"Down in their hearts, wise men know this truth: the only way to help yourself is to help others."
--Elbert Hubbard, The Philistine
"You have horses," Jess said to the girl, Marya, after they met the Princess of Berelain. Marya arched an eyebrow as if he had said something very stupid.
"Of course," she replied. "What else would pull the carriage?" She patted the nose of one of the horses and turned toward the boys. The Princess studied them curiously.
"There are more of you?" she asked. Her voice was soft and musical as she swung her long braid over a shoulder. Her eyes were a liquid blue, her face smooth and flawless. She was so beautiful; Cruz and Jess found it hard to look at her.
"Four more," Jess said patting a horse. "My brother. Another pair of brothers, and a girl. We left them at the crossroads."
"The road to Tarquin?" Marya asked. They both nodded. "What do you think, my lady?"
"Saddle the horses, Marya. The road to Tarquin is only a few leagues south. We can collect the rest of their party and conduct ourselves to Berelain. With three more strong boys, plus these two, we may be able to right the carriage." She fastened her blue eyes on Cruz and Jess. "We can travel to my castle and set the Royal Guard to capture the thief you are looking for. What say you?"
"That sounds great," Jess agreed. Beside him, Cruz nodded. "Why would you help us?"
"Because we are fated to," she smiled cryptically. Marya offered the same smile as she set to saddling the horses. She kept her bow close at hand, leaning against the carriage, always alert. The Princess leaned against the side of the carriage as well, smiling thinly.
"Can you ride?" Marya asked them as she tightened a belly strap. Jess shrugged.
"We used to have a horse. But we never rode him much," he replied.
"These horses were trained by the best," she explained. "They should give you no trouble. Are you the leader of your clan?"
"The leader? No. We… have no leaders. We're all friends and relatives."
"This thief—what did he take?"
"My brother is sick. He stole his medicine." Marya looked at him strangely, then shook her head. He opened his mouth to ask her what she was thinking, but she went on.
"The villain will be found and punished," she stated simply, tightening the last saddle strap. "The horses are ready, milady." She smiled at Jess. "Your brother is your elder?"
"Yeah, he's the oldest."
"It is admirable, what you are doing. Setting forth to find his medicine."
"He'd do the same for me," he admitted. He couldn't shake the feeling that this girl knew something he didn't. And why would guards abandon a pair of teenaged girls in the forest, especially when one of them was a Princess? "How old are you?" he asked suddenly.
"I have seen fifteen summers, my lady fourteen. How old are you?"
"Thirteen," he replied. "Why did your guards abandon you?"
"The creatures," she said with a shiver. "I told them to run for their lives and they took my words to heart." She shrugged. "They should not have abandoned us, but I do not blame them. In any case, we are only a few leagues from Berelain." She smiled and handed him the reins of the nearest horse. "Come. Let us collect your… friends and relatives, as you said?" With that, she swung up onto one of the horses and reached down to pull the Princess up behind her. Jess sighed and put his foot through the stirrup, heaving himself upward. Beside him, Cruz did the same, with a little more difficulty. Marya took the reins of the fourth horse and started off down the road, bow slung across her back. The horse beneath him followed dutifully.
They found Tom sitting beneath the sign at the fork in the road. He stood up as they approached, prepared to run off into the surrounding forest. Jess spurred his horse forward with his heels and Tom breathed a sigh of relief when he recognized him. Jess made the introductions and Tom explained that he had seen no sign of the others.
"Can you track them?" Marya asked Jess. He nodded.
"Their footprints aren't like any other around here," he said. "Should be easy to track."
"They shouldn't be too far up the road—they should already have started back," Tom added.
"Let us meet them, then," the Princess said brightly. Marya handed the extra horse off to Tom, who climbed up nimbly into the saddle. He spurred the horse forward to ride alongside Jess. Cruz hung back with the girls.
"Didn't find Jason, then," Tom said pointing out the tracks, easily visible from the horse.
"No," Jess replied. "But we should catch up easily with horses."
"Lucked out," he agreed with a laugh. "Plus, those girls are babes. A Princess, you said?"
"Let's find Matt and Aiden and Annie before you put your mind in the gutter," he warned. "Besides, you're a little young for them."
"You got your eye on that Marya, don't you?"
"She's fifteen, and I do not."
"You got dibs. That's fine with me. I won't interfere." He had to swerve to avoid Jess's punch.
"Is everything all right?" Marya called from behind.
"Fine," Jess called back, glaring at Tom. Tom just grinned at him as they rode on.
"Were they taken by the creatures?" Marya asked him as they tried to make sense of the tracks. He scowled up at her and said nothing. The tracks had been easy enough to follow, but it was here where they ended. The landscape around them had changed to a more bog-filled one than forest. He and Tom had gotten down from their steeds and Tom wandered off into the hedges, following the trackway. He was going to tell Marya he didn't know, when he noticed Tom looking at something while motioning him over.
"What?" he asked irritably. Tom pointed at a dark substance mixed among the tracks. Jess stopped and touched it, concern turning to worry as he recognized the dark stain on his fingertips. "Blood," he told Tom as the boy squatted down beside him.
"There's more over there," Tom whispered worriedly. Cruz wandered over with Marya in tow, leading their horses. He stood and went over to where Tom had indicated. There was less of a stain, but it was the same substance in among the cloven-hoofed tracks. Marya grabbed his wrist and looked at the blood on his fingertips. He pointed at the stain with his other hand.
"All is not lost," she said firmly. "They may yet live."
"Who said they weren't alive?" Tom sputtered angrily. "It's only a little blood. They're not dead." There were tears standing in his eyes. "They're not."
"Of course they're not," Jess assured him. "Their tracks lead into the woods. They're alive." He looked at Marya, challenging her to disagree. His blue eyes were hard as he stared into Marya's brown ones. Her stare faltered and she looked away.
"Of course," she said. She looked up at her companion, still on the horse. "Milady, Thomas and Cruz will remain here to guard you." Cruz opened his mouth to say otherwise, but a hard look from the older girl made him close his mouth. She grabbed her quiver full of arrows from her saddle horn. "Jess and I are going to go a little further to look for the others. If these creatures return, you must promise me that you will ride as hard and as fast as you can for Berelain."
The Princess looked at the other girl and nodded slowly. "I promise," she said firmly, "if the creatures return we will ride as hard and as fast as we can for Berelain." Marya nodded curtly and turned back to Jess. "Be careful, Marya. And return quickly and safely," the Princess said quietly.
"You don't have to come," Jess told the other girl, pulling the sword from his belt.
"I wish to," she replied nocking an arrow. He nodded and led the way.
The first of the dead creatures were literally torn apart, mangled almost beyond recognition. Marya identified them as the same type of creatures she had seen earlier. The stench of blood was thick in the air and it nearly turned their stomachs. Jess swallowed nervously—had they been captured by these creatures only to be recaptured by something even more horrible? What had killed these creatures? They walked through the carnage in silence. There were great rends in the trees like claw marks and the underbrush was trampled flat. Decimated pig-men lay everywhere.
Jess had lost the footprints—now they merely followed the ruination, looking for clues as to what might have taken place.
"Could they have done this?" Marya asked in a quiet voice. Jess shook his head.
"They weren't even armed," he told her. "How are we going to find them now?" They neared a rocky outcropping with a cleft that led downward into darkness. Jess reached the entryway but stopped just short of entering. "I'm not going in there."
"We must have a look—those creatures used it for some purpose," Marya reasoned. Jess sighed and moved nearer to the entrance. When he reached the narrow cleft, he stooped and picked up a rock. Taking a deep breath he tossed it underhand into the gloom. He frowned as he heard it strike bottom some distance away. Still, nothing stirred.
"Keep an eye out here," he said finally. "I don't want anything trapping me in there." She nodded and moved to stand near the entryway. Jess took another deep breath and ducked inside. It took his eyes a minute to adjust, but he noticed a path leading downward towards something that reflected the dim light behind him, like a pool of water. Stepping over the dead pig-men on the path, he crept down to the bottom where he saw some bits of cloth near the water's edge. Beyond it was an open pit.
He checked the pit first and breathed a sigh of relief when he found it empty. They were not there. Backing away, he made his way to the pool of water. On the ground in front of the pool were shredded pieces of cloth. He recognized the pattern of the shorts his brother had been wearing amid the shreds. What had happened? Something shiny caught his eye and he squatted to see what it was. It took him a moment to recognize it as Matt's glasses. They were so much a part of Matt that he was surprised to see them by themselves.
He sorted through the other clothes and found Aiden's shirt, a ragged bloody hole in the chest of it. Marya had said these pig-things occasionally ate the humans they captured. Had they eaten them? Couldn't have—not this quickly. Besides, what had caused all this destruction? He slipped Matt's glasses into his pocket and stood up. They would not have left the glasses and their clothes behind if they had escaped. They must have been captured by something else. He would ask Marya what other creatures roamed these woods. He shivered in the darkness—whatever had done this he hoped was long gone. But where were they?
"Jess?" Marya called nervously from the entryway. He supposed he'd been down here for a while and the girl was getting antsy. There was nothing more he could do down here. He slowly made his way back up the path. Marya looked relieved when he stepped out into the fading light. "Did you find anything?" she asked him.
He held up the remains of Aiden's shirt and the glasses. "Their clothes," he muttered. "Marya, what else lives in these woods? Anything else that would take them prisoner?"
"Goblins and the occasional troll," she replied. "But these pig-men are part of the goblin tribes. Perhaps a warring tribe took them prisoner?"
"Any reason why they'd take off their clothes?"
"Humiliation. Goblins hate humans."
"Are they going to eat them?"
"Slaves, I should think, more so than food. Game is aplenty this year."
"Do you think another tribe could do this? And take them prisoner?" He returned the glasses to his pocket and tossed the shredded shirt aside. "You know more about this stuff than me."
"It is possible, but I cannot say for certain."
"What should we do? How can we find them?" Marya frowned, thinking. She looked up at the sun sinking toward the horizon and sighed.
"We should go to Berelain. There we can ask some of the rangers which tribes are warring and see if we can locate them that way. This day is coming to an end and there is little we can do in the forest at night. There, we can outfit ourselves properly and gather the Royal Guard to aid in the search."
"I don't like the idea of leaving them with goblins overnight," he growled.
"What do you propose we do?"
"You're right," Jess sighed after a while. "Let's go to Berelain like you said. We could use more help looking. It's just a bummer that we couldn't find them."
"We will," she assured him. "We will."
They reached the gates of Berelain as the sun slipped behind the edge of the world. They were surprised to find that the town perched on the inside of a bay, the castle built atop a hill above the town. The town was lined with cobblestone streets and one to three-storied buildings of wood and stone. They passed inns and shops, well lit, and some with music spilling out of open doorways. Jess and Cruz and Tom stared wide-eyed at everything as the girls led them up the hill to the castle. There were large three-masted ships at the dock and Cruz pointed out a trio of fiercely bearded men in tri-cornered hats singing drunkenly down the street. One of them had an eyepatch and another a hook for a hand. All had curved swords lashed to their belts, swinging on their hips.
At the large gate, the guards posted there looked extremely surprised at the sight of the Princess. One large fellow helped her down from the horse and wrapped a woolen blanket around her shoulders. Marya waved another one off and told him they would take the horses to the stables, if they saw the Princess safely inside. The guard who had helped the Princess down nodded and Marya rode past him, the others following.
The stables were not far off and they handed the horses over to a couple of stable boys no older than they. Marya led them through a side door and into a huge kitchen, where a number of fires had spitted chunks of meat and cauldrons of bubbling stew hanging over them. They watched hungrily as Marya spoke with a large, matronly woman who ushered them into an anteroom with a long table and wooden benches on either side. She returned a few minutes later with bowls of thick stew and a loaf of fresh-baked bread. The boys set-to hungrily as Marya joined them, smiling.
With bellies full—the kitchen woman had returned with honey-cakes for dessert—Marya led them further into the castle and up a few flights of stairs. They passed a few servants in the hall and Marya gave a few of them instructions. At the end of the hall, she led them into a large room with four beds, a washbasin, a small desk and chair, and a wardrobe.
"This will do for quarters," she told them. "Try and get some sleep. I'll come get you first thing in the morning and we'll see what we can do about finding your companions." She started to go, but stopped in the doorway. "Thank you for helping me see to getting the Princess safely home."
"Thank you for… for everything," Jess told her. She smiled, waved goodnight, and was gone. Tom wandered over to one of the beds and lay down. Within seconds he was asleep with his shoes on. Jess and Cruz shook their heads and took two of the other beds. Sleep was not far in coming for them either, though at least they had the presence of mind to remove their shoes.