“And we’re off!” cried Hugo, taking this as a signal to depart. He blew a long blast on his horn and urged his horse forward. Ascelin looked up abruptly from his wife’s embrace, and the other horses all jumped and followed Hugo’s. We dashed across the drawbridge and down the hill, followed by waves and cries of farewell.
We reined in our horses at the bottom and entered the woods more sedately. Ascelin, momentarily left behind, caught up again. “Warn me next time you’re going to burst into a gallop like that,” he said to Hugo with a grin.
“We
Dominic was having a little trouble calming his big chestnut stallion. The horse that had tried to buck off Paul and Gwennie seemed reluctant to obey the king’s burly nephew either.
“Come on, Whirlwind, come on,” I heard Dominic say soothingly, holding the reins tight with one gloved hand and patting the stallion’s neck with the other.
“I didn’t know that was your horse’s name,” I said in surprise, once the stallion decided it was easiest to be quiet and walk with the rest of us.
Dominic turned to me with a sudden smile, which was another surprise; he normally smiled even less than Joachim. “It didn’t use to be,” he said. “But Prince Paul renamed him.”
Paul might not be going to the Holy Land with us, I thought, but at least Whirlwind might get a chance to race in search of treasure across the high plains.
After feeling somewhat apprehensive about this trip, once we started I enjoyed it thoroughly. We went at an easy rate, letting the king set the pace. Ascelin, on foot, had no trouble keeping up. After a day and a half, in which all the hills, streams, and woods we saw I knew by name, we passed out of the kingdom of Yurt and into new territory.
New scenes greeted us constantly as we rode: sunlit hills dappled with shadow, villages tucked into sheltering valleys, wheat fields where the new light green shoots burst from the dark earth, wild daffodils bright beneath leafless oaks, and birds tugging at last year’s grass for nesting material. Any difficulty we met, a sudden cold shower of rain, a ford where the horses splashed mud on us, villagers who looked at our equipment and charged us outrageously for fresh bread, was quickly left behind and indeed forgotten. And somewhere ahead of us was the sun-warmed Central Sea, and palms and flowering lemon trees rustling in the sea breezes.
All of us, except perhaps Hugo, were sore and stiff the first few days. But then our muscles became used to the constant exercise and our legs to gripping a horse.
“I’m still not sure my old bones will make the whole journey to the East and back,” said the king to me as we rode along, sounding remarkably cheerful about it. “But it’s good to be off on a quest after decades of worrying about the governance of Yurt. Prince Paul will grow up to be an excellent king whether I return or not, and if by some chance I do I may have the only blue rose in the western kingdoms!”
We spent the first few nights in the castles of lords the king knew; and once we stayed in an inn, all squeezed together in one big bed in the only private room the inn afforded; but most of the time we camped. Hugo put a sign reading “Giant’s Lair” on the tent he shared with Ascelin, until the prince ordered him rather sharply to take it down.
We took turns keeping watch at night. The king said that no one would attack a little group of pilgrims, but Ascelin insisted, and I had to agree with him. Hugo had the final watch on the first night we camped, and he woke the rest of us at dawn. When we crawled reluctantly out of the tents, he already had water boiling for tea and bright pink ribbons braided into Dominic’s stallion’s mane and tail.
Ascelin also thought it was funny, from the imperfectly concealed laugh lines around his eyes and mouth, but the rest of us, who had lived for years with the royal nephew, knew enough to keep our faces perfectly sober.
“Are you responsible for these ribbons?” Dominic asked Hugo with steely calm.
“Of course,” said the young man gaily. “Don’t you think they add a certain spritely air?”
“I don’t want my horse to have a spritely air,” said Dominic, a hard twist to his mouth.
But Hugo, laughing and setting out the tin teacups, paid no attention. I didn’t think it was quite as funny as he did, but I did have to admire his nerve in getting close enough to the stallion’s heels to braid in the ribbons. It took Dominic nearly until we were ready to go to get them out again.
The next day when we stopped for lunch Dominic made some excuse to stand up and go over to the horses. He was gone for several minutes, and when he came back, well wrapped up in his gray cloak against the cool air, he was frowning.
“Have you examined your sword recently, Hugo?” he asked gravely. “I just noticed it when I went to check on Whirlwind, and it looked-well, I don’t want to accuse our wizard of anything, but I would have to say it looked enchanted.”
Hugo jumped up, and so did I. We hurried to where his horse stood grazing, a long sheath hanging from the saddle.
But something was wrong. Instead of a hilt protruding from the top, there was what looked like a big smoked sausage. I probed with magic. That was certainly what it was.
“My sword!” cried Hugo in dismay, reaching for it. “What’s happened to it?”
There came a sound of a low chuckle from behind us, rough-edged as though it had not been used very often. When we spun around, Dominic tossed his cloak back to show that he held Hugo’s sword concealed beneath it.
Hugo, incredulous, slowly drew the sausage from his sheath. Dominic was really laughing now. The sausage, three feet long, was wrapped its entire length in pink ribbons.
V
We came over a hilltop, buffeted by a damp wind. Dominic, riding in front, pulled up hard.
Done in the valley before us was a small merchant caravan, half a dozen mule-drawn carts accompanied by two mounted men. But the mounted men had their hands up and were trying to control their skittish mounts with their knees. For on the hillside just above them, their backs turned to us, were four helmeted horsemen holding drawn bows.
Hugo reacted at once. Not even taking time to pull on his helmet, he gave a yell and kicked his horse forward. Dominic and Ascelin were only a second behind him. I hadn’t seen Dominic move that fast in years.
The startled bandits spun around, trying unsuccessfully to maintain their seats and keep their bows steady. Before they could aim again, our party was on them.
Hugo swung his sword in a great arc toward the bandit who seemed to be the leader. It slashed through his crimson cloak, but the steel bounced with a dull clang off the armor hidden underneath. The bandit’s bow flew from his hands as Ascelin grabbed the momentarily-stunned leader and wrenched him from his horse. Dominic whirled his mace, and two well-aimed blows on two more bandits’ arms made them drop their bows in anguish.
I had recovered from surprise enough at this point to come forward and start putting paralysis spells on everyone. The two bandits Dominic had clubbed toppled from their horses, and the leader went still in Ascelin’s hands. But that left one more.
I looked up and saw him galloping desperately, away down the valley. The other bandits’ horses ran, riderless, behind him.
“Shall I fly after him?” I yelled to Dominic.
“Let him go,” the prince answered with satisfaction. “They’re bound to have friends, and the friends ought to hear what happens to bandits.”
The king and Joachim, who had been left behind, came up with our pack horses at the same time as the mounted men from the caravan seemed to decide we weren’t a second group of bandits about to turn on them, having once dispatched the first group.
We all came together by the wagons at the bottom of the hill, a group of varied emotions. Dominic, Ascelin, and Hugo were highly pleased with themselves, I thought all out of proportion. Although there were only three of them to the four bandits, they had had the advantage of surprise as well as Ascelin’s size, plus the assistance of a
