Bravely(23)

They were always being compared to each other. Always bouncing off each other. Always finishing each other’s sentences, each other’s pranks. If they had any specific traits, they were always expressed in relation to one of the other boys. Hubert was louder than Harris. Harris was cleverer than Hubert. Hamish was sweeter than Harris. So on, so forth. Maybe just spending some time being one boy instead of part of a three-headed monster would be enough.

Her father had suggested Hubert for this journey because he thought he’d like Ardbarrach, and Merida was glad, in retrospect, to have him as her first task. Hubert was the easiest of all the triplets. Not because he was the best behaved—that would have been Hamish—but because he was the most like her. Neither was good at focusing on a task for too long unless it was physical, like Merida shooting arrows or Hubert banging nails into boards. Neither minded if things were messy or loud; in fact, sometimes messy and loud made it easier to think. Both were happy to go wandering in the woods by themselves but also wanted to return home to fiddle music and good company.

It meant Merida could almost certainly predict how Hubert would feel about Ardbarrach because of how she felt about it.

And this was how they felt:

“Whoa,” said Hubert and Merida in the same breath.

Merida thought she’d traveled quite a bit this year, but she hadn’t seen anything that looked like Ardbarrach.

Feradach had been as good as his word, because even with the pony cart slowing them down, they arrived at the stronghold only about an hour after dark. The landscape had slowly transformed from DunBroch’s rolling, snowing terrain into a snow-free, colorless landscape, empty of trees. The path had changed from an arduous single track to a wide, beaten road broad enough for three carts to travel wheel to wheel. When Merida had been with the mapmakers, they had come across only one road like this: the main trade road that led clear on down to Gowrie. It was the only one traveled by enough feet to keep it that bare and wide.

But this road was even more impressive. It had clearly been scraped and graded to perfection. Water did not pool on this road; it ran off to the edges, where channels wicked it away out of sight. This road had not been built. It had been engineered.

Ardbarrach stood at the end of it, and like the road, it did not seem built, but rather engineered. The fortress was as unlike Castle DunBroch’s soft, ivy-covered form as one could imagine. DunBroch’s eroded stones seemed to have been around for ages; Ardbarrach’s sharp, clean walls had clearly been built in this generation. DunBroch’s towers were round and organic; Ardbarrach’s were sharp and geometric. DunBroch’s green banners were tattered and worn; Ardbarrach’s red and gold were crisp and certain. Candles glowed welcomingly in DunBroch’s mismatched windows. Ardbarrach’s narrow arrow slits were dark and brusque.

“It looks ugly,” Leezie said from the cart, her voice shivering with the rest of her.

“It looks strong,” Hubert said.

“Es veffid so,” confirmed Gille Peter.

Most importantly, it looked like not freezing to death. The temperature had dropped precipitously as soon as the light was gone, and the wind had doubled, tripled, quadrupled. There were no hills or trees to interrupt it, so it boxed Merida’s ears without pause. Her cheeks actually hurt from her hair striking them with each gust. It was a deadly cold night.

Because of the lateness of the hour, Merida worried they wouldn’t be able to get anyone’s attention from outside the featureless wall, but the gate opened smoothly as soon as they approached, and behind it guards stood at the ready as if they had been waiting all along. Each guard was so identically uniformed and positioned that Merida couldn’t tell a difference between them in the flickering torchlight. Beyond them, she saw an open courtyard so huge and bare that its walls were lost in the dark. Everything was as flat and even and perfect as the road that had led there. Not even a shadow could be misaligned in this place.

“Merida and Hubert of DunBroch?” said the closest guard, as Merida dismounted to approach.

“Yes,” Merida said, surprised.

“Please wait a moment while we get an escort for you and your men. We apologize for the wait.”

The guard pulled a cord, and in the wall above him, a bell chimed three times. From somewhere further inside the castle, a matching bell chimed with precisely the same rhythm. From even farther away, Merida heard the same sound echo once more. There might have been even more after that that she simply couldn’t hear.

A moment later, more soldiers appeared, and a pack of page boys, and then some maidservants. Each class of person was neatly and identically dressed so that it seemed to be one soldier, copied many times; one page boy, copied many times; one maidservant, copied many times.

Hubert looked at Merida and simply mouthed Wow.

Wow indeed.

In just minutes, Merida and her party were entirely seen to. The Midge and Angus and the ponies were untacked and unhitched and taken away. Colban was tipped out of the Friendly Box, and he and Gille Peter and Hubert were bundled off to the men’s barracks. A good effort was put into catching Brionn, although eventually they gave up. Merida and Leezie were whisked to a room with two narrow beds, an inch of candle, and a simple dinner of bread and meat; presumably Hubert and the men had a similar meal in the barracks. If this had been DunBroch, everyone would have still been trying to figure out what to do with their guests, even if they had been expecting them, and they probably would have all ended up eating a dinner of leftover sugared Christmas plums in front of a fire and telling stories until dawn.