“Run, James, run!” Hudson cried as he backed the captain and the guards away once more with another slash of his blade. “Be your Father’s son! You are the Lord Morgan now!”
“But what about you, Hudson?” James shrieked. He knew nothing of combat, but even he could see that there were too many for Hudson to handle on his own.
“RUN!” Hudson yelled again. Finally James obeyed. He dodged the outstretched hands of Aunt Margarita, trying to sneak up and catch him again, and raced toward the stables. Blades clashed and angry shouts erupted behind him, but they lasted only for a moment.
SIX
ames found Destroyer still saddled from earlier in the day, waiting for him by the stables. He wasted no time and leapt upon the pony’s back. “Yah!” he cried, and Destroyer kicked out toward the road.
The first raindrops fell from the darkened sky, pelting James with large, gloppy splashes, quickly pooling on the dirt road. Wiping the water from his eyes, James steered Destroyer in the darkness along the main road that ran along the coast toward the nearby town of Rye, hoping to reach the town constable for help. But the frightening thud of pounding hoof beats behind him quickly shattered that idea.
The two soldiers from the study now thundered toward James, mounted on powerful stallions. However faithful to James was Destroyer, the pony was no match for warhorses on the open road. James veered sharply toward the hill. It was the same hill Thunderbold had charged up earlier that day, the dark imprints of her powerful hooves still visible in the grass. The tracks led straight for the haunted forest, and to all the dark mysteries that dwelt within its shadows.
James’s heart beat harder and harder as he neared the trees, visions of the dark horrors Jeremiah had told him about flashing in his mind’s eye. But the pursuing stallions were almost on top of him now, the soldiers upon their backs urging them faster, the warhorses’ throaty breaths sharp amongst their hoof beats, growing louder and louder in James’s ears. James’s fear of the soldiers was greater than his fear of the ghosts. He pushed Destroyer harder still, and with one last surge the pony cleared the trees, plunging James into greater darkness.
The rain came harder, flying down through the branches, stinging James’s skin on his hands and face. Sharp twigs and prickly pine needles scraped his arms and his cheeks. Lightning flashed, and in the momentary brightness James saw the soldiers still close behind him, working their way through the forest.
The thunder crashed, and suddenly another spark of lightning lit up the way before James. He had wandered into the open space of a large meadow, devoid of any trees to slow the pursuing soldiers. James dug his heels into Destroyer’s sides. The pony neighed and pushed forward toward the cover of more trees on the far side of the clearing.
The soldiers on their warhorses hit the clearing a moment later, driving their chargers across at a breakneck pace. Their steeds’ hooves sloshed against the muddy earth, the horses coughing and gulping for air. They drew close enough for James to hear the riders’ grunts and the metal and leather harnesses creaking and groaning under the strain of the chase.
Then James saw them out of the corner of his eyes, already at his sides, a leather-gloved hand reaching over James’s shoulder, grabbing for his coat.
“Come on, Destroyer!” James cried, and though his little pony had almost nothing left, she yet again leapt forward into the protection of the trees.
The thick forest once more gave James space, but the tumultuous rumble of raging water ahead made his heart sink. A river, driven mad by the torrential downpour of rain, appeared before him, running through the heart of the forest, cutting off James’s escape.
James ran Destroyer along the banks, hoping against hope to find a stretch shallow enough to cross, but the rainstorm had turned the river into an impassable wall of water.
Snapping branches and neighing horses sounded at James’s back. The soldiers were on top of him again. He pushed Destroyer forward as fast as the little pony could manage. Tears of hopelessness were about to fall from James’s eyes when a lightning bolt, blazing white hot through the air, struck a tree before him. A crack and a boom accompanied the sudden orange glow of fire. Destroyer reared up in terror just as a branch from the falling tree swung down on the pony and rider, striking James on the side of his head as he was thrown from Destroyer’s back. The last things James felt were the cold hands of the river catching him as he fell, the rushing water enveloping him as all went dark.
SEVEN
ames choked up water, gasping for air as he finally came to rest on the river’s muddy banks. He crawled on his hands and knees out of the water, collapsing into the slimy muck. The right side of his head throbbed, and even in spite of all the water and mud, he felt the warmth of blood on his forehead and cheek. He had no idea exactly how he had survived his fall into river. He remembered the lightning and the tree; he remembered all going dark; and just before passing out, he recalled grasping hold of the very same tree branch that had struck his head. He awoke a few moments later, his mouth full of water, his hand still on the branch, the fast current sweeping his body downstream.
After gathering his senses, James sat up. The rest of his body hurt as badly as his head, he found, but there was nothing to be done. There were no servants to summon, not even his aunt to call upon for help. Aunt Margarita. James’s insides turned to cold water again. He had been so afraid while the soldiers had chased him, so terrified of losing his life that he had thought of nothing but escape. Now, sitting on the dark banks of a river, in a deep forest in the black of night, James was alone with the awful truth of what had just happened.
His own aunt had betrayed him. She had looked right into his face while men had suggested killing him, and she’d let them try. James wasn’t entirely sure who those other two men were, but they had known Hudson and his father. And the one, the dark-haired man who had been so eager to finish James off, was a captain in his majesty’s navy. James knew the uniform and the rank. The older man must have been the very Count Cromier his aunt and his father spoke of in the kitchen, and the younger must have been Bartholomew. The pale captain’s eyes had been so terrifying and cold, James thought, and he’d pulled his sword from his scabbard as fast as the wind.
Then James thought about Hudson. The old valet had hardly known James, but he had been willing to sacrifice himself so that James could escape. James had seen the way Hudson had looked at his father, with tears in the old man’s eyes. James’s father. Now James’s thoughts turned solely on his father and the last words James had ever spoken to him: “You’re the one who should be sorry.”
James could bear it no longer and wept furiously. All by himself in the dark he cried and sobbed aloud, never caring if anyone heard or what they thought even if they did. For a long time James sat there until finally he fell over, exhausted from weeping. As he fell, something hard stuck his side, the pinch of pain snapping him out of his misery.
It was the little wooden box in his pocket. James pulled it out and opened it. A few drops had seeped in through the cracks, but the letter on the ancient-looking parchment and the necklace were mostly undamaged. James stared at the letter, his father’s last words and the story of his great secret. James couldn’t understand why, but he was afraid of the letter, so afraid that he refused to touch either of the items inside the box, slamming the lid shut to block them from view. When James closed the box, he noticed for the first time the intricately carved decoration on the top. Even in the dark, between his eyes and the touch of his fingers he made out the bizarre image. It was some sort of scepter, James thought, or perhaps a spear of some kind, with three points at the tip instead of one. And behind the strange spear was a pearl resting in an open shell.
James stared at the strange image for a long time. He had never seen this symbol before, but it looked to him like a family crest of some sort, though certainly not one with which he was familiar.
James sighed and put the box back in his pocket. He felt like his whole world was s
pinning out of control and nothing made any sense anymore. The only things he knew were that his box held a secret – the secret of a vast treasure – and that the last thing Hudson had told him was that they were going to London to keep it safe, that it was James’s duty to keep it safe. He was the Lord Morgan now, so to protect what his father had left for him was what James decided to do.
James stood and looked around. The rain had stopped and the moon and the stars peeked out from behind the clouds. James was surprised at how well he could see after his eyes adjusted to the dim light. But as James waded further and further into the dark forest, the more the moonlight struggled to squeeze between the canopy of branches and leaves.
As James walked beneath a small opening in the tree branches above, he looked up to the rapidly clearing sky and suddenly had the brilliant idea to navigate using the stars. But, alas, he had ignored all those astronomy lessons from old Phineus, so that idea was dashed. Then James remembered Jeremiah offering to take him out into the woods to teach him how to build fires and survive in the elements.
“Why should I learn that?” James had scoffed. “I have you to do it for me!” He had laughed then, but he wasn’t laughing now. Right then and there James made a promise to himself to never turn down the chance to learn anything new from anyone in the future, no matter how silly it seemed at the time.
So without the aid of the stars, by which he had absolutely no clue how to navigate, and without the light of a fire, which he hadn’t the slightest idea how to build, James picked a direction and set off down the bank of the river. He seemed to recall some lesson or other (to which he had paid half-attention at one point) that suggested that people gathered near water for some reason or another, and he just might be lucky enough to meet someone who could help. Unfortunately, luck was not on James’s side.
More than once he slipped in the mud and nearly rolled back into the river. He was soon covered in slime and, not being used to walking around a filthy mess, grew steadily more and more miserable, his misery only increasing as his feet began to ache from walking. But worse than even that, James soon began to suspect fouler things than mud dwelt in the forest shadows. Strange noises echoed amongst the trees. Sometimes James saw floating pairs of green orbs in the dark, but they disappeared as soon as he caught them in the edges of his vision. They were eyes, he imagined, but eyes that belonged to what?
There were stories, James knew. Stories that Jeremiah used to tell about creatures in the forest, fauns and nymphs and dryads, creatures of the woods that tricked little children into following them deeper into the forests, singing songs and offering treats, tempting their prey to go but a little farther, until they would capture the children and hold them captive for years and years…or worse, eat them for dinner. Once or twice James thought he heard the soft notes of a faun’s panpipes in the dark, and his heart hammered against his chest.
Then he heard a rumble.
James stopped dead in his tracks, fear freezing him cold from his fingertips to his toes. He heard it again, a soft growling that sounded like it came from all around him. He slowly crept a few steps forward.
A branch snapped loudly behind him, and James whirled around, his blood pulsing with fear through his veins.
Two green orbs stared at him from only a few yards away. But these neither disappeared nor flitted away. They remained locked on James. For a moment, the orbs and James stood completely still, staring at each other without blinking.
“Hello, Mr. Faun or Ms. Nymph,” James finally offered, his mouth gone dry as a stone. “My name is James Morgan. Just looking for London, that’s all. No harm being done. Perhaps you’ve been there a time or two? Lovely place really - there’s some terrific gardens and parks you might like.”
The orbs remained in place. James backed up a step, then another. The orbs hovered but a few feet away.
“Anyway, just wanted to let you know that I won’t be following you into the woods to be your late-night snack this evening, but I hope you find some other children to chase later. Happy hunting, cheers.”
James thought he might be in the clear as he backed up one step farther, but then the orbs advanced upon him. They bobbed in the dark until finally the form that carried them passed into the pale light of the moon. It was no faun or nymph. Bristling fur covered its lean, grey body. Lips on a long snout peeled back over a row of white fangs, glistening in the starlight. For the first time in his life James looked into the eyes of a wolf.
Fear crawled out from James’s chest, turning his whole body to stone, standing on petrified legs as the wolf stepped closer and closer. It sniffed at him, licking its chops with a long red tongue, measuring him with hungry eyes, but still James stood frozen to his spot. Only when the wolf barked did the spell of stone suddenly release James with a hot flash.
The pain in James’s feet scorched his every step, but he never ran so fast in his entire life. With dread, however, he quickly realized it was still not fast enough. The wolf nipped at James’s heels then broke off to his side. In the shafts of moonlight the beast glided through the trees alongside James before streaking on ahead. James hoped for only a moment that it had given up for some other prey – until the feral creature burst into the clearing before James, skidding to a stop.
James gasped for breath. There was no strength in his body to run again. The wolf stalked forward, wet slobber dripping from its jowls. James closed his eyes, the images of his life flashing in the darkness like the leafing pages of a picture book, Aunt Margarita, Phineus, Jeremiah, the manor, his pony, Hudson, and finally his father. He wondered what it would feel like when the wolf bit him. He dared crack his eyes open just as the wolf crouched to spring.
But in that instant, as James stepped back, he felt an unseen hand snatch his ankle and heard two snaps like whips. The wolf yelped like a pup and James’s legs whipped out from beneath him, his head smacking the ground. James suddenly found himself hanging upside down, and for the second time that night, everything went completely black.
James woke with a throbbing head. The world was upside down - everything that was, but the wolf, which hung suspended in midair as James did. A biting pain dug into James’s ankle. He looked up to find a coil of rough rope tied to his leg, the cord having worn through his socks, cutting into the soft skin of his leg, and hanging him from the top branches of a tree. James tried to pull himself up to reach the knot and loosen himself, but he was too weak for the task. He let his head fall back down - and found an upside-down man’s face staring into his own.
James screamed and thrashed in the air until the man’s hand shot out and gripped him roughly by the throat. James’s scream squeaked instantly into a muffled choke.
“Silence,” the man said in a thick accent that was not of James’s country. “If you are qviet, I vill cut you down. If not…I vill cut your throat.”
“That seems fair enough,” James rasped. The man released him with a small shove, sending James swaying back and forth in the air like a pendulum. After a moment of swinging the tension in the rope went slack and James tumbled to the ground in a miserable heap.
“Ouch!” he said with a yelp. “You could have done that–”
The man let his long knife gleam in the moonlight.
“–softer,” James whispered.
The man ignored James and went to the wolf. He didn’t offer the animal the same deal as James, and after he had killed the beast, he let it down and slung its body over his shoulder, carrying it to the edge of the little clearing.
“Hey, wait!” James shouted to the man. “Don’t leave me here!”
The man said nothing and kept walking. So James clambered to his feet and rushed to follow, limping badly from his blistered heels, tired soles, and ragged ankle.
“You could slow down a bit there!” Once again James’s words came back unanswered, and the pitiless man refused to slow his pace even a little. James studied the hunter as well as he could in the dark. He was swarthy and short, dark curls p
ouring out from beneath a red rag tied over his head, a dark mustache and beard lining his thick mouth. He was obviously strong, the weight of the wolf seemed not to bother him in the least nor hinder the speed of his gait.
This was unfortunate for James, for as well as having even shorter legs than the squat man he followed, his body ached, and his head still swam from being hunted, struck twice, nearly drowned, almost eaten by a wolf, and hung upside down for a good portion of the night.
After what felt like miles, the sweat pouring down his face, the pain burning like a fever, James could go no farther. “Now look,” he gasped through ragged breaths. “This is most inhumane, my good man. We really should take a break.” The man still gave no answer. “Can’t you see that I’m hurt?” James demanded to the man’s back. “I’m bleeding, you cur! I can’t go on!” And with that, James collapsed in a heap on the forest floor.
At this the man finally stopped, turning to look down at James.
“Finally come to your senses, you brute?” James snapped.
But the man just smiled and shrugged, then kept right on walking. James was incredulous. How could this man be so cruel? Couldn’t he see that James was hurt?
“Are you daft!” James called after him. “Don’t leave me here like this!” But the man acted as though he heard not a word. With no choice left to him, James finally got up once more and staggered after the man, whimpering and limping the entire way.
At some point James stopped thinking about the cruel foreigner he followed and even about the pain that clawed at his feet with every step. His tears dried into a stiff mess under his eyes and on his cheeks. His mind wandered through myriad bizarre memories and thoughts. He remembered his aunt pinching his cheek, but in his mind she pinched it so hard that it bled. He remembered old Phineus shaking his head and the nurse getting sacked, but for what he could not recall. He remembered Hudson leaping forward to defend him.
Jim Morgan and the King of Thieves Page 4
