Split Heirs (17 page)

“Well, if that's what you want, my liege. I'll be only too happy to do anything you want.
Anything
.” She edged closer, her gown hissing over the kitchen slabs. “Now, where were we?”

“The library!” cried the prince, for no earthly reason Ubri could see. He sprang to his feet. “I forgot about the library! I was supposed to be there to meet…I have to go. Good-bye. See you later.” He sprinted off, leaving Ubri on the floor, growling native Gorgorian curses.

He didn't stop running until he reached the library. Once inside, he shot the bolt and leaned back, panting.

“Well, did it work?” came the question. Queen Artemisia looked up from her place at one of the tables.

He just nodded. “No one saw anything different.”

“Good.” She reached into her sleeve and drew out the food taster's mask. “Then put this back on. We'll play again tomorrow, and this time we'll let Arbol wear the mask and see if people think he's you at the same time you're pretending to be him.”

As Wulfrith tugged the mask back on, he wondered whether he ought to tell the queen about the very friendly Gorgorian lady he'd met down in the kitchens.

He decided he wouldn't. This game Queen Artemisia had devised was lots more fun than anything he'd ever done with old Clootie. He didn't want to spoil it for anyone.

Especially not if that nice Gorgorian lady wanted to play.

Chapter Eighteen

“What ho, lad!”

Dunwin looked up, mildly startled, as a large young man in leafy-green forester's garb (with clashing sky-blue lapels) plunged out of a tree onto the roadway in front of him.

“Hello,” Dunwin said, as the other landed on the path and fell to his knees, only keeping himself from flattening out completely by throwing out a hand at the last moment.

The fellow in green got quickly to his feet, brushing dirt from his hose with one hand, and shaking the other to restore circulation; Dunwin could see that the palm was bright red from the force of the impact.

“Ho, lad! Stand where you are!” the man called, squinting down at his knees and deciding that they would do.

“I
am
standing where I am,” Dunwin pointed out. “How could I stand anywhere else?”

The young man looked up. “Here, now, none of that! We don't take kindly to those tricksy word games around
here!
We're simple, straightforward men of the greenwood, we are!”

“Jumping out of trees doesn't seem like a very simple, straightforward thing to do,” Dunwin pointed out.

“Ah, but that was to get the drop on you, so that you'd have no time to call your men or draw your sword!”

Dunwin blinked. He turned and looked back down the highway, then peered down at his empty belt.

“I don't have a sword,” he said. “Nor any men.”

“I can
see
that,” the other said, a bit rattled. “But if you
had
, I mean. We couldn't tell from up there whether you had any men with you. Or swords.”

“Oh.” Dunwin looked up, and saw two other men in brown and green tunics sitting in the same giant oak that the one had jumped from. He waved a polite greeting; the two waved back.

“Terrible view from up there,” the leaper explained, “with the leaves in the way and everything, but it's got such nice branches for dropping out of, and it's sort of traditional.”

“I see,” Dunwin said politely.

For a moment the two of them stood there, facing each other; then Dunwin said, “Well, if that's all, I'll be going on, then. I've got a lost ewe to find. A sheep.” He took a step forward.

“Not so fast!” The man in green held up a hand. “Don't you know where you are, and who we are?”

Dunwin scratched an ear, dislodging three or four fleas. “I'm in the eastern hills,” he said, “and you're some stranger dressed in a silly costume who's just fallen out of a tree for no very good reason that I can see. I don't see how either of these has anything to do with me or Bernice.”

“Ha ha!” The man did not laugh, he simply said, very loudly, “Ha ha!” Dunwin thought this a very odd thing to do. “You are in the domain of the Black Weasel, and we before you are his Bold Bush-dwellers, come to exact his toll!”

“I don't have any money,” Dunwin said. “Can I go on now?” He took another step.

“Not so fast! You're a likely-looking young fellow; if you've no coin, then you'll pay with a year's service!”

Dunwin shook his head. “Look, I'm very sorry, but I don't have time for that. I've got to find Bernice.” He took another step.

The Bold Bush-dweller braced his feet apart and thrust out a hand, catching Dunwin's chest. “You shall not pass!” he proclaimed.

Dunwin reached up and removed the hand from his chest. The Bold Bush-dweller tried to prevent this, and Dunwin was forced to use pressure.

The man in green managed not to scream as his wrist was squeezed and pushed aside. It felt as if the bones were scraping against each other, squashing the flesh out from between them like soft cheese.

When Dunwin let go, the Bold Bush-dweller stared at his hand for a moment, watching the color gradually return to normal, and glorying in the pain he felt; he had been very much afraid that that hand might never feel anything again. The shepherd was stronger than he looked, and he didn't exactly look like any nine-stone weakling to begin with.

The sensible thing to do would obviously be to let him go on looking for his sheep. Unfortunately, the Black Weasel's orders were very definite and very emphatic, and as every Bush-dweller knew, the Black Weasel was not a sensible man.
Every
traveler had to be stopped.

By the time he could work all his fingers again, the shepherd had walked on past; the Bush-dweller turned and ran after him, grabbing the back of his tunic with both hands.

“Not so fast there…” he began.

He did not finish the sentence, as he was distracted by the novel sensation of traveling through the air horizontally. It felt surprisingly different from the familiar vertical drop out of the tree.

Then he abruptly stopped traveling at all, having arrived in a large thornbush. Any concerns about the Black Weasel's orders were put aside until he had dealt with the rather more immediate problems posed by several hundred inch-long, needle-sharp thorns and the accompanying leaves and woodwork.

He did hear the sound of two large objects thudding onto the road, and assumed that his companions were following instructions and had dropped from the tree to subdue the reluctant shepherd boy. He supposed they would have no trouble. The lad had to be a bit winded after heaving a fifteen-stone man into a thornbush that stood a good five yards from the roadway, and the other two Bush-dwellers knew that their target was not the harmless oaf he had first appeared.

He concentrated on disentangling himself while retaining a maximum amount of unpunctured skin.

He did not really pay attention to the voices exchanging words, or the thumps as they exchanged something a little heavier than words, or the clatter as the Bush-dwellers took up their staves and the shepherd boy snatched up a fallen treelimb to defend himself.

Eventually, though, he was able to stand upright on his own two feet without any direct contact with sharp objects. He brushed himself off, lightly touched the innumerable scratches on his cheeks, shuddered at the discovery of how close some had come to his eyes, and then turned to look at the others.

He was astonished to find the battle still raging. Ochovar
—
his official nickname of Off-White Chipmunk had failed to stick, as had many of the later coinages
—
was swinging his staff wildly, warding off the shepherd boy's attack; the other Bush-dweller, Wennedel, sat on the ground nearby, clearly dazed, his staff in pieces beside him.

“Hey!” the former resident of the thornbush called. “You can't do that!”

“Why not?” Dunwin asked, startled. He turned an inquiring glance toward the speaker, and promptly received a solid whack across the back of his head from Ochovar's weapon. He staggered.

“Because there are three of us, all highly trained in every form of combat, and only one of you, and you're just a poor ignorant shepherd boy,” the Bush-dweller explained, as Ochovar drew back for another swing.

“Oh,” Dunwin said. Ochovar hesitated. His companion nodded; humanity was all very well, but there was no point in taking stupid chances.

Ochovar put everything he had into it, coming up from the knees, his whole weight in the swing; even so, Dunwin managed to roll with it somewhat.

He still went down, face first. Ochovar promptly sat on him, staff held ready for another whack.

Wennedel, moving stiffly, joined Ochovar. The third Bush-dweller approached cautiously, then sat down cross-legged in front of Dunwin's face. He waited, picking thorns from his hose, and studied the shepherd's face.

There was something rather familiar about it.

When the boy's eyes showed signs of focusing, the Bush-dweller said, “As I was saying, lad, you show promise, but you clearly don't stand a chance against the likes of us. I like you, though, so I tell you what we'll do. We'll take you to meet our leader, the mighty Black Weasel himself, and we'll let him decide what to do with you. You tell him about your lost sheep, and maybe he'll even help you find her.”

Dunwin blinked. “Well, why didn't you say so in the first place?” he asked. He got to his feet, sending Ochovar and Wennedel tumbling, and picked up his fallen tree branch. “Let's go,” he said.

Ochovar looked at the spokesman; Wennedel looked at Ochovar. “How hard did you hit him?” Wennedel whispered.

“As hard as I bloody well could, of course!” Ochovar hissed back. “What do you
think
?”

“I think maybe you knocked the brains right out of him, only he hasn't noticed yet,” Wennedel replied.

The spokesman shook his head. “No, I think he was
always
like that,” he said quietly. “I mean, who'd be chasing a lost sheep here in the forest?” Aloud, he asked, “What's your name, lad?”

“Dunwin,” Dunwin said. “After my uncle that got himself hanged.”

“That figures,” the spokesman muttered. Aloud, he said, “Good to meet you, Dunwin. I'm called the Purple Possum.” He held out a hand to shake, but Dunwin didn't notice it, and after a moment it was withdrawn. The Possum frowned slightly.

“We better blindfold him,” Ochovar said. “I don't know if the boss will want to keep this one.”

“An excellent point,” the Possum agreed. “Who's got the cloth?”

After a moment of embarrassed silent exploration, the Possum let out a sigh. “Well, this tunic was ruined anyway,” he said, tearing a strip of thorn-pierced fabric from his own garment.

Dunwin made no protest as the blindfold was tied in place; he had no reason to, since the multiple thorn holes left him well able to see. He saw no need to mention this.

Thus prepared, the three Bush-dwellers led the lad through the forest by secret paths
—
Dunwin knew they were secret paths, because the letters carved on the trees marking the route clearly said,
SECRET PATH, DO NOT ENTER. BOLD BUSH-DWELLERS ONLY—
until they arrived in a small clearing, at the center of which stood an ancient beech tree. Beneath the beech stood a large, badly weathered chair that had apparently been gilded once; seated in the chair was a rather tired-looking man dressed entirely in black.

“Yes, Possum?” the man in the chair said wearily.

“Oh, Black Weasel, brave and dashing heroic leader of the Bold Bush-dwellers in their valiant struggle against the abominable Gorgorian oppressors who have plundered our fair kingdom,” the Purple Possum said, “we captured this fellow on our way back from town.”

“Did you get the salt? And the nails?”

“Yes, Black Weasel. Wennedel
—
I mean, the Crimson Slug has them.”

The Black Weasel nodded. “Good. Now, about this lad you caught
—
is this one signing up for a year's service, or is he a recruit? Or are you being playful again?”

“This one's not decided, Black Weasel,” the Possum said. “He shows a real talent for brawling, but he's only interested in finding a lost sheep.”

The Black Weasel sighed. “Is he even an Old Hydrangean? All the best brawlers these days seem to be runaway Gorgorians.”

“Of course I'm Old Hydrangean,” Dunwin said, offended.

“I think he is, Black Weasel,” the Possum interjected. “His face has the look; I'd say there's even a faint resemblance to yourself.”

As he spoke, the Purple Possum took a closer look. There certainly
was
a resemblance, he saw. Dunwin was bigger and his coloring darker, but his features definitely echoed the Black Weasel's.

Mere coincidence, of course, the Possum told himself.

“Well, that's a good start, anyway,” the Black Weasel said. “You're a shepherd, boy?”

“That's right, sir.”

“Well,
I
am the Black Weasel, brave and dashing heroic leader of the Bold Bush-dwellers in their valiant struggle against the abominable Gorgorian oppressors who have plundered our fair kingdom.”

“Pleased to meet you, I'm sure.” Dunwin was unsure whether he should bow, and decided not to bother. “My name's Dunwin. I'm looking for Bernice.”

“Bernice is your lost sheep?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, we don't see very many sheep around here; what does she look like?”

Dunwin hesitated.

“Well,” he said, “she's very big, for a sheep. She's green, and sort of shiny, and all over scales, sort of like a lizard, or maybe a water-snake.”

The Black Weasel's attention had wandered somewhat, until he had been staring off across the clearing, but now he sat up straight and stared directly at Dunwin.

“Your
sheep
is green and scaly?” he asked.

Dunwin nodded unhappily.

Ochovar smothered a snicker. The Purple Possum shrugged expressively. Wennedel tapped his head significantly.

The Black Weasel pondered this for a long moment, then turned to the Purple Possum. “
How
good a brawler?” he demanded.

The Purple Possum said, “Pretty good. He threw me in a thorn-bush, then took on both my men, their quarterstaves against a tree-branch, and had Wennedel down before Ochovar caught him a sound buffet.”

The Black Weasel drummed his fingers on one arm of his chair, thinking; then he announced, “Dunwin, my lad, we're here to aid all good Old Hydrangeans. We'll find your sheep for you! But first, we ask that in excange, you join our merry band. We'll train you in fighting, we'll give you a fine sword, and when the time is ripe, you'll join us in the battle against the foul Gorgorians! What do you say?”

Dunwin looked around. He noticed that in addition to the three who had captured him, and the Black Weasel himself, there were about a dozen other green- and brown-clad men watching from among the surrounding trees.

“You'll help me find Bernice?” he asked.

“My word on it,” the Black Weasel said. “If any of us ever see a green, scaly sheep, or hear word of one, we'll let you know at once.”