“How long has it been?” Aubrey asked. “How many days?”

Claudio shifted his attention from the busy street to the young girl beside him. Her dark brown head covering was hardly level with his shoulder. “No more than three weeks,” he answered with an apologetic shrug. “‘Tis no worse now than it was a few days ago. All our chances are the same.” He always told her what he said to himself–the things he told himself when he couldn’t afford to count up the cost. He could not tell if that was comforting for a terrified girl. “Ahnna will be fine,” he added.

It was impossible to tell, by looking at her, that Aubrey was as perturbed as he knew she was. Her face was a perfect mask of calm–except for her light brown eyes, which were alert and tense. It was hard to get his eyes off her rough work dress and light cloak, and back on the line of shops and houses before him. For the first time since she had found him, she blended in. It was strange to him when she looked like everyone else.

A middle class lady, probably some merchant’s wife, bustled past them, brushing Aubrey with puffed sleeves of blue satin. Claudio was struck by how plain his companion looked next to the strange lady, whose dark hair pulled up under a covering of smooth linen and gold braid. Aubrey looked more like the peasant children that ran and played up and down the street. He began to doubt whether leading the princess around the poor and crowded edges of town was wise. In his defense, she had asked him to.

“Do you think he’s real?” Aubrey asked.

“I do,” Claudio answered, trying to spot the sign over the door of the Dancing Dragon inn he knew must be ahead of them. “Too many rumors, they had to come from somewhere.

“Do you think all the rumors are true?” she pressed.

“I think some of them are,” Claudio said evasively, as he caught sight of the sign and hurrying forward. She had the distracting tendency of discussing important things when they were in the thick of them.

“You think because he can wrestle a lion and outrun a stag, he can take down a dragon?” she asked, hastening to keep up with him.

“I don’t know.”

“But do you think this will work?” she persisted, a twinge of worry entering her young voice.

Claudio shrugged. “Yes, I think it may. But I don’t know, which is why I want to found out more.”

“As far as Master Thomas seemed to think, ’tis well nigh madness,” she stated fearfully.

“All of this is madness!” Claudio muttered. “The only reason I can help you is because I haven’t any sense.”

“I thought you said you killed a dragon this last time you were gone?” she said in surprise.

“It was a pathetic, little water-wyrm, not a winged fire-breather!” Claudio exclaimed. After all these days, he still had not gotten it into her head that there were dragons and. . . dragons. “I am willing to do anything to help you, but you must understand what we face. This is desperate. We are still trying because we are both hopelessly stubborn.”

Claudio took a deep breath as he stopped before the inn. Don’t lecture her, she will get nervous. He grabbed the door handle, and the sun-warmed metal felt familiar in his hand.

“Remember to call yourself Ella, and let me do the talking,” he instructed briefly. She nodded, but he hesitated. “And you know what to do if you see anyone who would recognize you.”

She took a deep breath but smiled nervously. “Of course I do.”

“Just, whatever happens, do not let them see your face.” He lowered his voice. “You know there shall be trouble if people hear about this. And, so help me, if your father–“

She nodded more vigorously. Claudio gave it up and led her inside.

He pushed back his hood and surveyed the large, dim room, which was alive and active. The air was filled with the hum of conversation, some mild, some heated. Ragged children darted and screamed, weaving between people, dogs, and tables. Aubrey tucked a stand of her ocher hair under her head covering and drew back nervously. Claudio could not understand how crowds made her so nervous, when she had grown up in a palace that housed thousands, tripping over her own numerous attendants.

“They’re not dangerous,” he said under his breath. “Just crowded and careless. Stay close to me, and you’ll be fine.” He offered her his arm, and then ducked forward into the mass of people, before the landlord could spy them and try to sell them drinks. The goal was to stay low and avoid special notice. Aubrey clung to his arm as people jostled her. Claudio noticed the Sailor sitting at a table by himself in a far corner, with a steaming mug–as usual. “Sailor” was the only thing Claudio had ever heard him called, though it was rumored he was really a Robert of Thorten. He had never been close enough to the ocean to hear a gull scream, but he had had many marvelous adventures, and told more tall tales than anyone else in town. It was well known at the Dancing Dragon that he had never been to sea; but no one was quite willing to believe it, and the Sailor he had been dubbed. He had no real friends, as far as Claudio had ever seen, but everyone loved his stories.

The two passed by the great fireplace as they made for the old man’s table. Robin sat before the blaze, as always, wrapped in his shabby mantel, with his crutches beside him. His blind eyes stared unseeing into the flames, and Claudio knew it was to turn his ear to the busy room. He saw Aubrey’s eyes dart to the old peasant and there was pity in them, but looking at her face, he knew she was also repulsed. Living inside the palace parapet, she had never been exposed to dirt and disability. He caught the old man’s groping hand, and pushed a coin into it before shoving his way deeper into the crowd.

“Old Robin can tell a fantastic story as well, if he has a mind,” he told Aubrey. “But I don’t think he can help us today.”

He walked up and sat down on the bench across from the Sailor. Aubrey stood behind him. The Sailor’s eyes passed up and down the young knight, and then the maiden.

“What ye youngsters want? A story?” His voice was thick and wavering with long years of shouting and singing into smoke and fog.

“Yes, sir, I want a story.” Claudio started slow.

“What sort of story, boy? Most lads come in here and want me to spin tales about some knight or dragon they’ve heard tell of. None of them care about the real world we live in today.”

“I care, sir,” Claudio answered. “I am a knight, I don’t need tall tales of them. I want to know about the Black Forest.”

“There ain’t much to tell, lad.”

“Then what can you tell me of the Werewolf of Woodbrock?” Claudio asked.

The Sailor said nothing, but the knight saw his face become suddenly alert. He groped for his mug, but kept his eyes fixed on the young man’s face.

“Most call him the Forest Ghost, or the Hunter,” Claudio pressed.

There was a long pause. When he spoke again, the Sailor spoke slowly.

“There are two things a rash boy like yourself needs know about the Hunter of Woodbrock,” he said.  “One, he ain’t no myth, and he ain’t no legend. He’s real. He ain’t like Taral and Tirim, and the Maid of Silslick. He’s real.” The Sailor paused.

“And two?” Claudio asked.

The Sailor looked him up and down with his dim eyes.

“And two, he ain’t none of your business.”

“But what can you tell me?” Claudio pressed, undaunted.

The Sailor took a long drink, and then spoke slowly. “He lives in the Black Forest, deep in. ‘Tis said he dwells near the Woodbrock. Truth and fable meet and mix ’round him, and no one really knows what stories are real; but ’tis said he’s a very animal.”

“But is he a man?” Claudio asked.

The old man’s eyes drifted to another corner of the crowded room as he took another drink. “No. They say he is like one to look on, but he’s more than man, by all accounts. It is said he wrestles the bear, and can chase eels down a stream and catch them in his bare hands. They say he outruns the antelope, calling louder than an elk, and he rivals the monkeys at their craft. It is said he sleeps in the pits with the snakes, a viper wrapped ’round his head. He sings with the voices of birds, and they eat the flesh of lions from his hands. It is said.”

He stopped for breath, and drained his mug. Claudio took a deep breath, trying to discern the stream of legends. How many could be true? A serving girl stopped to take the empty cup. Claudio slapped a handful of coins on the table. “Bring him another.” The Sailor watched him with narrowed, unreadable eyes.

“Have you ever seen Woodbrock?” the knight asked.

“The Black Forest, yes, long ago; but to Woodbrock, no. Only fools go there.” His eyes flashed in the torchlight as he turned a suspicious eye on his young listener. “You hear me, lad? Fools. To walk those dark, deserted paths is beyond my courage, or my better judgment–say whichever ye will. But I know many who have tired–in vain–to see the Hunter. They all fare about the same.”

The serving girl handed him a new cup and hurried off. He took a long drink, adding thoughtfully, “Old Robin by the fireplace is one.”

Claudio had heard many of the rumors before, but never this one. “You mean. . . ” He hesitated. “Robin has been in the Black Forest?”

“Yes, yes, he has. Hasn’t he told you? No? Well, I don’t blame the fellow if he wants to forget, but ye ought to have read as much from his silence–didn’t you wonder that he never said how he was blinded and crippled?”

“Robin is old,” Claudio stammered. “His eyes are failing. He has been lame from birth.” Aubrey shifted nervously behind him.

The Sailor raised an eyebrow over his mug. “Oh, has he?”

Claudio let his eyes drop to his hands in his lap, then glanced desperately at the ceiling.

The old man laughed ruefully. “Where does a man loose his eyes, his legs, and half his wits, but hunting alone in a dangerous wood at night, invading a wild creature’s territory?”

Claudio felt cold fingers of dread slide down his spine, but he shook his head. “Why is he dangerous?”

The Sailor looked at him suspiciously, then shifted his gaze to Aubrey for the first time since they first arrived. “Robin started by listening to myths, and asking such questions,” he said. He grabbed his second cup and drained it. “And he learned, the hard way, what such rash curiosity always learns in the end: no one stalks the Hunter.” He rose stiffly, and marched out of the inn.

Claudio sat still, his eyes roving over the rough, wooden table without seeing. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Aubrey kneel down beside him. When he turned towards her, he saw she watched him with knowing, troubled eyes.

“You are going to do it, aren’t you?”

Claudio shrugged. “I am going to try.”