The Brave Apprentice

by P. W. Catanese

  “They huddle around her during the winter. Many sacrifice themselves to keep her warm,” said Cecilia softly. “Her?”

  She carefully replaced the top of the skep. “Yes, Patch. In the middle of all those bees is the queen. Don’t you see? They’re protecting their queen.”

  Despite the circumstances, despite his fear for the lives of Ludowick and Simon and everyone inside Dartham, Patch had to smile. “Like Lord Addison said. ‘The queen must be saved.’” Cecilia blushed and returned his smile.

  Patch looked again at the skep. “We have to warm them more, wake them fully.”

  “The kitchen, Patch—the ovens are always warm. Let us go!”

  Patch shook his head. “I’ll bring it. You have to hide here—the trolls will be looking for us.”

  The skin between her brows crinkled as Cecilia glared at him. “Hide here alone? They have my scent, remember—I would be hunted down like a fox. No, I will take my chances with you, Patch Ridling. And besides, if this works, I need to see the look on Giles’s face!”

  It was like a fever dream, returning to Dartham. The sounds of the struggle grew louder as Patch retraced his steps and they drew closer to the eastern wall. There was a shriek unlike anything he’d ever heard. It could only be a troll in mortal agony, and it gave him hope. But a moment later, there was a long scream from some poor fellow, a scream that seemed to rise up and arc high through the air, and then down again until it ended with a thud on the ground. And amid all this was the endless crashing stone and splintering timber, the shouts of soldiers and archers, the twang of bowstrings and the whine of arrows, and the roars and hisses and laughter of the trolls.

  At last they stood at the edge of the moat, across from the little door in the wall. “How stupid!” Patch cried. The plank across the ditch was gone, of course: The soldier had removed the temporary span after he and Simon left.

  “So we cross it anyway,” Cecilia said. She climbed down without hesitation, and Patch followed.

  “It’s not just that,” he said. “The door is going to be locked. And I doubt anyone will be there to let us in.”

  “We’ll see,” Cecilia said. She reached the bottom, where a sheet of ice lay under a growing puddle of slush, and her feet nearly slipped out beneath her. “Fancy breaking my neck in the moat after all this,” she said. She walked sideways across the ice with tiny, cautious steps.

  The sense of nightmare grew in Patch’s mind as he followed her, holding the precious skep with one arm and taking her hand with the other. Their pace slowed to a crawl.

  “The moat is here to slow down attackers,” Cecilia explained, nearly losing her balance again.

  “It’s working, Your Majesty,” Patch said. He was more nervous than ever now, keenly aware that if a troll should wander by, they could not hope to escape while trapped on the ice. But finally they reached the other side and scrambled up the slope. Patch went to the door. There was no handle on the outside—it had been built to blend into the wall. He put his fingers through the tiny window and used that to tug, but the door did not budge. “Locked,” he said, frowning at Cecilia. Then he peered through the tiny window. “Hello? Anyone there?” he called.

  On the other side of the door, someone was sobbing. He got up on his toes to look down and saw a girl sitting there, hugging the knees that were drawn up to her chest. She must have crawled into this place for refuge during the attack.

  “Let me,” said Cecilia, putting a hand on Patch’s shoulder to gently push him to the side. “Hello, child,” she said. Patch could not see, but the sobbing was replaced by sniffing. From the smile on Cecilia’s face, he knew the girl was looking up at her now.

  “I know you’re frightened, young lady. I am too. But I think we have a way to defeat the trolls. And you can help. We need to open this door—but I fear the bolt is too heavy for you to move. Would you like to try? You would? That’s a fine young girl.”

  Patch heard the bolt jiggle on the other side. The girl tried three, four, five times. Cecilia watched through the opening, with her bottom lip between her teeth. Then a small, quavering voice came from behind the door. “I can’t do it.”

  Cecilia glanced at Patch and grimaced. “What is your name, little girl?” she said, her eyes beginning to shine with tears.

  “Dulcie,” she replied.

  “Dulcie, I need you to do the bravest thing you’ve ever done. You need to find someone strong enough to open this door.”

  The girl gasped. “But the trolls—they’re out there!”

  Cecilia’s voice shook as she spoke, and she closed her eyes and pressed her forehead against the door. “I know, Dulcie. But you must try. Your king needs you. Your queen needs you. And most important, your friends and your family need you.”

  “All—all right.”

  Patch put the skep on the ground while he waited, and he listened to the sounds of the battle inside. Men were shouting; he tried in vain to pick out Addison’s voice, or Milo’s, or even Mannon’s. He heard Cecilia whispering, and saw her hands clasped, and knew she was praying for the safety of the tiny girl.

  There was a grunt somewhere in the fields behind them, and a sloshing sound. Then a series of squishing steps, heavy feet sinking deep into the slush and mud. The sound grew louder with every beat. He leaned toward Cecilia and whispered in her ear, “Troll coming.”

  The slippery moat was in front of them, and only the high walls of Dartham at their backs, with nowhere to hide, left or right. “Should we run?” the queen whispered back.

  “Don’t know,” Patch mouthed, straining to determine the source of the sound. He felt a hint of a warm breeze. The fog was changing. It was no longer a dense and uniform sea of white; now as he looked across the eastern fields he could see the insubstantial curtains of vapor wafting from right to left, randomly obscuring and unveiling the features of the landscape.

  Something in front of them, dangerously near, sniffed the air. The moving mists revealed what might have been mistaken for a huge boulder, but was instead a troll that was squatting on the far side of the ditch to examine footprints in the snow. He lifted his head to smell the air. Patch felt the queen’s arm slide under his, pulling him in close. “Don’t move,” she said.

  The troll sniffed left, swung his head right and sniffed again. Then the ugly head swiveled to face them directly. Patch could just make out the little gray eyes with their black dots in the center. The beast was squinting, trying to focus.

  “Get ready to run,” Patch said, barely audible.

  The troll rose from his crouch, turned. around, and trudged into the mist. Neither of them moved for a few seconds, then Cecilia practically fell over onto Patch. He put his hands atop his head and slid them over the length of his face and back up again. He felt a sweet, lightheaded relief, and heard the queen exhale long and deep. “I can’t believe I didn’t scream,” she said. And then she screamed.

  The troll charged out of the fog, snarling. He leaped when he reached the far edge of the moat. He seemed to hang in the air forever, suddenly crystal clear now that he was close, and Patch registered countless details—the color of his warty skin, the ten sharp points of his thick fingers, the wide mouth studded with teeth, the tongue wriggling out of a throat big enough to crawl inside, and those hideous too-small eyes with the golden ick streaming down the cheeks. Patch thought for a moment that the leap might carry the beast all the way across the moat, but he fell to the bottom just short of the near side. Then his head rose up and his hands clawed at the edge for purchase.

  So abrupt, so startling, so fascinating in its terrible way was the troll’s charge that Patch realized they had wasted a precious second frozen to the spot. “This way,” he shouted to Cecilia, and began to run, but she clutched at his sleeve and kept him from going.

  And then the door in the wall swung open. A gray-whiskered man, a farmer by the look of him, was there, and the little girl Dulcie was behind him, her high squeal drowned out by the roar of the troll. Patch could f
eel the ground shaking behind him as the troll’s legs swung up over the edge of the moat. He followed Cecilia into the passageway and was about to slam the door shut behind him when he saw the forgotten skep on the ground outside, maybe seven feet away.

  The troll was on his feet already and coming at them. Patch sprang out the door and landed like a frog by the skep. A darkness fell over him when he scooped it up, and as he took his first step back toward the opening, he could sense from the corner of his eye a vast gray bulk descending, and he knew that the troll had left his feet and was diving at him with his long, long arms reaching. Patch looked into the passage and saw the old man and the girl backing away, and the anguished look in Cecilia’s eyes, her mouth shaped to cry, “No!” A calm voice in his head said simply, Not going to make it. He pushed the skep out into the air in front of him, and it floated gracefully toward Cecilia’s arms.

  It all unfolded so slowly, as if the nature of time was altered and he was soaring through air as thick as honey. He was at the threshold when he sensed the massive hand behind him. Some animal instinct told him to leap, and he did. He was into the passageway, but the hand was coming after him, and as he kept running, his feet churning only air, he felt the troll’s fingers at his heel, so firm and heavy that he could actually push off and propel himself away, not once but twice. The troll felt him, and clutched at him, and a heavy pointed nail scratched savagely at his knee and sent him tumbling.

  Patch tucked his head down and hit the ground shoulder first. He allowed himself to roll forward, and turned to see the hand right behind him, clawing madly. The troll’s head was through the threshold, and the arm and the shoulder, but he was too large to come any farther. The monster snarled and spat in frustration. He bunched his fingers into a fist and hammered at the sides of the passage. Chunks of rock and dust began to rain down.

  The old farmer was holding Dulcie, and she had seized his beard in one hand and pressed her face to his neck. Cecilia handed Patch the skep and put her arms around them. “Bless you both,” she said, kissing the farmer’s cheek and the top of the girl’s head. “Now Patch, to the kitchen. If we can.”

  limped to the end of the passageway with Cecilia. The troll’s fingernail had torn through his pants and left a gash above his knee, and the pain seared him like fire.

  They peered out from the end of the passageway. They could not see far, but they heard the battle still raging.

  The kitchen and its warm ovens were just across the vineyard. But a troll was sitting in their path among the hibernating vines. And not just any troll, but the loathsome Gursh, who had come across an ox and, leaving the battle for the moment, brought it to this remote corner of the courtyard to consume it. They heard the bone splintering between Gursh’s teeth and smelled the fresh blood.

  “Remember him” Patch asked.

  “The one Simon rescued the child from. Vile creature! We’ll have to sneak past him,” Cecilia said.

  Patch looked at Gursh. This troll’s mouth was always foaming, but now the froth was pink with blood, and the raw flesh of the ox dribbled down his chin and chest. Gursh looked around as he chewed, as if nervous that he might be caught by the others. “He’ll see us,” Patch said. “There’s no way to get past.”

  “We can’t wait, Patch!”

  “I know. Take the skep. And get ready to run for the kitchen. I’ll lead him away.”

  “But your leg—you can’t run!”

  “Sure I can,” Patch said, shrugging off his heavy cloak. And without waiting for another objection, or some queenly order to stay put, he hobbled out toward the vineyard.

  For a moment Gursh was huddled over his kill, gnawing. He had taken his armor and helmet off and laid them on the ground at his side to sit in comfort. Patch walked softly past him, thankful he’d gotten this far before drawing the monster’s attention. But then Gursh’s head came up again. His silver eyes, which seemed to almost glow compared with the dark-gray-and-lichen-colored hide around them, locked onto Patch.

  “Hello, Gursh,” Patch said, waving. Gursh flung the ox aside and rose up, snarling.

  Patch swerved left and right through the trellises in the vineyard, using them to slow Gursh’s pursuit. He glanced over his shoulder. Gursh was a few paces behind, swatting the wooden framework out of his path as he ran. Beyond the troll, Patch saw Cecilia running for the kitchen with the skep cradled in her arms. How long would it take to rouse the bees? he wondered. He prayed it would not be long, because as he entered the main area of the courtyard and limped through the rapidly thinning fog, he could see that the situation was grim.

  Addison’s strategies had led to some minor victories. Patch ran past a troll who was sitting with his back to the wall of the chapel, gazing curiously at a long-shafted pike that had been driven deep into his gut. Another troll stomped madly across Patch’s path with his arms flailing—he was positively bristling with arrows, and one shot had been downright miraculous, because Patch saw the feathered shaft sticking out from the tiny eye slit in the beast’s helmet.

  But the losses were great. At a glance Patch could see at least a dozen broken bodies on the ground—archers, soldiers, peasants, and knights among them. And in every corner of the courtyard were the hulking forms of the other trolls. Some were picking up stones to heave at the archers who remained on the walls, bravely popping up here and there to send down more stinging arrows. Patch was sure he heard Mannon shouting out commands, and it was the first time he was glad to hear that rumbling voice.

  A gang of trolls was gathered at the front of the keep. The door was bashed in, and one of them had crawled into the opening, only to be forced back by the battle-axes of the men inside. Some of the trolls clambered up the walls of the keep to reach the upper floors.

  There was mayhem everywhere, but each troll was engrossed in his own battle and they ignored the hobbling boy—all except Gursh, who drew closer with every step, making awful guttural sounds. Patch ran on, ignoring the flaring pain and looking for a way to escape his pursuer.

  To his right Patch saw a crowd of trolls at the barracks. They pried open the timber walls on one side, and the sharp ends of pikes and spears came stabbing out of the hole. The door at the far end opened, and some thirty men, villagers and soldiers together, spilled out, led by Milo. Addison was the last to emerge. The trolls roared after them, and the men turned to face them, lining up with their long pikes facing the monsters.

  There was no time to watch that confrontation—Gursh was nearly close enough to snatch him off the ground while he ran. Patch gained a step by ducking under a long cart and coming up on the other side, while Gursh slowed to heave the cart out of his way.

  Ahead of him was the gatehouse, and Patch hobbled toward it, remembering Addison’s instructions before the attack. The trolls hadn’t bothered to smash down the heavy wooden doors of the front gate. Instead, they’d climbed in over the collapsed portion of the wall. So there is a chance, Patch thought. But would the men inside the winch room still be there, waiting?

  With Gursh snorting right behind him again, he had no other choice. He ran into the passageway, under the raised inner portcullis. He reached a dead end—a short, high tunnel barred at the far side by the massive doors. Patch ran to them and spun around, wincing from the pain in his leg.

  Gursh filled the entrance on the other side of the passage, blotting out the misty scene behind him. He leered at Patch, knowing his prey had no place to run, no hole to crawl into. The foam that forever leaked from his mouth had grown to the size of a beard now, and he wiped it away with one forearm. Patch had never heard Gursh speak before; he had only heard coarse beastly sounds from him. But now Gursh pointed at him with one claw-tipped finger and said perhaps the only word he knew: “Eat.”

  The troll crouched to fit into the passageway and shuffled toward him. Patch screamed, “Now!” and a sound came from the winch room above. Patch recognized the low rumble of a great cylinder rolling and the high pitch of chains spinning madly. The iron-p
lated portcullis came down, sliding easily through the grooves in the wall, its pointed ends forming a line of seven spears, each as thick as a tree. Gursh hardly had time to look up before it hit him across the shoulders. And even the thick, leathery skin of a troll could not resist the weight and piercing strength of the massive portcullis. The spikes sank deep into his flesh and drove him to the ground.

  Patch heard a wild celebration coming from the room above him. He looked up and saw a face smiling down at him through the hole in the ceiling. “We were just about to give it up—thought one would never come into our trap. But you done it, lad! We got one!”

  Patch waved weakly. Through the hole, he saw the soldier stand up and embrace the other men up there, all of them whooping and hopping about.

  He had to get to the kitchen now and help Cecilia. But one obstacle remained.

  Gursh was not yet dead.

  creature was on his belly, impaled across the back by four of the seven spikes of the portcullis. His head lay sideways on the ground. He stared at Patch, curling his lips back to show every nasty yellow tooth in his horribly wide mouth. The foam that bubbled from the corner of his mouth ran bright red.

  The bulk of the troll had kept the portcullis from dropping all the way to the ground. It looked as if there was enough room to crawl under. But those long, dangerous arms could reach across the width of the passage, if Gursh still had the strength. Patch edged along the wall, cautiously advancing. Gursh made no apparent move, but Patch saw those silver eyes narrowing and the long arm drawing back just a bit, and he knew the troll was trying to deceive him into wandering within reach.

  “Fine,” Patch said. “I’ll wait for you to die.” He crossed his arms and leaned back against the wall. He tried to act as if the delay did not concern him, but in truth he felt a growing panic inside—he had to get out, in case Cecilia needed his help.