Prince Hans simply had not time. There seemed to be not one decision in all of Florin that one way or another didn't eventually come heavily to rest upon his shoulders. Not only was he getting married, his country was having its five hundredth anniversary. Not only was he noodling around in his mind the best ways to get a war going, he also had to constantly have affection shining from his eyes. every detail had to be met, and met correctly.
His father was just no help at all, refusing either to empire or stop mumbling and start making sense.Queen Bella simply hovered around him, translating here and there, and it was with a shock that Prince Hans realized, just twelve days before his wedding day, that he had neglected to set in motion the crucial Guilder section of his plan, so he called Custer to the castle late one night.
Custer was Chief of All Enforcements in Florin City, a job he had inherited from his father. (The albino keeper at the Zoo was Custer's first cousin, and together they formed the only pair of non-nobles the Prince could come close to trusting.)
Prince Hans came out from behind his desk. He moved close to Cluster and looked carefully around before saying, softly, "I have heard, from unimpeachable sources, that many men of Guilder have, of late, begun to infiltrate our Thieves Quarter. They are disguised as Florinese, and I am worried."
"I have heard nothing of such a thing," Custer said.
"A Prince has spies everywhere."
"I understand,"said Cluster. "And you think since the evidence points that they tried to kidnap your fiancée once, such a thing might happen again?"
"It's a possibility."
"I'll close off the Thieves Quarter then," Cluster said. "No one will enter and no one will leave."
"Not good enough," said the Prince. "I want the Thieves Quarter emptied and every villain jailed until I am safely on my honeymoon." cluster did not nod quickly enough, so the Prince said, "Sate your problem."
"My men are not always too happt at the thought of entering the Thieves Quarter. Many of the thiees resist change."
"Root them out. Form a brute squad. But get it done."
"It takes at least a week to get a decent brute squad going," Cluster said. "But that is time enough." he bowed, and started to leave.
And that was when the scream began.
Cluster had heard many things in his life, but nothing quite so eerie as this: he was a brave man, but this sound frightened him. It was not human, but he could not guess the throat of the beast it came from. (It was actually a wild dog, on the first level of the Zoo, but no wild dog had ever shrieked like that before. But then, no wild dog had ever been put in he machine.)
The sound grew in anguish, and it filled the night sky as it spread across the castle grounds, over the walls, even into the Great Square beyond.
It would not stop. It simply hung now below the sky , the audible reminder of the existence of agony. In the Great Square, half a dozen children screamed back at the night, trying to blot out the sound. Some wept, some only ran for home.
Then it began to lessen the volume. Now it was hard to hear in the Great Square, now it was gone. Now it was hard to hear on the castle wall, now it was gone from the castle walls. It shrunk across the grounds toward the first level of the Zoo of Death, where Count Black sat fiddling with some knobs. The wild dog died. Count Black rose, and it was all he could do to bury his shriek of triumph.
ESTÁS LEYENDO
The Princess Bride
FanficWhen Jamie is sick with the flue on the Christmas holiday's all he can do is play his videos games and eat his meals that his mother has made him. He never planned on his father reading him, a book. This one book was a story that was read to father...
