by Colin Meloy
“Oh come now, fox,” said Brendan demurely. “Let’s not quibble over administrative details. Bigger things are afoot.”
Sterling was fuming. The thick red fur of his face seemed to take on a deeper hue as his eyes narrowed in anger. His hand went to the pruning shears at his side; he began to draw them from their sheath.
“Okay, foxy,” Brendan said, “if you must.” The silvery blade of his saber started to emerge from his scabbard. “Make your move, constable.”
A voice erupted from the crowd of farmers behind the fox: “Stop this!” came the voice. Prue turned to see Iphigenia, the Elder Mystic, shoving her way through the crowd. Arriving at the bridge, she put her wizened hand on the fox’s arm. “Constable Fox, I command you to stop this nonsense.”
Brendan hadn’t moved, his hand still positioned on his sword. “Listen to the old lady, foxy,” he said. The fox’s hackles rose; a bright spine of fur jutted from the back of his neck.
“You too, son,” Iphigenia said, glowering at the Bandit King. She walked forward and, putting her hand on top of Brendan’s, shoved the emerging sword hilt back into its scabbard. Having stayed the two combatants, Iphigenia stepped back and eyed the group warily. “Sorry we didn’t make it sooner, dear,” she said to Prue. “These old bones don’t move as fast as they used to.”
“No big deal,” Prue said, exhaling a deep, relieved sigh. “Just glad to see you all.”
Iphigenia smiled before raising her head and squinting up at the sky. The two armies squared off silently as the Elder Mystic gauged the position of the sun. Satisfied, she looked back at Brendan.
“King,” she said, “we offer our services. We are a humble army, but what we lack in arms we make up for in number. We have five hundred strong here, farmers and ranchers, and all very able with a scythe and pitchfork. If you’ll march with us, I think we should make a formidable force.”
Brendan’s face had softened in the presence of the Mystic. His hand fell away from the pommel of his sword, and he bowed deeply to the old woman. “If you’ll have us,” he said, “we’d be honored.”
“No need to bow, King,” Iphigenia said, blushing. “I understand your people’s creed.” She turned to face the gathered farmers. “People of North Wood, listen close. Today, on this bridge, an alliance has been struck—albeit temporary. Today, we march with the bandits of Wildwood for our common good. We go as allies.” Turning to Sterling the fox: “Now, I would appreciate it, for the sake of our enterprise, if you would shake hands in good faith with the Bandit King.”
The fox grumbled something under his breath before turning to Brendan. “Very well,” he said. “If it’s for the ‘good of our enterprise.’” He held out his paw. Brendan took it readily and shook it. When a few shakes had transpired, the fox jerked his paw away and nodded gravely. “It is done.”
“Okay, bandits,” Brendan said loudly. “We march with the North Wooders.”
Prue saw Iphigenia exhale a deep breath. She reached over and grabbed Prue’s hand, saying, “Our little plan is working. Let’s hope our good fortune holds out.”
Prue smiled. “Let’s do.”
Curtis sidled up next to Prue and reached out his hand. “Hi,” he said earnestly. “I’m Curtis. I’m Prue’s friend. I’m a bandit, too.”
Iphigenia turned to Curtis and began to smile politely when a look of surprise appeared on her face. “Well, that’s quite a coincidence.”
Prue and Curtis exchanged glances. “What’s a coincidence?” asked Curtis.
“Another half-breed,” explained Iphigenia, gripping his hand. “Having only ever seen a few in my lifetime, it’s quite remarkable to meet two in the span of a day.”
Prue was speechless. Curtis looked back and forth between Prue and the Mystic. “What does that mean, half-breed?” he asked.
Iphigenia reached up and patted him on the cheek. “No time for idle chitchat,” she said, turning away into the crowd of farmers. “We have work to do.”
The long wooden suspension bridge creaked noisily as the army crossed over the creek’s ravine, and Alexandra’s horse whinnied, reluctant to set his hoof on the first boards of the bridge.
“Shhh,” quieted the Dowager, patting his thick neck. She urged him forward with a swift kick of her heels against his flank. The baby murmured in her arms. The crossing was slow; the bridge swayed under the weight of the line of bodies it supported. Once on the other side, Alexandra cantered the horse up the hill to monitor the rest of the army’s crossing. The cannon teams were forced to cross on their own, so great was the weight of their munitions. Groups of four soldiers apiece slowly pushed the great metal behemoths across the complaining boards of the suspension bridge.
Alexandra was impatient.
She glanced up at the gloomy sky. The sun was slowly approaching its highest point. Noon was only a few hours away. She eyed the ravine that the creek cut through the hillside.
“Captain!” she hollered. A coyote ran to her side. He wore a peaked miter cap, and his uniform was a deep scarlet. He saluted as he approached.
“Send a sentry team up the north side of the creek,” she commanded. “We should establish a perimeter on the north side of the Grove. I don’t want any surprises. I’ll need all my energies about me to weave the incantation.”
“Yes, Madam Governess,” replied the captain, and he jogged off to organize a troop.
Alexandra watched the last of the artillery team make their way gingerly to the other side of the bridge. When the army was amassed in the road, Alexandra called for their attention.
“Here’s where we leave the Road,” she commanded. “Into the woods. Follow me.”
“Of Woods Magic?” asked Curtis, still perplexed. “I just don’t know what that means!”
The conjoined armies of the bandits and the North Wood farmers marched in single file up the narrow, winding path that was the Hardesty game trail as it snaked along a steep hillside. Curtis walked close behind Prue and her bike, peppering her with questions.
“I’ve told you everything I know, Curtis,” said Prue. “It’s some-thing called Woods Magic. It just means that you, like, are kind of from here. Or something.”
“And you’re ‘of Woods Magic’ how?” he asked.
“I told you: Alexandra made it possible for my parents to have kids,” she said, exasperated. “So that makes me of Woods Magic. I guess.”
Curtis shook his head in disbelief. “I mean, I just don’t know how that would be possible. We didn’t even move here till I was five.”
“Search your brain,” offered Prue. “Do you have any strange relatives? Maybe one of them came from the Wood.”
“I guess my aunt Ruthie was always a little weird,” Curtis surmised. “She lives right on the edge of the Impassable Wilderness—the Wood—and she really keeps to herself. My parents say she’s just a little batty.”
Curtis, in this haze of concentration, had neglected to keep pace with the rest of the marching column. One of the farmers, a black bear armed with a pair of loppers, grunted angrily when Curtis fell back and nearly tripped over the bear’s massive paws. “Sorry!”
“Just watch where yer going,” growled the bear.
Curtis jogged to catch up with Prue as she continued to push her bike and wagon up the steep incline of the path.
“Well, there you go,” said Prue. “Your old aunt Ruthie.”
“I don’t know,” said Curtis, shaking his head. “Come to think of it, most of my relatives would fit that description: a little batty.”
Suddenly, a whisper began cascading down the line of marchers. “Shhh!” A wave of an arm followed, passed from soldier to soldier, instructing the marchers to get down on the ground. Curtis waved to the black bear behind him, passing on the command, as he and Prue eased themselves quietly to the ground.
“What’s up?” he whispered to Prue.
“I don’t know,” she responded. Prue slowly, silently laid her bike against the slope of the hill. She tapped the
soldier in front of her, a female bandit in a muddy blue uniform with a thick coil of rope across her back. “What’s going on?”
The bandit shrugged, crouched low amid the sword ferns that dangled over the small clearing of the trail. After a moment, more information was passed down the line in a series of whispers. The bandit, receiving the intel, turned to Prue.
“Coyotes,” she whispered. “On the far ridge.”
Prue looked over at the other side of the ravine. The ample vegetation spilled down the side of the hill, falling to an empty creek bed where the two slopes met in a deep V.
“Where?” she whispered. “I don’t see any.”
Curtis was searching the far hillside as well. Finally, the crack of a broken tree limb in the bracken announced the approach of their enemy. Within moments, the woods seemed to disgorge a troop of thirty or so coyote soldiers, their heads barely above the massive copses of maidenhair ferns that surrounded them. The going was tough; they laboriously made their way along the hillside slope.
Prue looked up the long line of crouched bandits and farmers, searching for some sort of guidance. She saw Brendan’s head emerge from the line. He was gesturing to a few of his fellow bandits at the front of the column. The hand signals he made were indecipherable to Prue, but the bandits to whom they’d been directed nodded quickly in understanding. Walking crouched, he made his way down the line toward Prue and Curtis, stopping at the bandit in front of Prue. He made a kind of curlicue motion with his index finger and pointed across the ravine. The bandit nodded sharply and pulled the coil of rope from her shoulder.
“What’s the plan?” hissed Curtis from behind Prue. “Can we do anything?”
Brendan shook his head. “Sit tight,” he whispered. “Just archers and grapplers for this job.”
“I’ve got a sling,” suggested Curtis.
Brendan looked at him blankly. “Ever used one before?” he asked.
“No,” said Curtis.
“Like I said: archers and grapplers only,” Brendan repeated. “Hold your position.”
Minutes passed. The coyotes on the other side of the ravine, unaware of the danger that lurked on the opposite bank of ferns, continued their cautious march along the ridge. The bandits in the hidden line on the game trail watched for the sign from Brendan.
Suddenly, the wind shifted and swept down the hillside above the hidden army. One of the coyotes, the jangling medals at his breast suggesting a superior rank, held his muzzle high, sniffing the air. His eyes widened as he caught their scent.
“Enemies!” he shouted, whipping a saber from his hip. “On the far ridge!”
No sooner had he voiced this warning than Brendan gave the signal from the front of the line. About twenty bandits, in various places along the column, stood up and prepared for action. Half the bandits juggled coils of rope topped with grappling hooks in their hands, while others drew back the string of tall yew bows and took careful aim at the opposing ridge.
“Archers, NOW!” shouted Brendan, and the air above the ravine became an aerial show of flying arrow shafts.
Several of the arrows found their mark, and dozens of fern stands were mowed low by the coyotes, tumbling lifelessly down the hillside. In that instant, the troop of coyotes was easily halved in number, and the ones that remained began yapping in panic. “Hold the line!” barked the coyote captain, still standing with his saber drawn. “Fusiliers! Fire at will!” The soldiers to whom the command had been directed began desperately fumbling with their long flintlock rifles, jamming powder and ball down the iron barrels. The bandits let loose another fleet of arrows, and the few poor coyotes who had not found cover fell under the barrage before any of their rifle shots were fired. The captain remained standing, defiantly glaring at the opposite ridge.
“Retreat!” he cried. “Back for reinforcements!”
Brendan seized the moment to signal his grapplers to throw. The ridge, in an instant, became crisscrossed with taut rope lines as the barbs of the grappling hooks found purchase in the overhanging tree boughs. The bandit in front of Prue had thrown such a line and, testing its strength momentarily, she leapt into the air and sailed across the gully with the fluid ease of an acrobat. Prue watched as she arrived on the other side and, drawing her saber, quickly dispatched three coyotes with a series of lightning-fast maneuvers. Along the ridge, several more grapplers had swung the distance between the ridges and were engaged in heated battle.
The coyote captain, enraged at how quickly his troop had been defeated, gave a quick, angry bark to the bandits and farmers on the far ridge, sheathed his weapon, and turned to run. Curtis was the first to witness the captain’s retreat, and he quickly pulled the sling rope from his belt and began setting a rock in the sling’s cradle.
“I got him,” he said.
Prue looked at him sideways.
Curtis squinted one eye and began carefully swinging the sling, feeling the weight of the stone arc the sling assembly in a whipping circle around his shoulder. He gauged the distance between himself and the uniformed coyote, who was now disappearing into the underbrush, his bicorne hat bouncing just below the lowest-hanging branches. Before his navy-blue uniform had vanished, however, Curtis gave a great yelp and let loose the sling. Time seemed to slow to a stop.
Curtis watched the stone as it flew into the air above the creek.
And followed it with his eyes it as it fell with a mighty plop into the creek bed below.
He looked back up, crestfallen, to bear witness to the captain’s escape into the underbrush. Suddenly he heard an arrow whistle across the ravine and land with a dead thud into the captain’s back. The coyote fell, disappearing into the deep green brush with a crash.
Curtis looked up the line of figures to see Brendan standing with his bow drawn, the string still quivering from the released arrow. He glanced back at Curtis and smiled. Curtis felt his face flush red.
Brendan turned and eyed the far ridge, inspecting the terrain for stragglers. All was quiet. Satisfied, he waved for the column of marchers to continue up the trail.
“Nice shot,” whispered Prue over her shoulder.
“Like to see you try it,” snapped Curtis.
CHAPTER 25
Into the City of the Ancients
The trail cut southward when the ridge became too steep to climb; it crossed the trough of the ravine and carved up the opposite hillside in sharp switchbacks. Beyond the ridge, the ground leveled out and soon led to another shallow ravine where a second creek, this one much larger, cut a wide swath down the hillside. A small wooden bridge crossed the creek here, and beyond, the trail zigzagged up the hill on the other side. The trail opened up at the bridge, and the collected army of bandits and farmers paused at the clearing.
Prue and Curtis made their way into the milling crowd around the bridge and the creek. Curtis dipped his hand into the babbling water of the creek bed and ladled the cold liquid into his mouth. Prue stood alongside, her hands at her hips.
Brendan approached. “I noticed you travel unarmed, Outsider,” he said with a cock of his eyebrow. “I respect a man or woman who fights with their bare hands, but you don’t look the type.”
Prue frowned, saying, “I hadn’t really given much thought to it, actually. I thought maybe I could be some kind of nonviolent support, if that’s okay with you.”
“Very well,” said Brendan. “You and Curtis, come up to the front of the column. I may well be able to use you to carry orders down the marching line.”
When the soldiers had had their fill of the creek water, Brendan gave a quick, shrill whistle and the column fell back into position, weaving its way up the hillside just beyond the little bridge. Curtis and Prue jogged to the head of the line, Prue carefully pushing her bike by the handlebars, until they were just behind Brendan and Sterling the fox.
“How far till this place—what’s it called?” asked Curtis after they’d topped the ridge.
Brendan monitored the column as it arrived above the switc
hbacks, motioning for the crowd to follow the crest of the ridge eastward. “The Ancients’ Grove. Just east of here. An hour’s march, maybe less.”
Prue asked the next question: “What’s the Ancients’ Grove?”
“The site of a forgotten civilization,” responded Sterling, falling in behind Prue and Curtis. “No one knows much about them. But it’s believed that all of Wildwood was once a thriving metropolis, full of philosophers, farmers, and artists. It’s said they perished centuries and centuries ago, a flourishing culture wiped out within the span of a few decades. Victims of a ruthless barbarian invasion.”
Brendan, from ahead, grumbled, “I see where you’re going with this, fox.”
The fox ignored him. “The only remnant of this vast civilization, so advanced for its time, is this single grove of ruins that we are now marching on—and the descendants of the barbarian horde that extinguished it.”
“Who’d that be?” asked Curtis.
“You’re marching with them,” said the fox. “These ‘honorable’ bandits.”
“That’s completely unproven,” retorted Brendan. “And besides, who knows: Maybe those Ancients got what was coming to them.”
“Believe what you will, hoodlum,” said the fox. “Believe what you will.”
There was a crackling in the surrounding vegetation that silenced the marchers, and the line seized at Brendan’s frantic wave of an arm. He relaxed, however, when he saw it was Septimus the rat, scurrying out from under a thicket of ivy. Arriving at Brendan’s feet, he shivered.
“Eegh,” he said. “That stuff gives me the creeps.”
“What’s up, rat?” asked Brendan. “What have you seen?”
Septimus shook his head. “Blackberries. Blackberry brambles. As far as the eye can see. Just beyond that grove of alders there.” He was winded from running and paused to catch his breath. “Impassable,” he concluded.
Sure enough, as the long column of farmers and bandits made their way through a peaceful stand of tall alders, their leaves a kaleidoscope of yellow and green hues, they arrived at an impressive snarl of blackberry bushes that stretched like a wall in either direction, seemingly impregnable. Brendan cursed under his breath.
