Chapter 7: Robbie’s Story—Council, Ambush, and Death

Casey picked up several of the chunks and shards of flint and examined them. “This one,” he said, more to himself than the others. Holding it carefully in the hem of his shirt as had Peter, and placing it on top of a relatively flat rock, Casey pressed a pebble against the edge of the long shard. He jumped as a piece popped out.

“Knapping, isn’t it?” Robbie asked. “My older brother told me he’d teach me, some day.”

“Yes,” Casey said as he popped out a second piece. “There’s a lot of flint where we live, and we’ve made tools from it for as long as anyone can remember. They are sharper than steel, and a lot less costly. You’ve got to be—” he paused as another bit of flint popped from the edge of his shard. “You’ve got to be careful, though.”

“Where shall we go?” Casey asked. Robbie had carefully felt the boy’s foot, and decided that it wasn’t broken. “Robbie said he would help me walk, and carry me some.”

“Yeah,” said Walter. “We can’t just keep walking into Eblis. Those who captured us are probably not the only Evil people here.”

“Those mountains,” Robbie said, pointing to the west. “They’re the same ones we live beside. If we stay in the foothills and walk north, we will find our way home.”

“And, there’ll be streams like this one, and fish,” Casey added. “Well, that’s what we did. My family fished the streams near our home.”

“What if we run into the Red Robes and soldiers?” Edward asked.

“They’ll keep to the road,” Peter said. “They have to, with the food wagon.”

The matter was decided when Robbie stood and helped Casey to his feet. “Lean on me,” he told the boy as they began to walk toward the west. Peter stamped once more on the dead embers of the fire, and followed. Edward and Walter looked at one another, shrugged, and followed Peter.

The ambush wasn’t especially well-planned, although the soldiers and the lone red-robed mage were concealed. It wasn’t as if they were facing a squad of trained soldiers. A soldier sprang from concealment at the rear; another stepped from the brush on the right side of the column of boys. A scarp blocked escape to their left, leaving them only one way to go: into the arms of the mage who stepped from the bushes in front of them.

“Didn’t get very far, did you?” he asked. “You stink of fish. At least you’ve had your breakfast.” He raised his hands, but before he could lower them, Casey lunged toward him, the shard of flint he’d shaped into a knife extended before him. The mage's mouth formed an O as he felt the knife penetrate his abdomen.

Casey’s action stirred the others. The soldiers, overconfident, hadn’t drawn their swords, relying on their height, weight, and strength—as well as the Red Robe’s magic—to cow the boys. Robbie ran to Casey’s help while the other boys tackled the soldiers. Edward managed to draw one of the soldier’s daggers before the man could reach it, and jabbed it repeatedly into his back until Walter pulled him off. “He’s dead,” Walter said. “He’s dead.”

The second soldier had managed to get his sword free of its scabbard. Peter ducked under the blade and scooped up a fist-sized rock from the ground in the same motion. Before the soldier could bring his arm back around, Peter smashed the rock into his temple. The man fell.

“Peter! Help us!” Robbie called. His hand was pressed to Casey’s stomach. Blood poured from between his fingers. Casey’s face was ashen and his eyes were glazed.

“The Red Robe stabbed him. But Casey . . . he held his flint knife in his hand, with no protection,” Robbie said when Peter knelt beside him. “He twisted the knife in the red-robe’s guts, and in his own hand.”

Robbie paled when he saw Casey’s hand. The flesh was cut to the bone. Severed tendons curled at the ends of muscles. Bright red blood still flowed from severed arteries, but more flowed from the wound in the boy’s stomach.

Casey’s eyes fluttered. “Is he dead?” he gasped.

“He is, as are the others,” Robbie said. “You and we are safe.”

“And free,” Casey said. He smiled, closed his eyes, and died.

The soldier Peter had hit with the rock was not dead, only unconscious. Edward had stripped and bound him, while Walter stripped the second. Peter splashed water from the soldier’s own canteen onto his face, wakening him.

“Help me,” Peter asked Robbie. Together they frog-marched the soldier to where Casey lay.

“Look at him!” Peter said, twisting the soldier’s head until it faced the dead boy. “And look at your master. That boy gutted your master before he died. He did it so that he might die free, and so that we might be free. We will avenge his death. Would you like us to start with you?”

The soldier jerked his head from Peter’s grasp, turned it to one side, and hurled the contents of his stomach into the weeds. He choked and gasped, and then said. “No, please. I had no choice. You must understand. Please.”

They left Casey’s flint knife in his hand. They’d propped his body—now empty of that which was Casey—against a rock. The gutted body of the Red Robe, and the dead soldier, were at his feet. “If they find these bodies before the wolves do,” Robbie had said. “They will know, and they will know that we know, that they can be killed.”

The four boys and their captive walked westward for two hours before Peter signaled a halt by another stream.

“Now,” he said to the soldier. “How did you find us?”

“In the mage's pouch,” the soldier said and nodded his head toward the pile of things the boys had stripped from the dead mage and the dead soldier. “A lock of each of your hair. It was taken while you were asleep. It led him to you.”

Peter gestured, and Robbie handed him the pouch. “Here,” he said to the soldier. “You open it and show me.”

Awkwardly, for Peter had not cut the bonds on his wrists, the soldier opened the pouch. He dumped the contents on the ground. “There,” he said, pointing to a folded cloth bound with string. “Your hair.”

“Open it,” Peter demanded.

The soldier untied the string and unfolded the cloth. Five hanks of hair, each tied with string, spilled onto the ground. Peter looked closely. “That is surely yours, Robbie,” he said, pointing to a golden red hank. “Walter, Edward, these look like yours.” He pointed to straight and a curly hanks of brown hair. “That is mine,” he said, pointing to a black hank. “And this,” he reached out and took a hank of fine blonde hair, “this is the hair of a child who died to save his friends.”

Peter looked at the others. “Robbie will keep this, for now. Later we will decide its disposition. Are we agreed?”

The others nodded. Peter handed Casey’s hair to Robbie who tucked it into a shirt pocket.

Robbie turned to the soldier. “There is more,” he said. “About how they found us. You are keeping it secret because you hope it will lead them to us and free yourself.”

“You’re too young to be a sembler!” the soldier said. The other boys understood instantly. Robbie had seen the lie in the soldier’s voice.

Robbie stared into the soldier’s eyes. “Being enslaved and dragged in chains, and seeing a child die for his freedom and for his friends, that puts more years on a boy than you can imagine. I’ve known—my father told me, and the Mendicant who visits us each year told me—that I would be a sembler. It stirred when you and your masters and your mates chained me. It awakened when Casey died. You’re hiding something, and I will know what it is.”

“Magic?” Peter gasped. “They heard me start the fire?”

Robbie and Edward’s close questioning of the soldier had elicited the truth. The Red Robes could hear magic. Not boy magic, but what they called “Great Magic.” When Peter had started the fire, they’d heard him. That brought them close enough that they could use the hair, the soldier didn’t know how, to find them and learn enough to set up the ambush.

Robbie stood behind the soldier who sat on the ground. Peter had just given him water. “We cannot let you go,” Robbie said. “That would endanger us. We cannot leave you bound. If you freed yourself, it would endanger us. If you did not free yourself, you would starve to death—or be eaten alive by wolves. Either would be a cruelty, and Evil. We are not Evil.”

Remembering the lessons his father had taught him about slaughtering sheep, Robbie drove the soldier’s own dagger into the back of his neck and into his brain. The man was dead before his body finished twitching.

Peter took Robbie’s hand. “Thank you,” he said. “It had to be done. I would not have had the courage to do that.”

Robbie took both of Peter’s hands in his. “I could not have done it had I not seen Casey die for us. After that, there is nothing I cannot do to destroy this Evil.”

“They took my dagger,” Robbie said. “I claim this one.” He had wiped the soldier’s blood from the dagger, and with these words stuck it into his belt. The others nodded.

“I never had a dagger,” Edward said. “I killed a man with this one. I claim it.” He held out the dagger he’d taken from the first soldier, and with which he’d killed him. He looked around.

Peter nodded. “It is fitting.” The others nodded.

“Walter, you take the mage's dagger,” Peter said. “I will use the flint knife I made—until we kill our next Red Robe or soldier.”