Prince on the Run

by Guy Antibes

  “And he told you about his agreement,” Trevor said.

  “I’m sure your father was furious with him, but Lilith and I have had plans to flee since before you left for Red Forest Garrison. The Dorwickian army is camped nearby, and Henry has all his forces on the West Moreton and Viksaran borders.”

  “That is why he didn’t pursue you?”

  “Oh, he did, but they expired on the road.”

  “We didn’t see any evidence of fighting,” Boxster said.

  “Do you think we are stupid? At this point, we have to clean up after ourselves,” the queen said.

  “And what will happen to my brothers and sister?” Trevor asked. He already knew the answer.

  “I won’t have Lilith’s path to the Presidonian throne cluttered by heirs,” the queen said.

  “But, they are your children.”

  The queen made a disagreeable face. “Henry’s children.”

  Trevor looked at Lilith. “You agree to this?”

  “Most of it,” she said, turning red.

  Lilith knew where her power came from, and Trevor felt she wasn’t happy about the prospects of killing her halfsiblings, but it was a war of succession, and Trevor was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  “I suppose I should be going,” Trevor said.

  “I’ll give you and your friend a hundred count,” the queen said.

  Boxster was already out the door. Someone had removed their horses, but that wouldn’t stop either of them. They jumped on officer’s mounts and took off into the twilight. They were galloping, which made talking impossible.

  Their pursuers hadn’t caught them, but they were in sight as they entered a crossroads and pulled up.

  “Which way?” Boxster said.

  “Flip a coin? Throw lots? I don’t know.”

  Trevor turned right, and at the end of a wood, not five hundred paces along the road, a tree had been felled across their path.

  Three scruffy men stood in their way, holding swords.

  “Your money or your life,” one of them said.

  Trevor sighed. He had read that phrase in countless novels.

  “Your life, if you don’t let us pass,” Trevor said, drawing his sword.

  He could hear hoofbeats behind him.

  “Off!” Boxster yelled.

  Trevor didn’t need to be told. He attacked one of the two men. One of them backed away and bathed Trevor with fire.

  “That won’t work on me,” Trevor said. Don’t burn my partner, or I will kill you.”

  “I won’t,” the magician said.

  “Stay where you are.”

  The man nodded. “You are a great swordsman.”

  “Relatively speaking, definitely,” Trevor said as he turned to face five officers.

  Boxster’s highwayman had been bested as well as they turned to face the Dorwickians.

  The fighting was furious as Boxster and Trevor worked as a team to devastate the officers. None of them were champions, that was for sure, but like the robbers, one of them was a magician who bathed Trevor with fire. Trevor immediately slew him. In two minutes, they all lay sprawled in the dirt.

  The bandit magician held his hands tightly to his chest. “What are you going to do to me?”

  “Nothing, if you follow my instructions,” Trevor said. “And if you follow my instructions, you can feel free to loot the soldiers’ bodies and be off.”

  “What are your instructions?”

  Trevor took his jacket off and looked at his precious sword. He threw it on the ground and picked up one of the robbers’ swords. Boxster nodded and did the same. In a minute, they were dressed as brigands and stood at the scene.

  “Burn your friends’ bodies with magician’s fire. It’s probably a better ending for them than they deserved. I suggest you head west as fast as you can. There is a Dorwickian army heading to Tarviston. If you give a warning, you might get a reward. Tell them that men named Trevor and Desolation died fighting the Dorwickian officers.”

  “Trevor and Desolation.” The magician repeated.

  “Now burn your compatriots.”

  The magician, with fear still in his eyes, lit the other two robbers on fire.

  “Hurry before others come,” Boxster said to the magician and turned to Trevor. “Their horses are through there.”

  Trevor stayed long enough to make sure the magician wouldn’t be dousing the flames, but the man was already clawing at the officers. He ran toward Boxster, and they soon were heading northeast toward the mountains that bordered Ginster.

  They couldn’t go very fast through the fields, but they soon found a track leading in the right direction.

  “Do you think our trick will work?” Trevor asked Boxster.

  “That was quick thinking, but I have thought quickly before, and do you think I was successful?”

  “You are still alive,” Trevor said, feeling a bit down. “No one will care about us for a while, with Lilith’s army on the march. I’m sad to leave my sword behind.”

  “That might keep them off the scent for a while,” Boxster said, “but someone somewhere will recognize Trevor Arcwin’s face regardless of the name you use. Not many know my current name. The man in the musical group in Red Forest knew my face.”

  “Are we fooling ourselves trying to go into some kind of business?” Trevor asked.

  “What else can you do? We can live an exciting life on our own, without having to deal with incompetent officers—”

  “I was an incompetent officer?”

  “Not so incompetent and hardly an officer,” Boxster said.

  “So, we travel northeast until Mother sends out men to find us. And then we can find a road west to the monastery.”

  Boxster shrugged in the saddle. “Who knows, your ‘death’ might persuade your mother and your sister, after all. In any event, it won’t be so easy for them to get past Tarviston’s walls,” Boxster said.

  “There’s where you are wrong,” Trevor said. “If my mother and sister have planned this for a year, I would be surprised if they don’t have people ready to betray the king and let them into the city.”

  “Should that concern us anymore?”

  “No,” Trevor said. “I shouldn’t have come to talk to them.”

  “No, you shouldn’t, but I’m sure you will feel better for at least making an attempt.”

  “Neither of them would listen.”

  “But you showed up and made an effort. It won’t matter to the queen, but it matters to me, Brother Yvan, and Win.”

  “Maybe not Win,” Trevor said.

  Chapter Thirty

  ~

  I n the early hours of the morning, sounds woke Trevor up. They slept on piled-up grass in a meadow. He reached over and shook Boxster.

  “I hear it too. Soldiers coming from Dorwick or Ginster?” Boxster said. “I think it is time to get out of here.”

  Trevor nodded, but it was dark, and Boxster probably didn’t see the gesture. They mounted the nags they had taken at the fight and found a road that would take them back toward Tarviston. “If Ginster is invading, Presidon won’t be safe for anyone,” Trevor said.

  “We aren’t going to stay here long enough to find out,” Boxster said.

  They urged their horses, but they wouldn’t go much faster. It would be too dangerous to cut across country in the dark, and their mounts weren’t very interested in speeding up.

  “If there is an advance unit, we will be overtaken,” Boxster said. “I think I see a track up ahead.”

  “The row of trees?” Trevor asked.

  Boxster nodded. “A row like that generally means a lane of some kind.”

  Boxter was right. There was a track on the other side of the trees, and they took it to get out of the way of the army behind them. Trevor looked back and could make out torches as tiny points of light, illuminating the way, but they were too far to see who they were.

  The track led to an abandoned farm.

  “We won’
t sleep in the house, but we can sleep in the barn with our horses,” Boxster said.

  Trevor agreed, and they found straw that wasn’t too desiccated. They put their blankets on top and went back to sleep.

  Boxster shook Trevor awake in the early light of dawn. “We are surrounded. It seems the army had the same idea we did.”

  “I slept too soundly,” Trevor said.

  “We both did.”

  They found a lump of stale bread and a sour wineskin in one of the saddlebags and shared their awful breakfast. As Trevor began to kick the straw over to their horses, the door flew open.

  “Who goes there?” a voice said.

  Trevor couldn’t make out the uniform very well because of the light of the torch.

  “Two vagabonds,” Boxster said. “We came across the barn to use as shelter.”

  “Come out with your horses.”

  The soldier laughed when he saw the nags.

  “Vagabonds, you are. These are worthless mounts.”

  “They get us where we need to go,” Trevor said.

  “And where is that?” another soldier said, entering the circle of the torch’s light.

  “Here or there,” Boxster said. “Wherever chance takes us. Has chance led us to an opportunity?”

  “Not here. You two will be our guests for a little while,” an officer said, joining them.

  Trevor wondered if the entire army would soon surround the torch. “Tie their hands. We can’t have them telling the countryside that we are here.”

  “Who are you?” Boxster said.

  “You don’t recognize our uniforms? You are an ignorant pair. We are the pride of Dorwick.”

  “Is there another pride of Dorwick?” Trevor said, regretting he opened his mouth.

  “The entire army is the pride of Dorwick, you imbecile!” the officer said.

  “Can we go back to sleep?” Boxster said.

  “If you go back to sleep, it will be your last nap on this world,” the officer said.

  Trevor straightened up and said, “Yes, sir.” He gave the officer a silly salute.

  “Pathetic. Feed them a few crusts of bread and a drink of water,” the officer said. He turned around. “And get their hands tied!”

  As dawn broke over eastern Presidon, Boxster and Trevor sat on the ground with their backs to the barn wall. The army was smaller than the phony West Moreton army that King Henry had put into the field, but it would be a big surprise when it showed up to reinforce his mother’s force, who now had five fewer officers.

  A woman wearing an army tunic, but a skirt instead of breeches, gave them battered tin bowls full of mush. “At least you’ll die with full stomachs,” she said as she walked away cackling.

  “We need to get out of here,” Boxster said. “A couple of nobodies like us are very expendable to a marching army.”

  “Will this help?” Trevor said, holding out his hands and shoving them behind him quickly. “Their knot tying isn’t up to Presidon standards.”

  “I’d rather be killed escaping than face execution,” Boxster said.

  “And this isn’t even an assassination. I should be disappointed.”

  “Dead is dead,” Boxster said, “but I’m still partial to living. Untie my hands.”

  Trevor waited for their line of sight to be empty before he quickly freed Boxster. They waited for another lull around them and took off for the little wood not far from the barn. Their only weapons were the ropes that had tied their hands.

  They ran and kept on running, all the way through the wood and into the fields. On they went until they reached a road.

  “Tarviston or the monastery?” Boxster said. “Do you want to save your family?”

  Trevor stared at the road leading south. “They don’t have a chance. Do they?” Trevor asked.

  “My honest opinion? You will soon be the only remaining issue of the late king of Presidon.”

  “Then we won’t go south.” They turned and ran toward another copse to the northwest and collapsed by a little spring within the trees. After drinking their fill, they took off again to another group of trees. They heard the pounding of hooves on the soft earth of the field and looked back at four Dorwickian soldiers bearing down on them.

  Trevor and Boxster turned around and waited for them to arrive. None of them drew their swords, which might be a good sign, but the men always had the option, Trevor thought.

  “You didn’t head for Tarviston,” one of the men said. He looked like he might be a sergeant. “Names?”

  “Karn Kissel,” Boxster said.

  “Bill Denton,” Trevor said. “Please don’t kill us. I promise never to go to Dorwick.”

  “Or Tarviston?”

  “There too,” Trevor said. It wasn’t hard to put a little fear into his voice.

  “Then, here is where we part company.” The sergeant drew his sword.

  “Burn them,” he looked at one of the men. He didn’t wear a sword.

  “No, don’t burn me!” Trevor said. He ran toward the tiny wood, with Boxster following him.

  “Burn the woods and them in it,” the sergeant said as he turned his horse and headed back the way he came. “You know what to do.”

  The magician walked his horse toward the wood as the other two soldiers galloped ahead with evil grins on their faces. They let them enter the tiny forest. Boxster tried to run out the other side, but the soldiers threatened him with their swords.

  “I suppose they want to hear a little screaming,” Boxster said. “Typical soldiers.”

  “Not noble soldiers of fortune?”

  Boxster lifted a corner of his mouth in an almost-smile. “Not remotely.”

  They walked to the center. The woods might be little, but they were thick.

  “My ability not to burn won’t work in here,” Trevor said.

  “Why not?” Boxster said, looking alarmed.

  Trevor winced. “I can be burned by something that catches fire from the magicians flame. Win and I tested it.”

  “So, we are going to be burned alive?”

  Trevor sighed. “That is their intent.”

  He stomped around the wood, cursing at how stupid he was, peering out to see the soldiers. He could smell the wood burning and heard the crackling of flames. He walked around a tree and fell into another spring.

  Trevor’s first thought was how ironic his death might be, drowning in a burning copse.

  “What have you there?”

  Trevor looked up at Boxster. He was standing shoulder-deep in the spring. “Dryden provides for the righteous,” Trevor said.

  “I’m not righteous, but I’ll take a little of his providing,” Boxster said as he jumped in next to Trevor, making it a tight fit. “Most of these little copses must have springs.”

  “I never learned that they did, but I’m glad I know more now.”

  The fire began to reach them. Trevor ducked down and doused his hair, and he came up to see Boxster doing the same thing.

  “These clothes needed a good washing, anyway,” Boxster said as they began to bob up and down as the fire raged above them.

  The flames had mostly died out a few hours later. It was easy to see that the soldiers had left.

  “It looks like we’ve died twice in a full day,” Boxster said.

  “Burned to a crisp each time,” Trevor said, pulling himself out of the spring after throwing water to put out the hot spots around them. “We will have to make a run for it while our clothes are still wet.”

  The water in their boots sloshed as they hustled out of the copse, avoiding embers falling from the toasted trees, and entered the field beyond. They looked around for soldiers, but as Trevor looked at the smoking trees around him, it was plain to see that without the spring, they would have added to the ashes. The soldiers had to have counted them dead.

  Boxster stopped them at the next copse some distance away from the burned one. It also had a spring. They took a dip with their clothes on in that one, too, to get
rid of the stench of the smoke they had to run through as they exited their intended pyre. They walked north for a few hours and walked through another cluster of trees. This one had a tiny spring that fed a stream leading north.

  “Now where?” Boxster said.

  “Not Tarviston,” Trevor said. “It is clear Dryden wants us to move on. Look.” He pointed his finger at a building in the distance. “A monastery.”

  “A Presidonian monastery or a Dorwickian-controlled monastery?” Boxster said.

  “My growling stomach is hoping it is a Presidonian monastery.”

  ~

  The monk frowned at the bedraggled pair. “What have you done to yourselves? We typically entertain believers that are dry, at the least.”

  “Someone burned a copse that we were napping in, and we were almost caught in the blaze.”

  “Oh. That would explain the smoke to the south of here. We wondered what had happened.”

  “We have news,” Boxster said. “That might help compensate for a meal or at least a sack of food.”

  “Come in, come in. At least you don’t smell too badly after your bath or whatever it was,” the monk said.

  The monastery was set up very similar to the one they wintered in, except it was much bigger.

  “I assume you worship Dryden?”

  “Since I was a child,” Trevor said. “I’m friends with my local cleric. He taught me lots of things.”

  “I hope they were useful ‘things,’” the monk said. “Follow me, and I will give you robes to wear while you eat. The way you two are dressed, you will be too much of a distraction to the other monks. Everyone will be waiting for you to jump on the table and rob us.”

  The meal was serviceable, Trevor thought, and that meant tasty and filling, which was all he could ask for.

  “I understand you have news?” the prior asked at the dais table at the end of the refectory.

  “The Dorwickians are invading Presidon. They were the ones that burned the copse. After they chased a few men into it, a Dorwickian magician set it aflame,” Trevor said. “We were barely able to make it out alive. The men they pursued weren’t so lucky.”

  The table erupted in many conversations before Trevor was able to finish.