Young Writers Society

63 A CALL TO ARMS

Christian, never forgetting the hand in the water, thought he knew exactly what had happened to Morrow the Elder, but he decided not to mention it. Instead he said, “Does Rowan know you’re—not your father?”

Morrow the Younger’s eyebrows shot up in surprise, but it was Rowan herself who answered in muffled tones from beneath the cloak she was bundled in not far from the fire.

“Of course I know. I’ve known this one since before he was born.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Christian asked.

“I thought you knew, dear boy.” Rowan joined them beside the fire and said to the Rover, “Incidentally, for all you say against him, your father was proud to have you bearing his name. He wasn’t the best man, maybe, but none of us are perfect.”

“Well, I didn’t know,” said Christian. “I had no idea he was—was—”

“The wrong Morrow,” the Rover said with a bitter smile.

“That’s not what I meant,” Christian said, “and as you said you knew this was coming I assume I don’t find you completely unprepared for it. At any rate you ought to be far more prepared than I am.”

“Prepared enough.” Morrow slapped his knees and pushed himself to his feet, shouldering his pack. He wobbled and clutched his forehead. After a moment of breathing deeply, he straightened (though he still looked like he might be sick). “Let’s go. Dawn’s approaching and we have a bit of a walk before we reach the portal.”

“Quite so,” Rowan said, and she went around the fire to waken her troupe and Liza. In a few minutes they were all up, rubbing sleep from their eyes and giving their animals treats to entice them awake as well.

“Wait,” said Christian. “Oughtn’t we to see if any of the others want to go with us?”

Morrow looked at him blankly. “What others?”

“Why—why the Fair-folk, the other Rovers—after all, it was they who were attacked. Won’t they want to come back and fight?”

“Why should they? They’re safe here.”

“Safe, yes, but—well, look at them. They’re half-starved. They’re living in shacks, for heaven’s sakes. Can’t you—can’t you call them to arms, or something?”

The Rover king exchanged a thin smile with Rowan and said, “Shall I show you what happens when I call them to arms?”

He strode toward the center of the camp. Many of the Fair-folk were yet without shelter and huddled together on the ground, wrapped in their cloaks. They slept fitfully and woke before dawn, accustomed to rising before the portal back to Earth opened. Most of them were already awake and stirring up fires for warmth or breakfast, fetching water or chopping wood, despite the fact the sky had barely begun to lighten with the greyness of predawn. Circus-animals prowled between the fires, nosing for food and grunting crankily when they were pushed away.

Morrow leapt up onto a stump whose roots stuck out from the ground as if someone had been trying to pull it out but given up. The people nearest him looked up in disinterest and then went back to turning a scrawny rabbit on a spit over their fire.

“My people,” he called in a ringing voice, and he looked kingly indeed except for the shaking of his fingers. He stuck his hands in his coat pockets to them, but it didn’t matter; no one was paying attention to him. “Rovers, circus-folk. Goblin is rising to power—”

“Tell us something we don’t know!” a man splitting logs called from one end of the clearing. Several people tittered. Morrow continued, unfazed. But then, Christian thought with a sinking feeling, he had been expecting this, or something like it.

“Already his army has returned and victimized you once again,” Morrow said. “Long ago my father led you in battle against it. You were successful then—”

“Not successful enough, apparently,” an old Rover woman commented dryly. More titters.

“—and there is no reason why, if you decide to fight, you should not be successful now,” Morrow said as if he had not been interrupted. “You fought, you won, and you were rewarded. And now Goblin’s army has ripped that from you. My father—”

“You’re not your father,” the Rover woman said. “You’re a drunk who’s done no more for us than the stones in the ground.”

A muscle moved in Morrow’s jaw, but he did not answer her. Instead he stepped carefully down from the stump and murmured to Christian, “You see? I can't call them. Rowan’s troupe is all we have.”

64 ANOTHER CALL TO ARMS

“No,” Christian said. “No, there must be something we can say to make them come.”

Morrow gestured at the stump and said, “Be my guest.”

“No,” Christian said again, turning red, “no, that’s not what I meant.”

But Morrow was already walking back to their own fire, his shoulders hunched to deflect the heckling of the Fair-folk as he passed. He was a king without a people, a king without an army, and an army was precisely what they needed. They could not return, Christian thought, with only himself and Rowan’s small troupe to help fight Goblin. They, Mr. Catcher, and Minerva, assuming Minerva was well enough for a fight (which he doubted). And the fairies, who had magic on their side but not much of it thanks to the suddenness of the attack.

“Go on and try it,” Rowan said.

“Why not you?” Christian asked desperately. “You’re so good with people and I’m—”

“My dear Mr. Abernathy, they won’t listen to me,” the ringmaster said, as if this were obvious. “For decades my sister and I have been the object of much ridicule, thanks to our feud. The people think we cut a ridiculous figure. No, they won’t listen to me. But you—you’ve come here all on your own, though it was never your fight. Of course there’s no guarantee, but at any rate they might listen if it’s you speaking.”

“But—” said Christian.

“Just try,” said Rowan.

Christian stepped up onto the stump, wavering for a moment as he tried to find his balance. He cleared his throat and said, in a voice rather higher than usual, “Excuse me.”

No one listened.

“Excuse me,” he said again, a little louder. And when no one so much as looked at him, he took a breath and shouted as loud as he could (not very loud), “Excuse me!”

“You’re excused already,” the man splitting logs shouted back. The people around him laughed.

Well, Christian thought, at least they had noticed him. Still, he was angry. There was no need to be so rude.

“Listen, I mean,” he said, but the man leaned on his axe, grinned, and replied, “You’ve not said anything yet.”

“I’m about to.” Christian’s ears burned, more with anger for once than embarrassment. He inhaled deeply to calm himself.

“I know very few of you,” he said at last. Why did his voice have to tremble so? He looked like a fool already. “Probably almost none of you recognize me, so I realize there’s no earthly reason why you should listen to me—”

“Then, being wise enough to realize that,” the man across the clearing said languidly, “perhaps you might also be wise enough to stop talking.”

Christian clenched his jaw.

“There’s also no earthly reason why you should be so exceedingly rude to me,” he said. “I’ve done nothing to you. You might at least let me speak without heckling me.”

The man shrugged and returned to splitting logs.

“Thank you,” Christian said. Then the words he wanted spilled out in a rush. “I know you don’t know me, but I have seen the glory of your Fair at its height, your talents at work—all the merriment of a celebration that, by definition, was an insult to Goblin: a celebration of your past triumph over him and his allies. And to see you laid so low by them now—I didn’t think you had so little spirit.”

He stopped abruptly; those who had bothered to listen were now glaring at him. He was aware of Narodnaya’s presence in the surrounding forest. She probed his mind and spoke to him as she had after his dream, her voice faint with distance.

Quite a speech, but I think you may have offended them there at the end.

The man let the axe rest on his shoulder for a moment.

“It’s not for want of spirit,” he said. “Hard to think of fighting for revenge when you’re already fighting to survive.”

He brought the axe down, and the log split in two and thudded to the ground. The Fair-folk murmured in agreement and turned back to their fires.

“That’s just it,” Christian said. “You didn’t have to fight to survive in the park. You had food and shelter and—”

“And all that was destroyed when Goblin’s army came,” the man said without looking up from his logs. The others nodded and returned to their work.

The old Rover woman looked at Christian sympathetically.

“You seem a good sort,” she said, “but you’re young yet, and you’ve no business being here. Still, I wish you luck.”

Christian was crestfallen and did not think luck would be much help to him at all, but he said again, “Thank you.”

“I think that’s the best you can hope for,” Rowan said. “Oh, well. It was worth a shot, but they’re having none of it. Let’s go.”

They joined Morrow by their fire at the edge of the wood. The Rover king kicked it out and said, “Follow me.”

Christian and Liza remained in place, however. “What about Conrad?”

Morrow turned back to them. “Who?”

“The Guardian,” Rowan told him.

“My friend,” said Christian.

“My husband,” said Liza.

Morrow looked at the three of them with a raised eyebrow, but at last he nodded. “Where is he?”

Rather than explaining, Liza and Christian turned around and headed back toward the Rover caravan. Imelda’s horse was asleep against the wall of her wagon. They slowed as they approached it, both life-long city people; neither had any experience with horses.

“Er,” said Christian, reaching out to touch its neck. The horse snorted and awoke with a shake of its head, blinking at them with sleep in its eyes. It clambered to its feet and shook itself.

“Well—alright,” said Christian.

“That wasn’t so hard,” said Liza.

They led it to the front of the wagon, Christian gripping its mane and Liza kissing to it, but there they stopped.

“I’ve no idea how to harness a horse,” said Liza.

“Nor have I.”

Rowan chortled at the sight of them standing helplessly beside the horse. “Here, we’ll have this cinched up for you in no time. Graham!”

The horse-master stepped forward and buckled the horse into its traces in minutes. Then he gave Christian a long look and said, “You know how to drive?”

“Not in the least,” Christian said, so Graham climbed up into the driver’s seat and took the reins. Liza slipped inside the wagon to sit with her husband.

“Good to go if you are,” the horse-master said to Rowan. The ringmaster looked at Christian, who nodded.

“Excellent,” Rowan said. “Let’s get a move on, then.”

Graham Chelsea clucked to the horse and set the wagon moving in the direction of the woods. Together they headed into the trees with torches held high.