Summary: Four guys are trying to get back to England to win money in a big tournament. Their journey is complicated by a certain girl who wants to accompany them on the road.
Rating: PG-13
(Un) Important babbling-notes from Cimmy: This story is inspired by the movie A Knight’s Tale, but it’s only MD characters and the story is different from the movie. Plus, there’s no hockey...
Disclaimer: I do not own The Mighty Ducks, and neither do I own A Knight’s Tale.
The sun was slowly sinking below the skyline. The little country wagon rolled over the dusty road, followed by an exhausted horse dragging way too much packing on its back.
The road was long and winding, but so were most roads under the sky of Greece. The three guys taking turns managing the wagon, and the one guy riding the horse, had all traveled a long distance to get where they were.
One of the four travelers, a young man known only as Charlie to the others, kept a look out as if he was afraid to meet up with some uninvited guests along the way. Since the sun was beginning to set quite quickly, the small company knew they had to find somewhere to sleep at over the night. The shade of the moon wouldn’t help them if they were caught out of guard by any of the people they were trying to avoid.
Charlie knocked into the hard wood on the side of the small bench he was sitting on. “Would any of you like to tell me which way were going?”
One of his companions, Adam was his name, stuck his head up from under one of the potato sacks, covering the floor of the wagon. “The next town is about three miles away. I think it would be appropriate to head that way.”
“Okay, am I the only one concerned about our well-being? We’re chased by several governments, and you want to travel to the nearest town, because it’s ‘appropriate’?” Guy Germaine asked from his corner of the small wagon. “I hate to be predictable, but shouldn’t we run for cover or something?”
“Predictable? If only Robin Hood here hadn’t stolen that apple from the king’s basket, we wouldn’t have had to run,” Adam said knowingly, as if a situation like that happened every day. He was addressing the one guy outside, on the horse.
Fulton Reed rode up next to the wagon, smacking his tongue for every bite he took on the apple he had in his hand. “Please, I had to ease my hunger somehow. You boys all know how to get food, using your skills and sharp minds. I have neither skills nor a sharp mind, so I keep to what I know best.”
“Stealing,” Guy snorted. “We all know how to steal. The skill does not lie in how to not get caught, it lies in how to not get discovered.”
“The last thing you stole was two golden coins out of my pocket, and you confessed right away,” Charlie reminded him. “You’re too young to know the real value in how it feels to steal your very own belongings.”
Adam yawned and pulled the sack over him again. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’re all a bunch of criminals. At least we don’t kill people.”
“I actually am a lot like Robin Hood,” Fulton mused. “I steal from the rich and give to the less fortunate.”
“Us,” the other three said in unison.
Charlie did as told, though. He steered the horse towards the small town lying along the road. No one said anything, as their tiredness was beginning to get to them. It was almost dark when they finally entered over the bridge leading into the market place and the heart of the town. Charlie instinctively lowered his face and kept away from the lights along the walls of the houses.
“Can you see any guards?” Adam whispered from inside the wagon, under the sack, the most common place to find him at when things were getting too intense.
“No, but I see people.”
“What people?” Guy asked.
Charlie sighed deeply. “Usual, normal people. People who does us no harm.”
“Like ordinary town people?” Fulton asked with his usual loud-mouthed manner. The others quickly hushed him down.
“We could just get some food and try and sleep somewhere else tonight. It’s too high of a risk to sleep inside the walls of this town. If we get caught...” Adam explained, the voice of reason.
Guy looked out over the edge of one of the coffins packed on the wagon. “Maybe we should leave our transportation here and walk the rest of the way? It’s only about three days until we reach the border.”
“Forget it, I refuse to walk,” Fulton muttered. “I didn’t leave home just so I could walk through several countries, and steal apples.”
“So, why did you leave home?” Guy shot back.
“I wanted to see the world. And I kept stealing apples. What’s your point, young lad?” Fulton scuffed. “We all know my reasons for leaving. How about you, what’s your reason?”
Guy just shrugged. “I have already told you. I couldn’t go back, and I found the perfect ticket away from home.”
“Sweet story, would you like to tell the truth now?” Fulton sneered. “Because we all know that it can’t have been that easy, right?”
“Could you both shut up?” Charlie growled. “If you can’t be quiet, we’re bound to be discovered. Guy, keep it down.”
Guy nodded and went back to keeping look out, a bit annoyed at Fulton and his comments. “It’s clear, I can’t see any guards.”
“I can’t see anyone either,” Fulton said.
“Well, they could all be busy with other things than to follow us around,” Adam suggested. “But that’s unlikely, since apparently we’re the worst thing ever since the actual Robin Hood was here.”
“That took place in England, about several hundreds of years ago,” Guy explained. “Should we head back to the forest, or get food and supplies right now?”
“Food,” Charlie said monotonously. “I reckon we get food. And lots of it.”
“A whole bunch,” Fulton added. “And more apples.”
While Charlie and Fulton were off getting food, and Adam tried to get directions to the nearest town, Guy was set to guard the packing and the horses. Sometimes he wondered if he got stuck with the most hopeless assignments just because he was the youngest. They all treated him as if he was completely clueless to the surroundings of the world.
Actually, they couldn’t have been more wrong about him. He might be the youngest in number of years he’d been alive, but when it came to experiencing the hard reality, he knew a lot more than he got credit for.
His journey with the other three began years ago, when he was only fourteen years old. Even if he’d told his friends the explanation of his escape from home, they always questioned him for it. His story had only featured a brief explanation to why he had to leave home, so both Adam and Fulton figured he’d just felt like running away from home because of some trouble with his parents. Charlie knew the whole story, but also knew how to keep quiet about it.
Guy had traveled from his home on the north coast of England to France, and there on he’d kept going to Germany. After that, things had become a bit more difficult. Since he had no money to live on, he had to work to get money to get through the day. If there was no work, there was no money. When things had become too bad to live it through, Guy had decided to steal his way to fortune.
It was not reckoned, though, to steal too much, because that just made it too obvious, which Guy quickly realized. While being chased out of the country, he figured the quickest way to get by was to steal a horse. Sadly, the horse he got his hands on had already been stolen by another bunch of petty thieves. Charlie, Adam and Fulton got to him before the real owner of the horse, along with the guards, had been able to.
Instead of leaving him to a destiny far from the open roads and the freedom he’d seek out for, Charlie had offered to help him over the border if he gave back the possessions he’d stolen from them. Guy, too afraid to do anything, had quickly agreed. They had all worked together to try to come up with a way to get over the border without getting caught. After they’d succeeded with getting over to France, Guy had just stayed with them, glad to have some company to the unknown destination of his.
They never questioned his presence, and they accepted him right away. Four years had passed since then, and now he felt just like he’d been with them for all eternity. As long as they didn’t put him on horse-guarding way too many times, of course.
Guy felt how he began to doze off every now and then. The others had been gone for over an hour, and Guy knew that it could take a lot of time before they came back. His concern was neither about the drinking nor the women he knew had made their minds stray away, it was more about what to do if they were discovered by the guards, chasing them down.
He almost didn’t see when the apple next to him suddenly disappeared. He caught its movement in the corner of his eye. At first he didn’t mind it too much. There were always lots of hungry, homeless children out on the streets, so why get mad over an apple?
When the next thing, a small bag of nails, began to move towards the edge, Guy frowned a bit. Children rarely got so hungry that they ate nails. He let it slide anyway, they could always get, or steal, new nails.
Suddenly more things began to disappear. Not only tools and food, but clothes and money too. Guy decided to put an end to it, before the two horses was led away as well.
He watched carefully so he could spot the thief right away this time. He was not too surprised when he saw a small hand reach for the last apple on the floor. He waited until the apple, and the hand, began to move away from him. Then he threw his hand down around the wrist of the small thief.