The Hero's Guide to Storming the Castle

  “Fine,” Briar snapped. “If you’re going to turn into Mr. Wishy-Washy, I’ll just put Ruffian on the job.”

  “No, I’ll do it!” Liam exclaimed, struck with a sudden epiphany. He was beginning to understand why Briar had wanted to marry him to begin with: The Sword of Erinthia must somehow play a key role in her plot for global domination. Could that be what the cryptic JJDG referred to? As far as Liam knew, the sword had never gone by a name other than the Sword of Erinthia, but that didn’t mean it didn’t have a mysterious past he wasn’t aware of. In any case, he was certain of one thing: He had to get his hands on that sword before Briar did. The fate of the world might depend on it. Drat, he thought. Looks like I picked a bad week to stop believing in myself.

  “I’ll go after the sword for you,” Liam said, finally getting a bit of oomph back into his voice. “But only on one condition: Ella, Frederic, Duncan, and Gustav come with me.”

  PART II

  UNCOVERING THE PLOT

  7

  A HERO HAS NO IDEA WHAT’S GOING ON

  Knowledge is power. For instance, don’t you feel much more powerful now that you have the knowledge that knowledge is power?

  —THE HERO’S GUIDE TO BEING A HERO

  Throughout history, the kings of Avondell would meet with their generals in the palace War Room in order to discuss combat strategies and hatch plots against their enemies. For this reason, you might not expect the War Room to be a very cheery place; but like most things in Avondell, it was really quite lovely. Springtime sun streamed through large picture windows, illuminating colorful murals that depicted the Avondellian army’s many victory celebrations (showing the battles themselves was deemed too much of a downer). At the center of the chamber, under a shimmering crystal chandelier, was a large round table surrounded by twelve incredibly plush, high-backed chairs. Beneath it all was a plush red carpet that Briar’s family servants kept impressively lint free. It was often said that no nation sent its soldiers to war with as much style and panache as Avondell.

  While Frederic didn’t care for the name War Room, he certainly appreciated the chamber’s lively decor, which was a huge improvement over the prison cell he had been confined to ever since the wedding. He sat at the circular table in quiet trepidation, with Ella, Duncan, and Gustav beside him. Across from them were Liam and Briar.

  Fig. 10

  WAR ROOM

  “Okay, this meeting may now officially begin,” Briar said, banging a small golden gavel against the table. “First off, I don’t care if this table is round; wherever I’m sitting is the head. Now that that’s been established—go ahead, husband. You may speak.”

  Liam rolled his eyes. “Briar has asked me—”

  “Ordered you,” Briar corrected.

  Liam shot her an icy stare, then turned back to his friends. “Briar wants me to go on a quest for her, and I . . .” He paused. Gustav was cracking his knuckles; Frederic was anxiously chewing his lower lip; and Duncan was sniffing the spaces between his fingers. I’ve made a horrible mistake, Liam thought.

  Then he looked at Ella, who was listening intently. Her eyes met his and she nodded, urging him to continue.

  “I need to ask the four of you to help me,” Liam said.

  “I hope it involves more unicorns,” Duncan said. “I never even realized how much I love unicorns.”

  “You may remember that Deeb Rauber stole the Sword of Erinthia from my family,” Liam said.

  Duncan shook his head. “I don’t.”

  “That’s the sword with all the jewels on it,” Frederic said helpfully.

  “Ooh, sounds pretty,” Duncan said. “But no, I don’t recall this.”

  “The Bandit King tried to chop you to pieces with it,” Frederic added.

  “Hmm,” said Duncan. “You’d think that would have stuck with me. But no.”

  Liam suddenly remembered how easy it was to lose track of a conversation with these guys. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “The sword is a family heirloom; Rauber swiped it; the five of us are going to sneak into his castle and get it back.”

  “I’m not usually one for sneaking,” Gustav said. “I’m more of a direct-attack kind of guy. But snatching this sword is bound to tick the little punk off, so I’m in.”

  “Well, I can’t possibly say no,” Duncan said. “Not after you’ve told me how pretty the sword is.”

  Frederic dabbed his brow with a handkerchief. “Oh, this is not a fun decision to make. I have absolutely no desire to face off against armed thugs again. But at the same time, I really don’t want to spend another night on a prison cot with so many unidentifiable stains.” He didn’t realize he’d been drumming his fingers on the table until Ella put her hand over his to calm him. “Do we get to go home after we’ve gotten the sword?” he asked Briar.

  “Ehh, why not? You’ll all get full pardons,” Briar replied. “But that’s only if you get the sword. Which I wouldn’t bet on. I’ve seen you people in action. Oh, man, I wish there were some way we could have captured a moving image of the wedding just so you fools could see how ridiculous you looked trying to play heroes.”

  “Listen up, Mount High-Hair,” Gustav barked. “Say what you want about me, but lay off the rest of the team. I’ve been through a lot of stuff with these people. Nobody can tell me that Fancy Dancer and Lady Slick-Pants aren’t heroes. Captain Gloom-Cape over there, too. And even Shrimp Charming has his moments.”

  Briar leaned back in her chair. “I admire your ability to insult your friends while you defend them. It’s a rare talent.”

  “People!” Liam said forcefully. “Can we move on to planning this heist? It really shouldn’t be too difficult. We’ve been to Rauber’s castle before. We know exactly where he keeps his treasures. Gahh!”

  Everybody yelped as Ruffian the Blue suddenly popped up from behind Briar’s chair. “As I am receiving a consultant’s fee for this mission, I feel it is my duty to correct some misconceptions,” the bounty hunter droned.

  “Don’t sneak up on me like that,” Briar scolded, banging her gavel to underscore her displeasure.

  “You asked me to be here,” Ruffian grumbled indignantly.

  “Yeah, I also figured you’d walk through the door like a normal person,” Briar groused. “Now sit down.”

  “I don’t like to sit,” Ruffian replied.

  “Excuse me, Ruffian,” Ella interjected. “You always wear that cape, right? Because Frederic was insisting that villains never wear capes.”

  “I’m not a villain,” Ruffian whined. “Bounty hunting is a legitimate profession. And anyway, I’m wearing a cowl.”

  “Aha!” said Frederic, sitting back and folding his arms in a very satisfied manner. “Thank you, Mr. Ruffian.”

  Fig. 11

  RUFFIAN, cowled

  “I thought it was a cloak,” Briar said.

  “No. Cloaks are just long capes,” Frederic said.

  Briar rubbed the fabric of Ruffian’s cowl between her thumb and forefinger. “Why aren’t you wearing a cloak? I wanted a henchman draped in a mysterious cloak.”

  “How could the name of the garment possibly make a difference?” Ruffian asked.

  “It sounds scarier,” Briar said. “‘Cowl’ is the least terrifying word I’ve ever heard.”

  “Oh, I disagree,” Duncan added. “It makes me think of cow-owls. And those are horrifying. MOO-WHO! MOO-WHO!”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m not changing my outfit,” Ruffian insisted. “I need my hood.”

  “Fine,” Briar said. She banged her gavel against the table. “I hereby declare that capes with hoods are called cloaks.”

  “It’s still a cowl,” Frederic grumbled (few things could cause him to summon up his inner courage like improper word usage).

  Briar slammed her gavel down again and glared at Frederic.

  “Can we please get back to business?” Liam said. “Ruffian, you had some information?”

  Ruffian sighed. “Deeb Rauber is not in the s
ame castle anymore,” Ruffian said. “Hasn’t been for the better part of a year. He currently resides in a fortress at the foot of Mount Batwing. I believe you’ve been there before.”

  “The old witch’s place?” Ella asked.

  “Well, I suppose it was available,” Duncan mused. “You know, since Old What’s-Her-Name went kccchggh!” He let his tongue dangle out of his mouth, crossed his eyes, and fell sideways out of his seat.

  “Who cares if the thieving brat has moved?” Gustav said. “Wherever he is, we’ll go there and make short work of him.”

  “Short work,” Frederic repeated with a smile. “Nice one, Gustav.”

  “Nice what?” Gustav asked.

  Ruffian cleared his throat. “You cannot simply stroll into the home of a legitimate monarch and steal his possessions without having it considered an act of war.”

  “You’re giving the kid too much credit,” Liam said. “He calls himself the Bandit King, but he’s not a real king.”

  “Yes, he is,” Ruffian said flatly.

  “No, really, he’s not,” Liam said.

  “Yes, he is,” Ruffian repeated.

  “No, he’s not,” Frederic, Gustav, and Ella chimed in together.

  Ruffian huffed. “Who at this table has been out and about in the real world for the past ten months, keeping up with current events?” He raised his hand.

  Ella and the princes lowered their eyes.

  “Nine months ago, Deeb Rauber founded his own kingdom,” Ruffian said. “After the five of you vanquished that nameless old witch—”

  “Um, actually, she did have a name,” Frederic interjected.

  “Pipe down, Professor Textbook,” Gustav said. “Let’s hear what the talking hood has to say.”

  “After his last run-in with you, Rauber rebuilt his army and marched his men into the area that was known as the Orphaned Wastes,” Ruffian explained. “It was a no-man’s-land, a barren stretch of gray earth that no kingdom ever felt the need to claim as its own. So Rauber claimed it. He renamed the area Rauberia and established himself as its monarch and sole authority.”

  “Can he do that?” Liam asked skeptically.

  “I hate to say it, but based on the classes I’ve taken in interkingdom laws and regulations, it sounds plausible,” Frederic said.

  “Did you know about this?” Liam asked Briar.

  “Of course I did; I’m a member of the ruling family of one of the most powerful kingdoms in the hemisphere,” she said mockingly. “Oh, wait a minute—so are all of you. Losers.”

  “This doesn’t really change our mission, though, does it?” Ella asked. “It just makes it a bit more complicated.”

  “That’s right,” Liam said. “First thing we’ll need to do is have someone scout out Rauber’s new digs. A lot of the witch’s stronghold had crumbled by the time we left it, so I assume Rauber must have done some work on the place.”

  “He has erected an eighty-foot-high stone wall surrounding the entire castle,” Ruffian explained. “Only a select few have seen what’s beyond it.”

  “Ruffian, can you get in there, figure out where Rauber has the sword, and report back to us?” Liam asked.

  “There’s no way I could get farther than the gate,” Ruffian said flatly. “It’s common knowledge that I am in the employ of Princess Briar. And since you and she are married . . .”

  “The whole world knows about our marriage, huh?” Liam asked.

  “The bards have already circulated a song about the wedding,” Ruffian said. “The League of Princes Fails Again.’”

  “Seriously?” Gustav sputtered, slamming his hand on the table in frustration. “Every time we mess up, it has to become global news?”

  Frederic flopped onto the table, burying his face in his arms.

  Duncan didn’t seem bothered by the idea that they’d once again been humiliated in song. “If I had my own kingdom,” he said, “I would call it Pantsylvania.”

  “You have your own kingdom,” Ella pointed out.

  “Hey, you know what? I’m not letting this bother me,” Gustav said, puffing up his chest. “Pretty soon, it’s not gonna matter. Once we’ve stolen this sword from Bandit Boy, we’ll finally have the bards singing about us as winners again.”

  “You really are clueless, aren’t you?” Briar interjected. “No one will sing of your victory—no one can know about your victory. This is a secret mission.”

  Gustav kicked the table. “Never mind, I’m out,” he grumbled.

  “But, Gustav,” Ella said. “You might still get the chance to punch someone.”

  “All right, I’m back in.”

  “We’re all in on this,” Liam said definitively. “We just need to get more information about Rauber’s new place before we go storming in there.”

  “Wait!” Frederic said, jumping to his feet. “I know who we can send to scout out the Bandit King’s castle. And I’m going to feel very guilty if he’s still where I think he is.”

  Smimf was indeed still standing—or rather weakly teetering—in the small grove of trees outside the Avondell Palace garden gates, watching the princes’ horses. As Frederic and the others approached, the messenger snapped to attention.

  “Sir, Your Highness, sir! The horses have done nothing interesting.”

  “Great job, Smimf,” Frederic said. “I’m sorry we took so long.”

  “It was just a few days,” Smimf said. He panted a bit, seeming very thirsty and overheated. “A job is a job, after all.”

  “Well, I don’t know if this is the best time to ask,” Frederic said, putting his arm around Smimf’s shoulders, “but would you be interested in doing another job for us?”

  8

  THE VILLAIN REDECORATES

  A warlord’s home should inspire fear in all who lay eyes on it. The walls should induce shivers; the entryway should instill abject terror. Visions of the welcome mat should haunt visitors in their nightmares.

  —THE WARLORD’S PATH TO POWER: AN ANCIENT TOME OF DARIAN WISDOM

  It was eleven years earlier when a sweet and perfectly innocent nurse named Clara had the misfortune of delivering Prudence Rauber’s baby.

  “It’s a boy,” said the nurse. And then the infant proceeded to jab his toe into the poor woman’s eye. As the nurse dropped the newborn into his mother’s lap, Prudence looked at her son’s wrinkled face and could have sworn he was laughing.

  Six miserable years later, young Deeb locked his parents in a cupboard and took off on his own to become a professional criminal. Two solid years of schoolhouse pillaging, mansion ransacking, and palace burglarizing followed. And by the time he was eight, Deeb Rauber was known worldwide as the Bandit King. He had an army of grown thugs at his disposal, and monarchs and peasants alike cowered at his name. Toward the end of his tenth year, he suffered a brief setback: The League of Princes ambushed him with a horde of trolls and decimated his army. But Deeb was resilient. He struck back a few days later and turned the League into laughingstocks by literally stealing their victory celebration out from under them. After that his notoriety peaked: Every cutthroat, footpad, and ne’er-do-well around lined up to join him. He was easily able to refill the ranks of his bandit army and went on a brazen crime spree across the Thirteen Kingdoms. He stole the giant bronze yeti sculpture from outside the royal palace of Eïsborg; he dug up the bones of the ancient kings of Carpagia and stripped them of their jewelry; he birdnapped every golden goose in the nation of Jangleheim. Only one month after publicly humiliating the League, Rauber was stronger, richer, and more powerful than ever.

  But then, on his eleventh birthday, he decided he wanted more.

  It was in the heat of early August (still ten months before Liam and Briar’s wedding) that the Bandit King and his men celebrated Deeb Day.

  “It’s the big one-one,” Rauber said as he lounged on his stolen throne in the treasure chamber of his dumpy little castle in Sturmhagen. He shoved a piece of red velvet cake into his mouth, sending a cascade of crumbs d
own the front of his tattered black vest. “I need to up my game.”

  “Let’s steal more cake!” shouted one of the many bandits who were crammed into Rauber’s Hall o’ Loot for the celebration. Throughout the gray stone room, big, brutish men in black were rolling in loose coins, snacking on foot-long taffy strips, wrestling each other, and dipping chocolate-chip cookies into pints of foamy grog.

  “Nah. Something different,” Rauber said. He adjusted the edge of his crown, which had an annoying habit of sliding over his ears (as it was originally sized for the king of Hithershire), and sucked cream cheese frosting from his fingertips (the main reason he wore fingerless gloves).

  “We ain’t kidnapped nobody in a while,” a buck-toothed bandit said before letting loose with an enormous belch.

  “Ooh, what about snatchin’ the hats off old ladies?” another bandit asked. “That usually puts you in a good mood.”

  “Been there, done that,” Rauber said. He sounded uncharacteristically somber, despite the fact that he was twirling a doughnut on his finger as he spoke. “No. I’m eleven now. I need to make sure I don’t lose my spark with age. I need to do something big, something special. You know what I mean, Vero?”

  “I fear, sir, that I do,” replied a tall bandit who stood apart from the others, both literally and figuratively. It wasn’t just that Vero didn’t care to take part in the raucous carousing of his fellow bandits; he also carried himself in a way that was completely different from any of the other men. He dressed in black, as did all Rauber’s men, but unlike the rest, Vero had style. His puffy-sleeved shirt and embroidered vest were the kinds of clothing you’d more commonly see on a nobleman than a thief. His pencil-thin mustache was impeccably trimmed, and his dark brown hair was tied back in a long, sleek ponytail. At his side was a slim, pointed rapier—a far more precise and graceful weapon than the thick broadswords favored by most bandits. And Vero knew how to use that blade; he was without doubt the most accomplished swordsman in Rauber’s army and possibly one of the best in the world. The only thing he enjoyed more than dueling was relieving rich people of their money.