Chapter 16

"I'm looking for a very dangerous group of people," von Himmel said to the city guards. "They're trying to reach Mount Paladin."

"Mount Paladin?" one of the guards said incredulously. "But nobody's been there for centuries!"

"Yes, and our world is much safer that way," von Himmel said dryly.

"Oh? Why would that be, sir?" said the second guard. "I'd think things would be mighty exciting with a Paladin running around."

"Well, yes," said von Himmel, "things would be exciting for a while. But think of the shift in the balance of power. With a Paladin on their side, the Heroes would be able to vanquish all of the Evil Overlords in the world. I mean, sure, it would take a few years."

"Yeah," said the first guard, "and think of all the jobs there would be for troops to march into battle with him! Combat pay is automatically one pay scale higher!"

"Yes," said von Himmel, "but afterwards, there wouldn't be any Evil Overlords to hire henchmen. So half of the henchmen would instantly become unemployed. Think of all the competition there would be for jobs like yours."

"Oh," said the first guard. "Um."

"And without any Evil Overlords," von Himmel continued, "there wouldn't be anything left for the Heroes to do. So there would be a bunch of Heroes out of work, and looking to fill jobs like yours."

"Err," said the second guard. "Now that you put it like that..."

"And the Heroes won't be hiring any guards either, since the Heroes will all be out of work and won't have any money to pay for guards."

"All right, all right," said the second guard. "So can you give us some kind of description of these people? We haven't exactly seen anyone going by with a sign saying 'Mount Paladin or Bust'."

Von Himmel pulled a small notebook out of his saddlebag and ruffled through the pages. "Let's see. There were two guards, one of whom was identified by the name 'Roderick'; there was one bard, female; and there was a large, bearded, red-haired barbarian." He looked up. "Have you seen any groups go by of roughly that description?"

"Hey, boss," said the first guard. "Weren't you saying there was this group of four people that stopped by last night looking for Erik?"

"Erik? Who's Erik?" said von Himmel blankly.

The guard captain emerged from the guard room. "Yeah, there've been a couple groups of people come by, looking for Erik the Goth," he said. "The group last night was four people. Two guards, a barbarian, and a lady bard."

"Those are the ones I'm looking for," von Himmel said. "Can you tell me which way they went?"

"Sure, they went to Peggy Jean's house," the captain said, and repeated the directions.

"They were here last night, you say?" von Himmel said, remounting his horse. "Then I'd best get going. Thank you, my good men, for your time and trouble." He flipped each of them a silver piece, and rode off to the east.


The chancellor emerged from the basement with Sir Hugo in tow. Sir Hugo blinked in the sudden light of the kitchen. "Where is the messenger?" he said.

"Here, sir," said Calvin the Bold.

Sir Hugo was about to say something, but then, looking more closely at the messenger, he said, "Why, you're not one of my men at all. You're the one we met at Erik's castle last night."

"Yes, that's me," said Calvin the Bold. "They sent me back to report because I have the most expensive and fastest horse, so I would be able to catch up to them again more quickly."

"I see," said Sir Hugo. "Very well. What news, messenger?"

"Well, we were about to catch up with them, when suddenly this dragon flew up and attacked us."

"A dragon?" Sir Hugo frowned. "There are no dragons in these parts."

"Oh, really?" said Calvin the Bold, puzzled. "I wonder where it came from, then, because it was sure enough there, all right. You can probably still smell its stink on me."

Sir Hugo sniffed, and an expression of surprise flickered across his face. "Yes, that's the smell of dead dragon, all right," he said, puzzled. "Well, go on."

"Well, the hounds all ran off when they heard the dragon coming, and only a couple of them had come back by the time I started back here. And the smell of dragon is so strong that the Huntsmaster says they won't be able to track anything for miles from there."

"So the dragon is dead, our quarry has gotten away, and the hounds are useless until we've tracked them ourselves for several miles?" Sir Hugo said.

"Uh, yeah, I guess that pretty well sums it up."

"And we don't even know for sure that they're the right ones to be following, do we?"

"Huh? Well, uh, I would've thought we knew. I mean, your daughter was with them."

Sir Hugo's eyebrows went up. "She was? You saw her?"

"Well, yes, sir. She was sharing a horse with a young guard. I saw them pretty clearly."

"Sharing a horse, you say?" Sir Hugo said with a frown. "She didn't have her arms around him, did she?"

Calvin the Bold frowned. "Well, sure she did. She wouldn't be able to hold onto the horse otherwise, would she?"

Sir Hugo's face darkened. "Very well," he said. He turned to his chancellor. "Unlock Erik and the girl," he said. "Bring them along. I'll set off at once to catch up with the riders. The rest of you, follow along as quickly as you can."

Within moments, Sir Hugo was mounted astride his horse, and he and Calvin the Bold clattered quickly away down the road. The rest of the guards at the house hastily packed things up. Guards brought Erik the Goth and Peggy Jean up from the basement, tied securely, and put them in the back of one of the wagons. Nobody noticed a small bit of fuzz scampering through the confusion.

Fifteen minutes after Sir Hugo had departed, the chancellor gave the order to move out, and riders and wagons started off down the road at a brisk pace.

After a few minutes of travelling, a small, white, fuzzy head poked briefly out of the chancellor's saddlebag. The little pink nose caught a quick whiff of Calvin the Bold, and the white whiskers quivered. Then Noel the Not-So-Bold as Calvin the Bold ducked back out of sight, curled up in the dark warmth of the saddlebag, and began to purr.


Gisella stiffened. "Wait," she said. "Slow down a minute. Something's not right."

Roderick looked back at her, puzzled, but slowed his horse and held his hand up for the others, warning them to stay back.

There was a sudden gravelly yell from in front of them, and a small, round thing dropped out of a tree. Roderick's horse danced back nervously.

"What is that?" said Roderick wonderingly, staring at the wrinkly green face that looked back up at him.

"Look out!" Gisella cried, an instant before the thing sprang at Roderick. He tried to dodge, and lost his balance. Gisella reached forward lightning-fast and swiped with her hand, catching the thing in midair and knocking it back against a tree.

Roderick, flailing wildly for balance, was about to fall out of the saddle when Gisella grabbed his arm and hauled him back in. Then, almost before he had caught his balance again, she whipped out a dagger and sliced at the little wrinkly green thing, which was hurtling through midair at Roderick again.

The thing stopped, suspended in midair, an instant before it would have been impaled on the knife. "Yaaah," it said in its gravelly voice, sounding oddly disappointed. Then it disappeared, leaving only a puff of blue powder in the spot where it had been.

"What the hell was that?" Roderick said, still stunned by the suddenness of the attack.

"I have no idea," said Gisella, equally bewildered.

"Imp," Barbara said, riding up closer and inspecting some of the powder that had landed on Roderick's arm. "Haven't heard of any around for a very long time. In fact, I don't think there have been any since Sir Jello's time."

"Could that mean we're close to the Badlands?" asked Johnson.

Barbara shook her head. "They never had anything to do with the Badlands," she said. "They were all over the place, in all kinds of wilderness. And they're not so dangerous -- you saw yourself that all it takes is one blow with a weapon of iron or steel."

"But my dagger didn't even hit the thing," Gisella said, a touch angrily.

"Well, that's always been one of the more peculiar things about them," Barbara admitted. "They seem to know when they're about to get killed, and they seem to... I don't know, it's like they spontaneously combust or something."

Roderick frowned. "I've seen faeries that leave a cloud of dust when they teleport."

"So you think that thing might not be dead?" Stan said. He shook his head. "That doesn't sound like good news. And if it can teleport, too, then that's really bad news."

"But I'm wearing steel armor," Roderick said. "If they... well, whatever it is they do, if they do it because metal weapons would have hurt them, then what was he jumping at me for in the first place? My armor should've hurt him just as much as a weapon would have."

They all glanced at each other uneasily.

"Well, if it did teleport away, then it could teleport back," Stan said. "So we might not want to be in the same place."

"Good idea," said Roderick. "Okay, folks, let's get going again."


"So," said Calvin the Bold as soon as they were out of sight of the main band of Sir Hugo's men, "here we are."

Sir Hugo looked sideways at Calvin the Bold. "What do you mean?" he said.

"Oh, nothing," Calvin the Bold replied airily. When Sir Hugo shrugged and turned his attention back to the road, though, Calvin the Bold dropped one hand from the reins and rested it casually on the hilt of his dagger.

The hilt felt oddly slippery under his sweaty hand. He looked ahead at Sir Hugo again, a frown beginning to creep across his face. Could he really become a Hero by stabbing an Overlord in the back? It didn't seem right. He had seen something about it in the book, hadn't he?

He suddenly missed having Noel the Not-So-Bold as Calvin the Bold with him to talk to about this sort of thing.

With a sigh, he let go of his dagger and put both hands back on the reins.


Sir Hugo's huntsmaster patiently stalked through the forest, following the hoofprints, with his three apprentices in tow. The trail of hoofprints had joined up with a well-trodden game trail, which split and branched numerous times, but he didn't have a difficult time following the hoofprints even on the packed earth of the trail.

Then he heard a grunting and snuffling sound off to his left. He looked over in that direction, and came to a dead stop when he saw a large ogre shuffling toward him.

He scrambled backward, almost knocking over one of his apprentices in the process, but the ogre merely glanced at him and grunted. It lumbered along, crossing in front of the small group, its eyes and knuckles on the ground in front of it.

The four humans watched anxiously until it was well out of sight.

"What was that all about?" asked Jean, the oldest apprentice, a girl of about fifteen.

"I don't know," said the huntsmaster, trying to keep his voice calm. "I hadn't heard about any wild ogres in these parts. And personally, I would've been just as happy if it'd stayed that way." At an inquiring glance from Jean, he said hastily, "Ah, I had a bit of a run-in with an ogre when I was a lad. They still make me a bit nervous."

"Well, if there are ogres about," piped up the youngest apprentice, "then maybe we should go back and get some soldiers to come along with us."

The huntsmaster grimaced. "I hate to lose that much time. Let's just keep going. We should be able to hear that ogre before it gets close enough to hurt us. Come on."

They moved forward, only to find that the path bent to the right.

"Oh, no," Jean said softly. "That ogre was going along the trail."

"What does that mean?" asked the middle apprentice.

"It means that we're out of luck," the huntsmaster said grimly. "It's some kind of magic that ogres have. Nobody can track one. They wipe a trail clean." He heaved a sigh. "Well, let's follow quickly. If we're lucky, the ogre might not be following the same group we are, and we may catch up with them the next time the trail splits."


"I think we should go left," Barbara said.

"No," insisted Johnson. "We need to go right. Left will angle us away from the road and take us in the wrong direction entirely."

"But right will angle us directly toward the road," Barbara pointed out. "And we have to assume that they'll be patrolling the road. Besides, do roads even go into the Badlands?"

"How about straight?" said Gisella. "That seems like a good compromise. I mean, I've never been in this land before, but --"

"Well, I have, and I say left," said Barbara firmly.

Roderick walked wearily away from the three and sat down on a rock next to Stan. "So do you have any opinions on which way we should go?" he asked.

Stan shrugged. "I'd say we should probably look at the map," he said. "But that's just me."

"Oh, yeah! I'd almost forgotten about the map," Roderick said. He rummaged through his pack and pulled out the brochure, still slightly damp from their trek through the river and beginning to mildew slightly. He opened it carefully and studied the map, then got up, went over to the clearing where the path forked, and gauged the direction of the sun by the slanting of the shadows.

"Roderick, we should go left, shouldn't we?" said Barbara.

"No, we need to go right," insisted Johnson.

"Hang on a sec," Roderick said, starting down the left-hand road.

"Hah!" said Barbara. "I told you he'd take my side."

"Whoa, hold on, I haven't taken any side yet," he called back. "I'm just looking at something for a minute."

"What? What are you talking about?" Barbara called after him.

He followed the path for about a hundred and fifty hards, to where it crested a ridge, and looked down. The path twisted away into the dark shadows of the trees. He returned to the clearing, frowning, and picked the center path this time.

"Roderick, what are you doing?" asked Barbara.

"Just checking on something," he said, waving the map in the air.

This path went a little closer to two hundred and fifty hards before it crested the same ridge. He came to the top and looked down, blinking.

The trees ended abruptly about forty feet in front of him. The land fell away in a series of clay-red terraces, with a handful of dry gullies etching down through it. As he watched, a bird rose abruptly from somewhere about a mile ahead, leaving a large cloud of dust behind it that settled back only slowly.

Looking farther along, he could see a long series of hills, mesas, and cliffs standing ahead of him, stretching ahead to the horizon. Off in the distance, a high, forbidding blue mountain rose out of the hills around it.

Barbara had been right about one thing: there was not a road to be seen anywhere.

"This is it," he called back to the others as he turned back.

"What?" said Barbara. "You're siding with her?"

"Come take a look," he said, holding up the map again and gesturing back over his shoulder. "This is the next part of our trip to Mount Paladin. This is the Badlands."


< Chapter 15 Chapter 17 >