Maids with Blades

by Glynnis Campbell

  “Nay!” Deirdre screamed, the sound like a slash across Pagan’s heart.

  The lord slid over the edge, head first, saved from plummeting to the earth only by Colin’s firm grasp upon his ankles. But Colin couldn’t hold him long. A ledge of rock was all that braced him against descent, and that leverage slipped with every spray of pebbles that sifted loose.

  “Stay here!” Pagan barked at Deirdre. He didn’t know what he could do for her father, didn’t even know if he could reach the west tower in time. It was a terrible risk, one he knew better than to take. But he had to do something. The anguish in her face was intolerable.

  He grabbed Sir Rauve by the front of his surcoat and hauled him aside, riveting him with an iron glare and biting out the words he didn’t want Deirdre to hear. “Listen. No matter what happens, you hold this keep. Do not negotiate for hostages. Not me. Not Colin. Not Lord Gellir. Your loyalty is to the King.”

  Satisfied by Rauve’s grim nod, he released him. Then he bolted down the stairs three at a time, banging his elbows on the narrow walls. He slipped once on the wet grass of the courtyard, but charged forward, sending up sprays of sod with each desperate stride. As he passed the armorer’s shed, he snatched a coil of rope from the wall and slung it over his shoulder.

  The west tower stairs were clogged with rubble. His lungs heaving, he hauled rock out of the way, clawing at stone and choking on dust, until he could clamber through the wreckage to the next floor, certain the trebuchet would fire at any moment. His fingers bleeding, he scrabbled at the mortar and grit, climbing higher and higher until he felt the welcome kiss of raindrops upon his head. He scrambled up the last few steps, surfacing upon the skewed, rain-slick planks.

  Thank God, Colin was still there, grasping the lord with a grip as rigid and bloodless as the Reaper’s.

  “Hold on!” he shouted.

  But in the next instant, a bolt like thunder pounded the earth, rattling the stones of the tower as if they were dice. The ground beneath him trembled. An ungodly shrieking of timber and rock echoed from the depths. And the world turned on its edge.

  Deirdre screamed. Though the impact happened in an instant, she saw the tragedy play out with torturous sloth in her mind’s eye.

  The trebuchet arm slowly shot forward, loosing its heavy burden. The chunk of rock tumbled gracefully through the air, obliterating the raindrops as easily as swatting gnats, arcing with dark purpose toward the curtain wall of Rivenloch. After an interminable flight, it found its target, kissing the gray stone, then sinking deep with a reverberant thud, opening another mortal wound in the tower at the second floor. A hollow, ominous silence followed. Then the already damaged tower above the breach lazily collapsed in a waterfall of rock and rubble and ruin.

  Everything happened in a terrifying rush after that, and from Deirdre’s perspective, the men looked like chess pieces flung by an angry child. Pagan, flattened by the impact, slid across the tilting planks, his fingers scrabbling for purchase. Momentum cast him over the edge. He was saved only by catching hold of a splintered beam protruding from the wreckage.

  Colin was thrown hard onto his back, striking his head on a rock before he, too, slipped across the floor. When he finally came to rest, he lay silent, his body in an unnatural sprawl. One knee snagged by chance on a chunk of stonework, or he might have fallen to his death. If he wasn’t dead already.

  Meanwhile, in a macabre imitation of the sledding Deirdre used to do on snowy slopes, her father skidded down the steep side of the disintegrating tower, turning and twisting as he rode atop the shifting rocks.

  God must have watched over him the way he did drunks and fools. By some miracle, Lord Gellir survived. At the end of his jarring ride, though the old man lay helpless atop the rubble at the base of the destroyed tower, he yet flailed with life.

  Still, he was on the enemy side of the curtain wall. In a matter of moments the English would intercept him. And once they discovered what a valuable hostage they held, she’d lose all leverage.

  She couldn’t let that happen.

  Snapping to attention, she shouted, “Archers! Watch my back! Rauve, take my command!”

  With those orders, she fled down the stairs, scraping her heel on the bottom step, then hobbled across the courtyard toward the remains of the tower. Helena, having left her post on the eastern wall to investigate the deafening sound, met her halfway.

  “What the Devil are those bastards using?” she asked, unsheathing as she trotted beside Deirdre. “Thor’s hammer?” When she looked up and saw how little was left of the west tower, she skidded to a halt. “Ballocks,” she said in awe.

  “Come on!” Deirdre urged. “We have to save Father.”

  “Father? What—”

  “Hurry!” Deirdre caught Hel’s arm and pulled her along.

  Though the second impact had demolished the flooring of the tower and collapsed a good portion of the exterior wall, by sheer luck, it had also exposed what remained of the stairs, allowing them access to the top. They scrambled heedlessly over the rubble, gouging their hands on the sharp rocks and coughing on powdery mortar.

  Helena gaped at the wreckage, incredulous. “Holy angel of… Was father…? Is he…?”

  “He’s unhurt,” Deirdre called over her shoulder as they climbed. “Colin climbed the steps and managed to—”

  “Colin? Colin was here?”

  “Aye, but—”

  “Bloody hell!”

  Hel shoved past her then, as if demons snapped at her heels, ascending the winding stairs at breakneck speed. She burst through a pile of debris blocking the passageway and emerged first from the stairwell. Before Deirdre could shout a warning about the shifting floor, Helena gave a shrill cry, then hurtled forward to fall upon her knees beside Colin’s unmoving form. Luckily, the planks held.

  But Colin was not Deirdre’s foremost concern. She frowned, eyeing the splintered beam protruding from the ledge that had saved Pagan’s life. It still jutted from the rubble like the sturdy root of a tree, but no hand clasped it. Where was Pagan? Her heart pummeling at her ribs, she charged forward with no thought for her own safety, for once as impulsive as her sister.

  She slipped on the slick planks, sliding down the sloping floor, and would have followed her father’s course to the bottom of the tower, but for that same beam. She quickly thrust out her left arm to catch it, and a pang of agony tore through her shoulder as all of her weight wrenched against it. Somehow she managed to grapple her way back up to the ledge, and once there, breathless with exertion, she peered down over the edge, clutching her damaged arm.

  Already the sun was sinking below the horizon, behind the thickening clouds, and it was becoming difficult to see in the fading light. But she discerned that to one side below her, secured around the stone frame of what had been an arrow slit, a rope hung taut with its burden.

  Pagan.

  He’d lowered himself to the ground. She watched with halted breath as he rushed over to her father, who appeared groggy and battered, but none the worse for his dramatic landslide. A wave of relief dizzied her. Bless Pagan’s brave heart, he was rescuing her father.

  Not far away, however, she could see the dim figures of the enemy approaching at a cautious lope. Rivenloch’s walls were still not easily scalable, so it was not likely their intent to make a full-scale attack upon the castle yet. But the English surely recognized from Pagan’s heroic maneuvers that the man who’d fallen from the tower might be a valuable hostage.

  “They’re coming!” she shouted down to him.

  He looked up at her and nodded. Then, hauling the lord up with rough haste, he secured the rope around the old man’s waist. “Can you pull him up?”

  She wasn’t certain. She scrambled down to where the rope was secured, but there was little leverage there. She was strong, aye, but her father was no small man, and her injured shoulder throbbed with pain. “Helena! Help!”

  Hel came to the edge almost at once. She seemed distraught, her cheek wet wit
h more than rain. But she immediately assessed the situation, glancing at Pagan, the advancing army, and the gap closing between them. Slithering down to where Deirdre waited, she lent her hands to the task. Together they hauled their father up, straining against the frame, their palms slipping on the wet rope.

  Meanwhile, Rivenloch arrows arced across the rain-peppered air toward the approaching enemy, felling a few. But their numbers were too great, and the day growing too dim for accuracy. By the time she and Helena deposited the lord safely atop the wall and loosed the rope from around him, a dozen English knights had reached the base of the outer tower.

  Deirdre stared down in despair. The rope she’d planned to toss back down to Pagan coiled uselessly at her feet. She was too late. The enemy had already captured him.

  “Hold your fire!” she screamed to her archers, praying they could hear her. “Hold your fire!”

  Pagan didn’t fight his captors. He was a valiant soul, but he was wise enough to know when he was outnumbered. Deirdre felt tears of frustration well in her eyes, watching in helpless horror as they hauled him roughly to his feet.

  It wasn’t fair, she thought. It was a travesty of justice. She wiped angrily at her tears. Curse Lucifer! She’d not allow it. Not when Pagan had made such a noble sacrifice, saving her father at the peril of his own body.

  “Nay!” she cried. “Let him go, you bastards!”

  He pulled back once then, wrenching his head around to answer her. “Do not surrender the keep, no matter what! One man is a small sacrifice. Do not let Rivenloch fa—”

  His words were cut off as a knight cuffed him into silence and he slumped forward. She flinched, feeling the blow as if it bruised her own body. Then they dragged him, senseless and vulnerable, away from Rivenloch, into the shadowy twilight and the camp of the enemy.

  “Pagan!”

  Her cry was lost to the wind, buried beneath the thunder cracking the sky. She longed to rage like the storm, scream at the heavens, rain vile insults upon the enemy, curse the English and the Devil and God himself for such an injustice. But it would do no good. No words could express such grievous fury. And so she hung her head, inconsolable. Tears rolled unabashedly down her cheeks, dropping onto the ruins below. She clenched her hands together so tightly that the crest from Pagan’s ring left its mark upon her palm.

  Never had she experienced such impotence. Never had she known such despair. Never had she imagined she could be brought to such depths of sorrow over a Norman.

  Pagan was awakened by a sharp kick to the ribs. He jerked reflexively, but could move little, for his arms and legs were bound. Blinking, he tried to orient himself. He lay upon a damp carpet within a striped pavilion. Shadowy tongues of candlelight licked at the sides of the tent. Night had fallen.

  That was good. The English wouldn’t attempt to storm Rivenloch by night, which would give his men time to better prepare for her defense.

  Surrounding him, mangy brutes, wet and ragged and reeking from too many days on the road, crouched and narrowed their eyes, as if they studied some strange new beast.

  “Pagan,” someone grunted.

  Pagan raised his eyes. This must be one of the rogue English lords. The black-bearded man’s gap-toothed grin looked like the hideous grimace of a gargoyle.

  “That’s what the Warrior Maid called ye,” the man said smugly. “Not too many by that name. I’m thinkin’ ye’re Cameliard.”

  The rest of the savages drew eagerly close, like men playing at dice, wagering on his response.

  “Never heard of him,” Pagan said.

  “Is that so?” a second man asked, stroking the rust-colored stubble of his jaw. “Then I suppose ye’re just some hapless wretch dropped down to retrieve the old sot who fell from the tower?”

  “That’s right.”

  The first man’s eyes narrowed to reptilian slits, and he kicked Pagan again, this time in the belly. Pagan groaned in pain.

  “Ye’re lyin’,” he sneered. He bent close then, close enough that Pagan could smell the stench of his unwashed body and his rotting teeth. “Ye’re him, all right. And ye’ve been discourteous, puttin’ a coil in our plans like this.”

  No doubt he had ruined their plans, Pagan thought. The Englishman had probably assumed the castle was defended by three Scots maids and a handful of feeble knights.

  “But mind ye…” A third man rolled raven black eyes at him. “’Tis only a bit of a coil. Indeed, I wager ye might be worth ransomin’.”

  “You’re wasting your time,” Pagan muttered. “My men don’t barter with English swine.”

  The first man snagged Pagan by the throat. “If not yer men,” he said slyly, “then maybe yer mistress. The way that lusty Scots whore was squallin’ after—”

  Violent rage erupted in Pagan. He spat in the man’s leering face.

  Revenge was swift as the English guards came to their lord’s defense. Fists and boots pummeled him from all sides. Again and again the soldiers pounded at him until his blood flecked their hands and his bones throbbed with bruises.

  “Enough!” the man finally shouted. “Save it for his slut.”

  Pagan wheezed through battered ribs. The sweat of nausea beaded his brow. He’d already conceded to forfeit his life, if need be, for the security of Rivenloch. Not only was it his duty as a soldier of the King, but his desire as Deirdre’s husband. He’d risked his life to save her father, because he couldn’t bear to see her hurt. He’d realized the moment he scaled down the tower wall that the odds were against him.

  But knowing how much Deirdre doted upon the lord, knowing that she’d surrender Rivenloch before she’d let them torture her father, Pagan made what he considered a reasonable sacrifice. It would be far easier for Deirdre to turn a blind eye to the sufferings of her new husband than those of her beloved father.

  And it appeared those sufferings would resume on the morrow.

  The English were no fools. While they were perfectly capable of demolishing the castle with the trebuchet, that wouldn’t be wise, for once they won Rivenloch, they’d need to guard their prize in turn against other invaders. Damaging the castle walls would only weaken their own capacity for defense. The trebuchet, for all its effectiveness, was essentially a double-edged sword.

  The marauders had clearly thought Rivenloch an easy conquest, a remote, unguarded castle governed by a feeble lord, and so they hadn’t planned much beyond frightening the Scots into submission. But now that they saw it wouldn’t be that easy, it was more prudent to seize the castle by cunning or negotiation.

  The English imagined they had a valuable hostage in Pagan. They were wrong, of course. Pagan’s men had been trained to follow his orders strictly. He’d commanded Rauve to hold Rivenloch, no matter what happened. Pagan had faith he would do so.

  “But there has to be something we can do!” Deirdre snapped at Sir Rauve, who sniffed and scowled darkly into his ale.

  The rest of the knights assembled in the great hall grew quiet at their heated exchange. Lord Gellir, only vaguely aware of what transpired, sat beside the fire with Lucy and a warm cup of mulled wine. Miriel comforted a pair of sniffling children in a corner of the keep. But Helena, chewing her nails over Colin, who lay unconscious near the hearth on a makeshift bed of straw, listened intently.

  Deirdre smoldered with barely contained rage. “He’s your captain. You can’t just let him—” Her throat closed on the word.

  But to her amazement, as she scanned the room, looking into the faces of Pagan’s men, she saw the same stubborn refusal in all their averted eyes.

  With a cry of fury, she knocked the cup from Rauve’s hand, spattering wine across the floor. The dark liquid seeped into the rushes like spilled blood.

  Without a word, he straightened to his full height, towering over her. The rest of the knights of Cameliard followed suit. Tension bristled in the air.

  Hel shot suddenly to her feet. “What is wrong with you Normans? Are you a bunch of sniveling cowards, afraid of the dark?”<
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  A muscle in Rauve’s cheek twitched, and Deirdre saw his hand tighten on the pommel of his sword.

  “Pah! The Scots are no cowards,” Helena gloated, elbowing her way through the knights of Rivenloch, thumping some of them on the chest, jostling the shoulders of others. “We’ll take on the English, won’t we, lads? Without the help of these miserable, cowering—”

  “You will not leave this keep.” Rauve’s voice was as grim as his face.

  Hel’s jaw dropped.

  Deirdre shoved the insolent knight in the chest. “And you will not issue orders in my castle.”

  Though his gaze darkened, he made no move to fight back. “They are not my orders, my lady. They are Pagan’s.”

  “What?”

  “What?” Hel echoed.

  “Before he left to rescue your father, he charged me to hold Rivenloch at all costs.”

  Deirdre narrowed her eyes. “That was before they took him hostage.”

  “He knew they might. ’Tis why he gave me distinct orders.”

  “What orders?”

  “Orders not to negotiate.”

  “Who said anything about negotiating?” Hel chimed in. “I say we go out there and fight the bloody bastards. Right, lads?” She lifted her arms, raising a cheer of accord from the Rivenloch knights.

  “Nay!” Rauve bellowed. “The first man to step out the front gates will be shot by Cameliard archers for treason.”

  “What?” Helena’s eyes widened.

  The Norman knights moved carefully away from the Rivenloch men then, creating a clear separation, their hands hovering over their weapons. The Scots froze, their eyes shifting about warily. The air grew as taut as a drawn bow.

  “You can’t be serious,” Deirdre whispered.

  Rauve’s lips thinned, and Deirdre saw at once that Pagan’s man was just as displeased with his orders as she was. But he was a loyal soldier, and he’d given his oath to Pagan.