Princess Academy (18 page)

n

Chapter Twenty-three

Don’t look down, don’t look down

In midair you drown, drown

n

M
iri!” Her pa sprang forward. Rage distorted his face, and Miri trembled just to see it. A bandit overtook him, and Pa’s mallet swung twice—once to pound the bandit’s club to the ground, once to knock the bandit down. Pa hurdled him and rushed toward Dan, his mallet raised.

“I’ll kill her!” said Dan, his hoarse voice straining to yell. His hands gripped Miri’s neck. “I’ll snap her in two, mountain man.”

Pa stopped. Miri could see him tighten his hold on the mallet shaft, look to Miri, look at Dan, wanting nothing more than to beat the bandit into the snow. His chest heaved with his breath, and he lowered his mallet slowly, as though the action pained him as much as cutting off his own hand. His eyes were on Miri, and his expression said his heart was breaking for the second time.

Miri’s own heart felt sore, like a burnt fingertip. She saw now that he would do whatever she needed—fight to dying, or lower his mallet, or even believe Peder’s strange tale of quarry-speech spoken miles away. He had run through a snowstorm in the middle of the night to save his little girl.

She kicked backward at Dan and writhed to get free. It was like punching a stone. She hung limp from his hands and stared at her pa.

Everyone was quiet now. The frenzied running and brief fighting had stopped as quickly as it had begun. Miri and Dan stood in front of the academy steps. His hot, scratchy hands circled her throat, rubbing back and forth as if he rehearsed twisting her neck. Before her stood the wall of villagers.

She was comforted to see that many of the academy girls had made it behind the villagers, and they hugged one another and cried. The villagers had overwhelmed four bandits—three lay in the snow, a quarryman’s boot on each of their backs, and a fourth squirmed as Frid’s oldest brother held an iron lever across his neck. Miri wondered if any of the bandits were thinking of a mountain that could warn its people at the touch of an outsider’s boot.

But the villagers held only four bandits, and the remaining eleven had seized some of the fleeing academy girls. Miri spotted Esa, Gerti, Katar, Britta, and Frid among the captive. Miri shivered. There was no window she could crawl through now.

The cold soaked further and further inside her like mold creeping through bread, and the minute of silent tension seemed hours. When Os spoke, the sound of his voice closed the space, making the outside night feel like a crowded room.

“We have four of your men, you have nine of our daughters. We make a nice, easy trade: you go on your way, and no one’s blood melts the snow tonight.”

Dan laughed. “Hardly a fair trade, quarryman. How about this—you keep the four men, give us back the other girls, and we send them home safe and sound once the prince pays.”

There was a murmur of anger. Some of the villagers cursed at Dan and squeezed the shafts of their weapons. Os growled, his voice like the mountain rumbling.

“Not one of our daughters leaves our sight, and if even one is hurt, I make certain none of you leave this mountain with any limbs attached.” Os’s glance flicked to his daughter Gerti in the clutches of the one-eyed bandit. When his eyes returned to Dan, his expression said he would enjoy the chance to tear off a few limbs. “Let them come to us now and we’ll release your four men and let you all go alive and running. That’s a good offer. Don’t dismiss it for your pride.”

Dan spat into the snow. “I came here for some royal skin to ransom and I’m not leaving without—”

“You heard our terms,” said Os. “Why don’t you let what I’ve said roll around in your head before you decide to die tonight.”

Dan did not answer immediately, and Miri wondered if Os would have more success using the principles of Diplomacy.

The snow kept falling between them, soft and light, the clumps of flakes sometimes rising and spinning on a gust. To Miri, the snowfall was strange and gentle. Everything else that night was hard and dangerous, like slabs of falling ice and windstorms that can blow people off cliffs. The weather did not recognize that at any moment Dan could crack her neck as if she were a rabbit fattened for the stew. Down the flakes came, slow and sweet as petals in a breeze.

Dan spat again, marking a small hole in the snow. The action said he had made a decision. “I want a prize for my trouble, and I will have it or this girl is first to go. I’m not jesting.” His rough skin scratched her neck.

“Neither are we,” said Miri’s pa, his look set on Dan, rigid as stone, as though he were carved from the mountain itself.

“Come on, Dan.” The bandit holding Katar spoke quietly enough that his voice would not carry to the villagers. “We had a good rest and ate our fill. We could just be done with it.”

“Shut up, you idiot!” said Dan, and Miri gagged as his hold constricted. “I told you that you have to think bigger. We don’t have what we came for, and we’re not leaving without a princess to ransom.”

“I am,” said the bandit holding Gerti. He pushed her to the ground and backed away, his one eye darting as if trying to keep a watch on everything at once. “Something’s not right on this mountain. It knew that we were here, told the villagers, just like the girls said. Next thing, the mountain will bury us alive and no one will cry, or those men will lop off my arms. I lost an eye for you once, Dan, and I’m not losing my arms, too.”

Gerti ran to Os and gripped his leg. Miri could see the big man shudder with relief.

“You’re talking like a fool,” said Dan. Spit flew from his mouth as he spoke. “I order you to stay.”

The one-eyed bandit looked over the men and women with levers and mallets clutched in both hands, looked up into the snowstorm, shuddered, and turned to leave. Several others pushed away their hostages and followed him.

“Dangerous place,” one muttered.

Frid shoved down the two bandits who had been holding her. They seemed ready to fight back, but she held up her fists and gave them such a glare as to hope they would. They dusted the snow from their knees and caught up with the other deserters, looking back as they went as if afraid the mountain itself would follow.

“Get back here!” shouted Dan. “You leave now and you are no part of this band!”

The snow thickened, and in moments the departing bandits had disappeared behind the white screen. That seemed to make others nervous, and three more dropped their hostages and ran. Now only Onor and Dogface stood beside Dan.

“This one could be the princess,” said Onor, shaking Esa. “I’m not shoving a girl worth one hundred horses into the snow.”

Dogface held his one weapon, a dagger, to Britta’s chest and idly flicked its tip against her shirt. A strand of cloth ripped. Miri struggled again, and Dan’s hold tightened. If only she had a weapon. Snowflakes stuck to her eyelashes and tears of frustration blurred her vision so that she could not make out her father’s face.

Miri knew Dan would never let her go, and he would wring her neck before any mallet could reach him. Os was bargaining again, trying to make the remaining bandits see the futility of taking just three girls, but Miri felt no hesitation in her captor’s hands.

Somewhere far above the snowfall, dawn appeared. The world gradually lightened, lifting the rose and peach hues from the air, making everything a clear silver. She began to see the villagers more plainly, the early light picking out the lines under their eyes and around their mouths, and she felt her heart swell so large that it almost hurt. There was Peder, his hands red with cold, no doubt having left too quickly to find his gloves. There was Doter’s round face, Miri’s pa as hard and square as a foundation stone, Frid’s six brothers, and her ma bigger than any of them. Her family, her playmates, her protectors and neighbors and friends—those people were her world.

She realized with sudden clarity that she did not want to live far away from the village where Mount Eskel’s shadow fell like a comforting arm. The mountain was home—the linder dust, the rhythm of the quarry, the chain of mountains, the people she knew as well as the feel of her own skin. And now, looking at them for perhaps the last time, she thought she loved them so much that her chest would burst before the bandit had time to kill her dead.

She had to chance something, and soon. To give herself courage, she put her hand in her skirt pocket and touched the linder hawk. Until that moment, she had forgotten it was there.

“I don’t think we’ll rest easy in this house anymore,” Dan was saying. “Guess we’d better take our loot here and go.” He started to back away from the villagers and toward the road that led down the mountain.

“Do you think we’ll let you leave with those girls?” said Os. “We know they’ve little chance of survival in your hands.”

“That’s a chance you’ll have to take,” said Dan. “Because if you attack us now, I guarantee their survival prospects are much, much worse.”

The villagers hefted their weapons and shifted their stance, but none advanced.

Dan kept walking backward, and Onor and Dogface followed. He seemed to be trying to find the road by feel, but the snow was stacked deep.

Miri knew the mountain. Even in the snowstorm she could see he was veering too far to his left. The cliff edge was getting closer. If only she could prod him closer still. As quiet as an exhale, she sang to herself, “No wolf falters before the bite. So strike. No hawk wavers before the dive. Just strike.”

“Everyone stay still,” said Dan. “We’ll be gone soon, and you look for your girls come spring thaw. They’ll be just fine.”

She looked to her right and saw terror frozen on Britta’s and Esa’s faces like ice on a windowpane. To her left, the snow obscured the cliff’s edge. She needed help to get him there.

Miri knew her pa loved her, knew that now with a peace like the mildest summer evening. She knew he would throw himself off the mountain to save her. But, as Doter said, he was a house with shutters closed. She could not trust that he would understand her quarry-speech plea.

Peder had heard her call from miles away. He would understand.

Miri struggled again, but this time with no hope of getting free. She just wanted a moment of contact with the ground, a chance to dig her foot into the snow and feel stone. The touch came, and she gripped the hawk in her pocket, hoping that bit of linder could help as well. With all the will inside her and quiet as the flakes falling, she sang out in quarry-speech.

The memory she chose was Peder falling into an unseen ice-melt hole and disappearing from view. She did not have to wonder long if he understood.

“Don’t think we won’t follow you,” said Peder. Snowflakes lay thick in his tawny curls, silver crowning gold. “We’ll hound you as far as the sea if we have to.”

Some of the adults frowned at his outburst, but Peder did not take his eyes from Miri and Dan. He prodded Jans and Almond, Bena’s older brother, and they followed him away from the line of villagers to the left of the three bandits. Miri felt Dan shift.

“Not so close, little kitten,” said Dan. “I’m a thief and a murderer, remember? You can’t trust me not to kill her out of spite.”

Peder and the others slowed, but they kept advancing to Dan’s right, forcing him to change his path just a little. Miri thought it was enough. She concentrated on keeping her body relaxed, not stiffening in anticipation, giving Dan no indication of what she was about to try.

Don’t hesitate. Just swing.
Miri grabbed the linder hawk from her pocket, held it like a dagger, and stabbed Dan’s wrist with the sharpened tip of an outstretched wing.

Dan hollered and let go. Miri dropped to the ground, rolled away from him, and crawled through the snow. The shock of pain lasted only a moment, and he yelled and leaped after her.

But there was the edge. Miri did not have time to be careful. Hoping she had judged her position correctly, she rolled over the cliff and reached for the rocky shelf where she and Katar had talked the day of the exam.

She hit earth, but the relief filling her chest was stopped by the sickening feeling of her feet sliding off the ledge. Her hands scrambled for a hold and found the hanging roots of a cliff tree. She looked up to see Dan step over the edge, his face wide with surprise to find no ground beneath his feet. He fell.

Miri’s body shook with a hard yank. Dan had one hand on the cliff, another on her ankle.

The wood creaked in her hands. The root slid from its hold in the ledge like a snake through water, then jerked to a stop. Below, Dan clenched her leg, and farther down, the snow kept falling, falling, so far that she could not see a flake come to rest at the bottom. The falling snow made the cliff seem to run on forever, like a river stretching out to the faraway sea.

Her hands were on fire, her leg was numb. She tried to kick him off but could not budge his weight. Dan tried to climb the cliff wall with one hand, using her leg to pull himself up. Miri screamed from the pain of holding on. Her hands were slipping, and she felt herself nearly falling with the snow.

Then something struck Dan on the forehead. He looked up, but his eyes seemed blind, as if his vision were lost trying to follow a snowflake. His hold on the cliff slipped, his weight lessened, and then, unexpectedly, Miri was watching him get smaller and smaller. His arms and legs splayed as though he were making a snow angel in midair. The wind blew the falling snow into circles and spirals, washing out everything below, so that Miri did not see him hit the ground.