by N M Zoltack
A clatter rang out. Bjorn hadn’t realized until then that he had dropped the short sword. His left arm hung limply at his side, blood rushing down from the wound.
The pain was intense, but Bjorn ignored it, forcing himself to attack, launching an assault. The sight of his blood on that Vincanan’s blade fueled him forward until Bjorn finally brought up his sword and struck a blow to the side of the man’s head.
Shock filled the man’s eyes, and Bjorn had to tug a few times to free his blade. Swiftly, he opened the door and shut it behind him before any others could come in. He slammed his right shoulder to the vanity and forced the heavy wooden furniture to shift and move against the door.
That accomplished, the door barricaded at least somewhat, he hurried over to the window and glanced out. The queen’s room did had a balcony, but this room did not.
There was, however vines that stretched along most of the length of the castle. If he could make use of both arms…
No matter. He would have to try. If he managed to save the queen, Rosalynne would spare his life, wouldn’t she?
Even if he wouldn’t, he could not worry about his future, not while all of Tenoch was under attack. Being as he was on Olympia’s side, he did not truly have a rooting factor in this war, but he did wish for the least amount of violence and bloodshed to occur on Tenoch soil.
Gritting his teeth, trying not to jar his left side, Bjorn sheathed his sword. He truly did not relish that idea, but he had no choice.
He gripped the first vine and tugged. It held firm, so he climbed out the window, dangling by one hand on the vine. Using his legs, he built up some momentum and timed the release to launch himself closer to the queen’s balcony. His hand touched the vine, and he slipped a bit before he found purchase on the vine. He had to almost hop up the side of the castle wall to be able to climb up the rope given that he only had the use of one hand. Another swing and a jump over, and he now held the vine right next to the balcony.
Although he saw dark spots of light, he threw his left arm over the balcony and then grabbed the railing with his good hand. He managed to flail himself over, and he nearly landed on his face.
The balcony door was locked. The inside curtains were shut, so he could not see inside, but from here, he could hear parts of the commotion in the hallway.
All the more desperate now, Bjorn slammed his good shoulder against the balcony door four times before it cave, and he tumbled into a room that was empty.
Nearly empty.
The queen was not here.
A maid was.
Bjorn muttered a curse and growled, “You need to get out of here.”
69
Rase Ainsley
The knights, the guards, the soldiers, the enemy… In Rase’s mind, they were all enemies because not one of them would help him locate his sister. If she were here, if she weren’t… Rase was too worried about her. This kind of chaos was far more than she could handle. She needed peace after all of the devastating losses she had experiences, after all of the traumatic events she had suffered.
Rase hated himself for being the cause of some of her suffering, and he vowed right now, from this very moment onward, that he would do whatever was required of him to see to it that his sister smiled each day, that she felt no shame or fear or anything but happiness. Oh, and a fully belly. And a roof over her head. And nice clothes.
But no husband. That was on her if she wished for one. He would not try to press her to marry this man or that one, although he doubted he would ever recommend her to marry a knight considering all they cared about was Tenoch, the land and the castle, versus the actual people who lived there.
The peasants and the commoners within the castle had been shoved where exactly? Rase fought his way over to the stairs. He even had to stab a Vincanan in the neck to be able to head around a bend to find the right set of stairs. Upward he climbed, and he eventually found the peasants, and the stench alone was nearly enough to make him turn back. Instead, he went about the massive room that housed them all not once but three times in total.
Leanne was not here.
“Who are you looking for?” an older woman with a missing front tooth asked, her words hissing slightly, almost a whistle.
“My sister.”
“If she was wounded, she might be down in the healer’s hall.”
“Where is that?” Rase begged.
Among the screams and the cries and the wailing of the scared people and the children, Rase had to ask her to repeat herself many times before he thought he had the directions down.
He raced out of the room, rushed down the stairs, hurried down a floor, and had to fall onto his rump and slide between the legs of a Vincanan so that he was not stabbed straight through. Rase stumbled back to his feet, and he just kept on running, rounding the end of the hallway, realizing there was a battle going on to the right and the left, sighing, and heading to the right, trying to push past the fighters.
Rase’s anger and worry fueled him, and the more battles he raced past, the more he tried to hinder the Vincanans. Honestly, he did not rightly care who sat on the throne, but if his sister were here, if she had been injured, he would send each and every Vincanan back to their southern continent in pieces.
So he would slice the back of their necks, stab them in the back, drag his dagger along their sleeves, whatever he could to harm them in any fashion, even if only superficially. If they reacted at all, it might give those fighting for Tenoch a chance to knock off the invader.
It took Rase far too long to reach the healer’s hall. Thankfully, there were a dozen knights at the front of it, shoulder to shoulder, swords raised and ready to defend their injured fellow men and women.
They eyed Rase and parted enough to allow him entrance.
Many healers were rushing about, trying to tend to those bleeding. Knights were arguing, wanting to go back out and fight, the healers yelling at them right back, telling them to shut their mouths and stop moving because they were getting blood everywhere.
Honestly, it would have been a bit comical except Rase had seen some of the injuries as they had occurred to other knights who hadn’t made their way down here. They had fought. One he had witnessed fight until he died.
Rase hadn’t been able to nick that Vincanan at all, and he almost felt a bit guilty about that. Maybe if he had, the Vincanan wouldn’t have slain the knight.
Then again, if the knight had trained harder, had faster reflexes…
And then Rase saw something strange.
A woman’s hands were glowing. She held them over the gaping wound of a knight. Without consciously thinking about it, Rase walked over that way. When the woman’s hands no longer glowed, she drew back her hands, and the wound had closed up.
Rase gaped at the sight. How… His mouth hung open, and no sound came out.
But then he saw that same glow over to the right. Another woman, a younger one, had glowing hands, and Rase stared at her.
“Leanne!”
He rushed over to stand beside her as she worked, as she healed a man. Sweat beaded on her forehead, but she ignored her brother entirely as she worked. She saved one man and then turned to the next knight who rested on the bed on her other side. There were only so many beds, and there were enough wounded men—oh, and at least one or two women too—that some rested on blankets in the corner.
His mouth clamped shut so that she could work without being distracted, Rase just watched in awe as his sister used magic—magic!—to help people.
Amazing. Rase was utterly amazed.
Magic was real.
The dragons were real.
And yes, the castle was under attack, but he had found his sister.
Life could be better, yes, but all in all, it could be far worse.
70
Ulric Cooper
The sheer relief that Ulric had reached the queen in time to literally save her life was only a fleeting emotion because he had been followed. He had to fight off two
Vincanans and then two more and one last one before it seemed as if there might be a chance for them to have a breather.
He glanced around the room. “We can bar the door,” he suggested. “Move—”
“Chef will skin you alive and put you in a stew if you move his things!” a young maid burst, coming out from under a table.
Ulric jerked back, bringing up his sword reactively, almost as if he intended to fight her, which he did not. Nerves, he supposed, anxiety from the battle.
“We can leave out the kitchen door,” another maid suggested.
“I thought of that before,” Rosalynne said softly. She stared at Ulric with her wide dark eyes. “I thought about it, but it felt wrong—”
“What would be wrong would be for you to die. Come now. Where is this back door?”
The scullery maids—three in total—led the way, and they shoved open one of the double doors. He supposed they needed the wide opening for when they had fattened animals to kill and prepare for a grand feast.
Not that there had been a feast grand or otherwise in a long while.
Out of the kitchen, Ulric tried to breathe easier, but he could not. Torches cast flickering light and long shadows everywhere, and the sky offered no illumination at all. He urged the queen to head away from the door toward the back of the castle, considering during the battle, Ulric had deduced they must have entered through the front. Just waltzed on in as if the castle was already theirs.
For a few minutes, things seemed calm enough that Ulric faced Rosalynne, who stood with her back against the southern wall of the keep.
“I will be your personal guard,” he said, his sword in his right hand, the blade pointed to the ground as he pinned the hilt against the wall above her shoulder, the blade between her and the wall. His other hand dug into the stone just above her other shoulder. Essentially, she was trapped, pinned in place by his body, and he was not about to accept her orders otherwise. “I will be by your side at all times,” he added when she said nothing.
“Even when I sleep?” she asked a bit coyly, slightly breathlessly.
“Even then,” he said without being flustered. “I will stand beside your bed.”
“And when would you sleep?”
“I won’t because you can’t seem to stop getting yourself into danger,” he growled, “you and your sister both.”
Ulric drew back and glanced around. Although there were a few guards here and there, it seemed that the fighting had all been contained inside the keep, for better or for worse.
“Where is Vivian?” he wondered aloud.
“Hopefully not doing as you just said,” Rosalynne murmured.
“Her middle name is trouble,” he grumbled.
“Yes, and mine?”
He stared down at her, at her lovely dark eyes. Her hair was mostly contained in a braid that hung over one shoulder, but many strands had tugged free. She looked so very vulnerable in that moment, and he hated the Vincanans fiercely at that moment, so much so that he drew back and gripped his sword as if he meant to go find an enemy to fight.
“Ulric…”
He lowered his head and slowly shook it. “I will be your guard,” he repeated.
“I hate that I feel so hopeless!” she cried.
He glanced at the scullery maids who clung to each other as if they could somehow save themselves through that hug.
“You are not as hopeless as they,” he murmured for her ears alone.
“I am not much more capable than they,” she retorted.
“I am willing to train you to use a sword if that is your wish.”
“A bow and arrow,” she murmured. “I would rather fight targets from afar. You’ll be with me, so if I miss and any get close to me, you can handle them, yes?”
He laughed. Despite himself, he laughed. “I suppose that could work, yes.”
The sounds of the battle continued all around them, and Ulric gripped her arm and started to walk away toward the stable.
“You mean to spirit me away after all,” she mused once their destination became apparent.
“Only if it proves truly necessary,” he assured her.
A scream pierced the nighttime air, and a man fell down from a window high up in the keep. Rosalynne did not react as he thudded to the ground, but the maids, all three of them, promptly burst into tears.
“When will this accursed night end?” she murmured.
“I’m not sure we will like what we find come the dawn,” Ulric murmured back.
“It could be worse, I suppose.”
“Indeed it could,” he agreed.
He could not say for certain who grabbed the other’s hand, but the two of them held hands and stood by the entrance of the stable even though he should have been saddling up horses and preparing them just in case as the Vincanans showed no signs of leaving. If they meant to fight until the last man standing, who would prevail? The Vincanans were strong, but those from Tenoch had the numbers, or did they?
Perhaps it could not be much worse after all.
71
Sir Edmund Hill
The moment the fighting started, Edmund’s first thought was of Tatum. Was she all right? Followed closely by did the knights have some of her potions?
For most of the battles against the Vincanans, those from Tenoch had potions that gave them increased strength and endurance to fight against the stronger and more powerful Vincanans. Edmund did not have one of those potions on hand. The only potion he had at all in his possession was the one that Tatum had given him that would give him his heart’s happiness or something along those lines.
He had never taken that potion because he knew in his heart what he wanted.
Not a what but a who.
His brother’s wife.
And that Dudley was dead did not make Tatum available to him. Not at all.
Although he would care for her and the babe as if the baby was his own, as if she were his wife.
There were times when a man would wed the widow of his brother, but Edmund could not bring himself to do that. No, if he wed Tatum it would be because she knew and returned his love.
But he could not and would not ask that of her.
And if he did not start to think on the battle, he would not live long enough to ever see her again.
Edmund fought as if he had the potion. He fought as if the Vincanans had come to take Tatum away instead of Rosalynne.
He fought for Tenoch, for the future, for the chance that peace could one day return to the realm.
Edmund did not slow down when he was stabbed near the shoulder. He did not slow down when his Chestplate was dented, and he did not slow down when a blade nearly took out one of his eyes.
He fought and fought and fought and would go down fighting if he must, but he would fight until he could not fight any longer.
Just as any good knight of Tenoch would do.
He was merely a knight, nothing more, a suit of armor and a sword and a shield, fighting against his enemy, the enemy of his land, and Edmund would continue fighting until the war was done.
And then… he did not even think he could survive in a time of peace, not after all of this fighting.
No, there would be no peace for him, but love? He could fight for love all the days of his life.
72
Rase Ainsley
The more Rase watched Leanne work, the more fascinated he became until finally, he had to say something.
“Leanne—”
“Move aside,” she snapped. “You’re dripping blood onto the floor.”
Rase started and backed away. His sister was right. A plop of blood dripped off his dagger onto the stone floor, and he grimaced and shoved the dagger into its sheath even though he probably should have cleaned it first.
“Leanne, what’s going on with you?” he asked. “How is it that you… You’re healing people just by touching them! How does that work?”
She glowered at him. “Why should I stop working—”
“Working?” His ears perked up. “Is this a job? Are you getting paid for it?”
“Rase! Leave me be!”
“No,” he said angrily. “I will not leave. You upped and left me, Leanne! I had no idea where you were and—”
She glanced at him and slanted her head, her eyes narrowing. Her hands dropped to her side, and she faced him, ignoring the injured knights for once. “You were injured recently, weren’t you?”
“Yes,” he admitted begrudgingly, “but that doesn’t matter.
“Why wouldn’t it matter?” she asked haughtily. “Of course it matters. But that’s just it, isn’t it? Everything is about you and what you want.”
“That’s not true at all!” he protested. “What about when I took care of you? After Pa died? After…”
“After Ma died? Why did she die, Rase? Why did those men come after us? Because of you!”
“Maxene,” he said desperately. “I did everything I could for her. I… I know I’m only fourteen, and she was older than I am, but I would’ve done right by her. I would’ve married her and raised her baby as my own, but…”
“Whatever happened to the man who got her pregnant?”
“Radcliff Snell,” Rase growled.
“You killed him, didn’t you? Your bloody dagger, how many have you killed with it? That’s all you do, isn’t it? You cause hatred and diversion wherever you go. You aren’t a good man. You’re a terrible, cruel one. All you do is seek what you want.”
“That isn’t true!”
“No? Where did you get that dagger? How did you become injured? What about that house? How did you acquire it?”
Rase said nothing.
“Why won’t you answer my questions? Because you know I won’t like the answers? Or because the answers prove my point? You are a…”
