by Peter David
Still, I lay there on my side, watching the door, waiting to see if it would creak open, and in short order my eyes closed and I fell into a deep sleep.
I was suddenly shaken to wakefulness and Entipy was looking at me, her face inches from mine.
Oh gods … this is it … she wants me to mount her like a stallion …
And without preamble she said, “The sun has risen, the troops of King Meander, the mad wandering king, are heading this way, and we are completely helpless because the fort is empty save for you, me, my father, and the jester.”
There are some mornings where not only do you wake up badly, but you just know the day isn’t going to get any better.
Chapter 24
I dressed quickly and emerged into lightly falling snow. “This weather is driving me insane!” I raged.
Entipy, who had been waiting outside my quarters, replied, “You won’t live long enough for it to make any difference if Meander gets his hands on you.”
“How can the fort be empty? Where are the soldiers? The garrison … ?”
We were moving across the courtyard toward the main battlements. Entipy was walking so quickly that, because of my lame leg, it was difficult for me to keep up. I held my staff securely, taking some measure of comfort in its heft as well as in the sword strapped to my back. But if Meander and his Journeymen had really returned to the vicinity, my meager weapons wouldn’t last me long at all.
“I have no idea where they are,” she said tersely. “I woke up, found the main doors ajar, and when I climbed up onto the ramparts, I saw the Journeymen in the distance.”
“Are you sure it’s them?”
“They fly the flag of Meander. At least that’s what the jester says.”
I stopped dead. “The jester? You’re listening to Odclay now? The king’s fool?”
She frowned at me. “Far better to believe he’s right and try to prepare for it than assume he’s wrong and wind up captives.”
I couldn’t argue with that either.
The doors were still open. I wasn’t surprised; the things were so damned heavy that it had taken several burly men all their effort to shut them before. We were completely vulnerable. Looking up, I saw that the king had joined the jester on the parapet. They seemed to be having an intense discussion as the jester pointed, and then danced about a bit for good measure. Runcible was nodding, looking very solemn and very serious.
“And you’ve looked everywhere for the rest of the troops?” I asked.
She nodded briskly. “Checked all the barracks, everywhere. Everyone’s gone.”
The light snow continued to fall, slicking up the ladders that led up to the ramparts. I almost slipped as we clambered up. The king looked down at us with mild eyes and said dryly, “Pity I can’t wish you a good morning, squire, but it doesn’t appear very good.”
I looked where he was looking, and couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing.
In the distance, there was heavy snow falling to the left of the King’s Road, thick and fast. The tops of the trees in the forest were already abundant with white. It was exactly the same to the right. As for the road itself … nothing. A few stray flakes fluttering in from the wind that was whipping through, but otherwise nothing was obstructing the path of the Journeymen.
And Journeymen they most definitely were. I remembered their uniforms of black and white, and that emblem of theirs—the globe with marching feet around it. I was too far to see it on their shields, as I had that time in the Elderwoods with Tacit, but it didn’t require the eyes of an eagle to see the symbol emblazoned on banners being held high that were fluttering in the wind. With the snow whirling on either side of them, it was as if Meander had brought the spirit and climes of the Frozen North along with him.
“That,” Entipy said slowly, “is unnatural. It’s as if the snow is his very friend … it …”
“Oh … gods,” I whispered. “Of course. Of course.”
“Of course what?”
“It all makes sense … I mean, a warped kind of sense, but sense nevertheless …”
“It all makes sense, makes sense, makes sense,” chanted the jester, “I sense, the scents of sense incensed …”
“Shut up,” I said.
“Speak, squire,” said the king, his eyes narrowed. His demeanor was quite calm; you would have thought we were simply chatting about niceties rather than being faced with the impending arrival of an army, who couldn’t have been more than an hour away.
“The weather patterns. They’ve been out of whack. It’s been because of Meander. He may have left the immediate area of Isteria, but apparently he hasn’t gone far from these parts. And he’s been using a weatherweaver to re-create the climes of the Frozen North for him. It’s the environment that he’s most accustomed to. So when the mood suits him, he has the weatherweaver manipulate the cold to benefit him, when he’s going on the offensive, or whenever he’s simply feeling nostalgic for his homelands.”
“I knew that other kings were fighting him,” Runcible said, shaking his head. “I advised them against it … told them the foolishness …”
“As foolish as ignoring him, Father?” demanded Entipy. As cold as the air was, there was genuine heat from her. “Is that how ruling works? To sit about on your royal throne with your royal thumb up your royal ass, while others do whatever they wish to whomever they wish? Apropos told me how one of Meander’s people killed his mother, and you sat by and did nothing.”
The jester immediately started to chant. “Blue is ground, brown is skies, King Meander is so wise, knows he to avoid a fight when the timing is not right …”
“Shut up!” This time Entipy and I had spoken in unison.
“We all do what seems right at the time, Entipy,” the king told her.
“And what seems right this time, Father?” And she pointed in the direction of the oncoming army. “Face facts: You have been betrayed. Your whereabouts offered up to Meander, and he’s coming for you, and we’re defenseless …”
“I have a cunning plan!” declared the jester. I moaned inwardly, and Entipy audibly. “As cunning as the good king’s brilliant outflanking maneuver at the Battle of Ralderbash! As outstanding as the way in which he outthought the evil hippogryph of Collosia. As clever as the way in which he managed to obtain the Veil of Tiers from the very heart of the Land of Wuin! As—”
“Is this a cunning plan or a résumé?” I asked in exasperation.
But the king seemed genuinely interested. “What would that plan be, Odclay, pray tell?”
“I will stay here, perched in plain view, and distract Meander and his men when they arrive. In the meantime, the three of you can flee.”
“We do not run from danger,” Entipy snapped.
“The hell we don’t,” I shot back, and then quickly added—to sound noble—“Not when you and the king are at risk. The problem is, there’s no place to run to. If we head north, away from Meander, we wind up back in the Outer Lawless regions. If we head east, he’ll catch up with us, and besides, the terrain is too daunting for us to put any serious distance between us. West is problematic, considering there’s a thousand-foot drop in that direction, and south takes us right into his arms.”
“I said it was a cunning plan, not a perfect one,” retorted the jester.
They were still approaching, taking their own sweet time. They knew they had us.
“If only we knew for sure that we were helpless,” said the king. “If only we knew where our troops had gone … whether they would return in time … there’s so much that’s uncertain …”
“Yes, but we don’t know for sure,” said Entipy.
And that’s when it hit me.
“No,” I said softly, “we don’t know. And neither do they.” Suddenly I turned to them, seeing the confused expressions on their faces. “Highness … what do you know of a siege? When an army lays siege to a fortress such as this. What do you know of what happens?”
“Well,” the king
said slowly, “you secure the gateway, lower the portcullis if you have one. Man the battlements. Get boiling liquid or heavy stones to be dropped through the machicolations if you have any. Ready the archers, keep behind the merlons to present as minimal a target as—”
“Right. Right. And they know that, too.”
“Of course. Everyone knows it.”
“All right. Here’s what we do.” My mind was racing down the slippery slope of inspired madness. “Highness … change clothes.”
He looked at me blankly, as did the others. “You consider this an inappropriate ensemble in which to be captured?”
“Not with something else you brought. With him.”
And I pointed at the jester.
“Are you crazy?” asked Entipy, genuinely curious.
“No,” I said. “But they’re going to think your father is. Crazy as a fox, as the saying goes.”
And I laid out my plan for them, as quickly and efficiently as I could. When I finished they were still staring at me as if I’d grown a third head.
“It won’t work,” Entipy said flatly.
“Do you have a better idea?” I asked.
“She’s right, it won’t work!” said Odclay, sounding pleasantly lucid. “The moment they see him up there, a perfect target, they’ll put a hundred arrows in him!”
“No, they won’t. They’ll want him alive; he’s far more valuable that way.”
“Are you sure?” asked Runcible doubtfully.
“Reasonably so.”
“Reasonably so?”
“Look,” I said in exasperation, “if they want you dead, then we’re finished no matter what. If they want you alive, then this can work. But we have to decide now, because if I’m going to get into the forest and accomplish my part of the plan, we have to get started.”
Entipy and the jester looked to the king, who instead looked at me as if hoping that I might somehow suddenly transform into a great wizard and simply spirit the lot of us out of there. The snow was coming down harder around us.
“All right,” he said finally. “We will trust the squire’s plan.”
“Father—!”
“You should not be complaining, Entipy. Think: If it doesn’t work, you have the questionable joy of seeing your father making a total ass of himself in his final moments. Not quite the compensation for the years you feel you lost with the Faith Women … but hopefully it will provide some small amusement. All right, Odclay … let’s get started. Apropos,” and he clamped a hand on my shoulder. “Good luck.”
You’ll need it, I thought privately.
“And Apropos …”
“Yes, Highness … ?”
He smiled. “If this works … and we live to tell the tale … I shall make you Sir Apropos.”
The king and Odclay climbed down off the parapets, and I prepared to follow … and suddenly Entipy caught me by the arm and swung me around, looking at me hard in the eyes. She seemed to be searching for something in there, something she could hold on to and believe in.
And then she kissed me. It was as firm and deep and passionate a kiss as I’d ever received, and she didn’t seem the least bit insane at all. She broke off and looked at me with wide eyes, and she whispered, “I trust you.”
What was I going to say? More fool you, I’m out of here, because this demented plan will never work, even though it’s mine.
“Thank you,” I said.
Understand: When I first started outlining the plan, I actually thought it was workable. The further I got into it, though, the more I became convinced that I was suggesting sheer idiocy. If the king had smiled patronizingly and said, “We’ll have to try some other course of action, squire,” I would have nodded and been glad for the out. The only thing that made me get defensive about it was that Entipy dismissed it out of hand, and for some reason the fact that she was the one who had done so prompted me to rise to the occasion.
So now they were stuck with it.
They. Not me.
I was getting the hell out of there.
The moment I had seen Meander’s Journeymen approaching, I began assessing the odds—not where the royals were concerned, but where I was concerned. And from where I stood, it didn’t look especially promising. I was reasonably certain that I could escape into the woods, make my way through them silently, slip away like a ghost. Lame of leg or not, I had still learned my woodcraft from the best, and even though these were not the Elderwoods, I was willing to take my chances on my own. I was not, however, enthused about the prospects of evaporating into the woods if I was dragging along the king, the princess, and the court jester. The king, possibly. Possibly. But the princess had the woodcraft of a diseased wombat, and the court jester was so unpredictable that he might start singing eighteen choruses of “My Crumpet Was a Strumpet,” getting the attention of not only Meander’s people but probably a wandering regiment of Warlord Shanks’s men as well. I did not think that the king would be willing to leave either of them behind … although of the two, he might just take his chances with the jester. The only possible way I could manage to survive was to know everything that could go wrong, and bringing the unholy trio with me simply offered too many unknowns.
Furthermore, I wasn’t all that worried about Meander’s capturing them. I truly did believe that the king was going to be of more value to them alive. The princess would likely fall into that same category. The jester they would probably keep around for amusement value, and if they didn’t, well, small loss. They would all fare perfectly well in Meander’s care. Perhaps they’d get on so famously that they’d all take up a house by the shore together. But a lone squire, lame of leg? They’d chop me for kindling in a heartbeat.
No, my resolve was solid and reasonable: I was departing as fast as my good leg would carry me.
In the fort’s storehouse, I found a supplies belt that was ordinarily used for carrying rations. I opened the pouches, dumped in the jewels and money from my saddlebag, and closed it up again, leaving the coinage in the hidden compartment in my staff. I shook the belt violently several times to make certain that there was no telltale jingling. There wasn’t. I had it packed in too tight. I tightened the belt around my waist and allowed my tunic to hang loosely over it, covering it quite well. I rolled my cloak up tightly and tied it over my waist. By that point I was bulging there, but it was better than trying to make my way through the woods with my cloak snagging on branches. I would probably need it later, though, as proof against the cold, particularly if the snow didn’t let up. My scabbard remained on my back, my staff firmly in hand.
I took a deep breath and made my way to the front. The king didn’t see me; he was heading toward the battlements. He was jingling, attired in the fool’s motley. Yes. Definitely an insane plan. Thank the gods I wasn’t going to be around to see it. Entipy had secured herself in the barracks, although I suspected that she was going to be trying to watch from there. I couldn’t blame her. Who would pass up an opportunity to watch a king make a complete jackass of himself? Well … who besides me, that was.
I exited the front of the fortress through the doors that remained wide open. Meander’s men were still a distance away, and I covered the distance between the fortress and the forest in no time. As opposed to the ludicrousness of the plan I had hatched for the king, my personal plan was simplicity itself: Stay the hell out of Meander’s path.
The moment I was in the forest, all my doubts melted away. I felt as if I was truly back in my element. This was where I was meant to be. Not posturing about in castle halls, pretending I was something I wasn’t. Instead my place was living a life of freedom, unencumbered by all the demands that society put upon one. The trees seemed to say “Welcome back” to me, even though I had never been there before. I had enough money in my belt to live life in any manner I chose. I could build a house, build a business … or even just live in the woods and emerge only when I felt like it, buying what I desired and vanishing again. It would bother no one. If you’re
penniless, you’re mad, but if you’re rich, you’re eccentric. I would owe nothing to anyone, buy what I felt like, and even take what I felt like, because when you have money, you can do anything you want.
I looked behind me, the fort already lost to sight. There was snow upon the ground. There were no footprints upon it. That was how smoothly, how lightly I had passed over it. I felt like a great fish finally and gratefully returning to the oceans that were his home. I felt like a liberated soul. I felt …
… I felt …
… I felt … the warmth of her lips upon mine. I felt the sincerity with which she said, “I trust you.” The last person to trust me had been Tacit … and look what happened to him.
I felt a clear, vivid recollection of the sensation that passed between us. I felt the pride, however fleeting it had been, however misplaced it was, when Runcible had accepted my plan and resolved to try and make it work.
You will not do this to yourself! You will not! You will not turn into some mewling, smitten creature! My mind was fairly screaming at me, the same inner voice that had warned me to just take the money Justus had offered me to compensate for my mother’s death. If I’d listened to it then, think of all the problems I could have avoided. You must not forget who they are, and who you are! He is the king who oversees the knights that raped your mother! She is an unstable little creature whom even her own father says is insane! And a jester? The jester is the only one in the bunch worth saving, truth be told, and you’re certainly not going to risk yourself for him! You will never be Sir Apropos of anything! You liked the feeling of her kiss? Women’s lips are a sov a dozen, and you’ve got enough riches on you to purchase the affections of a hundred women far more voluptuous, and far less trouble, than Entipy.
