The Gully Snipe (The Dual World Book 1) (30 page)

“You... uh...” whispered Gully in horror, “oh, by the staring stars in the sky above, this cannot be!”

What Gully saw in front of him could not possibly be, but neither could he further risk the transgression if it was. He immediately dropped to one knee and looked squarely at the ground beneath the person in front of him. He mumbled to the man nervously, “Unless you have stolen the clothes you wear, then you are Prince Thaybrill! Forgive my disrespect, Your Highness!”

Gully did not dare look up and his mind began to spin and wheel, furiously working at what events might have transpired to create this situation. Gully had a good memory for faces, and the man before him had to be the crown prince, the future king of all the Iisendom.

But he had assumed that most, if not all, of the nobility were somehow a part of this plot to kidnap and sell the citizens of Iisen, and the Merchers too, into slavery. If veBasstrolle was a key part of it, and the Domo Regent was as well, then the crown prince must needs be a part of it, too. In fact, he was to marry the Maqaran princess to align the two kingdoms, which
had
to mean he was a part of the conspiracy.

But here was the crown prince in front of him, stolen away like a common peasant. How could it be that the future king himself would now be a victim of the cabal behind the abductions?

As he kept one knee down and stared at the ground, the other possibility struck into his chest, causing a shrieking panic in him. These people, these criminals, knew someone had freed two victims; they knew someone had discovered their crimes. Was it possible that they had set a trap to draw him out? To get him to attempt to free another victim so that they could catch him?

The possibility had merit and Gully knew it.
But this is the crown prince
, thought Gully. Surely they would never use Prince Thaybrill as a lure, would they? They would use another swordsman complicit in this trade as a bait, wouldn’t they?

His thoughts spun wildly, trying to understand and make sense of the situation, and he was on the verge of simply running off into the woods he called home. If the prince was somehow a true victim, then he was now freed and could return home. If this was somehow a trap being sprung, they would have to come after Gully into the marshes, and he would survive while they perished.

An unexpected noise drew Gully’s attention and his eyes. He had been so wrapped up in his thoughts that he had not realized that the man, the prince, had slid down and now sat on the ground in front of Gully, his arms wrapped around his knees while he sobbed miserably.

Gully stared for a moment. If this was a trap, it was a strange sort of one.

He ventured, “You... you are Prince Thaybrill, are you not?”

The man in front of him sniffled, picked up one of the apples and threw it angrily into the woods in frustration. “I... I am. Or was. I no longer know since I have been betrayed by everyone I have trusted all of my life. Betrayed and assaulted and hauled off in a cart to my death.”

Gully bristled internally a little. It would not have been the prince’s death, and at least he could acknowledge that he had been saved from such a fate. He held his tongue and said timidly, “Highness, you were not being taken to your death. Do you not know the fate that was awaiting you?”

“I was not to be taken into the woods and killed? But the Domo Regent said something about King Azi that made no sense to me.”

“Nay, Highness, I do not think you would have been killed. But we do not have time now for explanations. These soldiers will not be held indefinitely by the knots I was able to tie. We must get away!” said Gully.

The prince looked at his boots and howled in miserable defeat, “And go where? There is nowhere I am safe now. My Domo Regent and Lord Marshal have led a coup to rid themselves of me and take the throne for their own ends. You have only delayed my fate and I am still lost. The Iisendom is lost!”

Gully again felt irked that the prince seemed to place no value on his rescue. It affirmed for Gully how nobility and royalty felt no appreciation for what people did for them. Nonetheless, he did not let these feelings take hold of his tongue.

He realized he had no idea what to say, though. If what the prince said was true, then things had moved beyond selling peasants into slavery, and Gully was now in far over his head. How could he fight back against men with so much power and cunning that they could do this to the future king and steal an entire kingdom away?

Gully resolved himself. The prince, a man his own age, felt lost and needed to know that not everyone was against him. There were still people to be trusted.

“That’s not true, Your Highness,” said Gully. “I am here, and I will not do wrong by you. You are still the rightful heir and we have interrupted their plans. But we need to get away to safer ground and think through our options.”

“Go where, though?”

“The woods! The bogs! None will dare follow us there.”

The prince stopped looking miserable long enough to look horrified instead. “The bogs?! I will die quicker there than at the hands of my kidnappers! You assure our death by suggesting such a plan!”

“Nay,” said Gully, swelling some with pride, “There is no one that knows these woods the way that I do. I know them the way I know the backs of my own eyelids, Sire!”

The prince looked skeptical. “But are we to just hide in the damp woods?”

Gully stood and offered his hand to help the prince up. The prince took the offered assistance and stood with Gully.

Gully said, with an urgent glance over at the swordsmen, “I grew up here. My cabin is not too far and no one will be able to find us there. But we must leave now.”

The prince looked helpless for a moment, then he seemed to make up his mind. He said, “I will go with you if you will lead. And please call me Thaybrill. Under the circumstances, the rigid formalities seem rather pointless.”

Gully smiled and nodded.

“May I ask your name, sir?” asked the prince politely.

Gully did not even hesitate this time. “Bayle... my name is Bayle Delescer,” he replied with a slight bow of his head.

Gully held up his hand to Prince Thaybrill to get him to wait for a moment. He said, “Before we go, one last thing...”

He walked over to the guards and searched them. Normally he would have taken whatever coinpurses they had in their pockets, but he would not do that in front of the prince. Instead, he found a knife that one of them still had hidden in his belt. He took it and put it in his own belt.

Gully finished disarming the kidnappers and the prince shook his head as he watched. He said, “If I had only realized these gardeners were in on this plot against me!”

“Your Highness... I mean, Thaybrill,” said Gully as he unhitched the half-mule from the cart, “these men are only dressed as gardeners, but that is not whom they are in truth.” He handed the knife he had taken to the prince to look at.

Thaybrill examined the knife and exclaimed, “This is the dagger of a swordsman in the Guard! Members of my own Guard! If the whole Kingdom Guard is against me then this is far more hopeless than I thought!” He looked so beaten that Gully worried he was going to slump to the ground and begin sobbing again.

Gully said, “Yes, these men are trained swordsmen, but I doubt the entire Kingdom Guard is against you. In fact, I know that some are still fully loyal to you and will fight for you with all might and main. So do not despair, Prince Thaybrill!”

Gully led the half-mule around and directed it back towards the city. He smacked it on the rear and the mule started his patient walk back towards his home.

“What makes you so sure of that?” asked Thaybrill.

“I will explain, but we must leave, and leave now. Follow me, please, keeping precisely in the path that I use. And if I tell you not to step somewhere, you must obey, Your Highness, as if your life depends on it. The bogs are often hard to discern from safe ground if you are not used to them, and they well-deserve their deadly reputation.”

The prince’s face turned determined, and also grateful. “Thank you, Bayle. I do appreciate what you have done for me.”

He studied Gully’s face for a moment, his face clouding briefly before he brushed it away and added, “I thought all was lost after you promised to free me in the city and then disappeared. I thought the next time I stood up from that cart, I would die. Thank you, again.”

Gully decided he would withhold further opinion of the prince, but he was feeling a little better about having rescued him.

Without even a look back at the two kidnappers, Gully plunged into the thick brush of the woods on the south side of the road, and the prince followed immediately behind him.

~~~~~

For hours, Gully and Thaybrill trudged carefully through the woods. Gully worried that the kidnappers may free themselves quickly and come after them. As a result of that fear, he chose to avoid the road entirely, but this slowed their progress. Also, Gully had to be careful on behalf of the prince, keeping an eye on where he walked and warning him to stay away from soft spots that could swallow a person and leave no trace behind.

Thaybrill mis-stepped only one time, sinking to his knees in a bog and starting to panic before Gully could grab hold of his arms and slowly pull him from the mire. A few minutes after that, they had to stop again as Thaybrill began to complain of his wet, muck-filled boots and how they rubbed uncomfortably against his feet. Gully was a little annoyed by this, but he knew it would only get worse, so he offered Thaybrill his own boots to wear instead. When Thaybrill asked what shoes Gully would wear, Gully replied he would go without, and told the prince how he had spent much of his youth without shoes in the woods, especially in the summertime.

When Thaybrill pulled the offered boots on, he was very pleased to find they fit him just as well as they had fit Gully. He seemed worried about Gully going without, and Gully said that there was probably an old pair at his cabin he could use instead once they arrived.

At several points early in their journey, Gully would stop and insist on utter silence while he listened carefully, checking that no one had managed to follow them. He knew it was all but impossible for anyone to do so given the path that they had taken, but with the company he had with him, the risks were now higher than ever and he would leave nothing to chance that he did not have to.

The rest of their time walking they spent telling each other what they knew of the crimes. Gully explained, a little apprehensively, to the beleaguered prince how he had he not been taken to be killed when he had been rescued. The prince almost went into shock when Gully told him that he would probably have had his tongue cut out that evening and that then he would have been sold into slavery in Maqara. It took some reassurances and coaxing to get the prince to resume their walk after hearing the cruelty that had been planned for him.

It got even worse, though, when Gully explained how that same fate was what had befallen all of the people of Iisen that had disappeared over the years.

Gully continued walking as he made the comment, but then turned and looked back when he realized how silent it had become. He found Thaybrill standing still a distance behind, his eyes glazed and distant.

The horror of what so many people had suffered hit the prince so hard that Gully had to go to him and insist they sit for a while. They sat on a log and Gully offered a couple of apples to the prince that he had taken from the cart while he tried to encourage him. They ate in silence and Gully watched the prince sting from the guilt at the cruel greed and treachery of his own court and advisors. He watched Thaybrill’s shock at the suffering visited on so many citizens of the realm, all for the increased fortunes of a very few. He sat quietly so the prince could better shoulder the burden that a single day had brought him.

When they resumed, Gully explained how he came to know about the plot and the people involved. He left out his own career as a thief, but explained that he came across a letter between Chelders veBasstrolle and someone whose initials were K. D. that described the slave trade in disguised terms. He told of how he had recently freed two men that had been kidnapped and only then understood the truth of what the letter was describing. He skirted around the truth some more and did not mention that the two men he freed were of the “feared” gypsy people in the northern woods, instead saying only how they had run away in fear. He related how he realized that the robbers holding the men captive were members of the Kingdom Guard disguising their identities.

Some of the aggravation Gully had felt at how overly indulged and entitled the mincing prince had behaved was softened when he saw how concerned the prince truly was for the abducted, and how appreciative he was for what Gully had done to fight these crimes and help the people who had been victimized by them.

Thaybrill took his turn and told Gully how he wound up as one more of the kidnapped that very day. He told Gully of the Domo Regent’s desire for the alignment with Maqara, the failed engagement, the Domo’s anger and frustration when he failed to win the Maqarans over. He told Gully how the Domo had left the royal party to meet with veBasstrolle as soon as they were back on Iisen land, almost certainly, he now felt, to plan his abduction. He finished by telling how the Domo Regent had lured him to the royal orchards that very day to be assaulted by the Lord Marshal and carried off to his doom.

The prince finished his story, and Gully could hear the despair in his voice again. The both of them fell into silence as they walked, each lost in his own melancholy thoughts and unsure what move should come next. Gully was certain that the men at the heart of these crimes would do any desperate thing now to keep the prince silenced, and there was no way to know whom to trust and whom not to trust among the royal court and noble families.

At least they had bought themselves some time to think through it.

By the time they arrived at the cabin, they were both very tired and Gully was glad to have an excuse not to dwell on it for a little while.