Knight-napped!

by Ursula Vernon

  The knights took a step back.

  They looked at each other.

  They scurried out through the door, clanking and rattling like a box full of frying pans.

  Christiana sagged. “Darn. I really thought that might work.”

  “It was looking good,” said Wendell. “But hey, at least we know Spencer’s here. And they haven’t done anything to him.”

  Danny swallowed his smoke and slumped into the straw. “Yeah, but they said they wanted a small dragon? I don’t like the sound of that at all.”

  “Maybe . . . err . . . maybe they just want to have a really small weenie roast?” asked Wendell hopefully.

  “Maybe they’ve got a really small corner of the library and only an extra-small dragon head will fit.”

  The door swung open again. With a clatter of armor, no fewer than four knights entered the hall.

  A knight with an elaborately plumed helmet was in the lead. His armor looked old, and what little they could see of his face was lined.

  He was holding a rubber chicken and a parsnip.

  “Oh, that’s normal,” said Wendell.

  “Hold these,” the knight said to Christiana, thrusting chicken and parsnip through the bars.

  Christiana took them both.

  “Up,” said the knight. “Under your chin. Ye-e-e-e-s. Like that.”

  “Young Lady Vanderpool,” said the knight with the plumed helmet, “I am the castellan of Castle Wanderpoll. I am so sorry for the misunderstanding.”

  “I’ll let it go this time,” said Christiana, turning her nose up, “provided, of course, that you free my friends.”

  “I regret that is impossible,” said the castellan. “Indeed, for a Wanderpoll to claim friendship with a dragon—well, we have much to discuss. Doubtless this is a misunderstanding. But we would not dream of leaving you in a cell, of course.” He gestured, and one of the other knights hurried to unlock the cell.

  Christiana paused on the threshold and shot an agonized glance back at Danny and Wendell. Then she straightened and lifted her chin.

  “. . . we’ll discuss it,” said the castellan, slamming the cell door. The knights closed around her in an honor guard, and Christiana swept out of the hallway as if she owned it.

  The clanking footsteps receded and left Danny and Wendell alone in the silence of the dungeon.

  Sitting in the cell without Christiana was, if possible, even more boring than sitting in a cell with her. The only difference was that you could fart loudly and not get a lecture about barbarism and the fall of Western civilization.

  There was a bucket of water in the corner. Danny was so thirsty he took a drink, but it tasted like there was something growing in it.

  “So what’s a lackey?” asked Danny.

  “A servant,” said Wendell. “Only worse. Um. Kinda like how Frankie the chameleon follows Big Eddy around, you know?”

  “Oh.” Danny thought for a minute. “Okay. What’s a castellan?”

  “The person in charge of a castle. Not like the king, but like . . . um . . . a sheriff. From the Latin castellanus, derived from—”

  “That’s okay,” said Danny hurriedly. Once Wendell went to Latin, you had to shake him to get him to talk like a normal person again.

  They sat in silence. Danny picked at the straw.

  “What do you think she’s doing?” asked Wendell.

  “I hope she’s finding Spencer.”

  “Didn’t your granddad used to roast knights?” asked Wendell. “When we saw him that one time, he kept telling you to go slay some knights.”

  “Well, he said he did.” Danny scowled. “I don’t know. I think it was more of a thing back in the day. And he didn’t stick them on the wall of his cottage. That would just be weird.”

  Danny groaned. One thing for sure, if Spencer got slain, Danny’s aunt was going to freak out. He might not be a very good son (in Danny’s opinion), but she liked him alive. If Danny showed up without Spencer—or worse yet, with Spencer’s head on a plaque—

  Oh, that’d be bad.

  “You’re leaking smoke again,” said Wendell.

  “Sorry.” Danny eyed the bars. “Maybe we could melt our way out!”

  “There is no way that’s a good idea.”

  “No, it totally is! I’ll breathe fire on the bars and get them red hot and then they’ll melt, and—”

  “Well, it depends on the exact alloy, but at least 2,500 degrees!”

  Danny had to admit that sounded pretty hot. Still, his fire was pretty hot, wasn’t it? He was so worried about Spencer that he could feel the fire lurking in the back of his throat. He felt like a commercial for acid reflux medication.

  It sure felt hot.

  “Say something to make me mad,” he told Wendell.

  “What?”

  “So I can breathe fire! Make me mad!”

  “I . . . uh . . . um . . . your mother wears army boots?”

  Danny rolled his eyes. “Better than that! And Mom’s boots are awesome! She could kick a door down with those things!”

  Danny sighed. If anything, Wendell’s attempts to help were making him less mad.

  “Oh!” said the iguana. “I know! Heads on the library wall! Dragon heads! I bet they have glass eyeballs! I bet they use them for coat racks!”

  The bars didn’t melt. They did turn a dull reddish color, but they didn’t get runny.

  “Told you,” said Wendell.

  “I’m just getting warmed up.” Danny took a deep breath. The bars made little ping!ping!ping! noises as they cooled.

  “Uh—”

  FWOOOM! Danny exhaled over the bars again.

  They were so hot now that it was uncomfortable to stand next to them, but they still didn’t melt. Wendell retreated to the far side of the cell.

  “Uh, Danny—”

  “Relax. I can totally do it! They’re much redder this time!”

  “Danny—”

  “Third time’s bound to be the charm—”

  “Whoops.”

  Danny hurriedly choked back the fire and began stomping on the burning straw. Whatever the melting point of steel was, apparently the burning point of straw was a lot lower.

  Unfortunately, stomping on the straw made bits of it fly into the air. Where they landed, new flames sprang up.

  “Hrrggkk . . . hgg . . . Danny . . . !”

  Smoke billowed out of the cell. Wendell began coughing wretchedly. Danny did a little better, since dragons are used to smoke, but it was still getting awfully thick. He put an arm over his face and kicked over the bucket of water in the corner. It sloshed across the floor and put the fire out with a wet hiss.

  Nearly half the straw had turned black and curled up. The cell looked like the floor was covered in dead spiders. Danny pushed it away from the wall, looking for stray embers . . . and stopped.

  “Hrrghk . . . hrkk . . . huh?”

  “Come over here! I think there’s a hole in the wall! The straw was covering it up!”

  Sure enough, there was a narrow crack in the wall where the mortar between two stones had crumbled away. It was so thin that the knights might not have bothered to patch it up, if they’d even noticed it. After all, no grown-up could possibly fit through a hole that size . . .

  “We won’t fit,” said Wendell practically.

  “If we could get one more brick out . . .”

  The same thought struck both of them simultaneously.

  “I wonder if the other cell is locked . . . ?”

  Danny had his head halfway into the hole when he heard the door opening.

  The knights were back.

  Wendell grabbed him around the waist and hauled backward. Danny flattened himself against the wall to hide the crack from view.

  The knights marc
hed in.

  “Whew!” said one, waving his hand through the smoke. “What happened in here?”

  “Uh . . .” Danny and Wendell exchanged glances. The knights must know that dragons could breathe fire, but did they know Danny could breathe fire?

  “Spontaneous combustion?” said Wendell. “It just . . . err . . . caught fire. Suddenly.”

  The knight rolled his eyes. “Yeah, right. Typical dragon behavior,” he said. “You get frustrated and you start setting everything on fire. Sheesh.”

  “Never mind that,” said Danny. “Where’s Christiana?”

  The knights grinned. A short figure pushed past them and came up to the bars.

  “Ahem,” said Christiana.

  “I have seen the truth!” cried Christiana, waving her arms in the air. “They have shown me the Great Book of Wanderpoll, and traced my lineage back to the first knights of the realm! The blood of a thousand dragon-slayers runs in my veins!”

  “That is so not cool!” said Danny.

  “Knights and dragons can never be friends! In a few hours, your worthless cousin shall be slain, to prove the worthiness of the youngest scion of House Wanderpoll.”

  “Wait, what?” Danny almost lunged for the bars, but remembered just in time to keep his back to the wall. “They’re going to slay Spencer?!”

  “This very evening!” said Christiana. “As is only right! In the amphitheater in the center of the castle. And there is nothing you can do about it, dragon, for your cousin is held atop the tallest tower, and you are trapped down here in the entirely escape-proof dungeon!”

  “Totally escape-proof!” shouted Christiana. “Nobody is escaping! I mean, with guards patrolling the far end of the hallway and the only windows looking directly over the moat, how could anyone escape?”

  “It’s a pretty good dungeon,” admitted the knight.

  Danny was furious. How dare Christiana throw them over for the knights? Didn’t their friendship mean anything? Hadn’t they faced ghosts and fairies and toxic mutant pack rats together?

  He couldn’t breathe fire on her—it was Christiana!—but he kinda wished he was close enough to the bars to hock a loogie.

  “I shall take my leave of you—forever!” said Christiana, putting the back of her hand to her forehead. “But you, Wendell—you’re not a dragon. I only pity you for being associated with such scaly scum. Give me your hand in friendship before I go.”

  “Good-bye forever!” said Christiana. “I’m off to be fitted for armor and become a knight!”

  “I hope you get armor rash!” yelled Danny.

  “Uh . . . huh . . . hmm . . . bye, Christiana,” said Wendell.

  The knights clanked away, taking their former friend. Danny heard the hall door slam, and the sound of a key turning in the lock.

  He sagged away from the crack in the wall.

  He ran out of breath and had to take another one. Smoke started to drift out his nose again. “Dragons don’t stink! And what’s a flatworm, anyway?”

  Wendell rubbed his forehead. “It’s a little slimy thing that wiggles around in the mud. And you’re an idiot.”

  Danny blinked at him.

  “Christiana was acting,” said Wendell. “Jeez, she was like someone in a bad commercial. And she managed to tell us where Spencer’s being held, where the guards are, and what they plan to do with him.”

  The key didn’t fit the cell door. “She probably couldn’t get to the key for our cell,” said Wendell practically. “I bet the knights were keeping a really close eye on that one. She probably figured we could get out of the cell on our own.”

  “If this is the hall key, it’s good enough,” said Danny, who was feeling guilty that he’d suspected Christiana of turning on them. He should have known better.

  Although that bit about being lower than flatworms still rankled, and seriously, vileness upon the earth? That sounded really insulting. And also weirdly formal, but then again, it was Christiana.

  They turned back to the crack in the wall. The mortar was soft and crumbled when Danny banged on it with the wooden bucket.

  “Oh, good,” said Wendell. “This should only take hours and hours.”

  “It’s not that bad,” said Danny. “Don’t you remember that report I did on Alcatraz?”

  “Of course I do,” said Wendell. “It’s the only one you’ve ever gotten an A plus on. I think your mom framed it.”

  “Yeah! When those prisoners dug their way out of Alcatraz, all they had were spoons! We’ve got a bucket!”

  In the end, it took about half an hour. The bucket did not survive the experience, but once it had fallen apart, the metal ring that went around the wooden slats came in handy. Danny braced it around the edge of the brick and pulled.

  The brick popped free. The resulting hole was just large enough for a dragon to fit through—and Wendell, if he took off his glasses.

  Once they’d squeezed through the crack in the wall, the other cell door was unlocked. They tiptoed to the end of the hall and Wendell put his key in the hallway door.

  KA-CHUNK!

  It turned. They both let out a deep breath.

  “There’s gonna be a guard at the end of the hallway,” whispered Wendell. Danny nodded.

  They eased the door open a crack and peered around the edge. There was a short flight of stairs, leading to an elevated hall. Watery light streamed through the windows and danced on the ceiling.

  They crept partway up the stairs and peered over the top.

  The hall was lined with suits of armor. Wendell let out a squeak and ducked back below the top stair.

  Danny elbowed him in the ribs. “Dummy! They’re only suits!”

  “What if one of them’s real?” whispered Wendell, elbowing him back.

  “Then he’s got no legs!”

  At the far end, past the empty suits of armor, Danny could see another hallway at right angles to this one. There was no door between the two.

  “I don’t see anybody—” he began.

  Wendell grabbed his arm. “Wait! Listen!”

  Danny cocked his head. Wendell held his breath.

  Then he heard it.

  A knight passed by the end of the hallway. They could hear the rattle of his armor receding as he walked away. Clank . . . clank . . . clank . . .

  “Now!” whispered Danny.

  They lunged from hiding toward the nearest window.

  There was a pair of iron bars set into it, too close to squeeze through. Danny growled with frustration.

  “Great!” said Danny. “I’ll stand on your shoulders—”

  “You always stand on my shoulders,” said the iguana. “I want to be the one who stands on somebody’s shoulders for a change!”

  “Oh my god, Wendell, is this really the time to talk about this?!”

  Wendell folded his arms. “Well, I’ve been meaning to say something. All this can’t be good for my back. Seriously, I’m gonna be the first person in history who needs a chiropractor before they’re out of middle school.”

  “Fine! You stand on my shoulders! Just hurry up!”

  “It’s the moat,” Wendell reported.

  “Well, duh!”

  “There’s nowhere to stand. We’d fall into the moat.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Danny, listening. Had that been a distant clank?

  “Maybe there’s another way out—”

  It had definitely been a clank.

  “Hurry!” hissed Danny. “Pull me up!”

  “But we’ll both fall in the moat!”

  Clank . . . clank . . .

  “That’s the point! The moat is out there! The dungeon’s in here! If we’re in the moat, we’re not in the dungeon!”

  “But the moat is disgusting!”

  Clank . . .

>   “If we don’t get out of here, they’re going to slay Spencer!”

  Wendell crawled halfway through the window and stopped.

  CLANK . . .

  The knight was nearly at the end of the hallway. Another few seconds, and he’d see Danny standing only a few feet away. Even if the last suit of armor hid most of him, there was still the problem of his feet, which would be clearly visible below the edge of the armor.

  Danny jumped for the wall, grabbed the rough edge of a stone with his fingertips, and clung.

  Wendell dropped down the outside of the wall, clinging to the last bar with both hands.

  They held their breath.

  CLANK

  Was the knight stopping?

  There was an agonizing pause. Danny’s fingertips burned. In another second, he was going to fall to the floor, and there was no way the knight could miss him—

  Danny leaned against the wall, weak-kneed with relief.

  Wendell poked his head back through the window. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” said Danny. “But he’s going to come back from the other direction, and there’s no way he won’t see us from that angle.”

  “I’m going to need antibiotics,” said Wendell. “This moat is nasty.”

  Wendell leaned down and hauled him up.

  The iguana had been right. There really was nowhere to stand. Wendell hung on to the bar and Danny perched in the window, looking down into the murky green depths of the moat.

  “I don’t wanna swim in that,” said Wendell.

  Danny had to admit, once he was up close and personal, he didn’t really want to swim in it either. The moat was nasty. Parts of it looked almost solid with scum.