“Don’t say a word,” Liam grumped.
“I don’t need to,” Ella said, allowing herself a slight smirk as they took off in pursuit of the runaway wagon.
Greenfang got a good look at their faces as they sped past him. “This is our lucky day—they’ve got bounties on their heads, too!” He turned to his men. “Double Trouble, get after that horse! The rest of you, stop the cage!”
As Ella and Liam rode, the twin bounty hunters closed in on either side of them, grinning wickedly. Norin Black-Ax swung his black ax, and Corin Silversword swung his not-silver sword.
“Duck!” Liam and Ella yelled to each other in unison. The brothers’ weapons clanged together, and both twins were knocked from their mounts.
“Lummoxes!” Greenfang spat.
Duncan cheered as he and his friends awkwardly bounced against one another in the overcrowded cage. “Huzzah! We’re getting away!”
“I hate to be the one to break this to you,” Rapunzel said, trying to hold herself in one place, “but I’m pretty sure mongooses can’t drive.”
The animal turned around, reins in its mouth, and gave them an offended growl.
“Keep your eye on the road, weasel!” Gustav barked. The mongoose looked back to the curvy, downhill mountain path they were now on and whimpered.
Pushing her horse to go as fast as it could, Ella caught up to the runaway wagon. “Give me the keys,” she said to Liam.
“Why?” he asked.
“I’m going to jump onto the wagon.”
“No, I’ll do it.”
Fig. 6
NOT a WEASEL
“Liam, this is not the time.” She snatched the keys from his hand and leapt off the galloping horse, landing on the back edge of the wagon. She gripped the cage bars to steady herself. “Take care of the mongoose,” she called back to Liam.
Liam grumbled and raced to the front of the wagon, reaching up to snap a twig from a tree branch as he rode. “Hey, mongoose!” he called, waving the stick. “Look what I’ve got! Look!”
The mongoose dropped the reins from its mouth and turned toward Liam, panting excitedly.
“Fetch!” Liam shouted, hurling the stick deep into the woods. The mongoose leapt from the speeding wagon and disappeared among the trees. Liam carefully hopped back into the driver’s seat of the wagon. “Blecch,” he groaned when he picked up the soggy, drool-soaked reins.
On the back of the wagon, Ella unlocked and opened the cage door.
“Hold it open! Hold it open!” everyone inside cried. “Don’t let it close again!”
“Relax,” Ella said, stepping into the cage. “We’re home free. Liam, take us out of here!”
“With pleasure,” he replied, cracking the reins once more.
This was punctuated by several quick thwipping sounds. The bounty hunters were right back on their tail, and Periwinkle Pete had launched another volley of arrows. Each hit its mark, and the wagon’s team of horses—with their harnesses severed—took off in separate directions. Liam yelped and squeezed the now-useless reins as the wagon plummeted uncontrollably down the winding mountain road.
“Lamebrain!” Greenfang barked at his archer. “We need them alive, fool!”
Pete brought his horse to an abrupt halt, kicking up clouds of dust. “I am an elf,” he said, proudly crossing his arms. “I shall continue the chase once I have received a proper apology.”
Greenfang fumed. “Why am I working with you again?”
The runaway cage, in the meantime, swayed and rattled—as did its passengers. The road narrowed, and tree limbs cracked against the iron bars.
“I think I liked it better when the big doggie was driving,” Snow said as her acorn tiara bounced off her head.
“Don’t worry, Snow,” Duncan said. “I’ve got you. Everything will be all right.”
“Duncan, that’s my hand,” said Frederic.
“It’s so soft,” Duncan said with admiration.
“I moisturize.”
“Everybody hold on!” Liam shouted as the wagon hit a steeply angled boulder and launched into the air. When the wheels hit the ground again, Frederic and Duncan—still hand in hand—went airborne, sailing toward the open door. Gustav reached out to catch them, tripped over Snow’s tiara, and tumbled out of the cage with them. The three men rolled to a painful stop amid the gravel.
“Well, that’s one way to get out,” Gustav groaned.
Periwinkle Pete, fresh from an apology that he found sorely lacking in sincerity, was once again racing after the wagon on his horse when he saw the pile of princes plop into his path. He whipped his reins to the left and made a sharp turn—directly into Greenfang’s horse. The two steeds collided and their riders fell, tumbling into Erik the Mauve and his startled mongoose. All three bounty hunters rolled off the road and down an embankment.
“Get up, get up,” Gustav said, dragging Frederic and Duncan to their feet. He took off on foot down the hill, and his fellow princes followed.
The wagon continued to barrel downhill, heading toward a sharp bend in the road. “Brace yourselves,” Liam said, his fingers curling around the edge of his seat. Inside, Snow and Rapunzel huddled under Ella’s arms. The wagon reached the bend, catapulted over a scattering of large rocks and shrubs, and landed with a splash in a thick and bubbling mud pit. Liam slid off the bench and plunked into the goo; the women all fell toward the front of the cage; the door slammed shut; and the keys slid out and disappeared below the muck.
“We’re alive,” Rapunzel said, finding it hard to believe.
“I would prefer not to do that again,” Snow added.
“Liam, get over here and help find the keys,” Ella said as she reached out between the bars and sifted through the brown slime.
Wiping sludge from his eyes, Liam dug around fruitlessly. “I can’t find them.”
Gustav arrived, with Frederic and Duncan panting behind him.
“Blondie, you’re okay,” he shouted as he plodded into the mire.
“Sort of,” Rapunzel said. “We’re still stuck in this cage.”
“It’s worse than just that,” Frederic added, looking up the hill behind them. The bounty hunters were coming. On their mounts again. All of them.
“Hey, that’s not fair,” said Duncan. “The bad guys got their horses back, and I’ve lost poor Papa Scoots yet again.”
“We’ve got to get this cage open,” Liam said, pulling pointlessly on the locked iron door.
“It’s not going to happen,” Ella said.
“We’ll fight them off,” Gustav said, cracking his knuckles.
“No, all of you, listen to me,” Ella said. “You need to leave. They have horses and weapons and . . . mongeese. Get away while you can. The only thing worse than some of us getting caught is all of us getting caught.”
Everyone looked to Liam. He took a deep breath and nodded.
“I’ll be back, Snowy,” Duncan said with far less than his usual amount of perk.
Frederic and Gustav both flashed reluctant looks at Rapunzel. “Guys, run away,” she said. “They’re almost here.”
The princes sloshed out of the mud and took off down the mountainside. Before they vanished out of sight, Liam turned back and called, “We will save you.”
“Save yourselves first!” Ella yelled back. And the princes were gone.
Greenfang’s gang arrived a few seconds later and dismounted.
“What a mess,” Greenfang said, scowling.
“Well, we still got three of ’em,” said Orangebeard. “Which is how many we had to start with.”
Greenfang leaned over and snarled in his henchman’s face. “We could have had all of them. I still want all of them.” He looked at the women in the cage, then walked over to the rugged slope down which the princes had fled. “Pete! Erik! Come with me. We’re going after them. On the mongooses.”
“Mongeese,” Erik said halfheartedly.
“The rest of you,” Greenfang said, “haul this wagon out of th
e muck and take it to the royal court in Avondell. The faster we get these ladies onto Death Row, the faster we get our gold.”
“I really hope Death Row isn’t what it sounds like,” Rapunzel said, growing pale.
“Yeah,” said Snow. “Maybe it’s not so much a row as it is one big room full of prisoners waiting to die.”
“That . . . was not my point,” Rapunzel said.
Ella put her hands on the shoulders of the other two women. “We will get out of this,” she said with reassurance. Then she looked off into the distance. “It’s the guys I’m worried about.”
9
AN OUTLAW GOES GREEN
The princes were exhausted. They’d been running for three solid days, hiking across miles of rugged terrain, ducking behind trees and sliding down hillsides in order to stay ahead of the bounty hunters who dogged them the entire way. They would have given anything for a bed or a hot meal, but towns and villages needed to be strictly avoided—a sad fact they discovered when they sought refuge at an inn in the tiny hamlet of Tartlesboro and almost lost Duncan to a grieving innkeeper with a hot skillet.
A satin-draped minstrel was in the process of serenading the inn’s dining room guests as the princes ducked inside. “He’s good and he’s kind and he never says curses! / He makes kingdoms better, when they started off worses!” The honey-voiced man sang as he plucked on a mandolin.
“I wonder who he’s singing about,” Duncan said.
“At least it’s not us for once,” Frederic said, shutting the door behind them and peeking out a nearby window to check for any signs of bounty hunters.
But that was when the innkeeper, who had been busy at the stove, heard the door slam and turned to see who his new customers were. His face turned instantly red, and his nostrils flared.
“Murderous fiends! You took away our Sleeping Beauty!” the angry man shouted as he leapt over the bar and swung his cast-iron pan straight at Duncan’s face. Luckily, Gustav saved the day by throwing his petite friend out of the way—and through a table.
“I’m no murderer,” Duncan protested as Liam and Frederic pulled him from the splinters. “The only thing killer about me is my dance moves.” But his defense went unheeded—and every customer in the place joined the innkeeper in chasing the princes out of town.
And so it was back into the wilderness, where, within minutes, they heard the slobbery panting of pursuing mongooses. When the princes finally stumbled upon the banks of Rambling River, they were more than just relieved.
“This is the perfect place to lose them,” Liam said. “We won’t leave a trail on water.”
A fisherman’s canoe sat by the riverside. They climbed in and pushed off (leaving a note and a few coins behind for the boat’s former owner). Floating downstream, they finally had a chance to catch their breaths—except for Frederic, whose head was planted firmly between his legs.
“Did you drop something?” Duncan asked.
“No,” Frederic replied, his voice quivery. “I’ve just never been in a boat before. And apparently I get seasick.”
“Riversick,” Duncan corrected, though not unsympathetically.
Gustav shifted uneasily in his seat. “What’s the plan now?” he asked. “Straight to Avondell Palace, right? We bust the girls out of jail?”
“Anything to get us back on dry land,” Frederic muttered.
Gustav grabbed the oars. “All right, then. Let’s hightail it to Avondell Palace.”
“No,” said Liam forcefully. “We’re not doing this again.”
The others looked at him askance. “What’s the problem?” Gustav asked. “Quitting the hero business just because we’re outlaws now?”
“No,” Liam said again. “I mean, yes, we have to help our friends, but we’re not doing this again.” He held out his hands to indicate the soiled, tattered state they were in. “Every time one of us gets captured, the others all run off half-cocked on some barely planned rescue mission. And we always manage to foul things up worse than they were when we started. Look at what happened at my wedding. Look at what happened with those bounty hunters!”
“To be fair,” Frederic said, “Duncan and Snow were doing pretty well until—”
“That’s not the point!” Liam said. “We’re going to get Ella, Rapunzel, and Snow free. But we’re going to do it right this time.”
“And how’s that exactly?” Gustav asked.
“We’re going to prove our innocence,” Liam said.
In an unnecessarily dark chamber at the heart of the fortress formerly known as Castle von Deeb, Lord Rundark crossed his arms against his burly chest and watched his army of bandits at work. Scores of grunting, sweaty henchmen tramped past him, lugging taffy machines, Ping-Pong tables, and tubs of raw cookie dough. Once outside, these offending items would be tossed into the moat along with every other reminder of the young Deeb Rauber’s reign as Bandit King.
Rauberia was no more. This was New Dar now—a land in which there was no time or place for trivial things like entertainment or recreation. Lord Rundark made sure of that.
As four bandits worked together to haul out a chocolate-smeared trampoline, one of them made the mistake of whistling. The other three stopped in their tracks, closed their eyes, and braced themselves for what they knew was to come. A second later, the Warlord was looming over the absentminded whistler, snorting like an angry bull. With his bare hands, Rundark folded the trampoline around the man, trapping him like beans in a burrito. “Carry on,” the Warlord said.
Fig. 7
NEW TENANT
He stepped back and watched the remaining three carry out the twisted trampoline with its pitiful passenger. Back during Rauber’s rule, one of them might have freed their friend once they were outside, but Rundark had no worries about such a thing happening now. His brutal, iron-fisted ways had earned him the utter loyalty of these men.
A black-clad messenger jogged into the room, an emissary from the League of Evil Couriers. The man’s hands trembled, and his breath was short. “Lord Rundark, I bring news from Avondell,” he announced in a quivery voice.
Rundark stared at him, waiting.
“Three of the ladies have arrived there as prisoners,” the courier said. He swallowed hard. “But I regret to inform you that the young princess from Erinthia and all four of the princes have thus far eluded capture. Bounty hunters are still in pursuit, though, so it’s just a matter of time. I’m sure.”
The Warlord stroked the long braids of his wild, black beard before he suddenly stepped off into a shadowy corner of the obsidian chamber and began mumbling softly. He’s talking to himself, the messenger thought. He’s completely insane. And I’m dead. But then he heard a second voice. Rundark wasn’t alone. He was talking to someone hidden in the darkness. No, not just talking—arguing. The courier strained to listen, praying that his own doom was not the topic of conversation. “. . . best not to take chances,” he thought he heard one of them say. He was just about to attempt a quiet exit when Rundark grabbed something shiny and turned back into the dim lamplight. The Warlord stood before the messenger, holding a large glass-like orb on his palm.
“Take this to our friends by the sea,” Rundark said. “They will know what to do with it.”
“At once,” the courier said, taking the big crystal ball and nearly collapsing with relief. He turned to leave.
“Oh,” said Rundark. “And after you’ve made your delivery, come back here and jump into the moat with the bladejaw eels.”
“Yes, sir.” The messenger sighed and took off on his trip to Yondale.
10
AN OUTLAW SMELLS SOMETHING FISHY
At night the Twisted Forest of Yondale is the kind of eerie, shadow-bathed, creak-and-groan-filled place that makes you believe its gnarled and drooping trees are going to snap to life and bite your head off. By the light of day it’s slightly less intimidating—you may feel like the trees are only going to eat one of your feet or maybe a few fingers. So as Lila rode throug
h the Twisted Forest, she reminded herself that sweet, naive, little Snow White had managed to brave these woods on her own. It had been here in the Twisted Forest that Snow’s stepmother, who was queen of Yondale at the time, had abandoned the young princess and left her to die. But Snow had survived and made it into the much happier forest of Sylvaria (which was, coincidentally, called the Much Happier Forest). And I will survive my trip too, Lila told herself. After all, I’ve got the world’s greatest bounty hunter by my side.
“So why did we come here again?” she asked Ruffian, ducking as she rode under a particularly evil-looking oak.
“Wiley Whitehair is from Yondale,” Ruffian said, glancing down at her from his much taller horse. “So is Greenfang. And they were the first hunters to find out about the bounty on the League of Princes. They saw the Wanted posters by Yondale Harbor.”
“Of course!” Lila said excitedly. “You’d think posters would have gone up in Avondell first, since that’s supposedly where Briar was killed. But we didn’t hear about it until days later, when Reynaldo wrote his song. If news of the murder spread from Yondale first, maybe this is where the crime actually took place.”
“If you know everything, why do you bother asking questions?”
“Are you smiling under that hood?” Lila asked playfully.
“I assure you I am not,” Ruffian said.
“Sometimes I think you’re the only one who actually believes in me, Ruff.”
“I really do wish you would stop calling me that,” the bounty hunter droned.
“You know it’s true, Ruff. Even my brother still thinks I’m useless.”
“I do not believe that is the case. You need to give Prince Liam some leeway right now. He has suffered a loss, and as I can tell you from personal experience, loss has profound ways of affecting a man.”
“You’re talking about your daughter, right?”
Ruffian closed his eyes and pictured the girl, barely Lila’s age at the time, who had disappeared years earlier—the one person he had never been able to find. “As I said before,” he sniffed, “why do you bother asking questions?”