by Scott Toney
A Chill in the Keep
The day before
Fields of wheat stretched for miles in all directions about Lilya as she stood, arrow cocked against her bow, her eyes focusing on a target some distance before her. Vansir and Alinar had just shot their weapons and now it was her turn.
The sun in the sky half blinded her sight as she felt the firm shaft of the arrow in her hand. She let go and in a second the arrow whizzed through the air and struck firmly in the bull’s-eye beside Vansir’s.
“I’ll have to admit,” Vansir smiled at her, “you’ve improved.”
“For a girl,” Alinar laughed.
“A girl who’s outshot you,” Vansir remarked. Their massive hawks stretched their wings nearby. Sunlight reflected off of their forms.
Lilya patted Alinar on the back as the man towered over her. “Let’s try again. Maybe this time you’ll have better luck.” Since arriving at The Canyon of Eyes Lilya had been training extensively with the bow and arrow. She had learned the bow was the hawk riders’ weapon of choice and thought that the skill could come in handy. “What do you say? Do you think you can outshoot a girl?” she prodded him.
Vansir chuckled under his breath and cocked an arrow of his own. It whizzed forward, striking just beside the bull’s-eye. “Good luck,” he told his friend.
Alinar then cocked his arrow and let it fly through the air. It struck between Vansir and Lilya’s last arrows, right in the center of the bull’s-eye. “It’s alright, Lilya. You don’t have to shoot.”
She cocked an arrow and lifted her bow toward the target, peering through the sunlight at Alinar’s last arrow. This would be a hard shot. In an instant she let go of the arrow and watched it splice through the air before her and into the back of Alinar’s, splitting it in two.
“How did you do that?” he stared, confounded.
Lilya walked to the target and pulled her arrows out. “Well, you knew you weren’t going to win. Something had to happen.” Then out of the corner of her eye she saw smoke rising in the air over the trees in the distance. That was where the market was. She hoped they would have enough water there to put out the flames. “Look.” She pointed at the smoke. “Can we do anything?”
“We walk such a fine line as outcasts,” Vansir told her. “I want to help, but if we’re discovered by your father then who knows what troubles we’ll face. The market is just too close to the castle.”
Suddenly shouts came from the fields in the direction of the smoke and Lilya saw a ragged boy, or was it a man, running full speed toward them.
He toppled into the wheat just before reaching her. “Help!” he cried. “Help!”
Lilya ran to his side, braced her arm beneath his shoulder and helped him up. There were dark circles around his eyes and his body shook as she supported him. He was about her age, she realized, but she had not seen him before. “What’s wrong?” she asked as Vansir and Alinar joined them. “Have you come from the fire?”
“Men who are half beast attack the villages and the market.” His look was that of a man who didn’t fully believe what he was saying. “They say King Thomas of Havilah has sent them. The people… the people in the market, they need help. My father was slain while I escaped into the woods.”
Lilya looked to the smoke rising above the trees. It was thicker now than it was when she first saw it. “We must help Cush’s people, no matter the cost to us,” she told her companions. “Go with your hawks and defend them. I will follow soon with Alexander and will send for others.”
“How will he know?” Alinar asked.
“We have our ways,” she said. “Go. Trust me.”
With that Vansir and Alinar ran to their birds, climbing the birds’ sides and hoisting themselves on their backs. “Good luck!” Vansir shouted over the caws of their birds as their wings stretched to their sides and they flew elegantly into the sky. Soon the pair was above the forest and headed toward the billowing smoke.
Alexander, Lilya spoke to him through her thoughts. Did you hear what this boy has said?
I’ve told the others in the canyon and am coming for you. Soon I will be with you.
Lilya turned to the shaking boy, now standing on his own. “You have seen and done enough,” she told him. “Go from here. Run away from this battle and trust that we will do all we can to save our people.”
“I must help,” he said.
“You are exhausted. If you die, then what good will come of it?” She put her arms around him and tears streamed down his face and into her shirt.
He lifted his head and took a step back, trying to calm himself. “If my family and friends die and I have not done all I could to protect them then I have no reason to live.”
“Come with us then,” she said as she watched something red coming toward them in the sky. Soon she could make out his wings beating in the air as he soared. Alexander dipped low and thrust into the ground, his claws digging up earth as he landed.
“The boy comes with us?” he asked as his vibrant eyes looked to the young man. “Climb into my paw.”
He turned over his paw and opened it for them to step into. Lilya ran to it, climbing up and reaching down to help her new companion up beside her. “What’s your name?” she asked him as he joined her side, looking at Alexander in disbelief. “I might as well know it if we’re flying together.”
“Timothy,” he said. “And yours?”
“Princess Lilya.”
The boy had a look of awe in his eyes now as Alexander beat his massive wings, pushed off with his free paws against the ground and soared in the sky.
“Hold tight,” Lilya told Timothy as she clutched one of Alexander’s claws. The boy was blown back by the wind and lay flat against the dragon’s palm. Lilya watched as the earth dropped away beneath them. Soon they soared above the forest and she saw things moving in the woods below. She smelled the smoke in the distance and saw flames leaping through the trees.
Alexander rose high in the air and the mist of a cloud passed around Lilya’s body. He dipped down and curved over until he was soaring above a main roadway.
“Look!” She pointed at the road below them where people ran, some stumbling in their mad rush away from Westwood Castle and the marketplace.
“They are the lucky ones. They’ve escaped for now,” Timothy said as he hugged tight to Alexander’s palm, peering over its edge to the street below. “The things that attack us are more beast than man.”
Lilya looked down to him. “We’ll do what we can to hold them off,” she assured him.
Alexander soared over the dirt road as more people ran away from the city beneath them.
Soon the sound of screams filled Lilya’s ears and the forest opened up to reveal the market place below. The forest itself crackled with flame and she could see deformed men attacking the peddlers. “Take us closer,” she told Alexander.
“Be careful,” he spoke to her and dipped over the burning woods so that they were just above the market now.
Lilya took a deep breath and drew an arrow, cocking it back against her bowstring. Some of the attackers were staring up now and pointing at Alexander. “Leave my people alone!” she shouted through the smoke over the sound of screams, letting her arrow free. It struck a barbaric looking man in the back and he turned around in shock to see who had shot him. Another arrow from her bow lodged in his chest and he fell to the earth, writhing. “Leave!” she shouted as Alexander curved through the air.
She saw Vansir and Alinar in the corner of her vision, perched upon their massive hawks. The birds cried out as they dove toward the fighting below. As Vansir and Alinar shot arrows into the battle their hawks swooped in, clutched men in their talons and soared back up into the sky.
Lilya’s heart dropped in her chest as she watched the birds release the men, their bodies careening to the ground and smashing into the earth.
“What do we do to stop this madness?” she asked, half to Alexander and half to no-one at all. She drew another arrow
and shot it into the fighting, watching it ricochet off of a peddler’s cart and into the ground.
“Soon others from The Canyon of Eyes will join us and we can drive them back, at least enough to rescue some of the peddlers and secure the castle until other help arrives.”
She hadn’t thought of the castle. Her father was there. Why aren’t his knights out here defending their people? Is he alright? She drew another arrow and shot it into the skull of a man who was chasing a child across the field. The man instantly crashed to the ground.
“They’ll start fighting us,” Timothy said as he cowered in the dragon’s paw, wind whipping around them. “Surely they have archers among them.”
As if their enemies had heard him, arrows zipped through the air around them and Lilya ducked close to Alexander’s paw. The arrows bounced off of his scales and fell back down to earth.
“I promised you that I would not harm another in your name, Lilya,” Alexander spoke steadily. “I ask you to rethink that, at least for today.”
“Yes. Please,” she said, grasping her bow tight and standing once more. Her heart beat heavily in her chest. She loosed two more arrows into the fighting and watched the hawk riders aim their arrows and make another pass. Their birds dove and clutched men in their talons, lifting up and then letting the men crash to the earth below.
More arrows zipped past, almost striking Lilya in her hand.
“They’re in the trees,” Alexander said. Lilya could barely make out the forms of archers perched in the tree limbs around the market. They were concealed by smoke that plumed up from the forest. “No more,” Alexander spoke and flew toward the trees, knocking Lilya off balance. “Duck and hold tight to my palm.”
His vast wings shone in the sunlight as he hovered above the tree line. A wave of arrows zipped toward them as his head thrust forward and fire burst from his mouth, turning the wooden shafts to ash and devouring the treetops and the archers in them. Men wailed out in pain and dropped to their deaths below. A few more arrows shot up and Alexander let out another burst of fire.
Lilya could feel the heat of his flame licking at her skin and she crawled to the side of his palm that was farthest from the treetops. “Timothy, come here,” she called to the boy and pointed toward a road leading out of the woods into the market.
Timothy quickly joined her. “Who are they?” he asked as they saw people in armor wielding axes, swords and bows charging into the market.
“They’re from The Canyon of Eyes,” she replied.
The boy held tight to one of Alexander’s claws as the dragon pulled up in the air and flew toward the newcomers. “There are so many. How can so many people live in the canyon?”
“They live deep in caves cut out of the canyon walls.” Lilya watched the group as they joined the battle, the swordsmen and axe wielders parrying blows with their enemies and the archers standing back and launching arrows from a distance. “We need to join them,” she called up to Alexander.
“I’ll set you down by the archers,” he said while slanting to the side and soaring down toward them. “Be careful. Call for me if the fighting near you gets too intense. No matter what I’m doing I’ll come for you.”
He flew just behind the archers, his wings beating heavily, and Lilya and Timothy leapt down to solid earth. “Take care of yourself!” she called to Alexander as he lifted back into the sky. “Try to hold the enemy back so we can free Cush’s people and make a run for the castle!”
There was no time to think, only react, as Lilya ran beside the rest of the archers. They were extremely tall, like Alinar and Vansir, and shot arrows at a rate she knew she could not match.
She kept Timothy close to her side and cocked an arrow, shooting it at one of the skulls of a two-headed man in battle with one of the canyon’s people. It burst through the side of his skull, leaving the head bobbing limply while the creature’s other head shot around and looked at her. The being plunged its sword into the man it was fighting and then came lumbering toward her.
“You will regret that!” he called in a scratchy tone as he spun his sword through the air.
“Aim true,” Lilya spoke under her breath, drew another arrow and then let it fly at the man’s second head. She missed and watched her arrow disappear into the battle before them.
The man laughed and charged her, enraged.
“Help!” Lilya shouted to the men around her as she launched another arrow and watched it bounce off of the being’s armor.
It raised its sword and Lilya stumbled on a stone behind her, falling to the dusty ground. “Help!” she called again as sunlight split in sheens across her attacker’s shadowlike form.
Time seemed to stand still.
This is it, she thought, bracing for death. Then suddenly the dark form of her attacker staggered, the blade of an axe piercing his stomach as he tumbled down. Standing in his place was a dwarf, one of the races of the canyon. The short, burly man clasped his hands on the axe and withdrew its bloodstained blade from their enemy.
“Thank you,” Lilya said as she took Timothy’s hand and stood. The dwarf nodded and then charged at another attacker, his blade clanging against the man’s. “Take the sword,” she told Timothy. “You’ll need something to defend yourself with.”
As Timothy lifted the weapon Lilya pulled an arrow back in her bow and charged through the battle until she reached Coal, the old dwarf she had met back in the caves. “Coal, we need to head to Westwood Castle!” she shouted and shot her arrow at a man coming Coal’s way.
It struck the attacker in the stomach and Coal swung his axe back, deflecting the man’s blade. With a second stroke of his axe Coal cut off the man’s legs and the man fell to the ground, writhing as blood flowed from his body. “We have to free Cush’s people!” Coal called back as Lilya pulled another arrow back in her bow.
“Leave that to me,” she said. Can you hear me, Alexander? she spoke to her dragon companion through her mind.
I hear everything, Lilya. What can I do for you?
She could see his crimson form soaring through the sky above alongside the hawks. Flame exploded from his mouth to the ground. We are retreating to Westwood Castle until more reinforcements can join us. Can you hold off their forces with your flame so that Cush’s people can follow us?
Gladly! That sounds like a good plan, his voice sounded in her mind as she watched him curve in the sky and come toward her.
The earth shook as he landed in an open span of ground. “People of Cush, retreat to the castle!” Alexander’s voice boomed over all other noise.
“Retreat!” Coal shouted, hacking a man’s shoulder with his axe. “We’ll hold our position there!”
As Lilya turned to run she saw fire blasting in short bursts from Alexander’s mouth. The flames landed on their enemies, scorching their bodies and freeing the remaining civilians to retreat to the castle.
With all the strength in her body she ran across the destroyed market place, leaping over the fallen bodies of her people and of the men who had attacked them. Once, her foot thumped into the chest of a dead market peddler, almost sending her to the ground. Please be with us, she found herself thinking to whatever deity was above them in the universe.
Step after step she ran for Westwood Castle’s doors, sure that at any moment an arrow would find her back. Smoke filled the air about her, swimming through her lungs. There had been fire before their arrival, but she was sure that the inferno Alexander was breathing down on their enemies would destroy the forests for miles around.
She looked up as she neared the castle, happy to see that no enemies were there to stop them from entering. Her gamble was paying off. “Go inside!” she shouted as the warriors from The Canyon of Eyes flooded into the castle’s doors. Lilya turned, waving her hands in the air and motioning for the civilians to follow their saviors.
“They’ll break in and kill us,” a worn-looking peddler with a bloody gash down his face said as he passed.
“Not if I have an
ything to say about it,” Lilya said as others ran by her. She felt for an arrow in her pack, grabbed its firm shaft and pulled it back in her bow. She aimed through the smoke at a massive man who was chasing down a child that was fleeing for the castle.
With a snap of the bowstring on her fingers the arrow flew, finding its target and lodging in his knee. “Leave him alone!” she called over the sound of flame crackling in the air and the shouts and screams coming from both sides. Lilya pulled another arrow into her bow and charged the man, moving in front of the small boy he was chasing and letting an arrow fly toward his forehead. To her surprise it ricocheted off.
Her enemy grinned, coming at her and the boy with a battle-axe.
“Run,” she told the boy. “Run for the castle doors. Don’t look back.” She could hear the boy’s footsteps bounding away behind her and she braced for the coming blow. She pulled back for an arrow and then watched as her attacker burst into flames, turning to ash and blowing away as smoke and ash into the sky.
In the smoke before her was Alexander. “No one will harm you. I’ve given my word.”
He let down his paw and Lilya stepped into it, stunned to see their enemies keeping a clear distance from them because of their fear of what Alexander could do. “Can you take me to the castle?” she asked as he lifted her into the sky.
“Yes. You’ll be safe there. I’ll protect you.”
The earth blurred by below them as Alexander took her to Westwood Castle’s doors. As she stepped back down from his paw she looked into the market and was happy to see that no one else was coming to the castle. They were all inside.
“I’ll guard the doors. Go.”
“I…” she said, stopping for a second to look into his beautiful eyes. She reached her hand up and he lowered his head to her. “Thank you,” she said and then kissed his scaled cheek.
“It’s my pleasure. Now go.”
As he turned to face a horde of enemies Lilya ran through the castle doors. “Shut them!” she called as a group of worn-out dwarves and giant looking men from the canyon shut the doors and barricaded them with chairs and tables they had brought from the main hall.
Where is father? she instinctively thought. “Has anyone seen the king or his knights?”
“Behind the throne,” a young man told her as he rushed past with a plank to add to the rubble against the doors.
As she made her way toward the throne she noticed dead knights lying on the cold stone floor. No… she thought no… There were jewels littering the floor about their bodies and they had been stripped of most of their armor. Westwood Castle must have been ransacked long before we arrived.
“Father!” Lilya called out. “Father! Are you alright?”
Silence.
She ran toward the throne, her feet echoing on the floor, and then she stumbled and caught herself on the throne’s back as she stared at her father’s dead form lying crumpled on the floor behind the throne. He was not mutilated. In fact Lilya could barely see the small stream of blood trickling down his breastplate, but she knew instantly that he was dead.
“Father…” she almost whispered as a tear flowed down her cheek. “I did not wish…” She knelt down and braced his head with her hand, stroking his hair with her other hand.
She kissed his forehead, feeling the cold chill of his clammy skin on her lips.
25
