Christopher Healy - The Hero’s Guide to Storming the Castle

“Shall we?”

Climbing up onto the roof, running along the ramparts, descending into the gardens behind the palace, and hopping over the exterior gates all took much longer than Ella had hoped—Frederic moved with the speed of a wobbly toddler wearing shoes for the first time. By the time they were off the palace grounds, the sun was coming up.

“I am so tired,” Frederic said, collapsing on the grass.

“Well,” Ella said, sitting down next to him, “we need to pause and figure out a plan anyway.”

“Oh, I have a plan,” Frederic said. He pulled two pieces of parchment and a quill from his satchel. He quickly dashed off two notes, rolled them up, and stood. “Let’s head into town and hire a messenger to deliver these. It’s time to get the League of Princes back together.”

Mere words cannot defeat a true hero. Unless they happen to be the words to some sort of Instant Death spell. Magic is scary.

—THE HERO’S GUIDE TO BEING A HERO

ix months before Liam’s kidnapping, Prince Gustav exploded. Not literally. Although there was quite a mess. You see, Gustav did not share the same taste in music as his sixteen older brothers. The elder princes, for example, adored “The Sixteen Hero Princes of Sturmhagen.” That song had everything: an evil witch, five kidnapped bards, sixteen strong, young heroes. The only thing it didn’t have was Gustav, the seventeenth and youngest of the Sturmhagen princes—which was unfortunate, as Gustav was the only one of them actually involved in saving the bards. Suffice it to say Gustav didn’t care for the song. Nor was he a fan of “The Embarrassment of the League of Princes,” a tune his brothers couldn’t get enough of. After a full year of mocking Gustav for his failure to rescue Rapunzel, they were pleased to have a new reason to taunt him.

And taunt him they did. They never let Gustav forget that the Bandit King—whom the world now knew to be a ten-year-old boy—managed to rob him in full view of about a thousand people. Prince Sigfrid (#7) spattered Gustav with baby food. Osvald (#5) startled him with shouts of “Don’t look down! There’s a toddler crawling after you!” Alvar (#3) even pinned a sign to his back that read PROPERTY OF BANDIT KING. IF FOUND, PLEASE RETURN TO TOY BOX. Every time something like this happened, Gustav gritted his teeth, grumbled unseemly things under his breath, and stomped away—which, for him, showed incredible self-restraint. Despite being six-foot-five and having biceps the size of watermelons, he was the smallest member of his family. His older brothers teased him through most of his life; and in the past Gustav responded to their jibes with flying fists, thrown furniture, and sometimes even a good, old-fashioned head butt. The past year had changed him, though. Gustav was more mature now. He vowed that he would not let his brothers get the better of him.

But he was fooling himself. Gustav couldn’t swear off tantrums any more than a volcano could promise not to erupt. It was on the day of his brothers’ birthday party (all sixteen, having been born in two sets of octuplets exactly one year apart, had the same birthday) that Gustav finally lost it.

The entire kingdom came out for the big celebration, which was held in the big cobblestone courtyard outside Castle Sturmhagen. HAPPY BIRTHDAY banners were hung everywhere, bands played, food vendors handed out turkey legs and ostrich eggs, and crowds of Sturmhageners danced merrily in their leathery, fur-lined suits and dresses. All the birthday boys, from Henrik (#1) to Viktor (#16), were seated at the lengthy table of honor on a central stage. Only Gustav sat by himself, at a tiny round table-for-one that had been set for him on the outer edge of the courtyard. Behind the crowd. Under a drippy rain gutter. Next to a stinking barrel with a sign that read PLEASE DEPOSIT BONES AND OTHER UNCHEWABLES HERE.

Gustav watched glumly as his parents, King Olaf and Queen Berthilda, led a procession of bakers up onto the stage. The bakers carried an eight-foot-by-four-foot, seventy-pound sheet cake, topped with marzipan sculptures of all sixteen princes. The colossal dessert was set on a viewing platform near the edge of the stage so the crowd could marvel at it.

Fig. 4 GUSTAV, celebrating

Then Lyrical Leif, Sturmhagen’s royal bard, was introduced. The round-bodied musician pranced onstage wearing his usual green tights, puffy gold blouse-shirt, and floppy feathered hat. He took a proudly over-the-top bow and announced—to great applause—that he would serenade the birthday boys with his hit, “The Sixteen Hero Princes of Sturmhagen.”

As Leif began strumming his lute and singing (“Dear hearts, listen well to a tale most sublime / of sixteen strong princes—that’s seven plus nine”), Gustav decided he was done being ignored. He stood up, kicked the barrel of unchewables at an oblivious trio of swaying Leif fans, and shoved his way through the crowd to the stage. He climbed up and stood face-to-face with the bard (or bellybutton-to-face, really—Lyrical Leif wasn’t very tall). A tense quiet fell over the square.

“No one wants to hear that song anymore, Featherhead,” Gustav declared. “Sing the one about me.” In his heavy, fur-lined armor, with his shoulders heaving and his long blond hair hanging over his face, Gustav was an undeniably imposing figure. But the roly-poly Leif was undaunted.

“Oh, ‘The Song of Rapunzel’? In which you got beaten by the old lady and Rapunzel had to rescue you?” Leif asked sarcastically. He turned to the audience: “Who out there wants to hear ‘Rapunzel’?”

Scores of people raised their hands and hooted.

“You know which song I mean,” Gustav growled. “The one where I’m a hero.”

“Oh. You’re talking about that song in which you play the part of Cinderella’s little helper.” Leif made an over-the-top frowny face. “I’m afraid we don’t get many requests for that tune. It’s a tad too unbelievable, I think.”

His brothers crowed with laughter. As did most of the crowd.

“Starf it all,” Gustav cursed under his breath. If he couldn’t get people to like him, maybe he could at least get them to hate him. Anything was better than being laughed at.

Gustav abruptly reached out, grabbed Lyrical Leif’s floppy hat by the brim, and yanked it down to the bard’s shoulders. The cap split down the middle as Leif’s head burst through the shimmery fabric. Gustav then grabbed the bard by the seat of his tights and hoisted him up in the air with one hand. With the other hand, he reached down and scooped up a handful of richly frosted birthday cake—which he proceeded to smoosh all over Leif’s shocked face before dropping the singer on his ample belly.

As horrified gasps and shouts of derision sounded from all around the square, Gustav grinned and wiped his hands clean. “Maybe now,” he declared, “you’ll show some respect to the mighty Prince Gustav.”

He turned to walk away, slipped on a dollop of icing, and flopped face-first into the giant birthday cake. As Gustav slowly staggered back to his feet, covered from his tangled hair to his big steel boots in buttercream frosting, uproarious laughter echoed throughout the courtyard.

King Olaf gave Gustav a new job after that, one that would conveniently keep him away from Castle Sturmhagen for a while. “Go check on the trolls,” he ordered. “We need an ambassador out there, and since you’re the reason we had to turn over a hunk of our land to them, you should be the one to fill that position.”

“With pleasure,” Gustav said. Minutes later, he was riding his big gray warhorse, Seventeen, out to troll country.

As he approached a wide swath of farmland on the outskirts of Sturmhagen’s thick and wild pine forests, Gustav was suddenly encircled by what appeared to be hulking mounds of overcooked collard greens. But these were no shambling piles of vegetation; these were living creatures—nine feet tall with scraggly green fur, enormous clawed hands, frighteningly large teeth, and, in some cases, a horn or two. Or three. Trolls. And they were closing in on the prince.