The Grave Robber's Apprentice Page 8

  Chapter 22

  Things that Go Bump in the Night

  “I’m a simple monk in need,” Hans pleaded.

  “Don’t camp on the road through the forest, they say, or the Wolf King will get ye,” the man snarled in Hans’ ear. “So I made me a bed in the roots of a tree, and sure if I don’t wake to the sound of you sneaking up to my wagon. Well, you be no Wolf King nor monk, neither. A common thief is what you be, and you’ll never again filch from me nor any other poor peddler.” He readied his blade.

  “Peddler!” a voice commanded from the trees. “Drop your weapon!”

  The peddler squinted into the dark. An old general emerged from the forest, starlight glinting off his epaulettes and helmet. A musket was crooked at his shoulder, aimed at the peddler’s head. The peddler fell to his knees and threw away his knife.

  “For shame, threatening the life of a friar,” Hans said.

  “You speak to me of shame?” the peddler replied. “You a rogue monk and a rogue soldier?”

  Angela came out of the shadows. “You wrong us, sir. We’re not what we seem, nor what you imagine.”

  The peddler saw that “the general” was a girl holding a broken branch. “Who are you? What do you want?”

  Hans had an inspiration. “We are humble travelers journeying to the far mountains,” he said in his finest court talk. “What say you, friend: Is your wagon for hire?”

  Angela had been wondering the same thing. A wagon was faster than foot, and the faster they got to the far mountains, the sooner they’d be safe from Arnulf and able to plot the rescue of her parents. She produced a diamond from her jewel sack. “Here’s treasure for your pains.”

  The peddler bit the jewel and turned it in his fingers. “Tis real!” he exclaimed in wonder. “Into the wagon with you, then, no questions asked. For by my troth, you’re on the run, and misfortune shall befall us if we tarry.”

  Hans and Angela lay curled together under the wagon’s heavy canopy, squeezed between baskets and boxes. The steady clip-clop of the horse’s hooves and the gentle creak of the axles soothed their spirits. Soon they’d drifted into the deepest of dreamlands.

  Hans found himself at a traveling circus. The ringmaster was a skeleton; the acrobats were rats in red-spangled tights. Meanwhile, Angela was having tea with Georgina von Hoffen-Toffen. “I didn’t drown in a bath,” Georgina simpered, “I drowned at sea. See how the fish ate my eyeballs?” An eel slithered in and out of her sockets, and every time she spoke a school of sardines swam out of her mouth.

  By a curious coincidence, both dreamers heard the Necromancer say, “What have we here?” In Hans’ dream, the ringmaster whipped a shroud around his shoulders and became the Evil One. Hans tried to escape, but the circus tent collapsed around him. A rat with Knobbe’s face nuzzled his chin: “This will teach you to run from your papa.”

  In her neighboring dreamland, Angela hid behind her teacup as Georgina wiped the flesh from her skull. She was the Necromancer disguised in ringlets and a frock. Angela ran and bumped into a wall. All the windows and doors to the tearoom had disappeared.

  The Necromancer smacked his lips. “Soon my pickling jars will be filled with fresh meat.”

  Hans and Angela cried out and awoke in the night, hearts pounding.

  Angela clutched Hans. “I dreamed the Necromancer had us.”

  “So did I,” Hans said. “But we’re safe.”

  Angela held her breath. “Are we?”

  “Aren’t we?”

  They were still in the back of the wagon, between the vegetables, herbs, and sundries. But something was different. The wagon had stopped moving. There was an eerie quiet. Hans wriggled to the front of the wagon. He lifted the cloth covering and looked to the driver’s seat. It was empty.

  “The peddler. He’s gone.”

  Angela gulped. “He’ll be back. . . . Won’t he?”

  “I don’t think so,” Hans said. “His horse is gone too. Another thing. We’re not on the main road anymore. We’re on a side trail.”

  “Why would the peddler abandon us in the middle of the forest?” Angela shivered. “Why would he leave us alone with his things?”

  “Who says he had a choice? Who says we’re alone?”

  Quiet as a bedbug, Hans slid under the covering to the ground and motioned Angela to follow. They crouched low. The trail ahead was overgrown with vines and saplings. The wagon had been driven to the end of nowhere.

  A nasty murmur floated through the air.

  Hans took Angela’s hand. “Weevils.” He guided her over the roots of a large tree to the side of the path.

  “Can they see us?” Angela whispered.

  Something drifted behind them. Its long, scaly fingers caressed their shoulders. “Oh yes, they can see you. I, too, in my way. For I hear you. Smell you. Feel you.”

  “Necromancer!” Hans and Angela swung their arms wildly.

  “He’s over here,” mocked voices from the left. “No, over here,” mocked voices from the right.

  “No, here,” said the Necromancer, raising a lantern window before their eyes. “My Weevils wanted to kill you in your sleep. I said to wait, the better to enjoy your terror. Was I right, my pets?”

  “Yes, Master.” A circle of lantern windows opened. Weevils were ringed around them, crows hopping at their feet.

  “Take the grave robber’s apprentice and the countess,” the Necromancer said. “Prepare them for sacrifice.”

  The Weevils swarmed. One jumped on Hans’ back. Three grabbed his arms, two yanked his legs, another pummeled his middle.

  Angela thrust a hand into her treasure bag. “Take me or my jewels!” she cried, and threw a fistful of gems into the air. The Weevils squealed. For a second, they turned from their prey in search of the shinies.

  Hans and Angela tore blindly into the forest night.

  Chapter 23

  The Wolf King

  “Don’t let them escape!” the Necromancer shrieked.

  The Weevils took after the pair with their lamps. “We sees you!” they taunted, as they hopped over stumps and ducked under branches. “We sees you!” They were so close their lanterns lit the way.

  “Run faster,” Hans panted. “They kill in packs.” Fear spurred them on. Hans and Angela gained ground, but as they did the lamplight faded and they stumbled. The Weevils caught up.

  “Pray God they tire,” Angela gasped as they ran down a hillock.

  “Pray, indeed,” Hans said, for now, as well as the taunts of Weevils, the air was alive with the crow calls of the Necromancer.

  In a flash, the night was a flapping of wings. The birds were everywhere—and everywhere invisible in the shadows, save for their cold, red eyes glinting in the lamplight. The Necromancer cawed again. The crows attacked with beak and claw.

  “Shield your eyes!” Hans hollered. He drew his monk’s hood tight; Angela pressed her helmet into her collar.

  They tripped and tumbled forward. The crows landed on their backs, dug their talons into their shoulders. One pulled at Angela’s hair, fallen from under her helmet; another pecked over her collar for her neck. Angela screamed.

  The Weevils were nearly upon them. Hans and Angela struggled to their feet. Hans spotted a campfire through the trees ahead. “Help us!” he hollered to the clearing. “Help us.” In a mad dash, he and Angela burst into the camp.

  It was abandoned—emptied by some nightmare. Piles of bones circled the campsite, some old, some dripping blood and sinew.

  “What hell is this?” Angela cried. “Is this where we’re to die?”

  The crows attacked again. They pecked and battered the pair to the ground. Hans and Angela curled into balls. The Weevils leaped on their backs. “We has you!”

  The Necromancer’s hollow laugh floated out of the forest. “Well done, my pets.” He entered the clearing, spirited there by the grace of his crook and the second sight that lit his brain like the Evening Star. The crows flew to his feet. He tossed them a fistful of maggot
s.

  “Treats for us, too, Master?” the Weevils begged.

  “As many as you like, and shinies, too,” the Necromancer said. “First, stake our prey to the ground.” He turned to the warmth of the fire pit. “We seem to have scared off a band of poachers. Their flames will heat my blade.”

  Hans and Angela gripped their hands together. The Necromancer knelt between them. He pulled off Hans’ hood and Angela’s helmet and stroked their hair. “Be of good cheer. Your memory will live on. Your skins shall become the archduke’s pillowcase and footstool, your insides stored in my pickling jars for spells.”

  “There is justice eternal for such as you,” said Hans, as steadily as he could.

  “Indeed,” Angela said. “Even in tragedy, villains end badly. Ask anyone.”

  “I write my own story, little one,” the Necromancer said. “At the moment, we’re on the page where you die.”

  From beyond the clearing, a wolf howled. A second. A third. A fourth. The Weevils looked up. Heavy paws bounded through the forest around them. Fur flashed between the trees. A wolf pack emerged at the edges of the campsite: a pack as large as it was lean.

  The crows flew into the branches. A Weevil tugged on the Necromancer’s shroud. “What shall we do, Master?”

  “Wolves fear fire; they’ll stay at bay,” the Necromancer said. “When we’re done, we’ll toss them a few limbs from our little friends.”

  Unearthly roars shook the night beyond the thicket of bushes past the fire pit: roars so strange and mutant they could only come from monsters of myth and legend. The Weevils squealed.

  “Strangers, begone!” a voice boomed.

  The Necromancer smiled. “We are on business of His Royal Highness Arnulf, Archduke of Waldland. You and your fellows would be wise to flee, on peril of your lives.”

  “We are no ‘fellows,’ nor take we orders from mortals,” the voice roared. “Know ye that I am the Wolf King. Behold my monster horde.”

  Monstrous heads of fang and fur reared above the tallest bushes. Their eyes gleamed fire. Thunder rumbled the cloudless night.

  The terrified Weevils leaped off Hans and Angela and pressed themselves at the Necromancer’s feet. Hans and Angela jumped up, but escape was impossible. Wolves circled all round and monsters howled beyond the thicket.

  The Necromancer cocked his head. He could hear the animals and the thunder, smell the fur and blood, and knew that the creatures were taller than carnival freaks. Yet something was not as it seemed.

  He sniffed through his bony noseholes and flicked the air with his lizard tongue. “I, too, can conjure thunder from thin air, Wolf King,” he said. “Yea, and have creatures to do my bidding. Before we speak further, I should like my crows to investigate your monsters.” He craned his neck and cawed three times.

  The crows flew from their branches. They circled the campsite twice and swooped toward the Wolf King’s bushes. Yet before they could cross the clearing, they were pierced by a wave of blazing arrows. Their feathers burst into flame; they shrieked to the ground in fiery spirals.

  The wolves went wild at the smell of blood. They tore into the circle to rip at the fallen birds. As the pack charged, the Weevils screamed off into the forest.

  “Come back,” the Necromancer commanded. “I order you back!” But they were gone.

  Hans grabbed Angela’s hand. “Time for us to go, too.”

  “No! Not now!”

  The Necromancer spun to their voices. He flailed his crook on the ground around them. “You, boy. You, girl. Do you think to escape me?” But the night was so thick with sounds, smells, tastes, and dangers—his senses so flooded—that he was all but truly blind. He reached into his shroud and held aloft a bag of powder.

  “Apprentice! Countess! We’ll meet again!” he cried. “As for you, Wolf King: I’ll see you and your monster horde in Hell!”

  He threw the powder into the fire pit. There was a huge explosion. A billow of smoke. And in that smoke, the Necromancer vanished into the night.

  Chapter 24

  Warriors of the Imagination

  Hans and Angela faced the monstrous heads that loomed above the thicket. All around, wolves licked their bloody fangs and howled.

  “Did you not hear my dread command?” the Wolf King roared. “Begone or face my wrath.”

  “Sorry for disturbing Your Majesty,” Hans gulped. “We’ll be on our way.”

  “We most certainly will not,” Angela said.

  “Then your deaths shall be savage and strange,” the Wolf King boomed.

  “Far less savage and strange than what awaits us out there with the Necromancer and his Weevils,” Angela said. “Next to them, to be torn apart by monsters and wolves would be a relief.”

  “Come behind this thicket and say that,” the Wolf King sneered. Laughter rose from the monster horde.

  “No,” Angela tossed back. “If you plan to eat us, have the courage to eat us in the clearing.”

  “You question our courage? We who fear neither mortal nor beast?”

  Hans blanched. “Angela, apologize or they’ll kill us.”

  “Heed the wisdom of your protector,” the Wolf King warned.

  “Him?” Angela rolled her eyes. “He’s only a grave robber’s apprentice. I, on the other hand, am Countess Angela Gabriela von Schwanenberg. I’ve outwitted the great Archduke Arnulf and escaped the grave, so I have no idea why I should tremble and quake before a ragtag gaggle of cowardly fiends who hide behind bushes.”

  Three of the monsters belched fire. Hans prepared for the worst.

  “Have you not seen our flaming arrows?” boomed the Wolf King.

  “A quick and merciful death they’d provide. But that’s hardly the horrible end you’ve advertised. So come: Brandish your claws. Do your worst. I dare you.”

  A roll of thunder. The wolves covered their ears with their paws.

  Angela yawned. “I’m sorry, but I don’t believe you’re a Wolf King or that you have any monsters. Still, you put on a wonderful show with your pet wolves and fire breathers. You ought to perform in village squares on May Day.”

  A third peal of thunder shook the night. “What of my power over the heavens?” the Wolf King demanded.

  “Oh, that,” Angela said. “I own a thunder sheet myself. It came with my puppet theater. I’ve found it very useful in producing sound effects for storms. Mine is a thin sheet of bronze with a cushioned velvet trim to protect my fingers when I shake it. Yours, I imagine, is cheap scrap metal.”

  The heads of the monster horde reared high. Hans gasped.

  “I know about stick puppets, too,” Angela continued. “Those monstrous heads are surely crafted from beasts you’ve hunted for food. Theirs are the bones that litter your campsite. You put red lanterns in the skulls to create the fiery eyes, and add painted wooden horns and tusks by means of glue and leather bindings. Then you attach the heads to poles so you can make them soar and tower. I also expect you’re all on horseback so that your roars seem to come from the puppets’ jaws.”

  “You think my creatures are puppets?” the Wolf King exclaimed in outrage.

  Hans smacked his forehead with delight. “But of course! It’s what the Necromancer couldn’t sense, and what his Weevils and I could never imagine.”

  “Why should a lord of the underworld play with the toys of mortal children?” the Wolf King thundered.

  Hans threw up a hand like a student who’d solved his teacher’s prize riddle. “When Papa robbed the graves of Wottenberg, I pretended we were ghosts to frighten locals out of the cemetery. He dug undisturbed an entire summer, while I shook a sack of chains and moaned from mausoleums. You’re the same: highwaymen who scare people away from the forest so you can rob at will!”

  Angela grinned. “Congratulations, Sir So-called Wolf King. Even I, well-versed in the art of puppetry, was fooled at first.”

  The monster heads looked at each other, then came from behind the bushes, carried by eight sheepish men on horseback.
The riders wore grubby velvet doublets and torn linen leggings under patched woolen knee breeches; their faces and hands were smeared with soot. They circled Hans and Angela, and dismounted. The wolves wagged their tails and frisked around them.

  The “Wolf King” stepped forward. He was a little man as delicate as a lark, except for an Adam’s apple the size of a walnut. “Intelligence is a dangerous gift. Now that you know our secret, what are we to do with you?”

  “Show us the quickest path to the mountain home of Peter the Hermit,” Angela said brightly.

  “Why should we let you free to reveal our secret?” the little man asked.

  An excellent question. Hans summoned the finest court talk he could imagine. “Because you’re good and decent thieves who’d never harm sworn enemies of the archduke,” he said heroically. “The proof? You rob the ill-gotten gains of the idle rich, not the hard-earned coin of the honest poor.”

  Angela shot him a look. As a countess, she wasn’t sure she liked this line of reasoning. “You’re also men of kind and tender hearts,” she said. “You could have slain the Necromancer and his Weevils with your arrows. Instead you merely killed his crows, and only when attacked.”

  The little man puffed out his chest in indignation. “How dare you call us good and decent, kind and tender? We’re ruffians. Savage ruffians. We let the archduke’s wizard and his gang escape to spread our legend.”

  “So will we, if you set us free beyond the forest,” Hans replied. “We’re hunted too. We’d never betray you.”

  “Besides, we share another bond,” Angela said “We’re Artists: Keepers of the Divine Flame! Warriors of the Imagination.” Angela couldn’t remember where she’d read the line, but it had the desired effect.

  “You think I’m an artist?” The little man’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down like a bird at a rain barrel.

  “Upon my word,” Angela declared. “Who else could inspire tavern songs that terrify an archduchy?”