CHAPTER 3
Dignity
Defended
Rain
pattered against Klaus’s leather armor, and Pat began to grow soggy. The cookie muttered and tucked himself away
beneath the crag in the boulder. It had
already been ten minutes since Bahar had left them, and judging by Pat’s
restless movements and occasional strained humming, it had been ten minutes too
long. Every thirty seconds or so, the
cookie would peer up at the cloud-blanketed sun as if an hour had passed since
his last glance. Klaus chuckled
internally but said nothing; he simply fixed his gaze on the blur of green
field to the east, hoping that Bahar had interpreted his message correctly, and
not expecting his friend’s return for some time.
“It’s
pouring out there,” Pat remarked with a shiver.
“Wouldn’t you rather be sheltered from the rain?”
“Not
particularly,” answered Klaus. “Winter
is nearly over, and this feels more like a spring rain. It’s a bit warmer—and comforting, somehow.”
That
was clearly not the answer the leprechaun cookie had been looking for. He gestured in the direction of Klaus’s
gaze. “Your friend sure is devout. Just how long does his meditation last,
anyway?”
Klaus
shrugged. “I’ve never really kept
count. It’s not a thing that should be
hurried, after all.”
“Of
course, I understand.” The cookie tapped the smooth grey wall in front of
him. “But—um, Klaus? I’m a little
worried that maybe the thief heard us and may have found a crevice or something
to slip out of. Do you think we can take
a peek inside? I can’t bear the thought of being away from my gold for much
longer.”
Klaus
rolled his eyes (unseen by the cookie, of course), and turned toward the cave
opening. “Sure, let’s take a peek. I don’t think Bahar will take much longer,
anyway.”
Pat
turned to the side so that Klaus could enter the pitch-black opening at the
base of the boulder, and he proceeded to lead the way, the cookie’s tiny feet pit-patting
behind him. He could see nothing, but
his whiskers told him that the walls were narrow on either side; it would have
been difficult for two mice, or two cookies, to travel abreast. After he had made it a few inches into the
tunnel, the grass beneath him, shielded from sun and rain, became coarse and
almost crunchy. The space was very cold,
its rocky frame uninsulated from the weather and retaining the extreme high or
extreme low temperatures that were experienced in summer and winter. After half a minute the tunnel curved gently
to the left, and he felt a bit of trepidation stir in his heart. What if Bahar had not understood the
message? What if he would take too long? What if Klaus really would be
trapped in here? Can’t be too careful, he thought. I’m not sure this cookie could do anything
to harm me, but he obviously had no intention of leading the way. And he is being uncharacteristically quiet. He reached back and put his claws around the
handle of his sword.
As
he moved further in, the tunnel widened at a nearly imperceptible rate, and the
temperature seemed to rise proportionately.
Within another minute’s time he became comfortably warm, and he realized
that the interior of the boulder could be livable, for a time, for any critter
desperate enough to endure the spiky grass, hard earth, and unyielding walls. The silence was biting. His thoughts turned to Ingrid, and he winced
as he imagined her reaction to his spelunking: “Klaus, my dear husband, did you
forget that you had a wife to get back to, not to mention an entire kingdom
that depends on you? What were you thinking?” He could always retort that the
kingship had been thrust upon him, not one that he had taken up willingly—but
there was no such response to the point about a wife to get back to.
The
tunnel opened up into a cavern whose width Klaus could not guess, for there was
now nothing to touch with his paws and whiskers, and he thought he could hear
wind somehow funneling into the space and whipping against a distant wall. It was also dark, darker than the deepest
night, darker than it had been in the tunnel.
He drew his sword and held it out before him, as if a foe would take
advantage of his blindness and attack—but an attack did not come. What did come was the grating sound of
a stone behind him, and as he turned his head toward it, he could just barely see
Pat pushing a tall rock in front of the opening of the tunnel. He sighed inwardly, more at the
predictability than the inconvenience.
“So
he really fell for it,” spoke a voice in the darkness. “I’m a bit surprised, to be honest. He’s always touted as a brilliant thinker and
strategist. But I guess all that goes
out the window when someone is in need.”
“Aw,
I didn’t find him to be all that brilliant,” Pat replied, leaning against the
rock with a smug look on his face. “Just
a regular old mouse, as far as I can tell."
Klaus
took a few steps back and to the right until he could feel a wall behind him. Because he was a strategist, he knew
that in a dark room, it was preferable to be pitted against a wall by an enemy
than to have one’s back exposed. He held
his sword at a horizontal angle and listened for approaching footsteps, or even
for an inhalation or exhalation. There
was breathing, but it was not near; it was perhaps a stone’s throw away—as the
mouse throws.
“Welcome,
Klaus,” the voice spoke again. It was
both familiar and new, as if he had heard it at a lower pitch from a different
creature. “Do you know why you’re here?”
“I
don’t know,” he replied, not entirely truthfully. “Is it because the voles hate me and despise
the freedom of the Mice of Sweetfort, and wish to remove me from the map?”
The
vole scoffed. “That’s secondary. Maybe even tertiary. What Tanas wants matters little to me; King
Chisha’s will is only slightly more important.
My will, on the other hand is what matters most. My will, Klaus, is to kill you—the
same way you killed my brothers.”
“That’s
why I recognize your voice. Volahmi.” He
shook his head. “Technically, it was a
certain turkey who slew Volsaph, not I.”
“Semantics. He acted at your command, didn’t he?”
“Yes,
he did,” Klaus replied. “Can you blame
me, after what your brother pulled? Challenging me to a ruse of a duel, just to
draw a crowd of my loyal followers and attempt to have them consumed by starved
turkeys? And Voliath was hardly any better—mocking our ways, our values,
everything that we are; I had no choice but to put him to death.”
“No
choice.” Klaus heard the vole spit.
“With the power and authority you wield, there’s always a choice. You could have chosen mercy.”
“The
same way your lawless bands showed mercy when they picked off our wives and our
young in the countryside?” Klaus’s entire body burned at the memory. “That kind of mercy? Or the kind of
mercy King Chisha showed when he allied with Tanas the madman, resulting in scores
of famished birds and the disruption of our ecosystem?”
“I’m
not here to speak of the misdeeds of others, but of yours. You’re the one on trial here, Klaus, and
you’ll pay dearly for what you’ve done.
You and everyone you love!”
Klaus
sighed and looked sidelong at the leprechaun cookie. “You still have a chance to do the right
thing, Pat.”
“I
know what I’m doing,” said the cookie, shaking his head. “I know what I’m promised.”
“And
what is that?”
“A
mountain of gold-wrapped chocolate coins from the larder of King Chisha
himself. A mountain of it, Klaus. Can you imagine? I told you that we
leprechauns can’t resist gawking at gold for long. I must have it…you understand.”
“Although
I probably feel very similarly about cheese,” Klaus told him, brandishing his
blade, “honor comes first. I’m sorry for
what you’re about to see.”
“So
am I,” said Volahmi, and there was the sound of a knife sliding out of its
sheath.
Klaus
did not leave his position but continued to hold his sword at a horizontal
angle. Try as he might to see anything past
a few inches, there was nothing but the weighty blanket of darkness. Confound it, he grumbled
internally. Is he really going to
make me come to him? I can’t give in; I won’t. There’s too much on the line. That’s his plan, to have me totter out
into the open and then come up behind me and end it. Just the way his slimy brothers would
do it.
To
his surprise, his foe did not wait for him, nor did he attack from the
right or the left; he appeared directly before him, holding a silver steak
knife vertically. The vole was as tall
as his brothers, plump, reddish-grey, and with a face that ended abruptly at a
diminutive black nose. His eyes were black, too, and were almost camouflaged in
the darkness. Ears, appearing a size too
small for the rest of his body, lighter in color and furry, poked up from his
head. Around his paunch was half of the
outer part of a baseball, its ends tied together on his left side with gold
safety pins. For pants he wore what
appeared to be durable leather from a wallet or something similar, but his head
and paws were uncovered. His tail, brown
and stunted, flicked the dry blades of grass behind him. He looked strong, disciplined, ready.
The
sword came down not as fast as lighting, as Klaus had feared, but with thunderous
strength, and his own sword wavered beneath the blow. He shifted to the right, dragging his back
along the wall for a few seconds and focusing his strength into keeping his
enemy’s weapon at bay. Once he was a
satisfactory distance away from Pat and had more wiggle room, he strafed
quickly away from the wall and turned his right shoulder toward the center of
the room. Then he revealed the true
reservoir of his physical strength, shoving his enemy’s blade so high that
Volahmi staggered and almost lost balance.
That’s it. That’s what I
needed.
He
was on his foe in a second, his sword thrusting low and penetrating the exposed
bottom-left paw. A look swept across
Volahmi’s face—he thought he had an opening!—and he rained his sword down
toward Klaus, as if the deep bite of the paring knife were a mere
pinprick. Klaus hopped back and watched
as his enemy’s blade embedded itself in the earth, and he did not waste half a
second; nimbly, he scurried up the flat top of the knife, leapt over Volahmi’s
head as the creature tore his weapon from the earth, and aimed a maiming strike
towards his foe’s left ear. The
appendage was cleanly filleted, and it fell to the coarse grass with a plop.
As
he landed, Volahmi—groaning in frustration and pain—turned to the left to face
him, and Klaus aimed a thrust toward the small opening between the gold safety
pins that held his armor together.
Volahmi took a step back and knocked his blade to the side with a weary
but powerful swipe. He bent his knees,
planted his short tail into the earth for balance, and waited for Klaus to come
to him. Blood was soaking his fur from
the left side of his face to the right, and in his eyes Klaus could see that
the vole was no longer sure of himself.
There
was the sound of something nearby. Footsteps—fast,
frenetic, friendly. Volahmi seemed to
hear it, too, and he began to back up toward the western side of the cavern,
opposite the tunnel from which Klaus had entered. A pile of pebbles could be seen leaning against
a craggy, hole-pocked wall. Beside it
stood Pat’s pot of gold—the only part of the cookie’s story that had been true,
it appeared. Volahmi wants to be over here, Klaus understood. Why? What’s his plan?
“I
thought you said you could beat him!” Pat yelled across the room, stamping a
furious foot against the ground. “I kept
my end of the bargain, so if you don’t pay me, someone has to.”
“I
think you have other things to be concerned about, Pat,” said Klaus.
“Huh?”
Before
the leprechaun cookie could speculate, Klaus heard a bam! as the rock door
before the tunnel opening fell forward and smashed against the ground. Pat screamed—a bit too femininely, Klaus
thought—and tried to scurry away. Seeking
to take advantage of the commotion, Volahmi aimed a final, wild slash at Klaus
and whirled toward the rocky rubble. Klaus
was able to take off the end of his foe’s tail before the vole wriggled through
a hole and disappeared—into the earth or through a secret passage in the
boulder, he could not guess. Then he
turned around and headed toward the source of the commotion.
It
was Molasses, obviously, who had knocked down the makeshift door Pat had
erected; he was currently holding the leprechaun cookie in place, his gold
whisk—a Christmas gift from Klaus—slung across his back. Ingrid was also there, wide-eyed as she
stared at what had been a battleground just moments before. A dozen mice from Sweetfort, soldiers of his
royal army, stood side by side to the right of the tunnel opening, small paring
knives held points-up in their paws. Bahar
entered the room next, and last of all came a certain female gingerbread cookie
with a green bow, two green gumdrop buttons, and a green frosting belt.
“Good
golly!” she shouted as she ran to him. “Klaus,
what happened?”
“My
dear Ginger,” he replied with a smile. “I
knew I would be dueling today, but the plan was to duel Bahar for fun, not to
be put into a life-or-death situation.”
“Life
or death?” growled Ingrid, stepping forward.
“Husband, what were you thinking? Who was that?”
He
looked at her, his eyes grave. “It was
Volahmi.”
Ginger
snickered. “Volahmi. Salami.”
“Volahmi,”
said Molasses. “You mean the brother of
Voliath and Volsaph.”
“The
very same,” answered Klaus. He squinted
into the darkness of the room. “Come, it’s
better if we talk outside, where we can see more clearly and where we are less
likely to be attacked from behind—although I don’t think that is Volahmi’s way,
not anymore.”
They
obeyed his command, moving through the tunnel in single file until they had
exited the void of the boulder and walked out into the field and dim
sunlight. Clouds were everywhere, and
not a hint of blue could be seen above; but the rain had stopped, and
everything was bright and damp and fresh.
Trot was there, hunting for worms until he saw the party approach
him. Although he seemed a bit miffed
that his afternoon snack had been interrupted, he beamed to see Klaus in one
piece.
“Thank
you for your services once again, Trot,” said Klaus, bowing. “I’m stunned that you managed not only to
bring my wife and some of my fellow mice here, but also Ginger and
Molasses. How did you manage that?”
Bahar
stepped forward and saluted. “It was
rather serendipitous, my king. I perceived
in your words that you wanted me to find Trot and seek out our sweet friends,
but I knew not whether sweet friends referred to the cookies or the Mice
of Sweetfort. So I decided, even before
I found Trot, that I would seek out both.
“Trot
was actually at the edge of Mount Oniz at the time we reached the boulder
earlier. But I ran through the fields, shouting
for help from any turkey who happened to be nearby. There was a small rafter of them in the area,
and I convinced them to call for Trot; their gobbles can be heard by their
fellows at least a mile away, you know.”
Trot
nodded. “Yeah, one minute I’m trying to
find shelter from the rain under the trees of the mountain, and the next moment
I hear my brothers and sisters shrieking their wattles off about how I needed
to bring Ginger, Molasses, Bahar, and a squad of mice from Sweetfort to the big
boulder next to the western foothills. A
weird message, but most likely not a trap, I decided. So I did as they asked with all the speed I
could summon.”
“It
was really fast,” said Ginger, her eyes glowing at the traumatic memory. “I had three gumdrop buttons on my
dress. Now I have two. It was chaos.”
“You
did well, Bahar,” Klaus addressed the vole, placing a paw on his shoulder. “You got the gist of my message and acted on
it. I’m grateful.”
Bahar
inclined his head. “Of course. But…well, forgive me, my king, but why did head
inside the boulder? I thought you would wait and not put yourself in danger.”
“I
didn’t want Pat to suspect anything, and he was growing impatient.” He turned
toward the leprechaun cookie and glowered at him. “Plus, I felt that he needed to know who he
was dealing with. And I figured that if an
enemy vole did await me within, then he, too, needed to receive the
message that the Mice of Sweetfort are not to be trifled with.”
“I
see,” said Bahar. “Only—King Klaus, I
wish you would be more careful. I could
not bear the thought of Sweetfort being without its beloved king.”
Klaus
crossed his arms. “You care a great deal
about your king, and about his kingdom, and about the lives of those who dwell
within it. It’s refreshing to see. I think you would be better suited to use
your abilities to lead half of my royal army.”
“Half
of the army?” Bahar’s fur stood on end. “King
Klaus, I am not worthy of such a position!”
“In
my eyes, you are. You fight very well,
and any soldier would benefit greatly were he to learn from you. In this way, you can spread the teachings of
your mentor, Sir Meloran, to many.” He grinned.
“If it helps, see this as a command from your king. Whether you feel worthy or not, you have been
given a command, and I expect you to follow it.”
Bahar,
visibly flustered, saluted once again. “Then
I will obey it as well as I can, King Klaus.
I—I thank you.”
Klaus
turned toward the leprechaun cookie once again.
“Now, as for you….”
“Please
don’t kill him, Klaus,” Ginger implored him, pressing the ends of her arms
together. “Remember Molasses, when he
went astray?”
“Yes,
how could I ever forget? But you should know, Ginger, that killing Pat didn’t even
enter my mind. There is a time for
mercy.” He bent down toward the cookie, whom Molasses was still keeping restrained. “Greed is a terrible thing, Pat, and riches
are deceptive. They whisper to you that
they are enough, that by them you will be satisfied…but they can never really
satisfy you. You’ll always feel that you
are in want, that you are lacking. And
there are other ways to be wealthy.” He looked around at his friends and at his
wife, those who enriched his life. “And
the desire for wealth should never come before honor. Remember that.”
The
leprechaun cookie avoided his gaze and stared at the ground; he did not seem
repentant, but rather appeared saddened that his plot had been foiled. “If you’re not going to kill me, what are you
going to do with me?”
Klaus
pointed toward the foothills. “You’re
banished. If you show your face again in
these parts, you will be killed, under one exception—that you have changed, and
that your lifestyle and words are evidence of this change. Until or unless you have become a new cookie,
I suggest that you stay in those foothills and think on your failure.”
Molasses
released him, and the leprechaun cookie waddled off, grumbling to himself. He passed by the boulder that had now become
a crypt for his pot of gold, and then he struggled his way up the green slope
of the nearest hill. After another
minute he was gone, lost in the vast wilderness west of Sprinklevale.
“It’s
likely that he’ll be back one day, you know,” said Molasses. “Whether that’s as a changed or unchanged
cookie remains to be seen.”
Klaus
nodded. “Volahmi will be back one day,
too. He and I fought, but I spared his
life—though I did leave him with a couple of wounds to remember me by.”
“You
did the right thing, Klaus,” Ginger reassured him.
He
smiled at her. “I know, Ginger.”
“And
now we get to have a St. Patrick’s shindig at your house, don’t we?”
He
let out a hearty laugh. “That we do, my
friend. That we do.”
They
began to walk together toward Trot, who, of course, was their ride back home. As they ambled abreast through the cold
grass, Klaus put an arm around Ingrid.
She looked less angry than she had in the cave, and the anger had been
replaced by a pallor that could be seen under her fur. She swallowed loudly, as if sick, and then turned
her eyes to look at him.
“Is
something the matter, my love?” he asked her, immediately becoming concerned.
“I—well.”
Her eyes shifted toward the cloudy eastern sky.
“I know you have certain responsibilities as a king, and I know there
are times when you need to make a show of power. It’s just—”
“What
is it, my dear?”
Her
eyes turned to him again. “I need you to
be more careful than ever, Klaus—especially now that you’re about to be a
father.”
THE
END
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