The Kingdom on the Edge of Reality (36 page)

"Jack," she said very softly, fighting to control her voice. "I'm in danger. Please don't leave me like this!"

"I'll find some way to help you, Jenna, I swear I will. But I can't come back to court and be the duke's mouthpiece. He just wants me to help him squash this rebellion he's got on his hands. That's plain enough, isn't it? What happens after that?"

"I don't know. I'm frightened."

"Jenna, do whatever you need to do to stay alive until we come for you. I understand what I have to do now."

"Come, come, what's all this whispering?" said the duke, riding into our midst. "You disappoint me, Darcey. I thought you had got some sense." Now he turned to Jenna with a chilling smile. "Swilling pigs is more his style, your majesty. We'll have to get along without him. Come, I think it's time we left. Goodbye, Darcey. Don't say I never gave you a chance."

He took hold of Jenna's bridle and turned her horse toward the road. "We're leaving now, your majesty."

Jenna cast me one imploring look before she tapped her horse with the heel of her boot. The duke rode out behind her and the three warriors fell into step behind them. Down the road they went at a trot in the direction of the duke's manor.

"Go get the baby and throw some food in a sack," I said to Mora without taking my eyes off the riders.

"Where are we going?"

"We have to get away from here right away. Is there a friend you can stay with while I go look for Sir Leo? Someone you can trust who'll hide you if need be?"

"Why do I have to go stay with a friend?"

"Mora, I want you to wait someplace safe while I find Sir Leo. Then I'll come get you and take you to the forest."

"Jack, I can't just go away and leave the farm like that. Who will look after it?"

"Mora, please hurry. The duke isn't going to ride away and let us be. We need to get away from here right now or it's going to be too late." I glanced back at the riders, and saw the duke take hold of Jenna's bridle. Suddenly there was a sickening sensation in my stomach and I knew exactly what it meant. It was already too late.

"Jack!" screamed Jenna. "Jack, look out!" The three warriors were wheeling their horses around, and now they came galloping back.

"Get the baby and hide in the woods!" I was running for the cottage and propelling her along with me. What was I going to do? I didn't even have a weapon. Yanking open the cottage door, I shoved Mora inside, and then raced for the tool shed. When the riders galloped into the yard, there I was with the scythe in my hands.

"Ride him down!" shouted one of the warriors.

"Ride him down yourself," said another.

"All right, all right, let's take our time and be careful," said the first one. "Somebody needs to get behind him."

Suddenly I saw Mora dash behind one of the horses with something smoking in her hand and then the horse was bucking and kicking, and it was a good thing she kept running because those slashing hooves would have been the end of her. The warrior couldn't keep his seat. He crashed awkwardly to the ground and only managed to get halfway to his feet before I clipped his head off and sent it rolling away into the bushes.

I heard Mora scream, and I was running even as I turned. My body was way ahead of my mind, for I had dropped the heavy scythe in order to run faster. Mora dodged around the big stump in the middle of the yard, and the rider pursuing her was forced to do the same. Right there I caught up with him, running up the stump and hurling myself through the air to land on the horse's back behind him. Ass over teakettle we went crashing to the ground.

Mora took a swing at his head with the poker, but it bounced harmlessly off his steel helm. He had lost his sword in our wild tumble, but it was yards away and no use to me. Snatching out his long dirk, he tried to slash at Mora, but I had him by the wrist before he could strike, and Mora hit him a blow on the shoulder that made him howl. I made a grab for his chinstrap, hoping to yank off his helm, but my hand closed around his Adam's apple instead, and when I felt that brittle cartilage bend and crack in my desperate grasp, I pried deeper with my fingers and squeezed and squeezed until my fingers met my thumb behind his windpipe.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the third rider dismount and draw his sword. "Mora, run!" I yelled. But she just held her poker out in front of her, pointing at the advancing swordsman as though she was planning to take him on with it. The man I was holding by the windpipe was pitching his body this way and that in the last stages of panic. I didn't dare let go of his wrist or his throat and I couldn't get to my feet.

"Jack!" screamed Mora, backing away from the oncoming soldier, but there was nothing I could do. Holding his sword in both hands like an axe, he threw the blade up over his head. Much as I needed to shield myself, I had run out of hands. Another step and he would cleave me open like a chicken on the butcher's block.

But now the warrior looked puzzled. He seemed to have forgotten all about me. His sword hand dropped to his side, and the other hand was grasping at his chest. He looked down and there it was: the heavy triangular head of a war arrow and several inches of the shaft sticking out of his chest. He was trying to figure out where it had come from, I suppose, and so was I.

This time I heard the thump, and now there was another arrow sticking out beside the first. The sword dropped from his grasp and he nodded his head a couple of times, as though, just at the last moment, he had figured out what the matter was. Then he pitched forward on his face.

When I turned my attention to the man I was holding by the throat, I saw that he was also dead. His face was a reassuring shade of deep purple and his eyes had rolled back in his head. Gasping for breath, I clung to him while my heart bounced back and forth between my chest and my backbone. My head ached with the adrenaline and the rest of my body was throbbing with fatigue.

Leo and Gordon came bounding up. Leo had an arrow nocked and Gordon was swinging his great stick up as he ran, but when they saw the soldier's purple face, they let their weapons drop to their sides.

"I'm terribly sorry, my lord," gasped Leo between breaths. "Oh, God!" he cried, quite beside himself. "We almost lost him, Gordon!"

"It's all right, Leo, we came in time," said Gordon. "Are you all right, Mora?"

"Oh yes, I'm fine," said Mora, and then she fainted. Gordon caught her as she fell and lifted her up in his arms like a child.

"Is she hurt?"

"No, she's just having a nap like the good girl she is," said Gordon, gazing down on her as lovingly as any father. "You're a lucky man, my lord."

"Every time I turn around that girl is saving my life. Many thanks to you, Leo. Very nice shooting, very!" I was trying to disengage myself from the dead man but it was not that easy to do. My left hand seemed as rusty as an old iron clamp around the man's wrist; and my right hand, which had crushed out his life . . .

Staring at my hand in amazement, I slowly released my grasp, and the dead soldier slumped to the ground like a bag full of sand. The hand was stiff, and it tingled and prickled, but it was working.

"It works!" I'd just received the most wonderful gift in the world. With a real right hand, I was myself again. I was Sir Jack!

"You had a good fight for it here," said Leo. "This one has no head."

I was quite amazed that we were still alive. How could Mora and I have prevailed against so many armed men? But we made a good team and we were fighting for each other, and that had somehow pulled us through.

"We've all been due for some better luck," said Gordon.

"Here's his head," said Leo, lifting it out of the bushes by the hair. He laid it near the body. "We'll take their armor and weapons and lay them out side by side. With your approval, my lord, I would prefer to be safely in the forest before more company arrives. They all have families to claim them."

"Did you know these men, Leo?"

"Oh yes, I recognize them. They're just farmers in armor. This is a terrible time for this kingdom."

Looking at the bodies, I felt sad for my soul, for I felt no remorse for having killed two more men. We were at war now, but that wasn't what made the difference. No, the real reason was that I was getting used to it. I was adapting to my environment. I was developing a thicker skin.

"Put me down, Gordon," said Mora. "Did I faint?" She put her clothes to rights and shook out her hair.

Taking her hand, I said, "Come along, sweetie. We're off to our new home in the greenwood."

She took one long wistful look at her farm. "All right, Jack, I'm ready to go."

By the time we arrived at Sir Leo's camp in the forest, the story of the fight at the farm had traveled ahead of us along that uncanny gravevine. I could tell that everybody knew about it already by the way people looked at me, and particularly by the way they looked at Mora. Their eyes were shining with such luminous emotion that I knew I had been elevated to a new level in my legend and that Mora had been given her own glory as my warrior mate.

On the one hand it was pleasant to be greeted with so much admiration, but on the other hand it made me uncomfortable to see that I had become larger than life in their eyes and hence somewhat unreal. Mora didn't seem to be affected by the attention that was being paid her. She nodded and smiled and said hello to the people she knew without any trace of self-consciousness, though they were making her very special.

I was aware that even my gestures would be significant to these people who were watching my every move and who were expecting me to live up to the role that was being thrust upon me. So I raised my hand slowly with the fingers outstretched, made a fist high in the air, and then stretched my fingers out again. They responded with a pantomime cheer that shook their bodies but was utterly silent—the camp was a secret.

Sir Rudy Strapp was there, and Sir Bradley, and Sir Maynard, and the rest of Albert's knights, and Don the armorer and many other faces that I recognized, along with many that I didn't. We dismounted where the knights were gathered, and after many embraces, Sir Bradley said, "I think you'll look better in these." Much to my surprise I saw he was holding the clothes I had worn as a knight, all clean and mended after their rough treatment the last time I'd worn them.

"Where did you get these?" I asked Sir Bradley, who pointed into the crowd.

"Ask Kitchen John, who smuggled them out." John of the kitchen, who I barely knew in passing, nodded with a grin, happy to have played his part.

It took me only a few moments to change my clothes on the spot, and when I presented myself to the crowd as Sir Jack of old, there was another silent cheer. Then the crowd parted and out stepped Marya Mage with my very own sword. Didn't they all go nuts with silent happiness when she handed it to me.

I held the sword in its scabbard up over my head and called out very softly, "For Albert!" And the king's name, quietly but with a fierce energy, echoed throughout the crowd.

Next we had a meal, and none too soon either, for I was faint with hunger. The fare was venison, vegetable soup, bread and cheese, and we sat down to eat under the trees. Mora went to sit with some women friends who were making a fuss over her, and I was left with Marya and Sir Leo. When I had filled my gut, I leaned back against the roots of a tree and looked around.

Part of the camp was dug into the southern side of a hill, taking advantage of natural caves. There were crude shelters of cloth and skins on frameworks, and a large common area with three big firepits. Food was hanging from tree limbs in sacks and baskets, and there were several caches where weapons were kept close at hand. Simple as it might be, there was an orderly look to everything which I would have expected from Leo.

"I like the way you've organized this camp, Leo," I said. "But are you sure the duke doesn't know where it is?"

"No, my lord," said Leo. "There's no way we can be sure of that. But we have sentries posted against an attack, and people watching the castle too. This spot also has natural fortifications, like the ravine to the west and the rocky north side of this hill, which make it inconvenient to horsemen."

"What's the plan if we're attacked?"

"We melt into the trees with our provisions and weapons and rendezvous elsewhere."

"Can you do that smoothly and quickly with women and children?"

"We have a drill every day, my lord. Would you like to see?"

"No, Leo, I believe anything you tell me. But do you have to call me my lord so often?"

Leo sighed and looked away, and then there was a silence. I had said something wrong but I wasn't sure what.

"Wake up, Jack," Marya said; after a bit it dawned on me what she meant. Leo was a natural leader, and he already had everything well organized. What he needed from me was authority. Albert was dead, and if Leo went up against the duke, he was just a rebel leading a band of rebels. But Albert had made me prime minister and put me in charge of the kingdom in regency along with the queen. Looking at the situation from that point of view, it was actually Guy Hawke who was the rebel.

"Sir Leo," I said, "with the power vested in me by our late king, I hereby appoint you master-at-arms of all the royal forces and any commoners who support us in overthrowing the usurper and tyrant, Lord Hawke."

"Thank you, my lord."

"Please keep me advised in all matters, but you will have complete authority to act spontaneously if the situation demands it."

"Very good, my lord." Leo brought his heels together and gave me a short, formal bow with his arms at his sides. With a smile that contained both gratitude and relief, he left Marya and me alone.

"Good for you, bubber," said Marya. "That was just right."

"Okay, I'm willing to do anything I have to do for the time being, but I just want to tell you, Marya, that this hat doesn't fit me. I was terrible as a farmer, but at least I could kind of believe in what I was doing. But playing lord high muck-a-muck seems totally wrong and false. Listen to this. Marsha Bennett came to see me about being the new king; and she told me not to worry about a thing because she would be right behind me working the strings that made my head nod and my hands go up and down."