He was about to get his wish, in a left-handed way. The sun was glinting from directly overhead—time for the noon meal. Coram grunted orders to the cloaked child, and they both dismounted in a clearing beside the road. Pulling bread and cheese from a saddlebag, he broke off a share and handed it over. He also took the wineskin down from his saddle horn.
“We’ll make the wayhouse by dark, if not before,” he rumbled. “Till then, we make do with this.”
Alanna removed her heavy cloak. “This is fine with me.”
Coram choked, spraying a mouthful of liquid all over the road. Alanna had to clap him on the back before he caught his breath again.
“Brandy?” he whispered, looking at the wineskin. He returned to his immediate problem. “By the Black God!” he roared, turning spotty purple. “We’re goin’ back this instant, and I’m tannin’ yer hide for ye when we get home! Where’s that devils’-spawn brother of yours?”
“Coram, calm down,” she said. “Have a drink.”
“I don’t want a drink,” he snarled. “I want t’ beat the two of ye till yer skins won’t hold water!” He took a deep gulp from the wineskin.
“Thom’s on his way to the City of the Gods with Maude,” Alanna explained. “She thinks we’re doing the right thing.”
Coram swore under his breath. “That witch would agree with you two sorcerers. And what does yer father say?”
“Why should he ever know?” Alanna asked. “Coram, you know Thom doesn’t want to be a knight. I do.”
“I don’t care if the two of ye want t’ be dancing bears!” Coram told her, taking another swallow from the skin. “Ye’re a girl.”
“Who’s to know?” She bent forward, her small face intent. “From now on I’m Alan of Trebond, the younger twin. I’ll be a knight—Thom’ll be a sorcerer. It’ll happen. Maude saw it for us in the fire.”
Coram made the Sign against evil with his right hand. Magic made him nervous. Maude made him nervous. He drank again to settle his nerves. “Lass, it’s a noble thought, a warrior’s thought, but it’ll never work. If ye’re not caught when ye bathe, ye’ll be turning into a woman—”
“I can hide all that—with your help. If I can’t, I’ll disappear.”
“Yer father will have my hide!”
She made a face. “Father doesn’t care about anything but his scrolls.” She drew a breath. “Coram, I’m being nice. Thom wouldn’t be this nice. D’you want to see things that aren’t there for the next ten years? I can work that, you know. Remember when Cook was going to tell Father who ate the cherry tarts? Or the time Godmother tried to get Father to marry her?”
Coram turned pale. The afternoon the tarts were discovered missing, Cook started to see large, hungry lions following him around the kitchens. Lord Alan never heard about the missing tarts. When the twins’ godmother came to Trebond to snare Lord Alan as her next husband, she had fled after only three days, claiming the castle was haunted.
“Ye wouldn’t,” Coram whispered. He had always suspected that the twins had been behind Cook’s hallucinations and Lady Catherine’s ghosts, but he had kept those thoughts to himself. Cook gave himself airs, and Lady Catherine was cruel to her servants.
Seeing she had struck a nerve, Alanna changed tactics. “Thom can’t shoot for beans, and I can. Thom wouldn’t be a credit to you. I will, I think. You said yourself a grown man can’t skin a rabbit faster’n me.” She fed her last piece of bread to Chubby and looked at Coram with huge, pleading eyes. “Let’s ride on. If you feel the same in the morning, we can turn back.” She crossed her fingers as she lied. She had no intention of returning to Trebond. “Just don’t rush. Father won’t know till it’s too late.”
Coram swigged again from the skin, getting up shakily. He mounted, watching the girl. They rode silently while Coram thought, and drank.
The threat about making him see things didn’t worry him much. Instead he thought of Thom’s performance in archery—it was enough to make a soldier cry. Alanna was much quicker than her brother. She rarely tired, even hiking over rough country. She had a feel for the fighting arts, and that was something that never could be learned. She was also as stubborn as a mule.
Because he was absorbed in his thoughts, Coram never saw the wood snake glide across the road. Alanna—and Coram’s horse—spotted the slithery creature in the same second. The big gelding reared, almost throwing his master. Chubby stopped dead in the road, surprised by these antics. Coram yelled and fought to hold on as his mount bucked frantically, terrified by the snake. Alanna never stopped to think. She threw herself from Chubby’s saddle and grabbed for Coram’s reins with both hands. Dodging the gelding’s flying hooves frantically, she used all her strength and weight to pull the horse down before Coram fell and broke his neck.
The gelding, more surprised than anything else by the new weight on his reins, dropped to all fours. He trembled as Alanna stroked his nose, whispering comforting words. She dug in a pocket and produced an apple for the horse, continuing to pet him until his shaking stopped.
When Alanna looked up, Coram was watching her oddly. She had no way of knowing that he was imagining what Thom would have done in similar circumstances: Her twin would have left Coram to fend for himself. Coram knew the kind of courage it took to calm a large, bucking horse. It was the kind of courage a knight needed in plenty. Even so, Alanna was a girl. . . .
By the time they arrived at the wayhouse, Coram was very drunk. The innkeeper helped him to bed while his wife fussed over “the poor wee lad.” In her bed that night, Alanna listened to Coram’s snores with a wide grin on her lips. Maude had managed to fill the wineskin with Lord Alan’s best brandy, hoping her old friend might be more open to reason if his joints were well oiled.
Coram woke the next morning with the worst hangover he had ever had. He moaned as Alanna entered his room.
“Don’t walk so loud,” he begged.
Alanna handed him a steaming mug. “Drink. Maude says this makes you feel better every time.”
The man drank deeply, gasping as the hot liquid burned down his throat. But in the end, he did feel better. He swung his feet to the floor, gently rubbing his tender skull. “I need a bath.”
Alanna pointed to the bath already waiting in the corner.
Coram glared at her from beneath his eyebrows. “Go order breakfast. I take it I’m to call ye ‘Alan’ now?”
She yelped with joy and skipped from the room.
Four days later they rode into Corus just after dawn. They were part of the stream of people entering the capital for the market day. Coram guided his horse through the crowds, while Alanna tried to keep Chubby close behind him and still see everything. Never in her life had she encountered so many people! She saw merchants, slaves, priests, nobles. She could tell the Bazhir—desert tribesmen—by their heavy white burnooses, just as she spotted seamen by their braided pigtails. She was lucky that Chubby was inclined to stay near Coram’s gelding, or she would have been lost in a second.
The marketplace itself was almost more than a girl from a mountain castle could take. Alanna blinked her eyes at the bright colors—piles of orange and yellow fruits, hangings of bright blue and green, ropes of gold and silver chains. Some people were staring as openly as she was. Others shoved their goods under people’s noses, shouting for them to buy. Women in tight dresses eyed men from doorways, and children ran underfoot, sneaking their hands into pockets and purses.
Coram missed nothing. “Keep an eye to yer saddlebags,” he called back to Alanna. “There are some here as would steal their own mother’s teeth!” He seemed to be directing this comment at a tall young man standing near Alanna.