by A. J. Ponder
Phibiam paused and looked at Dirk. Dirk held up a finger.
“One hour’s time,” the king bellowed. “And no stupid heroics.”
“A considered choice, Your Majesty,” Dirk said graciously. “And never fear, we will let you go as soon as we are safely—” Dirk stopped, mid-sentence. His eyes had registered movement. He tensed, ready for anything.
Sylvalla noticed something was up. She looked to where his gaze had frozen, locked on a shadow beneath the door.
At first, she could see nothing in the dim light. Then she saw the glint of metal in the shape of two little half-moons.
Half underneath the door, in the deep morning shadows, lay two copper pieces. Slowly, carefully, she went and collected them. They were Avondale coins—like the ones she’d given the stable boy.
“I think our horses are ready,” Sylvalla spoke the words almost as if she were in a trance. A small corner of her mind wondered how she could deduce so much from so little.
“The stable boy?” Dirk questioned. “Can we trust him?”
Sylvalla nodded slowly. “You know, I think we can.”
King Phetero used his most regal and commanding tones. “No, whatever it is. No.”
His words were like water off a duck’s back for Sylvalla. She was used to ignoring fatuous ultimatums. “Dirk, listen, this might be our only chance to get out of here, and I’m going to take it. If the soldiers are really gone, then it will be safe enough.”
Dirk, on the other hand, didn’t like ignoring ultimatums. Mostly because when he gave them, he followed them up with decisive action. So, he paused and considered the options, and came to a very unfortunate conclusion. “Sylvalla, it’s the most foolhardy plan I’ve ever heard. The king is right to expect a trap … I wouldn’t even think about it, except every other option I can think of is worse.”
Good Sense Goes Out the Window
Francis, knees knocking with fright, prayed the soldiers hadn’t seen the coins he’d pushed under the door as he’d lowered the tray.
The words, “Fair enough, lad,” and “Didn’t expect much anyway,” were barely audible past the blood rushing through his ears as he slunk back past.
Francis pretended to nod as he retrieved his bow and arrows and ducked toward the door.
His path was blocked by an angry Mrs Balmy. Fortunately, the landlady was flanked by a soldier.
For some reason, that made him feel a little safer. He stopped shaking.
“There, boy, no need to be so frightened. It’s all over now,” the man said as he laid a heavy hand on Francis’ back.
Francis jumped. Fat lot that soldier knew. Thank all the gods.
“Been in a few scrapes meself,” the soldier continued. “You get used to the nerves, it’s all part of the rush. And then when the blood starts to flow, you can turn out to be a fool, or a hero. You’d be surprised. Sometimes it’s a fine line that divides the two.”
“So, which are you?” Francis asked cheekily, courting danger but unable to stop himself. It was a bit late to worry about that now.
The man grinned at his audacity, and clapped Francis on the back again. “I’m the fine line.”
Mrs Balmy didn’t smile. She rolled her eyes and waited for Francis to run the gauntlet past her. “You won’t get no money, boy. You was being paid to get the door open.”
She’d have nicked it back, anyway.
“Of course, m’lady.” Francis ducked past her—and caught a blow on the side of his face for his troubles. “I’m sure my dead body would’ve found a lot of use for a silver coin. Perhaps I’ll go see to the horses. I know where I belong,” he said, silently adding—and it’s not here.
From the stifled scream of hatred behind him, Francis guessed Mrs Balmy would be planning revenge for his impudence. But she didn’t dare go too far. At least, not now, with all the soldiers here. A bunch of them pushed past her as if she didn’t exist, complaining in bitterly harsh undertones about no sleep, and dress clothes, and demerit points for not being spotless on parade.
Mrs Balmy slammed the door after them, so she didn’t see Francis slinking across the rapidly clearing courtyard toward the horses. But there were only three! Mr MacNarra’s horse had gone, and so had one other. It was not enough! Not if the king was coming too.
Think!
At least he didn’t need a diversion, the soldiers were all but gone. A couple of stragglers and the man who’d been flanking Mrs Balmy rushed out of the yard.
It would take too long to go back to the stables and saddle another. He’d be too late. Before long, the courtyard would be buzzing with people desperate to know why the soldiers had packed up in such a hurry.
Before long, Mrs Balmy would come and grab him, and drag him over to the whipping post.
Before long, time would be up.
White as a sheet, he led the horses to the balcony and threw a pebble up to the shutters.
The shutters moved.
“It’s the stable boy. I’ve got three horses,” he called. “Be quick.” Expertly, he mounted the friskiest horse without letting go of the other leads.
He heard the clop of distant hooves and a faint whinny. At least one horse was approaching.
He tried to prime his bow. It was impossible; there were too many horses pulling his aim every which way. “Quickly!” he cried.
The stallion Francis had chosen whinnied and reared underneath him.
Francis managed to hold on, but by now the other horses were getting skittery. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could stay in the open like this, when Sylvalla’s head poked out. She turned back to the others. “It is him!”
Half-surprised her earlier prediction was playing out, she climbed over the edge of the balcony and onto her pony.
Dirk thought, nice knowing you, as Sylvalla disappeared from view. Why had he agreed to her plan? Now it was happening, it seemed little better than suicide. A complete lack of arrow fire and sword grating against bone made him re-evaluate his position.
He hazarded a glance over the balcony.
The courtyard was empty except for the stable boy, the horses and Sylvalla herself. Still alive.
Not quite ready to put his life in someone else’s hands, Dirk urged Phibiam to go next. If the worst came to the worst, the king out in the open should discourage arrow fire.
Half-straddling the railing, Phibiam hesitated, his kingly robes bunched over his arms.
Dirk encouraged him by waving his sword a little more forcefully, and the man half-toppled over the edge, landing heavily on a disgruntled horse.
Phibiam looked around and found with smug satisfaction that his preposterous order had been obeyed. So long as Dirk didn’t decide to kill him for kicks, he might get out of this situation alive. He thought about galloping away, but the boy hadn’t given him back the reins.
“That’s all the horses.” Francis looked up at Dirk. “I didn’t realise the king was coming.” He blanched, terrified he was about to be left behind. He was sure he could hear horses and soldiers coming from behind the stables. “Um. We could share … or something.”
“Oh no, boy, the king’s not going far,” Dirk said, landing on the ground beside them. “Just until we’re safely away from the city gate. Until then, I’m going to run along beside him, where I’ll be much safer, thank you. Besides, I’m faster’n any horse.”
Before Dirk could say anything more, boots clattered from behind the stables.
A missile sliced through the courtyard.
A Change in Fortune
Fergus, Dothie and Arrant broke camp early so as to get the jump on Sylvalla. Refreshed, or at least more refreshed than their quarry, they strolled through the city gates with a mad hope that today was the day that their luck would change. And it did. Constantly.
All the commotion made it easy to track where Sylvalla and Dirk had gone. The Kyng’s Arms. Where, by all accounts, they, and a small army, were holding the king for ransom.
“They are close, I can sme
ll it,” Fergus growled under his breath as they led their horses through a narrow alley.
They hurried through the mud and around the stables.
There in the courtyard were Dirk, Sylvalla, a tattered urchin, and if they were not mistaken, King Phetero himself.
Would there be a prize for rescuing him?
Dothie hoped so. Dothie loosed a flaming missile at Dirk. A good shot, it flew straight at the annoying swordsman. He was dead for sure.
Dirk’s sword flashed through the air, and the missile tumbled out of the sky, cleaved in two separate pieces.
Dothie stopped in shock, arms raised and mid-spell. What had happened?
Arrant and Fergus kept running in to attack.
An arrow sliced the air between them, and they stopped just long enough to watch their quarry clatter out of the gate.
Life rolls forever uphill, they thought to themselves, if not quite so poetically.
§
“It’s just a rock.” Dirk said, disgusted as the missile crashed in two pieces at his feet. “I mean, really, what are those idiot soldiers thinking, throwing rocks?”
“Soldiers?” said Sylvalla. “I don’t see any uniforms.”
Francis dropped all the reins, swung his bow up and fired.
“Time to split.” Dirk grabbed the reins for Phibiam’s mount and started off.
They hardly needed encouragement. Francis urged his skittish mount toward the goods exit, a small side archway. Sylvalla turned Swift in a tight circle, to follow Francis. Phibiam geed his horse, and it took off after the others. Dirk, having planned a different escape route, was wrenched off course. Being light on his feet, he soon caught up. He tried to swallow his panic. Not because things were going badly, but because everything was going very well. Too well.
Sylvalla and the king were of much the same mind. Something was about to go wrong. Only sheer stupid bravado had got them this far. Their luck could not hold up for much longer.
Francis hardly noticed their heavy mood. He was too ecstatic.
This was his opportunity, and no matter how slim the odds of success, he was at last free.
The best part was when he heard the musical words, “I think you’ve really earned that silver, boy.” And it wasn’t even Sylvalla who had spoken.
So Close
A crabby old lady ran out of the front of the hotel. She looked like she’d slept in that dress, it was so rumpled. Her dingy hair writhed like fat snakes as she shook her fists after the disappearing horses.
“Is that Dirk’s lot?” Dothie asked.
She kept waving her fist and yelling down the road with an expression of unremitting hate plastered on her face, before turning to Dothie. “A second earlier and you could have nabbed the lot of them.” Hands on hips, she scowled at them as if to say they should have known better. “Why didn’t you move faster, you lazy bums?”
Dothie revised his opinion; she might not be as old as he’d first thought, but she was definitely crabbier. Her scowling face was reminiscent of Toots, busy trying to gain attention on his shoulder. Dirk would feed him, but he was heavy enough already.
“The princess, too?” Arrant asked just to be sure. “The girl who left, she’s the princess of Avondale?”
“That tramp? She ain’t no princess, wanderin’ about with a sell-sword, and my stable boy.” The woman opened her mouth as if to say more, but only shook her head and sucked at her teeth as if they were sour jellies.
A young lady sidled over to join them. “Begging pardon, but the girl was Princess Sylvie of Avondale, and no mistake. And get this.” She leaned over conspiratorially, showing a large expanse of white bosom. “Just before they escaped, all the soldiers disappeared like they was scared.”
“Foolish girl,” the woman snapped. “The king gave them an order.”
“Now, why’d he do that?” Arrant asked, not really thinking through the fine details.
The lass frowned. “It was very strange. And the soldiers were real grumpy about it, too.”
“I’ll be real grumpy in a minute, Ethelda. Go and get to work. And you guys, shove off. Go catch ’em, if that’s what you want to do, and don’t be too nice about it, neither.” The woman grabbed the poor girl by the arm and stomped back into her hotel.
Dothie and Arrant were left staring open-mouthed, trying to assimilate what they’d heard. “It doesn’t matter,” Dothie said after a moment of stunned incomprehension. “We need to get going.”
“First, we’ll need another horse for Fergus,” Arrant muttered. “Shall we go back and look in the stables?”
Fortunately for them, there was one horse left. It was perfect. Huge, and dappled white, its purple saddlecloth and gold-embroidered trim hung conveniently on a peg inside its stall.
They took it and a large quantity of oats for their horses. Nobody tried to stop them except the crabby old lady who ran out the doorway yelling, “That’s the king’s horse—”
Fergus slapped one meaty fist against the other.
She stopped, looked left and right, then turned back and slammed the door shut.
It was enough to make the three realise as keenly as she did that all the King’s Guard were on parade, the local equivalent to a police force were in hiding, and none of her remaining customers were in any position to help.
Arrant, Dothie and Fergus were tempted to bash the door down to see if the place held anything else that was of use, but time was of the essence, so they ignored her accidental invitation and took off in the direction she’d pointed out earlier.
They didn’t get very far before they came to a busy marketplace with multiple thoroughfares.
Dothie wheeled his horse, and when Sylvalla didn’t conveniently materialise, he demanded, “Where do we go now?”
Fergus tried to follow suit, thinking to get a better view of the situation. Instead his horse almost knocked over a stall and a man in a straw hat. The horse nicked the straw hat and started chewing.
“That way,” Arrant said. “I can see a gate.”
So, they clattered through the cobbled thoroughfare, stopping near the main gate where there was a convenient CMTD stand. The perfect place to buy pies and information.
“Excuse me,” Dothie said, licking gravy from his fingers, before offering a morsel to Toots. “Has the king come this way?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?” Dothie insisted, but even with a sword at his throat the man continued to profess he hadn’t seen anything.
Dothie cursed the man for a blind old fool.
The next fifteen minutes was spent discovering the vendor was right. The king hadn’t been past. Nor had a lady on a horse with a man running alongside. They’d been looking in the wrong direction and wasting valuable time.
“Which gate now?”
“Not this one,” Arrant muttered. “So South, West or North? Eeny, meeny, miney, moe: West.”
“A very considered choice. I should have thought of that myself!” Dothie muttered, failing to be impressed by Arrant’s logic. It hardly mattered. Sometimes any direction is better than none, and this time, it was quickly apparent that they were on the right track at last.
The first clue was the street corner littered with bodies who had nothing better to do than to lie in terrifically uncomfortable and inconvenient positions. A group of spectators had gathered around the carnage to watch the dead, dying and injured.
Arrant suspected most of the crowd were wondering if anybody would notice a little pickpocketing. Given the time, he’d have liked to try his hand. Only he was on a horse, and that made petty thievery kind of inconvenient right now.
As soon as they’d made it past the worst of the obstruction, they picked up the pace, cantering down the busy street, ignoring everyone cursing and ducking out of their way.
“Ho, the gate!” Dothie bellowed as soon as he thought the guards on top of the portcullis could hear him.
“Lag off.”
“We are mercenaries, hired to capture the
miscreants who kid—er—reginapped the king.” Dothie continued with only slightly less conviction. “See, we have King … um … the king’s horse.”
“Our orders are that nobody passes.” The guards looked at each other and stood firm.
Dothie kept moving.
To show they meant business, one of the guards drew a massive bow almost as tall as himself, his muscles standing out like knotted cordwood.
“Orders from Dirk are no orders at all,” Arrant said, trying to make his voice a little deeper and more commanding than it usually was. “Lift the gates.”
The guards called down from the safety of their bolt-hole. “Our orders were by command of the king, not some pipsqueak boy and his retainers.”
They might not be happy about the situation, but orders were orders, and they weren’t about to be countermanded by three ruffians. However regal one of their horses was, they looked like the type of ruffians their king no doubt wanted to be kept safe from.
Fergus unsheathed his sword.
The biggest guard pulled back his bow, this time in earnest, convinced at last that their king had been most astute to have given them the order. The other guard followed suit.
Dothie’s lips thinned. The creature on his shoulder flicked its tongue in and out, always a sign of tension—but before he could really lose his temper, someone rode in from the other side of the gate and hailed the guards.
By the flash of purple cloak, he was probably the local king. The man had a terse discussion with the guard.
What was he saying?
Dothie and Arrant waited with bated breath. These few words could save them a lot of time. Or doom them. Arrant craned his ears. He could hear stone grating on stone and then, quite clearly, someone yelled, “Get my gods-forsaken troops marshalled, we are going to war! And by the way, the next time I tell the soldiers to go and have a military parade, that is exactly what I want. By the seven hells, whose idea was it to have those idiot soldiers dress up as commoners? I’ll court-martial whoever gave that order. Pestilence, they were using standard military equipment—did you think Dirk would fail to notice? He probably knows my armoury better than I do …”