The Hero's Guide to Being an Outlaw (26 page)

“Frank,” Snow scolded, “you don’t need to be so harsh.”

“You want people to come or not?” Frank retorted.

“It’s okay, Snowy,” said Duncan. “All part of the act. I know my good friend Frank doesn’t mean a word of it.”

Frank said nothing.

Flik continued to sound his bell while eleven other dwarfs on ponies helped corral the jolly revelers into one long line. A short time later, they reached the abandoned site of the Sylvarian Royal Fair, a ghost town of empty game stalls and unused rides. It had been years since an actual fair was held in the kingdom—people stopped coming after King King insisted that every visitor through the gates had to pose for a take-home souvenir portrait painted by the king himself.

As soon as all the parade followers had filtered into the fairgrounds, Duncan popped up from his seat in the back of the wagon and flicked off his fake bindings. “Ta-da!” he shouted, taking a bow. “I was never captured! It was all a trick! We tricked you!”

People started throwing trash at him.

“Dunky, I don’t think that’s the best way to get them on our side,” Snow said gently. Frank rolled his eyes.

“Citizens, you need to hear the important things I have to say,” Duncan tried. “I’m very important. Hear my words, and they will make you important, like me!” He ducked a flying wad of used handkerchiefs.

“Still not working,” said Snow. People started leaving the fairgrounds.

“Don’t go,” Duncan called. “How can you turn away from someone with a hat like this?”

The crowd got steadily smaller.

“Okay, okay!” Duncan yelled. “If you stay and listen to me, I’ll still get in the dunk tank.”

The people stopped and listened.

And so it was that the four princes, in four different kingdoms, each began the most important speech of his life.

“I know you’ve heard bard songs recently that claim my father to be a hard-hearted and duplicitous ruler,” Frederic told his people in Harmonia. “Those same songs speak of Lord Rundark as a kind and generous man. Neither could be further from the truth. But these are bard songs, you say. How can we not trust the word of our bards? Well, have you ever really thought about some of the things you’ve supposedly learned from bard songs?” He stood tall and proud as he spoke.

“You all loved ‘The Tale of Cinderella,’ right?” he continued. “That song ended with Ella and me getting married and living happily ever after. But where is Ella now? Not married to me, that’s for sure. In fact, I’m in love with someone else.” He said it without even realizing it. But Rapunzel heard it.

“So there you go,” Frederic went on. “A blatant falsehood, right there in a bard song. And her name isn’t even Cinderella! It’s Ella! You all know that! And mine isn’t Prince Charming—even if I’ve grown to somewhat like that name. But let’s see how many more lies we can find in bard songs.”

“‘The Tale of the Sleeping Beauty’ claimed that I was Briar Rose’s one true love,” Liam said to his people in Erinthia. “But how does that match up with the story in ‘The League of Princes Fails Again’—the one about me trying to
escape
my wedding? I don’t understand how you can listen to those two contradictory songs and believe that both are completely true.”

“So are you saying that Princess Briar isn’t really sweet and beautiful?” asked a woman in the crowd. “That she is awful and terrible and ugly.”

“Well, no. Briar is . . .” He looked over at Ella but couldn’t quite read the expression on her face. “She’s just . . . Look, she and I have come to be . . . non-enemies. But, uh . . . maybe that wasn’t the best example.” He wiped sweat from his forehead.

Ella stepped up. “But, hey, what about ‘The Bandit King Rides Again’?” she said to the crowd. “That song by Tyrese mentions the Bandit King tying the bones of his enemies in his beard. But Deeb hasn’t even hit puberty yet!”

The crowd began to murmur. The message was sinking in. Ella stepped off to the side, letting Liam take center stage once more. “Go get ’em, champ,” she whispered.

“See what I mean?” Liam said, loud and sure. “You can’t automatically trust everything you hear in a song.”

“Yes, that’s right,” Duncan said to the crowd at the fairgrounds. “I had no magical ring of flight. I just fell off the Bandit King’s roof. And when I defeated the evil witch, I didn’t use an enchanted power sword. I just chucked a stinky steak at her.”

“You know, that’s a lot more believable,” one man said to his wife.

“And don’t even get me started on the witch,” Duncan said, gesticulating wildly. “The songs call her the Nameless Witch. But she
had
a name! Wendy! Or something! And she didn’t have three heads! Only one!”

“The song never said she had three heads,” remarked a man in the crowd.

“That doesn’t matter,” said Duncan. “My point is . . .”

“Bards. Pah! You can’t trust those puffy-pantsed song-sellers,” Gustav spat. “Everything they say is wrong.”

“Angry Man right!” Mr. Troll howled in agreement. “Tiny Guitar Men always sing about trolls be monsters.”

“You
are
monsters,” said Rosilda, impatiently flexing her fingers around her shovel. “That’s your evidence? Good thing you’re not a lawyer, Prince Charming.”

“Ha! No,
there’s
your evidence!” Gustav said, grinning. “Prince Charming! There’s no such guy! I’m the one in the Rapunzel story. Which is full of lies.”

“Like what?” someone asked.

“Like . . .” There were plenty of mistakes in that song for Gustav to mention, but they involved details he didn’t exactly want to publicize. He clenched and unclenched his fists, breathing heavily. “Like how long I fought the witch for,” he finally said. “The song has me battling her for hours. It really took about three seconds. She threw me out the window the moment she saw me.”

Jaws dropped.

“And in the part after I was blinded, when the song says I used my sense of smell to track down bears and kill them for food—that’s all wrong, too,” he said with his head down and his long blond hair hanging in his face. “I just lay in a ball and cried. I was starving and nearly dead when Rapunzel found me.”

“Wow,” a man said. “The song made you sound like an average loser, but in reality you were a horribly pathetic loser.”

“I believe you,” Rosilda said. “No one would admit to such things if they weren’t true.”

Gustav looked up. He sniffled. “Well, then let’s start talking about this Rundark guy.”

“The song tells you Rundark will make you happy,” Frederic said. “Are you happy?”

The people in the factory looked down at the fancy clothes they wore, the same outfits Rundark had forbidden them to wear, saying tassels and lace would get in the way of their machinery work. Many muttered unkind words about their Darian overseers.

“The songs say Rundark is generous,” said Liam. “But what has he given you so far?”

“Nothing,” said one person.

“A sore back and tired fingers,” said another.

“Low self-esteem,” said a third.

“The songs say Rundark has the cheeks of an angel,” said Duncan. “But have you seen the man? His cheeks are filthy.”

“Come on, people,” Gustav said, raising a sly eyebrow. “Rundark ain’t gonna make your gardens grow any faster. The only way that guy’s ever used a spade is bashing it over someone’s head. Which, while admittedly pretty cool, still ain’t gonna make your gardens grow any faster. Believe me, I know. The trolls and I have tried it.”

“We Harmonians are smart people,” said Frederic. “What makes more sense? Believing what we’re told in a song? Or believing what we see with our own eyes? Were your lives better before Dar took over? Or since? My father may have been a tad strict, but at least he didn’t force you to ruin your manicures by sewing leather pants all day. Let’s take Harmonia back!”

The people raised their frilly sleeves and chanted a dignified-but-forceful “Huzzah!”

“Come on, I know you Erinthians like your cozy, cushy lives,” said Liam. “But how cozy do you feel digging in a silver mine with Darians cracking whips over your heads? I’ll be the first to admit that my parents aren’t perfect—but you can’t say they didn’t know how to pamper their people. And if you ever want the chance to be lazy again, you’re going to have to work for it!”

“I don’t wanna work!” one man yelled. “I just wanna be rich!”

“Then let’s fight to be rich!” Davy Wilkins called out. And he was greeted with cheers of approval.

Liam looked to Ella. “Not what I was going for,” he said. “But I’ll take it.”

“What it basically comes down to is this,” Gustav said. “You people are wimps.”

“What?”

“How dare you!”

“Of all the nerve!”

Scores of angry farmers started rolling up their sleeves, ready for a brawl.

“You heard me:
wimps
,” Gustav continued. He stood with his hands on his hips, staring down his nose at the people surrounding him. “You think you’re all big, tough Sturmhageners. You wrestle bulls for fun and split logs with your teeth. Nothing can stop you, right? But then a guy with a fossil on his head comes along and starts telling you what to do—and you all shut up and do it. All I’m saying is that real Sturmhageners would’ve tossed Ol’ Bonehead out on his backside.”

The crowd grew agitated, a fury welling up inside of them. But for once it wasn’t directed at Gustav.

“You’re more of a sly one than I gave you credit for, Prince Gustav,” Rosilda said. “We’re all true Sturmhageners here. Each of us—down to my littlest wee one. And if you wanna take Castle Sturmhagen back, you’ve got yourself an army.”

The farmers all raised their makeshift weapons, hooting and howling.

“So as you can see, Lord Rundark is actually an evil tyrant who’s turning your country into a prison and you into his captive workforce,” Duncan explained with remarkable clarity.

“That may be,” said a man in the crowd. “But he’s still better than your father.”

“Now, hold on a minute!” Duncan barked, his cheeks red and his nostrils flaring. Snow flinched, never before having seen such a look on her husband’s face. In fact, she’d never seen Duncan exhibit any expression more negative than a mildly knotted brow. “My father is a good man!” he snapped. “He may be a terrible king, but he is a good man, and he does not deserve your scorn. None of my family does. It doesn’t matter that the shoes my sisters invented are really just blankets you tie around your feet, or that my mother refers to grass as ‘dirt hair’—they’re good people who only want the best for this country. They’ve tried so hard for so long to make this kingdom a better place. But you all are so embarrassed by them that you’ve abandoned them in that quest. Not a single one of you will give them any help. And they need the help—because they have no idea what they’re doing! But that is not—I repeat
not
—worse than what Rundark is doing! Forcing you to work for his glory? Taking away your rights? You should be ashamed of yourselves for thinking it. Because right now, I am ashamed to be Sylvarian.”

The crowd was stunned into silence. Several people began tugging at their collars or shuffling their feet. Many stared self-consciously off into the sky.

“Jeez, man,” one villager finally said. “I feel terrible about myself right now.”

Duncan’s eyes were lively. “Does that mean you’ll fight the Darians with me?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” one woman mumbled. “Since you’re making us feel so guilty about it.”

“Woo-hoo!” Duncan cheered. “It’s revolution time!”

I
n later years, future scribes would write books referring to that day as “The Warriest Day in the History of the Thirteen Kingdoms”—because those scribes were terrible at naming things. But on that day, those lands did indeed see more war than they ever had before. Simultaneous battles raged in five separate kingdoms. Prince Frederic and his squadron of impeccably dressed rebels charged Harmonia’s royal palace, wielding the only weapons available to them: big spoons from von Torkleton’s factory. Liam’s greed-fueled mob cut a quick path through the gates of the Palace of Erinthia (it didn’t hurt that they had a couple of giants flicking enemies out of their way). Lila and her platoon of bounty hunters busted down the doors of Yondale Castle and ambushed the startled Darians inside. Gustav’s army of furious farmers fought ferociously—as did their troll allies—turning the thatch-roofed village that surrounded Castle Sturmhagen into a raucous free-for-all. And Duncan inspired his Sylvarian revolutionaries with rousing chants and war cries—while the ax-wielding dwarfs went toe-to-toe with the bad guys (dwarfs are
expert
warriors, after all).

Yes, the Warriest Day was a pivotal point in the history of the Thirteen Kingdoms. And since
scribes
would recount its battles, as opposed to bards, people would actually get to hear about the best parts.

THE BATTLE OF HARMONIA

Frederic’s elegant militia was in high spirits as they marched on the Harmonian palace sounding cries of “For etiquette!” and “For decorum!” But spoons-versus-battle-axes isn’t exactly a fair fight, and things quickly turned grim. Frederic feared he’d made a terrible mistake, until a certain speedy messenger turned the tide. Thanks to the fast footwork of Smimf, many a Darian soldier was left standing baffled, wondering why the sword he was about to swing had suddenly vanished from his hand in a gust of wind.

Smimf’s barrage of invisible attacks presented the perfect opportunity for Frederic and Rapunzel to sneak inside the palace and search for King Wilberforce (but not before promising to give the messenger a very nice tip). Racing up to the king’s chambers, carrying a sword he prayed he wouldn’t have to use, Frederic found his father being dragged down a marble-tiled hall, unconscious. A purplish bruise ringed Wilberforce’s left eye, and his normally buoyant mustache hung limply over his lip.

The Darian who held him had a curving, pointed beard and hair that jutted from the sides of his head like wings. He pulled the king over to an open window. “Do not come any closer or we’ll see if the king can fly,” the man warned.

“Ah,” said Frederic, keeping his distance. “I see you are a coward.”

The Darian laughed. “You’ll regret those words.”

“I regret no words,” Frederic said. “I love words. And the words I just spoke were the truth. You are a coward, because only a coward would rather defenestrate a helpless old man than face me in a fair fight.”

“I wasn’t gonna defenish—”

“Defenestrate.”

“Yeah, I wasn’t gonna defenestrate him,” the wing-haired man said. “I was gonna throw him out the window.”

“That’s what ‘defenestrate’ means,” said Frederic.

“Then why didn’t you just say ‘throw him out the window’?”

“Because I love words,” Frederic said with a smoldering intensity. “But my point still stands: You are afraid to duel me.”

The Darian released King Wilberforce and took a shaky step back. He’d never before faced a foe who seemed so utterly sure of himself.
This guy must be some sort of master duelist
, the villain said to himself.
He’ll take me down in a second.
He raised his hands in surrender.

And then the king woke up. “Frederic!” he called out, struggling to his feet. “What are you doing here? You’ll be killed!”

“Father, be quiet!” Frederic whispered. Behind him, Rapunzel shook her head adamantly.

Wilberforce didn’t back down. “Stop playing hero, Son! Run while you can!”

“Oh, so you’re Prince Frederic, eh?” the Darian asked, dropping his hands. “You’re the talker, I hear. They say not to let you start talking, ’cause you use your words to confuse people and foul them up, and that’s how you beat ’em.”

“Really? They say that about me? That’s so neat.” Frederic beamed.

“They also say you’re a terrible swordsman.” The Darian drew his blade and launched himself at Frederic. The prince deflected the blow, surprising even himself.

“Well,” said Frederic. “I suppose this is what it has come to, Mr. . . . ?”

“They call me Princeslayer,” the villain sneered. “And today I finally get to live up to that name.”

CLANG! CLACK! CLANG!
Their blades clashed together. Rapunzel ran to King Wilberforce and helped him off the floor.

“You know, Mr. Slayer,” Frederic said, panting between words. “I can”—
CLACK!
—“still use my words against you”—
CLANK!
—“even while we fight.”

“Ha!” Princeslayer spat. “There’s nothin’ you could say to throw me off”—
SWISH
—“now that I know who you are.”

“Not even”—
WHOOSH! CLASH!
—“that you just let my father escape?”

Princeslayer gasped and spun around. “Come back here, you old— Huh? No, he’s right where I left ’im.”

And Frederic clubbed him over the head with the hilt of his sword. Princeslayer landed on his face. End of fight.

“Oh dear,” muttered Rapunzel as she tried to sop up the tears of relief that streamed down her cheeks. “Can’t waste these.”

King Wilberforce had fallen to his knees, but Frederic helped him back up. The old man looked into the prince’s eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “And thank you.”

THE BATTLE OF ERINTHIA

The Darian forces in Erinthiopolis didn’t stand much of a chance against Liam’s revolutionaries, especially when two of those revolutionaries were over a hundred feet tall. While Liam, Ella, and Val took the fight straight to the palace guards, Reese and Maude took care of the rest of Vero’s troops. The giants dropped boulders on pikemen, kicked archers into neighboring counties, and stomped on cannons with ease.

“This is wonderful,” Reese crooned as he crushed a catapult under his heel. “Not even the teensiest bit of foot pain. I should’ve started wearing shoes ages ago.”

Of course, those who are new to wearing shoes may not be the best at tying them. Ten minutes into the battle, the giant’s shoelaces flopped loose. And he tripped. “Oh, fudge,” Reese blurted as he toppled onto his face. Happily, he managed to take out most of the Darian army in doing so. Less happily, he also managed to crash his battleship-size head through the palace’s eastern wall. Wide cracks shot like lightning across the sides of the building. Heavy chunks of debris rained down, and one entire tower snapped off, shattering like an egg on the courtyard below.

Maude shook her head. “Shoes,” she muttered.

That was when Liam began to panic. “My parents are in there!” he cried as a portion of the roof collapsed. He, Val, and Ella quickly disarmed the Darians they were battling and dashed to a door at the base of the palace’s easternmost tower. As Liam threw the portal open, gray bricks tumbled to the ground, the entire arched doorway about to cave in. But Val thrust herself in under the arch, bracing it with her strong arms and back. “Go quick!” she groaned. “I’ll hold it as long as I can.”

“Are you sure you—” Ella began to ask, but Val didn’t let her finish.

“Go!”

Ella and Liam squeezed past Val into the slowly crumbling palace. They raced upstairs toward the royal couple’s bedchamber as walls cracked all around them and clouds of white dust filled the air. They barely sidestepped a chandelier that crashed onto the steps between them. As they darted out of the stairwell on the third floor, they nearly crashed into Vero, who was racing in the opposite direction. The dapper swordsman skidded to a stop, flicked his long ponytail over his shoulder, and drew his rapier.

“Now this is an unexpected conundrum for me,” he said. “Here I was, fleeing for my life, when I find myself face-to-face again with the man I have been waiting so long to duel. Which do I choose? Personal safety? Or the chance to test my sword against that of the famous Prince Liam? It is, as we say in my country,
a tough one,
no? Hmm . . . I choose to fight.” He leapt into a fencing stance.

Liam immediately jumped into a counterstance, sword held high. “Find my parents,” he said to Ella.

“Why don’t
you
find your parents? I don’t know where they are,” Ella urgently suggested, while ducking a falling ceiling tile.

“Good point,” Liam said. “Sorry, Vero.” And he sped off.

Vero sighed. “Disappointed again,” he said, his blade still at the ready. “But not a total loss, yes? I still long to fight the legendary Prince Liam, but this is not so bad, eh? To settle for a duel with the second best?”

Ella glared at him with eyes like flaming meteorites. “Oh, you just said the wrong thing, mister.” She flew at him as if she had been shot from a cannon.

Liam, in the meantime, found King Gareth and Queen Gertrude chained to their four-poster bed. “Mother, Father,” he began, “I know you’re probably not happy to see me, but—”

“Of course we’re happy to see you, you fool,” the queen snapped. “The palace is collapsing. Get us out of here!”

Which he did. On their way back to the stairwell, dodging falling bricks and leaping over growing chasms in the floor, they saw no sign of either Ella or Vero. But they never slowed. Liam and his parents hurtled down the steps and ran for the exit.

“Hurry!” Val yelled when she saw them. “I can’t hold it much longer!” Liam, Gareth, and Gertrude squeezed out past her, right before Val herself tumbled into the shattered courtyard and the doorway completely caved in.

Liam turned back toward the smoking pile of rubble that had been his palace’s eastern wing. “Ella! Ella!”

“What?” Ella replied.

He spun to see her dragging a woozy Vero by his ponytail.

“Oh, yeah,” said Val. “She got down way before you did.”

The battered swordsman looked groggily up at the prince. “I still wish to duel you someday,” he wheezed. “But honestly, I do not see how you could be, as we say in my country,
better than her.”

THE BATTLE OF YONDALE

Thirty-seven bounty hunters burst into the dining hall of Yondale Castle, taking the Darians by surprise and starting a massive food fight. Axes chopped into shields, and potpies were shoved into faces; war hammers were swung into helmeted heads, and chains of sausage links were wrapped around throats. And while all this went on, Lila, astride a giant mongoose, searched the dusty, gray corridors of the castle, looking for any sign of its missing resident.

“King Edwyn?” Lila shouted.

“Your Highness!” called Periwinkle Pete, who sat behind her with his bow drawn. “If you can hear us, make a noise!”

A muffled shout rose from somewhere along a cold, dim passage that sloped downward into the lower levels below the surface of the cliff. Erik the Mauve, sitting just behind the animal’s pointy ears, steered the mongoose in the direction of the sound. The great, furry creature sniffed, caught a scent, and began galloping. It slid to a halt before a cobweb-coated door, the entrance to the royal catacombs, the resting places of the kings of Yondale’s past.

Another moan sounded from behind it.

“Everybody off,” said Erik. “The mongoose won’t fit through there.” They dismounted, and Erik tugged open the ancient door. “Funny,” he said. “The cobwebs only cover one half of the—”

Madu kicked the door open from the inside and slammed a heavy club over Erik’s head. “Boo!” the tattooed Darian cackled as Erik slumped to the stony floor. “Ha! Weren’t you easy to lure in here?”

“You!” Lila sneered, drawing her quarterstaff.

Pete stepped in front of her protectively and raised his bow. “I’ve got this,” he said.
THWIP! THWIP! THWIP! THWIP!
With arrows through his vest and kilt, Madu was pinned to the wall. Pete strode into the catacombs to face him. “Now, tell us where the king is.”

“Um, Pete,” Lila said, running in after the elf and tugging at his sleeve. “He’s not as trapped as you think. He—”

But Madu had already changed. He was now a thirty-foot-long, writhing sand snake that had no problem at all wriggling out of some clothing stuck to a wall. Pete shot off another volley of arrows, all of which hit the snake, but none of which seemed to slow it down. The thing lashed its sinewy tail at the elven archer and sent him hurtling into the dusty grave of a long-forgotten king.

Lila stared down the snake. “Come and get me,” she said, and ran back out into the corridor. The snake followed her through the doorway and stopped when it saw her standing there, scratching behind the ears of a very large mammal. The snake’s face contorted into something like a grin.

“Sssssso, you brought a big weasssssssel,” Madu hissed. “I eat weasssssselsssss for breakfasssssst.”

“One problem,” Lila said. “This isn’t a weasel. It’s a mongoose. And you know what a mongoose’s favorite prey is?”

The sand snake’s tear-shaped eyes went suddenly round with horror. Madu tried to slither away but never had a chance. In a flash, the mongoose lunged at the snake, pinned it down, and sank its long, sharp teeth into its scaly, reptilian neck.

Lila didn’t stick around to see what happened next. She darted back into the catacombs. A quick look at Erik and Pete revealed that they were both still breathing. She called out for the king again, and this time she was met with a weak voice in response. Following the sound, Lila stumbled into a musty chamber that was lined with the bones of ages-old Yondale royalty. King Edwyn was there, too. For once he was the youngest in the room. But he was sound asleep, curled adorably around a small cameo portrait of Snow White.

She heard the faint voice again, from behind her, in another chamber across the way. She ran. Squinting into the darkness, Lila saw a figure huddled on the floor.