Dauntless (Valiant Hearts Book #1) by Dina L. Sleiman Read Free Book Online Page B

Merry, tapping the child on her turned-up nose.
    “Va-wee strong. And vaaa-weeee big!” The girl stood to her tiptoes and reached toward the ceiling.
    “Are there many of your sunshine men?” Merry continued to humor her.
    “So, so many. One, two, four, ten!” Wren raised her hands over her head, then plopped back down to the earthen floor and continued her play as if she had never ceased.
    Merry envied her. How simple to be a babe. To live in the present. To think not of the past, nor the future. To exist in a singular perfect moment of romping wooden horses and sheep. Of flowers and butterflies dancing in the breeze. Of fleeting sunshine men and tumbles in the dirt. Contentment contained in the tip of her tiny thumb.
    So unlike Merry’s world. Her own mind ever brewed with haunting memories and troublesome worries.
    Someday Wren would understand that her parents had been slaughtered, leaving her a nameless tyke, barely half a year old, to fend for herself in this merciless kingdom. Had it not been for the ingenuity of Merry and the other girls—along with a particularly cooperative nanny goat—Wrenny would have died, as so many children did in their early years.
    Death always spiraled about them in this realm, brushing against their shoulders, reminding them they might be next. Like the rotting remains of criminals upon the town walls, and at every road crossing. So common that it had become the subject of humor and sport. But Merry would never grow accustomed to it.
    An odd sound met her ears from just outside the door.
    The call of a wood warbler . . . or rather a childish imitation of one.
    “Thanks be to God,” Allen said. “Our prayers have been answered.”
    Robert rushed to the door and opened it.
    In tumbled Gilbert, red cheeked and panting for breath. “All . . . is clear.” He collapsed against the wall. “But I lost . . . the berries.”
    Everyone laughed and cheered as they hugged him and thumped him upon the back. Jane offered Gilbert a ladle full of water, then chided him in her motherly way as he gulped it too quickly.
    Once the fray settled, Merry sat down next to the boy. “So tell us your tale, Gilbert.”
    “Oh, ’tis a good one to be certain.”
    The children hushed and gave Gilbert their rapt attention.
    He proceeded to tell his story of stepping through the bushes to find a nobleman and three giant soldiers pointing their arrows at his chest, his berries flying through the air, and the nobleman’s unexpected kindness.
    “I did just like you taught us, Lady Merry. I acted lost and scared. ’Twas easy, as I was frightened out of my wits. Except I couldn’t remember the name of the village I was to tell them I lived, so I pointed to the west. I remembered it was the closest one in that direction. And I cried and told him my mum would beat me if she found me out. So he let me down before we got there, and I ran away and disappeared between the cottages.”
    “Excellent work, my good man.” Merry ruffled his hair.
    “That’s what the nobleman done to me.” Gilbert smiled his gaptoothed grin. “He mussed my hair just like you do, Lady Merry. And he was young, like us. That’s when I knew everything would be fine. Said they were hunting, was all.”
    Merry dared not ask for a description of the nobleman. Nor his name. For all she had survived during the last two years, she feared her heart could not bear to hear if it had been Timothy Grey.
    Young Gilbert tilted his head, as if an afterthought occurredto him. “Although one of the soldiers did ask if I’d seen any men in the forest, which was odd. But . . . no, they were hunting. They nearly shot me clean through.”
    Hunters indeed. But hunting deer . . . or ghosts? Her heart clenched.
    Merry gathered together her courage. “Robert, please take some of the men to town and investigate on the morrow.”
    Robert’s shrewd eyes assessed her gaze. “You can count on me, Lady Merry.”

    The following afternoon the children