Chapter Thirteen
Jaq
“This is one of those situations where I should’ve been more organized.” Jaq looked around, trying to find a landmark or some indication of human life. Unfortunately, all he could see were trees. It wasn’t that trees weren’t pretty or nice to look at – they made for very pleasant scenery. But unfortunately, trees were something Jaq hadn’t had the time to study yet, and they all looked the same to him.
“I think we can assume this is a classic case of me being lost. Not a situation I remember being in before, so there’s that. Mother was always hoping I would try new things.” Patting his horse’s neck, Jaq kept hold of the reins and dismounted, keeping his grip on the reins loose so that Bella could munch on some clumps of grass. He knew she would need water very soon, and I could do with some, too, he thought with a sigh. Breakfast seemed so long ago, although in truth it was likely barely lunchtime.
“We have the daylight in our favor,” Jaq mused out loud. Talking helped him think. “I can only assume that when we came to that fork in the trail we should’ve gone left instead of right.” He looked down and around at the grass he and Bella were standing on. “I don’t suppose you can tell me when we ran out of trail? Only that would’ve been our first clue that we were heading in the wrong direction.”
Bella flicked her ears at his voice, but she was busy chomping.
“All right then. So, let’s consider our options. We could go back the way we came, but without the trail…” Jaq’s voice trailed off as he wandered to stand by Bella’s flank, scanning the ground in between the trees. It clearly hadn’t rained in a while, so it wasn’t as though Bella had left any hoof prints. “I’m not sure moving from here is a good idea. We have to assume someone will come looking for us sooner or later.”
Jaq wasn’t exactly sure when someone might come looking for him. From everything he’d heard during breakfast with the queen, Jaq didn’t believe Patin had been banished from the castle. Serron would never allow it and, indeed, had agreed with Jaq’s idea for them to move to the Folkon estate. But that loud-mouthed footman had certainly been crowing in the yards outside the stables, where Jaq had gone to find Patin.
“It’s not every day you see someone with a title being told to get packing,” the footman had crowed, actually doing a dance on the cobblestones. “And I told him. Did you see when I told him? That duke’s face went white, and I’ve never seen him get on a horse so fast. He’ll be hightailing it back to Folkon, licking his sorry society ass, I’ll bet.”
“Excuse me.” Jaq had pulled on every inch of his mother’s tone when she was dealing with someone she couldn’t stand. “Am I given to understand you informed Patin, Duke of Folkon, that he was no longer a person of standing in this castle? You did that?”
The change in mood was electric, and stuck as he was in the forest, Jaq reminded himself to dust that tone off in any future encounters with people whose lies annoyed him. The footman immediately stopped dancing, snatching his cap off his head and clutching it, bowing all over the place while the stable boys all seemed to find the cobblestones fascinating.
“I… I… I heard a couple of people discussing it in the castle, Your Highness.” The footman found his voice at last. “I was shocked to see the Duke of Folkon coming to oversee the removal of your trunks. I felt it was my duty to mention to him that he didn’t have that right. I was just about to move your belongings myself, Your Highness.”
“When you spoke to the Duke of Folkon, did you stop to consider that what you were hearing was utter nonsense?” Jaq even managed a quirked eyebrow. “I was just breakfasting with Queen Sophie, making plans with her for my fiancé and I to hold our wedding and reception at Folkon. Does that sound like something your queen and Crown prince would deem suitable, if the person who owned the estate wasn’t in the highest standing in the castle?”
“I’m just here to move your trunks, Your Highness.” The footman looked as though he was hoping a crack would appear in the ground so he could fall through it.
“You will leave my trunks alone. Report to the head of the household and inform them of the gross insult you’ve just offered to the Duke of Folkon. I imagine this castle has a process for staff who have seriously overstepped their boundaries, but if they haven’t, I also have full confidence some will be implemented for your situation.”
But that was then, and present-moment Jaq sighed. “I was very masterful, Bella. One could almost say princely. Mother would be so proud. Even jumping on my horse and riding off like a misguided hero to save Patin from what must’ve been a heartbreaking departure was all very well and good in theory. But in hindsight, it probably would’ve made more sense to wait for Serron. I’m sure he knows the way to Folkon.”
Looking around, Jaq was no closer to knowing how far away he was from Folkon than he was when he got off his horse. He wasn’t even sure if he could tell where the castle might be from where he was. Gray clouds were gathering as well, suggesting rain was imminent. Even if it rained, that wasn’t going to help Bella take a drink, so Jaq decided to hunt for a stream, creek, or similar body of water. That would be downhill, wouldn’t it? Once the water was found, Jaq would work out how long it might be before someone came to look for him.
/~/~/~/~/
“All right, we have a couple of flaws to my current hypothesis.” Jaq stabbed at the dirt with the stick he’d found. They were by a creek where the water appeared clean. Bella appreciated the chance to have a drink, so that was a plus. Having decided he might as well stay where he was, Jaq decided to apply a few theories and his limited facts, hypothetically, to work out how long it would take for him to be found.
“The issue, the way I see it,” he said out loud as though addressing a class on the topic, “is that there are too many variables that aren’t fixed. For example, I have no idea how long Serron was with the queen after I left to find Patin. His time with the queen influences how long it might take for him to realize Patin and I were both missing. Hmm.”
Jaq pondered the lines in the dust. “The other issue, the way I see it, is that Serron would automatically think I had traveled in the right direction.” He glanced around at the trees that were against his back. “Which was not an assumption he should make, but it is a logical one if I’m trying to work out how he might think. So he would go to Folkon first. Patin would already be there – he knows the way, obviously. Serron would join him there because he also knows how to get there. Serron said Folkon was about an hour’s ride from the castle. So, we have an hour, plus the time he spent with the queen, plus the time it would take for him and Patin to discuss I went off by myself, which means…”
Jaq tossed his stick aside in disgust. “That’s not helpful to me. I don’t even have a means of keeping track of time with me. Even if I could calculate the exact length of time it would take Serron and Patin to come looking for me, I don’t know how long I’ve been missing, or how far away from Folkon my present location is. It wouldn’t be so bad if I thought to pack a book before I left. Then I probably wouldn’t even notice the waiting time.” He had to chuckle about that because it was true.
With a lack of anything else to do, Jaq thought about the different ways some of his fictional heroes dealt with being in the wilderness. Admittedly, the heroes he read about were used to being outside and were usually on some wonderfully important quest, but their survival aspects seemed to revolve around common themes.
There was building and lighting a fire – apparently important for cooking food, generating warmth, and keeping wild animals away at night. Jaq reached out, touching the bark of the tree he was leaning on. It felt very dry. Yes, the sky was cloudy, and it looked like it might rain, but Jaq didn’t think it was worth the risk. “If I lit a fire, I’d probably set light to the whole forest.” So Jaq ignored that idea.
Hunting was something else some authors went into great detail about. Jaq wrinkled his nose just thinking about it. He understood people needed to eat, and if a man didn’t have any supplies, then using a piece of string or a handy knife to kill an animal could be the difference between life and death. Jaq had never understood how people could do it. Patin probably could, Jaq thought. He could imagine Patin going out with a long bow and arrows and coming back with food for a week. Serron, in Jaq’s mind, would be more likely to set snares or creep up on some unsuspecting creature and stab it with his sword.
I can always go looking for berries or fruit if I’m here much longer, Jaq decided. The animals in the forest would be safe from him. He didn’t even have a knife. The one Patin gifted him was still sitting on his dresser back in the castle. Jaq hadn’t thought it was a suitable accessory when having breakfast with a queen. I should’ve put it in my boot the way Patin does.
Not that a knife was going to help him now. But then his brain kicked in with something useful. “Tree climbing! Bella, people climb trees when they are lost, don’t they?”
Jaq was going to take the look Bella gave him as one of encouragement. In truth, her widened eye and the rather rude snort could also be laughter, but Jaq was going to go with her being supportive. “If I climb a tree, I can see over the top of the forest, and that would give me a chance to see if I can find any human civilization. I might be able to see the trail, or even the Folkon estate, or the castle. I’ll be able to see something if I can get up that high, surely.”
Admittedly, Jaq had never climbed a tree before. But as he eyed the nearest tree, he figured it couldn’t be difficult. “I think it would be similar to climbing a ladder,” he said to Bella, “only with wider rungs. I’m sure that’s what it would be like.” All he had to do was find a suitable tree – one that could be climbed by a person of not quite average height.
Making sure Bella was secured and wasn’t about to wander off, Jaq climbed up the small rise, looking for a tree on higher ground. It made sense to him that the higher up the tree was, the more likely it would be that he could see over the other trees when he was at the top. He was getting a crick in his neck, looking up at how tall the individual trees were, because clearly he needed to scale one of the highest ones. Otherwise he was still going to be seeing more leaves and nothing else.
Just get it done. Jaq was getting hungry. He stripped off his coat, and then looked at his boots. They were relatively supple, and if he was barefoot, the knobs and ridges on the bark were going to hurt. “This is going to be easy.” He reached up for the lowest branch and grabbed hold of it, hoisting himself up.
What felt like years later, Jaq wiped the sweat from his brow with his shirt sleeve – cautiously. His other arm was wrapped around the trunk of the tree and both feet were on the same branch. Climbing was not as easy as books made it out to be.
“I’m also a really long way up from the ground.” Still clinging on to the trunk, Jaq peered over his feet. There seemed to be a lot of distance between where he was and the ground. Cricking his neck yet again, Jaq could see he also had quite a way to go before he got to the smaller branches at the top of the tree. “The only way is up,” he sighed. He’d worry about getting down when he could see something to get down for.