Heir Apparent (11 page)

Ouch. OK, so I guessed I wasn't supposed to wait on them.

Then my new top priority was to get the guards happy with me so they wouldn't kill me again. "What—" I started. But I heard a sound, that stomach-churning
whoosh
of an arrow that I recognized from my death a couple times back, when the woodsmen had fired their arrows at me.

What did I do now?
I thought things had been going ... maybe not
well
but sort of OK. Hadn't they? Had the guardsmen been only pretending to accept my proposals?

Except that I hadn't felt an arrow slam into me, and I didn't feel any fizziness.

I looked back to the doorway of the guardroom, but there was no bowman there. Could I have imagined that sound? I turned to Captain Penrod, and he wasn't where I had left him.

He was, in fact, on the ground at my feet, an arrow through his heart.

There was a supply wagon parked in front of a servants' entrance, and a man jumped out from behind it. He was a huge, hairy guy, and it was hard to tell where his hairiness ended and his tunic—which my subconscious identified as elk hide—began. On his head was one of those horned helmets worn by cartoon Vikings and fat ladies in German operas.

Before I could get out much more than a squeak, he clapped a massive hand over my mouth. I kicked, squirmed, and tried to bite—but didn't get much reaction.

Still, my pathetic scream must have gotten someone's attention, for one of the guards came to the guardroom door.

A second man, who could have been my attacker's twin, edged out from behind the wagon and let loose an arrow that struck the guard in the throat.

I was still trying to jab my attacker where it hurts—which apparently is a lot easier in the movies than in real life—as he dragged me backward toward the wagon. There were two bowmen behind the wagon, who covered our retreat, as well as others, I now saw, on top of the wall that separated the courtyard from the surrounding woods. At just about the same time I became aware that the placement of the wagon had hidden a rope ladder the attackers had used to get into the castle compound, I also became aware that it wasn't my attacker's hand that smelled so bad, but the cloth he held in his hand over my nose and mouth.

Whatever he'd soaked the cloth in made my knees wobble and give out, and he flung me over his shoulder as he grabbed hold of the rope. The ground spun, and I lost consciousness.

I woke up when someone threw a bucket of cold water on me. Even in my groggy state, I was beginning to figure this was the only bath I was likely to get in this particular lifetime.

Speaking of baths, two big hairy guys who looked as though they'd never
heard
the word—and who may or may not have been some of the ones I'd seen in the castle courtyard—were standing over me, one with an empty-though-still-dripping bucket in hand. This guy said something to me—a whole string of words I couldn't understand.

"I don't speak your language," I said.

The second man switched to whatever language English passed for in this world. "Where do it be?" he demanded. Despite his appearance, his accent was pleasant and musical—sort of Jamaican but not.

I was smart enough not to check to see if the ring I'd tied to my bodice laces was still there.

"Where do
what
be?" I asked.

"Do na play the dumb one," commanded the other guy, his accent thicker. "The crown, to be certain."

That was a surprise. I had no idea who these guys were or why they were looking for the crown, but I couldn't see any reason not to be honest. "I haven't been officially named king yet," I explained. "Not for a couple more days. I don't know where they're keeping the crown in the meantime."

The two guys exchanged a look that struck me as a can-this-girl-be-real? look.

"What?" I asked.

They talked over me as though I weren't there. "Mayhap she be playin' the dumb one?" the one with the bucket said. "Or mayhap she really be as stupid as she seems?"

I resented that, even though I was lying in a puddle of new-made mud, obviously these guys' prisoner. And there were a bunch of other guys, looking just like these two. A
whole
bunch. Like hundreds, I guessed, seeing their tents, their campfires. I was in some sort of enemy camp.

Bucketless stroked his bushy beard speculatively. "It might be that no one has been telling her yet," he said, but he didn't sound as though he really believed it.

"Nobody has told me much of anything," I agreed.

"You be the new king," said the bucket guy. "How can they be na tellin' you what you be needin' to know to rule?"

"Well," I admitted, "I do suspect some of them are trying to get around that me-being-the-new-king thing."

The guy who spoke better English gave a short, sharp laugh, and this time I guessed he believed me. "I would bet," he said. Then he asked, "Do anybody be telling you about King Grimbold?"

I shook my head. "Who's he?"

He grinned, his white teeth flashing. "Me."

A king. Another one. Oh boy. "You're not a contender for the throne of..."—implanted memory floated to my mind's surface, and my kingdom gained a name—"Shelby, are you?"

Grimbold snorted. "I be having my own kingdom, thank you—when Shelban kings be not sabotaging us." He could see I wasn't following this. "In the north," he added, which wouldn't have meant anything to me except for what Queen Andreanna had said about us being threatened by a barbarian army in the north.

I didn't ask if he was a barbarian, which sounded a bit rude to me. Maybe it would and maybe it wouldn't to a barbarian, but I decided not to chance it. I asked, "King Cynric took your crown, is that what you're saying? He took away the actual crown?"

"He be
stole
it away," the other man interrupted. "From Grimbold's father, King Tobrecan."

"I don't know anything about that," I said. "I was raised away from court."

Grimbold gave that barklike laugh of his. "Like Wulfgar."

This was not news to me, but for the first time I wondered if Wulfgar and I had more in common than I had suspected. That he had been educated away from home was the first thing Deming had said about him—but had it been to protect him from court intrigue? Had Cynric seen that Queen Andreanna had enough ambitions for herself that she posed a danger to their son when he was too young to defend himself? I saw there were a lot more questions I should have asked at court.

The barbarian with the bucket said, "But now that King Tobrecan is bein' dead and Grimbold is bein' our new king, and now that Cynric is bein' dead, it is bein' time to reclaim the crown that been fashioned by Xenos for Brecc the Slayer, our firstest chieftain."

"Xenos," I said, recognizing the name. "There's a magician today by that same name."

Again the men exchanged a long-suffering look.

They couldn't be talking about the same man, could they? How long ago had this Brecc ruled, and how old would that make Xenos? But, then again, we were talking about a magician.

"She
do
be as stupid as she looks," the guy with the bucket said.

"I be liking her," Grimbold argued. "She does na know nothing, but I na be going to hold that against her."

"So what do that be meanin'?" the other man asked.

"We shall be letting her live," Grimbold said.

That was a relief.

Grimbold said, "We shall be demanding the crown as ransom for her."

The other gave a dismissive snort. "What makes you be thinkin' they be payin' a ransom for her, useless thing that she be?"

I couldn't help but mentally agree. They were going to ask my family to trade something—presumably of value—for me? This opened up a whole new batch of possibilities for public humiliation.

Grimbold stroked his beard pensively as though his companion had presented a new thought. "We can always be killing her later," he said.

Which I guess showed he wasn't all
that
emotionally attached to me.

"Set a guard on her," Grimbold ordered, "and send a envoy to the castle to be demanding the returning of my crown in exchange for the life of their new king."

I couldn't even use my ring on Grimbold. If I said, "Here, take this ring," and he put it on, and then started doing everything I said, then surely this other guy would catch on that something was wrong.

Nor could I use it on my guard: Grimbold had given his orders. There were too many men in this camp who would question why those orders were being ignored if I got this guy to release me.

The barbarian guard got a length of chain and some shackles—not promising an easy escape at all—then he brought me to a tree in the midst of their campground, and he fastened me there, by my left ankle. All in all, they were being more considerate than I had reason to expect from enemy barbarians. The shackle wasn't tight, and the chain was long enough that I could sit, stand, He down, or walk around the tree—choosing shade or sunlight as I pleased. But I still felt like a leashed dog.

From the position of the sun, I guessed that it was midafternoon. The last meal my stomach remembered was a breakfast of hard bread and salted fish back in St. Jehan—a menu the real me had to keep from dwelling on or I would have gagged. I felt hungry, and these guys would have already had their midday meal and wouldn't be thinking about supper for another several hours.

A guard was posted to watch me. He was given the key to the shackles, which I found reason enough to try to strike up a friendship. It was hard to tell if he didn't speak English, or if he simply didn't want to talk.

There were some women in the camp, and one of them brought me a cup of water.

"Thank you," I said. "Any chance of any leftovers from lunch?"

She looked at me quizzically and said something that sounded like, "
Doe naado?
"

"Food?" I said. I pantomimed eating, but she shook her head. I thought she meant she didn't understand rather than that I couldn't have any, but there was no way to know for sure. My guard certainly didn't offer any commentary.

There were even a few kids. Some of them seemed curious, some seemed to be playing a game of dare—approaching, then running away. When I didn't chase after them, a few got bolder and took up a new game of throw-clumps-of-dirt-at-the-prisoner. My guard napped obliviously in the shade of his own tree.

I didn't even know if my royal family was planning to rescue me. Should I be patiently waiting for them to come swooping in, or was I supposed to be working on some plan of my own?

Of course, it would help if I had even the beginnings of a plan of my own to get me started in the right direction.

Knowing how difficult it is to judge the passing of time when you're bored, I think I waited about an hour and a half, maybe two. The sun
did
lower a bit in the sky.

This can't be right,
I told myself. If anyone was going to rescue me, it was probably going to have to be me.

My opportunity came when a new guard took over.

"Do you speak the language of Shelby?" I asked.

"No," the man answered, revealing himself to be not quite rocket-scientist caliber.

I untied the magic ring from the lacing of my bodice. "Take this ring," I commanded.

Sure enough, he understood me well enough that the magic of the ring compelled him to come forward and take it from my outstretched hand. He slipped it onto one of his own fingers, and I figured that had to be another of the ring's magical properties—that it would fit anyone—either that or my mother had had very fat fingers.

"I want you to like me," I told the guard.

"Oh, I do," the man assured me so warmly I feared we were veering into a direction I certainly didn't want to go.

"I want you to like me as your best buddy," I clarified. "I want you to only want good things for me. I want you to want me safe and happy."

"'Safe,'" he repeated, nodding his head energetically. "'Happy.'"

"I want you to release me," I said, "and to get me out of this camp."

He came forward and tried to tear the chain in half with his bare hands.

It looked as though I would have to do the thinking for both of us.

I said, "Take the time to release me without attracting attention."

The guard paused to consider, then took out the key he'd been given when he'd relieved the other guy. He unlocked my shackles.

I stood. "Put your hand on my shoulder. Act as if Grimbold has ordered you to bring me to him, except lead me out of the camp instead. If anyone asks, tell them you're acting under Grimbold's orders. Do you understand?"

"Yes," he told me. "Buddy."

We were fine for about ten paces. Then King Grimbold came around the corner of a tent, and we found ourselves face-to-face.

"What do you be doing?" Grimbold demanded.

And my guard, compelled to do my bidding, answered, "Grimbold's orders."

"I be ordering no such thing!" Grimbold protested. "Bring her back and secure her once more."

My guard tried to stiff-arm Grimbold out of his way.

"Stop," Grimbold ordered.

"Uhm..." I said. What in the world was the way out of this?

My guard waited one second to see what I would bid, then he once again tried to shove past his king.

Grimbold stopped the man the only way he could. He whipped out his sword and stabbed my escort in the chest.

Well, that was too bad, but I wasn't going to let it slow me down. I made a break for the trees.

Grimbold yelled something in his own language, and barbarians came pouring out of the tents. What felt like about seventeen of them tackled me and jumped on top of me before I'd made it more than a tenth of the way I had to.

They took their time about getting off me, too. Now I know what a football feels like.

My captors dragged my bruised body back to where Grimbold knelt beside the dead guard. Though he spoke in Shelban for my benefit, he addressed his men. "I be having to kill Isen because she be having some sort of power over him. I be thinking this may be the source of her power." He held up the ring to show them.