The assembled guests turned around toward the colonnade surrounding the courtyard. There were gasps at the sudden appearance of blades reflecting back the full moon. A new harvest, of blood, was about to be taken. But Quercus’s rallying call momentarily checked their advance out of the shadows. The element of surprise had been taken from Flint though the odds were surely on his side?

The Marquis De-Gall, with a mustache that curled above his lip like creeper vines, and hair whiter than any shimmering cobweb, decided that imminent death was not on the menu. He suddenly swiveled around in his chair, pulling out a dress sword that had not touched action in thirty years. “For the King!” he shouted back. “For Quercus and Arborium!”

Ladies who were normally more concerned with nose powdering pulled dainty, jeweled stilettos from handbags and stood their ground. They might be surrounded, but they were proudly part of the hunting brigade, happily able to leap across broken branches to seek out timber foxes. Cowardice was not in their nature.

There was a moment of silence as the two groups faced each other. A young princess, with blond curls bright as sunbeams and a teddy boar firmly clutched to her chest, began to cry. The soldiers were trained to keep conscience at bay. A child’s weeping wouldn’t stop them. As the first raised his sword to strike, and as Ark prepared to give his own secret signal, a strident voice rang out.

“Stay your weapons!” Commander Flint stepped forth from the shadows directly in front of the King and his companions. His bronzed chain mail gleamed in the light of the gas table lamps and his visor was raised, revealing hard cheekbones and cold eyes. “My lord!” He bowed. “Forgive this intrusion.”

“I forgive nothing, Flint. You were my trusted friend once. Have you really sold us out to Maw?”

“There is change in the air, Your Majesty!” Flint spat the final word. “The little people cannot bow before you forever. Safe in your castle, you do not see what is really happening in the wide-wood. We both know the price paid for the last twenty years of peace. And how is such loyalty rewarded? Poor wages and being banished to a cold billet in the armories!”

First the boy with his sharp criticisms. Now Flint, nagging his conscience like a sore tooth. Quercus shook his head, the visions of a happy harvest threshed to dust. Had he really lost touch?

Flint continued, laying out precisely what his intentions were, “We must make our future where we find it, in the new Republic of Arborium.”

“You would pretend your cause is just? Gold has eaten all your common sense, man.” Quercus was furious. How many years did the two of them go back? “Do you honestly think that Maw will keep its promises to you? Trust me: Like these trees, they will cut you down.”