Chapter Twenty-One
Twenty-One
When Mo had left ten winters ago, he had at least left a note, and the last thing Juniper had seen of him was him walking away down the dirt road, his pack on his shoulders.
This morning, there was no note and Juniper’s stupid roommate was just gone, and you know what?
That was stupid and selfish, too, just like Juniper had been stupid and selfish to get them trapped on this quest in the first place.
Just like he had been stupid and selfish to make a deal with that gods-cursed prince.
He packed up the camp with a heavy sigh, rolling his shoulders to work out the knots there. He groaned as he swung his bag up onto his shoulders, those knots immediately returning with a vengeance. Wasn’t it supposed to get easier at some point? Wasn’t he supposed to have his trail legs by now?
That was one of the sample SMART goals the recruiter’s documents had mentioned.
Juniper hated being in love. Possibly even more than he hated Bill Bronson and being left alone in the woods. It was like having a very unpleasant blister—every time you moved, it made itself known.
But it made his next choice easy, at least: He was going to march into the jaws of danger because, Divona curse it all, that’s where Mo was.
Mo would have been easy to track even if Juniper hadn’t known exactly where that heroic fool was going—Juniper could just see his friend’s familiar gait in the impressions he had left in the leaves and moss and mud as he walked, a tiny bit uneven because that ankle injury from three winters ago had never fully healed.
At a bend in the trail, there was a patch of ground with a more marked indent where Mo had paused, looking at something. Looking back at something, by the angle of his footprints.
Juniper tightened one of the straps on his pack, popped a few berries into his mouth (along with a handful of the specialty hand-crafted cheese cubes that paired so well with them), and kept on through the forest.
When he reached the meadow where the prince’s men had camped the night before, Juniper (reluctantly) stepped off the path, where there were more bugs but slightly lower odds of instant death at the end of a prince’s sword.
When he peered through the underbrush into the prince’s camp, he was struck immediately with a wave of disgust and nausea at a sight so foul it would fill anyone with rage.
Bill Bronson was on guard.
He was holding a sword loosely at his side as he paced back and forth with a bored expression on his face. What fool had put this toenail of a man on guard duty?
“Bronson!” Prince Edward’s now familiar voice cut the morning air from a nearby tent.
Oh, so it was that fool, then.
It was hard to believe Juniper had ever been caught in the prince’s golden trance now. In fact, his voice was starting to be as grating as Bill’s, which was a feat.
Juniper crept forward a little farther, wincing when a twig snapped. Where the hell was Mo?
“Yes, Your Highness?” Bill sighed.
Now this attitude was new. Bill Bronson, not sucking up to His Highness’s royal butt cheeks?
Juniper wasn’t about to like him for it, but it was a marked improvement.
The rest of Bill still needed a makeover—his personality, his voice, that thicket of hair on top of his head that was the color of a dead mouse.
In fact, Juniper wasn’t convinced Bill hadn’t robbed a family of dead mice to get that hair in the first place.
“Bring the dragon its breakfast,” the prince called. “But make sure her muzzle stays on.”
Juniper bristled, the rage that hit him so white-hot and all-consuming he nearly ran out of the bushes to light one or both of the men on fire.
Bear was a child. Not an it. Not something to muzzle.
All of his reticence evaporated: He may have lost his skin care, but he’d be damned if he lost his soul to this quest.
For the first time in his fool life, though, Juniper forced his body to stay still instead of running headlong into danger.
Mo had already done that for the both of them, and they had always had an unspoken pact: When one was in their “running headlong into danger without a second thought” era, the other had to be in their “levelheaded enough not to do that” era.
Juniper reached into his pack slowly in search of his fire ale. He was going to keep his head on.
But he was also going to keep an incendiary close, just in case.
He still hadn’t caught any sight of Mo, so arson and treason would have to wait. At least until Juniper had secured the love of his life (who inconveniently remained the love of his life even though he wanted nothing to do with Juniper).
Juniper skirted the edge of the meadow, moving as soundlessly as he could while he followed Bill, who set his sword down to grab a flask of water and some jerky.
“Bronson!” the prince called again.
Juniper froze, and then reached for his match and tinder. If he didn’t find Mo’s dumb ass in a few minutes, he might have to return to plan A (A for arson).
“What is it?” Bill yelled back, pausing outside the tent that must contain Bear. He did not at all sound as polite as Juniper would have thought a prince would require from one of his mercenaries.
“Don’t forget the perimeter check first!”
Bill mumbled a few rude words he usually reserved for Juniper and then kept going. He ducked into the tent, leaving his sword outside.
No one else was visible, though there were several other large tents in the clearing.
Juniper crept across the moss, snatched up the sword, and then he circled back (finally utilizing that “closing the loop” technique the bankers in his village were always talking about) toward the prince’s tent.
Just in case, he poured a line of fire ale in front of the prince’s tent.
He was readying his match and tinderbox when a loud, gruff voice shouted from across the camp:
“Avast!”
And then there was a great deal of shouting, but amid it all, one very familiar voice responded:
“Ahoy!”
Oh, Mo.
Juniper lit the fire ale, sending a line of fire across the ground in front of the prince’s tent, snatched up Bill’s heavy-ass sword, and ran toward the sound of Mo’s voice.
He arrived just in time to see one large, burly guard kick Mo’s bad ankle. It turned with a sickening crunch, and then—well, Juniper didn’t quite know what happened next.
A lot of bold, manly yelling from him, probably. Not a scream, or a shriek, no matter what anybody else said.
And a lot of swinging that very heavy sword as he did.
Shock on Mo’s face. Confusion on the mercenaries’ faces.
More screaming from the other side of the camp. The prince, discovering he had walked out of his tent into a line of fire.
“Help!” the prince was screaming. “Help me! A dragon has attacked! Or a traitor! Or that little bastard has set everything on fire again!”
Juniper, the little bastard in question, found himself grinning despite himself.
Perhaps quests could have an element of fun, after all.
He grabbed Mo’s sizable bicep as the mercenaries ran to help the prince and dragged him away from camp, clinging to Mo with one arm and that stupid sword with the other.
“Thank you for the fire ale,” Juniper shouted over his shoulder as he half-ran from the camp, dragging Mo with him. “I hope you all fall into a briar patch!”
He plunged into the forest, going as fast as his tired legs would take him.
“Juniper,” Mo attempted. “Juniper, I can walk. You don’t have to carry me.”
“I heard that crunch, you magnificent oaf,” Juniper yelled. “And Divona curse us all, I am going to take care of you.”
“You’re faster without me,” Mo said, shoving Juniper off him as they reached the path by the river.
Behind them, the sound of shouts and swords approached.
“There isn’t time for you to be noble,” Juniper told Mo, and then pushed him directly into the rushing current of the river.