Halt's Ranger Apprentices- John Flanagan Ranger Apprentice fan-fiction

CHAPTER NINE:

"King Duncan." Halt said in an obnoxiously loud voice while he glanced over at Squirt, a warning dancing in them as he caught her stare upon the King.  

King Duncan didn't look like the King Duncan Squirt had remembered him as. The last time she had ever seen the King was when she was still a young child of four years where her memories were all a blur, but she was sure that the King never looked almost exhausted with his shoulders slumped and his eyes grim. 

Halt let the door squeak its way to be fully opened, as he bowed his head in greeting. "You're majesty." As the King walked through the doorway, he didn't waste time catching his eyes with her Squirts, not bothering to look at the untidy cabin.

She knew she should do something, she should bow her head or curtsy. Even smiling would've been a good start, but all Squirt had managed to put together in the seconds it had taken for the surprise to rise within her as she became suddenly aware how small she was in her slouched and lazy position on the chair, was a small mumble; "You're the King." 

Squirt hadn't realised in the commotion inside her head of thoughts bumping into each other, that she was slowly slipping off the wooden chair. She quickly tried to add, 'your majesty' to the end of her sentence that she was now utterly in disbelief that she had allowed those words escape her lips.

But it seemed her slipping hide had other plans. The cabin went silent from footsteps and squeaking doors and Squirt was sure the two men standing before her had stopping their breathing as they watching her slip off the chair, her body flopping, unprepared for any of it. 

Instead of getting up and picking up the chair that now lay with a snapped leg, she let the mess inside her head tangle and mess with her actions as she scrambled to a kneeling position, and grabbing the chair now in two pieces and propping the broken leg underneath the chair, giving the illusion of a perfectly fine chair. 

"King Duncan, your majesty." Squirt let the words come out in a rush, so it sounded more like, 'Sing drunk an' draw my chesty'. Now Squirt was sure even the insects waking for the night had grown silent. 

In desperate need for the silence to not eat at her skin that was making her want to squirm, she quickly rushed to her feet, leaning on the chair-that-didn't-look-broken-but-was-broken which let Squirt have a moment of standing on her two feet before the chair-that-didn't-look-broken-but-was-broken gave way to the weight crashing down back onto the floor, Squirt following the splintered wood.

Squirt let the dust on the floor settle as she lay, stomach to the floor and her head slightly raised to keep from squashing her nose. It was still silent, but Squirt realised in her clumsy chaos she created, that she preferred to the silence better now. 

"This won't go on my report card, will it?" Squirt eventually spoke, her voice rattling the calmed air, cutting through it like an arrow cut through air in mid-flight.

"Oh," Halt's voice was soft, but his tone that dripped with a certain grimness Squirt was too familair with. She turned reluctantly on her stomach. She was in the middle of persuading herself that he can't have been as horrifying as she initially thought, but then she took in the scene of the two men, King Duncan doing a poor job at masking his smile, and the sympathetic amusement danced in a battle with the grim expression in the patterns of his eyes. 

Halt, on the other hand, showed no sign of hidden amusement, no hint of a crease at the edges of his mouth. Instead he looked like the usual grim Halt, but instead of his arms folding in front of his chest or his fingers dangling at the hilt of his  Saxe Knife, they were holding a bit of paper and a feather inked pen. Halt held his gaze firmly with Squirt's  reluctant expression. "Was I not supposed to?"