Tipping my fingers into a forward wave, I got us moving again, slinking through the press of ancient firs until we had a visual.
All four guards were outside the tent, seated around a roaring fire. The flames stretched and blew off glowing embers with each gust of wind. They passed a canteen between them, speaking in undertones that carried but lost the specifics.
Four of them.
Seven of us.
I prayed the show of force would eliminate the need to actually use it. We didn’t want any bloodshed. We only wanted to survive and, in order to do that, the King’s army was a beast we had to fight. The individual men, however, could well be old friends and family members. We all descended from the original survivors who’d made it to the sanctuary at the end of times. We’d lived alongside each other in one way or another, nobles and servants in the castle, townsfolk and the cotter families who worked the farms, hunters and the King’s men. This held true for both sides and our encounters had seldom been fuelled with bloodlust.
But something had changed.
In truth, it had changed six months ago.
On some level, I suppose we’d all been biding our time until this, the next confrontation, and we knew the same rules could no longer apply. But not tonight. Not by my hand. The only person I wished dead, with all my being, was Nathanial Glamorgan.
I took a deep, slow breath to steady my pulse, then circled my hand in the air. We all knew the plan.
Gavin and I straightened from our crouch and stepped out into the clearing, swords drawn from our scabbards. Two more steps and we had their attention.
“Halt.” One of the men, a greybeard with eyes sunken in the firelight, lurched to his feet and went for his sword.
“Uh, uh.” Gavin surged ahead with those massive strides of his, a looming menace who could easily take on three of the four men at once. “I wouldn’t do that.”
I flexed my wrist, close enough to the flames now that the blade of my sword gleamed orange. “Yield your weapons and no harm will be done. You have my word.”
The man hesitated, his eyes widening on me in recognition. I didn’t remember this man’s face, and I’d changed too much in the last ten years for him to know me. Unless Nathanial has posted sketches of me around town. Or perhaps this man had simply connected the dots. The guard had certainly been set up here to defend against the mountain rebels, led by the High Chancellor, and here came a rogue female dressed in buckskin and wielding a sword.
His three friends sat stunned on the log stumps they’d pulled up around the fire, their gazes frozen past my shoulder.
Right on time, the remainder of my merry band joined us, crowding around the fire.
“You’re outnumbered and outsmarted,” I informed them, although they’d surely noticed. “Kick your swords our way, if you’ll be so kind.”
“Samuel, Jack,” the man hissed in a low, strained voice. “Arthur.”
All three slowly pushed to their feet. The youngest, a man with cropped brown curls and not much older than me, wiped sweat from his forehead with a shaky hand.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Ar-r-rthur.”
I smiled softly for his benefit. “You have nothing to fear, Arthur. Give over your weapon and I swear my men will not touch you.”
Arthur’s eyes veered to the greybeard, who gave one nod. All four men reached for their swords.
“Nice and slow,” warned Gavin, and then all hell broke loose.
The stampede of booted footfalls rushed my ears, my blood, spiked my heartrate for a dizzy second before my training kicked in. I fell in with my men, a tight knot with our backs to each other, swords raised outward to defend against the King’s men.
A hundred or more.
Easily a third of Nathanial’s army, and they came at us from all sides. Emerging from the treeline like rats scurrying from a flooded sewer. Swarming around the tent. Blowing in from the darkness across the dry riverbed.
“Sweet Mary,” David’s voice pitched at my back, a boy of sixteen on his virgin mission.
His mother had never been in the picture, her story had died with his father right at the beginning—an arrow to the heart in the Battle for the Mountain. David had grown up running around amongst us, taken care of and loved by all but by no one in particular. When he’d declared his desire to be one of my mountain warriors, I’d taken him in against Markus’ concerns—the lad doesn’t have a fighting heart—he’s too young—maybe in another ten years— I’d given him a place to belong within my tight-knit band of warriors.
Why the hell hadn’t I listened to Markus?
“Hold it together, son,” grunted Gavin, calm and steady. “Rose?”
The men had formed a circle around us, giving us a wide berth. They held still, silent, but a hundred men could not be noiseless. Compounded breaths, the shuffle of boots in the dirt, cloth rustling against neighbouring bodies.
We were outnumbered and outsmarted.
And I’d brought us to this.
“The dam was a trap,” I said, my chest heavy with the weight of emptiness.
Fight or Flee. That gut instinct had been honed into my bones, refined by long hours spent challenging and absorbing my father’s wisdom. But in all the things he’d taught me, all the ways he’d trained me to think, act and lead, we’d never covered this. Surrender had never found a place in my father’s vocabulary.
I sent Gavin a sidelong glance. “They knew I’d come to them. All they had to do was wait.”
His watchful eyes scanned the perimeter of our human container without breaking to look at me. “We’ve been scouting these woods for days. How did I miss this?”
I didn’t know for sure, but I could well imagine. Lookouts posted to monitor our movements. The King’s men camped up river, near enough to get into position the moment I rode down the mountain with my posse and my intentions on full display.
“We all missed it,” I said to Gavin. Not much reassurance, but there it was.
And the question remained.
What now?
Sweat beaded my upper lip, slid into the corner crack of my mouth with the salty taste of fear.
There is no shame in fear. More of my father’s gentle teachings. A man without fear is naught but a fool with a death wish. Ah, but what you do with that fear, that is what sets the strong apart from the weak.
I raised my voice for the men backed up against me to hear. “We can fight to the death, but that’s exactly what it’ll be, no matter how many we take down with us.”
I was no coward. None of my men were. But this was not an army of hostile strangers. These were kin to my people, bonded by blood and community and old familial friendships. I didn’t want to go to my afterlife like that, taking as many of them with me as I could for the sheer sake of it.
“We don’t make the first move,” I decided aloud. “If they attack, we fight our way to the treeline and scatter.”
As if any of us would make it that far alive.
But we wouldn’t just lie down and die, either.
A sudden guttural cry rent the air.
Gavin’s arm slapped out against my chest.
Heart pounding, I shrugged free from the protective gesture and slipped around my knot of men to face the treeline, the direction from which the cry had erupted. A different kind of fear seated in my stomach, the fear of the unknown. What was happening?
A wall built on a hundred whispered curses rose up around us, a few louder calls demanding new orders. I swivelled to look, saw only the circle of our captors and the restless energy sweeping through them.
My gaze landed on David right before me, his face pale with a sheen of sweat, his jaw clamped in determination.
“Fear is the mark of true bravery,” I told him, cocked my head lower to meet his glazed eyes. “Do you understand?”
He swallowed hard. “I won’t let you down.”
“I know,” I said, although he had that upside down.
It
was I who couldn’t let him down.
Gavin, Liam, all the others, they were seasoned men, but I’d brought David into my inner circle of mountain warriors and I hadn’t brought him here to die before his seventeenth birthdate.
Another deep-throated cry snapped my head to the left. A man staggered forward, dropped to his knees with a gargled whimper. He wore the black and wine-red of the King’s men, and the feathered flight of an arrow at his throat.
Lilliana!
My breath caught, trapped somewhere between gut-wrenching regret and hope. She was moving within the treeline, picking them off one by one and stirring confusion. Two men dropped to their knees by the fallen man to lend aid, even though it was far too late.
Another cry, another felled man up along the circular line, and this one broke the rank of formation between us and the woods. Men spun about to face the threat, drifted toward the trees as their heads jerked from one side to the other, no doubt searching for the archer, worried as to how many were out there.
Only Lilliana.
Giving us a fighting chance.
I felt the tide swell at my back, the semi-circle of men closing rank and distance, but I didn’t spare the time to look.
Grabbing David’s non-fighting hand, I raised my sword high in the air to give the command that would end us or spare us.
I surged forward into the gap Lilliana had created for us, adrenaline rushing through my veins and clearing out the deadwood. There was only the goal, the ten or so yards to the treeline and the soldiers in my way. No panic. No hesitation. No regret.
Gavin and Liam flanked me and, within seconds, the clash of steel rang out as they protected the High Chancellor from a side assault. I probably couldn’t have stopped them if I wanted to, and I did not want to. So long as they shielded me, they shielded David. I might be their top priority, but David had become mine.
All around me, the clash and grunts, heat and sweat of blood spilled, but for me there were only the two soldiers looming directly in front.
“David!” I yelled, my blade slicing across to deflect the sword wielded by the one on his side.
Vibrations rattled up my arm as our blades connected. I drove the man back a step, took the reprieve to swing my blade at the second man. He wasn’t as close as he’d been in my peripheral vision a second ago—had he backed up?—my sword swooshed and ripped the fabric of his cloak.
A quick glance at the first man, David’s sword arced upward to defend wildly. Good enough to keep the brute occupied. Lurching forward on one leg, kicking out swiftly with the other—the second man went down and I dragged David over his body before he could regain his senses. We couldn’t outfight the King’s army. This was all about out-running them and disappearing into the thick of trees.
And then we were almost at the edge of the woodland, Gavin shouting, “Go! Go! Go!” and I shoved David ahead of me, into the darkened shadows, “Go deeper! Stay hidden!” and that’s all I had time for before my left flank dropped away.
“Liam!” I spun left, and my sword followed with precision control, the tip of my blade grazing the cheekbone of the grizzly soldier about to finish Liam off where he lay.
Pain flared the man’s nostrils, his wrist flexed to undercut my next arc with a broad stroke and I was already adjusting to counter that manoeuvre when he seemed to change his mind. Retreated. The twenty men at his back didn’t take his place, melted instead into the melee where James and Benjamin were fighting back-to-back.
Gavin warded off two men with a single slash and growled at me, “Go!”
Like hell. I dropped to my knees beside Liam.
“I’ll live,” he grunted, clasping a hand over his midriff where blood soaked the cloth clinging to his side.
Bent over him, my eyes and hands went everywhere. Frantically trying to press his blood back inside his veins. Watching for the next assault wave. Ripping Liam’s sleeve from the cuff up along the seam and stuffing the cloth to pad his wound.
No one rushed.
Blood seeped through all my efforts.
He pushed to a sitting position, the pain-dulled look in his eyes sharpening, instantly alert through sheer strength of will. “Rose, you must go now.”
I glanced over my shoulder and saw what he meant. The space between us and the trees was clear where there should have been a crush of challengers. I remembered the man in my peripheral vision whom I swore had backed up, and the grizzly solider, and the twenty at his back, and it hit me.
“They have orders to take me alive,” I told Liam. “They won’t raise a sword to me, won’t engage lest they make a mistake.”
Even as I spoke, Gavin’s sword flew out of his hand and he collapsed onto one knee, doubled over.
I shot up and threw myself over him with a fierce glare at the three cowards who’d attacked him as one.
“Dammit, Rose,” Gavin groaned, breathing hard, too weak to swat me away.
“Shhh… I have a theory,” I said, and never got to put that theory to the test.
A horn blared.
The madness of the battlefield stilled.
Spilled blood, sweat and rage clogged the air, assailed my nostrils and drenched my skin bone-deep. I looked around, searching for James and Benjamin, unable to distinguish them in the sea of ravaged men.
My heart ached as I realized I might need to be looking for them amongst the bodies that littered the ground.
Us or them.
It didn’t matter, still too goddamn many.
Right then, the moon chose to dip beneath a bank of roiling clouds. As if ashamed to bear witness to the aftermath of man’s senseless cruelty. In that moment, with the darkness blanketing the carnage at my feet, I hated myself and all that I was with an intensity that ripped inside me like a molten blade.
I was the traitor’s daughter.
I was the High Chancellor.
I was death.
Torchlight flickered in the distance, flames weaving through the tall pines that stood sentinel on the bend in the riverside path. The heavens above opened to spit rain and the ground thundered with the pounding hooves of hard riding.
The flame-cast silhouettes rapidly approached, parting the men around me for the King’s progress.
Gavin attempted to rise and I pressed a palm to his shoulder. “Stay down. Our fight is done for the night.”
My grip fisted on the hilt of my sword, my stare fixed and my spine rigid as the King rode up and pulled at the bit to rein in his midnight black Arabian.
Ah, I’d momentarily forgotten. There was one person on this earth I loathed far more than myself.
Nathanial Glamorgan.
And if the wrath chiselled into his features as he looked down on me from his mounted height were any indication, the feeling was mutual.
He dismounted with his customary grace, grabbing a flaming torch from one of his escorts to bring with as his long stride cut the gap between us. Rain slickened his hair to the arrogant contours of his face. Torch flames reflected in the stone grey of his eyes. Black buckskin pants, knee-high boots, silver sword gleaming at his side. He stood half a head taller than me and had a hundred men at his back.
All I had was the poisonous venom that left an acrid aftertaste at the back of my throat. I’d never know how I managed to stand there, look up into his eyes, and not thrust my sword deep into his gut. Perhaps it had something to do with my two men bleeding out at his mercy, although God and I both knew Nathanial had no mercy, not an ounce.
He ran the torchlight over me, and his first words to me after nearly a decade were, “Who’s blood covers you?”
I glanced down, turned one hand over, momentarily confounded—stricken—at the red syrupy mess creased into the life lines and dropping from my palm, at the blood that speckled my pale cotton sleeve. I was no light-head, especially not in a crisis, but this was my first battlefield and I hadn’t realized how quickly the detail became lost in the onslaught.
Of course I was covered in blood. I reeked o
f it, tasted the metallic bite on my tongue, breathed in the rusted decay through every pore.
“Yours!” I spat at Nathanial. “All of this…” I cast a hand out over the dying and the dead. “All this is your doing, blood spilt on your behalf.”
Torchlight brandished shards of fury in his eyes, those eyes that pierced me with the intensity of his stare. “Are you hurt?”
“No.” I shook my head, my pulse hitching at how much rested on the whim of this ice-veined King.
“My men are wounded, Gavin and Liam,” I mentioned by name, once his father’s men, King’s men he’d practiced amongst when he was still a boy, not sure if I played better odds or worse. Any reminders of familiarity were also reminders of betrayal.
Nathanial’s head dipped fractionally to look at Gavin, at Liam, enough so to hide his thoughts until his stone-blanked gaze returned to me. “They’ll be attended to.”
I searched his eyes, hoping to convince myself there was some code of honour amongst these men.
“You have my word,” Nathanial said, as if reading my mind, and held out his hand, no words or mindreading required.
Raindrops splattered on my bare head, trickled down my forehead to wet my lashes. The torchlight flickered with indecision, but the reeds were treated and dipped in oil and wouldn’t yield to a little rain. One of the horses snorted, booted feet shuffled. All these things I noticed as my thumb strummed the hilt of my sword, as I wrestled with a decision that was no longer mine to make.
“Rose,” he said firmly, not impatient, not kind.
I handed my sword over, hilt first, but didn’t immediately let go, too cold and numb to care that his hand brushed over mine as he reached to take it.
“Tell me, Nathanial,” I said, looking into his steely eyes, matching my tone to his, “tell me the Glamorgan word still counts for something.”
The hint of a smile touched his mouth. “Have I ever broken my word to you?”
No, he hadn’t. Then again, he’d never made me any promises, either.
I yielded my sword and as soon as he had what he wanted, my unconditional surrender, Nathanial turned to go.
“Wait,” I demanded. “What of my other men?” I raised my voice, looking around. “Benjamin! James!”
The Traitor's Daughter Page 4
