Read The Bark of the Bog Owl Online
Authors: Jonathan Rogers
Aidan still had no plan of escape from this predicament. He couldn’t signal his brothers for help; there was no way to reach for his hunting horn without losing his grip. The alligator, however, did have a new plan. It rolled over on its back, dunking Aidan under the river. It continued rolling over and over in a sickening spin. Growing dizzy and disoriented, Aidan found it difficult to catch a breath without sucking in as much water as air. But he managed to hang on, and he was grateful not to have cracked his head on an underwater root or stump. He was also grateful that the alligator didn’t roll onto its back and sink to the river mud, crushing him under its mass.
The alligator finally stopped rolling. Perhaps it was getting dizzy too. But Aidan’s reprieve lasted only a few short seconds. The scaly beast carried him out toward the deep part of the river. When it had swum a few powerful strokes, it went into a steep dive. It intended to drown the boy who wouldn’t get off its back.
But Aidan knew something that the alligator didn’t know. The other end of the rope was still tied to the big cypress, and it couldn’t pay out much farther. When he felt the rope grow taut, Aidan gathered up the last of his strength. Just as the rope jerked the alligator backward in a half-flip, Aidan propelled himself forward from the top of the alligator’s head, as if from a springboard. He leaped clear, out into the middle of the river.
He had escaped—as long as the rope held. He swam out another ten strokes or so, then let the current carry him well beyond the reach of the great reptile, which was still thrashing at the end of its rope. When he was safely downstream, he swam with labored strokes back to the shallows, then waded to the sandy bank on trembling legs. He blew three blasts on his hunting horn, then lay exhausted on the bank, waiting for his brothers to arrive.
* * *
The trials experienced by the Errolsons as they hauled the alligator to the riverbank, tied it up, loaded it onto a mule-drawn haycart, and drove it to the manor house compose a long and colorful story—too long to recount in detail. The whole adventure consumed a full afternoon and involved six broken ropes, the near-total destruction of a hay cart, and numerous scrapes and bruises to the Errolson brothers. Percy, who had the unenviable job of roping the thrashing tail, was flung into the river twice. The Errolsons eventually had to call on ten farm workers from the indigo field to help them heave the great beast onto the cart. No one suffered any serious harm, and no harm of any sort came to the tough old alligator.
Waiting in front of the manor house, Errol beamed with pride as he watched his sons trudge up the path. The splintered cart tilted dangerously to one side, then to the other, as the alligator hurled itself against the sides of the cart. The mules, clearly displeased, flattened their ears back against their heads. Percy halted them in the shade of a great oak tree that overhung the path.
Errol peered over the side of the wagon at the trussed and blindfolded alligator. “Just look at the great blind Samson,” he laughed, as the reptile again threw itself at the wall of the cart. “He’s determined to bring the walls down on himself, like Samson of old!” From that moment on, the alligator went by the name of Samson.
“Boys,” Errol continued, “that’s a fine animal you’ve caught. He’ll make quite an addition to King Darrow’s collection.”
Aidan felt a twinge of sadness at the thought of this magnificent creature, once the master of all he surveyed, becoming part of anyone’s collection, even a king’s. Before this moment, he had given little thought to how the alligator might feel about things.
Errol saw the sadness in his son’s face. “Aidan, you needn’t worry about Samson. He’ll be right at home in the moat of Tambluff Castle. Plenty to eat, plenty of smaller alligators to boss, a nice sandbar to sun himself on … Alligators don’t ask for much more than that, do they?”
“I don’t suppose so,” Aidan answered, but he suspected that Samson would have preferred to be left alone.
“Yes, I’ll be very proud to give such a creature to King Darrow—all the prouder because my own sons captured him.” He patted Aidan’s shoulder. “And I was thinking, because you boys were the ones who caught him, maybe you’d like to be the ones to deliver him to King Darrow.”
The Errolsons looked at their father, then at each other, disbelieving. Was Father talking about a trip to Tambluff Castle? None of Errol’s sons, not even Brennus or Maynard, had ever set foot within the castle walls. There was hardly anything they more desired to do.
“We have been invited to Darrow’s castle on Midsummer’s Night, two weeks hence. For a treaty feast.”
A wave of excitement rippled through Errol’s sons. “Which of us is invited?” Jasper asked tentatively, afraid even to hope that he might be included.
“All of us,” Errol answered. “The Four and Twenty Nobles are all invited and all of their sons.”
A treaty feast! The Errolsons could hardly contain their excitement. “There can be no treaty feast without a treaty,” said Jasper. “Have we made a new alliance?”
A cloud passed over Errol’s face. “Yes, with the Pyrthen Empire,” he answered. “We have made an alliance with our bitterest enemy.”
“Why do you frown?” asked Brennus. “This is wonderful news—to have our most dangerous enemy become our friend!”
“They have been fearsome foes these many years,” Errol answered. “But I fear their friendship more than I fear their enmity.”
“But, Father,” Maynard persisted, “with the great empire as our ally, what other enemy could rise against us?”
“With Pyrth as a friend,” said Errol, “we may have no need of enemies. They do not love what we love. They love only power.”
He gestured at a great sprawling live oak that shaded them. “What is this, Maynard?”
Maynard thought the question odd but certainly not hard to answer. “It’s an oak tree.”
“You see a tree,” answered Errol. “A Pyrthen sees lumber.” He ran his hand along the low sweep of a mas
sive limb. “You find beauty in such a graceful curve. A Pyrthen sees the curving ribs of the imperial navy’s next warship.” Samson crashed against the wagon. Errol nodded toward the sound. “You thought that was an alligator? No, that’s seven pairs of officers’ boots.”
“Boys,” he continued, “don’t you ever forget how we got here. When the kingdom of Halverdy fell to the Pyrthens, your great-great-grandparents and a handful of others decided they’d rather take their chances on this uninhabited island than live under Pyrthen rule.” No matter how many times he recounted this history, Errol still grew misty-eyed to think of his forebears, the last free people on a vast continent, giving up all their worldly goods and comforts to start their lives over in a teeming wilderness.
“Our very existence is an act of defiance against the Pyrthen Empire. Four times they’ve invaded this island. And four times the stout men of Corenwald sent them home in disgrace.” Errol smiled as he thought of it. “They’ve swallowed up a whole continent, but people who have a taste for freedom aren’t easily conquered.”
Errol had spent much of his adult life fighting Pyrthens. Indeed, it seemed that all of the suffering experienced by Errol and his family had come at the hands of the great empire. He still walked with a slight limp, his leg having been crushed by a Pyrthen catapult stone ten years earlier at the fourth siege of Tambluff. Twice he had rebuilt the manor house after Pyrthen raiders had torched it in the second and third western invasions. Countless friends had died in battles with the Pyrthens. And Errol’s dearest treasure—they had taken that too. His wife
Sophronia was killed in a Pyrthen raid while Errol was away at the fourth siege. Aidan was only two years old.
“Boys, you know I’m an old warrior. But I’ve never been a warmonger. I hope I’ve taught you to seek peace wherever it can be found. But an alliance with the Pyrthens …” Errol’s voice trailed off.
“Times are changing, boys. Not everybody still keeps the old Corenwalder ways. There aren’t many of the Four and Twenty Nobles who still make their sons work alongside their farmhands.” He nudged Brennus, who had often voiced this very complaint. “Of the Four and Twenty, I think I’m the only one who still wears homespun. I know things change. Still, I keep asking one question: Can Corenwald be a friend to Pyrth and still be Corenwald?”
Errol grew quiet as thoughts of the future crowded upon him. But he soon shook off his gloom. “The king knows my mind. So do the Four and Twenty, and they have decided to go forward with this alliance. There is nothing left now but to stand with them. We will speak no more of this today.
“I’ll get Smithy started building a cage of iron and oak for Samson.”
“From the looks of this hay cart,” offered Percy, “you’d better talk to Waggoner too.”
On Midsummer’s Eve, in the second watch of the night, Errol and his sons left on their journey to Tambluff Castle. Samson rode in his heavy iron cage on an oversize oxcart that Waggoner, the cart builder, had constructed especially for the trip. Errol and Brennus rode ahead of the oxen while Maynard, Jasper, Percy, and Aidan rode one at each corner of the cart, like a troop of bodyguards to the great alligator.
The sandy River Road shone like a white ribbon beneath the round midsummer’s moon. It was easy going in the cool of the night, and there was hardly a hill all the way to Tambluff. But still they made slow progress, the team of oxen plodding along at its deliberate pace. Aidan nodded in his saddle, lulled by the rhythmic creaking of the cartwheels.
The little village of Hustingreen, two leagues from Longleaf, was still asleep when the Errolsons inched through. A small dog yapped a few sharp barks at the strangers, but he beat a hasty retreat when Samson raised his head to investigate, and they heard no more from the little dog. Aidan smiled to think of the villagers, unaware of the terrifying beast that crept only feet away from the beds where they slept so snugly.
They were more than halfway to Tambluff when the first pink rays of dawn glimmered in the east. By mid-morning, they were in sight of the castle’s honey-brown parapets. Tambluff Castle was situated on a high sandstone bluff overlooking the River Tam. The sandstone from which the castle was built came from just across the river and, like the bluff stone, was a rich honey color, between brown and gold. The exact match between the masonry and the surrounding bedrock gave the impression that the castle hadn’t been built on the bluff but carved from it.
Tambluff Castle was nestled in a U-shaped bend where the river bulged eastward to wind around the sandstone promontory. So the castle had deep river on three sides. Along the fourth side, which bordered the city of Tambluff, the king had dug a wide moat, making an island of Tambluff Castle and providing a habitat for his alligators.
The city of Tambluff, Corenwald’s capital city, sat at the foot of the castle on the west bank of the southward-flowing Tam. The city walls formed a nearly exact square mile. Three walls were perfectly straight, twenty feet high, one mile long, and built at right angles to one another. The east wall followed the river. It served as a levee to protect the city from flooding. It also protected the city from enemies who would attack from the water. Each of the walls—except the east wall, which had a moat and drawbridge—had a gatehouse in its exact center.
It was nearly noon when the Errolsons reached Tambluff’s south gate. Southporter, the old keeper of the gate, recognized them from a distance and came down the
gatehouse steps to meet them. “Errol, old boy,” he shouted, genuinely glad to see him. “I’ve been watching for you. What’s took you so long?” Southporter was a peasant, but he spoke to the nobleman with the easy familiarity that had long been the custom among Corenwalders of any rank.
“What’s kept us, you say?” laughed Errol. “Why don’t you come see for yourself?”
Walking around to see what was in the oxcart, Southporter whistled with surprise and awe. “That’s quite a beast. For Darrow’s moat?”
“Yes sir,” answered Errol. “Aidan, my youngest son, captured him where the Tam runs along the edge of our lands.”
Southporter looked at Aidan with undisguised admiration and patted him on the shoulder. “You must be some kind of hunter!”
Aidan reddened. “Father gives me more credit than I deserve. I slipped a rope around his snout, so in a way you could say I caught him. But in the end, I did no more than my brothers.”
“Well, anyhow,” answered Southporter, “he’s a good one. King Darrow will be glad to have him.”
The old gatekeeper gripped two bars of the cage and leaned over toward the unmoving alligator. He spoke to the great monster the way one speaks to a puppy in a box. “Got a name, big fellow?”
For an answer, Samson sprang to life and lunged at the gatekeeper with a terrifying roar. The clapping of his massive jaws sounded like two great planks being struck together. He seemed intent on dismembering the cheeky gatekeeper.
Southporter lurched backward and fell on the cobblestone pavement. His hat toppled from his head and rolled away. The gatekeeper quickly counted his fingers, then felt around on his face to make sure his nose was still there.
“His name’s Samson,” Aidan offered as he helped Southporter to his feet.
“Samson, you say? Well, Samson’s manners is none too refined.”
Percy chuckled. “Don’t judge the poor fellow too harshly. He’s had a hard day, and it’s not even noon yet.” Southporter looked dubiously in the alligator’s direction.
“So, old friend,” Errol broke in, “have the Four and Twenty all arrived?”
“I reckon so,” Southporter answered, “though I can only speak to the ones what come through the south gate. Of the six of you whose estates lie south by the River Road, you’re the last one to come through the gate.”
“And our guests,” asked Errol, “I assume they have arrived?”
The old gatekeeper’s face darkened. “The Pyrthens got here three days ago. And ever since, they’ve been strutting around Tambluff like a passel of roosters—just like they own the place. I don’t like it one bit, Errol, and I don’t care who knows it.”
No one quite knew what to say to this. Southporter pressed his point. “I’m just a gatekeeper, Errol. You’re a great nobleman. So maybe you can help me understand. How are we all of a sudden friends with these folks?”
Errol tried to formulate an answer, but before he got a chance to speak, Southporter began again. “Four times they’ve brought their armies to these city walls, and four
times we sent them running home like their pants was on fire. I took some pleasure in that; I don’t care who knows it.
“Four times the Pyrthens’ battering rams have pounded on this gate—
my
gate. My job was to pour boiling oil on their heads, but I would have gladly done it for free. I don’t care who knows it.”
He paused for effect. “But now we open up the west gate and invite them to traipse right in? I don’t understand this, Errol!”
At the Council of the Four and Twenty a few weeks earlier, Errol had expressed these very same sentiments. He would have gladly told Southporter how heartily he agreed with him, but he held his tongue for fear of seeming disrespectful to King Darrow.
“But let me tell you this, friend,” Southporter continued. “If the Pyrthens had come to the south gate instead of the west gate, they’d still be standing right where you are—outside of my wall.”
Errol laughed. “Spoken like a true Corenwalder.”
“A Corenwalder true and free,” the gatekeeper replied. His eyes glittered with pride.
Aidan was proud to know the old man. “May you ever be so,” said Errol. “But now we must be off to the castle.”
“I’ll send a messenger ahead of you to tell Gamekeeper Wendell that Samson is on his way.”
“Thank you, friend,” Errol answered. “He knows to expect us.”
“He’ll be mighty proud to get such a beast. And I’ll be just as proud to see him go; I don’t care who knows it.”
Darrow’s castle was only a half-mile from the south gate. But it was no small feat to maneuver the big oxcart through the narrow, crowded lanes of the capital city. Down every street, the busy throng parted before them and stared in awe at the monstrous alligator. An eighteen-foot alligator wasn’t something Corenwalders saw every day, even in the big city.
Boys and girls clambered up the thatched roofs of wayside houses or hung from the signs in front of market stalls, the better to get a look at Samson. The onlookers peppered the Errolsons with questions.
“Where did you find such a monster?”
“Has he ever eaten anybody?”
“What are you going to do with him?”
A butcher leaning on the counter in front of his stall offered to buy the great reptile. “Must be a hundred and fifty pounds of meat in that tail,” he remarked. But when Percy made as if to open the cage, the butcher quickly retracted his offer. He retracted his whole person, in fact, vaulting over the counter and clattering the shutters down behind him in a single, rapid motion.
Aidan and his brothers couldn’t help but strut a little to see that their Samson was causing such a sensation in the city. Father, too, was visibly proud of his sons, especially of Aidan. He knew that all five had done their parts in capturing Samson. But he also knew that without Aidan’s initiative and resourcefulness, none of them would have had the chance to test their strength and their wits against the great beast.
By the time the Errolsons reached Tambluff Castle, they were followed by an army of young Tambluffers—
messenger boys, shopgirls, and apprentices of all sorts who dropped what they were doing to watch the fun. But when the oxcart finally began creaking up the ramp that led to the drawbridge landing, the followers fell away. Two guards on the near side of the drawbridge signaled to two guards on the battlements above the gatehouse. The massive drawbridge began to jerk downward, a foot at a time.
The guards wore the dress uniform of Darrow’s royal guard. Over a coat of chain mail hung a loosely fitting silk tunic of royal blue emblazoned with the golden boar, the emblem of the House of Darrow. The tunic was cinched with a leather belt, from which hung a scabbard and sword. The guards’ round helmets were made of burnished steel and were embellished with an egret’s plume dyed to match the golden boar.
As the drawbridge bumped its way down, Aidan peered over the low wall into the moat below. A tangle of large alligators wallowed and writhed over one another. But none was as big as Samson.
Father is right,
Aidan thought.
Samson will have plenty of alligators to boss.
He could see that the floor of the moat was sand rather than stone. Its gentle slope created a sandy beach where the alligators could sun themselves. There were also a number of sandbars and logs, which the larger animals had reserved for themselves. Aidan tried to guess which spot Samson would stake out when he was released into the moat.
One of the alligators in the moat snapped its jaws in Aidan’s direction; Aidan flinched involuntarily. The guard standing near him smiled and winked. “Just be glad you
aren’t the one who has to clean that place out,” he whispered.
The bridge finally dropped into place. At the far end, just inside the castle wall, waited Wendell, the royal gamekeeper. He was a red-faced, blustery man who always smelled like campfires. Aidan knew him from his many hunting trips to Longleaf.
“Welcome, welcome,” he boomed. “Glad you’re here. I’ll take this big fellow off your hands—Samson, isn’t it?—and get him ready.”
Now Wendell addressed Samson directly: “You’re as big as they said! Come along, now. King Darrow is going to be glad to see you. He’s got big plans for you!”
And with that, Samson was wheeled away. Hostlers led the horses away to the stables, and the steward showed Errol and his sons to their apartments. There they rested until sundown, when the treaty feast was set to begin.