The Hero's Guide to Being an Outlaw (29 page)

With elegance and precision, the nattily dressed Avondellian warriors advanced on Rundark’s castle. As soon as they got within range, the Darian archers began unloading scores of arrows upon them. The Avondellian cannons fired in return, blowing huge hunks of stone from the upper edges of the wall and crumbling the ramparts on which the archers stood. With a creak, the huge iron gate swung open, and platoons of snarling Darians flooded out into the meadow. They met the Avondellians head-on, and soon the entire field echoed with the clashing of blades and the clattering of armor.

The heroes stood, watching the chaos from afar. “Okay,” Briar called as she stepped back into her coach. “Say ta-ta to your horsies for now and get inside.”

“In there?” Liam asked.

“With you?” added Gustav.

“Well, if you’d rather ride openly across the battlefield—” Briar began.

“Slide over, sister,” Ella said, climbing in. The princes squeezed in after her.

Frederic, who was squished against the far door next to Gustav, cleared his throat. “So, um, Briar . . . are you sure this coach can make it through—”

“I brought Worthingham,” Briar said, nodding slyly. “He’s the driver I used to send through treacherous obstacle courses for fun. You know, back when I was cruel and awful. Hit it, Worthingham!”

The driver cracked the reins, and the coach took off with a jolt. It whipped left and right, narrowly avoiding dueling warriors and wild, riderless horses. A squad of Darian spearmen tried to block the coach, but it pivoted, kicking dirt up into their faces. Everybody inside held on for dear life except Briar, who hummed cheerily.

The coach barreled through the gateway and across the drawbridge, and skidded to a stop at the front doors of the castle.

“Last stop,” Briar said. “Everybody out.”

Gustav threw open the door and stepped directly into the castle’s entry chamber, where he clobbered two bewildered sentries. Frederic, Duncan, Ella, and Liam filed out after him.

“Hey, losers,” Briar called as they rushed down the hall. “Do me a favor?”

They paused briefly to turn back to her. “What?” asked Liam.

“Try to win for a change, okay?”

Liam nodded as Briar closed the door and screamed something at Worthingham. The coach took off again.

“To the roof, people,” Liam said to his team. “Let’s end this.”

A
nd so it was that the League of Princes faced off against their two greatest foes in a climactic battle that would forever cement their places in history. But rather than dwell on that horrible, violent conflict, let me instead recount to you an interesting conversation that occurred between Reginald the valet and Frank the dwarf.

“Sir Dwarf,” said Reginald. “I hear you will be petitioning the Inter-Kingdom Dictionary Guild to have ‘dwarves’ recognized as the official plural of ‘dwarf.’”

“That’s right,” grunted Frank. “What of it?”

“I happen to have some connections on the Guild Board,” said the valet, straightening his tie. “You may not know this, but it was through my influence that we no longer need to pronounce the
B
at the end of ‘comb.’”

Aw, who am I kidding? Let’s get to the battle.

After leaving Briar’s coach, the League crawled into the first dumbwaiter shaft they found and climbed straight to the castle’s roof, where they immediately noticed that Rundark had made significant changes. All of Rauber’s candy kiosks and ringtoss booths were gone. The rooftop was now one big rectangle of flatness—except for the dome (stolen from a Svenlandian cathedral) that still rose up from its center.

“Where is he?” Gustav asked. “Where are the bombs? And the big cannon?”

“Maybe Gabberman was wrong?” Frederic suggested. “Maybe that cart was just bringing in a load of melons?”

Liam grunted. “I hate melons.”

Then a loud noise rose from beneath their feet, like the grinding of a thousand metal gears. A cracking sound followed, along with a hurried hiss of air, as the huge dome split down the middle and its halves began to separate.

“Ooh, I hope it hatches a giant chick.” Duncan beamed.

Inside the open dome they could see a complicated weave of moving mechanical parts. With a chorus of screeches and crunches, a circular platform appeared: a gleaming steel disk two feet thick and fifty feet across that rose up into the air on a tall, rotating column. Rundark stood on the platform, along with six brutish bodyguards. Beside the Warlord was a vision orb, sitting on a pedestal of carved bone. But what caught the heroes’ eyes most of all was the cannon—thirty feet-long, bloodred, and wide enough to load a cow into (if, for any reason, you’d ever want to load a cow into a cannon). And right next to it sat a large wooden bin piled high with glowing, cauldron-size bombs.

Rundark caught sight of the stunned princes and let out a bemused huff. “It takes a special type of fly to revisit the web of the spider it was lucky enough to escape,” he said.

“Heroic flies,” Liam said proudly.

“I was thinking stupid,” the Warlord replied.

“Yeah, that’s us,” said Gustav. And with that, he leapt up onto the slowly rising platform, grabbed one of the bodyguards by the ankle, and tossed him off. Ella and Liam jumped for the edge of the disk and pulled themselves up. But Frederic and Duncan were too late; they couldn’t quite reach the lip of the platform. While Ella drew her sword and fended off bodyguards, Liam leaned down and grabbed the outstretched hands of his fellow princes.

As the disk continued to rise, Frederic and Duncan felt their feet leave the floor—but Liam didn’t have the strength or leverage to haul them both up at once. Gustav did, though. He head-butted a guard off the edge of the platform and then pulled all three men up.

“Everybody good?” Gustav asked. “Okay, let’s fight.”

He and Liam drew their swords and joined Ella in battling the remaining four guards. Liam quickly disarmed one enemy and kicked him down to the roof. Ella tricked a pair into tackling each other and tumbling off the side. Gustav picked the last one up by the collar and simply dropped him over the edge.

The five heroes faced Lord Rundark. He still stood by the vision orb with his arms folded across his chest. He’d made no move to join the fight, nor did he seem to care that his men were rolling and groaning on the roof below.

And the platform rose still. It passed flying birds. It appeared to pass clouds. It passed what might have been a flying hat. Duncan peeked over the edge and watched the men on the roof become mere specks. Frederic tried to mentally calculate how high up they were but started hyperventilating once he’d counted past three hundred feet. Then, suddenly, with a loud, metallic screech, the disk came to a halt. Ella and Liam grabbed the others and formed a human wall between the Warlord and his mega-weapon.

“What’s the matter, Rundark?” Liam said to their silent, smirking foe. “Afraid to take on all of us?”

“No,” the Warlord said. “I was just waiting until we were high enough to guarantee that the fall would kill you.” His lips curled. In the bright light of day, his glowing green aura had not been so easy to see. He raised his hands and shot forth five bolts of blue lightning. Everybody went down. The heroes rolled and skidded across the platform, moaning as smoke wafted up from their singed clothing. Duncan slid perilously close to the edge, but Ella caught him by the neck ruff.

“And that’s right—Zaubera’s here, too!” cackled the ghostly witch as her spectral form separated itself from the Warlord’s body and flew gleeful loops in the air. “I never get tired of zapping you guys,” she clucked.

“Yes, but you failed to knock them off the platform, witch,” Rundark said.

“That would be too easy,” Zaubera replied. “We need to have some fun with them first.”

“Bah!” Rundark barked. “It’s time to destroy the world.” Ignoring the smoldering heroes, he ran his hands over the vision orb to activate it. In each of the Thirteen Kingdoms, citizens outside their royal palaces jumped, startled to see the giant Mega-orbs crackle to life. Most people had practically forgotten about the enormous crystal balls, thinking of them as nothing more than oversize public art displays. But everybody’s attention was drawn to the orbs now. Mists swirled within them, and an image appeared—the Warlord of Dar standing by an enormous cannon with the clear blue sky as his backdrop and five writhing people at his feet. Slowly but surely, crowds began to gather.

In Sylvaria, Snow White and the royal family huddled close, horrified to recognize Duncan amid those writhing figures. In Harmonia, Rapunzel gripped Reginald’s hand as she spotted Frederic in the orb’s image. Val pounded her fists against the giant sphere in Erinthia, as if doing so would help her reach Ella. Lila, who had just chased a Darian general from Svenlandia’s royal palace, started cursing herself for not being there to help her brother. And in Sturmhagen, Jerica saw Gustav’s prone form within the orb and stomped on Wrathgar’s hand (which was still sticking out from under it).

By the hundreds, people came together around the orbs, watching with bated breath. And back on the sky-high platform in New Dar, Rundark looked out upon thirteen different crowds at once. Thousands of faces flickered within the mists of his orb—the faces of people he was about to obliterate.

“People of the Thirteen Kingdoms,” the Warlord said. “I offered you paradise in a world under my rule. But you have refused my benevolence. And now you will reap the consequences. I thank you in advance for so cooperatively gathering around my targets.”

He strode over to the bin and hoisted out a bomb. It sizzled and glowed with a throbbing light. He loaded the bomb into the cannon and turned a crank to raise the barrel to a steep angle. He drew a tall match from his pocket, struck it across his leg to light it, and brought it near the cannon’s long fuse. Before the match made contact, though, its tiny flame went out.

Rundark turned and glared at ghostly Zaubera, who was hovering over his shoulder with her lips still puckered from blowing out the match. “What do you think you’re doing?” he snapped.

“You don’t kill the audience before the show,” the witch said. “We didn’t plan on it, but we’ve got those loathsome princes right here. And snivelly Cinderella, too. We can’t let this golden opportunity slip by! We destroy them first. In front of the whole world, just like we planned before.”

“Like
you
planned before,” Rundark said. “I neither need nor desire your brand of theatricality. I crave only destruction. Besides, it’s not as if these people are going to have long to ruminate on the deaths of their heroes. In a matter of moments, they’ll all be dead themselves.”

“And where’s the art in simply surprising them with their own obliteration,” Zaubera scoffed. “You’re always so practical. Let’s toy with their emotions first!”

As the villains bickered, Frederic dragged himself to Rundark’s skeletal pedestal and pulled his head up to stare into the vision orb. “Everybody, listen!” he shouted to the far-off crowds. “Rundark has super-powerful magical bombs. And they will be headed straight toward those giant vision orbs you’re watching. You need to get as far away from those orbs as possible!”

And all around the Thirteen Kingdoms, seven people turned away from the orbs and fled. Yes, that’s right: seven. The thousands of others stayed glued to the action. They’d discovered a new form of moving-picture entertainment, and nothing was going to tear them away.

“Seriously, leave!” Frederic tried again. But he was quickly cut off by Zaubera’s phantom form swishing by and startling him back onto the floor.

“Nuh-uh-uh,” the witched cooed. “No interfering with my spectacle.” She hovered before the orb and addressed the audience. “Ladies and gentlemen, we now present for your viewing pleasure: the Death of the League of Princes.”

“Bah! Enough nonsense,” Rundark spat as he lit another match.

Duncan crawled over to Gustav. “Throw me at him!” Duncan said.

“Didn’t that go badly once before?” Gustav asked warily.

“Yes,” Duncan replied. “But nothing can fail
that
horribly twice”

Gustav shrugged. “Can’t argue that logic.” He stood up, grabbed Duncan, and hurled him headlong at the Warlord. Rundark dropped the match to catch him.

“Aha! See?” Duncan crowed, lying cradled like a baby in the Warlord’s arms.

Then Rundark hurled Duncan, spear-like, back at Gustav. The collision sent both princes hurtling dangerously close to the platform’s edge. Ella and Liam ran to pull them to safety.

“Guys,” Ella barked, “we can’t keep saying it’s five against one and then attacking him individually!”

“She’s right,” Liam said. “We do this together. On the count of three . . .”

“Let’s finish them off now!” Zaubera hissed. “Open yourself up to me! We’ll fry them slowly while their loved ones watch!”

She wafted toward Rundark, but he raised his big, calloused hands and waved her away like a foul odor. “No!” he barked. “I shut my mind to you. I’m tired of giving power to a petty old spirit. I am Warlord of Dar! Not the stoolie of some dead hag.”

“Three!” Liam shouted. He, Ella, Gustav, and Duncan leapt as one at Rundark. Frederic, who was on the other side of the platform, took a deep breath and ran to join them. Or, rather, he tried to. On his first step, he slipped in a puddle of his own sweat. Viewers in far-off cities screamed as he tumbled off the platform—and gasped as he gripped his fingers around the rim of the disk.

While his friends struggled to take down the Warlord, Frederic dangled hundreds of feet in the air, his legs flailing wildly, hoping to find a foothold that simply wasn’t there. He glanced down and bit his lower lip, wondering if he could perhaps use his coat like a parachute and glide gently to the soft grass.

The soft grass! The soft, lush, vibrant grass. That just might be the key to saving them all.

“Zaubera!” he called. The witch’s ghostly face appeared over the edge of the platform, grinning wickedly.

“Well, look what we have here,” she said. “I don’t even need Rundark to finish
you
off. I’ll just blow on your fingers until you get so ooked out by my ghost breath that you let go.”

She began puffing on his fingertips. And the cold dampness of her breath felt so icky that her plan almost worked. But Frederic was determined.

“No,” he said, straining to hold on. “Zaubera, listen to me: I know you’re not a hundred percent evil. There’s goodness in you.”

“Where?” the ghost-witch said, looking down through her transparent torso. “I certainly don’t see any.”

“The grass down there, the flowers,” Frederic said. “You did that. Why? You must have wanted to bring a little beauty into the world.”

“What?” she spat. “A wicked sorceress isn’t allowed to have a garden? I like to have an attractive backdrop when I slay my enemies.”

“You don’t really want to kill us,” Frederic said.

“Yes, I do,” she said plainly. “And I will. And thanks to all the eyewitnesses watching through my vision orbs, I’ll finally get the fame I deserve.”

Frederic could hear the battle raging on the platform above him, his friends shouting and crying amid the crash and clamor of combat.

“Liam, no!”
BAM!

“Look out, Ella! He’s about to—”
CRACK!

“Duncan, what happened to your pants?”
KA-KRAM!

With all his might, Frederic pulled himself up just high enough to glance over the edge of the platform. He saw his friends on the floor. And he watched as Rundark, with another match in hand, finally lit the cannon’s fuse.

Frederic’s strength wavered, and he dropped back down, hanging once again only by his fingertips. “Don’t let him do it, Zaubera,” Frederic pleaded wearily. “Think about your grand vision. Don’t let him rob you of that.”

The ghost-witch furrowed her misty brow. “And what am I supposed to do to stop him? Huff and puff on him until he catches pneumonia?”

Frederic’s right hand slipped off. And his left didn’t feel like it could take much more. “Use me,” he said. “I open my mind and body to you. Use me.”

“Really?” Zaubera asked giddily. “Well, you don’t need to tell me twice!” She whooshed down to Frederic. At first he felt an odd rush of chill air, but a second later, he felt invigorated—stronger than he ever had before. With only the fingertips of his left hand, he pulled himself nimbly up onto the platform.

I have Zaubera’s magical strength,
he thought. And then he realized that he had more than just that. He had access to her mind, her thoughts and memories. A parade of images marched through his head. He felt Zaubera’s terror as the dragon’s gaping jaws came at her. He felt her anger as he and the other princes escaped from her after their first encounter two summers ago. He felt her petulance as she threw a tantrum, flash-frying a trio of pitiful henchmen who had let one of her prisoners escape. But he also saw much older images and felt much more distant emotions—ones that the witch herself had nearly forgotten. Frederic saw a woman who loved nature, who wanted nothing more than to tend her garden and share its treasures with her neighbors. He saw a woman who was hurt, intensely, by the jeers and barbs of vicious bullies who tormented her. He saw a woman who wanted to be a hero, who sacrificed her beloved garden in order to save the lives of three children in a fiery inferno—a misinterpreted act for which she received no thanks and was instead branded a dangerous villain.

“I understand now,” Frederic said aloud.

“It is about time,” said Rundark. “You finally understand that fighting me is pointless. Your world is over. And I will rule the wastes that remain.”

But Frederic ignored him. Instead, he directed his words to Zaubera. “What they did to you was unfair,” he said. “It was wrong. But you didn’t have to become what they assumed you to be. You could have worked to prove them wrong.”

“Hey, Tassels,” Gustav said gently as he struggled to sit upright. “Who are you talking to?”

“Zaubera,” Frederic said. “She’s in my head.”

“What?” Rundark snapped. For the first time ever, they noticed a hint of fear in his eyes. He raced toward Frederic, who found his hands suddenly moving of their own volition. His arms stretched out before him, and his fingers began to twitch as a ball of crackling blue energy appeared between his palms. He whipped the magic missile at Rundark, and it exploded against his broad chest, knocking him off his feet.

“Way to go, Magic Tassels!” Gustav crowed.

Liam and Ella raised their heads off the ground. “What’s going on?” Liam muttered.

“Zaubera’s not totally evil,” Frederic said. “I think I convinced her to switch sides.” And then his arms went wild. He was sending energy bolts everywhere. One crashed into the base of the cannon, another came dangerously close to igniting the entire crate of bombs. One blue blast would have sizzled Duncan if Liam and Ella hadn’t each grabbed one of his feet and yanked him out of the way.

“Come on, Duncan! Wake up and move!” Liam urged.

Duncan’s eyelids fluttered. “Papa Scoots, is that you?”

“Hey, Tassels, you wanna watch where you’re shooting those things?” Gustav called, ducking as a bolt sailed over his head.

“I’m not exactly in control here,” Frederic said, his eyes wide with horror.

“You fool!” Rundark barked, ducking behind the cannon to avoid the magic missiles headed his way. “Do you realize what you’ve done? She’ll kill us all! I’ve seen inside that witch’s mind, too! She’s a cruel and sadistic beast. She thrives on bringing pain to others. That’s why I knew I could use her!”

“Don’t listen to him, Zaubera,” Frederic said as his arms continued to whip about, spraying fire across the platform. “He only sees in you what he wants to see. There’s more to you than that! The world is watching, Zaubera. If you do the right thing now, do you think they’ll care about anything you’ve done in the past? You’ll be a hero—the hero you were always meant to be. You can write your own destiny!”