Split Heirs (5 page)

If those two could be raised by wolverines, then why couldn't this pair be raised by sheep?

Odo's heart swelled with pride. Maybe he would raise himself a pair of heroes! Maybe, centuries from now, people would remember the stories of this pair, raised by Odo and his sheep before setting forth upon lives of adventure!

Of course, Odo would be dead by then, but it might be nice to be remembered. And meanwhile, when they got a bit bigger, he could get some work out of them; there was plenty to do around the mountain.

And they would need names.

Remulo and Rommis were the obvious choices, and he had seen that they were both boys when Ludmilla had changed their nappies, but Odo had a ram by the name of Rommis already. He frowned, and sucked on the wisp of beard in his mouth.

It uncoiled down his throat and choked him, sending him into a prolonged coughing fit, the sound of which woke the babies. When Odo had extracted the treacherous whiskers and regained his composure, he devoted himself to trying to quiet the boys, using a moistened finger as an impromptu pacifier.

It didn't work.

In desperation, he took a lantern and set out to find Audrea, despite the utter darkness outside. The babies lay wailing in one corner of the cottage, Ludmilla lay dead in the other, and once outside Odo seriously considered not coming back.

But that, he thought, wouldn't be right; his sheep were depending on him. He squared his shoulders, lifted the lantern high, and trudged onward.

By the time he dragged Audrea into the cottage, ignoring her bleats of protest, both babies were blissfully asleep again. Odo glared down at them, then tethered Audrea to the leg of his only table and sat down on the fleecy pallet.

“Trouble,” he said, “these two'll be trouble.” He sighed. “Like those two uncles of mine that got hanged down in Lichenbury.” He looked down at the tiny red faces and squinty closed eyes. “They even look like 'em.” He poked gently at the boy on the right. “Guess I'll call you after Uncle Dunwin,” he said, “and t'other after Uncle Wulfrith.”

The newly named Wulfrith cooed softly.

Chapter Four

“Listen to me, you stupid earwig,” said Queen Artemisia, pearly teeth clenched almost to the splintering point. “What is so precious hard about remembering one paltry message?”

“Nothin',” replied the hapless page. He stared at his shoes and tried to get his voice up above a whisper. “'Cept the words of it, m'lady.”

Artemisia uttered a sound not meant for human lips to emit nor ears to receive. In the several weeks since Ludmilla's departure with the twins, she had learned an awful lot about uncanny, unearthly, unholy, downright nerve-shattering sounds from her infant daughter. The princess (
No, no: the
prince!
I must always think of her as the prince
, Artemisia thought furiously.
Both our lives depend upon it.
) had a healthy set of lungs and an unhealthy case of the colic.

“Very well, nit,” said the queen. “I will try just once more, and if you fail to memorize my message then, I will summon my lord King Gudge and say that you tried to ravish me. You won't like what happens next. I think it will involve wolverines.”

“Yes'm,” the page replied miserably.

His name was Spurge, and his Old Hydrangean pedigree was impeccable. Artemisia felt certain that she could rely on his loyalty and discretion when she chose him for this most delicate of missions. Alack, although the lad's qualifications looked good on parchment, showing a noble bloodline that was almost as blue and inbred as Artemisia's own, in her case the result was fine bone structure, fiery temper, and a congenital tendency to decorate with too much lace, while in his the end product was a mind like a sieve, a nose like a spatula, and feet like a pair of roasting pans, with the rest of his bones poking out at awkward angles all over his body like a complete set of silver utensils concealed in a pastry bag.

Spurge didn't look capable of ravishing a newt, but even he was sharp enough to know that King Gudge's idea of justice didn't hold much truck with physical evidence. Not when there were wolverines to be exercised. “I'll give it another go.” Closing his eyes and summoning up all seven of his brain cells, Spurge began to recite:

“Greetings unto the Black Weasel, brave and heroic dashing leader of…”

“
‘
Brave
and
dashing
heroic leader,
'
” the queen prompted.

“Oh? Oh. Orright. Um…” Spurge tried to recapture his daisy-chain of thought, but the petals were long since blasted from their stems. “Urrrrh
—
Greetings unto the Black Wolverine
—
no, wait, that's not…Greetings unto the Black
Weasel
, brave and dashing heroic wolverine of
—
Ooohh!” Spurge writhed like one in pain and began to gibber. His bleats of agony woke the baby who began to wail.

Murder flashed in the queen's bloodshot eyes. “
That
did it,” she pronounced with awful finality. “It took me four blessed
hours
to get that child to go to sleep, and now you've gone and done it. I'm summoning the king. When I get through telling him about you, you will
pray
for wolverines!”

Poor Spurge emitted a squeal of pure terror and bolted for the tower window. Perhaps he intended to cheat Fate, and any spare wolverines, by hurling himself to his death. Perhaps he actually believed what everyone always told him, which was: “Spurge, your head's so full of air that if you jumped out a tower window, you'd float!”

Whatever the case, it would remain a mystery. The royal cradle stood between him and the window, and as if by instinct, one of Spurge's unwieldy feet jerked out with a life of its own to snag itself in the cradle skirtings. Spurge fell flat on his face, the cradle toppling after, the baby airborne, and Queen Artemisia paralyzed with the certainty that her precious infant was going take a headfirst landing. (King Pyron the Goosefooted was the only Old Hydrangean king for whom there was documentary evidence to confirm that he had indeed been dropped on his head as a child, and no royal mother in her right mind wished to risk a similar fate befalling her offspring. His abbreviated reign was still spoken of with cold dread as the “Hundred Days of Metal Implements and Pudding.”)

What the queen did not know was that clumsy Spurge had the sharpest set of reflexes in the kingdom. It was a matter of survival. As a lad at home he had broken one priceless, unique, irreplaceable art object after another, under the horrified eye of his mother, Neurissa of the White Hand. The White Hand was also the Heavy Hand, which was why Spurge had developed the automatic reaction of moving fast
—
no, really fast
—
no, even faster than
that
—
just as soon as his brain got the message:
Aaaargh! We did it again!

There was blur of livery, a flash of leaping page, and the infant was plucked from midair by Spurge's huge, occasionally capable hands. Cuddled securely to Spurge's chest, the baby gurgled with joy, eyes bright. On bended knee, Spurge proffered the contented child to his queen, saying, “Um…yours, m'lady.”

The queen fainted.

Artemisia regained her senses to the words, “
—
Weasel, brave and dashing heroic leader of the Bold Bush-dwellers. The White Doe sends to learn
—
to learn whether the Bun Duzzard
—
no, perish it all, that couldn't be it
—
the
Dun Buzzard
has yet placed the
—
uh
—
the brace of Golden Eaglets in your care.”

She sat up slowly and turned towards the sound of the voice. It was Spurge, still holding the baby, and pacing back and forth before the queen's dressing-glass as he rattled off her secret message. “Yet does the White Doe mean you to know that one of the aforesaid Golden Eaglets is not the
—
come
on
, Spurge, you better do this right, those wolverines have got
teeth
on 'em!
—
not the Rosy Hind she fancied, but the matched Silver Hart of the other.” He looked at the baby. “Does that make any sense to you, Your Royal Highness?” The baby gurgled. “Nah, nor to me, either. Oh well.” He shrugged and plowed on. “It is well known that the Dun Buzzard has the brains of a Squashed Frog. Thus we lay this error to her charge. If the Dun Buzzard yet roost among you, we grant you the freedom to rearrange her pinfeathers; look to't.”

Queen Artemisia nodded, satisfied with Spurge's progress. What was so difficult about the message, after all? These pages always made a fuss about nothing. At the mirror, Spurge forged ahead: “Therefore
—
uh
—
therefore send one Silver Hart by your swiftest messenger that the White Doe may make of a Silver Hart a Rosy Hind and…and…and…Oh, plague take it! How in the name of cold fried slaw can anyone turn your heart into your behind I don't know. Nor want to.” Spurge sighed. “Bring on the wolverines.”

“No, no, gentle Spurge, do not despair!” cried Queen Artemisia, scrambling to her feet. “You have the message perfectly. Well, as perfectly as you ever will have it. These are chancy times. We must make do. Now go, and hasten back with the Black Weasel's reply! Oh, and pass me the prince, would you?” She gathered the sleeping babe gratefully from the page's arms, only to discover that her cherished daughter was in need of changing as well as exchanging.

She thought of having Spurge take care of the nasty business
—
after all, with his intelligence he might not notice that the “prince” was singularly underendowed. And if he did manage to notice, he might assume that royal boy-babies sort of...
acquire
such things later on in life, at about the same time they win their first sword.

But with the keen instinct of males everywhere when the chance of having to change a diaper loomed, Spurge was long gone.

* * * *

“Halt! Who goes there?” cried a voice from the thickest part of the old oak's crown.

“
Where?
” yelped Spurge, turning around in his saddle and peering into the underbrush in an access of panic.

“Nowhere, you dope.” The voice from amid the leaves sounded fed up. “I mean, yes,
some
where. There. Where you are. You. Who are you?”

“Me?” Spurge made it sound like one of the Seven Great Unanswerables of Old Hydrangean Philosophy (Number Three was:
Why is it that nothing you do, unto the conquest of countless kingdoms, is ever enough to satisfy your mother?
)

“You see anyone else around?” the tree replied. It was mighty nasty for an oak. At its foot, a thicket of gorse snickered cruelly. “Well, come on, talk! Tell us who you are and what business you've got here or…or…”

“Or we toast his kidneys for our tea!” the gorse bush shouted enthusiastically.

“Yuck,” said the oak. “That is so gross that no one would ever take it seriously. And what good's a threat if nobody believes you're gonna do it?”

The gorse bush was miffed. “'Sbetter than any threat
you
ever come up with. Hunh! Best you done was tell that wandering peddler that if he didn't swear loyalty to the Black Weasel, we'd smack him.”

“The…the Black Weasel?” Hope lit Spurge's beady eyes. “You veggers know the Black Weasel, brave and dashing heroic leader of the Bold Bush-dwellers?”

“
‘Veggers'? What's 'at?” the oak demanded.

“Um…you know, plants. Growing things. I mean, I heard as how the Black Weasel, braveanddashingwhatsit, was the master of the jolly greenwood, but I never knew he had a bunch of vegetables on his side.”

“
Who you callin' a vegetable?
” There was a loud rustling from the old oak's crown, then a flurry of leaves as a small, dark object plunged from on high. It landed in the gorse bush, which yelped, “Get
off
me, Mole, you idjit! Ow! Ow! That's my
eye
!” Further tussling in the prickly foliage followed until at last the thick stems parted and the gorse bush yielded up a pair of the dirtiest, scruffiest, sulkiest lads Spurge had ever seen. One was taller and more wiry than the other, dark-haired and dark-eyed; his friend was blond, under a layer of leaf mold, with blue eyes and a sturdier build. Apart from these minor differences, the boys were equally young, filthy, and sullen.

They were also heavily armed with longbows which they handled with disturbing expertise. Arrows nocked, bowstrings taut, both weapons were aimed at Spurge's heart.

“We may be vegetables,” said the blond with an evil grin, “but you're dead meat.”

It was shortly thereafter that Spurge found himself relieved of his horse and conducted on foot into the presence of the Black Weasel. He had heard tales and songs about this freebooter of the forest
—
quite a startling number of them, considering that the Black Weasel had not been in the forest freebooting business for more than three years at most.

The queen's messenger looked around him, gaping at the wonders of the Bold Bush-dweller's stronghold. The tales had not lied. There stood the king-tree, an enormously aged beech which was the central rallying point of the Black Weasel's forces. At its gnarled roots stood a gilded throne, likely plunder from some luckless Gorgorian merchant's stock, and lounging crosswise upon the silken cushions reposed the Black Weasel himself.

He was dressed all in black, of course, a fact which should have surprised no one of moderate intelligence. (Spurge was astonished.) In his gloved hands he cupped a golden goblet and sipped from it with a courtier's practiced manner. Flanking the throne were a score of youths, none among them much older than Spurge's captors. Although their jerkins, tunics, and hose were of leafy green and barky brown, the patches of flaming crimson acne dappling nearly every cheek made them poor candidates for camouflage maneuvers. They all looked peeved.

“Well, well, what have we here?” the Black Weasel drawled, slinging his legs around and sitting up straight.

“Lunch,” suggested Spurge's fair-haired guard, and laughed until his voice cracked.

“Please, Your Weaselship, I
—yow!
” cried Spurge, falling to his knees before the throne to discover rather sharply that a forest floor is a bit rockier than your common Old Hydrangean reception room. Holding back tears he said, “I've got a message for you. From
—
uh
—
the White Buzzard. No, wait, the White Wolver…no, no, there's a behind in it someplace.”

“Indeed there is.” The Black Weasel arched one sooty brow and waved his men away. “I would hear what this dolt has to tell me in private. Go, my hearties, get you gone.”

The Black Weasel's youthful honor-guard stayed put. “Get us gone where?” one demanded.

“Oh, I don't know.” The Black Weasel was impatient. “Anywhere. It's a big forest.”

“Yeah, and there's nothin' to
do
anywhere in it,” a second spindly-legged Bold Bush-dweller pointed out.

“It's
boring
,” a third affirmed.

“Why don't you go out and waylay some passing merchants?” the Black Weasel suggested.

“We done that,” the first lad said. “Took all their goods an' stripped 'em of their breeches besides.”

“We
always
strip 'em of their breeches,” said the second boy.

“It's
boring
,” the third repeated.

“Well, then, why don't you go have archery practice? Shoot at the butts.”

“Done that, too,” said a fourth.

“While them merchants was runnin' off.”

“Booooooooorrrrrrrriiiiinnnnnnng!”

The Black Weasel scowled. The boys scowled back. With a snort that rippled his magnificent black beard and moustache, the Black Weasel set down his goblet, cupped his hands to his mouth and bawled, “Tadwyl! Tadwyl, get your worthless shanks over here at once!”