“Yes, my lord.” Captain Blang bowed.
At last the king turned to JaRed. “It seems we owe you our thanks, mouse. For many lives would have been lost without your courage. What was it they called you?”
JaRed cocked his head, perplexed. Just a little while ago the king had called him by his given name. And now the king couldn’t remember it? JaRed remembered what LaRish had said about the king being unpredictable, and he shoved the thought aside. “They call me Runt, Majesty.”
“Runt? I see. Perhaps we should call you Serpent-Killer instead? Or Tunnel-Breaker.”
JaRed was not sure whether the king sounded angry or amused.
“In any event you have the royal gratitude. I think, unless your father objects, I shall take you into my service. Would you like that, mouse?”
“I would be honored.”
“And you?” the king asked ReDemec.
JaRed’s father stuck out his chest. “With great pride.”
“Very well. Tomorrow seek out—where is LaRish?”
“You threw him out of the palace last week,” Captain Blang said.
“Well, never mind that. JaRed, find General LaRish and tell him he is to instruct you along with my son, JoHanan. Tell him he is to prepare you to serve in the kingsguard.”
“Yes, Your Majesty. Thank you, Your Majesty.”
“Oh, don’t thank me. I am likely to need you before you are ready. A war is coming. And it smells of rats.”
In ElShua’s garden a new world bloomed. It had grown much in the past few months. So much that its hole, which had grown with it, now spread like a small pond in the center of the field. The surface of the hole shimmered with starlight.
Then, great sorrow! The stars blinked. The world shivered as though under a tremendous weight.
At the far end of the garden ElShua’s shoulders slumped, and a look of deep anguish came over him. “Owl,” he called. “Come quickly!”
The Owl came.
“Your first burden.” ElShua pointed into the hole. “Go quickly and find a mouse. And understand from now on you will have no rest, for your burdens will be many.”
Down the Owl flew, and was swallowed by the now black pool.
He found the soul of the mouse in a dark cavern near the sea, next to its body.
There, too, he found Wroth, as he knew he would. The Owl could see him even if the rats could not.
Wroth laughed. “So? Where is ElShua?”
The Owl did not answer. He only stared at the trembling spirit of the mouse and understood Wroth had been tormenting it.
“Too busy to come himself? Sent an owl to do a god’s job?” Wroth laughed again. “I told you so You’ll regret this, I said. Over and over. And still I say it. You’ll regret this more than you know. Every time I say it, it means another one of these creatures—these nothings—will die. And while I am here killing, you will be going back and forth. Bouncing between here and there like a rubber ball. Between death and life. Regret and hopelessness.”
Still the Owl did not answer. It seemed to the Owl he had never understood anything before this moment. Even now he understood so little. Yet here was a mouse, loosed from its moorings. How it trembled!
Gently the Owl spread his wings and took the mouse spirit in one talon while Wroth mocked.
On that day the Owl swore that never again would Wroth be permitted to attend the separation of a soul. Never again would the newly dead suffer the torture of the rat as they waited for safe passage to ElShua’s side.
On that day the Owl made a promise to Earth. And to himself. He would come quickly when a body expired. Always quickly. He would swoop from the sky with the wind under his wings and carry the sorrows of a wasted world to redemption. So no poor soul would be left alone, even for a moment, with a suddenly visible Wroth.
Never again would the Great Owl come late to the dying.
Early, perhaps. But never late.
HaRed left the palace when he could stand the ingratiating blather no longer. On his way out, he leaned close to JaRed and whispered in his ear, “Imagine that. Runt. A soldier.”
Then he stomped past the palace guards and into the dingy corridors of the Commons before making quickly for his hiding place.
The alcove stood in darkness above a little-used corridor in the perimeter tunnel south of the ReDemec home. The alcove held the wooden mechanism of the Wind Gate wall-stone.
He stopped when he came to the familiar dip in the tunnel floor. He reached up high on the right-hand side for the earthen ledge, cool and damp to his touch. He leaped up into the alcove and lay with his back against one wall.
He placed one hind paw against the smooth wooden lever and thought about JaRed’s promotion into the kingsguard. Ridiculous! Was all of Tira-Nor mad?
It would serve them right if rats destroyed the whole city.
He stared into the darkness in the general direction of the lever. A nudge was all it would take. Then what noise! The wall stone slamming down. The earth shaking with the impact. The guards at the Wind Gate falling over themselves in fear. It would be nothing to evade the sentries afterward. There would be no one to point a blaming finger at HaRed, son of ReDemec. He could flee to the Dark Forest and watch as Tira-Nor fell to the rats.
Such power in one paw! The power to frighten soldiers, enrage a king, close a tunnel for weeks or months or even years. He closed his eyes in the darkness.
Only I would know!
Now that was something worth thinking on. For what else did HaRed son of ReDemec know that he could reveal—or keep hidden—at his own pleasure?
Chapter Six
In the House of Man
In JaRed’s dream, LaRish poked a stubby, gnarled nose into his sleeping chamber and spoke in a far-off voice. “You wish to sleep all the day?” JaRed rubbed his eyes. So strange, LaRish being here. LaRish of the quick reflexes and even quicker wit.
“You are used to sleeping in, perhaps? But I cannot work miracles. If you would train with the kingsguard, you must get up.”
What was LaRish doing here in JaRed’s home, talking about the kingsguard? JaRed yawned and stretched.
“You will perhaps want something to eat?” LaRish asked. “I will just tell Prince JoHanan the newest member of the kingsguard is tired and hungry.”
Still JaRed did not move. His mind had frozen solid, like a lump of ice. His body felt as though he were floating between two worlds, somewhere beyond the reach of responsibilities and appointments and orders shouted by grumpy forage masters.
“Why the king should want you, I do not know. But I am a soldier. I follow orders. When the king says, ‘Go.’ I go. And when he tells me to train a great nuisance of a mouse into the kingsguard, I say, ‘Okay.’ All of the kingsguard are nuisances. But I must have cooperation.”
LaRish disappeared for a moment, and JaRed saw through the portal, behind him in the family chambers, Mother standing speechless, her eyebrows raised.
She clutched both paws over her bosom. “JaRed,” she called. “What’s wrong?”
Then LaRish sneered again, “What don’t you understand, leetle mouse?”
JaRed cocked his head and blinked.
This gesture proved too much for LaRish. “I am telling you to get up! Move that leetle bumpkin out of the hole and come out into this big great room so I can cuff your leetle ears! ”
King SoSheth.
The kingsguard.
LaRish.
The ice broke all at once, and JaRed understood: this was no dream.
He scrambled out of the chamber and was relieved to see that only Mother had heard the exchange. The others had apparently left for the day.
“I’m sorry,” JaRed said. “I was just so tired—”
LaRish waved the explanation away. “Save the excuses for when you someday get married, if maybe miracles still happen.”Before JaRed was fully awake, LaRish was leading him back through the Great Hall and into the expansive, winding corridors of the kingsguard, though he did
not stop to explain where the spidery passages led. JaRed hurried to keep up. It occurred to him more than once that this section of Tira-Nor was no longer forbidden to him. He could come and go here as he pleased, a privilege no other member of his family enjoyed. No doubt this irritated his brothers, which was probably why they had not been there to greet the notorious LaRish.
They passed the four sentries posted at the Royal Gate—an entrance JaRed had never before used—and slipped into the warmth of mid-morning.
LaRish led him silently to the training area, a black pool of shade formed by the jaw of a great rock that jutted from the side of a culvert north of Tira-Nor. The rock formed a sort of cave that provided shelter against the openness of the prairie.
“Ho, there, Corporal LaRish,” a voice sang from the blackness of the cave. “You are too late for breakfast.”
“Ho there yourself,” LaRish grumped. “And I am a generale this morning. You think because you are a prince I cannot teach you a lesson? I will tell you something. King SoSheth would thank me to teach you some respect.”
Prince JoHanan laughed as they entered the darkness. “Who is this, Master Instructor? I do not recognize him.”
“Prince JoHanan, meet your new training partner, JaRed son of ReDemec.”
The prince dipped his head in a long bow and offered JaRed a smile. “My pleasure.”
In person, JoHanan son of SoSheth seemed much smaller than his father. JaRed had never been close enough to the prince to really notice. He had expected SoSheth’s offspring to be more imposing. Instead, JoHanan seemed, if not ordinary, then not royal, either. A pair of wide rose-petal ears jutted from his head. A spattering of brown freckles marched along the bridge of his nose to his forehead, and his smile seemed genuine, almost an offer of friendship.
JaRed decided he liked JoHanan son of SoSheth. Someday Prince JoHanan would make a good king.
Or would he?
TaMir’s voice came back to him now, whispering through his mind like a great wind, and the shock of it nearly knocked him to the ground: JaRed, you are the next king of Tira-Nor.
And Horrid: We already have a king.
Again TaMir seemed so close his breath echoed under the rock: He will hate you for what I have done, but the words are not mine. It is not might that makes right, in spite of what people say. It is right that makes might.
JaRed had thought TaMir’s prophecy referred to Horrid, but now he wasn’t sure. The prophecy hadn’t been clear. Come to think of it, what prophecy ever was? What if the words meant JoHanan would grow to hate him? What if both father and son turned their venom against him?
But I can’t be king. I’m not even strong.
JoHanan laughed, and JaRed realized he was staring. “Sorry,” he muttered.
JoHanan’s laughter continued, clear and unrestrained, and JaRed couldn’t imagine such a laugh turning to hatred.
“It’s the ears,” JoHanan said. “LaRish says if I would just grow tail feathers I’d be able to fly.”
“Your father,” LaRish said, “took him into service last night.”
“I didn’t know.”
LaRish shrugged. “The king was going to have him keeled, but at the last moment, he changed his mind and decided death is too good for him. He say, What is a more terrible punishment? And all the wise men in court, they say, Make him spend every day with La-Rish and JoHanan. So here he is.”
“Ah,” JoHanan said. “You’re the one who killed the snake.”
“ElShua killed the snake,” JaRed said.
“Are we going to get started?” LaRish asked. “Or stand here blabbing all day? JoHanan! Take your stance as point mouse for a three-unit.”
To JaRed’s astonishment, Prince JoHanan winked at him.
They trained all that day, and the next, and the next.
JoHanan expressed surprised at JaRed’s reluctance to oil his fur. The other members of the kingsguard thought oil a necessity. It made them slippery, difficult to grab and pin. But JaRed found he couldn’t keep it off his palms, which made grasping anything difficult. Worse, the oil acted like a layer of fat; it made him unbearably hot.
LaRish only shrugged as though it weren’t all that important. “He is small, Prince. Maybe it is better for him with no oil. Sometimes the instinct is good, yes?”
And that was the end of it.
Summer drew to a close. The stalks of corn in the fields far to the west bent over in death and turned slowly from yellow to black. The endless shafts of tall grass that carpeted the prairie now stood dormant, as brittle as the wings of a moth. Even the Earth seemed little more than a shriveled and rotting husk. Its skin, now hard as bone, lay split into a craquelure pattern of dusty runnels.
Meanwhile, Captain Blang inspired, cajoled, and threatened the mice of Tira-Nor to incredible feats of service. The mice of the Commons were thirsty and exhausted, but they dug, scraped, foraged, hauled, shaped, planned. They formed new booby traps, narrowed the gates, and closed old passages. They plotted and planned and schemed. They stocked the storerooms with more and more food, though most of it hardly looked edible.
JaRed slept in his own private chambers in a section of the palace reserved for the kingsguard. Like something from a dream, he thought. His muscles ached, and he slept soundly, though never long, and he gained a new respect for both JoHanan and LaRish. LaRish carried himself with the speed of a cat and the cunning of a hawk.
As he trained, JaRed discovered inner reserves of strength he didn’t know he possessed. His family would barely have recognized him, but of course there was no time for visiting relatives.
One night LaRish ordered JaRed and JoHanan to meet after curfew at the training area, and JaRed found himself stalking through sagging tallgrass beyond the mound of the Common Gate. Overhead, a hooked moon washed the field in a blue haze the color of thinned milk.
After curfew, LaRish had said. Which was illegal, and meant sneaking or lying or conniving to get past the guards at one of the gates.
JaRed dealt with this obstacle easily enough, though his solution was perhaps not the sort of clever trickery LaRish expected. JaRed simply took the long way round. Back into the bowels of Tira-Nor. Back to his old stomping grounds, the passages and tunnels of the poor, the place that still felt like home to him. He belonged in the Commons if he belonged anywhere.
Not long ago he had thought the mice of the Commons had rejected him, but now he knew it wasn’t rejection as much as containment. He was small; therefore, he would do small things.
But wasn’t that the truth? Had he ever really expected to shake the world? To make a difference in the universe? To do great deeds and live important adventures? His only really important adventure had terrified him … and made the king angry.
Face it, he told himself, you are what you are. A simple mouse, nothing more.
When he found old GrouSer on duty at the Tower Gate, he told him the truth. LaRish was running him through some kind of a test on kingsguard business. GrouSer let him through with barely a twitch.
Smiling, JaRed supposed that after being vindicated in the killing of the snake he could tell GrouSer just about anything and be believed.
“You’re late,” LaRish spat when JaRed arrived. JoHanan yawned groggily in the corner.
“A pass would have saved some time.”
“You would I should make it easy for you?”
“Yes, please,” JaRed said. All these tests. All these exercises and long days and training rituals. At times LaRish could be irritating.
“Come. Time to go.”
They stalked out into the terrible openness and headed west.
Out of sight of Tira-Nor’s sloping field, they stopped beneath an old hedge apple tree at the edge of the cornfield that marked the western boundary.
“We must be careful, now,” LaRish said. “Their sentries may be sleeping, but I think not.”
JoHanan rubbed his paws together. “What’s the mission?”
“We are looking,” LaR
ish said.
“For what?”
LaRish twitched his nose. “Rats.”
“A spy mission?” JoHanan asked.
“A scouting mission.”
“Good,” JoHanan replied. “If other mice can be sent on dangerous missions, so can I.”
LaRish scowled. “The first test of a good king is what he will surrender for his people. So. What will you surrender, prince big shot? Eh? What do you have that is so much more important than this leetle mouse?”
Prince JoHanan blinked. A moment passed before he answered. “Nothing.”
“Well, that is what you ought to say,” LaRish said. “But still it is wrong. You do have one thing more than JaRed. You have a crown waiting for you. Don’t forget that.”
“So what are we to do now?” JaRed asked.
“Now we earn the food the king gives us and find out what you are made of. It must be enough, for we cannot help you. Are you ready?”
JaRed glanced at JoHanan and nodded.
“How many weapons have you?”
“Three,” JaRed said. “Tooth, claw, tail. The tooth is most natural, but the claw is surprise, and the tail is balance.”
“Strike the throat of a rat and he will bleed like any mouse,” LaRish said. “Rats are slow and stupid, but don’t underestimate them, for they can keel more easily than you. But you have other weapons. Behind your nose, yes?”
JaRed stared.
“Your eyes, leetle one. Your eyes are not just to look. They are to see. Understand? Many mice and many rats look. Not many really see.”
They crept forward silently. North along the line that divided corn field from prairie.
It took careful navigation through the concealing tallgrass before they found a clear view of the subdivision. They stood on a little rise looking west through parted blades.
Men called the massive structures houses, though how they could live in such grotesque monstrosities JaRed could not imagine. The trees in the subdivision had been leveled months ago. Here and there a yard of cultivated sod broke the tedium of dirt, concrete, and gravel. A few of the houses were evidently completed, ready to be lived in. But up close, on the eastern edge of the development, there were still empty lots for sale.
Runt the Brave: Bravery in the Midst of a Bully Society (Legends of Tira-Nor) Page 6