Unexpected Magic (57 page)

The meal was so full of chatter and exclamations like this, that it was a marvel they made any plans, but, somehow, they did. While they were finding out that Towerwood was already proving a mean, grabbing landlord, they were arranging to take a fresh horse each and to leave the Courcys' horses in their place. While Alex explained how he came to be in the dungeon too, Everard was discovering that Lord Tremath had indeed gone to Gairne to look for them. Towerwood had been too anxious to follow Robert to waste time fighting Lord Tremath.

“Then, Darron,” he said, “you must find him and tell him to follow us. We shall make for Bress and then Tremath, since Robert went that way. But we shall need men to help us against Towerwood. How glad I am that Tremath has proven such a friend! I thought he was too fond of Robert to be of any help to me.”

Lord Darron wanted to take Susannah with him and leave the three boys to find Robert alone, but Susannah was as foolish as Cecilia. As she pointed out, she had come so far without danger that it seemed she would not be harmed. So it was settled. Everard, Alex, Harry, and Susannah mounted the wheelwright's horses and rode out into the cold street again, calling good-bye and thank you as they went. Lord Darron went through the back gate on a shortcut to Gairne over the hills.

Everard and Alex both looked back at the people who had helped them so cheerfully as they stood waving at their gate. The woman had come out in the cold with much too little on in order to say good-bye. Alex thought it would take a great deal to better their ordinary down-to-earth niceness. They reminded him of the Gatlys.

“Alex,” said Everard, “what can I give them to reward them, that would not offend them too much? I would like to reward them for
believing
me as much as for their help.”

“Why not give them Endwait?” Alex suggested, but he thought as he said it that probably, here, people needed to be noble to own land.

“What an excellent idea!” said Everard. “That is exactly right. They are just the people! Alex, you must be my advisor if we—if we manage this next part successfully.”

Harry had been whispering to Susannah meanwhile. Now he rode up beside Everard and shyly held out his pistol. “Your Highness, Susannah and I think you ought to have this. We found out—the lady in the house told us—that no one would dare kill us.”

“Thank you,” said Everard gravely. “How do I use it?” The three boys rode with their heads together, and Harry and Alex explained about firearms. Alex found the other two still deferred to him, rather than to each other—which was just as well in this case, because he was better than Harry at explaining how things worked.

Susannah trotted impatiently ahead. Around her, the snow in the valley was already pink in the late winter afternoon. They had miles to go and it would be dark in less than two hours.

“Oh, hurry, do!” she called over her shoulder. Then she looked in front again and saw a strange wild man with a face like a boot riding on a donkey much too small for him. “Oh, my
goodness
!”

The man pointed at her. “Eleanor de Courcy lives in you. Am I right?”

Susannah did not quite know what to say. “Well, sir, my name is Susannah Courcy, really—” But Everard came galloping up in a flurry of snow and interrupted her.

“Aaron! Do you have any news? Do you know anything of my cousin Robert?”

Aaron told them how he had met Robert and Cecilia and where he had advised them to go. “But,” he said, “they will not reach the lands Outside. Their horse was too laden and already tiring. Towerwood was gaining fast.”

“Then,” said Everard, “I think I can find them, even if we come too late. Thanks, Aaron. Ask for any gift you like when I come back.” Then he said to the others: “We must hurry. Luckily the Forest is not too far from here. I would stake Landerness that Robert has gone to my hunting lodge.”

They hurried out of the valley and over the bridge. Then they turned left, into the red sun, and galloped. Alex was so worried about Cecilia that he was angry. He called out from time to time to whichever person happened to be galloping beside him:

“He did not need to take Cecilia! They must both be daft! What was she doing there?”

“Coming along, too, like me,” said Susannah. “I would have done the same, if it had been you, Alex.”

“Save your breath,” said Harry, and grinned to show it was not meant to be rude.

Everard simply shook his head, as worried as Alex.

After that it was all hard riding. They galloped along the road until the hills on either side were lower. Then they came out into the great upper part of the Laisle valley, with fields and farms and woods as far as they could see under the sun. Harry realized that the Principality was not underpopulated at all. Here, it seemed several times more cultivated than around his own Arnforth. He had scarcely time to think this, though, before Everard swung away from this wide land to the left, beside a signpost. Now they rode with the sun shining low across them, toward a black mass of woods in the distance.

It seemed as if the woods came out to meet them. First they passed bushes, then spinneys of beeches, then bigger clumps of woodland, and then a great area where ancient oaks stood here and there as they might in a gentleman's park. There, at last, as the sun was almost down, they entered the thick wood. Trees spun about them as they galloped, falling into new patterns, this way and that, as if they were riding in a black-and-white kaleidoscope. By this time, Susannah, good horsewoman though she was, was almost too tired to keep her seat. Harry, almost as tired, was riding all bunched up, like a bad jockey.

“Do you know what this is called?” Everard said. “This part of the Forest, I mean.”

“What?” asked Alex.

“Everard's Ride. After Everard I, who reigned seven hundred years ago. Listen!”

They all stopped and Harry jolted upright, pushing his fingers into his aching eye sockets. They could hear the bloodhounds, far off, giving tongue. If they shut their eyes and listened even harder, they could just hear men shouting.

Everard stretched his arm out, pointing in the direction he thought the sound came from. The others nodded. All of them were used to hunting. Then Everard moved his arm on, pointing beyond the sound, to where he thought the quarry might be. The others nodded again.

“If we go that way,” Everard said, “we can expect to come up for the—” Then he stopped, because he had nearly said “kill” and the others all knew he had. “Ride,” he said. “Like the wind.”

And they rode like the wind. Susannah's dark and Everard's fair hair streamed. They leaped bushes and crashed through brakes. They rode with their faces on their horses' necks under whippy low branches, and they galloped down clear rides as if it was for their own lives they rode. The sun went down and they crashed along by their own and their horses' instinct. The sound of the dogs and the men came closer, converging on the same place for which they rode. Everard put out a hand and caught a half-dead branch. Alex saw him nearly fall, pulling a small stick away to make another weapon. Alex tried to do the same, and almost wrenched his arm from its socket. Harry and Susannah were too tired even to try.

Then they saw lanterns and torches. They heard a horrible yelling, then nothing for a while. Then they heard Towerwood's shout of triumph, echoing around the whole wood. Then Alex heard Cecilia screaming. He hammered his horse with his fist. He and Everard together rushed between the last trees and came upon the backs of all Towerwood's waiting soldiers.

Everard went straight along them, slashing right and left with his stick. “Stand back there! Out of our way!” The soldiers surged aside, running and falling, too surprised to attack him. Alex rushed among them too, and they avoided him, though he hardly noticed them. He could see Cecilia struggling with Towerwood and Robert tied to the tree beyond. Two spears were thrown at Robert as they came, but both stuck in the tree, harmlessly.

“
Stop
!” shouted Everard. “Anyone who raises a finger against Cecilia Hornby or my Lord Howeforce is a dead man. My men have you surrounded. Drop your weapons.”

Alex realized that this was the only thing to say. He prayed that the soldiers would believe Everard. Otherwise, they were all as good as dead. Harry, still outside the line of soldiers, felt sick, knowing that he and Susannah were all the army Everard had.

For the moment at least, it worked. Towerwood was staring up at Everard as if he were a ghost, holding Cecilia's wrists as though he had forgotten her. The soldiers turned glumly to one another, muttering. Then first one man, then another, dropped his spear and unbuckled his sword. Everard waited, sitting very proud and high, until weapons were strewn in the snow all round. Then he turned just slightly to call over his shoulder.

“My Lord Henry Courcy, will you be so good as to collect these weapons.”

There was an impressed, surprised muttering from the soldiers at the name of Courcy, but Harry shook in his saddle. He knew Everard had gone too far. His name was all very well, but what would the soldiers think when they saw he was only another small boy? Susannah wanted to giggle. She knew it was deadly serious, but she had to put her hands over her mouth in order to hide her laughter.

Harry rode out into the circle of soldiers, with the lanterns lighting him up from beneath, and dismounted to obey orders. To his utter astonishment, no one interfered. He had not met Ralph of Tremath or James of March, or he would have realized that the soldiers were used to boys not much older than he was holding important commands and giving orders to men three times their age. Most of the men obligingly picked up their weapons for him. Two men muzzled the bloodhounds and tied them to a tree. Even the surliest kicked their swords and spears toward him without attempting to stop him.

Conrad of Towerwood, however, suspected him at once, probably more because he was an Outsider than because he was a boy. Towerwood watched Harry for a minute or so, and Alex and Everard watched Towerwood. They could see that he was planning something. At last he seemed to decide what to do.

“You fools!” he called to the soldiers. “The Prince has no more men than these boys. Seize them all, at once.”

Everard raised Harry's pistol. “Another word, Towerwood, and I shall shoot you before you can move a muscle.”

He should have shot him at once, but Alex could see he was nervous of the strange weapon. Towerwood looked up at him, his fat face all sucked inward and crafty. Then he jerked Cecilia toward him and crouched down behind her. Cecilia writhed and kicked backward, but it was like being locked in a steel fetter. She could not move.

“I dare you to shoot now,” Towerwood called to Everard. And then he shouted to his men. “Seize them, you fools!”

Harry was still collecting weapons. By now he had a stack of them to one side of Towerwood. He expected any second that he would be rushed and overpowered, but not one soldier moved. He looked at what he could see of their faces. They were staring at Towerwood crouched behind Cecilia, at Robert against the tree, and at Everard and Alex. It was as if they had suddenly turned audience at a play.

Everard sighed and handed the pistol to Alex. “It is yours, Alex. You are an Outsider too, and she is your sister. You can shoot if anyone can.”

Cecilia leaned forward fiercely, the tears on her face shining in the lantern light and in the moonlight now suddenly streaming through the bare branches overhead. “Shoot him, Alex. Do not think of me. Shoot!”

Susannah called from beyond the soldiers: “Please do what she says, Alex.”

But Alex could not, no more than Everard. It was impossible, even if he had been an expert marksman. It was too dark. Towerwood was almost entirely hidden behind Cecilia and Robert was just behind them. If he did not hit Cecilia, he would certainly hit Robert.

“Harry,” he called, “take one of those swords and come at him from your side.” He pulled his horse around, trying to come at Towerwood sideways on, opposite Harry.

Towerwood had foreseen this. He went scrambling backward, lugging Cecilia, chinking and panting, until he was up against Robert. Alex rode right up to him and fired downward, but it was not he who killed Towerwood. Before he had pulled the trigger, Towerwood sprang up, screaming, with Robert's dagger in his neck. Alex's bullet hit the ground and sent a shower of snow over Towerwood's body and into Harry's face. It could have killed Cecilia, who was lying beside him, in a dead faint for the first time in her life. Robert slashed away the ropes around his legs and picked her up.

The bang terrified the soldiers. They stopped being audience and became actors again. Most of them ran away, straight at Susannah. She fell off her horse and crouched in the snow, crying, expecting them to kill her, but they did not see her. They stopped a few yards farther on, shouting: “We yield, we yield,” away into the woods.

Those who did not run away came slowly toward Everard and the others, some with daggers, some with spears snatched from Harry's stack, ready to revenge their leader.

“Stop!” said Everard. “Not a step nearer.”

They came slowly on, though. They had almost reached Everard's horse, when a crowd of new soldiers descended on them.