Jonathan Rogers - The Secret of the Swamp King

Aidan looked down at his father’s walking stick. “How are you feeling, Father?”

Errol sighed. “These old battle wounds are troubling me. The rheumatism has crept into my bad leg.” Leaning on Aidan, he hobbled to the nearest chair and sat down heavily. Aidan could feel his own eyes grow wet with the sadness of seeing his father, always so hale and strong, carrying himself now like an old man.

“I had hoped you’d come to Darrow’s hunt two days ago,” said Aidan. Then, thinking of his father’s ailing state, he quickly added, “Or at least to the hunt feast.”

“So I gathered from your letters,” answered Errol. “So I gathered. But I never got an invitation from the king.” He looked vacantly out the window. “There was a time when I was free to come and go as I pleased at Tambluff Castle,” he said quietly. “But no more.”

Aidan remembered King Darrow’s remark the night before, when he referred to Errol as a man “whose standing in the realm isn’t what it used to be.”

Errol patted his left leg, his bad leg. “I’ve had this limp for thirteen years now, since the Pyrthens’ fourth siege of Tambluff,” he remarked. “It’s never bothered me much. It always seemed a small price to pay for freedom, a small enough tribute to a king I loved, a king who loved his kingdom like a father loves his family.” He stared into the distance. “But now this old battle wound is a misery to me.”

Aidan and Errol sat in silence for a few awkward seconds before Aidan changed the subject. “Brennus wrote. Said Gemma was having a baby.”

“That’s right,” answered Errol, brightening at the prospect. “They’ve been married over a year now. It’s time they gave me a grandchild.”

“He said in his letter that he cleared another field for indigo,” added Aidan.

“That farm of his will be another Longleaf before you know it,” said Errol. Though he had hoped that his eldest would stay and raise his family on Longleaf Manor, he was proud of the young man’s initiative. “You know how your brother works.” He paused a moment, then chuckled. “Your brother Brennus anyway. Your brother Percy is another matter altogether. It’s not that he minds working; it’s just that he likes so many other things better, it’s hard to get a whole day’s work out of him. This is the son who decides to stay on the farm.” He shook his head and smiled. “But he’s good company. And I’m going to need it when Jasper starts at the university in the fall.”

“I’d almost forgotten,” said Aidan. “We’ll be together again.” Tambluff University was just around the corner from the castle drawbridge.

“But I don’t know what the professors at the university are going to be able to teach that boy,” Errol remarked. “He knows the old lore better than anybody I’ve ever seen-except the Truthspeaker, maybe. He’s read every book in the library.”

Father and son both fell silent. Both were thinking of the other Errolson, the missing one. Maynard had disappeared two years earlier, less than a year after Aidan moved to Tambluff. He went out hunting in the Eastern Wilderness and never came back.

Everyone had given Maynard up for dead. That was just the way of the Eastern Wilderness: sometimes people went out and never came back. It was a vast and perilous place. Only Errol still held out hope for his son’s safe return. But it was a hope fueled by a father’s love and blind faith-not by any reasonable expectation that Maynard could possibly be alive. But even Errol’s faith had begun to waver. Every day he looked a little grayer.

Aidan had already decided not to tell his father the whole story of why he was headed downriver. He would find out soon enough, whether Aidan told him or not. Now that he saw his father’s troubled state, Aidan was even more convinced it would do more harm than good to explain that King Darrow had sent him on a fool’s errand, an impossible mission he didn’t expect Aidan to survive. “King Darrow has sent me on a mission down the river.”

“Hmmm…” said Errol. “Sounds important.” There was a pause. Aidan looked down at his boots. Errol pressed him. “Too important for you to tell your father about?”

Aidan was between a rock and a hard spot. It would be a disaster to tell his father that he was headed alone into the very heart of the Feechiefen Swamp. Father would be worried sick, and rightly so. He would probably try to stop him from going, command him as his father to stop this insane quest. And Aidan wouldn’t do that. To quit his quest would mean self-banishment. King Darrow had ordered him not to return without the frog orchid.

Not to tell, however, would be a slap in Father’s face. Until recently, Errol had been one of Darrow’s chief advisers. The king did almost nothing without Errol’s knowledge. Had Darrow now entrusted Aidan with a task that was too secret for Errol to know about? Had Errol’s fifteen-year-old son surpassed him in the king’s confidence?

Errol saw the struggle on Aidan’s face. “I understand,” he said. “I won’t ask you to betray your king’s trust.” Aidan nodded his head. But he couldn’t meet his father’s gaze. The silence between father and son was mercifully broken by the clanging of Moira’s dinner bell.

Moira was bringing around pies she had made from plum preserves, but as usual, Percy was so busy talking to the guests that he had hardly touched his dinner of venison and sweet potatoes.

“So if you needed timber at Last Camp,” Percy asked Massey, “why didn’t you just cut down some of the trees down there? Hustingreen to the Big Bend is a long float.”

Massey straightened in his chair and answered self-importantly, “I ain’t a timber cutter,” as if felling trees were beneath the dignity of an alligator hunter.

“Well, if you don’t mind my saying so,” observed Percy, “you aren’t much of a rafthand either.” Percy’s twin Jasper, who had taken off from his studies to eat dinner, couldn’t help but snicker. Ebbe, standing behind Lord Errol’s chair, raised the back of his hand to his mouth as if to conceal a laugh.

Lord Errol intervened, mindful of his guests’ feelings. “Why do you need a raft of timber at Last Camp?”

“We’re building a stockade,” answered Floyd.

“A stockade?” asked Errol. “Who would attack hunters and trappers?”

“We don’t know,” said Floyd. He was grimly serious now. “That’s what’s got us worried.”

“Somebody wants us gone from Last Camp,” explained Massey. “They hide in the woods and shoot up the camp with arrows, throw spears in amongst us.”

“Just the other day,” said Floyd, “Massey was leaning up against a tree resting after a day-long hunt, when a spear come sailing in and stuck in the tree just above his head.”

“Parted my ever-loving hair like a Tambluff dandy,” added Massey. With his right hand he showed the motion of the spearpoint, imitating the noise of an arrow in flight striking a tree: “Sssssssssst-thwonnnngg!”

“I never seen such a near miss,” said Floyd.

“Was it a near miss,” asked Jasper, “or a warning shot? A man who can part your hair with a spear can kill you just as easily.”

“Well, whatever it was,” said Massey, “near miss, warning shot, or friendly hello, we’re building ourselves a fort.”

“And we’re building it strong,” added Floyd.

The diners returned to their plum pies. Errol, poking at his rather than eating it, finally asked the question he always asked anyone from the Eastern Wilderness. “Have you seen my son Maynard?”

Massey and Floyd looked at each other, then at Errol. “No sir,” answered Floyd. “Why?” Errol didn’t answer, only picked more at his pie.