“No one wants you here, Pickering, so go catch your stupid frogs.”
“Hey, Fanen,” the boy shouted over his shoulder and toward the castle keep. “It’s the hero from yesterday, the one who risked himself to save Arista.” He looked at Reuben. “What kind of trouble have you gotten yourself into now?”
“None of your business, boy,” Dills snapped.
At the sound of the word boy, Reuben saw Mauvin grin.
His younger brother came around the woodpile a moment later. When he did, Mauvin pointed. “No one at the castle can see a thing.”
This was exactly what Reuben guessed Ellison had realized, only now Ellison and the Three Cruelties looked less pleased.
“Muckraker and I have a score to settle,” Ellison explained. “This has nothing to do with you two.”
“Muckraker? Oh, you’re mistaken. His name is Hilfred and he’s a friend of ours,” Mauvin said, surprising all, but none more than Reuben. “We had great fun sparring a few days ago. Hilfred didn’t do so well, but he was fighting a Pickering.” The boy winked at him. “I’m sure he’ll fare much better against you, even though he only has an axe and all four of you have swords.”
“But still, that’s not very sporting,” Fanen said.
“Downright rude if you ask me.” Mauvin continued to grin. “Hilfred, how dare you hog all of these squires to yourself. I demand that Fanen and I get to play too.”
The Pickering boys drew their swords in unison with elegant ease. As they did, Dills and Willard spun to face them. “Didn’t one of you say something about carving initials?” Mauvin asked. Looking at Dills, he added, “That will be fun. And just to jog your dim-witted memory, I’m the son of Count Leopold Pickering of Galilin, one of the five Lords of the Charter—no one calls me boy.”
“Mauvin? Fanen?” Shouts came from the direction of the castle.
“Here, Alric—we’re on the other side of the woodpile,” Mauvin shouted back, a touch of regret in his voice.
Alric? Reuben thought. It can’t be. A moment later none other than the Prince of Melengar rounded the pile. He was dressed in a lavish three-quarter-length white satin tunic with extensive embroidery, heavy gold piping, and full sleeves and broad triple-folded cuffs. His suede belt, while lacking even a dagger, was ornamented with metallic studs and a buckle that Reuben guessed to be worth more than he and his father could ever hope to earn if both of them lived to be a hundred.
The squires all dropped to one knee. Reuben followed suit an instant later. Neither of the Pickerings so much as bowed.
“What’s going on?” the prince asked.
Mauvin was frowning at him. “Fanen, Hilfred, and I were about to have some fun … then you ruined it. You always ruin it.”
The prince looked at the kneeling squires, puzzled, until he spotted the drawn swords. “Hilfred?” he asked; then, turning, he made eye contact with Reuben. “Oh, the hero from the Battle of Gateway Bridge!” He looked back at the squires and added, “He risked his life to defend my sister against a band of highwaymen. Don’t tell me this pool of pond scum was thinking of taking advantage of our friend?”
Reuben could hardly believe his ears. The prince had been the third horseman who’d chased the princess?
“We were just leaving, Your Highness,” Ellison said, slipping his sword into its sheath and standing up. He took one step away when the prince stepped in front of him.
“You haven’t answered my question, Ellison.” Alric moved uncomfortably close.
“No, Your Highness, we would never think of harming a friend of yours.”
Alric looked at Reuben. “Is he telling the truth? I can have him ripped apart by dogs, you know. I love dogs. We use them to hunt, but they aren’t allowed to actually take down or eat their quarry. Always thought that was a shame, you know? I think they would appreciate the opportunity. It could be fun too. We could just let these fools run and bet on how far they can get before the dogs catch them.”
“I bet Horace doesn’t make it to the gate,” Mauvin said; then all heads turned to Reuben.
Ellison looked at him, too, his face frozen in a tense, wide-eyed stare.
“I wasn’t aware of any threat from Squire Ellison, Your Highness,” Reuben replied.
“Are you sure?” Alric pressed, and flicked a small yellow leaf off Ellison’s shoulder. “We don’t have to use the dogs.” He smiled and tilted his head toward the Pickerings. “They’d love to teach them a lesson, you know. In a way they’re a lot like hunting dogs—they never get the chance to kill anyone either. Ever since they reached their tenth birthday, no one has been stupid enough to challenge them.”
“I was, Your Highness,” Reuben said.
That got a laugh from the Pickerings and the prince, although Reuben didn’t know why. “Yes, you did, didn’t you?”
“That’s why you’re our friend,” Mauvin explained.
“He didn’t know who we were,” Fanen pointed out. “He had no idea about the skill of a Pickering blade.”
“It wouldn’t have mattered,” Reuben said. His blood was still up from the fight, and his mouth ran away with him. “If I thought you were there to harm the princess, I would still have fought you.”
A moment of silence followed this and Reuben watched as Alric smiled; then he glanced at Mauvin and they laughed again. “Tell me, Hilfred, how are you at catching frogs?”
“Did you see Ellison-Jellison piss himself when I said I could have dogs tear him apart?” the prince asked as they trotted along the road.
“Ha! Yeah,” Mauvin replied. “Thought he might faint like a girl.”
“Can you really do that?” Fanen asked.
The two brothers were only separated by a year, but they were very different. Fanen kept his hair neat, his thoughts to himself, and when he did speak it was in a soft voice, which was difficult to hear above the clapping of the hooves and the rising wind.
Alric laughed. “Sure, Fanen. I’ll just go to my dad and say, ‘Hey, do you mind if I have Lord Trevail’s son torn apart by dogs?’ ”
Mauvin chuckled as if he alone understood some joke. Although Reuben also thought the boy just enjoyed laughing. He did a lot of it. “What do you think your dad would say?”
Alric shrugged. “I wouldn’t want to be there to find out.”
Alric insisted Reuben accompany them to a swamp for a bit of frog hunting, and there was no refusing the son of the king. Not that he wanted to. Despite the humiliation of the previous day, he found he liked the trio. And after saving him from a severe beating, he was more than happy to join them frog hunting—or even dragon hunting if that had been the prince’s preference. Reuben learned they each had a small collection of frogs at the castle. Mauvin in the lead with eight, but Fanen, with five, had the most diverse assortment. Alric had the least with only four. Being the prince, Alric probably did not like being outdone. He told Ian to fetch their mounts and bring one for his new pal, Hilfred. They all grabbed cloaks, and for the second time in less than a week, Reuben rode out of the city in the presence of royalty.
They traveled north past the King’s Road toward East March. The late afternoon sun dipped low in the west, and farms in the shadows of hills already had their lamps lit. Cows were making the trip back to the barns, and smoke was rising from chimneys as the temperature turned colder. They were a good hour from the city walls, where the farms were thin and the hills forested. When they veered off the road, it was toward what looked to be a good-sized pond surrounded by thickets, forests, and mist. The boys called it Edgar’s Swamp because Edgar the Carpenter had told them about it. The best place in the world to catch frogs, he had declared.
They dismounted and walked their horses the last bit to the water’s edge.
“Isn’t it a bit late to be going all the way out here … ah … Your Highness?” Reuben asked.