Princess Academy By Shannon Hale

Chapter 23

Don't look down, don't look down
In midair you drown, drown

"Miri!" Her pa sprang forward. Rage distorted his face, and Miri trembled just to see it. A bandit overtook him, and Pa's mallet swung twice—once to pound the bandit's club to the ground, once to knock the bandit down. Pa hurdled him and rushed toward Dan, his mallet raised.

"I'll kill her!" said Dan, his hoarse voice straining to yell. His hands gripped Miri's neck. "I'll snap her in two, mountain man."

Pa stopped. Miri could see him tighten his hold on the mallet shaft, look to Miri, look at Dan, wanting nothing more than to beat the bandit into the snow. His chest heaved with his breath, and he lowered his mallet slowly, as though the action pained him as much as cutting off his own hand. His eyes were on Miri, and his expression said his heart was breaking for the second time.
Miri's own heart felt sore, like a burnt fingertip.
She saw now that he would do whatever she needed—fight to dying, or lower his mallet, or even believe Peder's strange tale of quarry-speech spoken miles away. He had run through a snowstorm in the middle of the night to save his little girl.

She kicked backward at Dan and writhed to get free. It was like punching a stone. She hung limp from his hands and stared at her pa. Everyone was quiet now. The frenzied running and brief fighting had stopped as quickly as it had begun. Miri and Dan stood in front of the academy steps. His hot, scratchy hands circled her throat, rubbing back and forth as if he rehearsed twisting her neck. Before her stood the wall of villagers.

She was comforted to see that many of the academy girls had made it behind the villagers, and they hugged one another and cried. The villagers had overwhelmed four bandits—three lay in the snow, a quarryman's boot on each of their backs, and a fourth squirmed as Frid's oldest brother held an iron lever across his neck. Miri wondered if any of the bandits were thinking of a mountain that could warn its people at the touch of an outsider's boot.

But the villagers held only four bandits, and the remaining eleven had seized some of the fleeing academy girls. Miri spotted Esa, Gerti, Katar, Britta, and Frid among the captive. Miri shivered. There was no window she could crawl through now. The cold soaked further and further inside her like mold creeping through bread, and the minute of silent tension seemed hours. When Os spoke, the sound of his voice closed the space, making the outside night feel like a crowded room.

"We have four of your men, you have nine of our daughters. We make a nice, easy trade: you go on your way, and no one's blood melts the snow tonight."

Dan laughed. "Hardly a fair trade, quarryman. How about this—you keep the four men, give us back the other girls, and we send them home safe and sound once the prince pays."

There was a murmur of anger. Some of the villagers cursed at Dan and squeezed the shafts of their weapons. Os growled, his voice like the mountain rumbling.

"Not one of our daughters leaves our sight, and if even one is hurt, I make certain none of you leave this mountain with any limbs attached." Os's glance flicked to his daughter Gerti in the clutches of the one-eyed bandit. When his eyes returned to Dan, his expression said he would enjoy the chance to tear off a few limbs. "Let them come to us now and we'll release your four men and let you all go alive and running. That's a good offer. Don't dismiss it for your pride."

Dan spat into the snow. "I came here for some royal skin to ransom and I'm not leaving without—"
"You heard our terms," said Os. "Why don't you let what I've said roll around in your head before you decide to die tonight."

Dan did not answer immediately, and Miri wondered if Os would have more success using the principles of Diplomacy. The snow kept falling between them, soft and light, the clumps of flakes sometimes rising and spinning on a gust. To Miri, the snowfall was strange and gentle. Everything else that night was hard and dangerous, like slabs of falling ice and windstorms that can blow people off cliffs. The weather did not recognize that at any moment Dan could crack her neck as if she were a rabbit fattened for the stew. Down the flakes came, slow and sweet as petals in a breeze.