The Princess Knight

by G. A. Aiken

  That’s when she saw a tree several feet away shake, the snow on its branches and limbs fall to the ground.

  Keeley immediately forgot about the soldier at her feet and she jogged over to the edge of the hill near where she was currently fighting. She looked out over everything. Cyrus’s military camp. The totems. Where the battles were taking place. Everything.

  Then she studied the mountainside that Cyrus had at his back and looked down at her hammer.

  “What?” Caid asked, coming up beside her. While his sister continued to protect their flank from the onslaught of Cyrus’s men, he’d insisted on remaining near her side.

  “I need you to pull back our troops.”

  “What? Why?” She whistled for the gray mare that she still rode into battle. She kept thinking the horse would leave her, but so far, she hadn’t. Although she had found herself another wild herd to run with near the castle and had given birth to another foal. But when Keeley put on her chainmail and weapons, there the gray mare was, waiting for her by the stables, snapping at poor Samuel or any of the stable hands when they got too close to her with Keeley’s saddle.

  The gray mare galloped to her side and Keeley mounted her.

  “Just do it, Caid. Pull them back. Now!”

  * * *

  “What’s happening?” Laila asked when Caid started to pull back their troops. She’d just gotten their portion of the battle under control but that could easily change.

  “I have no idea, but be ready to move.”

  * * *

  Her party had settled behind some big boulders when Gemma and the others rode up. Quinn had her in a hug before she could say a word. And to his surprise, she didn’t complain. She simply hugged him back. Hard.

  When they pulled away from each other, she winced as his arm brushed hers, and he caught her sword arm and carefully pulled up the sleeve of her hauberk. He expected to see a wound from an edge weapon but it was a bad burn. That’s when it occurred to him that Gemma had ridden up on the back of Scandal with the Abbess.

  “Where’s Kriegszorn?”

  Gemma opened her mouth to speak but Ima suddenly pulled her away and asked Balla, “Are you good at healing burns, virgin?”

  “You think you’d be better at that sort of wound, whore.”

  “Could someone just give me something for the pain? I feel the need to start crying.”

  “We found something,” Aubin said, returning with Tadesse. “About a half a mile that way.”

  As there were no fresh herbs for a poultice, it was decided that treating Gemma’s wound would have to wait.

  Instead, their group snuck down to the location found by the priest and the assassin. It didn’t take long. The tunnel began at the mouth of a mountainside opening. King Marius’s soldiers were guarding the area.

  But that was not why Gemma had to walk away. Why she nearly ran away.

  Quinn followed, finding her behind a large, ancient tree. She was bent over at the waist, her hands on her knees, struggling to breathe. She’d already vomited, and tears spilled from her eyes. They had nothing to do with the pain from her burned arm, though. This was worse.

  “How could she?” Gemma kept repeating. “How could she? How could she?”

  Quinn crouched next to her, stroking her back and resting his head against hers.

  “I wish I had an answer for you,” Hurik said, coming around the tree. She had her hands tucked into her white robes, which had been splattered with blood from the battle she’d just fought. “I wish I could tell you it’s because your sister is pure evil, a soulless devil who was placed with your family without your parents’ knowledge. That you weren’t related to her by blood. But you’d know that wouldn’t be the truth. You know that there are no easy answers in this world. You know that your sister is simply and sadly very human.”

  “But she’s using slaves,” Gemma choked out. “She’s using slaves and they’re all children. They’re all children. They’re all children!”

  Gemma stood tall, her entire body vibrating with rage. “She’s using children as slaves!”

  “Whose children are those?” Wassa asked.

  Agathon began to obsessively rub his forehead. “She convinced King Marius to strike several barbarian tribes. She told him they were endangering some nearby villages. She insisted those troops that are loyal to her were part of the legion the king sent out. They must have taken the children after or even during the battles. And because they’re children, she could put the costs of feeding them under expenses for war orphans. King Marius would never know.”

  “Do we know where this tunnel goes?”

  Gemma pushed away from everyone and pulled out her sword.

  “I don’t care where it goes.”

  Quinn quickly grabbed her, pulling her back against his chest.

  “Before you do something very brave and very stupid, remember there are children in that tunnel. You start killing the soldiers, the first thing they are going to do . . .”

  “We need to get the children out of there,” Balla said. “But how?”

  “I know my mistress,” Agathon warned. “I’m sure the soldiers have been told that if anyone is about to find out anything, they are to eliminate the children first.”

  “What if you call on your gods?” Hurik suggested.

  “All doorways are closed,” Ima reminded them. “They don’t want Cyrus or his fanatics traveling through them to attack our people.”

  More calm now, Gemma pulled away from Quinn. “She’s been working on this tunnel for two years. Do you think there’s a way out on the other end?”

  “I saw something about that in the messages to the queen.”

  Agathon pulled out the scrolls he’d handed off to Aubin, who’d put them in his travel bag. He began to shuffle through them quickly.

  “Yes. Here. From the captain in charge about three months ago. He’s telling her that they’ve reached their destination. The tunnel is big enough for the children and one man to get through. But not yet for the armies.”

  “Gods-dammit!” Gemma snarled, her hands curling into fists. “She’s doing all this to launch a bloody attack.”

  “On who?”

  “The crazed queen of whatever whatever. The one that lives in a land filled with dragons.” Gemma briefly closed her eyes and blew out a breath. “I can’t think about that right now. Okay, so the children can get out on the far side.”

  “But we don’t know how long that trek is. The children might have to run for days.”

  “Without food or water.”

  “You know what?” Quinn realized. “All we need to do is get the soldiers out.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We get them out, slaughter them. Then rescue the children and take them to safety in Keeley’s territory. We all know she’ll happily take care of them until we find out if the barbarians will want them back. They can be a little . . . strange about that kind of thing.”

  “We don’t know how many troops are in there,” Léandre pointed out.

  “So we go back home to get more troops and leave these children to be slaves for another day? Another hour? Another second?”

  “I’m guessing from your tone, War Monk, that any response I may give would be the wrong one.”

  “Let’s draw the soldiers out and slaughter them all,” Hurik said.

  “And how do we do that?”

  She snorted. “Easy.”

  * * *

  Keeley quickly dismounted from the gray mare and sent her back with the other troops.

  She had to move fast. Cyrus’s archers were already raining arrows down on her. She was just lucky that she was far enough out of range not to get hit. But when they moved closer . . .

  She wasn’t even sure her idea would work, but she still had to try before her army was completely exhausted.

  Keeley took in a deep breath, lifted her hammer, swung it up and around and then into the mountainside.

  She took a step back
, thinking about trying again and wondering if she was only wasting her time when she realized someone was screaming at her. Keeley turned toward the yelling and she saw that everyone was screaming at her. All her troops, the centaurs, even Ragna. They were all screaming at her to run. Run now.

  “Fuck!” she got out before she started running. Running for her life. Running as she’d never run before.

  Even as she heard part of the mountain coming down behind her, she ran. She saw Caid galloping toward her. He circled around her and when he was alongside her, she leaped onto his back and wrapped her arms around his chest.

  She looked back and saw part of the mountain sliding down, taking out half of Cyrus’s camp in the process as well as two of his totems. He was still partly protected, but she’d opened up an area where the centaurs could get in. She just had to wait until the mountain stopped coming down....

  Caid slowed from a gallop to a trot, then stopped completely. He turned and they both saw that everything had finally finished moving, the damage devastating.

  That’s when Caid asked, “What exactly did those dwarves do to your hammer?”

  * * *

  He loved his queen. She paid him well and was very straightforward. But he couldn’t say that he enjoyed his job. Making sure chained children moved rocks out of the way was simply boring. At least most of them weren’t too young. The older ones were fairly strong and could be made to move the rocks and dirt faster than the younger ones. But the older they got, the more difficult they became. They tried to get away a lot more often than the little ones and were full of backtalk.

  He could think of a thousand things he’d rather do than stand around all day doing this job. But he knew when his year here was finished, the queen would come through for him just as she’d come through for the ones who’d gone before him. Put in a year, she’d promised, and keep your mouth shut, and not only did you get your regular pay, but also a big bonus and a promotion. Bastards that should have stayed privates for decades were already corporals and some even sergeants, all because of Queen Beatrix.

  So, yeah, this was not his favorite job. In fact, this would go down as his most hated job. But who cared if it got him his dream in three more months?

  “Come on, you,” he shouted at some kid. He’d learned long ago not to bother with anyone’s name. That was just a quick way to get attached and you didn’t want to get attached. That only brought trouble. So “you” and “boy” or “girl” were good enough. Especially for these people. Barbarians. They were barely human as it was.

  He heard something and looked around. It was like a crack.

  “What?” a fellow soldier asked.

  “Did you hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  “A weird—”

  The two men stared at each other. Now they’d both heard it.

  He looked up at the rock ceiling, wondering how sturdy those wooden beam supports were when he heard another loud “crack” and saw a line zigzag through the tunnel.

  “Run!” he screamed, taking off.

  “What about the—”

  “Fuck ’em!” he yelled back at his cohorts. “Just run!”

  He ran around the slave labor his queen had stolen, shaking off their groping hands, ignoring their screams for help, their pleas for him to unlock their chains, and headed straight for the light of the tunnel exit. He could hear his fellow soldiers right behind him.

  “Come on, lads!” he urged them. “Come—”

  The bitch opened him up from throat to hip with one slash. Her expression so angry, he thought it could have killed him all on its own. She slashed him again, though, for good measure, and as he dropped, one of his fellow soldiers tripped over his legs and got his head cut off before he even managed to hit the ground.

  * * *

  Keeley rode the gray mare to the third totem, now vastly weakened by the loss of the other two, and with a swing of her hammer, destroyed it. As soon as she did, centaurs swarmed the area, attacking Cyrus’s soldiers. She charged on, going after the fourth totem. This time, she and the mare simply rode by, and she swung at the totem, crushing it on impact.

  The fifth one was in her sights, but soldiers and wizards surrounded it. She dismounted the gray mare and sent her off.

  With the hammer tight in her hand, she approached. Soldiers charged, but she swung her hammer, sending one flying off. She swung the other way and crushed another soldier’s leg. When he went down, she bashed in his head.

  A wizard stepped forward, raised his hands, and unleashed lightning. She lifted her hammer but it was a poor shield, and the lightning struck her in the chest. But other than stumbling back a few steps . . . Keeley felt nothing. She looked down at the armor Queen Vulfegundis had given her. It wasn’t magickal but maybe it absorbed other magicks, keeping her safe from their effects.

  Grinning, she continued forward, knocking soldiers and wizards out of her way with a joyous glee she hadn’t felt since she’d last been in her old forge. Especially when all the wizards’ magickal attacks were simply absorbed by her armor or her weapon.

  She bashed in a wizard’s entire back and kicked his broken body out of the way, leaving her alone with the totem.

  Keeley had just raised her hammer above her head when a voice asked, “Do you really think this will change anything?”

  She glanced over her shoulder and saw what she could only guess was Cyrus the Honored standing behind her in his full armor with a sword in his hand.

  “I don’t know,” she told him. “Let’s find out.”

  She brought the hammer down and crushed the last totem into the ground.

  * * *

  With a swipe of her hand, Balla released all the children from their chains.

  Unfortunately, there were many more soldiers inside the tunnel than they’d thought. Soldiers willing to fight to the end for their queen. Unwilling to run, even when they believed the stone walls were crumbling around them.

  Which meant they had to find a way to get the children who were further back in the tunnel out past them. Because the soldiers seemed determined to keep them inside.

  At least Balla knew that she’d unlocked all the children in this very long tunnel. Right now, all she could really do was focus on the ones next to her and—Balla gasped, her gaze moving to Priska and Ima, wondering if they’d felt it, too. Felt that shift in universal magicks. Felt the unlocking of mystical doorways that had been closed for so long. Looking at their faces, Balla knew they had. They had all felt the change. And they knew what it meant. Knew what freedom it had just rewarded them with.

  “Where do we send them?” Priska asked.

  “The other end of the tunnel?”

  “Are you sure? I thought we were going to leave it up to Keeley. Where they go.”

  “The children’s villages were destroyed,” Hurik replied, fighting two soldiers with her battle staff. “If we leave them in this area and we don’t make it out alive, there’s a risk they could end up right back under Beatrix’s thumb. We can’t take that chance. But at the other end . . . they can at least run. Do it, Balla.”

  The nun was right.

  Balla looked at Priska and the witches. With a nod, they all called on their gods, and finally did what they hadn’t been able to do in weeks. They opened doorways that allowed them to safely send the children to whatever was on the other end of Beatrix’s tunnel.

  “Now what?” Ima asked, shoving her dagger into the throat of a soldier.

  Balla smiled. The safety of the children had been the only thing holding them back....

  Balla opened another doorway and moved everyone out of the tunnel, including herself.

  Shocked to be outside and away from obvious danger, Gemma spun on her. “What the hells are you doing?”

  “What I need to do.”

  Balla then flung all the soldiers, including those outside of the tunnel, or those at either end, into the very middle of it. This way, they wouldn’t have a chance to escape. />
  Then she said, “Ima.”

  Giggling a little, the witch crouched to the ground and dug her hands into the dirt. She began to chant and the earth shook beneath her fingers. In seconds it began to split apart, opening up as the chasm raced down toward the tunnel. When it hit, the entire earth opened beneath it and the tunnel broke in the middle and disappeared inside.

  Balla thought maybe she could hear the soldiers screaming but that could have been her imagination. She really didn’t know. Or care.

  When Ima finished, Balla called up the winds and let the power of them fill in the hole with dirt and rocks until everything was completely covered.

  “Huh,” the vicar said. “That was efficient.”

  “The gods opened the doorways, I gather?” Gemma noted.

  “They did.”

  “Why?”

  Balla and Ima both shrugged and Balla admitted, “We have no—aaaaaaaah!” she ended on a scream, jerking several feet away. When she’d calmed down, she jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “Your horse is back, Gemma.”

  “Oh.” Gemma forced a smile. “Great.”

  “Something you want to tell us about Kriegszorn, Gemma?” Quinn asked.

  “No. Look at her over there with all her skin and whatnot. She’s just a normal-sized, half-dead animal. What’s not to love nor ask questions about?”

  * * *

  Keeley faced Cyrus. He wasn’t near enough for her to hit him with her hammer. And he was well surrounded by his soldiers.

  “Your army is still losing, peasant Queen,” Cyrus laughed. “Even with your half-horse abominations.”

  “If you’re so confident, Prince Cyrus, fight me.”

  “I’m not my brother, foolish woman. You can’t goad me into a fight by challenging my manliness. Not when my army can simply wipe out yours and then . . . wipe you out. You see, I have nothing to prove. I have my god on my side. What do you have, heretic?”

  A flash of bright light distracted Keeley from the conversation. And when she looked out over the valley, she saw that there was an army of war monks. But it wasn’t Ragna’s war monks. It was another order. And another. And then another. Plus several orders of war priest armies. And an army of battle witches. An army of temple virgins. A small unit of divine assassins easing out from the nearby trees.