Matilda had wondered to whom this fine house belonged when she had passed it riding up the hill to the great castle. She knew now—and should have guessed then—that it could only belong to Sir Egelric’s steward. Only such a fine, imposing house could have done for such a fine, imposing man.
“Welcome home,” the steward’s wife said cheerily.
“Ah, look at him in here,” the King sighed grandly. “Gloating over his runt like a troll over his gold.”
“Do not compare this baby to anything which has a price,” Leofric grumbled.
“Oh!” Cedric flung a hand up over his eyes.
“Is that any way to greet a lady?” his father laughed.
“I don’t know what it is, runt,” Leofric sighed. “Some bastard must be borrowing my saddle and lengthening my stirrups or something. I never got such backaches before from such short rides.”
Sigefrith turned his head and coughed, “Fifty!”
Sophie woke in a panic. But there was no one… nothing…
And then she heard it—a man’s heavy tread behind the curtain. She shrieked.
Edris seemed to have made it halfway down the aisle before remembering that she was in a chapel and dropping to her knees. She had certainly stopped in the middle of a sentence as she called for him.
“I thought I heard someone calling for old Father Brandt,” he chuckled.
Edris hesitated in the doorway of her husband’s study. “Are you busy, Wynn?”
“Busy serving you in one way or another, my lady,” her husband’s steward smiled.
Cedric had been training himself by running up and down the hill at home, and furthermore it seemed to him that Conrad should have been handicapped by the extra weight he carried around his middle. Nevertheless, these footraces always ended the same way.
Conrad was first onto the mill bridge, and Cedric and Olaf followed at some distance, though Cedric came in second, as he always did. They arrived in the order of their ages, which was perhaps not coincidentally the order of the lengths of their legs.
Vash hesitated, trying to read the look on his friend’s face. The news he brought was not overwhelmingly good, but perhaps it was too late already.
“I’m sorry I took so long,” he said. “I suppose I can’t use the excuse of the rain.”
Benedict leaned forward with all his might, but he knew what the outcome would be. He would fall flat on his chest, and then there would be all the hard work of pushing and grunting until he was on his hands and knees again, and in the end he might find himself no closer to his doll than he had been when he started. Sometimes he would even be farther away.
“Swearing in your barbarian language is like playing the harp with a single finger.”
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