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The wos his head to face forward and gives the reins a violent yank The horses yawp Their hooves scraainst the slick surface of the road The carriage tips and shi quickly, the driver hollers an ie through the obstacle course of the fallen trees Bodies,from the woods; they are dressed similarly to the boy, but their uniforms are mismatched So their faces They are all children The oldestwith disbelief at the coache with its two panicked horses through their trap Within moments, the coachman has cleared the obstacles and has returned to his whip, urging the horses on

In the meantime, the boy and the rat have picked theing snow from their clothes The rat leaps back up to the boy’s shoulder as the boy puts his fingers to his lips and gives a shrill whistle From the dense scrub of the forest comes a horse, a dappled brown-and-white pony The boy throws hiht to the boy’s epaulet, and kicks it into a gallop Arriving at the fallen trees, he leaps the horse and clears the three cedars A spray of snow and mud flies up when the horse makes landfall The children in the woods have shaken the theirchase to the fleeing carriage

The coachman, ahead, marks this He curses the bandits’ te at his face; the snow is now driving, icy

Of the pursuing riders, the boy with the rat is clearly a the fastest Many are unable to keep up the pace that the carriage is setting and fall away Within minutes, only four reirls They draw closer to the speeding carriage and split apart, two on each side of the vehicle The rat, holding tight to the boy’s shoulder by a flap of his furry hat, issues a warning to the coacho free!”

The coach curse that makes the boy blush, even in this e He can see inside: the veiled woman, the key at her neck, the clasped ornate chest The wo fro cloth at her face The boy is momentarily distracted by the scene The rat shouts, “LOOK OUT!”

In an effort to unseat his pursuers, the coache to the left, and the boy nearly runs his pony directly into the coach’s traces He catches a shriek in his throat and veers the pony off the road The pony’s hooves hit the soft underbrush of the roadside and it falters; the ground drops away here and slopes down to a rushing brook far below The boy braces for the fall, but the pony is nihted itself and finds its footing again on the road The boy whispers a word of thanks in its ear They are back in the chase

The carriage leads theths The three other bandits are struggling to keep up One of the riders, a girl with straw-blond hair, has grabbed hold of the roof of the coach and is atteirl’s face is set in concentration The other two bandits, a boy and a girl, have ed to spur their mounts to ride parallel to the coach’s horses The blond-haired girl grunts loudly and vaults frorab hold of the latticework that runs along the top of the carriage Her horse veers away; her body swings against the carriage-side, eliciting another high-pitched screairl steadies herself and cli a triumphant whoop She turns her head to the boy with the rat, who is still several horse-lengths behind

“May the best bandit—” she begins Her sentence is cut short when the carriage plows underneath a low-hanging bough and the girl is lifted from her perch in the blink of an eye The boy with the rat allops his pony toward the carriage

“Win,” finishes the girl, suspended from the limb of the tree

The boy nods to the rat and grits his teeth in deterirl The other boy has fallen away fro into the underbrush

“Aisling!” the boy shouts “Get the horses!”

The girl, now parallel with the right-hand horse, has heard hiet her hands on the horse’s bridle, but the coachand!” shouts the coachirl winces as the whip’s leather tip leaves a red welt on the back of her hand

“Septimus,” hisses the boy to the rat, “think you could help out?”

The rat s” The boy is now even with the carriage He can hear theof the maiden within The rat leaps from the boy’s shoulder and lands on the nape of the coach scream

“RRRRRATS!” he shouts “I CAN’T STAND RATS!”

But the rodent has already crawled down the coach a kind of Irish step dance between his naked shoulder blades The coachman hollers and lets fall both the whip and the reins; the coach’s horses, confused, lose their gallop, and the boy and the girl are able to pull up even with thelance at each other, the two bandits leap astride the carriage horses and pull the stop

The coachman jumps from his seat and stu at his back The girl and the boy watch hiirl beckons graciously “After you” The boy bows and walks toward the idle carriage, radiating confidence He swings the door open

“Now,over…”

His words falter Inside, the woled nest of auburn facial hair

Also: There is the barrel of a flintlock pistol pointing at him

“I don’t think so,” says the passenger, in a husky (and very unladylike) baritone

The boy is crestfallen “But—” he begins

“Bang,” says the passenger He gives the boy a scolding rap on his forehead with the pistol barrel

The boy stares and scratches at his te the entire scene in his mind He kicks his boots in the snow The winter terun And Curtis has just failed his first test