My hands ached with cold, and at last I could manufacture a small flame while I collected my breath and thoughts. As I gazed back up at that stony face, I could not but marvel at my accomplishment. Desperation, it would seem, makes heroes of us all.
Now I noticed, too, peculiar markings on the stone. At one point a fissure broke the cliff's face rather as a door breaks a wall, and aside this opening were several scratches—fresh, to my eyes at least—that appeared, improbably enough, to be letters. With one finger, careful to maintain the flame in my other hand, I traced them. They were letters! They had to be, so precisely had they been scratched into the lichen and rock:
H R H W K M
I frowned. "HRH" I knew, as it is forever in use in official correspondence, an abbreviation for His Royal Highness, or Her Royal Highness as the case might be. But I could make no sense of the final three letters.
At this moment the sun burst fully to life through the eastern clouds. Golden rays bounced off the snow in an explosion of light. Light illuminated the cliff face as well, pouring into the fissure with such intensity that the cleft itself seemed to glow.
The fissure, I could now see, was wide enough to enter. In fact, it opened into a small cavern within the cliff itself. Cold, exhausted, and frightened I might be, but my curiosity remained fresh. I eased my way inside. As I did so, the luminous rays of morning touched the cavern walls, turning the hoarfrost that coated them into a glittering expanse of diamonds. The brilliance dazzled me; so perfectly illuminated, the crystals rendered this frozen space more magnificent than an emperor's palace.
Entranced, I continued forward. The sunbeams slipped down the wall, catching ever more of those frozen gems, and—
There he lay. So entranced had I been by the cave's icy beauty that for a time I did not notice the man on the floor. He, too, glittered as if made of a million gems, for he was encased in a veritable shroud of frost.
Registering at last, I cried out in horror, too frightened to move. It was not ... it could not be ... yet I must be sure. I stole forward. The man was of good size; his armor, anyway. His face, however, had shrunk almost to the bone, and its desiccated, cadaverous appearance terrified me. His hands likewise were more skeleton than flesh. Yet the thin prince's crown on his head—worn only for the most formal occasions, I well remembered—glowed gold through the ice, and the Montagne hedgehog showed clearly on his surcoat.
I had found my father. Small wonder no one had discovered his remains, for no team could have searched this far. No man, I believed—or had believed up to this moment—ever ascended so high up Ancienne.
My father's right hand clenched a dagger, its purpose apparent from the rough scratchings on the wall by his side. Frost obscured many of the letters, and I promptly melted this by breath and flame. Each letter, I well imagined, had cost him dearly as he battled cold and death.
Through the glimmering light I could discern, scraped on the stone itself, the condemning phrase I PURSUED DRACHENSBETT. The next sentence—the final one, the last he ever wrote—brought tears to my eyes, and kneeling at his side, I wept openly. With the last embers of his strength, he had chosen three simple, unforgettable words: FAREWELL, SWEET BEN.
***
For many hours I sat, ignorant of cold, as the sun moving through the heavens returned this glittering cavern to a dark and frigid tomb. I now understood the letters scratched on the cliff face as my father's initials: His Royal Highness, Walter, King of Montagne. Never would my father have referred to himself so formally; such pomp was reserved for Montagne's leader. As he carved those letters, therefore, my father must have known that his brother Ferdinand had already perished and that he was now king. Neither had he bade farewell to his beloved wife; she, too, he knew, was no longer of this world.
Now I had incontrovertible evidence of Drachensbett's role in her death. The shameful Drachensbett king, with his sniveling ambitions, his lying and greed and his sneering son, must pay for the pain he had wrought. Kneeling at my father's side, I vowed revenge. "Farewell, sweet Father," I then whispered in his ear, returning his words. I managed even a formal curtsy, backing from the cave as one does in the presence of a king.
Xavier the Elder, the esteemed soldier who had disappeared with my father that day, I now knew must also rest somewhere on the mountain, dead of wounds or exposure. Surely this information would provide his son some consolation. I would return to Montagne to share this news somehow and rally its people against our despicable foe.
I set off at once. The hour I could not tell, for winter clouds now blocked the sun. My sense of direction, already weak, suffered in the uneven terrain as my hunger grew. I was descending, that much was clear, but however hard I peered about for some indication of civilization—a shepherd, a woolly Montagne sheep, even the hint of a cleared meadow—I discovered naught but the cheeky little birds that continually warned the forest of my presence.
The wind intensified, howling in a most unnerving fashion. Oh, I would never escape Ancienne! How bitter the irony! Now, when at last I had a true goal, one worthy of my parents and station, my dream would be denied me.
Overcome, I collapsed against a tree as the wind, sounding almost like a human voice, shouted past my head. A hiss—and without warning an arrow pierced my arm. I gaped at my limb pinned to the tree trunk. I felt no pain, only bafflement at this inexplicable turn of events. Then, overcome with the shock of the last twenty-four hours, the traumas that piled ever deeper upon me, I fainted.
***
I came to consciousness in a small copse of trees. Dazedly I struggled to open my eyes, then was shocked awake by the stabbing agony of my arm. What I saw sent me reeling: an arrow pierced the sleeve of my woolen tunic, now saturated with blood, and my swollen, violet-colored wrist. One tentative movement produced such a wave of pain that I knew at once my forearm was broken.
Despairing at this awful image, I noted for the first time deep voices. Peering about, I realized with a start that I was not sprawled amid tree trunks but rather in a half-circle of men.
"He knows of our presence," said one, fingering a broken arrowhead—doubtless the remainder of the projectile now embedded in me.
They thought I was a boy? Both ears pricked, I listened further.
"Thanks to you!" snarled a second man. "He had no sense of us otherwise." He prodded me with his foot. "Whence hail you?
Numb though I was with pain and cold, I knew well enough that informing them I was the better half of a Montagne witch-princess would not bode well. My teeth chattering, and not only with chill, I answered: "The mountain, sir.
The man sighed. "We know that. Which side? Drachensbett or the other?
"The—other, sir. Montagne.
The men eyed each other. "Must be that missing shepherd boy, one offered.
"That lad's been lost for months. This one—again a boot met my flesh, harder this time—"is far from starvation. They chuckled.
"Perhaps it's enchantment, said another, "being Montagne...
"Ha! An enchanted boy wouldn't bleed and whimper so. Again they laughed.
"We must dispose of him. He can't return knowing of us."
The second man—he appeared to be their leader—spoke again. "Better would it be to slaughter some fat piglet than this creature; that at least we could eat. This boy's death would only bring trouble upon us. For a third time I was kicked. "What be your name, piglet-boy? he asked.
"Um, B-Ben."
"Well, Piglet Ben, you belong to us now. Get up."
"Belong—to—whom?" I struggled to my feet as best I could, my eyes streaming from pain.
The man barked a short laugh. "To the army of the kingdom of Drachensbett.
TWELVE
Not a day earlier, I aspired to flee my onerous burdens of nobility for a position of anonymous and humble service in another land. Now, to my enormous heartbreak, I had attained my exact wish. Rest assured that the irony of this situation, bitter though I found it, did not escape me.
The patrol that had discovered and accidentally shot me now dragged me back to their camp. That is to say that they cuffed, kicked, and pushed me along, keeping me always to the forefront to prevent my escape, assuming as they did that I knew the route back to Montagne. After some time, the leader—Captain, his men called him—threw one end of my cloak over my shoulder, ordering me to hold the edge with my good hand as a sling for my throbbing arm. His goal was expedience, not compassion, for my moaning pace delayed them. From the snatches of banter I could make out, they had no interest in experiencing the mountain in darkness.
At last, dusk settling around us, we arrived at a double row of huts built of fresh-hewn logs. Returning scouts greeted my captors boisterously as we approached, paying me no more than a second's notice.
The captain ordered me brought to the mess hall, for the camp's cook was also its surgeon. One look at the man's hands and I wanted no taste of either of his professions, but no other option was presented, and in a moment's time I found myself laid out on a table, the cook's grimy fingers prodding my wound. Without warning he jerked the arrow's remains from my arm, and again I fainted. When I came to, the broken bone was already set, and my arm splinted.
Glad as I was that the rags securing this splint were at least clean, I wished he had taken the time to soak them in aqua vitae, for my mother always swore of the healing powers of strong spirits. I knew better than to request this, however, for already I sensed the man had no interest in instruction, least of all from a whimpering young prisoner.
Without a word, the cook plunked an earthen bowl of stew at my side and returned to his stove. How good the stew tasted in reality I cannot say, but at that moment, drunk with hunger and pain, I considered that hodgepodge of beans and old meat the nectar of the gods, and I polished it off promptly.
"Huh, grunted the cook as I brought my empty bowl to him—ostensibly returning it, but in truth hoping for a second serving—"you eat well enough. But you cry like a girl.
I started. Of course I did! But, no, they could not learn that. Whatever fate might befall a female prisoner, I did not want to discover it. Instead I nodded in what I hoped was a masculine fashion.
"Start scrubbing those," he directed, jerking his head at a mountain of soiled pots and bowls.
"But—This in the deepest voice I could manage.
"Don't 'but' me," he snarled. "Prisoners work for food, and they thank me for it, too.
So I did, and set to work on the pots, my belly still growling.
Here I made the most awful discovery: my broken arm, in addition to aching with throbbing intensity, had been wrapped so thoroughly that I could not wiggle any part of my right hand. My injury and its dressing meant that I could not move my fingers. Washing dishes was thus problematic at best. Far more horrifying, however, was the realization that the spells over which I had labored for so many months were now as good as useless.
***
In the days that followed, it became clear that I was without doubt the most worthless human being these Drachensbett men had ever met. I could not chop wood or clear dinner bowls; my skills as bootblack were nonexistent; I failed even at tugging arrows from a target the soldiers had erected.
But, I counseled myself, at least no one discerned my sex. Filthy, my hair close-cropped, I spent my days, and nights as well, in a bundle of fabrics that would have disguised the most feminine of silhouettes, and my silhouette was far from feminine. Even without my cloak, I sported a tunic covered with a heavy wool jerkin, these topped with a shapeless and bulky knitted jersey, more suitable for fisherman than soldier, that I had unearthed my first day in the camp. In fact, its past life on the sea was apparent from its stench, but I quickly learned to sacrifice delicacy for warmth.
Anonymity, however, was derived less from appearance than from station. My past ten months in the castle had exposed me to a ceaseless outpouring of attention. Much as I disliked it, I had grown accustomed to constant observance by servants, teachers, guests, and residents of Montagne, little though I came in contact with this last population. In the Drachensbett camp, however, I learned the truth that men forever look upward. The cares, needs, clothing, demeanor, and indeed gender of those of inferior status bear them little concern. Most days I spent with tears dried to my cheeks, having no water, looking glass, or incentive to wash them, and even these did not attract attention. As prisoner, I was considered drudge for whoever claimed me first, and that claim was accompanied by only the most perfunctory of glances.
The cook quickly took me as kitchen slave, even chaining me to his great empty cooking pot each night so that I would not escape. Stirring meals, scrubbing dishes as best I could one-handed, serving up great steaming globs of food—such became the cycle of my days, and though the pain in my arm gradually faded as the bones reknitted, the pain in my heart only grew.
It was, however, in working for the cook that I discovered my one ability. Self-defense, evasion, navigation—all these I desperately required, and had not. Yet I could still, one-handed, light fires. No matter how wet the wood, how sparse the kindling, how drafty the hearth, in the space of minutes I produced a working flame.
My labors soon included warming the officers' quarters before they arose each morning. (The soldiers, as soldiers everywhere, were expected to suffer.) The first day of this assignment, the captain watched my labors from his bed, though I hid my hand gestures as best I could. "That's quite a talent, Piglet, he said, using the designation by which I was universally known, to my enormous shame, in the camp. "We'll have to keep you with us when the time comes.
What "the time was I dared not ask, but I sensed it would not bode well for Montagne, and I endeavored to make myself as unobtrusive as possible in order to overhear all I could. Soon enough I learned that in the past year Drachensbett scouts had discovered a pass across Ancienne (or Drachensbett, as they called the mountain) that could be suitable for an army's passage, should that army be hardened enough to withstand the brutal elements for which the mountain was so infamous. This, clearly, was how Drachensbett's assassins had murdered my mother and uncle, and it was in trailing the assassins that my father had perished. My blood boiled as I remembered King Renaldo's vehement denials. Now Drachensbett, tiring of diplomacy and sensing an opportunity at last to claim the small country in the middle of their own, intended to invade in force, sweeping down the mountain to broach the weaker defenses on Chateau de Montagne's mountain façade.
Much of this I learned by eavesdropping on soldiers frustrated that the attack had not yet occurred. Apparently these plans, drawn for months, had been postponed when news of the ball at Chateau de Montagne had reached their king. (Clever Lord Frederick! He had predicted the ball would delay them.) True to their profession, the soldiers dismissed such politics and now were eager to move. Until orders came, however, they could not, and instead passed their days in endless patrols and military exercises, subsisting on an ever more monotonous diet of beans.
I had never enjoyed beans, no matter how well my mother prepared them. Now my abhorrence of their mushy, pasty tastelessness reached new depths with every meal. Only fear of starvation kept me eating. Chained to my pot, a stinking ram's skin for my bed (I had never known how odiferous wool could be in its natural state, and bristling with twigs and burrs), I fantasized of banquet meals, yearning even for the dry cakes and rubbery aspics so frequent to the table of Chateau de Montagne.
Observing the soldiers dine, I also dreamt, for the first time in my life, of table manners. Packed shoulder to shoulder, the men spat food in their enthusiastic exchanges. They swilled down enormous mouthfuls with equally sizable portions of ale, belched with abandon, and picked their teeth with their knives. I could not tell, in fact, which was more repellent, the food or its consumers, and in my loneliness and revulsion I ached even for Queen Sophia. Envisioning her response to this barbarous spectacle, my spirits rose ... until I remembered that the queen, whatever her occupation at the moment, was certainly not planning the
castle's defense. If only I could warn her!
But no. I was trapped in the camp as surely as a pickle in a pig. Even if I escaped my chains, I could not navigate over the mountain, not before the skilled Drachensbett scouts tracked me down like an animal and dealt me a quick death. That night, huddled on my malodorous sheepskin, my body curled around the flame in my good hand, I begged forgiveness of my father. I had promised to honor him, and instead I was feeding our enemies and polishing their boots as they plotted the capture of Montagne.
I snuffed my flame and not for the first time cried myself to sleep.
***
Just as a sausage falls from a skillet to the hotter stone below, so too did I discover that however miserable my enslavement had been these many weeks, it was about to become truly unbearable.
As always, the day began with the cook kicking me awake to light his stove, then sending me on my rounds. I crept into each officer's hut more silent than a mouse, for a mouse is not mocked for his "girlish" pink cheeks and soft body, or put to work tugging on officers' boots and brushing their coats, all the time knowing the cook will be waiting with a sharp word and sharper fist for his tardiness.
Inevitably I was late, or late enough, and with a cuff and a curse the cook put me to work at the sink as yet another pot of beans bubbled on the fire. This dismal routine, which normally continued until I collapsed to sleep still damp from the night's last scrubbing, was now broken by a most improbable flourish of horns, followed by great shouts and hurrahs.
The cook at once scuttled to the doorway, his mouth agape. Curious as any other, I peeked around his bony shoulder at a most splendid procession parading through the camp. A dozen fresh soldiers with drummers and pages marched before a handsome young man with fine silver crown, one hand casually holding the reins of his gleaming black mount while the other rested on his thigh. He beamed about, his glee spreading to every man he viewed, so that it took me several moments to connect this face to my former life.