‘We’re getting closeish,’ he said.
The track was terribly overgrown, and wound up and down, but mainly up through gullies and gorges, over streams and fallen logs. Eventually a sustained rise led them to the edge of a clearing at the top of a hill. In the middle of the clearing stood a stone cottage.
‘She’s in there,’ said Roderick.
‘Are you –’
‘Yes. I’m sure. Let me concentrate.’ He shut his eyes. A few moments later he opened them again. ‘Three guards, I think.’
It was starting to get dark.
CHAPTER 20
A BADLY TIMED VISIT
Roderick crept across the grass towards the cottage.
‘Roderick,’ whispered Ruby behind him. ‘You’re creeping again. Walk confidently. You’re on official business, remember?’
Roderick tried to straighten his shoulders. His left hand grabbed his right to stop it shaking. It didn’t work because his left hand was shaking too. He tried to tell himself that their plan was a good one and it would work. He had an invisible girl at his side, and a bear keeping watch. What could possibly go wrong? At the front door of the cottage he raised his hand. The last thing in the world he wanted to do was knock on the door, so he didn’t. He might have stayed like that for hours if Ruby hadn’t grabbed his hand and bashed it firmly against the door three times.
He heard a chair scrape, then a suspicious voice with a slight accent. ‘Who is it?’
‘It is Sir Daniel,’ said Roderick. ‘I have orders from the Queen.’
‘What’s the password?’
Roderick froze. Ruby jabbed him in the ribs.
He found his voice. ‘This is no time for games. War is coming. I was told nothing of a password. I have urgent orders. Open up or I will batter the door down and you can explain your impudence to the Queen!’
Roderick heard muttering inside, then a bolt slid back and the door creaked open. Inside, three guards with drawn swords faced them. Behind them was a plain sitting room with chairs and benches, and to Roderick’s left a kitchen table, stove and pantry. Two corridors led off the room, one to Roderick’s right, the other directly behind the guards towards the back of the house.
The guard on Roderick’s left had black hair and a confident look. In the middle was a big one with a brown beard, and the third was bald and thin with darting eyes. They were all dressed in shabby shirts and jackets, and were clearly not Baronian soldiers.
‘What welcome is this?’ said Roderick, stepping inside. The thin guard cautiously moved around him to shut and re-bolt the door. Roderick hoped Ruby had managed to squeeze through in time.
‘I have ridden all day from Palandan. Perhaps a drink of water before the three of you cut me to pieces.’ He took a few steps over to the room’s right-hand side, away from the kitchen, extremely aware of the three swords aimed at him.
The guards followed him. The kitchen was behind them, which meant that they did not see a large pot rise off the table, hover over to the black-haired guard and smash him a frightful blow on the head. He groaned and collapsed, his sword clattering to the floor next to him. The other two guards leapt back in shock.
‘Goodness gracious!’ said Roderick in mock surprise. ‘That’s an angry pot you’ve got. Maybe it doesn’t like being cooked in.’ The pot floated down to the floor beside the prone guard, and his sword now rose into the air and started swishing towards the two remaining guards.
‘I’m not much of a swordsman,’ said Roderick, ‘but I do know that the aim of sword fighting isn’t to kill or injure the sword. It’s to kill or injure the person holding the sword.’
The sword swished closer to the heads of the guards. They each raised their own to parry it.
‘But what do you do,’ continued Roderick, drawing his own sword and taking up a position next to the hovering sword, ‘if there isn’t anyone holding the sword? How do you stop a sword that fights by itself?’
The airborne sword suddenly launched a violent array of strokes, backing the guards up against the wall.
‘Look,’ Roderick said seriously, ‘enough mucking around. Give me the keys or I’ll tell that sword to cut your ears off!’ The guards hesitated. ‘And then your noses.’
The guards exchanged a look, and then the bigger one removed the keys from his belt and tossed them to Roderick, who fumbled and dropped them, denting the cool, calm and collected image he had been trying to project. He picked them up quickly, and then motioned the guards to sit on the floor. They sat.
‘Where is she?’ he asked.
The guards stared at the still-hovering sword but said nothing.
‘For goodness’ sake,’ said Roderick. ‘You’ve given me the keys. You’ve sat on the floor. There are only three or four rooms in here. It isn’t going to take me long. Where is she?’
The thin guard looked down the corridor that led to the right-hand side of the cottage.
‘Thank you,’ said Roderick, and then addressed the sword. ‘If either of them moves, start slicing ears.’
He hurried down the corridor and tried the first door he came to. The third key opened it.
Sonya was sitting on a bed inside. He’d found her! And she looked unharmed.
She leapt to her feet. ‘Roderick! But how –’
‘I can tell you everything later. Are you all right?’
She nodded.
Roderick grabbed her hand. ‘Let’s go.’
‘But I haven’t even packed.’ He opened his mouth, but she quickly added, ‘Joke.’
As they re-entered the main room, they saw the sword was still floating above the two conscious guards. The third had begun to moan and roll groggily around on the floor. There had been another development too. One of Ruby’s legs had returned, and her other foot was rapidly joining it. Her invisibility was wearing off.
Then there was a knock at the door. Everyone froze, and they all stared at the door, as if it was going to tell them who was outside. The sword closed in on the guards.
‘Let me in.’ It was Chester. ‘In the door, I mean, in a way that is as quick as you can open the door and say, “Come in, Chester.” In fact, to save time you don’t even have to say that!’
Roderick unbolted the door. Chester hurried inside, causing the guards’ and Sonya’s eyes to widen. Roderick re-bolted the door.
‘People are coming, who are people with swords,’ panted Chester, ‘and who are also people on horses, which means that all together they are people on swords with horses. Wait, it is the other way around. But whoever they are, they are people who I think are about to knock on the door that I just knocked on. And I think that the fact that the people I am talking about are here and not somewhere else means that there is now much more trouble than the trouble there already was.’
Another knock came. Everyone looked at the door again. Roderick put his finger to his lips. ‘Who is it?’
‘Sir Ledwick with a company of men sent by the Queen to provide extra security for your guest. Open up!’
Roderick knew Sir Ledwick as an experienced, strong and fiery knight. ‘How many of you are there?’ asked Roderick. They were in trouble, but he wanted to find out just how much. He noticed that both of Ruby’s legs were now visible.
‘What does that matter? Open up!’
Roderick tried to keep his voice steady. ‘All right, all right. Just let me get the key.’
He grabbed Sonya’s hand and pulled her down the corridor towards the back of the house. Ruby, whose hips had now returned, stayed with the guards, her sword waving menacingly in front of their noses. Chester, next to her, picked up a chair. ‘Bears don’t use chairs for sitting,’ he whispered to Ruby, ‘but bears can use chairs for other things. Not for eating, but maybe for whacking people on the head, which is what I might soon use this chair for.’
A door led off the corridor t
o the left. Roderick tried the handle. It was open. Inside was a bedroom with a window big enough to squeeze through. That was, however, impossible as three iron bars crossed it.
‘Hurry up, curse you,’ Sir Ledwick thundered from outside.
Roderick heard shoulders ramming the front door of the house. There was one more door at the end of the corridor. It was also unlocked. Inside was another bedroom. Above one of the beds was an unbarred window big enough to climb through.
‘Wait here,’ he said to Sonya and raced back up the corridor just in time to see the door smash open and Baronian soldiers rush into the room. Ruby, now fully visible, had backed up to the doorway of the corridor, and Chester stood beside her, brandishing the chair.
‘Chester, don’t talk now. Just listen. Ruby and I are going down this corridor. You stay here and hold them off until I scream, “Now!” Then run through them out the front door and into the forest. They won’t follow you. They want us. All right?’
‘This is a bad thing,’ muttered Chester nervously. ‘And there are lots of things to say about this thing, but this is not the time to say them, so instead I will just do some nodding, which means yes.’ He nodded.
The soldiers advanced, swords drawn.
‘A bit of roaring might help too,’ suggested Roderick.
Chester let out a huge bellow and started waving the chair about. Roderick grabbed Ruby’s hand and sprinted back down the corridor to the bedroom.
‘Quick. Out,’ he said to Sonya, leaping onto the bed and cupping his hands together for her foot. She stepped up on them, pulled herself up, pushed the window open, squeezed through it and disappeared.
Roderick pulled himself up onto the window ledge. From the front of the house he heard commotion: shouting, more roaring and what sounded like a chair connecting with a head. He pulled Ruby up, shouted, ‘Chester! Now!’ then jumped, tumbling over as he hit the ground next to Sonya. They scrambled to their feet. A moment later Ruby landed beside them. They were in a clearing. The forest was just thirty or forty steps away. If they could just get to it, the trees and the darkness would swallow them up.
‘HURRY!’ ordered Roderick and they raced for the trees.
‘They’re here!’ The shout came from behind them. Soldiers raced around the corner of the cottage. A moment later, Sir Ledwick dropped out of the bedroom window. Roderick and Sonya were only a few steps from the trees.
‘Roderick!’ He looked around. Ruby had fallen, and Ledwick was walking purposefully towards her. Without thinking, Roderick drew his sword and raced back. As he passed her, without taking his eyes of Ledwick, he said, ‘Go with Sonya.’
As Ruby pulled herself up, Roderick yelled as loudly as he could, raised his sword above his head and charged at Ledwick. On some level he may have known that a furious scream would distract attention from the two fleeing girls, and that the other soldiers would be less likely to chase them if their leader was being attacked, but neither of these thoughts passed through his conscious mind. For once, for a few precious seconds, he was free of the maddening complications of thought and acted out of the pure animal instinct to protect and defend.
His ferocity took Sir Ledwick, a far superior swordsman, by surprise. Sir Ledwick raised his sword to parry Roderick’s blow, but its force knocked the flat of the sword back into his nose. Roderick swung again and Ledwick desperately parried. Roderick took a step back, swung his sword in a wide arc at the semi-circle of soldiers carefully closing in on him, and slowly backed further away. Then he turned and ran for his life into the forest.
There was no sign of Ruby or Sonya. He blundered through the trees, hearing footsteps behind him. It was so dark that it was surely only a matter of time before he tripped and fell, but his only chance of escape was to run as fast as he could. A branch whacked him in the face, opening a cut on his cheek. He pushed his arms out in front of him, trying to bat other branches away.
Suddenly, still running at full speed, he broke out of the trees onto steeply sloping rock. Too late he saw the rock shelf fall away into nothingness in front of him.
Before he could stop himself, he had run off the edge of a cliff.
He had only a moment to wonder how much hitting the ground was going to hurt, and then he found out. A smashing, bashing pain pummelled him all over until his body found the only escape on offer: unconsciousness.
Sonya and Ruby ran downhill through the trees, hearing clomping feet chasing them. Sonya still had no idea who the girl was beside her, but staying together seemed to be, at least for the moment, the best option.
The bush thickened, which both slowed their progress and made it noisier. Ruby wondered whether they should just crouch down and hope the soldiers passed them by. She pushed back to her left, towards a thinning in the undergrowth.
It opened out until they were able to jog reasonably quietly through the trees. They could still hear soldiers here and there, but none seemed too close. Abruptly they emerged onto a short, steep rock shelf. Sonya moved to the edge and looked over. Through the gloom she could see a sheer drop down to more bushes and rocks below. She motioned for Ruby to head back into the trees, but before they could, three soldiers stepped out of the darkness onto the rock.
‘Halt!’ shouted one.
‘Surrender and we won’t hurt you,’ said another.
‘Come on,’ said Sonya, running further along the rock shelf. Ruby followed. Ahead, it broadened out. The guards yelled for reinforcements. Sonya and Ruby leapt over rocks and around corners. Ruby looked to her left for a way to re-enter the forest to get more cover, but the rocks rose steeply on that side, and climbing them would slow them down too much. To her right, the drop was still sheer. The guards were only about twenty paces behind. Ruby heard water rushing in front of her. A fast-flowing stream, ten metres wide, rushed out of the forest and over the edge of the rocks. On the far side of the stream two more soldiers appeared. Ruby looked to her left up the hill. Another soldier was clambering down the rocks towards them. They were cut off on three sides, and the fourth was a cliff.
Slowly they backed up to the edge of the cliff. The soldiers approached until they formed a line blocking any chance of escape. Sonya looked over the edge. It was a big drop, but at its bottom was a huge pool into which the waterfall emptied. There was no way of telling how deep it was. If they jumped, it could kill them, or just make them wet. Sonya knew one thing. She didn’t want to be taken prisoner again.
‘We have to jump,’ she said to Ruby.
‘Jump?!’ Ruby glanced over the edge and nearly vomited. Impossible. She had never been good with heights. She didn’t even like sleeping in an upstairs room.
The soldiers, swords drawn, approached cautiously.
‘They can’t follow us,’ said Sonya. ‘They’re wearing armour. They’d sink. We’ll escape.’
Ruby’s head spun. ‘I can’t,’ she gasped.
The soldiers were just steps away. Ruby looked over the ledge again. She couldn’t.
‘It’s our only chance. Come on.’ Sonya grabbed Ruby’s hand and leapt. Ruby was jerked forward but instinctively twisted her hand free. Air rushed past Sonya, then she splashed into the water. There was a delicious second of relief as she discovered the water was deep, and then she shot back to the surface. ‘It’s fine,’ she shouted up to Ruby.
Ruby stared down at her, helpless. She knew that if she jumped she would be all right, and that they would escape. But she couldn’t take the step. She just couldn’t. She remained frozen in place until a soldier grabbed her arm and pulled it up behind her back while another held a sword against her neck.
The soldier holding the sword shouted down to Sonya. ‘Swim to the side, and stay there till we get down to you. Or I’ll slit her throat!’
Sonya didn’t know anything about the girl at the top of the cliff. She didn’t know who she was, or why she had tried to help Roderick rescue her. She
didn’t even know her name. What she did know was that all she had to do was to paddle to the far side of the pool and disappear into the trees and she would be free. She had been a prisoner for weeks now, and had hated ever second of it. She had yearned for freedom every waking second of every day, and now she had it.
But the girl at the top of the cliff had risked her life to try to rescue her.
Sonya sighed. ‘All right,’ she called and paddled to the side of the pool.
At the top of the cliff, Ruby called, ‘No! Go! Escape!’ A soldier covered her mouth with his gloved hand, but there was no need. Sonya had heard, but kept swimming towards them. She was going to save Ruby’s life, whether Ruby liked it or not. Ruby bowed her head in shame.
CHAPTER 21
AN UNLIKELY PARTNERSHIP
Roderick woke in a world of pain. His head throbbed, his ribs ached and his left leg was agony. He pushed his eyes open. The good news was that there wasn’t really a tiger gnawing on his right calf. It just felt like there was.
He seemed to be wedged in a narrow crevice between two large rocks, with his feet stuck inconveniently and uncomfortably above his head. He tried to kick his legs around to get them underneath his body, but they were wedged tight and the pain was excruciating. Eventually, panting and cursing, he gave up.
He let his tired eyes shut, and drifted somewhere near unconsciousness. All that prevented him from going completely under was the pain. It kept reminding him he was alive.
At some point he was awake enough to wonder what had happened to Ruby, Sonya and Chester. Had they escaped? He tried to open his mind to search for a sign of them, but the pain keep intruding and closing it down. Eventually he picked up something. It was a trace of Sonya, but he couldn’t tell how far away she was or in what direction. She was alive, though, he was sure. There was something else, something similar to what he had felt when he had tracked her before. He honed in on it. A sense that she was not free. Yes. She was once again a prisoner.
The Adventures of Sir Roderick, the Not-Very Brave Page 20
