Alanna The First Adventure - By Tamora Pierce Page 0,3

both be skinned.”

“No one’s going to catch us, brother.” She reached across the distance between them, and they gripped hands warmly. “Good luck, Thom. Watch your back.”

“There are a lot of tests ahead for you,” Thom said earnestly. “Watch your back.”

“I’ll pass the tests,” Alanna said. She knew they were brave words, almost foolhardy, but Thom looked as if he needed to hear them. They turned their ponies then and rejoined the adults.

“Let’s go,” Alanna growled to Coram.

Maude and Thom took the left fork of the Great Road and Alanna and Coram bore right. Alanna halted suddenly, turning around to watch her brother ride off. She blinked the burning feeling from her eyes, but she couldn’t ease the tight feeling in her throat. Something told her Thom would be very different when she saw him again. With a sigh she turned Chubby back toward the capital city.

Coram made a face and urged his big gelding forward. He would have preferred doing anything to escorting a finicky boy to the palace. Once he had been the hardiest soldier in the King’s armies. Now he was going to be a joke. People would see that Thom was no warrior, and they would blame Coram—the man who was to have taught him the basics of the warrior’s craft. He rode for hours without a word, thinking his own gloomy thoughts, too depressed to notice that Thom, who usually complained after an hour’s ride, was silent as well.

Coram had been trained as a blacksmith, but he had once been one of the best of the King’s foot soldiers, until he had returned home to Trebond Castle and become sergeant-at-arms there. Now he wanted to be with the King’s soldiers again, but not if they were going to laugh at him because he had a weakling for a master. Why couldn’t Alanna have been the boy? She was a fighter. Coram had taught her at first because to teach one twin was to teach the other, poor motherless things. Then he began to enjoy teaching her. She learned quickly and well—better than her brother. With all his heart Coram Smythesson wished now, as he had in the past, that Alanna were the boy.

He was about to get his wish, in a left-handed way. The sun was glinting from directly overhead—time for the noon meal. Coram grunted orders to the cloaked child, and they both dismounted in a clearing beside the road. Pulling bread and cheese from a saddlebag, he broke off a share and handed it over. He also took the wineskin down from his saddle horn.

“We’ll make the wayhouse by dark, if not before,” he rumbled. “Till then, we make do with this.”

Alanna removed her heavy cloak. “This is fine with me.”

Coram choked, spraying a mouthful of liquid all over the road. Alanna had to clap him on the back before he caught his breath again.

“Brandy?” he whispered, looking at the wineskin. He returned to his immediate problem. “By the Black God!” he roared, turning spotty purple. “We’re goin’ back this instant, and I’m tannin’ yer hide for ye when we get home! Where’s that devils’spawn brother of yours?”

“Coram, calm down,” she said. “Have a drink.”

“I don’t want a drink,” he snarled. “I want t’ beat the two of ye till yer skins won’t hold water!” He took a deep gulp from the wineskin.

“Thom’s on his way to the City of the Gods with Maude,” Alanna explained. “She thinks we’re doing the right thing.”

Coram swore under his breath. “That witch would agree with you two sorcerers. And what does yer father say?”

“Why should he ever know?” Alanna asked. “Coram, you know Thom doesn’t want to be a knight. I do.”

“I don’t care if the two of ye want t’ be dancing bears!” Coram told her, taking another swallow from the skin. “Ye’re a girl.”

“Who’s to know?” She bent forward, her small face intent. “From now on I’m Alan of Trebond, the younger twin. I’ll be a knight—Thom’ll be a sorcerer. It’ll happen. Maude saw it for us in the fire.”

Coram made the Sign against evil with his right hand. Magic made him nervous. Maude made him nervous. He drank again to settle his nerves. “Lass, it’s a noble thought, a warrior’s thought, but it’ll never work. If ye’re not caught when ye bathe, ye’ll be turning into a woman—”

“I can hide all that—with your help. If I can’t, I’ll disappear.”

“Yer father will have my hide!”

She made a face. “Father doesn’t care about anything but