Jonathan Rogers - The Way of the Wilderking

King Darrow, for his part, was speechless with rage. Nor did Steren look very pleased with his old friend’s gesture. “A loyal subject,” Steren said in clipped tones, “would not have stolen from his sovereign to begin with.”

Some of Aidan’s self-satisfaction ebbed away under the stern gaze of the crown prince. “I truly meant it as a gesture of goodwill,” Aidan said, not quite so confidently. “To show His Majesty, and every man assembled here, that I would never do my king harm.”

The king’s rage boiled over at this. “You lie!” he shouted. “You have done me many harms! The subjects whose loyalty you have stolen-”

“Your Majesty, I would never-”

“The swamp men you have organized into a hostile army-”

“No, Your Majesty-”

“My own son, whom you almost turned against me…” As if it weakened him merely to speak of such things, the king leaned heavily on Steren, who neither frowned nor smiled at Aidan.

Aidan extended the hand that held the hunting knife. “This morning I held this knife an inch away from Your Majesty’s throat, while you slept.” His hand shook as he spoke, and his voice trembled. “If I had meant you any harm, I could have done you harm.”

This statement seemed to get through to the king, whose aspect softened, though only a little. Aidan continued. “I’m about to go away. Pursue me if you must. But I make this solemn promise: I will not cross again into the land of the feechiefolk. You need not look for me there.”

King Darrow snorted. “Why should I believe that?”

“Because I have never lied to you.”

In that moment King Darrow understood Aidan was telling the truth, as he always had. “Why would you make me such a promise?” the king asked.

“Because I am not worth the lives of a thousand men. If you lead these men into the Feechiefen, you will be leading them to their deaths. The feechies are fierce, and they aren’t forgiving of outsiders who invade their swamp.”

Aidan paused to let the king and his men think about what he had said. “I will run for my life if I have to, Your Majesty. But you have my word: I won’t run that way.”

King Darrow pondered Aidan’s promise. Something about it rankled him-the quarry defining the terms of the chase. Years of smoldering hatred got the better of him. “I will end this now!” he announced. “Archers!”

Fifty archers raised their bows and awaited the distasteful order from their king-to shoot Aidan Errolson down like a roosting bird. But Prince Steren intervened again. “Wait, Father-Your Majesty,” he called. “There is a more honorable way. I will end this myself.” The look he fixed on Aidan was grim.

Among the king’s many jealousies was Darrow’s jealousy of Aidan’s friendship with his son. It pleased Darrow to see Steren taking his side in this conflict. He motioned to the archers to stand down. Steren kicked off his boots and checked to be sure his knife was in its sheath. Aidan watched in mute astonishment, his feet rooted to the limb on which he stood, while Steren climbed swiftly, feechielike, toward him.

Aidan had faced down alligators and wolves, a giant and a rattlesnake, the Pyrthens’ thunder-tubes and the consuming darkness of underground caverns, hostile feechies and a thousand men bent on his capture. Now his best friend in all the civilized world was climbing steadily toward him to “end this.” He suddenly felt overwhelmingly tired. The struggle just didn’t seem worth it now, not if he couldn’t even count on Steren anymore.

But when Steren was just a few feet away, once he was high enough to be sure no one on the ground could see his face, he gave Aidan a smile and a broad wink. “Run,” he whispered through clenched teeth. “And make it look good.”

When Aidan leaped from the limb where he stood to a limb on a neighboring tree, Steren was hot after him, careful to jump precisely where he jumped, to land precisely where he landed. For Aidan it was thrilling to be in the forest again with Steren, as they had been so many times when they both lived in Tambluff Castle. For Steren it was no less thrilling. In the years since their famous boar hunt, Steren had often dreamed of that dizzying tree-walk when he followed Dobro and Aidan through the forest canopy to the greenbog. How many times had he wished he hadn’t been too tentative and self-conscious to fully enjoy one of the most exhilarating experiences of his life. How many times had he wished for one more chance to soar and leap through the treetops like this. This time he would enjoy it.

Aidan and Steren made the full circuit around Last Camp, in full sight of the Corenwalder soldiers. Viewed from below, their frolic through the treetops looked like a harrowing, death-defying chase. The men were whipped into a frenzy, shouting and whooping like coon hunters following a pack of hounds on the trail. Aidan spiraled upward into the higher boughs, and Steren followed leap for leap, landing for landing, handhold for handhold. Soon they were well out of sight of their audience, up above the overstory.

In the highest branches of an enormous gum tree, the two friends perched like a pair of egrets. Below them they could still hear the clamorous shouts of a thousand men desperate for news of the chase. But here they were above it all. All was peace in the treetop. Even the whine of mosquitoes, so incessant in the forest as to go largely unnoticed, was absent here. The sun came to them directly, not filtered through the dense leaves of the forest. They had a straight shot to the bluest sky imaginable. Everything seemed clearer here, more focused. Aidan and Steren were boys again, catching their breath after a frolic.

“Remember the last time we did this?” Aidan asked. “With Dobro?” He paused, chuckled. “Things were simpler then.”

Steren looked across the river and into feechie country. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe things weren’t as simple as we thought they were.”

A long silence prevailed. Neither Aidan nor Steren knew quite what to say, where to begin after three years-and such years as those had been. Finally Aidan spoke. “So,” he said, in that casual way of people who are just catching up, “how’s your father?”

Steren gave Aidan a perplexed look, then got the joke, and he laughed until he almost fell from his perch.

“Father,” Steren said when he had regained his composure. “Father

… he does better than you might think, judging from your run-in this morning. He’s rational most of the time-almost all the time, really. But when he’s not…” Steren’s voice trailed off. “I’m the only person left who can talk sense to him when he gets that way. And half the time he won’t listen even to me.”

“What about the Four and Twenty Noblemen?”

Steren shook his head. “Father doesn’t trust any of them anymore. He’s outlawed three of them-your father, Aethelbert, and Cleland. Gave their lands to half-wits and flatterers he thought he could control. But now he doesn’t trust those men either.

“Think about how many lives are affected every time a king makes a bad decision. Do you ever think about that?”

“No, not really,” Aidan admitted.

“I think about it all the time.” Steren plucked at the leaves where he sat and watched them flutter down through the overstory when he dropped them. “He’s quite sane most of the time,” he said. He almost sounded as if he were trying to convince himself. “The best thing I can do is to help manage those times when he’s not-try to talk him out of his worst decisions.”

“Isn’t that strange? Trying to manage a king?”

“Not half so strange as trying to manage your own father.”

“What about this invasion of the Feechiefen? You couldn’t talk him out of that?”