Igraine the Brave Read Online Free PDF

simple,” said Sir Lamorak. “Your mother and I have found out that, now we’re pigs, we can’t work magic at all.”
    “What?” Now it was Igraine and Albert who looked anxious.
    “Not the least little scrap of magic,” said the Fair Melisande. “That’s why we need those giant’s hairs as soon as possible, and you, Albert, will have to defend the castle until we can cast spells again.”
    Up on their shelves, the Singing Books groaned.
    “Luckily we’d made the birthday breakfast in advance, or else …” Sir Lamorak fell silent, but Igraine ended his sentence for him.
    “Or else breakfast would have been blue eggs and dry biscuits this morning.”
    Albert went as red as a beetroot. “All right, all right, little sister, I’m working on it!”
    “You’d better,” said Igraine, standing up. “But anyway, that settles one thing. I must set off today. In fact, at once.”
    “No, no, no!” grunted her father, shaking his pink ears energetically. “Out of the question. We’re celebrating your birthday today. Tomorrow’s soon enough to decide whether you really do go to find the giant. I still don’t like the idea. You’d most likely be back within four days on your pony, but then again it probably wouldn’t take your mother and me more than a week. At least, so I assume,” he added, looking doubtfully at his pink trotters. “I don’t have the faintest idea how good pigs are at hiking. But in any case, it would be the devil’s own luck if Osmund arrived with his men before we’re rid of our curly tails.”
    Sometimes, however, the devil does have all the luck. Then it’s just one thing after another. And troubles seldom come alone.

7

     
    O smund came the very next morning.
    Mist still hung over the meadows, and Igraine was saddling her pony while Sisyphus rubbed uneasily around her legs. Albert was sitting astride one of the stone lions, cleaning dove droppings out of its eyes. He almost fell off its back when it roared in alarm.
    “Oh, hang it!” he said angrily. “Are you up to your old tricks again? There’s no excuse this time!”
    Igraine raced up the flight of steps as fast as she could, but Sisyphus slipped between her legs and was up on the wall first.
    “Albert, get off that lion!” called Igraine once she had looked over the battlements, but her brother was already hiding behind them.
    Horsemen emerged from the mist in the east. Horsemen in gray armor. They were riding toward Pimpernel Castle.
    “Sisyphus, go and fetch our parents!” Igraine whispered. “Quick! They’re still in the stables.”
    Sisyphus shot away as if a pack of wolves were after him.
    “What do you bet it’s our new neighbor, little sister?” asked Albert in a low voice.
    Igraine didn’t answer.
    For where but Darkrock could the horsemen be coming from? There were a great many of them, so many that Igraine soon lost count. A fat man in a black cloak rode at the head of the troop, with a gigantic knight following him. The strange banner that Igraine had seen flying from the towers of Darkrock was fluttering from his lance.
    “A visit from the neighbors?” Igraine’s father was badly out of breath after climbing the steep steps to the battlements on his piggy legs.
    “Goodness me, this looks like trouble, my dear,” said Melisande, pushing her snout above the wall. Sisyphus jumped up on the battlements, his tail raised high, and hissed at the visitors below.
    The horsemen were coming closer and closer. The cold morning air was filled with the clanking of their weapons and armor. They were hardly a horse’s length from the castle moat when their stout leader reined in his mount and raised his gloved hand. His men swarmed forward, taking their horses up to the moat until they surrounded it like a wall, leaving only a space in front of the drawbridge for their master and the knight with the lance. The knight’s armor looked exactly as Bertram had described it; it was covered from his neck to his