Chapter Four

The gravesites, side-by-side, were unmarked. No headstone. No monument. No
marker. Nothing to indicate that there were bodies in coffins under the freshly
turned soil. Jenner, in his twisted wisdom, had ordered King Nicodemus and Sir
Jonathan Brisbee hastily buried in the most isolated "potter's field"
in all Londontown. A field that had long ago been reserved for traitors, spies
and other such threats to the Crown and its subjects.

Even through his tears, Justin could see the irony in Jenner's choice. To
the new King, Nicodemus was, in fact, a traitor. A traitor to Jenner's perverse
ideals of greed, vanity and power for its own sake. Therefore, he deserved, in
his adopted sibling's eyes at least, to be interred with others of the ilk.

Justin thought back to the last time that he had cried. An orphan himself,
he had just turned twelve, still no more than a kit. He had spent his first
night away from home in the barracks of the Kings Guards where he and about two
dozen other boys had been sent. He had not been the only one to cry himself to
sleep; but since he was the smallest and youngest, he was the one who all of the
other young animals mercilessly ragged on that first day. That night he had
resolved never to cry again as long as he served his King. Through the years,
he had not only served The King; and when the old ruler eventually died, his
heir, King Nicodemus and his Prince Regent, Jenner; he'd served with such
distinction that he was the first Captain-of the-Guard to be picked from the
Guard's own ranks (usually a Colonel from the Army was given the job, which for
all its supposed pomp and glory was considered a step down in status) and the
youngest to attain the post to boot! And all but one of the others who had been
in his troop that first night and day had been either sent back to wherever
they had come from or had transferred to postings in His Majesty's Army. But
the one who had stayed was Sullivan.

Justin had known that Sullivan was trouble from the first week that their
troop had begun training. The young wolf was lazy, mean-spirited, disrespectful
and a bully to the others and, when he could get away with it, a thief.
Unfortunately, he was also a competent soldier when he applied himself to the
task; one had only to ask the many training partners with dislocated joints or
broken bones whom he had sent to the infirmary at one time or another. Justin
himself had suffered a few bruises at the business end of one of Sullivan's
quarterstaffs or practice swords, but his own natural lithness and an almost,
some thought, preternatural ability to predict where the wolf would strike his
next blow; although Justin would have pointed out that Sullivan, if observed
for a long enough period of time, would telegraph his next blow as he became
overconfident; had helped him to tie or best his colleague, even if the result
was only a bruise to Sullivan's egorather than his hide. But Sullivan was also
a natural sycophant, and it was only natural that he should have fallen under
the influence of the Prince Regent.

Jenner, for all his skills as a master manipulator, sorely lacked any real
battlefield leadership abilities. While his grasp of military knowledge
bordered on the merely adequate and he could recite most of the lessons taught
him by rote, although with little passion, his real skill, as he would show
from the day of his investiture, was to make no end of trouble for his ever-forgiving
adoptive brother. Jenner and Sullivan, therefore, were soon secretly hatching
plots to rid themselves of the various perceived obstacles on their path to
power. The first victim had been their most difficult; the King's Physician,
Doctor Ages. Jenner had, with the help of various allies among the lesser
so-called "nobles", started a rumor that an "agent
provocateur" had been sent from one of the continental Empires to poison
or somehow incapacitate His Majesty as a first step to the conquest of Britain.
Somehow, in a manner that Justin had never been able to discover, Jenner or
Sullivan or one of his allies had skillfully mixed a near-lethal dose of poison
into the King's ale; planting just enough evidence along a trail that Justin,
then a young Troop-Captain, was forced to follow when he was appointed to be
the Chief Investigator; thus implicating Ages. With a heavy heart; because he,
along with the King's Coroner, a wise young fox named Jonathan Brisbee,
believed the good Doctor to be innocent of the charges; he had been forced to
send Ages to exile in the countryside. But the three quickly hatched a plot of
their own. They vowed to use every means at their disposal to counter Jenner's
every effort, no matter how small, to take the Crown. Brisbee, ironically, was
Titled for his part in the "successful" completion of the
investigation and given the post of Chancellor, who spoke for His Majesty when
the King was conducting business elsewhere. This also entitled Sir Jonathan to
wear The Amulet, a stone so fabled for its powers; though no one in living
memory had ever seen them applied; that all factual information, beyond the
stories passed from generation to generation, had been lost aeons ago. Justin,
much to his shock, was also promoted; over Sullivan, in fact; which was
probably what prompted the wolf to resign his commission in the King's Guard
and become Jenner's personal aide-de-camp. And so, for the past several years,
these three colleagues had, in great secrecy, been both eyes and ears; watching
and listening and trading tiny scraps of information between each other; to
keep both the Crown and, far more importantly, The Amulet away from Jenner's
grasp.

But all those years of effort had been in vain. He lay prostrate on the wet
grass at the foot of the twin gravesites as sobs of grief wracked his body,
years of suppressed emotions freeing themselves as they ran rampant through his
mind. "Oh, Your Majesty!" he cried. "I was supposed to die under
that wall, not you! You have a whole Kingdom that needs your guidance and
wisdom! I would gladly give up my own life if it would bring back yours!"
A gentle rain, blown in from the Sea by a fair early-Summer's breeze, began to
fall. Justin got to his knees and hung his head in shame. "Jonathan,"
He sobbed. "You had a wife, children...a family! I don't even know my own
last name! You and your family had a future together! All that I had was my
post in the Guard." Now even this was denied him. The rain fell harder,
soaking into his fur and mingling with his tears, causing him to shiver as a
cold wind began to moan through the surrounding trees. A distant noise, like
the slow roll of a side-drum at a funeral procession, told him that another
storm was approaching. Justin heaved a sigh of defeat. He dimly Ωremembered
stories that his adoptive mother had told him about the brave and gallant
Knights of ancient times who, before going into battle, would meditate or pray
at the grave of a dead predecessor in hopes that the spirit of the one buried
therein would offer advice or words of encouragement. "Your Majesty;
Jonathan. Please forgive me. I'm so lost right now. I've depended on the wisdom
of others for so much of my life that I have none of my own. For only the
second time in my whole life I'm completely alone!" Only the wind and
another distant drum-roll of thunder answered his plea.

After a moment he stood, drew his sword, and rendered his best salute.
A moment later, after sheathing the blade, he drew two arrows from the quiver
that lay nearby and; following an old, honored and nearly forgotten Guards
tradition taught to him by his predecessor; in quick succession, he nocked and
launched them, symbolically puncturing the sky and givingnotice to the
spirit-world that two more heros were coming to join their ranks.

Chapter Five

The bare whisps of cloud glowed pale orange-pink with the last rays of the
setting sun. The dark purple sky glistened with many constellations; broken,
but also complimented by, the thin streak of crescent moon in the East. Mrs.
Brisbee and her children stared in wonder at this display of Nature's nocturnal
glory. "It's the most beautiful sight I've ever seen!" She exclaimed.
"My, my! You have been living in the city too long. This is the roof that
covers my head just about every night!" Jeremysaid; then, after thinking
for a moment, he added, "But it does have a tendency to leak every once in
a while." He smiled, pleased by the cleverness of his observation. Mrs.
Brisbee returned it with one of her own. Jeremy had been a wonderful companion
on their journey. He had a seemingly endless supply of entertaining banter
about all of his various adventures as a wandering minstrel. While he saw
himself as a last true practitioner of the old Bardic traditions; and Mrs.
Brisbee had to admit to herself that his voice, while relatively untrained, was
more than up to the task that he had set for himself; his most glaring
deficiency was a distinct lack of skill on his chosen instrument. It was not
that he lacked enthusiasm, nor probably even talent. But other than a few of
the simplest chords, he simply couldn't play the lute.

Mrs. Brisbee, however, was no stranger to the instrument. All young ladies
of the court were made aware of the importance of music as a part of daily
life. While the "household arts" were usually stressed as the way to
excite the wiles of the male ego, a virginal, mandolin or; for the more daring
among them; an archlute and a small repitoire of romantic ballads
were,according to tradition, excellent aids in catching one's intended husband.
Mrs. Brisbee, of course,had never put as much stock in those
"traditions" as the other girls, but this did not mean that she
hadn't enjoyed making music. While never really able to master the keyboard
instruments (she had the annoying habit of pounding them into submission rather
than produce anything even remotely resembling decent music) she had found her
calling playing stringed instruments popular in the court as well as, and this
had really caused sometalk among the more snobbish of the ladies, the guitar,
thought suited only to the tastes of gypsies, tramps and thieves. But after her
marriage to Jonathan, recently available because of his Titlement by The King,
and her own appointment as Administrator-of-Household, she had been forced to
give up any musical pursuits.

But with the death of her beloved husband, and especially with four small
children to support, even the nomadic life that Jeremy chose to live was
beginning to look more than a little promising, particularly since they were
now fugitives from whatever law that Jenner might use to persecute them.

"Pence for your thought, Ma'am?" Jeremy asked softly, a touch of
concern in his usually jaunty voice.

Her slight scowl must have embarrassed him because he looked remorseful as
he said, "You had that faraway look that my mom used to get when she told
me bedtime stories aboutmy father. He was a minstrel too. He even had the honor
of performing for Nicodemus whenhe was still the Crown Prince." Mrs.
Brisbee's expression softened as she asked, "Do you ever visit your
parents, with all of the travelling that you do?" Jeremy bowed his head
and stared at the dewy grass, which reflected tiny sparkles of light from the
moon and stars. "My father died in the Plague just before my brood hatched.
Mom died a couple of years ago. Mybrothers and sisters say that she died of old
age." He paused for a moment, as if to collect his thoughts, then sighed
and continued. "But I think she really died from the sadness caused by a
broken heart." Mrs. Brisbee laid a sympathetic paw on his back and nodded
herunderstanding. The rooster smiled his own, the characteristic playful glint
visible again even in the near-total darkness of the meadow that surrounded
them. Nearby, the children were catching fireflies Ωand putting them in
the lantern-glass, the fuel to keep it burning having run out long before.

"What do you say we get going, eh?" Jeremy asked in a comic
dialect as he fairly skipped, as if a small child himself, toward the cart.
"I hear tell th' Sheriff o' Nottin'ham's looking t' arrest a mama fox an'
'er kids for nabbin' th' King's fireflies!" The children giggled and
laughed at the rooster's childish antics; but, soon enough, they were back on
the road.

Mrs. Brisbee had no idea what time it was when she was awakened by Martin.
Jeremy had insisted before they leave the meadow that she climb into the cart,
cramped as it was, and get a few hours of desperately needed rest.

"Where are we? How long have I been asleep?" She asked, climbing
down from the back of the conveyance.

"Oh, it's probably sometime after midnight." Jeremy answered
casually.

She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and looked in the direction Ωthat
he indicated with an outstretched wing. Up ahead she could see a small house;
dark, except for several candles burning in one lower-story window.

A few minutes later, she knocked at the heavy wooden door. "Dr.
Ages!" She called out. "Dr. Ages, are you home?"

"Go Away!" A harsh, grating voice yelled.

She knocked on the door again. "Dr. Ages! Please, I have to talk to
you!"

"Go Away!" The voice said again.

Mrs. Brisbee now pounded insistently on the thick wood. "Dr. Ages!
Please! I must speak..." She was taken aback when the door suddenly flew
open. "...with you." she murmured.

Before her stood an ancient badger. His fur was patchy and faded white,
including the eyestripes that gave all members of his species their distinctive
look, and even his eyes, which must once have been brown or even black, had
faded to a rheumy bluish-gray. He wore a rough-textured heavy cassock, almost
like a sackcloth, as if he were doing penance for some sin.

"Great Jupiter, Woman! What do you want?" He demanded.

"Oh, thank goodness you're home! I know that you don't know who I
am..." She started to explain.

"Yes, I do. You're Jonathan's widow. I'm sorry about your husband's
death. Now, if you'll excuse me..." He started to close the door.

"No! Please wait! Justin sent me!" She exclaimed frantically.

The old badger regarded her skeptically, and then opened the door the rest
of the way and peered into the darkness. "Alright," He said, with
more than a hint of reluctance in his tone. "But get that cart into the
barn. And tell those kids not to touch anything. I'm working on something,
uh...something very important!"

While Jeremy went to park the cart in the barn, Mrs. Brisbee settled her
children in the attic of the house where they were put to sleep in makeshift
beds.

When she returned downstairs, Ages was drinking tea with Jeremy and
listening to the events leading up to his meeting the Brisbee family. When Ages
saw her, he waved her over to a large, overstuffed chair that had obviously
been sat in far too many times. He motioned toward the tea, still intent on the
rooster's story. She nodded, poured herself a cup and carefully tasted it. Surprisingly,
it was absolutely delicious; it tasted like pepper and gingeroot with a hint of
willowbark.

Ages, noticing the expression on her face, interrupted Jeremy, saying,
"Like that, huh? It's my own special concoction. The willowbark's in there
to take the ache out of these old bones."

After Jeremy finished his narrative of events of the past few days, Ages
turned his attention to the beautiful fox seated before him. "Mrs.
Brisbee," he began cordially, "First let me apologize for my behavior
earlier tonight. I'm afraid I've been away from both civilization and the
King's court for so long that my social graces have atrophied from
disuse."

He lifted himself from his seat, with no small amount of difficulty, as the
popping of various joints throughout his frame seemed to attest. Mrs. Brisbee
was about to stand up to help him, but he motioned her to stay seated. "If
I start asking for help every time my bones start creaking, they'll start
gettin' lazy an' I'll have to get someone to look after me. I'm afraid I value
my privacy too much to contemplate that ever happening." He shuffled over
to the fireplace and placed a well-aged log into the glowing embers.

"I imagine that you must have many questions about the events that have
disrupted your life and those of your children over the past two days. I
promise that I will try to answer as many as possible tonight. But I must also
warn you that there are some questions that you will ask that I will not, for
my own reasons, be willing or able to answer." Ages ambled back to his
chair and nestled back into its warm embrace.

Mrs. Brisbee hardly knew where to begin. Almost without thinking, she
blurted out, "How did you know who I was? Justin told me before he left us
that you might recognize me, but I must confess that I've never laid eyes on
you in my life."

The old badger chuckled, as if he had all the worlds secrets. "Why, my
Lady Marian, I was at your mothers side when she was giving birth to you!
Infact, you were my very first medical assignment after my appointment as Royal
Physician. That you don't remember me comes as no surprise to me because I
became the King's Physician only three years later and you had barely left your
teens when Jenner got me implicated in that poisoning scandal that indirectly
led to your marriage to Jonathan!"

"You knew Jonathan?" She gasped, sitting bolt-upright as if hit
between the shoulder blades with a sledgehammer.

Ages eyes darkened as he bitterly recalled the circumstances Ωof how
they crossed paths. "Jenner saw me as an obstacle to power because he knew
that Nicodemus trusted me implicitly with his health and I returned the favor
with unswerving loyalty. You'll remember that rumors abounded that one of the
Continental ΩEmpires was trying to kill him in order to take control of
the Crown. Jenner, with the help of certain allies in the lower aristocracy,
then somehow gave Nicodemus a dose of poison, only enough to make him ill, and
then cleverly laid the blame at my door. But the two officials appointed to the
case were no fools. Jonathan suspected Jenner because none of the clues led
outside of his circle of friends. The other official, a young Guardsman named
Justin, did indeed first suspect me; but Jonathan kept asking the right
questions and making Justin look beyond that which was in front of his eyes. In
the end, we found that Jenner had manipulated the evidence against me in such a
way that, no matter what we tried to present to the contrary, I would still be
seen asa traitor to my King, and probably end up on the gallows. I decided to
let myself be exiled here, where, with the help of your late husband and
Justin, bless their souls, we did what we could to protect Nicodemus and keep
the Crown and that Amulet..." He motioned to the stone that hung around
her neck. "...away from Jenner."

"But what happened?" Mrs. Brisby asked, her voice a choked whisper
as tears ran down her cheeks. "Why didn't he ever tell me any of this?
Why?"

Ages sighed. "I think," He stated as he pulled his chair closer to
hers. "That it would be best to answer your second question first. When we
made our vows to protect King, Crown, Amulet, and by extension, Country; we
also vowed secrecy so that, if any one of us should fall into Jenner's paws
should he become too powerful to control, the other two would either attempt a
rescue or, failing that, kill him so that he couldn't reveal the identities of
the other two, who were to try to keep up the fight. What happened?" Ages
shook his head sadly, seeming to age many decades in those few moments.
"Justin found out that Jenner somehow got wind of Jonathan's part in our
conspiracy of light. He didn't figure out until too late that Jenner sabotaged
the tower wall to make it tumble down onto King Nicodemus andyour husband.
After he saw it fall on them,Justin tried to dig them both out; but too many of
Jenner's assistants were closing in and, besides, there was no way to have
survived under all those tons of stone, mortar and wood. Justin did the only
thing that he could think to do at that moment: he grabbed the Amulet which had
fallen from Jonathan's neck..."

"And gave it to me." Mrs. Brisby whispered.

"Yes. Justin trusts you. He's always believed that you and Jonathan
were right for each other; even though, when you two first met, I believed
differently." When he saw her questioning look, he continued. "You
see, I have been keeping track of my patients for many, many years. The reports
on you were always extremely ambiguous. You were a practical girl. You were an
impulsive girl. You were charitable almost to a fault. You were utterly,
ruthlessly efficient as an Administrator. Where Jonathan saw qualities that
made you an ideal wife in his eyes; I saw someone who might, however
unwittingly, undermine our efforts to keep King Nicodemus on the Throne. It was
Justin who convinced me that you were a loving and trustworthy companion for
him."

Mrs. Brisbee sat dazed by what she was hearing, a wave of fatigue washing
over her. Jeremy, who had been listening in rapt attention, now spoke up.
"Now I know why the Sheriffs have had their Deputies locking up all the
alms-seekers and homeless these past few weeks! Jenner probably set this thing
in motion weeks ago, right under King Nicodemus's nose!"

"I shouldn't be at all surprised." Ages stated. "The Sheriffs
have a lot of latitude when it comes to enforcing the criminal and civil codes.
Nicodemus wanted to try to rein them in. No doubt that Jenner would have jumped
at the opportunity to offer them almost unlimited localpower in return for
their support. Clearing the streets of so-called "undesirable
elements" would certainly signal to him that they are serious about giving
that support." He looked at the rooster, his face set with concern.
"I would suggest that you stay here with Mrs. Brisbee for the near future,
my friend. I'm going to let you sleep in the house from now on. We'll have to
get some beds from the abandoned inn a few miles down the road tomorrow.
Tonight I'm afraid you'll have to make do on the couch in here; I'll see if I
can find some more blankets somewhere."

To both of them he said, "I know that you've been through quite a bit
these past few days, and I'm afraid that things are going Ωto get far
worse before they begin to get better. But if all of us work together for our
mutual benefit we have a chance of making it through, hopefully relatively
unscathed." He then glanced at what looked like a complicated sculpture
that occupied most of a nearby table. "Great Jupiter!" He exclaimed,
rising to his feet; more joints popping as he did so. "It's almost three-thirty!"
He bade Mrs. Brisbee good night and hurried off to find Jeremy his promised
blankets.

Mrs Brisbee made her way up to the attic and removed her cape and folded it,
placing it at the foot of her improvised bed. The Amulet she hung from a
protruding dowel that she had noticed earlier while putting the children to
bed. She crawled under her covers and fell asleep as soon as her head hit the
folded blanket that was her pillow. But hers was the uneasy sleep of hunted
prey.

Chapter Six

The morning Sun had only just cleared the horizon when Justin forced himself
once again to stop and rest. He had been loping along at a good clip since just
before dawn, after only a few hours of fitful sleep in an abandoned stone shed.
He had been using old marching trails, cut centuries before when a
proliferation of small armies rampaged through Britain before she was united
under one King, now grown over from disuse. He could not see or be seen from
the road, which this particular trail paralleled from a short distance away.
Other than a bit of heavier than normal breathing Justin hadn't even broken a
sweat, such was the excellence of his physical condition.

The only sounds from the forest that he had heard were the wind whispering
through the trees and rustling leaves and his own Ωfootfalls, which
weren't much louder. Stealth was not normally part of the training for a
primarily ceremonial posting, but in recent years Justin had come to believe
that any advantages that one could gain over one's adversaries were all too
often the difference between survival and an early grave.

He wondered what the future, his future, held. He had considered taking Lady
Brisbee and her children and moving them North to the Scottish Lands. But the
animals in those parts were almost as wild as the land that they inhabited; and
the land itself was so poor that Justin doubted that he and the Lady could
sustain the needs of her family for very long. He had also considered taking
them to Wales, the small Duchy that no British monarch had ever been able to
force to join the Kingdom. He knew that its Duke bore no love for Jenner and
that he and King Nicodemus seemed to bear no grudge against each other, but the
Duke was a very wily old hare who no doubt would have let the children; who
were, after all, rabbits; in, but would never have approved of a pair of
unmarried foxes as parents. "No," He decided grimly, "I must
help her to rebuild her shattered life here in Britain as much as I possibly
can."

He was snapped out of his reverie by a commotion from the road. The crack of
a whip, an item that had been banned from use in the Kingdom for centuries,
sounded in the morning air. He had once seen one of these vile instruments of
torture demonstrated on an old tree trunk that stood near the Guards parade
ground and had been sickened by the very thought that one animal might once
have used it to inflict pain on another. He carefully made his way to a small
stand of brush to investigate the scene that was taking place on the road not
far away.

A group of peasants, racoons by the look of them, was being forced to carry
a huge sedan-chair. Normally, prisoners volunteered for such duty because it
shaved time off of their sentence. But none of the animals under the load; a
fat, baggy-eyed boar whom Justin recognized as a very successful merchant and
one of Jenner's more unlikable allies; was wearing a prison uniform. And the
merchant, whose name Justin could not remember, was unescorted. He could see no
Deputy to guard the carriers, as was the prescribed practice.

"Dammit!" The merchant grunted. "I said get moving!" He
let loose another blow, putting a bloody stripe across the back of one of his
victims. The poor racoon cringed in agony but desperately bent to his
near-impossible task without so much as a whimper.

Justin paled in horror at this sight. "Have Jenner's friends grown so
arrogant and black-hearted that they now feel free to enslave peasants?"
He asked himself.

The merchant landed yet another stroke on the poor racoon's back. "When
I say move, I mean MOVE!" He squealed, almost as if delighted by the sound
of the whipcrack and his own anger.

Justin could stand no more of this. He curled his lip and emitted a low
growl; his feet fairly flying as he, quietly as a light summers breeze, made
his way to a tall oak tree with a large overhanging branch that he'd spotted a
short ways back. With the help of ivy vines growing up from the base of the
huge trunk, he was up the tree and kneeling, like an avenging angel over an
unrepentant sinner; over the spot in the road where the bent and bloodied
racoons half-dragged, half-carried their enormous, cursing burden.

The boar never noticed Justin silently draw his sword out of its scabbard.
He was too busy whipping the racoons and his sadistic frenzy to see or hear
Justin swoop down with the sword over his head uttering a primal cry not heard
since animals first walked on their hind legs.

The sword missed the merchant's head by no more than the thickness of a
butterfly's wing; instead coming down full-force on the back of the seat of the
chair and through the platform that supported it, rending the entire structure
in two. Justin dropped expertly to the ground as it gave way. The merchant,
caught totally unawares, landed awkwardly and painfully on his ample rump. The
racoons were all thrown clear and uninjured to one side or another of the road.
With speed born of years of practice in combat training drills; Justin, using
the end of the hilt as a cudgel, drove it into the back of the boar's neck,
stunning him into unconsciousness.

When he awoke, the merchant found that he'd been stripped to his silk
underwear and tied tight, paw and hoof, face-to-face to a large and very sturdy
looking oak tree. "What's the meaning of this!" he grunted, trying to
see behind him but having no luck because of his thick neck and multiple chins.
He could also still feel the lump that had formed as the result of the blow to
his head. "Whoever you are, you'd better let me go! I'm a friend of the
new King!" He tried his best to sound in command of the situation, but
there was no way to keep a large measure of nervousness out of his voice.
Suddenly, a fox stepped casually into his limited field of vision, paws behind
his back, the expressionless vulpine eyes regarding him coldly. It took a few
moments, but soon a glimmer of recognition crept into the boar's mind.
"Y-You're the C-Captain-of-the-Guard!" He stammered. A hard smile
came to Justin's face. "I was the Captain-of-the-Guard. Jenner has, shall
we say, relieved me of my duties." He said sarcastically.

"Well, whatever you are or aren't, get over here and untie me and I'll
see to it that you're amply rewarded!" The merchant exclaimed, the relief
in his voice still tinged with nervousness. "And hurry it up! The bandits
who robbed me may still be about!"

A nasty glare darkened Justin's face as he brought the whip into sight.
"Bandits are the least of your worries at the moment." He stated
flatly. The boar's eyes widened in panic. Justin walked over and knelt down,
using the coiled whip to lift the boar's many-layered chin, to confront him
nose-to-snout. "I never thought," Justin hissed angrily, "That I
would see the day when one animal would feel that he could enslave another
using something like this!" He indicated the whip that he held with
narrowed, burning eyes. "But I guess that as long as Jenner wears the
Crown, anything can happen." Justin then rose and began pacing around the
merchant as a vulture circles a fresh kill. "I sent those poor racoons
home. You know, of course, that all of them are going to have a permanent
reminder of their mistreatment at your hands. Their children or parents or
relatives are gonna wonder why their father or son or brother has those
horrible scars on his back. And what are they gonna say? That some fat hog
whipped 'em bloody because they couldn't lift him high enough or carry him fast
enough?"

The merchant shifted uncomfortably, the vines used to tie him biting into
his hocks and wrists. "P-Please," he begged. "I-I'll pay them
for their trouble! I-I just lost control because I was in a hurry!" Large
droplets of perspiration began to form on his pale, saggy flesh.

Justin stopped his pacing, reached down and grabbed the boar's snout,
bringing them eye-to-eye and eliciting a frightened whine. "I already gave
them all the money in your strong-box!" He said sharply. "As well as
all those fine clothes! I even wanted to strip you to the skin, but no one
wanted your undergarments! And as for losing control..." He whipped his
paw to one side and back, smashing the boar's snout into the tree. A small
trickle of blood began to flow from one nostril. "Oops!" Justin said,
mock-gleefully. "Did I do that? I'm sorry! I just sorta 'lost
control'!" He then grabbed the boar's snout again and growled, "Now
you listen to me you pig! I'm not gonna kill you, even though Britain wouldn't
miss your worthless hide, because I want you to deliver a message to Jenner!
You tell that flea-bitten excuse for a throw-rug that I'm making it my mission
in life to make his life and those of his friends as miserable as he's made
mine for as long as he wears that Crown! Got it?" The merchant quickly
nodded, tears of pain and relief streaming from his eyes.

Justin released his grip on the merchant's snout and counted five paces back
from where the boar was tied to the tree. "Wh-What're you gonna do?"
The boar asked through chattering teeth.

Justin unfurled the whip and gave it an experimental crack. "There's an
old proverb that states: 'A moment of pleasure at the expense of others must
eventually be paid for by many hours of pain at the expense of ones self.' You
had your pleasure at the expense of those peasants. Now, I'm gonna take it out
of YOUR hide! One stroke per peasant!"

With that, ignoring the merchant's tearful pleas for mercy, Justin let loose
with the first stroke, putting every ounce of his strength behind it. The huge,
thick oak shook to its roots as the boar squealed in pain, leaves shaking loose
from branches and scattering in the light wind.

Seven more times Justin landed the whip across the boar's back, each time
answered by a squeal of agony; which, Justin thought, sounded suspiciously like
the squeals of pleasure that he had given while he was whipping the raccoons;
and resulting in a bloody stripe down his back.

After the last lash, Justin tossed the whip aside. "Remember," He
said calmly and deliberately, "Jenner gives up the Crown or else I turn
his life into pure and total misery!" He then executed a perfect
about-face and disappeared into the forest; leaving the boar bawling like a
child.