My dad came down the stairs, took hold of my hand, and pulled me, stumbling, up the next few steps. I didn’t see Hudson until he was in front of me. These stairs were wider and Hudson stepped past my dad to me. Without a word of explanation, he picked me up, plunked me over his shoulder, and hauled me the rest of the way up the stairs.

It would have been kind of romantic if my face hadn’t been smashed into the back of his chain mail. Plus there weren’t any handrails on these stairs either. And worrying about what it would feel like to fall that far kind of sucked all the romance out of the situation.

213/356

When we reached the top of the wall, I waited for Hudson to put me down. He didn’t. He moved along the wall, half jogging, until we came to Robin Hood and his men. The Merry Men were tying up two guards with … I blinked to make sure I was seeing right … our bike locks. A strange white coating covered the guards. It looked like their faces and torsos had been frosted.

“Thanks for helping me up the stairs,” I told Hudson.

“No problem,” he said.

I waited for him to set me down. He didn’t.

He and my father whispered to each other about where to go next.

“You can put me down now,” I said.

“I’m fine,” he said. “You don’t weigh much.”

“The blood is rushing to my head.”

“But at least this way you won’t slow us down.” Using my arms to push against his back, I propped my head up. “I can be faster now. Going up stairs is just hard and …” I broke off as I got a better look at the white coating on the captured guards. Paint?

Or maybe it was foam. “What did you do to those men?”

“We used fire extinguishers.”

Dad smiled proudly. “We may not have had any weapons at our house, but that doesn’t stop us from improvising.”

“Will it hurt them?” I asked.

“Nah,” Dad said. “Well, probably not. Besides, this way they won’t be flammable for a while.”

One of the guards let out a muffled groan, and Robin Hood pointed his sword at him menacingly. The guard fell silent at once. Robin Hood shot Dad an angry look. “This would be easier if you let us dis-patch the guards properly.”

214/356

“We’ve already gone over this,” Dad said. “Killing someone could change history. That could be my great-great-great-grandfather you want to run through.”

Robin Hood rolled his eyes and motioned for Will Scarlet to hurry securing the men. “Very well, then. Are we ready to leave this family reunion?”

“Aye,” Will said, and stood up.

The next moment, we all jogged along the wall, well, except for me. I bounced against Hudson’s shoulder, wishing chain mail weren’t quite so hard. The ribbons holding my hair had come loose, making it even harder to see what was going on.

Finally we stopped. I wasn’t sure why until Hudson slid me off his shoulder.

Little John had looped a rope around one of the stone merlons.

He pulled on the rope, testing the knot’s strength. “She’ll hold,” he said, and to prove it, he hoisted himself over the edge and disappeared.

Robin Hood wrapped a strip of cloth around his palm. “Now the rest of you.”

My father pulled a pair of gardening gloves from his pocket and shoved them in my direction. “Put these on. They’ll save your hands from rope burn.”

I took them and tried not to think about how far down it was, or the fact that I’d always stunk at rope climbing in PE.

My father went next. Even as he flung one leg over the side of the wall, he was giving me directions. “You can do this,” he told me. “It’s like that rope swing you used to climb when we went to the lake, remember?”

I stared at him bleakly. “We haven’t been to the lake since I was in fifth grade.”

215/356

He took hold of the rope and flung his other leg over the wall.

“Has it been that long?” He shook his head to banish that line of thinking. “Just don’t let go of the rope.” Then he was gone. I held my breath and listened, hoping I didn’t hear the sound of him falling.

Hudson nudged me forward. “It’s your turn. Don’t freeze up, we need to hurry. Oh, and don’t scream. It will give away our position.”

“I’m not going to scream,” I said. I hoisted myself on the wall, grabbed hold of the rope, and prayed that rope climbing was like bike riding and I would remember how to do this. Otherwise my fairy tale would have a very bad ending.

New moral of the story: You should have paid attention in PE

class.

My father was nearly to the ground. He had slid down more than climbed down. I meant to climb down. The rope had other ideas. It was hard to get a good grip while wearing gardening gloves. I slid from the moment I let go of the wall. But I didn’t scream—except for in my mind, where I was screaming at the top of my lungs and coming up with really colorful curses for fairies.

In less time than I thought, I reached the ground. Little John waved for Dad and me to follow him. As we did, Dad took out the walkie-talkie again. “We’re headed toward the rendezvous point. Over and out.”

We strode down a hill. No trees grew around the castle walls.

They’d been cleared, I supposed, to keep enemies from using them. I felt exposed out in the open grass. “Where are we going?” I asked my father.

“To the road.”

It was around front, where the fighting was. This did not seem to be a particularly good point to meet with Nick and Sandra, but I didn’t 216/356

have time to ask about it. Little John was moving fast, and I didn’t want to lose sight of him.

Before long, Hudson, Robin Hood, and Will came up behind us.

“Good,” Little John said. “Now we can hurry.” I had been hurrying. Still, I tried to pick up my pace and accomplished a staggering run.

“Are you all right?” Hudson asked, jogging effortlessly beside me.

“If your mother tells you to marry a girl with a heart of gold, she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.” I regretted saying the words as soon as they left my mouth. I had forgotten about Hudson’s mother.

But if he had a reaction, I didn’t see it.

“Do you want me to carry you again?”

“I’m fine,” I said. I couldn’t elaborate because I was panting too much.

Hudson eyed me, as though waiting for me to collapse, but he didn’t say more on the subject.

We reached the front of the castle, making a wide berth in the process to avoid any random arrows shot our way. The attackers had brought their own cover with them. They stood behind wooden walls with tiny slits that let the men shoot arrows from behind them. The walls were movable too. Every few minutes, the attackers skittered sideways or backward to avoid being hit by the rocks that the castle catapulted toward them.

I recognized Nick right away. He was the one with the potato launcher over his shoulder. As I watched, he shot at the castle wall. A cloud of smoke went off where it hit. Obviously, he wasn’t shooting potatoes.

The men were too far away for either side to do much damage, but damage wasn’t the point. This fight had only been a distraction. Once 217/356

we were close enough to the road, Robin Hood gave a whistle. The men grabbed hold of their walls and fell back.

I’m not sure whether their retreat gave the castle enough courage to send out knights after them, or whether they had planned to do that anyway, but the castle gate opened and knights on horses thundered toward us.

I let out a gasp. These horses were huge and wearing so much armor that they looked like giant robotic horses. We couldn’t outrun them. In a few minutes, they’d be on us.

Chapter 16

I looked around, searching in the dark for the Merry Men’s horses.

Certainly they hadn’t walked here, but I didn’t see any sign of animals.