The Six Crowns: Trundle's Quest by Allan Jones

Author:Allan Jones [Jones, Allan]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2011-04-05T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

The Perils of Cheating at Cards

“What did you do in there?” wailed Trundle, as the door reverberated to the thumps and kicks of far too many furious fists and feet.

“No time for explanations!” cried Esmeralda. “Quickly! Hand me a knife!”

Trundle snatched a knife out of the washing- up water and ran over to her. Was she planning on fighting? If so, what should he do? Attack with his dish mop?

She jammed the knife under the door, wedging it shut—for the moment!

“Come on!” she yelled, grabbing Trundle’s hand and towing him to the back door. “We need to skedaddle!” She waved a bunch of paper sunders at him. “We can afford the sword now!”

They plunged through the back door and found themselves in a dimly lit back alley.

“How did you get the money?” gasped Trundle as they ran over cobbles.

“I won it fair and square at poker,” Esmeralda explained breathlessly. “But they caught me cheating, curse them for suspicious swine!” She laughed. “They’ll never find us now, Trundle, my lad! We’re home free!”

At that moment, the back door of the kitchen burst open and a gang of disreputable-looking rats came pouring out into the alley.

“There she is!” screamed one of them, pointing a claw. “Get her, boys! We’ll show her how we deal with card sharps in this town!”

“Oh, lummy!” gasped Esmeralda. “Run, Trundle! Run!”

But Trundle didn’t need telling. He was already running.

They dived around a zigzag bend, pursued by the yelling mob of irate gamblers. Trundle quickly lost all sense of direction as they raced up and down and to and fro and hither and thither through the winding, twisting, turning tangle of passageways and lanes and alleys of Rathanger. And always, their pursuers were only half a street away from them, wielding sticks and cudgels and bludgeons, and yelling terrible threats.

At one point, Esmeralda paused for a moment to pick up a loose cobblestone. For a horrible moment, Trundle thought she was going to stand and fight the rats, but she just carried on running, her skirts flying.

Suddenly Trundle realized where they were. Their mad chase had brought them right back to where they had started—in the same alley as the entrance to the Strangled Stoat. Esmeralda came to a skidding halt, leaning back and hefting the cobblestone. She let it fly. There was a chime and clash of smashing glass, and almost before Trundle knew what was going on, she had reached in through the broken window of Honesty Skank’s Gold Star Pawnshop and had grabbed hold of the sword.

A shrill alarm bell began to clang from inside the shop.

Esmeralda pushed the sword into Trundle’s hands. “Yours, I think,” she panted. “I should have thought of this from the start! It would have saved us a lot of bother!”

“But we can’t—”

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