Andreus looked at her with concern as he bent his knees and turned the long stick in his hands. Carys didn’t give herself or her brother time to think. She flipped the stick so she was holding it parallel to the ground and lunged at her brother. He deflected the blow, hopped backward and almost took a dive into the mud. She poked the quarterstaff at him again. This time he smacked his own stick against it with more force than she’d expected, which made it easy to make it look as though it was the blow that made her stumble to the side and fall off the platform. Her boots squished into the mud. She tried to grab onto the platform to keep herself upright but the quarterstaff she’d kept hold of sent her off balance and she went down to her knees.
The mud was cold and clammy and oozed around her legs, encasing them in muck. She waited for her brother to jump off the platform and help her up, but the crowd was stomping their feet and shouting his name. Carys had struck first. Andreus had no choice but to strike back, which meant the people could still cheer for their hero.
Really, it was almost too easy.
Plunging the end of the quarterstaff into the mud, Carys pushed to her feet. The bottom of her dress was heavy with muck, but she pretended it didn’t matter as she slogged out of the pen and handed the quarterstaff to the page, who gave her a look filled with pity. Was he sorry for her because of the mud or because she was going to lose again? She wasn’t sure it mattered. Pity was the last thing she cared about.
The trumpets sounded as Elder Cestrum called for another demonstration of support to determine the winner. Carys steeled herself for silence when her name was called out, but this time there were more shouts in her favor than before. And she saw several blue banners wave in the crowd, but the yellow overwhelmed them in numbers and, again, Andreus was declared the winner. Now he was two points ahead. She wasn’t sure how many were required to get across the scoring board in the Council’s twisted little game, but Andreus would reach that goal soon.
Elder Cestrum wasted no time in moving on, announcing, “The final contest in this first trial of humility will be an obstacle footrace. Prince Andreus and Princess Carys will run alongside six of the victors of contests held earlier today. A sack of gold will be presented to any competitor who reaches the finish line first, and the Council will ask for the final show of support for Prince Andreus or Princess Carys to award one last point for this first trial.”
The six other runners in this race were waiting for Carys and her brother when they arrived on the other side of the tournament grounds. The obstacle footraces often were run by men and women both, so Carys wasn’t surprised to see that two of the people chosen to run were young girls, streaked with dirt and sweat from their earlier competitions. They were wearing dresses that fell just above the ankle, which gave them better mobility. Smart. Carys itched to cut the muddy bottom half off her own gown, but it wasn’t her goal to win or to scandalize everyone watching.
The other four competitors ranged from young boys to muscular men who were twice her age. All but one of them looked at the ground or out at the crowd—anywhere but at Carys and Andreus. Clearly, this race with the royal family made all but the man with several missing teeth and a scar down the side of his face uncomfortable.
The blare of the trumpets meant it would all be over soon.
Carys caught her brother’s eye as they walked to the starting point and tilted her head to the side in a silent question that he answered with a smile. He was feeling fine. No tight breathing. No tingling in his arms. No curse, which was a relief. If they could get through this footrace without his heart seizing, they’d be able to get through anything the Council threw at them.
Carys took her place at the starting point, next to her brother and a boy of maybe thirteen, for the race that took up almost half of the tournament grounds. The obstacle footraces were always one of the most popular events since a person didn’t need to bring a weapon or have any specific skill in order to compete. And the obstacles meant being the faster runner didn’t necessarily make you the winner. It was often the fastest who raced headlong into obstructions without studying them first. Depending on the nature of each one, the result could be life-threatening.
Careful and clever often won over brute strength and fast feet. Carys had always enjoyed the obstacle races more than watching armored guardsmen smack each other with lances at the lists. Of course, that was when she didn’t have to worry about her brother running across the tournament grounds toward near-certain, impulsive doom.
“Let the third event of this trial being,” Elder Cestrum called, and the heralds blasted their horns again.
“Be careful,” she yelled to Andreus. Too late. He bolted with the others down the path marked with bales of hay and fences.
Carys raced behind her brother, who had pulled ahead of all but one of the other competitors. While she intended to lose, she had to stay close enough to Andreus to intervene in case he grew weak or, more likely, he misjudged the challenge set before him. She picked up her heavy, mud-caked skirts and awkwardly leaped over a log, then steadied herself before climbing over several more piled across the length of the path a few feet away. Andreus and the two young boys were disappearing over a shoulder-high stack of rocks when she heard a shout from farther up the trail. She cursed at her unwieldy dress as she searched for footholds and pulled herself up atop the wall of logs. On the ground to the left side she spotted the man who had cried out trying to escape from a spike that had impaled his foot when he landed on it from above.
“Watch out for spikes,” she yelled to the two girls and one of the men who were coming behind. From their slow pace, she doubted they were interested in risking the wrath of a future ruler by winning this competition, which meant they would probably be fine.
Wiping her forehead, Carys hurried past the injured man and headed down the path toward the water pit her brother was jumping over. Andreus landed with a splash near enough to the other side that he didn’t get very wet, with a boy and the man with the missing teeth hot on his heels. The boy yelped as he crashed down in the water a foot from the edge and scrambled to the dirt beyond. When Carys reached the water she saw the long, thin undulating black streaks in the water and the scaled head that rose above the water and then plunged back in.
Water serpents. A bite from them caused numbness that would fade after several days. Anything more would cause far worse damage.
Carys lifted her skirts and raced to the edge of the pond where the distance from one side of the water to the other was only three feet and leaped across. Distantly she heard the crowd cheering and wondered what was happening up ahead. Worried that she could no longer see her brother, she pushed herself to go faster.
Her feet pounded the path as she hurried around a pile of hay bales, passed the boy who had been ahead of her, and spotted why the crowd had been cheering. Andreus had leaped over a flaming pile of coals and was now streaking toward a line of flags three hundred lengths in the distance that signaled the end of the race.