“Grandfather, I hate my room. Why can’t I change with Philip?”
“Uncle, don’t you think it best if I take over managing your finances?”
“Grandfather, my dresses are so out of fashion.”
A middle-aged man sitting on Sir Danton’s right shooed them all away.
The complainers sulked as they returned to their seats. “It’s not fair,” was muttered by more than a few. Sadly, most of them were adults.
“Who are these people?” Tate asked Hero as she led us toward a table in the back of the room.
“My family,” Hero said, clearly annoyed. “They never visited when Grandfather actually expected something of them. But once his memory began to fade, they started turning up like mushrooms.”
“Are your parents here?” Tate asked.
Hero’s face lost its annoyance. “No, my parents are dead,” she said, and gave us a look that made it clear the subject was closed.
After we had eaten, Hero found us a room. It was large and well furnished, but we had to share it with a boy named Melvin. Melvin did nothing but grumble about how unfair it was that I had a sword, and he didn’t. I hid Guardian in the bottom of my bag after that. If this boy realized precisely which sword I carried, I was sure I would never hear the end of it.
That night, I decided that the beds were really the only nice thing about Castle Mortico. They were made with straw instead of rocks and had actual bed linens. Tate and I went to bed early, in part because we were tired, and in part just to get away from Hero’s family.
I woke up before the sun and shook Tate. “I say we g-get out of h-here before the h-harpies wake up,” I whispered.
Tate nodded and rolled out of bed, landing quietly on the rushes that covered the floor. Melvin mumbled something in his sleep, rolled over into the space where Tate had been, and went back to snoring.
We snuck our way through the castle, getting turned around more than once, and finally found the stables. Hero was waiting for us.
“I have decided to come with you to Rona,” she said. “We’re going to slay a dragon,” Tate said.
Hero gave us a sharp look and then shrugged her shoulders. “It doesn’t really matter. I’m coming with you.”
I already had more company than I could really use; but when I opened my mouth to explain that she fixed her dark eyes on me with a look that threatened my life if I gave her any trouble.
“F-fine,” I told her.
Hero offered Tate a horse, but he was a little wary of the big ones. He finally settled on a pony named Sparkles. There didn’t seem to be anything sparkling about the pony’s gloomy expression, but I couldn’t really comment. I rode a horse named Albert.
So, we left Castle Mortico, Hero leading the way. It felt as if I was supposed to be the leader of this strange party. But since I had no idea where we were or how to get to our destination, I let her lead.
It turned out that Hero had opinions about more than just roads. That night, she told us that we had been doing nearly everything wrong. I would have grumbled at her, but her way of arranging pine needles did make for softer beds, and the turnips did taste better cooked. She even showed us which of the plants we passed were edible. I begrudgingly had to admit that we were more comfortable with her along.
Before turning north into the mountains, the road to Rona dipped south to trail along the coast. Mildred’s almanac predicted snow, so of course we were covered in sweat. We were all glad to see the ocean and feel the breeze that blew in off the water.
As we rode along the edge of the beach, we saw a man huddled beside an overturned boat. Hero frowned and then turned her horse to ride over to him. Tate and I followed.
“Do you need help with your boat?” she asked.
“No,” the man said in the most miserable-sounding voice I had ever heard.
Hero looked from the fishing nets stretched out on the sand to the man.
“Aren’t you a fisherman?” she said.
He nodded.
“Then why aren’t you fishing?”
“There was a terrible storm last month,” the man said, growing paler as he spoke. “I nearly drowned.”
“You haven’t gone back out on the water?” Hero asked with a frown.
“I know. I’m a coward,” the man said, and then he began to cry.
“You are not a coward,” she told him firmly.
Hero looked up at Tate and me with a glance that made it clear we were supposed to agree with her.
“I’m sure you’re real brave,” Tate said.
I looked from the ocean to the boat and then found myself walking back over to where Albert was carrying on a one-sided conversation with Sparkles. I opened my saddlebag, pulled out Mildred’s almanac, and walked back to the little knot of people on the sand.
“H-here, t-take this.” I handed the would-be fisherman the book. “It’s an almanac.”
Tate gave me a questioning glance.
Hero mouthed the words, “You said that it was always wrong.”
“I-It doesn’t w-work like other almanacs,” I told the fisherman. “It s-says the opposite of the w-weather.”
He just looked at me, confused.
“So if it s-says that it will be a s-sunny day, then you know to expect a s-storm.”
The fisherman still looked uncertain, but he took the book and opened it, turning to the day’s date. “Snowy and cold,” he read with the halting speech of someone who doesn’t read much.
“See, it’s s-sunny and h-hot,” I said.
“It’s always wrong?” He looked hopeful for the first time.
“Always.”
We helped the fisherman turn over his boat and drag it down to the water. By the time we got back on our horses, he was loading his nets. Our group continued along the shore road, but Hero was watching me.
“It was kind of you to give him the book,” she said as the road rose over a sand dune.
I shrugged. “It was h-heavy to c-carry,” I said.
But I don’t think she believed me.
If the fisherman checked the almanac that night, he would have chosen to stay home that next day. Because even as we slept under the stars, there was a storm brewing.
Chapter 7
In Which Albert Walks on Water
When we woke up the next morning, the sky was a dark, heavy gray. I kept glancing up, waiting for the first drops to fall and Albert’s complaining to start, but nothing happened until late that afternoon. When the rain finally came, it fell hard and fast. We were wet to our skins within minutes and couldn’t see our own hands in front of our faces.
“W-we might as well s-stop,” I said, having to yell to be heard over the storm.
Hero and Tate nodded and pulled their silent horses over to the side of the trail. My horse moaned and complained. I couldn’t hear most of what he said but could guess the basic idea.
We all huddled together under a tree, the branches giving us little cover from the downpour. The temperature was dropping, but we didn’t have anything dry to put on, and there was no hope for starting a fire. Even Tate looked miserable. Which was a first.
“Well, at least things can’t get much worse,” he said.
Seconds later, we heard the first rumbles of thunder.
Albert started to shake. Hero’s horse, Virtue, began to move restlessly, her ears folded back flat against her head. Sparkles just stood there, looking as sullen as ever.
Hero stroked Virtue’s head, trying to calm her, but the horses became more and more agitated as the thunder rolled closer. Albert swayed on his hooves.
“You are not g-going to faint,” I told him, taking Albert by the nose. “It’s just a s-storm. It c-can’t hurt you.”
And then the lightning struck. I might not have been able to make a fire in that rain; but the lightning m
anaged it without any difficulty. The tree above us burst into fl and the world exploded into chaos. The horses screamed and bucked, breaking the branch that held their reins. They bolted in a pack and Tate ran after them. Hero threw herself into me, and we both hit the ground seconds before a branch crashed into the place where I had been standing.
I expected a comment from her, but instead she just pulled me to my feet, and we started running after Tate and the horses. Another bolt of lightning hit a tree off to our left as we ran. More sparks shot out. The rain was slowing down, and the fire was growing. The fl licked at the trees, spreading and expanding as they chased us through the woods. I ran harder than I ever had in my life, with Hero racing along beside me, her dark hair billowing out behind her.
I saw the moment when the flames caught hold of her hair. I yelled. She whipped her head around to look at me, and her flaming hair swung with her. Hero’s eyes widened, and a small sound escaped her mouth. But then she was throwing herself down and rolling back and forth in the mud. I took off my shoe and helped her beat out the last of the flames. And then she was up, and we were running again.
But the few seconds we had spent putting out one small fire had cost us our lead on the much larger blaze. Smoke was reaching for us, stretching to fill our lungs. I started having flashbacks of ogres and little girls as another shape came running toward us.
Tate let out a breath of relief when he saw us and then turned, falling into step beside us.
“You said you wanted a fire,” Tate said.
Hero gave me an incredulous look. “You wanted a fire?” she panted.
“N-not like this.”
Hero still didn’t look sure of my sanity. She may have had a point.
Soon we came to a river. Tate had tied all three horses to a tree along the shore. The animals were panicking, Sparkles and Virtue with their bodies, Albert with his mouth.
I knew we didn’t have much time.
“I didn’t know where to go,” Tate said.
“We’ll have to c-cross the river,” I told him.
Tate’s face paled, and he shook his head.
“We h-have to,” I told him. “The fire is c-coming.” Tate’s face was terrified.
“He doesn’t like rivers?” Hero said as she struggled to calm Virtue.
“H-he almost d-drowned in the last one,” I said.
She looked at me seriously. “That seems like a fair reason not to like rivers.”
It might have been fair, but it wasn’t helpful. Putting the river between us and the fire was our best chance of surviving.
Lightning struck a third tree, and Albert reared. Screaming about the end being near, he pulled hard enough to snap the branch that held his reins. Albert took off galloping onto the river.
No, I do not mean into the river. The horse didn’t plunge into the water. He ran over it, his hooves barely breaking the surface.
“There must be a sandbar,” Hero cried and started untangling Virtue’s reins from the tree.
Albert had either found solid land to use as a bridge, or Mildred the Wise had enchanted him with the ability to walk on water. I had to hope that she hadn’t liked him that much.
“C-come on,” I yelled to Tate.
The boy looked between the approaching fire and the running river. I grabbed his shoulders.
“You c-can do this.”
Tate shook his head.
“You n-need to do this,” I said and pushed him forward.
Tate took a tentative step into the river and then another.
I got Sparkles loose and then looked back at Hero. She had had to wrap her cloak around Virtue’s head to get the horse to move, but they were following. On the far bank, I could see Albert running in spastic circles. He would live to panic another day.
Holding my breath and clutching Sparkles’ reins, I stepped into the river. There was something under my foot. Please be solid, please be solid, I thought as I took another step. I was expecting rocks and a sudden drop but instead found a narrow strip of solid ground, the top of an old dam, maybe. The water was still moving and wanted to carry us off with it, but if we planted our feet firmly enough, we could stay on the submerged bridge.
Tate, Hero, the horses, and I all made it across the river and dropped down to sit in the mud. I had never been so happy to feel mud in my life.
From that side of the river, we watched the fire rush up and down the far bank, until finally another wave of heavy rain surged through and beat out the flames. The rain reached us, covering us in deluges of water, but no one minded. We had made it through, together.
When the rain finally stopped, we looked like a bunch of drowned rats. Hero pulled her hair over her shoulder and sighed at the sight of the blackened tips. She got up and went to dig into her saddle bags. She came back with a pair of scissors, which she held out to me.
“Will you cut my hair?”
“W-What?”
“Like a page boy?” Tate asked.
“Sh-she wouldn’t look g-good with a pageboy.”
“How else do you cut hair?” Tate said.
“Monks t-trim the t-top,” I told him.
“True, but that would look even worse,” he said.
“Just trim off the burned edges,” Hero said in exasperation.
I still wasn’t sure that I was the person who should be cutting a girl’s hair, but I took the scissors. Hero sat down on a rock facing the river, and I walked around behind her. Only a few inches of her hair were black. If I did this right, her hair would still reach past the middle of her back, and no one would even notice.
I started on her left, trimming carefully. I made it almost to the middle before Tate gasped, and I turned.
“D-don’t do that,” I snapped at him.
“I saw a cardinal,” he said happily. “They’re good luck.”
“We h-haven’t had much g-good luck.”
“Maybe now we will,” he said.
And then we both looked back at Hero’s hair. My stomach dropped a foot. Tate’s eyes widened to the size of chicken eggs. When I’d turned in surprise, the scissors had slipped, cutting a diagonal wedge out of the middle of Hero’s hair.
“H-how is this g-good luck,” I whispered to Tate.
“It’s in the back,” Tate whispered.
“Everything all right?” Hero asked.
“Fine,” Tate and I said together.
I quickly trimmed the black off the rest of her ends and said, “All d-done.”
Hero pulled a length of hair over her shoulder, looked at the neatly trimmed ends, and then smiled up at me. “Thank you,” she said.
I just nodded, fairly certain that hell hath no fury like a woman scalped. But maybe the cardinal had brought us good luck, because she didn’t notice. And when Albert did and started to open his mouth, I shot him a look that threatened his very life. For once he kept his mouth shut.
The next day, we started climbing into the mountains. I was still worried about Hero somehow noticing her interesting hairstyle. I should have been worried about what was coming next.
Chapter 8
In Which We Are Set Upon by Bandits
We had little to eat other than turnips. I had come to despise that small, hard vegetable. Albert turned up his muzzle at them. Even Tate lost his cheerful expression when I pulled out the satchel. Hero was the only one who didn’t seem to mind. But she hadn’t been eating them nearly as long as the rest of us.
Late in the afternoon of our third day with Hero, we stopped to make camp. Once the horses were watered and the turnip soup was cooking over the fire, Hero said, “We have some time until supper is ready. How about a little sparring?”
“You mean with swords?” Tate asked. “Of course,” Hero said.
Tate and I looked at each other. From the look on his face, he had about
as much experience with a sword as I did.
“W-well,” I said, for once purposely dragging out a word, because I didn’t know what to say next.
“It will be good for all of us,” Hero said. “As Grandfather used to say, ‘There is no substitute for practice.’”
Hero got Guardian out of my saddlebag and then went looking for a tree limb to serve as another blade. She gave me the sword, handed Tate the branch, and then stood back to watch.
Tate and I bowed to each other, because that seemed like the kind of thing that knights would do before they tried to cut off each other’s heads. Then we began to swing our various weapons around. Hero’s expression quickly shifted from patient expectation to confusion to revulsion.
She stepped closer and put a hand up to stop us. “What are you doing?”
Tate and I both looked slightly sheepish. I shrugged my shoulders.
“This is Guardian,” Hero said. “You can’t treat it like a stick. Don’t you know anything about swordsmanship?”
I wanted to tell her that of course I did, but it would have been a lie. And she would have most likely asked to see some specific technique that I had no clue how to do. So I shook my head, feeling like an idiot.
“N-no,” I said, and Tate nodded his agreement.
Hero frowned as she looked at me. I expected her to go on about what a disgrace I was, but instead she held out her hand. Feeling strange, I handed her the sword.
Hero walked around to face Tate. “First off, a sword is not a club that you swing. It should work like an extension of your arm.” She moved her right arm through a series of movements to show us how natural the sword should look.
Hero taught us how to thrust and parry, how to slash and block. Tate and I took turns practicing the skills with Guardian. Hero’s way certainly felt more effective. After that night, Hero gave Tate and me a swordsmanship lesson every evening while the stew cooked. Slowly, I began to feel less and less like a fool when I picked up Guardian.
The road was growing steeper and the air cooler. On occasion there would be a break in the trees, and we would get a real sense of how high we were climbing. The heights made Albert dizzy, and a wobbly horse is a danger to everyone. So we made a point of not letting him look. But one afternoon as we came around a tight turn, the forest disappeared to show a sheer drop ahead. Albert began to swoon.
The Legend of Hobart Page 4
