The Silent Shield (The Kingfountain Series Book 5)

by Jeff Wheeler

  “You’re brilliant,” Trynne told him, feeling her heart swell with pride. She turned and hugged him, grateful that he had finally revealed himself to her. Part of her longed to question him about the clothes she’d found in Morwenna’s room, but she could not bear to ruin the moment by mentioning it.

  He seemed surprised by her sudden embrace, but after another moment passed, he put his arms around her shoulders and rested his cheek against her hair. She felt so short compared to him, yet so warm and protected too. She savored the moment, drowning in it.

  “I’ve told you this because I trust you completely, and I know that you are truly loyal to the king. I’ve harbored doubts about Morwenna for some time, and she proved herself a traitor this evening by accusing you of her treachery. My Trynne.”

  He pulled back a little and lifted her chin so she could look up at him. The silver moonlight revealed his expression of hunger and torment and fierce protectiveness. The wind blew hair across her face again, and this time, he cleared it away before she could.

  “Trynne,” he whispered urgently.

  Her heart was aching. It hurt down to her deepest core. She loved him still. She had always loved him.

  And when he started kissing her cheek, her nose, and then her mouth, she lost all control of herself and kissed him back, clinging to him to keep from flying away on the next gust. He pulled her against him as she gripped the front of his tunic. Warmth and giddiness tore loose inside her. She wanted to be his. She wanted to be his always.

  The sound of the trapdoor slamming against the flagstones behind her caused her to flinch and pull away. She hastily parted from Fallon, still feeling the memory of his mouth on her lips, her legs trembling with exhilaration.

  When the aging captain poked his head up, Fallon looked at the man as if he were sorely tempted to blister his ears with curses.

  “Unless the battle has just started, you’d better have a good excuse for interrupting me . . .” he said.

  The captain shrugged helplessly. “The thief is dead.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Rage

  Silence followed the captain’s pronouncement. Dead? The man who’d hurt her family so much was dead? She wasn’t sure how to feel.

  A scowl crossed Fallon’s face, and he said, “I will be down shortly. Do not touch the gate. It could be a trick.”

  “Aye, my lord,” the captain said, ducking back down. He left the trapdoor open for them to follow. Fallon stood there for a moment, one hand on his side, the other gripping his furrowed brow. Trynne’s heart pained her. Their situation buffeted her worse than the wind.

  “We should go back down,” she said, knowing it was wise but not wanting to be wise at that moment. She gazed up at the tortured look on his face.

  “Trynne,” he said, stepping forward. She retreated, keeping space between them, holding up her hand. He looked at her hand as if it were a stone wall.

  He shook his head at her. “Please don’t push me away.”

  “I must,” she whispered, but she doubted he could hear her over the wind.

  He reached out and pressed his palm against hers, then entwined their fingers. “I will never stop hoping,” he said.

  The heartsick look on his face worsened her own pain. “We have a duty, Fallon,” she said, squeezing his hand. “You cannot play in the river near the falls without the risk of being pulled into the current. Please, we must go down.”

  He nodded in agreement and, holding her hand still, guided her to the edge of the trapdoor and the ladder.

  They both halted at the same time. A snake made of a thousand torches wound all the way down the valley road toward Dundrennan. It shimmered in the black, stark night against the stone and trees. Gahalatine’s army would arrive by midnight.

  Fallon’s expression turned dark and severe. “He won’t wait for the dawn,” he said with conviction. “He will attack tonight.”

  Captain Staeli finished the final buckle of Trynne’s armor—the Maid of Donremy’s armor, which Trynne had found in a sanctuary in Occitania. The captain had carried the heavy armor with him, uncomplaining, on their journey. Once it was on, he stood back and appraised her with a frown. His chain cowl was down around his shoulders, but he had on the battered breastplate she’d seen him wearing at the Battle of Guilme. His belt was equipped with a throwing axe, several daggers, and a glaive. His sullen expression and bearded mouth looked so familiar to her, so dear.

  “The woad, then?” he asked.

  She was wearing the spelled ring under her gauntlets. She had felt the Fountain’s subtle suggestion that she should dress the part of the Painted Knight and then use the ring to hide her distinctive armor and painted face.

  Tonight, she sensed, would be the night she revealed the truth to all.

  She nodded and Captain Staeli reached for the bowl of woad. He scooped up a wad of the doughy material with his forefingers and carefully and gently smeared it across half of her face. She closed her eyes, almost feeling herself transform into the persona of the Painted Knight. What the night would bring, she did not know. But she felt certain the battle would be momentous. If she needed to, she would bring Drew to another fortress and rally more defenders to them there. She felt a crushing duty to protect the king from harm. She was his shield, his secret protector. Fallon had been given the right to her father’s seat, but it had been intended for her.

  “I’m done, lass,” Staeli said, wiping his hand on a rag and tossing it aside. “The Oath Maidens will fight to defend the king tonight. They’ve trained hard and they’ve trained well. So have you. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried about our fate, but we won’t make it easy for them to take this castle. We’ll put up a fight.”

  Trynne nodded to him. “I’m glad you are with me,” she said. She dreaded losing anyone else she held dear.

  There was a firm rap on the door. Trynne sighed and nodded to Staeli to open it. She used the power of the ring to summon the mirage of her face without the woad, her body dressed in the tunic of Averanche rather than the armor of the Maid of Donremy. She started toward the door as Staeli opened it, revealing Fallon’s herald.

  “The king is going to the wall with Lord Fallon,” the herald said. “He wanted you to join them.”

  Trynne gave a final curt nod to Staeli and, gripping the hilt of one of her swords, followed the herald into the corridor. Even though it was the middle of the night, no one in the castle was asleep. The great hall was filled with the people from the town, mostly women and children. Every able-bodied man had been given a weapon and a shield and assigned a place to defend the fortress. The air was thick with fear, but people murmured that the king was there with Firebos. They would rally together to fight against the invader.

  The torches affixed to the outer wall of Dundrennan cast light on the preparations that were being made. The drawbridge was up, revealing a jagged cleft of rocks separating the defenders from the attacking army. The bailey was crowded with knights, and many of the castle’s braziers had been brought out to provide warmth. Trynne and Staeli followed the herald to a stone staircase leading up to the head of the gate. The king was pacing the battlements, wearing borrowed armor. The hollow crown was welded to his helmet. It was nearly midnight, judging by the stars overhead. The moon had disappeared.

  Fallon stood there in his armor, the chain cowl up around his head, his arms folded imperiously. He nodded at Trynne as she reached the top of the wall.

  The view filled her with dread. A veritable sea of torches filled the space below, and the golden armor of the warriors of Chandigarl glowed in the light. The ranks of Gahalatine’s soldiers stood in perfectly ordered rows—spearmen, archers, and warriors with glaives. Row after row, phalanx after phalanx, with more coming still. There was no siege apparatus on display, no towers or ladders or ropes with grappling hooks. She knew from her own experience that they did not need them.

  Their breath came out in puffs of mist. The night was bitingly cold and getting colder.
Her eyes shot to the hollow crown.

  Standing opposite Fallon was Duke Severn, wearing his black armor with the boar badge tunic, still bloodstained from the battle at Blackpool. He glared down at the host.

  The king smiled when he saw Trynne. “We’re outnumbered,” he said to her. “But do not the rocks hold back the sea? I’ve ordered the maidens to occupy the heights along the inner wall. Fallon’s knights hold this one. Do you approve?”

  Trynne nodded, gazing down at the huge host, her throat stopped with fear.

  Fallon approached. “The last Espion to make it inside said they found a treasure ship unloading in Blackpool two days ago. Another host of soldiers is marching to Dundrennan. They are converging here with suitable arms. Grand Duke Elwis crossed over from Brugia with an army of ten thousand and started attacking the supply lines. Some of this new army has diverted south to engage his. The war is happening in multiple places and across multiple battlefields. But this one is the largest.”

  “Thank you for the news,” Drew said grimly. “We are hopelessly outnumbered. But one soldier with courage has always been worth a hundred men fighting for the wrong reason.”

  “My lord, look!” Severn said, pointing off the wall.

  They all turned at once. The army before them was splitting in half. A black road appeared down the middle. Then Trynne saw Gahalatine striding through the ranks with Rucrius by his side and two other figures following behind them. She sensed the aura of their magic as they approached. It had become familiar to her.

  Just a few days before, she had faced Gahalatine at the zenana in Chandigarl. Now he was approaching Dundrennan as a man of war.

  The knights on the wall fell silent as he approached.

  Drew’s face twisted with animosity as he gazed down at the emperor. He was still looking at the scene below when flakes of snow began to drift down from the cloudless sky. There was an audible gasp as the soldiers noticed the flurry. A grim smile appeared on Severn’s mouth. He knew, better than anyone, the special qualities of the hollow crown.

  Gahalatine halted when he and his Wizr companions reached the front of the army. He held a sword in one hand and a blazing torch in the other. The wind was blowing hard still, thick with coin-sized flakes of snow that were quickly sticking to the ground.

  The emperor of the Forbidden Court turned to Rucrius.

  “Bevah-kah-sha!” Rucrius pronounced in words that trumpeted like thunder.

  The wind instantly calmed. Silence fell across the wall, broken only by the hissing of the snowflakes as they hit the fires from the braziers and torches.

  Gahalatine strode forward again, only stopping when he stood directly before the walls of Dundrennan. She knew that he had a way of amplifying his voice. And she felt his well of magic writhing inside him, a bowl full to the brim with power. He unleashed it.

  “My name is Gahalatine, Lord of the Distant Isles. I see you plainly, Andrew, son of Eyric, son of Eredur. You wear the hollow crown. I have come to take it from you, to conquer your people and assert my claim to rule these lands as your emperor and protector. Before the bloodletting that will result if I am forced to earn my right by conquest, I give you this chance to surrender the crown to me and spare many innocent lives. But if you feel your duty is to preserve your crown by right of arms, then so be it. I did not come to kill you. Only to humble you. What say you, Lord of Kingfountain? Will you kneel before me?”

  Trynne felt magic gush from Gahalatine as he spoke. He was using his words to try to cow Drew into surrendering. Faced with such impossible odds, another might have buckled and capitulated to prevent the violence of war. But Trynne stood near the king, and the magic did not shake Drew’s confidence or his resolve to defy Gahalatine’s claim. She saw the king’s jaw clench and he leaned forward, putting one hand on a buttress of the battlements.

  “Both of us worship and believe in the same Fountain, my lord. It was the Fountain that gave me the right to rule. And if it is the Fountain’s will that I surrender it, then I shall. Be it according to the Fountain’s will and not my own.”

  He did not have a supernatural way of lifting his voice, but Trynne did not doubt that he could be heard below.

  After a moment of silent contemplation, Gahalatine lifted his head high. “Well said, sir. You are an honorable foe. I will grant quarter the moment you decide there is no longer hope. I have prepared for a year to carry on what I started. Tonight, we finish it.”

  “He’s overconfident,” Severn snorted under his breath.

  “Rucrius, the gate if you please,” Gahalatine said with a gallant gesture toward the castle, as if he were inviting him to dine.

  Rucrius’s smile was cold and humorless. He was gripping a different staff than the one Trynne had taken from him. It was black with a yellow-orange globe attached to the end. Trynne’s pulse raced as the Wizr pointed it toward the castle.

  “Soontrybio!”

  The raised drawbridge jolted and exploded in a hail of splinters and debris that rained down into the black chasm below as if it had been struck from inside the castle instead of outside. The force of the explosion knocked them all to their knees. Trynne winced in pain, her ears ringing with the cracking noise as she watched small fragments of the drawbridge rain down with the snow across the bailey yard. Twisted and steaming hunks of iron littered the bailey yard too. The gate had been wrenched and snapped apart. Soldiers were scrambling to get away from the doorway.

  Drew rose shakily to his feet, his eyes wide with shock. He gripped Fallon’s shoulder and nodded. Trynne couldn’t hear what he said, but she saw him mouth the word “Now!”

  As if Gahalatine had heard the silent word, the first leaf-armored warriors began to land on the battlements as if catapulted from below. The din of clashing metal broke out all along the upper defenses.

  It was just after midnight, and Trynne wondered in desperation if they would even be able to hold them off until dawn.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Battle of the Kings

  The thick flakes of snow obscured the onslaught against the walls of Dundrennan. Even though she could not see her enemies well, she sensed them through her magic and responded to their attacks. Trynne caught many of the warriors as they were unfurling and landing on the battlements, sending their bodies plummeting into the black abyss.

  Fallon, holding a sword in one hand and a curved horn in another, pressed his lips against the end of the horn and let out a long, sonorous blast. From high above them, the noise was repeated as the watchmen on the tower began to sound their horns as well, signaling the commencement of the surprise attack.

  Trynne was buffeted by a warrior landing near her, but managed to deflect his glaive with her twin swords. She rocked him off his heels, sending him into the abyss. After he fell, she saw something in the flurry below, movement coming from the warriors of Gahalatine’s army. Not all were vaulting up to the walls. Then she saw it. That gap in Gahalatine’s army was now filled with warriors carrying long wooden poles. No—they were the trunks of pine trees!

  Trynne watched in horror as the soldiers carrying the trunks lumbered forward and she divined that the trunks had been prepared to clear the chasm. They hadn’t brought siege equipment; they’d brought their own makeshift bridge, knowing that the Wizr would demolish the existing one.

  The king brought the pommel of Firebos down on the helmet of an attacker, dropping him to the ground with a dented helm. The sword was a whorl of blue light as he fought, its magic adding strength to his blows. He threw himself into the fight with all the fervor of a man struggling to survive.

  “Drew!” Trynne shouted, pointing down at the advancing men. Another leaf-armored warrior landed between them, facing her, and Trynne cut him down and then kicked him off the wall.

  The king turned, followed her finger, and saw what was unfolding.

  “They’re going to cross!” he shouted, striking at another enemy who had fallen from the sky amid the flurries. He turned and shouted down to
the bailey yard. “Severn! To the gap! Hold them!”

  Trynne realized the danger. The aerial attack was a distraction. If Gahalatine could get his troops across the chasm, he could trap the defenders on the walls, isolating the king from the rest of Dundrennan’s defenses.

  “Aye, my lord!” Severn shouted back and growled at his knights to hasten and follow him down the stairs to join the battle below.

  Groans of pain and surprise floated up from the ranks of Gahalatine’s men as spears began raining down on them from the cliffs above. Trynne watched with triumph as the teeming mass of soldiers crumpled from the onslaught, dropping under a withering hail of spears. They hadn’t expected the counterattack from their flanks.

  “Well done, Fallon!” the king bellowed. “That will distract them a bit!”

  Trynne flanked one side of Drew, Fallon the other. He was fighting with lethal skill, cutting down the warriors that still dared to land on the battlements. When Trynne flashed a look at him, she saw the determination in his eyes. This was what he’d always wanted: to prove himself.

  The falling spears disrupted the attack on the battlements, and a whoop and a cheer started from the ranks of the knights who were defending the wall. There were only a few remaining pockets of fighting as multiple knights dispatched those who had landed and killed their comrades. Trynne knew the celebration was premature.

  Gahalatine would not be defeated so easily.

  Not long after the cheers rose from the wall, Trynne felt a sudden surge of power from below and saw a shimmer of light from the magic’s aura. She sensed the danger an instant before it happened.

  “Drop!” she shouted, grabbing the king’s arm and yanking him down. A spear glanced off her shoulder and spun her around, but she managed to drop low. So did Fallon. A roar filled the air, loud as the thunder of a thousand charging horses, and the hail of spears began to fly at Dundrennan’s walls. Knights who were slow to drop were impaled by spears and fell from the wall down into the bailey. She sensed the magic coming from Rucrius. He had invoked a massive whirlwind that had gripped the falling spears and hurled them against the fortress.