by Sara Ansted
The king shook his head and replied, "No. Neither of you are to blame. Sir Guy caused it. And me. I am more at fault than anyone, for allowing it to come to this."
"Go get him, for me. I'm p-proud you're my... my father..." David gasped. He coughed violently, then lay very still.
The most bizarre feeling swept over Evey. She called into question everything she had ever thought about the glory of battle. At the same time she was seized with a furious desire for revenge. It was difficult to reconcile the two. Revenge would inevitably involve more fighting, but she knew there was little choice. She would never be satisfied until things were put right in the country, and Sir Guy was made to answer for his crimes.
She looked up again, and gasped. She had expected to see the king in tears. What met her instead was a vicious glare that caused her to sit back.
"This is my fault," he fumed. "I've always been a coward, and now it's cost me my son. I've let Sir Guy destroy what I love, and he WILL pay. I'll help you finish this."
Isaiah put a hand on her shoulder, and she took hold of it. Time seemed to stand still for a long while, as the king grieved over his lost son. Finally, he stood and gathered Isaiah, Evey, and a few of his captains together.
"Report," he demanded.
"Sir Guy and his personal guard are barricaded in the northwest tower," one of the captains explained. "A direct assault would be nearly suicidal, even if we had more men."
"Blast!" the king growled. "That place was built to be impenetrable, even with a minimal garrison."
Another captain spoke immediately. "Your majesty, Sir Guy can't hold out forever. Food and water are limited. Whether we drive him away, or lay siege, he'll have to come out in the end, and then we'll have him."
"No good. No good!" the king roared. "If anyone here really knows Sir Guy, I do. I didn't foresee his treachery, true, but I know how his mind works. He's far too clever. The longer we give him, the more chance he'll have to slip away right under our noses. It's got to be now."
"But sir! Our men would be slaughtered. We've got no chance. He's got two dozen elite guards with him."
The king sank to a makeshift chair. "I know. But we can't let him escape. We've got to do something before he has time to regroup."
"Excuse me," Evey interrupted. All of the men turned to look at her, some with disapproving glares. She ignored these. "I think you're forgetting a third option. You're underrating subtlety."
"Get this girl out of here!" roared a tall, thin man. "What could you know of battle? Go back to your needlework, girl."
He uttered the last word with such contempt that Evey charged before she had time to think. She kicked out his knees and locked her arms around his head and neck in a hold that a bear couldn't have broken. She had to restrain herself from squeezing too tight. The rest of the men, other than Isaiah and the king, were too shocked to react.
"Ready to listen to me now?" she muttered into the man's ear. He didn't answer, but gave a whimper of pain. Looking at the rest, she said, "I've never been inside, of course. But what makes towers like that so easy to defend is the spiraling staircase. The defenders have the high ground and the advantage of the weapon hand forward. So if someone were to attack from the top down..."
She left the men to figure out the rest on their own. Most looked unconvinced, but Isaiah nodded. The king also looked intrigued.
"Have we got any others who are left handed?" Isaiah asked him.
"Not that I know of. It's mighty uncommon."
"Not as much as you might think," he replied, and he ran off to search the uninjured knights.
"What is going on here?" the king asked Evey. "It seems that I've missed a rather crucial part of this plan."
"I can climb that tower. So can John, if he's not hurt. They can't shoot at us from the arrow slits if we're actually on the wall. From the top down, we'll have the advantage. We'll clear any archers. Then Isaiah, with anyone else he can find, will lead the charge up. They're left-handed. That will negate the angle advantage. We'll have Sir Guy before nightfall."
She said this confidently, despite her plan's obvious uncertainty and reliance on luck. She had no intention of letting the foul man escape her.
The king looked into her eyes. "You're sure about all of this? That's a dreadfully high tower."
"We nearly made it to your bedchamber once. The tower isn't much higher." She didn't mention that she had never actually climbed that far before. But with so much at stake, she was willing to try.
The king looked at her with a mixture of curiosity and amazement. "Well, alright. But do be careful."
She gave him a nod, and hurried off to find John.
Isaiah had been able to find two other men who favored their left hands. Unlike Isaiah, they had not been allowed to train that way. They still repeated the fighting stances with their right, alongside everyone else, but they could fight well with either arm.
The plan came together within half an hour. There wasn't really much to arrange. She had summed it up very succinctly for the king. Every bit of it was risky, but there wasn't a lot that could be done to fix that.
Just before they put the plan into action, Isaiah pulled Evey aside.
"Are you sure about this?" he asked. "That's over fifty feet, straight up."
"If you mean 'have I ever done it before', then no. But yes, I'm sure. I'll be fine."
"And you're not just saying that to make me stop asking you?"
She rolled her eyes, but only to make him laugh.
"You caught me," she admitted. "But seriously, don't worry about it."
"I..." He seemed to be trying to find the right words.
He stood incredibly close. Breathing suddenly became more difficult than usual. He brushed away a strand of her hair. As his thumb gently ran along her cheek, she stopped breathing altogether.
A little at a time, he leaned down until only an inch separated them. She longed to close the gap, but she froze in place. Forward. Just one inch. That was all.
Before she could act, he pulled away and turned his back on her.
"We can't," he said sullenly. Any other words caught in his throat as he cleared it. Then he walked away, stealing only the briefest glance back.
Misery. The moment he left was quite possibly the most depressing of her short life. And yet, even as she felt like crying, she couldn't help but admire the loyalty he had shown. No matter how much he wished things to be different, he still honored his promises. She only hoped that his bride would realize how lucky she was.
After an agonizingly long minute, she scolded herself back to the present. She had a job to do, and she couldn't just go around wishing for things that would never happen. She'd channel her frustration into energy for the job at hand. She had more than enough. Any tower guard that crossed her path would wish they hadn't.
CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN
Evey approached the tower first. She had a much more accurate judgment of a flying arrow than did John. Her first instinct was to sneak to the wall. Something she could do with no problems. But that left John to fend for himself. Instead, she charged forward with a yell, attracting the attention of all the archers in the tower.
Arrows flew past her. Some she dodged. Others she blocked with her huge, and quite heavy shield. Near the base of the wall, she threw aside her shield and dove the remaining few feet. Every archer had sent an arrow at her, and none of them hit. John came in only seconds behind her, taking advantage of the momentary lack of fire while the guards re-nocked arrows.
The tower had only three protruding machicolations from which to drop objects or pour boiling water. Evey considered this to be a serious design flaw. Any tower boasting to be impenetrable would leave no blind spots, but at least it gave her the safety she needed to climb.
Without pausing to think, she secured her bow and started the intimidating climb. By virtue of her small size, she climbed much faster than John, and was soon several yards hi
gher. Just as before, she found herself wishing for her crumbly wall at home. The hand holds were difficult and her footing was even more tenuous.
By the time she'd gotten level with the third floor, the strain began to tell in her fingers. They got stiff and shaky. She had no feeling at all left in her toes. When her hands finally found the edge of the fifth floor window, she was certain that only pure stubbornness had gotten her all the way up.
Disregarding caution, she swung herself over the ledge and into the only room with a window. Having a window at all, and positioned right in a blind spot, was yet another design flaw. If it weren't for the fact that it was now possible to catch a country-destroying traitor, she would be making some serious complaints about these weaknesses.
Evey was relieved, but not surprised, to find the room empty. No one in the tower had foreseen the chance of attack from the fifty foot high window. If she had been defending, she would have had an archer at the opening. Maybe two. Luckily, Gisbourne's soldiers were not her.
As quickly as she could, she knotted a rope around the sturdiest item in the room, which was a massive four poster bed on a stone dais. She had a sneaking suspicion that this was the king's second bedroom, to be used in the event of a siege.
She tossed the rope out to John, who still clung to the wall twenty feet below the window. He was clearly struggling with the climb. Good thing they had thought to bring a rope.
As much as she wanted to wait for John's backup, she couldn't handle idly pacing around the room. Against her better judgment, she decided to crack the door open and scope out the defenses. Knowing that her bow would be of little use in the spiraling stairway, she drew the sword that had once been her father's and stepped out into the passage.
It was a narrow tower. There were only two rooms per floor, and seven floors in all. Just enough space to house the royal family and as many soldiers as they could block the stairs with. As she looked around, she wondered about the point of it all.
If an army had breached the rest of the castle, it would only be a matter of time before the tower fell as well. She couldn't think of a single instance in history where a siege had been repelled from the last unoccupied, and sparsely defended, tower. But she supposed that it had to be attempted, as a matter of principle. That, at least, she could approve of.
She took another cautious step out of the room. The place seemed abnormally quiet. She expected to hear the footfalls of the pacing guards and the sounds of readied weapons clinking and shuffling between hands. There was nothing. An ominous feeling of dread settled over her.
She heard him coming before he knew that he was ready to attack. The shuffles were deafening in the strange silence, and instantly alerted her to the presence of a man in an alcove a few steps above her. He clearly thought that he was being silent, and she allowed him to continue thinking that. On guard, and ready for a fight, she waited until the last moment before turning to face her attacker.
It was just like the first time that Isaiah had attempted to sneak up on her, only this man was not Isaiah. He was at least a foot taller, and probably a full hundred pounds heavier. Although her timing was perfect, and her form was correct, the man didn't budge when she tried to sweep his feet. He stood there like a living boulder.
She was in big trouble. Any normal sized man would have been thrown to the ground with a knife at his throat. Instead, she sprawled across two stairs, having dropped her sword as she stumbled. Her knife seemed suddenly insignificant but she parried blows as best she could.
Each swing of the guard's massive sword fell so heavily that the power of it passed through the dagger and numbed her arm. The stone steps cut into her back each time she blocked, and she could feel her fingers losing their grip.
With one massive thrust, the knife flew from her hand and landed ten steps away. For the second time in as many hours, Evey faced imminent death, and for the second time, she cursed her lack of ability with the sword. Rather than fear, anger surged through her. To die like this.
Just as she had on the castle walls, she tried to get to her feet, intending to die standing up. A sudden crack rang through the air, interrupting her attempt to stand. The man before her went cross-eyed, and stumbled forward. She only just missed getting crushed by the fall.
In his place, John appeared, wielding his heavy hammer. He didn't say a thing to her about not following the plan. He just picked up her sword, handed it back to her, and lifted her to her feet. She shook out her numbed limbs and followed him carefully down the stairs.
Two dozen men, at least, had followed Sir Guy into the tower. She expected to see a sign of them at any moment. But stair after stair was empty. There were no other guards on the fifth floor, nor on the fourth. John and Evey scoured every room, just to make sure that they wouldn't be ambushed, but each one was empty.
After finding the third floor to be just as empty, Evey began to really worry. She had known that something was wrong earlier, but now she was nearly overwhelmed by the sense of foreboding. Where were the archers that had fired on her? What happened to Sir Guy? On the second floor, she chanced a whisper.
"Where are they?"
John just shrugged his answer, which did little to relieve her anxiety.
Finally they reached the ground level. Evey had been holding out on the idea that Sir Guy had sent every man to guard the door, but again they found no one. Realizing the absurdity of it as she acted, she walked over to the large, heavy door, casually unlocked it, and swung it open. Then she just shrugged at the waiting knights and beckoned them inside.
"What's going on?" Isaiah asked as he hesitantly took a few steps past Evey.
"No idea. We only met one guy and John took care of him right off."
"But what about all those–"
"Archers?" She shook her head. "I do not know. Something really fishy is going on here."
Isaiah walked over to the stairs and looked up. "So it's clear all the way up?"
"We checked every room up to the fifth floor."
"Maybe they're at the top?"
"It didn't sound like it, but we can't rule it out," she admitted.
Isaiah furrowed his eyebrows. "They've got to be. Alright, men. Up those stairs, and be cautious about it. They could be waiting for you at the top. Marion, cover my back. I want to check these guard rooms, just to make sure."
Evey had already glanced through them. They looked empty, but it was better to be sure. She nocked an arrow and followed Isaiah. There were four guard rooms. Isaiah spend several minutes in each, making absolutely sure that there were no hidden soldiers or back doors.
Twenty minutes later a shout came from the stairway. Evey and Isaiah turned to listen. Another shout echoed through the door. Both of them ran to the aid of the soldiers. Evey didn't even bother to draw her sword. She just kept her arrow nocked as she sprinted up the stairs.
The sound of echoing footsteps was disorienting. Evey couldn't tell who was where. She just knew that something had happened in the spiral staircase. Halfway between the second and third floor, she rounded a bend and ran straight into John. Only his quick reaction kept her from bouncing off and tumbling back down.
"What is it? Did you find them?" she asked between heavy breaths.
"What? No. We thought you did."
She narrowed her eyes. "The guard rooms were totally empty."
"So were the top floors."
Evey tried to look around John. The knights all seemed to be in one piece.
"Then who screamed?"
John shrugged. The men behind him shook their heads.
"It wasn't us," one of them called.
Evey lowered her bow and marched back down the stairs. She checked with the guards outside the front door. No one had even been near the tower.
"That is the weirdest - "
She froze mid-sentence.
"What?" John shook her gently. He waved his hand in front of her face, but her eyes stayed fixed.
<
br /> In the center of the floor was a sword. A very familiar sword.
"Where's Robin?"
CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT
For an hour they searched and re-searched the tower, the grounds, and sent soldiers to explore every inch of the castle. They found David's brothers in the dungeon, several frightened slave girls in Sir Guy's chambers, and two or three knights that had somehow slept through the whole battle, but no Isaiah.
Evey, John, and Will stood in the entryway of the tower. The king was the last one back. He approached them with a grim look on his face.
"Any luck?" he asked.
"None," Will replied. "We can't figure out where they could have gone."
As he spoke, Evey combed every inch of the entry hall. There had to be a clue. Men did not just disappear.
"Always one step ahead, that one," the king added unhelpfully.
"You're absolutely sure that there are no hidden chambers or secret doors or anything?" Evey asked.
The king's eyes shifted to the wall and back to her. "No."
There was a tapestry on the wall. She flung it aside. There was nothing behind it.
"What?" She got just a little too close to the king's face. "You looked at the wall. Tell me now."
"Nothing."
She shoved him away and went back to the wall. She ran her hand back and forth across it. Her fingers hit something. A distinctive door shaped edge protruding about an inch from the rest of the wall. The tiniest sliver of light came through at the seam. She pulled at the stone and found herself facing a passageway.
"You knew about this?" she demanded with a sharp voice.
He shrugged. "Of course I did. It's the royal escape route. Used only in case of a lost siege, to protect the royal family."
"And why," she began very slowly, "didn't you TELL us about this?"
"It's a top security secret. I can't go flapping my jaw about it to every person I meet. If they all knew, it wouldn't be much good as an escape route, would it?"
"Let's think about this for a moment," she replied with obviously forced calm. "Was Sir Guy a top security member of your court?"
