The Mage Queen

by R A Dodson

  D’Artagnan forced himself to consider the question, out of respect for a man who was willing to talk to him about it—to try and help him without judging.

  “I’m not sure,” he said eventually. “It’s both, I think.”

  He glanced up and saw Aramis nod thoughtfully. “I can respect your honesty in answering so. In return, here is my proposal. As long as we are under the same roof, if you should feel the need to take up the whip, you can come to me at any time of the day or night and we will pray about it together, asking God for His guidance. Would that be helpful to you?”

  Already, the fleeting peace d’Artagnan had enjoyed earlier had vanished, allowing emotions to crowd around him once more. “I’ll... think about it?” he managed.

  Aramis smiled, and d’Artagnan could see him once again donning the persona of the debonair chevalier like a mask. “That’s all I ask, my young friend. Now, if you’re feeling up to it, Athos, Milady, and I are planning to hunt in the forest this afternoon, in hopes of replenishing the larder with something a bit more interesting than chicken. You should join us, and test the sights on that new pistol of yours.”

  Knowing that he would eventually have to face Milady again, and feeling that he should put forth some effort to support the household after enjoying its hospitality, d’Artagnan reluctantly nodded his agreement.

  Fortunately for d’Artagnan’s sanity, it was easier than he had expected to separate in his mind the haughty, competent Milady of the daylight hours from last night’s wanton temptress. The four rode out from the castle, passing through the surrounding fields and into the woods before dismounting and proceeding on foot. This last decision came much to d’Artagnan’s relief, since he was riding Grimaud’s foul-tempered, broom-tailed nag after Athos noticed his gelding’s sorry state, in the wake of d’Artagnan’s earlier ill use on the way back from Blois.

  Grimaud’s mare seemed to react to every bit of guidance from her rider by pinning her ears back and kicking out with one hind foot. D’Artagnan had resolved earlier to offer to shoe her like he had the others, to repay Athos and Grimaud for her use, but if he was honest with himself, he really wasn’t looking forward to the prospect of being any closer to those sharp hooves than he already was.

  With the horses securely tied in a clearing, Athos offered d’Artagnan powder and shot for his pistol.

  “Are you well supplied with ammunition?” d’Artagnan asked. “I would not like to waste any if your stores are low. Gunpowder is quite a valuable commodity in many places.”

  “Don’t worry yourself on that account,” Athos said, regarding him kindly. “We won’t suffer any shortages if you test your new weapon and bring down a hart. De Tréville has contacts that are extremely helpful in that regard.”

  “These days,” Milady added, “it’s not who you are that’s important; it’s who you know.”

  “Wise words, Milady,” Aramis said, “and, in point of fact, one of the reasons I continue to tolerate your husband’s company.”

  Milady snorted, and Athos raised an eyebrow.

  “Indeed,” Athos said. “And remind me once again why it is that we keep you around?”

  “My finely honed wit and handsome good looks, I should imagine,” Aramis replied with a smirk. “My singing voice has also garnered high praise from certain quarters, I’m told.”

  “Hmm,” said Milady. “Perhaps we’ll trade you in for our young guest, here. At least he can shoe a horse.”

  D’Artagnan blushed, and Aramis slapped a hand over his heart. “You wound me, Madame. I suppose I shall have to bring down a stag now, to prove my usefulness.”

  As it happened—and to no one’s surprise, given their rather rudimentary armaments—none of them brought down a stag. D’Artagnan had a single chance at a young doe, but the sights on his new pistol were slightly off and the shot buried itself in a tree a foot to the left of the animal as it leapt away. By compensating for the discrepancy, he was eventually able to shoot a large hare. Unfortunately, even large hares tended to end up fairly mangled when pierced by a lead ball at range.

  Milady—more suitably armed with a pellet crossbow—bagged four fat pigeons over the course of the afternoon, and Athos, a brace of partridge. Aramis, much to his disgust and the others’ amusement, was empty-handed when they returned in the deepening dusk, but all agreed that the bounty would at least keep them supplied for a couple of days without having to taste chicken again.

  D’Artagnan surrendered the remains of his hare to Grimaud, and brushed down both Grimaud’s horse and his own by lamplight before eating a hasty meal and returning to his quarters. Unlike the previous evening, he found himself barely able to keep his eyes open as he carefully cleaned and reloaded his pistol, removed his boots and doublet, and eased his shirt free from the new wounds on his back where the blood had dried. He had scarcely blown out the candle next to his bed before he was fast asleep, lost to dreams.

  An explosion in the castle wrenched him abruptly from slumber some unknown amount of time later, shifting the stonework around him and sending trickles of dust and mortar down from the ceiling.

  Chapter 7

  The overwhelming blast of noise was like nothing d’Artagnan had ever experienced before. Disoriented, ears ringing, he flailed toward the wall next to the bed before remembering where he was. Turning the other way, he grabbed for his sword belt, pistol, and dagger in the dark.

  The smell of smoke and gunpowder assaulted his nose as he quickly donned his shirt and weapons belt before pulling on his boots—his eyes adjusting rapidly to the faint moonlight coming through the window. D’Artagnan had no idea what was happening, but decided that drawing attention to himself by lighting a candle would be too great a risk in such an uncertain situation.

  Creeping through the doorway in a macabre re-enactment of the previous night, he made it only a few steps before an arm snaked around his neck from behind and he was dragged backward into the shadows, a blade pressed to his throat as he cried out in surprise.

  “D’Artagnan?” a voice hissed in his ear.

  “Aramis?” d’Artagnan asked in reply, suddenly remembering his new friend’s self-confessed tendency toward insomnia. Instantly, the arm and blade disappeared.

  “Yes, it’s me,” Aramis whispered. “Keep your voice down.”

  “What’s happening?” d’Artagnan whispered back, heart still pounding.

  “I don’t know,” said the other man, grounding him with a steady hand at the junction of his neck and shoulder. “But that felt like a bomb, and it was somewhere in this wing. Come... hurry!”

  D’Artagnan followed Aramis’ guiding hand down the hallway, the smoke and dust becoming thicker as they progressed until they could just make out where it was coming from in the darkness. It was a room with which d’Artagnan was unfamiliar; its doors blown halfway off the hinges. Aramis froze, his hand clenching convulsively around d’Artagnan’s shoulder.

  “Oh God in Heaven, no,” he moaned as if struck. “Ana’s room!”

  D’Artagnan’s mouth opened and closed in shock. After a moment, he whispered, “We need light, Aramis!”

  Aramis was silent for a beat before replying, “No. No, this won’t be the end of it. They’ll still be coming, and they’ll need illumination of their own to find their way through the castle. Carrying lights will only make us easy targets.”

  “They?” D’Artagnan echoed, feeling completely out of his depth. “Who are they?”

  “Ana María’s enemies,” Aramis replied grimly, leaving d’Artagnan considerably confused as to why a sweet young woman like Ana would possibly have enemies.

  Before he could ask any more questions, torches flooded the hallway from the far end, momentarily blinding him. A bellow of rage sounded amidst the lights, and one torch fell to the ground, still clenched in its dead owner’s hand.

  “Aramis!” Porthos yelled from within the confusion of flame and men, and Aramis disappeared from d’Artagnan’s side like a shot, flinging himself towa
rd the fight.

  “Porthos, down!” he barked, waiting a beat before firing both pistols into the mass of men. Two more torches dropped, and Aramis drew his sword and waded into the fray as Porthos staggered back to his feet and began cutting down opponents with broad strokes of his schiavona.

  D’Artagnan came back to himself with a jolt, a flush rising as he realized that he had stood frozen for several moments while Aramis and Porthos fought. With a flash of insight, he knew that the intruders would not be aware of his presence in the shadows, and that could be to his advantage. Skirting the wall and trying to keep away from the torchlight, he edged toward the fringes of the fight and drew his dagger.

  Imitating the move Aramis had used on him earlier, he grabbed the nearest figure from behind and dragged him backward even as he sliced the blade across the man’s throat. His victim fell with a horrible gurgling noise. D’Artagnan swept up the man’s torch, keeping it between his body and the other intruders to obscure their view of him as he dove in once again, attacking from behind.

  As more men fell under his assault, d’Artagnan got a view of Porthos and Aramis fighting side by side, backs to the wall. A rough, unfamiliar voice shouted from within Ana’s ruined room.

  “She’s not here! Finish off those fools and search the other rooms! We’re not leaving here until the bitch is dead!”

  ‘D’Artagnan!” Aramis called, just as the men around him registered his attack on their flank and turned to engage him. “Find de Tréville and help him! Leave these swine to us!”

  The idea of running away from the fight was galling, but d’Artagnan suddenly remembered seeing Ana in de Tréville’s room the previous night and understood that Aramis was sending him to protect her. With a yell, he brandished his torch in a wide arc, catching one opponent in the face with the flaming end and causing the other to jump back or risk the same fate. Knowing that discarding it would make it harder for the others to follow him, he threw the torch at a third man and hared away into the darkness, trusting luck and instinct to let him avoid any obstacles until his eyes could adjust to the moonlight once again.

  Several sets of footsteps pounded after him. A lantern carried by a running figure approached from the other direction, and d’Artagnan glimpsed Athos, half-dressed and wild-eyed as he rushed toward the fight in the hallway. A sudden stabbing pain ripped through d’Artagnan’s left shoulder and he stumbled to a halt, awkwardly grasping the handle of the small throwing knife that one of his pursuers had lodged there and pulling it free.

  The three men who had followed d’Artagnan were nearly upon him when Athos passed by him, swinging the heavy lantern up and catching one of them on the temple. The man fell as if pole-axed.

  D’Artagnan dropped the dagger and drew his pistol. He fired at one of the others, but missed. Blood was streaming down his numb left arm as he replaced the pistol on his belt and reached for his sword with his right, but just then the scent of rosewater wafted past him. He heard Milady hiss, “Olivier, go! I’ll deal with these two!” before she appeared like an avenging angel in his pursuers’ torchlight, barefoot and with wild hair curling around her head and torso like writhing snakes in the flickering light.

  Milady lunged forward and drove a dagger between the ribs of one man with her left hand before smoothly whirling and shooting the other through the heart with her right.

  Feeling stupid and slow due to shock and blood loss, d’Artagnan said, “I have to find de Tréville.”

  Milady grabbed his arm and dragged him forward. “Hurry, then. We’ll both go.”

  “They’re after Ana,” d’Artagnan said urgently. “They’re trying to kill her.”

  “Of course they’re after Ana,” Milady snapped in response. “Lucky for her that she’s spent the last few nights crying on de Tréville’s shoulder instead of sleeping in her own room.”

  “What’s going on?” d’Artagnan asked, unable to keep a plaintive note from entering his voice. “Who is she?”

  “It’s not for me to say,” Milady replied. “Here we are.”

  Unthinking, d’Artagnan barged through the door into the candlelit room, only to find himself slammed up against the archway with a sword against his throat. Consciousness wavered as his shoulder wound screamed at the ill treatment, and he grunted in pain.

  “It’s us; for God’s sake don’t kill him,” Milady said. “I have a feeling we’ll need all the sword arms we can get this night.”

  “D’Artagnan?” came de Tréville’s rough voice in his ear, and he nodded, too short of breath for words. The blade moved away, and the scarred face with its single bright eye looming in his vision backed off, giving him a view of Ana María pressed against the wall out of sight from the doorway, wide-eyed and pale, clutching a main gauche dagger protectively in front of her with both hands.

  “How many men?” de Tréville asked.

  “More than a score, I think,” d’Artagnan answered hoarsely, rallying his wits as best he could. “We’ve taken down ten, at least. Porthos, Aramis, and Athos are engaged with the main body of men, but I heard one of them tell the others to search the rest of the wing.”

  “What weapons do they have?” Milady asked.

  “Blades only,” he said. “I didn’t hear any gunshots except ours.”

  De Tréville shook his head. “Doesn’t mean anything. Ammunition is hard to come by. They could be saving it for their main target.”

  “What have you got stashed in here that we can use?” Milady asked de Tréville. “D’Artagnan and I each have a spent pistol and a dagger. He has a sword. I think he’s injured, though.”

  “It’s nothing,” d’Artagnan said quickly, not wanting to seem like a liability. Milady made a skeptical humming noise in response.

  “There are two loaded pistols, along with powder and ammunition on the bench,” de Tréville said, motioning with his chin. “Reload your own weapons, both of you—quick as you can.”

  Milady nodded and moved immediately to her task. D’Artagnan hesitated, knowing that he would be unable to load a pistol with his left arm numb and useless. He was saved from looking foolish by the approach of pounding footsteps.

  “Too late,” Milady said, dropping the unloaded pistol and scooping up the two loaded ones, one in each hand. D’Artagnan drew his sword, thanking providence that he would not have to fight left-handed like Athos.

  “Stand clear!” Milady snapped, and d’Artagnan and de Tréville smoothly pressed themselves against the wall on either side of the doorway as the first two attackers appeared, only to fall as she fired first one pistol, and then the other. Retrieving her dagger, she moved to stand between Ana and the door even as de Tréville and d’Artagnan drove forward to engage the next wave of men as they tried to squeeze through the doorway and over the slumped bodies.

  It was hard to tell from within the confines of the room, but d’Artagnan thought there were perhaps half a dozen men remaining outside. He tried not to think about what might have happened to Athos, Porthos, and Aramis that would have prevented them from blocking the men or at least shouting a warning of their approach. Instead, he focused on coordinating their defense with the old soldier next to him; picking off the intruders as they attempted to enter the room, while they were still constrained by the confines of the archway.

  Even as blood loss from his wound began to make d’Artagnan’s head swim unpleasantly, three more of the opposing force fell before them, making entry into the room even more difficult as the bodies piled up. Just as he was beginning to hold out hope that they might prevail, de Tréville fell beneath a blow to the head from a sword pommel, and the assassin burst into the room even as d’Artagnan ran his sword through the stomach of a second man.

  A third—the last, as far as d’Artagnan could make out—pressed forward to take his place, but d’Artagnan’s attention was snatched by the sight of the one who had beaten de Tréville reaching for a pistol at his waist. Moving on instinct, d’Artagnan leapt sideways to put himself between the assa
ssin and the two women, even as the muzzle of the man’s firearm came up in a smooth arc and exploded.

  Pain unlike anything he had ever experienced bloomed in d’Artagnan’s side. He tried to catch himself against the wall and was vaguely aware of a dagger whistling past his ear to lodge in the shooter’s throat. D’Artagnan’s legs collapsed under him and he slid down the wall. The scent of roses assailed him and a slender hand picked up his rapier from where it had fallen. Milady growled and rushed toward the remaining man. The sound of bare feet slapping on stone and Ana’s soft voice reciting prayers under her breath behind him were the last things d’Artagnan registered.

  Chapter 8

  He couldn’t breathe.

  D’Artagnan flailed, trying to free himself from the stabbing constriction that caught at his lungs when he tried to gasp for air. Hands closed around his arms and legs, restraining them, and panic washed over him, bringing tears to his eyes.

  “D’Artagnan!”

  The voice was familiar. A hand rested on the side of his face, guiding it to the right until a blurry face came into view, and his mind helpfully supplied a name—Athos. Athos was the person leaning over him and speaking his name so urgently.

  “Can’t—” d’Artagnan wheezed, “can’t—”

  “You can breathe, d’Artagnan,” Athos said. “Look at me. Look at me.” D’Artagnan struggled to focus on the piercing gray eyes above him, only peripherally aware of the tears burning hot tracks down the sides of his face. The hand that had been cupping his cheek moved to rest lightly on the centre of his chest. “Shallow breaths, now. Try not to move my hand.”