by David Noel
“Well Father, it seems that we will have a little entertainment tonight,” said the big man.
“So it would seem, Centurion,” the old man replied with a chuckle. “So it would seem.”
Chapter 3
“A woman with a bow can be just as deadly as a man with a sword, provided that she knows how to use it.”
The Centurion Handbook of Combat – The Value of Shieldmaidens: Chapter 1
Portia drew her bowstring back until it touched her cheek. She slowly let out her breath, held it for a moment, and then released the string. It twanged and sent her arrow toward the target, another bull’s-eye. The young woman was bored but there was nothing she could do about it. The use of a light bow against a target that was only 20 yards away was a skill that she had mastered long ago. Sadly, many of the other girls training with her had not.
In a Centurion castle everyone was a Centurion from the lord of the manor to the scullery maid’s assistant, so everyone was trained to fight, even the scullery maid’s assistant. There was, of course, a full time warrior class in the order, the knights and the squires and their female counterparts the shieldmaidens and handmaidens, but since there were never enough Centurions at any one time it was necessary for everyone to be able to pitch in and defend the castle when necessary, regardless of their place or position. So, if these were maidservants or cooks whose archery skills were weak it would be understandable, but these were handmaidens! Young women who would someday become shieldmaidens! This was the problem, as far as Portia was concerned, she was a handmaiden ready to become a shieldmaiden while too many of the other girls were handmaidens ready to become cooks.
“Can we please use the crossbows?” One of the other girls pleaded.
“Master your craft, Priscilla!” Barked Portia, “Stop being lazy!”
“Portia! I will deal with it, not you,” snapped the older woman in charge of the drills. She was Lady Evelyn, wife of Lord Gerard, the Count of Carinthia and Warden of the Eastern Marches. He was away and when he was gone, she ran the castle with an iron hand. “You already know how to use the crossbow, Priscilla,” she corrected, “the crossbow is easy to master and an excellent weapon to defend a castle with but it is a poor choice to use from horseback which is why you need to master them both. Now get back to your training!”
Portia angrily snapped off another shot without even bothering to aim. It barely missed the bullseye and she grunted in disgust.
“What’s the matter?” The Gray Lady gruffed as she limped over to Portia. Nearly everyone in the castle called Lady Evelyn the Gray Lady behind her back. It matched both her solemn, serious, rainy day disposition and her gray eyes and graying hair. Her limp was due to an old war injury that she refused to discuss but it definitely added to her no-nonsense air.
“I keep trying to split the arrows I’ve already put in the bullseye, but I keep missing by a fraction of an inch.”
Lady Evelyn gave a grunt of her own in response. "Go get my hunting bow," she finally said. “I keep it in your father’s weapons locker.”
“Yes, ma’am!” exclaimed Portia. She looked almost nothing like her mother. She had inherited Lady Evelyn’s blond hair but that was it. She had her father's green eyes, his chiseled, athletic build, and his relentless energy. She was quick with a smile or a frown and was prone to loving life one moment and hating it the next. And she was left-handed, nobody had a clue where that came from.
Portia turned and took off at a sprint toward the family's quarters in the keep. Her mother's hunting bow was a self-bow, basically nothing more than a carved stick with a string on it, but it was made out of real yew wood, looked like a small longbow, and had a draw weight of 60 pounds instead of the 30 pounds the girls were using. It felt like a real bow instead of a training bow and Portia desperately wanted to use it. Of course, her mother's war bow was a 120-pound composite bow, but Portia knew there was no way she was getting her hands on that one any time soon.
Portia glanced back at her mother as she neared the dining hall and saw that she was facing the other girls. Impulsively, the young handmaiden decided to use her shortcut, it was just like running her homemade obstacle course but more challenging. Stronger, faster, better, that was her personal mantra and she found it coming unbidden to her mind even now.
In a single fluid motion at a full sprint, she leapt for the side of the watering trough and used it to launch herself to the top of the hitching post. Without slowing in the least, she sprang from the top of the hitching post toward the edge of the dining hall roof, caught it, and easily vaulted herself up onto the ceramic shingles. They were steeply slanted so she had to be careful, but she didn’t hesitate since slowing down would actually make it harder to reach the top. A short sprint up the sharp incline brought her to the top of the roof which was built up against the sheer cliff that formed the back of the castle grounds. Just as she came to the cliff face, she bounced upward toward a narrow walkway carved into the cliff face that led up toward the watchtower at the summit of the peak. She had to fully extend herself to catch the edge of the walkway with her fingertips. She hit the wall with the flat of her stomach, but it barely registered against the slab of muscle that was her abdomen. She kicked off the wall and pulled up as hard as she could. She caught her elbows on the narrow path and swung her legs up onto it.
She flashed a smile at a man-at-arms coming down the path from his shift in the watchtower and squeezed past him. She pressed her body against his harder than was appropriate for a teenage girl trying to get past a young man but there was no room to spare and no time to waste, besides, he didn’t seem to mind. Most of the soldiers had seen her pull this stunt before but they kept their silence.
Thirty feet up the walkway she came to where the keep backed up against the cliff face. Without hesitation she jumped off the walkway and down toward a balcony that extended from the 4th floor of the keep. This was both the easiest and most dangerous part of her shortcut. The easy part was that she was jumping downward at a large open target, the dangerous part was that it was at least fifteen feet away and a thirty-foot fall if she missed it. She landed cleanly on the nearest side of the balcony, rolled to the other side, and popped up smiling proudly to herself.
A balcony would normally be considered a major design weakness on a keep, but her mother had asked for it, her father had relented, and Portia loved it. She looked down into the bailey, the large open area in the middle of the castle grounds, and watched the other handmaidens practicing with their bows. Ha! Let any of them try to do that! Their slender builds, and fair skin might be considered beautiful to the boys but none of them had the strength or athletic ability to do what she had just done. They wanted to be shieldmaidens, but too many of them also wanted to look like beautiful noblewomen with their willowy arms and tiny waists. Meals were secretly skipped, and training exercises avoided due to a lack of energy. Portia, on the other hand, worked herself ten times harder than the others and had absolutely no problem eating. Her face began to burn as she remembered a few snickering comments about both her eating habits and her physique.
“Portia!” Cracked her mother’s voice from below.
Portia realized with a start that her mother was looking at her. Portia tried to assess the damage done based upon her mother’s body language. Everyone in the castle knew how driven she was to be stronger, faster, better. Before she had even taken the vow and made the decision to serve as a shieldmaiden she had been pushing herself. She would lift buckets of water for hours at a time when she was ten and she built her own obstacle course of wooden beams, barrels, and bales of hay to improve her speed and agility. Her route up to the watchtower path would not even raise an eyebrow from her mother, but the jump to the balcony? That was probably crossing a line since a thirty-foot fall could kill her. Her mother studied her for a long moment.
"Get my bow and come back to the balcony," called the Gray Lady, her voice firm but without anger.
Portia silently thanked God while she
ran through her own bedroom and down the hallway to her parents' bedroom. She opened her father's weapon locker and pulled out the bow and a bow string. She strung it with a bit of effort, grabbed a quiver of arrows and then ran back through her own bedroom and out onto the balcony. She held up the bow and looked down on the bailey waiting for her mother's next instruction. Her mother pointed at the farthest target, "Hit it from there!" She called.
Portia considered for a moment; she had never fired a sixty-pound bow before so the trajectory would be a little flatter than what she was used to. The target was closer to sixty yards than the twenty she had been firing at and she was firing downward instead of from level ground. She made a mental estimate taking all these things into account and then tried to draw the bow. She could draw it, she had the strength, but her arm trembled, and her fingers started to slip before she was ready to fire. She quickly eased off on the bow.
What to do? She needed to find a way to focus, to put steel in her arm and fingers. She paused at that thought. Her little sister enjoyed books far too much and used to tell her stories about the people of the ancient world that she had read about. Portia thought most of them were incredibly boring but there was one that had caught her attention, Heron of Alexandria, an engineer who built marvelous machines. She had loved the stories about the different things his machines could do. She wondered if he could design a machine to fire a bow like an archer and then it struck her, she could pretend to be just such a machine. She cleared her mind and visualized herself as a female archer, cast in steel, her arms and eye controlled by levers and fulcrums, pulleys and counterweights. There was no thought, as her arm drew back the bow. Action and reaction. The bow felt like it was part of her hands, cast as one piece of steel. She found her spot, relaxed her fingers and let the arrow fly. It hit the target with an audible 'thwock' well above the bull’s-eye. Portia drew an exultant breath.
"Good! Keep shooting until you hit the mark," commanded her mother.
Portia smiled to herself, she fired at Priscilla’s target and put an arrow closer to the bullseye from sixty yards than the smug, pretty-little princess could do from twenty. Priscilla glared at her as Portia, satisfied, went back to shooting at the farthest target.
Chapter 4
“The Black is the easiest to kill of all of the dragons, but it is the hardest to catch. It uses dreams, nightmares, treacheries, and deceptions as its most potent weapons. Do not underestimate its cunning.”
The Centurion Book of Beasts – Folio IV: Dragons
She stretched out upon her pile of bones. Different dragons collected different things for their nest. Reds liked gold, Greens liked weapons and armor, Blues liked precious gems, but Blacks? Blacks collected the bones of their enemies. Laying upon the bones of her enemies soothed her and she wished to be comfortable while she dreamed. Dreams were one of her most powerful weapons and she was going to need excellent ones tonight. She looked at her children, who were already sleeping, and she knew she would be undisturbed. She closed her eyes and slumbered.
In her dream she soared above the countryside toward the castle of her enemy. The feel of the cool night air under her wings was exhilarating! She would show that prophet that his words were not the final say, that his prophecies could be defeated. She paused; where had those thoughts come from? They had intruded against her will, pushing their way into her nocturnal brooding. The Black pushed the words out of her dream, but the memory of the prophet would not be silenced as he entered her dream and changed it. It went in a direction that she did not intend and could not change. Her heart pounded within her as her dream became a nightmare that she was losing control of.
How could her dreams betray her like this? They had always been under her control! She used them to collect information, to sow the seeds of discord, to manipulate others, to instill fear. But not this time, this time it was the dream that was manipulating her, instilling fear in her.
She saw him again, even more imposing and menacing than he had been in reality. He stood in the entrance of the cave, his face shrouded in a dark cloak, leaning on his staff. His entire person seemed to be wrapped in shadows. She could not tear her eyes away from him no matter how hard she tried. He waved his hand and she saw once again the death of her mate as he had prophesied so many years ago. She had thought him stupid and arrogant then, what kind of man walks into a dragon lair by himself to deliver a prophesy of doom? His fearlessness had made her hesitate, but her mate laughed at him and ate him in a single bite. They went on with their plans for the nest that they were going to build and the hunting they would do in this new, rich land but the man’s indifference to his own fate haunted her. Her thoughts lingered over him, how does one strike fear into people who are not afraid of death?
She saw again the knight - that horrible, ghastly knight! - riding down the narrow, twisted canyon looking for the dragons who were destroying the countryside and terrorizing the villagers. Her mate, a powerful red, saw him as an easy meal and dove down on him from above. At the last possible moment, the man spurred his horse and it leapt forward around yet another twist in the ravine as her mate swept over the spot where the knight had been just a moment before. The wise thing to do would have been to wheel around and get some altitude and attack again from above but Reds are known for their power, ferocity, and their fiery breath, not their wisdom. Her mate flew down into the canyon after the knight expecting to catch him around the next corner but instead, he found himself in a well-planned trap. Ooooh! The hateful cunning of that knight! His plan had been perfect. The walls were too close together for the Red to spread his wings and fly out or even to turn around, he couldn’t maneuver, and he couldn’t escape. The knight, on the other hand, had plenty of room for what he was planning to do. He wheeled his horse around in the blink of an eye and charged her mate. She could still hear the thundering hooves of two thousand pounds of horse, armor, and man, charging at full speed. When all that power is concentrated into the steel tip of a twelve-foot battle lance it can strike a devastating blow even by the standards of a dragon.
Her mate did the only thing that he could do, he whipped his head around and tried to breath fire upon his attacker, but it was too little, too late. The knight ignored the momentary flash of flame and drove his lance home. The steel tip pierced her mate's wing and entered deep into his side before snapping off. The Red’s flank was immediately drenched with blood and his wing was pinned in place by the broken lance until the great dragon ripped it free leaving a gaping hole in the membrane. The wound was mortal, and both the knight and the dragon knew it but still her mate fought bravely on. With his lung pierced he couldn't use his fiery breath and the narrow walls of the canyon prevented him from fully extending his forelegs and slashing with his claws. He tried to crush the man in his terrible teeth, but the horse was too quick and the knight was too skilled, every attack was dodged or parried. Her mate began to move slower and slower, his attacks becoming more and more feeble as his steaming blood poured out from the wound in his side. Finally, the knight saw an opening and charged in again. His sword, made of that accursed Centurion Steel, penetrated deep into the neck of her beloved, and her mate fell dead on the spot.
In her mind’s eye, she could still see it, that evil knight sitting on his horse, leaning over the body of her beloved, covered in bright armor wearing a black tabard with a large red cross over the top of it. It was the sign of the Order of the Centurion, just as the prophet had foretold. The old fool had been no fool after all.
Humans had killed dragons before but only in large, well-armed, and well-trained groups. Any local nobleman wishing to kill a dragon that had invaded his lands brought a group of 20 or 30 knights, twice as many retainers, and a few ballistae and tried to catch it by surprise in its lair so that it couldn’t take flight. Even then he understood that most of his men would not come back. If it could get out into the open and use its wings, he could easily lose the entire company. But THIS?! This was a single man killing a dragon on his o
wn, armed with nothing more than a lance and a sword. All the pain and humiliation of that day came rushing back into the dragon’s heart as she began to weep and grind her teeth in frustration.
Why was she reliving that day again in her dreams? This was the first nightmare of her entire existence and still the dark dream moved on. The prophet waved his hand again in her dreams and she was reminded of the rest of his prophecy, the part that foretold her own doom. She raged against him in her dream but could do nothing to him.
She awoke suddenly to find that her children were all huddled away from her in the far corner of the chamber. She wanted to destroy the prophet all over again but he was already dead, her mate had eaten him. He was DEAD! Why did he still have this power over her? She sniffed around in her bed of bones until she found a skull that reminded her of him and then crushed it to dust under her claws. Clearly, destroying her enemy and his family would be more difficult than she had thought. But she had to do it! She had to if she was going to beat the prophecy and live. And the revenge? Yes, the revenge would be sweet as well.
Chapter 5
“Never underestimate the power of stupidity to deliver you from the hands of your enemies.”
The Centurion Guide to Practical Advice – Chapter 1: Proverb 6
Centurion? Brendan knew that was a term used for officers in the Legions of Rome, but the Legions had disappeared from the world centuries ago. Was that a title or a name? Probably a title. He looked at the larger man closely. He was a warrior’s warrior. His gray mustache, gray hair, and even the gray shadows cast on his rugged face by the firelight made him look like he was made of iron. Brendan dubbed him ‘the Iron Knight’.
