Being a soldier would be a step up. Now he would receive a wage that he could spend as he saw fit. Although most of that salary he would never see, as it would go toward paying for his food, uniform, weapons, and living space—something his father’s pay had covered so far. He should have been excited at the impending promotion, at the recognition that he was a man at last, only he didn’t feel like one. The squires had beaten, and a child had bested, him both in the same day. He didn’t feel worthy to take the burgundy and gold. He was only fit to open doors, haul water, and split wood. These were the tasks he was good at, what he was comfortable with, and what was being taken from him.
Hidden from the castle doors, Reuben was splitting wood under the oak on the far side of the woodpile when he heard them. He’d thought the stormy sky would have been enough to keep the squires indoors learning table manners, helping to dress their lords, or listening to the tales of the knights. The sound of the approaching laughter proved him wrong.
“What do we have here?” Ellison rounded the woodpile with the Three Cruelties in tow. “Muckraker, how wonderful. I was looking for you.” Ellison stepped in front of Reuben while the others circled around.
There was no chance to run. The best he could do was yank the axe from the block, but a heavy splitting axe was a slow weapon, and each of the squires wore their swords—metal this time.
“Word has it that you’re to be sworn in as a guard of the castle tomorrow. There are complications with beating a soldier in the king’s service, so this will be my last chance to pay you back for the bruise.”
Reuben only then noticed a small purple mark on Ellison’s cheek.
“The bad news is that you’ll spend your first day of service in the infirmary.”
Ellison punched him in the jaw. The blow stunned him and Reuben staggered back into Horace, who shoved him to the ground. Reuben crouched, dazed for a moment before jumping up and breaking the axe free of the block by slapping the handle. He held it with both hands. Horace seized Reuben from behind in a bear hug. While not skilled with a sword, Reuben knew his way around an axe. He thrust backward with the handle, jamming it hard into Horace’s broad gut. The big arms let go and the squire dropped to his knees. Ellison rushed forward, but Reuben expected that and dodged behind Horace, who was still doubled over. Ellison and Horace both fell.
That’s when Willard and Dills drew their swords. Once he got to his feet, so did Ellison.
Reuben had at least managed to put his back to the woodpile. Now all four were out in front.
“Get his arms and legs. I don’t want him to ever forget us,” Ellison said. “We’ll each carve our initials into him.”
“My name’s short enough to write the whole thing,” Dills declared.
They closed in, jabbing, leering, and grinning.
“Is this a private party or can anyone play?” a familiar voice asked.
Looking over Ellison’s shoulder, Reuben spotted the wild-haired boy who had bested him at the bridge, the one the princess had called Mauvin.
“No one wants you here, Pickering, so go catch your stupid frogs.”
“Hey, Fanen,” the boy shouted over his shoulder and toward the castle keep. “It’s the hero from yesterday, the one who risked himself to save Arista.” He looked at Reuben. “What kind of trouble have you gotten yourself into now?”
“None of your business, boy,” Dills snapped.
At the sound of the word boy, Reuben saw Mauvin grin.
His younger brother came around the woodpile a moment later. When he did, Mauvin pointed. “No one at the castle can see a thing.”
This was exactly what Reuben guessed Ellison had realized, only now Ellison and the Three Cruelties looked less pleased.
“Muckraker and I have a score to settle,” Ellison explained. “This has nothing to do with you two.”
“Muckraker? Oh, you’re mistaken. His name is Hilfred and he’s a friend of ours,” Mauvin said, surprising all, but none more than Reuben. “We had great fun sparring a few days ago. Hilfred didn’t do so well, but he was fighting a Pickering.” The boy winked at him. “I’m sure he’ll fare much better against you, even though he only has an axe and all four of you have swords.”
“But still, that’s not very sporting,” Fanen said.
“Downright rude if you ask me.” Mauvin continued to grin. “Hilfred, how dare you hog all of these squires to yourself. I demand that Fanen and I get to play too.”
The Pickering boys drew their swords in unison with elegant ease. As they did, Dills and Willard spun to face them. “Didn’t one of you say something about carving initials?” Mauvin asked. Looking at Dills, he added, “That will be fun. And just to jog your dim-witted memory, I’m the son of Count Leopold Pickering of Galilin, one of the five Lords of the Charter—no one calls me boy.”
“Mauvin? Fanen?” Shouts came from the direction of the castle.
“Here, Alric—we’re on the other side of the woodpile,” Mauvin shouted back, a touch of regret in his voice.
Alric? Reuben thought. It can’t be. A moment later none other than the Prince of Melengar rounded the pile. He was dressed in a lavish three-quarter-length white satin tunic with extensive embroidery, heavy gold piping, and full sleeves and broad triple-folded cuffs. His suede belt, while lacking even a dagger, was ornamented with metallic studs and a buckle that Reuben guessed to be worth more than he and his father could ever hope to earn if both of them lived to be a hundred.
The squires all dropped to one knee. Reuben followed suit an instant later. Neither of the Pickerings so much as bowed.
“What’s going on?” the prince asked.
Mauvin was frowning at him. “Fanen, Hilfred, and I were about to have some fun… then you ruined it. You always ruin it.”
The prince looked at the kneeling squires, puzzled, until he spotted the drawn swords. “Hilfred?” he asked; then, turning, he made eye contact with Reuben. “Oh, the hero from the Battle of Gateway Bridge!” He looked back at the squires and added, “He risked his life to defend my sister against a band of highwaymen. Don’t tell me this pool of pond scum was thinking of taking advantage of our friend?”
Reuben could hardly believe his ears. The prince had been the third horseman who’d chased the princess?
“We were just leaving, Your Highness,” Ellison said, slipping his sword into its sheath and standing up. He took one step away when the prince stepped in front of him.
“You haven’t answered my question, Ellison.” Alric moved uncomfortably close.
“No, Your Highness, we would never think of harming a friend of yours.”
Alric looked at Reuben. “Is he telling the truth? I can have him ripped apart by dogs, you know. I love dogs. We use them to hunt, but they aren’t allowed to actually take down or eat their quarry. Always thought that was a shame, you know? I think they would appreciate the opportunity. It could be fun too. We could just let these fools run and bet on how far they can get before the dogs catch them.”
“I bet Horace doesn’t make it to the gate,” Mauvin said; then all heads turned to Reuben.
Ellison looked at him, too, his face frozen in a tense, wide-eyed stare.
“I wasn’t aware of any threat from Squire Ellison, Your Highness,” Reuben replied.
“Are you sure?” Alric pressed, and flicked a small yellow leaf off Ellison’s shoulder. “We don’t have to use the dogs.” He smiled and tilted his head toward the Pickerings. “They’d love to teach them a lesson, you know. In a way they’re a lot like hunting dogs—they never get the chance to kill anyone either. Ever since they reached their tenth birthday, no one has been stupid enough to challenge them.”
“I was, Your Highness,” Reuben said.
That got a laugh from the Pickerings and the prince, although Reuben didn’t know why. “Yes, you did, didn’t you?”
“That’s why you’re our friend,” Mauvin explained.
“He didn’t know who we were,” Fanen pointed out. “He had no idea about
the skill of a Pickering blade.”
“It wouldn’t have mattered,” Reuben said. His blood was still up from the fight, and his mouth ran away with him. “If I thought you were there to harm the princess, I would still have fought you.”
A moment of silence followed this and Reuben watched as Alric smiled; then he glanced at Mauvin and they laughed again. “Tell me, Hilfred, how are you at catching frogs?”
“Did you see Ellison-Jellison piss himself when I said I could have dogs tear him apart?” the prince asked as they trotted along the road.
“Ha! Yeah,” Mauvin replied. “Thought he might faint like a girl.”
“Can you really do that?” Fanen asked.
The two brothers were only separated by a year, but they were very different. Fanen kept his hair neat, his thoughts to himself, and when he did speak it was in a soft voice, which was difficult to hear above the clapping of the hooves and the rising wind.
Alric laughed. “Sure, Fanen. I’ll just go to my dad and say, ‘Hey, do you mind if I have Lord Trevail’s son torn apart by dogs?’ ”
Mauvin chuckled as if he alone understood some joke. Although Reuben also thought the boy just enjoyed laughing. He did a lot of it. “What do you think your dad would say?”
Alric shrugged. “I wouldn’t want to be there to find out.”
Alric insisted Reuben accompany them to a swamp for a bit of frog hunting, and there was no refusing the son of the king. Not that he wanted to. Despite the humiliation of the previous day, he found he liked the trio. And after saving him from a severe beating, he was more than happy to join them frog hunting—or even dragon hunting if that had been the prince’s preference. Reuben learned they each had a small collection of frogs at the castle. Mauvin in the lead with eight, but Fanen, with five, had the most diverse assortment. Alric had the least with only four. Being the prince, Alric probably did not like being outdone. He told Ian to fetch their mounts and bring one for his new pal, Hilfred. They all grabbed cloaks, and for the second time in less than a week, Reuben rode out of the city in the presence of royalty.
They traveled north past the King’s Road toward East March. The late afternoon sun dipped low in the west, and farms in the shadows of hills already had their lamps lit. Cows were making the trip back to the barns, and smoke was rising from chimneys as the temperature turned colder. They were a good hour from the city walls, where the farms were thin and the hills forested. When they veered off the road, it was toward what looked to be a good-sized pond surrounded by thickets, forests, and mist. The boys called it Edgar’s Swamp because Edgar the Carpenter had told them about it. The best place in the world to catch frogs, he had declared.
They dismounted and walked their horses the last bit to the water’s edge.
“Isn’t it a bit late to be going all the way out here… ah… Your Highness?” Reuben asked.
“Best time to catch them is right after the sun sets,” Alric replied.
“I’m surprised your father allows you to go all this way at night without an escort.”
The prince chuckled. “He wouldn’t. I had to assure him I had a guard.”
“Who?”
“You.”
“But I’m not a guard yet!”
“Really? That’s strange, because when I told my father that Hilfred had agreed to ride out with us, he was fine with that.”
Reuben was stunned. “He thought you were talking about my father!”
“Really? You think so?” Alric was having a hard time keeping a straight face. “You know… you may be right.”
The three broke out in laughter again and continued to do so even as they tied their reins to a fallen tree on the edge of the pond, giving their horses a chance to drink. “It’s not my fault, you know,” the prince said. “Arista never told us your first name.”
“If my father thinks I was trying to impersonate him, he’ll kill me,” Reuben said.
“It’s not your fault either.” Fanen pulled his frogging sack off the saddle. “You didn’t know.”
“My father doesn’t like the idea of me associating with nobility, period.”
“Why not?”
“He thinks it will get me in trouble.”
“And so it has!” Mauvin shouted, and they all laughed again. “You have a wise father.”
“No sense worrying about it now,” Alric said, throwing his own frogging sack over his shoulder. “We’re here. Let’s get some frogs.”
“What am I to do?” Reuben asked.
Alric shrugged. “Guard us. So don’t forget to bring your sword.”
They laughed again.
The four of them slogged into the tall grass, using fallen logs as bridges and leaping from tufts of grass to rocks as they made their way deep into the misty bog.
“You really are awful at sword fighting,” Mauvin told Reuben. “And is it true what Ellison said? That you’re to be sworn into service tomorrow?”
Reuben nodded.
“So this is the quality of arms at Essendon, is it, Alric?”
“I’ll take it up with Captain Lawrence in the morning,” the prince said so seriously it worried Reuben.
“You’re not really going to, are you, Your Highness?”
Alric looked back at him and rolled his eyes. “We need to keep him around. This guy is hilarious.”
“Oh feathers!” Fanen exclaimed right after Reuben heard a liquid plunk. Glancing back, he saw the boy’s left foot was ankle-deep in water. “Foot slipped,” he said with a grimace.
“You need better balance, Fanen,” Mauvin said. “A mistake like that in battle could get you killed.”
Fanen pulled his foot out and shook it.
“Say, Hilfred.” Mauvin turned to him. “Your father is pretty fair with a blade.”
“My father is excellent,” Reuben corrected. “He’s known to be the best sword in the royal guard next to the lieutenant and the captain.”
“You’re talking to a Pickering, Hilfred,” the prince reminded him. “That’s like speaking to a family of Thoroughbred racehorses and saying your father is the fastest plow horse in the county. Their father”—Alric waved at the brothers—“is the greatest living sword master… anywhere.”
Mauvin ducked a branch. “My father started training all of us before we could even lift a blade. Even my sister Lenare, who I think can still best Fanen, although she no longer thinks sword fighting is ladylike.”
“You don’t have to tell everyone about that, you know,” Fanen said, his left foot making a slopping sound each time he stepped with it.
“Yeah I do—it’s funny.”
“Not so much, no.”
“So, okay, your father is better than my father,” Reuben grumbled.
“That’s not my point at all. I meant it as a compliment… that your father is fair with a blade—”
“That’s a huge compliment coming from him, trust me,” the prince said.
“So what are you getting at?”
“Well”—Mauvin paused a moment as he checked the support of a partially submerged log—“if your father knows how to use a sword, how come you don’t?”
Reuben shrugged. “He’s too busy, I guess.”
“I could teach you.” Mauvin steadied himself by grabbing hold of a fistful of cattails, then jogged up the log to a small patch of grass that formed an island near the center of the pond. “That is assuming you don’t mind learning from someone younger.”
“I’d accept,” the prince said. “When he turned ten, Mauvin bested our Captain Lawrence in a Wintertide exhibition.”
“That was two years ago,” Mauvin reminded him. “Father says I’ll master the first tier of the Tek’chin this month.”
“Nice.”
They each kneeled down, and Fanen lit a small lantern. The sun was well behind the forest now, leaving them in shadow. All around were the chirps and peeps of frogs.
“I see one!” Fanen whispered, pointing toward the water. “Go ahead, Alric.”
The prince left his bag and walked carefully with hands out like the claws of an attacking bear. He crept into the pond and in a fast grab scooped at the water, making a great splash. “Got him!”
Alric rushed back, cupping something, his tunic soaked. Fanen held the prince’s bag open for him and Alric deposited his prize. “Now we are even, my friend,” he said to Fanen. “One more and I will pass you. Then I’ll be setting my sights at replacing Mad Mauvin as the Frog King.”
This was obviously some great honor that Reuben had never heard of. Perhaps no one other than the three boys had.
“What kind is it?” Mauvin asked.
“A horned.”
“I have two of them.” Mauvin grinned.
Alric frowned, then turned to Reuben. “Let him teach you to fight—just don’t ever listen to him.”
Reuben sat on the mossy turf surrounded by the forest of cattails and floating lily pads, watching them hunt. He offered to help but was told that was against the rules. Reuben had no idea frog hunting had rules, but apparently it did. Being late in the season, most of the harvests were already in, and snow would be falling soon. But there, in Edgar’s Swamp, the place was alive with sounds—the swish of treetops, the brush of grass, and the deafening chirps and peeps of frogs. The carpenter knew his ponds.
Reuben marveled at his strange turn of fortune. Only a bit over an hour before, he had faced the certainty of a pounding—likely worse. Ellison might not have been kidding about cutting their initials into him. To them he was barely human and not worthy of sympathy. Yet now he was here, safe and surrounded by nobility, catching frogs with the prince of the realm. Just then Reuben was struck by the unique opportunity he had. “Hey, have any of you been to the room at the top of the high tower?”
“The haunted tower?” Alric asked without looking up from the surface of the water where he was stalking another elusive toad.
“Haunted?”
“Sure,” Alric said, creeping through the tufts, trying not to fall. “Nora tells the story every year about this time. I guess because it happened in the late fall.”
“What happened?”
The Rose and the Thorn Page 6
