A Quest of Heroes by Morgan Rice

“He’s always picking fights. I’m Reece.”
    “Thank you,” Thor said, reaching out his hand, “for choosing me as your partner. I don’t know what I would have done without it.”
    “I’m happy to choose anyone who stands up to that brute,” Reece said happily. “That was a nice fight.”
    “Are you kidding?” Thor asked, wiping dried blood from his face and feeling his welt swell up. “He killed me.”
    “But you didn’t give up,” Reece said. “Impressive. Any of the others of us would have just stayed down. And that was one hell of a spear throw. How did you learn to throw like that? We shall be partners for life!” He looked at Thor meaningfully as he shook his hand. “And friends, too. I can sense it.”
    As Thor shook his hand, he couldn’t help but feel that he was making a friend for life.
    Suddenly, he was poked from the side.
    He spun and saw an older boy standing there, with pockmarked skin and a long and narrow face.
    “I am Feithgold. Erec’s squire. You are now his second squire. Which means you answer to me. And we have a tournament in minutes. Are you going to just stand there when you been made squire to the most famous knight in the kingdom? Follow me! Quickly!”
    Reece had already turned away, and Thor turned and hurried after the squire as he ran across the field. He had no idea where they were going—but he didn’t care. He was singing inside. He had made it.
    He could hardly believe it.
    He had made it.
     
     

 
     
    CHAPTER SEVEN
     
     
    Gareth hurried across King’s court, dressed in his royal fineries, pushing his way amidst the masses who poured in from all directions for his sister’s wedding, and he fumed. He was still reeling from his encounter with his father. How was it possible that he was skipped over? That his father would not choose him as king? It made no sense. He was the firstborn legitimate son. That was the way it had always worked. He had always, from the time he was born, assumed he would reign—he had no reason to think otherwise.
    It was unconscionable. Passing him over for a younger sibling—and a girl, no less. When word spread, he would be the laughingstock of the kingdom. As he walked, he felt as if the wind had been knocked out of him, and he did not know how to catch his breath.
    He stumbled his way with the masses towards the wedding ceremony of his elder sister. He looked about, saw the multitude of colored robes, the endless streams of people, all the different folk from all the different provinces. He hated being this close to commoners. This was the one time when the poor could mingle with the rich, the one time those savages from the Eastern Kingdom, from the far side of the Highlands, had been allowed in, too. Gareth still could hardly conceive that his sister was being married off to one of them. It was a shrewd political move by his father, a pathetic attempt to make peace between the kingdoms.
    Even stranger, somehow, his sister seemed to actually like this creature. Gareth could hardly conceive why. Knowing her, it was not the man she liked, but the title, the chance to be queen of her own province. She would get what she deserved: they were all savages, those on the other side of the Highlands. In Gareth’s mind, they lacked his civility, his refinery, his sophistication. It was not his problem. If his sister was happy, let her be married off. It was just one less sibling to have around that might stand in his way to the throne. In fact, the farther away she was, the better.
    Not that any of this was his concern anymore. After today, he would never be king. Now, he would be relegated to being just another anonymous prince in his father’s kingdom. Now, he had no path to power; now he was doomed to a life of mediocrity.
    His father had underestimated him—he always had. His father considered himself politically shrewd—but Gareth knew that he was much shrewder, and always had been. For instance, this marrying off of Luanda to