A Company of Heroes Book Three: The Princess by Ron Miller

Author:Ron Miller [Miller, Ron]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Baen Books
Published: 2014-12-02T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

HERE AND THERE

Thud and his rescuers are several miles outside the city before he is allowed to protrude his head from the bundles and baggage that fill the floor of the little wagon. It reminds Rykkla of a pink egg sitting in its nest. When Thud speaks, it looks as though the egg are cracking and she half expected something to hatch from it.

The trio had not been disturbed while leaving the city. Its officials were more concerned about what was disappearing into and appearing out of the ground than with gypsy wagons trundling from the city. Anything leaving the town was fine with them.

The crater that the Kobolds had made in the city’s central square remained undisturbed for more than a year before the townspeople finally accepted it, since nothing further ever emerged from it. It eventually became half filled with stagnant little pools of greenish rainwater and the rubbish that blew or is thrown into it. There is considerable debate over whether it should be filled in and paved over. A small monument is erected at last, by public subscription, to commemorate the event. It is a simple, squat pedestal bearing a somewhat imaginative likeness of Thud. There was hope that the depression might serve to attract tourists to the town, and that might indeed have been the case have not subsequent events in Tamlaght provided irresistible competition. No one, it seemed, wished to travel the necessary hundreds of miles to simply visit an otherwise undistinguished city with a hole in the middle of its central plaza, even if it did boast a mediocre sculpture of a fat man.

“Where are we?” asks Thud. It is the first time since his capture several weeks earlier that it has occurred to him to wonder where he might be. Perhaps the earlier hopelessness that had so depressed his thoughts is passing.

“We just left Fezzoo,” replies Busra, glancing over his shoulder as he flicks the flanks of the pair of little mules that pull the wagon. The animals ignor him.

“Who’s Fezzoo?”

“You can come on out now, I think,” interjects Rykkla.

“Fezzoo,” explains Busra, as Thud struggles to free himself of his friends’ belongings, threatening to overturn the little wagon in the process, “is the capitol of Fezzara.”

“What’s Fezzara?”

“Fezzara is north of Crotoy, and Crotoy, anticipating your next question, is the country that lies between us and Tamlaght.”

“Blavek’s in Tamlaght, isn’t it?”

“It is indeed, my friend.”

“Are we going there?”

“It’s as good a place as any!” Busra replies, though he sees no point in mentioning that Blavek lies more than twelve hundred miles away in a highly idealistic straight line, as well as through some of the most rugged topography in the islands. Nor that traveling there is not part of either his immediate or even future plans.

“Do you think the princess might be there?”

“Your Princess Bronwyn?”

“Uh huh.”

“I wouldn’t know. That’s where she’s from, isn’t it? And isn’t that where she is trying to go?”

“I think so.”

“Then you might as well go as far in that direction with us as you can.

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