Soon it was raining rotten vegetables. Dobro was dodging black squash and green sweet potatoes and trying to decide which of the stagehands to whip first when Aidan and Sadie flew into the circle of the stage lights on a second curtain rope and sent two of Dobro’s attackers sprawling with two perfectly placed kicks. The three of them shot through the gap before the remaining stagehands closed it, and Sadie led them through the maze of old scenery and props until they found an exit. The theater manager had already sent for the castle guards, who were still in the neighborhood searching for Aidan and Dobro.
Sadie pointed to the low roof of a cottage behind the theater. “That way,” she directed. Dobro scrambled up onto the thatch. Aidan climbed up behind him. They had crested the roof and were running down the slope of the other side before they realized Sadie hadn’t climbed up with them. Peeking over the ridge of the roof, they saw that she had run in the opposite direction. She was creating a diversion to aid their escape, bouncing paving stones off the helmets of King Darrow’s guards.
“Reckon we ought to help her?” Dobro gasped.
“I have a feeling Sadie can take care of herself,” Aidan said.
“That gal’s got gumption, don’t she?” Dobro marveled. “That gal’s got what it takes.”
The houses in that quarter of Tambluff were close together, and Aidan and Dobro had no trouble running rooftop to rooftop almost all the way to the south gate. The uproar in the city grew as word spread of the strangers who set off the ruckus in the Swan Theater. More torches were lit and more voices raised in shouts; more people wandered into the streets to see any excitement that might come their way.
Aidan and Dobro were a hundred strides from the south gate before they were noticed, running across the roof of the tailor’s shop. “There they are!” someone shouted, and a dozen voices joined the chorus. With concealment lost, Aidan knew speed was their only remaining hope. He and Dobro dropped to the ground and pelted the remaining distance as hard as they could go. “The gate!” someone bellowed behind them. “Southporter! Close the gate!”
Through the window of the gatehouse, they could see the short, round silhouette of Southporter heaving away at the wheel that lowered the portcullis. But the portcullis didn’t drop. Aidan smiled as he ran. He realized that Southporter was only going through the motions, only pretending to turn the wheel. The instant they were through the gate, it thundered down behind them.
“To the left!” Aidan could hear Southporter shouting to the guards patrolling outside the wall. “They’ve run into the thicket on the left!” Aidan knew what that meant. He and Dobro lurched to the right. And there, in a copse of low-limbed oak trees, they found their horses-fed, watered, rested, and ready to gallop down the Western Road and toward the safety of Sinking Canyons.
Chapter Twenty
The Western Road cut through a series of gentle hills just east of the Bonifay Plain. There Aidan and Dobro met a farmer working in a great, deep, red-banked gully that opened onto the road. His son stood in the bed of a wagon drawn by a heavy farm horse. The son heaved sandbags down into the gully where his father stacked them into a knee-high wall that cut across the floor of the gully from one bank to the other.
“Hello,” Aidan called. He and Dobro dismounted from their horses. The sweat-slick farmer stopped, wiped his brow with the back of his wrist, and waved. He was glad for the break.
“What you doing?” Dobro asked the farmer.
“Trying to slow down this gully, hopefully save the road from washing out,” the farmer answered.
Dobro sighted up the gully. It was a hundred strides long and arrow straight, ten feet deep or more in most places, ten long strides across. Its red-clay banks dropped vertically down to a rocky floor.
“Friend, I believe you got the master gully I ever seen,” Dobro announced.
“Why, thank you,” the man said with mock modesty. “I dug it myself.”
Dobro raised his eyebrow. “Must have takened you a long time.”
“Not really,” the old farmer said. “I finished in a day.”
Dobro whistled. “Mister, I’d surely love to watch you work a shovel.”
The man laughed. “I didn’t use a shovel. I used a plow.”
Dobro gave Aidan a significant look. “See,” he said, “I told you working a plow was a dangerous way to pass the time.” He looked at the looming walls of the gully. “Veezo hisself couldn’t have done this much damage with a plow in a single day.”
Aidan laughed and cut a look at the farmer. “He’s teasing you, Dobro. He didn’t dig this gully, certainly not in a single day.”
“I reckon I did too,” the farmer shot back. “That ain’t the sort of thing I’d lie about. And it sure ain’t the sort of thing I’d brag about.”
“He’s telling true,” said the boy before lying back in the bed of the wagon and covering his eyes with a floppy hat. He knew the story his father was about to tell and figured the old boy could tell it fine without his help.
The farmer pointed up the gully. “This is the property line between my farm and my neighbor’s-from here up this slope to where those two hills divide. About four years ago, I decided to plow a furrow right down this line to show where my farm ended and his farm began.” He made a slicing gesture with his hand, following the line of the gully.
“I knowed to plow a field across the slope, to keep the dirt from washing away. But I didn’t figure it would hurt anything to plow two or three furrows straight up this slope.”
He shook his head, as if to indicate how wrong he had been. “This here’s a natural drain anyway,” he said. He swept his hands down to a point to indicate the flow of water off the hills on either side of the gully. “First rainstorm to come through, half the topsoil in my furrow ended up in the road down there. Wasn’t many more rains before this gully was cut all the way down to the bedrock. Started widening from there.”
They had walked halfway up the gully by now, stepping over little sandbag walls every twenty strides or so. The ground level was a good four feet above their heads. Dobro was looking a little nervous about being “in a gully, down a hole,” as the old rhyme put it.
“How long ago did you say you plowed this spot?” Aidan asked.
“Four years ago.”
Aidan shook his head slowly. He was amazed so much had happened so quickly.
“But it only took a year or so for it to get this deep,” the farmer clarified. “It don’t take but a few freshet rains to cut all the way down to bedrock.” He stomped his boot on the flat chunk of rock where he stood.
The farmer looked up at the sun. “It’s getting late,” he said, then he gave a loud whistle for his horse. “If I aim to lay more sandbags today, I better hurry back to the barn for another wagonload.” The horse and wagon jangled up to the gully rim, and the farmer climbed up to ground level and into the driver’s seat. His son was still asleep in the bed of the wagon.
“Good-bye and good travels,” the farmer called as the wagon started moving. “And don’t plow down the slope!”
Aidan and Dobro took their time making their way back to the road. There were few really good flinging rocks to be had in Sinking Canyons, and Dobro was filling his pouch with rocks scattered on the gully floor. Aidan enjoyed a few minutes of shade beneath the western bank before they had to get back on their horses. He was crumbling a handful of red clay when he heard a most unexpected sound: Maaaaaa-aaah!
Aidan looked up into the yellow-green eyes of a nanny goat peering over the edge of the gully. The head of a billy goat appeared beside her with its curving horns, and then a spray of white hair and the brown, wrinkled face of Bayard the Truthspeaker.
“Bayard!” Aidan and Dobro shouted in joyful unison. They clambered out of the gully to embrace the old man. He still seemed strong and hearty. How old must he be now? thought Aidan.
“What a pleasant surprise!” said Bayard. Aidan wondered, however, if anything ever really surprised the old prophet. “Aidan Errolson and”-he looked over Dobro and pretended to have trouble recognizing him-“Dobro Turtlebane? But you’re so pink! Dobro, you haven’t gone civilized, have you?”
