Free Straw Into Gold by Gary D. Schmidt Page A

else, the king has always wanted gold. And if he had one skein of gold in his hands, it would bring him no pleasure unless he might have two."
    "You are sure of this?" asked Innes.
    The miller nodded. "I learned it too late, and to my own sorrow. But what good will even the answer do you? If you solve the riddle, do you think he will clap you merrily on the back and send you off with prisoners dancing behind you? He will not even let you approach before he cuts you down."
    "He made the promise before the Great Lords."
    But the miller gave only a bitter laugh. "A skein of gold for each prisoner might bring release. But nothing else will—most especially a promise."
    "First the answer," said Innes. "Then we shall see what comes with the day."
    A short, guttural sob from the miller's wife, and she turned to her husband and held him.
    Through the windows I watched the sky cloaking into dark. The last light lit the undersides of bulbous clouds waddling in, heavy with their snow. Already the night air was seeping beneath the cottage door and winding its way around my feet.
    "It's to be a cold night," said the miller. "If we're to have these boys gone beyond easy reach by morning, we'll need to be leaving."
    She looked at him, then smiled. "You never did find that shirt, or another for Tousle," she said, wiping at her eyes. "Leave it to me, and you find a sack we might fill for them. Go on, now. Yes, yes, go on." Then slowly, hardly taking her eyes from us, she climbed the steep stairs into the loft.
    "I'd best be taking the bow," called the miller after her.
    She leaned down from the loft. "You haven't strung that bow for more years than you or I can count."
    "Well," he said, taking a bow and quiver from a nail beneath the stair overhang, "that hardly matters. Not a single one of these arrows has a head."
    "Then what earthly good will it do to take it?"
    He shrugged his shoulders and smiled at us as he slung the quiver over his shoulder. "You won't be long up there?"
    "Long enough to find the shirts you could not."
    She was long up there, but when she came down, she brought with her two fine woven shirts. She handed one to me, then turned to Innes and helped him change. I stripped off my own shirt—I was almost as bloody as Innes—and was about to put on this new one when I heard the miller gasp.
    At the same moment, the door smashed open. With a single long stride the Grip strode in and twisted my arm behind my back. Quickly, expertly, he unsheathed his sword and held it tight against my throat.
    "Meal through the floorboards," he said quietly, and smiled.

Chapter Five
    The cold line pressed against my throat, but it was nothing to the fire in my shoulder with my arm twisted and held high behind my back.
    "Master," came the controlled and slow voice of the miller, "I'm known in these parts as one who never misses his aim."
    "The same is said of me," replied the Grip, and he grinned.
    "Then you know that should you even prick that boy, I'll have an arrow into you before you see blood."
    The Grip laughed. "He'll be dead and I'll be at your throat before you fit an arrow to the bow."
    "Master, folks hereabouts live by poaching, and being that a poacher hunts at the same time he himself is hunted, his hands are faster than fast, and his aim surer than sure. You'll never see the arrow drawn from the quiver and fitted, any more than the doe that ends up on this table, and she with eyes sharper than yours might ever hope to be."
    The Grip held still.
    "I'd pay good and close heed to him, Master," said Innes. "I've never seen him come close to missing."
    "Boy," growled the Grip, "I'm here for this one. But no one will squawk if I let your blood as well."
    "No," replied Innes, his voice low."No one would." Even with the sword at my throat I was startled by the bitterness in his voice.
    "But you would have another soul heaped on your back," said the miller's wife. She stepped to Innes and drew his head against her.
    "An easy load to