PART V: A Blow of the Scrumbittlethwaight

 

Chapter 47

 

It was a short-lived celebration. It lasted a mere seven seconds – which was the amount of time it took the Peachy and the Cheesy Knight to reach the downed wheel of cheese.

By the time the brothers got there, a large crowd had already gathered around the cheese, and more people were arriving every second. Some were there in the hopes of hoisting Bruce over their heads and parading him about the property, just as they had done earlier in the day with Gehry. Others were there for lunch.

The Peachy and the Cheesy Knight had no trouble shoving their way through the throng. And once past the last of the spectators, they found Bruce, perched atop the wheel of cheese like a lion hovering over a recently felled gazelle. The boy was dividing his time equally between devouring his prize and protecting it. He slapped at every reaching hand and lunged preemptively at anyone who even appeared to have hunger in their eyes, shoving gooey fistfuls of cheese into his mouth any free second he got.

But Bruce had barely gotten anything into his stomach before the Peachy Knight intervened. He plucked the boy up by the back of the neck as if he were a bothersome kitten and tossed him aside. Bruce belly-flopped down onto the firm, bumpy ground and slid along on his slick, cheese-greased elbows and knees, finally coming to a stop a full ten feet away from his cheese.

Bruce lay there a moment before pushing himself up to his knees and climbing to his feet. Turning back to check on his prize, he found the Peachy and the Cheesy Knights standing in his way. Both of the brothers were still breathing heavily from their trip down the hill, and both looked like they had murder on their minds.

“Uhh,” Bruce said. “Sorry for winning?”

They came at Bruce.

But so did a swarm of servants. They detached themselves from the larger crowd and rushed to form a barrier between the rogue knights and Bruce.

“What the – ?” the Peachy Knight said. He swung an arm at the servants. “Get out of my way!”

A girl stepped out from among the others. She didn’t look much older than Bruce, but was at least a whole head taller. She trained her eyes on the Peachy Knight and gave the man a simple answer:

“No.”

“What?!” he barked. The rogue knight tipped his ear toward the girl as if he had never before encountered the word she had said, as if she were in fact speaking some strange, foreign language.

“You heard me,” the girl said, lifting her chin a little as she did. “We’re done getting out of your way. Done doing every single degrading thing you demand of us. Done eating scraps and done living crammed together in tiny rooms with doors so small we have to get down on our hands and knees and crawl in and out of them. Crawl like – like rats.” She spat this last word as if it carried an ugly, sour taste.

The Peachy Knight listened patiently. Then he grinned, apparently amused at how worked up the girl was getting. “Oh, really?” he said. “And what are you going to do about it?”

“Nothing,” the girl said. But confusingly – to Bruce, at least – she said it as defiantly as she had said everything else.

Bruce decided that he must have misheard her.

Until the girl said it again.

“We aren’t going to do a thing,” she informed the Peachy Knight. “And we don’t have to. Because these boys – ” She turned and aimed a finger at the pack of servants behind her, all of whom quickly stepped aside so that the girl’s finger was aimed right at Bruce. “ – these brave young knights have come here to save us. To free us from your evil lordship. To put an end to all your wrongs and return us to the happier life that it is every one of our rights to lead!”

The servants went wild, clapping and cheering and yelling their throats raw.

During the ruckus, Bruce tried to squeeze his way through the crowd, doing his best to dodge the flailing arms, flying elbows, and pumping fists.

“Excuse me?” he said. “Hey. Hey. I – excuse – ow – please – okay – just – ”

It was far too loud for anyone to hear him. And as soon as things had quieted down, the girl, still fired up, began speaking again.

“That’s right!” she said. “Never again will you make a grown man lick your boots clean! Never again will you make a young girl smoosh peaches until her hands bleed! Never again will you make a mere boy carry around twice his weight in sugar – sugar that he’ll never even get to taste! Never again – ”

It was here that Bruce, having finally wormed his way through the crowd, interrupted the girl’s rabble-rousing with a tap on her shoulder.

Turning to him, the girl said, “Yes?”

“Hey. How’s it – uh, yeah – about that whole – that whole saving thing.” Bruce gave a little laugh. “I think there’s been some sort of misunderstanding. A miscommunication, maybe, on our part. Which I apologize for. But – but we’re – you see, we’re actually knights-to–be. And so – and so, you see – ”

Someone shoved Bruce aside. He staggered and nearly lost his balance, and was just about to get upset about it when he saw that the shover was none other than Kinsmere. Bruce watched his friend stride up to the servant girl, take her hand lightly in his own, and place a gentle kiss on the thin skin that covered her knuckles.

Gehry showed up a moment later. He joined Kinsmere beside the girl, and standing shoulder to shoulder, the two of them advanced toward the Peachy and the Cheesy Knight, stopping only once they were close enough to smell the brothers’ breath.

“Bruce?”

It was Kinsmere, snapping his fingers to get his friend’s attention.

“Bruce. We kind of need you up here, too, bud.”

With a sinking heart and a souring – and still very much empty – stomach, Bruce slunk forward and stood beside his friends.

 

Chapter 48

 

The next sixty seconds were chaotic and confusing. Here’s what happened, more or less in the order that it did.

First the Cheesy Knight gave his brother a nudge, after which he lunged for Gehry and Kinsmere. The boys were ready, and fought back bravely. But it quickly became clear that their efforts weren’t going to amount to much. The Cheesy Knight slapped the boys’ punches away as if each one was just another annoying gnat. Then, taking Gehry’s head in one giant hand and Kinsmere’s in the other, palming their scalps as if he were picking up a couple of his brother’s peaches, the rogue knight conked their skulls together. The boys’ legs went rubbery and they began to sink toward the ground. Before they could get there, though, the Cheesy Knight scooped them up. With a single, powerful motion, he hoisted the boys over his shoulders, draping Gehry over one and Kinsmere over the other.

Meanwhile, the Peachy Knight had gone after Bruce. Initially, the boy tried to throw a few punches, but as the knight came closer and his lake-sized shadow swallowed Bruce up, the preposterousness of putting up a fight became clear. Bruce loosened his fists and waved his hands to try and let the Peachy Knight know that he would go peacefully, that he was happy to be carted off to wherever it was his friends were being taken. Whether the man understood this, Bruce didn’t know. But, to the boy’s great relief, there was no more head-conking. The Peachy Knight simply grabbed him and, tucking Bruce under an arm as if he weighed about a quarter of what he truly did, started off after his brother.

The servants, so animated only moments before, seemed too stunned to try and help the boys. Or perhaps it was disappointment at seeing these young knights, these emissaries of freedom, fail so swiftly and thoroughly.

On the way back to the castle, perhaps feeling inadequate about carrying just one human being while his brother hauled two, the Peachy Knight snatched the horn-blower by the ends of his orange shirt. He dragged the man across the field, ignoring his pleas and apologies and desperate attempts to make the brothers’ day full of losses seem less humiliating than it truly was.

“It was too hot,” he said. “Yes, much too hot of a day. And you didn’t get enough sleep! Such an important thing, sleep. If only you’d had a little more, I think you would’ve really cleaned up.”

On and on he went, the back of his shirt gathering grass stains, his voice wobbling as he rode over the field’s pits and bumps.

 

Chapter 49

 

The brothers locked the boys and the horn-blower into a small, cramped iron cage. The cage rested atop a wheeled platform, which had been hooked to a two-person cart by a series of chains. The cart, in turn, was attached to a pair of horses – strong, antsy, and clearly well-rested – by way of a network of thick leather straps.

Once he had finished helping his brother with the straps, the Peachy Knight disappeared, returning a few minutes later with a sack of peaches, a large cloth-wrapped hunk of cheese, and a barrel of water. These supplies were loaded into the cart, set what would have normally been tantalizingly close to Bruce. Just then, however, the boy didn’t feel the least bit hungry. He was too focused on the fact that he and his friends were prisoners of a pair of rogue knights who had just spent a whole day collecting reasons to despise them. To make matters worse, his friends were unconscious, and Bruce had been crammed into the cage beside the horn-blower, who was sobbing uncontrollably, speckling his shirt with tears and gobs of snot.

Bruce tried to ignore the horn-blower and listen in on the Peachy and the Cheesy Knight’s conversation, hoping he might learn where he and his friends were being taken. The brothers had been talking constantly since climbing into the cart, but the more Bruce heard, the more he realized that the men were merely arguing.

“I told you,” said the Cheesy Knight.

“Told me what?” demanded his brother.

“That we should’ve done this from the start. We should’ve locked these brats up the second they told us who they were.”

“And I told you it wouldn’t matter. Which it didn’t. We got ‘em locked up now, don’t we?”

The Cheesy Knight turned in his seat so he could better glare at his brother.

“What?”

“What?!” cried the Cheesy Knight. “You know what. Today – ” His voice shook. “Today was the most humiliating day of our lives.”

The Peachy Knight gave a little laugh.

“Oh,” his brother said. “You think it’s funny?”

“Not at all. I just – well, I think I know of a day that was a bit more humiliating for you.”

It took a moment, but then understanding dawned on the Cheesy Knight’s face. “Don’t,” he warned his brother. “Don’t even.”

The Peachy Knight laughed again, harder this time.

“You promised,” whined the Cheesy Knight. “You said you’d never bring that up again. I – I was only five! How was I supposed to know? Back then boys’ and girls’ underpants looked the same!”

The Peachy Knight didn’t agree or disagree. He simply went on laughing.

“Just wait,” muttered his brother. “Wait until we get to Hamper’s and I tell him you waited a whole day to bring him the boys. That you gave them a hundred opportunities to escape.”

None of this quieted the Peachy Knight.

“Wait,” the Cheesy Knight went on, growing more upset by the second. “Wha-wha-wha-wait until I tell him what you really think of him!”

This shut the Peachy Knight up at once. “You wouldn’t,” he said, his tone and expression all of a sudden serious, perhaps even a little scared.

“I would!” cried the Cheesy Knight, grinning wickedly.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Yuh-huh!”

“Stop it!”

“No!”

“Yes!”

“No!”

“Yes!”

“No!”

It was here that Bruce quit listening. He couldn’t decide what was more irritating, the horn-blower’s sobbing or the brothers’ bickering. But it was possible, he thought, that the two of them together were even worse than that horrific blast that came out of the horn-blower’s instrument.

An idea tore through Bruce’s brain, grabbing his attention like a bolt of lightning in an otherwise still, dark sky.

The cart had only just then reached the edge of the woods, and despite the distraction of their ongoing argument, the brothers had wisely turned their horses away from the trees. Wherever they were headed, they weren’t going to venture into the Forest of Egergrel in order to get there. They would go around, riding alongside the trees instead of through them. Even so, Bruce thought they might be close enough for his idea to work.

Turning to the horn-blower, he said, “Hey. Your horn.”

“Huh?” said the man, sniffling and dragging a finger under his nostrils.

“Your horn,” Bruce said. “Do you have it?”

The horn-blower still didn’t understand. “My – my what?”

“The thing,” Bruce said. “The thing you blow into that makes that terrible sound.”

“Oh,” the horn-blower said. “My scrumbittlethwaight.” He reached beneath his snot-stained shirt and produced the trumpet-like instrument.

Bruce’s eyes lit up, and a grin curled onto his lips. Looking from the instrument to the horn-blower, he gazed into the man’s tear-studded eyes. “Blow it,” he told him. “Blow it like you’ve never blown it before.”

 

Chapter 50

 

The horn-blower did not disappoint. The noise he made was so horrid, so heinous, it caused all kinds of far-flung havoc. It altered weather patterns in the immediate area, and caused residents of several surrounding villages to be suddenly struck by incapacitating seizures. A sheep innocently munching grass in a field not far from King Beribahn’s castle burst into flames, and men and women all over the Realm fell out of love, set to sobbing, wet their pants, or did some wild combination of all three.

The noise also yanked Gehry and Kinsmere back into consciousness, and, as if they had been kicked by a big, invisible boot, knocked both the Peachy and the Cheesy Knight out of their cart and onto the ground. It did something else, too. It did the very thing that Bruce was hoping it would. But the boy didn’t know this yet, which was why he had his eyes fixed on the tops of the nearby trees.

On the ground beside the cart, meanwhile, the Peachy and the Cheesy Knight were grunting and groaning, slowly climbing to their feet. But the blast of the horn had been so loud, so close, and so unexpected that, even once their bodies began to work again, their brains remained fuzzy. They stumbled about, frowning dimly at their surroundings, until at last the sight of the cart and the caged boys caused something in their heads to click.

“Hey,” said the Peachy Knight.

“Yeah!” his brother cried, swaying woozily and, it seemed, looking around for something to hold onto. “Hey.”

“What the . . . ” The Peachy Knight’s bleary eyes roamed over the horn-blower, then focused in on the man’s instrument. Starting forward, he said, “Gimme that.”

“Yeah,” said the Cheesy Knight, now sort of hugging the side of the cart in order to keep himself upright. “Give him it!”

Sadly, but without protest, the horn-blower handed over his scrumbittlethwaight.

The Peachy Knight hefted the instrument in his meaty hand. Suddenly, then, he pulled his arm back behind his head, as if he were going to hurl the instrument out into the middle of the field. He stopped, though, just before doing so, and held the scrumbittlethwaight up to the light to get a better look at it. He brought the front of it up close to his face so he could peer through the bell, as if he thought perhaps there was something hidden within it. Finally the man tossed the instrument back into the cart. “I’m keepin’ it,” he said. “I kinda like it.”

“Yeah,” his brother said. “It’s . . . ”

“It’s . . . ”

“Right, it’s . . . ”

“Yeah.”

Nearly a minute passed before something else clicked in the brothers’ addled brains. Or nearly clicked.

“We should probably get going, huh?” said the Peachy Knight.

“Definitely,” agreed the Cheesy Knight. “We should do that. For sure.”

“All right, then.”

“Yep. All righty right righty.”

“On to our destination.”

“Straight there!”

“To where we’d been planning to go.”

“Mmhm.”

“That place.”

“That wonderful, wonderful place.”

“Full of . . . ”

“Of, ah . . . ”

“Flowers.”

“Flowers!”

“And the people.”

“Yes, the people. Of course the people.”

“The people we’re going there to see.”

“Indeed. Them.”

“Who are . . . ”

“Are so . . . ”

“So very . . . ”

“So very, very . . . ”

While the brothers were struggling to work through their scrumbittlethwaight-induced confusion, Gehry and Kinsmere, slowly coming to, were trying to work through their own. After taking a look around and seeing that they had been captured by the rogue knights, they turned to Bruce and the horn-blower for some sort of explanation.

“What . . . ” Gehry said. “What happened?”

“And where are they taking us?” Kinsmere asked.

Bruce didn’t answer his friends’ questions. He barely even heard them. He was busy, still staring at the tops of those trees. A hesitant smile formed on his face. He thought he saw some movement up there. It could have been a breeze blowing the leaves – but it could have just as easily been something else.

“Come on,” the boy murmured. “Hurry up. Please.”

“Bruce?” Gehry said.

“You okay?” asked Kinsmere.

The cart gave a lurch and then began to roll forward again. The Peachy and the Cheesy Knight had yet to recall where they were supposed to be going, but, refusing to admit this to one another, had agreed that it was silly to stand around and delay any longer, and so had gotten back into the cart and set off toward the destination they both no longer knew of.

It didn’t make any sense. But in the end it didn’t matter. Because before the cart had made it more than a handful of feet, the tops of the trees along the edge of the Forest of Egergrel began to shake – and shake harder than any breeze could have possibly shook them.

Bruce’s tentative smile spread into a full-on grin.

More firmly this time, Gehry said, “Bruce.”

“You’re freaking us out,” Kinsmere added.

This time Bruce heard his friends. But all he said was, “He’s coming. He’s really coming.”

 

Chapter 51

 

The trees shook and bent and swayed. A couple of the thinner ones even tore themselves up out of the ground and leapt through the air. Or so it appeared to everybody watching from the cart. Bruce, of course, knew what was really going on. Gazing up at the trees, he grinned as if he had just won the Realm-wide lottery. And if not for the smells that soon began to waft over the cart, he would’ve gone on grinning, too, but instead he stopped in order to better breathe in those spicy scents.

“Is that . . . cinnamon?” Gehry said.

Kinsmere took a few quick sniffs. “I’m getting cumin.”

“Allspice,” the horn-blower said.

Bruce simply shouted: “Egergrel!”

The troll-giant came bursting through the last of the branches and leaves. Crashing out onto the field, he battered his barrel-sized fists against his chest and roared, “WHO DARE DISTURB THE AFTERNOON NAP OF EGERGREL?” Then, looking down and around him, peering past the iron bars of the cage perched behind the cart, he added, “Oh. Hey, Bruce.”

Everyone – Gehry, Kinsmere, the horn-blower, the Peachy and the Cheesy Knight – looked from the troll-giant to Bruce in astonishment. A chorus of confused sounds accompanied the looks:

“Errr –  ”

“Ahhh . . . ”

“Umm . . . ?”

“Grfp.”

“Blurp.”

(This last sound was, in fact, a tiny belch of worry that had slipped out of the Cheesy Knight’s throat.)

Egergrel didn’t notice any of these reactions. Between beaming at Bruce and lifting up his enormous feet to show the boy their dusty, yellow-brown bottoms, he was very busy.

Bruce nodded happily at the troll-giant, and every time the creature showed him the soles of his feet, the boy sucked up a lungful of the scented air and gave him a pair of thumbs-ups.

It took Egergrel a moment to get over his excitement at having bumped into his new friend. But as soon as he had, he said, “Hey. Wait a second . . . ” The fact that Bruce was currently trapped in a cage had finally sunk in. Egergrel frowned. “What are you . . . ” he began, looking around again, trying to put things together for himself and, being unable to do so, at last just asking Bruce, “What are you doing in there?”

Bruce aimed a finger toward the front of the cart, where the Peachy and the Cheesy knight were still sitting, frozen and stupefied by the scene unfolding before them. But the roaring of Egergrel – an “AHRUUURRRRGHHHHH!” so loud and deep it made the earth jiggle slightly in its orbit – pulled the men out of their daze.

The Cheesy Knight dove for the horses’ reins. He tugged at them and twisted them and did everything else he could think of doing to them in order to get the animals going. Beside his panicked brother, the Peachy Knight was panicking, too. He swatted at the horses’ backsides, urging them on with curses and kicks and screams and shouts, before finally realizing that the animals had fainted dead away on their feet. It was then that the rogue knight finally leapt out of the cart and tried to simply make a run for it. He was followed promptly by his brother.

But neither man had any real hope of escaping the troll-giant. It took Egergrel only a couple troll-giant-sized strides to reach the rogue knights and scoop them up in either of his fists. Returning to the cart, temporarily tucking the Cheesy Knight into an armpit, Egergrel used a massive forefinger and thumb to bend the iron bars of the cage until he had made a space large enough for the boys, and even the horn-blower, to crawl through.

Once he had made it out onto the ground, Bruce called up to the troll-giant. “Thanks!”

“Yeah,” Gehry said. “Thanks a million.”

“Make it a billion,” Kinsmere said.

The troll-giant spent a moment smiling down at the boys. Then he looked up at the sky. It seemed as if he didn’t want to leave, like he would have very much enjoyed lingering there for a while in the afternoon sun. But the Peachy and the Cheesy Knight began to squirm around in his humongous fists, and so, after casting one last regretful glance up at the bright burning star in the sky, Egergrel turned to go.

He ducked his head to dodge the branches as he stepped back into his forest. The leafy shadows fell over his greenish skin, turning it several shades darker. Before he disappeared – the boys, squinting, could still see him, though indistinctly – Egergrel looked back and said, “Come visit, will ya?”

It was Bruce who answered.

“Will do,” he called into the forest.

The boys could still hear the troll-giant stomping away for quite some time. They listened until the forest swallowed up the sound. But even then, the scents of cinnamon and cumin hung around, giving the air a pleasant tang.

 

Chapter 52

 

It had been nearly twenty-four hours since the boys had had a chance to speak to each other at any real length, and quite a lot had happened to them during that time. And so, as soon as Egergrel had left them behind, the boys spent a few minutes catching up.

Bruce started. Understandably, Gehry and Kinsmere were eager to find out how he had become such good friends with the troll-giant who had nearly eaten them the afternoon before. So he explained about Gerwin, the wizard-to-be, how he had caught Bruce in the Peachy Knight’s kitchen just as he was about to help himself to a midnight snack and how, somehow or other, the boy then managed to convince him to go hungry and instead lug a bunch of sacks of spices out to the Forest of Egergrel in order to help the troll-giant mask the horrid odors that had been pouring forth from his feet for decades.

“Whoa.” It was Kinsmere. “Hold on a second, though.”

Bruce raised his eyebrows. “Yeah?”

“That little guy in the robe – he got you not to have a snack?”

Bruce sighed. “That’s what you got out of all of that?”

Kinsmere wasn’t listening. “Kid must be some wizard,” he said.

Gehry went next. He told his friends about the epic – and epically unnecessary – journey he had taken just to find a bathroom, but how all the pain and aggravation was ultimately worth it, seeing as his wanderings had led to his overhearing a secret meeting between the Peachy and the Cheesy Knight, one in which they discussed their plans to bring King Beribahn’s son and his two friends to someone they called “you-know-who.”

“Hammer,” Bruce said.

“Huh?” said Gehry.

“Or was it Hapner?” Bruce murmured. “Haggor? No. Hargor?”

“What?” Kinsmere said.

Bruce gave up trying to remember the guy’s name. “When you two were still knocked out,” he told his friends, “I heard them, the Peachy Knight and his brother – they were talking about bringing us to some guy named Hadder or Hastor or – or – ”

“Hasper?”

This was the horn-blower, who had been standing nearby all this time, listening to the boys’ stories. The boys turned to the man now.

“Who’s Hasper?” Kinsmere asked him.

“Oh,” the horn-blower said. “He’s my brother-in-law. Or actually – ” The man frowned. “Actually maybe he’s not. He’s my sister’s husband’s brother. So I know it’s her – Marsha’s, I mean – I know Hasper’s her brother-in-law. But if he’s mine, too – I’m not sure how that all works. Never thought about it, really, till now.”

“Well, this Hasper,” Gehry said, trying to get the man focused again. “Does he have some kind of secret, evil plan to do something terrible to my father, King Beribahn, and the Realm as a whole?”

The horn-blower tipped his head from side to side, considering. “Seeing as this hypothetical evil plan would also be a secret one,” he said, “I can’t say anything with complete confidence . . . ” He narrowed his eyes. He was thinking again, and thinking hard. “But no,” he finally said. “I really can’t see it. I mean, the guy’s just a humble scrumbittlethwaight-maker. That’s all.”

“Oh-kay, then,” Kinsmere said. “Anyway . . . ” He turned back to his friends and proceeded to tell them about his night, how he had woken up to knocking and a Gehry- and Bruce-less room, and how he had then answered the door and found a green-eyed girl who was there to tell the boys about the servants’ plight and their desperate need of a knightly rescue.

Then he leapt ahead, telling his friends about his experience in the smelly locker and his victory over the Peachy Knight. Which got Gehry sharing the story of the gas-off and his victory over the Cheesy Knight.

After that, the boys fell silent.

It was the horn-blower who finally spoke. “My word,” he said. “For knights as young as yourselves, you boys have had quite an adventure.”

 

Chapter 53

 

After a little more discussion, it was decided that the boys’ adventure wasn’t over yet. There was trouble brewing in the Realm, and more trouble, perhaps, than Gehry’s father could have ever believed. The boys would send word back to King Beribahn’s castle – the horn-blower promised to find someone to deliver their message – but would not return there themselves. They would travel on in search of more information about this Halper or Hastor or Hadder and his sinister designs against the Realm, confronting whatever obstacles they encountered along the way.

The decision had been made, and the boys – even Kinsmere and Bruce – were in perfect agreement about it. Yet they found themselves hesitating to leave. They stood around for several minutes, looking from the nearby Forest of Egergrel to the Peachy Knight’s castle, a turnip-sized smudge on the dusky horizon. A bright orange dot fluttered over the grass between the boys and that distant structure. It was the horn-blower, running across the field as fast as he could, his scrumbittlethwaight held proudly above his head. He was on his way to the castle to deliver the good news, to let the servants know that the boys, with a little help from the local troll-giant, had done it. They had ended the cruel reign of the Peachy Knight – and, as a bonus, had also gotten rid of the guy’s brother.

“Well . . . ” Gehry said at last. He took a deep breath. “Shall we?”

The boys dumped the cage out of the back of the cart, climbed into the front, and arranged themselves on the seat. The horses needed to be roused, and then soothed. But once they had been taken care of, the animals responded happily, even eagerly, to the boys’ gentle commands.

They hadn’t made it far when the cheers rose up. They were coming from the castle, from the newly freed servants, and they continued for a long time. It was clear that a magnificent celebration was underway.

The boys all glanced back at the castle – Kinsmere perhaps a few more times than either Gehry or Bruce – but they didn’t turn around, stop, or even slow the cart. They rode on, toward their next adventure.

“Anyone want some cheese?”

“Pass me a peach.”

“Here. Have two.”

______

Text copyright © 2020 by Jarrett Lerner

All right reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

 

Chapter 43

 

Bruce had been waiting at the bottom of a hill behind the castle for nearly an hour. The servants who had brought him there told him he would be competing in the tournament’s final – and biggest and best – event, but they didn’t offer any additional information. Bruce might have gone around in search of some clues about what the event entailed, but his stomach was so empty that he didn’t trust himself to make it more than a couple of steps without collapsing.

So he waited. He stood in the grass and kept an eye – and a nose – out for some sign of food. Because in Bruce’s experience, tournaments were basically daylong outdoor feasts. Of course there was the jousting and the sword-fighting and all that. But that was just the entertainment, something to watch while you crammed meat and cheese into your face.

There at the Peachy-slash-Cheesy Tournament of Champions, however, Bruce hadn’t seen or smelled a single edible morsel. As clumps of spectators began to gather at the base of the hill, Bruce attempted to flag someone down. When that didn’t work, he simply stepped into the path of an oncoming man.

“Yep!” the man was saying to a guy walking beside him. “Came outta there with a grin on his lips and someone else’s heave-hurl all up and down his face. I’m telling you, I’ve never seen anything – ”

“Excuse me!” Bruce shouted a second before the man barreled into him.

The man came to an abrupt stop. He looked Bruce up and down and said, “Hey, you’re one of those boys!”

“Uh, yeah,” Bruce said. “Yeah, I am.”

“Well,” the man said, grinning as if he were speaking to some sort of celebrity, “what can I do for ya?”

Bruce gestured at the space behind the castle. There was the flat patch of grass at the bottom of the hill and the long, bumpy field that rolled away beyond it. “Do you know what’s supposed to happen here?”

“Here?!” the man cried. He let out a burst of loud, bouncy laughter. “Why, it’s the cheese roll! Best part of the tournament, if you ask me.” The man looked Bruce up and down again. This time, he did so slowly, spending a particularly long time eyeing the boy’s round, softly bulging belly. “Oh, you’ll do fine,” he said. “Better than fine if you’ve got a bit of what your friends have in ‘em!”

He clapped Bruce on the shoulder, scanned the still-growing crowd for the guy he had been talking to a moment ago, and then hurried off to catch up with him. Bruce barely noticed. He had heard the man say cheese. After that, not a word.

 

Chapter 44

 

Several dozen more people joined the crowd before the cheese itself made an appearance. Most of these newcomers were regular spectators, but a small group of them were servants who came bearing hammers and nails and large armloads of wood. Piling up their supplies, the servants set to work building some kind of big, circular contraption.

Hunger-blind, Bruce saw the spectators and servants as nothing more than a bunch of people-shaped things getting in the way of him and his – yes, his – cheese. He moved around to try and get a better view of the castle, where he figured the cheese would be coming from, and used what little energy he had left in him to leap up and look over the people-shaped things’ hairy tops.

At one point, he thought he saw Gehry somehow floating above the crowd. But this thought occupied Bruce’s mind for less than a second. Because just as his friend came into sight, the cheese finally arrived. And it wasn’t just any old piece of cheese – it was the cheese. That glorious, gooey masterpiece of pressed milk-curd, that enormous, perfectly proportioned wheel that Bruce had been so desperate to sink his teeth into ever since he had first glimpsed it in the castle’s kitchen all those many, many, meal-less hours ago.

Watching a group of servants roll the cheese across the grass, Bruce began to salivate. Additional servants moved along behind and on either side of the wheel, fanning it furiously to keep it from softening and losing its shape in the heat.

At the bottom of the hill, the servants rolling and fanning the cheese met up with the servants who had been busy building that wooden contraption, which, in the past few minutes, had turned into a large, hollow wheel. Carefully, calling out directions to one another, the cheese was steered into the hollow pocket and firmly secured inside the contraption. Then the servants began to roll the warming, wood-framed cheese up the hill.

Bruce tried desperately to make sense of this. Why were they bringing the cheese up the hill? They weren’t going to make him climb up there just to get a bite, were they? Why not keep it at the bottom of the hill, cut it up and serve it there?

It was the logical thing to do. But Bruce’s life had stopped running according to logic a couple days ago. And so the servants kept pushing and pushing, ever so slowly inching the cheese further up the hill.

Bruce could have cried. He probably would’ve cried, too, had that man – the one he had spoken to earlier – not passed by again.

“Hey,” he said. “Boy. What’re you doing down here?”

Bruce ignored the question. He pointed toward the hill and said, “Where . . . where are they . . . ” It was as much as he could manage.

Frowning, the man peered up the hill and told Bruce, “You’d better get up there. You don’t wanna give the others a head-start. Then you’ll have no chance of catching that thing.”

Only then did Bruce see all the other people climbing the hill. He had been too focused on the cheese to notice them before. But there were a bunch of them – regular-looking men mixed in among the cheese-pushing and cheese-fanning servants.

The man beside Bruce gave his shoulder a squeeze, a gesture that the boy supposed was meant to impart courage and strength. Mostly it just hurt.

“Just keep your eye on that wheel,” the man told Bruce. “And don’t you stop until you’ve got ’er!”

 

Chapter 45

 

Bruce never could’ve made it up the hill on his own. It wasn’t that the hill was especially tall or steep. It was the length of the hill that was the problem. It sloped up gradually, but endlessly. Bruce could see the top, and could see that there were a handful of people already gathered up there, stretching their legs, waiting. But every time Bruce lowered his head, trudged on a bit, and then looked back up again, his destination appeared to be just as far away. Then there was the sun. Hanging directly overhead, not softened by a single cloud, it beat down ruthlessly on Bruce’s head and shoulders and neck. The boy wasn’t sure how the cheese was faring, but he knew that he was on the verge of turning to goo.

Fortunately, some of the servants spotted Bruce struggling, and before his legs could melt out from under him, a pair of them came down from the top of the hill to help. They each draped one of the boy’s limp, sweaty arms over their shoulders and dragged him up the rest of the way.

“Thank you,” Bruce said once he had begun to catch his breath.

“It’s the least we can do,” one of the servants replied. He was youngish, maybe a year or two older than Bruce.

“Right,” said the second servant, a girl who was maybe a year or two older than the first. “With all you’re doing for us today?” She shook her head with what appeared to be awe, and then flashed Bruce a smile. “We’ll be forever in your debt.”

Bruce blinked at the girl. He was, understandably, confused. “All I’m . . . ” he said. “All I’m doing? Me? What do you – ”

An ear-splitting burst of sound cut Bruce off before he could finish his question. It was that horn, that wickedly pitched instrument. The man in the giant orange shirt was all the way down at the bottom of the hill, but the brain-piercing sound of his horn carried easily over the distance. Even the servants, who must have heard dozens, if not hundreds, of those blasts, plugged their ears and ducked for cover.

Bruce did the same. And by the time he felt safe enough to stand back up and un-stuff his ears, the boy and the girl who had helped him up the hill were gone. In their place stood a pair of very large, very angry-looking men. Bruce immediately recognized one of them as the Peachy Knight, and based on their physical resemblance, he decided that the mammoth of a man standing next to him had to be the Cheesy Knight, his brother. The men didn’t look like they had fared too well so far in the tournament. Atop the layers of peach juice coating his shirt and pants and boots, the Peachy Knight sported a fresh-looking layer of vomit. And the Cheesy Knight? Bruce couldn’t quite believe it, but the man’s eyes were all puffy and pink, as if he had spent the morning crying.

“Uhh,” Bruce said. “Hi?”

Neither one of the brother’s answered. Not with their words, at least. The Cheesy Knight simply went on glaring, while the Peachy Knight lifted a huge, meaty hand and aimed his index finger directly at Bruce.

The boy flinched back as if the rogue knight’s arm might detach itself from his shoulder and fly at Bruce’s face. All that came Bruce’s way, however, was a sour-smelling growl. He turned back to the men in time to see the Cheesy Knight, his bottom lip quivering, spin around and stomp away.

His brother followed a moment later, leaving Bruce alone to wonder what to make of the encounter. Which, in the end, wasn’t much. Because as big as his confusion was, Bruce’s hunger was even bigger.

Peering past the crowd gathered atop the hill, he finally glimpsed a thin, curving slice of the wood-framed wheel of cheese. It was shiny and slick from having spent all this time in the sun, the spidery spokes of the wooden contraption providing nothing but the thinnest hints of shade.

Bruce’s feet began to carry him toward the cheese, taking him on a route that went around the Peachy and the Cheesy Knight. Distantly, he wondered whether they had somehow found out what he had done with their bags of spices. Was that what they were so angry about? Bruce stuck his cinnamon-scented hands in his pockets just in case.

A few more steps, and the smell of hot cheese danced its way across the hilltop and tickled Bruce’s nostrils. He breathed in the heavy, salty scent, and it filled his famished body with a tingly energy, giving him the strength he needed to continue weaving through the crowd. There at last, he tapped the shoulder of the single servant still standing between himself and the cheese.

The young man turned to look, and a grin spread across his face when he saw that it was Bruce.

“Um, hi,” Bruce said. “Could I – ?” He pointed at the wheel of cheese. “You think maybe I could have, like, a bite of that? Or maybe – yeah, I guess maybe two?”

“Sure!” the servant said, nodding enthusiastically. “You can have the whole thing! And all to yourself!”

It was a strange and unexpected thing for the young man to say. But it happened to be exactly what Bruce had been hoping to hear, and so he decided not to question it. Instead he started for the wheel, hands held out before him, fingers tensed and ready to rip off a nice hot smelly hunk of cheesy cheese cheese.

But Bruce hadn’t made it more than a couple of steps when the servant threw an arm out across his chest, blocking his way forward.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he said. “You’ve gotta catch it first.” The young man peered around, then whispered something to a nearby servant. Turning back to Bruce, he spoke quietly, as if he were divulging an extremely delicate secret. “It’s about to roll.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “Now do it for us, will ya?”

Bruce was more confused than ever. But things began to fall into place when he saw the wheel of cheese, still trapped in the wooden contraption, slowly start to turn over the servants’ heads. It crept all the way to the edge of the hilltop, pausing at the spot where the long, gentle slope began. By then, Bruce could see the servants who were in charge of holding onto the cheese. He watched them peer around for a moment, and then nod to one another.

And then they just let go.

 

Chapter 46

 

The crowd at the bottom of the hill noticed the cheese before any of Bruce’s opponents did. They let out an enormous roar, one that grabbed the attention of the men gathered at the top of the hill.

One man cried, “Hey!” and then charged down the hill in pursuit. A swarm of others followed after him, leaving only a few competitors lingering atop the hill. Bruce was one of those few, and so, the boy saw, was the Peachy Knight. The rest had been left behind because they had either just been punched, or were currently in the process of being punched, by the rogue knight.

Bruce, rooted to the spot, saw the Peachy Knight bash a cantaloupe-sized fist into another man’s face, and then saw the punched man collapse to the ground in a crumpled heap, as if his bones had been turned into pudding. The rogue knight watched all this gleefully, then whirled around to look for a fresh victim. Unfortunately, Bruce was the only un-punched contestant still standing there atop the hill.

“You!” the man growled at him.

And Bruce, who only a moment ago had considered running down an enormous hill after a giant wheel of cheese a crazy, dangerous thing to do, had a sudden change of heart, all at once finding it a very lovely idea indeed.

He ran.

It was much easier going down the hill than coming up it had been. The only hard part was keeping your balance, making sure you didn’t lose your footing, fall over, and roll down the hill right along with the cheese. Knowing that a bloodthirsty Peachy Knight was somewhere behind him helped Bruce keep his speed up. But even so, the boy didn’t think he had a chance of catching the cheese. His opponents were already so much closer, and the fact that most of them were full grown men with legs twice as long as Bruce’s meant that it would basically be impossible for him to catch up.

He needed a miracle.

Or an accident.

And he got one.

Or maybe it was both.

The man leading the pack of cheese-chasers tripped and fell. One of his arms hooked the leg of the man right behind him, who, falling himself, grabbed hold of the men on either side of him. These two went down as well, and all together, the four fallen men formed a big, grabby obstacle that quickly took down another half a dozen competitors. One man did try and leap over the whole angry mess of reaching arms and kicking legs. And he made it, too – but landed awkwardly. There was a loud snap, and the man cried out, hitting the ground and sliding to a stop while clutching his probably broken leg.

It was, in a word, chaos. But chaos that Bruce happened to be behind. And far enough behind that he could easily angle his steps to dodge the now massive pile of fallen competitors. He did so, and in his excitement at looking down upon a hill completely empty except for that rolling wheel of cheese, he threw his arms up over his head, celebrating as if he had already won the competition.

But the celebration didn’t last too long. Because Bruce had forgotten about the man who wasn’t in that body-heap. A reminder came in the form of a low growl directly behind him, and a moment later, Bruce felt a breath of hot air across the back of his neck. As he turned his head to look behind him, a massive, blood-spattered hand pawed through the air right in front of his eyes. Bruce shrieked, and turned his head to look behind him the other way. But the view over there wasn’t much better – he saw the Cheesy Knight, making his way down the hill just a few strides behind his brother.

Bruce decided to keep his eyes aimed forward for the time being. He focused on the cheese, which had finally reached the bottom of the hill and was now rolling through the field that lay beyond it. It was still moving fast, but it wouldn’t be picking up any more speed, and if Bruce got lucky, the wheel might hit a bump big enough to knock it over. If that happened soon enough, he just might be able to reach the cheese before the rogue knights reached him.

But those servants – they knew how to keep a giant wheel of cheese rolling. The wooden contraption bounced cleanly, easily absorbing the bumps of the field. It showed no signs of toppling, just kept rolling and rolling. And the Peachy and the Cheesy Knight? They had to be right behind Bruce now. Steeling himself for what he might see, he glanced back – and something odd and unexpected caught his eye. It was a baggy brown robe, floating along, it seemed, just a few feet to his side. The cloth flapped and fluttered as it zipped forward, and then finally a face emerged from the folds. It was Gerwin’s face, of course. Bruce had no idea where he had come from, but he was there, all right.

“Hi!” said the wizard-to-be.

“Wha?” Bruce panted back at him. At the moment, it was as much of a response as he could muster.

“Listen,” Gerwin said. “It’s really, really, really important that you get to that cheese first. Like, really important. You’ve got to beat these guys, ’kay?”

Bruce gave his head a single shake. He was afraid to do more, lest it throw him off balance or upset his stride.

“You’re shaking your head,” Gerwin said. “I’m not sure what that’s supposed to mean, but you should probably just concentrate on running. And the cheese, Bruce. The cheese. Think about how good it’ll be to finally eat that cheese!”

Glancing back, Bruce saw that both the Peachy and the Cheesy Knight were now close enough to dive forward and grab his ankles. To Gerwin, Bruce said, “I’m too . . . too . . . ”

“Tired?” the boy guessed.

Bruce nodded.

“But the cheese, Bruce! You’re so hungry! You’ve barely eaten anything for two whole days!”

“I’m . . . ” Bruce huffed. “ . . . ahw . . . ahw . . . aware.”

“Come on, Bruce,” Gerwin said. “You can do it. You’ve got to do it. If not for the love of cheese, then for something.”

Bruce said, “I . . . I’m – ”

“Okay,” the wizard-to-be interrupted him. “Fine. But if I get in trouble for this . . . ”

Gerwin didn’t elaborate. Instead he wormed a hand out of his robe and wiggled his fingers at the field in front of him.

A sudden gust of wind swept across the grass, knocking the wheel of cheese over onto its side. A moment later, Gerwin did something crazy. He stopped running, spun around, and positioned himself directly in the Peachy and the Cheesy Knight’s path.

The brothers made no attempt to dodge the boy. They plowed right into him. But Gerwin refused to go down without a fight. Flailing his limbs wildly, he managed to get the baggy folds of his robe tangled in the men’s legs. It didn’t bring them down, but it still took the rogue knights several precious seconds to shake off the wizard-to-be, each one further weakening their chances of catching up to Bruce.

If, that is, Bruce could continue running as fast as he was. Which was a big if.

Do it for something.

That’s what Gerwin had told him. The wizard-to-be had kept him hungry all this time so that he would have a reason to chase the cheese. And that, plus the threat of annihilation at the hands of the Peachy Knight, had been enough to get him this far. But he still had a little further to go.

So what was it?

What was Bruce’s something?

Running, burning up his last licks of energy, he let his eyes close. He felt around in the darkness of his tired mind, searching for that something. And there, looming up out of the blackness, he saw it.

It was the face of his father. He thought back to the send-off feast just a couple of nights ago, and in his mind’s eye he saw Sir Brent, bold and brave and valiant, casually telling Bruce that he knew he would never see him, his own son, ever again. You and I both know you won’t make it more than a fortnight out there, he had said. A rogue knight’ll smell you from a mile away. You’ll get picked off faster than you can say “cake.” After which his father had dismissed him, saying, People are starting to stare.

And how many times had Bruce heard that before?

People are starting to stare.

Everywhere he went, people were always starting to stare. Even if he wasn’t doing anything stare-worthy at the time, they figured that he, the chubby, clumsy kid of the castle, was bound to embarrass himself sooner or later.

People are starting to stare.

People are starting to stare.

Still running, eyes shut, chasing blindly after the cheese, his empty stomach churning and grinding, Bruce thought, So let them! Let them stare all they want! Because he was going to show them – his father, his friends, the Peachy and the Cheesy Knight, the whole entire Realm – he was going to show them that he was more than a food-obsessed fat kid who couldn’t do anything worthwhile. He was going to get to that wheel of cheese first. He was going to win this tournament, and once he did, he would –

Bruce tripped. As he was falling, his eyes popped open – and just in time to see that what he had tripped over was the wooden contraption surrounding the wheel of cheese. Half a second later he flopped down face-first, his hands and face sinking into the gooey, sun-soaked curds.

Picking his head up, wiping the goop from over his eyes, Bruce looked around. The Peachy and Cheesy Knight were still a ways away. They must have slowed their pace once they had seen that the boy had them beat. The spectators, who were already rushing over to gather around the victor, were moving much faster than the pair of rogue knights.

Bruce watched the oncoming crowd, overwhelmed by the fact that they seemed to be cheering for him. But then he noticed that some of the approaching people were carrying forks and knives and loaves of bread, and suddenly jealousy replaced every other feeling in the boy’s body. Bruce brought his attention back to the cheese – his cheese – and tried to stuff as much of it as he could into his mouth before anybody else arrived.

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Text copyright © 2020 by Jarrett Lerner

All right reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.