Beyond the Gates
Bart awoke. His head hurt, he was lying on his side and it was dark. Either that or he had gone blind. He went to rub his head but couldn’t move his arms and realised his wrists were tied together in front of him. He tried to move his legs and found his ankles were also tied. There was a gag in his mouth held in place by what felt like a strip of cloth tied around his head.
He was lying under something, maybe a blanket. He pushed gently up on it with his head. Above the blanket was something soft. It felt like he was on a wooden floor which was gently bumping up and down, and he could hear a rattling noise. He got the impression he was on something that was moving.
What had happened? He remembered riding Midnight through the King’s Gardens, behind the armoury, and then he’d come out into the open and . . . what? He dimly recalled being hit on the head. Just before that, he had seen a wagon full of hay. Was he now on it?
Why would someone knock him off his horse, tie him up and put him in a wagon? If Dani was here she’d be able to work it out. He remembered he had been dressed as the Prince. Could someone have been after the Prince and got him instead?
Bart moved onto his back. Maybe he could roll right off the wagon, or whatever it was. He rolled again and then, once again, something hit him on the head.
Dani had often imagined what the city of Cranlon looked like, but now that she was finally in it, she didn’t have time for sightseeing. Outside the castle gates was a cobbled square full of shops, stalls and people hurrying this way and that. Dani ran across it. She doubted she had been seen slipping through the gates, but didn’t want to take any chances.
She was looking for a cart full of hay with at least two people on it, but how would she find it? If the kidnappers thought they had Prince Edward, surely they’d want to get out of the city, as almost everyone within it knew the Prince by sight. The city had a wall around it, and she knew there were only two gates. Which one would they have left by?
She had heard that not far past the Western Gate was the sea, and a port where trading ships came and went. The land on that side of the city was fertile and lots of people lived there. Up and down the coast the land was dotted with towns, villages and farmland that stretched north to near the edge of the Great Larayan Desert and south to a range of steep mountains.
The Eastern Gate led to less densely populated land. There were farms and villages near the city, but then deep forests stretched all the way to Pirainia. If the kidnappers wanted to get away from people quickly, Dani guessed they would probably go east.
A terrifying possibility hit her. What if the kidnappers were going to board a boat and cross the sea? If they did that, how could she follow?
She would just have to hope that they didn’t. She would try the Eastern Gate. She asked a woman for directions and then hurried down a road to another square. On the far side of it were the huge wooden city gates, even bigger than the ones at the castle, with a guard on either side. She didn’t recognise either guard, which meant that they wouldn’t recognise her. That was lucky, because orphan servants weren’t allowed to leave the castle grounds, let alone the city.
Dani approached one of the guards, a tall, well-built man with a straggly beard, and addressed him politely. ‘Excuse me, sir, has a wagon full of hay passed through recently?’
‘Why do you want to know, then?’ he replied curtly.
‘It’s my father’s. We had an argument, you see, and I stormed off and, well, I’m not sure whether he’s set off home or not. Normally he’d wait, but he was so angry with me . . .’ Dani let her voice trail off and looked down.
‘I did see a cartload of hay a while back, but it wasn’t your father’s,’ said the guard.
‘How do you know?’
The guard chuckled. ‘Unless your father’s a woman. Is he?’
‘Er, no,’ replied Dani.
‘No, not many fathers are,’ said the guard, and laughed uproariously.
‘But it was a wagon full of hay, was it?’
‘Yep.’
‘And just the one woman on it?’
‘That’s what I said, wasn’t it?’ said the guard impatiently.
‘There was a man sitting on the back,’ said the other guard, short and stocky.
‘Nah,’ said the first guard.
‘Yeah,’ said the second guard.
‘Nah.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah.’
‘There you go, then,’ shrugged the first guard.
Dani’s heartbeat quickened. Two people on a wagon full of hay. That must be the cart with Bart in it, because why else would a cartload of hay be leaving the city? No one takes hay from the city to the country.
‘That’d be my aunt and my father,’ said Dani. ‘I guess I’ll have to walk home. Thanks.’
She strode through the gate and the view almost took her breath away. For her entire life she had never seen further than a hundred paces ahead before her line of sight was interrupted by a wall or a building. Now, layers of rolling hills stretched ahead of her. The closer ones were cleared and on them paddocks were ploughed into neat lines and cows, goats and sheep grazed. Further away, trees covered the hills.
The road almost immediately split in two in a V shape. Dani turned back to the guards. ‘By the way,’ she called. ‘Did you notice which way the cart went after it came through the gate?’
‘You said it was going back to your home,’ said the first guard suspiciously. ‘You know where you live, don’t you?’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Dani quickly. ‘I’m just not sure if they were going to my aunt’s place first.’
‘Well, I dunno,’ said the first guard.
‘They went right, I think,’ said the second guard. ‘Pretty sure, ’cos I watched them head over the hills.’
Dani gave the second, nicer guard a wave and headed down the right-hand track. As she strode down the road
a surge of energy hit her. She was free. All her life she
had wanted to escape, and now she had. But when she had imagined it, Bart had always been at her side. He had only just gone missing, and already she missed him terribly. She promised herself that she would find him and that they would never return to Tintarfell Castle.