40. The plan (1)

In the days that followed, Hilda and William did the rounds together constantly. They had gone to look at Calandra's house and indeed found footsteps of Grizbles. That made it clear Lamador had his hand in Calandra's vanishing.

They enjoyed flying together, and it made William more and more certain of his grasp of the broom. Hilda thought up challenges for him to perform while they were in flight, and some of them were pretty severe. He had to learn how to keep in flight while doing magic that required lots of attention.

After the rounds they spent a lot of time on preparing all things for the plan that William had brought up. They had one and a half moon of time to put it all into effect, and stage one was arriving very quickly.

"Are we all set?" William looked around, trying to remember everything they had worked on. "Nothing forgotten?"

"No, I am certain we have everything, William." Following that, she went to check the closet where they had stored their gear and made sure for the fourth time it was empty. "See, told you." Secretly she was glad she had taken that last look.

"Good." William picked up the two dice that were on the floor and slipped them in his hidden pocket. He sealed it so the two itty bitty objects could not fall out. "Then we're ready to move out."

Hilda nodded. "House, be good, okay? We should be back in three days at the most."

"Yes, yes, I know. You have not stopped talking about it the last weeks so I know everything about it."

"As long as you keep your- ehm... don't say a thing to anyone, okay?" William said.

"Don't worry. Who wants to talk to a house anyway..."

The couple went outside, the brooms floating along behind them. Hilda closed the door. "Okay William, better step back a bit more."

She took her wand, said a spell, and the giant amount of chains and padlocks materialised around the house again.

"Holy Bejeebus," William said as he saw the incredible size of it all.

Hilda grinned. She snipped her fingers, and the sign appeared in her hand. "Hmmm... not all correct now," she mumbled. She moved the wand over it and put it on the main padlock. "Right, we're clear. Let's go."

The two mounted their brooms and flew off, leaving the house encapsuled in iron. The sign said: "The witch (and wizard) is out."

"I must say, William, that this is the weirdest approach to a challenge I have ever taken," Hilda said as they were on their way. "I hope I am not regretting this."

"What is your alternative?", William asked, his face serious.

"Oh, shush you. I am still the witch in charge, remember?" She threw her hair back and her eyes flashed blue. Her laughter was music to William's ears.

"I love you, you wicked witch," he grinned and pulled her close to steal a kiss from her.

"Hands off, you," she grinned, "I am in charge of navigation as you don't know where we have to go. If someone does the grabbing and groping, it's me." And she proved that immediately.

The landscape beneath them slowly changed. The hills slowly flattened, but the grassy areas remained, as did the forest. The only change in those was the slightly more reddish colours that came into the leaves.

"The trees will get more and more red, the more we get west," Hilda explained. "It appears to be something in the soil that makes them turn the colour of rust."

William nodded. He had heard of things like that happening before. "So first we get to the kingdom of Lorn, right? A friendly one."

"Yep," Hilda confirmed, "that's a piece of cherry pie. And after that we have to make our way along the borders of Ringeholm and Oxfern. Each of them don't like Walt and his ways, flying is forbidden there, so we may have to do some fancy flying to avoid the people who will be shooting at us."

"Yes, you mentioned those." William went over her words in his mind. "They have the terrible bows that can take out a flying witch."

"Yes. Not too bad because they are slow to load and not very accurate, but still it is best not to get one of those suckers in your eye. Or anywhere else."

William wondered about bows that were powerful enough to fling a large arrow up several hundred yards into the air. The prospect of meeting them filled him with eagerness, awe andalso a healthy dose of fear.

Not long after that, they came past a long thin silvery line. The River For Lorn, William remembered. "Very nice view, it is like a silver strip."

"Yes, it's nice from up here. They drown their death convicts in it," Hilda said. "But they drag them out again after some days, otherwise the water will go bad."

"Oh. Uhm. I see." Suddenly the river looked very different to William. Hilda did not appear to be affected in any way. Well, the convicts probably deserved that fate, he told himself and tried to forget the remark the witch had made.

The trees by now had turned completely red.

"Hilda, would it be possible that we go lower for a few moments? I'd love to see these trees up close," said William.

"Sure, we're fine here," she smiled and dove down, shrieking her laughter as the thrill got to her. William laughed as he followed her.

The trees were red. No doubt possible. The leaves looked like they were on fire, with many shades of red, from burgundy to bright red. The trunks of the trees and the branches too were more rust-coloured, brown-red, but everything about the trees was affected by the substance in the soil that coloured all plants.

"It is really amazing," said William as they were gaining altitude again. "I've never seen trees that red, and in my old world some trees would turn very red in the autumn."

"Yes, it's cute, isn't it? It could have been cuter though," Hilda sighed.

William looked at her and grinned. He did not need a link to her to know what she meant.

The witch looked at him. "What?"

"Purple," was all he said.

"Yes!" Her face outshone the sun for a moment. "Now that would be wicked!"

They kept joking about trees and entire forests in all kinds of colours, and that way they had crossed the kingdom of Lorn rather quickly. Just before they were to reach the twoneighbouring problem spots, they found a good spot to land and have a quick lunch. There was water from a natural well, cool and refreshing. Soon they were airborne again, Hilda in the lead as she knew the route.

At first the trip went without a problem. There were no large bows, no arrows coming for them, and the trees turned back to normal tree-colours after a while.

Suddenly, after little over an hour, Hilda said: "I see a few. Careful. I think they've seen us also."

"How can they distinguish us from birds at this altitude?", William wondered out loud.

"They have wizards and witches down there too, dummy. They use their magical powers to scan the skies."

William could slap himself. That was so logical, he should have been able to figure that one out himself. "And the no flying here? Does that have to do with some aerial attack or so?"

"Yes. A dozen or so centuries ago Ringeholm had dragons, they used to fly them around everywhere. Then an insane Marshall assembled a small squadron of some three hundred dragons and - oh crap, there they come."

At first William was puzzled and looked around for three hundred dragons. Then it occurred to him that Hilda had spotted something coming from the ground as she made a swoop with her broom.

William looked down and also saw something coming at them. "Holy Bejeebus!" He yanked his broom to the side as something the size of a small tree was on its way to him. It missed him by at least twenty yards, but the sight of that thing coming was highly impressive.

"Okay, it is obvious to see why these things are hard to load up," he muttered, "but a direct hit of one of these babies will take you out of commission permanently."

Hilda maneuvered her broom closer to his again. "See what I mean?"

"Oh yes, and you did not exaggerate one word," William said. "Perhaps flying a bit faster would be an option."

"No! Don't even think of that. Going fast usually gives them even more reason to believe we have hostile things in mind and we don't. At this moment the arrows are shot by ordinaries, and that is how we want things to be. When they suspect bad things, they bring in the magical people, and I don't want first hand experience of what they do with these things."

William understood from her words that she did have second hand experiences. It was better not to ask now, he decided.

"We're now halfway over Ringeholm," Hilda told him. "The number of arrows will get a bit worse from here on, so watch me and also watch for yourself. They seem to move the bows around, nobody ever knows where they are except their soldier-bosses."

They spent an uncomfortable hour avoiding trees that were flung at them, and William was less and less eager to have a look at the bows that were capable of such a feat. He just wanted get away from this area as soon as possible and preferably in one piece, together with Hilda.

Finally he noticed that Hilda relaxed. "Are we in the clear now?" His arms hurt from holding the broomstick, as the jolts he had it make were quite radical at times.

"Yes, a few more minutes and we are in Herald's kingdom," she said. Hilda too was glad they had this behind them. Her arms also hurt, and she felt pity for William who was hurting much more. She knew that through the link. "If you want, we can land when we're there. Plenty of safe spots."

"If you fly on, I fly on," he said.

Hilda pulled her broom next to his. "Don't give me that, William. I know your arms almost fall off, so we are going down first chance we have. And I don't want you to say anything but yes or okay."

"Yes. Okay. Sweetheart. Thank you for getting us through this."