The Princess Bride

too long in crossing. The fault is mine.'

'I accept your surrender,' the Prince said.

Westley held Buttercup's hand. 'No one is surrendering,' he said.

'You're acting silly now,' the Prince replied. 'I credit you with bravery. Don't make yourself a fool.'

'What is so foolish about winning?' Westley wanted to know. 'It's my opinion that in order to capture us, you will have to come into the Fire Swamp. We have spent many hours here now; we know where the Snow Sand waits. I doubt that you or your men will be any too anxious to follow us in here. And by morning we will have slipped away.'

'I doubt that somehow,' said the Prince, and he gestured out to sea. Half the Armada had begun to give chase to the great ship Revenge. And the Revenge, alone, was sailing, as it had to do, away. 'Surrender,' the Prince said.

'It will not happen.'

'SURRENDER!' the Prince shouted.

'DEATH FIRST!' Westley roared.

'...will you promise not to hurt him...?' Buttercup whispered.

'What was that?' the Prince said. 'What was that?' Westley said.

Buttercup took a step forward and said, 'If we surrender, freely and without struggle, if life returns to what it was one dusk ago, will you swear not to hurt this man?'

Prince Humperdinck raised his right hand: 'I swear on the grave of my soon-to-be-dead father and the soul of my already-dead mother that I shall not hurt this man, and if I do, may I never hunt again though I live a thousand years.'

Buttercup turned to Westley. 'There,' she said. 'You can't ask for more than that, and that is the truth.'

'The truth,' said Westley, 'is that you would rather live with your Prince than die with your love.'

'I would rather live than die, I admit it.'

'We were talking of love, madam.' There was a long pause. Then Buttercup said it:

'I can live without love.'

And with that she left Westley alone.

Prince Humperdinck watched her as she began the long cross to him. 'When we are out of sight,' he said to Count Rugen, 'take that man in black and put him in the fifth level of the Zoo of Death.'

The Count nodded. 'For a moment, I believed you when you swore.'

'I spoke truth; I never lie,' the Prince replied. 'I said Iwould not hurt him. But I never for a moment said he would not suffer pain. You will do the actual tormenting; I will only spectate.' He opened his arms then for his Princess.

'He belongs to the ship Revenge,' Buttercup said. 'He is—' she began, about to tell Westley's story, but that was not for her to repeat—'a simple sailor and I have known him since I was a child. Will you arrange that?'

'Must I swear again?'

'No need,' Buttercup said, because she knew, as did everyone, that the Prince was more forthright than any Florinese.

'Come along, my Princess.' He took her hand.

Buttercup went away with him.

Westley watched it all. He stood silently at the edge of the Fire Swamp. It was darker now, but the flame spurts behind him outlined his face. He was glazed with fatigue. He had been bitten, cut, gone without rest, had assaulted the Cliffs of Insanity, had saved and taken lives. He had risked his world, and now it was walking away from him, hand in hand with a ruffian prince.

Then Buttercup was gone, out of sight.

Westley took a breath. He was aware of the score of soldiers starting to surround him, and probably he could have made a few of them perspire for their victory.

But for what point?

Westley sagged.

'Come, sir.' Count Rugen approached. 'We must get you safely to your ship.'

'We are both men of action,' Westley replied. 'Lies do not become us.'

'Well spoken,' said the Count, and with one sudden swing, he clubbed Westley into insensitivity.

Westley fell like a beaten stone, his last conscious thought being of the Count's right hand; it was six- fingered, and Westley could never quite remember having encountered that deformity before....

Six

The Festivities

THIS IS ONE of those chapters again where Professor Bongiorno of Columbia, the Florinese guru, claims that Morgenstern's satiric genius is at its fullest flower. (That's the way this guy talks: 'fullest flower,' 'delicious drolleries'—on and on.)

This festivities chapter is mostly detailed descriptions of guess what? Bingo! The festivities. It's like eighty-nine days till the nuptials and every high muckamuck in Florin has to give a 'do' for the couple, and what Morgenstern fills his pages with is how the various richies of the time entertained. What kind of parties, what kind of food, who did the decorations, how did the seating arrangements get settled, all that kind of thing.

The only interesting part, but it's not worth going through forty-four pages for, is that Prince Humperdinck gets more and more interested and mannerly toward Buttercup, cutting down even a little on his hunting activities. And, more important, because of the foiling of the kidnapping attempt, three things happen: (1) everyone is pretty well convinced that the plot was engineered by Guilder, so relations between the countries are more than a little strained; (2) Buttercup is just adored by everybody because the rumors are all over that she acted very brave and even came through the Fire Swamp alive and (3) Prince Humperdinck is, at last, in his own land, a hero. He was never popular, what with his hunting fetish and leaving the country to kind of rot once his old man got senile, but the way he foiled the kidnapping made everybody realize that this was some brave fella and they were lucky to have him next in line to lead them.

Anyhow, these forty-four pages cover just about the first month of party giving. And it's not till the end of that, that, for my money, things get going again. Buttercup is in bed, pooped, it's late, the end of another long party, and as she waits for sleep, she wonders what sea Westley is riding on, and the giant and the Spaniard, whatever happened to them? So eventually, in three quick flashbacks, Morgenstern returns to what I think is the story.

***

WHEN INIGO REGAINED consciousness, it was still night on the Cliffs of Insanity. Far below, the waters of Florin Channel pounded. Inigo stirred, blinked, tried to rub his eyes, couldn't.

His arms were tied together around a tree.

Inigo blinked again, banishing cobwebs. He had gone on his knees to the man in black, ready for death. Clearly, the victor had other notions. Inigo looked around as best he could, and there it was, the six-fingered sword, glittering in the moonlight like lost magic. Inigo stretched his right leg as far as it would go and managed to touch the handle. Then it was simply a matter of inching the weapon close enough to be graspable by one hand, and then it was an even simpler task to slash his bindings. He was dizzy when he stood, and he rubbed his head behind his ear, where the man in black had struck him. A lump, sizable, to be sure, but not a major problem.

The major problem was what to do now?

Vizzini had strict instructions for occasions such as this, when a plan went wrong: Go back to the beginning. Back to the beginning and wait for Vizzini, then regroup, replan, start again. Inigo had even made a little rhyme out of it for Fezzik so the giant would not have problems remembering what to do in time of trouble: 'Fool, fool, back to the beginning is the rule.'

Inigo knew precisely where the beginning was. They had gotten the job in Florin City itself, the Thieves