The Grave Robber's Apprentice

by Allan Stratton

  The little man stomped on his hat. “I’m more than an inspiration! I’m the poet who penned those ballads! But who gets the credit? Anonymous!”

  “How tragic for you to labor in obscurity,” Angela declared. “You, whose verses are the finest in the archduchy!”

  “The finest in the archduchy?” His lower lip wobbled. “You’re the first to ever say so.”

  “The world is a hard place for artists,” Angela said solemnly. “A young countess, now deceased, once called my puppet plays childish and silly.”

  “The very words that sent me packing from three châteaus and a barony. Oh, such critics deserve to die,” he wept. “Know, then, my true name, kindred spirit. I am Tomas Bundt, Esquire, Artist and Poet Extraordinaire. The Tomas is spelled without an h.” He bowed low, brushing the ground with the brim of his battered buckram hat. “My men are musicians cast from court for playing my wedding serenades. Mocked by nobles of little soul and less taste, we repaired to the great forest, where we have pursued our Muse, taking vengeance on those who abused us.”

  A large gray wolf nuzzled his breeches. “Let me introduce Siegfried, the truest friend that ever lived.” He let the beast lick his face. “At first, we feared the wolf pack and tossed it meat to spare ourselves. Such feeding made us their boon companions. Thanks to them and our monster heads, we never need to draw a pistol. One look, and nobles run screaming from their carriages.”

  Hans placed his hand over his heart. “Tomas Bundt, Esquire, Artist and Poet Extraordinaire: Take us to the mountain of Peter the Hermit, and when our tale is done, you shall be immortalized for helping to save the Little Countess from the forces of darkness.”

  Before Tomas could say a word, Siegfried and his pack began to run in circles, sniffing the air. Now the rest could smell it, too. Smoke. It drifted across the campsite from little fires in the underbrush circling the clearing.

  “The Necromancer!” Hans exclaimed. “He’s returned to burn us alive.”

  “We’ve no time to lose,” Tomas said. He and his men jumped onto their horses.

  “What about us?” Angela cried.

  “The Wolf King will never forsake a fellow artist, nor a good-hearted outlaw,” Tomas promised. “Hop aboard.”

  Hans cupped his hands. Angela sprang from the foothold to a seat behind Tomas. One leap, and Hans was safely at her back. Tomas and his men spurred their horses and burst through the billowing smoke into the clear night air.

  “The Necromancer will follow our scent,” Angela said.

  “Fear not,” Tomas replied. “A scent can be tracked over ground, not through water. We’ll gallop to one of a dozen nearby streams and get you to the base of your hermit’s mountain by daybreak.”

  ACT III

  Peter the Hermit

  Chapter 25

  The Frozen Tomb

  True to his word, Tomas Bundt got Hans and Angela to the hermit’s mountain by sunrise. The snow-capped peak towered without end, the hermitage appearing no bigger than a speck of pepper on a pillowcase.

  Hans and Angela shared a hearty breakfast with the outlaws: dried sausage and drier bread, washed down with river water fed from the mountain’s springs. Siegfried bounded up with a stick, laid it at Hans’ feet, and wagged his tail. Hans grinned and tossed it. The beast fetched and bounded back.

  “You’ve found a new friend,” Tomas smiled.

  Hans scratched the great wolf’s ears. “Angela and I have to go now, Siegfried. We have a good day’s climb if we’re to reach the hermitage by nightfall.” Siegfried raised a paw as if to shake good-bye.

  The outlaws gathered round. Tomas presented Hans with a pair of boots. “You’ll need these to keep your feet from freezing on the upper slope. I stole them from a cruel magistrate to make him walk in the steps of the barefoot poor.”

  “Thank you from the bottom of my heart,” Hans said. “These are the first boots I’ve ever had. The first shoes, even.”

  “May they keep your feet as warm as your heart,” Tomas said.

  Angela shook his hand. “Fair thee well, Tomas Bundt, Esquire, Poet and Wolf King Extraordinaire.” She removed the three remaining jewels from her treasure bag. “Take these for your help and kindness. They’re all that I have, though less than you deserve.”

  Tomas was overwhelmed. “In truth, I deserve nothing. Despite my airs, I’m neither Wolf King nor Poet, but a storybook of lies.”

  Angela shook her head. “Truth is made of such stories. Without your Wolf King, we’d have perished at the Necromancer’s hands. Yet here we stand, alive and well. What truer tale is there than that?”

  “Thank you,” Tomas said. His Adam’s apple bobbled up his throat.

  “I, too, would like to show my thanks,” said Hans, “but I have nothing with which to repay you.”

  Tomas looked into the bright eyes of the young apprentice. “Remember me,” Tomas said. “There is no greater gift than that.”

  Hans and Angela climbed all day. They began on a footpath that ran along a stream. There were berry bushes and cows grazing on lush grasses; the bells on their necks provided dull melodies in the breeze.

  By midafternoon, they reached a stream that gushed from the mountainside. From here, the path zigzagged as the route grew steeper. The grasses were shorter, the earth stripped from the stone. Mountain goats cocked their heads as if wondering if Hans and Angela had gifts of bread and cheese.

  The air grew crisp to the skin. Hans rubbed his hands against the cold.

  Angela paused. “Would you like my gloves?”

  “I’m fine,” Hans said. “You keep warm.” He blew into his palms and snuck them up the sleeves of his robe. “We’d better move fast if we’re to reach the hermitage by dusk.”

  Angela nodded and pulled her general’s helmet over her ears. They had climbed so high that frost covered the rocks in shadow.

  The trail ended. From here, a rough stack of stone shelves rose into the heights. They mounted some of the shelves like stairs. Others were over their heads. For these, Angela crawled onto Hans’ shoulders and wrestled herself up; then he’d jump high and use her dangling arms as climbing ropes.

  The shelves grew more treacherous, lined with crusted snow. Pellets and chunks fell inside their boots and melted against their feet and ankles. The wet leather was useless against the cold, and soon too rigid to grip the rock. Angela slipped. Hans grabbed her by the elbow. His hands were turning blue.

  The sun dropped behind the mountains. The route ahead was uncertain, the light dim, the shadows deep.

  “We’ll never make the hermitage in the dark,” Hans shivered. “One wrong move, and we’ll fall to our deaths. Two shelves up and over there’s a crevice big enough to hold us. We’ll rest there till daybreak.”

  “No,” Angela said, teeth chattering. “We’ll freeze to death.”

  “Not if we huddle together.”

  Hans pushed her to the next ledge and crawled up after. Clouds curled around them. The crevice drifted out of sight. Hans hoisted himself to the final grade, and reached down. Angela grabbed his arms through the icy mist. Hans pulled long and hard. At last she was beside him.

  They sat panting with exhaustion, their backs to the frigid rock, their legs dangling over the precipice.

  “The crevice is to our left,” Hans said. They slid across, inch by inch, and pressed themselves inside. The wind whistled around them.

  “If anything happens to me,” Angela said quietly, “I want you to know you’re my best friend in the whole world. In fact, you’re my only friend ever.”

  “You’re mine, too,” Hans said, and held her tight. “But nothing’s going to happen to you. I promise.”

  He knew it was a lie. They couldn’t survive. But in the crevice they’d die in peace, not in pieces. He couldn’t bear the thought of Angela’s screams as she tumbled down the mountain, or of her body smashed and battered. Nor did he fancy the same for himself. “We’re in this together,” he whispered into her ear. “Friends to the en
d.”

  “Yes,” Angela whispered back. “Friends to the end.”

  She couldn’t feel her feet. Her face was numb. She closed her eyes and saw her mother and father. If she were to die, they’d be lost forever. She had to survive for them. She opened her eyes quickly. They closed again. She blinked and struggled to keep them open. But the cold was too much. They closed, closed, slowly, and she was still.

  Hans kissed her gently on the forehead. The crevice was a different kind of tomb than any he’d entered before. At least he’d be free in the fresh air, not trapped in a box.

  Ice crystals formed on his lashes; they flickered shut. The numbness in his limbs felt warm, so warm—and for a moment, he dreamed that a kindly man was wrapping him in a blanket. “Courage, my son.” The lid of a box closed over him. Then he flew through the air, there was a great splash, and a rocking in the pitch-black.

  Hans heard the voice again.

  “Courage. Courage. We’re nearly there.”

  His lids flickered open. There was a great light. He and Angela were rising into it. All around them, men in white were rising alongside.

  “He’s coming round!” the voice rang out.

  Hans turned to the sound and found his face buried in a world of whiskers. He leaned back and saw a ruddy-faced man with a bushy white beard and a shock of white hair that bloomed in all directions. A halo of light glowed through the tangled mane.

  “Are you God?” Hans asked in wonder.

  “No,” the man laughed. “I’m Peter the Hermit.”

  Chapter 26

  Resting With the Dead

  At that very moment, the Necromancer reentered the abandoned cemetery, alone and hungry. He’d eaten the carrots he’d taken from the peddler’s wagon. Now there were only two potatoes left to gnaw on. These he’d stored in his empty sockets. After all, he mused grimly, potatoes have eyes.

  He picked his way to Hans and Angela’s old coffin tunnel. Where is my prey now? he wondered. What will I tell the archduke when I return to Castle Schwanenberg?

  The Necromancer knelt down by the hole. Where better to think and dream than cocooned in the dank earth? He slithered inside and lay very still. Worms came out of the tunnel walls and wriggled up his shroud. He relaxed as they crawled over his arms and legs. What peace, he thought, to rest with corpses.

  His mind drifted to the moment of Hans and Angela’s escape. He knew there was no Wolf King nor monster horde: Magical creatures had no need for horses. Clearly, that meant the fellows were outlaws, using disguise to frighten the world from their hideaway. Harmless, too, or they’d have killed him and his Weevils, not just his crows.

  So why had they taken the boy and the girl? Not for reward: The children could expose them. And not for slaughter: They could have killed the brats in the clearing. That left but one explanation: They were escorting them somewhere.

  But why? Out of kindness? If the Necromancer had had eyes, he would have rolled them. Good-hearted thieves, like garrulous nurses and evil wizards, were the stuff of fairy tales.

  Besides, the only important question was where. The place must be secluded, for no town could provide safe haven from his spies. And it was surely in the north, for north was the only direction they’d traveled. Indeed, far north, the peddler’s wagon suggesting a long journey.

  But where in the far north could they find sanctuary?

  A slug poked its moist horns into the Necromancer’s left earhole, as if confiding a secret.

  “Ah.” The Necromancer smiled. “But of course!”

  Chapter 27

  Peter the Hermit

  All night, Hans drifted in and out of consciousness. He was aware of a room built of rocks and mortar, and of smoke drifting up from a stone hearth to a blackened timber ceiling. The air smelled of eucalyptus. A few of the hermits warmed his hands and feet with its oil and made him breathe over a steaming pot of pine needles. They laid him before the hearth under a pile of goat hides. Angela was nearby under a second pile.

  Peter the Hermit sat between them. He stroked their hair, wiped the sweat from their brows with rags, and raised their heads so they could drink a bitter tea of roots and bark. All the while, he whispered encouragement and prayers.

  The other hermits ringed the room singing in Latin. Some knelt on the ground, heads rolled back, palms extended upward. Others twirled in a circle, white robes billowing around them.

  “Is this the hermitage?” Hans murmured.

  Peter squeezed his hand. “It’s home,” he said. “Wherever you are is home.”

  Their fevers broke before dawn; by noon, they were propped up slurping chicken broth from tankards. The other hermits were off on their daily chores. Peter had stayed behind, their health his sole concern.

  Hans marveled at their host. He was dressed in leather motley with a patchwork cloak that swept from his broad shoulders over his muscular arms and chest. A man of all seasons, his broad face and hands were worn by the sun, while his bright, blue eyes pierced the gloom like a harbor lamp. Most striking of all was his spectacular shock of hair and beard. It looked like a nesting ground for sparrows.

  Hans tried not to stare. “How did you know where to find us?”

  “The lookout spotted you at midday,” Peter said. “We watched you climb through our telescope, uncertain if you were friend or foe. When it got dark, we decided to act. It’s much more agreeable fetching live bodies than dead ones.”

  Angela took a glug of her soup. “Why do you have a lookout?”

  “Aren’t you happy that we do?” Peter smiled.

  Angela scrunched her nose. “Is that an answer?”

  “It’s the one you’re getting,” Peter laughed. “But here are a couple of questions for you: Who are you? Why are you here?”

  “Well, to begin, I’m Countess Angela Gabriela von Schwanenberg, and this is my best friend, Hans.”

  “Angela Gabriela von Schwanenberg,” Peter said with a start. “I gave you your name. Your mother and father let me sleep in your haymow.”

  “Yes,” Angela said, “and now I’ve come to seek sanctuary with you. The archduke has imprisoned my parents; he seeks our deaths.”

  “What?”

  Angela told him their tale, Peter shaking his head and rocking as the occasion required. When she described her burial, he leaped from his stool. When she spoke of her rescue by Hans, he gave the lad a fatherly hug. “Blessèd be the grave robbers!”

  “I’m just an apprentice.” Hans blushed.

  “To return to the point,” Angela said crisply, “my parents say you’re wise. I need you to tell me how to rescue them.”

  “First, you must rest,” Peter replied. “No child fresh from her deathbed is fit to confront the power of the archduke and his necromancer.”

  “But time is short. My parents are in danger.”

  “Time is never so short as life itself.”

  Angela kicked her foot under the covers. “You don’t understand. How can you? The archduke’s never harmed you.”

  “No?” The color drained from Peter’s cheeks. “That villain caused the death of my son. My only child.”

  “I’m sorry,” Angela said. “I didn’t know.”

  The hermit’s eyes filled with tears. “My wife had passed away in childbirth. When I lost my child as well, I wandered the land, unhinged by grief. That’s how I came upon your parents. They restored my mind and I retreated here, far from the horrors of the world.” He blinked. “I grow tiresome. Come, bundle yourselves and step to the porch.”

  The porch of the great hall was constructed of thick planks resting on small stone pillars. From here, Hans and Angela looked over the hermitage grounds. It was a large, triangular plateau: One side, a hundred yards wide, marked the mountain face on which they’d nearly died. The other two sides backed onto a steep V-shaped slope that towered to the mountain’s summit.

  “This porch is our altar,” Peter said reverently, “the plateau our chapel.”

  Hans was awestruck
. Sheltered on three sides, but open to the southern sun, the plateau was like a meadow in early spring. A few sheep and goats munched on hardy grasses; daffodils, crocuses, and bluebells poked through clumps of snow at the base of berry bushes; and the inner walls of the mountain were covered in moss and evergreens.

  Angela pointed at the hermits. They were standing around a large tree stump at the center of the grounds. Each held a heavy wooden sword and took turns attacking the stump with thrusts and roars.

  “They’re pell training!” Angela exclaimed.

  “It’s their daily exercise,” Peter said.

  “But pell training is what knights do before tournaments and battle.”

  “Knights are what they were, the sons of noble families, before grief brought them to this mountain as it brought me.”

  “Where did they come from?” Hans asked.

  “From as far away as it took them to get here,” Peter said.

  Angela rolled her eyes at Hans: A hermit speaking in riddles was as irritating in real life as it was in storybooks. As mysterious, too.

  Peter combed his fingers through his hair. His mood brightened. “Our stump is one of the finest pells around. You’re welcome to train when you’re able.”

  “I’d love to,” Hans said.

  “I’d rather not perspire if I don’t have to,” Angela said. “But I’ll need to do something till I’m well enough to rescue my parents. At home, I made puppets. Do you have a workshop?”

  Peter pointed across the plateau. “We make wine barrels and caskets in that barn over there. Use whatever tools you wish.”

  Hans saw a series of carved openings in the rock wall behind the barn. “What’s in those holes?”

  “They’re hermit cells, where we contemplate by day and sleep by night. We’ll prepare one for each of you.”

  “I’ve spent my life in a cave,” Hans said. “Could we please sleep in the great hall instead?”

  “Unchaperoned?” Peter raised his bushy eyebrows. “What would your parents say to that?” he asked Angela in amusement.