.
Then up rode Siegfried and Leopold, who dismounted and took down those bundles of greenery from behind their saddles, and immediately it became clear what the bushes on the backs of their horses were.
Fodder.
“Interesting,” Lily said quietly. “I would have expected them to try hay, which sheep will only eat in the winter. But those are bean plants, which sheep love.”
“Do you suppose that Siegfried went and listened to sheep to find out what they like?” Rosa wondered aloud.
“I would not be in the least surprised.” Lily leaned forward and watched them keenly. Leopold and Siegfried, instead of going to the milling, frightened flock, went to the sheepfold and asked for six sheep that were not in a panic to be released. And a
s the gate was opened, they stood side by side and thrust the bundles of fodder in the sheep’s surprised faces. Then, still side by side, they backed away. The sheep were hungry, the men were not acting like predators and the bean blossoms must have smelled delicious. They managed to lead all six sheep, step by careful step, across the space between the sheepfolds and into the pens. While not as fast as the shepherds and their dogs, it was efficient, and clever.
Then they went and dealt with their eggs, just as efficiently, using a spoon and some sort of scoop. When they were done, they generously gave the tools over to two of the other Princes without even being asked.
“Very kind,” Lily murmured.
Then just as calmly as they had arrived, the two men got on their horses and galloped off. A slow gallop, meant to eat distance without tiring the horse. Rosa felt like applauding.
But the distraction of new riders turning up and trying even more ploys on the hapless sheep was too much, and she turned her attention back to the trial. Several of the men finally decided to be herd-dogs themselves, banding together to chivvy all their sheep at the pens at once. Which was fine, and a good idea, but the pens weren’t made for more than three sheep each, and the wooly idiots all tried to crowd into one, met the fence, panicked and began leaping over each other’s backs to get out again.
It became very clear that eventually what was going to happen was that, short of more magic, or someone who actually knew what to do about the sheep, the Princes were going to keep paying the shepherds to take care of the problem for them, and there were going to be enough discarded implements to get the eggs moved into their lines. Rosa glanced over at Lily, who nodded. They used the mirror to get back to the one set up at the starting line, which was now the finish line.
There were already some of the first arrivals there, with the clerks that Lily had left in charge. These were not the ones who had arrived at the sheepfolds first; their mouse-horses were not exhausted and they were mostly clean of egg. Prince Desmond was among them, standing a little apart from the others, his expression pleasant but unreadable, as he waited for his own horse to be brought to him.
The Sleeping Beauty Page 17