husband, she was certainly comely, definitely practical and had a commendable fighting spirit. These were all good things in anyone, woman or man. Now, since her father was apparently away, trying to stave off a war, if Siegfried could just manage to find out if the Princess found him sufficiently interesting, he had a number of options to think about. The most promising, and the one that made the best use of his talents, was to go off to join her father, and challenge the champion of the other side to single combat. He'd lost count of the number of champions he'd defeated in single combat.
The only times he'd lost was when he hadn't listened to the bird, and he'd wound up fighting on the wrong side. The bird liked his chances this time.
It was possible that the father might not care for penniless northlanders, but if that penniless northlander saved his kingdom for him, from everything Siegfried could tell, he was pretty much obligated to offer the Princess in marriage.
So that was good.
Leopold, on the other hand, was seemingly in his element, which was more than worrisome. He was equally popular with the young ladies and young men, he dressed the way they did, spoke the way they did and knew how to keep them entertained. In the two days after they all arrived, while the Princess was incommunicado, and all that they saw was that dreadful black-clad glacier of a Queen, he fitted himself right into the very center of things. If there was a big group of people laughing about something, you could be sure he was at the heart of it, telling an amusing tale. He was always in the middle of games — generally not winning most of them, but Siegfried had the shrewd notion that this was on purpose. Siegfried worried that when the Princess finally did appear, Leopold would be far more attractive to her than he himself was. He certainly wasn't going to force himself on her as a suitor. That was not fair. And if she did favor Leopold over him, it would complicate things immensely.
Of course, as luck would have it, when she did finally recover from her ordeal and make her appearance, there was no chance for either of them to put themselves forward before everything went straight through the ice and into the frozen river.
Because the very first either of them saw her, it was standing next to Queen Crow while the woman delivered the news that the King was dead, and that she and the Princess were now the rulers. To say that the people of the court reacted like a flock of spooked sheep was to give less credit to sheep than sheep deserved.
At first, Siegfried couldn't understand why they were acting as if the world-snake had let go of its tail and was about to come eat them all. Granted, it was very sad that the King was dead, and he felt very sorry for the Princess, but there was no need to carry on as if you had just seen the Fedris-Wolf and Vallahalia was in flames.
Then the bird explained it all, and their reaction made sense. Quite a lot of sense, provided you were senseless to begin with.
And cowardly.
And you regarded the King as if you were toddling babes, and he was father who kept the Fedris-Wolf away.
On the other hand...from what the bird said, he really had kept a metaphorical Fedris-Wolf away. Still, they acted, well...rather stupidly. Despite the fact that Queen Glacier had a very sound plan — and having hostages to prevent other people from acting stupidly was always a good plan, as his people knew very well — once the court had been dismissed, a good half of the people in it reacted with varying degrees of panic. A few actually rushed off, declaring wildly that the only sensible thing was to flee and fling themselves on the mercy of one side or another. Now, since in Siegfried's experience such mercy was generally nonexistent, and since a would-be conqueror could as easily — and with far more profit — declare them to be agents of the enemy, take all their valuables and fling them into a pit, this showed very poor planning on their part. He did try to remonstrate with as many of them as he could, out of sheer pity — for some of them had rather nice daughters and not-so-terrible sons who had not made fun of him to his knowledge. Some of them listened and managed to calm themselves and their families down. Others did not. One declared hysterically that he was going to disguise himself and his family as gypsies in order to escape. Siegfried attempted to explain that gypsies were not much welcome in any kingdom, and that in all events, such a disguise would be quickly penetrated, but the fellow was in no mood to listen to him. He ran off declaring he was going straight to a gypsy camp and buying himself a wagon before anyone else got such a good idea.
Siegfried had to console himself with the knowledge that he had tried, he really had, and with any luck the fellow would not get more than a day away from the city without discovering that he did not know how to manage a wagon, or drive a team, did not know how to make a camp, and no one in his family knew how to cook over an open fire, or indeed, knew how to cook at all. That did not even begin to cover all the difficulties of passing a wealthy, well-born family off as gypsies.
At least some gypsy family would certainly find themselves much the richer out of this. And, being gypsies, they stood a very good chance of slipping across the border with every penny intact.
Still, he did manage to talk sense into some. As he spoke, reasonably, calmly, as he would to a bunch of terrified children, some of his calm communicated itself to them. 'The news cannot yet have reached your enemies,' he said. 'And when it does, it will still take them some time before they can move their armies. Have any of you ever been with an army?'
He looked around, took in the soft hands, the arms that had never actually borne arms. Oh there were plenty of people whohad at this court, but they were not here, among the ones that were panicking. So, no. They didn't even have to shake their heads. No, of course, they had not.
He racked his brains for a practical comparison. Wait...he recalled some of the young ladies lamenting that they were going to go to a 'summer home' soon. That implied moving, twice a year. That would do. 'Well, think about how it is when you need to move your whole family. Yes?' He saw brows furrowing as they tried to imagine how rounding up the family, servants and all was anything like moving an army.
'An army is like that, only a thousand times bigger. A much more complicated thing to get going in one direction.'
'But disciplined!' said one man, voice breaking pitifully. 'All the generals have to do is issue orders, and things get done without any arguing!' Siegfried looked at his rabbity face. No wonder he had been sitting in a chair despairing, instead of panicking and trying to flee. It sounded as if he already knew he couldn't get his family to agree on anything regarding an escape until it would be too late.
'Yes, but they need to be fed. They need to get their provisions together. Yes?' His expression prompted reluctant agreement. 'Then they need to get their equipment. Armies need arrows, bowstrings, spare bows, spears, spearheads. They need horseshoes and horseshoe nails, spare reins, spare wagon wheels. They need blacksmiths and farriers andthose people need supplies. Then they need to be sure of their supply lines, because they certainly
