Sagaria (17 page)

“I … I think he’s dead,” said Sagandran in a weak voice. “How in heck did that happen?”

“Who cares how it happened?” said Perima with sudden practicality. “Let’s just be grateful it did.”

“We still have to get ourselves untied,” said Sagandran matter-of-factly, taking his cue from her. “Flip? Flip?”

There was a rustling in the bushes behind them. He craned his neck to try to see what had caused it.

“These parts of the forest are not safe enough to be walked by children,” said a strange voice.

“Who’s that?” hissed Perima. She too was unable to turn far enough to see.

The owner of the voice walked slowly around to stand in front of them – not so much walked as half-walked, half-hopped in one of the most curious gaits Sagandran had ever seen. But he didn’t notice the gait as much as he noticed their savior’s appearance. The Earthworld animal the newcomer most resembled was a frog, though the hind legs were less squat and rounded than a frog’s, being partway between a frog’s and a man’s. This frog had a man’s size as well. He was dressed in an elaborately embroidered tunic and short kilt, and bore a green cloak cast raffishly back over one shoulder. His hat sported an upright peacock feather. A long sword hung at his waist, and dangling from his webbed hand was a sling.

A sling,
thought Sagandran.
Of course. That swishing sound just before the object appeared in the middle of the worg’s brow.

The man-frog gave them an ostentatious bow, full of gratuitous embellishments of motion. “Sir Tombin Quackford at your service.”

“I’m very pleased to make your acquaintance, Sir Tombin,” said Perima graciously. “You may kiss my hand – well, as soon as I can get it free of these accursed bindings, anyway.”

Sagandran stared at her.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“He’s just saved our lives and you’re expecting to get your hand kissed?”

“Why, yes. I
am
a Royal Princess of Mattani, after all. My father is King Fungfari the First, and I am his eldest daughter.”

Sir Tombin was watching the exchange without a word. His eyes were shiny and black, with a sort of gently dreaming light in them. Friendly eyes. Intelligent eyes.

“More like a spoilt brat,” said Sagandran angrily. “Flip was right, we ought to have left you to your fate. Princess or not, you should be thanking this kind fellow, not being condescending to him.”

“You haven’t thanked me yourself yet, boy,” said Sir Tombin, not unkindly.

“Oh. Oh, yes. I’m sorry about that. I thank you from the bottom of my heart,
sir. If it weren’t for your timely intervention, we’d have been sizzling by now. We owe you our lives. If there’s anything I can do—”

Sir Tombin held up a hand. “It is one of my knightly obligations to save those in distress.” He put one foot on the worg’s motionless carcass, like a triumphant hunter posing for a photograph. “And it is my pleasure also.”

With a few of those half-paces, half-hops, he was behind Sagandran, his sword sliding free of its scabbard. Less than a minute later, the worg’s ropes lay in pieces around him. Sagandran busily rubbed the circulation back into his wrists and knees.

Perima regarded them both coldly.

“Daughter of King Fungfari the First,” said Sir Tombin with another of those intricately graceful courtly bows, “I must wait until I have sufficiently cleansed my lowly mouth before I would lay it upon the regal flesh of your hand.” He straightened up. “I’ll untie you then, as well,” he concluded.

Sagandran introduced himself and looked for Flip so that he could introduce his little friend. But there was no sign of Flip.

“Flip?” called Sagandran anxiously.

There was a muffled squeak close by.

“Flip?”

“I’m sure your funny little pet will turn up sooner or later,” said Perima. “In the meantime, there is a Princess of the Blood Royal tied up here.”

“It’s a shame the worg never thought to use a gag, isn’t it?” muttered Sagandran darkly.

Sir Tombin heard. “An oversight that could soon be rectified,” he offered.

Perima was shocked into silence.

A furious volley of squeaks perplexed Sagandran even more.

“With respect,” said Sir Tombin, staring at the mammoth form of the fallen worg, “might I recommend that we try to move the body?”

Between the two of them, they managed to roll the worg over onto its back. Stuck to its gross belly was a flattened-looking Flip. Sagandran hurried to pick him up, and held him in his arms.

“Are you all right?”

“Next time shout ‘timber’ or something, could you?”

Sir Tombin gave a snort of laughter.

Flip was soon scampering around much as usual, apparently none the worse for wear. It was far longer before he tired of telling the rest of them about it though. A ton of worg on top of him had been the least of it, he assured them. The worst part, as he lay trapped between the worg’s fleshy belly and the ground, was the stench. Flip hadn’t known what would kill him first,
suffocation or gas poisoning, and he hadn’t really cared.

By then, Sir Tombin and Sagandran had relented and cut Perima free. Glowering, she sat a little distant from the rest of them by the fire that the worg had built, which had become a mound of hot orange embers. The late afternoon was still pleasantly warm, but both she and Sagandran were shivering from delayed shock after their close brush with a frightful death, and the fire’s heat was welcome. No one looked at Brootle’s corpse.

“As soon as you two are ready,” said Sir Tombin with his habitual mild courtesy, “I propose that we endeavor to put as much distance as possible between ourselves and this place. This is worg territory and hazardous at the best of times. Even were that no matter of concern, I don’t believe it will be long before that malodorous beast’s fellows come across this scene. When they do, the hunt will be on in earnest. Worgs have little sentiment when one of their own kind dies – they are forever slaughtering each other in the most trivial of squabbles – but they do regard anything capable of killing a worg as a menace to be exterminated at the first opportunity. I know of a safe haven not too far from here and, if I may, I would guide you there so we may rest and talk at our leisure.”

Sagandran interpreted all this to mean that he and Perima should hurry up and pull themselves together so that the little band could make themselves scarce before a bunch of maddened worgs descended on them.

He pushed himself up off the ground, subdued his trembling with an effort, and reached out a hand to help Perima to her feet.

She stared at the hand coldly.

“Ma’am,” said Sir Tombin, “if you would be so kind?”

With an air of stifled revulsion she took Sagandran’s hand and stood up. Once again, he was startled by how pretty she was. Almost as tall as himself, she had long black hair that hung to the middle of her back. It was matted now, with leaves and bits of twig tangled in it, but it must normally form a lustrous curtain. She was wearing a long dress that had started as off-white but was now covered in brown and green mud and grass stains. It was torn in places, and a piece of the hem hung down at the front. Her face was heart-shaped, the point of her chin ameliorated by a dimple, and her skin was a gorgeous coffee color. Her eyes were almost turquoise; Sagandran wondered what it would be like to gaze into them for a long while. Her mouth was small but her lips quite full, and when she spoke her neat little white teeth flashed. Her nose was an adorable little snub. He thought of Jennifer Cochrane back in school, and guiltily found that he couldn’t even conjure up Jennifer’s face. It was a pity that, prettiness aside, Perima was so ghastly.

Sir Tombin’s bright gaze twitched backward and forward between the two of them and he gave a small smile, the meaning of which Sagandran couldn’t interpret.

“Shall we be on our way then?” said Sir Tombin.

They carried on down the hillside Sagandran and Flip had been descending when they’d heard Perima struggling with the worg. It seemed like a long time ago. Soon the slope disappeared and, after crunching through dead leaves and brush for a while, they found themselves on another forest trail. Sir Tombin obviously knew where they were, for he hesitated not at all in that strange stride of his as he struck off along the path.

Flip had nosed his way into the pocket where Sagandran had stuffed the bread and, after having gorged on crumbs that had been left there, he curled up into a ball and fell asleep. Sagandran could feel his friend’s snores against his side as he strolled along behind Sir Tombin.

Perima had said nothing since they’d left the fire, but was making it plain through her demeanor that all of this was beneath her dignity and that they were lucky to be graced by her regal presence. Sagandran groaned inwardly. There were girls like Perima at school. They tended to group into exclusive cliques and chatter like starlings about how disgusting boys were and how attractive and trendily dressed and altogether brilliant they were. Sagandran avoided them like the plague.

Jennifer was different. Jennifer was always glad to see him, and they could talk for hours about things that really mattered or about things that didn’t matter at all but were interesting nevertheless. She didn’t give a hang what she looked like, and tended to drape herself in jeans with the knees worn out and sweaters that were in severe need of a darning. Despite this, she was prettier than the girls in the cliques, which was probably why they kept saying that she was plain and a frump behind her back. In a way, the prettiest aspect of her was probably that she was so interested in so many things, whereas they weren’t. Of course, that meant she went through a dazzling spectrum of fads, but this was, in its way, appealing too. He supposed Jennifer was his girlfriend, though he’d never thought of her as anything more than someone he hung out with because they liked each other so much.

What would Jennifer do if she were stuck with Perima? Get her to talk, that’s what. Try to welcome her into the life the rest of the people lived in. Thaw her out. Oh, well. He’d give it a try.

“We’d be dead by now if it hadn’t been for Sir Tombin,” he essayed, nodding toward the gaudily clad figure ahead.

Perima said nothing.

“And Flip did his best to chew through our bonds.”

Still that haughty silence.

“We should be thankful to both of them.”

At last she spoke. “And you, Sagandran, stepped in and tried to rescue me when you could just as easily have left me to my fate.” Her voice was dull.

“That was nothing.”

“It was something, a big something. All of you – I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to all three of you.” She turned toward him. He could see a pleading in her eyes. “Can’t you see what an enormous burden that is to me, Sagandran? If I weren’t a royal princess, it wouldn’t matter, but I am. I’m not supposed to be in debt to anyone, for anything. When I thought we were both about to die it was different. Who cared if I owed you my thanks for being so brave? Now that it’s the worg who’s dead, I have to live with the weight of this obligation for the rest of my life. Oh, Sagandran.”

He thought that she was about to throw her arms around him and start weeping all over him as they walked, and his shoulders tensed instinctively in preparation for the onslaught. He used the excuse of stepping around a stone to increase the distance between them a little.

“What difference does it make that you’re a princess?” he prompted.

“All the difference in the world.”

He let that answer hang between them for a moment, then asked her, “Why were you out in the forest rather than sitting at home in palatial splendor doing princessly things, with courtiers and serving maids fluttering around you catering to your every whim?”

She grunted and stared at Sir Tombin’s back.

“Hm?” said Sagandran.

“Because I couldn’t stand princesshood any longer, if you must know. I was trying to run away from it all.”

“I guessed it must have been something like that. So, don’t you mean it’s princesshood that’s the burden, not any imaginary weight of gratitude you owe us? We saved you because you were a person in danger, you know, not because you were a princess.”

She took time to absorb this.

Sagandran pressed on. “If you were trying to leave your princesshood behind, shouldn’t you be dumping this part of it as well?” Watching her face even as he kept walking, he saw it give a little twitch, almost a wince. “I can’t speak for Sir Tombin, but all Flip and I want is to be your friends.” He crossed the fingers of the hand that she couldn’t see.
I’ll talk Flip into this if I have to,
he resolved. “That’s what ordinary folk do, you know – make friends with each other. If you
want to stop being a member of royalty and start being an ordinary person, making friends is one of the first things you ought to learn how to do.”

Now her features relaxed, just a little.

“You could practise on Flip and me,” he added, “and I’m sure Sir Tombin wouldn’t mind if you practised on him as well.”

“I hadn’t realized that this was going to be so infernally difficult,” Perima said reluctantly. “I thought that if I ran away from Mattani and my father, I would just magically turn into a normal human being.”

“You
are
a normal human being. The whole business of royal families and aristocracies is just nonsense that people make up. We all have two arms, two legs and a head.” He waved his hands about, showing them off as examples of what he meant. “We all hurt in the same way when we’re sick or injured. Some of us are brighter than others, some of us are better at some things than others, but being born into this family or that family doesn’t have anything to do with those differences. Your dad’s probably a king because hundreds of years ago some bloodthirsty warlord ancestor of his seized the land that’s now called Mattani, massacred its population, and set up a reign of terror.”

“Something like that,” she murmured with a small smile.

“So everyone else is supposed to respect you and your dad because you’re the descendants of a thief and mass murderer?”

“I’ve never heard it described like that.” Another of those little grins. He couldn’t tell if she was genuinely amused or not. Either way, he hoped he was winning her over to his way of thinking. Even if he wasn’t, at least this was better than the stony silence and haughtiness.