I stared at him. Yeah, like that was happening.
But for once, Rosier’s panic was justified. I didn’t have to be a lumberjack to know that tree was on its last leg. Or limb. Or—
“Throw me the backpack!” I yelled.
“Oh yes. Yes, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” he said furiously. “So you can take off with the food and leave me here—”
“No! You stupid—I’m not planning to leave you!”
“Then why?”
“For the pigs, you stupid, stupid—”
A great leather thing hit me in the face, hard enough to knock me down.
But there really wasn’t time to complain. My butt smacked down into an icy puddle, and the next second, I was throwing junk food everywhere. And this was not the moment to mess about with crap like strawberry roll-ups or turkey jerky. No, this called for the big guns.
I pulled out a little white box and went ballistic with the Twinkies.
r /> A moment later, Rosier’s tree gave up the ghost, and fell into some others with a great snap, creak, crack, as loud as a bullet echoing out over the forest. It normally would have had me flinching and panicking and fleeing in the opposite direction, before everybody and their dog came to find out what the hell. But right then, I was having a problem doing that.
Right then I was having a problem doing anything but standing and staring with my mouth hanging open.
I was still doing it when Rosier joined me a few moments later. His tree had ended up wedged against an outcropping of rock a little way down the path, instead of hitting the forest floor, allowing him to scramble back onto solid ground. And I guess the intervening time had given him a chance to get his shit together, although the usual smugness had yet to return.
Or maybe he was having a hard time finding the right words, too.
“You . . . didn’t use the knockout pills, I take it?” he finally asked, staring out into the void.
I shook my head.
He sat down and we split the last Twinkie.
“You realize we just sent a herd of flying pigs soaring out over medieval Wales,” I said, sometime later, when the last little oinking cloud had disappeared over the horizon.
“Hm.”
“You don’t look too concerned.”
Rosier got to his feet and then actually extended a hand to help me up. “Maybe it will give the Pythias something else to do. And in any case . . .”
“In any case?”
“Well. The expression had to start somewhere, didn’t it?”
Chapter Sixteen
“I thought you knew where this place was,” I said as we passed a familiar-looking mossy stump for the third time.
“I do.”
“So we’re taking the scenic route, is that it?” It was halfway through the afternoon, we were drenched with sweat, and we’d been rained on twice. Even worse, we hadn’t even managed to locate the court, much less Pritkin. At the rate we were going, we’d still be wandering around the wilderness when the cursed soul came and went and not even know it!
Rosier stopped abruptly. “Do you see that?” he demanded, pointing at something between the trees.
“No.”
“It’s a mill!”