But Seamus’s temper had been sparked, and he began shaking at the bars of his cage. “Free Wildwood!” he shouted, then louder: “FREE WILDWOOD!”
The other bandits joined in, hitting their tin bowls against the wooden bars. The cavern was alive with the chaotic sound, the metallic clang echoing through the chamber. Suddenly, the warden appeared at the doorway below with a pair of armed guards.
“Keep it down in here, maggots!” he yelled. “Or we’ll start using ye for target practice.” One of the accompanying guards, as if to grant credence to the warden’s threat, raised his rifle to his eye and began aiming it indiscriminately at each dangling cage.
Septimus the rat jumped up from his reclining position and scrambled up the side of Curtis’s cage. Grabbing hold of the rope, he looked back down at Curtis and whispered, “This is where I take my leave! Catch you later!” And he was gone up the rope.
One of the bandits, concealed in his cage, yelled a muffled insult to the warden.
“That’s done it!” shouted the stout warden. “No breakfast tomorrow!”
The bandits groaned loudly in mock protest.
“And no lunch!”
Finally, the prisoners fell quiet, the only sound being the creaking of the cages on their ropes. “All right, then, light
s out!” The two guards separated and began snuffing out the torches that lined the cavern wall until the chamber was consumed in darkness. “Good night, maggots!” shouted the warden, and he was gone again.
Once he’d left, Cormac put his face against the bars and addressed the prisoners from his cage. “Mark my words, lads,” he said in a raspy whisper, “as long as Brendan, our King and comrade, walks this earth, Wildwood will be free. I swear it.”
The prisoners responded with a quiet cheer.
“He’s comin’ for us, boys,” hissed Cormac. “He’s comin’ for us and we’ll burn and bludgeon our way out of here. Mark my words. And no dog soldier or Dowager Queen will stand in our way.”
CHAPTER 16
The Flight; A Meeting on the Bridge
Prue was flying.
The feeling was incredible.
Prue was flying. The feeling was incredible.
She’d flown in planes, but that had been a sterile sensation, a mediated experience that gave the illusion of flying—replete with the jarring complaints of gravity and the television-screen-sized windows broadcasting pictures of fluffy clouds and miniaturized cities. It was nothing compared to this, this true feeling of soaring: the dome of sky above her, the verdant sprawl of the forest below. Her arms were now safely wrapped around the General’s fleecy neck, and her shoes had found footing at the joint where the eagle’s tail feathers fanned out from his body. She could feel his powerful back muscles heaving and contracting with every wing beat, and the cool, damp morning air assaulted her skin, blowing her hair straight back and bringing tears to her eyes. The dawning light was pervasive now, crowning the tops of the fir trees with a golden glow. The horizon burned rosy and bright, reflecting off a bank of clouds in the distance, perhaps heralding a coming storm.
Below them, dotting the treetops, was a multitude of nests, large and small. Some were elaborate, multileveled affairs connecting the topmost branches of a given tree with a series of nests, aeries, and landing platforms. Many of the nests looked like common robin’s nests, all straw and small branches, while others spanned whole boughs, their walls built of sizable tree limbs, their floors plastered with a smoothed gray mud. Several cedars towered above their neighboring firs, and Prue could see small cities of swallows’ nests built against the bark of the trees, a dizzying network of little mud abodes. It was breakfast time, and from Prue’s high vantage she could see the little holes, the entryways, to these nests crowded with the outstretched beaks of expectant chicks. As the morning progressed, she noticed that the air above this veritable metropolis of nests was growing more and more active as birds of all size and feather darted in and out of the massive blanket of trees, carrying worms and beetles, twigs and grass to succor their demanding broods.
“It’s beautiful!” shouted Prue.
“The best way to see the Principality!” the General shouted back. The high wind whipped at them noisily; it was difficult to talk above the din. “From the air!”
Suddenly, the General banked left and carved a diagonal line down to skirt the tops of the trees. Prue felt her stomach drop. She gave a yelp as she felt the green newborn shoots of these gargantuan conifers brush her knees. A flock of adolescent peregrines, out for a morning flight, fell into the General’s draft and began chasing him for sport, wheeling in and out of his flight path, badgering him to go faster and try to lose them.
“On an important mission, lads!” he shouted. They wouldn’t have it; they continued to toy with him until he took a deep breath and, warning Prue to “hold on!” he corkscrewed up into the air, briefly stalling in midflight, and plummeted headfirst into the dense foliage of the trees. Prue screamed. She clutched his neck feathers tightly. Before he got too low, however, he expertly pulled from the tailspin and began flying through the thick jungle of tree boughs, masterfully weaving through the branches that hampered their way. The peregrines tried to keep up as best they could, but barely five minutes had passed before they were forced to give up pursuit. Once their pursuers had been lost, the eagle shifted his tail feathers and soared upward, out of the thick of the tree boughs. When they returned to their initial altitude, Prue saw something extraordinary. “Wow!” she exclaimed.
“The Royal Nest,” explained the General, guessing the object of her amazement.
Before them towered a single tree, a majestic Douglas fir, which dwarfed its neighboring trees by sheer size. The trunk, even at this lofty height, was the width of a small house—Prue could only guess what its width would be at ground level—and the topmost branches soared fifty feet—easily!—above the nearest tree. The most extraordinary thing about the tree, though, was the impressive network of aeries that filled the high branches. An immense series of smaller nests occupied some of the lower branches, each inhabited by droves of sparrows and finches; above them, a smaller number of larger nests, these sheltering flocks of hawks and falcons—all leading up to a single, massive roost crowning the topmost branch, the pinnacle of the tree. It was solidly thirty feet in diameter and made of a diverse collection of every source of vegetation imaginable: fir boughs and raspberry brambles, ivy vines and coltsfoot stalks, flowering nasturtium and maple vines. The bowl of the nest was caked in a smooth layer of mud and looked to be the most inviting nest one could imagine—but, alas, it remained empty.
“The Crown Prince’s own roost,” explained the eagle solemnly.
“What will you do now Owl Rex is gone?” shouted Prue over the roar of the wind. They circled the complex of the Royal Nest a few times before resuming their northward flight.
“His nest will be tended and kept till he is returned. If South Wood refuses to do so, however, it will be war.” The eagle arched his wings back and picked up speed as the city of nests below them grew sparser within the trees.
Prue was troubled by the eagle’s response. “But how will you fight two wars at once? Assuming that the coyotes keep attacking you from the North?” she hollered. “And what will happen to Owl Rex?”