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.
“Best time to catch them is right after the sun sets,” Alric replied.
“I’m surprised your father allows you to go all this way at night without an escort.”
The prince chuckled. “He wouldn’t. I had to assure him I had a guard.”
“Who?”
“You.”
“But I’m not a guard yet!”
“Really? That’s strange, because when I told my father that Hilfred had agreed to ride out with us, he was fine with that.”
Reuben was stunned. “He thought you were talking about my father!”
“Really? You think so?” Alric was having a hard time keeping a straight face. “You know … you may be right.”
The three broke out in laughter again and continued to do so even as they tied their reins to a fallen tree on the edge of the pond, giving their horses a chance to drink. “It’s not my fault, you know,” the prince said. “Arista never told us your first name.”
“If my father thinks I was trying to impersonate him, he’ll kill me,” Reuben said.
“It’s not your fault either.” Fanen pulled his frogging sack off the saddle. “You didn’t know.”
“My father doesn’t like the idea of me associating with nobility, period.”
“Why not?”
“He thinks it will get me in trouble.”
“And so it has!” Mauvin shouted, and they all laughed again. “You have a wise father.”
“No sense worrying about it now,” Alric said, throwing his own frogging sack over his shoulder. “We’re here. Let’s get some frogs.”
“What am I to do?” Reuben asked.
Alric shrugged. “Guard us. So don’t forget to bring your sword.”
They laughed again.
The four of them slogged into the tall grass, using fallen logs as bridges and leaping from tufts of grass to rocks as they made their way deep into the misty bog.
“You really are awful at sword fighting,” Mauvin told Reuben. “And is it true what Ellison said? That you’re to be sworn into service tomorrow?”
Reuben nodded.
“So this is the quality of arms at Essendon, is it, Alric?”
“I’ll take it up with Captain Lawrence in the morning,” the prince said so seriously it worried Reuben.
“You’re not really going to, are you, Your Highness?”
Alric looked back at him and rolled his eyes. “We need to keep him around. This guy is hilarious.”
“Oh feathers!” Fanen exclaimed right after Reuben heard a liquid plunk. Glancing back, he saw the boy’s left foot was ankle-deep in water. “Foot slipped,” he said with a grimace.
“You need better balance, Fanen,” Mauvin said. “A mistake like that in battle could get you killed.”
Fanen pulled his foot out and shook it.
“Say, Hilfred.” Mauvin turned to him. “Your father is pretty fair with a blade.”