A HENRY STORY 1: Memories Of The Fallen Prince

XVIII. Besieged

The word hit Henry like a brick wall. "Siege?!" he yelled. "How did that happen?"

Technically, he knew how it had happened. That didn't help the panic that crept up and gripped an icy claw around his heart, though.

"The cutters have us surrounded," Cevian said, lowering her eyes to the floor. "If we open up an exit, they will take the citadel, and we will all be lost."

Henry's head was spinning; he suddenly felt sick. He scooted back until he could lean on the wall and fought his screaming thoughts. He would not succumb to panic. He couldn't afford it.

They were trapped. Here, in this . . . crawler nest, and they couldn't get out. For how long? How long would the cutters keep their siege up?

Wait, he suddenly thought. There was something wrong here. This siege shouldn't be happening. Henry recalled what little he knew about the crawlers—most importantly, that they weren't supposed to be sedentary.

When he asked Cevian why they didn't just leave and let the cutters have this place, she shook her head. "Under normal circumstances, they would, but . . ."

"No place to leave to, there is, no place," a different voice finished her sentence and Henry jerked around. "Stingers and pinchers have taken territory in north," the crawler said. "Cutters have taken all other, all that surrounds us, they have. Nowhere left to go, there is, nowhere to go."

Henry didn't know why, but for some reason, he was certain the crawler before him was the same who had spoken to him earlier.

"So, they have the crawlers surrounded?" he said to Cevian. "As in, this is the last remaining bit of land they still have?"

Cevian looked at him with a figuratively raised eyebrow. "Henry, he is right in front of you. Why are you talking to me as though he doesn't exist?"

Henry rolled his eyes and eyed the crawler. Would he actually talk to one of them? He suppressed a sigh and decided that it was more efficient to do so. And what excuse had he to refuse? He could no longer claim that it was beneath him to interact with them. He was not a prince anymore; he was an outcast. There was nothing he could still dismiss for that reason.

Henry took a deep breath and, using a considerable amount of willpower, finally addressed the crawler: "So, they have you surrounded?"

He twitched one of his antennas approvingly. "The citadel the last standing is, the citadel is. The last of us are all here, last of us."

"The citadel . . ." Henry looked around. "Is that what you call this place? It's . . . decent enough. Who built it?"

"We built it, we did." Henry discerned something like actual pride in the crawler's voice.

"You? Really?" He frowned, finding it hard to imagine that the crawlers were capable of building a stronghold like this. Judging from what he had seen before, it appeared to be an impregnable fortress.

"Do not make the mistake of judging the crawlers too quickly," said Cevian. "They may not be great fighters, but they are skilled builders and have the stamina of stones. They have so far defeated the cutters every time by holing up in here for weeks until the cutters ceased their attempts. The citadel has never been taken; it is, even among other species, said to be the most tenacious and powerful colony the crawlers call their own."

A powerful crawler colony . . . Henry rolled his eyes, though in a way so that Cevian couldn't see.

"These crawlers may be the last of their colony," she continued, "but they are still many. And they are still here. I highly doubt the citadel will fall today—or ever."