The Knight Thieves by Jenn Bennett

Author:Jenn Bennett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Published: 2024-07-30T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15 BETWEEN TWO HILLS

When your team has suffered a major loss, you need time to regroup and make a new plan. The last thing you want to do is hike to a stranger’s house.

In strange woods.

As the sun sinks.

But the Blackhearts could not continue their journey without Wryclaw, so after they’d raced away from the horrors of the wild boar pit—and were fairly certain that no one was following them—they got their bearings and headed up the road toward the hills that Owlglass had mentioned.

None of them felt like saying much. They were dejected and weary. Rosebud continually put her hand on her hip where her missing ax should be, and its absence made her dispirited. Wilda was trying to keep it together, but Rosebud knew she was a nervous wreck, worrying herself silly over Wryclaw—and who could blame her?

On top of all that, Timo had hurt his arm a bit when his knapsack was nabbed by one of the Bleeders. He explained, “It was the bag or my life, so I let it fall off my shoulder and the hound nearly yanked my arm along with it.”

“The bloodhound didn’t bite you, did it?” Rosebud asked with some concern.

He shook his head.

That was good. At least they didn’t have to tend to a wound that wouldn’t heal, because she’d lost her knapsack with Hildegard’s herbal medicinals—a fact that further depressed Wilda.

And yet they continued walking in the darkening wood.

Despondent and tired after hiking for quite a long time, the three children approached the two hills that Owlglass had mentioned: twin black slopes that looked foreboding in the deepening twilight. They found a narrow path beneath the brush there and trekked between the hills, pushing back thicket and low-hanging tree branches as they hiked.

Finally, after they thought they might be truly lost and never see light again, the thicket opened up and the moon appeared in the sky, winking above the tree canopy. And once they’d followed a snaking trail through dense pine trees, they came to a small clearing in the moonlit woods where a house stood.

By all appearances, it was a rather nice house.

Grand and well-kept, the half-timbered building had two stories and pretty shutters with cut-out moons. It was surrounded by several outbuildings and a small barn. In Rosebud and Wilda’s village, only the banker and oldest town elder had houses this nice. There was even a small pond here—a real one, not a stinky boar pit—that would make a nice fishing hole.

“Where are the wasps?” Wilda whispered. “I don’t see any clockwork beasts.”

“Be careful,” Rosebud warned. “Owlglass didn’t tell me much about this man, just that he made the wasps. I guess he builds things? But I got the impression that he might be…”

“What?” the prince asked.

Rosebud’s stomach twisted. Black-Eyed Peter didn’t sound like the nicest name. Then there was all that talk about him being cast out. From where? And who did the casting out? She didn’t want to make the other Blackhearts nervous too. “Just be on guard.

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