“Come on, Walters!” she shouted as she jumped from the raised table to the next and then the next, skirts flying behind her. Soon there were a flurry of crossbow bolts hitting their mark as the servants struggled to adapt to the new game and clamber up onto the tables themselves. In seconds that felt like minutes there was just one left, scrambling in her kitchen clogs as she ran for the door that led out to the rest of the castle.
“Get her, she’s going to warn the others, stop her!” But they were both too far away. Yet of her own accord the girl stopped dead in the doorway just as she was about to leave the hall.
“The others are warned,” said a voice from the doorway, and Derrick leaned in grinning, as the serving girl fell straight onto her back a Rhodopalais kitchen knife sticking out from her throat into the sky. He handed Ash her crossbow and she lurched forward to grab it as if it were a child. “Everyone alright?” he called back into the corpse-festooned Great Hall.
Slowly, silks and velvets started rousing themselves, some having even inventively contrived to dunk choice parts of their hair and clothing into their gruel as they fell. “Alright here, thanks to you two,” called one through a beard smeared in cinnamon goo as Naomi Verraine picked herself stiffly up off the floor. “You were supposed to catch me, Walters! Now I’ll have a most unladylike bruise near my rump.”
“And what a prime rump it is your ladyship, my apologies. Do you all have daggers?”
“Yes. When Ash told Derrick after she came to you, he taught us enough to get by. Isn’t that right, Bella?”
Bella Nargosi just nodded from her gruel-soaked place, white-faced, staring at the bodies around her and then staring up at Ash wide-eyed. Remembering herself, she fumbled in her skirts and produced a glinting silver little thing that looked like a letter opener. Still, it would do.
“Right. Everyone go down to the kitchens and wait there. It’s the only place they’ll not look for you. Keep your guard up and kill anyone who walks int hat isn’t us. Go!”
“But where are you going?”
“Do you think they were only young serving girls, who decided to do this? No. The men will be searching out the nobles” quarters for stragglers, but the bulk will have made their way up to try and capture the king.”
“And the prince?”
“And the prince too. That’s why we who can fight have to go up there. I’m no warrior, but I can work a crossbow, so I’ll be helping the men Derrick and I trained out there with the carriors. Walters, you told them, yes?”
“They’re hiding and in position and gave me their word they wouldn’t move until we came. Which is why we must hurry – time for at least the young prince may be running out.”
There were three floors between the Great Hall and the king’s solar where Rize always ate breakfast with his father. Three floors – who knew they could seem so long? Ash climbed like a madwoman with her crossbow in hand, with men running all around her in an oval of raised swords. Still the stairs came. A momentary relief came when they were stopped on the second floor by two men dressed like stable boys with royal-looking weapons in their hands. But they stood no chance against the sheer numbers and anger of the newly minted carrior killers they faced, and soon they were lying face down on the narrow stairs.
“See, what did I tell you?” said Walters, managing to sound smug even with his voice raised. “A battle on a narrow staircase is much better – here they have to come for you one at a time.”
The stairs did eventually run out though, and then the real fun began.
Eleven thickly-muscled men stood guard at the king’s doorway, which was eerily silent. They stared at Ash and her men with dead eyes. These men were no nobles or royalty. They had earned their muscles slaving out in the hot sun, enduring, developing a strength beneath calloused skin from childhood that no noble, not even Ash, would ever understand. They raised hoes and axes, sickles and hooks as the aristocracy ran at them across the shiny floors.
As one, the men surrounding Ash all ran forward anyway, and she too: for each of them, someone they desperately cared for lay beyond that door. Even her, no matter what had happened or what he had done. They rain with their blades held high.
Steel crashed onto steel and, in some cases, iron and wood, in a bone-jarring crash. For all her talk and her fancy crossbow moves, Ash had precious little combat experience. Most of all she had ever done with a blade involved throwing daggers, which was fine, but when swords came into it her whole experience came from long-ago sparring sessions with her musty, portly teacher. She found this to be quite different. The men around her were forming a protective ring, but it was being broken apart fast by various men picking fights with an adversary. In the chaotic jumble of feet and clashing metal noise and the backs of heads, Ash couldn’t do much except stab wildly and the odd man who broke through their defences. Eventually, the circle broke completely to reveal just three rebels left standing. Ash surged forward, yelling, hacking wildly and completely at random with her sword. The men seemed to understand, and while she was diverting the men, two of her own came up behind the three and made short work of their backs. When the last fell gurgling and gasping to the floor, they kicked down the king’s door.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Bring the fight
Ash’s eyes struggled to adjust for a moment – the room was a circular one filled with windows covered by long drapes, sunlight streaming in from every side. When she recovered, the sight she saw was bizarre in its domesticity. There was Mater, standing behind both Rize and the king sitting at an ornate writing desk, a parchment before each. She might have been their governess, but for the fact that there was a fine curved sword in each of her hand’s, and those swords were at each man’s throat.
“Not one more step doves,” she said softly as any nursery mother. Somehow the quiet in her voice was more frightening than if she’d shouted. Both Rize and the king did not even look up. For a wild moment, she wondered if they were drugged or under some magic, but when she looked closer she could see a pulse jumping against the shiny steel at the prince’s throat.
It felt good and terrible too him again, this prince she thought to marry less than a week ago. He looked like Rize, like the same Rize, except for a new darkness around his eyes.
A man to Ash’s left blustered in outrage and took a step forward. Calmly, without even looking down at her target, Mater cut a shallow, thin red line across a centimetre of Rize’s skin. He winced at this but did not move. At least he wasn’t tranced or poisoned or something. Yet.
“How dare you,” said the king quietly, without looking at his son. It was the most subdued Ash had ever seen him and she thought she heard tears in his voice.
“Just keep going there, Your Majesty. Yer almost done.”
It was only then that Ash thought to look at what they were writing. She could not see well from her angle and daren’t move; but could make out the words “I hereby bequeath in my own name and of my own will’. The words gave her a jolt of urgency and, at the same time, an idea.
Slowly, with all the subtlety of court, she carefully manoeuvred her hand holding her dagger behind her. If she remembered carefully Pescera was standing directly behind her. Lithe, dangerous Pescera – their only hope.
As suddenly as she could Ash jumped diagonally forward to draw Mater’s eye and Pescera send the dagger spinning right towards the cook. The old woman swing backward fast, catching the dagger only in the shoulder, but mercifully the swords were now free of the king and prince’s throats.
With a roar Mater pulled the dagger and in one fluid motion had it spinning across the room. To her credit, Pescera dropped at the last second. And instead of in Pescera, the dagger landed neatly in the man’s eye who had been behind her, with a wet thunk.
Ash turned away to fight her nausea as the man fell backwards without a sound. “You’re not really a cook, are you?”
“Leader of the mob, more like,” rasped Rize, rubbing his throat.
“You
shut up now Pup Prince, that was meant only for your ears. But whatever I am, I’m no woman dumb enough to not have another plan. Boys?”
With sinking horror, Ash turned towards the nearest of the billowing window drapes, lush enough to fall in pools to the floor. In what seemed like slow motion, each swathe of fabric suddenly floated into the air and, coming out from behind each, was an armed, screaming man.
Sound left. So did time, as Ash flung herself backward away from the man with a cleaver in front of her, turning to the right as another threw a knife too. She needed to pull her crossbow off her back but there was no time. Clumsily, she brought her sword in front of her to block the one man’s blade, then stabbed clumsily at the other to keep him back. All the while her heart was screaming, but the world remained silent. It was as though she had forgotten to hear. Never, not at Rhodopalais nor when the owl came for Vanita, had she had to fight like this.
And then, out of nowhere, Derrick was beside her. Derrick, who was always on her side, whether she felt it or not. Neither of them were swordsman but, together, their hacking motions had an effect, the men were pushed back for a moment. At the same time, the draperies at the windows billowed, and Ash and Derrick nodded at each other. Sound came back into the world and, screaming, they ran forward and pushed the two men from the tower window.
It was a precious moment of space, and all they needed. As one, each reached behind them and pulled crossbows from their backs. Ash breathed a sigh of relief as air came back into her lungs and felt the familiar comforting weight of familiar wood in her hands. Less harried now, she scanned the room, turning in a slow circle, picking off men with cleavers and scythes one by one.
Mater was fighting off three men when Ash walked towards her, trying to get a better shot. But a hand was suddenly on her crossbow, pushing it gently down.
“She is my responsibility. This is my fight,” said Walters gravely. And walked slowly forward. “You get rid of the last of her cronies for me instead.”
Ash gaped at him. Walters? Fight a mob leader with obvious combat training? He was a good steward, but he was still a steward and no knight. It would be the death of him, and then who would keep these royals alive?
“Remember, I’m also the son of a Pathfinder. Well, I was,” he smiled sadly. “It’s alright Ash. I’m not afraid. I’m ready.” She knew that he wasn’t talking about the fight, and his words clenched her throat tight, but she nodded anyway and let him pass.
“Ash!”
Derrick’s voice. He turned, to see a scrawny, screaming man almost close enough to touch her. In the hubbub with Walters, she had let her guard down. Now, she stupidly raised her arm by instinct and blocked his blade with her crossbow, making her weapon worth even less in the struggle.
The man seemed to smell her weakness for his free hand grabbed her by the hair as his sword blade bore down on her face. “Shame to waste a pretty face, Maidy. I could stab you with something else if you like.” He moved forward to press his snarling mouth onto her.
It was too much, too much in this chaos and fear. Something in Ash loosed and she brought her forehead forward sharply to meet his, then kicked fiercely in the direction of his groin. She must have hit her target for he doubled over, and she came close enough to whisper into his ear. “Not if I stab you first,” she said low as she unsheathed the dagger still at her thigh and plunged it into his stomach again and again.
When she was done, she looked up to find yet another blade at her throat from behind. She looked around as much as she could move her neck, trying to calm her thoughts. Derrick was backed into a corner fight a particularly burly man with a cleaver and dagger while Walters was fighting Mater furiously in a battle of two swords so beautifully silver that they flashed like stars as man and woman dove, thrust and parried at lightning speed amongst the still-billowing drapes. And the king… the king was slumped forward on his desk, likely passed out from shock, but the space where Rize had been sitting was empty.
Ash dropped her crossbow and raised her hands and closed her eyes. Then, changing her mind, she slowly turned half a circle and opened them again to spit in the face of her killer before she died.
She did not get the chance though. As soon as she’d done turning, a bright blade blossomed in his chest. The sword was dark metal, like that of vigorously polished Expansion Iron, and Ash stared at it stupidly as the man crumpled to the ground. Behind him, Rize pulled the sword free with a murderous look on his face.
“Are you alright? If he touched you…”
“You’ll kill him again? I’m fine, thanks to you, Prince.”
Rise shrugged awkwardly, and Ash realised suddenly that it was the most they’d said to each other in a week. They stood for a moment, swords and screams clashing all around them, and stared at each other.
“Well, got to go,” he said quietly and, without warning, leapt backward acrobatically. Ash gaped. She had never seen Rize sword fight, and if she had though Walters was good… Here was someone who had been trained since three. Without much effort, Rize leapt in and dispatched of the man fighting Derrick with one swish of his blade, not even watching the man fall as he jumped to the sign and managed to insert himself between Walter and Mater’s furiously clanging swords. He moved like no one else with a weapon, like a dancer almost, and in seconds he had met Mater’s right sword in mid-air and spun it in an arc so fast that it looked as though her wrist was broken. The left sword, coming stabbing through towards his side, he had sidestepped while still having her other arm pinned, and in a flick of his sword she didn’t quite understand had made Mater drop one sword, then hack at the hand holding the other. Within two minutes, a bleeding Mater was standing surrounded by frantically blowing curtains and a prince’s sword held high at her throat.
Unhurriedly, Mater raised both hands with eyes full of hate.
“You’re too late,” she drawled. “They’re already coming. I told you there was nothing you could do to stop this.”
Ash suddenly remembered something. “Walters, did you bring it? Give her the thing!”
“What thing?” asked Rise without taking his eyes off of his former cook.
“A serum my mother was working on when she died. It’s almost like a potion. It makes someone tell the truth even against their will.” Walters came forward, shaking, holding a glass stopped jar small enough to fit in his palm, the blue liquid within it malevolently shining.
“If you think I’ll betray my own to you, you don’t know me well, Prince Pup. Hear me again: they are coming here for you. They already left in the night and will be your doors any moment. It’s over.”
And before anyone could move, Mater grinned icily and, still smiling, threw herself through the billowing clouds of drapes and out the tower window to her death.
For a while, nobody moved, not even the king breathing jaggedly at his table. Ash turned away from the dark fallen shape below and studied him, the king instead, and the contents before him.
The parchment read: “I hereby bequeath in my own name and of my own will inheritance and heirship of Castle Blindé, all its contents, as well as the country and governing of Germania and its treasures therein to the bearer of this, named…” And then nothing. They had got there just in time. One word more… Ash shuddered to think it.
“What do we do now?” asked Walters, coming up beside her. Ash shrugged, looking from him to Rize.
“Well, you still got the potion stuff, haven’t you?” put in Derrick from the corner.
***
Minutes later, the four of them were racing down the last of the stairs. She was still where they’d left her, struggling at her bonds and shrieking like a cat from behind a veil of red hair.
“Shut up and open your mouth Tarah. Derrick pinch her nose until she opens her mouth. Walters, you pour it in then. Good. Now: who’s coming, Tarah?”
“The mob.”
“How many?”
“A whole village worth, five hundred people. Men, women, children… all comi
ng. They’re going to live in here when you’re all dead. We’ve been planning this a long time.”
“When will they arrive? How soon? And are they armed?”
“Who knows? They left at midnight, while you were still chained in here. They might reach here in two hours, might be less. There’s no time to defend against them. When they arrive they’ll cage the king, kill the prince and everyone else still left.”
“How do you know this to be true?”
“Because Mater’s protegee, Rayce, is leading them. And he’s my brother. He’s been out to get you all since our sister died.”
The words sank like lead into Ash’s skin and stomach. “Walters how long does this stuff last?”
“I’ve no idea. She wasn’t finished with it – it might even be poisonous for all I know. Perhaps an hour or so?”
“She’s right,” said Rize quietly, “We have no time to defend and mount a proper defence or siege fort. This castle’s the worst for that of all of them, which must be why they chose Blindé.”
“We don’t have the food stores to outlast a siege anyway,” said Walters.
“Well, we can’t do nothing! Tarah, do you know where the mob is coming from?”
As Ash was speaking, the last of her and Derrick’s trainees ran in, panting, their faces pale from battle. She turned to them now. “Are you boys up for more fight? Have you got it in you?”
“What? Why, Ash?”
“Because we have to truss up young Tarah here like a turkey, fetch a compass and all the nobles in the kitchens who can fight, Duke included.
“If we cannot defend against a mob here, we’ll take them by surprise on the road. We’ll bring the fight to them.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Take her
Horse hooves were all there were in the world. They matched the pace of her own heart as they pounded the dirt, first a few miles, then some more, until flying dirt and thundering heart was all that was left, all she could imagine. Nursery rhymes filled her head, games played with her dead sister. I am keeper at the gate, who goes there? And if you got it wrong, you lost. I’m king of the castle and you’re the dirty rascal. She urged her horse on, faster.
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