©2025 SammyC

“I’d love to wipe that smug smile off his impudent face!” Amos said loud enough for Malcolm to hear as he paced the rocky edge of the gorge we were hiding in. The gorge was nestled between two low-slung hills Langston’s people had escorted us to after we were warned of the impending arrival of Senshi’s band of highwaymen. We were waiting for word that Senshi and her men had departed, convinced by Langston that we had never made an appearance there.

“The little cuss is so sure of himself. How do we know he hasn’t walked us right into an ambush, whether through deliberate intent or sheer stupidity? Damn my broken arms! At least we have Merlyn’s dead eye with the crossbow to count on if we need to make a hasty escape…”

I leaned close to Amos, raised myself on my tippy-toes, and cupped my mouth as I whispered, “She was bluffing. She’s never shot a crossbow in her life. But Malcolm sure believes she has. I don’t think he’s trying to deceive us…”

Amos didn’t reply. Instead, he took me in his splinted arms and planted a quick kiss on my lips. I blushed crimson red and lowered my eyes. I held my breath momentarily as I tried to stifle a moan. This was embarrassing.

Letting go of my waist, Amos turned partly away from me, avoiding my eyes.

“I’m sorry…my…my Lady. That was disrespectful behavior on my part. It’s just that…damn it! You look so beautiful…as a girl.”

“Well, that’s because she is a girl. Your vision must be deficient for a soldier.” Malcolm laughed. “Didn’t Merlyn say that the two of you grew up together inside the palace walls? Strange, you should only now remark upon Princess Rani’s beauty.”

“She had a long tomboy phase,” Merlyn quickly explained. “Even I had to remind myself sometimes that she was really a girl, not a pretty little urchin who enjoyed playing boy games and eschewed dolls and hair ribbons.”

Malcolm hmphed. “My sister never left her tomboy phase behind. I wager she’d prefer being a man instead of a woman. As for Princess Rani, I’m sure she has no intentions of ever being anything other than what she is…a beautiful young woman of grace and virtue.”

“Here, here! Well said, Malcolm,” Merlyn declared. “Now to the matter at hand. It’s been nearly two hours since we've been hunkered down behind these hills. Shouldn’t we have gotten word that Senshi has left, satisfaction denied?”

The sound of Hobnob hooves scrabbling at the gravelly rocks leading into the gorge diverted our attention away from the uncomfortable discussion of my beauty, grace, and virtue, such as it is, of course.

“Speak of the devil,” Malcolm said with a smirk. It was Horace with three other riders. The four men Langston had promised us. Within ten meters of our group, Horace dismounted first and ran up to Malcolm. After thrusting his right arm in the air in salute, he excitedly made his announcement.

“Malcolm, my liege, Senshi and her band of men have left. Langston was able to convince her that you and your friends have not stopped by here, nor has he heard from you since the time you and your sister picked up our most recent harvest.”

“Good work, Horace. You and your men can stand guard at the entrance to the gorge for the present. We’ll be moving out later tonight.” Malcolm turned to us with a wide smile on his face.

“Am I right or am I right?” He held his hands out, palms up and open.

“You lucked out, friend. Now what’s our next step?” Amos spit on the ground.

“I don’t know about you, but I feel like taking a short nap. That was a rather filling meal we just had. And that beer has a definite kick. I suggest we all get some rest before we do anything else tonight.” Malcolm’s self-satisfaction made him look a little fatuous, I thought.

It didn’t sit well with Amos, and he protested. “You’re either the most infuriating trickster I’ve ever met or an incompetent boob! What kind of plan of action is that? We’re in the middle of nowhere. Are we even headed in the right direction to reach the Western Kingdom? The Princess is expected, according to my reckoning, three days from now. The fate of the world lies in the balance! And you want to take a nap?” Amos spat on the ground twice more for emphasis.

Malcolm was offended, but responded with what might be deceptive mildness. “Listen…my friend…I’ve sworn to deliver the Princess to the Western Kingdom safe and sound and on time to save the planet, despite the nauseating thought of her nuptials with that…that child. And I will be true to my word. Because my word is—”

“Your bond! Yes, yes, you’ve said that innumerable times. But how exactly are we going to accomplish this while you’re asleep?”

Malcolm turned his back to us and walked over to where he had spread a blanket on the ground. Yawning, he slowly seated himself on the blanket. He paused, an exasperated expression on his face, before continuing.

“My word is my bond. As you must realize, I know these lands fairly well, traveling here every two months for the last two years. Now, my sister wants to keep her band of merry men fresh and alert, so they will camp down for the night. She feels her Hobnobs can outpace your Rumperdons by a good margin, making up the time she might lose overnight. There’s a series of caves some ten kilometers from here that they’ll go to tonight. When they’ve settled in for the night, we’ll be riding by, unnoticed. We’ll be able to wave bye-bye to them as we go.” Malcolm laughed and yawned again. “Wake me up in two hours, please.”

There’s a ridge that runs for a dozen or more kilometers south of where Senshi headed to camp down for the night. Malcolm assured us that it was far enough from those caves that Senshi couldn’t spot us moving along on top of the ridge. Both Malcolm and Amos were woodswise enough to keep the crest of the ridge between us and where Senshi and her men were supposed to be.

Nights on our planet are not as black as they are on our home planet, so Merlyn tells me. Of course, she only knows that from her research in the few scattered, half-destroyed books that have survived the centuries. There are quartz data stones that supposedly hold entire libraries of knowledge still in existence, but we don’t have the power to run the machines that were used to read them.

Traveling at night isn’t that daunting. The sunlight that’s reflected by our two moons bathes the sky in a dim glow, especially from the much smaller of the moons. Its surface almost seems metallic; the sheen as the sunlight hits it is remarkable.

You could read by the moonlight…if only we had brought along my copy of Merlyn’s aphorisms. She illustrated it herself and gave it to me on my 13th birthday. Strangely, she said as she handed it to me, “Today, you have become a man.” I laughed at the memory. Loud enough for Malcolm to hear me.

He had been standing almost at the precipice of the ridge, peering through what he called a pair of binoculars. They looked like the toy I loved playing with as a child. I could turn the wheel on its side and see scenes from our home planet. I especially liked the pictures of children my age frolicking at what Merlyn tells me was an amusement park called Disneyland. They were seated in giant teacups and laughing, their faces full of joy and free of care.

“What are you laughing about, my Lady? Come, come over here. Let me show you something.” Malcolm’s warm smile and glistening eyes were an invitation I couldn’t refuse. I jumped down from my Rumperdon and rushed over to him. Amos awkwardly leaped down as well and followed me.

“These binoculars have a range of almost 10 kilometers. On a clear night like tonight, you can see all the way to the horizon. Here…” He took my hands and placed them on the binoculars, bringing the eyepieces up for me to look through. As he did so, he crooked his arm around me and nestled his head against mine, his lips inches away from my left ear.

“Senshi and her crew are in those caves. They’re fast asleep. Don’t worry they can’t see us with only our heads above the crest of the ridge. I’m the only one in our tribe who possesses a pair of binoculars.”

He was silent for a moment. “It was my father’s. Mother gave it to me after he died.” He raised his voice. “She gave it to me, not to Senshi! No, not to her. Never her!” He seemed to be addressing someone kilometers away in a cave. “You have stolen my birthright! I will avenge myself and our tribe!”

“What will your sister do to you if, heaven forbid, she catches up with us?” I asked, my voice trembling.

“Boil me in oil, I suppose. Or just trade me along with you and your entourage to the underground people.” I shivered. “But that’s not going to happen. If there truly are Gods, they will see us through to the Western Kingdom. This is what you were born to do, just as I was born to lead my tribe.”

“I’m…I’m afraid.”

“I’ll tell you a secret. Don’t tell your friend Amos. I’m scared as well. But life is a scary proposition. Trust in me, Rani. I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”

I handed the binoculars back to Malcolm, who offered them immediately to Amos. “Here, look for yourself. I told you they’d be in the arms of Morpheus by the time we reached these caves.”

Taking the binoculars, Amos asked, “Who is Morpheus? And I hope his arms are in better shape than mine.”

“Just another saying I learned from riding with Merlyn. She’s quite a fount of knowledge, I’ve discovered.”

“No sarcasm, Malcolm.” Merlyn raised her crossbow and aimed it at him. “Remember, I’m a deadeye.”

“We’ll move on now. Everyone, mount up!” After Malcolm vaulted onto his saddle, he reached down his left arm to hoist Merlyn up. “Ooof! You’re heavier than you appear, madam.”

“It’s the crossbow, child!”

It was mid-morning of the next day when we stopped to rest and have a late breakfast, safe in our assumption that we were hours ahead of Senshi. We could afford to stop by this ravine with the shallow stream running through it, hidden from the open spaces beyond the hills to the east.

“You’re letting him blind you with his charming repartee and gallant façade,” Amos complained to the cup of tea in his hands. He avoided my eyes as he said it.

“Are you jealous?” To show him I was joking, I laughed. But it came out as a girly giggle.

“After all this is over, you know you will have to go back to being a boy, Rani. Be careful with Malcolm. He’s a savage. An outlander. He wouldn’t forgive you for tricking him—”

“I’m not. Have I returned his declarations of affection? Have I?”

“No but saving the world from the Dagger of Heaven is not his goal in life. He’s infatuated with you because he thinks you’re a beautiful girl—”

“Well, I admit I have my days…”

“It’s not a laughing matter, Rani. If he ever finds out what you really are—”

“Maybe he can tell me what I really am. I’m beginning to wonder myself.”

“You two have to keep your voices down,” Merlyn warned. “Even if Malcolm is out of hearing range, those four outlanders with him now have ears and speak the same language we all do.”

“I’m just trying to talk some sense into Rani. She doesn’t realize how dangerous this situation with Malcolm could be.” Amos spilled the rest of his tea onto the ground. “Damn it! If I had two good arms, I could shoot that crossbow or swing my sword—”

“No use crying over spilt milk, my child.”

Suddenly, we saw Horace running toward us, a look of alarm on his face. He had been standing watch on a high point about a hundred meters from where we were bivouacked. Malcolm had given him his binoculars to use.

“Horace, what’s the matter?” Malcolm had been skipping stones over the stream, singing some tribal tune that sounded like a love ballad. He was such a manchild, part awkward teenage boy, part grizzled warrior.

“Senshi! About five kilometers behind us, coming from the north!”

Malcolm turned and ran to his Hobnob to retrieve his broadsword, a bow, and a quiver of arrows. “Men, have your weapons at the ready! We’ve got some action happening!”

On his Hobnob, Malcolm shouted to us, “My Lady, whip your Rumperdons to a frenzy. Move as fast as you can!”

“But which direction, Malcolm?” cried Amos as he hurried, almost dragging me to our Rumperdon.

“Straight down this ravine until you arrive at a clearing. Then due west. Follow the sun! Amos, my friend, if you truly care for Rani, then see that she gets to the Western Kingdom in time to save the world! I entrust her to you. Don’t let me down!”

“But what about you?” I shouted once I was in the basket on top of our Rumperdon.

“I’ll try to give you time to get away clean. My boys and I will meet up with you in a few hours, the Gods willing. Just go! Now!”

I turned to Amos. “What’s he trying to do?”

“If it were me, I’d find a position high up in a hill or a ridge and try to pick off Senshi’s men as they rode by. At the very least, it should delay them in chasing us down.”

“But Senshi has a dozen men with crossbows riding with her. Malcolm has four and no crossbows. Those are bad odds.”

“Yes, they are. Very bad.”