Chapter 1
Twenty years ago
Make ready.” Eleven-year-old Eamon Stone’s whisper held tension.
The two boys with him, who until this morning had been his enemies, nodded.
One of them had dark hair, flinty gray eyes, and an arrogance he’d been born with. Lord Dominic Wolfe, whose father was a lofty marquis, held himself apart from the students at Hallbridge School for Young Gentlemen in Buckinghamshire. This had earned him mockery and a few beatings, until his attackers had gotten a taste of Wolfe’s fists. Nothing weak about Wolfe.
The second youth’s flame-red hair was like a beacon, his freckled face and blue eyes holding an incessant cheer that could be as irritating as Wolfe’s brooding. Eamon had made McCormick put on his knit cap so his bright head didn’t give away their position, but it had been a futile attempt. Their enemies were closing in.
Eamon and his companions would have to fight hard to get past Pebbly Pollard and his compatriots, the vilest bullies in the school. These included the Viking, a boy who was six feet tall at twelve years old, with white-blond hair and blue eyes that held both ingenuousness and petty cruelty.
This morning, Eamon had persuaded the Viking to pinch cakes from the hamper Pebbly’s indulgent nanny had sent to him and bring them to Eamon. When Pebbly discovered the deception, he’d rallied an army to go after Eamon. The Viking had turned coat, joining Pebbly’s troops and putting the full blame on Eamon.
Pebbly and his crew had cornered Eamon in an empty lecture room, but he’d found unexpected allies in Wolfe and Hayden McCormick, who’d been caught in the chase. Wolfe had temporarily baffled the mob with disdainful words, while McCormick helped Eamon wrench open a window so all three of them could flee.
They now hid together below the ridge over which passed the only road to the school. Eamon had discovered this hollow soon after he’d been dumped at Hallbridge, his late father’s man of business having no idea what else to do with him. Evidence of Eamon’s refuge here—cigar ends, dog-eared books, a well-used notebook, and a flask of brandy—littered the yellowed grass.
Eamon had expected Wolfe and McCormick to turn on him once they reached his hiding place and blame him for their current predicament. Instead, McCormick sat cross-legged on the ground, calmly leafing through Eamon’s notebook of drawings, while Wolfe kept a sharp eye on the enemy below.
When Eamon apologized for catching them up in his war, Wolfe spat on the grass. “Pollard needs to be crushed.”
McCormick looked up from the notebook in amazement. “You expect us to do the crushing, do you, Wolfe?” he asked in his accent of the Shetland Isles.
Wolfe lifted his well-clad shoulders. “Why not? The three of us have more brains than Pollard’s dozen toadies, and we each have our strengths. I’ve been drilled in tactics since I could crawl. McCormick, you’re brilliant at maths. Stone, you—” Wolfe broke off, as though at a loss.
Eamon’s eyes narrowed. “I what? Can draw pretty pictures?”
“Good ones too,” McCormick said in admiration. “This is beautiful.” His tattered glove rested on a portrait of a young woman whose silken ringlets framed a comely face, the gleam in her eyes matching her coy smile. “Who is she? I’d be obliged if you could introduce us.”
“I have no idea,” Eamon answered. “That’s a copy of an Albrecht Dürer. You’ve fallen for a woman three hundred years gone.”
“Oh.” McCormick’s syllable held vast disappointment.
“Your gift is your golden tongue, Stone,” Wolfe concluded. “I’ve listened to you nattering since you arrived this term. Even Wilson is putty in your hands.”
Wilson was the Classics master, who used martial tactics to drill Greek and Latin into small boys who’d rather be anywhere but a stuffy lecture hall. Eamon had managed to sidestep the worst of Wilson’s assignments and had yet to be called upon to recite.
“Wilson just wants a bit of flattering,” Eamon said reasonably. The man pretended to be tough but was in truth sentimentally in love with heroic poetry.
“But it’s a trick to know exactly how to flatter,” Wolfe said. “Somehow you convinced the Viking to steal from Pollard, when the Viking would die for him.”
Eamon shrugged. “Neither of them is what I’d call quick-witted.”
“Whereas you …” Wolfe shook his head. “Never mind. I’d rather have you on my side, where I can keep an eye on you.” He gazed down the hill where Pebbly and the Viking were conferring. “McCormick and I are going to think of a way out of this mess. Stone, you will execute the plan, and we’ll back you up.”
Eamon stared at him. “You’ll throw me out to take the first blow, you mean?”
“It’s you and your tongue that got us into this situation,” Wolfe pointed out. “That same tongue is going to take us to safety.”
Mirth trickled through Eamon’s uneasiness. “My tongue, eh? I’m not that fond of Pollard.”
“Don’t be disgusting.” Wolfe wrinkled his aristocratic nose. “I mean you’re going to talk, while McCormick and I focus on strategy.”
“Not sure I can help you there.” McCormick moved on to landscape drawings Eamon had copied from seventeenth-century Dutch painters, and paused at an original Eamon had done of the school grounds from this very hill.
“Maths are very helpful in military planning,” Wolfe informed him.
