He smiled, his wet lips going upwards on their own accord. “I’s always lookin’ for fun wiff pretty comfany.”
Lyolf tried to stroke her cheek, but missed the mark and ended up grabbing her roughly by the shoulder. She used the movement to sidle up under his outstretched arm, wrapping a well-muscled limb around his waist.
“Well look no further. You have a room?” she asked.
“Su’ do,” he said.
He leaned against her and led her toward the stairs. If it hadn’t been for her support, he would never have made it up to the second floor, much less to his third floor bedroom. They stumbled in, one laughing drunkenly, the other giggling flirtatiously.
It was all sweating and grunting after that.
Lyolf woke with a start, sitting straight up and looking around. He glanced at the other side of the bed to find it empty. Where was the woman? He quickly climbed out of the plush bed, ignoring his pounding head and fuzzy mouth. He scrambled to the desk and flipped open the little door. The cabinet was empty. She had taken his purse.
The ex-prince slumped into the chair. Thankfully, he had hidden most of his wealth under the floorboards of his room. It was safe there. Or was it?
He fell to the floor, flipped over the woven rug, and pried up the loose floorboard. Inside he found the small chest of wealth, safe and full. Lyolf let out a deep sigh as he slumped back onto his rump and stared at the chest. She may have missed the chest, but she still got away with a small fortune.
What am I doing? Lyolf asked himself as he stared at the trunks and sacks of his belongings lining his room.
He had told his “father” that he would be going into the army, or at least taking hold of his lands and serving the people beholden to him. Instead, he was pissing his life away in taverns and brothels. It was fun, but it wasn’t right. It wasn’t what he had been trained to do, raised to do.
Lyolf climbed to his feet, a groan escaping his lips. His headache increased as he made it to his feet, as if to give confirmation to his new internal understanding. Yes, it was time to go to Nava and make a decision.
The ex-prince cleaned his face, dressed in his traditional clothing, and packed up what few items had been released from the luggage.
In another hour his horses were loaded and he was leaving the shining, vibrant city of Topaq aboard a ferry used to cross the wide inlet. On the other side he would follow the coast, pass the Central Wastelands, and settle in Nava, or go on into the army as originally planned.
Bethany groaned as she rolled over on the wooden flooring of the deserted keep. It was an unusual blessing to wake up warm and dry. She looked around to find Sir Caldry leaning against the far wall and sharpening his sword. She let out a more relaxed sigh.
“Can we just stay here for a few days?” she asked, luxuriating in the warmth of the fire.
“I thought you wanted to be home.”
Bethany groaned again as she sat up. “You’re right.”
“I usually am. Gruel’s hot.”
“Can’t we get something else other than gruel at the next village?”
“You got coin hidden somewhere?”
She chuckled. “Good point.”
She slurped down her serving of the gruel and nibbled on her tiny bit of cheese. It wasn’t nearly enough, but it would have to do.
“Well, we off?” she asked when she finished eating.
“Not quite yet. You said you wanted to learn how to use a weapon. Well now’s your chance.” The knight stood up, picked up the bow from the floor, and handed it to her. “String it.”
Bethany stared at the long, curved bow. This wasn’t the weapon she had had in mind. She had seen the knight string it a number of times, and yet it seemed so different as she tried to remember the trick he’d used. After a few minutes of fruitless effort, she looked up at the knight and shrugged.
“Give up?”
“Afraid so.”
“Lean the bottom end against your left foot. No. Like that. And with your right foot step over the bow. No, keep the gut above your leg. There. Now bend the bow around your right thigh and loop the gut over the end. Right. Like that.”
Bethany obeyed his instructions, but it was still difficult to bend the bow far enough for her to loop the string of gut over the end. She managed it eventually, but not until sweat had beaded on her forehead. The knight handed her the scuffed up arrow he had used on the tree exercises. He guided her into the hallway and pointed at the ancient portrait hanging at the other end. Decades of grime coated it, but Bethany thought she saw the outline of a face.
“Give it a try.”
She tried to mimic his movements, placing the arrow on the string of gut, pulling it back as far as she could, and releasing it. The arrow flew off to the side, landing in one of the door frames that lined the hallways. Bethany grunted in frustration.
“What did I do wrong?”
“Where to begin?”
“Be nice,” she growled as she marched to the arrow and yanked it out of the rotten doorframe. She returned and took her stance again.
The knight stepped up behind her. “Pull it all the way back to your cheek.”
“I can’t,” she whined.
“Try.”
With a little more effort she got the string all the way to her cheek, her arms shaking with fatigue.
“Lower you elbow. Breathe. And release.”
The arrow flew a little straighter, bouncing off the stone wall six inches away from the painting. Bethany ground her teeth together as she went to fetch the arrow again.
“This time,” said the knight. “Don’t snap the string. Just straighten your fingers.”
Bethany obeyed and the arrow landed on the painting, near where the subject’s shoulder lay under the layers of dirt.
“Better. Fire a couple more times while I load up the animals. Then we’ll head out.”
By the time Sir Caldry called for her to join him in the old great hall, Bethany’s arm could barely pull the taught string back to her cheek. So much for being done with sore muscles, she thought as she pulled the arrow from the painting and marched down the stairs.
Sir Caldry marched up to her, yanking the bow from her grasp. “Always unstring the bow,” he snapped, doing the task himself.
“Sir Caldry, you never told me. How was I supposed to know?” she asked, surprised to find him suddenly so angry.
The knight let out a gusty sigh, nodding his head. “I thought you were going to call me Erin?”
“Only when you deserve it,” she grumbled, stomping toward the donkey and leading it out of the keep. Eventually, the knight followed.
Bethany pulled back the string of the bow and let the arrow fly. The arrow met the tree with a low thud, the feathered end of the shaft quivered as though the improvement in her aim excited it. Bethany stifled a giggle at the thought of an arrow being excited. She was growing giddy with exhaustion.
The knight was allowing them to stop earlier in the evenings now, but it was when they stopped that the real work began. He still had the princess climbing trees—to build muscle, he said—doing her basic chores, and now practicing her archery. Bethany was just returning with the arrow when the knight called her over to their campsite.
They had stopped for the night in a small valley wedged between two steep hills. The Domhain lands appeared to Bethany to be nothing but hills. They had spent the last three days winding their way around hills and small mountains too steep and jagged to go over. It didn’t seem like the fastest route, but the knight continued to insist he knew this land like the back of his hand.
“Here,” said the knight when she reached the small flat space they had found, partially protected from the wind and the rain by a short cliff.
The knight held a dagger in his hand, flipped it upwards, and caught it gracefully by the blade. He offered it to her, hilt first. She took it in her small hand, her fingers wrapping around the leather grip. It felt right. She liked the weight of it in her hand, feeling
safer with the dagger than she did with the bow.
“What’s the number one rule when handling a blade?” he asked, sounding as though he was quoting something said to him long ago.
Bethany glanced up at him. “Don’t stab yourself.”
The knight shrugged, a grin pulling on his scar. “Okay, what’s the second rule?”
Bethany stopped fiddling with the blade, looked down at it, and wondered. “Stab the bad guy?” she finally asked.
The knight laughed softly. “Clean your blade before you put it away. Blood left on the blade can destroy a sword or dagger faster than anything else.”
Bethany nodded, filing the information away, determined to not forget anything he taught her. They didn’t do more than talk that evening, discussing the different tactics of fighting: how to use all of her body, not just her dagger hand, when to grapple and when to keep her distance, speed over strength, and most importantly, stab and twist.
Bethany tried to remember it all and even fell asleep reciting the facts in her mind, but she had a sneaking suspicion putting them into practice would be much harder than remembering them.
A less impressive skill he taught her that evening was whittling. They both sat beside the fire, turning everyday sticks into small, pointy spears. Bethany grumbled as she cut tiny bits off the stick in her hand. What was this teaching her? she asked herself as she picked up another stick.
She kept her complaints to herself, though, knowing the knight would not take kindly to her whining. He had told from the very beginning that a soldier takes orders and that’s what she was going to do.
Cal watched the princess by the light of their fire, her tongue poking through her lips as she concentrated on the stick in her hand. She was careful to make sure she didn’t cut herself as she turned stick after stick into tiny spears. Granted, the dagger was so dull she would have to work at it to cut herself. Nonetheless, it had a point and could do serious damage if called upon.
He had been amused as he talked theory. He could see her mind working to remember every point he said, as though the theory was enough to save her in a fight. It was going to be a tough lesson the first time she encountered a real enemy. Book knowledge only got you so far in a crisis. It was instinct and muscle memory more than anything.
At least she isn’t complaining, he told himself as she picked up her forth stick.
Cal had expected her to argue with the order. Evidently she’d learned his first rule: Do as you’re told.
If he could just put more meat on her bones. He was trying to be generous with the rations, but they had only a few coins left, and next to no game for the killing. Maybe he should take her hunting. There wasn’t much around here for her to scare away, and it would be a good exercise in moving quietly. And if by chance they did kill something, she would have the opportunity to bleed an animal. That would be interesting.
Maybe, just maybe, he’d grow to genuinely like her, even if she was a princess.
“Why can’t I have a sword yet?” she asked out of the blue.
Nope, probably never going to really like her, he thought as he tossed another stick into the fire.
“Like as not, you’d just end up hurting yourself. You manage that,” he pointed at the dagger, “and I’ll think about giving you the sword.”
She didn’t argue, for which he was grateful.
Chapter Sixteen
It had been over a week since the knight gave Bethany the dagger. They had spent the evenings shooting and dueling, and so far Bethany felt certain she would never be able to protect herself. She couldn’t bring herself to strike the knight with all of her new found strength, even when they were sparing with blunt sticks. Until one evening…
“You have to attack with force,” the knight repeated.
Bethany grunted with another lunge. “I am.”
“I know you have more power in those little arms than that.”
“I’m trying!”
Bethany was exhausted from another rough day of trudging through thick mud. She didn’t have the patience to hear the knight repeat the same instructions, nor did she have the willpower to transform her understanding of those instructions into the correct movement.
“If we are attacked again,” he lunged forward with a downward swing of his pretend sword, which she barely managed to avoid with a twist of her shoulders. “These men will show you no mercy.”
“I know,” she growled as she took another whack on the thigh from his stick.
“That means you can’t show mercy.”
“I won’t.”
“You are if you can’t even hit me once. You’re holding back.”
Again Bethany took a jab in the gut. What was one more bruise, she thought as she tried to ignore the pain and block his next attack. Was she really holding back? She didn’t think she was holding back. The sweat pouring down her neck and spine suggested otherwise. What more could she give?
“C’mon. Hit me!” he snapped, annoyed with her tendency to defend herself rather than go on the offensive.
Bethany furrowed her brows and gave him a quick succession of thrusts and jabs, a special string of moves she had just mastered the night before. Of course, the knight blocked each move, his stick ready to block her next attack before she had even begun it.
“You’re faster than this. Stop holding back.”
“I’m not!” she snapped.
“You are. I’ve seen you move. You’re faster than this. You have to be willing to deal the death blow. If that means you have to feel the hate, then feel it.”
Bethany glared at him. He didn’t even sound winded.
“But I don’t hate you.”
Her words were a realization. At some point over the last week or so, she had stopped hating and fearing the knight. In some ways, Erin had become her friend. Maybe, in some small way, she was holding back.
“Try.”
They continued to battle, Bethany taking three more blows of his stick. How do you chose to hate someone?
“Why would you like me?” he demanded, slashing downward and hitting her in the face hard enough to draw blood from her eyebrow.
Bethany tumbled to the ground, falling into a thatch of course grass. She reached up and wipe the blood from her face. Before she could climb to her feet, Erin had taken her by the strings of her jerkin and pulled her to her feet.
“You’re enemy doesn’t wait for you to clean yourself up,” he growled, dropping her to her feet and giving her a quick whack on the backside.
Bethany jumped back, her free hand rubbing the sore spot on her rump.
“Not nice.”
“War isn’t nice. Now hit me,” growled Erin as he waited for her to attack.
She tried again, and again was too slow to get a blow past his defenses.
“I deserve more than a strike with a stick. C’mon!”
Again she failed and received a blow to the shoulder as payment.
“C’mon. I whipped you. I beat you. I made you work for days and nights on end.”
Bethany felt her blood boil within her veins, remembering the whippings. He may be her ally now, but he had once been her enemy. He had done all he said and more. Bethany charged forward, her speed increasing as she tried to harness the distress he had caused her.
“Oh so close. But not close enough.”
The princess took a blow to the neck.
“I out-ed you to Wolfric. I got you thrown into that family, engaged to the prince. Its ‘cause of me you got raped.”
Bethany felt tears of rage prick her eyes. She charged into the fray, swinging upward until the knight’s sword caught her blow. She slid her fake sword until its “hilt” and her fist jabbed the knight in the throat. The suddenness of her movement caught him by surprise, giving her a second to sling her foot around the back of his leg. She leaned into the grapple, turning him over the back of her heel. Without thinking, she drew the dagger from her hip and held it to his throat.
For the first t
ime, she saw a flicker of fear in the knight’s eyes.
Erin took slow, deep breaths, pouring his calm into her. Bethany began mimicking him.
“You didn’t do this to me,” she finally said before climbing off him and sheathing her dagger.
Bethany stumbled back and collapsed against the rise of a small hillock. The tears she didn’t want to shed began to leak out of her eyes and clear paths down her dirty face. She dropped the stick and stared at their crackling fire.
Erin climbed to his feet and hesitated a second before squatting down in front of her.
“Bethany.”
She didn’t look at him.
“Look at me.”
The fire shimmered in her wet eyes.
Erin took her by the chin and force her face up to look at him.
“When you’re attacked,” he began, his voice soft, “you think of Féderic, and what he did to you. You use that rage to win… just like you did now.”
Bethany glared up at him, the rage he’d called forth with his words still lingering.
She took a deep breath before she spoke. “You didn’t do this to me.”
“No. But I didn’t help you, either. Sometimes, our fears and our rage can be our most powerful weapon. Eventually, you will learn to fight without them.”
“It is my crutch.”
Erin nodded. “As it is mine.”
He left her by the hillock, no doubt giving her space to think. Bethany had just forced herself to her feet when she heard the crash from the trees and underbrush. She turned to see men charging down the hillock. Without trying, Bethany counted five assailants. She heard the sound of the knight’s sword being drawn, and suddenly remembered her own dagger. Her sword, sadly, was leaning against a log on the other side of their camp.
Bethany scrambled for it just as the men reached their little camp. To her surprise, the first move of the knight was to slice the rope lead tying Éimhin to a nearby tree. The horse, much too smart for its own good, kicked out, taking one of their assailants out.
The Dothan Chronicles: The Complete Trilogy Page 42
