The King in Reserve (6 page)

Kikkalak clacked her beak in frustration. 'No, no, lift the net together, you lackwits. One at each corner.'

Adalon paused in the business of strapping on his armour. He couldn't help smiling as Kikkalak's Winged Ones attempted to hoist the fat cook in one of their nets.

The cook, a pale-looking Crested One, lay in the net and shivered, clutching at the ropes. He only stopped thrashing about after a sharp word from his master.

'Are you sure this is necessary?' Gormond asked Adalon.

'It's been a miracle you've avoided capture thus far, but attempting to cross Thraag would be foolishness. This is safer and quicker.'

'What about Sachi? She won't be around to chronicle my exploits!'

'It's all right, sire,' Sachi said. 'I'm sure I can fill in the gaps.'

'Hrrumph. But what about Bandit?' He reached out and patted the riding beast on its neck. Its nostrils flared and it tried to bite his hand. He pulled it away and smiled fondly. 'He's a fine steed and a good friend. I can't leave him.'

Adalon thought Gormond would be better off without the fractious beast. 'You face a difficult decision, Your Majesty. It's the sort of dilemma that has confronted us many times in our struggle.'

'Really?'

'Indeed. The life of a hero is not simply a life of fame and adventure. Many of the most difficult battles are with oneself.'

Simangee opened her mouth to speak, but Adalon shot her a warning glance.

'I see.' Gormond tapped his plated cheek with a finger. 'In fact, I thought as much. A true hero must do the right thing, even when it is difficult.'

Adalon nodded.
There is truth in what he says,
he thought and any urge to mock him disappeared. 'Turn Bandit loose, Your Majesty. Value the service he has given you. Remember his friendship. Wish him well.'

Gormond looked as if he was about to cry. He busied himself with removing Bandit's bridle and tack. Adalon came to help and Gormond nodded with gratitude. In a few moments, the steed was free, snorting and stamping. Gormond slapped him on the rump and he trotted a few paces before looking back uncertainly. 'Go, Bandit,' Gormond said. 'And may good fortune go with you.'

The steed shook its head and cantered into the spreading light of early morning. The other beasts, having had their tack removed, followed and soon disappeared.

'He will be all right?' Gormond asked.

'He may end up with one of Queen Tayesha's patrols, but they will take care of him. He's too valuable to mistreat.' Adalon mounted his brass riding beast and extended his hand. 'Here.'

With Gormond seated behind him, Adalon rounded on the Winged Ones. 'We will meet you at the Lost Castle, Kikkalak. Go with safety.'

He kicked his heels into the brass flanks of his riding beast. With a sound like the clashing of cymbals, it bounded off.

The day unwound under the pounding hoofs. Noon loomed, then passed as they kept up their fleet passage. As afternoon broadened into evening, Adalon felt Gormond sagging against his back with weariness. He signalled to Simangee and Targesh. They slowed to a walk under the canopy of the dense woods they were traversing. 'We've put many leagues between us and those searching for the King,' he said. 'Let's rest for the night.'

Simangee needed no persuading. 'At last.' She pulled on the reins, halting her brass steed. 'A wash, that's what I want, then sleep.'

Targesh helped Gormond from the saddle. The young king didn't wake, merely mumbling as Targesh eased him onto a blanket. 'I'll take first watch,' the Horned One said.

Adalon didn't argue. 'Sim? Second or third?'

Simangee looked up from gathering kindling. 'Third, please. That'll give me some uninterrupted sleep.'

While Targesh helped Simangee start the fire, Adalon paced the perimeter of their campsite, kicking up the thick layer of leaves on the ground in this part of the forest. The air was still and noises of night came to him – insects, night birds, branches snapping and leaves rustling. These were the sounds of the other half of the world, the night world of which Adalon had little knowledge. Dark and mysterious, night had its own rules.

He shook his shoulders and grinned. Such gloomy thoughts! He needed to snatch some sleep himself.

After tasty but sparse rations from their saddlebags, the friends settled. Simangee wrapped herself in a blanket and curled up on the lee side of a fallen wild oak, her knees almost touching her chin. The snoring bundle that was the young king was near the remains of the camp fire. Targesh propped himself against a cabbage elm, his battleaxe beside him.

Adalon was casting about for the best place to lie down when he heard a sound that even he recognised didn't belong in the night-time chorus. He crouched and cleared a patch of bare earth. He placed his palm on it and hissed when he felt the tell-tale pounding of hoofs.

He leaped to his feet and stowed his blanket. 'Get up!' he shouted to his friends. 'Riding beasts coming fast!'

Instantly, Simangee and Targesh rolled to their feet. 'Which way?' Targesh asked.

'From the north,' Adalon said as Gormond sat up, blinking.

'More of Tayesha's troops, most likely,' Simangee said. She seized the reins of her steed.

'They haven't given up,' Targesh said. He fingered the haft of his axe for a moment before he shook his neck shield and mounted his steed.

'Hurry, Gormond,' Adalon urged. 'We must be away.'

Gormond struggled to his feet, but his eyes were bright. 'A midnight escape!' He rubbed his hands together. 'When danger threatens from the darkness, the heroes steal away, vanishing like ghosts!'

'Enough, Your Majesty,' Adalon said, pushing the eager monarch into the saddle. 'We ride like the wind, not ghosts.'

Adalon vaulted into his seat and urged his steed on, hurtling down a shallow depression where the shadows lay brooding and mysterious.

The three brass riding beasts thundered through the forest, following the faint trail with ease, surefooted despite the darkness. The path climbed the shoulder of a rocky ridge, followed it for some time, then plunged into a dry stream bed where the footing was uneven and treacherous. The brass riding beasts slowed, but still moved at a pace that no mortal steed could match.

The stream bed gave out onto a narrow band of grassy tussocks. On the other side stood a wall of conifers. Their tall, straight trunks stretched away in either direction, unpromising and forbidding. The trees whispered in the wind that had sprung up, needles rustling on needles, sounding like low, hurried plans being muttered in the night.

'Adalon!' Simangee called. He turned to see her on his left. She was pointing. 'I saw a patrol! Hard to tell, but I think five or six riders are flanking us over there!'

Adalon wheeled right and they sped along the face of the conifer forest. They splashed through ground which had suddenly become marshy, then followed a miserly creek thick with rushes. In the east, the sky showed the first touches of dawn.

Behind them came the sounds of pursuit: thundering hoofs, cries and the blast of a horn. Adalon put his head down and urged the great brass beast on.

As dawn struggled to move aside the night, the three friends found themselves running into more and more patrols. Once, they rounded a house-sized thicket of thorn bush to find three Crested Ones by the side of their steeds, studying the earth for tracks. They all wore the colours of the Second Thraag Regiment. Two threw themselves backwards, yelling, but the third was bowled over by Simangee's riding beast.

After that, it was a deadly game in the half-light, finding trails through the changing landscape of north-east Thraag while avoiding the patrols that seemed to infest the woods and marshlands. Without the supernatural speed and endurance of the brass steeds, the three friends and the young king would have been captured easily.

Adalon was grateful for Gormond's silence during the pursuit. The young monarch held on to Adalon doggedly, but the seriousness of the situation had dampened even his spirits.

Adalon tried to retrace the route they'd taken. He'd chosen to go through the forest as the most direct way to the south and lands beyond, but the land proved to be riven by sharp valleys and rivers running cold and strong from the mountains. At every turn they had to be careful, with bogs and wetlands waiting to swallow the unwary. The pursuit had taken them far from their path, but where exactly were they?

He slowed, easing his steed into a copse of gnarled crab-apple trees in a part of the forest that had grown increasingly rocky. He could clearly see his friends as they joined him, and he realised that it was well and truly morning. 'We've been driven more westerly than I would have liked. If we continue that way, we're sure to strike the Challish-Sleeto road. When we do, we can cross it and make our way southwards and home.'

'Good plan,' Targesh said. 'If we can lose these idiots.'

Gormond made a fist and shook it. 'Our pursuers are dogged, but we will not be captured.'

'I hope not,' Simangee muttered. 'We might end up in a dungeon together.'

A shout went up and Adalon hissed. A horn sounded nearby, then another.

'They've closed in,' Targesh growled.

'We'll have to outrun them,' Adalon said. He kicked his steed forward and it burst through the crab-apples.

Ahead, the terrain narrowed into a steep-sided valley, about an arrow's flight wide. It was still thickly wooded, and large boulders and falls of rock made the going hazardous. Adalon gripped the reins hard as his mount hurdled rocks that stuck up through the undergrowth like fangs, but the brass steed was supernaturally sure-footed.

The pursuers were stubborn. Adalon risked a glance over his shoulder to see that they'd swollen in number to a good-sized troop, a score or more riders in light armour.

Horns rang out, echoing along the valley walls.

'Up there,' Targesh shouted.

Through the trees on the left, Adalon could make out riders racing on the crest of the valley sides. He cursed when he saw more flanking them on the right, the leaders beginning to urge their steeds down the slope to head them off.

Adalon hissed. If only they could reach some open country; the brass steeds would outdistance any pursuit.

As long as they don't cut us off,
Adalon thought. He urged his steed on.

A spur of boulders and fallen trees loomed ahead, jutting from the left side of the valley, a nightmare jumble for any steed. It narrowed the way ahead dangerously, with the valley wall on the right a mass of shattered, loose rock.

Adalon trusted his mount and goaded it forward. The speed of their passage made his eyes water, but he saw the troop on their right frantically trying to close the distance, riding pell-mell down the perilous slope.

'Hold on!' he called to Gormond and he kicked his heels into his steed's metal sides. It responded by lengthening its stride until the trees flew past on either side. Adalon knew that if he lost his seat he would be dashed to pieces.

A final bound and the brass riding beast flew through the air, passing through the gap between a slab-like boulder and the trunk of a fallen forest giant. It landed with a crash, pulling up so quickly that Adalon had to fight to keep his seat, with Gormond's weight nearly throwing him off.

Cries of dismay made him turn to see Targesh and Simangee hurtle through the gap, one after the other. Adalon gasped when he saw how close they came to being knocked off as they squeezed through the narrow passage.

Outside the gap, he saw the Thraag riders milling, but none of them made any attempt to follow.

'Move further in,' Adalon said, and his advice was proven timely as a volley of arrows came through the gap. One struck the broken top of a pillar that was peeping from under a squat spearbush. Adalon stared at it and saw the tell-tale angular script of the A'ak. His chest tightened and his tail flicked once, with a sharp snap.

Ever since he'd fled the wrath of Queen Tayesha, he had been coming up against the remnants of the A'ak at every turn. His fate and the fate of the sinister, banished race seemed linked. At times, it was as if he were a piece in a game, being moved around by forces much larger than he was, and according to rules he would never understand.

No!
he thought and he made an angry noise at the back of his throat.
I
am not a pawn! I am in charge of my own destiny, for better or for worse!

'Adalon?' Gormond's voice was small and weary.

'We're safe, Your Majesty.'

He halted his steed in a clear area surrounded by the straight trunks of beech and alder. He could make out stonework wherever he looked, much of it fallen and broken.
At least, I hope we're safe.

'Let us cross this cursed place quickly,' he said, 'and leave our pursuers behind.'

'Aye,' Targesh said. 'And leave the A'ak alone.'

'The A'ak?' Gormond said, brightening. 'This is an A'ak place? We must explore! Who knows what we may find?'

'Oh, we know a thing or two about the A'ak,' Simangee said, smiling.

Adalon wasn't sure he liked the light of curiosity in Simangee's eyes, but he knew there was little he could do about it. He looked back the way they'd come. 'We're not being followed. Let's see if we can snatch some rest before we move on.'