“I don’t-”
Above them, Flagg’s chilly laughter abruptly stopped.
“Who goes there?” he called. His voice was like thunder, like doom. “Answer me, if you want to keep your heads! Who goes there?”
Frisky whined and shrank against Naomi’s side.
“Oh gods, now you’ve done it,” Dennis said. “What do we do, Ben?”
“Wait,” Ben said grimly. “And if the magician comes down, fight. We wait for what happens next. We-”
But that was all the waiting any of them had to do, for in the next few seconds, much-not all, but a great deal-was resolved.
132
Flagg had seen the thinness of Peter’s rope, its whiteness-and in a trice he understood everything, from beginning to end-the napkins and the dollhouse as well. Peter’s means of escape had been under his nose the whole time, and he had very nearly missed it. But… he saw something else as well. Little pops of fiber where the strands were giving way, some fifteen feet down the taut length of rope.
Flagg could have turned the iron bar he was resting his hand on and sent Peter plummeting that way, with the anchor trailing after to perhaps bash his head in when he struck bottom. He could have swung the battle-axe and parted the fragile rope.
But he preferred to let matters take their course, and a moment after he had challenged the voices, matters did take their course.
The rope’s breaking strain was reached. It parted with a twang like a lute string that has been wound too far on its peg.
“Goodbye, birdie,” Flagg cried happily, leaning far out to watch Peter’s fall. He was laughing. “Goodb-”
Then his voice ceased and his eyes widened as they had when he looked into the crystal and saw the tiny figure descending the side of the Needle. He opened his mouth and screamed with rage. That awful cry woke up more people in Delain than the fall of the Tower.
133
Peter heard that twanging sound, felt the rope part. Cold wind rushed up past his face. He tried to steel himself for the crash, knowing it would come in less than a second. The pain if he didn’t die instantly would be the worst.
And that was when Peter struck the thick, deep drift of royal napkins which Frisky had hauled out of the castle and across the Plaza in a stolen cart-the royal napkins which Ben, Dennis, and Naomi had worked so feverishly to pile up. The size of that pile-it looked like a whitewashed haystack-was never really known, because Ben, Dennis, and Naomi all had different estimates on the subject. Perhaps Peter’s own idea was the best, since he was the one who fell squarely into the middle of it, he believed that messy, lovely, lifesaving pile of napkins must have been at least twenty feet high, and for all I know, he may have been right.
134
He fell squarely into the middle, as I have said, making a crater. Then he fell over on his back and lay still. Far above, Ben heard Flagg howl with rage and he thought: You don’t need to do that, everything’s going to be just fine for you, magician. He has died anyway, in spite of all we could do.
Then Peter sat up. He looked dazed but very much alive. In spite of Flagg, in spite of the fact that there might be Guards of the Watch racing toward them at that moment, Ben Staad whooped. It was a sound of pure triumph. He grabbed Naomi and kissed her.
“Hoorah!” Dennis cried, grinning dizzily. “Hoorah for the King!”
Then Flagg screeched again far above them-the sound of a devil-bird cheated of its prey. The whooping, the kissing, and the hoorahing all stopped right then.
“You’ll pay with your heads!” Flagg shrieked. He was insane with rage. “You’ll pay with your heads, all of you! Guards of the Watch, to the Needle! To the Needle! The regicide has escaped! To the Needle! Kill the murdering prince! Kill his gang! Kill them all!”
And in the castle that surrounded the Plaza of the Needle on all four sides, windows began to be lit… and from two sides came the sound of running feet and the clash of metal as swords were drawn.
“Kill the prince!” Flagg shrieked hellishly from the top of the Needle. “Kill his gang! KILL THEM ALL!”
Peter tried to get up, floundered, and fell over again. Part of his mind was crying out urgently that he must get on his feet, that they must be away or they would be killed… but another part insisted that he was already dead, or severely wounded, and all of this was only a dream of his perishing mind. He seemed to have landed in a bed of the very napkins which had occupied so much of his mind over the last five years… and how could that be anything but a dream?
Ben’s strong hand gripped his upper arm, and he knew it was all real, all happening.
“Peter, are you all right? Are you really all right?”
“Not hurt a bit,” Peter said. “We have to get away from here.”
“My King!” Dennis cried, falling on his knees before the dazed Peter and grinning the same dizzy, foolish grin. “My oath of fealty forever! I swear my-”
“Swear later!” Peter cried, laughing in spite of himself. As Ben had pulled him to his feet, so Peter now pulled Dennis to his. “Let’s get out of here!”
“Which gate?” Ben asked. He knew-as Peter did himself that Flagg would already be on his way back down. “They come from all sides, by the sound.”
In truth, Ben thought any direction would do for the battle which would surely come, and result in their eventual slaughter. But, dazed or not, Peter knew perfectly well where he wanted to go.
“The West Gate,” he said, “and quickly! Run!”
The four of them ran, Frisky at their heels.
135
Still fifty yards from the West Gate, Peter’s band met a party of seven sleepy, confused guards. Most of them had sheltered from the storm in one of the warm Lower Kitchens of the castle, drinking mead and exclaiming to one another that they would have something to tell their grandchildren about. They did not know the half of what they would have to tell their grandchildren about, as it happened. Their “leader” was a manboy of just twenty, and only a goshawk… what we would call a corporal, I suppose. Still, he hadn’t had anything to drink and was reasonably alert. And he was determined to do his duty.
“Halt in the name of the King!” he called out as Peter’s group closed with his slightly larger one. He tried to thunder this command, but a storyteller should tell as much of the truth as he can, and I must tell you that the goshawk’s voice was more squeak than thunder.
Peter was unarmed, of course, but Ben and Naomi both carried shortswords, and Dennis had his rusty dagger. All three of them at once pushed in front of Peter. Ben’s and Naomi’s hands went to their hilts. Dennis had already pulled his dagger.
“Stop!” Peter cried; his voice was thunder. “You must not draw!”
Surprised-shocked, even-Ben threw a glance at Peter.
Peter stepped to the fore. He stood with his eyes flashing moonlight and his beard riffling in the light, chill-edged wind. He was dressed in the rough clothes of a prisoner, but his face was commanding and regal.
“Halt in the name of the King, you say,” Peter said. He stepped calmly toward the terrified goshawk until the two of them were almost chest to chest-less than six inches separated them. The guard fell back a step in spite of his own drawn sword and the fact that Peter’s hands were empty. “And yet I tell you, goshawk: I am the King.”
The guard licked his lips. He looked around at his men.
“But…” he began. “You…”
“What is your name?” Peter asked quietly.
The goshawk gaped. He could have run Peter through in a second, but he only gaped helplessly, like a fish drawn from water.