[Continued from here]
[Part 18]
It
bounced off his saddle, but it made the young lord pull his horse to a stop.
Lucan looked around.
“Someone
threw something at me.” He said in a puzzled voice.
In
the best childlike voice she could muster, Beranwen giggled audibly, and threw
another stone. This one caught Lucan on the arm. His expression soured.
“Sounds
like children, my lord. Just ignore them. We’ll pass by them soon enough.”
That
was hardly what Beranwen wanted. She sent another stone winging through the
air, and clipped Lucan across the cheek. The advisor swore, and in her child’s
voice Beranwen said “Good’un Michael. Get ‘im on the other cheek too.’
“Listen
here, you boys.” Lucan called, clearly angry. “Come out where I can see you.
You don’t know what trouble you’re getting yourselves…”
Beranwen’s
next stone hit Derryl on the arm. It couldn’t have hurt much – by the time it
had travelled all that way, the force had gone out of it – but it caused the
lord to yelp in pain.
“Make
them stop it, Master Lucan!”
“Right.”
Resolute fury was in every line of his body as Lucan dismounted and stalked
into the trees. That was Beranwen’s cue. She half climbed, half fell out of her
tree, threw the rest of her stones further into the forest, and crept as
quietly as possible in the opposite direction. Lucan, following the noise of
the stones, didn’t see her at all.
Beranwen
took a long loop through the trees back to the road, and came out behind lord
Derryl and Lucan’s riderless horse. To her delight, Stan was no longer over the
saddle.
Thank the gods! She thought as
she hurried off the road again towards Quinton. The boy has a good memory, if nothing else.
There
was a sort of cave in the middle of the forest made from fallen trees. Three
large elms had toppled one onto another, creating a network of criss-crossing
branches bounded by trunks of solid
wood. Over the years, children had broken off some of the internal branches,
creating a magnificent chamber roofed by years of fallen leaves.
Once
she had lured Lucan off his horse, Quinton had crept out and stolen Stan right
off the saddle. Beranwen had expected him to be spotted, but Derryl had been
too intent on his advisor to even notice the horse next to him whinny as the
weight was taken from its back. And on silent feet, Quinton had carried Stan to
the tree fortress. It was difficult to see a way in if you didn’t know where it
was – even if he had been pursued, it would have been easy to disappear in the
tangle of long-dead branches.
Quinton
was waiting for her there when she eased her way in, and he had a huge grin on
his face.
“This
is the best first quest ever!” He exclaimed, with the presence of mind to
exclaim it quietly.
“I’m
glad you’re enjoying yourself." She gave Stan a quick glance, but he was
still unconscious. She'd have to figure him out before they returned to the
house, if she'd have any chance of persuading Nereus to let her keep her job. "You
still haven’t found a trophy, though. We’ll have to find something on the way
back to the house, because I don’t want to linger with Derryl and Lucan still
about. They’ll figure out it was us soon enough.
And
indeed, as she spoke, there was a distance, despairing cry from lord Derryl as
he finally noticed what was missing.
“But
I’ve found my quest.” Quinton said, not hearing the cry or not understanding
what it meant.
“I’ve
already said, Stan can’t be a…”
“No,
not Stan. This place. It’s amazing. I wish I could have it in the gardens, so I
could visit it whenever I want. But Master Nereus wouldn’t like that.”
[Part 18]
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