by CW Thomas
Relieved his father wasn’t upset with him for being late, Brayden rested his hands on the grip of his saddle and tried not to look as uneasy as he felt.
“An owl came to my room this morning,” he said. “It perched on my window. Looked me right in the eye.”
Khalous shook his head. “Bad omen having a bird look at you like that. Bad enough just to have one in your room.” He scratched his iron colored hair that was drawn back from his retreating hairline into a mangled plait that hung just passed his neck.
“And an owl at that,” said Fierdrick, another member of Kingsley’s personal bodyguard.
“I’m not afraid of an owl,” Brayden said, though, truthfully, the memory of the owl sitting in his window had haunted him since he woke up.
“That’s a good lad,” said Khalous, a smile cracking his otherwise gaunt visage. “Fearless. You’ll be a mighty hunter some day.”
Brayden had a sense that wasn’t true. Deep down he had always felt like the stern captain was disappointed in him, like he saw the flaws in Brayden’s character that his father overlooked.
Kingsley smiled. “Shall we hunt him down?”
Looking east, Brayden hesitated. “I don’t like owls,” he said, curling his lip as though the thought of owl meat repulsed him. “Partridge stew is better.”
Khalous lifted a thick, worn hand to his stomach and closed his eyes. “Ah, the dreams I have about Lady Lilyanna’s partridge stew.” His fingers drummed on his small gut.
Kingsley lifted a questioning eyebrow. “I’m not sure I like you dreaming about my wife’s stew.”
“Oh, it’s marvelous stew!” Khalous said. “I bet there’s not another queen in the realm that can match her stew.”
“I bet there’s not another queen in the realm who can cook at all,” Pick said.
The banter continued as the men steered their horses west, toward the nesting quail.
Brayden lingered behind, reluctant to follow.
Pick turned his horse around and sauntered up next to him. “What’s the matter, young master? Still waking up?”
“I hate hunting,” Brayden said. “It’s servant’s work.”
“And who calls it servant’s work?”
Brayden shrugged. He didn’t actually believe what he’d said. He was just too afraid to admit the truth. “I just hate it.”
Pick flopped his hands over each other on his saddle. “Did you know what your grandfather—may he slumber in peace—enjoyed doing most?”
“Using his bow. Everyone knows that. He had the best aim in the realm before the stiffness took his hands.”
“And do you know what your father hated to do the most when he was your age?”
Brayden offered a guess, “Using his bow.”
“Your father hated using a bow, but his father, your grandfather, loved it. And what does your father love doing that you hate?”
“Let me guess. Hunting.”
“And do you know what makes your father such a good hunter?”
Brayden waited for the answer, even though he knew what it was.
“His skills with a bow.” Pick paused. “Were it not for your grandfather’s passion your father never would have learned how to enjoy his.”
“But what am I ever going to learn from hunting?” Brayden argued.
“That’s for you to find out, young master.”
He was out of excuses. He could stall no further. With a reluctant sigh, Brayden urged Arrow forward.
The company of hunters moved through the woods, looking, listening. They all had their bows ready, arrows notched, but Brayden knew the only ones who would draw their strings were he and his father. This hunt belonged to them.
After a while the company stopped. Pick gestured for Brayden to trot ahead. “Your father wants you,” he said, pointing toward the head of the line.
Kingsley sat atop his stallion on a gentle slope overlooking a descent of forest shrubbery. He cracked a smile when Brayden neared. “Down there. I’ll go down around the west side of those bushes and flush them out. When they take flight, they’ll be headed east, so track them first before you let go of your arrow.”
“Yes, Sir,” Brayden said quietly.
There was no avoiding it now. The moment he always feared had come.
He watched as his father, tall and regal in the saddle, meandered down the slope to the left. The young prince of Aberdour lifted his bow, fingers teasing the taut string, ready to set his arrow free at a moment’s notice.
He wondered if he would hit his target this time, and if the others would rib him when he missed. He would miss, of that much he was certain. Broderick and Dana were better at archery than he was. The only thing Brayden ever got from using his bow was the look of disappointment on his father’s face when he failed to hit his marks.
Behind him, Fierdrick made a noise as though he’d just been slugged in the stomach. Brayden turned around on the back of his horse to see the soldier tumble from his saddle. The impact of his body on the forest floor sounded like a single partridge wing beat, sudden and strong.
Brayden remembered the owl, the way it had perched on his windowsill, staring at him with those big haunting eyes.
But then he saw the arrow in Fierdrick’s back.
The silence of the woods evaporated, and everything seemed to happen at once. Footsteps crashed through the leaves on the hill behind them. Soldiers shouted. An arrow flew past Brayden’s head. Pick galloped forward, and Khalous called for his father. Black soldiers of the high king lined along the top of the ridge, yelling and drawing their weapons.
“Broods!” Khalous said.
Brayden saw Kingsley’s horse come hurrying back up the slope, startling the pair of partridges at last. The birds shot up into the air in a panicked flurry of thumping drumbeats as more arrows whipped past.
“Brayden!” his father yelled. “Go back to the castle! Now!”
An arrow found its mark in the nape of Kingsley’s neck. He fell forward on his horse, choking on the spurts of blood that showered from his throat.
Fear entered Brayden like a monster, invading every corner of his soul. “Father!” he shouted.
Pick grabbed Arrow’s reins and yanked the horse around. “Move!”
“What? No! Father!”
More arrows careened past him.
He and Pick rushed their horses down the forest slope toward Aberdour. Brayden glanced back to see Khalous riding away with Lord Kingsley just as two other members of the king’s company were brought down by arrows.
The hill at their backs, he saw, was crawling with black vipers. The brood poured over the ridge like ants out of an anthill.
“Come on,” Pick said.
His fierce tone scared Brayden, sharpening his focus as the pair wove their way out of the forest. Once in the clear, their horses raced across the southern plain to the city’s gate, where the navy and silver flags of Aberdour waved high.
Brayden charged into the southern gate, through the tunnel under the city’s stout wall, to the brown and gray stone entry court beyond. Pick dismounted to inform the guards of the attack. His words were met with resounding surprise, voices that echoed in the portal’s vaulting.
“Why didn’t the scouts warn us?” a soldier said.
“What happened to the outpost?” asked another.
“Brayden?” came the tiny call of a little girl. He pivoted in his saddle to see his sister Brynlee running toward him, her silky hair springy with her steps. Their youngest sister Scarlett was with her, her tiny feet shuffling under the folds of a long ivory dress.
“What’s happening?” Brynlee asked.
Brayden wasn’t sure he could explain it—or even if he should. Brynlee had turned seven last fall, and Scarlett was only five. Could they even comprehend what was happening?
An image of their father covered in blood rushed into his mind, and tears welled in the young boy’s eyes.
From atop the wall someone shouted, “Look!”
> The surrounding commotion grew silent. When Brayden saw Pick make a dash for the gate, he jumped off his horse and followed.
“What is that?”
“There, coming over the hill!”
Brayden looked to the west where he saw a horsed scout approaching dressed in the colors of Aberdour. At least, it used to be a scout. The man’s head had been severed and placed in his lap. His body was tied to his horse, and the symbol of Aberdour on his chest had been scribbled out with his own blood.
Soldiers hurried ahead to catch the man’s horse and cut his body down.
Beyond the hills, visible against the pale blue sky, rose a column of smoke.
“The outpost burns,” said one of the soldiers.
“And now we know why we had no warning,” Pick said.
Khalous came barging up the southern slope. “Make way for the king!” he shouted, his voice edged with urgency and rage.
Kingsley’s horse galloped alongside his own, faithfully bearing its lord upon its saddle. The moment the horses came to a stop within the city, however, the King of Aberdour plunged to the ground.
“Father,” Brayden cried, running toward him with Brynlee and Scarlett on his heels.
Kingsley’s eyes fluttered open, a gurgling sound emanating from deep in his throat.
“Get back!” Khalous said. He started to pull Brayden away when the king latched onto his son’s shoulders and pulled him in close.
“Father?” Brayden said, fresh tears springing to his eyes.
Kingsley fought for breath, choking on the arrow shaft still lodged in his throat. “Fight hard,” he whispered. “Love well. You’re a man now… my son.”
Kingsley’s hand fell from the boy’s shoulders, limp. Brayden felt a wave of cold wash over him, and then he lost control. He clutched his father’s velvet shirt and begged him not to leave. He apologized. He pleaded. He cursed and fumed and told his father that he loved him, but Lord Kingsley Falls was dead. The king of the last free city on Edhen had been murdered.
To the west, the army of the high king marched up over the road.
BRYNLEE
Aberdour became a city of panic when the brood of black vipers appeared on the southwestern hillside. Thousands of spears and halberds jutted up from the mob like the talons of a monster while the golden insignia of a viper flapped high in the breeze on crimson flags. The soldiers filed over the hillside step-by-step, unit-by-unit, until the green field sprawling before the city sat covered with a dark patchwork of enemy divisions and siege weapons.
The dirt and stone streets of Aberdour, soiled by remnants of winter’s runoff, churned under the footsteps of thousands of citizens pushing and running, screaming and calling for loved ones, fleeing to whatever shelter they could find—barn lofts, crawl spaces, wooden homes with shingled roofs.
The chaos was sheer terror to the mind of seven-year-old Brynlee Falls.
Heralds of the high king’s army blew their trumpets, a deep, bone-chilling reverberation that sent shivers down Brynlee’s spine. Next to her, Scarlett, her baby sister, clutched her ears to quell the awful noise.
With tiny trembling fingers Brynlee Falls reached out and took her father’s lifeless hand with a sense of dawning horror. “Papa? Papa!” She shook him, wanting him to wake up, wanting to gaze upon his beautiful tawny eyes one last time.
A contingent of Aberdourian soldiers in full regalia sprinted toward them down the main road. Captain Khalous Marloch ordered Brynlee and Scarlett out of the street. He shouted for Brayden too, but her brother was lost in his sorrow, crying in a manner that Brynlee had never seen from him before. It chilled her skin and frightened her.
“Secure the city!” a guard shouted.
Hundreds of soldiers ran to their defensive positions on the battlements, swords carried prudently at their sides. The great portcullis of the southern wall descended.
Brynlee pulled her sister in close to her, not noticing the blood on her fingers until her hands soiled the flowered patterning of Scarlett’s ivory dress. It was their father’s blood, and Brynlee shivered at the sight of it. She wiped her hands on the folds of her skirt and then swiveled Scarlett to face her. The girl looked more confused than afraid, her big brown eyes peeking out from behind a few loose strands of rich brown hair.
“It’s going to be all right,” Brynlee said, though more to calm herself than her sister.
A single horse galloped up the path toward the city carrying a man in ragged brown clothes. He stopped at the gate and held up his hand, begging the soldiers to let him in. Straddling the horse with him was a young girl in gray slacks and a long forest green tunic who Brynlee recognized.
“Lia!” she said, springing toward the entrance. “Someone raise the gate!”
Her tiny voice was lost in the rising din of the city. Soldiers trampled past her to ready the defensive weapons, massive wood and iron contraptions of varying sizes capable of launching rocks, flaming drums of oil, and massive spears. Citizens rushed arrows to the walls to aid the archers at the crenels while others hoisted pots of hot oil on pulleys.
Brynlee reached her hand through the bars of the portcullis, calling out for Lia. “Raise the gate!”
“My lady!” a soldier shouted as he came to pull Brynlee away. “We must seal the entrance. You can’t—”
“But it’s Lia!” she yelled.
When the soldier noticed the young princess on the other side of the gate, his eyes widened. “My lady! What are you doing out there?” His gaze tipped to the men above. “Raise the gate! Now!”
The massive portcullis lifted to allow the horsed stranger and the young princess of Aberdour to enter. Soldiers then rushed to seal the entrance behind a pair of massive double doors, which they reinforced with two thick iron bars.
Brynlee ran to her sister and threw her arms around her waist.
“The Black King’s vipers,” Lia said, breathless, “on the northern hills. They–they killed them. Thomas and Abigail. They’re dead!”
Khalous strode up to her, unfastening his long blue cape from the metal shoulders of his armor. He left it on the ground in a heap. “Where are the vipers?”
The rough and ragged looking man who had ridden in with Lia, said, “A band of them are making their way through the forest path. Sir Komor Raven is leading the pack.”
“The Raven?” Khalous said.
Brynlee wondered if that was fear she saw in his slate gray eyes.
After a brief pause for consideration, Khalous issued a slew of orders to the men of the King’s Shield: “Get the king to the castle, and find the queen! Gather their children and take the eastern tunnels out of the city.”
The secret tunnels, escape routes for the king. Brynlee had been fascinated when she’d read about them in her schoolbooks, but now, faced with the prospect of actually using them, she was far less enthused.
“The tunnels?” said Pick. “You intend to abandon Aberdour?”
“The protection of the city is not our job,” Khalous said. “The protection of the king and his family is. Get them out! Brynlee, Scarlett, Lia, follow me. Brayden!”
Brynlee saw her brother still kneeling by their father’s side. He looked startled when Khalous walked over to him and yanked him to his feet.
“Pull yourself together, lad!” Khalous demanded. “Your father is dead, and you will be too if you don’t do as I say.” He looked at the girls. “The men who are coming here will not show you mercy because you are children. If they get in here, and it is likely they will, they will rape you and slit your throats.”
Most people liked the plain manner in which Khalous Marloch spoke, direct with no flowery words to coat his meanings. Brynlee did not.
“Now do as I say and stay close to me,” Khalous said. “We’re going back to the castle to—”
A thundering collision of rock and fire exploded above the portcullis. The impact sent a flaming mess of stone and wood showering onto the street. Khalous pulled Brynlee and Scarlett into him,
covering them with his broad shoulders as the debris rained down upon them.
Screaming ensued, women’s voices and men’s.
“Trebuchets!” came a shout from the wall.
Trebuchets. At mention of the towering catapults, Brynlee’s little body trembled with fear. She’d read about the war machines in her schoolbooks and knew full well the devastation they were capable of. They would demolish Aberdour, she was sure of it.
“Take cover!”
“Go!” Khalous ordered.
Brynlee grabbed Scarlett’s hand and ran up the main street. Fear wrestled with courage inside her stomach, but her determination pushed her on. She heard more boulders slam into the city’s defenses. People wailed all around her.
“There you are!” said a young woman.
Brynlee looked up and saw her older sister riding toward her atop a lithe brown horse. The animal skidded to a stone-spitting stop. Dana Falls dismounted in an elegant rush of green dress folds and fortitude. She hurried to Brynlee and Scarlett, wrapped them in a desperate hug, and said, “I’ve been looking everywhere for you!”
Brynlee sobbed into her sister’s velvet shoulder. “Papa. It’s… he’s gone. The soldiers killed him.”
“What?”
Khalous put a firm hand on Dana’s shoulder and said, “Dana, listen to me. I need you to—”
“Our father,” Dana said, “is he really–did they really…” but Brynlee could tell that she didn’t want to say the words.
“He is dead,” Khalous said plainly. Then, before the adolescent girl could break down, he added, “I need you to help me get your sisters and your brother back to the castle. We need to get your mother and Broderick and—”
“Mama’s gone.”
Dana’s words, sown together with unhidden grief, made Brynlee’s stomach tighten like a knot.
The captain’s shoulders slouched. “What happened?”
“Black vipers from the north, they came in so swift and quick.” Dana’s mouth clamped shut as tears welled in her eyes. “She’s gone. They took her. They killed her. She’s gone.”
“No,” Brynlee whimpered. She pressed herself into Dana.