John Flanagan - The siege of Macindaw

"Besides," Will continued, "have you ever tried to set a piece of hardwood on fire by dropping a burning stick on top of it? The odds are the arrows will scorch the wood a little, but they'll burn out before the fire can really take hold."

"The odds are?" Horace repeated. "What odds might they be?"

Will regarded him patiently. "What do you want to do, Horace, jump out and put out the arrows and then wave to the men on the ramparts?"

Horace looked uncomfortable, realizing he might have been premature in his reaction.

"Well, no," he said."But I certainly don't want to be caught under a burning cart either."

" The cart won't burn. Trust me." Will told him. Then, seeing that the last two words had absolutely no effect on Horace, he continued, "And even if it does, we'll have plenty of time to get out of here. But there's no point running for it now. How will we feel if we give our plan away and then sit back in the trees and watch the fire go out?"

"Well, maybe…," Horace said, a little mollified by Will's logic – and by the fact that the smell of smoke hadn't grown any stronger. He put his hand against the planks, beneath the spot where one of the bolts had struck it. The wood didn't feel any warmer there than in other parts of the roof.

Another two burning bolts hit the cart in the next few minutes. But, like the first two, they soon burned out, causing nothing but surface scorching. Eventually, seeing that the fire arrows weren't working, the defenders on the ramparts gave up the attempt.

+ + ¦

The afternoon wore on, and the light began to fade as the watery winter sun sank below the level of the trees. Horace pulled his cloak tighter about him. It was cold sitting here immobile for hours on end.

"What time is it?" Horace asked.

"About five minutes later than the last time you asked," Will told him. "You're getting as bad as Gundar, with his constant Are we nearly there?' "

"I can't help it," Horace grumbled."I don't like just sitting around doing nothing."

" Try composing a poem," Will said sarcastically, wishing his friend would shut up.

"What sort of poem?" Horace asked.

"A limerick," Will told him, through gritted teeth. "That would seem to be about your speed."

"Yeah. Good idea," Horace said, brightening a little."That'll take my mind off things." He frowned thoughtfully, looking to the heavens for inspiration. His lips moved silently for several minutes, then the frown deepened.

"I don't have anything to write it down with," he said.

Will, who had managed to doze off in the silence, jerked awake. "What?" he snapped, crankily. "Write what down?"

"My limerick. If I don't write it down, I might forget it."

"Have you thought it up yet?"

"Well, I've got the first line," Horace said defensively. Limerick writing was proving to be harder than he'd expected."There once was a castle called Macindaw…," he declaimed. "That's the first line," he added.

"Surely you can remember that?" Will said.

Horace nodded reluctant agreement. "Well, yes. But when I get two or three or four lines worked out, it'll get harder. Maybe I could tell them to you and you could remember them?" he suggested.

"Please don't," Will said, biting off the words.

Horace shrugged. "Well, fine. If you choose not to help."

"I do."

Will's replies, Horace noted, were becoming shorter and shorter. "All right then," he said, a little huffily. His lips moved again, stopped, restarted. He closed his eyes to concentrate. This went on for some five minutes, and the more Will tried to ignore him, the more he was drawn to Horace's facial contortions. Finally, the broad-shouldered warrior realized his friend was watching him.

"What rhymes with Macindaw?" he said.

As the afternoon lengthened into evening and then into night, Horace became increasingly restless and bored. He shifted position continually and sighed repeatedly. Will steadfastly ignored him. This annoyed Horace, who knew his friend was intentionally taking no notice of him.

Eventually, after a particularly extended sigh, followed by a prolonged shifting of position and shuffling of shoulders and buttocks, Will could no longer pretend not to notice.

"It's a pity you didn't bring a trumpet," he said. "That way you could make a bit more noise."

Horace, pleased that he had finally provoked the beginning of a conversation, answered immediately. "What I don't get," he said, "is why we didn't run the cart out here now, instead of doing it hours ago? We could have waited comfortably in the trees until nightfall, then run out, lost the wheel and had only an hour or so to wait for Malcolm's monsters. It would have been much less boring than crouching here all afternoon and into the night."

"It's supposed to be boring," Will snapped. "That's the idea."

"You wanted to be bored?" Horace asked.

"No." Will spoke very patiently. He adopted the tone an adult might use talking to a very young child. It had been some time since he'd done that with Horace, and the warrior found that he didn't like it any more now than he had previously.

"I wanted the sentries to be bored. I wanted them so used to the sight of this cart that it became part of the scenery. I wanted them to look at it for hours and hours with absolutely nothing happening so that they eventually believed that nothing is going to happen. If we'd only come out of the trees now, they'd still be suspicious when the time comes, and they'd possibly still have their eyes on us. This way, they've seen the cart clearly, in full daylight, and they think they have nothing to fear from it. They're bored with it, in fact."

"Well… maybe…," Horace said reluctantly. Actually, what Will said made sense. But still, he was bored. And cold too. They were sitting on a mixture of melted snow and saturated grass. And the earth itself still held the bone-numbing chill of winter. As he had the thought, Horace felt an overwhelming need to sneeze. He tried to smother the sound, but only succeeded in making it louder.

Will looked up angrily, shaking his head in disbelief. "Will you shut up?" he said tautly.

Horace shrugged in apology. "I'm sorry," he said. "I sneezed. A person can't help it when they sneeze."

"Perhaps not. But you could try to make it sound a little less like an elephant trumpeting in agony," Will told him.

Horace wasn't prepared to take that lying down. Crouching down, perhaps. But lying down, never.

"And of course, you'd know what an elephant sounds like! Have you ever heard an elephant?" he challenged.

But Will was unabashed by his logic. "No," he said."But I'm sure it couldn't be any louder than that sneeze."

Horace sniffed disdainfully. Then wished he hadn't. Sniffing only created the urge to sneeze again, and he fought against it valiantly, finally quelling it. He sensed Will was right. The sneeze had been particularly loud.

On the ramparts, the corporal in command looked at one of the soldiers standing by him.

"Did you hear that?" he asked.

From the soldier's reaction and the way he was staring into the darkness, it was obvious that he had. "It sounded like an animal," he said uncertainly. "In pain."

"A big animal," the corporal agreed uneasily. They peered into the night together. Fortunately, neither of them connected the strange sound with the ruined cart. Will had proven to be right. The sentries barely noticed the dark shape anymore."God knows what goes on in that forest," the corporal said eventually.

"Whatever it was, it seems to have gone now," said the other man. He hoped he was right.

Twenty meters away, under the cart, Horace had his cloak doubled over his head and his fist rammed up tight under the soft cartilage between his nostrils to prevent another sneeze. The following day, he would find a bruise and wonder how it got there.