The Kronborg Chronicles: A Sister’s Mission

     The villagers in Meridell Town stared at their princess as she rode a white Uni through the centre of town toward the castle. Meridellian law prohibited most flying pets large enough to bear riders or carriages from landing within town limits except during times of war out of concern for pedestrians, and as Solarin was a particularly large Uni, Annabelle had thought it best not to invoke royal privilege to ignore this regulation. She did not want to risk her steed and friend accidentally trampling some young child who, in a weakened state, might be too slow to get out of his way as he tried to land. Instead, she had instructed Solarin to land in the large field outside the city that was specifically designated as an airport and to enter Meridell’s capital on foot. She had opted not to use her eldest brother’s carriage as she felt that Solarin would be able to fly more quickly if he did not have to pull the bulky coach, and that there was no need to take the coach for a visit that was likely only going to last for one or two days. Hagan was to leave Brightvale at noon the following day, and Annabelle imagined that Skarl would not be far behind, as the sea route to Altador through the Northern Ocean was only slightly shorter from Meridell than from Brightvale. For her last birthday, Roberta had given her mother a pair of saddlebags enchanted to accommodate ten times their usual volume while only seeming to weigh one-tenth of what they should, enabling Annabelle to easily pack a week’s worth of clothes and accessories within them for her frequent trips to Meridell to converse with Skarl on Hagan’s behalf. On this occasion, she did not even need to fill one. As she typically rode side-saddle, that saddlebag hung on the opposite side of Solarin’s body from her legs, distributing the Uni’s load as evenly as possible.

      “Rather dreary isn’t it, Princess?” Solarin broke through his rider’s pensive mood with this question.

      “Indeed, my dear friend, though not quite as much as I expected. It’s not entirely grey. There are a few pops of colour here and there.”

      “True, but those colours are quite muted. Gold has become more like a dull beige and scarlet a dusty maroon.”

      “I imagine this is why the villagers are staring at us more than usual. I normally blend right into the land of my birth, but now I must stand out like a sore thumb.” Whenever she travelled to Meridell, Annabelle always dressed in Meridellian fashions and colours in an effort to blend in and to remind those she met that she was a princess of Meridell as well as of Brightvale. However, on this trip, her bright blue fur and red-and-gold riding gown were producing the opposite effect, marking her as a foreigner who no longer truly belonged here. “I daresay I should’ve worn my black gown instead, but I didn’t want to risk reminding Skarl of Ellie’s funeral.”

     As the pair approached the gates to the castle, they saw a pair of Lupe knights ahead walking in the same direction, apparently returning to the castle after a patrol of the city. From behind, Annabelle had a moment of uncertainty as to their identities. Without colour, she suddenly realized how alike Neopets of the same species, gender, and social class must look. She silently signalled for Solarin to pause for a moment in order to study the pair better, and soon realized that the style of their armour was different, and that one was slightly taller and lankier than the other. The taller Lupe was wearing simple, solid plate armour, while the stockier one’s armour had chainmail sleeves and some ornamentation about the shoulders, which was more of an Altadorian style than a traditional Meridellian one. Confident that she now knew the identity of at least one (if not both) of these knights, she signalled for Solarin to continue, and they resumed their trek to the castle. She stopped Solarin again when she saw the knights’ ears swivel back in her direction and their hands instinctively reach for the hilts of their swords, indicating that they had heard the Uni’s hooves on the cobblestone road.

      “Sir Jeran! Sir Tormund!” Annabelle smiled when the two knights spun around at her greeting, realizing that both of her guesses had indeed been correct. “Please do not cut me down. I’m afraid my brothers might both take that poorly.”

      “Princess Annabelle!” they both shouted in unison as they bowed to her. Sir Jeran, as the higher-ranking of the two, then walked forward to greet her.

      “My apologies, Your Highness. I did not know you were coming, or I should have been on the lookout for you. Tor, did you know the Princess was coming?”

      “No, though I did write to her daughter this morning when I saw what had happened. In fact, I urged her to stay away.”

      “If I may offer a slight correction, Tor,” interjected Annabelle, “You urged Roberta to stay away, and so she did remain in Brightvale to begin the research project you set her. Your words, at least the ones she read aloud to me, did not urge me to stay away, nor, frankly, would I have listened to them if they had. Both of you have younger sisters, so I must hope that you will enter into the feelings of a younger sister who has heard that her older brother is ill. If not, then I shall have to ask Lady Lisha and Miss Lucy to take my side.”

      “For my part, that will not be necessary,” said Jeran with a weak smile. “My sister travelled three hundred years back in time because a museum curator implied that I would die in battle, which she wanted to prevent. Surely, if she had not already been here and affected likewise, it would take a far greater distance than that between Brightvale Castle and Meridell Castle to prevent her from coming to me now. I still would not wish to see you fall victim to this curse if it can be avoided, though.”

      “It’s a risk I am willing to take, Sir Jeran, if I can hope to bring even the slightest comfort to my brother Skarl. How is he? Do you know?”

      “Last I saw, he was leaving the castle with one of his guards and a sack of Blue Paintbrushes. I think he’s in Faerieland trying to repaint himself in the Rainbow Fountain. I imagine he’ll be back soon, though I don’t know if he’ll be back to normal or not. I suppose you would like to come with us to the castle to wait for him?”

      “I would, though I would find it much easier to talk to you both as we go if I were not mounted.” On cue, Jeran lifted his arms to help her dismount, nearly falling backwards as she slid down from Solarin’s back. “Oh dear, are you alright?”

      “To own the truth, Your Highness, ever since this morning I’ve felt rather drained,” Jeran admitted, running a paw through the tuft of fur between his ears. “My armour feels like it weighs twice as much as normal, though my training makes me loathe to change it for lighter mail. I would feel so vulnerable.”

      “Same here,” confessed Tor. “Same with my sword. I feel like it weighs a ton, but it also makes me feel like I have a chance of fighting, if it comes to it.”

      “I think,” Annabelle said after a thoughtful pause, “if switching to lighter armour and weapons would allow you to move more quickly and with more strength, it might be worth at least considering. Then again, I tend to defer to your expertise in these matters. Combat training formed but a small portion of my education as a princess. Languages, art, music, dancing, sewing, and domestic management were considered more important for my future than sword fighting.” Annabelle strode between the two Lupes, and together they continued walking up the hill toward the castle, with Solarin following behind with her luggage. “Don’t get me wrong, these are all important skills in their way, but if a situation arose where I had to fight, I fear I would be rather useless.”

      “And if I had to paint a picture or speak Tyrannian, I’d be useless,” replied Tor.

      “What you say about the lighter armour and weapons does make sense, though,” added Jeran. “Tor, perhaps we should find some lighter swords and mail when we return to the castle, then have a sparring match in the courtyard to test this out.”

      “We should probably use wasters rather than real swords, Jeran, at least while we test the idea. I still have the one my dad gave me before I first came to town. Hard to believe now that I was so proud to finally be entrusted with that wooden sword at the time. Now it feels more like a child’s toy than a real weapon.”

      “I’m sure it was an important moment in your life, Tor,” Annabelle pointed out, placing a hand on the stockier Lupe’s arm. “I know Sir Jeran went straight into using a real sword out of necessity, and the nobles with whom you now associate tend to get wasters at a much younger age and so wouldn’t necessarily think much of it. In fact, I distinctly remember Hagan and Skarl frequently hitting one another, and sometimes other noble boys, with wasters when they were young. In one particular instance, I remember a Grarrl page deciding to pull my hair and both of them immediately stopped fighting one another and instead began smacking him with their wasters. Now what was that Grarrl’s name…” Annabelle trailed off for a moment, then snapped her fingers. “Harlag! That was the name! Anyway, I also know that normally commoners aren’t supposed to have metal weapons other than farm tools, so for you, being entrusted with a waster probably would have been a sign that you were ready to be treated as an adult. Am I right?”

      “Yeah, it was the first time I was being trusted to leave Meri Acres on my own. My dad had a package he needed to be delivered to the recruitment centre here in town. I don’t think he realised what it would lead to, though, what with me becoming a knight and moving into the castle and everything.”

      “It’s hard for parents to let their adult children go off into the world where we can’t protect them anymore. Trust me, I know. Sending Roberta off on her first diplomatic mission without me was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do as a mother, and I imagine that letting you become a squire was equally hard on your father. I am glad that we were both able to let our children go, though, for if we hadn’t, both Meridell and Brightvale likely would have been destroyed. The day I let my daughter go on that mission was the day before she met you.” It was now Tor’s turn to offer a weak smile. “I do have to say, though,” Annabelle continued, “that I rather wish she had paused to at least let me know that she had returned to Brightvale safely before rushing off again to save the world.”

      “She said something very similar to me after we saved my parents’ farm from the clouds. After meeting my family, she said that she should’ve stopped in Brightvale to introduce me to you. Of course, I pointed out that at the time I probably smelled like a combination of low tide and sewage, so it was probably for the best that we limited the number of nobles I met prior to having the opportunity to take a proper bath and get a change of clothes. I definitely wouldn’t have wanted that to be the first impression I made on King Hagan if I’d had much of a choice in the matter.”

      “I assure you that, despite any smell, you still made a favourable impression on my brother Hagan. He found you to be very brave and intelligent. He respected that you were willing to stand up for Roberta, even if it meant going against him. A king needs pets around who are not afraid to tell him when he’s wrong. All too often, kings wind up surrounded by pets who refuse to disagree with them because they don’t think that they have the right to do so. When he learned that you were the son not of some knight or lord, who might be expected to be comfortable addressing royalty, but instead were the son of farmers, that respect was doubled. When he learned that you had, at that time, gone from farm boy to squire to knight in less than a week, that respect doubled again. He might be an advocate for brains over brawn, but he does understand how difficult the martial arts are and how much natural talent you must possess to advance so quickly. That goes for you as well, Jeran. Your rise was also incredibly rapid, as I recall, and you were even younger than Sir Tor here. I seem to recall that the first time Hagan saw you, he mistook you for a squire, and was shocked to see that you could already best almost all of his knights in combat.”

     The group of Neopets arrived outside the castle’s main entrance, and Jeran signalled for the two Grey Draiks flanking the gates to lower the drawbridge and allow them to enter. Tor immediately moved to help unload the saddlebags from Solarin, but Annabelle raised her hand to stop him.

      “I appreciate the thought, Tor, but I can carry my own bags into the hall. You’re carrying enough as it is.” Tor looked crestfallen, so Annabelle continued, “Unless, of course, there was some reason you wished to speak with me privately?”

     Before Tor could answer, a loud crunch behind them caused all four pets to spin around. A grey Uni pulling a large grey coach had just landed on the path a few meters away, barely avoiding hitting them as they skidded to a halt. A greyscale version of the Meridell royal crest was visible on the carriage door.

      “If so,” Annabelle whispered to Tor, “it may have to wait. It would appear that my brother Skarl is home.”

To be continued…